Chapter 416: Chapter 416
One thing I had not known in my previous life was that, upon becoming a master, one comes to know one’s own body far more intimately.
For example, even in a space like this one—engulfed in darkness on all sides, with no way to tell how much time had passed—I could estimate the elapsed time based on the state of my stomach’s digestion.
‘Twenty-four hours.’
That was right.
Having reached a higher level than my previous life, I was now blessed with the ability to perceive exactly how long I had endured this godforsaken state in this godforsaken place.
Well done, Jin So-un! Fuck!
“Ngh…… ngh……”
I had endured agony so excruciating that my soul seemed to have fled my body—no, it had most certainly fled and then returned—and managed to undo the numbing acupoints and sit cross-legged. But not a single thing had improved.
My qi center was primed to explode at any moment, and the Ren and Du Meridians, the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and the Twelve Meridians were all choked shut.
It felt as though needles as long as spears had been skewered through my entire body.
The instant even a small amount of energy stirred from my qi center—
“Kgh, hngh……!”
It was as if white-hot needles were stabbing wildly into every meridian the energy passed through.
Yet if I simply tried to endure without acting, the Taiji Pill that had begun boiling inside my qi center was desperate to send its energy surging outward in every direction.
Like a dog that had just heard the words ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ it was going absolutely berserk—and the oblivious creature’s antics were giving me a splitting headache.
Moreover, since so little was publicly known about the Taiji Pill, there was something I had not realized until now.
This Taiji Pill had not been named Taiji for nothing.
Two energies, divided into Yin and Yang, pulled and pushed against each other inside the qi center, amplifying the internal qi further and further.
How had I figured that out? After risking my life to sit cross-legged, I had drawn upon the Taeul True Scripture to try and suppress the Taiji Pill, but—
The two insane energies of the Taiji Pill began rotating around each other, amplifying their power wildly!
Damn Wudang Sect. Why did they have to create such a magnificent pill?
For now, I had drawn the full force of the Taeul True Scripture to suppress the Taiji Pill.
But I was dying.
No—it was fair to say I was already nearly dead.
The flow of qi throughout my body had ceased, and as a result, my flesh was slowly necrotizing.
Skin that had lost all feeling. Suffocating breaths. A heartbeat slowing until my head went numb.
My mind was filled with hazy fragments of thought, as though shrouded in fog.
I reached out to grasp a fragment, but my consciousness, drifting through the mist, grew hazier by the moment.
Then, one single shard surfaced vividly from among the fragments.
‘Am I going to die like this?’
A premonition of death.
I die like this?
If I die……
What about the people of the Taeul Sect?
My juniors?
Those bastards of the White Wolf Pavilion?
One by one, the fragments began to float to the surface.
The wretched scenes I had witnessed in my previous life were drawn with increasing clarity in my fogged mind.
If I died here, the same horrors would probably repeat—
“……!”
I die?
Don’t fuck with me!
If I was going to die here, I should have just ended it in my last life!
I released the Taeul True Scripture’s hold on the Taiji Pill for a moment, allowing it to move—and the agony ripping through my entire body resumed.
“GAAAAAAARGH!”
In the nerve-shredding torment, my mind snapped back to crystalline clarity.
And I retraced the cause that had led to this situation.
‘It definitely started because of that insane old man.’
I recalled my final exchange with the wretched geezer.
[The balance of Essence, Qi, and Spirit is gradually breaking down. If you keep recklessly piling on inner arts, the best you can hope for is death by Qi Deviation.]
The inciting incident.
[Wudang and Shaolin overflow with treasures like this, yet they never funnel inner arts recklessly into a single person.]
The development.
[Then the faint amount of inner arts I sense from you, Elder…… is connected to that very reason?]
[Heh heh heh. Sharp one, aren’t you?]
The crisis.
I should have caught on right then.
[Is there a way to consume that pill and still grow stronger?]
[There is.]
[I beg you to teach me.]
[Why should I?]
The climax.
Pulling back at the decisive moment was the hallmark of a con artist.
And I had known that, yet let myself get played anyway.
[Hmm…… using this as payment would not be a bad idea.]
And this…… was the accursed conclusion.
Infuriating as it was, when I traced the arc from beginning to end, every single point tilted in my favor.
On top of that, the old man who had claimed he wanted the Taiji Pill had not stolen it—he had fed it to me.
If I died from this, I would become the man assassinated in the most expensive manner in history.
