Chapter 130: Wronged Ghost Summons Calamity (7)

A place Soyak had originally never been permitted to enter.

An elder’s residence was a place one could enter only while accompanied by someone of second-generation disciple rank or higher.

However, Soyak alone was an exception.

Because Elder Jeonggang had granted her special permission.

And strangely, Sect Leader Jeongyang had not placed any particular restriction on Jeonggang’s actions.

Rather......

He seemed distracted by something else.

He had not even asked about the fact that Elder Jeonggang’s internal energy had vanished completely.

Though Elder Jeonggang sensed something odd, he considered the order of priorities first.

The most important thing right now was teaching Soyak.

At minimum, she had to cross the threshold of the Transformation Realm.

The final goal was to help her advance all the way to the end of the Transformation Realm, to a realm beyond even that......

So she might reach the Mysterious Realm, a realm spoken of only in stories.

For that, he had to pass down everything he had realized and felt.

Jeonggang took out the medicinal pellets he had collected over the years from an old wooden chest.

Then he began dividing them into those with weaker effects and those with stronger effects.

“......The ones with insufficient medicinal effect have no meaning now.”

Soyak was already a martial artist who had reached the far edge of Transcendent Apex.

She still did not properly recognize or control that power.

But he had already passed on internal energy beyond that level to her.

All she needed now was realization to cross the “wall.”

In that case, there was no particular meaning in giving her spirit medicines whose efficacy fell short.

Jeonggang set those aside.

He intended to take them himself.

His body was no longer that of a Transformation Realm martial artist.

For the body of a decrepit old man, even pellets with such faint efficacy would have a significant effect.

Building internal energy anew would be meaningless.

It would not stop his appointed death either......

But at least during the time he still lived, it would lessen his pain and give him a little more vitality.

That was enough.

Jeonggang quietly placed one murky brown pellet into his mouth and crossed his legs.

For his former body, it would have been such a trivial amount that his dantian would not even have noticed it.

But now, the internal energy soaked into the pellet felt like a typhoon.

“......Hoo.”

But he had once been a Transformation Realm master.

Jeonggang easily soothed and controlled the raging internal energy.

When he guided it into his dantian, he felt the twisting in his insides ease somewhat.

“It will not last long.”

He poured the pellet’s internal energy into the place where his Innate True Qi had vanished.

But this, too, would only make his approaching death a little less painful.

He knew it could not even delay it.

Even so......

He had to live until the Primordial Peerless Pellet was completed.

Because he was the only one who could guide that powerful pellet’s internal energy and lead it onto the proper path.

“Grand Master, are you there?”

Just then, Soyak’s voice came from beyond the door.

Elder Jeonggang gathered his internal energy, finished his circulation practice, and rose from his seat.

When he opened the old wooden door pasted with thick paper, Soyak stood there ramrod-straight, looking at him.

Jeonggang could not hold back his laughter.

The corners of his mouth slowly curved upward, and Soyak tilted her head, unable to understand that smile.

“......Why are you laughing?”

Soyak thought this was not something to laugh about.

His lifetime of training and study had gone to nothing.

All the internal energy he had earned by burning his whole life away had disappeared......

So how could he smile like that?

“Come sit here.”

Instead of answering, Jeonggang called Soyak over.

Then he sat at the edge of the wooden porch and took a snack from inside his robe.

It was dried sweet potato wrapped in paper.

“Try some.”

“......Grand Master, I—”

“It is all right, so try some.”

Jeonggang placed the dried sweet potato in Soyak’s small hand.

Soyak looked back and forth for a moment between Jeonggang’s face and the thing in her hand......

Then took a bite.

The texture had just enough chew to it, and the more she chewed, the more a faint sweetness and nuttiness seeped out.

It tasted good, but her heart remained uneasy.

All the more because she knew Elder Jeonggang was doing this out of consideration for her feelings.

Elder Jeonggang gave a soft laugh as he watched Soyak gradually darken.

Then he pressed firmly against the middle of Soyak’s back, making her straighten her body.

“......Ah.”

“Walk with your back straight. Your shoulders too.”

“But......”

Elder Jeonggang shook his head.

It meant she had nothing to be sorry to him about.

Of course Soyak knew that.

She understood °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° it in her head, but......

“......Even so, what can I do when I am sorry?”

She lowered her head again and could only grip the hem of her pants with her small hands.

Elder Jeonggang slowly stroked Soyak’s head and spoke.

Lowly, as if murmuring.

“I was never going to achieve the great work anyway.”

