Chapter 865: The Way of the Sail Swordsman (12)

The defensive posture of the Five Poison Sect—of the Blood Cult—was, in truth, no different from an impregnable fortress.

The layout of buildings that had been rebuilt and expanded for more than five hundred years formed the axis of a formation by itself. It was an independent stronghold that repelled enemies with hidden weapons and poison, and at the same time, it was itself a trap.

Each trap was linked organically—if you were caught by one, another followed, and even if you avoided it, it led into yet another.

There was no end to how horrifying it was.

And on top of that naturally blessed fortress, they overlaid a vicious sealing formation with no Life Gate on top of the existing sealing formation.

They laid traps where traps had already been designed, laid traps even where there had been none, and loaded deadly poison into the mechanisms of the existing mechanism-formation...

A sect’s fortress-making always ran alongside its history and its strength. That was why people didn’t bring up a sect’s age for nothing when talking about how powerful it was.

It was a terrifying defense that would not break no matter how many enemies swarmed—unless they had Manifest Realm martial artists.

And after Jang Choeryang’s monstrous modifications, it became even more vicious—so much so that it turned into a death pit that not only enemies, but even allies, could not enter and escape.

Truly—an isolated island in a vast sea.

An isolated island in a vast sea meant a lone island far out in the ocean, and the Five Poison Sect’s main sect could be called an island standing on land.

No one could enter.

And no one could leave.

Originally, if you sealed yourself off from the world like this behind traps, anyone would be unable to hide their anxiety.

It would spread from the slow depletion of food, if nothing else.

But the Blood Cultists were calm.

Because Blood Cultists always preferred isolated environments, preferred to shut {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} themselves in and live like that.

Food was running low?

That was the same no matter where you were.

Shouldn’t you be grateful you had food to eat right now?

And when the food ran out?

Then the weakest one—the most useless one—could go first as a “noble sacrifice.”

That was the Blood Cult way of thinking.

It was a trait of Blood Cultists who always had to hide from the Central Plains’ (well-earned) persecution.

Jang Choeryang was the same—no, Jang Choeryang was even more at ease than other Blood Cultists.

Right now, he was treated as a genius blessed with heaven’s brain, even though they were short on manpower—but before the Poison Demon had taken him in, he’d been treated as nothing but a useless idiot.

Even other Blood Cultists had oppressed him, and Jang Choeryang still preferred shutting himself away alone. So being isolated inside the Five Poison Sect now was no different from back when he’d always been isolated in his quarters.

No—he was even more comfortable.

Outside, at least, there were the First Poison-Squad members whose faces he already knew, and his other “works,” and his fellow menial brothers.

The possibility of unknown faces showing up, clicking their tongues, muttering what a worthless bastard, and treating him badly had disappeared completely.

So even now, Jang Choeryang unconsciously hummed as he immersed himself in his hobby—poison research.

And this research was no joke.

A solution for the side effects of poison arts, using the properties of the Strongest-in-the-Human-World, Most-Vicious-in-All-Ages, Supreme Poison—also known as Immortal-Slaying Poison!

Immortal-Slaying Poison was a truly unique poison—and therefore a poison beyond terrifying.

Each ingredient was harmless, but once they entered the body and combined, only then was it forged into a deadly toxin.

It sounded simple.

It was anything but.

The way masters “burned out” poison in their bodies required the poison to act first—only after the body rejected it and recognized it as poison could it be expelled.

But if the ingredients were harmless?

No matter how great the master, there was no way to know those were poison materials.

So what happened?

Even Manifest Realm martial artists were tricked cleanly and ended up poisoned.

And yet its toxicity didn’t fall behind famous ultimate poisons.

The Poison Demon hadn’t praised it for nothing—marveling that it was a poison that could kill even immortals, that it could fool even those ghostlike immortals and be fed to them, and that it was truly worthy of being called Immortal-Slaying Poison.

Of course, it had weaknesses.

For one, the taste and scent of each ingredient were too distinct, so if you didn’t use them like seasonings in the right dishes, people wouldn’t eat it—not because it was poison, but because it tasted wrong.

Even if you served it, if the target was picky, they wouldn’t be poisoned.

Some components had to be mixed into alcohol, too, so it became troublesome with someone who didn’t drink at all. (Though there were almost none like that in the Central Plains.)

And because it required so many processing steps, the manufacturing process was extremely finicky.

And most of all—

A horrifying unit cost that burned through gold in obscene amounts.

