Chapter 18
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: Joint Attack Formation
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Baek Chan's condition was far from good, even as a polite exaggeration.
The numerous small sword scars etched across his body could still be dismissed as light injuries, but his right arm—dislocated and dangling limply from his shoulder—was in such obvious bad shape that even a layperson ignorant of medicine or martial arts could tell at a glance.
However, Baek Chan wasn't the only one whose body was screaming in protest.
My entire body throbbed, stung, and ached as well. I'd probably torn the inner walls of my meridians by circulating my internal energy too aggressively.
I'd barely avoided collapsing from internal energy depletion, but honestly, even standing was a struggle.
In the end, neither of us could continue fighting. The only reason I could put on this brave front was that, unlike Baek Chan, I had no visible wounds.
But if I asked Baek Chan, he'd probably throw a fit and insist the spar wasn't over yet. So I turned my gaze to Steward Cheon, who was officiating as referee.
Our eyes met, and after a moment's hesitation, Steward Cheon opened his mouth.
"The match... has been decided. Victory goes to Kim Hoon."
"Hear that?"
Baek Chan ground his teeth in silence.
Leaving a dislocated arm like that could lead to problems. Besides, since I'd won the spar, we were in the same boat now.
If the vanguard showed up for the upcoming 'Lee Soo-young raid' unable to use one arm, our already slim odds of victory would drop even further.
I nodded toward Veronica, who had been watching from behind us.
"Veronica. Grab it."
"Don't touch my bo—Gurk!"
Veronica seized Baek Chan's arm and shoulder, and I suddenly jammed it back into place.
A grinding sound came from Baek Chan's molars, but the limp, dislocated arm returned to its proper position.
Baek Chan shook us off with his now-functional arm and struggled to his feet.
"Hmph. Looks spry enough. Should've left it like that for a couple hours? Hey, what the hell did you do to make the guy you hit end up like that?"
Veronica asked, but I narrowed my eyes into thin slits, pressed my index finger to my lips, and smiled.
"That's a secret."
"Argh, your eyes are so damn... I thought you were a bloated deep-sea fish."
Veronica recoiled in utter disgust.
She sure doesn't hold back when it comes to calling people ugly. That stung pretty bad.
'That wicked girl...'
I swallowed my tears and inwardly cursed the parents who gave me this face. Since I didn't even know their names or faces, it probably didn't count as slander against anyone specific.
Well, the truth was, the principle behind taking down Baek Chan wasn't some deeply complex secret.
I'd simply timed my deflection to match the moment he threw his punch, using his own monstrous strength against him to dislocate his arm. A mishmash of principles from Grafting, Four-Two-One Thousand Catty, Pascal's martial logic, and more.
It was a crude technique somewhere between the Wudang Clan's Taiji Fist and the practical Vagabond-style Golden Crow Claw method. Even that, I couldn't pull off more than twice. I didn't show it, but my whole body felt like it'd been pummeled.
That said, there's a famous saying in the jianghu: hide thirty percent of your skill. So I didn't bother explaining the finer points of the technique. Veronica, being a true martial artist, didn't press further.
I turned to Baek Chan and asked,
"The loser follows the winner's will. That's the rule we set for this spar, right? You're not going to pull some low-class stunt by refusing to accept the result, are you?"
Baek Chan glared at me silently for a moment before sighing and speaking.
"......What exactly do you want? You're the one spouting nonsense about taking down an A-rank with this pathetic level of power. Surely you didn't start this mess without any plan or strategy."
His tone was curt, but this was close enough to acceptance.
I smiled and replied,
"Well, there aren't many ways for the weak to beat the strong. Wheel war, guns, poison, ambush, threats using bystanders..."
I'd only mentioned kidnapping or fake-threatening the target's family, friends, or pets—methods quite useful in the vagabond trade—to make them hold back. But seeing the orthodox martial artists' expressions twist oddly, I quickly changed the subject.
"For now, we'll boldly scrap the wheel war! We all saw clearly in last class what happens when you take turns charging at a Peak Realm expert—you just get smashed one by one."
Guns? The other three each had one at home, but we couldn't bring them to school and shoot Lee Soo-young. She might be fine with illegal means to take her down, but the police wouldn't be.
Countries like the US with their cowboy culture are exceptions, but when gunpowder's involved, principles like immunity for government warriors or exemptions for elite martial artists amount to nothing. If we got unlucky and ran afoul of that Public Enemy guy, we'd be picking our bones clean.
Besides, trying to gun down an A-rank—especially a super-elite ex-soldier who'd rolled through bullet-riddled battlefields—was absurd from the start. Guns were out.
Poison... that had some potential.
Lee Soo-young was ex-military, so she'd trained against CBRN threats, but no one's completely immune to all poisons. If Jong-myeong's full name was Tang Jong-myeong instead of Park, I might've given it a shot.
But using poison in combat without proper knowledge is basically mutual suicide.