“......What do you mean?”

“I am over sixty. I reached the middle of the Transformation Realm and sat among the absolute masters. Once you reach that point, you cannot help realizing whether your end is here, or whether you can see beyond it.”

Jeonggang smiled bitterly.

He had not been able to see what came next for himself.

Because there had been nothing.

Any series of imaginings in which he became a better person than he was now......

He had been unable to picture it.

Paradoxically, Elder Jeonggang saw a “better self”......

Only after he had laid down his martial arts, his internal energy, and his life.

Only after he had handed everything over to Soyak.

Only then did Jeonggang realize it.

A flower is not forever red.

Spring does not stay forever.

His era, their era, already grown old, had passed......

He felt it.

“I chose to let go.”

“But why......”

“You have learned all of Falling Plum Elegy, haven’t you?”

“......Yes.”

“Because flowers fall when their time has passed, people wait for them again.”

Soyak opened her eyes round and tilted her head.

Jeonggang kindly added the next explanation.

“And because that waiting exists, flowers seem beautiful and special.”

“Ah......”

“I was struggling too. Like this Red for Ten Thousand Days blooming all across the Mount Hua of today, I wanted to become a flower that bloomed forever.”

Jeonggang cast his gaze far toward Mount Hua’s South Peak.

Soyak looked in the same direction as well.

“So there is no need to feel sorry. More than anything, you will become a martial artist far greater than this old grand master. It would not do for you to die there.”

“......I will do it.”

Whether she could or could not, that was impossible to know.

She had been born with the fate of the Heavenly Killing Star and possessed talent beyond genius, talent almost like a monster’s.

But the Mysterious Realm was a realm that no one in the history of the martial world had ever been properly recorded as achieving.

To begin with, even the Transformation Realm was something found only extremely rarely across an entire era in the current age.

And yet Jeonggang believed Soyak could do it.

The first step, for now, was crossing the threshold of the Transformation Realm.

“You must have heard from Eunsong, but from today onward, when the other children go to find their masters for training, you will come to me.”

“I will.”

*****

“You have to recover your other body parts?”

“Yes. What is so surprising about that?”

The Young Cult Leader answered indifferently.

Jeongyang, however, wore a grave expression.

The Young Cult Leader’s complete resurrection?

That did not matter to him much.

In any case, he had already made a scheme with him to divide the world under heaven.

They would have to cooperate.

But what truly worried him was......

The process.

“Do you know where your body parts are?”

“I do.”

“......How do you know?”

This was not even the Young Cult Leader’s head.

At most, it was fragmented thought and ego contained in his left arm.

So how could it know where his other body parts were sealed?

The Young Cult Leader smiled and shrugged.

It meant it was a secret.

Jeongyang ground his teeth, but had no choice but to leave it be.

“Your head is at Namgung, your torso is at Shaolin, your right arm is at Wudang......and your right leg is sealed at the Zhuge Household, isn’t it?”

“......Ha. I do not know how you found that out while trapped in that underground lightning prison, but......”

At that moment.

The answer flashed through Jeongyang’s mind.

One could say it was no more than an inference, but......

There was no other answer.

“You bastard. Are you looking through Myeongjeok’s memories?”

“You are quick on the uptake despite being so old. I suppose there is a reason you became Sect Leader despite not being Eldest Brother.”

“Are you insulting me right now?”

“Let us not be so prickly with each other, shall we?”

The Young Cult Leader rose from his seat.

Then he began wandering around inside the Red Tile Pavilion, murmuring to himself.

“Namgung, Shaolin, Wudang, Zhuge...... Where should I visit first?”

“Hah. So impatient already.”

“The sooner a great work begins, the better. It takes a long time, you see. More importantly, it is about time it arrived......”

Just then, someone began pounding on the back door of the Red Tile Pavilion.

Jeongyang frowned.

Inside the Red Tile Pavilion, there was no one but him and the Young Cult Leader.

Which meant that even if someone pounded on the door like that, there was no servant to open it.

“Huh. Disciple education seems lax these days. When entering the Sect Leader’s residence, stating one’s identity first is the proper etiquette.”

“That assumes it is one of your disciples.”

Jeongyang narrowed his eyes.

Then he slowly crossed the corridor toward the back door.

Still, a low, heavy sound rang out.

Thud. Thud.

This was not so much knocking on the door......

As striking it.

The moment he opened the door, Jeongyang saw it.

The Young Cult Leader’s leg, said to have run off alone and disappeared.

It stood there, beating on the door with its severed stump.