The Honin guided her not to the Blood Demon’s bedchamber but to the reception room.Seated in a chair, the Blood Demon raised his hand.“Come closer.”Sohwa stared at him and then stepped forward. At that, the Blood Demon’s face took on an odd look.“Every time I see you, it’s astonishing. To the point I wonder if Cheong-il made Geumso’s face to mock me.”Whenever he looked at Sohwa, the Blood Demon brought up a woman named Geumso. They said she was her mother, but since she had never seen her, she had no feeling about it. Rather, his tenderness seemed deeper.But at the words the Blood Demon spoke right after, Sohwa cleared that thought away.“If I had known Geumso was born with the aptitude, I would have embraced her myself. Regrettable.”Seated, Sohwa covered her mouth with her hand.The Blood Demon let out a hollow laugh.“What do you mean by that?”“Apologies. I don’t have a strong stomach and don’t tolerate repulsive talk well.”“Ha ha, what is there to find repulsive?”The Blood Demon said that Sohwa carried his blood.There was no way Tang Ji-ha was a descendant of ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) the Blood Demon, so Geumso must be of the Blood Demon’s line. How could it not be repulsive to say he would embrace her family?“I have no interest in the Blood Cult’s codes, but in the Central Plains, it is not permitted for parent and child to couple.”The Blood Demon gave a thin smile.“Geumso is not my child.”Sohwa took him for a liar.“I read the records you wrote in the Bigo. You made frames, and you embraced them yourself to make new frames as well, didn’t you.”“It is true I embraced a line far above Geumso, so that Geumso carries my blood. But can one far below be called my child? If one must link that child and me, one should call us blood relatives.”He tilted his mouth and asked,“I understand the Central Plains often marries within blood relations as well, is that not so?”He seemed well versed in Central Plains culture.“Are you my mother’s maternal grandfather? Or her maternal great-grandfather?”“Well now. I don’t remember.”The Blood Demon said that since those he had embraced were not few, it was hard to know. Listening, Sohwa pressed her mouth again.“Why again?”“As I said, I don’t bear the repulsive well.”“Geumso was a polite child, but you, though you received that fine blood, speak coarsely.”Clicking his tongue once, the Blood Demon asked,“So, did you find an answer in the Bigo?”“It’s hard to give a definite answer.”“You said you once made the Blood Jade in a former life—was that empty talk?”“The records you sent are not yet written in the Central Plains tongue. And now that I say it, what I completed was extreme poison.”Sohwa smiled and asked,“If you want, shall I feed you at least that?”“Extreme poison, is it.”The Blood Demon smiled.It was not the face of a man who had been deceived; rather, he looked intrigued.“What was the record you read?”“There were more than a few, but the most memorable was the record about survivors of a plague in the Western Regions.”As if he knew what that was, the Blood Demon stroked his dark-red lips with his fingers.He fell silent, as if ordering her to prove she knew the content.Meeting his gaze, Sohwa opened her mouth.“The medical text you sent me was strange. Normally one writes the symptoms of a disease and sets down the method of treating it, but this described in detail how the disease manifests. The one who wrote it gave the patients no treatment at all. He merely watched them suffer and recorded the process by which they healed on their own.”It was hard to call the writer of the record a physician.He was merely a madman with a curiosity about the human body, like a monster before one’s eyes.“He seemed to believe there is an organ in the human body that senses plague, and that in response to the signal from that organ, worms that eat the disease arise. He conjectured that because something that eats the disease arose in excess, the survivors overcame the plague.”Observing the patients, he sought the difference between those who survived and those who died.The only common point of the survivors was that they had a family member who died of the plague.He thought that there was something in the survivors’ bodies that ate the disease, so they survived even when infected, and therefore would survive again if the disease struck again.From the start, he regarded it as a difference of the body.He went to a village the plague had not yet reached, pretended it was medicine, and fed each villager a single drop of blood from one who had died of the disease.Most of the villagers who drank the blood caught the plague and died.That was natural.But again, a portion fell ill for a few days and got better on their own.And when at last the plague reached that village, all who had survived did not catch the disease.“The physician called that something which arises in response to the plague and eats the plague ‘immunity,’ and said that to check whether one has it in abundance, one need only drink the blood of one who died of the disease. Though it costs one’s life. I imagine he continued his experiments thereafter, but regrettably, in my former life I saw only that single volume of his record, so I know no more than this.”With an intrigued look, the Blood Demon stroked his jaw.“The House of Compilation Lord would not yet have set that record down in the Central Plains tongue… Seeing that you know its contents, I find you credible, Geumso’s child.”Ignoring the Blood Demon’s sickening voice, Sohwa spoke.