After hearing about the Indestructible Vajra Body from Great Master Jeonghyeon, I returned.
I reunited with the group that had been waiting for me at the foot of Mount Song.
"Young hero Cheon. Did you take care of the matter you said you remembered?"
"Yeah. Sorry for making you wait."
"Oh my. I've grown accustomed to waiting for young hero Cheon, so there's no need to worry."
"…You didn't happen to storm off without a word and then sulk, did you?"
"Surely not. I was merely thinking that now was the perfect time to impress upon young hero Cheon just how precious I am."
"Hmph."
Before my dumbfounded eyes, Tang So-wol shamelessly lifted her chin and placed a hand over her chest.
Then she urged me to answer.
"Well? If you have something to say to me, now would be the time?"
"I'm always grateful."
"That's too ordinary."
"How about this—thanks to you, Tang So-wol, I never lost my way back?"
"Hmm. That was quite moving, but it's still a little lacking."
"It's not easy. I've never been particularly eloquent, so… how about this instead."
I pulled up the corners of my mouth in a grin and took Tang So-wol's hand as she was. Warm skin wrapped snugly inside my palm.
She hadn't undergone a Bone-Exchange Rebirth, nor was she neglecting her training, yet her delicate hand was smooth without a single callus.
I'd heard that after reaching Transcendent Peak, she'd learned a martial art that removed calluses. It was a kind of beauty art, quite popular among female martial artists.
Thinking that there really were all sorts of martial arts in the world, I brought her hand a little closer.
Palm against palm. Our fingertips tickled each other, sharing warmth, and before long, we turned the angle.
Fingers slipped past each other. Naturally interlacing them, I asked once more.
"I won't tell you not to wait. I'll come back to hold your hand like this whenever I can, so keep one hand free for me."
"…"
Tang So-wol stared blankly at her hand and my face for a moment, then nodded with the most satisfied expression in the world.
"Passed! That was excellent, young hero Cheon! Keep it up just like that from now on!"
"I'll try."
It seemed I had managed to please Tang So-wol, thankfully.
My sigh of relief lasted only a moment. Tang Jincheon's eyes, which had been chasing the air with a hazy gaze as if refusing to look directly at us, finally regained their focus.
He wasn't broad-minded enough to simply let my playful exchange with Tang So-wol slide, but he had learned over the past few years that reacting to every little thing would only exhaust him.
"So? What was so urgent that my son-in-law had to come all the way up here?"
"Ah, it's nothing much. I merely went to ask the Great Master Jeonghyeon to teach me the method for breaking the Indestructible Vajra Body."
"…Son-in-law. How is it that you look so unscathed? Surely not!"
"Both the Great Master Jeonghyeon and you, Father-in-law, seem to hold such grim preconceptions about me, but I simply received his teachings in a perfectly ordinary and peaceful manner."
"It's not just me who feels that way, is it?"
"…"
"Ha, can't even joke around with you. Wipe that pitiful look off your face. Isn't it disgusting?"
"I learned it from Tang So-wol."
"Now that I look at you, you do seem a bit pitiful after all."
Tang Jincheon straightened his expression and took back his words. The Tang Clan was this harmonious.
Seomun Hwa-rin, who had been watching my conversation with Tang Jincheon, shook her head and spoke.
"Come to think of it, you asked to help dismantle the sect's secret art, and now you say you received teachings—that's quite surprising. Did you make some kind of deal?"
"Well, a deal if you want to call it that. Great Master Jeonghyeon has placed a debt of the heart upon me."
"…To my ears, it sounds like you went there and robbed him."
"As it turns out, the Indestructible Vajra Body isn't some secret art of the Shaolin Temple—it's a term referring to the finest External Arts achievement of the current era. It's just that many Shaolin monks are called Indestructible Vajra Bodies, which leads to that misconception."
In other words, there was no such thing as the Indestructible Vajra Divine Art that people commonly thought of as a Shaolin secret art.
Once I explained it clearly, Seomun Hwa-rin finally nodded.
"Ah, I see. If that's the case, it makes sense. You went to ask because you knew this well."
"No? I only just learned this from the Great Master Jeonghyeon. Until now, I too believed that something like the Indestructible Vajra Divine Art actually existed. At the very least, I thought there would be a level known only to the Shaolin Temple."
"…"
Seomun Hwa-rin stared at me in silence with an expression that clearly said, 'So you went up there with the heart of a bandit after all.'
