The Martial Genius Who Remembers Everything Novel - Chapter 4

Chapter 4
## Chapter 4. A Third-Rate Warrior Who Gathers Spiritual Medicines (2)

“SKREECH.”

An arachnid monster with a visage vaguely resembling a human countenance discharged poison from its jaws.

HISS.

The lethal, corrosive substance dissolved not only the surrounding foliage but also the hard-packed dirt beneath, sending plumes of verdant vapor into the air.

Although I had bound a cloth over my nose and mouth, a wave of lightheadedness began to creep over me.

Miraculous plants usually grew in regions where the primal energies of the sky and the earth converged.

Yet, such mystical locations did not solely foster rare herbs; they also bred extraordinary creatures.

When these beasts possessed an appearance too horrific to contemplate, people frequently branded them as demonic fiends.

“You truly are a monstrous sight.”

Eight limbs. A colossal torso. And perched upon it, a face mimicking a human’s with four distinct eyes. This was the terrifying entity known as the Human-Faced Spider.

Terrified of losing its prize, the Human-Faced Spider shielded the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng behind its massive form and glared at me with intense caution.

“On your account, I was forced to journey all the way to the distant peaks of Mount Hapchi.”

Manuevering to its flank, I slashed forward and severed one of its thick limbs.

SKREECH.

Vibrant green fluid erupted outward, scattering toxic smoke and burning acid in every direction.

For a martial artist like myself possessing minimal internal cultivation, merely inhaling that vapor could cause instantaneous demise. It was certainly a wise decision to take the long detour to Mount Hapchi to ingest the Nine-Leaf Divine Root beforehand.

“Even if you manage to survive this encounter, three years from now you will be captured by the Tang Clan, destined to be drained of your venom until you are nothing but a desiccated husk.”

SKREECH.

Despite my reasonable words, the Human-Faced Spider showed absolutely no inclination to yield.

FWIP.

Thick webs erupted from the rear of the Human-Faced Spider, spreading across the space.

The filaments expanded like a massive net, instantly sealing off the exit of the cavern.

“Ignorant beast.”

I immediately applied a blazing torch to the sticky threads.

In a flash, the fire ignited the webbing and began racing directly toward the Human-Faced Spider.

Trailing along the creature’s own secretions, the inferno rushed straight toward the rear of the Human-Faced Spider.

SKREECH.

Frantic with terror, the monster attempted to extinguish its burning backside against the cavern floor. Capitalizing on that exact second, I emptied the flask of oil I had readied over its torso and ignited it completely.

SKREEEEEECH!

While the Human-Faced Spider shrieked in agony, I drove my blade deep into its horrific maw, causing the beast to writhe in violent convulsions.

From its bizarrely human face, dark green fluid streamed copiously from its eyes and open jaws.

It was a repulsive spectacle, precisely the sort of nightmare that would plague a person’s sleep.

Retreating a few paces, I maintained my distance until the thrashing of the creature gradually began to subside.

Only when a pungent, nauseating odor permeated the cavern did I finally allow myself to exhale.

“Hoo.”

Though I had previously consumed the Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwu and the Human King Ginseng, I had managed to refine a mere eight years’ worth of internal reserves.

While those two miraculous herbs were highly valuable in their own right, they weren’t primarily suited for boosting inner energy, and the refinement capacity of the Taeul Heart Method was inherently restricted.

“At this rate, how many lifetimes will it take to match that person’s level?”

The legendary Taecheong Divine Sword—or rather, the person currently known as Yong So-ah—had commanded a staggering three gapja of internal energy.

Three gapja. Three gapja.

The monumental disparity made my consciousness waver.

Nevertheless, I could not afford to waste time wallowing in despair.

“If I manage to consume every single miracle herb cataloged within the Murim Compendium of Spiritual Medicines, will I at least stand on equal footing?”

While the Taeul Heart Method was an exceptional internal exercise, it remained fundamentally a basic technique.

Without the aid of a premium internal cultivation manual, assimilating the potent properties of such medicines proved exceedingly difficult.

The essence of the spiritual herbs wouldn’t simply disappear, but if I were to perish with a sword through my chest before fully absorbing it, the irony would be painfully bitter.

“What I truly require are spiritual pills. Spiritual pills.”

When it came to expanding one’s inner reserves rapidly, manufactured pills were far more effective than raw spiritual medicines.

The grander the reputation of the righteous sect that crafted them, the greater the boost to one’s internal cultivation.

“The path ahead of me is truly endless.”

