Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 147 - Poison Person (3)
Chapter 147 – Poison Person (3)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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-Drip! Drip!
Dark drops of blood falling from Mok Gyeong-un’s palm.
Baek Sa-ha, the Annihilation Poison King, who had been staring fixedly at them with eyes that could not believe it, opened his mouth.
“Boy. Do you even know what you just said?”
“Who knows.”
“If your blood is poison, that means you have reached a realm even this old man has failed to attain. Do you think that makes any sense?”
A mere seventeen years old.
It was still too early even to call him a young man.
Was he claiming that he had reached a realm that even one who had practiced poison arts his entire life had not attained?
It was something Baek Sa-ha could never accept.
To him, Mok Gyeong-un only smiled faintly and said,
“For one who calls himself the foremost master of poison arts, you seem to find drinking a little of my blood rather difficult. Judging by how long you keep denying it.”
“What? Who are you calling….”
“Then taste it. It is not such a difficult thing.”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, Baek Sa-ha, the Annihilation Poison King, narrowed his eyes.
If the fellow’s blood truly was poison itself, then for him this was nothing less than shocking.
After hesitating briefly, Baek Sa-ha finally stretched out his hand.
Then he seized Mok Gyeong-un’s wrist, pulled it closer, and let the blood flowing from his palm fall into his mouth.
-Tok tok tok!
Mok Gyeong-un’s blood wet his tongue.
The instant it touched his tongue, the eyes of Baek Sa-ha, the Annihilation Poison King, widened.
‘!?’
He was a man who had lived his whole life with poison.
The instant he tasted the blood, he was able to realize it instinctively.
‘This is……’
It was undoubtedly poison.
The moment it touched his tongue, it felt as though it were burning, and with that came a complex flavor spreading through him.
Though it was one thing, it contained countless changes, and it was the sort of poison he had never experienced before.
‘What in the world is this….’
Baek Sa-ha’s ability to discern poison was such that calling it the highest level would not be an exaggeration.
Yet even he could not identify what poison it was.
That meant it had not been formed through poisoning, but that the blood itself had become poison.
“Ha……”
A sigh of exclamation flowed from Baek Sa-ha’s lips.
Even he, who preserved poison within his body through the Wave Demon Poison Scripture, could not make the blood itself become poison.
But Mok Gyeong-un’s blood truly was poison itself.
That meant,
“……Poison Person.”
Mok Gyeong-un truly had reached the realm of a Poison Person.
Baek Sa-ha stared fixedly at Mok Gyeong-un’s face with shocked eyes.
Just what was this fellow?
How had a mere boy like this reached the realm of a Poison Person, something even he had not achieved after decades of practicing poison arts?
It had gone beyond the realm of understanding, leaving him full of questions.
After being speechless for quite some time, Baek Sa-ha at last barely opened his lips.
“How……how did you reach the realm of a Poison Person?”
“What exactly is a Poison Person?”
“……You are asking what a Poison Person is?”
“Yes.”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s question, Baek Sa-ha felt the back of his neck tighten.
This fellow did not even know what realm he himself had reached.
It was absurd in the extreme.
“Are you making sport of this old man?”
“I am not joking. I really do not know, so I am asking.”
“Hah……”
“Is it because my blood is poison?”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s question, Baek Sa-ha clicked his tongue, then answered.
“Yes. When the person himself becomes poison. That is the realm of a Poison Person.”
“Ahh. Is that so?”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s attitude, as though it were nothing much, Baek Sa-ha inwardly felt both dumbfounded and envious.
How could this whelp achieve so easily what he himself could not attain no matter how desperately he strove?
‘It feels utterly hollow.’
This whelp, who did not even practice poison arts, no, who could not even properly use poison, had reached the realm of a Poison Person.
It was enough to make all his past efforts feel hollow.
It felt exactly like finding a pearl necklace hanging around a pig’s neck.
“……Good. Then I will change the question. How did poison come to settle in your blood? You do at least know the answer to that yourself.”
“Well. That much, yes.”
“Then tell me.”
“You mean the method?”
“Yes.”
At that reply, Mok Gyeong-un scratched his head and let out a troubled groan.
“Hmm.”
“Do you not wish to tell me?”
“It sounds as though you want it very badly.”
“Want it? More than that. It is this old man’s long-cherished wish.”
“Is that so?”
“Indeed. So tell me what you know. If you do, I will pass on proper poison arts so that you can truly make use of that poison of yours.”
“That is not a bad offer.”
