Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 6 - Yeon Mok Sword Manor (2)
Chapter 6 – Yeon Mok Sword Manor (2)
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Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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‘What is this bastard, really…?’
His breath being cut off was one thing, but a chill ran down Gochan’s spine.
The gaze in Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes as he smiled so wide that his mouth nearly split was unnervingly creepy.
Only now did he understand why Guard Gam had said what he did.
[I mean he is not the sort who can be easily controlled.]
He had wondered whether it had just been talk.
But after experiencing it himself, it was obvious that this one was different from ordinary people.
He had not learned martial arts, yet there was this overwhelming strength,
-and the sinister pressure carried in his eyes was crushing Gochan’s heart into mush.
Clench.
“Guhhh.”
The force squeezing his throat grew stronger.
He had endured with internal power, but he was reaching his limit.
His eyeballs were starting to burn, and it felt as though his consciousness would vanish at any moment.
-It was right then.
Ssk.
The hand gripping his throat loosened.
“Cough, cough!”
As his blocked breath cleared, he coughed as though he had choked.
Even while coughing, he was puzzled.
‘Why?’
The wide smile vanished from Mok Gyeong-un’s face.
Then he said regretfully,
“I nearly killed you.”
“Cough, cough… what?”
“If I killed you like this, the trouble I went through to become Mok Gyeong-un would become meaningless, wouldn’t it?”
At those words, Gochan’s eyes shook.
He felt as though the boy were toying with him.
What in the world was this bastard?
Fury surged up in Gochan, and with trembling lips he said,
“… Do you even have the confidence to deal with what comes after this?”
“Deal with what comes after?”
“Without the antidote, you will die. And painfully.”
Gochan brought up the poison pellet Mok Gyeong-un had taken.
He had assumed the fake must know that as well, and that was why he had stopped before killing him.
But it was already too late.
Gochan had now seen the boy’s deeply unsettling side too.
Just as Guard Gam had said, this was never someone who could be controlled.
He did not know what would happen after five days, but if they were to change allegiances, it would be better to kill this one somehow.
‘If we leave him alone, he will definitely stab us in the back.’
Even so, for the moment, the one holding the hilt was still this bastard,
so Gochan had to make him realize his position.
Gochan said in a low voice,
“If Guard Gam finds out, he will not let you off.”
“Probably not.”
“… But I will treat this incident as something that happened on impulse.”
“What does that mean?”
“I will regard it as you acting out because you were frustrated from being kept shut in, so go back to your room now.”
“Go back to my room?”
“Yes. If you go back on your own quietly, I will pretend none of what just happened ever happened.”
At that, Mok Gyeong-un smiled brightly and said,
“If I were going to do that, I would not have bothered coming out.”
Gochan frowned.
Was this bastard truly incapable of grasping the situation?
He had even swallowed the poison pellet, so why was he still acting this way?
“If Senior Brother, no, if Guard Gam finds out…”
“Yes, yes. He will not let it slide.”
“Then with you standing here now…”
“If only Bodyguard Gochan keeps his mouth shut, then nothing will happen. What of it?”
“What?”
At Mok Gyeong-un’s shameless words, Gochan was left dumbfounded.
As Guard Gam had said, this one truly could not be controlled.
Suppressing his anger with effort, Gochan said,
“I said that if you do not take the neutralizing medicine or antidote before the Hour of the Ox ends, your life will be over. Yet you still do not come to your senses…”
Before he could finish,
“Padu, wild danggui, winter aconite, pinellia…”
‘!?’
The moment those herbs, or rather poisonous plants, came out of Mok Gyeong-un’s mouth,
Gochan’s expression froze.
They were all ingredients that went into the poison pellet.
“Pokeweed, russula mushroom, fennel grass. Is that all?”
‘… Impossible.’
Gochan was struck speechless.
One or two could have been wrong, but every one was correct.
He had named every toxic ingredient that went into the poison pellet.
The reason Gochan was so shocked was not simply because he had named the ingredients.
A poison pellet was made by blending these materials, decocting them, drying them, and forming them into a pill.
That meant one could not identify all of it simply by tasting it.
“W-what are you?”
Even Jo Ak-gyeong, the Emperor of Ten Thousand Poisons,
or Mun No, the Medicine Immortal, would they be able to do this?
‘Was he not supposed to be an ordinary condemned prisoner?’
It reached the point where Gochan truly wanted to know what this one’s real identity was.
As he stood there in shock, Mok Gyeong-un said,
“Ever since I was young, I ate herbs and poisonous herbs alike. Boiled them and ate them. Dried them and ate them.”
“What? You ate poisonous herbs?”
“I was told that if I was to be an herb gatherer, I had to know their properties.”
‘… Though that was not the only reason.’
There were other reasons he knew as well, but that was not important now.
In any case, Mok Gyeong-un was sensitive enough to distinguish herbs.
No, anything he had personally tasted or even smelled a little of, he remembered.
Even his grandfather had clicked his tongue at that.
“An herb gatherer?”
“Oh, did you not know? I used to live by gathering herbs.”
“Nonsense! How could some mere herb gatherer identify the ingredients of a poison pellet just by tasting them?”
It was impossible.
“Judging from how flustered you are, I must be right.”
Mok Gyeong-un stepped toward the startled Gochan.
As the distance suddenly narrowed, Gochan instinctively stepped back.
Gochan said hurriedly,
“E-even if you know that, what do you think you can do with it? Making the antidote is harder than making the poison pellet.”
