The Way To Full Mastery Of Thunder Qi

Yu Seong had no doubt of me. I did not know why, but he had absolute trust in whatever I said.

Well — he calls me elder brother without the least awkwardness, after all.

I went into an empty room in the annex of the Hohyeon Estate and forbade anyone else to enter.

“Is it truly all right to tell me the oral formula of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art?”

“It is all right. I have long fathomed it and grasped its meaning, but I have not reached the tenth degree of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art. And I still do not know the reason why.”

I took the oral formula from Yu Seong first, then talked it over with him to see how far he had understood it, and came away impressed. His skill at reading an oral formula outstripped Namgung Mu-baek’s.

“A remarkable comprehension. Young Hero Yu understands the oral formula perfectly.”

“You call me remarkable, but elder brother is more remarkable by far. Elder brother understood the whole of it the moment he heard it, did he not?”

“I am a special sort of man, that is all.”

“Which is why this Yu Seong serves you as an elder brother.”

Yu Seong went on.

“So then, as elder brother sees it, what is it I lack, that I have not come properly to full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa’s thunder qi?”

Instead of answering his question, I turned to something else entirely, one beside the point.

“Young Hero Yu. If you complete the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art, it may be that in all the world there exists no master able to handle you.”

Yu Seong lowered his eyes and nodded.

“In our house too they say that a man who comes to full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art can become the first master under heaven. But they also say that so long as he is human, no man can master it.”

“So then — do you see what I am afraid of?”

Yu Seong was a clear-headed man. He took my meaning at once.

“I do. If I come to full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa and the Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy is not removed, then a Great Slaughter Star is born into the murim.”

“Just so. You would become a Great Slaughter Star without precedent or successor, and be talked of down the histories. And so there is nothing for it but to put one more safeguard in place.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“I mean to lay a seal on Young Hero Yu.”

Yu Seong shook his head.

“Any seal at all can be broken once the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa is fully mastered. There is no seal that can stand against a fully mastered thunder qi.”

“The seal I lay is not made with internal force, so thunder qi cannot undo it either.”

A seal set on the mind with the spirit energy of the Seven Stars wheel-energy was a seal set on the soul, and nothing whatever could undo it. Among the Ghost Immortal’s arts I knew one outstanding method of sealing.

Thinking of it now, the Ghost Immortal’s arts are all but arts made for me.

Sealing by internal force had one weakness. If the man who received the seal grew stronger in internal force than the man who laid it, he could learn the path the sealing force had taken. But spirit energy left no trace, so neither the method of the seal nor its passage could be known, and not even the Daluo Immortal could undo it.

“Then lay the seal on me, if you please.”

Yu Seong asked for the seal as though it were nothing at all.

“You know what this means, and still you say it?”

“Elder brother, I have no wish to become the first master under heaven and then have the Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy burst out of me. I believe elder brother can remove my Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy. But one must think of the case where it is otherwise.”

“Young Hero Yu, why is it that you call me elder brother? I heard the reason before, but I should like to hear the true one.”

Yu Seong laughed like a mischievous boy.

“It was from the time elder brother struck Mak Jin-yul across the face. Nowhere in this world was there a man who would dare so much as think of slapping Mak Jin-yul. Even I, even when the Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy was rising high in me, never dared think of such a thing. All I ever thought was whether to simply kill her.”

A deep smile spread across Yu Seong’s face.

“And then to watch that same Mak Jin-yul slapped across the face — there was no end to how splendid it felt. Every gloom in the world was swept clean away. I swore it then, to serve you as an elder brother. I saw that there was no one in this world but elder brother for me to treat as an elder brother.”

Men who had a Heavenly Slaughter Star or a madness in them were apt, once a thing took hold of them, to make that thing their whole world. Yu Seong would have taken a liking to the man who chastised Mak Jin-yul, since she was the woman who roused in him both the urge to kill and irritation. I had struck her across the face more than ten times over, so what he felt for me seemed to have gone past mere good will. And if he came to full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa, keeping him as my younger brother was no bad thing either.