“Ha! Not a bad offer? Boy, if you were to learn poison arts from this old man, you would be called the greatest among the younger generation without question.”
“To that extent?”
“Without a doubt.”
Mok Gyeong-un had already reached the realm of a Poison Person.
If taught, he possessed more than enough talent to rise even to the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture.
Yet entirely unexpected words came from Mok Gyeong-un’s mouth.
“May I alter the condition a little?”
“What?”
“It is not anything difficult.”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, Baek Sa-ha clicked his tongue once more.
Now that the side regretting things was him, this fellow was trying to bargain with him. What audacity it was.
“……What is it that you want?”
“It is nothing very difficult. I only want you, Elder, to tell me what I wish to know….”
It was right then.
“Kuh.”
At that moment Baek Sa-ha grabbed his own chest.
Then, with both eyes bloodshot, he looked at Mok Gyeong-un with a bewildered expression.
‘Th-this……what in the world….’
The reason Baek Sa-ha was bewildered was simple.
It was because a pain like he was burning alive was spreading up from his chest.
Baek Sa-ha instantly realized what this pain originated from.
‘Impossible.’
This was a phenomenon caused by being poisoned.
Baek Sa-ha was dumbfounded.
Having risen in realm through poison arts, he possessed the ability to neutralize other poisons entering his body through the hundreds of poisons stored within himself.
And yet,
“Cough… cough……”
Dark red blood flowed from his mouth.
Baek Sa-ha’s eyes shook violently.
“How can this be……”
It was absurd to the point of disbelief.
How could it make sense that there existed a poison the man called the Annihilation Poison King could not neutralize?
[Virulent? This?]
In that instant Baek Sa-ha remembered what Mok Gyeong-un had said.
It had angered him because the boy had spoken as though his Wave Poison were nothing at all.
But as the poison spread through him at a terrifying speed, Baek Sa-ha came to realize something.
‘This fellow……was he……speaking seriously?’
It had not been bluster meant to provoke him.
Baek Sa-ha hurriedly circulated the Wave Demon Poison Scripture, trying to neutralize Mok Gyeong-un’s poison as it spread deeper into his five viscera and six bowels.
-Ssssss!
Dark red steam flowed from his shoulders.
It was the phenomenon that occurred as he dispelled poison.
Because he possessed deep internal power, he was late, but he was somehow managing to expel the poison.
But the problem lay elsewhere.
-Pakak!
“Kuh!”
As he circulated his qi, Baek Sa-ha clutched the back of his neck.
“Elder?”
“Grrrgh.”
Mok Gyeong-un looked at him in puzzlement.
He had been watching, thinking that as a master of poison arts he might be able to dispel the poison on his own, but something was wrong.
The look in Baek Sa-ha’s eyes, as he clutched the back of his neck, was growing cloudy.
Something seemed to have gone wrong.
‘Hmm.’
So Mok Gyeong-un tried to lay Baek Sa-ha down to examine his condition.
But then,
-Crack-crack!
‘Hm?’
The legs folded beneath him in meditation would not come loose.
No, it was not merely that they would not come loose. It seemed the posture had been fixed like this for a long time, and the bones and muscles of his lower body had become significantly weakened.
Mok Gyeong-un placed his hand on the acupoints there.
‘……So that is why he kept sitting.’
By touching the acupoints, Mok Gyeong-un learned Baek Sa-ha’s secret.
It seemed the poison aura flowing backward and the qi within his body had collided, blocking the flow of the acupoints in his lower half and causing paralysis.
‘Had he been continuously using qi to block the poison aura from flowing backward?’
That seemed to be why he had done nothing but sit all this time.
Mok Gyeong-un slowly traced upward along Baek Sa-ha’s acupoints.
It seemed the poison had flowed backward along the major acupoints on the path through which qi moved and at last had reached even the brain.
The cause was probably,
‘My blood?’
It seemed that while trying to neutralize Mok Gyeong-un’s blood, this new poison, by dispersing the qi in his body even further, he had failed to block the reverse flow of poison aura.
‘What am I supposed to do with this?’
If left alone, Baek Sa-ha would either become a vegetable or die.
If one helped him by pouring qi in so he could block the poison aura flowing backward, there might be some chance, but the problem was,
‘Will death aura work?’
Mok Gyeong-un’s death aura instead scattered qi.
It could even produce the opposite effect.
As he was thinking about what to do, Blue Spirit’s voice sounded beside his ear.
