By the time we had stopped at the physician's to get Byeong-ho treated and made it back to the Drunken Immortal Pavilion, the sun hung high in the sky.
The moment we went to our rooms, Byeong-ho's snoring came through the wall. He had taken on thirty men all night. No wonder he had dropped from exhaustion.
I latched the door, sat cross-legged on the bed, and went back over the night before.
'What a vicious cold that was.'
The Iron-Blood Azure Root I had gulped down at the gambling table had shown its true colors in full once it was in my belly.
As if the lava I had felt were a lie, a searing blue cold shot up from below my solar plexus right after.
Slice. The energy climbing my meridians was like a blade. A cold that pared the flesh from the inside. This was the Iron-Blood Azure Root's real face. My heart stopped for a beat, then skipped two at a time.
Crack. A sound like thin ice splitting came from the meridians inside my wrist. At this rate, I wouldn't last even half a quarter-hour before every meridian in my body shattered.
My instincts screamed. Draw it in and circulate it. Hurry and melt it with circulation.
'No.'
If I drew the energy around now, I would die. Because the harder I tried to melt it, the more savagely the cold would rage.
It would be like trying to heat iron in a fire and burning your own hand first. In my last life, I had seen more than one or two people ruined for good by taking in a spirit medicine the wrong way.
'Swallow it whole.'
I deliberately stopped the faint circulation and shut even my meridians. Instead of sending the raging cold through my whole body, I gathered it into one spot and let it drop straight down.
Into my qi center.
Into the middle of the endless sea the Kun-Becoming Thunder Formula had made. I had done this before.
Splash—
The raging cold split the surface and began to sink beneath it.
However ferocious an energy might be, before so vast a surface it was nothing but a pebble. Like a thrown stone that draws a few ripples and is gone.
'Deeper. Deeper still.'
Time melted away. Forgetting up and down, I simply watched a single point of cold sink on and on without end.
How far down had it gone?
Far below, something stirred on the pitch-dark floor. It was the faceless black fish that had woken at the bottom of my qi center the other day.
It opened its mouth and swallowed the sinking cold whole. Crunch, crunch. It seemed to chew a few times, then gulped it straight down.
Then the raging cold died down in its belly. Rather than me taking in the spirit medicine, the sea was digesting it for me and handing it back.
RUMBLE—
In that instant, the empty floor of the sea filled up, heavy and solid.
Only after I had made sure that the vessel, grown so wide that no comparison with others meant anything, finally had ground laid on its distant floor to stand on, had I ended my qi circulation and opened my eyes.
'......Last night, I laid the foundation.'
Now it was time for the next step.
Once the cornerstone is set, the pillars come next.
Feeling that the cold I had absorbed overnight had been dyed gold, I sent the energy around my whole body once, then once more.
As if driving pillars into every corner of my meridians.
After running a full circuit several times like that, I finished my qi circulation.
"Whoo......"
When I opened my eyes, I felt a strange sensation.
My fingertips tingled oddly. When I filled my thumbnail with energy and nicked my middle finger, a drop of blood welled up and rolled.
I brought my mind to rest on it.
Then metal energy filled the drop of blood, and it ripened into a round lump of iron half the size of a fingernail.
"......"
I picked up the drop of blood and rolled it between my fingers. It was cold and hard. An iron pellet, no mistake.
'Well, would you look at that.'
In my last life, I had loaded drops of blood with internal force and used them as hidden weapons. It was the same skill I had used to corner Moyong Wi on that rainy day.
A skill that once took true energy handled to its absolute limit now took nothing but will. What would happen if I added the old concentration on top of that?
It was thanks to the Iron-Blood Azure Root's energy dissolving into my blood.
And was that all?
When I closed my eyes, the straight blade leaning against the wall came to mind so clearly I could almost touch it.
Not its shape. It felt as though the grain of energy flowing through the iron was ringing, not in my eyes, but in my ears.
Grain upon grain pressed in by countless quenchings, and the spaces between them...... I could feel even the spots where the energy had warped ever so slightly.
'......It's a special ability.'
It was an ability worthy of a spirit medicine forged from the blood and iron of battlefields. But I had never heard of anything like this among the Iron-Blood Azure Root's known effects.
It was probably the Kun-Becoming Thunder Formula's doing.
I had watched the black fish swallow and digest the Iron-Blood Azure Root's energy. Maybe this wonder had only taken shape because the root met the bottomless sea of the Kun-Becoming?
Ears that hear iron cry had opened, and hands that forge blood into iron had awakened.
Iron-Blood, is it.
A grin crept onto my face all on its own.
"It lives up to its name."
I flicked the iron pellet in my palm out the window. With a PING—, a block of wood in a corner of the yard crumbled apart with a crunch.
Right about then, the snoring from the next room cut off.
