Chapter 210 - In the Middle of the Main Training Ground

An old man with snow-white hair sat at the entrance to the Thousand-Poison Forest. Even at a glance, his presence was extraordinary. Several poison pouches hung from his waist—the hallmark of the forest’s poison practitioners.

I counted nine pouches in all.

Those just beginning to learn poison arts wore one pouch, while the Poison King wore twelve. The nine at this old man’s waist told me just how formidable a master he was here.

“I am Geom Mugeuk. I have come to see the Poison King.”

At my polite greeting, the old man introduced himself.

“This old man is called Sang Seon.”

He was the Poison King’s right-hand man and one of the Four Great Poison Practitioners of the Thousand-Poison Forest.

“I’m honored that someone of your standing has come out to meet me.”

“An honored guest deserves to be welcomed by this old man himself.”

I had sent word ahead of my visit, but I hadn’t expected Sang Seon to receive me personally.

“Follow me, and mind your step.”

I followed him into the forest. It was truly dense.

“Of all the Eight Demon Supremes’ domains, the Thousand-Poison Forest is the largest.”

It was indeed vast enough to warrant his pride.

HISSSS.

A snake I spotted along the path had an unusual appearance.

“That is a white-blood snake. As its name suggests, its blood is white. If it bites you and you cannot take an antidote, you won’t survive even a quarter of an hour.”

They said a thousand kinds of poisonous things existed here. The Thousand-Poison Forest teemed with poisonous herbs, insects, and snakes. One wrong step, and even your corpse might never be found.

Along the way, we also encountered poison practitioners gathering herbs. These practitioners were known as the Poison Fangs, and the number of pouches hanging at their waists varied.

After passing through the dense forest, we reached the Poison King’s residence. It was a circular building, low but enormously sprawling.

“I’ll wait here. Go in and have your talk.”

“Thank you.”

I entered the building.

The interior was one vast, undivided space.

Everything was there: dozens of bookshelves and desks, all manner of devices whose purposes I couldn’t guess, a bed, tables, a wardrobe, display cabinets, even a wooden bathing tub. Everything a person needed to live was contained in this space. This was the Poison King’s room.

In its center, surrounded by an assortment of objects he had spread out, the Poison King squatted reading something.

This was my first meeting with him.

Before my regression, I had seen him only once or twice from a distance in my youth. By the time I returned, older, to obtain materials for the great art, he was already dead. Today was the first time I had ever seen him up close.

To sum up my first impression: youthful and scholarly.

People tended to imagine the Poison King as a stooped old man, or someone whose skin was covered in sores, inflamed and peeling from the side effects of poison—someone with a ravaged face and body. But the current Poison King looked utterly pristine.

Despite being middle-aged, he looked remarkably young. If the Cult held a contest for the most youthful face, I was certain he would win.

Had we walked together, people might have thought us friends of the same age. Moreover, he had a profoundly intellectual air. Judging by looks alone, he seemed even cleverer than Chief Strategist Sima Myeong.

Without his dark green robes and the twelve pouches at his waist, anyone would have taken him for a scholar. No, he was handsome and boyish enough to pass for a student studying under one.

‘So the Poison King really did look this young.’

He looked so young that I wondered whether poison had stopped his growth at some point.

‘He did those things with such an innocent face? He dreamed of becoming the Supreme Poison Master Under Heaven and ruling Murim?’

The life he had lived truly did not suit his appearance.

As I approached, the Poison King spoke without looking up from his book.

“Bring me that blue bottle on the desk.”

His voice was as youthful as his face.

I picked up the bottle and walked over to him.

“Careful. Even a single drop of Blue Poison splashing on you will kill you.”

No, it wouldn’t! He could pour every poison in this room over me, and I still wouldn’t die!

The Poison King mixed the poison I handed him into another poison set before him.

The instant he mixed them—

BANG!

Poisonous smoke billowed up. I stepped back, swiftly sweeping both hands through the air. What an extravagant welcome.

WHOOOSH.

I released my internal energy, gathering the rising smoke into a mass and trapping it between my hands.

I was about to carry it over and fling it out the window when—

“No! Wait!”

The Poison King hurried off and fetched a large sack.

“Put it in here.”

I funneled the smoke gathered before me into the sack.

He firmly tied its mouth shut with a cord, tossed the smoke-filled sack beside a table, and began searching through his book again.

