Chapter 36. On the First Night of My Appointment

The meeting ended as peacefully as my heart desired.

I am the sort of man who conducts meetings in such a fruitful and efficient manner. After sending the officers away first, and while So Gunpyeong took the Golden Dragon Pavilion to set up an ironclad guard, I welcomed a quiet and sacred night.

It was also a day when the power of the Heavenly Jade brimmed within me.

As I sat alone in the main hall, wearing my mask and doing nothing but breathing, a maidservant approached and asked,

“Gang Leader, will you be dining? Or shall I prepare a bath first?”

Did this maidservant know that the Gang Leader had changed? Or did she not? If she had only been doing chores here without going out, then it was only natural she wouldn’t know. To let her hear my voice, I replied,

“No need for a bath, and I ate pork backbone, so I’m fine for food as well. I think there’s some blood on my face, so bring me some wash water here.”

“Understood.”

The maidservant, without noticing anything in particular, trotted off somewhere. I sank into thought for a moment.

‘Does my voice sound similar to the Rabbit’s?’

Both were deep voices, but their qualities were different.

Before long, as I watched the maidservant walking back with wash water in a basin, I took off my mask.

The maidservant thoughtlessly checked my face after I removed the mask, then jumped in fright and dropped the basin full of water onto the floor.

Her eyes were wide as they could go.

I looked at the water she had spilled and said in a subdued tone,

“Bring it again. And wipe the floor while you’re at it. You really threw that washbasin down with gusto.”

“Ah, yes……”

“Don’t be startled. This time, don’t spill it.”

“Understood. I apologize.”

A short while later, the maidservant returned with the basin, both hands trembling violently, and as soon as she set it on the table, she bowed her head deeply.

“Don’t tremble. No harm will come to you. I am the new leader of the Black Rabbit Gang.”

“Yes, Gang Leader. It is an honor to meet you for the first time.”

After wiping the bloodstains from my face, I cleaned the bloodied mask and asked the maidservant,

“Does my voice sound similar to the previous Gang Leader’s?”

“Not right now, it doesn’t.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. When you have the mask on, your voice normally comes out slightly altered, so I didn’t notice the difference.”

“So if I speak while wearing the mask, it seems to sound similar.”

“Yes.”

Looking at it, the inside of the mask was made of a hard material, and there were tiny holes at the mouth so air could escape. It seemed the overall sealed structure distorted the voice. If the mask was like this, it would be safe to say my identity wouldn’t be exposed because of my voice. And to a certain degree, I could also imitate the previous Gang Leader’s voice and tone.

Suddenly, the maidservant seemed to be glancing at me a few times, so I asked,

“What? Am I handsome? Do your eyes keep wandering over?”

“I apologize.”

“Mm.”

What did she mean by apologizing? I couldn’t tell whether she meant I wasn’t handsome, or that she was sorry for daring to look at the Gang Leader.

“As you know, today is the first day of my appointment as Gang Leader. You guide me a bit. Show me my quarters, the personal training room, the spirit medicine storage room, and places like that. Lead the way.”

“Yes, Gang Leader.”

I followed the maidservant and inspected the various places the Gang Leader had used. As it was a fairly luxurious residence, there was nothing it lacked. There was even a place just for changing clothes, two bedrooms, a private bath, and a room with some unidentified wooden bed sitting all by itself.

“What is this place for? There’s only a bed here.”

“On days when he practiced external arts, he would loosen his muscles here.”

“Who loosened them?”

“The maidservants would gather around and do it.”

“Instead of training, he was doing useless things……”

The next place she guided me to served as both a personal training room and a spirit medicine storage room.

I ordered the maidservant,

“Gather the maidservants, then tell them to spread out and stand by a little ways away. If anyone approaches, there’s no need to forcibly stop them. If you just say something like, ‘What business brings you here?’ I’ll handle the rest. You understand what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes, Gang Leader.”

I waved my hand to send the maidservant out and closed the door.

* * *

Among spirit medicines, there are rare kinds you might never see even if you spent your entire life rotting away in the jianghu, and there are mass-produced varieties that are not so rare.

