'I've got plenty of spiritual medicine, so inner arts come first.'
Long years of neglected training had left this body full of impurities.
Even if fine water is poured out, when the vessel meant to hold it is lacking, the result turns crude.
To unfold the martial arts he knew, he had to raise this body's realm.
'The good thing is that the energy is still pure. A little work and it can get plenty strong.'
As strong as he had been in the past. Perhaps more.
His chest pounded with anticipation.
Tang Yu-hyeon hurried to his quarters and dismissed every servant.
"It's been a long time since I did this properly."
During the war, when he had to bolt out of bed even in his sleep, there had been no time to settle into posture and perform qi circulation and breath regulation.
There had been no time to rest with an easy mind, so it was only natural.
But what about now?
Thanks to the flamboyant life the owner of this body had led, no one came near him first, and there was no one to disturb him.
It was, in every sense, the ideal environment for building inner arts.
"Crazy bastard. I'm so grateful I could weep."
Tang Yu-hyeon muttered, grinding his teeth.
He meant to scrub this wastrel down and turn him over a new leaf, but there was hardly just one or two things that needed changing.
"Haaah. One at a time. One at a time."
Without delay he folded his legs into a lotus seat and tipped a spirit elixir into his mouth.
FWOOOOSH.
A cool fragrance that called to mind a bamboo grove on a summer day spread through his mouth.
'This is no ordinary spirit elixir. What an admirable descendant.'
Swallowing a laugh, Tang Yu-hyeon recited the mnemonic verses of the Guiding Reversal Three Yang Origin Return Art.
The Guiding Reversal Three Yang Origin Return Art was one of the Tang Clan's secret mind arts, passed down only to the direct line, and without a guide it was difficult to climb to a high realm.
But who was he?
The man who had mastered the Myriad Streams Return to Origin Divine Art, the greatest mind art of the Tang Clan.
A newcomer with a career already behind him, whom no one would ever turn away, and one whose relevant experience alone would fill a good hundred bamboo scrolls at the very least.
Unfolding again what he had once realized was as easy as eating cold porridge.
'I am guide enough for myself.'
Tang Yu-hyeon exhaled deeply and drew energy up from his qi center.
The clear, limpid energy melted into his own and set off an explosive reaction.
At first it seemed to flow gently, but before long it swept through him roughly, as though devouring his body.
CRUNCH!
THUD! THUD! THUUUD—!
Every time it reached a blockage where dregs had piled up, shocks great and small ran through his body.
"Kh!"
Tang Yu-hyeon clenched his teeth and recited the realization he had gained long ago.
Where it is blocked, bore through; where it is turbid, drive the turbidity out and fill the space with the pure.
And when purity has spread through the whole body and formed the Three Yang, it returns once more to the qi center.
As a man dies and returns to the earth, pure to pure, yang to yang.
Sending it all back to that center.
The process was far from easy, and most could not endure the pain of the body being beaten as though by two clubs, so reaching peak mastery was difficult.
But Tang Yu-hyeon did not give up.
Until purity drove out turbidity.
Until muddy water turned into a clear stream.
Again and again he sent the energy out and drew it back.
Twelve circuits.
Twelve circuits again.
The number of completed Lesser Circulations climbed swiftly.
WOOOOOOM!
With a resonant hum, his cross-legged body rose into the air.
Clear energy filled the qi center, then flowed out again, expelling waste from his whole body.
His flesh changed toward a form far better suited to martial arts, and the poison left in his blood vessels was purified.
A span of joy and suffering, an unbroken chain of pain that felt like his whole body breaking apart and the satisfaction of drawing nearer to peak mastery.
"Haaaaah."
Having endured the last of the pain, Tang Yu-hyeon let out a long breath.
At the same time, his body sank slowly back to the ground.
Once all of the energy was stored in his qi center, he was wrung dry.
Rather than force himself to hold his stance, Tang Yu-hyeon flopped flat onto his back.
"It's done......!"
He had hauled a body that was no more than second-rate all the way up to first-rate.
Compared to the days when he was called the Poison Lord, it was still no more than blood on a bird's foot.
But the cornerstone for achievements beyond his past had unmistakably been laid.
Was a pure energy, plainly different from before, not circling through his body!
"Heh heh. Heh. Heh heh heh."
At a result that sent a thrill through his whole body, a smile came of its own accord.
Bursting into laughter at intervals, he turned his head.
The sky had darkened without his noticing.
***
The next day.
Tang Yu-hyeon left his quarters the moment dawn broke.
As he set off without a word, his guard Tang Ho-yeong fell in behind him at once.
"Where are you headed?"
"The library."
"The library?"
"I cannot attend lessons for a few days, so I mean to at least read a book."
"Ah...... Yes. Understood."
The gap before that answer was long.
Hard to believe, isn't it?
He would have been the same in the man's place.
A wastrel reading a book. It would sound more credible to say an ox was reciting scripture.
But Tang Ho-yeong was Tang Yu-hyeon's guard. He asked nothing further and followed quietly.
That was satisfying enough that he let the suspicious glances and the occasional tilt of the head slide.
"I want to read in quiet, so wait out front."
"Yes. What will you do about breakfast?"
"The medicinal brew has left me with no appetite. I will come out around midday."
"Understood."
"And unless it is something major, send back anyone who comes looking for me."
"Yes. I will keep it in mind."
CLICK—.
The instant the gate guard closed the library door, Tang Yu-hyeon spread out his energy.
