Awakening (1)

初發心時 便成正覺
知一切法 真實之性
具足慧身 不由他悟

When one first gives rise to the mind, one at once attains right awakening.
Awakening to the true nature of all things, one gains the body of wisdom.
This does not come by borrowing another’s enlightenment.

-<Avatamsaka Sutra, Brahmacarya Chapter>-

“Kheok!!”

Who would have thought, in all one’s life, that one would be strangled by one’s own hand.

I gathered my internal energy into my right hand and grabbed my left hand, but the left arm, controlled by the doctor persona, didn’t budge.

“When did it reach this level…….”

My left arm, running wild beyond my will.
Even with all my strength, I couldn’t stop it easily.

For some reason, each time the force flowing through my meridians passed through my brain, it was being corrupted into demonic Kung-Fu.

True, my master did pass on demonic Kung-Fu to me to some extent, but I have never learned a Kung-Fu that emitted an aura this vicious.

The doctor persona sealed in the Mind Palace should not know any Kung-Fu principles beyond the Kung-Fu I have trained.

And that was not the only shocking fact.

What was dominating my left arm now was only a very small part of the doctor persona’s Intent.

Even though it was moving my internal energy with incomplete Intent, the terrifying arm strength the doctor persona was exerting was something I had not anticipated at all.

I thought the limit of what the doctor persona could do was to shake my mind, or at most drive me into Qi Deviation.

But I never dreamed it would try to harm me in such a nakedly Kung-Fu-principled way.

A situation where I could not even tell what the bastard wanted.

However, if there was one certainty, it was that from the left arm moving like a snake, I could feel abnormal killing intent and Yin Qi together.

How a thing that never even possessed a body acquired such power while sealed in the Mind Palace, I cannot know.

But what mattered now was stopping the doctor persona’s attempt to block my breathing and make me faint, even though it could only move one arm, not finding the source of that power.

“This body……! Is mine……!!”

Perhaps because Qi Deviation was close, I unknowingly picked up the Heavenly Demon Cane I had set beside me, then set it down again.

No matter if what was moving my left arm now was a living Papiyas-like existence, cutting off one’s own limb with a sword was nonsense.

Instead, with my perfectly sound right hand, I formed a sword seal.

Then I gathered as much internal energy as I could into my two fingers.

-Gooo!

A spear-finger, extending the index and middle fingers and folding the rest.

Just like that, I drove my fingers straight down into my forearm.

-Kwajik!
-Puuk!

The finger energy of my right hand pierced the thick demonic Qi and opened a hole in my left arm.

My middle finger tore the skin and burrowed into the muscle fibers.

The first joint of my finger vanished completely from sight.

-Tuduk.

The sound of a tendon snapping.

A hole opened in my body and my blood paths were damaged, but that was precisely my aim.

The teachings of Headmaster Louise remained intact in my mind.

The teaching material she used was my own flesh.

The internal energy Louise forced into my body first carried the aura of the Medicamentum Communionem, slithering like a snake through every corner of my blood paths, then gathered in one place and caused a fierce Essence explosion.

What was engraved was the dizzying memory of the moment my minor meridians opened through.

A fortuitous encounter that came to me, who had to postpone the opening through of the Ren and Du meridians and the minor meridians because I had learned the Lion Heart Method.

That strange connection was trying to save me from crisis once again.

What I needed was delicate intent to guide my internal energy in the right direction, and the focus to maintain it.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you while you’re enjoying an outing for once, but get out.”

The moment I finished speaking, the internal energy that exploded from my fingertips began to spread into the acupoints all over my left arm.

-Kwaaah!

Essence that followed the exact path the energy of the Medicamentum Communionem had once passed through, filling the inside without gaps.

When I deliberately blocked the minor meridians, the corrupted force occupying my arm lost its place to go and began to be pushed out by the pure aura.

Because it was using all its power to strangle my throat, it could not resist the internal energy invading from within.

-Kwaaah!!

The Essence that had been controlling my left arm was forced out through the hole made by my two fingers and scattered into the air.

The surest way to remove air trapped in a cup is to pour in water.

Unless it was residual Demonic Qi left behind by a demonic Kung-Fu cultivator at death, if the quantity was sufficient, pushing it out with the pure internal energy accumulated through the Lion Heart Method wasn’t impossible.

-Tuk.

When the doctor persona’s Intent was released together with the demonic Qi, my left arm went limp.

“……As expected, it won’t move right away.”

I tried to circulate my internal energy to stop the bleeding, but it was not easy.

“Haa…….”

I let out a sigh with my fingers still embedded in my arm.

Perhaps as an aftereffect of being controlled by the doctor persona, the nerves in my left arm seemed unable to respond to Bio Essence.

Nerves, as the name implies, are the path through which Spirit, that is, Intent, passes among Essence, Qi, and Spirit.

I had driven out the demonic Qi, but for a brief time my nerves were occupied by an Intent different from my usual one, so it would take some time for the nerves to adapt to my Intent again.

-Ulkeok.

Well, until then I would have to endure a certain amount of bleeding.

“Holmes!!”

That was when Watson flung open the bedroom door.

