Ch. 27 Murim Psychopath Chapter 27

Chapter 27: Open Crown

Tak, tadak, tak!

Dot-like bruises were etched across several parts of Dong Bong-su’s body.

Careful yet razor-sharp movements.

At last, the Tang Clan’s secret Open Crown Grand Technique began to unfold upon Sosam—no, upon Dong Bong-su’s body.

To carry out the Open Crown Grand Technique, Tang-oh had to arbitrarily create acupoints in Dong Bong-su’s body using the Dragon-Phoenix Gold Needles. Since there was no path to begin with, the work of creating paths had to come first.

Tang-oh’s hand swiftly cleaved through the air. Following that motion, the Dragon-Phoenix Gold Needles floating in midair began to embed themselves throughout Dong Bong-su’s body, and Tang-oh’s energy wove between the needles, carving out pathways.

Passing through the Central Treasury Point, piercing the Lesser Shang Point and Shang Yang Point, penetrating the Welcome Fragrance Point, from the Utmost Spring Point boring through the Lesser Rushing Point and Lesser Marsh Point, crossing the Palace of Hearing Point and Heavenly Pool Point, passing beyond the Central Rushing Point and Tear Receptacle Point, striking the Jade Hall Point and Hidden White Point, tapping the Great Embrace Point and Bright Clarity Point, traversing the Reaching Yin Point and Gushing Spring Point, hitting the Abundant Mansion Point and Gate Rushing Point, scraping the Silk Bamboo Hollow Point and Pupil Crevice Point, piercing the Foot Opening Yin Point and Great Mound Point, all the way to the Gate of Cycles Point.

At last, paths were opened through all the Twelve Meridian Acupoints in accordance with yin-yang and the five elements.

From that moment on, the Open Crown Grand Technique was carried out in earnest.

Papapak!

Tang-oh’s hands and the Dragon-Phoenix Gold Needles roamed all over Dong Bong-su’s body.

As he proceeded with the Open Crown Grand Technique, he felt more and more keenly just how extraordinary the Body of No Acupoints truly was. Even though the energy followed acupoints that had been created only temporarily, there was not the slightest obstruction in the flow of qi and blood. Rather than being hindered, the qi surged several times faster than it did in an ordinary martial artist.

He grew excited and sank ever deeper into the Open Crown Grand Technique.

That said, he had not completely lost his reason. There was still an important task he had yet to perform.

When the Open Crown Grand Technique neared its final stage, Tang-oh pressed a button attached somewhere on the bottom of the Dragon-Phoenix Gold Needles case. The bottom opened, revealing a hidden compartment inside the case.

Inside were countless tiny, pitch-black specks, like grains of millet. Yet upon closer inspection, those tiny things were crawling. They were not grains at all, but insects.

They were a type of ultra-fine worm known as the Ten-Thousand Poison Gu.

The Ten-Thousand Poison Gu was a gu secretly developed by the Tang Clan, a special breed created by mixing various types of gu, refining them, and then infusing the resulting gu with ten thousand kinds of poison.

Once the Ten-Thousand Poison Gu took root in the host’s lower dantian, it possessed the trait of devouring any poison that infiltrated the body. Thus, even someone without any innate resistance to poison would become a Body Impervious to Ten Thousand Poisons simply by harboring this Ten-Thousand Poison Gu within.

However, not long after its creation, the Ten-Thousand Poison Gu was soon abandoned.

The reason was the danger inherent in its use.

The Ten-Thousand Poison Gu lived in colonies like ants or bees, but once they encountered a host, the colony would break apart. At that moment, the person who harbored the Queen Ten-Thousand Poison Gu could control all other people who carried the remaining Ten-Thousand Poison Gu of that colony.

In other words, if someone who possessed the Queen Ten-Thousand Poison Gu harbored malicious intent and endangered the Tang Clan, the Tang Clan could be driven down a path of no return. Because they were aware of this danger, the members of the Tang Clan buried the Ten-Thousand Poison Gu as it was, even after developing it.

And yet, that Ten-Thousand Poison Gu, thought to have been lost, was now in Tang-oh’s hands.

Why did Tang-oh take out the Ten-Thousand Poison Gu at this very moment, when the Open Crown Grand Technique was nearly complete?

The reason was obvious.

It was to place a restraint upon Dong Bong-su.

He did not wish to lose such an outstanding asset as Sosam to another place, even by chance, and he also wished to make him completely his own.

However, there was something he did not know.

Dong Bong-su had already heard all of this.