“Most likely, at that time you sent me the medical text because you knew I resembled you. So that I would experiment on my own body and find an answer.”This is why you separated me from the Tang Clan before you annihilated Sichuan.After a brief silence, she asked,“Did you judge that you and I have a great many of those worms called immunity in our bodies?”The Blood Demon did not deny it.Curling his dark-red lips, he asked,“So, did you find the answer?”Sohwa nodded.“For a time, I went around drinking patients’ blood as you wished. I was curious whether, if I could handle those worms called immunity, my body would wholly accept poison.”The Blood Demon’s voice changed.“Did you succeed?”Sohwa’s lips slanted.“I succeeded.”A heavy silence fell.When he spoke again, the Blood Demon’s voice had risen.“Do you mean you discovered a way to remove immunity?”Sohwa shook her head.“No, that could not be removed.”She added slowly,“It can only be paralyzed for a very short while.”“How long? One quarter-hour?”The Blood Demon asked again, impatient.Sohwa recalled the day she had taken the poison she had made.“Not even half a quarter-hour. Long enough to say a few words, that was all.”“Mm, that short, you say? It must be at least one quarter-hour.”Regret brushed the Blood Demon’s face.“What I made was like that. But seeing the records you left, I realized what I did wrong. Next time I can lengthen the paralysis. If I read more records, I may find a precise method to control the time.”The man who had been leaning back against his chair leaned his body close to the table.“Then how long do you need to make it?”Unlike the urgent Blood Demon, Sohwa answered unhurriedly.“There are no distillers here, nor tools to prepare medicinal ingredients. Only if an environment to make it is prepared can I gauge the time.”“Do not worry about such things.”Tearing his mouth in a smile, the Blood Demon asked,“Will three days suffice?”Meeting the Blood Demon’s eyes, Sohwa opened her mouth.“From the look of it, there are many precious herbs in your garden.”“Ha ha, you took note of that as well.”“Most of the ingredients I need are in your garden, so there aren’t many I have to procure. That will save that much time. If you let me use the garden, I can try making a new one not in three days but within two.”Perhaps pleased with the answer, the Blood Demon laughed.Then, as if bestowing tremendous generosity, he said,“I intended to punish you for taking the divine object, but your answer pleases me. Use the garden as you please. And if you complete the Blood Jade and bring it, I will give you the divine object as well.”Sohwa’s gaze fell to her wrist.“Treasure it well. It is a precious divine object that contains my blood.”She had already seen in the Bigo how the Blood Cult man treated divine objects. Even so, Sohwa let out a slight scoff, treating it like something trivial.“It doesn’t look that precious.”It was to provoke the Blood Demon.“Geumso’s child, it would be best if you learned to watch your tongue.”Sohwa lifted her head.Then she stared straight at the Blood Demon.Only after reading the Blood Cult’s history did I understand why the Blood Demon calls as an elixir not a medicine that accumulates energy, but a medicine that neutralizes his own recovery.And also why, in my former life, he sent Namgung Hyun to me and showed me the Blood Cult’s records.Because the Blood Demon’s body is similar to mine.Sohwa’s body, as if in response to poison, was sensitive to alien energies as well.No matter how fine an elixir she took, no matter if she spent the whole day circulating, the energy would not be retained. Even if she forcibly drove energy to pierce the points, before she could complete the Small Heavenly Circuit, her qi and blood would close again.In the end, Sohwa could not pile inner energy in the dantian.Because her inner energy did not accumulate, her martial arts remained in place. As time passed, her martial attainment fell far behind her peers, and she gave up learning martial arts altogether.Tang Sohwa was certain. That the Blood Demon, like her, could not form meridian pathways. Hence his obsession with martial men.There was no way to grow except by stealing the inner energy others had piled up.But it seemed there was a problem with using the inner energy he stole.From the start, Sohwa was one who had not found a way to accumulate energy; she could not know how the Blood Demon absorbed and used the inner energy he took.So she had to see it herself.Sohwa pulled the divine object from her sleeve.“They called this ‘Blood Demon’s Will,’ and I found it laughable that you call a mere ornament your will.”Confident in her sneer, Sohwa began to mock the Blood Demon.“Isn’t it shameful to regard yourself as a god merely because you were born with an unusual body? I too was born with a body like yours, yet I have never once regarded myself as a god. You say you intended to punish me for taking a god’s thing, but…”Tang Sohwa curled her lips in an annoying smile.“Are you not not a god?”Right before the Blood Demon’s eyes, Tang Sohwa dropped the bracelet to the floor.“So a mere human’s thing is powerless.”Tang Sohwa’s foot came down upon the beads.“If you die, what use would ‘Blood Demon’s Will’ be? It’s nothing but a stagnant, rotting, disgusting pouch of blood.”

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