Chapter 80: Hua Tuos Remedy
While I washed up briefly and took a short rest, two people visited.
One was Elder Cheong-pung.
“I am called Tang Man-ok.”
The other was a middle-aged man. He was slightly thinner than average, and his sharp eyes flashed through an air that seemed refined in some way.
“He is the Chief Steward of the Sichuan Tang Clan. He is also the fellow who suddenly came to the Qingcheng Sect and demanded the Great Luo Divine Pill. Although those who claim to be from prestigious orthodox sects sometimes mistake what is truly important, this fellow does not stray from the weight of matters. It will be helpful for you to get acquainted with him as well.”
“Thank you for the kind introduction.”
Chief Tang Man-ok spoke with a bitter smile. I did not know whether it was because he was treated as a young junior by Elder Cheong-pung, or because the situation where he had to go to the Qingcheng Sect to demand the Great Luo Divine Pill had scraped at his inside.
“Are you the Young Heavenly Dragon?”
At the alias I was still not used to, this time I gave an awkward smile.
“I am Yeon Cheong-un. And this is my friend, Baek Mu-ho.”
It was a place for a simple exchange of names. Along with greeting, I introduced Baek Mu-ho.
Chief Tang Man-ok’s gaze directed toward Baek Mu-ho.
“Indeed. I heard that there was an outstanding sword genius by the Young Heavenly Dragon’s side. It seems to be that friend.”
Just where did such groundless rumors come from?
Knowing what reaction this fellow would show upon hearing that, it was obvious.
“Hahaha! Just where did such accurate information come from?”
Before I could even answer, Baek Mu-ho beat me to it. And that, too, while imitating a respectably aged elder.
My own face burned with embarrassment.
“Do you even know what the word humility means?”
“Since it is said by a fellow called the Young Heavenly Dragon, I wouldn’t know?”
“……”
Right, I admitted that.
If you put it that way, I indeed had nothing to say.
‘Sigh…’
Since I could not sweep up and gather the words that had already spread, it seemed I had no choice but to adjust to this damn alias in the end.
[That kid is amusing.]
Perhaps because he had a bright personality, Master Bian Que seemed to like Baek Mu-ho quite a bit.
Chief Tang Man-ok chuckled.
“Youth is indeed good.”
It felt as though he was receiving our conversation as somewhat unfamiliar.
“Are you speaking of time in front of me?”
“I do not know about before, but if we are talking about whose inside is festering right now, I will be worse off than you, Elder.”
Chief Tang Man-ok exquisitely countered the words of Elder Cheong-pung who subtly poked at him.
Chief Tang Man-ok made a request to me.
“Originally, I would have liked to let you rest comfortably for about today, but our circumstances are also urgent. I am sorry, but I would like you to move immediately.”
“It is what I hoped for.”
This was not a place I came to play.
If it was something that must be done, it was better for me to face it quickly.
“I shall guide you.”
At my confident reply, Chief Tang Man-ok, who finally wore a complete smile, walked ahead.
***
A faction of some scale naturally divided the inside and the outside. The spaces that could be shared with outsiders and the spaces where sharing was refused were divided.
I confirmed that boundary, which I had also seen at the Baek Family Escort, in the Sichuan Tang Clan as well.
Although it was merely a gate, the moment I stepped inside, I felt the air growing heavy.
‘Is it even more so because I am alone?’
The one to examine the Clan Leader was me anyway. Naturally, I headed alone toward where the Clan Leader of the Sichuan Tang Clan, the Myriad Poison Divine Lord, was.
“To be honest, I suspected you.”
Chief Tang Man-ok suddenly threw out cold words.
“Because the timing was too good. Like a habit, I muttered that it would be nice if someone with medical skills reaching the heavens fell from somewhere, and in the midst of that, you fell right out of the sky. Quite luckily, that is. However, anyone who has tasted the bitterness of reality knows. That there are not many cases where one is lucky in reality.”
As if this heavy air were familiar, Chief Tang Man-ok’s words melted into the heavy air.
The weight of a major axis that moved the Sichuan Tang Clan, stripped of the lightness seen in our first meeting, was conveyed intact.
Had I been a greenhorn newcomer to the martial world, I might have wet myself.
‘A pressure of this level is nothing.’
However, I was not one to be crushed by that level of pressure.
Although I had never faced them directly, the people I usually faced were the legends of the martial world.
If one wished to make my knees tremble, they would have to bring ten thousand times more than this pressure.
“You said ‘suspected’… I suppose that means you don’t anymore.”
