Chapter 16
The old swordsman Yan Nan-cheon clasped his hands in a martial salute to me.
A peerless master known in the mortal world as the “Sword Demon (劍鬼).”
I screamed inwardly.
No way.
Sword Demon Yan Nan-cheon.
Even his name sounds powerful.
Somehow, I get the feeling he has the whole backstory of a monster who made a name for himself as one of the Three Great Fiends of the jianghu in his youth, then went into seclusion.
And I’m supposed to test my skills against a monster who can pierce someone’s hand with a pair of chopsticks!
‘What do you mean, teach you a move! I’m a frail, sickly fourteen-year-old girl who can’t even swing a hunk of metal properly without falling flat on my butt! A spar with the Sword Demon?’
Yan Nan-cheon stared intently at me as I sat in silence.
“Though faint, I just infused my aura with killing intent. A worldly martial artist would have foamed at the mouth and collapsed, yet you seem as if you were merely brushed by a spring breeze… Heh heh.”
I nearly choked on my tea.
Spring breeze, my foot. I’m frozen solid and can’t move.
‘My knees are shaking, you old geezer.’
“I can’t find so much as a single opening.”
I had to think carefully.
If I slipped up, I’d trade a blow with the Sword Demon and get my head lopped off.
Jin Mu-ak had done something despicable, but I’d learned one thing from that experience.
Don’t get cocky.
Boldness might be a virtue of a great man, but it’s not more precious than his life.
Besides, if we’re being technical, I’m biologically female!
So the woman card only comes out when things get rough.
‘What should I do? What do I do? I can’t just refuse without a reason.’
Speaking of reasons, I remembered a famous saying from my previous life.
If someone hates you for no reason, give them a reason to hate you.
The best course is to avoid trouble by offering an undeniable justification.
I had to think of a reason not to fight him.
Wasn’t the point of a spar to ‘gauge one’s own skill’?
If so, I had three options.
[Option 1. Admit that I’m so weak I don’t even qualify as a punching machine.]
I’d only been a cultivator for a few days, and I was a low-level rookie who’d never even held a sword. It was hopeless.
But would he believe me?
Wasn’t there a 99% chance that old man, glaring at me with fire in his eyes, would draw his sword and yell, “Are you trying to deceive me!”?
[Option 2. Lie and claim that I’m so incredibly powerful you’re not even worth sparring with.]
The strategy was to put on such a show of strength that he’d give up before we even started.
But that was out.
Just look at that piercing gaze of his.
There was no way this old man would back down from a fight. He’d obviously come at me saying, “Even one move will do! Please teach me!”
That’s how swordsmen who roam the jianghu usually are, isn’t it?
When they see a tall mountain in front of them, they climb it instead of going around.
So, rejected.
[Option 3. Just be honest and say I don’t want to fight.]
Sometimes, honesty can be the best weapon.
After all, he was a kind man who’d saved three pitiful ruffians from certain death at the hands of an adorable little Qi Refining cultivator like me.
If I confessed that I was still a fledgling cultivator and begged him to spare me, saying I had absolutely no desire to fight, maybe he’d accept it as a merciful senior of the jianghu.
‘And if that doesn’t work? Then I’ll have no choice but to resort to my ultimate last resort: the deadly cute act.’
If I put on a show of cuteness so devastating the village chief would collapse with a nosebleed, maybe even this old man would let me go.
The only problem was that I was dressed as a man right now…
Embarrassment lasts only a moment, but life lasts forever!
I have to live forever and uncover the secrets of the universe.
Damn right.
‘All right, I’ve decided. I’m going with option three! The honest confession strategy!’
“Um…”
“……Are you saying this old man’s sword isn’t even worthy of your attention?”
Deep despair and stubborn defiance crossed Yan Nan-cheon’s eyes at once.
The old man’s hand clamped tightly around the sword hilt at his waist.
He looked ready to flip the table and charge at me any second.
Flustered, I hurriedly waved my hands.
“No, that’s not what I mean…”
“Then what is the reason?”
“Senior Yan, great hero!”
Let’s speak as politely as possible.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to fight.”
“May I ask why?”
‘Um… What do I do, what do I do? Ah, forget it!’
Though I’d meant to be honest and straightforward, my unruly mouth started dressing things up all on its own.
“Wherever a sword is pointed, blood flows until it forms a river…”
Where the blade’s edge points 鋒鋩所向
Blood flows like a river 血流成河
“They say that once the poison of resentment takes root, there’s no turning back, even after countless eons.”
Where resentment takes root 怨毒所結
There is no return for ten thousand kalpas 萬劫不復
“……?!”