It seemed she had been waiting for me in the sitting room, sensed killing intent, and rushed in.

“Are you in your right mind! Self-harm, what on earth were you thinking…….”

She saw the floorboards pooled thick with blood and lost her words.
Then, as if she noticed the presence of a strange aura lingering in the room, she hurriedly opened the window.

“What is this! This demonic Qi—”
“Calm down, Watson. I’ll explain everything.”

Watson looked back and forth between my left arm and the manuscript that had fallen on the floor, then nodded with difficulty.

“Very well. I hope it will be something I can accept. First, before that, we must do something about your wound.”

Watson sutured the hole in my left arm, then finely ground medicinal ingredients with anesthetic effect, mixed them with alcohol, and applied it to the wound.

Next, before the alcohol evaporated, she evenly sprinkled Tiger Balm Powder, and judging by the slight tremble in the hand holding the jar, she seemed to have been quite shocked by what she saw earlier.

“The bleeding……has stopped now.”

Only after she finished wrapping the bandages and completing the acupoint technique did Watson wipe away the beads of sweat that had formed on her brow.

Though the blood had drained and it was pale, my left arm lay still, without being dominated by the doctor persona again.

The arm still didn’t move, but it would recover with time.

If I sent through an extremely tiny amount of Brain Stopper, I could make the nerves adapt to my Intent again.

However, my current condition was the worst.

If I failed to control the strength of the Brain Stopper, I would never be able to move my left arm again.

Watson’s life was not in imminent peril, nor were we facing anything comparable, so there was no need to take such a risk.

“Even if the bleeding has stopped, it will take at least a week for the nerves’ function to return to normal. Since it’s you, your recovery may be several times faster than others. In any case, for the next few days, you must refrain from strenuous movement and rest.”
“I will bear it in mind. For this once, I promise that no matter what case occurs, I will not move personally.”

It seemed it would truly spiral into something irreparable if I provoked Watson, so I quickly nodded.

“Then tell me now. What has happened to your body. And if there is anything else you are hiding from me, this time you would do well to spill it all.”

She spoke softly, but Watson’s expression was sharper than anything.

“……Fine. I will.”

I ended up making a promise I couldn’t keep.

How could I reveal that I was a being who crossed over from another world, and that her twin older brother John Watson was the same.

After Sir Harcourt was carried away, I had spoken to Watson about Moriarty before.

But I still couldn’t bring myself to speak about John.

Besides the story of demonic Kung-Fu linked to what she just witnessed, I needed another secret that could satisfy Watson.

A precious secret that would not make her feel excluded.

Something big enough to make her forget the magazine’s reply for a moment.

‘There is one.’

Still, before bringing that up, I needed to convey my condition precisely to Watson.

“Listen well, Watson. An Angel and a Devil coexist within me.”
“……What is this? Some talk of the Wildhunt reaping souls?”

As expected, Watson wore an expression of utter disbelief.

I had meant to settle it with a proper metaphor, but it seemed difficult.

At this point, I had no choice but to use the most direct words.

“I am a demonic Kung-Fu practitioner.“
“…….”

Only then did Watson nod heavily.

“I wondered, because the sobriquet Little Heavenly Demon is so wildly presumptuous, and it seems I was right.”
“What? You were expecting it?”
“No. I wasn’t certain. Not everyone in London Murim who is called by a sobriquet with the character ‘demon’ in it has trained demonic Kung-Fu, so I thought it might be a baseless notion.”
“…….”

This time I was the one who was speechless.

This was why I had resisted so fiercely when my master gave me the sobriquet Little Heavenly Demon.

The strict laws of the British Empire do not forbid the act of training demonic Kung-Fu itself.

In the regular duels of the Royal Combat Society, as well as the Battle City held every five years by the League of Gentlemen, partial use of demonic Kung-Fu was permitted so long as you did not take your opponent’s life or destroy their elixir field.

The same was true of Sword Debate Chess.

The official tournaments of the European Murim Alliance held in Britain had introduced a block system in which only Kung-Fu announced through Sword Debate papers after a certain time period could be used, but under the standard rules, a limit regulation that completely forbade demonic Kung-Fu itself had never been declared.

At most, it was restricted or semi-restricted.

The funny thing was that, despite the British government proclaiming such an open stance toward demonic Kung-Fu, people did not try to use demonic Kung-Fu in tournaments or Sword Debate Chess competitions.

They not only hesitated to learn demonic Kung-Fu, they even made up pointless catchphrases like ‘A real man does not use demons,’ and mocked demonic Kung-Fu practitioners.

That was why demonic Kung-Fu practitioners all crawled into the shadows, research failed to flourish, and nothing remained but inner cultivation methods and Kung-Fu with severe side effects.

Yet they insist on stuffing the character for demon into sobriquets.

Do they not know that using words too strong makes you look weak?

They long for the power demonic Kung-Fu gives, yet have no intention of understanding it properly.

As expected, longing is the emotion farthest from understanding.

“……Holmes? Have you been muttering something to yourself for a while now?”
“What? What did I say?”
“Your eyes are terribly bloodshot too.”
“Ah…….”

It was Qi Deviation.

“Holmes?”

-Koong.

I fainted.