-You have the Moonlight Pill, right?
-Pardon?
-That thing they called the Heaven and Earth Pill.
-Ah, that? I do carry it around.
Because he had not learned life-nurturing qi, Mok Gyeong-un could not gain any effect even if he took it, so he had simply kept it wrapped up in his pocket.
-Good. Put the Moonlight Pill in that old fool’s mouth and somehow stop the poison that has climbed up to the brain’s acupoints.
-The poison that has gone up to the brain?
Mok Gyeong-un looked toward the back of Baek Sa-ha’s neck.
Then he moved aside the hand clutching the back of the neck and placed his fingers on the acupoints connected to the brain.
-Ssk!
And then he unfolded the Form of Attachment.
Through the Form of Attachment concentrated into a single finger, the poison that had been rising gathered into one point and then flowed into Mok Gyeong-un’s finger.
“Cough.”
At that moment Baek Sa-ha, who had lost consciousness, came to.
“Have you come to your senses?”
“Y-you… how?”
To the man who had no idea what had happened, Mok Gyeong-un said,
“More importantly, I do not think I can help you directly, so try making do with this.”
“What?”
-Pop!
Mok Gyeong-un immediately stuffed the Heaven and Earth Pill into Baek Sa-ha’s mouth.
‘This is?’
With it in his mouth, Baek Sa-ha instinctively realized this was a spiritual medicine.
As it was, the flow of his qi had already broken while he was neutralizing Mok Gyeong-un’s poison, so he could not block the poison aura flowing backward.
Thus, being in no position to be choosy, Baek Sa-ha,
-Gulp!
Swallowed the Heaven and Earth Pill whole.
As expected of the spiritual medicine the Heaven and Earth Society was proud of, the moment he swallowed it, he felt a hot energy gradually spreading as it traveled down his esophagus.
Ordinarily he should have used that to make it his own.
‘Push it back.’
Baek Sa-ha had to use the energy of the spiritual medicine to drive back the poison aura that was flowing in reverse.
If he did not, it would not end with paralysis of the lower body. His whole body could be paralyzed, and he might become a vegetable.
-Ssssss!
It was while Baek Sa-ha was desperately struggling with the energy of the spiritual medicine.
Watching him, Mok Gyeong-un muttered,
“How strange. I do not know why you keep fighting the poison. You could simply accept it.”
‘!?’
At that moment Baek Sa-ha’s eyes shook violently.
* * *
More than fifty years ago.
The young Baek Sa-ha, kneeling down, asked a middle-aged man lighting incense,
[How in the world can one reach the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture?]
[……]
[Will you not answer me, Father?]
That middle-aged man was none other than Baek Sa-ha’s father, Baek Yu, the Master of Ten Thousand Poisons and the progenitor of the Baek family.
He was the man who overturned the accepted belief in murim that in poison no one could defeat either the Tang Clan of Sichuan or the Guyang family.
When the then head of the Tang Clan of Sichuan, Tang Yeon-jong, the Thousand Flower Poison Palm, died at his hands, the martial world of the Central Plains acknowledged Baek Yu as the new grand authority of poison arts.
The Wave Demon Poison Scripture was the poison art created by Baek Yu, the progenitor of the Baek family, and it came to stand shoulder to shoulder in fame with the Tang Clan’s Ten Thousand Flower Scripture Poison Art and the Guyang family’s Toad Poison Art.
But the process of learning the Wave Demon Poison Scripture was not easy, and the higher one ascended layer by layer, the harder it became to gain enlightenment, so aside from Baek Yu, its creator, none of his sons had ever reached the eighth layer, the realm called its utmost peak.
That was equally true of Baek Sa-ha, who had been the second son but became the eldest.
[Is the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture not impossible unless one is you, Father?]
[……]
Baek Yu gave no answer.
The reason he was acting this way was because this was the ancestral shrine where the memorial tablet of the eldest son was kept.
The eldest son, Baek Seong-ha, while practicing the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture, suffered reverse-flowing poison that blocked the blood vessels of the brain and died after his whole body became paralyzed.
[Please tell me, Father.]
[……]
[If this continues, then as I train the eighth layer as well, will I not lose my life just like my elder brother?]
After losing his brother, the young Baek Sa-ha had begun to feel skeptical about practicing the Wave Demon Poison Scripture.
The eldest son had lost his life, and the third younger brother had become paralyzed in the lower body.
