WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 55: When Water Is Too Clear, There Are No Fish (3)

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Trickle, trickle...

In a pitch-black cave where not a speck of light entered, spring water welled up from somewhere and flowed elsewhere.

That sound was Yeon Sowol's only landmark.

"Here it is."

After feeling his way to the spring, Yeon Sowol immediately stripped off his clothes.

"Ugh!"

They had become sticky, like clothes that had been drenched in cola, dried, then drenched in liquor and dried again.

He swished his hands through the water until he found his dipper, then scooped up spring water and poured it over his entire body.

Through his hair.

Down his nape and underarms, all the way to his toes. The stickiness turned slick, then washed away until his skin squeaked clean.

"Hah! I feel alive again!"

Now Yeon Sowol was humming under his breath.

Squeeze! Squeeze!

Scrub! Scrub!

He soaked the sticky clothes and kneaded and rubbed them clean.

Once he had dried himself and changed into fresh clothes, it finally began to feel real.

"I... became first-rate?"

Even when he circulated his qi now, smoke no longer came out of his mouth.

That was because he had passed Breathing Smoke into Clouds and entered the realm of Brave Flame Soars.

It was also proof that the True Flame rising from his dantian had burned away every impurity in the Eight Extraordinary Vessels.

Now, his Eight Extraordinary Vessels were full of nothing but pure innate true qi.

Innate true qi referred to the hot, pure essence, qi, and spirit granted to a person by Heaven and Earth at birth.

Once a person kindled True Flame and settled it within the dantian, the Conception Vessel, Governing Vessel, and Penetrating Vessel, the three most important channels among the Eight Extraordinary Vessels that originated from the dantian, all heated up at once.

Eventually, the essence within the innate true qi melted and transformed into qi.

That was the realm of first-rate.

The Daoist tradition called it Refining Essence into Qi, since it meant refining essence into qi.

Only upon reaching the first-rate realm could martial artists finally wield the harmonies of qi.

"So this... is qi."

The ancients had said:

Qi was that which could not be spoken.

The moment one called it this, it had already become that. The moment one called it that, it had already become this.

Qi was also that which went unsaid.

It was the unspoken part when someone said, "I never liked you."

Not the part cut by a sword, but the events that failed to happen because the sword had cut.

Thus, qi was not something defined, but something that existed before definition. Not something felt, but the fact that it could be felt. Something that encompassed that entire context.

When essence remained,

qi flowed.

When essence was firm and clear,

qi transformed and became profound.

Before matter,

before force,

before limitation and definition,

there was a purer, freer, more fundamental essence.

Harmony flowing through relationships.

"So something like this existed..."

Yeon Sowol had never imagined it.

That such a sensation could exist in the world.

A world beyond sight.

Not a world governed by laws like action and reaction, but a world before those laws, a world of possibility.

Within it, Yeon Sowol could be free.

Wheee-

Wind flowed along his body without him releasing any power, and qi made his body light without him having to temper it.

Everything was completely different.

If his qi became strong enough, it felt as though he could lift his body without even pushing off the ground with his feet. That was how first-rate martial artists carried themselves and fought.

"I want to become... stronger."

Yeon Sowol clenched his fist.

The True Flame he had only just kindled was far too weak.

Because of that, the process of essence melting into qi within the Eight Extraordinary Vessels was agonizingly slow. At this rate, it felt as though it would take another ten thousand years for all his essence to melt away.

That was not all.

He had not known before, but he knew now.

The Twelve Regular Meridians that Yi Yubaek had helped him refine once before.

Their stage of maturity had improved by leaps and bounds afterward, but even that now felt woefully insufficient.

"The flow of energy keeps breaking off. I already have so little qi I can control that harmony barely forms, and now even that keeps getting cut off..."

How had he even lived like this before?

His body suddenly felt like a creepy mountain path overgrown with messy weeds, and he could not stand it.

Click.

Unable to bear it any longer, Yeon Sowol took out a small wooden box.

"I was originally going to train for a few days and get more used to the first-rate realm, but..."

There did not seem to be any need. It did not feel as though a few days of training would improve anything.

"Come to think of it, I've been saving this to use at exactly this moment."

Why he had endured for so long.

He wanted to use it after reaching the first-rate realm, right when he felt most lost about how to further refine that realm, so he could gain the greatest benefit.

He had held back.

The Greater Rejuvenation Pill.

All this time. Every moment.

So he did not need to hold back anymore.

"Okay."

Yeon Sowol opened the wooden box.