It was a truly narrow-minded and malicious insinuation, but since she hadn't voiced it aloud, I decided to let it pass as a mere poke to the crown of my head.
I had Seol Ri-hyang press firmly on Seomun Hwa-rin's crown, then slowly began to walk.
Behind me came Seol Ri-hyang's stifled giggles and Seomun Hwa-rin's voice, shy yet pleased. Using the warmth still felt in my hand as a backdrop, I took a moment to organize my thoughts.
Though I had brushed it off half-jokingly, the truth was that I did feel a debt of gratitude toward the Great Master Jeonghyeon for his help.
I am grateful, but since there is no fitting way to repay this gratitude, it remains a debt of the heart. Yet what is the Tang Clan's Family Precept?
Favor is repaid twofold, and grudges tenfold.
I am a man of the Tang Clan now, so I should follow the precept.
An elder from Shaolin Temple who is set to suddenly commit a massacre within the Murim Alliance.
I do not know what circumstances drove him, nor exactly when he snaps, but… I know that he will cause trouble before long.
Before the regression, the weight of his Shaolin origins and his usual reputation, along with circumstances I had only heard of secondhand, had led them to try to bury the incident entirely.
In fact, they nearly succeeded. I cannot say for certain whether it was coincidence, but from after the incident until the Demonic Cult's invasion, Shaolin's external activities dwindled.
Of course, it was not to the point of sealing the mountain gates. Still, they holed up on Mount Song enough that anyone would notice something amiss. As if they were reflecting in seclusion.
I intend to put a stop to it.
And since I'm stopping it anyway, I also plan to repay the debt I owe to Great Master Jeonghyeon—to the Shaolin Temple.
The best course is to first remove the reason the elder's eyes rolled back. Even if I can't do that, I can subdue him without killing and hand him over to Shaolin.
That was the moment I added a clear stroke to the schedule that had only held vague goals.
***
I'd decided to head to the Murim Alliance after finishing things at Shaolin, but that doesn't mean I'd leave immediately.
After all, I should explain the outcome of this meeting to the Tang Clan's retainers before setting out.
And while I and Tang So-wol are often away from home, it wouldn't be easy for the clan head, Tang Jincheon, to leave the Tang Clan without a set date of return.
The Sichuan Tang Clan is currently being hailed as the greatest clan in the world, and it's a time when their influence is swelling to its peak.
The absence of the final decision-maker would inevitably put the brakes on the Tang Clan's movements in many ways.
So I carefully asked Tang Jincheon, who was walking ahead of me.
"I'm grateful for your concern, but are you really sure about this, father-in-law? I have Senior Seomun Hwa-rin with me, so I'll manage somehow."
"That's enough. If I can't protect what must be protected before profit, how could I hold my head up as clan head, as a father, and as a father-in-law? Don't worry about it. I'll just leave things in Cheong's hands for a while."
Tang Cheong is no longer young. Naturally, his training as successor has also reached its final stage.
His martial arts realm may be a bit lacking, but when it comes to internal affairs or building his own power base—his abilities as young head are more than sufficient, or so it was said.
If that's the case, things will work out somehow, but…
"I'm worried that the Heavenly Demon is plotting something. Just as he did with the Black Alliance, I fear he may send someone against the Tang Clan."
The martial artists of the Demonic Cult are relatively weak. It's only the Heavenly Demon himself who is abnormally strong—the others simply lack martial arts skill or talent.
That is why, even the Demonic Cult's strongest masters, excluding the Heavenly Demon, are only at Transcendent Peak… but hasn't the Heavenly Demon already raised the Sword Demon to a half-formed Harmony Realm?
He was not a true Harmony Realm martial artist, but his level was clearly distinct from a Transcendent Peak one.
If even a half-formed Harmony Realm master were to attack the Tang Clan, the clan—which had not a single absolute master left to face him—would be helplessly overwhelmed.
Hearing my words, Tang Jincheon let out a hollow laugh and shook his head.
"The Tang Clan isn't as easy a target as you think, son-in-law."
"I never said I thought it was easy."
"Then answer me this. As my son-in-law, what do you think makes poison dangerous?"
"Is it not because it is covert and lethal?"
"That is not wrong, but there is a greater reason. Once a poison is made and one knows how to handle it properly, most poisons can be used by anyone."
"…Ah."
Tang So-wol and Tang Jincheon, who were born with the Poison Spirit Constitution or underwent Bone-Exchange Rebirth to become complete Poison Humans, could unleash poison as if performing martial arts.
