Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 94 - Secret Meeting in the Bamboo Grove
Chapter 94 – Secret Meeting in the Bamboo Grove
===================
Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
Deep within a bamboo grove in eastern Sichuan, the air was still.
-Swoooosh…
A pale man dressed in black martial clothing stood rigidly, staring in one direction.
His face was deeply wrinkled, yet there was not even a trace of stubble on his chin or philtrum.
His features were strangely androgynous… partly feminine, partly masculine… making him look bizarre.
-Ssk.
The man briefly closed and opened his eyes, and when he did, another man in the same black martial clothing was before him, kneeling on one knee.
The kneeling man spoke.
“I greet the Head Eunuch.”
“Very well. Report.”
The voices coming from both men’s mouths were thin and high-pitched.
The term “Head Eunuch” referred to high-ranking eunuchs. The two men meeting secretly in the bamboo grove were eunuchs from the imperial palace.
Among the eunuchs, they were from a military organization that received secret orders from the Emperor to monitor the martial world and powerful families.
They were eunuchs of the Eastern Depot.
Among them, the honorific “Head Eunuch” used to address the older one held significant meaning.
He was the Brush-Wielding Head Eunuch.
He was the second-highest ranking among all eunuchs in the imperial palace.
It was the term for the leader of an organization called the Eastern Depot. The head of the imperial court’s foremost intelligence agency had come to inspect Sichuan.
The kneeling man began his report.
“It was definitely the Ten Thousand Ears Gang that was hiding explosives. Some kind of fatal secret was hidden in the Vajra Pavilion, which was the Sichuan Province Headquarters of the Ten Thousand Ears Gang, and it appears they used explosives to conceal it.”
“Have you determined what that secret was?”
“Not exactly, but I suspect it involved rituals connected to some ancient heretical cult. Or perhaps they were plotting rebellion.”
“Mm… Here is my thinking.”
“Please speak.”
“Several centuries ago, during the Song Dynasty, there was a man named Master of Ten Thousand Arts who mastered mechanical devices, formations, divination, and even martial arts.”
“…Yes.”
The kneeling man couldn’t understand why the Head Eunuch was suddenly bringing up the Master of Ten Thousand Arts. Wasn’t that a man who had only been famous in ancient times?
The Head Eunuch continued speaking, regardless of whether the eunuch understood.
“Coincidentally, that Master of Ten Thousand Arts had his secret vault in Vajra. After all, Sichuan was the last place he went into seclusion.”
“…”
The young eunuch felt the hand resting on his knee tremble slightly.
“The Pavilion Master who first discovered the secret vault coveted the secret manuals and formation texts the Master of Ten Thousand Arts had left behind, and attempted to explore the vault alone. But the mechanical devices had decayed and broken down over the centuries. The old explosives, the weak ground near the Jin River, the empty spaces created underground from installing the devices and vault… all these factors combined to cause the major collapse.”
“…Head Eunuch. Are you saying we should report a falsehood to His Majesty?”
“What… I simply don’t wish to trouble His Majesty’s ears with news about jianghu ruffians.”
The Head Eunuch had been speaking in an effeminate tone while gazing at the far end of the bamboo grove, but now he rolled just one eye to look at the young eunuch.
“However, my boy. Is this really the time for you to be worrying about what reaches His Majesty’s ears?”
“Good heavens!”
The young eunuch tried to roll his body away quickly, but somehow his whole body had frozen stiff like a mouse before a cat.
The eunuch lifted his head and urgently opened his mouth.
“Head Eunuch!”
And those were his final words.
One half of the Head Eunuch’s body remained as before, hands clasped behind his back gazing at the distant mountains.
Only his left eye followed the young eunuch, and only his left arm drew a sword and swung.
It was a soft sword that had been stored as a belt around his waist.
-Swaaaak!
A blood-curdling sound rang out, and chilling cold spread through the area.
The young eunuch had a black line drawn across his neck.
“Kuh… Keurgh… Traitor…”
“Traitor. Yes, that’s not wrong.”
The Head Eunuch murmured as he lightly pushed the young eunuch’s forehead.
-Thunk.
