WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 134: The Rear Waves of the Yangtze Push the Front Waves (8)

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“Why did you do that?”

Shin Si-ye approached Jin Hyeogo.

“What are you talking about?”

“Sowol. You didn’t have to stab him that brutally.”

“Did it look that bad?”

“It did. His internal injury must be serious. The meridians around his shoulder were probably badly twisted and torn too.”

She was referring to Jin Hyeogo’s final strike.

He had used the blunt end of his spear, but the force behind it had been far too fierce. Yeon Sowol had vomited more than a bowlful of blood, so his qi-blood had clearly been thrown into chaos. His body could not have been in good condition either.

“You didn’t have to go that far against a young martial artist with such a bright future. What if he can’t overcome an internal injury like that?”

Jin Hyeogo snorted.

“You say that because you don’t know. That boy is a monster. Didn’t you see how tough he is? He took all those attacks from me and kept getting back up. I thought I’d only be able to put him down if I struck him for real. Just how much bodily cultivation have all the meridians in his body undergone...? It’s not as if he took a Greater Rejuvenation Pill.”

“...He’s that tough?”

“I’m telling you. I thought it was over several times, but he kept getting up. And there’s this too.”

Jin Hyeogo took a tiny stone-carved vial from his robes.

“The spiritual elixir he received as a prize for placing among the top three. Azure Void Stone Milk. It may only be one twelfth of a drop, but Azure Void Stone Milk is still Azure Void Stone Milk. With this, won’t he overcome it on his own?”

Deep beneath untouched land, in vast caverns that seemed to go on forever, there were stones made transparent and blue by earth qi accumulated over immeasurable ages.

Sometimes, one of those stones would be hollow, and the essence of earth qi would gather inside as a milky liquid. That was called Azure Void Stone Milk.

The milk of stone gathered within a hollow blue rock.

It was a legendary spiritual elixir whose energy was exceptionally clear and pure, said to be tremendously effective at treating internal injuries and performing Spirit Cultivation.

So Hye had succeeded in obtaining a quarter of a drop of that legendary spiritual elixir.

Everyone had been stunned when she divided it into three portions and awarded them to the top three. The quantity might have been small, but the mere fact that she had found Azure Void Stone Milk was astonishing.

Shin Si-ye had no choice but to agree.

“Mm. If it’s Azure Void Stone Milk...”

“Exactly. If anything, it’s frightening. Sowol is already an absurd monster. Once he takes this, how much more monstrous will he become?”

Jin Hyeogo stared at the vial, then put it back into his robes.

“Well, I’ll take mine and grow stronger too.”

His gaze shifted into the distance, toward Yeon Sowol.

Yuezhou’s hero was leaving under his own power, his steps unsteady but determined.

So Hye walked right beside him, lightly holding his wrist with half-lidded eyes as if taking his pulse. Ha Jeop, Won Huiseung, Namgung Ujin, and the others followed around Yeon Sowol as though escorting him.

The spectators carefully avoided blocking their path, yet gathered around them and followed after.

They all felt it.

One story was coming to an end.

The martial arts tournament journey of the young hero who had appeared like a comet would likely end here. There was no way he could endure further matches with such internal injuries.

Yet no one felt regret.

Instead, they were left with a lingering feeling, quietly awaiting the moment this young hero would overcome his internal injury and rise again.

Those feelings gathered and swelled into a murmur as they followed Yeon Sowol. All of Yuezhou stirred in the wake of a single young hero.

* * *

“I’ll make the medicine right away! His internal injury is worse than I expected! But we have Azure Void Stone Milk, so I can make exactly the medicine Young Master Yeon needs!”

The moment they arrived at the inn where Yeon Sowol was staying, So Hye rushed off.

Jin Geol watched Yeon Sowol closely.

“Sowol. She said your internal injury is worse than she thought?”

Yeon Sowol frowned.

“...No wonder. It felt like I was dying.”

He hunched his injured shoulder. Even though he had been struck with the blunt end, pain tore through him so badly that he could barely straighten it.

“Ugh...”

When Yeon Sowol shifted his stiff body slightly, there was a faint sizzle.

A faint burning smell drifted through the air.

Everyone’s expressions darkened.

“W-wait. Isn’t True Flame leaking out? T-then this is really worse than we thought...”

Ha Jeop hurried over and examined his shoulder.

“Is your qi-blood all right?”

Won Huiseung also frowned as he looked Yeon Sowol over.

At some point, Jin Geol had opened his fan and begun gently fanning the beads of sweat on Yeon Sowol’s forehead.