Mulling over these complex thoughts, I moved past the charred remains of the Human-Faced Spider and spotted the vibrant foliage of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng soaking in the faint light filtering through a fissure in the ceiling.

“To think I would actually partake of this grand treasure in this lifetime.”

My anxieties regarding the acquisition of spiritual pills evaporated in an instant. The very second my eyes landed on the leaves of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng, all my worries dissipated entirely.

While the Ten-Thousand-Year Heshouwu and the Human King Ginseng were undoubtedly rare, the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng, alongside the fabled Ten-Thousand-Year Snow Ginseng, was a legendary medicine renowned for its unparalleled ability to bolster both yang and yin true qi, alongside general internal energy.

Most notably, it possessed the miraculous property of total physical reconstitution. If a person devoid of natural martial aptitude consumed it, their skeletal structure and vessels would change into an ideal vessel for martial arts. Should an already gifted martial artist ingest it, their form would ascend to the coveted Martial God Body.

To put it plainly, if I consumed this masterpiece, I would no longer suffer from the humiliating predicament where my mind comprehends how to deflect an incoming blow, yet my physical frame fails to execute the movement in time.

Wasting no more time, I detached the smallest rootlets first to assimilate as much pure essence as possible, eventually chewing and swallowing the foliage as well.

An incredibly crisp, unblemished aroma coated my mouth, and every breath I released carried that pristine fragrance into the cavern air.

“It begins.”

Shortly after the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng settled in my stomach, a ferocious heat began to radiate from my lower abdomen.

Determined not to let a single shred of this energy escape, I swiftly assumed a cross-legged position and began executing the breathing cycles of the Taeul Heart Method.

The scorching torrent easily overpowered the modest energy of the Taeul Heart Method, rampaging wildly through my internal pathways.

The calm and refined nature of the Taeul Heart Method desperately pursued the wild energy of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng in an attempt to tame it, but the fiery force refused to be mastered.

“Urgh.”

It surged through my cardiac pathways, forcefully shattering blocked meridians at whim and incinerating any stagnant, foul qi in its path.

With every breakthrough, an agonizing sensation as if my physical frame were being rendered apart tore through my consciousness. Yet, as a consequence of this brutal process, the raging energy slowly began to lose its chaotic intensity, bit by bit.

Thus, the relentless internal struggle persisted.

How many hours had slipped away?

FLASH.

The moment my eyelids parted, the ambient light filtering into the cavern felt so blindingly intense that it forced me to grimace.

‘Blinding?’

Within this subterranean space, illumination only penetrated the small alcove where the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng had taken root.

Even that illumination had been so dim that I had been forced to construct and carry an independent torch just to navigate.

Yet now, the light seemed incredibly brilliant?

‘My constitution has transformed.’

My entire physical framework had undergone a metamorphosis. A profound sense of vitality throbbed through every fiber of my being.

THUD.

When I slammed my closed fist against the stone wall, a section of the solid rock face shattered and collapsed.

Despite the impact, I experienced absolutely no discomfort.

Inspecting my internal dantian, I discovered a concentrated sphere of energy roughly the size of a digit securely anchored there.

“Approximately fifteen years of cultivated energy?”

When measured against the monstrous young talents of the Nine Sects and One Gang or the elite heirs of the Five Great Clans, it was still a meager amount. Even so, this was pure internal energy forged through the Taeul Heart Method, an exercise notorious for its agonizingly sluggish rate of progression.

Furthermore, because I had successfully reshaped the physical vessel required for advanced martial arts, the future velocity of my internal energy accumulation would no longer be hampered by my previous physical limitations.

“I suppose I can now realistically set my sights on a high-tier spiritual pill.”

As fortune would have it, I possessed knowledge regarding a legendary spiritual pill that was entirely omitted from the pages of the Murim Compendium of Spiritual Medicines.

“To be entirely accurate, it is a legendary pill that slipped through the fingers of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild.”

For the benefit of Gye Cheol-yeong, the guild leader Gye Yeon-seok had managed to procure Mount Hua’s Snow Plum Pill.

Excluding the legendary Purple Firmament Pill, which stood as the pinnacle of Mount Hua’s medical achievements, this particular medicine was regarded as the absolute crown jewel among their pill creations.

To secure the elusive Snow Plum Pill, an item that even the core disciples of Mount Hua could rarely hope to gaze upon, he had expended not only his immense family wealth but also manipulated every single connection available to the Gyeryong Merchant Guild.

