Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 48 - An Unremarkable Man

Chapter 48 – An Unremarkable Man

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Ju-seong collapsed without even thinking of continuing the attack.

Had he rolled his eyes back and foamed at the mouth? Hard to say.

His meridians were a mess as if burned all over, and an unwelcome guest had entered his side… in other words, this was the creature’s poison sac itself.

‘Facing death, it used its last resort.’

A poisonous creature’s poison sac was similar to a martial artist’s dantian.

Powerful poison held powerful energy, so cultivating poison within the body was like a martial artist’s energy circulation and breathing exercises.

The creature had just burst its painstakingly cultivated poison sac and injected it into Ju-seong’s body in the form of poison.

‘A mutual destruction technique.’

Ju-seong smiled bitterly inside.

Was Red Beggar handling the moth?

Probably the moth was fleeing, and Red Beggar was standing guard over Ju-seong.

Being in a state between poison and internal energy, this could not be resolved by antidote alone, nor by energy circulation alone.

Even using both, it was uncertain whether it could be detoxified.

‘First, let me try to drive out the poison as much as possible.’

Ju-seong circulated the Flame Crow Six Stage Art’s internal energy through his meridians and tried to beat and expel the poison energy.

He ignored the pain in his side for now. He had roughly cauterized it for hemostasis, so it should be fine.

Cultivation methods were similar to training the mind.

The reason cultivation verse often took the form of poetry was for this reason.

The key was to wholeheartedly immerse oneself in the mindset of whoever first created the cultivation method.

When this immersion deepened to a trance-like level, one could be drawn into an inner mental image as if dreaming.

That was Ju-seong’s current state.

“Ah… It is hot.”

Ju-seong stood alone on a blazing hot gravel path. Glancing down at the gravel under his feet, Ju-seong was startled.

Disgustingly numerous sprouts and vines were sprouting up between the gravel, then burning and wilting, over and over again.

The plants served as firewood, making the gravel path burn hotter, and Ju-seong was sure that before long, the soles of his feet would be peeled clean off.

‘If these weeds are the moth’s poison…’

Ju-seong pulled a long whip of flame from his hand and began furiously lashing the gravel path.

“Take that! And that!”

He intended to burn them down to the roots and eliminate them entirely, but soon realized it was utterly useless. Every time he burned a plant, the resulting fire only heated the gravel path further.

Suddenly, something cold and hard touched his waist, and Ju-seong pulled it out.

“…A hoe.”

A hoe with a strong essence of metal energy. Come to think of it, he had drunk the metal energy-rich medicine before facing the moth.

He had tried to block the poison energy entering his insides, and it seemed to help unexpectedly.

Ju-seong carefully used the hoe to turn over the hot gravel and begun driving out the roots hidden within.

“That is right, good. That is right…”

He was not a baby, and coaxing and cajoling speechless plants made him sigh despite himself.

Ju-seong walked and walked the long, long gravel path, turning the soil with his hoe. Having never tilled a field in his life, he was somehow coming to understand a farmer’s heart.

“Ah… Really…”

Ju-seong swept back his hair as if going crazy and shook off the sweat.

This was truly grueling labor.

Not simply because it was hard, but because the outcome was not guaranteed.

You might farm for a year only to have it taken as tribute to dark path thugs, have your seed grain stripped by excessive taxes, face a bad harvest, be raided by bandits, be plagued by locusts, or have an epidemic break out.

Ju-seong too, right now, kept driving and driving without knowing what result this endless hoeing would bring.

Suddenly, Ju-seong realized it was impossible to expel all these weeds from his body.

Because this was energy that had already entered and taken root.

Then the best course was to gather all this poison energy and confine it somewhere manageable.

Ju-seong worked his small hoe vigorously to smack the sprouts on their behinds.

“Come on, kids. Let us go to the dantian.”

Indeed, a person’s body was a small world.

That made it easy to get lost too. Because it was too vast and complex.

Ju-seong fumbled his way forward. He had memorized the map of his body in his head, memorized every nook and cranny of his personal physical characteristics.

Originally, the length of limbs, thickness of fingers, and width of meridians differed from person to person, and considering all these factors while circulating energy was what comprehension meant.