Only a tiny minority have consumed truly rare spirit medicines.

The heir of a great clan, the successor of a sect, a sect leader who has reached his prime, or a martial artist of the jianghu who obtained a rare spirit medicine through some tremendous fortuitous encounter……

Even combining all of them, there aren’t many.

So the majority of martial artists in the jianghu spend their whole lives taking mass-produced spirit medicines before they die.

Put simply, mass-produced spirit medicines are high-grade medicinal materials made by physicians. Because of that, when martial artists of the jianghu speak of a divine physician, they sometimes mean someone who makes excellent mass-produced spirit medicines.

I know one such fellow myself.

He was a man with countless problems, and his end was extremely miserable. Along with the Left Envoy of Light, he was also someone I absolutely had to find first.

I do not want him to meet another miserable death. In any case, this fellow is also entangled in problems with the Great Rakshasa, though timing-wise, not right now. What is certain is that the sooner I kill the Great Rakshasa, the significantly lower the chance that this fellow will live a miserable life. Of course, compared to my previous life, I am still in the period when I was working as a waiter in Ilyang County, so there is plenty of time.

I opened the small drawers one by one and checked the mass-produced spirit medicines.

Even mass-produced spirit medicines come in many types.

Medicines for treating internal injuries, antidotes, and wound medicines were mixed together, so I couldn’t just eat them recklessly. Spirit medicines could be broadly classified like this, and if divided in detail, there were even more. Among them, the most representative were Beast Spirit Medicines.

Beasts referred to winged creatures and four-legged creatures.

Things fed to messenger pigeons that carried letters, or spirit medicines made to permanently increase a horse’s stamina or explosive power, were Beast Spirit Medicines. It seemed the Black Rabbit Gang had also handled messenger pigeons, as such things were stocked here too.

The reason the Murim Alliance is powerful is because it mass-produces these common spirit medicines on a truly large scale. Backed by solid financial power, it keeps increasing the number of horses fed spirit medicines, and by using them, it unofficially operates cavalry made up of martial artists of the jianghu.

The Demon Cult bastards are even worse.

Since they do not view people as people to begin with, they carried out all sorts of experiments on beasts. All of these experiments were for the purpose of dealing with the Murim Alliance’s elite cavalry, and because of that, an enormous number of innocent ferocious beasts were sacrificed.

While rummaging through the drawers, I finally found three Heart Heat Pills, a high-grade common spirit medicine.

The reason these remained was simple.

With Heart Heat Pills, even taking just one usually caused fever and aftereffects like coming down with body aches, befitting the term common grade. Since I had suffered greatly from heat and qi deviation while learning martial arts, I knew the Heart Heat Pill well.

The time when it is safe to take this Heart Heat Pill is when one has firmly accumulated extreme yang internal energy.

Surprisingly, that is exactly my current state. I listened to my surroundings for a moment, then chewed and swallowed all three Heart Heat Pills at once.

A short while later, heat filled my entire body.

I sat cross-legged, my face bright red, and prepared to unfold the heart method of the Golden Tortoise Carefree Art. Since I had already reached the realm of Flame, the heat of the Heart-Heat Pill was gradually suppressed.

For a moment, with my eyes closed, I was seized by a strange imagining.

Before I had even begun the heart method, the process of heat devouring heat had been vividly drawn by my bizarre imagination.

It was the sight of the experts imprisoned within the Heavenly Jade all rushing forward, then charging like ferocious beasts to devour the heat of the Heart-Heat Pill for themselves.

My stomach lurched slightly.

‘Damn, that startled me…….’

Before I had even begun a full heavenly circuit, I felt the energy of the Heavenly Jade grow stronger, if only faintly. The energy of the spirit medicine had merged with it in an instant, as if absorbed by the Heavenly Jade.

The sensation was truly strange, so I stretched out my hand, drew up the true qi of the Golden Tortoise Carefree Art, and gathered it in my palm.

I held the qi of the Wood realm in my hand, then converted it into the energy of the Flame realm. As the Flame realm condensed in my palm, the center of my palm gradually turned scarlet.

‘Something’s strange today.’

I had not yet obtained a clue as to exactly what was strange.

