The Eldest Daughter of the Sichuan Tang Clan Protects Her Family

Sohwa could not answer readily.
There were people in the Central Plains who cultivated Yeolyanggong (Scorching Yang Art) using blazing internal energy, and others who trained Binggong (Ice Art) that held cold force.
But this was of a different nature.

Heat not filtered from the energies of nature and accumulated, but drawn out of the human body itself.
This heat that had slipped into another’s body was certainly internal energy.
However, it seeped in as if it were the body’s original warmth and was naturally wrecking the body.

In the distant past, there were those who, with innate True Qi alone, could burn a person to death or freeze them. True Qi that held heat and cold. The bloodlines of the Taeyang Palace and the Bing Palace, said to be born carrying extreme yang and extreme yin.
Their Heat Art and Ice Art were divine skills passed down like legend—and martial arts that no longer existed.
The Saeoeo Five Palaces to which Taeyang Palace and Bing Palace belonged had long since vanished.

To study such peculiar martial disciplines, one had to be born with a peculiar body; even knowing the mnemonic formulas, a martial artist of the Central Plains could not acquire them.
Without a body that could endure heat and cold that soaked into one’s core temperature, merely learning them put one’s life at risk.
Now that the palace lord and his descendants had fallen, even if those arts still existed, there was no one who could employ them.
“…Yes, they ought not to exist.”

Sohwa lifted her head and met the Branch Head’s gaze.
A harsh silence followed for an instant.
It was because all had arrived at the same thought.

Was the lineage of the Taeyang Palace still continuing?
Taeyang Palace was one of the Saeoeo Five Palaces that had disappeared long ago; yet with the Blood Cult—thought annihilated—now tearing through the Central Plains, it was not unbelievable that the palace lord’s descendant might be alive as well.
Unlike the Blood Cult, the Saeoeo Five Palaces did not particularly have poor relations with the Central Plains.

To speak more precisely, they were such a far-off external power that there was not even occasion to accumulate favor or enmity.
However, the fact that those arts were being found in the Central Plains was a different matter.
A group that possessed overwhelming martial arts.

Either a descendant of the Taeyang Palace, or someone who ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) had acquired those arts, was alive.
What was more, that person had attacked a member of the Martial Alliance.
The worst assumption formed at once.

Had the Blood Cult absorbed the Saeoeo Five Palaces?
Feeling the hot heat streaming from the patient, Sohwa lowered her gaze.
To be able to implant heat without burning qi-blood—she could not tell what realm one had to reach to wield Heat Art with such fineness.

Sohwa opened and closed her bloodless hand.
One positive fact was that, since she had learned the cause of Myungdan’s condition, she could attempt treatment.
Looking at the perplexed Branch Head, Sohwa spoke in a calm voice.
“We must strip away the heat that has seeped into the Daoist’s body.”

At those words, the Shaanxi physician asked:
“You mean to draw out the heat?”
Sohwa nodded.

Most True Qi, unless cultivated by one who trains Binggong, contains heat to some degree.
A martial artist who had only just begun training sometimes injured his qi-blood while circulating energy and regulating breath.
At such times, pain like one’s qi-blood was burning accompanied it.

From time to time, a kind master, to lessen a disciple’s pain, would personally draw off the heated internal energy and take it into his own body to purify it.
Of course, this was a consideration only a master whose control of internal force had reached a consummate realm could perform—

and only a tender master who cherished his disciple could do.
Sohwa took out the wooden case she had kept in her sleeve.

It was among the medicinal materials she had wrung out of Tang Min before leaving the Tang estate.
Handing the medicinal to Wu So, who stood behind her, Sohwa asked:
“May I trouble you, Great Hero?”

Wu So’s gaze dropped to the wooden case.
Inside lay an herb of unknown identity. It was so thoroughly dried that it was difficult to infer its original form.
“What is this?”

“Binggeukjicho.”
At her answer, an uproar broke out indoors.
“Binggeukjicho? Do you mean that Binggeukjicho which grows in the North Sea region?”

When the Shaanxi physician asked in surprise, Sohwa nodded.
Binggeukjicho was a plant that grew in extreme regions, an herb that held cold. Among those who cultivated Binggong it was treated as an elixir, and even in the North Sea it was said to be traded as a precious herb.
“Where in the world did you obtain this?”

Wu So asked in astonishment.
“I cannot tell you that.”
The one who had procured the Binggeukjicho was Tang Min.

He might have rifled someone’s purse—no, if he had met in person and wrung it out of them, that would have been almost conscientious; he may well have simply ransacked someone else’s secret storeroom without so much as a by-your-leave. Thus, the source was hard to disclose.
When she first entered the Dokjeongak (Poison Pavilion) at fourteen, Tang Min asked her to make a poison that could let one feel the Eleven Hells. Not to die, but a tormenting poison that would make one feel the pain right before death.
She did not know for whom he meant to use it, but like a child he had made his eyes sparkle and thrust rare medicinals at her.

At the time she did not know how to make it. She was only a fourteen-year-old who had just entered the Gujeongak.
However, at the Tang estate, the rumors concerning the Dokjeongak were extremely ghastly.
The place where the quintessence left behind by the Tang Clan’s geniuses was stored.
The rumors about the Gujeongak were mostly like this:

That there existed the results of human experimentation that created the most dreadful poisons known as the Eight Extreme Poisons.
That merely seeing them would enable one to create poisons so atrocious the Eight Extreme Poisons could not compare.
That one could even cause death to a martial artist born with a Poison-Impervious Body.
Because it was not a place just anyone could enter and the security was thorough, the exaggerations were extreme.
As a child, too prideful to say “I don’t know,” Sohwa had answered Tang Min that he was a nuisance and she would make it later when she felt like it.

