CHAPTER: Chapter 2
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Chapter 2.
With the jolt of being thrown onto a cold bed, Uncheon’s consciousness fully returned.
“Urk…!”
Every joint in his body creaked.
He tried to raise himself, but he could not so much as move a finger.
As though his consciousness had been severed from this unfamiliar flesh, his gaunt limbs would not obey his will.
‘If this keeps up, I really will die!’
By instinct, Uncheon set Gonryun’s Taecheong Qigong in motion.
He drew a quiet breath, gathered the energies of heaven and earth, and guided them toward the dantian in his lower abdomen.
In his previous life, it had been a cultivation method he could perform even with his eyes closed, something as natural to him as a part of his own body.
‘First, I have to get qi flowing through this corpse-like body.’
In his mind, the perfect flow of qi formed with absolute clarity.
But just as the gathered energy began to spin and condense into the seed of internal energy…
at that very instant!
“Aghk!”
An unimaginable agony assaulted him.
It was a pain as though something had burst around his dantian.
The energy he had barely gathered scattered in all directions and surged back in reverse.
Every qi channel in his body screamed at once.
He felt them twist and seal shut, rejecting even the faintest flow of energy.
‘The qi channels throughout my body… are twisted! This is… a congenital Severed Meridian Affliction!’
Amid that dreadful pain, he finally realized it.
The realm he had attained in the body of Gonryun’s First Sword was nothing more than a mirage before this ruined flesh.
‘At this rate…!’
The fear of death tightened around his throat—the fear that, if he failed to control the qi, he would destroy this body with his own hands.
Yet at the very peak of that terror, what rose to Uncheon’s lips was an incredulous laugh.
‘I, Uncheon, Gonryun’s First Sword beneath the heavens, am going to die because I cannot even control a single thread of true qi?’
The sheer absurdity of it drove away his fear of death.
‘I did not gain a chance to take revenge on the Demonic Cult and the Murim Alliance only to die such a meaningless death!’
The fog smothering his muddled consciousness swept away, and his mind awakened with the sharpness of a drawn blade.
All the martial knowledge from his previous life roared through his head like a storm.
‘The Taecheong Divine Art will not work. In this body, where the qi and blood are twisted from end to end, the very act of storing qi is poison. In that case….’
Uncheon boldly abandoned the major acupoints.
The major acupoints were, in simple terms, the great rivers through which qi flowed.
Ordinarily, common sense dictated that one gathered the energy flowing through those great rivers into the dantian.
But Uncheon cast common sense aside.
No—he had no choice but to.
This body had already strayed far beyond the bounds of common sense.
‘It is impossible to accumulate internal energy in this body right now! I can only let it seep into the body itself….’
Instead of the major acupoints, which were already sealing shut, he began guiding the breath itself thread by thread through the fine meridians spread throughout his body like tiny veins.
It was a choice to bypass the main current and travel through the tributaries instead.
‘At least the fine meridians are not blocked yet…!’
This was not a martial art.
It was a breathing method that had never existed before, devised solely so that he could survive in a body afflicted with Severed Meridians.
The Life-Prolonging Breathing Method.
It was the flower born from Uncheon’s genius in the face of death.
“Hah… Hah….”
Uncheon barely calmed the rampaging qi and gasped for breath.
‘Hoo… So this is the body I was reborn into. I nearly died on the spot….’
At that very moment, as he barely caught his breath—
someone seized his wrist roughly.
It was a physician.
“Hoh, are you not the one whose heart stopped when the gu poison flared up? You somehow survived.”
After taking his pulse with perfunctory annoyance, the physician turned away indifferently.
“Heh heh, now that you have swallowed the Demon Bell Soul-Chasing Gu, whether you live or die, you are still a slave of our cult.”
But Uncheon’s heart turned cold.
‘The Demon Bell Soul-Chasing Gu…! I swallowed one of the Demonic Cult’s gu poisons?’
Uncheon immediately gathered every shred of weak qi he could muster and turned his awareness inward.
This body was his, and yet not his.
Twisted and clogged everywhere, it was a wasteland through which even vitality could scarcely flow.
‘…From bad to worse.’