Knowing everything, he accepted Tang-oh’s proposal in full and was now allowing a single male Ten-Thousand Poison Gu into his body. This was because he could kill the gu whenever he wished. The Inventory Divine Art applied the same way even inside the body. This was something he had discovered only recently.

It was a conclusion he had reached after pondering the question of just how far the scope of the Inventory Divine Art extended, starting from the act of taking various items in and out of the inventory.

Would the Inventory Divine Art function even within the empty spaces inside the body?

The result was, ‘It was possible.’

Therefore, as long as Dong Bong-su knew where the gu had settled inside his body, he could eject a tiny weapon like a fine needle into his body and burst the gu to death at any time.

Tang-oh did not know this, and he believed that he would be able to completely control Dong Bong-su.

Tang-oh inserted a single Ten-Thousand Poison Gu into Dong Bong-su’s ear.

Ssssslide.

Like an ant burrowing into sand, the male Ten-Thousand Poison Gu disappeared into Dong Bong-su’s ear.

Even so, Dong Bong-su sat quietly, sensing the new energy accumulating in his body as a result of the Open Crown Grand Technique. By simply accepting the qi, he was grasping how qi flowed and how it ought to flow within the body. In that process, the pain caused by the Open Crown Grand Technique and the invasion of the Ten-Thousand Poison Gu was dreadful, but having entered a state of unity between self and all things, Dong Bong-su gradually forgot the pain.

Though it was not a long time, Dong Bong-su was evolving into an even greater monster.

● ● ●

A few hours later.

Only after the dawn rooster crowed did the Open Crown Grand Technique finally come to an end.

A satisfied smile formed on Tang-oh’s exhausted face as he looked down at Dong Bong-su and spoke.

“Open your eyes.”

Dong Bong-su slowly opened his eyes and looked at Tang-oh. The dullness in his eyes had completely cleared, and in some ways, there was even a faint sense of dizziness within them.

“Your name was given as Tang Sam, meaning to cut down demons as one would mow grass.”

“Yes.”

An inarticulate voice flowed from Dong Bong-su’s mouth. To Tang-oh or anyone else listening, it should have sounded as though he had lost the ability to speak for a long time, and it was appropriate.

Thinking that everything had gone exactly as intended, Tang-oh formed a satisfied smile. In response, Dong Bong-su smiled back. Of course, his smile was also one of satisfaction at everything having gone properly.

Which of the two had truly succeeded went without saying.

At last, Dong Bong-su completely shed the shell called Sosam and gained new wings named Tang Sam. Though no one in the martial world perceived the danger inherent in it.

Today was the day a monster fastened small wings to itself and began preparing for flight. How high it would soar, or whether it would fail to fly and instead crash straight down, was something only time would tell.

● ● ●

(Revised) New Murim Online Second Law: Any object that is in direct contact with any part of the body (addition: regardless of whether it is inside or outside the body) can be placed into the inventory. (However, it must be smaller than the inventory, and it must not be a living creature.)

Addition: It is not limited to taking out or putting in only one item at a time; through training, that number may increase.

※Even now, none of these laws are fixed or certain.

Side Story 1: Birth of a Psychopath

A good person is something you can only talk about in passing. When you look at an entire lifetime, there is no such thing as a good person in this world.

– Hannibal Lecter, from The Silence Of The Lambs

● ● ●

He had been different since childhood.

Ms. Kim Yang-suk said that when he was born, she was startled because instead of crying, he simply looked around at his surroundings. She said she slapped his butt for quite some time to make him cry, but when he still did not cry, she pinched him. Only then did he cry from the pain.

Ten months later.

At last, he began to speak.

Even then, he was a child distinct from the others. The first words he uttered were not short words like “mom,” “dad,” or “milk,” but a complete sentence: “Mom, give me food.”

It seemed that his mother, Ms. Kim Yang-suk, clearly realized at that moment that he was different from other children. Perhaps because of that, from a young age he was able to learn many things under the banner of gifted education and the like. However, his pace of progress did not differ much from that of other children. In reality, he had already mastered everything and was spending his time making ants fight—something he enjoyed—while outwardly pretending that he was still in the process of learning.

Perhaps even at that time, he had known instinctively. That standing out was never beneficial.

Time flowed on again, and he became five years old.

Ms. Kim Yang-suk’s obsessive gifted education had nearly come to an end, and he was going through a normal stage of growth.

He played ttaekji [TL/N:paper tile flipping game], marbles, land-grabbing games, and various game consoles with the neighborhood kids. Among them all, the game he liked the most was catching insects, reptiles, and amphibians and playing with them.