"Whew."

He took a deep breath.

There had been another reason he had planned to train for a few days first.

'This time, the danger of a heart demon is greater than the danger of Cultivation Deviation. Always remember that your surroundings are so dark you cannot see anything. Then everything you do see will be a lie.'

Yeon Sowol remembered Yi Yubaek's warning.

A heart demon.

He had never forgotten that chilling fear for even a moment.

Perhaps he needed time to prepare himself. He had intended to buy time under the excuse of stabilizing his realm for a few days.

"Let's do this."

His mind had completely changed now.

He had become first-rate,

and as his way of seeing and feeling the world changed, his state of mind changed with it.

The world was still dangerous and terrifying, yet somehow, it felt familiar.

The path that would let him draw closer to that world was the Greater Rejuvenation Pill resting on his palm.

"I can overcome it this time too."

Yeon Sowol believed in himself.

He believed in the heart that had begun to connect not just with himself, but with the energy of the world.

Gulp.

He swallowed the Greater Rejuvenation Pill.

The pill had looked utterly ordinary from the outside, but the instant it entered his mouth, it dissolved and flowed down his throat like milk.

Whoosh!

At once, Yeon Sowol felt tremendous heat blaze inside his body.

...!

He nearly screamed.

He barely held it in. Opening his mouth outside the prescribed moments during qi circulation could lead to disaster.

'Wh-what is this heat...?!'

It was absurdly hot.

Not even when Yi Yubaek had forcibly tempered his body had it been this bad.

Yeon Sowol hurriedly regulated his breathing, moved his body, and practiced the Willow Serenity Art.

He fought desperately for his life as cold sweat poured off him.

Yet after a quarter hour, his expression abruptly relaxed. His eyebrows rose as he failed to hide his surprise.

'It's... this gentle? No. It's more than gentle.'

The flames that had risen as the Greater Rejuvenation Pill dissolved.

He had been startled by their heat only at first.

They were hotter than anything he had ever experienced, even hotter than True Flame, yet they were astonishingly safe.

'The flames are controlling the stage of maturity on their own...?'

The first flames gathered in the dantian network.

Whoooosh!

A netlike network spread through his abdomen like clouds, wrapping around the roots of the Conception Vessel, Governing Vessel, and Penetrating Vessel.

The flames settled there, even taking root in its smallest branches, and poured out fierce heat.

That was when Yeon Sowol had first broken out in a cold sweat. He had feared his insides would melt away.

But things unfolded completely differently.

'The dantian network is being refined on its own.'

The flames that had entered even the tiniest roots flowed with remarkable gentleness and began strengthening his dantian.

Since the Willow Serenity Art was a moving cultivation art, it was practiced through motion rather than seated meditation. That meant the Twelve Regular Meridians running through his whole body were refined quickly, but refinement of the dantian and Eight Extraordinary Vessels was slow.

Yet the Greater Rejuvenation Pill seemed to know this. It went straight into the dantian network and refined his dantian.

It cleared away the path blocked by weeds and boulders, then created a picturesque road paved with polished stone and lined with bamboo fences.

Whoosh!

As it coursed through that path, the Greater Rejuvenation Pill's flames grew even fiercer.

Then, within the blazing Conception Vessel, Governing Vessel, and Penetrating Vessel, essence began melting into qi.

It happened at an outrageous speed.

Innate qi swelled in an instant, like ice melting into water beneath the sunlight.

Essence was sticky and solid, while qi was gentle and flowing. The Eight Extraordinary Vessels gradually softened and began surging violently.

Hummmmmm!

The meridians across his entire body responded, and true qi arose.

Resonating with the heat pouring out from the Eight Extraordinary Vessels, the Twelve Regular Meridians, Twelve Divergent Meridians, and Fifteen Collaterals gradually grew hot as well.

Yeon Sowol had not struggled at all through this entire process.

All he had done was follow the Greater Rejuvenation Pill's flames, making sure not a speck of heat went to waste.

Of course, even that had only become possible because he had reached the first-rate realm, but still, there was not much for Yeon Sowol to do.

The Greater Rejuvenation Pill's flames adjusted the broad stage of maturity by themselves. Yeon Sowol only supplemented and assisted them, reducing waste.

After heating his dantian for a long while, the Greater Rejuvenation Pill suddenly began spreading throughout his body.

With heat still left to spare, it refined every corner of him.

'Focus! Stay focused!'

From this point on, Yeon Sowol became busy as well. When the flames had remained inside his dantian, there had not been much to manage, but once they began spreading through his whole body, even supporting them was no easy task.

