Chapter 199
Chapter 199. Experimental Record
Between the white gorge, the prisoners of the Yan Clan, and the Dong Clan were shivering uncontrollably.
With their upper bodies stripped bare, and the place thick with yin energy, their bodies could not withstand the cold.
So much so that even the Central Plains men who had brought the prisoners stood guard far away at the mountain entrance, and the North Sea Ice Palace had only two people handling the menial work.
The prisoners were lined up in front of a secluded hall.
The Ice Palace disciples watching them would occasionally take five at a time into the hall, yet no sound could be heard from within.
Had the cold broken their minds? Even while feeling uneasy, the prisoners found themselves wanting to enter the hall as quickly as possible.
As if that wish had been granted, the hall doors opened not long after.
Creeeak.
At the old man’s glance, the ash-gray–haired man standing beside the prisoners led five of them to the entrance.
The Fourth Seat received them and, without a word, closed the doors.
The martial artists who entered the hall were taken aback.
They had expected instruments of torture, but instead there were five bathtubs.
Steam rose gently from the tubs.
Instinctively, the prisoners thought they wanted to get inside.
Where the prisoners who had entered earlier had gone, and how such clean water had been prepared, were both suspicious, but their desire to escape the cold overwhelmed their wariness.
Splash.
A woman with long hair tied back into a single tail quietly went to the brazier. The water in the large cauldron was boiling vigorously. She scooped up some more hot water and poured it into the tubs.
“Put them in one by one.”
At Tang So-hwa’s words, the Fourth Seat pushed them forward. Though he did not use much force, the men climbed into the wooden tubs on their own.
“Ah.”
A prisoner let out a cry of wonder.
His entire body tingled, and he felt good.
Similar exclamations came from the sides.
The five martial artists warmed themselves in the tubs. Whatever brutal torture might come, that was a problem for later.
The Fourth Seat tied cords over the tubs to bind them so they could not get out, but it hardly even registered. It even felt like a pointless act. Even if they were dragged out by force, they did not want to leave this place.
The woman rolled up her sleeves to her elbows and went to the side table. She flipped past a sheet of dry paper and picked up her brush.
“State your age.”
“Thirty-two.”
They all obediently answered their ages. The woman wrote them down.
She also asked whether they had any chronic illnesses, and then asked when they had received the Gu poison of the Blood Demon.
As their bodies grew more comfortable, their surroundings gradually came into focus.
A folding screen spread along one wall caught the eye. It was excessively long. It looked as though a wall had been erected to conceal something.
Creeeak.
Having finished her questions, the woman brought over the jar that had been on the side table.
She then added its contents little by little into the tubs. Into the first tub, she put in an amount so small it could be called just a few drops; into the second, twice that; into the third, twice again that amount, increasing the quantity step by step.
The black liquid, which looked like ink, slowly dissolved into the warm water.
As he watched, sudden pain shot through a leg.
“Aaagh!”
It was because the Fourth Seat had stabbed the prisoner’s thigh with his sword.
Blood poured steadily from the gaping wound. Before he could even register the unpleasant feeling, the woman said something chilling.
“It is water that erases the Gu poison of the Blood Demon. When the substance enters the body, the will of the Blood Demon becomes subordinate to the one who made the medicine. That means you must now follow my will, not the Blood Demon’s.”
“What are you—ngh!”
As the prisoner retched and tried to protest, the Fourth Seat struck the back of his head. With a terrifying white demon at their backs, everyone had no choice but to stay silent.
The woman walked between the tubs, checking the water within.
The prisoner who had been struck glared at her, then followed her gaze downward.
Beneath the red blood drifting like smoke, black liquid gushed out in surges. The Blood Demon’s blood was being expelled.
“Uuaaagh!”
Startled, the prisoner clamped his hands over his wound.
When one tried to forcibly draw out the Gu poison, some of it would come out, then flow back into the body. And it would attempt to kill the host that resisted.
The prisoner frantically pressed the torn flesh together as if to stanch the bleeding, but it was useless, since the wound was submerged in water. Like smoke spreading through the air, the Gu poison forced its way through the narrow gap and poured out.
At that moment, the ink the woman had dropped suddenly picked up speed.
Shraack.
The two kinds of liquid rushed at each other.
But it was no contest. The ink began to devour the Blood Demon’s blood outright.
“Hhuuugh!”
The prisoner trembled at the unbelievable sight.
The black liquid chased the Blood Demon’s blood and burrowed into the wound.
His whole body itched like mad. The prisoners beside him also scratched themselves frantically.
With an expressionless face, the woman glanced at the water clock on the side table. Then, writing something on the paper, she spoke.
“You must not lie to me.”
“Kuhk!”
With just that single sentence, the prisoner at the far end vomited blood.
“So it is affected by the mind. It seems that even merely thinking of lying causes the Gu poison to mete out punishment.”
Tang So-hwa muttered as if studying the nature of the Gu poison, writing down what she observed.
“Are you all truly human?”
“Yes!”
A brisk reply came back.
Even the one who had been coughing up blood nodded as he answered.
“Become rabbits, all of you.”
“Pardon?”
At the absurd demand, a foolish question came back. The prisoners blinked, unsure how to answer.
“Ugh!”
“Kheeeugh!”
The prisoners clutched at their hearts and spat blood.
Tang So-hwa moved her brush as she watched the scene.
“Even when an impossible demand is made, the Gu poison still reacts.”
So-hwa watched them gasping for air and pouring out blood for a long while before checking the water clock. Despite the agony, the prisoners could not die.