No matter how insane that old man was, he would not kill me through a method this convoluted.
Then this was the ‘guidance’ I had requested.
A heat rose unbidden from deep in my chest.
‘That insane old man……! I ask for guidance, and this is what he does?’
In any case, to summarize: this situation was the old man’s answer to the problem I faced.
If I broke through, I could leap to the next level. A ‘fortuitous encounter’ in the truest sense.
‘……Of course, if I fail, I die.’
A laugh escaped me at the old man’s grand design.
But true to someone who was clearly out of his mind, he had set the whole thing in motion without leaving a single clue about how to solve it.
‘At least tell me something before you go ahead and do this……!’
I struggled to raise my head, stiff and barely responsive.
A colossal, towering wall that I had to break through alone.
The sheer enormity of it made the back of my neck ache even more. I steadied my breathing once more.
Think. Jin So-un.
Find a way, no matter what.
This was hardly the first life-or-death crisis I had survived. So I had to find the answer this time, too.
And then—a single solution surfaced.
‘Memory.’
A thick gulp of saliva was swallowed in anticipation of the oncoming pain, and my entire body clenched with tension.
Still, I repeated it to myself.
So what? What else am I going to do?
I have to!
I released, all at once, the Taiji Pill’s energy that the Taeul True Scripture had been holding down.
The energy began to stir, then rapidly accelerated, expanding with manic fury.
That insane old man may have been wrong about everything else, but he had been dead-on about the quantity of inner arts.
If even a few more energies like this filled the qi center, the harmony of Essence, Qi, and Spirit would shatter in an instant.
CRACK, CRACK—
Through the calcifying channels of Qi and Blood, the Taiji Pill’s energy surged toward the heart.
The pain was enough to make my eyeballs feel as if they would burst from their sockets, but I bit down so hard I tore the inside of my mouth and endured.
Agony battered my entire body so savagely I could not even taste the iron tang of blood.
Even through that, I focused on the energy coursing through my body.
The energy had traveled through the largest meridian to reach the heart, but the fine meridians were blocked, preventing it from spreading to the rest of the body.
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP—
My heartbeat quickened, and I felt it swell as though about to burst.
The energy trapped in my heart, unable to disperse through the body, shot straight up to my head instead.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP
In time with the accelerating heartbeat, the fog that had filled my mind vanished in an instant.
“Ngggggh.”
My head, overwhelmed by the Taiji Pill’s energy, dragged me into the mind-image realm in a single breath.
I immediately recalled the single exchange with the insane old man.
The moment I had unleashed the First Form—Extreme Swiftness—of the Three Forms of the White Moon Governing Heaven.
Even viewing the frozen scene frame by frame, Extreme Swiftness was so fast that there were gaps where the image cut out entirely.
And through those gaps, that insane old man had slipped in and plunged his hand into my breast.
‘He saw those gaps and exploited them?’
For an instant, fear crept in—that the old man’s true nature might be something beyond my imagination—but that was not what mattered right now.
I reviewed the old man’s movements again and again.
Rewound, then played forward.
No matter how many times I watched, the old man’s motions were breathtaking.
And then I pushed one step further.
Until now, this had been beyond me even in the mind-image realm—but with my head flooded by the Taiji Pill’s energy, it should be possible.
I erased every extraneous detail from my field of vision and focused solely on how the old man wielded his energy.
And—
‘No loss?’
I realized that the old man wasted nothing. The energy that should naturally dissipate—that inevitably dissipates—simply did not.
‘Is that…… even possible?’
Unless my memory was wrong, what the old man had done defied the laws of creation.
‘Come to think of it.’
When Hyeon-yeong had detonated his Innate Energy, the amount of qi that had bloomed above his shoulders had been minuscule.
Compared to when I had detonated my own Innate Energy at the Iron Sword Sect, Hyeon-yeong’s loss had been a drop in the ocean.
My total quantity of inner arts should have been smaller back then, yet the amount of wasted energy had been greater on my end.
Yes. I had lost more—
‘This is it……!’
I wanted to consider other possibilities, but my body was reaching its limit.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP
My heart and now my head felt ready to burst.
Not wanting to end up like a kettle with its spout sealed, I made my decision on the spot.
“I’m going with this!”
I began Qi Circulation.
From here on, it was do or die.
***
The Inspection Office had been on edge in recent days, having received an unprecedented heavyweight into custody.
The next abbot of the Wudang Sect.
