A moon-bright night.
In a pit deep in the deserted mountains.
Without so much as a coffin, only the sorrowful body of a young girl lay there forlornly.
“……Cough, kahak.”
Not a corpse yet, then.
But she would soon die, so how could one not pity her?
The girl’s body, half-buried in fallen leaves, was a sight too gruesome to behold.
Throwing knives and arrows had turned her into a hedgehog, and a long precious sword was lodged in her belly.
Even if one were hunting the fiercest of beasts, one would not be so merciless.
Those who had hunted this girl surely had no human hearts.
Yet the girl herself was no different in that regard.
Who would believe it if told she had walked a path stained with blood, like an asura fiend?
The girl’s name was Wu Jiao.
Though she looked like a young child, she was twenty years old this year.
She was born in Guizhou, and lost her parents as a child after being caught up in the rebellion raised by Yang Yinglong.
When the world fell into chaos, she followed a procession of refugees to Yunnan, where she was taken in by Duan Guheng, the cult master of the Miaojiang Five Poisons Cult. Thereafter, she studied directly under him and was called material fit to be his successor.
In the end, however, she could not endure the agonizing training and left the sect, fleeing far into the Central Plains.
All she had learned in her life was sinister poison arts, and she knew nothing of etiquette, so she was like a mountain beast wearing a girl’s skin. Even after going out into the world, it was only natural that she walked a road of hardship.
Because she did not know how to endure hunger, she easily stole what belonged to others. Because she did not know how to mingle with people, quarrels arose over every little thing. Because she did not know the word mercy, anyone who picked a fight with her was killed without exception.
In the end, her evil deeds spread far and wide, and she came to be wanted.
But was this girl an ordinary girl? She was someone who had been doted upon by the cult master of the Five Poisons Cult, who called her a vessel for the Poison King Body, one that might not be born even once in a hundred years.
Through the Five Poisons Cult’s secret arts, the care of spiritual beasts, and harsh training that scraped at the bone, her body had drawn exceedingly close to the Body of Ten Thousand Poisons.
Though she had not yet perfected that realm, when she circulated her internal energy, she could poison and kill a person merely by touching them.
As a result, ordinary constables did not dare even think of capturing her. In the end, only after the imperial experts came forth in great numbers and fought a desperate battle were they able to seize this exceedingly dangerous beast.
She was truly a seed too unsettling to leave alive, but perhaps she looked precious in the eyes of the wicked.
The eunuch Zhao Weixian, head of the Dongchang, took this beast in.
What great effort did it take to raise a single stray dog?
He gave her a room where she could curl up and sleep, rice to eat, and water to wash herself with, and the girl followed the official who had taken her in like a dog.
After that, she was assigned to the Jinyiwei and took charge of filthy tasks such as surveillance, intimidation, and assassination. She carried them out so well it seemed she had been born for such work.
The girl knew nothing of complicated politics, nor of the distinction between good and evil.
So long as her stomach was full and her back was warm, that was enough.
If she had learned characters in her spare time, she might have known the saying, “When the hare is dead, the hound is boiled.”
Once the hunt was over, a hunting dog that had outlived its usefulness ought to be boiled and eaten.
Having eliminated all his political enemies and seized absolute power, Zhao Weixian boiled this unsightly dog without delay.
And so, she was now dying among the fallen leaves.
Until a short while ago, she had been so cold her body trembled, but now the pain left her no room to feel the cold.
‘It hurts. I’m hungry. ……I don’t want to die.’
In her heart, she whined like a child.
But how could the heavens look kindly upon this wicked beast, who had not accumulated even a single good deed in her life?
If anyone tried to save this girl, that person would surely be some evil sort who meant to use her, just like Zhao Weixian.
And now, one such evil sort leaned her face over the edge of the pit and looked down at the girl.
“Are you all right? Are you still alive?”
Was she a fairy descended from the moon?
The one who appeared was a young girl, with dazzlingly white hair and deep blue, jade-like eyes.
Though it was a night of swirling snow, this girl wore thin clothes that exposed her neck.
