Chapter 214: Moving in the Shadows (2)

The pavilion was burning.

The roof tiles cracked one after another under the searing heat.

The main beams twisted, the rafters turned to charcoal, and the pillars split and splintered.

Overwhelming heat.

And with it came an unbearable stench.

A young man dressed in green walked through the heart of the inferno.

Behind him, a crowd had gathered.

Some had lost their arms.

Others were missing fingers.

Blood dripped from their bodies, and their bloodshot eyes gleamed with the crimson reflections of the flames.

They were human, yet they no longer looked human.

Their skin, blackened and charred by the dancing flames, crumbled away in rough flakes.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

A finger fell from one person. An arm from another. Someone else's toes dropped to the ground.

Yet what had fallen could hardly be called a loss.

New limbs were growing from the ragged stumps.

Those who had lost their arms sprouted enormous, twisted replacements, each with several joints tangled together.

Those who had lost fingers or toes grew new extremities, black and hard as ore.

They had gone beyond Demonic Humans.

They were Demonic Beasts.

The people gathered behind him were members of the Tang Family household.

But their internal energy was too weak to withstand Demonic Energy, or they were of such lowly standing that they had never cultivated it at all.

And the man standing before them...

The young man in green.

Anyone could tell at a glance that the green silk he wore was a privilege reserved for blood members of the Tang Family.

His name was Tang Gukwon.

He was the heir to the Tang Family.

"...So this is what such power feels like."

His voice was slow, each word emerging as though he were grinding it between his teeth.

The whites of his eyes had turned red, and Demonic Energy was creeping from his body.

He had already become a Demonic Human.

"Haa..."

A low breath escaped his lips, accompanied by a wisp of black energy.

Dense Demonic Energy had already seized control of the acupoints throughout his body.

It surged through him with tremendous force, reversing the natural flow of ordinary internal energy.

Each surge forced more of his original internal energy out of his dantian, where Demonic Energy pooled and took its place.

Immense power.

It was immense power in the truest sense.

Judged solely by the amount of Demonic Energy he could wield as internal energy, he could rival even masters of the Transformation Realm.

But Tang Gukwon knew better.

He was merely a Transcendent Apex martial artist with an abnormally vast reserve of power.

Even so...

...How many Transformation Realm masters are there in the world?

Only a handful.

Which meant there were very few people capable of stopping him in the first place.

Simply reaching the early stage of Transcendent Apex already placed a martial artist at heights that ordinary people could scarcely hope to witness.

There was a reason the realm was called Transcendent Apex. It lay beyond even the Apex, the very summit of martial achievement.

But Tang Gukwon wanted greater power still.

And...

He had never been satisfied with the poisons of the Sichuan Tang Family.

Ever since childhood, he had shown little talent for poison.

His younger brother, Tang Uwon, was the one born with a natural gift for the poison arts.

Gukwon's own gifts lay instead in hand-to-hand combat and his exceptional physical frame.

The foundation of the poison arts was the administration of poison.

A practitioner had to infuse poison with internal energy, then manipulate and release it through the fingertips at will.

Those who lacked that ability ultimately had to incorporate external martial arts to compensate.

And that was precisely what had brought Tang Gukwon to the Transcendent Apex realm: the Tang Family's advanced external martial art, the Green Shadow Poison Palm.

But Tang Gukwon knew that Transcendent Apex was his limit.

He would probably never even reach its middle stage.

After all, the Tang Family's poison palm art was fundamentally a palm technique built upon the poison arts.

It was not like the palm techniques of the unorthodox factions, which incorporated sinister arts into an external martial framework to inflict greater damage.

Nor was it a palm technique that merely added poison to its strikes.

The palm was simply the chosen means of releasing poison.

By borrowing the movements of an external martial art, however, a practitioner could compensate for an inadequate ability to manipulate poisonous energy.

Of course, its sheer destructive force surpassed that of the pure poison arts.

The physical impact of a strike, combined with its potent toxicity, also made it easier to inject poison into an opponent's body than administering poison alone.

One needed only to drive poisonous energy, a mixture of poison and internal energy, directly into the enemy through the palm.

In essence, the poison arts took the place of an internal cultivation method.

That was the secret tradition of the Sichuan Tang Family.

Over the course of a lifetime, its practitioners cultivated internal energy imbued with poison, accumulating the two together through a specialized heart method.

But things were different now.

The poison-infused internal energy in Tang Gukwon's dantian was gradually being displaced and leaking away.

An enormous quantity of Demonic Energy was taking its place.

His hands, too, were slowly turning black as the dense Demonic Energy seeped into them.