A normal Poison Priest would continue researching to overcome those flaws.

Compress and reduce the necessary ingredients.

Dull the sharp, standout flavors.

Establish a simple refining process, and search for substitute materials so it could be mass-produced.

But Jang Choeryang wasn’t normal.

Like a poison genius blessed by heaven, he glimpsed another possibility in the Strongest-in-the-Human-World, Most-Vicious-in-All-Ages, Supreme Poison.

Research to remove the unavoidable danger that came with learning poison arts—the danger of the poison core.

In truth, poison arts were nothing special.

You dosed yourself with poison little by little, formed poison essence deep in your dantian, and if you could melt poison energy into the internal energy you circulated, that was poison arts.

But humans were not creatures meant to carry poison in the first place, so countless side effects were inevitable.

First—poison was consumable. The more you used, the more you had to refill.

If something went wrong in your dantian before you spent it, or if your internal energy ran dry, the poison core would unravel and you would die to your own poison.

And poison arts had their limits: the stronger the opponent, the more they resisted poison.

And the cost to “raise” even one usable poison core was astronomical—making it a martial art without economic value.

Of course, the core limitation—that it was expensive, yet grew endlessly weaker against higher-level masters—couldn’t be helped.

But the side effects of poison arts...

Those might be erasable.

How?

By separating toxicity.

What if, instead of keeping a poison core in the dantian, you separated it into harmless components and let each flow through the body?

Only combine them when needed to exert toxicity—

And otherwise let them circulate in a harmless state?

That was the new possibility for poison arts Jang Choeryang had glimpsed through the Strongest-in-the-Human-World, Most-Vicious-in-All-Ages, Supreme Poison.

And it was also a surprise gift for his master—the master who had taken him in when he’d been treated as an idiot and would’ve been offered up as a “noble sacrifice.”

When poison arts reached their peak and one achieved the Poison Person Realm, the poison user fell into endless solitude.

In the Poison Person Realm, poison seeped into the marrow, and you reached a state where you produced toxicity yourself.

And because that poison didn’t harm you, you no longer needed to operate a poison core. With toxicity in your meridians and blood channels, just circulating internal energy naturally manifested poison arts.

But in exchange, poison dwelled in every part of your body, so your blood, sweat, tears—and every other secretion—became poisonous.

Forget some kind of exercise where men and women matched their rhythms—

You couldn’t even touch your chopsticks—chopsticks with your saliva on them—to a shared dish.

If you were just talking and a bit of spit flew, the other person would be poisoned.

Even your breath carried faint poison—so in a closed space, simply breathing together could poison someone.

But if you could separate toxicity and let it flow?

You could eradicate that solitude of the Poison Person Realm—eradicate, at the root, the side effect where even a close disciple couldn’t be patted with bare hands.

Heh heh.

Master will like it, right?

He’ll definitely praise me again—like crazy.

In truth, it was research he’d been doing for quite a long time.

After completing the Strongest-in-the-Human-World, Most-Vicious-in-All-Ages, Supreme Poison, Jang Choeryang had been utterly uninterested in improving it, and immediately threw himself into separating the toxicity of the poison core.

That had already been a year ago.

The Poison Demon had only thought, There he goes again—he finishes something, gets bored right away, and falls into another project.

But in reality, it had been a thoughtful disciple’s repayment—researching in secret to present a great gift to his master.

The Poison Demon had picked up a good disciple.

And at this very moment—

Jang Choeryang’s eyes snapped wide.

Because his poison core had subtly shrunk.

Was it because, within the Five Poison Sect’s main sect—already completely cut off from the world—he was now settled inside a research lab that was cut off even further?

He’d felt unusually at ease, and in the end—

“Ah... aah...! Khh-heh-heh...!”

Forcing down the laughter that wanted to spill out, Jang Choeryang closed his eyes again, observed his own body, and began separating the poison inside him.

The poison core slowly melted.

The poison core, separated into harmless components—components clearly distinguished because he himself had separated them—flowed through the body without mixing together.

And yet, at any time, they could be combined again to manifest toxicity—

A revolution in poison arts.

This separation of the poison core was only a small step for a single human being—

But for poison users, it was a massive first leap!

“HEE-HEE-HEE...!”

With a childlike laugh, Jang Choeryang grabbed his brush with a bright smile.

And immediately he set it moving—organizing this feeling, this principle, into writing as a miraculous gift for his master.

