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Dang Gun-ak, the Supreme Poison Demon.
When the Demonic Cult invaded the murim world from faraway Xinjiang, he was the young patriarch of the Sichuan Dang Family.
The Demonic Cult's massive rise.
Their cult leader, the Heavenly Demon,
The murim world was cut down by the Demonic Cult with unstoppable momentum.
The Dang Family was no exception.
Driven to the brink of annihilation, the family members fled east, and in the midst of it all, the head of the Dang Family and Dang Gun-ak's father lost his life.
Dang Gun-ak, who had escaped to the outskirts of the Central Plains, gritted his teeth and strove for revenge.
He slept on a bed made of nails, and chewed and swallowed heartsever grass, a deadly poison, with his own mouth.
Thus he attained the realm of the Poison Demon.
In the end, he succeeded in his revenge and saved the murim world by melting the Heavenly Demon into a handful of poisonous water.
The title he gained then was none other than the Supreme Poison Demon.
Dang Gun-ak led his household back to his homeland.
At last, the Sichuan Dang Family overcame its destruction and became the greatest family in the murim world.
He had achieved everything.
He passed the position of family head to his child and retreated into the inner quarters.
Now what remained?
To go beyond the realm of the Poison Demon.
The Sichuan Dang Family was famous for hidden weapons and poison arts.
That was why, despite being part of the orthodox faction, martial artists looked down on them.
The Daoist sects in particular, like Wudang and Mount Hua, had treated them as something close to an unorthodox faction.
They called themselves lofty Daoists walking the path of the Dao?
Saying they would realize the principles of the world, become immortals, and ascend?
Fine.
Then I'll try ascending too.
What do I lack compared to those hook-nosed Daoist bastards?
He obtained and read Daoist books, studied the sorcery of foreign religions, the scriptures of Tibetan esotericism, and even secret teachings that had come from the Western Regions.
Dang Gun-ak contemplated and contemplated again.
What are the principles of the world?
How was it made, and by what method does it operate?
But all it did was make him sleepy.
To be honest, Dang Gun-ak knew it too.
The only things he knew how to do were poisons and hidden weapons.
How to kill as many people as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
There was no way such things had anything to do with the Dao.
Was ascension truly the exclusive domain of Zen monks and Daoists?
Even so, let's see it through to the end.
Dang Gun-ak, the Poison Demon, did not give up on his training.
He had cut off grain, faced the wall, and meditated inside his secluded training chamber, repeating his cultivation to the point his body was breaking down.
'Huh?'
Dang Gun-ak felt it.
The sensation that his body was floating up into the air.
Was it dizziness from exhaustion?
Or an illusion born from his desperate longing for ascension?
But one thing was certain.
Something was happening.
It felt as if his consciousness was being sucked somewhere.
And then he realized it.
Someone was looking at him.
It was a young man dressed in strange clothes.
He couldn't be an immortal.
Their eyes met.
And at the same time, he understood.
Another young version of himself, met in a distant world.
'You are me.'
A connection of spirits.
At last, soul faced soul.
Their experiences and knowledge began to flow between them.
A smile rose on its own.
***
A cliff near Jungcheongbong Peak on Seoraksan.
Kim Taeju, hanging from a jutting tree.
He could not move his body, but his mind was clear.
His older self from another world.
Was this the multiverse or something like that?
They looked so alike that he wondered if that was what he would become when he got old.
The moment he recognized that fact, all sorts of memories came flooding into his consciousness.
A connection made in a fleeting instant.
But it was enough time to vividly and completely experience the entire life of the Supreme Poison Demon.
The strongest man in the murim world, who had melted the Heavenly Demon with poison.
The achievements of the poison arts he had attained.
The Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art, which refined poison essence and evolved it into the ultimate realm, the Poison Spirit.
Blood Seal Poison Palm, Soul-Seizing Finger, Poison-Breaking Hand, Soul-Severing Blade, Blood Butterfly, One Flash of the Flying Falls, Formless Poison, Myriad Flowers Filling the Sky, and countless other hidden weapon arts and poison arts.
Phantom Maze Step, Dark Fragrance Chasing Soul, Golden Cauldron Body Art, Turtle Breathing Technique, Stealth Art, and all kinds of movement and footwork techniques.
The forms and methods of using martial arts, making poisons, handling and crafting hidden weapons, even the realizations Dang Gun-ak had achieved most recently.
He absorbed every last bit of it.
It was all engraved neatly into his mind.
'Uh, uh.....'