The sound of a head dropping to the ground echoed through the bamboo grove.
The Head Eunuch kicked the head with his foot to turn the face upward, then met its eyes squarely.
“The master of this land has changed a dozen times or more anyway, hasn’t he? Now it’s our turn to have a taste. A world that worships demons as heaven… wouldn’t that be interesting?”
A deep smile hung at the corner of the Head Eunuch’s mouth.
The slender figure spun in a circle.
-Flutter.
No sooner had his robes traced a black arc than the Head Eunuch’s form vanished without a trace.
Only a headless corpse remained, abandoned in the bamboo grove.
* * *
Ju-seong sat quietly in lotus position with his eyes closed, observing his body.
The human body is a small universe… truly a collection of every principle contained in heaven and earth.
But he was not trying to attain enlightenment that would allow him to advance through the peak level.
He had decided to set aside moving forward for now.
Ju-seong was in a state where he had grasped the key to advancing Samadhi Body Refinement to the next level.
He kept recalling the sariras that emerged from Master Jeong-hwa’s body after the cremation.
She had earned the epithet “Blade of Extinguishing Evil” by dedicating her entire life to slaying evil, and had read hundreds, thousands of Buddhist and Taoist scriptures.
He couldn’t even mourn her death properly, and instead was only rummaging through idle thoughts about sariras, being ensnared by form.
‘I could never be a monk.’
Ju-seong let out a small sigh while sitting in lotus position. Imagining himself with a shaved head… it was quite amusing.
He’d have to maintain a gleaming bald head.
If some fat rich man said he couldn’t give alms, he might immediately crack the guy’s skull with a moktak.
Ok-wol and So-so were cheering him on from behind.
Ju-seong entered a state on the border between unconsciousness and consciousness, as if dreaming. His consciousness flowed aimlessly.
His life as a monk flowed by like water.
Whenever his hair started to grow, he’d have to shave it… how bothersome. He’d have to maintain the gleam.
When he died, there would be cremation… a multi in Buddhist terms. Then sariras would come out. Gleaming sariras.
Gleaming sariras, a gleaming head… Ju-seong imagined his skin all gleaming and glistening like sariras.
How had it come to this?
The Samadhi True Fire rising from his middle dantian and the fire energy of the Flame Crow Six Stage Art rising from his lower dantian surged upward like waterspouts, intertwined and became one.
A rope made of two fire serpents twisted together. The rope wandered through the full-body meridians as if they were snake burrows, then encountered heat rushing in from outside.
It was the fire set to cremate Ju-seong’s corpse.
The external heat and internal heat faced each other with just the thin layer of skin between them.
‘They’re not friends, so they’ll keep their distance.’
Because Ju-seong’s fire originated from life, while the external flames were generated from burning the dead.
Though both were fire, was there a principle of yin and yang within them?
The flames of life and the flames of the unborn collided and melted his skin.
His skin melted until it couldn’t melt any more… and then absorbed both flames, mixing with them.
He imagined everything becoming sleek and smooth.
“Haaak!”
Ju-seong gasped violently as he barely woke from the dream.
All his clothing had burned away, and the blood vessels bulging on his skin were all radiating red light.
“Ah, damn it…”
Just as Ju-seong was about to curse at realizing how badly things had gone.
“Young Hero! Close your eyes! Don’t think of anything and focus on circulating your energy!”
Whose voice was this again?
Ju-seong was puzzled, but for now he closed his eyes as the voice instructed. Just before his consciousness submerged again, he felt a small palm touch the crown of his head.
“Whew… Wheew…”
Ju-seong breathed deeply and calmed the energy that had gone haywire on its own.
He had nearly walked to the threshold of qi deviation while trying to gain enlightenment.
Normally, the higher a martial artist’s level, the more dangerous and difficult it became to attain enlightenment.
And what about forging a new path of martial arts that had never been attempted before?
It was no different from stealing peaches from the Queen Mother of the West’s garden, or stealing immortal pills from the Supreme Lord’s furnace.
If he succeeded, he would taste sweet fruit, but if he failed, he might find himself meeting with King Yama for a consultation.
