23 — Poison Forest (5)

Bi Sayoung, in the end, did not kill the old man.

No—he chose not to.

He only exploded at the elder who kept telling him to do it.

“If I kill you now, I’ll just make more people like me! Or should I kill Dakam and those kids along with you?!”

When the elder couldn’t answer, Bi Sayoung ground out his words.

“Don’t say things you can’t take responsibility for. Pay it back—while you’re still alive.”

“Pay it back… while I’m alive?”

Bi Sayoung glanced my way and told him,

“I’m too dense to know how, but my smart friend needs your knowledge. If we ever mean to storm the Blood Demon Cult, we’ll need information. So spill everything you know—Blood Cult matters, antidote herbs, venoms—everything.”

The elder looked at him deeply.

“…Will that truly suffice?”

“Hell no! But do it anyway! And stop prodding me! Ugh—I can’t keep cursing in front of the kids.”

He had already cursed plenty, but I let it slide.

We patted his shoulder, warm and firm.

Across both lives of mine—barring the times he died behind me—this was the finest I’d ever seen Bi Sayoung.

Seok Gyeongdal thought for a moment, then told Dakam,

“Fetch what I made last time.”

What Dakam brought back was, unbelievably, a pill exuding a rich fragrance.

The elder said,

“It’s not a Great Restoration Pill, but it should be on the level of a Lesser Restoration Pill. It’s no proper apology—consider it something you found on the road.”

Flustered, Bi Sayoung barked,

“W-what?! D-do you think a trinket like this will make me forgive you?! I—I’m not that sort of man!”

Yet he accepted it, dazed—already a little softened.

We grinned and congratulated him.

“You were grumbling you’d never tasted a real elixir—nice. Wish granted.”

“Same here. Something equal to a Lesser Restoration Pill—congrats.”

“Now you can grow fast, Sayoung. Brace yourself; I’ll drill you even harder.”

But after staring at it, he held it out to us.

“Let’s… split it.”

We blinked, taken aback, and he hurried to explain,

“N-no other meaning. They say if your external qi exceeds half your inner base you risk Qi Deviation. I’m not keen on that, and Jin needs inner power right now, and the captain and Lady Cheong-yeon getting stronger keeps me safer. That’s all. So…”

We knew his heart regardless of the babble.

Today he’d apparently decided to be heroic.

Seol Pung smiled warmly.

“Very well. For your sake, I’ll strive even harder. But I don’t need elixirs now. I’m stuck at the eighty-year inner-power bottleneck; without an insight, I can’t add more anyway.”

Cheong-yeon smiled too.

“Same here. At the threshold myself—an elixir won’t add to my inner power right now, so I’ll accept the thought.”

Ordinary cultivators capped out at one jiazi—sixty years—of inner power. No matter how many elixirs you gulped, the vessel filled and wouldn’t hold more.

Gain an insight and break into the Pinnacle realm, and your vessel enlarges to seventy years. With further awakenings: eighty, then—at last—beyond a hundred years: the Super-Pinnacle.

If such limits didn’t exist, every tycoon who hoarded elixirs would be a top master; nature has its balances.

So the captain was likely wedged at eighty years; Cheong-yeon at a full jiazi, the Pinnacle wall.

Listening with a baffled face, Seok Gyeongdal muttered,

“In all my days I’ve seen men fight to the death over elixirs—never saw any try to give them away. What in blazes are you people?”

We traded looks.

He was right: a pill as rare as a Lesser Restoration—who shares that? And who refuses an elixir just because they can’t absorb it right now?

Well—other than those standing here.

The warmth among us felt almost unreal.

The elder shooed us, annoyed.

“My whole life feels a farce. Stop tormenting an old man—someone eat it already. And don’t fret over Qi Deviation.”

“…We shouldn’t worry about Qi Deviation?”

Cheong-yeon and I grasped his meaning first.

We’d wondered, hadn’t we—why Blood Cultists who build power by draining vital essence don’t fall to Qi Deviation.

I swallowed.

“There’s a method?”

He smiled, enigmatic.

“You’re about to learn one of the Blood Cult’s greatest secrets.”

He produced a pouch of black pellets.

“These are Poison Pellets.”

“Poison… Pellets?”

“Yes—pills laced with a very faint venom.”

His explanation ran thus: Blood Cultists who long built inner power by siphoning others’ vital essence had discovered that regularly ingesting minute toxins prevented Qi Deviation.

“In metaphor: Qi Deviation is the clash between impure inner force and pure. Introduce an external ‘enemy,’ and the two stop colliding.”

Jaw-dropping.

“H-how has this never leaked?”

He chuckled.

“I said it’s one of our greatest secrets. And even if a corpse is looted and a rival finds pellets—what are they? Just poison pills. Who would think it special that a Blood Cultist carried them?”

I exhaled.

Through history, the Blood Cult endured because joining promised easy power—one jiazi in a rush, first-rate in a flash, a swarm reaching Pinnacle.

True, such ease hindered further enlightenment—but it still minted formidable numbers.

And now… we knew the trick.

Cheong-yeon said,

“Since we’re on it, why don’t you two take the elixir now? You’ll be fighting as soon as we return.”

The captain agreed.

“I concur. With a method in hand, there’s no reason to hesitate.”

I thought so too.

So Sayoung and I downed the elixir and sat to circulate our qi.

Seok Gyeongdal watched, pleased; so did the captain and Cheong-yeon.

Dakam, observing, suddenly asked his siblings,

“Where’s Rakun?”

“Brother Rakun went out before dawn to look for you—because you didn’t come back.”

“Really? He didn’t go far, did he…?”

Near the Poison Forest, at the same time.

