Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 69 - Gu Poison (4)
Chapter 69 – Gu Poison (4)
===================
Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
Mok Gyeong-un had revealed himself from within the chains.
-Gooooooo!
That appearance was not ordinary.
Had he perhaps been devoured by the completed gu poison?
In a somewhat angry voice, Blue Spirit aimed her pipe and said,
-You fool. In the end, were you devoured after all?
At that question, Mok Gyeong-un’s lips twitched, and then he looked at Blue Spirit and spoke.
“I was not devoured. I devoured it.”
-!?
At those words, Blue Spirit’s expression blanked for an instant.
From his characteristic manner of speaking alone, she could tell clearly that it was Mok Gyeong-un himself and not that his body had been taken.
“What is it?”
-…Did you really devour that thing?
At her question, Mok Gyeong-un shrugged and answered,
“Just as you see.”
-Ha!
It was truly absurd.
Even if one had several lives, the probability of failure would have been higher.
Yet this ignorant sentient being had actually managed it in the end.
“It’s just that I feel as though my stomach might burst from overeating.”
-Your stomach might burst?
“Yes. I think I ate rather too much.”
He had certainly succeeded in absorbing its energy after a tug-of-war with it.
But a problem had arisen here.
He had certainly absorbed its energy, but the resentment and death aura it possessed were hard to compare at all to what he had taken in until now.
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, she frowned.
‘Come to think of it, this fellow is human.’
Blue Spirit realized it belatedly.
Perhaps because she had existed as a vengeful spirit for over a hundred years, the way she thought while human had grown rigid.
A human body could be called a kind of vessel.
And every vessel had a limit to what it could bear.
‘More important than receiving internal power is enlarging that vessel through enlightenment.’
But Mok Gyeong-un had little enlightenment.
He had not yet understood the operation of qi as a first-rate master, and even though he had learned the moon sword forms, which could be called the secret of a supreme martial art, his understanding of the sword was still low.
If he had obtained enlightenment step by step through a normal path, the limit of the internal power he could accept would naturally have grown as well.
But Mok Gyeong-un was not like that at all.
Blue Spirit said in a somewhat grave voice,
-Immediately expel the energies you cannot handle.
“Pardon?”
-There is a saying that too much is as bad as too little. If you take in energy to a level your flesh cannot handle, it will instead become poison to you, sentient being.
“Ah. Is that so?”
-Yes.
“Then it would be better to hand over any excess energy after all.”
-What?
While she looked puzzled, Mok Gyeong-un bent at the waist and began looking for something on the floor.
She wondered what he was searching for, but then Mok Gyeong-un let out an “oh” and lifted what he had found.
It was none other than a skull with the face and forehead area shattered into a complete mess.
Strangely, an old talisman was attached near the skull’s head, and though it seemed quite old, it was almost surprising that it had remained intact.
‘Because of spell power.’
She guessed that was likely the reason.
And that guess was correct.
Mok Gyeong-un removed the old talisman with the character for lock written on it from the skull he was holding.
And then.
-Uuuuuung!
-What are you doing now?
No. He was not merely expelling energy, so why was he pouring it into that thing?
In Blue Spirit’s ghost eyes, she saw a presence crouching within that skull.
It was a vengeful spirit hiding there in terror.
-Why are you giving energy to that…
Blue Spirit had not even finished speaking.
As death aura was already injected into the skull, the vengeful spirit within reacted.
-Gooooooo!
Like dried seafood regaining life when water is poured on it, the crouched vengeful spirit absorbed death aura and then revealed itself.
It was none other than
-Chalkang chalkang!
a cold-looking girl, her whole body clad in thin chains like clothing.
Judging by her youthful face, she looked no older than fifteen.
What was strange was that half of her hair had gone white, truly half-white.
At that appearance, Blue Spirit frowned and said,
-What is this? It was a girl?
Hearing those words, the girl bit her lip hard and then shouted,
-Who are you calling a girl? This young master is a man.
-……..What?
At the girl’s words, Blue Spirit lifted one eyebrow.
Then she muttered in a tone of utter incomprehension,
-You’re joking, aren’t you?
No matter how she looked at it, it was a girl.
