Chapter 8

Writhing in agony, falling asleep and waking up repeatedly for many days.

One day when he opened his eyes again, sure enough, there was Mang-ryo’s smiling face.

“Did you sleep well? It’s been several days. Come now, now that you’re awake, we have work to do.”

Jin Ja-gang could only tremble helplessly.

His entire body felt as if it were sinking endlessly into the earth.

He had fallen into an inescapable hell.

A dark and deep hell where he couldn’t see anything ahead.

* * *

Mang-ryo tested all kinds of poisons on Jin Ja-gang.

“Still alive, are you?”

Though he always said this when Jin Ja-gang woke up, Mang-ryo’s expression suggested he would have been quite disappointed if Jin Ja-gang had actually died.

“Hungry? Here, let’s eat.”

Mang-ryo fed Jin Ja-gang a dark, murky porridge. Not knowing what was in it, Jin Ja-gang kept his mouth shut and resisted. But Mang-ryo smiled gently, dislocated Jin Ja-gang’s jaw, and force-fed him.

As soon as the porridge entered his stomach, stomach pains began.

“Urrrgh!”

Mang-ryo continued feeding him the porridge and left him alone, then laughed heartily when he saw Jin Ja-gang drooling.

“Is my homemade mushroom porridge that delicious? Would you like some more?”

Jin Ja-gang shook his head, but that only pleased Mang-ryo more.

“Let’s see. Among the mushrooms, I used death cap, destroying angel, fly agaric… and what else did I put in? Heh heh, as I get older, my memory weakens. Oh, that’s right. I also added fool’s funnel and honey fungus.”

With a satisfied expression, Mang-ryo fed Jin Ja-gang all of the remaining poisonous mushroom porridge, then put his jaw back in place.

Jin Ja-gang was already hallucinating and completely out of his mind. The world was twisted and filled with strange, colorful patterns.

***

Read only at nineheavens.org

Translated by Nine Heavens!

https://discord.gg/XC9DTsTQ9Z

***

Jin Ja-gang wandered in hallucinations and pain for half a day, but eventually survived after passing bloody excretions.

When Jin Ja-gang woke up, Mang-ryo poured a bucket of water over him.

“How can a grown boy not control his bowels and bladder?”

After roughly splashing him with water a few times, what Mang-ryo presented next was another bowl of porridge.

Mang-ryo smiled contentedly.

“Since you didn’t die, I mixed in a few more varieties.”

“Ugh…”

Seeing Jin Ja-gang’s terror-stricken eyes, Mang-ryo laughed maniacally.

“Don’t worry. It’s a joke! A joke! Since you ate everything and excreted it all, I made more porridge because I thought you might be hungry.”

It was a lie.

Jin Ja-gang ate the more potent poisonous mushroom porridge, vomited several times, and then passed out.

* * *

“Now, what shall we try today?”

The painful days continued.

There wasn’t even a moment for Jin Ja-gang to rest.

“I should try the yellow lizard poison. It causes a lot of pain but has little killing power, which has always been a concern.”

Mang-ryo brought a lizard. The Extreme Poison Sect primarily used poisons from insects and animals that lived on the ground.

The lizard, which had been flicking its tongue, bit Jin Ja-gang’s arm.

Soon, his arm swelled and became stiff, losing sensation. Blood flowed steadily and wouldn’t stop.

Cold sweat broke out and dizziness set in. He felt as if his body was being pressed firmly into the ground.

Soon, an immense pain surged from his arm, feeling as if the entire arm was about to burst.

“Nngh!”

Jin Ja-gang’s eyes rolled back and he passed out.

Time passed, and he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. When Jin Ja-gang came to his senses, Mang-ryo, as if he had been waiting, examined Jin Ja-gang’s condition by pulling back his eyelids.

“How strange. The poison should have spread throughout the body, but it remained confined to the bitten area and then disappeared. I understand that the poison can’t move because your energy channels are blocked… but why does the poison disappear?”

Mang-ryo asked Jin Ja-gang.

“Do you know why?”

Even in his dazed state, Jin Ja-gang gritted his teeth. Even if he knew, he didn’t want to answer.

Mang-ryo tapped Jin Ja-gang’s cheek lightly.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. What could I expect from you? I’ll figure it out myself.”

Those words were even more chilling.

