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Chapter 31 - Plaque (3)
“The elder took in a disciple?”
The woman in the bamboo hat released her hand, which was holding the sword. As she looked at my face, I noted that her face was really beautiful.
However, the atmosphere around her was terrifying. With her round eyes and long lashes, maybe this was how Miss Ha Yeon would look when she lost weight?
“Were you surprised?”
The woman in the bamboo hat asked me.
Perhaps she was trying to hide her eerie, exposed red eyes as she pressed down on her hat. It was better to not look at her.
“You should have told me earlier. I almost killed you.”
-This woman is weird.
No. She is strange. What she said didn’t sound different from saying that I would be killed if I was just a trainee.
“I was about to tell you.”
“Is that so?”
Looking at her face, it didn’t seem like she was back to normal yet, but her voice was natural.
“Well, the elder raised his disciple well. Outwardly you look no different from the trainees.”
I think I knew why she said such a thing.
It is said that a good master knows their opponent’s skill to an extent.
It is called Ki Feel or Ki intuition. The South Heavenly Iron Sword told me it would be difficult for even the most distinguished master to realize my full capabilities as I used innate qi and not internal qi.
“You are good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because you are the first among those around me to block my attack.”
She seemed proud of her skills. But I knew better.
Even now, her attack was still making my stomach go weak. I didn’t think a single attack would push me to the corner like this.
“Is the elder doing well? I haven’t seen him at all in the past, just like the Second Blood Star.”
She asked me about my teacher. In addition, she spoke of the Second Blood Star. So this woman…
Tak!
And then someone appeared next to her. Miss Ha Yeon.
She glared at the woman with displeasure and said,
“Didn’t you say you were leaving?”
It felt different from yesterday. It didn’t feel like she was angry, but it seemed like she hated this woman instead.
And the woman said,
“I was. Anyone who sees this would discover that you are the master of the Six Blood Valley.”
Such blunt words.
“You know it won’t go to that.”
“Right. Right.”
“Go quickly. I might not see you out.”
“I can go on my own. Stop pushing me out. I am starting to get annoyed.”
The woman turned to the front.
Sh!
Miss Ha Yeon’s hands were stained red. The atmosphere suddenly turned violent, and I felt like I shouldn’t be here.
Had I known this would happen, I would have come a little later to do what I needed to do.
“You here?”
The voice I heard from far away was quiet. The woman smiled at the voice of the Great Doctor.
It felt like something terrible was happening.
Sh!
The woman in the bamboo hat held her sword and looked at me.
“Give my regards to your teacher. And let’s meet again.”
Then, she raised the bamboo hat slightly and smiled with her red eyes. Something about that expression made her look more terrifying rather than happy.
-My previous owner told me to be careful of such a woman.
-Aren’t the ones with red eyes usually gumihos (Nine-tailed fox)?
It’s crazy because we were both talking about the same thing. I could still hear the woman’s sword. I could feel it was in pain. The sword itself hated the woman.
-Kill me…
The sword was suffering. What did she make the sword do to make it suffer so much?
The woman then turned around and stood in front of the group of bamboo hats. She waved her hand and shouted.
“The next time we see each other, let’s fight.”
Then she leisurely took her people and left the place.
It felt like a typhoon had just gone through here. When I met Hae Ack-chun for the first time, I was surprised at his strength, but differently, this woman gave me goosebumps instead.
-What do we do? Do we need to handle her next time?
-We grind hard then!
I had a headache.
There was someone with a more troubled expression than me. It was Ha Yeon, who was looking outside with a complicated expression.
Should I call it bitterness and anger?
“Miss?”
She looked at me as I called out to her.
“Ah. Young master.”
“Are you fine? Miss. Just now…”
She cuts off my words.
“The Great Doctor is looking for you.”
It was no different from saying don’t ask about it. I had one guess, but this was beyond what I was capable of.
Being Hae Ack-chun’s disciple didn’t mean I had to know everything.
In the main hall, it was just the Great Doctor and me.
As I watched him, I wondered about something. Why did the red-eyed woman look for him?
-Is it because he has the best contacts in the world?
Well, that was true. The quality of plaques he possessed was shocking. And as I struggled with my curiosity, he said to me.
“I heard that you are the elder’s disciple, but you don’t have a face which suits this place.”
Well, mine wasn’t a face with evil intentions.
Still, my family was well known. This face had also changed a lot after the suffering I went through in my past life.
“… There were a couple situations.”
“I guess so. What is a person without situations? Roll your sleeves up and show me your wrist.”
I extended my wrist for him to check the pulse. He touched my pulse with the index and middle finger when he reached out.
Can the broken dantian be fixed?
- It doesn’t matter if it isn’t fixed, right?
‘No.’
As Short Sword said, the dantian is meaningless to me now. I was fine without the dantian because I was honing my innate qi.
But to avoid suspicion from Hae Ack-chun, my dantian had to be saved.
“Hmm.”
The Great Doctor, who was checking my condition, frowned.
Was something wrong?
