Chapter 386 : Seed (5)
Chapter 386: Seed (5)
'Miss Jin treated me?'
Il-mok thought back to the Blood Qi still clinging to his meridians and the chilling Yin Qi that tucked in the corner of his dantian.
Il-mok was no fool, and so the thought process that followed unfolded of its own accord.
The incident at Potala Palace. The matter that had transpired between Dam Bin and Ouyang Mun after the massacre in Sichuan.
The pieces snapped together one after the other, and before he knew it, he was already cupping his fists toward Wi Jin-hak.
"Cult Leader, something urgent's come up. I'll be taking my leave first."
Before Wi Jin-hak could even formulate a reply, he saw Il-mok sprinting like a madman to the building where Jin Hayeon was staying.
"…"
Watching the receding figure of his youngest brother, who tore off at tremendous speed despite being unable to use his lightness skill on account of his internal injuries, Wi Jin-hak turned his head and asked Hwangbo Ak, "What sort of treatment did Miss Jin perform that got our youngest to rush off like that?”
"Haha. Hahaha. W-well, I do not know the details."
Ain’t no way Hwangbo Ak could say to Wi Jin-hak’s face that they dual cultivated, so he merely laughed like a fool and left.
***
As soon as he reached the destination, Il-mok hurriedly summoned Jin Hayeon to his room.
In contrast to grave and serious Il-mok, Jin Hayeon carried herself in perfect tranquility.
"Miss Jin."
"Yes, Young Master."
"I've heard that you were the one who treated me. Please don’t tell me that you used the Potala Palace’s method in the process.”
When Il-mok cautiously brought this up, Jin Hayeon shook her head and replied. "It was not the method of Potala Palace, but the manner was very similar."
"…"
Momentarily at a loss for words, countless thoughts tangled together in Il-mok's mind.
The woman before him had given up something precious in order to save his life.
Even in the modern era, there were those who placed great weight upon a woman's chastity, but it was nothing that could dare be compared to this age.
This was a world insane enough to spit on a woman for being "tainted" after she'd been kidnapped and trafficked and finally clawed her way home. And Jin Hayeon had taken on that kind of sacrifice to save his life.
While his head was still spinning from the revelation, Il-mok first bowed to her and spoke.
"I am truly sorry. And for this matter, I will take responsibility—"
"It is quite all right, Young Master."
Jin Hayeon cut Il-mok off mid-sentence and added.
"I merely did what a maidservant ought to do. There's no need for you to feel obligated to take responsibility for it."
And she really meant every word despite the fact that she had now fully come to recognize and accept her own feelings toward Il-mok.
‘My feelings are my own. That's all they are.’
It was not something that had occurred at Il-mok's wish. It was simply something she had done on her own accord.
Just because her heart longed for him didn't give her any right to push that onto him. Doing so would make her no better than Ouyang Mun, the man whom she had despised more than anything in the world.
At her composed words, Il-mok straightened his bowed back and cautiously opened his mouth.
"...It isn't an obligation that's making me want to take responsibility."
A faint smile painted her lips at that reply.
It was a strange thing to be thinking about in the middle of such a serious conversation, but watching that smile really made Il-mok realize that she had achieved Transcendence.
"I know that the Young Master has a strong sense of responsibility. And as ironic as it may sound, I also know that because your sense of responsibility is so strong, you prefer not to create matters for which you must take responsibility."
That was the biggest reason she'd thought him lazy when she first met him. But after all the time they'd spent together, she finally understood him.
"Are you not already bearing responsibility for so many of the faithful? There is no need to take on the burden of one such as me as well. Above all, I am but a maidservant who attends upon the Young Master."
"I've never once thought of you as a burden. And being with you wouldn't be any different from how things already are. So how could it possibly be a problem for me to take responsibility for you?"
She shook her head with a composed expression.
"The times are different. We are now in a time of war, Young Master. Tell me, Young Master, what would you do if a really powerful enemy like the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi came after us? I’ve known you for years, and I know you will sacrifice yourself to save me if that scenario happens.”
"Isn’t that the natural thing to do?”
At Il-mok's reply, Jin Hayeon shook her head once more.