It was nothing but a bogus aphorism I’d improvised on the spot, but even I thought it sounded pretty convincing.
‘Convincing, my ass. Who do you think you are, Confucius? Mencius? What’s wrong with you?’
Inside, I wanted to say, ‘Please spare me, Grandpa. I’m just a little chick, cheep cheep.’ But my years of writing government-funded research proposals had come out in the worst possible way.
But my ridiculous, pretentious aphorism made Yan Nan-cheon’s expression turn strange.
“When you draw your sword, blood flows; when blood flows, resentment is born… I see. Mm-hmm.”
Yan Nan-cheon repeated my words slowly, as if savoring a line from a sacred text.
“Ahem. I’ve held my sword all my life to cut down resentment.”
“……”
“But after I cut down one grudge, another was born. The more I cut, the deeper the resentment that pursued me. I spent my whole life believing that this cycle of hatred was an inescapable truth of the jianghu.”
The old man suddenly rose from his seat and bowed deeply to me.
“Yet you have already seen what lies beyond the end of that cycle—the realm beyond the shackles of resentment. I am truly ashamed.”
“N-no, not at all.”
“…I was foolish to think I couldn’t know my opponent without crossing swords, or discuss their realm without seeing blood. Senior whose name I do not know, thank you for your guidance.”
“Please raise your head. I’m not worthy of such praise.”
‘There we go! I don’t know what happened, but it looks like things worked out! I really am a genius, aren’t I? Hahaha!’
“Now, please sit down. Let me pour you a drink.”
Whew. Once the tension drained away, I felt much more at ease in both body and mind.
‘Maybe because I’ve relaxed, I need to pee. I’d like to leave soon, too.’
The problem was that I’d sat down in this inn in the first place.
‘Wait a second. Why did I come here again?’
Wasn’t it to learn how things worked in the world of the jianghu?
But it’d be a shame to slink home terrified without learning a thing.
Actually, I didn’t need to go anywhere far to find information.
‘The living encyclopedia of the jianghu is right in front of me!’
In a world without computers, where books were scarce, age and experience were everything. If knowledge was power, I shouldn’t underestimate the old man’s wisdom.
From the looks of it, he seemed to know quite a bit about cultivation clans like the Xuan Yang Sect and the White Cloud Sect. Maybe I could tease out some valuable information if I asked the right questions.
But it wasn’t as if he’d give me information for free.
By the law of equivalent exchange, it was only right that I pay a price commensurate with the value of the information I wanted.
A deal only works if both sides have something to bargain with.
‘There must be something I can do. Surely there’s something… Ah! Didn’t he say he’d failed to ascend?’
That strange stubbornness that made him want a cultivator to gauge his skill might have come from a martial artist’s instinctive inferiority complex and yearning to ascend to immortality.
Besides, inferiority could be an excellent source of fuel.
All right, then what did he need to ascend?
A spiritual root, obviously.
I hadn’t been able to look properly because I was scared, but now things were different.
As I studied the old man muttering to himself, I noticed turbid qi flowing along his acupoints.
I guessed it was what martial arts novels called ‘inner power.’
The result of decades of cultivation looked as solid as an ancient tree with deep roots.
But the meridians where spiritual qi should have flowed were completely blocked, as if they had clogged arteries.
Like mud and sand accumulating in an old riverbed, stagnant qi had settled throughout his blood and qi channels.
The flow was especially distorted where the path ran from his dantian to his chest, near his right shoulder, and around his left knee.
If I drove out the stagnant energy and let spiritual qi into his meridians, he might not ascend, but at least his crappy☆ supply of true qi could increase.
‘Okay.’
“If you truly wish it, Great Hero, instead of crossing swords, I’d like to tell you one thing.”
“Oh, I would gladly seek your enlightenment.”
It’s not enlightenment so much as a plumbing inspection.
I tilted my bamboo hat slightly and wore a faint smile, acting like an eccentric who’d descended from the Immortal Realm.
“Has your right shoulder been bothering you for a long time?”
“How did you know?”
“The clear energy can’t move past your shoulder. It breaks apart and disperses there.”
I was only saying what I could see.
He tugged his clothes up to his shoulder and showed me a deep scar.
‘That must hurt.’
“I suffered this grievous injury twenty-seven years ago… on Mount Beomang.”
‘Here it comes. The old-timer’s “back in my day” story. If I handle this right, maybe I can get the information I want, too.’
“You know how it is. When we’re young, we don’t know we’re young, do we? I’m sure you understand, Immortal.”
“You think so?”
‘Is he mistaking me for someone his own age?’
“To tell the truth… In my youth, I was so bold that I was downright arrogant. I believed I, Yan Nan-cheon, was destined to become the hegemon of the Central Plains.”