In my past life, I'd faced the Tang Clan's poison hands, but I'd never used poison on others myself. Field experience only got me as far as distinguishing poisonous mushrooms from edible ones. Pass.
"Looks like we've got just one option left."
I snapped my fingers with a click and declared,
"Joint Attack Formation."
That evening, at a dining table in the Baek family home larger than the orphanage room where Kim Hoon had grown up, Baek Kang-mu shoveled food brought by the servants into his mouth. He asked his son across the table in a puzzled voice,
"Chan, why are you suddenly eating with your left hand?"
"......I injured my right arm."
"I see. Be more careful."
Baek Kang-mu seemed to regard such an injury as trivial and continued eating.
"Whoa. What happened to you, oppa? Did Veronica-unnie hit you? Or Ha-rin-unnie?"
"It's nothing like that. Shut up and eat, Baek Seol."
"What! Tell me too!"
Completely ignoring his sulking younger sister, who puffed out her cheeks, Baek Chan replayed the afternoon's events.
This afternoon, Kim Hoon and Veronica had stormed in like a gale, with the third member barely noticeable. They'd left just as abruptly, with only a single parting remark.
-Come up with at least one decent Joint Attack Formation for the four of us by next time!
Thinking back on it now, it hit him that he'd lost to a guy like that twice recently.
He wasn't unused to defeat, but these two losses to Kim Hoon were utterly incomprehensible.
Not emotionally hard to accept—just literally hard to understand.
In the first spar, sure, he'd been careless. But the second? He'd held the advantage throughout, and even at the decisive moment, he'd unleashed the superior technique. Yet he'd still lost.
It was bizarre beyond belief, but two unexpected defeats couldn't be dismissed as coincidence. It was the undeniable result of Kim Hoon's martial prowess. There was no reason to deny that.
It wasn't easy. Many young martial artists struggled in anguish, unable to admit it.
However, seventeen-year-old prodigy Baek Chan was gifted not just in body, but in mind as well.
He was accustomed to viewing his own skills objectively and was prepared to do the same for others' martial arts.
And yet...
'What the hell is that guy?'
Kim Hoon remained an enigma.
He had no idea what arts he used or his precise realm.
Both times, he'd clearly used Gang Qi, so he seemed like a B-rank like Baek Chan himself, but the aura he exuded felt weaker than a typical C-rank.
Above all, that 'thing' during the spar that had shaken Baek Chan's composure for a split second.
Until he resolved that mystery, he wouldn't have room to ponder other martial questions.
"Father."
Finally, Baek Chan stopped poking at his side dishes with chopsticks that looked like toothpicks in his massive hand and spoke.
"Is it possible to maintain Gang Qi for just a very short time?"
"Haha... you rascal. Chan, you grew up gorging on elixirs because you're my son, but normally, keeping Gang Qi short is basic common sense."
Baek Kang-mu clicked his tongue as if he'd heard something ridiculous and scolded his son.
It was obvious. Gang Qi was the perfect superior form of sword qi in terms of power, but it consumed internal energy at a rate incomparable to sword qi.
Unless you were a Peak Realm expert or higher who could recover energy mid-fight at a matching pace, 'long-lasting Gang Qi' was a contradictory concept for absolute peaks relying solely on their dantian reserves.
Even exceptions like Baek Chan, whose dantian energy rivaled Peak Realm masters despite being absolute peak, didn't change that.
But Baek Chan hadn't brought it up just to reconfirm such basics.
"What I mean is, is it possible to draw out Sword Gang for just the split second right before impact... no, even shorter, just an instant? Intentionally."
"Hmm. One-second Gang Qi, huh. I was born a chaebol heir too, so I've never lacked for internal energy. Why would anyone bother switching Gang Qi on and off by the second when they can maintain it for minutes or hours?"
To the Baek father and son of Tae-san Group, who had never and would never lack energy, it was true.
But in today's spar, Baek Chan had clearly witnessed sword qi flashing with Gang Qi's glow for a fleeting moment before reverting—fact.
"I've never practiced using Gang Qi that way, but I could if I tried. It wouldn't be easy, though. Sword Qi into Gang isn't like flicking a button on and off."
Baek Kang-mu said this and raised the butter knife in his hand.
Flash! The silver blade gleamed with Gang Qi's radiance for an instant before vanishing.
"Shortest I can do on the fly. About 0.7 seconds? With practice, I could shave it down a bit more."
"......0.7 seconds."
"Yeah. Perks of Manifestation Realm. Basic energy control, even if I'm not used to it. Needs reflexes, qi sensitivity, and precise energy control—all beyond your current level."
Baek Kang-mu chuckled contentedly and munched on his buttered bread.
Baek Chan rose quietly from the table, ruminating on the memory.
0.7 seconds for a Manifestation Realm expert to shift from sword qi to Gang and back.
However.
Kim Hoon's sword Gang, which had nearly pierced his shoulder in that instant...
Seemed even closer to a mere blink.