Ju-seong delved deeper into and recalled his own body once more to find his way.

The dantian in his mental image was a great lava pool.

A pool of lava, bubbling with rising bubbles, its color orange as if leaving yellow behind and heading toward red.

Ju-seong looked at the sprouts and vines he had driven here.

“Restless bastards…”

They clustered before the pool and would not stay still for a moment, squirming.

Since the nature of wood energy was to grow and flourish, they would not be silenced just because Ju-seong scolded them.

Ju-seong used his hoe to herd them into one place. The sprouts and vines feared the hoe in his hand.

Because metal naturally weakens wood.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, and even though it was a dream, his clothes were drenched. Meanwhile, the surroundings were a fiery hell, and staying much longer would steam him to death.

If he steamed to death in the world of consciousness, it would surely affect reality too… in other words, causing qi deviation.

‘This is the second qi deviation crisis in two days…’

Ju-seong let out a hollow laugh. Meanwhile, the vines and sprouts he had gathered had become one large ball.

Not content with that, Ju-seong diligently pressed it down into a tight bundle.

He rolled the vine ball into the lava like rolling a snowball.

-Plop! Bubble bubble…

One splash on the surface, then bubbles rose as the vine bundle sank in.

If he had thrown in the sprouts and vines unbundled, a tremendous blaze would have erupted instantly.

But by bundling them to reduce the exposed surface area, the blaze was less than expected.

“Whew…”

Ju-seong wiped his forehead sweat, then stiffened. Black smoke was rising from where the vine bundle had fallen.

The black smoke quickly transformed into a malevolent spirit and flew upward, laughing wildly.

Ju-seong let out a small groan and muttered.

“Inner demons…”

The moth’s poison had hallucinogenic properties. Hallucinogenic properties mainly affected the upper dantian, and naturally, if a martial artist succumbed to hallucinations, they could fall into inner demons.

But somehow, he was not too worried. Ju-seong watched the inner demon with arms folded as it ascended.

A mountain cloaked in pure white clouds.

Probably the peak was his upper dantian.

Suddenly, a scarlet lightning bolt tore through the white clouds and struck down the inner demon, obliterating it.

-RUMBLE…

The newborn inner demon was pathetically shattered and scattered before it could even babble. Ju-seong realized the white clouds were the Stillness-Bright Incantation, and the scarlet lightning was none other than his own killing intent.

“What fearsome killing intent indeed.”

Killing intent fierce enough to strike down inner demons. He knew, yet it was still frightening.

Ju-seong looked at the smoke rising again from the lava pool.

Inner demons would keep popping out, and each time, the killing intent in the upper dantian would stir to suppress them.

Eventually, a day would come when even the Stillness-Bright Incantation could not contain the killing intent.

In short, the killing intent would grow stronger, stimulated by the inner demons.

“…I must find a solution soon. That is enough for today.”

Ju-seong gently closed his eyes, then opened them.

The heat that should have scorched his lungs was gone; he was in a lush green forest.

“Whew…”

Ju-seong exhaled a long stream of white vapor and made a hand motion as if gathering the energy throughout his body back into his dantian.

Old martial arts sometimes retained traces of dynamic arts. Making such a motion at the end of energy circulation was one such trace.

“Are you feeling better?”

Hearing Red Beggar’s voice, he turned to see the beggar lying before the campfire with his mask off.

Looking around, it was that shrine again.

“…You carried me out.”

Red Beggar nodded.

“I know you should not touch someone treating internal injuries, but… staying there seemed more harmful.”

“Thank you.”

Ju-seong gazed at Red Beggar, then spoke.

“Thank you, Red Beggar.”

Red Beggar immediately countered with an incredulous look.

“What embarrassing nonsense is that? Have you gone mad?”

Ju-seong glared at Red Beggar and said.

“Fair words bring fair words, they say. If good words go out, good words come back, but an uneducated beggar bastard would not know such etiquette. Go out and die.”

“That is right. That is you, Brother.”

Nodding as if relieved, Red Beggar watched as Ju-seong lay down and closed his eyes.

Energy circulation, inner demons, whatever, he was sick of it all right now.

The shrine that had felt so ominous at first no longer felt that way.

A place was just a place. Whether it became an ominous or auspicious place depended on how it was used.