She was no ordinary person. She might truly be a fairy.
Wu Jiao hurriedly squeezed out her voice and begged.
“Save…… me…….”
Hearing that, the girl grinned. Her mouth drew a crescent moon, her eyes a waning moon; her appearance was so bewitching it bordered on uncanny.
“All right. From now on, you’re going to be our family’s dog.”
“Mm, I will…….”
“Hehe, how cute.”
Wu Jiao saw the girl lightly descend into the pit.
Perhaps because she felt relieved, Wu Jiao’s eyes gradually began to close.
“My name is Yaohua. What’s yours?”
“……Wu Jiao…….”
“Wu Jiao, I have a miracle elixir that will make you better, but this medicine can only be given from mouth to mouth. Is that all right?”
With her mind growing duller by the moment, Wu Jiao thought for a while.
After all, there was something that bothered her.
“My saliva has poison in it…….”
Hearing that, Yaohua smiled brightly once again.
“It’s all right. I want to drink your poison.”
What did that mean? What a strange woman.
But either way, if that was so, there was no reason to stop her.
Yaohua’s transparent face gradually drew near.
Her head covered the moon, casting a shadow over Wu Jiao’s sight.
In that dim field of vision, pale pink lips approached.
Even in such a situation, something deep in her chest tickled.
The feeling was mysterious, as if moist flower petals were gently pressing against her lips.
Warm breath.
Come to think of it, this was the first time she had ever kissed anyone.
In the instant before she lost consciousness, that thought came to her.
*
Yaohua.
She was a person of boundless mystery.
If one examined her feature by feature, every single aspect of her was extraordinary.
First of all, her beautiful appearance captured the gaze of anyone who saw her and rendered them unable to move.
Even Wu Jiao, a woman herself, would sometimes stare blankly at Yaohua from beside her and lose track of time.
Her skin had not a single blemish, and her lips were always lustrous, no matter the season.
Her long eyelashes were silver, sparkling as though frosted over, a truly magnificent sight; and the blue eyes hidden beneath them were like a pair of precious jewels.
Her body was slender and graceful, with elegant curves like a mermaid from a tale.
Compared to Wu Jiao, she was about a head and a half taller, though that was also because Wu Jiao herself was short.
Her voice was soft, and her way of speaking was innocent.
Her footsteps were light, and her gestures were rather playful, yet also alluring.
At times, Yaohua would spread her long fingers and carelessly stroke Wu Jiao’s small cheeks or head, and because Wu Jiao liked that touch, she always stayed docile.
Yaohua was deep in thought and rich in knowledge, making it difficult to fathom her inner mind.
She was versed not only in the Four Books and Five Classics and Yangming learning, but also in military strategy, pharmacology, astronomy, and even epigraphy.
On top of that, she was skilled in zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting, and could even dance well. Where else could such talent be found?
However, there was one thing even she could not do: she was utterly poor at singing.
Yet Yaohua herself said she loved singing most of all, which was precisely where the heavens’ indifference revealed itself.
Her age could not be guessed. Judging by appearance alone, she seemed to have just reached marriageable age, but through conversation, one could infer that she was a being who had lived far longer than that.
Wu Jiao was completely captivated by this unfathomable girl.
Her admiration and affection for Yaohua sprang up like bamboo shoots in spring, and when she remained by Yaohua’s side, her heart felt more at ease than anything in the world.
Yaohua took Wu Jiao far from the Central Plains and entered the deep, secluded valleys of the Qilian Mountains in Gansu.
In a beautiful valley no one ever visited, they built a dwelling and lived together, and each day was like a dream.
There, Yaohua taught Wu Jiao etiquette, the principles of being human, and Buddhist learning.
Thanks to that, Wu Jiao did gain a few somewhat human qualities, but a stray dog was still a stray dog; she remained reckless and arrogant.
Yaohua also taught Wu Jiao martial arts.
What Wu Jiao learned from Yaohua was the thread art.
Originally, Wu Jiao had studied under Duan Guheng, cult master of the Miaojiang Five Poisons Cult, since childhood, but she had learned almost no external martial arts.
