Chapter 159: The End of Childhood (18)

Eunsong, Eun Jeong, and Soyak...

All of them simply looked down at that small bead in silence.

An object refined over more than a decade by a genius who might appear once in ten centuries, with every form of support a great sect could provide.

It was a treasure more precious than any spirit medicine.

“This is not some ritual offering. What are you doing instead of eating it already?”

Jeonggang chuckled and urged Soyak to take it.

But Soyak looked around once, then lowered her eyes and answered quietly.

“...How could I, here and now...?”

“It must be here and now.”

Jeonggang urged Soyak once again instead.

Soyak looked at the thing in her hand with an expression that said she could not understand.

If she did it here, she would once again have her master, her master’s fellow disciple, her Great Grand Master, and her Grand Master standing guard over her.

That would be a tremendous discourtesy, and Soyak did not want to do that again.

“At night, quietly in my room...”

“Soyak.”

At last, unable to listen any longer, Jeonggang opened his mouth to explain.

“...Yes, Grand Master.”

“How many people in this world do you think have ever eaten that pellet?”

“Only... Sky-Burning Sword Tiger, I believe.”

“Yes. You remember.”

Jeonggang let out a deep sigh.

Then he glanced once at the Medicine Sage before turning his gaze back to Soyak.

The Medicine Sage did not look especially pleased, but he seemed to understand Jeonggang.

“Only one person in this world has ever eaten that pellet.”

“All the more reason, since it is so precious, to take it alone when everything is quiet...”

“Then I will put it this way. It means this medicine has only ever been tested once, Soyak. Do you understand what that means?”

Only then did Soyak realize why Jeonggang was urging her to take it “here.”

The Primordial Peerless Pellet was a divine medicine that had restored Sky-Burning Sword Tiger Namgung Byeok’s shattered dantian from that single use.

However, when thought of from the perspective of “medicine”...

It had only undergone one proper test.

How could anyone guarantee the same effect would appear this time?

Aconite decoction was a medicinal soup that protected the organs, warmed the body, and restored depleted vitality, but it contained a plant called aconite, and if the dosage was even slightly wrong, it could blind the person who drank it.

Then what about the Primordial Peerless Pellet, made by dissolving, boiling, and combining spirit medicines?

Of course, the Medicine Sage was a divine physician called Hua Tuo reborn, and there was no way he would make such a beginner’s mistake.

But Namgung Byeok and Soyak were completely different people, with different genders, builds, and constitutions.

So from Jeonggang’s perspective, he could not help but worry.

“You must eat it in front of the Medicine Sage. That way, if anything happens, he can respond, can he not?”

“...I understand.”

That was why he had urged her to take it here, where the Medicine Sage was present.

Even if something happened immediately after she took it, or during circulation practice afterward.

The person who could understand her condition faster than anyone and take the proper measures was the Medicine Sage.

Only then did Soyak understand, and she sat cross-legged in the middle of the wooden porch.

Jeonggang, Myeonggon, Eunsong, and Eun Jeong...

All of them watched Soyak.

The other children had already been sent away, except for Cheonjeong.

Because no one knew what might happen.

And when Soyak placed the Primordial Peerless Pellet in her mouth.

Along with an inexplicable sense of elevation, Soyak lost consciousness.

*****

「You are gradually becoming a completed vessel.」

Inside the mindscape.

The black snake was looking at her.

The black qilin lowered its head quietly, coiling around her as if to protect her body.

Soyak scratched under the black qilin’s chin with her fingertips.

Though at this point, the difference in their size was far too great.

But the moment she thought that...

The black qilin’s form slowly shrank.

Until it became about the size of a fairly large horse.

As if...

It wanted to savor Soyak’s stroking hand from closer by.

“What is...”

「Does this require explanation?」

Soyak nodded and looked up at him.

The black snake gazed down at Soyak with those narrow, bright-yellow eyes.

He seemed to be wondering how much he was allowed to say.

Soyak simply waited.

This mindscape was not mere illusion.

It was shaped and formed from her own heart...

But everything in this place existed somewhere between the real and the unreal.

Just as that black qilin was, in truth, her internal energy.