Ants, dragonflies, cicadas, beetles, longhorn beetles, mantises, all kinds of grasshoppers and katydids, frogs, salamanders, tadpoles, and so on.

Since most of the children’s mothers disliked such things, storing them always fell to him. Ms. Kim Yang-suk did not pay much attention to them as long as he himself was fine with it.

He mostly played with them in his room.

Then one morning, Ms. Kim Yang-suk came into his room and, not seeing them, asked him about it.

“Huh? Bong-su, what did you do with all the bugs you caught with the other kids yesterday? You shouldn’t just throw things like that into the trash.”

As she said that, she rummaged through the trash can in his room. But of course, they were not there.

“I ate them.”

That was probably how he answered. It was not wrong.

Startled by those words, Ms. Kim Yang-suk scolded him harshly, saying he should never eat things like that. She even told his father when he came home in the evening, and he was scolded even more severely.

In truth, the only thing he had eaten was a frog. As for the rest, he had made them fight among themselves. They killed and were killed by one another. In the end, the one that survived was the frog, and he had merely eaten the frog. In the end, it amounted to having eaten them all.

He had proven that he was stronger than the frog, but he was still a weaker existence compared to his parents.

That was when he realized it. That he should not do the things he liked in front of others—especially people stronger than himself.

Time flowed on once more.

He grew up healthy and exemplary.

He did not trouble his parents’ hearts, nor did he fall out of favor with his teachers. Rather, as a child, he was a model student acknowledged by everyone.

Ms. Kim Yang-suk praised him wherever she went.

A son who studied well and was kind.

The teachers, too, frequently patted his head and praised him.

A perfect child, praised wherever he was shown off.

That was who he was back then—Dong Bong-su. By behaving that way, even if he did what he liked, people would interpret it on their own as having a strong experimental spirit, or they would understand it easily.

However, while a high-achieving, praised exemplary child might be beloved by parents, such a child was bound to draw hostility from peers. At the time, he had not yet fully understood that.

It was probably when he was in his second year of middle school.

He secretly gathered several stray dogs and cats that wandered around the neighborhood and made them fight. Then, while secretly burying the dead dogs and cats in the school flower bed, he was caught by the other children. Because of that incident, he became an outcast. After that, for the remainder of his middle school years, it became difficult to pursue his hobbies and experiments again.

At that time, he realized one more thing. It was not enough to look good only to those stronger than himself; he also had to look good to those who were not strong, and he had to hide his hobbies.

Time passed again, and he became a high school student.

At least on the surface, he had become fairly ordinary by then.

His grades were average, he had nothing in particular that he excelled at, just the unremarkable high schooler next door who would not stand out anywhere. That was him, Dong Bong-su.

But.

There was still something that was not ordinary.

For some strange reason, girls liked him and followed him around. At first, he could not understand why.

Eventually, braving the annoyance, he dated one of them. And one day, he asked her,

“Why do you like me?”

“Oh my! Look at you? How could I say something like that out loud? It’s embarrassing.”

Since she said that, he did what she liked and, when she reached her climax, asked her once more.

“Why do you like me?”

Panting, she finally gave him the answer he wanted.

“I don’t know. Maybe because you’re not ordinary…?”

“What does that mean?”

“You seem different somehow. You’re ordinary, but at the same time, you don’t seem ordinary?”

At that moment, he gained a new realization. Even if he stayed still, he was not ordinary.

So from then on, he began to wear an artificial camouflage. He exercised like everyone else, watched the TV programs others watched, laughed when others laughed, and cried when others cried.

At some point, people began to say this when they looked at him.

“Mr. Bong-su. You’re such a good person.”

“Bong-su, thank you.”

“Mr. Bong-su, could you please take care of this?”

“Mr. Bong-su….”

“Bong-su….”

“Bong….”

Before he knew it, he had become a good person.

No one felt any hesitation in dealing with him. The men came to like him simply as a colleague or friend, and the women perceived him merely as a coworker, a senior from school, an older brother figure, and so on.

At last, he realized.

Only then did he understand that he had obtained true camouflage—what was called ordinariness. Now, like a chameleon, wherever he went, even without conscious effort, he transformed into a ‘good person, an ordinary person.’

He had finally completely slipped out of people’s sight.

Only at that point was he able to reclaim his true self.

It had been a truly long period of endurance.

Now it was time to unleash the desires he had suppressed and suppressed. Not on insects or animals, but on real prey.

Only in front of them could he shed his camouflage and return to his true self.