It was not something he had intended.
The moment their spirits connected, it happened on its own.
Is this really okay?
Isn't this basically theft of intellectual property?
I should at least ask first.
But the Supreme Poison Demon smiled as if he knew Taeju's thoughts and nodded.
'Ah!'
It meant permission.
***
The secluded training chamber of the Sichuan Dang Family in the murim world.
Dang Gun-ak was in a good mood.
'Of course it's okay!'
Aren't we the same person?
If I could, I would hand over everything I have.
Not only the internal energy I had built up over nearly a hundred years, but also the many poisons I had collected, all kinds of divine weapons and treasures, gold and silver, I would give it all if I could.
'Heh heh, even my very foundation is being stripped clean. Fine, take it all.'
Even so, Dang Gun-ak could not help but be greatly astonished.
Like water soaking into dried cotton, the realizations were being absorbed one after another.
To think that having the same soul would produce such a result!
That was why Dang Gun-ak, the Supreme Poison Demon, felt deeply pleased.
It was even enjoyable to pass on his secret arts.
And on top of that, there was the delight of peeking through his younger self's consciousness at things he had never seen in his life before—civilization, culture, learning, new knowledge.
'Earth, it is completely different from the murim world.'
It was a world that had undergone a great change and survived miraculously.
'And an omnipotent, miraculous existence intervened.'
Awakening and the System.
There were martial artists there too.
'Magical beasts... so they are something like monsters.'
A world whose direction of development was entirely different.
'How interesting. Don't you think so too?'
It seemed the other side felt the same.
That he too found it fascinating, and could hardly contain his amazement at the world called the murim world.
Dang Gun-ak slowly closed his eyes.
A lifetime spent devoting himself only to the study of poisons and hidden weapons.
He had beaten the Heavenly Demon to death and risen to the position of the strongest under heaven.
He had thought that was all he could ever achieve.
But he had been a frog in a well.
'Ascension, my ass!'
The universe was this vast.
Compared to it, the world he lived in was less than a speck of dust, less than a speck on a speck of dust, less than even that.
There might even be worlds bigger and wider than the immortal realm.
Even the immortal realm would be nothing more than a speck, just like the murim world or Earth.
The moment that train of thought continued,
Dang Gun-ak ascended.
***
Seoraksan.
Kim Taeju was mulling over the knowledge he had received from Dang Gun-ak, the Supreme Poison Demon.
He had taken in all of it.
It was truly a soul-level copy and paste.
It was as if the soul of the Supreme Poison Demon Dang Gun-ak had been transferred directly into his head.
'To think poison arts and hidden weapon arts could be this incredible.'
This was not merely martial arts.
If poison arts were compared to Earth's academic fields, they were like a mixture of chemistry, biology, pharmacy, and medicine.
And hidden weapon arts?
Metal alloys and smelting, engineering design, fluid dynamics,
'Blood Seal Poison Palm... is that a palm technique?'
He knew exactly how to unfold the form.
His body was itching.
'Blood Butterfly is a hidden weapon art.'
Blood Butterfly, which created illusions as it fluttered like a butterfly and struck its target.
'And Formless Poison is a vicious poison that no one can detect.'
The most terrifying poison.
Colorless and odorless.
It probably would not show up even under scientific investigation.
'As for the Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art.....'
It was the Supreme Poison Demon's foundational art and the entirety of poison arts.
He had to master this first.
'And then Myriad Flowers Filling the Sky.'
A technique in which flowers of hidden weapons bloomed across the sky and poured down like rain.
Those petals did not simply fall.
Each one moved according to the user's will as if it were alive.
In other words, it meant controlling thousands upon thousands of guided missiles.
Of course, to do that, one had to fully master the Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art and borrow the power of the Poison Spirit.
The attainments achieved by the Supreme Poison Demon were profound beyond measure.
And he had swallowed them all down without any effort.
But at that very moment!
'Ah!'
Suddenly, his consciousness returned to reality.
"Damn...."
He could no longer feel his presence.
It seemed the connection of spirits had been severed.
'What a shame.'
All he could do was watch and feel.
It would have been nice if they could have spoken to each other.
'That aside.'
He had to hurry.
The bastard who had kicked him might come to confirm his death.
'Ugh.'
But he could not move.
He had fallen from the cliff and gotten caught in a tree, but the impact had left his body in terrible shape.
The only parts that were relatively fine were his right arm and left leg.
Just then!
'Hm?'
A sharp scent tickled the tip of his nose.