And yet,
-This young master is a man!
After staring fixedly at the girl who insisted she was a man, Blue Spirit held out her hand.
At once, the girl’s body was forcibly sucked into Blue Spirit’s hand.
-Shuk!
-Uh?
-Pak!
Seizing the girl by the neck, Blue Spirit spoke in a somewhat chilly voice.
-You impudent little thing. Where did you learn to raise your voice to an elder? Are you so eager to die?
-!!!!!!!
At Blue Spirit’s tremendous pressure, the girl was struck speechless for a moment.
It seemed that among vengeful spirits, each could sense the other’s rank to some degree, and the girl too seemed able to infer it from the aura wafting from Blue Spirit.
But perhaps she was not the sort to submit so easily after all,
-E-even if I look like this, I have been dead around fifteen years, so in years I am thirty-thr… urk.
Blue Spirit’s grip tightened.
Pulling the girl closer, she said,
-If you do not wish to hear “little thing” from me, return after another hundred years.
At Blue Spirit’s words, the girl’s expression hardened.
From those words alone, she had guessed what sort of years Blue Spirit had lived through and what kind of rank she possessed.
Turning her head toward Mok Gyeong-un, Blue Spirit said,
-Why did you give energy to this one and revive it? You should have just killed it.
“Because it looked useful.”
-Useful?
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, the girl twisted her face.
Then she said to Mok Gyeong-un,
-Who are you calling useful now? A mere human…
-Tight!
-Keh!
-Who said you were allowed to open your mouth?
Though she was not actually suffocating, the girl could not speak under the crushing grip of Blue Spirit’s hand.
At that, Mok Gyeong-un held the skull in both hands.
Then he showed it to the girl and said,
“This is your head, isn’t it?”
The girl glanced at Blue Spirit nervously.
Blue Spirit nodded with an expression that said she found it annoying.
At that, the girl answered,
-…That’s right. Since that’s right, just leave it alone.
“Why?”
-What good could come from touching the bones of the dead?
“What good? There is some.”
-What?
-Ppudeuk!
At that moment, a crack formed in the girl’s skull.
Seeing it, the startled girl reached out and shouted,
-St-stop!
“Why?”
-No, why are you trying to break that?
Unlike the girl, who was desperately trying to stop him, Blue Spirit’s lips twitched as if she were enjoying herself.
She had wondered why this sentient being had revived the girl, but now it seemed it was only so he could torment her once more in this manner.
That skull could be called the girl’s source.
If he shattered that, she would suffer tremendous pain.
‘He really is a vicious fellow.’
As she thought that, the girl tried to shake free of Blue Spirit’s hand and rush toward Mok Gyeong-un.
But because she was lower in rank, she could not break loose.
Instead, by Mok Gyeong-un’s hand, the skull
-Wagjak!
-Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!
The girl let out a scream as if she were being torn apart.
The pain of the flesh she had once possessed being destroyed in life was hard to describe in words.
But here, besides pain, she also witnessed a sight shocking enough to stun her.
-Paseuseuseuseuk!
After crushing the girl’s skull into small pieces in his hand, Mok Gyeong-un put the powder into his mouth.
Even Blue Spirit had not expected this, and her eyes widened.
Who could have known he would put bone powder into his mouth?
-Yooooou!
The girl screamed.
Mok Gyeong-un paid her no mind, and by rubbing the remaining broken skull pieces between his palms and grinding them even more finely, he put all of the rest of the powder into his mouth.
-You son of a… Aaaaaaaak!
At that instant, something strange happened.
As if she had gone into convulsions, the girl began violently trembling in spirit form.
Then something like a red thread emerged from the girl’s body and connected itself to Mok Gyeong-un.
-!?
Seeing this, Blue Spirit was dumbfounded.
‘This fellow…’
He had eaten the source of the vengeful spirit and forcibly made it into his shikigami.
The act itself had been simple enough, but the result was anything but simple.
How could such a thing happen?
It was hard to believe even while looking at it.
Meanwhile, once Mok Gyeong-un saw that the attempt he had made on a whim had truly worked, the corners of his mouth rose in a sinister curl.
‘It worked.’