“I heard that you killed the Devouring Demonic Monarch. I think I also understand the reason you are busily moving around. It is difficult to keep doubting you when you display such chivalry. Frankly, there is also the fact that the Tang Clan is currently hard-pressed just to buy time, let alone treat the Clan Leader.”
It meant that if I were the subject of a scheme with ill intentions, there was no reason to move like this.
That was true.
If the Tang Clan Leader died, the Demonic Cult would continue to drive a wedge between the orthodox and unorthodox factions, provoking the orthodox sects to shorten their patience. Once the hot-tempered members of the unorthodox factions moved, the orthodox sects, whose patience had worn thin, would not tolerate it either, and everyone would dive into war with their eyes turned.
It was the catastrophe presumed to occur if I did not actively move.
And if the Sichuan Tang Clan lost their Clan Leader to someone’s conspiracy, they would surely run wild like crazy in that war.
“I was lucky… Since I formed a connection with you through a fortune rarely found in reality, I hope it remains that way until the end. Like destiny. Like a story in some fairy tale’s heroic tale. I hope it ends well. Truly.”
Was it because too much emotion entered? His words broke off in fragments.
The air of this inner side, which felt heavy whenever I heard Chief Tang Man-ok’s voice, began to feel different.
By the time I realized that, the air inside was no longer heavy.
“It will be so.”
Perhaps the most realistic answer would have been ‘I will do my best.’ In fact, those words came to mind, but what came out of my mouth was this.
[Kuh! Nice.]
[Yes, that’s it!]
Although there was a tendency of just throwing it out, the two divine physicians, Bian Que and Hua Tuo, were extremely delighted.
“……I…… count on you…….”
Whether it was an answer beyond expectation, Chief Tang Man-ok replied with a choked voice.
When we reached the deepest place, he opened the door and let me in.
In the place where a thick smell of medicinal herbs wafted as the door opened, a middle-aged man with half-white hair lay inside without moving at all.
Perhaps this person was the current Clan Leader of the Sichuan Tang Clan, the Myriad Poison Divine Lord.
Whether he had been unconscious for quite a long time, no vitality was felt from his face. Like an old man who might pass away tomorrow, age spots had also bloomed.
Chief Tang Man-ok stood slightly away and watched me.
[His state is bad.]
[Grab his wrist.]
Although I did not know how to take a pulse, I grabbed the Myriad Poison Divine Lord’s wrist as told for now.
‘Huh? This is…’
The moment I took the pulse, I could feel it.
Although I had never separately learned pulse-reading, it was not difficult to know that this pulse was abnormal.
‘It is violent and explosive. As if it would tear through the skin and burst out at any moment.’
Although he looked like a patient whose vitality was draining away, a tremendous power was surging beneath the skin.
“His pulse is abnormal. It is as if the energy, the poison qi, is boiling in his blood vessels…”
If this level of power moved recklessly without control, it would not be strange if the Myriad Poison Divine Lord turned into bloody water right now.
Though unconscious, it meant he was fighting violently against this boiling poison qi internally.
[If the poison qi is boiling like that as you say, we must assume that something went wrong while cultivating poison arts.]
[An infant with the alias of the Myriad Poison Divine Lord would make such a mistake?]
“We should consider it almost impossible.”
It made no sense for a master of poison to make a mistake during the cultivation of poison arts and end up in this state. It was correct to assume that someone had played a trick.
“A poison that could bring a person called the Myriad Poison Divine Lord to this state…”
I focused on sending information upward by muttering what I thought as much as possible.
[Something comes to mind.]
As expected of Master Hua Tuo. It seemed he already had an idea.
[You said you have the divine power of the earth, right?]
“Yes.”
[Focus your energy slightly on your hand and place your hand on his face.]
I did as told, this time putting my hand near his eyes.
“Huh?”
In an instant, I felt a tingling sensation at my fingertips.
A stimulus was transmitted to my fingertips as if static electricity had built up.
‘The divine power of the earth?’
The divine power reacted and clashed.
It reacted more violently than it did when I consumed poison. It behaved as if it had discovered something it disliked.
“The moment I place my hand on his eyes, the divine power of the earth reacts.”
[Indeed. If a fellow who is so well-versed in poison as to receive the alias of the Myriad Poison Divine Lord is in this state, we must assume that he was struck by an unexpected poison. Considering this, the scope is greatly reduced. And if the divine power of the earth that you possess repels to that extent, it narrows down to an obvious degree.]
[I see. Is it curse poison?]
As Master Hua Tuo laid out the grounds for his reasoning, Master Bian Que also realized immediately and spoke of its identity.
“Curse poison?”
[Should we say it is a mixture of a curse and poison? If I were to divide the classification, it seems it should be called sorcery.]