The guard at the main door, the gate guard at his post. There was no one else inside the library.
'Perfect!'
It seemed heaven was lending him a hand.
'A secret cavern really is best when you slip in unseen.'
Every clan was bound to have secret caverns, and the Tang Clan had more of them than most.
Usually there was the mishap of an entrance being sealed off by mistake in the course of rebuilding, but the library he had looked over on his way in showed no such trace.
In other words, the secret passage was still good.
'Well. If it's blocked, I'll just go in somewhere else.'
There was no rule that a secret cavern had only one entrance.
Humming to himself, Tang Yu-hyeon walked deeper into the library.
At the library's deepest point stood a folding screen painted with plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, and bamboo.
He admired the painted silk, faded with the years, then walked around behind it.
'It should have been about here.......'
Groping along the near-black wall behind the screen, his fingers found a small groove.
Tang Yu-hyeon slid his fingers straight into it, wrapped energy around his arm, and pushed.
SLIDE—.
A panel large enough for a person to pass through gave way, revealing a corridor set with night-glow pearls.
It was a secret passage meant for emergencies.
Who had made it?
'I did.'
Every one of them was a work built at Tang Yu-hyeon's own proposal.
'That's why it doesn't show and it's clean. If some other bastard had built it, it would have been found out and sealed off long ago.'
Apart from major structures such as the Clan Head's hall, there was nowhere his hand had not touched.
Though he had never imagined using it like this.
Tang Yu-hyeon smiled bitterly and stepped inside.
Past the corridor lit against the dark by night-glow pearls, a great wall stood firm.
It looked like a dead end, but it was not a wall.
It was the door leading into the secret cavern.
No feet seemed to have come this way in long years; dust flew with every movement.
Tang Yu-hyeon brushed the door clean of dust, then bit his finger to draw blood.
Kindness repaid double, grudges repaid tenfold.
The family precept, written down in blood, burned bright in the darkness.
With the right words written in the right place, the ground rumbled deeply and the door split apart to left and right.
RUUUMBLE—!
On the left, where kindness was written, medicine.
On the right, where grudge was written, poison.
In the center that mediated between the two, secret manuals of martial arts filled the shelves.
A step further in, shelves appeared behind the shelves, and behind those, treasured swords, jewels, and gold ingots were heaped like mountains.
"Where did you go and sell off the Moon Shadow Sword that only these are left? I keep saying, stop neglecting the swords."
For all the grumbling in his tone, the corners of his mouth were pulled high.
"Not one thing has changed in all this time!"
The secret cavern had kept its existence hidden and held firm through war, fire, and raids by the Demonic Cult's remnants, and he found that admirable.
Though its not being known even to later generations was a problem, of course.
"That is why I said not to hush it up so much."
Tang Yu-hyeon tapped the cavern door playfully.
"Someone has to know, or how can it be handed down or sealed away?"
The words, spoken to someone now dead and gone, scattered into the air.
A bitter smile layered itself over the silence.
But it vanished together with the motion of stepping forward.
Tang Yu-hyeon looked around, running a finger along the secret manuals.
"Well now. I don't have a clue what to hand over first. Ahh, I really can't decide. What do I do? This is sooooo hard to choose."
Martial arts believed lost, poison arts whose blending formulas no one knew, sword arts whose sword paths no one knew.
He can pass on all of it.
But he must not be satisfied with that.
The lost martial arts, Heaven-Filling Flower Rain among them, he would have to write out anew.
Setting them down carelessly in new books would raise doubts about whether they were genuine, and even if he were lucky enough to obtain old paper, having exactly the needed manuals turn up as if on cue would draw suspicion in its own way.
Handing over the manuals was well and good, but he had to help them be received whole.
Otherwise the manuals they had gone to such trouble to find would turn into scraps of paper.
Was he about to let their worth be buried without ever shining as it should?
"I'll have to teach them one at a time, slowly."
Making do, Tang Yu-hyeon picked out manuals suited to the Tang Clan as it now stood and tucked them into his robes.
Just as he was about to look over the shelves at the back for anything more to pass on, a small shelf standing apart caught his eye.
"Hm?"
A grey shelf piled high with neatly wrapped ink sticks.
As though spellbound, Tang Yu-hyeon went to it and opened one of the books.
RIFFLE.
"......There's nothing in it."
No matter how far he turned the pages, it was the same.
The one beside it, and the one beside that, were no different.
Books of nothingness, with neither title nor content, bearing only the marks of passing years.
Why were they packed tight into a small shelf in the corner of the secret cavern?
"Ah......."
A belated realization pierced through his head.
Whoever had placed them here in those old days had known as well.
That a day would come when we lost every manual and had to write them again.
'But you would not have wished for such a thing to come to pass.'
Tang Yu-hyeon turned his head slowly, as though taking in the whole of the secret cavern.
In the past he had taken no interest in the cavern beyond the plans for its passages.
He had never tried to learn what lay inside, or who had meant to pass down what.
Because all that mattered to him then was the clan's rise.
Only now, entering this place after so long a time, did he finally understand.
That concern and affection spanning ten thousand generations were here, and had gone on being handed down.
Knowing that, he could not sit still.
Leave them forever as faded jewels?
For whose benefit!
Tang Yu-hyeon clenched his fist.
'I will not let the same thing happen a second time either.'
Then he gathered up the blank books and the ink and slipped out of the secret cavern.
When he rubbed the letters on the door away with his hand, the cavern closed.
He gazed quietly at the wall-like door, then turned away.