Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 36 - A Man Well-Versed in Theory
Chapter 36 – A Man Well-Versed in Theory
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Red Beggar followed Ju-seong’s lead. He wanted to immediately catch and kill that sexual predator, but jumping into this fight would only get in the way.
He did not know what they could do, but Ju-seong seemed to have some idea, so he decided to follow.
Ju-seong recalled the sexual predator’s appearance and martial arts as he descended the dim cave passage.
‘That man has trained in the yin-harvesting yin-supplementing sexual arts.’
He had been devouring yin energy to reinforce his own yin.
The opposite principle from ordinary sexual predators who stole women’s yin energy to nourish their own yang energy.
With the method of yin-harvesting yang-supplementing, achievements would naturally be faster. Yin-harvesting yang-supplementing required a process of drawing surrounding yang energy through the stolen yin energy and then converting it into one’s own cultivation.
This method contained the principle of yin-yang, the Taiji.
Sexual arts in the martial world that embodied the principle of yin-harvesting yang-supplementing generally had their roots in Daoist dual cultivation.
It was not a martial art branched from Daoist roots, but rather one that directly opposed nature’s principles.
‘Truly, if there is such a thing as demonic arts, this would be it.’
But quick paths inevitably harbor pitfalls.
There is no royal road to martial studies. This man’s cultivation method surely entailed tremendous side effects.
By refining yin energy directly without processing it into cold energy, he had cultivated it as is. If a man did such a thing, naturally his masculine traits would fade, and feminine traits would become prominent.
That was why the man’s skin was smooth and his facial lines were thin.
Ju-seong spoke as he entered the cave.
“Why do you think this fellow could not rape a single woman while being chased?”
“Well, because he was too busy being chased for that, was he not?”
Red Beggar answered as if it were obvious. But that was overly optimistic thinking.
“Even while being chased, an ordinary sexual predator would have lost control of his boiling lust and barged into a village to commit atrocities on whatever woman he could find. But this fellow did not do that.”
“…Now that you mention it, you are right. Why is that?”
“This fellow has built up so much yin energy that his lower parts probably do not work as he wants. He needs to indulge in sex to increase his power, but the more his power increases, the harder it becomes to indulge in sex.”
“He must have had many worries, that bastard. Son of a bitch cannot even live up to the sexual predator title.”
Ju-seong nodded.
“He must have been becoming more and more like a woman. What are women like? Usually, for them to truly enjoy carnal pleasures, they need nice incense, clean sheets, a man who commits his heart and feelings… Anyway, they need many things, do they not?”
Red Beggar did not know much about such matters.
“Is that from experience?”
Ju-seong did not know much either.
“No, that is just what I thought in my head.”
But as someone from an acrobatic troupe, he had often heard such things from the older dancing women.
‘Though I am a virgin, I am a man well-versed in theory… Someday when I enter the practical realm, I will be exceedingly excellent…’
As he muttered to himself, Red Beggar’s skeptical voice cut through his excusing thoughts.
“…Anyway, go on.”
“Mm, yes. So for him to get his unresponsive lower parts to work at all, he needs many things, and the conditions to satisfy that perverted desire must be numerous. So while being chased, it was impossible for him to do that.”
“That makes sense.”
“His lust is boiling but he cannot relieve it… Since he trained sexual arts, he inevitably needs to do that, but it is not going his way. That is why he is teetering on the verge of qi deviation.”
“So what does that have to do with why we entered the cave?”
“Why do you think this fellow, who was being chased for so long, suddenly set up a formation here and settled down the moment he was sure he had shaken the pursuit?”
“I do not know. Just tell me. You are acting like you are some Zhuge Liang all by yourself.”
“Fool. We have not found the corpse of that Five Poisons Valley woman yet, have we?”
“Ah!”
Red Beggar exclaimed as if a light had turned on in his head.
“He needed the time and space to do unspeakable things to that woman!”
“Right? What a true bastard, is he not?”
“This is just absurdly ridiculous.”
Yet Red Beggar was inwardly astonished at Ju-seong’s acumen.
Well, should he call it acumen? Ju-seong had not come up with a flash of insight or tactics and strategy. That was not the kind of head he had.
This man simply had deep insight into human nature.
His skill at gauging and predicting another’s thoughts and actions was remarkably outstanding. This was impossible unless one had long observed and contemplated people.
‘What on earth does Brother usually think about…’
Red Beggar sneaked a glance at Ju-seong’s profile. Not knowing he was being watched, Ju-seong muttered to himself.
‘Ah… I am hungry. I should not have released those snake chickens.’
Ju-seong peered into the darkness with gaunt eyes. Chasing this sexual predator had already been going on for more than a day or two.
After descending ten-odd zhang through the cave, flickering firelight came into view.
“Hm, must be over there.”
Concealed by stalactites and stalagmites, the place looked like a bedchamber veiled by a curtain.
There was a terrible smell of unpleasant incense.
Approaching the scene, Red Beggar and Ju-seong frowned in displeasure.
“What kind of bastard is this?”