Cool energy seeped in through the crown of his head. It felt similar to the Stillness-Bright Incantation, but somehow…
‘Overwhelmingly pure.’
It was like a piece of metal hammered a thousand days to remove all impurities, or a clear liquor distilled ten thousand times to permit not a single speck of dust.
It calmed Ju-seong’s mind.
Come to think of it, what had been fueling his qi deviation was none other than his desire to become stronger.
No… it was Ju-seong’s impatience that he had to become stronger quickly.
The terrible killing intent toward the villains he had seen at the Ten Thousand Ears Gang had created that impatience.
So once again, that damned killing intent had caused the problem.
He had suppressed and suppressed, restraining himself from expressing it outwardly, and in the end it had turned its claws against its own master.
The killing intent was a savage beast. It had become violent after tasting blood, albeit vaguely, lately.
‘And it’s cunning.’
The killing intent didn’t rampage violently and make its presence known like before.
It naturally induced impatience, and through impatience, induced excessively deep meditation.
Deep enough for his internal energy to go haywire during meditation.
‘How is it that something inside my own body feels so much like an enemy?’
It truly felt like he was fighting a life-or-death battle with his killing intent for control of his body.
“Whew…”
Ju-seong exhaled deeply one last time and opened his eyes.
A long stream of white smoke puffed from his pursed lips and floated in the air.
“Young Hero…”
At the voice behind him, Ju-seong’s eyes widened as he turned around.
“Lady Wol-hyang!”
The moment Ju-seong extended his arm, Mo Wol-hyang’s form crumpled into it.
Black veins that looked like spider webs were raised all over Wol-hyang’s face and neck.
‘Damn it, it’s the Poisoned Feathered Bird Poison!’
Because she had roused her internal energy to stop Ju-seong’s qi deviation, the Feathered Bird Poison had flared up.
-Sizzle, sizzzzle…
Black tears falling from Wol-hyang’s eyes burned the grass as they dropped.
“Damn it, Master! Master!”
Ju-seong bellowed for his master, his voice hoarse, as he dashed down the mountainside.
“Young Hero… It’s alright. I’m not dying. I can regulate this much while…”
“Please, Lady, stop talking!”
Ju-seong executed his qinggong at the fastest speed of his life. What made it all the more hateful was that new movement techniques kept springing to mind even at this moment.
Wol-hyang called to Ju-seong from within his arms.
“Young Hero.”
“I told you to stop talking!”
Ju-seong snapped at her, fearing her voice might be fading into final words, but something absurd came from Wol-hyang’s mouth.
“Please carry me on your back instead. You keep hitting my back.”
“What’s hitting yo—…”
Ju-seong frowned, then startled and shifted Wol-hyang to his back. His qi deviation had burnt away all his clothes.
In other words, “naked” was an apt description of Ju-seong’s current state…
He had been cradling Wol-hyang frontward and running vigorously, causing an awkward accident.
“Sorry.”
“It’s alright. And I told you I’m not dying. I have things to do while I’m alive. I haven’t even known you that long… why would I give you my life?”
“…Fair point.”
Ju-seong answered while still running fast.
“As soon as the Divine Physician gives me some medicine, I’ll recover quickly. Though I probably won’t be able to see you off when you leave again.”
“…At this Martial Arts Tournament, I will definitely obtain an ingredient for the pill. They say the winner can demand anything they wish as a reward.”
Wol-hyang laughed softly, rested her chin on Ju-seong’s shoulder, and teased.
“Ow, my back. Like being beaten with an iron club…”
“Master!!”
Ju-seong shouted with all his might to drown out her words.
He saw the Divine Physician burst out of the courtyard below at tremendous speed.
‘Ah, now it’s fine.’
The moment he handed Wol-hyang over to the Divine Physician, Ju-seong felt his legs give out and collapsed on the spot.
“Oh no, Wol-hyang, are you alright?!”
The retreating figure of the Divine Physician… carrying off Wol-hyang while leaving his fallen disciple on the ground… filled Ju-seong’s narrowing vision.
“I love you, Master.”
Ju-seong muttered briefly, then blacked out.