Yeon Sowol squeezed his eyes shut once, then opened them and carefully observed his body.

‘Even as a joke, I can’t call this good.’

First, his shoulder. The place where the spear had struck.

The Hand Three Yin Meridians and Hand Three Yang Meridians running through that area had all taken damage. They had not snapped, but they were ruptured and frayed in places.

Even the Twelve Regular Meridians, the large, deeply situated meridians, were in that state. The smaller, more superficial hand meridians and netlike collateral vessels were even worse.

They were a complete mess, like an alley swept away by a tidal wave.

Still, that much was manageable.

Considering the force he had taken head-on, the damage was surprisingly minor.

The real problem was the Eight Extraordinary Vessels.

Especially the Yang Qiao Vessel and Yin Qiao Vessel.

The martial force wave that had shaken his entire body had severely damaged those two vessels.

The Yang Qiao Vessel and Yin Qiao Vessel curved from the head, past the shoulders, and down to the heels.

The spear had struck right near them, so they could not have escaped the shock of the martial force wave.

The vessels had twisted, causing the innate true qi flowing within them to pool, surge, and boil.

His qi-blood had been thoroughly thrown into chaos.

‘The Hand Three Yin Meridians and Hand Three Yang Meridians weren’t damaged this badly. Why are only the Qiao Vessels like this...?’

The six arm meridians belonging to the Twelve Regular Meridians had been struck, but with rest and proper recuperation, they would heal on their own. They were ruptured and frayed in places, but they had not twisted or torn apart.

The hand meridians and netlike collateral vessels had snapped and twisted in places, but they were small vessels to begin with, so the damage was not as critical as the damage to the Twelve Regular Meridians. Given time, those too would recover naturally.

The Yang Qiao Vessel and Yin Qiao Vessel were different.

Those two vessels of the Eight Extraordinary Vessels were containers that held innate true qi.

When they were shaken, the scorching innate true qi within them began to rage as well.

Heat escaped wildly from the two Qiao Vessels, becoming True Flame and racing recklessly through his body.

When it reached his ruined shoulder, it burst through the torn and broken pathways, cooking Yeon Sowol’s bones and flesh.

It was like a crack in a pressurized pipe.

This would not heal on its own with time. He needed medicine, along with serious rest and recuperation.

“Whew...”

Yeon Sowol controlled his breathing and tried to restrain the rampaging True Flame. Yet faint crackling and sizzling sounds kept coming from his shoulder. The essence making up his shoulder had grown scorching hot, softening his muscles until his arm kept threatening to droop.

Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.

Still, Yeon Sowol did not show his discomfort.

There was nothing he could do until So Hye returned with the medicine anyway, so he suppressed his boiling qi-blood and spoke in his usual tone.

“Anyway, what’s important now is what comes after the martial arts tournament.”

His friends looked at him.

They all looked as if words had risen to their throats, but they ultimately listened to him.

Yeon Sowol’s internal injury was important, but considering Moyong Ha’s revenge, what they did from now on was an even greater concern.

Jin Geol sighed and asked, “You’re saying this because the tournament is effectively over?”

“Yeah. It’s over for me, since I need to treat my internal injury first. Senior Jin Hyeogo and Senior Shin Si-ye will settle things between themselves. Once they do, the martial arts tournament will come to an end too.”

“Then we should make our next move before this excitement dies down.”

Yeon Sowol nodded.

As expected, he never needed to explain every little thing to Jin Geol.

“That’s why information is important. It was in Ha’s diary too. Mid-Autumn Festival. She wrote that they were planning to do something that day. That they were pushing themselves as if nothing else mattered, so long as they could accomplish it.”

“Then there must be plenty of traces left behind?”

“Yeah. We just don’t know about them yet. There have to be clues somewhere, evidence that Yuezhou’s provincial governor is doing something insane.”

“We need to find them. Got it.”

Jin Geol snapped his fan shut.

“I’ll use your name and ask around all over Yuezhou. See if anything even a little strange has been happening. No one in Yuezhou is more famous or popular than you right now, so they’ll all cooperate if I invoke your name. That’s why you kept this tournament going until the end.”

Yeon Sowol smiled faintly and nodded.

A neat summary and prediction that required no explanation.

Namgung Ujin looked around with a slightly blank expression and muttered, “You’d planned that far ahead too? That’s why the martial arts tournament... Really?”

It sounded as though he hoped someone would agree that they had not known either.