A current executive of the Murim Alliance Elder Hall.
And the Head of the Righteous Path Association.
The arrival of Clear Water True Man—owner of these dazzlingly illustrious credentials—as a criminal was far from welcome from the Inspection Office’s perspective.
Whether this matter was resolved well or poorly, it promised only varying degrees of damage.
Under normal circumstances, the Pavilion Master and Deputy Pavilion Master—or at the very least a chief of staff—should have personally conducted the investigation and interrogation.
Yet on the day of the inquiry, the Pavilion Master who had been scheduled to preside over the interrogation was followed by the Deputy Pavilion Master and chief of staff, all of whom suffered from stomachaches, high fevers, and mild Qi Deviation(?) and failed to report for duty.
Internal debate began over whether to postpone the investigation indefinitely or have the next officer in the chain of command take over.
With the Pavilion Master and his top deputies absent, the gazes of the Inspection Office’s Hall Masters turned to the Great Hall Master.
Everyone was paralyzed, unable to act.
The Great Hall Master broke the silence that had settled over the conference room.
“……We proceed with the investigation.”
Judging that the higher-ups would use indefinite sick leave as an excuse not to report at all, Ak Byeong-bi personally took charge of Clear Water True Man’s investigation.
“……With regard to the charges of murder, arson, and incitement to murder against key members of the envoy delegation—do you acknowledge them?”
Ak Byeong-bi read through the list of charges with a blunt expression.
Many a hardened criminal or Black Path heavyweight had been cowed into silence by Ak Byeong-bi’s massive frame, imposing features, and the overwhelming aura he radiated—yet Clear Water True Man did not so much as change color.
“I asked whether you acknowledge them.”
If anything, Clear Water True Man met Ak Byeong-bi’s eyes with a look of serene innocence.
“Do you truly believe those charges will stick to me?”
“You have been dragged into the Inspection Office, yet I fail to see why you are so confident.”
“You, as the Third Hall’s Hall Master, have slain countless Black Path criminals. Has a man such as yourself ever been punished for murder?”
A subject under interrogation invoking the interrogator’s past to legitimize himself.
But Ak Byeong-bi was not swayed by Clear Water True Man’s deft deflection.
“Alliance Law is strict precisely so that no innocent party suffers unjustly in the course of a trial. Moreover, the victims were an envoy delegation who came at the Alliance’s invitation. This transcends Black Path and Orthodox Path—it is an act unacceptable by basic human decency.”
Clear Water True Man’s cold eyes half-closed as he regarded Ak Byeong-bi.
“Fascinating. That a man of the Inspection Office would defend the Grand Strategist of the Black Thought Alliance—the very organization he should despise most.”
“A person’s guilt is judged not by their origins or ideology, but by their actions.”
“Hmm…… there was a rumor that the Third Hall’s Hall Master had changed after visiting the Black Thought Alliance. Is this what they meant?”
The composure on Ak Byeong-bi’s face hardened in an instant.
“The jesting ends here—”
“Could it be that you, too, have been brainwashed by Jin So-un?”
“……”
Clear Water True Man let a sneer slip and leaned back in his chair.
“I truly do not understand. Why does everyone who gets tangled with that brat become so thoroughly useless?”
SLAM!
Ak Byeong-bi’s fist crashed down on the table.
“Are you that confident?”
Confident, he says……
Clear Water True Man met Ak Byeong-bi’s piercing stare for a moment, then released a small breath.
“You seem to be under a misconception.”
His expression hardened and he murmured low.
“How long do you think I will remain here? An attempted assassination of Dam Ak? You believe that will keep me confined?”
“……”
“Had war broken out, your seat and mine would have been switched. And even without that, I will not be here long.”
“We shall see about that.”
At Ak Byeong-bi’s unyielding stance, Clear Water True Man let a thin smile escape.
“Jin So-un has gone missing, has he not?”
“……!”
Ak Byeong-bi’s breath hitched.
The Inspection Office’s prison was the most hermetically sealed space in the world.
How could Clear Water True Man have learned about external events that even Ak Byeong-bi himself had not known?
“It has already been seven days and nights since Dam Ak reunited with his forces. So why do you suppose Jin So-un has not returned?”
A triumphant smile touched Clear Water True Man’s lips.
“Tell me—are you confident?”
Unable to part his lips, Ak Byeong-bi heard a voice, level and devoid of inflection, settle against his ears.
“I will be walking out of here very soon.”