Possessing Nothing

“I’m indebted to you.”

Lloyd was laying down on a large bed. His depleted mana had recovered to some extent, and his wounds had healed as well, but it wasn’t as if his mental fatigue had recovered, so he looked very tired.

“It’s fine.”

“No, I really am in your debt. If you hadn’t helped me… I would have died all alone, deep underground. Nor would I have been able to destroy that heart.”

Lloyd spoke with a bitter smile. Hearing that, Sungmin flinched inwardly, taking care not to look suspicious. Didn’t Kim Jonghyun say it? That even other mages would not be able to see the heart that he now possesses.

“I heard you were the only survivor.”

“Ah… yes. I was lucky.”

As Kim Jonghyun had said, Lloyd didn’t seem to have realized that Sungmin had acquired the Black Heart. Not only that, he didn’t even notice that Sungmin had a soul with a twisted karma. If even the Gold Tower Lord wasn’t able to see through this, the only people who should be able to see through his twisted karma would be black mages at an incredible level.

“You indeed were lucky. Prescan, he… is a lunatic. It’s an incredible feat to survive under his hand.”

“About that… the lich called Prescan. What was he doing inside that dungeon?”

“Hm?”

Lloyd widened his eyes at Sungmin’s question. When a doubtful gaze was directed at him, Sungmin immediately controlled his expression. He looked at Lloyd with admiration and a bit of fear.

“If you are the Gold Tower Lord, shouldn’t you be at the peak of power even in the mage guild?”

“Uhm. Well, not exactly… I guess I should be in the top 5.”

“I can’t understand. You fell with heavy injuries even at your level. Just what was Prescan doing in that dungeon?”

“…Well… I guess it isn’t really a secret.”

Muttering that, Lloyd sighed.

“The ultimate life.”

His answer was the same as Kim Jonghyun’s.

“It was like that since 10 years ago. Prescan was researching into the ultimate life, and broke the taboo in order to achieve it. Originally, he should have died along with his exile… but thanks to his escape, I was tasked with pursuing him. And I was able to find his dungeon after 10 years of pursuit.

Lloyd paused for a moment and sighed again.

“…During these ten years… Prescan has produced considerable results in his research. Originally, there were two hearts. One of them… transformed into a young girl in front of me… she was terrifyingly strong.”

“A young girl, you say?”

“On the outside, she looked to be no more than ten or eleven, but she was… very strange. She dispelled my magic without a single chant, her arms and legs changed shape… but the most terrifying of all, is that the girl cannibalized a heart.”

“A heart?”

“Yeah. She said she was hungry… and ate it right in front of me.”

Sungmin recalled Xeon’s corpse that had a hole in his chest. Listening to Lloyd’s story, Sungmin subconsciously pressed down on his chest. The Black Heart was now inside his body, thumping. He was newly made aware that his heart belonged, or belongs, to a monster.

“Due to that Prescan escaped. Without that freakish girl, I would have been able to kill Prescan at least once. Perhaps I would have even been able to track down his phylactery. Whew! No, I guess I should consider myself lucky to be alive right now.”

Lloyd looked at Sungmin as he muttered that. He took a bow towards Sungmin.

“Thank you for helping me. As I promised, I wish to compensate you for this matter… is there anything you want? I can’t promise absolutely anything, but I will try to fulfill your desire to the best of my abilities.”

Sungmin hesitated at those words. The Gold Tower Lord granting him a request was something like a blank cheque.

However… he didn’t really have much to ask for. He thought about getting some magic texts, but he had no leisure to learn magic, when he had his hands full with martial arts. As for artifacts, he didn’t know what kind of things there were, nor did he need anything right now.

“…Can I ask later?”

“So you want me to owe you one?”

Lloyd asked with a chuckle.

“Ah! I didn’t mean that. I… just don’t have anything I need right now.”

“Well, it is what it is. Alright. I’ll be at the Gold Tower, so come find me when you want to ask me something.”

“Weren’t you tracking Prescan?”

“There’s no way a mage would do that himself.”

Lloyd giggled at Sungmin’s question.

After his conversation with Lloyd, Sungmin returned to the mercenary guild. Sungmin carefully explained what happened in the dungeon. Whether it was Jo Young or the others, they could only accept Sungmin’s story as the truth. After all, it was true that everyone other than him was killed.

Due to the massacre in the dungeon, the Behengerr mercenary guild received a big hit. The guildmaster, Bern, had died, and the SS-rank mercenary Xeon had died as well. Numerous other S and A-rank mercenaries died as well. With the death of Xeon and his men, the Corona mercenaries had practically disbanded.

Only at dawn was Sungmin able to leave the guild. After arriving at his home, Sungmin sighed in fatigue.

‘I should leave Behengerr soon.’

Sungmin sat down in his room. His first objective was to go find the god of time, Denir, in Drimoor.

However, before that, Sungmin took out the spatial pouches he got this time. Only money and potions were in the pouches of the other mercenaires. Although that was a bit of a pity, any disappointment he had washed away when he took out the Lesser and Greater Restoration pills from Xeon’s pouch.

Sungmin gulped and put his hand out towards the Lesser Restoration pill. He was planning to consume it now. Although he had experience consuming pills before, the Lesser Restoration pill should be at a completely different level in terms of effect compared to the Sacred Pill he consumed back in Xenavis.

Sungmin opened the wooden chest with a revering mind. Then, he took out the pill with both of his hands.

When he put it inside his mouth, the pill melted before he could chew. Sungmin immediately started circulating the Purple Cloud Divine Art after gulping it down.