[You said the predecessor of the Sichuan Tang Clan was a family of physicians, right? If they are fellows who only dug into medical arts, they might not know. The classification is very different on this side.]
Sorcery. Did it refer to some bizarre, surreal techniques that caused things like Qimen Dunjia with talismans?
Since I was already in a situation where I calmly conversed with supernatural existences who were no different from deities, I did not deny it, but even so, it was a bit out of the blue.
[Curses and poison have good chemistry, you see.]
[A living thing maintains a state of tranquility when it achieves the harmony of yin and yang. Poison has the property of disrupting that harmony and causing it to lean excessively to one side. They are mainly the yin of yin—turbid things. They cannot help but have good chemistry with curses, which can be called clumps of malice.]
[Have you heard of Gu poison? That can be considered a representative type created by the combination of curses and poison.]
Although it was hard to follow the conversation, in any case, they seemed to have reached an answer as to why the Myriad Poison Divine Lord had become like this.
As they explained it by comparing it to Gu poison, a relatively well-known technique, I understood to some extent.
“What would be the solution?”
[Looking at the flow of his pulse, he seems to be struggling quite a bit internally. It means that even if it is not distinct, he has some degree of consciousness to fight against the abnormality of his body. Therefore, if we remove the curse poison that caused the poison qi to run wild, he will be able to handle it himself.]
“Then, removing the curse poison is…”
[I told you it is a curse. It is not something that can be resolved with medicine alone.]
[Furthermore, the location is not good. Of all things, it is in the head. If you touch it clumsily, his brain will melt or be crushed.]
[The best way is to find someone skilled in sorcery. If there is someone to suppress the curse power, managing the poison qi would be no difficult task.]
[However, if the Demonic Cult bastards poured their heart and soul into making it, it would be difficult with ordinary curse power, so it would probably be hard unless they are fellows who have trained for a long time in a place like the Maoshan Sect.]
I had heard before that the Maoshan Sect was a sect located in Mount Mao, Jiangsu Province. It was known as a place where sorcerers with mysterious abilities resided.
‘If it is Mount Mao, Jiangsu Province… It’s hopeless.’
If it was Jiangsu Province, it was a place where one had to travel east until the sea was visible. On the other hand, this was a place where moving just a bit further west would cross the border of the Western Regions.
It meant having to cross the continent, and in the meantime, the Myriad Poison Divine Lord would pass away.
And Sichuan would become a battlefield.
[It is not that there is no way at all, though.]
Fortunately, Master Hua Tuo seemed to have a way.
I believed in you!
[With the divine power you possess, suppressing ordinary curse power is no big deal. However, if you blindly suppress the curse power, the brain will be crushed.]
Dying, or ending up in a state where dying would be better.
Either way, it was the worst.
If that happened, I would not see a good end either.
“But there is a way, right?”
[That is why I am speaking. There is a way to avoid the brain being crushed.]
“Then, there is no issue…”
[However, to do this, we have to split the head open.]
“……”
Excuse me?
I had heard that Master Hua Tuo suggested to the King of Wei to split open his head and remove the cause of his illness, only to be imprisoned and die…
Was that real?
An imagination of being turned into a beehive by hidden weapons while trying to split the Clan Leader’s head with an axe momentarily flashed through my mind.
How should I explain this to remain safe and without misunderstanding?
No matter how much I agonized over it, there was no answer.
“That…”
“Did you discover something?”
Reading my sign of trying to say something, Chief Tang Man-ok approached like an arrow.
To him, who asked with eyes full of expectation, I first started speaking.
“The cause… I have found. The treatment… is also there.”
“Ohhh!”
Chief Tang Man-ok’s face brightened up.
Although I did not think he would be able to smile like that upon hearing what would happen in the course of the treatment, for now, he smiled brightly as if he had gained the whole world.
“To think you have inherited Hua Tuo’s legacy, marvelous. As expected, Hua Tuo was a divine physician! Hahahahaha!”
He is indeed marvelous.
And his treatment is truly killer, too.
“Yes, what kind of treatment is it? Since it is Master Hua Tuo’s treatment, will you perhaps split his head open as he suggested to the King of Wei? Hahaha!”
“……Yes.”
“Ah, I am sorry. It is because my mood became too good. You are quite good at joking, too.”
“……”
“……Huh?”
Chief Tang Man-ok, who had been laughing and chatting happily by himself, tilted his head.
“I think you just said ‘yes’ earlier… That is agreement, not a response to a joke, is it?”
“Yes.”
“No, I mean, I am waiting for you to tell me that the joke is too much…”
“……”
“……Crazy……”