Chapter 109: I Will Raise You
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SWISH, SWISH, SWISH, SWISH.
Following the footsteps.
CLATTER-
The lattice door of the hall closed with a brief sound.
Thus, Tae Sa-ja was dragged inside, unconscious and held by Cheol Ryu-heun’s grip.
THUD!
Cheol Ryu-heun tossed Tae Sa-ja carelessly as if handling luggage and opened a drawer, taking out a small wooden box.
When he opened the lid, a small dark-red pill sitting on the inner bottom was visible.
It seemed to be some kind of medicine to cure hemophobia.
Cheol Ryu-heun, having taken out the pill from the wooden box, headed toward Tae Sa-ja who was lying on one side of the floor.
“What a sight.”
A voice mixing disdain into indifference.
True to his words.
It was quite a sight.
The appearance of Tae Sa-ja with his eyes half-closed and mouth hanging wide open…
Tsk, anyway, he does all kinds of things.
Only his name is impressive for nothing.
Someone who didn’t know him would think, seeing that face, that he was a corpse who had experienced some wrongful suffering, screamed, and stopped breathing.
Fainting with a bizarre expression might be a talent if you could call it one.
“His mouth is wide open, so it’ll be easy to feed him.”
Cheol Ryu-heun, along with those words, crouched beside Tae Sa-ja and crushed the dark-red pill between his palms.
So it would go down his throat easily.
Following that, after looking around here and there, he suddenly stretched out his left hand.
Suddenly.
WHOOSH-
A vase on the round table was drawn into his hand by Empty Hands Seizing Objects and grabbed!
Cheol Ryu-heun removed the flowers, confirmed there was water inside the bottle, poured it into Tae Sa-ja’s open mouth, then shook in the crushed pill powder as well.
The water was old, but… Well, it’s fine.
He wouldn’t die from drinking it.
He might get some diarrhea, but it’s not my stomach anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
GULP, GULP…
Thus, Tae Sa-ja, while unconscious, instinctively moved his throat and swallowed all the water and powder.
Cheol Ryu-heun brushed off his palms and quietly looked down at him.
‘Consider yourself lucky. If it weren’t for that collector who scraped together precious items, that one-of-a-kind pill would have quietly disappeared into history.’
One-of-a-kind pill – that meant, excluding what Ascending Heaven Sword Dragon had kept separately, it didn’t exist in this world and could absolutely not be obtained.
Fate is truly mysterious.
Honestly, he thought he would almost never have occasion to use it.
Yet unexpectedly, because of Tae Sa-ja with his hemophobia, he would end up using that pill.
It must be heaven’s arrangement.
Telling him not to let a pill that was impossible to obtain again just go to waste.
‘Anyway, that fellow made something interesting while he was alive.’
The “fellow” he had just muttered internally referred to the superman who had owned the Divine Martial Sword about eighty years ago.
Helian Ryung.
His alias at the time was Yaksha Great Sword Ancestor.
He had mastered supreme swordsmanship before turning thirty and stood tall as the unorthodox world’s greatest master, and before turning forty, he had also pacified the orthodox side, reigning as the undisputed absolute ruler of the martial world.
Jeo Gyeom, whose life had been ended today before Cheol Ryu-heun’s hands, was called the yaksha holding the sword of the dark realm.
But compared to Helian Ryung’s, it wasn’t even a frightening level.
It was the difference between heaven and earth.
Though that terrifying alias Dark Hall Master couldn’t be obtained by just anyone, in the past, Helian Ryung was a true incarnation of a yaksha.
Back then, there were rumors he walked around wearing blood instead of clothes, and each sword stroke was so extremely savage and cruel that opponents felt fear that made their legs go weak.
Wherever Helian Ryung set foot was no different from hell itself.
That was why the truly terrifying alias Yaksha Great Sword Ancestor was attached to him.
In any case, having pacified the martial world and found life boring after all rivals disappeared, he became absorbed in pill refinement studies from a certain day.
Wanting to create an elixir like Shaolin Temple’s Great Restoration Pill.
