Chapter 97. How are you alive?
Drip.
The tea Saweol was pouring overflowed the teacup.
Severed Meridians.
A constitution where the blood meridians are blocked, making it impossible to accumulate Qi.
For a martial artist, Severed Meridians was treated as a disease so severe it could be called a curse.
“It is hot. Child.”
“I am sorry.”
Saweol belatedly pulled the teapot away. That word, Severed Meridians, must have startled her that much.
“Please forgive my subordinate’s mistake.”
“That is fine, but it seems you have not answered my question.”
He had been like this even when I treated Jin Yeongryeong earlier, this Demonic Physician had a very tenacious streak. Once he set his mind on something, he would not rest until he did it.
“Would you say it again.”
“I asked how you treated Severed Meridians. No, let me ask again. Sado Clan Head, is it true you treated Severed Meridians?”
It was a troublesome question.
All the more so with Saweol sitting beside me.
If I say I treated it, I must prove it.
If I deny it, I will be suspected
One of those two outcomes was unavoidable.
The problem was,
If I say I treated it, this blows up even bigger.
The Demonic Physician is obsessively fixated on cures. If I say I treated Severed Meridians, he will pry into how on earth it was done, and who did it.
Is Severed Meridians called a curse for nothing? It is called a curse precisely because it cannot be treated. To say it was cured is not merely a private matter for me, it is enough to set not only the Divine Cult but all of Jianghu abuzz.
Obviously, I refused to have my condition revealed to the whole world.
“I do not know what you mean, however.”
“Do not think to brazen it out. When you were a child, I already examined you. You are not about to say my diagnosis was wrong, are you?”
Sado Gwang clearly said he eliminated every physician who had examined me, but it seems he failed to do so with the Demonic Physician.
“Well now. You were not yet the Demonic Physician at the time.”
“Heh heh heh, Sado Clan Head, you are quite rude. I am the Demonic Physician. Even if I was not yet called that then, there is no way my diagnosis was wrong.”
“If so, how do you explain that I wield powerful martial arts.”
“My guess is, it is one of two things. Either you, Sado Clan Head, truly overcame Severed Meridians, or all of this is a well staged play.”
The conclusion he drew hit the mark. I hid my expression and answered.
“It seems the rude one is you.”
Since it had come to this, I decided to cut my words short as well.
“Rude?”
“You come to my quarters and, on top of that, you doubt me and try to test me, if that is not rude, then what in the world is?”
“Heh, are you still too young to know better.”
“Watch your mouth, Demonic Physician.”
I put a hard edge in my eyes and spoke.
“I am the head of the Asura Sado Clan, one of the Six Demon Families. Even if you are Cheol Muguk, a clan head, do not speak to me carelessly.”
“Those eyes are vicious.”
“I will take that as praise.”
“I need nothing else. Pulse diagnosis. Just allow me to take your pulse once.”
Of course, that was outrageous.
To take one’s pulse with no treatment purpose meant, in effect, to grasp everything about the other’s internal energy. There is a reason martial artists say you must not let anyone grab the area near the wrist called the Pulse Gate.
“Saweol.”
“Yes, Clan Head.”
“The Demonic Physician says he is leaving. See him out.”
“Sado Clan Head!”
The Demonic Physician barked at me with a deliberately harsh face.
“Do you think you can slight me like this in the Divine Cult and stay unscathed?”
“You seem to be mistaken. The only reason I am not killing you where you stand is that you are the Demonic Physician appointed by the Heavenly Demon. That, and that alone.”
“W, what?”
“I have no need whatsoever for the likes of you. Did you not know? The Sado Family has a bond bordering on alliance with Dok Go-pung, the Poison Demon.”
“People fawn over you crying Demonic Physician, Demonic Physician, and you thought you were something?”
At my scathing words, the Demonic Physician became as mute as if he had swallowed honey.
Soon after,
“Ha ha, hahaha!”
He suddenly burst into laughter.
“My apologies, Sado Clan Head. I am so suspicious by nature that, though that Gwak fellow kept saying you had changed, I still had memories from twenty some years ago. You have truly changed.”
Saying so, the Demonic Physician spoke to Saweol.
“I need to speak with your clan head alone for a moment. Would you step out? And take that dumb friend sleeping over there with you.”
I nodded.
Saweol grabbed Tak Horak by the foot and dragged him out.
Watching that, the Demonic Physician said,
“So then. How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“How are you that powerful when, with Severed Meridians, you should not even be able to use internal energy.”
[We must kill him.]
Hardly had his words ended when Sky-breaker Sword, Skybreaker, slid from the scabbard with a srrk, and swept for the Demonic Physician’s neck.
“Wait.”
I stopped Skybreaker. The blade of Skybreaker had lightly grazed the skin of his neck.
“It really is sword flight. How?”
“How did you know?”
“Hmph, who do you think I am. I am the Demonic Physician.”
He snorted and said,
“Sado Clan Head, that nothing about your body has changed is something I can tell from observation on the spot.”
“Who else knows that fact?”
“Why, are you going to kill to the last witness?”
“There is nothing stopping me.”
“I am sure you would. Just as your dead older brother did.”
“Is that your last will?”
He smirked and shook his head.
“May I move my hand for a moment? There is nothing in it for you to lose.”
Before I could answer, the Demonic Physician slipped a hand into his robe and took something out.
