Chapter4: The Third-Rate Warrior Who Gathers Elixirs (2)
“Keeek.”
A spider with a shape that vaguely resembled a human face spat venomous fluid from its mouth.
Sizzle.
A vicious acidic liquid that melted not only trees but even the packed soil on the ground, and green smoke rising from it.
I had covered my mouth with a hood, but my head seemed to be growing gradually dizzy.
elixirs usually appeared in places where the energy of the earth, heaven, and nature gathered.
Such spiritual lands often nurtured not only elixirs, but also spiritual creatures.
However, if the creature was so horrifying that just looking at it was dreadful, people sometimes called it a demonic beast.
“It looks disgusting.”
Eight legs, a huge body, and on top of that, a face resembling a human’s with four eyes.
The Human-Faced Earth Spider, a demonic beast itself.
The Human-Faced Earth Spider was guarding me warily with the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng behind it, as if afraid its treasure would be stolen.
“Because of you, I had to go all the way to distant Hapchi Mountain.”
I circled to its side and cut off one of its legs.
Kieek.
Green blood sprayed out, spewing smoke and acidic fluid in every direction.
For someone like me, whose internal energy was lowly, even the smoke alone was a terrifying poison that could cause sudden death, so it had been worth going all the way around to Hapchi Mountain to eat the Nine-Leaf Divine Root first.
“Even if you survive here anyway, in three years, you’ll be dragged off by the Tang Clan and forced to produce venomous fluid until you dry up and die.”
Kieek.
Despite my persuasion, the Human-Faced Earth Spider showed no intention of listening.
Shaaaak.
From the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s rear, webs shot out in every direction.
The webs spread like a net in all directions and quickly blocked the cave passage.
“Stupid thing.”
I began setting the webs on fire with a torch.
In an instant, the fire caught on the webs and began moving toward the Human-Faced Earth Spider.
Riding along the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s mucus, the flames chased straight toward its rear.
Kieek.
The moment it panicked and tried to scrape its rear against the ground, I splashed the oil I had prepared onto its body and set it on fire.
Kieeeeeek!
As the Human-Faced Earth Spider screamed, I stabbed my sword into its horrifying maw, and the creature began thrashing wildly.
Its face, shaped similarly to a human’s, spewed green blood from its eyes and mouth.
It was a disgusting sight that seemed like it would appear in a nightmare.
After I stepped back, its movements gradually began to die down.
Only when a fishy smell filled the cave could I finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Phew.”
I had eaten the ten-thousand-year fleeceflower root and the ginseng king, but I had only absorbed eight years’ worth of internal energy.
The two elixirs themselves were precious, but they were not particularly helpful in increasing internal energy, and there was also a fixed amount I could absorb with the Taeul Heart Method.
“At this rate, when am I ever going to catch up to that guy?”
The Taechung Divine Sword, in other words, the current Yong Soa, had one hundred eighty years’ worth of internal energy.
One hundred eighty years.
One hundred eighty years.
The distant level made my mind grow faint.
Still, I could not just sit there blankly.
“If I eat every elixir listed in the Murim Elixir Records, will I at least be able to catch up?”
The Taeul Heart Method was an excellent heart method, but it was only a basic one.
Without an outstanding internal energy cultivation method, absorption would be even more distant.
It was not as if the energy of the elixirs would disappear, but how unfair would it be to die after being cut down while still holding energy I could not absorb?
“I need spirit pills. Spirit pills.”
When it came to increasing the amount of internal energy, spirit pills were more efficient than elixirs.
And the more a spirit pill came from a prestigious great sect, the more internal energy it could increase.
“There isn’t just one or two things to do.”
While I was thinking about this and that, I passed the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s corpse and saw the leaves of the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng basking in the light shining through a crack in the cave.
“To think I’d eat this in my lifetime.”
My worries about spirit pills lasted only a moment. As soon as I saw the leaves of the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng, all my concerns vanished.
The ten-thousand-year fleeceflower root and the ginseng king were precious, but the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng, along with the eternal snow ginseng, was a elixir with outstanding effects in increasing yang and yin true energy as well as internal energy.
In particular, it had the effect of body rebirth, so if someone with no martial talent ate it, their body would change into one with excellent martial talent, and if someone with excellent martial talent ate it, they would transform into a martial god physique.
At the very least, eating this meant I would no longer end up in the ridiculous situation of knowing something in my head but being unable to block it.
Without delay, I started from a single fine root, absorbing as much essence as possible, and chewed and swallowed even the leaves.
