Chapter 133

Demonic Sect

The next day, as soon as Tang Mujin stepped out of the house, he found himself lost in thought.

Perhaps it was because he had been entangled in so many different matters lately, but his mind felt cluttered.

He walked slowly, sorting through his thoughts. There was only one subject: what should he do next?

The first matter that came to mind was the commission he had received from the Demonic Sect—to drive away the Venom Bird.

‘That, at least, I think I can handle.’

He was already beginning to adapt to the bird’s poison, and he had Mok Wana as a crucial lead.

But ever since the day he saw that man slipping in and out of the Cult Leader’s Hall, something had been gnawing at him.

‘What was that straw-hatted man trying to do in the Cult Leader’s Hall?’

‘And that orb he held in his mouth—what was it?’

Once he began to think, other doubts quickly spread. Things he had brushed off before now scratched at his mind like grains of sand.

‘Why did the Venom Bird settle above the Cult Leader’s Hall, of all places?’

‘It’s been more than a year since it appeared. What has it been feeding on all this time?’

There were no answers to be found just by pondering. Mujin sighed deeply and stepped into the Poison Cavern.

***

When he entered, Mok Wana turned her head to look at him.

She didn’t seem troubled by what had happened the day before. If anything, her eyes held a faint glimmer of expectation—and it wasn’t hard to guess why.

The moment she spotted the tanghua and other snacks in his hands, her expression brightened instantly.

Could mere treats really bring so much joy? Perhaps not to him, but for her, their value was worlds apart.

As Mok Wana nibbled happily on the sweets, Mujin spoke.

“Today I’ve got a lot of questions.”

“Like what?”

“First, explain how your qi became imbued with poison.”

“Really? Where should I start?”

Cooperative, she thought for a moment, then began.

“I don’t know everything. The Demon Physician led the research, after all. But I understand the basics.”

“How does it work?”

“You know how you can use qi to push poison out of your body, right?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you think that works?”

Mujin thought carefully. It was such a vague question that no immediate answer came.

In the end, Mok Wana supplied it herself.

“The reason is simple—qi and poison don’t naturally mix.”

“Explain more. What are you getting at?”

“It’s not complicated. If qi were easily mixed with venom, then you wouldn’t be able to expel it with qi at all. The moment they touched, they’d just blend together.”

So that was the reasoning.

It was something Mujin had always taken for granted, so much so that he had never thought deeply about it.

But then he realized why Mok Wana was saying this.

Qi and poison are like water and oil—they don’t mix. But her qi does mix. How?

Mujin recalled lye water, made by running water through the ashes of burned straw or bean pods.

With lye, even oil and water could be forced to blend. That must be her point.

‘Then what serves as the lye in this case?’

A thought came to him.

“You’re saying to use the Venom Toad poison to mix qi and venom, aren’t you?”

Unlike ordinary toxins, the Venom Bird’s poison seeped even into qi itself.

It could seize hold of energy, block its flow, and even scatter it through the meridians.

There was no established name for this property, but Mujin privately called it Dispersing Qi—because it shattered internal energy.

The way he skipped all the intermediate steps and went straight to the answer left Mok Wana wide-eyed.

“How did you figure that out?”

Her reaction pleased him. Mujin pretended to brush it off, feigning modest arrogance.

“Anyone could reason it out. Hardly something to be impressed by.”

“Not impressive? I was shocked!”

“Don’t make a fuss over nothing. Anyway, enough theory—tell me about your own experiences.”

Wana bit down on the sugar shell of the tanghua, rolling the sweetness across her tongue, perhaps to soften the bitterness of the memories.

“The first step was introducing poison. Sometimes we drank it. Other times, they’d cut our skin and put snake venom into the wound.”

“I see. And then?”

“Then you deplete your qi.”

Mujin’s eyebrows rose. To consume qi while poison was in the body meant weakening the ability to resist it—deliberately exposing oneself to the venom.

“That must have hurt.”

At his comment, she made a wry face, as though the remark itself was strange.

“Of course it did. Every time, I burned with fever—but I was lucky. Some children lost their hearing or sight when the fever wouldn’t break. Countless others just died.”

“Mm…”

“Anyway, once the balance between qi and venom was on a knife’s edge, they would add the Venom Bird’s poison. Then, slowly, the qi and venom would begin to fuse. After enough repetitions, the qi itself would become imbued with poison.”

It was a simple method—but an incredibly dangerous one.

Still, Mujin decided he had to try it. The potential gain was too great to ignore.

“Oh, right. Do you know about the orb that blocks poison when you hold it in your mouth?”

“Of course. But how do you know about that?”

Her answer came instantly. Asking her instead of the Great Dharma Protector had indeed been the right choice.

“I ran into someone carrying it not long ago. So, what is it exactly?”

“It’s called the Poison-Repelling Bead. I heard it’s made using some kind of inner core, but I don’t know more than that. I’ve never used one myself.”

That was as much as he could expect to learn from her. Mujin rummaged through the cavern and packed several poisonous substances into his robe.

Then he asked her,

“You don’t like that I’m planning to drive the Venom Bird away, do you?”

“A little. To be exact, it’s not that I hate the idea. I’m just afraid something will happen and put us in danger.”

“You’re more timid than a three-year-old child.”

“If you want to survive, you have to avoid even the smallest risks in advance.”

So very like Mok Wana. Mujin chuckled and stepped out of the cavern.

***

Where there is a cave, there must be a cliff or peak. The Poison Cavern was carved into a small cliff.

Mujin chose the cliff top as his place to meditate.

Practicing within the cavern was no good—with Mok Wana there, she would always be on his mind. For now, she hadn’t shown any hostility, but it would be foolish to assume she’d stay cooperative forever.