Amid the qi channels warped by Severed Meridians, a sinister and baleful presence had coiled itself around the faintly beating heart meridian.
It was unmistakably the gu poison.
‘Damn it, it has already taken root!’
But… something was strange.
He could not sense the slightest movement of a living creature.
‘…Do not tell me?’
Uncheon froze in shock.
‘Is it dead?’
It seemed that while the frail host body had briefly stopped breathing, the gu poison had died as well.
But his relief lasted only a moment. The deadly latent venom contained within the dead gu poison remained inside Uncheon’s body exactly as it was.
‘If I disturb it carelessly, I will turn into a puddle of blood. Severed Meridians and latent venom on top of that… this truly is the worst. But….’
Even in that desperate situation, his mind flashed like a blade.
‘Since I swallowed the gu poison, they will believe I am still under its control.’
Free will.
That was the only weapon Uncheon possessed after being cast into this den of devils.
‘If I play this well, this may even turn disaster into blessing!’
But there was one condition.
‘They must never discover that the gu poison is dead.’
First, he would pretend to remain under the Demonic Cult’s control, survive, and climb upward.
And someday, at the decisive moment, he would drive a fatal dagger into the very heart of the Demonic Cult.
Having made up his mind, Uncheon narrowed his eyes and surveyed his surroundings.
“Ugh… Hah….”
Children were groaning all throughout the infirmary.
The physician, still busy taking pulses, waved his hand dismissively.
“Bah… There is no need to examine them one by one! The ones who endure the gu poison’s convulsion live, and the ones who cannot endure it die. Take only those who can move under their own power.”
“Understood.”
One of the Demonic Cult underlings answered the physician, then barked harshly,
“If you are still breathing, crawl out at once! Any who cannot return now will spend the rest of their lives toiling as laborers!”
Groaning, the children forced themselves upright one by one.
Uncheon silently rose as well, mingled with the children, and followed behind the cultist.
The moment he stepped out of the stale cavern and breathed in the cold air that sank deep into his lungs, his steps came to an abrupt halt of their own accord.
The mountain ridges were familiar.
The wind was sharp enough to flay the flesh.
The snowbound peaks soared high enough to pierce the heavens.
‘This landscape…! How could I ever forget it…!’
It felt as though all the blood in his body had turned cold.
This place, which he had thought was merely a nest where the Demonic Cult raised its warriors…
was Gonryun.
Uncheon slowly raised his trembling head and looked around.
Where the vast training grounds had once stood, a great and sinister structure had been erected.
On the plaque hanging above that building, which radiated a dark crimson aura, three characters had been carved in letters as red as blood.
[Demonic Martial Hall]
‘Those Demonic Cult bastards… they dared to build such an abomination on Mount Gonryun…!’
His teeth ground together as fury surged through him.
But he forced himself to judge the situation coldly.
‘Wait… It must have taken a considerable amount of time to build a facility of this scale on Mount Gonryun….’
Could it be?
Even when he searched through the memories of the orphan who had wandered the streets, he could not estimate the flow of time.
Ten years might have passed since that war.
Twenty, perhaps.
At present, he could not even begin to guess.
‘How much time has passed since my death? I have far too little information!’
Lost in thought, he eventually arrived at an underground training hall deep within the Demonic Martial Hall.
Cold stone walls, the reek of blood rising from every side, and the stale stink of mold.
And above all of that, an oppressive silence born of the children’s fear.
The hall was packed with what looked to be at least several thousand children.
‘…What is this place?’
Among them, a few children stood out at once.
A small number wore black or crimson martial robes and held their heads stiffly high.
‘The children of Demonic Cultists?’
Perhaps they had taken spiritual elixirs and learned martial arts since childhood, for neither their bearing nor their gait was ordinary.
By contrast, most of the children were paralyzed with fear.
‘…These are not mere slaves. It seems they only brought in children of the right age to learn martial arts.’
Uncheon quietly took a place at the edge of the crowd, steadied his breathing, and observed his surroundings.
‘In this kind of body, there is no need to step forward and draw attention to myself.’
Before long, even the murmuring born from the children’s fear faded away.