When I looked at him, puzzled, he opened his eyes and said.
“Wonderful yet odd.”
“Is something wrong?
I hadn’t been using any innate qi for him to feel, so his reaction made me anxious.
Did he detect the innate qi within me through feeling my pulse?
-It cannot be. The innate qi is different from the internal qi. It cannot be observed from just a pulse.
‘Is that something your former owner said?’
-Yes.
He trusted his former master a lot. I was looking at the Great Doctor with an anxious mind. He then gave me another order without answering my question.
“Take off your shirt.”
“Shirt?”
I hesitated for a moment before I took off my shirt. When I took it off, I felt my blood flow quickly as my heart kept pounding. The Great Doctor, who was holding my hand, released his grip.
“Is there a problem?”
“Did you eat the undersea plant?”
‘…?!’
It was shocking.
I hadn’t even said anything, but he managed to guess from just feeling my pulse.
He wasn’t called the Great Doctor for nothing.
“How did you know?”
“Looking at your pulse, I can see that you have more ice qi when compared to normal people.”
He was highly perceptive. Apart from that, the fact that there was ice qi still within me bothered me.
I sat down and even cultivated right away, and I felt all the ice qi had been discharged from my body, but apparently that didn’t seem to be the case.
“How did you end up eating it?”
I hesitated before answering. Would it be better, to tell the truth?
“I am a physician, a doctor. I do not speak about the condition of my patients to the others.”
He was reassuring me like I was a child. Hearing his voice, it felt like I should tell the truth after all. Wouldn’t many people fall for such words and give their secrets?
“I was looking for the plant and ended up going behind the frozen waterfall.”
I told him what had happened there.
The four-eyed monster which suddenly bit my foot, the hot poison which spread in my body, and my attempt to stop it by eating the undersea plant.
“Did you say it had four purple eyes?”
“Do you know of it?”
“It is a rare experience to meet the Human-faced Purple Eyed Snake.”
“Is that a spirit beast?”
Since it looked rare, I wondered if it was. To that question, the Great Doctor shook his head.
“It is no spirit beast. Rather, it can be said to be closer to a monster or demonic spirit.”
“A demonic spirit?”
“I heard from a young age that the monstrous snake there craves human flesh. They say it hides in the dark and eats people.”
I was terrified.
The bones of the humans I saw. If I didn’t have my two swords with me, I would have been its next prey!
-Ahem!
Short Sword made a triumphant snort. Right, I lived thanks to you.
“But, the Human-faced Purple Eyed Snake doesn’t like bright things, so if you had a torch in hand, it wouldn’t have come close to you. You were quite unlucky there.”
“… Uh?”
“The snake and its purple eyes are too used to the darkness. That is why there is a verse in the old books which tells us to not put out fires in places where there might be the Human-faced Purple Eyed Snake.”
“Ha…”
I felt embarrassed. If only I had a torch, I wouldn’t have encountered that thing.
For some reason, seeing that there was no story about that snake in my previous life, the person who brought back the plant must have gone in with a torch.
But thanks to that, I had grown a little.
“Anyway, that was the reason.”
“Reason?”
“Not only is there ice qi, but scorching heat within your veins. So I ask you again, what happened?”
“Uh… is there poison qi inside?”
The Great Doctor shook his head.
“That is something I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand?”
“The plant you ate is filled with yin energy and ice qi. It doesn’t have the ability to detoxify a poison. But there is no poison within your body.”
This was good.
If the ice and yang energy weren’t enough, then the poison would have stayed, and I would have ended up a corpse?
‘Is it because of the innate qi?’
There was a time when it naturally detoxifies the body.
I don’t know how the poison of the snake was taken down. But the problem is that there is still ice qi and yang energy in my body.
“Elder. If so, are the yang energy and ice qi fine? I mean, if it stays in the body, won’t it be bad for me?”
“Obviously, something will happen.”
“Uh?”
“That’s if only one of them remains.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right now, the ice qi and the Yang energy are balanced, so they are dissolved into your veins. It is no different from qi that you gain after taking a pill.”
Like the effects after taking a pill? Then, wasn’t it a good thing?
“Then if I get my dantian treated, can I turn them into my qi?”
“That is, if you can absorb and balance the two qi inside your body and dissolve it, then you will be able to build up your qi faster than others. But it will all depend on your efforts.”
I was happy about this good news.
To be honest, I thought it was a little too late to build my skills even if my dantian was recovered, but now this changed everything.
Maybe I can be better than just your average low-grade warrior.
“Thank you, elder!”
Feeling good, I got up and bowed down to him.
“Don’t do that. I have done nothing yet.”
The Great Doctor stopped me and pulled something from his arm. It was a plaque with his name on it.
“Why?”
“This is a plaque of mine. Take this.”
“Uh?”
What is this?
Since he was already treating my dantian, I didn’t have to receive this anymore, so why?
“You don’t have to give it to me as I will be getting treated.”
And then he said the most unexpected thing.
“How do I treat a healthy dantian?”
‘…?!’