Red Beggar ground his teeth, kicked away the incense glowing with a strange red light, then snapped the ropes binding the woman in a grotesque position.
Ju-seong waved his hand before his nose and muttered.
“An incense mixed with aphrodisiac. Ugh, filthy bastard…”
“Brother, this woman’s breathing is very faint.”
Ju-seong immediately narrowed his eyes and took her pulse.
Come to think of it, the Snow-Wing Blue Hawk that detected human body temperature had failed to track the sexual predator.
That meant this woman’s body temperature had dropped to a level unrecognizable as human.
“He has recklessly injected yin energy to put her in a state of apparent death. Damned bastard.”
Ju-seong quickly pulled out a small wooden box from his robes. They were the needles he had stolen… no, received… from his master.
Mixed with ten-thousand-year cold iron and carrying a peculiar magnetic force, they were objects of exceptional efficacy for acupuncture.
Ju-seong began carefully inserting needles into the woman’s vital points. Operating the Flame Crow Six Stage Art’s energy with great care and precision.
He intended to inject the yang energy contained in the Flame Crow Six Stage Art through the needles to thaw her blood vessels, which had been invaded by yin energy.
Red Beggar turned toward the cave exit and stood guard.
It was not just treatment; he was performing the dangerous art of acupuncture combined with internal energy circulation.
-Swish. Tap, tap. Shh. Tap, tap, tap.
Only the quiet sounds of rubbing pressure points and inserting needles echoed in the cave. A fierce battle was surely raging outside.
But right now, inside here, there was only one trying to save and one trying to protect.
Eventually, the woman’s breathing returned to a more normal pace. Before, both her pulse and breathing had been extremely slow, so now she had passed the crisis.
Ju-seong carefully withdrew the needles, lifted the woman onto his back, and stealthily made his way out.
-…BOOM! CRASH!
The closer to the cave entrance, the louder the sounds of martial artists clashing.
Ju-seong and Red Beggar watched for an opportunity at the cave entrance, then sidled along the wall.
But the sexual predator, deep in qi deviation, seemed extremely sensitive to having his prey snatched.
“You bastards! Put that woman down-!”
Palm force thick with yin energy floated through the air toward them.
Red Beggar immediately leaped up and struck the sexual predator’s palm force with his milky-white energy, but he could not fully absorb the impact.
“Keuhhuk!”
Red Beggar was thrown to the ground.
Ju-seong immediately abandoned his beggar brother and sprinted away.
“Hello there! Five Poisons Valley! Five Poisons Valley!”
There was no one in the field named Five Poisons Valley, but anyway, Yeo Hong-pa, the leader of the Five Poisons Valley martial artists, turned his head.
Yeo Hong-pa’s eyes widened instantly.
“Ho, Hong-yeon!”
Ju-seong placed the woman he had been carrying into Yeo Hong-pa’s arms and said.
“I have given emergency treatment, but she still needs stability.”
As Ju-seong briefly explained the situation, the sexual predator had gone wild. Several Martial Alliance warriors had been wounded or killed.
The formation had already become meaningless. The minimum number of people required to maintain this formation was ten, but only eight remained.
As the formation loosened, the sexual predator burst through. He tried to strike Red Beggar, who lay sprawled on the ground, on the crown of the head.
But at that moment.
-Shwik…!
Something flew toward him with a chilling sound, and he had to deflect it, delaying his move.
‘A needle?’
It was a single needle of fine metal with a blue gleam.
The needle itself was an excellent object, but the power contained within was not particularly great, so he deflected it without much thought.
-Ting!
But the sexual predator had to immediately move his hand again, eyes widening.
-Tiing!
‘There were two!’
Hidden directly behind the first needle, which flew making a loud sound, was a second silent needle.
He had thrown two needles on exactly the same trajectory so that the first carved through the air and the second followed silently.
Ju-seong narrowed his eyes and confirmed that his little trick had worked fairly well.
“How is that, Pervert Gong? It is a technique I invented, and its name is Mother-Child Dart. It flies in tandem like a friendly mother and child. It is particularly effective against someone like you. Because you have never experienced it.”
An insult that required a second glance to fully understand. It was uncertain whether the sexual predator in qi deviation would even comprehend it.
The Flower-Snapping Laughing Killer stared at Ju-seong with jet-black marble-like eyes and smiled eerily.
“Say that one more time.”
“I do not want to, you pervert bastard. Are your ear holes blocked too? Trash, a man so afraid of women you need to tie them up tight to feel safe, you who use filthy incense, you are the lowest of men. A low male, in fact.”
The sexual predator opened his mouth to say something, but Ju-seong immediately cut him off.
“Shut up! I do not want to hear words from a pervert’s mouth. You with a Great Wall conscript laborer between your legs. You need to be goaded for your lower parts to work, right?”
This hit a definite nerve.
Because the sexual predator screamed and charged directly at him.
“Aigoo!”
Ju-seong yelped in terror and turned to flee. He was now a first-rate martial artist, so he had the skill to throw out provoking words and run away.
‘He seems really angry.’
The sexual predator’s nerve was naturally ‘that kind of thing’, was it not?