It was a smell he had encountered many times before.
'... It's deodeok.'
He was certain.
He could tell just by the smell.
But this was not the healthy, delicious medicinal herb.
It was poisonous deodeok, whose genes had mutated under the influence of mana, containing a poison that was deadly to humans.
'I'm lucky.'
Now that he had obtained the Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art, poison was food and a divine medicine to him.
Sniff, sniff.
Taeju frantically dug at the ground, following the scent of the poisonous deodeok.
'Found it.'
It was a plump one.
'It looks like it's been growing for over a hundred years.'
At this size, it should contain enough poison to send at least one grown man into a coma.
In truth, a hundred years was not all that old.
Taeju slowly operated the Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art as he chewed the poisonous deodeok.
Sss!
It was bitter enough to make him gag.
But he forced himself to chew and swallow it.
'Urk!'
A stabbing pain rose from his lower abdomen.
And his heart too.
He endured it.
The poison was bitter, but the fruit it bore would be sweet.
'Are there more?'
Roots of grass growing from the cracks in the cliff.
"Oh!"
Poisonous deodeok was everywhere.
It seemed to be a whole colony.
He carefully pulled them out, shook off the dirt, and chewed them thoroughly.
Poison flowed through his entire body.
The Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art.
Following the flow of its formula, his blood vessels became filled with energy.
Vitality surged up.
Strength returned to his muscles.
Needless to say, it made him feel good too.
"This isn't enough."
To create poison essence, he needed at least a hundred roots of poisonous deodeok.
'Should I go look somewhere else?'
His right arm and left leg were fine.
In that case, the Wall Lizard Art.
One of the common martial arts used for climbing cliffs.
His internal energy was lacking because poison essence had not yet been refined in his dantian, but he could at least imitate it.
Taeju moved sideways along the cliff.
At the same time, he searched the poisonous herbs growing all around him.
Now that he had fully inherited the experience and knowledge of the Supreme Poison Demon, it was not difficult to find plants imbued with poison.
'That's poisonous bellflower root.'
There was an enormous amount of it.
They were also very large.
At least two or three hundred years old.
'Just one for now.....'
In truth, no matter how much one practiced poison arts, consuming poison in such quantities all at once was an act of suicide.
Even for the Supreme Poison Demon, a grandmaster of poison.
Chomp, chomp, he chewed and swallowed it, operating the Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art to convert it into internal energy, then dug up the rest and stored them all in his pocket and inside his clothes.
Strength returned to him.
Using that strength, he began climbing the cliff again.
At that moment!
'Hm?'
Voices could be heard from somewhere.
"Still haven't found him?"
"He definitely fell rolling down this way, sir."
It was Staff Sergeant Go Youngho and the members of his platoon, the ones who had tried to kill him.
"What do I do?'
He had to hide.
As things stood, he could not beat them.
Taeju pressed his body tightly against the cliff.
Because he had managed to produce a threadlike bit of internal power with the Primordial Boundless Poison Spirit Art, he had enough strength.
They would not find him easily.
And at the same time.
'Turtle Breathing Technique.'
A technique that controlled the body's metabolism and erased one's presence.
Taeju slowly entered a state of light suspended sleep.
"Where the hell did this bastard go? Did the orcs drag him away?"
"No, sir. According to the drone reconnaissance results, nothing happened in the orc village."
"I should've just killed him right away for no reason...."
He had fallen from a cliff.
Even a mana-compatible person would not have come out unharmed.
Kim Taeju was a Mana-Rejector.
Physical abilities worse than an ordinary person's.
Even if he had not died, it would have been normal for him to suffer fatal injuries.
"It'd be perfect to process this as an accidental death. He should've just died nicely."
The best scenario.
A young officer killed in the line of duty after losing his footing during reconnaissance.
That was what the higher-ups wanted too.
"Let's search a little more and then head back."
Taeju heard every word they said.
Their voices gradually grew distant.
Fortunately, he had survived the crisis.
'Fuck, you sons of bitches!'
Once his body recovered....
'I'll kill every last one of you.'
That was when it happened.
Hiss! Hissss!
Along with an ominous sound, a fishy smell reached the tip of his nose.
'Don't tell me...?'
Before Taeju's eyes, as he remained perfectly still using the Turtle Breathing Technique, something long and black appeared.
Chilling eyes, a triangular head, and terrifying patterns on its body.
It was a mutated pit viper as huge as a boa constrictor.
And it was a venomous snake whose poison had become even stronger due to mana mutation.
The crisis continued.