Nor was the village house suitable. The festival made the surroundings far too noisy.

On the other hand, cultivating atop a desolate cliff meant no one would interrupt him. And if he needed something, he could just step into the Poison Cavern and obtain it—an auspicious site, if there ever was one.

Tang Mujin filled his Poison Core with the toxins he had gathered from the cavern, then slowly completed a full cycle of circulation.

When he rose, feeling refreshed, he suddenly recalled the Poison-Blood Bead.

“The Grand Protector said he never saw the Poison-Blood Bead… then it might still be where I collapsed.”

He made his way toward the vicinity of the Cult Leader’s Hall and searched the area thoroughly.

But even after a long while, he found no trace of it.

“Did someone take it? That straw-hat bastard wouldn’t have reclaimed it… and the Grand Protector wouldn’t have lied. Should I ask the underling who carried me back?”

Just as he was about to leave, organizing his thoughts, Tang Mujin once again sensed an unfamiliar presence.

He flattened himself against the ground and scanned the surroundings.

A familiar figure emerged—the man in the straw hat. One edge of the hat was slightly bent.

“That’s the one I thrashed last time.”

Though he had been the one to collapse in the end, Tang Mujin still considered himself the victor of that fight.

If a mere first-rate warrior could clash evenly with a peak master, then factoring in potential and growth, the real winner was obvious.

“Perfect. You’ve walked right into my hands.”

This time, his Poison Core was full. He could even mount an ambush with his needles.

And he knew the man’s weakness: force him to spit out just one bead, and he wouldn’t even be able to breathe.

The thought of felling a peak master all by himself sent a thrill through him. It was time to unleash the pent-up rage of a first-rate.

But Tang Mujin didn’t attack right away. This time, he meant to watch carefully what the straw-hat man was doing. The distance was shorter than before; he could observe more clearly.

The bead in the man’s mouth was white. Last time it had been ashen—perhaps even black.

He also carried a sack, something he hadn’t had before.

Tang Mujin observed silently. As the man neared the Cult Leader’s Hall, the bead’s color darkened shade by shade.

“So… when it turns pitch black, that means something’s happening.”

The man vaulted onto the roof, then up before the vulture. He tipped the sack. Out poured writhing centipedes, spiders, and poisonous herbs.

Rage boiled inside Tang Mujin.

“He’s… feeding it?”

At least now he knew how the vulture had survived an entire year. If not for this bastard, I could have been resting easy instead of coming all the way to the Demonic Sect—

Tang Mujin seethed as he watched. When the sack was emptied, the man slipped beneath the hall.

By the time he emerged, the bead in his mouth was as dark as sludge.

That was when Tang Mujin struck. He loosed ten poisoned needles at once, twisting midair to target every inch of the man’s body.

“Breathing only through a bead means he can’t block toxins entering any other way.”

The needles shot from the shadows, embedding themselves into the man. Even a peak master couldn’t avoid such a silent ambush.

Tang Mujin stepped out confidently and sneered.

“Surprised? You know how long I’ve been wanting to see you again?”

The man clenched the bead in his teeth and mumbled something garbled.

“Eh hhhkkk, hhhgrhhk!”

“Think of it as death deferred. You should’ve died last time!”

Tang Mujin slashed with his sword, unleashing another flurry of needles. Against suffocating poison, martial skill meant little.

With each new needle, the man’s face grew darker, until finally he gagged and spat out the bead.

Overcome with rage, he collapsed and managed to shout, clearly this time:

“You little bastard! Just a brat with nothing but dirty tricks!”

“The complaints of the weak fall on deaf ears.”

“A mere first-rate—!”

Tang Mujin’s sword thrust like lightning, piercing his chest. A loser’s last words weren’t worth listening to.

The straw-hat man lay sprawled, his expression frozen in bitter resentment, unmoving.

“Of course. So what if he was peak?”

Searching his body, Tang Mujin found what he had sensed earlier. When he stabbed the man’s chest, the resistance hadn’t felt like flesh.

From inside the robes, he pulled a small scroll.

Strange characters—or perhaps drawings—covered it.

“I can’t make sense of this.”

He rubbed the parchment. It was faintly damp, not merely from blood. It had the limp, pliant feel of paper soaked in feed.

“So he wrote this inside the Cult Leader’s Hall?”

As he pondered, a prickling sensation stirred near his dantian.

“Wait… could the vulture’s poison be mixing with my Poison Core?”

For now, it wasn’t dangerous, but there was no time to linger.

He tucked the scroll away and sprinted off—away from the hall, toward the village. More precisely, toward the Grand Protector’s residence.

He’d report that he killed the one feeding the vulture, and hand over the suspicious scroll. That would complete his task. Soon enough, the vulture would leave in search of food. Then he could rest easy.

But halfway there, unease gnawed at him.

“…Should I really tell the Grand Protector?”

Looking back, something about the man had always felt off.

Every time the vulture was mentioned, his response was lukewarm. Take it easy, relax in the village, stay away from the cavern…

As if he wanted the vulture to remain perched atop the hall.

Just like the straw-hat man.

Tang Mujin shook his head.

“No. That’s too far-fetched. To repay kindness with suspicion would be ungrateful.”

And yet his steps faltered.

After all, the straw-hat man had somehow regained the bead he’d lost. That alone was suspicious.

He stopped walking.

From experience, ignoring his instincts always brought trouble.

“Then… who should I tell, if not him?”

Someone else came to mind.

Someone who truly wanted the vulture gone. Someone who had brought him to the Demonic Sect in the first place.

The Three-Eyed Buddha.

If there was one man he could trust now, it was him.

So Tang Mujin turned his steps toward the Buddha’s quarters instead.