For years, Duan Guheng had only poured precious pills and extreme poisons into Wu Jiao’s body in order to turn her into a Poison King Body.
This was the principle of the Miaojiang Five Poisons Cult’s secret internal cultivation method, Ten Thousand Poisons Return to the Origin, a method of growing internal energy through poison.
In this way, Wu Jiao came to possess profound internal energy at a young age, but because of the side effects of the poisons, her body stopped growing. And since she knew no proper external arts, the only martial art she used in battle was the clumsy hidden-weapon technique she had learned after entering the Jinyiwei.
Yaohua came up with the idea of combining that hidden-weapon technique with her own thread art.
The essence of this martial art was to tie hidden weapons to threads and control those threads with internal energy, unfolding an ever-changing hidden-weapon technique.
Wu Jiao and Yaohua joined forces for several years and at last completed a new martial art, naming it Yuanlian Xueluo.
Yaohua taught Wu Jiao martial arts, knowledge, and humanity.
She was Wu Jiao’s master, her mother, and also her closest friend.
Wu Jiao could no longer imagine a life without Yaohua.
But what need was there to imagine it?
One day, three years after she met Yaohua, that very thing became reality.
At the end of winter.
Recently, Yaohua had been coughing more often, and then, like a candle flame going out, she silently collapsed.
That had never happened before.
To the panicked Wu Jiao, Yaohua smiled and told her to be at ease.
“I-I’ll go down the mountain and get medicine made.”
“There’s no need. My lifespan has simply reached its end.”
“Lifespan?”
Such a word did not suit her. She was young and beautiful—how could a flower wither the very moment it reached full bloom?
“Wu Jiao, I’ll tell you an old story.”
In the distant past, when the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors ruled this land.
A foolish girl coveted immortality, trespassed into the realm of immortals, and stole and ate one of the peaches of immortality from the garden of the Queen Mother of the West.
The moment she took a bite of the peach, the girl was enveloped from head to toe in white energy as though struck by lightning, and afterward, her hair turned completely white.
From that day on, the girl’s body no longer grew, so she rejoiced, believing she had obtained eternal youth and immortality.
But this was not a blessing. It was a curse.
Her body did not age for her entire life and maintained its youth, so it was certainly eternal youth.
But it was not immortality.
When the girl reached fifty years of age, illness suddenly arose in her body, and she could no longer rise from her sickbed.
The girl feared death and wasted away in sickness, until at last she breathed her last.
But after several years passed, the girl opened her eyes again. Not on the far shore, but on this one.
When she awakened, the girl retained the same appearance and memories she had possessed in life.
The girl realized that she had reincarnated.
It was true that by eating the peach of immortality then, the girl had obtained eternal youth and immortality.
Only, she had not obtained both in a single body; rather, her body had gained eternal youth, and her soul had gained immortality.
That life, too, ended at fifty.
And the girl was born anew once more, in a place she did not know.
Why was her lifespan fifty years?
Fifty, the age at which one was said to understand the will of heaven.
Before long, the girl realized that this was the punishment heaven had given her.
She died, was born again, and died.
Within that infinite cycle of reincarnation, she came to understand the cruelty of eternal youth and immortality.
Eternity was a blessing that human beings could not bear.
The girl felt utterly alone beneath the heavens.
All those she loved were buried in the earth, new graves rose upon old graves, and over them grew wasteland.
In the course of repeating life, everything lost meaning.
When she ate, it felt as though she were chewing sand, and every human she met and spoke with felt like a paper doll.
I want to die. I want to sleep together with those I love.
At some point, that became the only thing she wished for.
But no form of suicide could halt her reincarnation.
Even so, she did not abandon hope.
She thought.
There must surely be an end.
She searched for a way to die.
She wandered the world.
She acquired knowledge.
She even tried leaning on religion, but there was no practical benefit.
In the end, one’s own problems must be solved by oneself.
She traced it back to the root.
The fact that one reincarnates is proof that the soul exists.
If something exists in reality, there must be a way to interfere with it.