He finally accomplished it.
Having mixed and harmonized various precious medicinal ingredients while steadily infusing internal energy and other efforts over a long time, he finally completed one pill.
Yet.
Since he hadn’t actually built any forces and operated independently, he had no successor to pass it to, so he kept it stored away in a secret location only he knew.
So that someday, someone with the right connection could have it – like a kind of fortune.
In his final years, just before death, he threw the Divine Martial Sword into the middle of the martial world and opened the door to his final hell.
-Anyone take it. I no longer need it.
Shortly after, Helian Ryung quietly closed his eyes, and thus the bloody battle to claim the master-less Divine Martial Sword continued for over five years.
No one knew.
That a pill left separately by him while alive existed.
Excluding only the Divine Martial Sword.
But fate is mysterious, and after a long time, Ascending Heaven Sword Dragon luckily discovered that secret location and obtained the pill.
Though he didn’t know the exact use, he considered it a precious item and just carefully kept it.
That ultimately led to the present Tae Sa-ja.
Cheol Ryu-heun, who had been the Divine Martial Sword at that time, knew the pill’s effects well, so he had fed it without hesitation like this.
Along with curing that ridiculous hemophobia, to transform him into a body capable of learning martial arts in the future.
‘Let’s see.’
Cheol Ryu-heun took the pulse at the wrist to examine Tae Sa-ja’s body condition in detail while the pill’s energy was dissolving.
Following that, he sent gentle vital energy into the subject’s body.
Of course, since he hadn’t established the foundation of internal energy techniques, it was certain his body would be a mess with turbid energy piled up.
The internal cultivation study of handling energy starts from completely understanding the circulation of heavenly fire.
Small Heavenly Cycle, and then Grand Heavenly Cycle.
It was something any martial artist had to learn as a basic requirement.
Small Heavenly Cycle was the study of operating vital energy along the paths of both vessels after piercing through the points of the Governing Vessel and Conception Vessel, and the next stage, Grand Heavenly Cycle, was the study of completely opening the Twelve Regular Meridians and Eight Extraordinary Meridians to rapidly circulate vital energy.
But Tae Sa-ja hadn’t even learned Qi Sinking to Dantian, the very entrance to energy accumulation which was the most basic of basics…
‘Hm?’
Suddenly, Cheol Ryu-heun’s eyes held a different light.
Because he had discovered something strange.
The inside of Tae Sa-ja’s body, detected through pulse examination using vital energy, was unexpectedly well-developed.
What could it be?
The flow of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians including the Governing and Conception Vessels, Thrusting Vessel, Girdle Vessel, and others was smooth as if he were a martial artist who had practiced internal energy techniques.
Moreover, the Twelve Regular Meridians went without saying.
‘Even the dantian…?’
Well, well, this is quite an interesting fellow.
Cheol Ryu-heun, having smiled so subtly it was barely visible, soon moved vital energy to touch Tae Sa-ja’s Sea of Qi Point.
It was wide.
Considerably so…
It was expanded as if he had learned internal energy techniques.
He had been planning to open the Twelve Regular Meridians and Eight Extraordinary Meridians once the pill’s energy completely dissolved, but the situation was such that there was no need to do anything separately.
In other words, Tae Sa-ja had a body capable of immediately learning internal energy techniques.
He just didn’t know the method because he wasn’t a martial artist, so it had been left alone.
For Cheol Ryu-heun, it seemed he just needed to stroke the major pressure points so that the pill’s effects could properly manifest.
At that moment.
Faster than initially expected, the medicinal effects manifested and dark-red currents rose thickly above Tae Sa-ja’s forehead.
In an instant.
Cheol Ryu-heun’s gaze changed once again.
‘Ho-oh.’
Immediately after, he used the pulse point to finely control the vital energy he had injected into Tae Sa-ja’s body.
Warm and gentle energy racing along the major energy pathways.
The intention was to stimulate the acupoints to accelerate the medicinal effects while preventing side effects.