“What in the world went wrong?”

He sank into deep thought, still without so much as a glance at me. He wasn’t deliberately pretending not to see me. He was completely absorbed in his own world.

I slowly surveyed the interior. Countless bottles stood in the cabinets lining the walls, and I could tell that all of them contained either poisons or antidotes. It was like a study with poisons shelved in place of books.

“Ah! Is this what went wrong? Hey, bring me that sinister poison herb.”

I selected the sinister poison herb from the many poisonous plants scattered across his desk and brought it to him. Even though I had picked out the correct one from so many herbs, he showed no reaction.

“Put it here, then go fetch me a dipper of water.”

He kept sending me on errands. Bring this, fetch that. I was kept thoroughly busy while he pounded and ground the herbs.

When he added Blue Poison to his newly prepared mixture, it did not explode this time.

“It worked! It worked! The sinister poison herb was the problem!”

Delighted that the mixture seemed to have come together properly at last, he finally noticed me beside him.

“By the way, who are you?”

Our dear Poison King certainly knew how to ask promptly.

“Did you know who I was when you sent me on all those errands?”

“I thought you were one of my people. Who are you?”

“Geom Mugeuk.”

“Oh, right. You said you were coming today. So you’re him. Geom Mugeuk, the talk of the Cult. What brings you here?”

Even after learning my identity, neither his tone nor his manner changed.

He acted like a scatterbrained eccentric, but the soft green glow in his eyes had remained constant from the moment I entered this room. It meant his emotions were consistently under control. That alone was enough to remind me never to forget that a Demon Supreme was still a Demon Supreme.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“What favor?”

“Please persuade my father.”

The Poison King suddenly thrust his face toward mine. His skin was fair and smooth, too. How could someone who handled poison have such good skin?

“No.”

He refused outright without even hearing the details.

“I’m allowed to refuse, aren’t I? This isn’t the cult leader’s son throwing his weight around, is it?”

“It isn’t.”

“Good. A youngster shouldn’t start by learning such nasty habits. Your business is done. Why are you still here?”

The Poison King was bewildering, but he was no pushover.

“No, I’m leaving. I’ll see you again.”

I bowed politely and walked out. Sang Seon, who had guided me earlier, waited at the entrance. He did not ask a single question about what had happened inside.

“Please let him know I’ll visit again tomorrow.”

“I will.”

As I followed him out of the Thousand-Poison Forest, I memorized the route.

* * *

The next day, I returned to the Thousand-Poison Forest.

Sang Seon again guided me to the Poison King’s residence, but by a different route. I could see his intention: he wanted to keep me from learning the way there.

But that was a needless attempt born of ignorance of my excellent memory and sense of direction. Today, I learned one more route to the Poison King’s residence.

When we arrived, the Poison King was digging near his house.

“I’m certain it was here.”

Holes dotted the ground. Apparently, he had buried something and couldn’t find it.

With dirt smeared on his face and body like a child, he looked cute. The cuter he looked, the stranger I felt at the disparity between that appearance and what he would do in the future.

Thousands of martial artists had died from his poison in that future. He had committed an outright massacre.

He barely acknowledged my greeting, concentrating entirely on digging.

I borrowed a shovel from Sang Seon and began digging as well.

An unusual gleam entered Sang Seon’s eyes as he watched me.

The Poison King, by contrast, cared only about whether the thing he sought would turn up in the patch he was digging. It wasn’t an act; he was genuinely absorbed in his task. Sometimes he would suddenly laugh to himself. To anyone watching, he looked exactly like a madman.

Now I understood precisely why the Demon Physician had said the key was getting him out of his laboratory. I also understood why everyone had said persuading him would be difficult. This man lived entirely in a world of his own.

I dug in several spots beside him. Whenever something came out of the ground, I gathered it to one side. All sorts of things turned up: boxes, insects and larvae, snakes, rubbish, and strange tools.

While I was digging another of those holes, he cried out.

“Ah! Why is that over there?”

The Poison King came over to where I was digging. Something I had set aside must have been what he was looking for.

The box he picked up contained a sticky liquid that gave off a terrible stench.

“Ahh! It’s matured beautifully!”

“Was that what you were looking for?”

He looked at me and gave a startled gasp.

“When did you get here?”

