"Now then. How should I put this to use?"
Tang Yu-hyeon muttered as he gathered up the ledger and several high-grade spiritual medicines.
So Red Tiger Keep is connected to the Moon-Crossing Pavilion.
But as things stood, both his martial attainment and his standing fell short of striking the Moon-Crossing Pavilion.
'Then I had better raise what I can raise right now.'
Tang Yu-hyeon took up No Sam-ho's saber and threw the door wide open.
"Clear this out and take it to the Tang Clan."
"Yes, sir!"
The shadows that had been following him appeared out of nowhere and cleared out Red Tiger Keep.
When Tang Yu-hyeon moved off without so much as looking at them, one of the shadows followed after him.
"Will you be returning at once?"
"No. I have something I must do."
"Understood."
Tang Yu-hyeon returned to the Hundred Flower Pavilion, now reduced to wreckage.
He pushed through those who were curious about what had happened yet too afraid to step inside, and climbed onto the flat boulder before the Hundred Flower Pavilion.
"Tang Yu-hyeon? Why is the Second Young Master of the Tang Clan here.......?"
"Did that good-for-nothing go and pull something again?"
"Hey now! Watch your mouth, man! You'll get yourself hauled away!"
SWISH.
The moment Tang Yu-hyeon raised his hand, the crowd fell silent.
However famous he had made himself as a good-for-nothing, he was still a member of the Tang Clan.
On top of that, before the presence of one who had made his name as the Poison Lord and the greatest under heaven, the people naturally deferred to him.
"I am Tang Yu-hyeon, Second Young Master of the Tang Clan."
After the brief introduction, Tang Yu-hyeon went straight to the point.
"As of today, the Hundred Flower Pavilion and Red Tiger Keep have fallen."
"The Hundred Flower Pavilion — is that not the place Pavilion Mistress Yeo ran? She kept so many guards that no one dared lay a finger on it!"
"And Red Tiger Keep is that mountain keep that has been running rampant of late.......!"
"Now that I look, that saber — is that not the Keep-Breaking Tiger King's? Did Tang Yu-hyeon really take down both?"
It was an unbelievable thing, but the blood-stained clothing and the saber in Tang Yu-hyeon's hand told them it was true.
Still, it was not enough to win their full trust.
"And though it may be hard to believe, I too have changed."
Tang Yu-hyeon spoke, sweeping his gaze across the eyes filled with suspicion and astonishment.
"Even if I had my reasons, it would take a great many words before you could understand them."
Those reasons were rather complicated, after all.
He would have to tell them of one man who died and one man who entered that body and went on living.
"So take your time and watch. I will prove that my heart loves this place, Sichuan, just as yours do."
A grand, powerful voice.
Even those who had doubted him a breath earlier found themselves nodding.
"If he speaks like that, is it not worth believing him once?"
The words of an aged merchant who had lived long in Sichuan drew agreement from those around him.
But a few young men folded their arms and sneered.
"Anyone can talk! The Second Young Master loves Sichuan? What a joke!"
At the voice cutting through the murmuring, Tang Yu-hyeon turned his head.
The pack of young thugs who had been eyeing him resentfully could not say a word once his gaze landed on them.
But Tang Yu-hyeon did not snap back at them; he simply turned away.
For now, a small change was enough.
***
Tang Yu-hyeon returned to the Tang Clan and handed over everything he had taken from Red Tiger Keep to the Finance Pavilion.
"Th-this is.......!"
The eyes of Tang Mun-jae, Master of the Finance Pavilion, went wide at a sum that came close to the Tang Clan's yearly budget.
Though set against the past, it was no more than blood on a bird's foot.
Startled by the unexpected result, Tang Mun-jae and Tang Gang-heon summoned Tang Yu-hyeon separately the next day.
".......and so I came to bring these."
Having given an account edited to his own advantage, Tang Yu-hyeon set down two sheets of paper bearing thumbprints before Tang Mun-jae and Tang Gang-heon.
At once their eyes fixed on a single spot.
Paper bearing nothing but thumbprints.
Unlike money, which vanished once spent, anything at all could be written on these, and they would not vanish.
In other words, the Tang Clan could bend the Hundred Flower Pavilion and Red Tiger Keep to its own advantage, and beyond that, reach into Sichuan's underworld.
At such an unmatched windfall, Tang Mun-jae broke into a bright smile.
"Second Young Master, this is truly magnificent! I always believed you would accomplish something one day!"