“…Huh?”

Before he circulated the Purple Cloud Divine Art, Sungmin opened his eyes and looked down at his body. He… couldn’t feel a thing. When he consumed the Sacred Pill, he was able to sense it’s efficacy immediately. He had a hard time turning the enormous amounts of qi into his meridians and into his dantian.

But this time, that didn’t happen.

“…What the?”

Sungmin sat down in a meditative stance again and circulated his qi. He picked on the internal cultivation in his dantian according to the scripts of the Purple Cloud Divine Art.

Sungmin became speechless and looked down at his body. Inside his dantian… he could feel an enormous amount of energy. When he became conscious of it, he could feel the minute changes that his body had experienced. His dantian had became much larger, and his cultivation was several times that of before.

Sungmin realized the identity behind it. It was the qi inside the Lesser Restoration Pill. The pill he had consumed did not go through any sort of refinement process and was stored in his dantian. This was absurd. All pills required refinement. Usually, making half of the qi inside a pill one’s own would be considered a great feat.

‘I didn’t even circulate it, but the qi was extracted on its own. Just why…?’

The Black Heart – Sungmin exclaimed out loud and nodded his head. This seemed to be one of the abilities of the Black Heart – absorbing the qi inside a pill as it is. Although he didn’t know the mechanisms of it, this was what Sungmin was feeling right now.

‘But also… Wiji Hoyeon said to me. That the art she learned, Heavenly Demon Divine Art, does not go through the required refinement process that every other art goes through.’

Wiji Hoyeon said that that was an ability unique to the Heavenly Demon Divine Art, and that a special constitution was required to learn the art. Did his constitution change to something like that after consuming the Black Heart? Sungmin circulated the Purple Cloud Divine Art just in case.

He did it for several hours, but he couldn’t feel much change to the fact that he was refining the qi in nature. Perhaps this wasn’t about constitution, but something unique to the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.

It was still too early to be sure of anything, so Sungmin took out the Greater Restoration Pill. He was consuming both the Lesser and Greater Restoration pills. Sungmin opened his mouth and swallowed the Greater Restoration Pill. Although it was slightly larger than the other pill, it also dissolved and flowed into his throat as soon as it entered the mouth.

As he was paying attention this time, he was able to notice the changes. The thick qi that came through his throat flowed through his meridians and reached the dantian before being stored. Sungmin’s body trembled from the filling sensation.

He had completely consumed the Lesser and Greater Restoration pills. His internal cultivation was now several times than what he possessed originally. This also meant that Sungmin had overcome one of his fatal weaknesses.

It had been merely four years since Sungmin started learning martial arts. Although he received Wiji Hoyeon’s cultivation, and gained some more through the Sacred Pill, he was lacking severely in his cultivation compared to the level he was at. This was because he broke through to the peak-realm in an incredibly short period of time on Mount Msh. Compared to other martial artists who reached that realm through more than a decade of cultivation, he was sorely lacking in his cultivation.

But now, that weakness of his had disappeared. In fact, he now possessed internal cultivation enough to dominate other martial artists at the same level, or even a few steps above him. When he checked on his cultivation base after circulating for a while, it was already morning. Even though he hadn’t slept a wink, he felt as refreshed as though he had gone through a deep sleep.

Since he had absorbed both of the pills, he thought about go finding Kim Jonghyun to dispel the curse on the magic armor, but before that, Sungin took out the Hundred Steps Divine Fist, the Bodhidharma Cultivation technique, and the Arhat movement art. He ignored the last two, and opened the Hundred Steps Divine Fist and started reading it.

Shooting qi outwards was an incredibly difficult thing to do. It required a very high level of control, and was incredibly burdensome on one’s cultivation. The Hundred Steps Divine Fist of the Shaolin was a fist art that could attack from a hundred steps away; the principle was to exert qi with the fist techniques to fire it. As Sungmin was currently unable to expel qi, learning the Hundred Steps Divine Fist was very helpful to him. Since the entire art was focused on shooting out qi, he would be able to use the method and apply it elsewhere if he managed to learn it.

Although the other two arts were splendid techniques as well, Sungmin didn’t have any desire to learn them. After memorizing the Hundred Steps Divine Fist, Sungmin summoned Nevel.

“You called?”

Nevel popped out from his shadow, taking a bow. Sungmin spoke while giving Nevel the martial arts texts.

***

Basically, ‘cultivation’, in this case, short for ‘internal cultivation’, refers to ‘qi inside one’s body’ aka ‘qi that has been refined’. ‘qi’ usually refers to a more general type of energy. Like in nature. When it enters the human body and is refined, it isn’t referred to as ‘qi’ anymore. It’s ‘internal cultivation’. (Does ‘neigong’ ring a bell? Tell me if there’s a better translation… I don’t really like using the word ‘cultivation’, and refrained from using it, but I had to…)

‘martial artist’ is also just ‘cultivators’… but no. I won’t use that word

TL;DR – I screwed up in translation, I don’t wanna fix it. I hate this novel

Some comments on the chapter:

I always wonder why ‘high’ people carry their secret art manuals with them…. (cough cough, WDQK cough cough)

Next chapter teaser: Shaolin stuff is actually cheap stuff? A new companion?

ED: Changed ‘lifeforce vessel’ to ‘phylactery’. I’ll retroactively apply the change to previous chapters too so new readers aren’t confused. Read the chapter release note thingy if you haven’t already (if you care about older chapters).