Mang-ryo brought a yellow lizard in his deerskin-gloved hand. And in his other hand, he held something like a net bag.

“If the poison wears off just half a day after poisoning, there’s no effect from all the effort I put into poisoning you. So this time, I’ve selected something that takes a bit longer to show symptoms.”

Mang-ryo first had the yellow lizard bite Jin Ja-gang. Then he took a snake out of the net bag. It was a viper, brownish with round spots, and uniquely, it had a white ring-shaped mark on its head.

“Let me introduce you. This is the ring-marked viper. You probably haven’t seen it directly before, but actually, you’re already acquainted. This is the snake whose venom was used in the Poison Palm that struck your grandfather, Son Wi-hak.”

Jin Ja-gang trembled even as he writhed in pain from the yellow lizard poison. It was the venom of this ring-marked viper that had caused Son Wi-hak to die in agony as his flesh rotted.

“The peculiarity of the ring-marked viper’s venom is that it only manifests about a day after the bite. So most people realize they’ve been poisoned when it’s too late. Son Wi-hak probably experienced the same. Poor fellow… tsk, tsk.”

Jin Ja-gang clenched his teeth. He wanted to rip out Mang-ryo’s tongue right then and there.

But Mang-ryo continued speaking.

“Just when you think the yellow lizard poison has subsided, the dormant ring-marked viper’s venom will activate again. I’m truly curious to see if your body can overcome the viper’s venom by that time and neutralize the dormant poison.”

The ring-marked viper bit Jin Ja-gang’s other arm.

As Mang-ryo had said, there was almost no immediate sensation from the viper’s venom. However, after barely two-fifths of an hour, the poisoning symptoms suddenly began.

Since the yellow lizard poison hadn’t subsided yet, when both poisons began acting simultaneously, Jin Ja-gang was in such agony that he wished for death.

“Ugh, aaaagh!”

It felt as if both arms had been severed.

As Jin Ja-gang was losing consciousness from the unbearable pain, Mang-ryo muttered:

“Hmm, what’s this? The ring-marked viper’s venom, which should take a day to manifest, has triggered in just two-fifths of an hour?”

Mang-ryo brought a handful of herbs and struck Jin Ja-gang’s cheeks and nose with them. It was musk herb.

Jin Ja-gang, who had been on the verge of losing consciousness, suddenly regained his senses from the spicy, pungent aroma.

“Aaaaaagh!”

As soon as Jin Ja-gang screamed, Mang-ryo pinched his nose. Then he poured hot broth into Jin Ja-gang’s mouth.

“Ack! Ack, pfft!”

Mang-ryo poured the broth, unconcerned whether Jin Ja-gang’s throat and mouth were scalded.

“This is a special intelligence decoction made with the finest ingredients spared no expense.”

Jin Ja-gang was dumbfounded by the unexpected statement.

Intelligence decoction?

It’s a medicinal broth made by mixing herbs like poria, polygala, acorus, and others. It’s mainly used to treat memory loss and enhance memory.

But why would he feed it to him?

Jin Ja-gang soon felt his mind clearing. Perhaps because of this, the pain in both arms felt even more intense.

It felt as if thousands of needles were sprouting inside his arms, growing outward.

“Ugh, aah!”

However, thanks to the intelligence decoction, he could perceive all the abnormal reactions in his arms even amid this tremendous pain.

The skin swelling, the flesh softening, the blood vessels bursting, the muscle fibers twisting, inflammation in the bones causing the bone marrow to throb.

Each sensation was vividly perceptible.

As his mind cleared and he entered a state of slight alertness, even if he wanted to faint, he couldn’t. Jin Ja-gang understood why Mang-ryo had given him the intelligence decoction.

“If you just collapse after consuming such expensive poisons, wouldn’t that be a waste for me?”

Mang-ryo laughed heartily as he observed Jin Ja-gang’s condition and recorded it in a ledger.

Jin Ja-gang forcibly suppressed the despair that washed over him.

A situation pushed to the extreme, with no way out.

Just like at the trial in the Martial Arts Alliance’s Yunnan Branch, there was nothing Jin Ja-gang could do now.

“Aaaaaagh!”

It took at least a day for both poisons to subside.

During that day, Jin Ja-gang couldn’t sleep and had to endure all the pain in a conscious state, etching it into his bones.

