Chapter 42 – The Flower That Eats People

Chapter 42 – The Flower That Eats People

“Wow…….”

I really almost died.

Beside Geom-hoe's breathless corpse, San-ho let out a short sigh and slumped down.

It was fortunate that at the last moment, Geom-hoe, in his impatience, had tried to decide the match with internal energy. If Geom-hoe had pushed his sword to the end, it might have been San-ho who was devoured by that speed.

The hand resting on the ground was still trembling.

The sticky killing intent, the pungent stench of blood, and the corpses rolling on the ground—this entire situation was unfamiliar to him.

The self-evident truth that he would die if he did not kill hit home once again. He thought he knew it well enough, but that was arrogance. One could not know such a thing without experiencing it.

San-ho, who clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, bit his lips tightly.

‘……Whew…’

Once the tension released, only then did his condition catch his eyes. Although he had driven out the poison, his back was still burning, and his body was covered in tears and cuts. He had sealed his acupoints, but because he had already lost too much blood, his vision kept blurring.

Lying flat on his back, San-ho looked up at the sky and thought.

Can't I just sleep for a little bit?

As physical fatigue and mental exhaustion overlapped, his eyes closed of their own accord.

‘…No. Let's check it first and then rest…….’

Changing his mind, San-ho barely forced his battered body up. With every step he took, drops of blood dripped down, trailing behind him.

As he reached the entrance of the cave, a strange scent wafted from within.

‘The smell of blood? No… it also seems like the fragrance of flowers.’

It was a bizarre scent where two completely different smells mingled.

San-ho moved his steps deeper into the cave. The further he went inside, the thicker the fragrance grew.

How far had he gone? Seeing torches placed here and there, it was certain that the Sa-han brothers had been coming and going here during that time.

It was then.

“Ugh…!”

The strange scent that had been wafting all along pierced his nose intensely.

San-ho raised his arm to cover his mouth and nose, looking for the source of the scent.

“………!!!”

And at the end of that path.

He saw a flowerbed filled with fully bloomed flowers that did not match this space. However, that was not the reason San-ho was surprised. It was because of the corpse half-buried in the ground where the flowers took root.

“What on earth is this…….”

The corpse, which had mostly turned into white bones, was clearly human.

The flowers blooming profusely around it were extremely grotesque. A corpse and flowers. Could there be anything else that mismatched so much?

‘Just how crazy do you have to be to do something like this…?’

It appeared that those flowers had grown by taking the skeletal corpse as nutrients.

Was this what the Sa-han brothers were trying to hide? But why on earth… San-ho, frowning, muttered.

At that moment, a drop of blood flowing from San-ho's arm fell onto a white petal.

Drip.

Inside the cave without a single breath of wind, the petal holding the blood fluttered as if dancing. One flower, and then another. The fluttering flowers spread out like a wave.

“……….”

The petals, swaying strangely as if they were living things possessed of reason, seemed to be calling him.

The moment San-ho, sensing something strange, tried to step back.

Saaah—

The strength drained from his body as if all the blood had been sucked out. At the same time, San-ho's body collapsed to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

It happened in an instant.

‘What is this…!’

A strange energy he had never felt before began to climb up his body starting from the soles of his feet resting on the ground. The energy that surged in intensely encroached upon his physical body uncontrollably.

Was this a dream? Or was this crazy thing really happening? Was the sensation he was feeling correct? Confused questions arose in San-ho's mind.

His mind was clear, but his body would not move. It felt just like being pressed by a nightmare.

“Khh……!”

As he felt a disgusting sensation tearing up his insides as it crossed back and forth between his acupoints, San-ho realized instinctively: he must not lose control to this energy now.

The flowers in the flowerbed had found new nutrients.

‘……Where in the world is there a flower that eats humans!’

The energy of life and death surged. A new life grown with death as its nutrient.

That tenacious and strange vitality flowed in with the momentum to take away even all the internal energy he possessed. He felt the internal energy circulating in his body being pulled by the unfamiliar energy and slipping away.

‘No!’

If things went on like this, he might end up lying companionably beside the skeletal corpse down there.

San-ho urgently chased the foreign energy.

‘That damn… what on earth did they do inside here!’

San-ho, blocking the energy, grit his teeth.

He intended to prevent his internal energy from slipping away and to separate and push out the foreign energy.

But that was only temporary. Before long, the blocked energy surged like waves and began to cross over his acupoints bit by bit.

‘Damn…!’

The higher he built and the stronger he blocked, the larger the rushing energy grew. It felt like watching a floodgate on the verge of collapsing. Looking at the overflowing energy, San-ho suddenly became afraid.

Can I block this? What happens if I can't? Then will I also end up like that…….

‘………No, what am I thinking right now?’

San-ho, who was sinking into weak thoughts, suddenly snapped out of it.

‘I even made a U-turn on the road to the afterlife, so why couldn't I get over something like this? Don't talk weak. What do you mean, what if I can't block it? Am I just going to quietly lie down next to the bones and die?’

I can't do that. For whose benefit?

Steeling his mind, San-ho took a deep breath.

The desire for life was greater than the rushing fear. Life had always been that way.

San-ho faced the surging energy head-on.

A powerful energy that he could neither block nor push out with his own strength. What should he do?

‘…Cover it with a greater power.’