「Then I must explain this first. What do you think is the largest vessel in the world?」

“...The largest vessel?”

Soyak narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.

He surely did not mean for her to go find the largest ceramic bowl in the world in the literal sense.

Soyak began weighing the meaning contained in those words.

And then, at that moment, the black qilin entered her eyes.

Her own internal energy, and her dantian itself.

The vessel the black snake spoke of... meant the person who contained all such things.

Then the largest vessel in the world was...

“A vessel capable of holding anything.”

「Yes. The largest vessel is one whose size cannot be measured.」

Only then did Soyak look at her black qilin again.

To say its size could not be measured... meant that one could not dare fathom it.

The reason the sky was vast was because no one knew its breadth.

The reason the sea was boundless, too, was because no one knew its end.

「To contain an unfathomable vastness, one needs a vessel vast beyond measure.」

“...Then you are...”

「I am that ‘unfathomable vastness.’」

With those words as the last she heard, Soyak felt the world before her turn black.

*****

When Soyak opened her eyes again.

She was lying facedown on a bed, and long needles were densely embedded all across her back.

“...Ah?”

“Oh, you’re awake.”

The Medicine Sage laughed heartily as he wiped cold sweat away.

Because Jeonggang was glaring at him relentlessly from beside him.

Regardless of that, Cheonjeong was sitting where Soyak’s hand could reach, keeping watch over her...

And Eunsong and Myeonggon had been speaking one step behind them before turning their gazes toward her.

“Are you all right?”

Eunsong was the first to ask.

Because everyone had waited until Eunsong asked.

There were many people here of higher seniority than him.

But Soyak’s master was Eunsong.

“I am all right, Master. May I get up now...”

“I said the needles need to stay in for another quarter hour.”

The Medicine Sage pressed down on Soyak’s head as she tried to rise and made her lie back down.

Soyak drooped weakly and only nodded.

It was true that there was almost no strength in her body.

“What... happened?”

At Soyak’s question, Cheonjeong answered.

“You collapsed.”

“I did, Eldest Brother...?”

“Yes. The moment you swallowed the pellet, you pitched forward, slammed your forehead into the floor, convulsed, and went limp. Grand Master Jeonggang kicked the Medicine Sage.”

Soyak’s eyes widened as she looked back and forth between the Medicine Sage and Jeonggang.

More than anything, Jeonggang was now an old man with no internal energy left...

Just how startled and flustered must he have been to force out enough strength to kick the Medicine Sage?

Eunsong and Eun Jeong seemed to find that sight funny now that they thought back on it, and they were holding back laughter behind her.

Myeonggon was the same.

The Medicine Sage, who had been kicked without warning, wore an awkward expression, while Jeonggang, regardless of all that, was looking only at Soyak.

“Is your body truly all right?”

“...Yes. It truly is.”

“And nothing has changed?”

There was a small edge of expectation at the end of those words.

Soyak quietly observed the inside of her body.

In particular, she examined the area around her dantian.

And she realized that a tremendous change had occurred.

The conversation she had held inside the mindscape while she was unconscious did not seem to have been a mere empty dream.

The depth of her dantian was truly...

Unfathomable.

Though she had no idea when she would ever be able to fill it completely with internal energy.

“...You said this pellet remakes the vessel, did you not?”

Soyak glanced at the Medicine Sage.

The Medicine Sage checked Soyak’s pulse, then nodded as he pulled the needles from her back one by one.

“I did.”

“It is difficult... to measure the depth of my dantian.”

At those words, none of the listeners properly understood what she meant.

The first to grasp the meaning was Eunsong.

“So you mean... the size of your dantian has become infinite?”

“I have never seen anything infinite, so I do not know what infinity is like... but it is true that I can no longer measure it with my own ability.”

At Soyak’s words, Jeonggang and the Medicine Sage looked at each other in silence.

The Medicine Sage was smiling broadly, and Jeonggang was letting out a sigh of relief.

“Did anything else happen while you were unconscious, Soyak?”

At Eunsong’s question, Soyak hesitated for a moment before answering honestly.

About what she had seen inside her mindscape.

“...I saw the black snake.”