Thwump!

A waterskin burst with a pop, and a giant black panther yowled as it was blasted back.

It was the very beast that had fought Seol Pung earlier.

Catlike, it twisted to land on its feet—but it couldn’t stop the hulking man from crashing down atop it.

Thud!

The panther cried once and slumped, limp.

Men who’d been watching from the brush lit up.

“Oooh! As expected of the Blood-Seeking Demon General!”

“To down such a monstrous beast in one stroke! Of course—what is vermin before the hound who served the Blood Demon in the last Holy War!”

Ignoring the flattery, the Blood-Seeking Demon General, Ji Gwang-ok, ordered,

“Don’t kill it; bind it. A venom-steeped black panther—curious. The Blood Demon may take interest.”

“Yes, sir!”

As several men trussed the panther, one slick-faced underling simpered,

“I confess I don’t see why, General—you’d personally come gather venoms. It’s like using an ox-cleaver to butcher a chicken. The Blood Demon has gone a bit far, perhaps…”

Ji Gwang-ok’s predatory eyes slid to him.

“Are you questioning the Blood Demon’s judgment?”

The man went white.

“N-no! I—I meant only that it burdens you to come in person—”

Crunch.

He never finished. Ji Gwang-ok’s meaty hand casually crushed his skull like a melon.

Gazing down at the twitching corpse, Ji Gwang-ok said tonelessly,

“A cultist who does not obey the Blood Demon is of no use to the Cult.”

Swallowing hard, the others hurried to finish binding the panther.

Since the Great Righteous–Blood War, Ji Gwang-ok—“Blood-Seeking Demon General,” the Blood Demon Sa Hye Jeon Mu-gwang’s hunting dog—had earned his fearsome reputation. Power. Savagery.

They had come on the Blood Demon’s order to gather lethal venoms from the Poison Marsh. The team was one early-Pinnacle and seven top first-rate fighters—“supervised” by Ji Gwang-ok.

Even among cultists, he was notorious—unyielding, vicious. They were all on edge.

They’d only just arrived, and already three were dead: two to the panther while Ji Gwang-ok watched with idle interest, and the lone Pinnacle—just now by Ji’s own hand.

They now wanted only to harvest venoms and flee him.

A scout returned, hauling a dark-skinned Miao boy.

“General! We caught a Miao near here—a boy. Judging by his age, there must be a hideout nearby. And he carries a sachet that repels the fiends!”

Ji Gwang-ok’s beast-eyes fixated on the child.

Pinned by a point-sealing strike, the boy wept and shouted,

“No! I live alone here! There’s no hideout! You monsters!”

“How interesting.”

Ji Gwang-ok murmured.

“A refuge near the marsh. Considering how sensitive the fiends are to repellent incense… plausible. And a sachet to drive them off.”

He seized the boy by the throat and lifted him to eye level.

Terror swallowed the child.

“Listen to me.”

Ji Gwang-ok breathed.

A hellish green glow seeped from his eyes. The boy’s gaze went hazy.

Ji Gwang-ok hadn’t mastered true puppet-making soul arts, but Soul-Seizing a non-cultivating child was trivial for the Blood-Seeking Demon General.

---

Seol Pung and Hae Cheong-yeon sipped the tea Dakam brewed, waiting for me and Bi Sayoung to finish circulating our qi. It had been a while, but speaking with Seok Gyeongdal made time vanish—the breadth of a former scholar-physician opened a new world to them.

Seol Pung asked, shaken,

“So the elixir they just took—was crafted from venoms?”

Cheong-yeon frowned slightly.

“That can’t be… we felt no trace of poison.”

“Think,” the elder said. “Poison is any force that skews balance to one side. And an elixir, imbalanced, becomes poison. Balance those deep venomous forces against each other—what do you have?”

“…An elixir.”

Seol Pung breathed.

“Precisely. An elixir is densely harmonized energy. If you can harmonize dense venom-energies, the result is no different. Not my theory alone—long ago, the famed maverick physician Nang Bin was said to recombine venoms to remake a crippled man’s body.”

It had clearly been some time since the elder had found peers to converse with; he seemed quietly delighted. Their talk drifted… to demons.

“So the fiends—the ‘living corpses’ we’re seeing—are all experiments?”

Seol Pung asked.

“Stepping stones to higher forms?”

The elder’s face darkened.

“Yes. It was the chief reason I left Mu Gwang’s side. What he intends to create is—”

A child at the window cried out,

“Grandpa! It’s Rakun! He’s bringing strange men here!”

“What?!”

Aided by Seol Pung, the elder peered out—and went white.

“That man… Everyone run! Out the back—now!”

“What is it, Elder? Who is he?”

“Blood-Seeking Demon General—Ji Gwang-ok! He Soul-Seized Rakun and tracked us here! We must flee!”

At that, Seol Pung and Hae Cheong-yeon met each other’s eyes.

Ji Gwang-ok.

None who fought the Blood Cult could fail to know the name: the butcher of orthodox lives since the Great Righteous–Blood War; a Super-Pinnacle monster beyond a hundred years of inner power.

Dakam cried,

“B-but Tokno! What about Rakun?!”

“Tragic—but he’s been Soul-Seized! If we try to save him, we all die!”

He was right. If it truly was Ji Gwang-ok, they had to run.

But Seol Pung glanced back at us—still seated, circulating.

We could not move while cultivating.

And so he could not leave us.

He told the elder,

“Take the children and go. I’ll buy time however I can.”

“Reckless—!”

Hae Cheong-yeon stepped in.

“Wrong, Captain. You meant to say ‘we’ll’ buy time.”

There was no hint of doubt on her face.