This was because whenever he was about to fall asleep, Mang-ryo would wake him with the musk herb and feed him more intelligence decoction to keep him alert.

* * *

Mang-ryo continued his experiments on Jin Ja-gang, feeding him intelligence decoction every day to keep his mind clear.

Starting with simple poisons, he created and tested various combinations, recording the results.

Jin Ja-gang rarely felt life-threatening danger from ordinary poisons, but when exposed to more potent ones, he would suffer greatly before surviving. Even though the poison didn’t spread throughout his body, it didn’t mean there were no symptoms of poisoning.

In fact, the poisoning symptoms that would have spread throughout the body were concentrated at the bitten area, making the pain even more intense.

Such days continued without rest.

Today, Mang-ryo put on deerskin gloves and showed Jin Ja-gang a small, black spider about the size of a fingertip.

The spider’s abdomen was round and lustrous like a black pearl, distinctive with a triangular red mark.

“This is a black widow spider. While the poison itself is very potent, its quantity is small, so its lethality is quite low. To achieve proper lethality, it requires very long-term special breeding. Then it becomes like this.”

Mang-ryo showed another spider. It was similar to the black widow but darker, with red dots embedded on both sides. Moreover, its abdomen was about three times larger.

“I was the first in our sect to succeed in breeding this twin-spotted paradise widow spider. It’s a lucrative product, with the Sichuan Tang family purchasing five from our Extreme Poison Sect every year. It contains more than ten times the venom of an ordinary black widow.”

“Ugh…”

“Be still. This isn’t your first time with spider venom, why the fuss? This twin-spotted paradise widow, like other spider venoms, causes swelling, dizziness, sweating, and vomiting. Then the joints feel like they’re dislocating, breathing becomes difficult, the heart barely works, and death follows. Normal people die at that point, but I’m not sure about you. Don’t disappoint me and make sure you survive this time, too.”

Jin Ja-gang was terrified. Just hearing the explanation made him tremble and break out in cold sweat even before being poisoned.

Mang-ryo laughed seeing Jin Ja-gang trembling.

“Kuk kuk kuk.”

He was deliberately giving unnecessary explanations with each poison just to enjoy Jin Ja-gang’s frightened reactions.

Jin Ja-gang didn’t want to hear Mang-ryo’s words. He didn’t want to see. But even forgetting what he had heard and seen was difficult. Due to the intelligence decoction, most of what Mang-ryo said remained in his mind.

The names of poisons, their effects… even the pain he had physically experienced, all of it.

That made it even more horrifying. When Mang-ryo showed a venomous creature, Jin Ja-gang could already predict what pain would follow from its poison.

Soon, Mang-ryo placed the twin-spotted paradise widow spider on Jin Ja-gang’s crown. The spider bit Jin Ja-gang’s right eyelid. Since it was the first time he had been bitten directly on the face, Jin Ja-gang was terrified.

“Aaaaaagh!”

Jin Ja-gang’s body was unique; instead of the poison spreading throughout his body, it worked intensively at the bitten area.

Soon his vision became blurry, and unbearable pain started from his eye and shook his head. It felt as if an awl had pierced through his eye.

“My eye! My eye! My eee-eye!”

Unlike Jin Ja-gang, who was screaming, Mang-ryo laughed heartily.

“My, what a powerful voice he has.”

Mang-ryo leisurely enjoyed watching Jin Ja-gang’s suffering while sipping tea.

“Originally, poisons from the black widow family have the effect of making a man’s member very vigorous. But with your unique body where poison doesn’t spread, such effects don’t work well.”

When bitten by a black widow type, a man’s lower region swells and doesn’t subside. That’s why “paradise” is included in the name of the twin-spotted paradise widow, bred from the black widow. Since it’s ten times more potent than the black widow, that side effect is also ten times stronger.

However, it seemed even that was of no use to Jin Ja-gang, whose energy channels were blocked, preventing the poison from spreading.

Still, the poisoning at the bite site progressed much faster than in ordinary people. Jin Ja-gang’s swollen bitten eyelid had already begun to necrotize.

The pain, like his eye rotting away, was incomparable to previous pains.

Unable to bear it any longer, Jin Ja-gang begged Mang-ryo for the first time.

“P-please… save me.”

“What?”