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Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Martial Alliance Rulebook Archives ◈

Chapter 34: Between Second-rate and Peak (2)

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A sudden, terrifying threat of murder.

Just as I was about to protest, thinking, “Goodness, how could a lowly junior martial artist like me dare play with you, Senior?”, a gust of wind brushed across my eyelids.

When I blinked, Mubeon had vanished without leaving the slightest trace behind.

I took several deep breaths and looked up at the sky.

"My life, seriously..."

Didn't they say you had to be wary of women, children, and the elderly in the martial world?

She called Senior Jade so casually that she had to be old, yet she looked more like a young girl. The Life-and-Death Gambler had every possible danger sign rolled into one person.

At least she had suffered severe injuries while fighting Maitreya. She said she had a constitution that made her hard to kill, and though her severed body had been hastily stitched back together and could still move, a complete recovery seemed beyond her.

'She said she needed to find someone called the Soul-Reaving Demon, right?'

It would probably take her quite some time before she could truly move again.

I wasn't the only Records Officer, and by all common sense, there was no reason I had to meet her again...

Then again, weren't martial artists the sort of people who openly told common sense to go to hell?

As I hurriedly packed at my lodging, I changed my mind. I remembered something that would take about a quarter-hour.

An incident of this scale had to be reported first. I borrowed paper and ink from the Martial Alliance branch, wrote a letter, and asked the person on duty to send it by carrier pigeon.

By the time I returned, either the Eccentric Physician, Senior Jade, or some other crazy expert would surely have thought of a way to hide me from her.

* * *

After what had happened yesterday, I found it hard to pay attention to the Taishan Sect's Purification Rite.

My nose had no such trouble. It was a smell I knew well, though I had never thought I would smell it again.

Chicken.

The smell of fried chicken, coated in oil and deep-fried.

The Anomaly with that shockingly appetite-whetting scent was called Fuxi.

It looked exactly as its smell suggested. It had the body of a rooster and the face of a human, and every time it crowed, a quarrel broke out.

More accurately, that was what it had looked like. A Taishan Sect Daoist had cut off its head in a single stroke to stop the chaos Fuxi caused.

Now, the Taishan Sect only managed its head.

Its head neither rotted nor burned, and whenever it let out an odd cry, discord arose among people. They had sealed it in a shrine near the Taishan Sect and periodically performed Purification Rites to weaken its turbid qi.

The Fuxi head resting in the shrine looked like an old man. Chicken feathers grew from the area where its sideburns should have been, while a chicken comb rose from its scalp in place of hair.

Its eyes were especially strange. They were almost closed, as though it were sleepy.

According to the elder preparing the Purification Rite, its eyes had originally been wide open even after death. Its eyelids had gradually lowered with every rite.

"Elder. But that..."

"You're wondering whether it's closer to a spirit creature than the Anomalies you manage?"

The elderly Taishan Sect Daoist who had welcomed me, the person responsible for this Purification Rite, stroked his beard and nodded.

"If it had followed the natural order, absorbed nature's essence, and gained spirituality that way, it would have become a spirit creature. But it accepted Demonic Qi and went bad, so you may consider it a type of Anomaly."

It was strange.

Ordinary people, and even martial artists, could live their whole lives without learning that Demonic Qi existed unless they encountered something extraordinary.

What had caused it to accept Demonic Qi and become twisted like that?

Just as the Heavenly Demon spread demonic arts among martial artists, was there something that corrupted spirit creatures as well?

* * *

Leaving the increasingly puzzling ecology of Anomalies behind, I finally returned to the Anomaly Records Office.

It had been a long assignment. I had thought it would end without much trouble if I just walked and ran, but I had encountered something far too dangerous near the end.

I headed for the Rites Department Preservation Archive. Even if I collapsed afterward, I needed to submit my report on returning from the assignment first...

"Hey, Records Officer Yeok!"

A familiar voice stopped me.

"Elder Special Physician?"

"Not that way. Come here."

The White-Robed Miracle Physician led me to the Medical Hall instead of the Anomaly Records Office. He hurriedly took me into a private room, sat me down, then suddenly shouted.

"Say, 'Maitreya, you bastard.'"

"Pardon?"

"Hurry."

"Maitreya, you bastard."

"One more time."

"Maitreya, you bast... No, if people from Mount Song hear this, won't they beat me to death with the Shaolin Eighteen Martial Arts?"

The Eccentric Physician calmly shook his head.

"It's fine. Our backers are formidable."

'Is the Director of the Records Office really that influential?'

As the head of a secret organization like this, the Director had to be close to the Martial Alliance's leadership and hold an important position trusted by the Martial Alliance Leader, but...

Shaolin was one of the martial world's great powers. If people had to name just one faction among the Nine Sects One Gang, most would choose Shaolin.

For him to confidently claim that they could quiet such opposition, I couldn't begin to guess at his public identity.