Indeed, the half-peach eaten in Xiwangmu's garden changed the nature of my soul.
Then couldn't this deviation be reversed through an interference equal to it?
To annihilate the soul.
With what?
Extreme poison.
I must find an extreme poison capable of dissolving even the soul.
And so the course was set.
What remained was unceasing trial.
Time, at least, was infinite.
“If you prepare to pour down rain with arrows, there is no target so small that you cannot hit it…….”
Yohwa looked at Ogyo with a childlike smile.
“You too are one of the arrows I have fired……. Ogyo, your Mandokgwijong is not yet complete. Please, for my sake, do your best…….”
Mandokgwijong was a heart method that, true to its name of myriad poisons passing through one path, accepted all poisons into the body to refine them into a single extreme poison.
Yohwa wished for it.
That the poison would send her into eternal rest.
For that, she had looked after Ogyo for the past three years.
Ogyo had finally realized she was being used.
But she was not angry in the slightest.
“Then Yohwa won't die? You'll come back to life even if you die? When can we meet again?”
“If short, two years; if long, it may take ten years…….”
She could wait that long.
Hope sprouted in her heart.
Seeing Ogyo's brightened face, Yohwa made a bitter expression.
“I'm sorry, I intended this from the very beginning…….”
“It's fine, I don't mind. I was happy to be able to meet Yohwa.”
“In secret, I altered your constitution as well. You will now die much later than others…….”
“What's bad about living long? I can be with Yohwa even longer.”
Kkeh-heok—Yohwa coughed violently, and a handful of blood soaked the bed.
Even knowing there was a promise of meeting again, seeing that made Ogyo's heart feel like it was catching fire.
“Uh, where do I have to go? Where should I wait to meet you?”
“Even I do not know that…….”
Yohwa said that when she died, her body would turn to smoke and vanish, so Ogyo must not be surprised.
The scattered physical form would gather again somewhere in the world after time passed.
The leaves of a certain tree would all turn pure white.
Eventually, when a great fruit formed on that tree, a new body would be born from within.
Yohwa extended a slender hand outside the bed.
“Ogyo, please find me. I will be born from the white-leaved tree…….”
“Yes, I'll find you.”
“Please come to meet me…….”
“Yes, even if I must walk a thousand li, I will come to meet you.”
Those long fingers coiled around her hand.
Like a snake constricting its prey—yet no, it was far too frail to say such a thing.
“Next time, without fail, kill me with your own hands…….”
“……Yohwa, I…….”
“Promise me, Ogyo.”
Only when saying those words did a fierce flame stir within those blue pupils.
“You must bring a savage poison fierce enough to melt my soul……. Do you understand?”
She could not possibly say no.
It seemed that if she spoke such words, Yohwa would not be able to rest peacefully.
So Ogyo nodded as if swallowing something bitter.
“……I understand, I understand.”
“Thank you…….”
As if finally relieved, Yohwa released her hand and lay straight.
Eyes closed, she steadied her breath for a moment, then soon began to hum softly.
Reciting a poem to a rhythm.
It was a habit she often had.
“You ask when I shall return, but no date can yet be promised…….”
A clumsy singing voice.
Yet even that was pleasant to hear.
Like gazing at the moon reflected in a pond, the stray dog was always spellbound by this maiden.
“Night rain falls on Bashan, swelling the autumn pool…….”
Winter was retreating, and last night sleet had fallen.
The pond did not overflow, but the water's surface swayed endlessly.
“When shall we trim the candle wicks together by the west window, and speak again of the night rain that fell on Bashan…….”
Yes, when shall that be.
When shall I again…… you…….
As if falling asleep, so did Yohwa depart from the world.
Just as she had said, the body left by the soul soon turned to mist and drifted away languidly.
Ogyo wept for a long while before finally stopping.
In her bloodshot eyes gazing at the empty bed, a frosty resolve took shape.
Having made a promise with her, it was worth a thousand pieces of gold.
Even if she hated it, she had to keep it.
The stray dog composed her heart and steeled her resolve.
She would find it without fail.
The extreme poison that would kill her.