“Looks familiar?”
“That is…”
“Blood Gu.”
There were two small glass vials. In each vial were two writhing, dark crimson bugs.
I knew of Blood Gu from the setting.
Among the Gu, it was one of the most vicious kinds. For bugs, they possessed a sorcerous power, able to understand human speech and even control thought.
It was supposed to show up only in the latter half of the story.
And the one who uses it is Sword Saint Maeng Wihak, one of the most famous martial artists right now. Many in the upper ranks of the Martial Alliance who were absolutely loyal to Maeng Wihak were so because of the Blood Gu.
Anyway,
“Blood Gu that only lives in Southern Barbaria. I won it from that Poison Demon in a wager. But that nasty fellow would not give me the antidote. Said the wager did not include an antidote, and burned it right before my eyes. Even for me, there is no way to make an antidote for Gu.”
“And so?”
No sooner had I spoken than the Demonic Physician opened one of the vials.
“I, the Demonic Physician, swear to do nothing that can harm Sado Hwan and to keep absolutely any secrets related to him.”
Murmuring that, he swallowed the smaller of the Blood Gu whole.
Then he handed me the remaining vial, the one with the larger Gu.
…Is he insane?
“What are you doing?”
“My lifelong wish is to conquer all disease. Since antiquity, Severed Meridians has been regarded as a cursed heavenly punishment, something that cannot be treated. I wish to gain the clue from you, Sado Clan Head.”
“So you swallowed gu?”
“My power over life and death now rests with you. As you know, Blood Gu has a sorcerous power. If I harbor even the slightest impure intent… guh!”
He spat blood. He pulled open his robe and showed his left chest. On his left chest, as if someone had stabbed it with a blade, a wound had opened and blood was flowing.
It was not a wound from outside. I could see the bug writhing within the wound. Blood Gu.
“In this way, the Blood Gu will not leave me be.”
Through the lenses of his spectacles, madness gleamed in the Demonic Physician’s eyes.
“Allow me to study your body. In return, I will devote my all to you.”
Even if this was the martial world, I could only think he was truly insane. To stake his own life to achieve his purpose.
Is that level of mania the price of being called a master in a field?
“What say you. If you still refuse, I will rush outside, expose your secret, and self detonate. Guh!”
As he spoke, another wound began to open on his chest.
“At this rate, I will die before I even leave these quarters. If I die here, would that not also cause you trouble?”
“You really are mad.”
“I may not be a martial artist, but are martial artists not the same? Driving their bodies to the brink as they run toward a single goal.”
I agonized and agonized again.
[Monster!]
Skybreaker called to me urgently.
[We cannot let him learn our secret!]
‘If it is the power of the Blood Gu, he will not be able to divulge it anyway. But if, by a one in ten thousand chance, the Demonic Physician really fixes this body?’
Sealed within Sado Hwan’s body was the energy of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art. Within it was the energy of the king of all demons, enough to drive Jin Yeongryeong mad with the slightest trace.
In Return of the Murim, Mujin cures Severed Meridians in the final arc.
Thus, with a single swing wrapped in the energy of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, he cuts down the head of the Wudang Sect. Though the Heavenly Demon Divine Art is split into two parts, its core, as expected, lies in the first half, the internal energy.
“Of course, curing Severed Meridians is an astronomical difficulty, however…”
The only ways to cure this Severed Meridians are to learn the latter half of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, or to pierce through an abysmal probability and treat it.
If the Demonic Physician took charge exclusively, perhaps that probability could be raised even a little, so I was thinking.
[Do you truly, truly mean this cursed heavenly punishment can be cured?]
‘Mm… first, we need ten elixirs left by the Medicine Immortal, and spirit pellets from mystic beasts that carry the power of the Four Gods. I have to take all of those.’
[That is simpler than I expected!]
‘On top of that, I must face brushes with death, not a little nick like now, but genuine deaths and returns to life, like six or seven times. Then the energy of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art grows a bit more lenient to save its host.’
[Really?]
‘I must be struck at an exquisitely precise instant by the hard Qi of both an orthodox and an unorthodox master at the same time to form a small Taiji in my body.’
[…Is there more?]
‘At that moment, the abbot of Shaolin must appear, place his hand on one of my key acupoints, and inject internal energy, and, right then, I must ingest a thousand year he shou wu and a ten thousand year snow ginseng to produce a harmony of yin and yang…’
[Enough. I refuse to listen to your absurd nonsense any further.]
It is real.
There is even more.
You have to go through all that, which is why I said the probability is abysmal.
Thinking on it, the original protagonist really did suffer. I will never roll around like that. I swear it.
And as for learning the latter half of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, I would have to become the Heavenly Demon.
To become the Heavenly Demon in this body, that differs little from the abysmal odds I just described. And for now, it is only conjecture.
Anyway.
“How long will you keep me waiting? My neck will stretch.”
“Fine.”
I held out my hand.
“Let us do the pulse diagnosis.”
“Wahahaha! Thank you, truly, thank you!”
Grinning so wide the corners of his mouth almost reached his ears, the Demonic Physician grabbed my hand with a hearty laugh. Then, with a sudden stop to his laughter, he pressed my wrist with a serious face.
“Huh?”
The Demonic Physician spoke, as if puzzled.
“You, how are you even alive?”