A clear fragrance filled my mouth, and every time I exhaled, the pure scent in my mouth spread in all directions.
“It’s coming.”
Not long after I swallowed the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng, heat began rising warmly from my lower abdomen.
In order not to miss that moment, I quickly sat cross-legged and began circulating the Taeul Heart Method.
The warm energy overwhelmed the energy of the Taeul Heart Method by far and began spinning around inside my body.
The gentle and pure Taeul Heart Method diligently chased after the energy of the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng, trying to restrain it, but the thing refused to listen.
“Keuk.”
It moved through my heart meridians, breaking through blocked paths at will and burning away impure energy.
Each time, I felt pain as though my entire body were being torn apart, but thanks to that, the energy slowly, very slowly, began to weaken little by little.
And so, the endless chase continued.
#
How much time had passed?
Flash.
When I opened my eyes, the light shining into the cave was so bright that I frowned.
‘Bright?’
Only a small part of the cave where the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng grew received light.
Even that light had been so weak that I had made a separate torch and brought it in.
And yet the light was bright?
‘It’s changed.’
My body had changed.
Vitality surged from every part of my body.
Thud.
When I struck the wall with my fist, part of the solid cave wall collapsed.
Even so, I felt no pain at all.
When I checked my dantian, there was a lump the size of a finger settled there.
“About fifteen years, roughly?”
Compared to the talents of the Nine Great Sects and the Five Great Families, it was still far from enough, but this was internal energy gathered with the Taeul Heart Method, whose speed of accumulating internal energy was extremely terrible.
On top of that, I had also refined the body needed to achieve martial arts, so the speed at which my internal energy accumulated from now on would not be as slow as before.
“I can afford to be greedy for precious spirit pills now.”
As it happened, I knew of one precious spirit pill that was not written in the Murim Elixir Records.
“To be exact, it’s a spirit pill that the Gyeryong Merchant Guild lost.”
Gye Yeonseok purchased Mount Hua’s Snow Plum Pill for Gye Cheolyeong.
Aside from the Purple Cloud Pill, Mount Hua’s finest elixir, it was considered the best spirit pill.
In order to obtain the Snow Plum Pill, which even true disciples supposedly found hard to see, he mobilized not only his family fortune but also every connection the Gyeryong Merchant Guild possessed.
In the end, Gye Yeonseok almost managed to obtain the Snow Plum Pill and prepare Gye Cheolyeong’s shining future.
However,
Perhaps because he had accomplished something so remarkable,
Gye Yeonseok’s vanity ruined everything.
“Perhaps he trusted the experts of Mount Hua.”
An expert of Mount Hua was visiting the Gyeryong Merchant Guild, no less.
Gye Yeonseok was not the kind of man who would miss such a good opportunity, and in order to advertise that the Mount Hua Sect and his merchant guild maintained a close relationship, he held a banquet.
However, on the day before Gye Cheolyeong was to take the Snow Plum Pill, the Snow Plum Pill, which had been hidden in the deepest safe of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild, vanished without a trace.
An unknown being had avoided the eyes of those Mount Hua Sect experts and stolen the Snow Plum Pill.
Gye Yeonseok, reduced to a dog that had chased a chicken only to lose it, clung to the Mount Hua Sect, but the Mount Hua Sect simply said that the Snow Plum Pill had been stolen after they had already handed it over, so they could not take responsibility, and left.
Later, Gye Yeonseok once again poured out a massive family fortune and managed to obtain a Plum Blossom Pill, but this incident remained forever in Gye Yeonseok’s heart, making even the people around him unable to speak of the Snow Plum Pill.
But someone else’s misfortune always made for good drinking talk.
People continued to share this story for a long time.
At the time, there had been many rumors about who had taken the Snow Plum Pill, but afterward, the lost Snow Plum Pill never appeared in the world.
“To think playing the role of a walking archive would be useful like this.”
I began searching through the materials in my head.
The first was the monthly report sent by the Martial Alliance’s Hefei branch.
Based on the day the Snow Plum Pill was stolen, I would identify the incidents that occurred in Hefei over the month before and after, as well as the movement routes of major dark faction figures.
The second was the Martial Alliance’s entry and exit list.
Most righteous faction experts capable of avoiding the eyes of Mount Hua Sect experts belonged to the Martial Alliance.
If I examined the Martial Alliance’s entry and exit list, I could figure out who moved and when.
The third was the mission report.
Among the experts dispatched by the Martial Alliance for missions, I narrowed down the people who had stopped by Hefei around the day of the incident.
