Chapter – 10
Danmok Hyeon-u believed that what had happened to Ryeon was his fault for failing to protect her properly that day.
That thought had unsettled his heart and caused the tip of his sword to waver, allowing a heart demon to take root. It was a blessing that he had not fallen completely into qi deviation.
Even now, Danmok Hyeon-u had not fully overcome that inner demon. Although he had finished his secluded cultivation, and regularly sent Ryeon rock sugar, pastries, and all kinds of snacks, he could not bring himself to visit her in person. Only after Danmok Cheon-gi ordered him to study literature did he finally face her again.
“Do you remember what I told you—that the best way to learn the characters you’ve studied is to write them often?”
“Yes!”
“Then from today onward, you should exchange letters with one another once a day. Even a single line will do.”
Danmok Bi had recently become fascinated with learning everything alongside his older sister, so he nodded enthusiastically. He was already looking forward to receiving replies from Ryeon and Hwa-ryun.
After the writing lesson came tea time.
More precisely, it was the time when everyone drank the tea Ryeon brewed. Ryeon herself had insisted that they all do it together.
Danmok Hyeon-u had tried to stop her, saying it was unreasonable for him to be treated to tea by his young niece every day, but Ryeon had pushed ahead, claiming she wanted to practice the tea ceremony her grandfather had taught her.
Let’s see…
Ryeon adjusted her sleeve.
Danmok Ryeon
- Harmony: 7 Stars – Can remain unnoticed.
- Insight Eye: 4 Stars – Can see flaws.
- Purification: 2 Stars – Can purify life energy.
Stamina: 6 / 100
Spiritual Energy: 52 / 100
Tip: Increase your mastery of Purification. Keep your spiritual energy below 50. If more than thirty-nine days pass in this state, death will result.
Tch. Easy for you to say!
No one knew how to use this power called spiritual energy. It was a field she had to pioneer entirely on her own.
Every day she brewed tea, fed it to those around her, purified her surroundings, and spent her spiritual energy. Yet the next day it was full again. And the day after that, full again.
So this is what it feels like to live from hand to mouth.
It wasn’t even a joke. She was literally surviving one day at a time.
Ryeon couldn’t afford to miss an opportunity like this, where she could serve tea to three people at once.
That was why she endured the scorching heat and continued boiling water for tea.
After brewing four cups and setting them down side by side, Danmok Hyeon-u smiled gently at the children.
“Your sister brewed this herself. Always remember to drink it with gratitude.”
“Yes! Thank you, Sister.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Every day they studied, every day they drank tea. Every day Danmok Hyeon-u repeated the same words, and every day the boys thanked her. Ryeon simply smiled brightly.
Drink well and grow strong…
“The people of Hangzhou would probably bring a thousand gold pieces just for a cup of this tea.”
After taking a sip, Danmok Hyeon-u smiled.
Ryeon quietly looked down at her teacup.
No way.
None of the tea leaves were newly purchased this year. They were all leaves that had been sitting around for years.
At best, they tasted barely decent.
Yet Danmok Hyeon-u always praised her.
Whenever he did, Danmok Bi—who spent the entire tea session squirming impatiently and gulping down his tea because he found the ceremony boring—would add his own limited-vocabulary compliments.
“It’s super delicious,” “as tasty as the yakgwa I had yesterday,” “an immortal would come down to drink this.”
He recycled the same remarks every few days.
As Ryeon smiled at how cute her younger brother was, her eyes landed on Hwa-ryun, who sat beside Bi grinning silently.
She could tell just from his gaze.
He was teasing her without saying a word.
No matter how good the tea tasted, how could something brewed by an eight-year-old compare to what an immortal might make?
You little brat.
“Those are not empty words, Ryeon. I can taste your careful hands and thoughtful heart in this tea. When you learn the sword from the Supreme Patriarch, your achievements will surely be extraordinary. And your father as well…”
Danmok Hyeon-u suddenly trailed off.
Just as the atmosphere was about to become awkward, Danmok Bi burst in.
“Sister! You’re going to learn swordsmanship from Grandfather?”
His face was filled with envy.
The stiffness that had briefly appeared on Danmok Hyeon-u’s face quickly melted away.
“You will, once you’ve memorized the Thousand Character Classic. Bi, if you memorize all your characters too, the Supreme Patriarch will teach you the sword as well.”
“Yes! I’ll memorize them all too!”
“Good, good. If all three of you finish, I’ll give you a reward.”
At the mention of a reward, Danmok Bi’s eyes sparkled.
Ryeon nodded while recalling that Danmok Cheon-gi had told her something similar before assigning her this writing study.
Then she glanced sideways.
Hwa-ryun, who had started to look pleased at Danmok Hyeon-u’s words before becoming indifferent again, met her gaze and flashed a grin.