***
The next day, before dawn had even broken, I woke Byeong-ho and dragged him up the hill behind Byeokgye County.
"Brother, why the mountain at the crack of dawn......"
He grumbled, but there was nothing wasted in the steps that kept up with me. When we came to a suitable hollow, I stopped and faced Byeong-ho.
"Stand there a moment."
"Huh?"
"Hit me. With everything you've got."
Byeong-ho's eyes narrowed. Before, he would have been the type to wave me off first, going "Aw, Brother, how could I......"
WHOOSH!
The words were barely out before his fist came flying. There wasn't a trace of hesitation.
I stepped half a pace aside and turned Byeong-ho's fist away with the edge of my hand. It was heavy. The night he had flattened thirty men hadn't gone to waste, it seemed.
"One more."
This time a huge foot like a bear's paw followed. When I turned the foot aside, a fist came without a break, and after that, a shoulder slammed into me.
This was the body of a man who had broken through his own riddle once. Where the hesitation had vanished, the foundation of a martial artist had finally taken its place. A threshold anyone must cross to reach the higher realms. Byeong-ho had crossed it the night before last.
"Enough."
Byeong-ho pulled back his hands and caught his ragged breath, but his eyes were blazing.
I took a secret manual from my robe and tossed it to Byeong-ho.
It was a booklet I had copied out by hand overnight, meaning to pass it on to him.
Byeong-ho looked at the title and mumbled.
"Myriad-Weight...... Boulder Art?"
"The martial art you're going to learn."
The Myriad-Weight Boulder Art.
—Once you plant your feet, you will not budge, like a ten-thousand-geun boulder. Put your weight into a hardened body and let fly, and a single blow will come down like a landslide.
In my last life, I once came across an escort agency caravan that had been wiped out.
It must have been ambushed, because it was as gruesome as it gets: escort guards and porters alike lay cut to pieces. Hardly a body still had its arms, legs and head where they belonged.
Among them, only one.
A man was curled up like a boulder against an overturned wagon, holding something in his arms.
His whole body was crowded with cuts. Not an inch of him was whole; he had been slashed again and again...... and yet, among all those sword wounds, nothing had been cut off.
"......I have a favor to ask of you."
The man I had taken for dead spoke through a froth of blood. He asked me to bury the child in his arms. The agency chief's son, whom he had failed to protect.
When I had buried the child, the man drew a booklet from his robe with trembling hands and held it out to me. Then he breathed his last.
I stayed up the whole night raising a grave for him too, beside the child, before I came down out of the valley.
The booklet I received then was the Myriad-Weight Boulder Art.
It was no secret art of some martial family with a proud lineage. It seemed to be the self-defense of laborers who had spent their lives hauling stone and cargo in quarries and on docks, forged into a martial art when it met a genius in some generation or other.
The man had gotten no further than its early part, and even so, he had reached a level where spears and blades could cut him but never cut anything off.
Had he only mastered it properly, he could have protected the agency and the agency chief's son both. He had held a fine martial art in his hands, but his vessel fell short, and he sank down halfway.
Byeong-ho looked over the secret manual I had handed him and asked.
"......Brother."
"What?"
"Isn't this just a martial art for making your body tough?"
I just looked at Byeong-ho. Then he added one more thing.
"......Don't tell me toughening up is all there is?"
He stuck out his lip. It was so ridiculous that a hollow laugh escaped me.
"You have no idea what a big deal it is to get endlessly tougher."
"It's, what do you call it, not very stylish, is it? Just defending doesn't seem like it'd suit a born dashing man like me at all?"
"Who told you that? That toughness is only good for defense?"
I was about to explain, but remembering the lesson from the other day, I cut it short.
"Forget it. You're not the type to understand things with your head anyway, are you? It's the perfect martial art for a bastard with a head like a rock."
"Are you making fun of me for being bald right now?"
"I never said that."
"I don't miss it!"
At the sight of Byeong-ho scowling and rubbing his own head, I let out a little laugh and explained.
"In the one instant when everyone else is struggling to dodge, you just walk right in. To a man who doesn't need to dodge, an opponent's weapon is no better than a scarecrow."
Only then did Byeong-ho's eyes twitch.
"Stomp, stomp, you mean?"
"That's right."
"Then it's a real man's martial art!"
I told Byeong-ho.
"Become a walking wall. Add that inborn strength of yours, and you'll be a rampart swinging a staff. From an enemy's point of view, nothing could be more sickening."
Only then did Byeong-ho's eyes light up. He was exactly this level, as expected.
"Brother."
"What?"
"I want to master this."
"Finally feeling moved, are you?"
"I'm going to be a man like a boulder."
"Should have said so sooner."
Byeong-ho settled down and opened the book. His lips were quite serious as they recited the first formula. I leaned back against a rock, watching him, and explained the formula to him.