It was both an act and not an act. He had noticed me, and he had also forgotten me.

“A little while ago. You seemed to be looking for something, so I started digging too.”

“Well done, well done.”

He smiled happily, then abruptly turned serious.

“I’m fairly certain I refused you yesterday.”

“Today I’ve come purely to help you. After watching you yesterday, I thought you needed someone to assist you.”

“Are you scheming to steal my poison arts?”

“Can the Poison King’s poison arts be stolen so easily?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then there shouldn’t be a problem.”

The Poison King stared at me. The green radiance in his eyes seemed to bore into mine. Of course, it had no effect on me after the New Eye Procedure.

Instead, I sensed something about him. At that moment, an image came to mind:

The Poison King striding out of his own world to stand on the boundary separating it from the world outside.

At this moment, he was no eccentric.

I could tell. The man before me wanted to become Murim’s Supreme Poison Master. He had crossed that boundary only once, and thousands had died.

“Shall we see how well you work?”

His feelings showed on his face. He would make even a single day so exhausting that I would never return!

He put me to work—really put me to work, intending to drive me away.

“Empty those poisonous herbs over here and sort them.”

As instructed, I brought over the herbs piled in the sack and sorted them.

I let go of my intention to persuade him. I let go of my desire to impress him, too. My only thought was to stay with him and discover what his world was like. Unless I understood that world, I could never persuade him.

“Now sort those newly arrived herbs over there, too.”

Every day, shipments of poisonous things gathered in the Central Plains by the Poison Fangs arrived here. Herbs alone would have been a relief, but there were all manner of revolting poisonous creatures as well.

I handled both the herbs and the other poisonous materials skillfully. After becoming immune to all poisons, I had lost my aversion to them entirely. Previously, the very mention of poison would make me frown and reluctant to go near it. That feeling was gone now.

He seemed surprised at how well I carried out his orders.

“I thought you’d make it obvious you were raised in luxury, but you can actually work.”

I had always been well versed in poisonous herbs. That was why I had easily passed the herb-related trials in Lesser Heaven Cave.

Of course, the sheer variety of herbs handled here far exceeded my knowledge. Whenever an unfamiliar one arrived, I asked him about it. What is this? What is that? I kept going until he told me to stop asking so many questions.

When the day’s work was done, the Poison King quizzed me on the herbs he had explained. Unable to find fault with my work, he attacked my memory instead.

“What did I tell you this herb was called?”

“Wild orchid herb. It’s usually ground up and added to spicy food as a poison. That makes it completely undetectable.”

I repeated even his explanation precisely.

“Then what about this one?”

“Black Mountain hundred-day herb. Once administered, its poisonous effects last a hundred days, making the victim waste away until they finally die.”

I explained it exactly as he had.

“You little brat! Why are you so clever?”

His eyes blazed with determination to find some fault in me tomorrow. At that moment, he looked for all the world like an immature boy my own age.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!”

* * *

I visited him again the next day.

The Poison King was sorely mistaken if he thought I would stop coming after a few days. He had no idea what lengths I would go to once I had set my sights on a goal.

Once again, I spent the day doing whatever work he gave me.

I made no deliberate effort to befriend him. I didn’t strike up conversations or try to impress him. I didn’t even employ the Divine Art of Flattery. I simply carried out his orders in silence.

Perhaps that was why he brought this up first.

“This won’t change my mind. Once I’ve said something, I never take it back. If I do, I’ll stand in the middle of the main training ground with everyone watching, shout ‘I am a dog,’ and bark five times.”

He was reaffirming his determination never to give in. He meant it as a warning not to come again, but I reaffirmed my resolve as well.

“Since you’re setting those terms, I should do the same. If I fail, I’ll gather everyone at the main training ground and shout, ‘A dog of a son born to a tiger of a father!’ Then I’ll bark five times.”

Apparently, he hadn’t expected that. He burst into loud laughter.

“I look forward to seeing the cult leader’s face then.”

Excited, perhaps, by my wager, he fetched paper and a brush.

“Now, since you’ll be visiting often, let’s put this in writing first! A pledge that you came to the Thousand-Poison Forest of your own free will, and that you won’t hold me responsible if an accident poisons you while you’re working. Well? Do you dare sign it?”

Looking into his excited eyes, I challenged him in return.

“If you sign one too.”