But ordinary martial artists of the Tang Clan carried poison directly and applied it through various methods.
That was why poison art was a skill closer to figuring out how to spread poison more effectively.
If one set aside the premise of reliably poisoning the opponent and looked purely at whether one could use poison at all…
Even a Third-Rate martial artist, if they truly understood the handling methods, could wield an enormous amount of Extreme Poison.
Well, there might be the minor side effect of one's own body melting away along with the target after a single Poison Application.
"The poison the Tang Clan has accumulated over the years is by no means insignificant. And thanks to my son-in-law exterminating the Heavenly Poison Sect, we were able to bring back all the poison and knowledge that remained there."
"Come to think of it, the Poison Demon was a Transcendent Peak martial artist who wielded poison that even worked on Harmony Realm martial artists."
"The current Tang Clan, assuming a fight within the clan's grounds, is a place even the Murim Alliance Leader would find difficult to handle."
"Surely you're not planning to invite the Murim Alliance Leader over sometime, poison him, and then swallow up the entire Murim Alliance in one go…!"
"…I've never even thought of such a thing. Do you take me for you?"
"It was a joke."
"Please, don't go around making jokes like that. Thanks to my son-in-law, at my age I'm living each day with my heart pounding."
"Oh dear. But I have Tang So-wol."
"You're mocking me!"
Tang Jincheon shouted in alarm, but then let out a deep sigh with a somewhat weary expression.
"Anyway, don't worry. As you said, if he's only a half-baked Harmony Realm martial artist, he wouldn't even make it halfway past the Tang Clan's doorstep. Of course, if the Heavenly Demon himself came, that would be a different story…"
"In that case, even with all of us in the Tang Clan, I'd find it hard to predict victory."
"…Perhaps because I've never seen him with my own eyes, I just can't bring myself to believe it."
Tang Jincheon scratched his head once and continued.
"Still, no matter how much I entrust things to Cheong, it won't be easy to keep things running the way we have been. There's no helping it. For a while, we'll have to halt our expansion and focus on strengthening our foundations."
"Oh. The Chief Steward will be pleased to hear that. After all, there's less work now."
"What are you talking about?"
"?"
"Strengthening our foundations is just as much work as expanding. We've taken on quite a few things that we started without thinking through the consequences…"
"…Hmph. I'm not really one to talk, since I'm the one who brought all these matters to you, but I can't help but feel you're being too hard on the Chief Steward."
"Hm-hm. We're continuously expanding our manpower anyway, and this time I'll appoint those I've been keeping an eye on to the position of Vice Chief Steward to assist the Chief Steward, so things should be better than before."
"Oh."
"But I'll also be bringing along the work that came from signing the political marriage treaty, so it's not like I'm leaving you with nothing."
"Oh…"
***
After arriving at the Tang Clan. As planned, Tang Jincheon handed full authority over to Tang Cheong for a while.
Upon hearing the policy that the Chief Steward would focus on internal affairs for a while, along with the contents of the political marriage treaty, he smiled as if he had attained enlightenment.
It was surprisingly similar to the smiles of the great monks he had seen at Shaolin Temple. Looking closer, it turned out he had fainted while standing.
Fortunately, he came back to his senses upon hearing that a Vice Chief Steward would be appointed.
Anyway, having wrapped up matters at the Tang Clan, he headed to the Murim Alliance.
After finishing his greetings with the Murim Alliance Leader, who had been waiting for him, he decided to put into action the plan he had been mulling over.
"By the way, Alliance Leader. I heard that one of the Murim Alliance's elders is from Shaolin Temple. Do you happen to know where he might be?"
"Hmm? That elder is probably in his office. Why do you ask? Did Shaolin Temple send some message?"
"No, nothing like that. I just wanted to request a sparring bout."
"A sp—sparring bout?"
The Murim Alliance Leader wore a puzzled expression at the request to spar with someone of a lower realm than himself.
Taking a cue from the Chief Steward's expression he had seen recently, he offered the most harmless smile he could manage.
"By the way, is it common in the Murim Alliance for an arm to go flying off due to a mistake during a sparring bout?"
"Are you insane?! You actually intend to carry out that deranged plan of cutting down every suspicious person one by one?!"
The Murim Alliance Leader, startled out of his wits, reflexively grabbed his staff.
This was unfair.
He had only spoken with good intentions.