"You mustn't. You must survive at all costs, even if it means using me to trade for your life. There are still many pitiful people who need to be delivered from their pain in this world. So you cannot die.”
As in the past, she seemed to value the greater cause above private feeling, yet things were a touch different.
What she said just now also contained her personal feelings.
Beneath all of those words, there lay her selfish wish.
Rather than watch him die trying to save her, she'd much rather throw herself away to save him.
Il-mok, for his part, could not fully read this subtle turn in her heart.
For that reason, Il-mok calmly ordered his thoughts and then spoke.
"What about after the war? No. What about once I'm strong enough that neither of us has to sacrifice for the other anymore, will it be all right then?"
His question landed a little off from where her heart actually was. And so the woman gave him an answer mixed with kindness and a quiet, tiny piece of selfishness of her own.
"If, even by then, the Young Master's heart has not changed. Would you, at that time, speak to me of this once more?"
***
After Jin Hayeon had left the room, Il-mok briefly raised his head and gazed at the ceiling with glazed eyes.
"If my heart still hasn't changed by then, huh..."
It was possible to take it as her having refused him in a roundabout manner, yet somehow it did not feel that way.
He'd been single his whole life as Il-mok for sure, but he'd at least had a relationship or two under his belt as Seo Ji-hoon.
"Was that her way of being considerate?"
Maybe she'd thought he was only confessing because he felt obligated.
May she thought he was saying things he didn't really mean.
And honestly, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
The whole thing had hit him out of nowhere, and even he hadn't fully sorted out what he felt yet.
After staring blankly at the ceiling for a while, Il-mok pulled himself together and settled into the lotus position.
Just as she said it was wartime, and it would be no surprise should either one of them die at any moment.
For that reason, Il-mok was going to make good on what he'd told her.
Either bring the war to an end, or climb high enough that even something like the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi couldn't put him down.
With that in mind, he slipped into meditation and started replaying his fight with the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi.
'That whole battle was basically a bunch of miracles stacked together. If the vengeful spirits in the Ascension Sword hadn’t lent their hands, I couldn’t pierce that creature's tough skin. And even if I could do that on my own, I’d have died on the spot from the surge of Blood Qi.’
Those miracles were born due to the fact that the opponent was the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi. And those miracles would not work at all should a living martial artist of comparable caliber to the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi appear on the battlefield.
He doubted there were other monsters out there quite like it, but he hadn't forgotten what his Master had told him once.
‘Master once told me that Wudang apparently has an old timer who’s only one step lower compared to Master.’
In addition to that, Hyeokryeon Il-hwi had foreseen that there were likely one or two more such martial artists in the Central Plains.
So rather than merely hoping that it was Master's groundless worry, it would be better to prepare for the worst.
So while he sat there running his qi for both healing and meditation, a thought suddenly hit him out of nowhere.
'Hey, does this actually count as a lucky encounter? Kind of, right?'
It wasn't like he'd had some grand epiphany during the fight with the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi. Once it was off the Blood Cult Leader's leash, the thing had moved like a dumb animal. And to be honest, the whole battle was winnable due to his Ascension Sword.
No, the "lucky encounter" Il-mok had in mind was the leftover Qi that still remained in his body. The Blood Qi is swimming through every part of his meridians. And Jin Hayeon's Yin Qi is coiled in his dantian.
Both Qis are easily worth some twenty years of internal cultivation, meaning if he absorbed the lot, it'd basically be like popping an elixir.
With that decided, Il-mok drew the ambient Qi in the air with the formula of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword and used that energy to wrap the Yin Qi sitting in his dantian. He was about to incorporate it into the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword and absorb it whole when a weird idea hit him.
On a hunch, he kept the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword energy running and carefully peeled off a sliver of the Yin Qi in his dantian.
It was a feat made possible by the fact that he had already passed beyond the threshold of the Realm of Truth and had grown reasonably accustomed to manipulating Qi by intent.
In the same fashion, Il-mok wielded the energy of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword to detach a portion of the Blood Qi drifting through his meridians and then guided the two Qi outward in two different directions.
One through the center of his left palm, the other through the center of his right.
