Part 1,
Chapter 27. Nine Turns Pavilion
The Blood Sect's resurgence caused a commotion throughout the Central Plains of Murim.
The Tang Clan was no exception.
However, the Tang Clan's commotion was not because of the Blood Sect.
The people of the Tang Clan were distracted by something else.
"Is it really the Divine Physician? The Divine Physician from the Yeonju Group?"
"Ah, I’m telling you, it is!"
The young physicians widened their eyes in shock.
"The Divine Physician from the Yeonju Group is still alive? It's been more than fifty years!"
"No, it’s not the physician herself, but her disciple. They say he inherited the Divine Physician’s medical skills perfectly."
At those words, one of the physicians pouted as if disappointed.
"I knew it. Just someone pretending to be the Divine Physician."
"Well, the Young Lord Tang Hak brought him in, and the Young Lord is so naïve."
"Ahh, the Young Lord brought him?"
The physicians of the Medical Hall, who had been chattering excitedly, grew less trusting upon hearing that Tang Hak had brought him. Then, a physician who had been quietly organizing medicinal herbs chimed in.
"The Young Lord Tang Hak didn't go alone. From what I heard, Grand Elder Tang Min went with him, and that..."
The physician cautiously looked around and whispered in a low voice.
"Young Lady Tang So-hwa went with them too."
Suddenly, silence fell.
"......Young Lady So-hwa?"
All the physicians’ gazes turned toward the window. Outside the window stood a nine-story pavilion.
The Medical Hall sat at the boundary between the inner and outer courtyards. Most of the Medical Hall’s buildings were located in the outer courtyard, but that one pavilion stood within the inner courtyard.
It was called Nine Turns Pavilion, but secretly, it was regarded as Poison Pavilion.
Even among the numerous people living in the Tang Clan estate, only sixteen people were permitted entry. It stored not only the secret poisons and materials but also experimental deadly poisons.
Nine Turns Pavilion was as massive as all the Medical Hall’s buildings combined, and beside it, they were currently building an identical new pavilion. It was said to be because there was no longer enough space to store the new poisons created by Young Lady Tang So-hwa.
"……."
The physicians looking at Nine Turns Pavilion exchanged glances. Their eyes were full of pity.
That old man had to be the Divine Physician’s disciple.
If he had deceived the Young Lady, he would not even be allowed to die peacefully.
Feeling pity for the unknown impersonator of the Divine Physician, someone clicked their tongue and entered.
"Ehh, I'm telling you, he’s real. The Iron Workshop is all in an uproar, making the Yeonju Group's tools right now. I sneaked a look, and even the tools were something else. They weren’t the typical medical tools."
'How could you tell someone’s the Divine Physician just by looking at the tools?'
Normally, someone would have asked such a question, but the physicians lost all sense upon hearing the words "the Divine Physician’s medical tools."
They threw aside the medicinal herbs they had been organizing and crowded around the physician who had just entered.
"What, what? What does it look like?"
"The blade’s thinner than paper, and the scissors look really strange too. I wondered if you could even cut with those."
"Ooh... I’m curious."
The physicians smacked their lips, burning with curiosity.
One physician, watching them, motioned toward the door.
"I saw earlier that he seemed to be unpacking. Want to go take a look together? He seemed like a nice person. If we ask, I’m sure he’ll gladly show us."
The young physicians exchanged glances silently, then, without anyone saying a word, they all rushed out, trying to be first.
The arrival of a new colleague caused quite a stir in the Tang Clan.
***
The Tang Clan was not the only clan that had a Medical Hall, but no other clan's Medical Hall was as massive as that of the Tang Clan of Sichuan.
It was because the Tang Clan's Medical Hall uniquely included a large pavilion.
While 'Medical Hall' sounded respectable, 'Poison Pavilion' felt too crude to utter. Perhaps for this reason, their ancestors had built a pavilion within the Medical Hall dedicated to researching poison.
Though it could not be openly named, the Poison Pavilion was ironically built larger than all the other pavilions of the Medical Hall combined.
So-hwa stopped walking in front of the pavilion called Nine Turns Pavilion.
The first and second floors were warehouses for storing medicinal and poisonous materials used for experiments, and the third floor was where ingredients were mixed and poisons were researched. From the fourth to the ninth floors, finished poisons and secret manuals detailing the methods of making them were stored.
The more important and deadly the poison, the higher the floor it was kept on. The infamous Eight Great Deadly Poisons of the Tang Clan of Sichuan were stored on the eighth floor of the Nine Turns Pavilion.
Tang So-hwa first entered the top floor, the ninth-floor archive.
There were only a few records stored in the ninth-floor archive. The standard for entry was extremely high.
The standard was 'A body immune to all poisons, with the ability to dispel them.’
The human body was like a canvas.
Depending on the size of the paper, the size of the drawing would differ, and depending on the material, the colors would appear vivid or blurred.
Just as a child could lose their life to a minute amount of poison, while an adult might only suffer a few days of stomach ache before recovering.
The difference was even more drastic among martial artists.
A deadly poison that could kill an ordinary martial artist instantly might not affect another martial artist at all.
Among those who had reached the pinnacle, there were some who had completed a body that did not allow the invasion of poison. Such a body was called a Body Immune to All Poisons.
They would not be poisoned, and there were even monstrous ones who absorbed poison to grow their internal energy.
Those called masters in the Murim were not human.
At any rate, it was the work of the Poison Pavilion, this Nine Turns Pavilion, to research poisons that could bring down such inhuman beings.
Tang So-hwa took out the books lined up on the shelf one by one and read them.
