Chapter 117: The Age of the Young (2)

“...No, that isn’t it.”

For a moment, he found himself at a loss for words.

Grand Master Jeonggang was right.

How else were they supposed to realize it?

After everything was already over?

After they had met the wretched ending that awaited them?

After it had become something that could never be undone?

“But even so...”

Being right did not mean the path was an easy one.

If Grand Master Jeonggang lost his power now, and worse still passed away...

then the Reverse Heaven Society would lose one of its great counterweights.

Because the problem of authority—of how this secret organization could operate smoothly under the will of two young people, Zhuge {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Yeon and Eunsong—had only ever been solved by borrowed weight.

And who had lent them that weight?

Naturally, it was Grand Master Jeonggang, the Mount Hua Sword Emperor, said to stand second among the One Sovereign, Three Emperors, and Five Lords of the Central Plains.

But what would happen once that authority vanished?

Namgung Byeok did not even want to imagine it.

In the worst case, the organization itself might collapse.

Of course, the ability Zhuge Yeon and Eunsong had shown already surpassed what anyone would dismiss as merely “young.”

No elder of long experience would have led the organization better than they had.

But there were times in this world when ability was not enough, and what mattered instead was the weight of a name.

This was an undertaking meant to overturn the world itself.

Everyone in the Reverse Heaven Society lived by clinging to a dream that always seemed impossible.

And prejudice was a terrifying thing.

The prejudice that young people were clever, but immature...

“...What do you mean to do about Zhuge Yeon and Eunsong?”

“Even without me, there is still Myeonggon, is there not?”

Myeonggon.

A master who had reached the middle stage of Transcendent Apex, Eunsong’s master and Soyak’s Great Grand Master.

But he was not someone famed across the world.

Was he not simply a man who had quietly stayed buried away on Mount Hua, doing nothing but honing his sword?

“Or Eun Jeong is there as well.”

“...It is still too early for Eun Jeong.”

“But does he not have more than enough talent?”

Mount Hua Sword Dragon Eun Jeong.

Eunsong’s junior fellow disciple, and a master who had reached a higher realm than even Myeonggon.

A martial artist already looking toward the end of Transcendent Apex.

But the fame he had built was still no more than that of a talented “young man.”

“...He has not ripened yet. You know that.”

The Medicine Sage had already laid Soyak down.

There was no time left.

Jeonggang no longer felt any need to explain himself further.

“Fine. Let us say that is true. But...”

His white eyebrows drew together.

That was unmistakable anger.

“Must I ask your permission?”

The rebuke was sharp.

Namgung Byeok finally lowered his head.

There was neither need nor reason for it.

It was to the point that he ought to be grateful Jeonggang had answered him at all, had waited, had explained this much.

“...Please reconsider.”

“I already have. Move.”

Jeonggang brushed straight past Namgung Byeok.

Namgung Byeok silently watched his back for a moment, then bit down bitterly and walked to the cave entrance.

He drew the sword at his waist and planted it against the ground.

“...What is going to become of this now?”

*****

While Namgung Byeok and Jeonggang were arguing, the Medicine Sage had taken Soyak from Jeonggang’s arms.

Without a word, Jeonggang had entrusted her to him.

Her pulse was faint, her breathing shallow—the unmistakable state of someone already standing at the brink of death.

And yet, for some reason...

“...Her face looks peaceful.”

As though she had let go of everything.

That could not possibly be true.

Even he had heard her story from Namgung Byeok.

She had lost both of her parents to the Martial Alliance of Sword Sovereign Namgung Ak.

Both of them had burned alive right in front of her eyes.

And even then, their heads had been cut off and taken.

The funeral had to be held with headless corpses.

Even those were half-burned remains, and they had been forced to gather up what they could, scrape together the ashes and flesh, and pour them into coffins somehow.

A horrible thing.

Something absolutely unforgivable...

“...Not that I could ever truly know.”

Jang Uitae, the Medicine Sage, had not been the one who suffered such a thing himself.

But he sympathized with their pain and resentment.

He acknowledged that this should not be a world where such acts could gain justification and be carried out without consequence.

That was why he stood with the Reverse Heaven Society.

The same was true of remaking the Primordial Peerless Pellet.

Originally, it had been meant for another master.

He had not singled out any one person as its target...

but he had thought that someday it would become something effective and useful for someone.

Perhaps it might even overturn the board.

To a martial artist, a martial art could become something vast and boundless from no more than the insight needed to take a single step upward.

How many extraordinary figures had there been who, through some sudden rare opportunity or burst of enlightenment, had become absolute masters in an instant?

The Primordial Peerless Pellet could give such people the maturity they lacked.

It could supplement the vastness or purity of internal energy they did not possess.

And in the martial world, that final edge, that margin of less than an inch, was what divided victory from defeat and life from death.