No — to keep the strongest man under heaven as my younger brother is a profit, that is what it is.

I spoke in earnest.

“All right. Whether this treatment succeeds or fails, from now on Yu Seong is my younger brother.”

“Elder brother!”

Yu Seong looked up at me, his face overcome with emotion.

“If you become the first master under heaven, I’ll be the man who guards your back, and if you don’t become the first under heaven, I’ll still make you the younger brother I trust my own back to.”

He dropped to his knees.

“What is it?”

“The world has always called me a strange fellow. And so I was always alone. I said there was no one but elder brother whom I call elder brother, but the truth is nearer to this: there was nobody I had to call by that name.”

Yu Seong spoke with his eyes gone red.

“Even when I want to weep, no tears come. Because I do not know how to feel what another man feels. That is why I want to be treated. So that when I am sad I may want to weep, as other people do.”

A man born with the Heavenly Slaughter Star’s energy carried killing intent and madness lodged in his mind and could not enter into another man’s feelings. That must have been the part of it he could not bear. And the reason he had been able to put up with Mak Jin-yul’s hellion behavior until now would be that it merely irritated him and he could feel nothing past that.

“All right. Once I’ve laid the seal, I’ll tell my younger brother the way to full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa.”

“Yes. Elder brother.”

The resolve in Yu Seong’s face made me grin. I took pains over it and unfolded the Ghost Immortal’s sealing method on him. I was sorry to do it to him, but it was the best there was.

After the better part of half an hour of laying the seal, I sent my spirit energy into Yu Seong’s body, spirit energy that would serve as the trigger to spring the seal if the Heavenly Slaughter Star ever showed itself.

Yu Seong’s eyes shone, as though he would not let a word of mine slip past him.

“The reason you can go no further than the seventh-degree enlightenment of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art is that one thing is lacking.”

“Is it my enlightenment?”

“My younger brother’s enlightenment is already enough. It’s one medium that’s lacking, nothing more.”

He waited for me to go on.

“Two energies are strongest in the world. One is thunder qi — and what would the other be?”

“Fire qi?”

“Can fire qi kill a man in an instant?”

“It cannot. Then what is it?”

“Poison qi. Thunder qi and poison qi are the energies that can kill a living creature in an instant. Your Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa goes uncompleted because the poison qi has been left out of it.”

“But the oral formula says nothing of the sort.”

“It’s not in the oral formula, but it’s there in the art’s name.”

“Black Dragon?”

“That’s it. What the oral formula calls the energy answering to thunder qi is poison qi. Only, for some reason, the formula never speaks the word poison qi. Likely the one who devised this art was afraid too. Because he knew this art stood at a level no human being could reach.”

“If that is the sense of it, how was I able to learn it even this far?”

“Because my younger brother is the owner of a Heavenly Slaughter Star.”

Yu Seong knitted his brows.

“That is all very well. But then where am I to get poison qi? Will it do simply to take the poison qi of venomous creatures?”

“It will not. It has to be poison qi refined and fine enough for a human body to take in.”

“Poison like that is held only in places like the Dang Sect of Sichuan or the Gal Sect of Jiangxi. And there is no chance they would hand such poison over.”

He had thrown me the obvious question, and now he wore the look of a man curious to see how I would answer it.

“Have I not two poison men? The poison a poison man carries is a poison qi of the highest purity, and yet refined enough for a living creature to hold.”

“Ah — the poison men.”

He had been at the Single Halt Sect and so had not seen the Demonic Cult men and the poison men fight with his own eyes, but his ears were open, and he would have heard roughly how it had gone.

“Absorb the poison qi, then work the power with the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art, and you can reach full mastery. What the poison qi is really doing there is serving as the medium that steadies and refines the thunder qi. Once it has done that office, the poison qi will be burned up in the thunder qi and vanish. Analyze the principle of the oral formula and that is how it must go.”

I let a moment hang before I spoke.

“But there’s a small chance of it failing, and of you being poisoned and dying of it.”