The only one still whole was himself, and no matter how he thought about it, this Wave Demon Poison Scripture was a martial art that no one but Baek Yu, its creator, could master.
[The Wave Demon Poison Scripture is the road to becoming a Poison Person.]
[That again?]
[The ultimate meaning of poison arts is that one must become poison oneself.]
[By what means? From the moment one practices poison arts, one lives unable to sleep properly and under constant tension, so how in the world can a person become poison?]
[One must yield.]
[……What in the world does that yielding mean?]
[I know that you cannot understand it now and that you hold much resentment toward this father. But it is something you can only awaken to yourself.]
[……]
‘Yield……yield……that damned yielding……’
Advice too vague even for a son.
Because of it, one son had died and another had become crippled, and this was all there was?
From that day onward, Baek Sa-ha resolved something.
Rather than doing something reckless by chasing after his father’s shadow, he would pioneer his own path.
Thirty-three years after that.
[Haa… haa….]
Baek Sa-ha wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and breathed roughly.
Having been injured in a one-on-one contest for the first time in nearly ten years, he could not hide his shock.
He had never competed with the Society Leader, who was said to be the strongest master in the Heaven and Earth Society, in the first place.
But he had directly sparred in friendship with Ho Tae-gang, the Axe-Breaking King, one of the Five Kings who bore the title of Eight Stars and who had crossed the wall.
Even then he had felt a certain gap, but he had never felt this degree of helplessness.
‘How can this be?’
Even the Axe-Breaking King, who had crossed the wall, had not been able to receive his poison aura head-on.
That was because he knew how dangerous the power of poison was.
Yet that man had clashed with him head-on and had let every indiscriminate cloud of poison roll harmlessly away.
Poison that failed to touch him could have no effect on him at all.
‘The profound principle of Moving the Flower and Grafting the Tree, so high-level that even poison aura was lightly deflected away.’
That was only possible if one handled qi as naturally as breathing.
‘Ghost Sword……’
The man truly had been a monster.
It was enough to make him feel self-loathing.
However, through that contest Baek Sa-ha realized his own deficiency.
That if he could not handle qi as delicately as that man, he could rise no further upward.
So he tempered himself once more.
If he could handle qi minutely and move it as freely as breathing, then perhaps he could succeed in the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture, which he had once given up on.
But in truth, that judgment of his could be said to have been half right and half wrong.
Confident that he had become able to handle qi as delicately as breathing, Baek Sa-ha challenged the realm of the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture.
The eighth layer, a realm only Baek Yu, his progenitor and father, had succeeded in reaching.
This time, he was sure he would succeed.
But,
[Grrrghhhhh.]
Baek Sa-ha did not reach the eighth layer.
Having become able to handle qi delicately, he tried to bring it into harmony with poison aura.
Yet instead, reverse-flowing poison aura left his lower body paralyzed.
He had become the same as his third younger brother.
‘……Is the utmost peak of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture impossible after all?’
From the start, the realm of a Poison Person may have been a domain impossible for anyone but his father, the grandmaster.
With his lower body paralyzed, Baek Sa-ha withdrew into seclusion under the pretext of observing three years of mourning.
His purpose was not to achieve the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture.
He only hoped to suppress the reverse-flowing poison aura and restore his paralyzed lower body.
But even now he had made no progress.
‘Must I live like this as a half-cripple?’
Thus he had been growing only more and more exhausted.
And yet,
[How strange. I do not know why you keep fighting the poison. You could simply accept it.]
The instant he heard Mok Gyeong-un say that, he suddenly remembered the words his father Baek Yu had once spoken.
[One must yield.]
‘Yield?’
It was at the very instant that thought crossed his mind.
Baek Sa-ha released both the reverse-flowing poison aura and the qi that had been stopping it until now.
And he abandoned the very act of thinking of them as separate things.
Then,
-Goooooooo!
Baek Sa-ha’s qi and poison aura, which had been unable to mix like oil and water, began to blend together.
Then,
-Crack! Craaack!
Cracks spread across Baek Sa-ha’s skin.
That phenomenon was precisely,
-That old fool got lucky. To think he would undergo Transforming the Bones and Replacing the Marrow.
It was just as Blue Spirit had said.
Transforming the Bones and Replacing the Marrow.
His body was changing to match this new enlightenment.
Into a body worthy of the eighth layer of the Wave Demon Poison Scripture, which he had desired so desperately.
It did not take long.
Baek Sa-ha’s body had already long been sufficiently prepared.
He had merely been forcibly holding it back.