A heartbeat later, the Blood Qi and the Yin Qi that were still enveloped by the internal energy of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword flowed forth from the centers of Il-mok's palms.
Just as when employing Sword Telekinesis or the Sky Walk, Il-mok controlled the Qi of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword in mid-air through the power of his intent.
And the moment the two Qis flowing forth from his left and right palms collided in mid-air, Il-mok released his control over the Qi of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword that enveloped them.
To begin with, it would have made no sense to claim that the Qi of the Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword could collide with neither Yin Qi nor Blood Qi.
The Soul-Stealing Heartless Sword was a Demonic Art too, and its energy was just as unstable and vicious as the others. The only reason it had been holding everything together was Il-mok's airtight control,
The instant Il-mok's control vanished, the cold Yin Qi, the Demonic Qi, and the Blood Qi started a chain reaction of repulsing each other.
Crackle-Crackle-Crackle.
The instant that reaction reached its peak. Blood Qi and Yin Qi met one another and a violent explosion erupted.
BOOM!!
The whole scene played out almost exactly the way he'd pictured it, and a small grin tugged at Il-mok's lips. The weird idea that had popped into his head while he was about to absorb the Yin Qi and Blood Qi had been this:
'What if I used these two to make a Sword Thunder?'
The Sword Thunder is a technique he favored the most. It was a method of deliberately running Demonic Qi out of control in order to amplify the power of his Sword Force.
So what if, instead of just overloading regular Demonic Qi, he built a Sword Thunder out of the cold Yin Qi and blazing Blood Qi, energies that were already primed to repel each other?
That was the curiosity that had set him off.
And since he couldn't freely control either the Yin Qi or the Blood Qi just yet, he'd improvised and wrapped them both in Demonic Qi and slammed them together.
And the result was satisfying.
He'd only pulled out a sliver strand of each energy for the test, and even that had produced a blast like that.
'Were I to form Sword Force itself out of Yin Qi and Blood Qi and make them collide, the result would be tremendous indeed.'
If there was one great problem, it was that Il-mok had never trained in any martial art that wielded Yang Qi or Yin Qi.
It was just then.
And right at that moment—
"Young Master!!"
"A-are you all right?"
The door to his room flew open with a bang as Jin Hayeon and Jeong Hyeon came barreling inside, both of them clearly spooked by the explosion they'd just heard.
Il-mok flashed them a beaming grin.
"No need to worry. I was just trying out some martial arts and it got a bit louder than I intended."
But even as he said it, Il-mok's eyes were locked on Jin Hayeon.
'There she is. My future Ice Arts tutor.'
In the meantime, Jeong Hyeon was looking at Il-mok with an oddly conflicted expression.
'B-but... he hasn't even picked up his sword. How was he testing his martial arts? Wh-what does that even mean...?'
Il-mok turned to her and spoke softly.
"Miss Jeong, I am sorry, but I have something to discuss with Miss Jin for a short while. Would you mind stepping out for a moment?"
Jeong Hyeon's expression turned complicated for a second, but she soon collected herself and answered with a bow of her head.
"Y-yes. I will do so."
Jeong Hyeon, too, had vaguely grasped what had transpired between Jin Hayeon and Il-mok. After all, Jin Hayeon herself had once made her read that particular book back at the Potala Palace.
On top of that, between Jin Hayeon dragging Il-mok off somewhere on her own and everything else surrounding the situation, putting two and two together hadn't been hard.
Of course, Jeong Hyeon was someone who was not only tight-lipped but uncomfortable conversing with others to begin with, so she was hardly the sort of person to broadcast such a thing here and there.
She just sat with it quietly, fretting on the inside.
Once she'd taken her tangled thoughts and left the room, Jin Hayeon spoke with a composed expression.
"Young Master, it hasn't even been two hours since we last spoke."
The way she drew that clear line made Il-mok smile slightly.
"Don't worry. That's not what I called you in for."
"Then for what purpose...?"
"Starting today, I'd like you to teach me a bit of the White Hand Demonic Art."
Jin Hayeon blinked at him a few times at his words.
"…I'm sorry. What?"