The old man’s hands trembled as if he were still angry.
“Then some fresh-faced little monk showed up, saying he was from a cultivation clan I’d never heard of, and dared to humiliate me, Yan Nan-cheon.”
“I see.”
‘Does he hold a grudge against cultivation clans?’
“I tried to teach the brat some respect for his elders. He looked like a little novice monk of about eight years old, after all. But he was a monster. He wasn’t human.”
‘Now I understand. He’s misjudging my age because of what he learned from that experience.’
“I couldn’t think of any way to beat him. The gap in our skills was so vast I couldn’t land even one of my best attacks… Do you know what it feels like to face an enormous, invisible wall?”
“Yes, of course. I understand perfectly.”
I knew exactly how that felt. That bastard Jin Mu-ak had done the same thing to me.
“He called me an insect and looked down on me. Calling a human an insect! He even said I wasn’t worth killing, then used a vile technique to make me pay for daring to challenge him as a mortal. He left this arm permanently crippled. My martial prowess was cut in half because of it. The title of Sword Demon is nothing but an empty name now. Heh heh.”
‘He’s just like that bastard I know. Treating people like insects.’
“Thank you for opening your heart and sharing the pain of your past with me. Did you challenge me to a spar because you wanted revenge?”
“I thought I’d cleared my heart of hatred for cultivation clans… but it seems this old man’s blood is still boiling. It has nothing to do with you. Please forgive my rudeness.”
“No, I understand how you feel.”
I read bitter despair in Yan Nan-cheon’s eyes.
For a martial artist, being unable to wield a sword properly must be no different from being forced to live without being able to die.
He’d searched the whole world for a physician, but to no avail. In the end, he’d come all the way to this remote village to seek the Xuan Yang Sect, which supposedly didn’t discriminate against mortals, but he had no way to break through its barrier. So he’d decided to leave this world without a second thought.
‘He tried to die? Had he picked a fight with me, a cultivator, hoping I’d kill him? Was he trying to get me to commit murder by proxy?’
How pitiful. Suicide, of all things.
‘Is there anything I can do for this old man?’
It seemed that the novice monk had blocked his meridians.
And yet, considering he’d shut off the flow of true qi, it was a wonder he hadn’t fallen into qi deviation.
I couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of magic that was.
But with my modern knowledge, I knew a physical way to clear clogged arteries.
It was a procedure where you inserted a tiny tube with a small balloon into a blood vessel, physically pushed the buildup aside to widen the passage, and then placed a support to keep it from collapsing.
In other words, stent placement surgery!
‘Could I make it work in theory if I manipulated the Five Elements like this and that?’
I didn’t have any surgical equipment, but I did have five kinds of spiritual qi.
“Could you lend me your wrist for a moment?”
Yan Nan-cheon immediately grasped his right arm with his left hand and held it out to me.
His lack of hesitation was almost unsettling.
‘Look at you. You have no idea what I might do.’
I pretended to check his pulse, imitating a traditional doctor.
I didn’t actually know how to take a pulse. And, of course, I knew nothing about traditional medicine…
Even my knowledge of modern medicine was limited to common sense and general knowledge. The only thing I really knew was fluid dynamics.
I knew even less about how to circulate the inner power of worldly martial arts.
If I touched the wrong thing, I might cause a death at the inn instead of treating Sword Demon Yan Nan-cheon.
I wasn’t even a licensed doctor. I was just a quack.
I didn’t know why I was trying to help this man.
‘Now that I think about it, I’m a total sucker. But his situation is pitiful, and I did get a little useful information out of him…’
What happened if you accidentally killed someone in this world?
Would you go to jail and pay damages to the bereaved family?
Would they execute your whole family? Probably not.
‘Let’s just roll with it and not overthink things. I can treat this as practice handling the difficult Five Elements.’
This was obviously a task that required intense concentration.
But how often did you get the chance to examine someone else’s meridians?
Besides, he’d said he didn’t mind dying, so he made for an excellent test subject.
“Ahem. Don’t get your hopes up. I’m no physician.”
“Heh heh. If a physician could have healed me, I wouldn’t still be clinging to hope.”
“It will be painful.”
“I’ve lived with pain all my life. I’ve suffered countless agonies, even bones breaking. Go ahead without worry.”
“Like Guan Yu.”
“Guan Yu? Who’s that?”
「
Ah—he doesn’t know.
Everyone in this place is a half-finished person.
」
“He was a man who once had a red face.”
“....?”
All right. At least I had the patient’s consent now.
Should I perform the first ‘Five-Element Micro-Stent Surgery’ in this otherworld?