Then I organized the gathered materials using the inference method Jegal Cheon had taught me.
“Four people, huh.”
Thus, the identities of four people surfaced in my mind.
Soul-Chasing Guest Ju Jangmok.
Five-Star Gentleman Song Wongi.
Diancang Five Swords Gu Ilmu.
Diancang Five Swords Jang Hangi.
Two of the Diancang Five Swords had stopped by Hefei three days before the incident, rested for three days, and then left again to carry out their mission.
Five-Star Gentleman Song Wongi.
He had been staying in Hefei from a month before the incident, and even after the incident occurred, he remained in Hefei for two more months.
Although he was a wandering warrior, his conduct was upright, so the people of the murim world had given him the nickname Gentleman.
Moreover, his skill was at the peak level, so if he wanted, he could easily obtain the wealth needed to buy the Snow Plum Pill. But he was someone who devoted himself solely to the sword, just as a gentleman devoted himself to his studies.
Lastly, the Soul-Chasing Guest.
The Soul-Chasing Guest was a dark faction figure.
He was better at fighting techniques than martial arts, and his greed for wealth was great.
He appeared in Hefei around the time rumors of the Snow Plum Pill began to spread, and on the day the Snow Plum Pill disappeared,
he vanished without a trace.
And after that, not a single trace of him appeared in any report from the Martial Alliance.
“The Soul-Chasing Guest, huh…….”
As I continued making deductions, I reached a point where I got stuck.
Each branch spread throughout the world was required to report the movements of major figures at all times, yet there was no information about the Soul-Chasing Guest anywhere.
The fact that he had shown no trace in the Martial Alliance after the incident meant there was a high possibility that he had hidden his identity.
Especially since thieves like this often used human-skin masks to maintain several identities.
After stealing the Snow Plum Pill, he might have erased the identity of the Soul-Chasing Guest itself from the world.
“But no one new appeared during that period.”
I frantically searched through the archive in my head, looking for thieves who had newly appeared around the time the Soul-Chasing Guest disappeared, but there was no one similar.
Then, while searching through another mission report, a hollow laugh escaped me.
“Hah!”
So that was the trick he used.
“No wonder there were no traces.”
If this went well, I probably would not have to worry about being chased even after stealing the Snow Plum Pill.
“This should be easy.”
Just as I thought that comfortably and was about to step over the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s corpse and leave the cave, an unprecedented force began pulling at my left arm.
“?”
The moment I unconsciously looked down at my left hand, I could not help but be shocked.
A blue dragon was wrapped around my wrist.
The Azure Dragon Ring I had possessed in my previous life was glowing beneath my skin.
‘What in the world is going on?’
It was strange enough that the Azure Dragon Ring I had worn in my previous life was now inside my skin, but what was even stranger was that the Azure Dragon Ring was clearly pulling toward the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s corpse.
“Do you want its inner core?”
The Human-Faced Earth Spider’s inner core was so poisonous that simply touching it could cause severe poisoning, so I had not touched it.
But for some reason, the Azure Dragon Ring seemed to be pulling toward the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s inner core.
Squelch.
When I cut open the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s belly, even the smell alone made my eyes sting.
The Azure Dragon Ring shone even brighter, as if it had found its meal, and was heading toward the inner core.
“……What should I do?”
The Azure Dragon Ring was a relic of the Bloodsucking Demon Fiend, one of the Guardian Dharma Kings.
I had kept it because it was an item that commemorated the Sojeong Unit’s precious victory, and until the moment my life ended, the Azure Dragon Ring had been an item that symbolized the Sojeong Unit to me.
“Damn it. I don’t know.”
The moment my approaching hand grabbed the Human-Faced Earth Spider’s inner core,
Sizzle.
“Keuk.”
A burning energy began melting into my palm and seeping in.
In my urgency, thinking that it would be over if the poison was absorbed into my body, I tried to pull my hand away.
At that moment,
“Huh?”
A cool, refreshing sensation began being absorbed through my palm.
That energy, which had been a small stream like a brook, soon became a great river and began rushing throughout my entire body.
A shudder ran through my whole body at the refreshing sensation, which was completely different from when I had absorbed the ten-thousand-year flower ginseng.
The Human-Faced Earth Spider’s inner core that had been in my hand vanished without a trace, and in my dantian, I felt a lump that had grown slightly larger than before.
“Huh, this is……”
With disbelieving eyes, I looked at the Azure Dragon Ring as its light faded.
“Should I be happy about this, or not?”
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