"But before, you certainly......."
"What was it that I said?"
Tang Mun-jae shot back without batting an eye.
One look, and it was plain the man had once given Tang Yu-hyeon an earful about draining the clan's finances.
'Well. That much is this brat's own fault.'
In its place I have brought something to add, however small, so put it to good use.
How much heartache you must have suffered all this while.
Tang Yu-hyeon looked upon his descendants with a warm gaze.
But because his face was so young, it looked like nothing more than a boy beaming proudly at praise from his elders.
'Heh heh heh. The lad.'
'A child is still a child.'
Smiles bloomed on the faces of Tang Gang-heon and Tang Mun-jae as they watched.
The adults had fallen short and left a heavy burden on a young child, so the least they could do was help him set it down for a while.
"You have done very well. I am truly grateful."
"Haha."
"He is without doubt a genius the likes of which the Tang Clan will never see again!"
"Hehehe."
Tang Yu-hyeon's cheeks rose high.
Every time a laugh he could not hide burst out, Tang Gang-heon and Tang Mun-jae added another word of praise.
"You have brought back something this great, so a reward is in order. Is there anything you wish for?"
Something he wished for?
Right now there was only one.
"I wish to see the Tang Clan's treasured sword, the Moon Shadow Sword."
"And what is that?"
"Pardon?"
These brats. They didn't even pass it down to later generations?
"I understand it was one of the Poison Lord's personal weapons."
"That cannot be. The Poison Lord's personal weapon was the throwing blade alone."
"Is that so."
They don't even know it exists, and it isn't in the secret cavern either.
Understood.
This ancestor will fetch it back soon enough.
"Ah. It seems I was mistaken."
"No matter. If you are curious about the personal weapons of other ancestors, go to the Joined Flame Workshop. You will be able to look your fill."
"Understood. I shall visit in due course."
Tang Yu-hyeon bowed at the waist and left the Clan Head's Hall.
With no one left to perform for, his eyes had settled into a stillness so cold it was fierce.
'The Moon Shadow Sword is not in the Tang Clan. So the Moon-Crossing Pavilion truly did make a move.'
They dared touch what belonged to the Tang Clan, in Sichuan, where the Tang Clan stood open guard?
Storming in at once and making certain they could never operate on this land again would hardly be enough, but as he was now, he lacked the strength for it.
'Never mind the transformation realm — what can a man who has not even reached the peak realm do?'
It was still not enough.
For someone to use No Sam-ho, who stood at the threshold of the peak realm, like a hand or a foot meant they held power beyond that.
In short, the Mistress of the Moon-Crossing Pavilion was a master of at least the beyond-peak realm.
Even with poison and experience, he would have to build martial arts to match before he could make a fight of it.
'So first I'd better raise the realm I'm short on.'
Tang Yu-hyeon ran straight for an empty training ground.
It would have been better to fortify his body calmly with spiritual medicine in his quarters, but even the time spent walking between his quarters and the training ground felt wasteful.
"It's a shame it's only mid-grade spiritual medicine, but this much isn't bad."
Tang Yu-hyeon settled at once into the lotus position and tossed the spiritual medicine back all in one go.
With his earlier qi circulation and breath regulation, he had succeeded in purifying his body and pulling it up to first-rate.
After that, the rest was easy.
All that remained was to lay the foundation and build upward.
'First, get rid of the impurities that are left.'
Tang Yu-hyeon recited the mnemonic verses of the Guiding Reversal Three Yang Origin Return Art once more.
Think it makes no difference since it's the same inner arts mind art?
Not in the slightest!
Which spirit elixir was taken, what condition the body is in, who guides it and how — depending on these, the same mnemonic verses produce different effects.
That was all the more true of the Guiding Reversal Three Yang Origin Return Art.
Where did the Three Yang come from in the first place?
The yang within yin,
the yang within yang,
the yang within yin and yang.
Three different yang gathered from three places and flowed through the body, so that filth was purified at the merest brush and the density of the inner arts rose.
At a glance it seemed similar to the Three Flowers Gathering at the Crown, but it was of an entirely different order.
It was not meant to remake the body into a Heavenly Martial Body — properly unfolded, the Guiding Reversal Three Yang Origin Return Art did not expel impurities.
Instead it burned the impure and made it nourishment for the pure.
So naturally, there was no waste.
Tang Yu-hyeon drew the energy flowing through his acupoints slowly upward and sent it back down, over and over.