When no one did, he awkwardly cleared his throat.

That was when So Hye came running back, holding a milky-white elixir pill in her palm.

“It’s done! I finished it! Swallow it right away and circulate your qi!”

Before she had even finished speaking, the group rose at once and scattered.

Hwangbo Hwi headed to the inn’s second floor.

Namgung Ujin went outside the inn’s entrance.

Won Huiseung and Ha Jeop took positions by a window and in front of the stairs, respectively.

They were taking up guard positions while Yeon Sowol circulated his qi. Fortunately, they had booked the entire inn for the martial arts tournament, so they would not inconvenience anyone else.

So Hye held the milky-white elixir pill to Yeon Sowol’s mouth.

“You know, right? Your Twelve Regular Meridians are strangely intact, while your Eight Extraordinary Vessels sustained a much greater shock than expected.”

Yeon Sowol nodded. He had just observed the same thing within his body.

“So use the medicine’s energy to lightly wrap the meridians, then circulate the rest mainly through the Yang Qiao Vessel and Yin Qiao Vessel, since they took the worst damage.”

“Got it.”

“And perform bodily cultivation too.”

“Bodily cultivation?”

Bodily cultivation meant the permanent tempering of the body.

It usually referred to strengthening meridians such as the Twelve Regular Meridians by tempering them with flame.

Through Yi Yubaek’s qi guidance, Yeon Sowol had performed bodily cultivation on his Twelve Regular Meridians. He had learned from Eun-yeong and performed bodily cultivation on his auxiliary meridians and netlike collateral vessels as well.

Then, after taking the Greater Rejuvenation Pill, he had gained the benefit of having all of them undergo bodily cultivation to an exceptionally high level.

Because of that, his True Flame was hotter and purer than anyone else’s, his already sensitive qi sense had grown even sharper, and his body had become incomparably sturdier.

Yeon Sowol had benefited from it countless times, both knowingly and unknowingly.

But what So Hye had said now was a little strange.

‘Bodily cultivation? These are the Eight Extraordinary Vessels. But bodily cultivation?’

The bodily cultivation Yeon Sowol had learned involved refining meridians through which postnatal qi flowed: the Twelve Regular Meridians, Twelve Divergent Meridians, various netlike collateral vessels and hand meridians, and even the auxiliary meridians.

Not the Eight Extraordinary Vessels, which contained innate true qi.

Yet So Hye spoke as though it were obvious.

“Yes. It’s an opportunity. The Eight Extraordinary Vessels being unstable is a crisis, but you can use that instability to temper the vessels until they are sturdier. This elixir pill might not look like much, but it contains one twelfth of a drop of Azure Void Stone Milk. It’ll be enough to make them stronger than before.”

So Hye’s eyes sparkled.

Yeon Sowol blinked.

She tilted her head.

“Why?”

His eyes shifted left, then right as he wrestled with himself. Should he say it? Did he have to say this...?

“Why? Tell me already. You’re injured too.”

As So Hye became restless, Yeon Sowol finally swallowed.

“So Hye. Don’t misunderstand me.”

“Yes, yes. What is it?”

“It’s just... I really just don’t know this one thing. It’s not like I don’t know everything, so don’t get the wrong idea.”

“Ah, what is it? Hurry and tell me. Aren’t you in pain?”

“Ahem. Well...”

After hesitating, Yeon Sowol finally squeezed his eyes shut and spoke.

“How... do you perform bodily cultivation on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels?”

“Pardon?”

So Hye’s eyes flew wide open.

“I haven’t... done it before.”

The truth was, he had not even known it was possible.

Yeon Sowol swallowed those words. He forced himself to keep his head from drooping in embarrassment, clenched his teeth, and shamelessly asked, “So teach me. How to perform bodily cultivation on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels. Do I do it like I did with the Twelve Regular Meridians?”

“No! You can’t do that!”

Before the deeply flustered and bewildered So Hye, Yeon Sowol solemnly declared, “Let me make this clear. I just never learned it. Everyone in the Guangdong martial world probably knows it. I just... you know? You know what I mean.”

“No...”

So Hye stared at Yeon Sowol with wavering eyes. Then she let out a long sigh and nodded.

“Yes. Yees. That can... happen. Sit here first. I’ll teach you.”

Only then did Yeon Sowol smile broadly, as if relieved.

He was not even really from Guangdong, but it still made him feel better.

Wiping away the cold sweat running down his face with one sleeve, he sat before So Hye.

It was time to step into another mystery of martial arts.

Footnotes:

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