Through these desperate measures, Gye Yeon-seok finally laid hands on the Snow Plum Pill, seemingly ensuring a magnificent destiny for Gye Cheol-yeong.

Yet, perhaps because he had pulled off such an unbelievable feat, Gye Yeon-seok’s personal hubris ultimately brought about his own undoing.

“Or perhaps his confidence lay entirely in the martial power of the Mount Hua experts.”

A distinguished elder from the Mount Hua Sect was scheduled to pay a formal visit to the headquarters of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild.

Gye Yeon-seok was far too calculating to let such a golden marketing opportunity pass by, and he arranged a grand celebration to publicly demonstrate that his commercial empire maintained an incredibly intimate bond with the Mount Hua Sect.

Regrettably, on the very eve of the date Gye Cheol-yeong was scheduled to ingest the medicine, the Snow Plum Pill securely locked within the most fortified subterranean vault of the Gyeryong Merchant Guild vanished without a single trace.

An unidentified intruder had completely bypassed the vigilant senses of the Mount Hua masters to abscond with the treasure.

Left behind like a foolish hound that had dropped its prey, Gye Yeon-seok desperately begged the Mount Hua Sect for assistance. However, the representatives of the Mount Hua Sect merely pointed out that the theft occurred after the transaction had been finalized, meaning they bore zero accountability, before promptly taking their leave.

In the aftermath, Gye Yeon-seok sacrificed another massive portion of his remaining capital to obtain a lesser Plum Blossom Pill, but the sting of that incident lingered in his soul forever, to the point where he strictly prohibited anyone in his presence from mentioning the name of the Snow Plum Pill.

Of course, another individual’s catastrophic misfortune always serves as excellent entertainment over spirits.

The martial world recounted this particular failure time and time again.

During that era, endless rumors circulated regarding the identity of the phantom thief who had pinched the Snow Plum Pill, but the stolen medicine never surfaced in the martial world again.

“To think that acting as a walking archive in my past life would yield such practical benefits now.”

I immediately began sorting through the vast stores of intelligence locked in my memory.

The primary source was the confidential monthly intelligence brief compiled by the Hefei Branch of the Murim Alliance.

Taking the exact calendar date of the Snow Plum Pill theft as my baseline, I meticulously scrutinized every notable incident that took place within the Hefei region roughly four weeks prior and four weeks following the event, alongside the recorded trajectories of prominent figures within the Black Path.

The secondary source was the official transit and lodging logs maintained by the Murim Alliance.

If the culprit was a master originating from the Orthodox Path who possessed the finesse to elude Mount Hua’s finest, such an individual would almost certainly be registered within the Murim Alliance.

By reviewing those specific travel records, I could pinpoint exactly who was moving and their corresponding timelines.

The tertiary source consisted of official mission deployment archives.

From the pool of combatants mobilized by the Murim Alliance for specific assignments, I filtered out anyone who had navigated through Hefei around the timeframe of the robbery.

Subsequently, I systematically cross-referenced this mountain of data using the advanced deductive formulas taught to me by the strategist Jegal Cheon-gi.

“Four candidates.”

Through this rigorous process, four specific names crystallized in my thoughts.

Soul-Chasing Guest Ju Jang-mok.

Five-Star Gentleman Song Won-gi.

Diancang Five Swords Gu Il-mu.

Diancang Five Swords Jang Han-gi.

Two representatives of the Diancang Five Swords had made a temporary stopover in Hefei seventy-two hours prior to the crime, recuperated there for a span of three days, and then departed to fulfill their assigned deployment.

Then there was Five-Star Gentleman Song Won-gi.

He had established residency in Hefei a full month before the incident occurred and maintained his presence there for an additional two months following the theft.

He operated as a unaligned rogue cultivator, yet his personal ethics were so impeccably chivalrous that the denizens of Jianghu universally bestowed upon him the title of Gentleman.

Furthermore, his martial prowess had firmly ascended to the peak realm; had he desired material comfort, he could have easily amassed enough silver to purchase multiple Snow Plum Pills. Instead, he was a purist who dedicated his entire existence solely to the refinement of his blade, matching how a traditional scholar loses himself in classical literature.

And finally, the notorious Soul-Chasing Guest.

The Soul-Chasing Guest was an established operative of the unorthodox Black Path.

He specialized far more in close-quarters capturing techniques than traditional weapon forms, and his avarice for material wealth was legendary.