“But I will not die. I will succeed.”

I soon brought the coffins holding the poison men over to the annex and got them into the room. It was not a thing I could set anyone else to, so I moved them myself.

“At first absorb only a little of the poison qi, then work the internal art. As your body grows used to it, increase it by degrees.”

Yu Seong looked at the poison men and asked.

“Elder brother — but if I absorb the poison men’s poison qi, will the poison men not be left of no use? They are of very high value in themselves.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know whether my younger brother will believe it, but of late I’ve become able to feel the poison men’s resentment.”

“I believe it.”

Yu Seong’s answer made me smile. That the one man who believed me without condition should be, of all people, the owner of a Heavenly Slaughter Star.

“Today especially, with the rain and all, the water qi is strong, so I hear it more strongly. The poison men’s resentment. Even now they’re begging to be killed.”

What I said was true.

At some point a sound smaller than a mosquito’s had begun to reach me, and at first I set it down as a ringing in the ears. But today the showers were driving and the water qi was strong, and I could hear it clearly.

Kill me. Please. Kill me. It is agony.

Near the poison men, their resentment tickled at my ears. I had meant to give it what it asked for in any case, and since it could serve the full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art besides, there was a depth of meaning in that too.

I shall send you up to heaven. Bear it a little longer.

At first I too had thought, on getting the poison men, that I had come by a decent weapon. They had the awareness of a small child, and I reckoned they would be good for a great deal. But having heard their resentment, I could not help feeling pity.

If a life is lived in ceaseless pain, then to lessen that pain must be mercy.

I watched Yu Seong absorb the poison and sit to circulate the qi. Meaning to step in if it went wrong, I did not leave his side.

He absorbed the poison qi and worked the power several times over, and from the look of it he was doing it properly. Two hours on, he had drawn out the whole poison qi of one poison man and was none the worse for it.

“Elder brother, absorbing the poison qi and then burning it away with the thunder qi, I am not actually being poisoned at all. And I have the feeling that my body is full of thunder qi. What elder brother said is certainly right. Until now, whatever I did, the thunder qi never increased.”

I answered him.

“Likely it was hard for anyone at all to come to full mastery of the Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa Internal Art. Refined poison qi had to be prepared first, and where would a man come by poison of that order?”

Yu Seong went through the Great Circulation and then began to absorb the poison qi of the one who remained.

Even I am beginning to be afraid. Of a Black Dragon Myriad Kalpa completed on the whole poison of two poison men. That is why there was nothing for it but to lay the seal.

That was how I comforted myself. If the method succeeded, Yu Seong would become a martial artist holding a thunder qi without precedent or successor in the murim’s history, and with that thunder qi, becoming the first master under heaven would be as easy as turning over his hand.¹

When at last Yu Seong had absorbed every last drop of the two poison men’s poison qi and entered into circulating the qi, he looked altogether different.

Somewhere along the way the poison men’s resentment had stopped reaching me, and I examined their blood flow. What little I had at least been able to feel in the brain and the heart was gone now, altogether.

Go on to a good place.

It was a good thing, I thought, that it was I who had found them, and that they were out of their pain. Otherwise there was no telling how much longer they would have gone on living in suffering.

— Sizzzk!

In the moment my eyes had turned to the poison men’s condition, my hair shot up into the air. Blue thunder qi had spread through the room like a spider’s web, and then that web drew in on itself and was sucked into Yu Seong’s body.

Yu Seong’s face twisted. His body shook and shook, from the pain of too much thunder qi, perhaps.

“Don’t lose your senses, Yu Seong! Endure it! Only then can you see the world you want!”

I cheered him on, though he was in no state to hear me.

— Pa-tsssss!

Now a blue flame came out of Yu Seong’s body, wrapped itself about him and blazed on and on. As a spider spins a cocoon, it became a cocoon of thunder qi.

About the time a quarter of an hour had passed in that way, the thunder qi vanished.

A little later, Yu Seong opened his eyes.