The cries of cicadas rang loud enough to split one’s ears.
Overcome by the heat, Ryeon sprawled across a bamboo mat on her bed, reading through a mountain of books stacked beside her one by one.
If I want to wipe out those Blood Luo Valley bastards, I need to know something first.
She had lived through—and died in—a future where Blood Luo Valley ran rampant little more than a decade from now.
There was no way she could simply ignore that.
Whether it was something she could stop alone or not, she couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.
So, using her studies as an excuse, she had dragged every related book she could find out of the library.
Blood Luo Valley’s Blood Arts. Destructive and cruel. Their wounds are characterized by claw-like lacerations. No one has yet discovered anything about the cultivation method behind them…
The internal energy accumulated over sixty years through basic breathing exercises—expelling the old and drawing in the new, a dantian breathing method—was known as one gapja.
A superior cultivation method could accelerate the process, but no technique could compress decades of training into a mere year or two.
The same was true no matter how miraculous the spiritual medicine consumed.
To absorb the spiritual energy contained in such medicines as internal energy, one still required proper cultivation methods and a considerable amount of time.
But Blood Luo Valley’s warriors were different.
Judging by their swordsmanship, many seemed to have trained for only a year or two.
Yet they possessed more than sixty years’ worth of internal energy and appeared in endless waves, rampaging like madmen.
Anyone with common sense could tell it was an evil martial art.
The problem was discovering exactly how it was evil so that it could be countered—and no one had managed to do that.
The Valley Master of Blood Luo Valley had changed several times, and all three major factions of the Martial Alliance had thrown themselves into investigating it.
Even the Black Heaven Union, which was not particularly concerned with methods that the world considered unsavory, had searched with fanatical determination.
Yet even they had failed to uncover the truth.
Can a cultivation method that accumulates internal energy that quickly even exist?
There had been theories that Blood Luo Valley simply fed its members enormous quantities of spiritual medicines.
But those theories had been dismissed.
The Zhuge Clan had calculated that anyone with enough wealth to support such a strategy could dominate the martial world with gold alone, without needing military force.
Regardless of the method, their internal energy inevitably gives rise to madness before long… and that madness can only be soothed by drinking human blood.
Ryeon slowly turned the page.
Perhaps thanks to Insight Eye, everything she read remained vividly etched in her mind after only a single glance.
The abnormal vitality of those who practice the Blood Arts. Even after their hearts are pierced, they can continue moving for half a shijin. Furthermore, it has been determined that the Valley Master possesses several treasures of the martial world? Treasures? What’s that about?
Ryeon pondered what she knew about these so-called treasures before finally closing the book, exhausted by the heat.
Blood Luo Valley was important, certainly.
But wasn’t that a problem for after she managed to survive first?
At that moment, the door to her residence quietly opened.
“Hm? Hwa-ryun?”
“I heard you were lying down because of the heat. Looks like it’s true.”
For some reason, Hwa-ryun wore a triumphant expression.
Ryeon sat up with a pout.
Her residence was the coolest place in the clan estate, but after spending even a little time outside, she would quickly succumb to the heat and start panting.
Her nursemaid, Madam Jang, often looked at her sympathetically and said that the women of this family had always been weak against hot weather.
“Just wait until winter.”
She might melt into a puddle every summer, but in winter she became full of energy.
Even after seeing her grumbling like this, Hwa-ryun merely raised an eyebrow and looked over the books scattered around her.
“Why… Blood Luo Valley?”
Feeling oddly guilty, Ryeon hurriedly closed the books.
“Have you ever seen Blood Luo Valley before?”
The Dongting Blood Incident, where Blood Luo Valley had clashed with the martial world, had indeed been a major event.
But that had been over twenty years ago.
People said ten years could change mountains and rivers; twice that time had passed.
These days, Blood Luo Valley’s name was occasionally used by elderly people as a substitute for a curse word.
Typically, some old man would drain a jug of liquor and shout, “May Blood Luo Valley chew you up and spit you out!” before a brawl broke out.
“…I’ve never seen them, but I know about them. The blood-drinking bastards.”
“I see…”
“Why are you researching them, Sister?”
“W-Well… our family is one of the pillars of the righteous martial world. As the eldest grandchild, I should know our history.”
Hwa-ryun looked at her with mild surprise.
“And because of them, my grandfather and father also…”
Danmok Hyeon-seong had died during a duel with the Geum Clan Manor.
But before that, the injuries he suffered during the Dongting Blood Incident had already been burning away his life.
If not for those wounds, how could Danmok Hyeon-seong—hailed as a genius of the ages—have possibly met his end in a duel against the upstart martial family of Hangzhou known as Geum Clan Manor?