If the chance came, he had wanted to test it once.
Whether his guess was correct, that was.
And yet it had truly worked.
-Th-this is…
The girl could not hide her bewilderment as she looked at the red cord.
Since she had spent long years as a vengeful spirit, she was a girl who had come to know all such things naturally even without anyone teaching her.
That was why she immediately realized that this was the cord of a shikigami, the thread that established a master-servant relationship.
-How can this…
The girl’s face flushed red, and she tried to seize the red cord.
But there was no chance that she could grasp it.
-Whish whish!
-How can this young master, this young master, become the shikigami of a trivial human like you?
Mok Gyeong-un asked the girl, who was wildly waving her hands about,
“What is your name?”
-Shut up! Who are you that this young mas…
“What is your name?”
The girl, who had been about to erupt in anger, suddenly softened at Mok Gyeong-un’s repeated question.
Then her lips twitched, and soon she said to Mok Gyeong-un with a much gentler face,
-It is Gyu So-ha, Master.
‘This girl?’
Blue Spirit was startled inwardly.
Even after becoming shikigami, vengeful spirits ordinarily did not reveal their names on their own.
The reason was the power carried by a name.
Once one became a spirit body, one approached the domain of gods, and then one was given fetters through one’s true name.
So vengeful spirits did not reveal their names.
And yet this one had not only changed her expression as though completely subdued, she had even revealed her true name.
Looking at the girl, Mok Gyeong-un said,
“It is a good name.”
-Thank you, Master.
“So-ha. You can become my loyal dog, can’t you?”
-Ah, that is all I could ever wish for.
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, the girl showed such intense delight that Blue Spirit clicked her tongue as though dumbfounded.
This was even worse than the Demon Monk.
To think that a Green Spirit that had nearly reached Blue Spirit rank, even though it had not quite attained it, would submit to such a degree.
She looked almost as if the very roots of her mind had surrendered.
‘…Is it because his death aura has grown stronger?’
-Gooooooo!
In her ghost eyes, it was clearly visible.
That Mok Gyeong-un’s death aura had grown incomparably stronger than before.
And yet he had infused enough energy into that fellow called Gyu So-ha to restore her to this extent, and it was still overflowing like this?
Moreover, she had vaguely sensed it for a while now, but the energy seemed to overlap in a subtle way.
At that, she asked,
-You… your energy is rather strange. Why does it seem layered?
“Ah. So Blue Spirit can see it?”
-See what?
“As it happens, a new formula came to me.”
-A new formula?
“Of the Eight Forms of Mind-Breaking.”
-What?
She could not hide her surprise.
He had come up with a new formula of the Eight Forms of Mind-Breaking in the middle of all this?
At that, Blue Spirit asked,
-What kind of formula did you come up with?
At her question, Mok Gyeong-un gestured toward So-ha and said,
“Jeongeoseoyanghyeol mubui mugeuk magaryanghyeongjeonsim wihaejeonmuga yeokgeukmumangnyeo ogeojeonjeolmu.”
‘!?’
Hearing it, Blue Spirit’s pupils shook.
‘This fellow… has grasped a formula that even I do not know.’
That was the reason Blue Spirit was shocked.
Because what Mok Gyeong-un had just spoken was a formula she did not know at all.
Even she, with her heaven-given martial talent, had only mastered four of the forms of the Eight Forms of Mind-Breaking.
Yet this formula was one she did not know.
Suppressing her inward excitement, she asked,
-Ahem… this is a form I have not mastered. What kind of principle does it possess?
“It lets me split the dantian into two places.”
-What?
“It seems I can disperse energy around the Baihui acupoint in the head and around the central area near the heart.”
‘!!!!!!’
At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, she made a dumbfounded expression.
Mok Gyeong-un probably did not realize what he was saying right now.
‘Ha.’
Until they crossed the wall, all martial artists could not escape the bounds of the lower dantian.
But the moment they gained enlightenment and crossed that wall, they opened the middle dantian.
Those who opened the middle dantian in this way were extremely few even within the martial world.
And yet this sentient being, through the principle of the Eight Forms of Mind-Breaking and without any enlightenment, had opened his middle dantian.