He conveniently materialized in Hefei just as whispers regarding the acquisition of the Snow Plum Pill began to circulate.

On the exact night the Snow Plum Pill went missing, he vanished into thin air.

Following that date, his name ceased to appear in any subsequent field reports generated by the Murim Alliance.

“The Soul-Chasing Guest……”

As my line of deduction deepened, I hit a sudden roadblock.

Every localized intelligence hub operating across the provinces was strictly mandated to record the whereabouts of high-profile martial artists, yet there was a total absence of data concerning the Soul-Chasing Guest’s post-theft movements.

The complete disappearance of his name from the Murim Alliance archives after the incident strongly indicated that he had adopted an entirely different persona.

Larrikins of his particular caliber were notorious for maintaining several secret identities through the clever utilization of human-skin masks.

After successfully securing the Snow Plum Pill, he likely discarded the persona of the Soul-Chasing Guest permanently.

“However, no unfamiliar high-tier characters emerged during that exact interval.”

I mentally sprinted through the vast archives of my mind, hunting for any newly registered outlaws or rising mercenaries who might have surfaced precisely when the Soul-Chasing Guest dropped off the grid, but found no matches fitting his profile.

Then, while filtering through an unrelated tactical deployment brief, a sudden, self-deprecating chuckle escaped my lips.

“Hah!”

So that was the brilliant strategy he employed.

“That perfectly explains why there were absolutely no tracking crumbs left behind.”

If my calculations proved correct, I might actually be able to intercept the Snow Plum Pill without the looming threat of retaliatory pursuit.

“This endeavor is going to be significantly less complicated than I originally anticipated.”

Just as I allowed myself to relax and strode past the ruined carcass of the Human-Faced Spider to exit the cavern, an intense, unfamiliar sensation suddenly locked onto my left limb.

“?”

The moment my eyes instinctively dropped down to examine my left wrist, my mind filled with utter astonishment.

A vivid azure dragon pattern was visibly coiling around my skin.

The legendary Azure Dragon Bracelet that I had carried throughout my previous incarnation was now radiating a faint luminescence directly beneath my flesh.

‘What under the heavens is occurring?’

It was baffling enough that a physical artifact like the Azure Dragon Bracelet from my past existence was somehow embedded inside my current body. It was even more bizarre to realize that the Azure Dragon Bracelet was undeniably exerting an attractive force toward the remains of the dead Human-Faced Spider.

“Are you targeting its internal core?”

The inner core of a Human-Faced Spider retained a concentration of toxicity so volatile that merely exposing bare skin to it could cause fatal contamination, which is why I had chosen to discard it.

Yet, for some inexplicable reason, the pulsing light of the Azure Dragon Bracelet seemed to be demanding the extraction of that very core.

RIIIIP.

As I sliced through the abdomen of the Human-Faced Spider, the resulting miasma was so intense it caused my vision to blur and sting.

As though sensing the proximity of its prize, the Azure Dragon Bracelet flared with a brilliant brilliance, guiding my hand directly toward the toxic bead.

“……What have I got to lose?”

The Azure Dragon Bracelet was a legendary artifact originally belonging to the Blood-Drinking Demon, one of the feared Guardian Dharma Kings.

It was an item that marked the ultimate, hard-fought triumph of the Sojeong Squad, which is why I had preserved it so carefully. Right up until the moment of my demise, that bracelet stood as the ultimate testament to the legacy of the Sojeong Squad.

“Ah, whatever. Let’s see what happens.”

The instant my fingers locked around the glowing internal core of the Human-Faced Spider—

SSSSS.

“Urgh.”

A searing, liquid energy immediately penetrated my flesh and began traveling up my arm.

The sudden panic that the lethal poison would breach my vital organs caused me to try and break the contact.

Yet at that exact split second—“Hm?”

A profoundly soothing, icy wave of energy began pouring through my palm instead.

The incoming flow, which had initiated as a modest stream akin to a small brook, rapidly expanded into a raging torrent that flooded through every single meridian in my body.

A violent tremor swept across my frame from the intense, invigorating clarity of the sensation—an experience completely distinct from the chaotic heat of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Ginseng.

The toxic core of the Human-Faced Spider dissolved into nothingness within my grasp, and deep inside my dantian, I could feel the newly formed core expanding slightly further.

“Hah, well look at this……”

I gazed down in absolute bewilderment at the Azure Dragon Bracelet as its radiant glow slowly dimished back into my skin.

“Should I be celebrating this turn of events, or should I be deeply concerned?”