Emperor Namgung Mu of the Thousand Years - Chapter 4

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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#004

I acted as if nothing had happened,

but during that short distance back to my small room, my heart felt like it would burst.

As soon as I entered my room, I hurriedly and carefully took out the precious Taeul Ji-so Restoration Pill from my chest and looked at it.

My fingertips trembled.

Throughout all my experiences, including my past life, was there anyone else in this Martial Arts World who felt such thirst for the lack of internal energy as I did?

The reason why my past self ultimately remained incomplete despite mastering all of my master’s teachings,

the reason why despite being able to learn and even apply Amje’s martial arts, I was overwhelmingly outmatched compared to my enlightenment and met a miserable end, was due to insufficient internal energy.

What was my level in the past?

My master said he couldn’t rashly apply the standards of the Martial Arts World to me.

‘Your techniques, especially your understanding and application of the essence of martial arts, are certainly extraordinary… but your most important internal energy is only equivalent to twenty years’ worth, so it’s meaningless.’

My hardened danjeon from the past couldn’t digest even the best ascending mental cultivation methods.

That’s probably why my master didn’t teach me ascending mental cultivation methods either.

For me back then, I wouldn’t have been able to absorb even half of such an inner pill.

No, more crucially, for an assassin who was at the very bottom of the Martial Arts World,

aside from money, the pills I could access through my past life were at best impure, dirty pills that could only be obtained from the Market District.

I couldn’t even eat those due to lack of availability, and even when I managed to eat something decent, my danjeon had already hardened from missing the proper learning period, so no matter how much I concentrated on circulating energy and breathing exercises, most of it would flow away without being absorbed, and what I scraped together through that process was twenty years’ worth of cultivation.

I had always dreamed.

No matter how hardened my danjeon was,

if I could encounter a pure pill like the Taeul Ji-so Restoration Pill, like this very moment, there might be a chance for my body to awaken even if my danjeon had hardened a little—.

‘Huh…?’

My breath stops.

“Wait. …Right now isn’t just before being kicked out, but rather much earlier.”

I blink my eyes.

If my thinking is correct.

The Taeul Ji-so Restoration Pill isn’t the issue right now.

“If I practice the mental cultivation methods I’ve already learned from now on…”

A chilling emotion envelops my body.

“This time, I can build internal energy before my danjeon completely hardens, right?”

Having lived as an assassin for decades in my past life, my body and behavioral patterns were clearly ingrained with an assassin’s identity.

An assassin never performs physical examination and energy circulation breathing exercises until they have completely analyzed and grasped the current situation and are certain of their safety.

What my current situation was,

whether I was truly having an illusion or being deceived by magic into thinking I had returned to the past, whether what I was facing now was really reality—it took two full days to gain complete certainty, and during that time I had no intention of systematically examining my body.

But aside from that…

In a way, I had unconsciously become accustomed to living without any expectations about my basic physical condition, and perhaps I had been avoiding facing reality because I didn’t want to confront it.

When I was kicked out of the Namgung Family in my past life, I was already at a late age with a completely hardened danjeon, and that held me back for my entire life.

Despite dedicating myself to mental cultivation methods with all my might, in terms of internal energy alone, I couldn’t even achieve one cycle of sixty years that any noble family member could easily reach with just one spiritual medicine supplement—my total was only twenty years’ worth of internal energy.

Of course, even with that level of internal energy, I had cornered masters several levels above me, and even my strict master seemed to mention something incomprehensible about being naturally gifted while simultaneously feeling sorry for me.

-Gulp.

I swallow my saliva.

I looked around.

I confirmed once again that no one was there.

There’s nothing to worry about.

No reason to hesitate.

“…Alright.”

I rush to my room.

I close the door and block it with a blanket in case other people might come in.

I sit in lotus position.

It feels like my heart will burst.

Could it really be true?

Has my body really not hardened?

Am I not too late?

I can’t stop my thoughts no matter how hard I try. My fingertips tremble.

Somehow suppressing my quickening breath, I examine my body according to the sequence of mental cultivation methods that I had attempted countless times in my past life with my pitiful internal energy.

-Whoooong…

The feeling of blue energy enveloping my body.

I do have common sense.

I don’t have high expectations.

No matter how early this is compared to my past life, my current age in this life is obviously still far too late to begin practicing mental cultivation methods.

Though my body is small, that’s merely because I was born with a poor frame and couldn’t grow properly due to not eating well under oppression—my danjeon is also starting much later than other noble family children who begin as soon as they can speak.

‘But compared to my past when I had completely missed the learning period…!’

Perhaps even if I practice mental cultivation methods from now on, in the worst case, half of my danjeon might already be hardened.

But.