Then, only after about ten years did she think up the method of manufacture; she took the ingredients from Tang Min and made the poison he wanted.
She did not know where, in the previous life, Tang Min used the poison.
No—did he even use it?

In any case, at that time Tang Min possessed as many as five roots of Binggeukjicho, and the cold the herb held was so tremendous that the poison he wanted achieved sufficient effect with only a single leaf.
Yet because Tang Min did not know this, Sohwa, before departing, plucked all five roots of Binggeukjicho.
In the past, no one had been able to bring down a Wudang disciple’s core temperature, so Sohwa had intended to try drawing out body heat through the meridians by way of blood pathways.

Like that Yeolhan-gi Poison she had once made for Tang Min.
Plucking off a single leaf of Binggeukjicho, Sohwa said:
“With this much, we should be able to lure the heat sufficiently.”

Having received the Binggeukjicho in a fluster, Wu So listened to Sohwa’s explanation.
“The heat is pooling near the Baekhoe-hyeol (Baihui) area. You may pass quickly over other places, but near the head please let the cold ‘swim’ slowly.”
“Milady.”

The Divine Physician called to Sohwa in a calm voice.

“The patient has already taken many medicines to reduce fever. If we rashly insert cold, it could be dangerous.”
Listening to his counsel, Sohwa shook her head.

“I am not trying to lower the body temperature with cold.”
She explained to Jin-cheol:
“I intend to create an air current inside Daoist Myungdan’s body with the cold.”

The Yeolhan-gi Poison she had given Tang Min worked on that principle.
“Cold qi and heat qi rush at each other. Because of that, they affect the flow of the surrounding air, do they not? I understand that this is called ‘giryu’, an air current.”
Sohwa moved her fingers along Myungdan’s meridians.

“If cold flows along the meridians, the heat that was nearby will give chase, and an air current will form.”
The heat exhaled as it destroyed the organs and the cold flowing along the meridians would collide within the body.
Swept up in that air current, the heat would be sucked into the meridians; as a result, the pressure of the meridians would rise, and the cold would be pushed forward rapidly.

Again chasing after the receding cold, the heat would race even faster, and this cycle would repeat until the air current found stability.
Because heat and cold kneaded the qi-blood by turns, the poisoned suffered tremendous pain.
Even so, the air current would grow ever rougher, and the blood channels that could not endure it would be destroyed.

Recalling that slow and agonizing poisoning process, Sohwa closed her mouth.
…It seems in this life I will have to find out whom Tang Min had intended to use that on.
“Then if we infuse cold into Myungdan’s meridians, you mean the heat that has spread through his organs will be drawn into the meridians?”

She nodded.
“Yes. That is correct.”
Even the body heat of organs damaged by poison had been drawn in; then this heat that mimicked core temperature would also be absorbed into the meridians.

Wu So fell silent, as if he could not understand.
Sohwa understood that reaction.
Unlike blood that runs through vessels you can see, meridians through which internal energy flows are invisible pathways. Yet they exert an intimate influence on the body.

The Hall of Records of the Tang estate had pondered whether the body’s core temperature or medicinals might also affect the meridians; though they had not perfectly proven it, their experiments had shown that core temperature and medicinals likewise influenced the meridians. One among those findings was the Yeolhan-gi Poison.
Wu So, who had been silent, opened his mouth again.
“But how can you assert that the heat spread through Myungdan’s organs is the trace of internal energy?”

Since she could not confess that she could feel internal energy, Sohwa told a fitting lie.
“I am not asserting it—I am inferring it.”
At Sohwa’s words, Wu So furrowed his brow.

“Inferring it? If you say only that, how am I to trust your word and follow this dangerous method?”
Wu So raised his voice, which was troublesome.
She could not say that she had studied the coroner’s report of one who died with the same symptoms in a previous life; even less could she say that she had once made a poison that burst a martial artist’s qi-blood by using the air current of core temperature and yin energy.

After some thought, Sohwa spoke again.
“The Tang Clan’s Medical Division is likely larger than that of any sect affiliated with the Martial Alliance.”
Wu So, as if dumbfounded, let out a hollow laugh.

“And so because you trained in the Tang Clan’s Medical Division, you know of a treatment even the Divine Physician did not?”
He meant: something even a descendant of Yeonjuda did not know—how could mere you know it?
Despite the sarcasm, Sohwa’s expression did not change. With a face so cold as to seem unfeeling, she delivered her answer evenly.

“The reason the Tang Clan’s Medical Division is large is not because it has many physicians, but because it stores countless secret texts within.”
Boldly, the Tang Clan’s eldest daughter extolled her family’s Medical Division and went on:
“If you ask how I knew, from merely looking at the Daoist’s symptoms, that he was struck by Heat Art—I cannot answer. If I must choose between another sect’s disciple’s life and the Tang Clan’s rules, I must of course choose the latter. Thus, Zhenren Wu So must be the one to judge.”

Handing the leaf to the silent Wu So, Sohwa asked:
“And tell me—would anyone offer up precious Binggeukjicho for a matter that cannot be assured?”
In truth, Wu So no longer had a choice.

Should they not try something, anything?
Gazing at the dry leaf in Sohwa’s hand, Wu So finally opened his mouth.