Ak Mujin closed his eyes, calming his excited heart at the thought of being outside the Demonic Cult when he opened them again, and drank the medicine.
This was Seo-mok’s idea: Ak Mujin would take a medicine that would put him in a state of suspended animation for three days, and while he appeared dead, Seo-mok would smuggle Ak Mujin’s body out of the Demonic Cult—a truly groundbreaking plan.
At first, he was skeptical, wondering if the same trick would work twice, especially since he had already unintentionally faked his death once. However, after experimenting with a tiny amount, he saw with his own eyes that the medicine’s effects were truly remarkable. After that, he was impatient to put it into action.
However, the more important the task, the more he had to suppress his impatience and prepare thoroughly. If he were to die while the Cult Leader was away, they would have to wait for the Cult Leader to return before holding the funeral, and three days would not be enough time in that case. Moreover, with the wedding to the 3rd Young master just around the corner, he had to be very careful in choosing the date.
Having meticulously planned everything, when he finally awoke from his three-day slumber and opened his eyes, the surroundings were dark.
It wasn’t that he was inside a coffin, but that the place he had forced the coffin open to was all darkness.
Before he could even think about what was going on, he heard the musty, dank smell and the squeaking of rats. Ak Mujin sat there for a while, then forced strength into his toes. After being in suspended animation for so long, he couldn’t properly control the strength in his fingers and toes.
That Seo-mok, did she put him in a cave so that no one would dig up the grave? Ak Mujin got up, thinking naively that the plan had been roughly successful. By then, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he could roughly see what was in the cave. He began to look for an exit to get out.
But there was no exit.
Ak Mujin felt cold sweat trickling down his back. It should be around here… This was really strange.
Seo-mok, you’re playing a trick on me, right…? Right…? Stop playing around and open the door….
But after searching here and there for hours, he couldn’t find anything that could be called an entrance to the cave.
No. This wasn’t a cave, but a grotto.
Ak Mujin put aside his bewildered feelings and, after examining the place, concluded that it was definitely the Demonic Cult’s Spirit Mausoleum. The stone coffin he had been sleeping in was one, and when he crossed over to the other room beyond his room, it was also filled with memorial tablets, candles, and all sorts of treasures buried with corpses.
The Cult Leader’s affectionate words, calling Ak Mujin his ‘beloved disciple,’ were not just empty words! He felt sorry for Ak Mujin’s death and had him enshrined in the Spirit Mausoleum, where only important figures of the Demonic Cult were buried.
If that was the case, Seo-mok would not have been able to do anything either. How could they dare to suggest throwing Ak Mujin out of the Demonic Cult when the Cult Leader wanted to bury him in the Spirit Mausoleum?
He was dumbfounded by this unexpected favor, but he wasn’t exactly happy. Being trapped in the Spirit Mausoleum meant that the Spirit Mausoleum door would not be opened until an Elder or senior Elder-level Demonic Cult member died.
Ak Mujin felt his breathing quicken and, to avoid Qi Deviation, quickly sat down calmly and thought. He recalled the Elders he knew, but not a single one of those old men with the title of Elder was on their deathbed. Even without looking, they would be hale and hearty enough not to die in just a year or two.
As his thoughts stretched that far, Ak Mujin’s head went blank. No, maybe it was because he hadn’t eaten anything for a long time. He began to devour the sacrificial food placed on his grave.
He put the last grape in his mouth and chewed it. The skin was so shriveled that it had lost all its moisture and didn’t taste very good.
Inside the Spirit Mausoleum, it was impossible to tell how time was passing. It was all dark and pitch-black, with not a single ray of light. As a result, Ak Mujin felt like he was going insane. Naturally, the thought of why he, not even a main character, had ended up in such a difficult situation slowly began to raise its head.
What was Jin Geum-ryeon doing right now?
If he was meeting either Mae-yeong or Namgung Eui and confirming their love, would Ak Mujin still be stuck in this world?
No. In fact, this hypothesis was just Ahn Do-hyun’s ‘assumption.’ There was no guarantee that he would return to his original world just because Jin Geum-ryeon was living according to this Doujinshi. So, no matter how the outside world was turning, it might have nothing to do with him.
Ak Mujin looked down at the floor with a gloomy face and grabbed his hungry stomach at the sound of his belly rumbling. No matter what his mental state was, the problem of ‘food’ was a pretty important practical obstacle in a grotto full of corpses.