No matter what, I thought it would be better than my past life when it was completely hardened.

This was something that had left such deep resentment in me.

Just.

If I could advance even a little, no, even half a step further from that hellish life—!

“…Hm?”

While exploring my danjeon, I felt something strange.

“What is this?”

I stopped my cultivation.

I was dazed.

“Did I… sense something wrong?”

I wondered if it was a mistake.

“Let me try again.”

I sit in lotus position again.

The danjeon hardens as one ages. Like muscles and bones.

Once a danjeon hardens, once the learning period is missed, no one can defy it.

A martial artist’s vessel for containing internal energy becomes dry and cracked like an old leather pouch as time passes, gradually hardening.

That’s why martial families hurry.

They teach mental cultivation methods and have children learn mental imagery when they’re even one year younger.

Before the danjeon hardens, they must pour in internal energy and train it to be flexible.

If the vessel becomes small and hard, no matter how much you pour, it overflows and eventually spills out.

Ultimately, the size and flexibility of the danjeon is determined in childhood.

Noble families pour all kinds of support into that period.

Food suited to one’s constitution, environment, top-tier mental cultivation methods, guidance from masters.

Meanwhile, third-rate martial families have nothing.

Background becomes destiny.

And for abandoned ones like me, even more so.

If my calculations are correct,

although my current body would certainly be better than my past life with its completely hardened danjeon, my physical growth had definitely reached the final stages where growth would stop, and the danjeon, which hardens faster than the body, should have already hardened about halfway and lost its proper function at this point.

It definitely should be like that—.

“Is this… really a danjeon?”

My danjeon was far from hardened—it was the complete opposite.

My danjeon was gently undulating with flexibility.

And it was quietly undulating while filled with twenty years of internal energy that I had desperately accumulated throughout my entire previous life.

‘Good… heavens.’

This wasn’t simply a matter of twenty years of internal energy being inherited in my danjeon.

The current me was just at the stage of opening my danjeon.

In the Martial Arts World, creating a danjeon was compared to hammering a lump of clay to make a jar.

Ordinary martial artists at this stage start with a danjeon as hard as dried clay.

Children of Noble Families start with flexible clay.

Beings like the Heavenly Martial Body have a danjeon like an empty water pouch from the beginning.

And my previous life’s danjeon was beyond dried clay—it was like cracked pine bark.

I had to live embracing that danjeon until my death.

-Thump.

My cultivation mixed with bloody tears.

Trash-like elixirs.

Humiliating memories of my mouth rotting and lungs burning.

The meager internal energy I scraped together like that.

Twenty years’ worth—an insignificant amount that children of Noble Families could achieve in one hour by swallowing a single inner pill.

But for that handful, I lived my entire life scraping like bloody tears, somehow keeping a small flame alive, breathing on it like giving breath.

And while it would certainly be insignificant internal energy equivalent to merely twenty years if accumulated later in life, it’s a different story if those twenty years of internal energy were contained from the moment the danjeon was first formed.

Before the danjeon hardens,

Even to create a danjeon slightly more compatible with internal energy,

This world overflows with children of Noble Families who practice mental cultivation methods from an early age to contain even a handful of weak internal energy while young.

In such a world, having a danjeon that starts while containing twenty years’ worth of internal energy from the beginning is unimaginable.

Thus, the internal energy I had scraped together throughout my previous life, which everyone mocked and deemed worthless, crossed an entire era—

-Thump.

Proving that all my suffering in my previous life was not in vain,

-Thump… thump…

A danjeon like the primordial vast ocean was quietly showing its existence, resonating with my heartbeat as if comforting me.

Yes.

It was like limitless.

Beyond any specifications.

Without any constraints.

It was a limitless danjeon itself.

***

-… …

I slowly opened my eyes to the faint sound of roosters crowing in the distance.

Even after opening my eyes, I blinked for a long while.

It was definitely night when I checked my danjeon, then swallowed the pill without hesitation and began cultivation, but what I see before my eyes now is the golden dawn’s twilight.

‘Throughout my previous life… have I ever concentrated so deeply on breathing cultivation?’

Breathing cultivation while embracing a danjeon hard as dry tree bark is painful.

It feels like forcing your body into small clothes that won’t stretch. In the past, I could concentrate for at most one hour.

And even after that, what remained in my body was terrible fatigue and discomfort.

The cold air that seeped through the window left open all night envelops my entire body.

“…Not just one hour, but I stayed up all night?”

Moreover, not having slept yet feeling refreshed throughout my body was definitely a first-time experience.

I never knew that having an unhardened danjeon could be this joyful.

It’s not like before, when I’d force water into a small clay jar and helplessly watch it overflow.