Long ago, a heretical cult must have performed human sacrifices here and chanted false doctrines, so at first the sinister energy lingered. However, once two men of the martial world came in, lit a campfire, smashed the statue of the wicked god, and stood guard protecting an injured man, it was no longer an ominous place.

‘I was supposed to bring back the poison sac, but I ended up swallowing it instead, so I do not know how to explain this to Master.’

He had not expected the moth to suddenly crush its poison sac and inject it into Ju-seong’s body.

A master of the martial world would generally not sacrifice their own dantian to attack.

But the creature was a beast, so its standard of behavior was different.

Since it could just cultivate more poison, but had only one life.

Like a lizard shedding its tail, it had simply thrown its poison sac in a final attack and fled.

“I also need to obtain heavenly silkworm thread…”

When Ju-seong muttered, Red Beggar startled and asked.

“What heavenly silkworm thread?”

“Oh, did I not tell you? The cocoon of that monster moth is the material for heavenly silkworm thread. I came here partly to obtain that as well.”

“Ah, is that so? Hmm, if there is medicine left, we could go back in…”

Ju-seong pondered, rubbing his chin.

In truth, the medicine he had brought was no ordinary thing. Being born of the Divine Physician’s medicine, it was naturally extraordinary, and the ingredients themselves were difficult to obtain.

‘If it were easy to make, the Yunnan martial artists would all have entered the forest together to beat down moths and left.’

The tiger bone had to be from at least a creature that ruled a whole mountain, and the pine cones had to be picked in autumn from a pine tree at least two hundred years old.

The other ingredients were also tricky to obtain, so only by raiding the Divine Physician’s storehouse could they all be procured.

“That will be difficult. My primary goal was the creature’s poison sac, and having obtained that, I suppose we should head back.”

“When did you obtain the poison sac? Is it like a spirit beast’s inner core? Are you going to eat it?”

Ju-seong nodded vaguely. He had no intention of explaining every detail.

Talking made him hungry, so Ju-seong and Red Beggar went hunting.

Thanks to Ju-seong’s Celestial Nose and Ear Penetrations, they caught a wild boar in less than half a si-chen.

Skewering meat over the campfire, the surface sizzled and dripped fat. The greasy skin gleamed yellowish in the firelight.

“Got any salt?”

“I was just about to take it out.”

Ju-seong rummaged through his pack that Red Beggar had brought and pulled out a pouch of salt.

Since learning the Celestial Nose, his palate had become picky, so Ju-seong reluctantly carried salt, pepper, and such.

The Divine Physician, having lived like that for decades, seemed to have dulled his palate, but for Ju-seong who had only recently learned the Celestial Nose, bland food was torture.

Ju-seong focused internal energy on his fingernails to draw out sharp energy.

Then he scored the meat for the seasoning to penetrate and sprinkled salt.

He was imitating the claw technique of the sexual predator he had witnessed.

Drawing energy through the narrow cross-section of the nails, the energy naturally became sharp.

The sharper the medium of energy, the sharper the energy emanating from it. This was one reason martial world swordsmen obsessed over famous swords, as they knew the sharpness of a famous sword would also imbue the energy.

If one no longer relied on weapons and held the sharpness of a single blade within one’s heart, perhaps that would be a peerless swordmaster.

They could fell a large tree with a mere thin twig even without a weapon.

If that were so…

Ju-seong recalled the Heavenly Silkworm Moth’s poison lodged in his dantian.

Poison was usually manufactured separately and used as an external object. Rarely, like the Five Poisons Valley, some mixed poison into internal energy to cultivate poison arts.

But what if one held poison in one’s heart? As a swordsman holds a sharp sword-heart in their heart, if one held endlessly poisonous resentment and obsession in their heart, what would be the result? Ju-seong could not know for now. He was not yet a master of poison arts, nor a master of martial arts.

“I am really nothing much.”

Ju-seong said as he lay down comfortably with his arm as a pillow, having eaten his fill.

Red Beggar nodded.

“We are really nothing much. Not yet, anyway.”

“Yes, let us sleep soundly. I shall take the first night watch.”

Even pathetic, unremarkable men should not be bitten by wolves in the night, so Ju-seong volunteered for first watch.