If it was the ability to absorb the qi of nature, it should be able to embrace this massive energy.

San-ho focused his mind clearly, recalling the true meaning of the Heaven and Man Unity Art he possessed.

I become the world, and the world becomes me.

True freedom is to exist, to flow, and thus to become myself.

Unity.

Let's just become one. Let's accept all of that wild energy as well.

For then I shall reach complete freedom.

San-ho stopped trying to obstruct the energy running rampant through his body. Then, his body relaxed comfortably instead, and he felt the energies that had been raging across his blood vessels gradually find stability.

Becoming one with the world.

San-ho did not stop at merely seeing the true meaning and gaining enlightenment, but realized it himself and accepted it completely. Without even realizing it, his body, which had been lying among the flowers, slowly began to float up.

Following that, an amazing thing happened.

The energy that had been taking away even San-ho's internal energy began to mix orderly within him. Just as rivers flow and flow to reach the deep sea and become one. In the boundlessly vast sea, would there be any meaning in dividing what was me and what was not me?

In that way, San-ho did not distinguish between the world and himself, fully permeating and becoming one.

‘Uh?’

As the energies blended, the flowers in the flowerbed withered one by one.

One flower, and then another.

The withered flowers turned into powder and scattered like an illusion. Until the last flower disappeared. Eventually, when all the petals that had filled the cave vanished and only white bones remained in their place.

San-ho lost consciousness just like that.

***

When he opened his eyes, he saw the dim cave walls.

Regaining his senses, San-ho stepped out to the entrance and entered the cabin in Ghost Sword Valley.

Inside the spacious cabin, it was filled with the money, jewels, and various valuable goods they had plundered while attacking people all this time. Not only that, but various weapons, including swords, were on display.

On the opposite side, pills and medicinal herbs were neatly arranged in a medicine chest that filled the entire wall.

However, those were not what San-ho was looking for.

Just then, a withered flower and a book resting on the table caught his eyes.

It was the very flower that had tried to kill San-ho moments ago.

‘Found it.’

Picking up the nameless book with nothing written on the cover, San-ho flipped through the pages.

Before long, as he examined the contents, San-ho's eyes gradually filled with shock.

“This is crazy…….”

It was not the secret manual he was looking for.

His hand flipping the pages trembled faintly. The book was about the flowers that had bloomed inside the cave.

The flower's name was 'Borrowing Flowers to Offer to Buddha (/).'

It stated that this flower, whose white petals resembled chrysanthemums, only grew wild, making it extremely difficult to find. Furthermore, because it would die quickly if transplanted from where it once took root, cultivation was also impossible.

However, there was something more important than that.

The capability of this flower, which most people did not know.

It harbored different energies depending on the environment in which it grew wild.

‘……No wonder I thought it was strange.’

What did this mean?

It meant that this flower absorbed all the energy of whatever became its nutrient. In the case of a human, everything, including their Innate True Qi and internal energy. If one consumed the flower like a spiritual medicine, the energy contained within it would also be absorbed together.

‘Then… that means one can extort another person's internal energy using the flower as a medium.’

Borrowing Flowers to Offer to Buddha.

He had wondered why such a name was given to the flower. The flower's name was identical to the idiom meaning 'borrowing flowers to offer to Buddha.' Giving away another's possession to seek one's own gain.

Just like its name, the Sa-han brothers had offered sacrifices to this flower.

The offering of a human.

It was a bizarre book, enough to make his stomach churn. Where on earth did the Sa-han brothers find out about such sorcery?

If this was not the first time, it made sense why Geom-hoe, whose name he had never heard before, possessed an unexpected amount of internal energy. It seemed he had been raising his martial power by taking others' energy as his own.

They said there were those who would not hesitate to do anything to become stronger, and indeed, those words were true.

‘No, wait. Then earlier…….’

Recalling what had happened in the cave, only then did San-ho examine his body again.

Soon, his eyes widened.

The torn and cut wounds had healed bit by bit at some point. That was not all. He felt an immense internal energy from his dantian, to the point where he wondered why he had not noticed it sooner.

‘…I absorbed the Borrowing Flowers to Offer to Buddha.’

The ability of the Heaven and Man Unity Art had conversely absorbed the energy of the Borrowing Flowers to Offer to Buddha, which had tried to use San-ho's internal energy as nutrients. All of the energy the flower held, and even the energy of the person who became the nutrient beneath it.

Was it a martial artist who had trained for a long time? The size of the power that Geom-hoe could not let go of until the very end was truly massive.

‘He must have thought he could live with this.’

However, even if he had reached the flowerbed, he would have died.

He did not know how it would have been if consumed in small amounts, but had it not responded to even a single drop of blood and tried to absorb all of San-ho's internal energy? The uncontrolled energy would have made him another nutrient for the Borrowing Flowers to Offer to Buddha.

The content was excessively dangerous.

But why was that?

The contents of the early part about absorbing surrounding energy were almost identical to the oral formula he had seen in the secret manual of the Heaven and Man Unity Art. Even the structure of the complex sentences, written like poetry, was similar.

‘………’

A book resembling it, though it was not the secret manual San-ho was looking for.

Wondering if there might be a clue, San-ho looked here and there at the book and discovered small letters written on the back cover.

It was a clue to approach the answer he was seeking.