As if spellbound by something, all eyes turned toward the raised platform in the training hall.
There, as though he had been standing there from the beginning, a man had appeared soundlessly like a shadow.
‘A formidable master…!’
The presence emanating from beneath his pitch-black robes was as sharp as a blade, and a long saber exuding blue-tinged killing intent hung diagonally across his back.
“Everyone is here.”
The man’s face was gaunt and cold.
A faintly cruel smile rested on his lips.
“Let us begin.”
His mere appearance made the air inside the training hall sink into an even colder stillness.
The children around him stared up at him with terrified eyes.
As if pleased by their reaction, the man slowly opened his mouth.
“I am Jeok Mugwang, the Mad Blood Saber, the instructor who will hammer you brats into blades fit for this cult!”
His voice, laden with killing intent and carried by internal energy, thundered through the entire underground training hall.
The children’s shoulders trembled at the sound reverberating through the hall.
Even the children of the Demonic Cult, who had seemed rather confident, visibly flinched.
‘The Mad Blood Saber, Jeok Mugwang? A demonic master whose title I have never heard before… His realm is roughly… the Peak Realm, perhaps.’
Instead of trembling in fear, Uncheon tilted his head slightly and measured the instructor’s realm.
‘…A perfect target to aim for. It is a road I have already walked once. This time, I will climb it even faster.’
In his previous life, Uncheon had already reached the Peak Realm by the age of twenty.
Then Jeok Mugwang, the Mad Blood Saber, made his declaration.
“However… the Demonic Martial Hall is not so idle that it can waste time teaching talentless vermin. You will be divided into five grades according to your innate constitution!”
As Uncheon was marking the man as his next target, those unexpected words struck his ears.
‘They are evaluating innate constitution?’
A cold bead of sweat ran down Uncheon’s back, shattering his calm.
“There will be five grades. Supreme, High, Middle, Low, and… Lowest. Those judged Lowest… yes, that means they are worthless as martial warriors. They will be disposed of immediately.”
Even Uncheon was shaken by that shocking declaration.
‘…Wait! If they assess my constitution in this condition, I will be Lowest without question…!’
Lowest meant immediate disposal.
Uncheon was alarmed, but he had no time to respond.
“Head instructors, begin the evaluations at once!”
WHOOSH—!
No sooner had Jeok Mugwang finished speaking than more than a hundred dark figures shot out at once from the shadows behind him.
If the instructor was the head of this den of devils, then these were his hands and feet—the ones who would directly train the children in the field.
The head instructors.
They silently wove through the children like machines, judged their grades, then swiftly pulled out differently colored identification tags and affixed them to their chests.
“Low.”
“Middle.”
“…Utter trash. Lowest!”
The surrounding children could scarcely even breathe beneath the pressure of the head instructors sweeping among them like a black wind.
‘If this continues, I really will be discarded! There has to be… some way…!’
Rather than panic, he observed the movements of the men approaching him.
Then, in an instant, a stratagem flashed through his mind.
‘An evaluation? Fine. If you are going to judge me, then I will judge you as well.’
His gaze swiftly swept over the head instructors as he analyzed the traits of their martial arts.
‘An expert in fist arts… The energy at his fingertips is vicious. If that hand seizes me, he will discern the distortion in my qi channels at once.’
‘That one… practices palm arts. His palms look thick and soft, but such hands are always the more sensitive.’
Then Uncheon’s gaze settled on one particular head instructor.
Compared to the others, his lower body was especially well developed.
He kept his hands clasped behind his back while surveying the children, moving them only when he attached the identification tags.
‘…That one is perfect. He seems to train in leg arts, and his upper body is less tempered. More importantly, that posture with his hands behind his back… he is careless!’
Uncheon shifted subtly, hiding himself behind another child as he deftly changed his position.
And at last, the head instructor he had marked swept past him like the wind and muttered in a cold voice,
“Twisted frame, blocked qi channels. There is no need for further words. Total refuse. Lowest.”
The instant the man’s hand slipped into his robes to pull out a black identification tag, a cold smile, too faint for anyone to notice, touched Uncheon’s lips.
‘Lowest? Since when was that your decision?’
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