As he said that, he gathered internal power into his Yongcheon point in preparation to flee at a moment’s notice.
-This one was unsettling beyond measure.
No one knew what kind of thing he might do.
‘No matter how much stronger than an ordinary person he is, he has not learned martial arts. Then if I use my movement arts, he can never catch me.’
He thought all he had to do was avoid a direct clash.
It was right then.
Creaak.
The moment Mok Gyeong-un stepped forward, the floorboards of the wooden veranda caved under his foot.
-The strength in his legs was monstrous.
‘Damn it!’
Like a tiger lunging, Mok Gyeong-un rushed into him in an instant.
Gochan leapt backward, but it was useless.
-Mok Gyeong-un was far too fast for him to gain distance.
Pat.
Mok Gyeong-un’s hand shot forward.
Naturally, Gochan assumed he would aim for the neck or head, so he crossed both arms to defend.
But that was not it.
Tap tap tap tap.
“Ugh!”
Mok Gyeong-un’s fingers struck the points on his chest.
Gochan’s eyes widened.
He had understood for certain that this bastard knew no martial arts at all.
There had truly been no trace of internal power in him, so that was what he believed.
But the places he had just struck were the numbing acupoint that stiffened the body and the mute acupoint that prevented speech.
‘Do not tell me he lied?’
They had been struck accurately.
Normally, once those acupoints were sealed, a person could neither move nor speak.
But though his chest throbbed and his body felt momentarily stiff, he could still move.
“What is this…”
As he wondered what was going on, Mok Gyeong-un tilted his head and muttered,
“Was it not like this?”
“What?”
“I tried copying what Guard Gam did, but it really does not work. I thought if I did it this way, your body would stop moving and you would not be able to talk.”
‘!?’
Mok Gyeong-un spoke as if it were nothing.
At those words, Gochan was beyond astonishment and simply appalled.
If this was true, then he had merely reproduced what had once been done to him.
‘He copied something he saw once?’
If he had known nothing, Gochan would have assumed he had learned it.
-He might even have believed he had practiced it dozens of times to get there.
That was how accurately he had struck the acupoints.
‘What in the world is this bastard?’
If he had possessed internal power, the acupoints would have been properly sealed.
-Because he had only jabbed them crudely with force, it ended with nothing more than brief stiffness.
While Gochan stood dumbfounded in shock,
clamp.
“Ghk!”
Mok Gyeong-un seized his throat in the instant his guard slipped.
Since he was still standing, Gochan tried to kick his groin,
but crack.
His neck twisted slightly.
If only a little more force was applied, it would snap.
With his life suddenly in danger, Gochan could not move at all in that position.
“… St-stop. Do you not want the antidote…”
“Ah, that. Guard Gam does not know this yet, but… I actually do not need it.”
“What?”
What nonsense was this now?
He did not need the antidote?
Gochan could not understand,
and Mok Gyeong-un smiled as he said,
“Ever since I was little, I have eaten all sorts of poisonous herbs, so I built up resistance.”
“R-resistance?”
“At the time, my insides sting a bit, but with the kind of sloppy mixture Guard Gam gave me, I barely feel anything.”
‘A sloppy mixture?’
-Gochan was stunned.
That poison pellet was still used even within the Society.
And he dared call it sloppy?
This was a poison pellet so virulent that even a first-rate expert of the internal path, if afflicted by it, could not easily purge it even after half a month of regulated breathing and recovery.
‘Just what is this bastard?’
Had anyone else said it, he would have dismissed it as nonsense.
But for some reason, it was difficult to deny what this one said.
Then Mok Gyeong-un did something strange.
Crunch.
He suddenly bit down on his own index finger.
As Gochan stared, unable to understand why,
Mok Gyeong-un raised the bleeding finger toward his mouth.
“W-what are you tryi- mmp!”
He could not refuse.
Mok Gyeong-un’s finger forced its way into his mouth.
Drops of blood wet his tongue and ran down his throat.
He tried not to swallow out of sheer unease, but with his throat gripped there was nothing he could do.
But not long after the blood went down,
“Gah!”
His chest turned hot.
A burning pain abruptly invaded his body.
Even after Mok Gyeong-un released the hand gripping him, the pain was so intense that it felt as though his five viscera and six bowels were twisting apart.
“Guuuuuuh!”
‘Po-poison?’
No matter how he thought of it, this was poison.
Otherwise it could never produce pain like this.
Gochan hurriedly tried to settle into regulated breathing,
-but just as he was trying to sit properly, Mok Gyeong-un kicked him.
“Ugh!”
He rolled helplessly across the floor.
As he writhed in pain, Mok Gyeong-un bent one knee and said,
“There were a few things Grandfather earnestly told me never to do. This is one of them. I built up resistance by eating so many poisonous herbs, yes, but he also said my blood had become poisonous.”
“What?”
“Once, a dog we were raising happened to lick my blood. It convulsed, vomited blood, and it was a whole mess.”
“You… you…”
The pain twisting through him was so severe that proper words would not come out.
Regardless, Mok Gyeong-un looked at him with a little chuckle.
Ssk.
As Gochan writhed, Mok Gyeong-un grabbed his jaw and lifted it.
Then, speaking as if soothing him, he said,
“It’s alright. Grandfather did a few things to it, and it improved.”
“Guuuuuuh!”
Gochan grabbed at his knee.
Since he could not get words out, he looked up at him with pleading eyes.
Then Mok Gyeong-un smiled brightly and said,
“I trust you’ll help me a lot from now on.”
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