As poisonous energy was driven out and Demonic Energy filled the void, his Green Shadow Poison Palm lost its original nature.

It was no longer a martial art that gathered poisonous energy in the palms and released it.

It had become an art that released Demonic Energy instead.

Yet its power was extraordinary.

Tang Gukwon instinctively understood why he had absorbed enough Demonic Energy to turn his hands black.

His body had recognized the necessity on its own.

Unless he reinforced his hands and arms to such an extent...

The destructive torrent of Demonic Energy coursing through him under Heaven-Toppling Cultivation would rupture every acupoint in his hands and arms.

"...Ah. My feelings of inferiority have vanished completely."

He had learned palm techniques because he lacked talent for the poison arts.

He had learned to control his poisonous energy through the methods of external martial arts.

Even then, he had often failed, sometimes melting his own fingernails in the process.

His powerful palm techniques were excellent in their own right, but the family had eyes only for his younger brother.

Naturally.

The foremost member of the Tang Family had to be the foremost practitioner of its poison arts.

An individual's martial strength was ultimately irrelevant.

What mattered was knowledge of poison and the ability to wield it.

Martial strength could be bought with gold.

Powerful swords and spears could be purchased with silver.

But the knowledge of medicines and poisons that allowed the Tang Family to command the Central Plains could not be bought.

That knowledge was a secret tradition passed down exclusively within the family.

The Tang Family Head was the inheritor of that forbidden knowledge.

Someone who understood the mysteries of birth, aging, sickness, and death, and who could manipulate life itself and the world before his eyes through medicine and poison.

Thus, even if Gukwon reached the Transformation Realm, he would never be able to succeed as Family Head.

Everyone might call him the heir now.

But his younger brother, Tang Uwon, had already surpassed him in the poison arts.

"...Father."

A single word from the Family Head would be enough to transfer the position of heir to someone else.

Tang Gukwon had lived with that knowledge his entire life.

He clenched his fist, which was now wreathed in black energy.

The Sichuan Tang Family estate had been consumed by fire and Demonic Energy.

Yet there was one place...

One place that neither the Demonic Humans nor the Demonic Beasts had managed to reach.

The main hall of the inner estate, where the Family Head resided.

******

The early stage of the Transformation Realm.

It was a level of martial achievement that could shake heaven and earth.

Most people died without ever coming close to the threshold of the Transformation Realm...

Let alone seeing a master who had reached it.

Yet Namgung Seon could not rid himself of a lingering question.

The look in the Sword Sovereign's eyes as he gazed at Seon's sword.

There had been unmistakable longing in those eyes.

...Why?

The Sword Sovereign had already reached the extreme end of the Transformation Realm, or perhaps even entered the Mysterious Realm.

His grandfather, Sword Sovereign Namgung Ak, was the foremost swordsman under heaven, a man whose authority extended throughout the martial world.

Even the formidable Mount Hua Sword Emperor had been unable to overcome him.

He had even severed the Heavenly Demon's head.

That only made it harder to understand.

Namgung Seon pondered the question as he walked through the quiet streets of Qianshan at dawn.

It was the hour when merchants emerged to open their shops and prepare their goods.

Sometimes, walking quietly through the streets and listening to the subdued sounds of people beginning their work was more beneficial than meditating on the training ground.

But not today.

Someone was standing there, ready to claim his attention.

"What are you doing here, young heir?"

"...I was about to ask you the same thing."

"I have the excellent excuse of being a tourist from out of town."

The fact that she called it an excuse made it clear that sightseeing was not her true purpose.

Then again, Soyak had practically revealed her intentions by saying so herself.

Namgung Seon gave a small, amused snort and studied her.

The cold rays of the early morning sun fell at an angle across the street.

Amid the slow breeze and the subdued sounds of the waking town, Soyak stood leaning against a pillar of a small cottage.

As always, the sword at her waist looked slightly too long for her slender frame.

"So, you're sightseeing right now?"

"Yes. Officially, at least."

"And what are you actually doing?"

"Familiarizing myself with the surroundings."

Wasn't that the same thing?

The question was written plainly across Namgung Seon's face.

But Soyak did not see it that way.

She really was checking the surrounding area for potential hiding places and alleyways that could serve as escape routes.

After all, the Night-Heaven Wanderers had attacked her on the very night she met Namgung Seon.

Unless she became properly acquainted with the streets of Qianshan, something similar could happen again.

Of course, it was unlikely that anyone could evade her senses now that she had reached the Transformation Realm...

But such complacent thinking was precisely what so often cost people their lives.

That was the martial world.