Chapter 160: The End of Childhood (19)

“The black snake.”

Jeonggang slowly closed his eyes.

He was trying to recall whether he had ever heard of anything similar.

But in all Jeonggang’s long decades, he had never heard of such a thing.

The Medicine Sage was the same.

“You saw it when you lost consciousness?”

“Yes, Medicine Sage. In truth, even before this...”

“Before this?”

“Sometimes, during circulation practice...”

If she had seen it only once, it could be treated as a dream.

Even twice, one could say she had seen an illusion...

But a third time was different.

If one’s enlightenment ran deep, or one was born with extraordinary talent, one could occasionally enter a state of selflessness.

It meant reaching the inner mindscape during circulation practice.

And Soyak experienced that rather often.

After hearing the whole story, Jeonggang and the Medicine Sage both shook their heads.

Because they could not tell what sort of omen or symbol it was.

They had lived long lives.

Even between the two of them, with nearly a century and a half of years combined, neither had heard of anything like it.

“What did that black snake do to you?”

“It did not do anything. It only...”

“Only?”

“It only told me its name.”

It told her its name?

That meant it was an intelligent being capable of communication.

But Jeonggang and the Medicine Sage stopped thinking any further about that mysterious “black snake.”

They had realized this was not a matter that would yield an answer simply because they worried over it.

What mattered right now was Soyak’s condition.

Specifically, her dantian, whose depth and breadth had become impossible to measure.

The foundation had now been fully prepared.

What Soyak needed now was the next step.

“...Soyak.”

Jeonggang quietly called her.

From the weight in his voice, Eunsong and Myeonggon knew that Jeonggang was about to voice what he had been agonizing over.

“Yes, Grand Master.”

“I no longer have much time left. And I am debating something.”

“What are you debating?”

“Whether to spend the rest of my remaining life teaching you until I die, or to return to my homeland now.”

He was as old as a man could be.

He no longer had the strength to wander the martial world.

The heart that had let everything go was emptier than anything...

Leaving behind only the most fundamental wish of someone facing death.

The wish not to die in a foreign place.

In one sense, it was an anachronistic sentiment, and one might wonder why such a thing mattered.

But the older one grew, and the closer death drew, the more one longed to return to the homeland where one’s memories lay.

Soyak understood that feeling.

“You may... set down your burden now.”

“I am not that irresponsible a man.”

Jeonggang reached out, opened a drawer, and took something from within.

Inside were...

The secret manuals of the Harmonization Scripture and Falling Plum Elegy, which had been lost when the Flower-Halo Sect burned and collapsed.

“These are...”

“How long has it been since you last read them?”

Jeonggang asked with a gentle smile.

These were manuals Jeonggang had personally copied by hand long ago for research, before the Harmonization Scripture and Falling Plum Elegy had been passed to Soyak’s father.

“I wrote them down exactly, without omitting a single character. That was when I was young.”

“...Isn’t that a violation of the rules?”

Myeonggon said what everyone else wanted to say.

Because among them, he was at least the one closest to Jeonggang.

“Would Jeongbeop really be so rigid with an old man who is about to die?”

“If it were Master Jeongbeop, I do think he might...”

Myeonggon thought of Jeongbeop, who had refuted Jeongyang point by point with sound principles even when Jeongyang had been sitting in the Sect Leader’s seat.

He...

It was not only now.

Jeongbeop had always been that sort of person from the beginning, and he had remained that way from childhood all the way into old age.

Jeonggang cackled and brought his hand to his mouth.

Then he looked at Soyak.

“It only needs all of you to keep your mouths shut, does it not?”

“Even if you make us keep our mouths shut, what will you do about the Medicine Sage’s mouth?”

“He is not such a faithless fellow. Is that not so, Medicine Sage?”

The Medicine Sage, at whom the arrow had suddenly been turned, opened his mouth with an expression as if all sense had evaporated from him.

“If Jeongbeop comes to ask me, I will have tea prepared and tell him everything.”

“He only talks like that.”

“I am telling you, I will not!”

*****

“It feels as though a storm has passed.”

The other third-generation disciples had all been told to return to Flower-Haze Hall.

So now, as the sun was just about to set...

Only Soyak and Cheonjeong remained beside Eunsong.

“You both went through a great deal.”

“No, Master.”