“Seeing how the Gu poison keeps them alive… does that mean that regardless of success or failure, it won’t kill them so long as they submit to the will?”
There was no reply. The prisoners looked as though even breathing was a struggle. Their faces turned purplish, and the blood vessels around their eyes burst, forming red spots.
So-hwa changed her approach.
“Do you have the will to become rabbits?”
“Yes, I do! I w-will, I’ll be ngh—I’ll become one. I’ll do anything, a-anything you want!”
A retainer of the Yan Clan, tears streaming down his face from the pain, answered as if pleading.
She altered the will.
“Then find a way to become a rabbit.”
“Yes! I will find it, no matter what!”
“I, I’ll become a rabbit somehow! Please spare my life!”
With that cry, the prisoner’s complexion returned to its original color.
Sensing the movement of the Gu poison, the prisoners clutched at their chests and let out sighs of relief.
After that, So-hwa threw out several more questions and recorded the reactions.
By good fortune, she had gotten her hands on people bearing the Gu poison of the Blood Demon. They were alive and even bound; she could not let this opportunity pass.
But time was pressing, so So-hwa did not rest for a single moment and continued the experiments with over a hundred retainers of the Yan Clan and the Dong Clan.
“Khk, kuhuk!”
At the moment the last prisoner lost consciousness, the experiment finally came to an end.
Perhaps because the sun was beginning to set, the surroundings were dark.
Before she knew it, five volumes of records had been produced. So-hwa set down her brush and tidied the side table.
Creeeak.
At that moment, the Second Leader entered.
“Is it all finished now?”
“Yes, all that remains is the cleanup.”
The Second Leader’s eyes shifted to the side. The Fourth Seat was staring at Tang So-hwa with an expressionless face. He was someone whose thoughts were impossible to read to begin with, but today in particular, his intentions were hard to grasp.
Not long after, the Fourth Seat revealed his thoughts himself.
“Must you go to the Central Plains?”
So-hwa’s gaze lifted from the side table she had been organizing.
In an emotionless voice, the Fourth Seat said,
“I would like you to remain in the North Sea. The North Sea would suit your nature better than the Central Plains.”
Bai Woon-Hyun looked around the hall, wondering what had happened to prompt such words.
Blood was splattered around the bathtubs, and beside the folding screen, the hands and feet of prisoners—whether dead or alive, it was hard to tell—were jutting out.
‘…Suits the North Sea, you say.’
How could one describe the North Sea as such a cruel place?
How could he describe the North Sea as such a cruel place? Bai Woon-Hyun felt uneasy, but since the Seven Seats within the Ice Palace and the disciples outside were so different, they might as well be different species, he swallowed his words.
However, Tang So-hwa also seemed far from pleased with what the Fourth Seat had said.
“…I don’t know whether saying I suit the North Sea is meant as praise, but I suit the Central Plains better.”
Tang So-hwa’s expression darkened.
It was only natural. She had often heard that expression before, and it was usually an insult.
The Great Elder used it to insult the Namgung family, and when Tang Hae-han gifted her the venom of a pit viper that even poison specialists hesitated to handle, he had said it was a poison that suited her well.
Sensing her mood, the Fourth Seat gave a small laugh and amended his words.
“I must find the records of the Black Pavilion to be certain, but there is a high chance that North Sea blood is mixed in you.”
So-hwa showed little reaction, but the Second Leader flinched. Before he could ask anything, however, the Fourth Seat extended a hand and pointed to Tang So-hwa’s dantian.
“From the looks of it, your meridians seem blocked. If you stay here, I could try teaching you personally. I’ll open your meridians and raise you to the point you can function as a proper person within a year.”
So-hwa quietly swallowed her breath.
‘So the Main Blood Hall Lord managed to escape the Fourth Seat.’
Fortunately, it seemed the Fourth Seat had not noticed her constitution.
There were, at times, people born with blocked meridians. It was an illness caused by innate qi obstructing the meridians, and it was entirely different from Tang So-hwa’s body.
Her body was not one where something blocked the meridians and prevented them from opening; rather, even if meridians were formed, they would disappear again.
In short, it was not a body where one could extract the qi blocking the meridians, nor force another’s qi inside to create meridian paths.
In her previous life, the Grand Elder, acting on reckless impulse, had tried to forcibly open Tang So-hwa’s meridians, only pushing her to the brink of death.
Tang So-hwa recovered after sleeping for half a day following her collapse, but had it been anyone else, they truly would have lost their life.
At that time, Tang Min became the second person, after the Tang Clan Head, to learn of So-hwa’s constitution.
Because of that incident, Tang Min had a major falling-out with the Tang Clan Head and, for the first time, offered an apology to the Clan Head he had always treated lightly.
With no intention of revealing her constitution to an outsider, So-hwa refused indirectly.
“I am a direct descendant of the Tang Clan of Sichuan, and I take pride in my clan. Moreover, the Tang Clan and I are well su—”
She had meant to say “well suited,” but perhaps due to long years of conditioning, the phrase “suited to me” felt like an insult to the clan, and her words trailed off.
“…What I am good at, I can do within the Tang Clan, and I place the safety and prosperity of the Tang Clan above all else. Just as the Fourth Seat can bring his innate power to its fullest in the North Sea, and is the one most needed for the reconstruction of the Ice Palace.”
However, the Fourth Seat did not back down.
Letting out a chuckle, he stubbornly pressed on.
“You are still young. Your thoughts may change. If your heart changes, come and find me.”