“Yes, that was only right. But I had a deal going with Mount Hua, so it wasn’t easy to strike rashly—and letting them go felt infuriating… I generously told them to leave that bastard behind, yet they panicked as if it were impossible. In the end, didn’t we nearly kill them all?”
“Haha, exactly! We almost had a disaster on our hands! And that bastard stepping up to block us just because they were from the same sect? That was hilarious!”
Raking it in.
The sheer shock of hearing such a vulgar phrase spill from the elegant Immortal Healer’s lips paralyzed the audience, but that initial stun rapidly morphed into a silent, sprawling horror.
Baek Ho-cheol, the indomitable king who had refused to yield to the most excruciating physical torment, was now nodding along, wearing a vacant, idiotic grin in response to the Immortal Healer’s prompting.
It resembled a casual agreement rather than a forced confession, yet it served as absolute, undeniable proof.
The horrifying rumor that the Mount Hua Sect had conspired with the Green Forests to block the routes into Sichuan, while simultaneously profiting from the desperate victims seeking their protection, had finally become undeniable reality. With every Tang Clan disciple present bearing witness, there was absolutely no taking it back.
The faces of the elders occupying the seats of honor hardened into rigid stone.
Losing the interrogation competition was no longer their primary concern; they had just realized a catastrophic war was now utterly inevitable. Worse yet, it wouldn’t be waged against their traditional enemies in the Unorthodox factions or the Demonic Cult.
A brutal, mud-slinging bloodbath against a prestigious Orthodox sect from their very own faction loomed ominously on the horizon.
Despite having extracted exactly what he needed, the Immortal Healer did not stop there, continuing to gently coax Baek Ho-cheol. He even made sure to pour the bandit king another cup of his specially brewed Wolf’s Tongue Root tea.
“Regardless, it was a truly brilliant maneuver,” Cho Yoon remarked smoothly. “You managed to slowly strangle Sichuan, a constant thorn in your side, while simultaneously generating a rather lucrative income, did you not?”
“Exactly, exactly! We even split the coin those horse-faced Daoists raked in. Thanks to that, I completely swapped out all my boys’ weapons over the past few years. You should’ve seen how thrilled that mace-wielding bastard Woongbi was.”
“However, that seems entirely beneath someone of your stature,” Cho Yoon probed, his tone laced with subtle curiosity. “Slaughtering them when the Mount Hua Sect is absent, but letting them pass when they are present? That could have severely damaged the King of Green Forests’s formidable reputation. Why did you deliberately choose this specific moment to personally raise your banners?”
Several escort warriors who had participated in the recent merchant caravan widened their eyes upon hearing the Immortal Healer’s pointed question.
It was certainly difficult to dismiss as a mere coincidence. The notion of Baek Ho-cheol—a King of Green Forests notorious for his inflated ego and towering pride—stooping to the level of a common mountain bandit performing petty raids was incredibly bizarre. It was a subtle, insidious discrepancy that even Nan Wi-jeong, who was currently absent attending to guests, had failed to notice.
Every single spectator observing the competition held their breath, focusing entirely on Baek Ho-cheol’s response. Sitting with a vacant expression utterly devoid of rational judgment, the bandit king slowly parted his lips.
“That… He… did not want that news reaching the Tang Clan… He ordered us to absolutely capture anyone who even looked like they belonged to the Tang Clan…”
He? That news?
The faces of the elders who were privy to the existence of the divine artifact contorted into masks of unprecedented ferocity. This essentially confirmed that the mastermind pulling the strings behind the Green Forests had intended to completely isolate Sichuan from the impending artifact war.
The Immortal Healer will surely interrogate him further.
Though their faces flushed dark red with boiling fury, the elders kept their mouths firmly shut.
However, just as Baek Ho-cheol seemed poised to reveal the truth, he abruptly ceased speaking and violently threw his head back.
“…Keuhuk!”
The teacup slipped from his grasp, shattering into pieces against the floor. His muscles seized and hardened as if turning to solid stone, violently convulsing, while his joints twisted at grotesque, unnatural angles. Thick, pitch-black blood began to stream rapidly from every single orifice on his face.
Leaping from his seat, Tang Yeom-cho roared. “Damn it, it’s a restriction!”
A ‘restriction’ was a horrifying technique that violently implanted a specific prohibition directly into the target’s psyche; if violated, it instantly devastated the brain or the danjeon, resulting in immediate death. Because it was so exceedingly cruel and inhumane, it was primarily utilized by the Demonic Cult. Yet, due to its flawless capacity to maintain absolute secrecy, it could occasionally be found even within the Orthodox factions.
Baek Ho-cheol was currently undergoing the exact same gruesome demise Tang Yeom-cho had witnessed a Demonic Cultist suffer decades ago.
Evidently, the identity of ‘Him’ was an absolute taboo that could never be spoken aloud.
At this point, Baek Ho-cheol’s death is utterly inevitable.
Just as Tang Yeom-cho, his face twisted in dismay, took a step forward to descend into the arena, the Immortal Healer rose from his seat.
Clatter.
The tea tray and porcelain cups resting upon the table rattled against each other.
Then, as if possessed by a will of its own, the heavy wooden table smoothly slid sideways, completely clearing a path for the Immortal Healer. The movement was so impossibly frictionless, as though gliding across solid ice, that it blatantly showcased the profound depths of his internal energy, drawing gasps of awe even amidst the unfolding chaos.