Cheonjeong shook his head.

But Eunsong knew well.

For someone of lower standing, facing someone of higher standing was burdensome no matter the form or circumstance.

All the more so when that person was a venerable elder of the same sect.

And even more so when, in the middle of it, an honored guest from outside had arrived.

And throughout that long stretch of time, Cheonjeong had held his tongue and faithfully carried out the role Eunsong had wanted of him.

Staying by Soyak’s side and looking after her.

Eunsong had told him to remain beside her as her Eldest Brother, since no one knew what might happen.

Of course, Eun Jeong, Eunsong, and Jeonggang had also been there.

But the people who had most recently spent the longest journey with her were Cheonjeong and Cheongak, were they not?

Soyak only looked silently down at the two secret manuals held in her arms.

From Eunsong’s perspective... he could understand, to an extent.

Jeonggang was a master who had reached the Transformation Realm.

But enlightenment was not something that could simply be passed down.

Like the story of Master Juzhi cutting off the boy’s finger, or the tale of Master Yunmen calling the Buddha a dried shit-stick.

Enlightenment was something one found for oneself.

And because it was a gate without a gate...

If one defined oneself as “this sort of person” and tried to cross “this sort of threshold,” one could never cross it.

It was the same even with another’s help.

Someone could point out the general branch of the road and tell one how rugged that road would be, but that was all.

Jeonggang must have agonized over it again and again.

And then he had placed those manuals in Soyak’s hands.

Even though they were the only copies of Falling Plum Elegy and the Harmonization Scripture that Jeonggang and Eunsong possessed.

“Are you that happy?”

Eunsong looked at Soyak silently.

She was a child whose expression rarely changed, but her gestures were honest.

After all, she was still holding the two thin manuals tight against her chest.

“...Yes.”

“Even though they are not the originals that burned and were lost on the day the Flower-Halo Sect fell?”

“...Yes.”

She had read them briefly.

The quality and color of the paper were different, and so was the handwriting.

But the contents were the same...

And the memory of her father guiding her through each character with his hand remained exactly as it had been.

With those two manuals, Soyak remembered the first time she had learned martial arts.

She was still far too young to speak of something like returning to her first intentions.

But she was old enough to savor a memory.

It was true that she had memorized both manuals in full, but she had never thought to create and preserve copies.

Because of her father’s instruction.

Only we possess these secret manuals, and they must never circulate through the world.

Soyak could now understand her father’s intention.

The enormous black qilin.

The power that hunted immortality, granting repose even to those devoured by Demonic Energy while dreaming of deathlessness.

Rumors moved slowly across the vast martial world, but the more she acted, the larger those rumors would grow.

And the secret manuals of divine arts that truly existed always brought calamity.

“...Haa.”

Soyak let out a sigh.

As she contemplated the two secret manuals, she realized what she needed.

Time.

Enough time to accept everything, grow accustomed to it, and look back.

She possessed a talent that surpassed the bounds of humanity and even exceeded the ordinary laws of genius, to the point that she could be called a monster.

But what she lacked more than anyone else right now was time.

Though talent was, in the end, a measure of how much one could learn and master in a short period of time...

Even with that shining talent, Soyak was dissatisfied with her current self.

Even if they did not possess the talent of a monster...

Others had taken talent that could still be called genius and polished it for decades.

Above all, there was the Sword Sovereign.

In the end, he had reached his realm and formed Sword Force with the sword of the Namgung Household, rising into the ranks of the number one martial artist under heaven.

She needed compressed time.

Compressed time, under the name of training.

And there was only one way to accomplish the most compressed training within the same span of time.

“...Master, I have one request.”

Soyak finally spoke aloud what she had been considering.

Eunsong knew very well how rare it was for Soyak to ask for something first.

“Well, this is unusual. What is it?”

“Can you grant it?”

Soyak’s eyes looked up at Eunsong.

Inside those black eyes, Eunsong saw a certain resolve.

Though small and young, she was a child who had experienced both the death of her parents and the border between life and death.

What sort of request was she about to make of him, that she needed this degree of resolve?

“...It seems you are asking for something quite great.”

“If it is great, then it is great. If it is small, then it is small.”

Both Eunsong and Cheonjeong tilted their heads.

And at last, Soyak drew out what she had been holding in her heart.

“...I want to enter closed-door training.”