The fact that when I concentrate and make effort, my body responds accordingly—even if just a tiny bit—was truly surprisingly joyful.

And to have this much condensed internal energy.

Using such internal energy to move through blood channels, I could feel the pathways being cleaned and widened just through that process.

I cultivated all night long, captivated by that pleasure.

‘It seems I’ve absorbed most of the Taeul Jiso Restoration Pill’s energy.’

I raised my hand to examine it.

A subtle heat shimmer was rising from my hand. Warm energy rose in the cold dawn air.

‘Even though the mental cultivation method I just used was Taeheo Mugeuk Mind Technique… to this extent.’

Taeheo Mugeuk Mind Technique.

A mental cultivation method learned from my master during my assassin days that operates internal energy with extreme precision and stability, meticulously controlling even the smallest energy to the periphery of blood channels.

It had the advantage of optimizing any form of internal energy to my body, transforming it into pure and stable internal energy, but the problem was its fatal weakness of being extremely slow in converting and accumulating internal energy.

Yet even so, it’s this much.

And no matter how much Taeheo Mugeuk Mind Technique has the effect of optimizing and purifying internal energy, there are certainly limits.

It’s definitely not supposed to be this much.

Something is different.

There’s an incomparable difference from the past.

I swallow and look toward below my navel, where I feel my danjeon.

‘Beyond vast, it feels completely hollow inside. Rather than accepting internal energy, it feels like it’s sucking it in…’

Like being sucked into a vacuum-state Abyss, internal energy gets sucked in as soon as it approaches the blood vessels of the danjeon that pulses with my heartbeat.

How should I describe this danjeon…

When operating mental cultivation methods and gazing at the quietly undulating danjeon, it makes me dizzy as if I might get sucked in, so it would be more accurate to describe it as the Deep Sea’s ocean, the North Sea’s abyss—

-Clench.

I make a fist.

My heart feels like it might burst.

‘Just operating Taeheo Mugeuk Mind Technique, which is weak at accumulating internal energy, achieved this much, but if I could apply something optimized for accumulating internal energy in this vast danjeon…’

Suddenly, a foul smell hitting my nose awakened me from my thoughts.

“Ah… I wondered what that smell was.”

Under the golden sun, I see my room brilliantly in complete chaos.

Though my danjeon inherited my previous life’s internal energy, my entire body’s blood channels seemed to be completely clogged with murky foreign substances, as if I’d never properly cultivated even once.

When I cleaned out the accumulated waste with strong force, pushing it all out at once, it seemed to spurt out through my entire body as if waste was being expelled in all directions.

Centered around me, filth was stuck to walls in all eight directions.

“It’ll take quite a while to clean up.”

If I had been even slightly late, that waste would have permanently stuck to my blood channels and entire body like rust.

It would have become my burden to carry forever.

My feelings while looking at the filth stuck to the room’s walls were endlessly complicated.

“It must have been… very difficult.”

I recall like a revolving lantern the old days when I lived desperately, clutching a completely hardened danjeon with a body that missed the time for learning, struggling as if retching.

What’s stuck to the walls isn’t just filth but also the burdens of my old days—

“…?”

In my field of vision, I see something glinting embedded in the paper wall directly in front.

I approach closer.

“This is a Gold Needle…?”

Once I see one, I see several more.

I look around the room.

Collecting the Gold Needles scattered among the waste, the count reaches a total of sixteen.

Having handled countless Gold Needles as an assassin, I know immediately upon seeing them.

The thickness, the length. All of this is meant to block blood vessels.

Even the number precisely matches the meridian flow of the major blood vessels passing through the lower Danjeon.

I look at my body.

I see all sorts of filthy waste that flowed out during the breathing circulation process.

And visible among it.

Traces of fresh blood that absolutely shouldn’t be there.

This means only one thing.

“This can’t be.”

My mind goes completely blank.

With trembling hands, I pull out one of the Gold Needles embedded in the wall.

A short Gold Needle, less than half the length of a pinky finger.

Its tip was slightly melting away like candle wax.

“I’m certain, this isn’t a mistake.”

The very bottom of the Martial Arts World.

Having lived for decades in Sal-gye seeing all sorts of filthy things, there’s no way I wouldn’t recognize this Gold Needle.

“…When on earth…?”

Golden Gate Prison Needle System.

A punishment that involves driving sixteen short Gold Needles into the limbs along major blood vessels.

A forbidden procedure said to be applied to newborn babies to prevent any possible cycle of revenge after annihilating an entire sect.

An extremely vicious procedure derived from the Blood Sect that melts and fuses after more than ten years, permanently blocking even the blood vessels.

“…Who was it…”

A trembling voice leaks out between my parched lips.

“Which bastard played such a trick on my body…!”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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