The faint turbid qi that lingered evaporated and was absorbed into the energy.
'Hgh!'
But taking nothing away also meant holding it all in, endlessly.
As the yang qi circulated through his whole body from the qi center to the Heavenly Palace, the heat that could not be expelled surged up.
His whole body burned as though he had set the sun in his heart, and in his qi center as well.
Tang Yu-hyeon gulped down the spirit elixir he had been holding in his mouth and eased the yang qi.
An exchange between the energy that sought to burn and the energy that sought to cool.
Pain rose enough to send his mind reeling, but Tang Yu-hyeon held his focus until he had achieved what he wanted.
By the hour when the moon that had hung on the left crossed over to the right.
At last the yang qi churning through his acupoints slowly settled.
".......Haah!"
Only once his body had entered a stable orbit did Tang Yu-hyeon gasp for breath like a man who had been underwater too long.
"Haa, hh, I thought I was going to die."
Is this what it feels like for a man to burn to death? It was horrific.
But he had clearly gained as much as he had endured.
"Now I finally feel something like a peak realm master."
With the impurities gone, his inner arts swelled and the energy coursing through his body gained spring.
If he added training on top of this, even the beyond-peak realm would not be a matter of the distant future.
"All right. Let's get to it."
To replenish his strength, Tang Yu-hyeon quickly chewed and swallowed spiritual medicine and sweets, then took up a throwing blade.
Though a target stood before him, he did not throw at once but laid the blade across his palm.
Loosing a throwing blade he could do as much as he liked.
As for accuracy or speed, he could adjust them however he pleased the moment he sharpened his senses.
The problem was the gap between mind and body.
If his body could not keep up with his experience and instinct, in the worst case he might die.
'What did I come back for? I can't let that happen.'
Tang Yu-hyeon composed himself and calmly poured qi into the throwing blade.
He had to feel it.
The energy flowing from his fingertips into the blade.
Soft as the wind, at times fierce as a current of water.
The energy circulating from his qi center stretching outward the way a straight tree sends out its roots.
Feeling out the flow in stillness, Tang Yu-hyeon suddenly threw.
THUNK!
The throwing blade buried itself dead center in the target.
'Too slow.'
It had not reached the level he wanted.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
The sound of blades burying themselves in the target came one after another.
Dozens of times he loosed from the same stance, then changed it.
Still Tang Yu-hyeon's face was full of dissatisfaction.
He looked at the splinters scattered as far as his feet and the sweat falling onto them, and let out a deep breath.
'Don't rush. There's nothing effort can't do.'
He believed in the power of repetition.
If once was not enough, ten times; if ten was not enough, twenty; if twenty was not enough, then a hundred.
'Do that, and things can change.'
Tang Yu-hyeon took up a throwing blade again.
The strength that had held him up time and again lifted him once more.
THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!
The sound of impacts rang out across the training ground once more.
***
The border between night and dawn.
The training ground was filled with nothing but ragged breathing.
"Hoo.......! Hoo.......!"
Tang Yu-hyeon lay down flat, unable to make a sound.
"I must be out of my mind......."
No matter that he had transformed from second-rate to the peak realm, stamina was another matter entirely.
He had been so fixed on closing the gap between mind and body that he had not thought that far.
"Thanks to that I can't lift a finger."
Besides, there were limits to training alone.
The flow of qi, his own movement. He knew them now, but he had no confidence he could feel them just as easily in the pressing moments of a real fight.
"The bastards who heard the news will be too scared to come near, so I can't even go clean out a mountain keep....... What a bind."
THUD. THUD.
As he muttered to himself, footsteps came toward the training ground.
A wide, regular stride.
Instead of lifting his weary body, Tang Yu-hyeon only raised his eyes.
The one who had been walking over from a distance stopped at his head and bent at the waist.
It was Tang San.
The upside-down face asked softly.
"Is something troubling you?"
He was asking as though he had not seen the throwing blades and targets strewn all across the training ground.
"Shall I help?"
'The ones who smile that prettily always keep a few old serpents coiled inside.'
As a rule, the best course was to get tangled with such people as little as possible.
But Tang San had helped Tang Yu-hyeon once before, at the Joint Study Pavilion.
Several reasons came to mind, but he seemed at least to look after his own brothers, so there would be no loss in it.
"Yes."
At that, Tang San smiled with satisfaction.
"Good thinking. I know just the place."