Then—

TAP.

Jang Choeryang set the brush down as if tossing it.

He sprang up and danced, wobbling and swaying.

His “dance line” was a mess, so it looked closer to grotesque writhing than a dance.

But Jang Choeryang’s mental age was noticeably low—when kids got excited, didn’t they start dancing without even realizing it?

“HEE-HEE! KEE-HA-HA-HA-HA!!”

And with it came a dolphin-like shriek unique to children, pouring out nonstop.

He looked really, really happy.

“Done! It’s DONE!! Master!!!”

The moment Jang Choeryang screamed in joy—

BOOM! CRUNCH! THUD, THUD, THUD, THUD, RRRROLL....

With a tremendous sound, something rolled in under Jang Choeryang’s feet.

Jang Choeryang looked down at the unfamiliar sphere at his feet.

An iron ball about the size of a baby’s head—dark and ugly, an iron ball forged without any finesse.

Jang Choeryang lifted his head.

A hole the size of that iron ball had been punched clean through the basement lid above the ladder.

Someone had dropped the iron ball from above.

Jang Choeryang tilted his head.

But why an iron ball?

Where were you even supposed to use—

That was Jang Choeryang’s last thought.

BOOOOM!!!

Countless shards of metal tore through him and ground his flesh into finely minced meat.

Because if a Fire-Rain Shell exploded at your feet, unless you had Body-Guarding Aura, there was no way to endure it.

A Fire-Rain Shell.

A shell made by packing an iron ball with gunpowder and removing the fuse—its detonation time adjustable by controlling the fuse length.

*****

A flare WHIIIIINED up into the sky.

Seeing it, the signalman shouted.

“First round—signal for a hit!”

It wasn’t just a hit—it was a perfect hit.

A sniping shot so astonishing even Houyi would’ve applauded, and it was sniping with artillery.

But the spotter didn’t know that much. He only knew it landed right in the middle.

The commandant gave an energetic order.

“Good! Prepare volley fire! On the standard-bearer’s signal, fire all rounds!”

*****

BOOM! With a roar that vaulted the wall, DUST—dust on the rafters scattered like snow.

The First Poison-Squad members frowned hard.

“What was that? An explosion?”

“Looks like the Great Lord blew something up again.”

“No, why does he keep blowing things up while making poison? I mean, the results are insane, but—shit, go. If he’s collapsed again, we pull him out first.”

The First Poison-Squad members hurried out of the room.

Jang Choeryang’s quarters—his lab—were a cramped side room in the Five Poison Sect leader’s residence, the servant’s room that concealed a secret underground library.

Since everyone was spread out among the four buildings in the center of the Five Poison Sect, the members who came running after hearing the sound met each other in the sect leader residence’s courtyard.

But the Great Lord’s “experiments” causing explosions had happened several times already.

So this time, too, they assumed it was the same.

No one looked serious.

“What, you all came? Yeah, fair. Who brought Blood-Poison Liquor? I forgot in the rush.”

“You bastard, look at you lying because you don’t want to go. I’ll bet both my balls that you’ve got Blood-Poison Liquor in your robe.”

“What? Don’t gamble if you’re not sure, don’t you know that? How the hell would you know whether I have Blood-Poison Liquor or not?”

“Bastard. Look at you dragging it out. You scared?”

“Scared? Who—”

That was when—

KUUUNG...! KUGUGUNG...! KUGUGUGUGUNG...!

A heavy sound rolling in from far away.

Cannon fire was like that—no matter how far, it crawled in and drilled into your ears with weight.

But the First Poison-Squad members stayed calm.

Because they’d heard it yesterday, too.

“What, again? Cannon fire?”

“Yesterday was a mess all through lunch—today too. Must be overflowing with gunpowder, those Central Plains bastards.”

For the record, yesterday they’d panicked pretty badly.

They’d screamed about how the Righteous Sect was teaming up with the government army to fire cannons, how they had to abandon the main compound and run right now. (A remarkable insight.)

But in the end, no shells came flying yesterday, so they decided the Forward Command Post was close and the soldiers were just doing artillery training.

And yesterday, that really was artillery training.

To bombard the Five Poison Sect main sect planted in the city—even if the Five Poison Sect estate was as wide as a fortress—you still had to set your aim and scrub the rust off artillery skill through practice to prevent collateral damage.

But today?

In the next moment, shells began to pour down like rain.

A rain of steel.

Iron-rain came falling.