The food offered at the grave had long since run out. He crouched down and sat there, then spotted a rat coming and going at his feet and stared at it blankly.
How much time had passed? Ak Mujin watched the rats move and realized that there was a secret passage deep inside the Spirit Mausoleum. But that was it. He couldn’t figure out where or how to open the secret passage, so he had no choice but to stand by and watch for a long time.
In the meantime, he had no choice but to open and rummage through all sorts of stone coffins. He ate the Yin-filled herbs that sprouted all over the Spirit Mausoleum because there was nothing to eat, and sometimes he mistakenly ate poisonous herbs and was sick for days, but strangely, he didn’t die.
Rather, it was strange that his body was warming up as if the Qi and Blood that had been blocked were returning to their original state.
He soon realized intuitively that these herbs were nourishing themselves from the bodies of the supreme masters who had already seeped into the soil and had become Spirit Herbs, invigorating Ak Mujin. That meant he could regain his original qualities.
Moreover, the efficacy of the Spirit Herbs didn’t end there. He had thought that he might die of malnutrition if he kept eating only grass like this, but his condition was not bad even though he had never eaten meat.
Thanks to this, Ak Mujin seemed to see hope even in this dark Spirit Mausoleum.
Occasionally, if he was lucky, he would find dried jerky in the stone coffins, and one day he found a fancy stick stuck in the arm of a corpse in one of their stone coffins.
It was an unusual object at first glance. He could see that the end of the stick was also carved into a fancy shape. Like a key.
As that thought flashed through his mind, Ak Mujin ran to the entrance of the secret passage in one breath. There was an unidentified hole near the entrance, and Ak Mujin thought that this seemed to be the device to open the entrance.
Sure enough, the stick fit perfectly into the hole. When Ak Mujin turned the stick, a rattling sound rang out and the wall in front of him rose up. As expected, the secret passage was revealed.
Finally.
He was finally able to get out!
“I… I’m getting out!”
Ak Mujin shouted coolly in the empty Spirit Mausoleum. But it was a weak voice because he hadn’t eaten anything.
He began to take steps towards the secret passage.
But the passage went on for quite a long time. He walked and walked, but there was no end, and eventually Ak Mujin felt like he was going crazy.
How could a secret passage go on and on without end? He felt like he had been walking for several hours. No. He was so sleepy that he slept in between, so was it a day? Two days? Maybe he had walked even longer than that. Just as he was muttering all sorts of curses, Ak Mujin realized that he could no longer move forward and stopped walking.
The end of the secret passage was firmly blocked by a rock.
It was cracked, but it didn’t seem like he could break through it with ordinary strength. Ak Mujin despaired. He slumped down, scattering tears that welled up. He mustn’t cry. He mustn’t cry. Crying also required physical strength, so he had to endure to live even a little longer.
No…. In this situation, was living important? Ak Mujin felt the sorrow rising and began to heave his chest greatly.
But then, he felt something slippery and wet at his fingertips. He blinked once and looked at it, and saw a rock with a shallow well where water was dripping from the ceiling.
Ak Mujin sensed something and looked into it. A fragrant and pungent scent rose, which he had never felt since entering the Spirit Mausoleum.
Empty Clear Stone Marrow!
Ak Mujin suddenly realized. In the original story, Jin Geum-ryeon breaks through this secret passage and drinks Empty Clear Stone Marrow on his way to the Demonic Cult, increasing his Inner Force by several Jiazi. That was what had appeared before Ak Mujin now!
Ak Mujin’s mind seemed to clear up.
There was no other choice. He had no choice but to drink this Spirit Pill and somehow increase his Inner Force to break through the wall. It was as good as being there for that purpose.
Ak Mujin hurriedly scooped up the Empty Clear Stone Marrow with his palm and drank it. After drinking it twice like that, the slippery water was all gone. He had stolen the main character’s Spirit Pill, but it would be okay because he had dozens of other Spirit Pills or Elixir waiting for him.
He was worried because he knew that his Qi and Blood were twisted, but it seemed that the Spirit Herbs he had been eating had restored his body, so he didn’t have a seizure after eating the Spirit Pill. Rather… his body became very light.
But he couldn’t just break the rock right away just because he had eaten the Spirit Pill. After that, he continued to eat the grass that grew in the Spirit Mausoleum every day and trained to build up his Inner Force in his spare time.
And finally.
Ak Mujin was able to break the boulders blocking the wall with his bare hands in one go.