“...I should have made it a few months earlier.”

Just a few months.

If he had only made up his mind a few months sooner, they would not be facing a moment when they needed it and still could not use it.

For now, Jang Uitae drew a porcelain vial from inside his robes.

It was no bigger than a thumb—

so small that it could barely hold half a mouthful of anything.

What on earth was inside it?

The mouth of the vial had been wound round and round with a stopper, talismans, and golden cord.

It was sealed so tightly that even tearing it open on purpose would have been difficult, let alone by accident.

But the Medicine Sage took a small knife from his pocket and began carefully stripping it away.

“I’m emptying out the last of my reserves at this rate.”

His words sounded like a complaint, but his hands did not.

His right hand moved with painstaking care, trying to undo it even a single moment faster.

Though he was already an old man of seventy-seven, he too was a martial artist who had stepped beyond the opening stage of Apex.

No matter how tightly it had been sealed away, there was no way he could fail to remove the stopper from a mere vial.

More importantly, this seal—

he had placed it himself.

Because the medicinal treasure inside was so precious that, in all his life, he had only seen something like it a handful of times.

Even worse, if it were stoppered with an ordinary seal, its effect and potency would gradually fade with time.

That was why it had to be sealed in such a special way.

It was an object in which the Zhuge Household’s formations had been meticulously recreated within an extremely tiny space.

As though to preserve what lay inside in a state where time itself had stopped.

“...There.”

At last, all the golden cord and talismans were removed.

The Medicine Sage carefully grasped the stopper and slowly twisted it free.

Fortunately, it did not crumble.

At once, a clear and refined fragrance poured from the vial and swept through the entire cave.

Even Jeonggang, who had ended the argument and was approaching, and Namgung Byeok, still standing guard at the mouth of the cave, could not ignore it.

“Medicine Sage, that is...”

Grand Master Jeonggang looked as though he knew what it was.

Namgung Byeok did not.

In all fifty years of his life, he had never smelled anything like it, nor even heard of such a thing.

“That’s right. Azurite Stalactite Essence.”

Azurite meant blue copper ore.

Then what was Azurite Stalactite Essence?

A peerless medicinal treasure formed only in deep underground caverns amid bizarre rock formations packed full of blue copper ore.

And among such treasures, it was something found only at places where earth-energy dragon veins crossed and flowed together, like the Zhuge Household’s hidden cave.

“You need even that?”

Jeonggang asked with a bitter smile.

The Medicine Sage let out a sigh.

“You are old, and this child is young. Unless I clear her acupoints clean with something like this, she won’t be able to accept your Innate True Qi.”

“...I see.”

“Come over here and take the needles. You’ll have to endure the pain. I’m going to make your blood vessels and meridians as similar to this child’s as possible. Your body will shrivel, and all of your internal energy will be consumed to temporarily rejuvenate your meridians.”

Whether such a thing was even possible aside—

it was a dreadful thing to hear.

To give something to the body of a child, there had to be a method suited to that body.

Why was it impossible to give Innate True Qi to another?

Because even though internal energy could be transmitted from body to body, life itself could not.

Internal energy was accumulated after birth, so if two people belonged to the same sect, its form, method, and essence were alike.

But Innate True Qi?

That was inborn.

A person’s Innate True Qi was determined from the moment they were born.

Which meant there could be no such thing as the same form, method, and essence.

Not even between twins.

Without a word, the Medicine Sage gently opened Soyak’s mouth and tipped the contents of the unsealed vial straight inside.

Half a mouthful at most.

But the effect was unmistakable.

Even though she had not circulated it properly through breathing practice, some color returned to Soyak’s lips and cheeks.

“If we leave her be, she’ll perform circulation practice on her own. Now it’s your turn.”

With a gloomy expression, the Medicine Sage drew out his needles from within his robes.

And he looked at his old friend as he undid his upper garments.

A body that did not belong to an old man.

Not thick with bulging muscle, yet packed corded muscle still made its presence known beneath his aged skin.

“Why that expression, Medicine Sage? We’re saving one precious child. You should be smiling.”

“And with my own hands, I’m also bringing one old friend’s life to its end.”

“Do not take it so heavily. I will only give enough that I do not die.”

“What absurd nonsense.”

Only enough that he would not die?

There was no such thing.

Once all of this treatment was finished, once all his strength had been passed over...

would he last three months at most?

And even that would be with no internal energy at all, no ability to store any more.

He would live only as an ordinary old man slowly dying, and then he would pass away.

Setting down the brilliant glory and the name of Mount Hua Sword Emperor...

and living only as one old man.

Yet Jeonggang showed no hesitation.

“Do it quickly, before my disciples arrive and try to stop me.”

“...Didn’t I already say I understood?”