"Good. It doesn't seem you've been brainwashed by the Bright Sect."

"Not the White Lotus Sect?"

"Think of the Bright Sect as the most radical members among the White Lotus Sect's branches. Shaolin and Lesser Leiyin Temple both belong to the Buddhist tradition in a broad sense, but you wouldn't treat them as the same kind, would you?"

The Eccentric Physician's assessment was that although the Bright Sect had grown from the White Lotus Sect, a religion that ordinary people relied on for comfort in their harsh lives was entirely different from a mad religion that actively sent others to the next world.

"You met Maitreya and the Life-and-Death Gambler. How did you even come back alive?"

"I dumped the problem on the Life-and-Death Gambler."

"That lunatic doesn't have the temperament to accept something dumped on her."

"She said we should settle the outcome with treasures from the True Empty Homeland, so I told her I had brought Maitreya."

The Eccentric Physician looked at me as though I were insane.

"I suspected it from the moment you ate the Feathered-Human Gu, but you really are an ideal talent for the Anomaly Records Office."

"You mean talent, right? Not a human disaster?"

The Eccentric Physician looked away. I heard him mutter that he had never imagined I would operate on the same level as the Life-and-Death Gambler.

Hearing him mention her brought our previous conversation back to me.

"More importantly, that person wasn't only half crazy. They were completely insane."

"Hm? What are you talking about? She's from the unorthodox sects and one of the Anomaly Destruction Hall's leaders. Of course she's insane."

"Didn't you say she was only half crazy last time?"

It had been when we were leaving after eating the Human-Skin Chef's dumplings with the Eccentric Physician.

I was certain that when I asked, “Is that guy insane?”, he had answered, “You're half right.”

"Ah, that."

The Eccentric Physician answered without the slightest embarrassment.

"I said you were half right. She's crazy, but she's not a guy."

Couldn't he have explained that a little more clearly? I now understood from the bottom of my heart why the Anomaly Destruction Hall called the Eccentric Physician an Eccentric Physician.

"She said something about needing to meet the Soul-Reaving Demon."

"You've probably heard of that one before. That crazy Heavenly Martial Physique fetishist from the Eon Clan."

The Soul-Reaving Demon was the demonic practitioner Peng Juhyeok had told me about before. The Soul-Reaving Demon made a hobby of tearing out martial artists' brains and transplanting them into other bodies, then later sought to transplant their own mind into a Heavenly Martial Physique.

That process had harmed so many people that the Soul-Reaving Demon had been struck from the clan registry and was wanted as a public enemy of the martial world.

"...Does the Life-and-Death Gambler also have a hobby of coveting other people's bodies?"

The Eccentric Physician shook his head. A martial artist who had already reached her level had no need to covet another person's talent, unless, like the Soul-Reaving Demon, the very intent embedded in one's martial arts was tied to plunder and erosion.

"It's simply that the Soul-Reaving Demon is the best physician the Anomaly Destruction Hall can summon most quickly in the current martial world. Putting the Soul-Reaving Demon's temperament aside, the skills are beyond doubt, given the experience gained from harming so many people."

The Eccentric Physician explained that, given her unusual constitution, the physicians capable of properly diagnosing the Life-and-Death Gambler could be counted on one hand, himself included.

"Then, what secret martial manual did she give you?"

"Th-that? I was in such a hurry on the way here that I haven't even taken it out yet."

That was a lie. Saying I had been busy was just an excuse because I was too embarrassed to admit I had been scared to open it.

I was afraid that if I opened it, there might be tracking incense inside and the Life-and-Death Gambler would suddenly come looking for me. I had decided not to open it until I was safely inside the Martial Alliance's walls.

The secret martial manual she had given me was still wrapped up with the clothes I had worn that day and stuffed into my pack.

"That Life-and-Death Gambler lunatic called it something precious, didn't she? Aren't you curious what martial art it is? Open it."

"Is there any chance it has tracking incense or poison on it?"

"That person doesn't play tricks with wager items. Well... unless it was already poisoned when she obtained it."

Feeling a strange sense of unease, I took the clothes out of my pack.

Even if I was poisoned, I had a better chance of surviving if it happened in the Martial Alliance Medical Hall.

When I shook out the clothes, a booklet fell from the inner pocket. Four characters were written on its cover in archaic calligraphy.

Absorb.

Star.

Great.

Method.

Star-Absorbing Great Method.

"Fuck?"

No matter how I looked at it, that was the name of a goddamn demonic art.

Author's Note

"What if I refuse?"

"She'll be disappointed and provoke the Anomaly. She'll disrupt the formation array's axis, so surviving will become very difficult."

"What if I accept?"

"She'll be happy and provoke the Anomaly."

"Is that guy insane?"

"You're half right."

- Chapter 26, Treating Hyperosmia (1)

Footnotes:

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