Not a single grain of heat could go to waste. Yeon Sowol put every ounce of strength into helping the Greater Rejuvenation Pill's flames.

Fwoosh! Whoosh!

Yeon Sowol's Twelve Regular Meridians remained as they had been after he ate the Dragon Scale Mushroom and refined them with Yi Yubaek.

To put it another way, they were paths with a few flagstones laid down and bamboo growing here and there.

Yi Yubaek had called that bamboo-like energy Chosen Green Bamboo.

It was an energy that could be achieved through the Windflow School's secret arts.

But when the Greater Rejuvenation Pill's flames passed through him, everything changed.

The bamboo bent and wove through the flames, becoming fences.

The flagstones on the ground baked in the heat with a sharp crack, transforming into resonant stone and being cut into neat squares that decorated the road.

Neither Yeon Sowol nor Yi Yubaek knew it, but among prestigious orthodox schools that had inherited profound teachings, it was energy known as Flourishing Selection Stone and Flourishing Selection Bamboo.

It was a grade of essence qi close to the finest among the Seventy-Two Earthly Fiends.

Yeon Sowol's body underwent bodily cultivation on its own.

How many shichen had passed?

No. Perhaps days had passed.

When the Greater Rejuvenation Pill's flames, which had endlessly circled his body, finally subsided, Yeon Sowol suddenly came to his senses.

"Uh..."

He felt strange.

Like he was drunk despite not having had a drink.

Yeon Sowol staggered as he moved.

"What is this...?"

His face felt uncomfortable, so he touched it. His beard had grown thick, as though months had passed.

"That much... time passed? Then why am I not that hungry...?"

Yeon Sowol chewed fasting pills and jerky, then lit a timekeeping incense stick.

He shuffled around, shaved his beard, and washed himself.

But the drunken feeling would not fade.

The world spun, heat kept rushing from his breath, and his mind felt distant.

"Huh. So this is why he said a month. My spirit must have been badly shaken. It was incredibly hot, after all."

Yeon Sowol swayed as he slowly moved his body.

It was dark anyway, and there was nothing to do, so he intended to train.

As he trained, he suddenly saw the incense he had lit burn out. Two shichen had passed.

"Hm."

As Yeon Sowol reached to light another incense stick, he suddenly felt something strange on his face again and touched it.

"..."

His beard was thick again.

This time, his hair had grown long enough to brush his shoulders.

"What? What's going on?"

His sense of time was completely off.

It felt as though he had been here for years, but it also felt like only a few days had passed.

Yeon Sowol shaved again and cut his hair.

Even though he found the drunken feeling strange, he did not pay it much mind.

That was when it began.

"Sowol. Are you in there?"

Yi Yubaek's voice came from beyond the boulder.

Yeon Sowol did not answer.

He had already experienced this during his previous closed-door seclusion.

He silently continued training, hoping his shaken spirit would return to its proper place.

"Sowol! Sowol! Something's happened! Hurry! Open up!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

This time, Mo Cheong's knocking echoed against the boulder.

Yeon Sowol did not answer again.

He had already experienced it during his previous closed-door seclusion.

"Sowol."

When he slept for a while, Hang Inwoo sometimes whispered in his ear.

That made him uncomfortable enough to wake up.

"Yeon Sowol."

Sometimes, while he was eating jerky, Eun-yeong's voice would call out.

He missed her a little, so he set the jerky beside him and offered a prayer.

Still.

"This is manageable."

Perhaps because it was his second time, it did not feel as difficult as before.

It was only frustrating that it was dark and he could not see anything.

Yeon Sowol felt proud of how much he had grown.

Until a faint voice drifted to him from far away.

- Sowol, you're moving your eyelids a lot today, aren't you?

"..."

Yeon Sowol's hand trembled.

That voice just now. What was it?

- Oh my? I think he heard my voice! He moved his fingers! Honey, look. Sowol...

- What? Really? Sowol!

Ah. This was...

It had not even been that long.

Only about a year had passed.

Yet the voices already sounded strangely unfamiliar.

"...Mom? Dad...?"

In the darkness, Yeon Sowol muttered without realizing it.

- Honey. Honey. Sowol...

- He'll wake up. He's responding more and more.

- Of all days, for the bus to plunge like that on the day of the college entrance exam...

- It's okay. Everything will be okay.

Yeon Sowol's body trembled.

"A... heart demon?"

As though he stood naked in a winter blizzard.

Footnotes:

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