In a single, imperceptible flash, the Immortal Healer closed the distance to Baek Ho-cheol.
Grasping the seated man’s convulsing face with both hands, Cho Yoon bowed his head. His long, snow-white hair cascaded down like a thick curtain, and the wide sleeves of his cotton robes completely enveloped the bandit king’s body.
Right on cue, a sudden mountain breeze swept down, blowing firmly against his back.
Obscured entirely by the violently fluttering white hair and billowing robes, not a single soul could see what the Immortal Healer was doing.
The spectators could only glimpse Baek Ho-cheol’s hands and knees protruding from the sides of the Immortal Healer’s silhouette, his splayed limbs trembling violently.
A mere moment later, Baek Ho-cheol’s rigid arms simultaneously went entirely limp.
Watching those heavy hands drop to the floor and sway faintly, the crowd swallowed sharp, terrified breaths.
His expression completely unchanged, the Immortal Healer slowly stepped back. He briefly observed Baek Ho-cheol, who was now slumped over the chair like a paralyzed frog, before turning his gaze away and walking back to the preparation platform.
Whether he felt disgusted by having touched the grimy bandit king, or simply wished to maintain the immaculate hygiene expected of a physician, he began calmly washing his hands in a prepared basin of water.
Frozen with a completely dumbfounded expression, Tang Yeom-cho finally forced his stiff legs to move, woodenly approaching the deeply composed Immortal Healer. Glancing between the unconscious Baek Ho-cheol and the Immortal Healer casually drying his hands with a towel, the Clan Head asked hesitantly.
“Is he… dead?”
“No. I merely put him to sleep.”
He actually saved him?!
Tang Yeom-cho and the surrounding elders’ jaws hit the floor. A tale of someone miraculously dragging a victim back from the absolute brink of immediate death caused by a triggered restriction hadn’t even been recorded in the legendary biographies of Hua Tuo.
Completely oblivious—or simply indifferent—to their escalating, mind-numbing shock, the Immortal Healer glanced back at Baek Ho-cheol with detached eyes and offered a brief explanation.
“It was a Gu poison. I have already exterminated the parasite implanted within his brain. However, since he undoubtedly sustained considerable psychological trauma, he will not awaken immediately. Continuously nourish his qi and ensure he rests.”
“Then… he will eventually wake up completely fine?”
“At the very least, he possesses an incredibly sturdy physique, does he not?”
The Immortal Healer stated it as if it were the most trivial matter in the world.
Tang Yeom-cho’s fingertips trembled violently. He could vividly feel the sheer, unadulterated disbelief radiating from the countless Tang Clan disciples observing the scene.
Defeat.
Never in his life had he suffered such a thoroughly devastating, absolute defeat.
He had known from the very beginning that the man would win, but this hadn’t even been a competition. Rather than measuring their skills against one another, he had merely paraded his own agonizing inadequacies.
While Tang Yeom-cho had focused exclusively on inflicting raw physical agony to forge a fundamentally flawed poison, the Immortal Healer had effortlessly pried open a tightly sealed mouth with a single cup of tea. As if that weren’t enough, he had casually exterminated a lethal Gu parasite and pulled a doomed man back from the jaws of certain death.
However, a truly overwhelming defeat also possessed the power to fundamentally transform a person.
Those granted a fleeting glimpse of a realm so impossibly high they couldn’t even dare to reach it would naturally embrace profound humility, dedicating themselves to relentless, grueling self-improvement.
Those incapable of doing so were merely useless baggage to be discarded early on, while those who could were the promising sprouts that must be nurtured to the bitter end.
Yes, this is exactly what I desired.
He had desperately yearned for a fresh, violent gale to sweep through the Tang Clan—a faction suffocating in its own stagnant, narrow territory, swarming with fools who had long since forgotten their original convictions.
He wanted the stubbornly prideful, inherently jealous elders to completely reform their mindsets, and he wanted the disciples, who merely dreamed of pathetic deviations to escape their suffocating twenty-year lockdown, to finally forge truly grand, boundless ambitions.
And the Immortal Healer had truly, miraculously answered Tang Yeom-cho’s deepest prayers. He would have been endlessly grateful for a mere gentle breeze, yet the man had summoned a catastrophic hurricane.
If the Tang Clan could deeply fortify its internal foundations and straighten its corrupted character, just how unimaginably powerful could they become in the future?
The old man’s entire body shuddered violently with overwhelming, crashing emotion. His deeply wrinkled hands, spotted with liver marks, and his frail knees met the floor.
Sprawled flat against the ground, Tang Yeom-cho bowed his head deeply.
His throat was so thick with emotion that squeezing out even a single word demanded every ounce of his remaining strength.
“We… can only weep tears of profound gratitude for the unimaginable grace you have bestowed upon the Tang Clan. We humbly… congratulate your overwhelming victory.”
With their Clan Head actively prostrating himself, there wasn’t a single disciple who dared to remain standing.
Every single member of the Tang Clan present hastily scrambled from their seats, dropping to the floor and bowing deeply.
We congratulate your victory.
We congratulate your victory.
In those endlessly echoing voices, not a single trace of their initial mockery or hostility remained.
On this very day, the Sichuan Tang Clan had finally forged the ultimate stepping stone required to orchestrate a monumental leap forward.