The Heavenly Jade was likely an object that had absorbed and accumulated what could be described as the qi, life force, and essence of living martial artists.

All of a sudden, a doubt occurred to me.

Had some bizarre ability to absorb another person’s qi or inner force taken root in my body, or in the Heavenly Jade I had absorbed……?

For a moment, I muttered with a vacant expression.

“No way, right?”

I merely want to live as a madman.

I had no desire to become a monster beyond even a madman like the Cult Leader. With my eyes closed for a while, I took deep breaths and cooled my mind with the impassiveness of a wooden rooster.

In the midst of that, I prayed that nothing was wrong with my body.

Because there were still far too many monkeys left to beat to death.

Still, just in case……

If such an ability had arisen in me, I found myself wanting to give it a name for no reason.

Absorption Art, Absorbing Qigong, Star-Absorbing Divine Art, Heavenly Jade Absorption Art.

Heavenly Jade Absorbing Divine Art, Heavenly Jade Absorbing Demonic Art, Mad Demon Heavenly Jade Star-Absorbing Divine Art.

‘Absorb (吸)…… forget it.’

As expected, naming things is the hardest part of any field.

For some reason, it felt right for the character “absorb” to be in it, but there was no name that rolled off the tongue. After pondering it, I decided to settle on it later. I had not yet clearly recognized this ability, after all.

In my private training room, I did not circulate qi and regulate my breath. Instead, I repeatedly drew the qi of the Flame realm into my palm and continued the work of confirming this ability. Deciding that I would gain nothing at this rate, I sat cross-legged and quietly sank into meditation.

I mixed the words of the Left Envoy of Light with my own conjectures.

I explored the essence of the Heavenly Jade, adding inference and imagination.

I also quietly observed the state of my own body.

Then I thought from the Cult Leader’s perspective.

What had the Cult Leader done as soon as he took the Heavenly Jade? It must have been a matter of grave importance, one that determined whether or not the Cult Leader would become the greatest under heaven. The Demonic Cult would have set up an ironclad guard more thorough than ever before. The Dharma Protectors would have waited around the Cult Leader, tense and holding their breath.

Would he have merely circulated qi and regulated his breath……?

No. He had likely carried out a great rite that could make him a Demon God at the same time. That was because the Demonic Path’s martial arts differed markedly in nature from those of ordinary sects.

My free imagination reconstructed the Cult Leader’s figure. He had probably applied that great rite while taking the Heavenly Jade, and if he had succeeded, he would have become an untouchable monster beyond the heavens.

That must be why the absurd fortuitous encounter called regression had been granted to me.

After finishing my meditation, I pondered for a while with my arms crossed, then reached toward the drawer containing the spirit medicines with the principle of Absorb (吸), an auxiliary method used when competing with palm force.

For a long time, nothing happened.

Even though nothing happened, I remained with my hand extended like a fool, revising my strategy, making my thoughts flexible, and going through the process of confirming various insights.

In any case, creating a martial art that has never existed in the world is the role of madmen.

Because only by not imitating the thoughts of others does something that never existed in the world appear.

Even though my current realm of martial arts and level of inner force were not at the point where I could seize objects through the void, I extended my hand like a solid stone statue and reexamined the entire world of martial learning I had accumulated over my lifetime.

And in an instant, I discarded the martial theories I had built up.

In the realm of a blank sheet, I used the brush of my mind to organize the power of the Heavenly Jade and the principle of Absorb into mnemonic formulas, then drew up the Heavenly Jade’s fundamental power and once again dyed the center of my palm red.

Then, with a clatter, one small drawer that had been storing spirit medicines shot through the air and slammed into my palm.

Thwack!

I quickly grabbed the drawer, calmed my startled heart, and breathed out.

“Phew…….”

Enlightenment came all at once, like a sweeping storm. At the same time, I decided the name of this ability on the spot.

It was the Heavenly Jade Star-Absorbing Great Art.

However, the Heavenly Jade was my secret alone, something I could tell no one, so I intended to omit those two words in public.

On the first night of my historic inauguration as the Black Cat Gang Leader, this was how I thought solely of martial arts.