While Ju-seong was taunting him, Red Beggar, having gained time, guzzled liquor while lying on his back.
Soon he rose, streams of milky-white brilliance shooting from both eyes.
“Flower-Snapping Laughing Killer, you son of a bitch! Your opponent is here!”
From his bamboo staff, a long stream of energy shot out like a white dragon.
An energy thread weaving through the air as if a drunken dragon were roaming.
-THWOOM!
The sexual predator thrust out both palms to extinguish Red Beggar’s energy. The shape of the incoming energy thread was so bizarre that he put in more power than necessary.
He narrowed his eyes and muttered.
“You are clearly… How are you projecting energy like that?”
Red Beggar could only project energy with that bizarre cultivation method that used the alcohol qi in wine to temporarily boost internal power output.
Red Beggar wiped the corner of his lips with a reddened face and said.
“Keuk, the Drunken Immortal threw his iron staff, and it transformed into a dragon he rode to the ninth heaven.”
It was called Iron Staff Becoming Dragon.
It was named after the legend of Li Tieguai, one of the Eight Immortals along with Sword Immortal Lü Dongbin.
Thus, his martial arts were passed down from the martial studies of one called an immortal back in the Sui Dynasty, at least seven or eight hundred years old.
Like old non-mainstream martial arts tended to be, his martial arts had many peculiar applications difficult to find in other martial studies.
One of them was the Iron Staff Becoming Dragon technique that boosted internal power using alcohol energy.
Like an iron staff transforming into a dragon.
It was an art that allowed a martial artist below first-rate who had not crossed the wall to temporarily mimic higher-level masters.
“Hryaaah! The moon is bright and the wine tastes good!”
He swung his bamboo staff wildly, scattering internal power everywhere. Milky-white energy rose greatly, swimming through the air like multiple thread-snakes targeting the sexual predator.
“Such cheapness!”
The sexual predator finally realized Red Beggar’s art was not that of a true peak realm. Though he had mimicked it by boosting the power and output of his internal energy, his martial enlightenment was at the first-rate level.
He roared and burst all the milky-white thread-snakes with palm techniques, then charged at Red Beggar.
He extended his right arm far back, then slashed with nails brimming with miasmic poison. With the energy he had put into his nails, that pretender’s shabby bamboo staff would surely shatter.
But someone he had forgotten intervened and blocked his nails.
-CLANG…!
It was Helian Qiu, the Martial Alliance Third Pursuit Squad Captain and a master at the level of full peak.
He received the sexual predator’s nail strike, powered with considerable internal energy.
-Creak, creeeak…
The miasmic poison made a grating sound as it corroded the blade.
Helian Qiu clenched his teeth and twisted the blade, making it slide along the inner surface of the nails.
Intending to sever the sexual predator’s fingers.
But the sexual predator grinned eerily and withdrew only his index finger, receiving the blade on the upper surface of his index nail.
-Creak, creeeak.
“Keeheeheehee, if we stay like this, who will win, hmm?”
The sexual predator let out a disgusting laugh, and with his free hand, he deflected Red Beggar’s attack.
Eventually, Ju-seong also rushed in, igniting yellow flames on both hands as he fought.
-Flare, boom!
Though merely at first-rate level, the sexual predator felt how Ju-seong’s attacks strangely slipped past his defense.
He twitched one corner of his lips. Then erupted with massive energy, pushing away all the martial artists facing him.
The energy was so yin that aside from black heat haze spreading in all directions, there was no great explosion sound.
But those nearby had to grimace and retreat six or seven steps.
“Damn… What kind of internal energy…”
Ju-seong swore as he felt the sticky, cool energy dulling his blood vessels.
Blasting internal energy like that with his whole body was, regardless of realm, an extremely inefficient move.
How much internal energy did he have to spend it like water? And…
‘Where would that tremendous internal energy have come from?’
He thought of the woman bound inside the cave. And the woman he had never seen, the one Red Beggar had admired.
And all the countless common women who had been cruelly sacrificed here in Yunnan…
Ju-seong narrowed his eyes and licked his upper lip. The sight was like a snake truly hunting its prey.
He asked quietly.
“You… Are you not afraid when you look at the night sky?”
A question no one would understand.
The sexual predator also tilted his head quizzically and looked Ju-seong up and down.
Ju-seong nodded, receiving the sexual predator’s unspoken answer in his head.
That even if he looked up at the night sky, he did not feel a shred of shame. That he was not afraid of the stars fixed high above, shining down.
He did not know that the flowers he had cruelly destroyed were now blooming in the night sky.
“Good.”
Yellow brilliance seemed to burst from his eyes.
Then everyone in the field felt as if all the hair on the backs of their necks stood on end.
It was a sensation felt by strong and weak alike. A warning arising from the realm of intuition, beyond the logic of power.
Humans are far stronger than hornets, but when a hornet’s fierce wingbeat sounds in one’s ear, goosebumps rise.
Instinctively, wariness is triggered against an existence hiding a sharp blade.
Right now, Ju-seong was like a hornet.
Even those stronger than him could not help but tremble at the terrifying killing intent bursting from him.