Byeong-ho's comprehension wasn't outstanding, but if I stayed beside him and melted the subtleties of the Kun-Becoming Thunder Formula into it, he could easily become the heaviest boulder in the martial world.
When we came down the mountain after I had passed on the foundations of the Myriad-Weight Boulder Art to Byeong-ho, five or six men stood blocking the way at the inn's entrance.
"We have guests."
It was a motley crew, each with a weapon hanging at his waist.
The scar-faced man in front recognized me and opened his mouth.
"Are you the bastard who turned the whole Byeokgye County gambling den upside down two days ago?"
I pointed at Byeong-ho.
"Wasn't me. It was him?"
Scarface ignored the flabbergasted Byeong-ho and jerked his chin at me.
"Our boss wants you. Come quietly."
For a moment, I considered the scar splitting his cheek.
It was a bit of a bother, so I thought about carving him a second scar beside the first and sending him packing, but they would only come looking again.
"Lead the way."
When I came along quietly, Scarface looked almost deflated. Without the faintest idea he had just saved his own life.
Our steps stopped at a sprawling manor on the edge of town. The moment we crossed the threshold, the gate closed behind us.
THUD. Clack.
'How childish.'
A greenhorn might have lost his nerve, but all it did was make me yawn.
And there was something the bastards were overlooking: having nowhere to run applied to both sides.
Leaving behind the bastards lined up along the wall glaring at us, I crossed the courtyard, and further in sat a man with his legs crossed.
He was a heavyset man with pitch-dark rings under his eyes. A deep blue snake tattoo climbed the back of his neck and coiled up to just under his jaw.
The boss of the Black Snake Gang, who held Byeokgye County's gambling dens and back alleys...... What was his name again? Some kind of tooth.
"Molar?"
"Poison Fang!"
Poison Fang, the bastard, ground his teeth at me.
"So it's you. The rat who swallowed my gambling den whole."
"And if it is?"
It came a little later, but in my last life too, these were bastards who made a habit of their vicious ways until I wiped them out. They probably hadn't lived much differently this time around.
"You turned the whole place to ashes in one night, so I'll take the price out of your hide."
"I see."
When I barely reacted, his insides must have boiled, because his face turned ugly. Either way, I wanted to finish this fast and rest, so I drew my straight blade as I spoke.
"I'm a little tired. Let's get started. Looks like you're counting on those bastards in hiding, so tell them all to come out. Fifty or sixty, give or take."
The energy leaking from the hidden bastards' blades tickled my ears. Thanks to senses honed by the Iron-Blood Azure Root, I could see where they all were as plainly as the palm of my hand.
The bastard flinched, then raised his hand. Ching, ching. At that, the bastards hidden everywhere drew their weapons and all sprang out.
Byeong-ho, his eyes gone calm and settled, quietly raised his iron staff.
About sixty in all......
It puzzled me.
They weren't much, granted, but in a single night thirty of them had been killed or crippled.
These were bastards who played Lu Bu to the weak and groveled endlessly to the strong...... so coming at me head-on like this was a little odd, wasn't it?
I could sense one bastard inside the main hall who still hadn't come out. That must be who they were counting on.
Poison Fang raised his oxtail saber and snarled.
"You bastard, did you pull this bullshit knowing whose family the Black Snake Gang belongs to?"
"How would I know?"
"You pulled it without the faintest idea that the great Poison Fang had just gotten his line into the Pitch-Black League, I bet. Heh heh."
Hm? This was news to me. Hadn't the Pitch-Black League and the Black Snake Gang had nothing to do with each other in my last life? Puffed up, the bastard went on.
"That's right. That Pitch-Black League! Our joining is all but settled. As proof, the League sent an envoy down in person! Heh heh, you're a dead man."
Poison Fang turned toward the main hall and bowed his head low.
"Elder, forgive me for showing you such a sorry sight. I'll clean it up at once."
Then someone stirred deep in the dim main hall. Cutting through the shadows, a man slowly came into view.
"......That's the one who caused the bloodbath at the gambling den the other day?"
The instant I heard that voice, a chill shot up my spine. The Iron-Blood Azure Root's cold was nothing next to it.
The man strolled unhurriedly across the courtyard and sank into the lavish chair Poison Fang had prepared. Chin propped on his hand, he looked down at me with eyes full of ease.
"What a handsome fellow. I have always cherished beautiful things, so I never forget a fine face once I've seen it......"
This voice.
This face.
How could I ever forget this mug?
The man who had been with me for twenty years, and in the end boiled the hound once the hunt was done.
The Murim Alliance's strategist and my direct superior.
The young Heart-Severing Sage, Moyong Wi, was sitting in the Black Snake Gang's seat of honor.
A faint smile hung on that scholarly face. Legs crossed, with the most harmless smile imaginable, he spoke to me.
"Have we met before, by any chance?"