The three books contained only the records of her ancestors' failures and did not reveal a method to poison a Body Immune to All Poisons.
As expected, in this era, there was still no poison technique that could break through such immunity.
Tang So-hwa had devoted her entire life to research but had managed to complete only one kind of poison. Although there was a minor issue that no successors remained to inherit that poison technique.
After closing the last book, Tang So-hwa raised her head and stared at the empty bookshelf.
In this life, she was contemplating how she should leave behind her record.
No, even whether she should leave a record at all made her hesitate.
In her previous life, she had completed the poison at the Namgung Clan, but that poison disappeared from her hands before it could enter Nine Turns Pavilion.
Though it was Nine Turns Pavilion’s purpose to create poisons capable of subduing masters with the Body Immune to All Poisons, not only martial artists had such bodies.
Occasionally, there were those born with natural resistance to poison. Nine Turns Pavilion considered such bodies as having the Body Immune to All Poisons as well.
Besides these two types, there was another kind of Body Immune to All Poisons.
Tang So-hwa was born with a body that did not get poisoned, but it was not due to protecting her body with extreme internal energy, nor because her body did not react due to immunity.
Although she was closer to the latter in the sense that she was born with it, So-hwa’s body did not ignore poison—it reacted to it with extreme sensitivity.
Sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Although human senses are classified into five senses, So-hwa was not particularly sensitive to stimuli of the five senses.
Her senses were similar to those of an average martial artist, and in fact, her eyesight and hearing were even inferior to Tang Hak's.
The stimulus that caused her body to react strangely was 'threat.'
Like an animal whose survival instincts had been honed to the extreme, she reacted sensitively to threats to her life.
The internal energy of a martial artist approaching like an explosion and poisons were prime examples.
Her body, as if it had shed a layer of skin like a beast, detected life-threatening dangers with extreme sensitivity and responded just as quickly.
Every time So-hwa consumed poison, she felt a different sensation.
When she ingested a paralysis poison, she felt her organs stiffen uncomfortably, followed by a rising heat that made her feel like her body was melting. When she ingested the internal bleeding poison, she felt her mucous membranes swell as if they were expanding, as if reattaching severed blood vessels.
By observing her body's reactions, she could tell what kind of poison had entered and how it was mixed. Because of this, she was able to easily create antidotes, and in her previous life, she was known as 'Master of Ten Thousand Poisons'.
‘...A useless title.’
So-hwa pondered as she placed the book back.
She had been thinking of reorganizing the poisons she had created in her previous life to fill the pavilion, but none of them were the antidote for breaking the Body Immune to All Poisons.
It would be more certain if she tested it on a martial artist born with the Body Immune to All Poisons, but even the Eight Great Deadly Poisons of the Tang Clan could not kill her, meaning it truly deserved to be stored on the ninth floor.
But now, there was a traitor within the Tang Clan, and that person had the ability to handle poisons and antidotes.
In a situation where she didn't know where the enemy was, could she reveal that such poisonous techniques existed in the Tang Clan?
It wasn’t that she was afraid of the enemy obtaining the antidotes.
It was an extreme poison capable of breaking the Body Immune to All Poisons.
If it became known that the Tang Clan held such a weapon, they could become enemies of the entire Murim.
If they turned the masters with the Body Immune to All Poisons against the Tang Clan, it would be the direct path to their destruction.
So-hwa decided to keep the recipe hidden for now and went downstairs.
She intended to examine the archives of Nine Turns Pavilion today.
She needed to check if the past she remembered was still the same, or if there were any changes. Given how the future had twisted, parts of the past might have been altered as well.
‘I’d better look it over while my memory is still clear.’
She had entered Nine Turns Pavilion around dawn, but after confirming just two floors of records, the glow of the sunset was already in the sky.
For now, there were no new poison techniques that she was unaware of on those two floors.
So-hwa, who had decided to review the rest tomorrow, was descending the stairs when she passed by the third-floor laboratory and stopped upon seeing the entry records hanging on the door.
Her gaze was fixed on one spot.
Tang Hae-han.
Her cousin and, until So-hwa’s arrival, the youngest member of Nine Turns Pavilion.
So-hwa looked over the entry records.
The names of Tang So-hwa and Tang Hae-han were alternately written on the list.
Tang Hae-han had stayed in Nine Turns Pavilion just as long as she had.
So-hwa swallowed a bitter laugh as she looked at the ink stains that had spread from hasty writing.
When she was younger, she had a senseless sense of rivalry. She had wanted to leave more entries in the guestbook than her older cousin Hae-han, so on days with nothing to do, she would come to the pavilion and read the records.
Placing the entry record back in its spot, So-hwa went inside to find Tang Hae-han.
The laboratory always kept its windows open to prevent poisoning. At this time, the room was filled with warm winds and sunlight coming from all directions.
The deep scent of dried herbs lingered in the air.
Though her body had grown older, she felt like she had returned to those days, and a strange emotion bloomed in her chest.
So-hwa stepped on the shadow painted by the sunset and brushed past the hanging herb bags, walking deeper into the room.
At the end of the corridor, a figure appeared.
Sensing someone, Tang Hae-han, sitting at his desk, continued writing.
The sound of the brush touching the paper was peaceful, and So-hwa quietly observed him.
The fine brush, dipped in ink, moved along the white hand. The calm, unremarkable characters built up one by one, just like Tang Hae-han’s personality.
However, the silence seemed to bother him, and Tang Hae-han finally spoke first.
“You were called to the Clear Night Pavilion, weren’t you?”
When there was no answer, Tang Hae-han finally lifted his head. His brow furrowed immediately.
“...Why does your face look like that?”