Before long, the Governing and Conception Vessels that had responded to Cheol Ryu-heun’s vital energy caused trembling.
Following that.
Like a waterfall, the vital energy that had passed through both vessels at once immediately raced through the Yang Heel Vessel and Yin Heel Vessel.
Similarly, great trembling occurred.
It was proof that the acupoints were being stimulated without difficulty.
Cheol Ryu-heun continued injecting vital energy, sweeping through Tae Sa-ja’s Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and repeated the process roughly ten times in a short time.
Before long.
POP, CLICK, POP-POP-POP…
A sound like bubbles bursting in succession was heard.
It was a sound informing them that the vital points of the major energy meridians, as well as minute and dormant meridians, were receiving stimulation and opening one by one.
‘Good, this much is enough for now.’
Cheol Ryu-heun removed the hand that had been on the pulse point and performed an ancient mysterious pressure point technique that only he knew.
TAT, TA-TAT, TAT-!
When he moved his hands rapidly and tapped several of Tae Sa-ja’s pressure points, the dark-red current above his forehead transformed into a distinct ring shape, then was re-absorbed and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
‘That is a phenomenon only a Blood Star Physique can show… Was he born with that body?’
Blood Star Physique, one of the rare constitutions known in the martial world, was a body with very special power.
If all potential bloomed at the end of martial arts training… He could become like Helian Ryung, who shook the martial world as its hegemon about eighty years ago.
That’s right.
The second coming of the Yaksha Great Sword Ancestor.
He never thought Tae Sa-ja would possess a body with such tremendous power latent within.
Cheol Ryu-heun quietly pulled up the corners of his mouth.
‘For a mere lower-class bandit origin to surprise me… It seems the pill with the Frenzy Blood attribute was destined to be yours.’
Originally, he had planned to just raise him moderately as a martial artist and put him to work, but at this point, a desire arose to bring the Blood Star Physique to its ultimate state.
Cheol Ryu-heun rolled up both sleeves for the full-scale work and muttered quietly.
“I’ll raise you to achieve greatness as a true yaksha who goes wild over blood. It’ll help strengthen this sect’s forces.”
* * *
SPLOSH, SPLOSH, SPLOSH, SPLOSH-
One person running madly through the rainy streets.
“Huff, huff…!”
His face was agonized with breath rising to his chin, but his two legs kept moving quickly without rest.
It was running that strongly conveyed urgency and desperation.
‘Fuck, fuck…!’
Cursing inwardly without pause, his identity was none other than the Green Forest Alliance’s eleventh stronghold member who had carelessly stretched out his arm toward Namgung Sang-rin and ended up spinning around and face-planting in the ground.
‘Ah… That’s it! I’m almost there! Urk, just wait a little longer! You damned bastard!’
* * *
Cold Plum Sword Bu Do-nam, who had been blankly gazing out the window, soon regained focus in his pupils and raised his body.
One member beside him asked awkwardly while half-rising from his seat.
“Ah… Stronghold Master, are you retiring to your bedchamber now?”
“Yeah, there’s nothing else to do anyway, so I should just sleep.”
“Yes, Stronghold Master. Then please rest well. We’ll just talk a little more and then…”
Right at that moment.
BANG-!
As soon as the inn door opened as if to break, one figure ran inside and lost balance, rolling hard on the floor.
CRASH, CRASH!
Simultaneously, everyone in the hall focused their gazes in that direction.
“Ugh, damn… M-my back…!”
That figure groaned painfully for a moment before scrambling to his feet and shouting.
“St-Stronghold Master!”
At that, Bu Do-nam widened his eyes.
“Oh? Why did you come here when you should just be resting? And what’s with that state…?”
“W-we’ve been attacked!”
“Huh?”
When Bu Do-nam wore a bewildered expression, the rain-soaked member spoke urgently, pleading for help.
“Y-you must go see quickly! Some young fellow unintentionally got into a quarrel with us, and already over twenty people have been knocked down!”
“…..”
Silence settled in the hall.
Before long, sparks erupted in Bu Do-nam’s eyes.
“Where is it!”