A Chivalrous Hero
Yielding the first move did not simply mean attacking first.
It meant that even if an attack came, you would only defend once or twice and refuse to counter.
It was a favor, or a display of magnanimity, that a superior martial artist might extend to an inferior one.
Block it beautifully, and your reputation rose with it; take a blade to the body, or worse, break the promise and counter anyway, and you were asking to be humiliated.
Yu Chanjing bristled inwardly, but he did not refuse the opening move.
Seeing the two of them fight, that made sense.
Yu Chanjing’s willow-leaf saber was quick and sharp. He drove in with the momentum of his charge, stabbing straight through as he pressed forward.
Hwang Gangju calmly swung his single-edged blade aside, knocking the tip away before slipping in on the left flank like water sliding through a crack.
Sided over in an instant, Yu Chanjing hurriedly drew back his willow-leaf saber and twisted his body.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Only after yielding three moves did Hwang Gangju counter.
It was not a saber technique taught properly in a sect. It was a collection of instinctive, improvised methods that depended almost entirely on feel.
That made him look quite troublesome to deal with.
The match did not even reach twenty exchanges.
Yu Chanjing’s ferocious saber assault was carved open by Hwang Gangju’s blade, which seemed to shatter it apart as it rose in a sudden strike.
When the blade came down over his head, Yu Chanjing nearly jumped out of his skin. He tried to retreat too late.
Just as the single-edged saber was about to split his skull, Hwang Gangju brilliantly snapped his wrist and changed the path of the strike.
The blade slid perilously past the side of Yu Chanjing’s forehead, then swept around and struck his shoulder with the broad face of the saber.
Thud!
Thrown off balance, Yu Chanjing staggered all the way to the corner of the stage. He dropped to the floor, then got back up coughing.
He was not badly injured, but he no longer dared press the attack.
He looked at Hwang Gangju, who stood there with his blade lowered and his posture unruffled, then sheathed his willow-leaf saber.
“I lost. Thanks for showing mercy.”
“I learned something.”
The two of them clasped hands in salute and withdrew.
“Hwang Gangju wins!”
Emotions split among the onlookers who had wagered money on the bout. Cheers and curses rained down on the stage at the same time.
Most of the saber-carrying martial artists seemed to accept the result.
“As expected, it’s Hwang the Great Hero.”
It was not because Hwang Gangju’s skill was overwhelming or especially exceptional.
Unlike the other contestants, who fought like fighting dogs, drenched in blood and gnawing at each other with grim determination, Hwang Gangju had put on a proper orthodox martial display all by himself.
From beginning to end, his ease and composure were so striking that it almost seemed like this was what a true chivalrous hero should look like.
In the end, any martial artist who carried a blade had once dreamed of becoming such a hero, so the feeling was bound to be strange.
He kept that same dignified bearing the whole time, as if he could not hear the jeers of the gamblers surrounding the stage, and even I found it fairly satisfying to watch.
Before the afterglow had even faded, two rough-looking saber users climbed onto the stage and started a filthy brawl.
It was a dogfight full of hatred, with no technique to speak of.
Fights between the inept were always the most entertaining, so the crowd was thrilled, but the martial artists who actually knew how to use a blade were shaking their heads.
Then, out of nowhere, a masked swordsman appeared.
“So there really were no masked men? Looks like they’re starting to show up one by one now.”
The goat-bearded man sneered with a mocking grin.
“Back in the day, some idiot orthodox youngsters would come bragging about their skills in masks, but after a few of them got cut down in back alleys and died, even that trend faded.”
Another contestant chimed in with a smirk.
“These days, the only people who show up masked are the ones too ashamed to show their faces because they know they’re about to get beaten senseless. Or else they’re so ugly they’d spoil the view for everyone watching.”
For no good reason, I suddenly felt wronged and my hand went to the mask tucked inside my robes.
The masked swordsman shattered that prejudice in front of everyone, sending the saber-wielding opponent’s right hand flying with a sharp sword strike.
It was a merciless blow, meant to secure certain victory.
After five or six matches had passed, one of the staff came looking for me.
“You must be the Great Hero Cheongdo? You’re next.”
I followed him down the stairs, pulled the mask from my robes, and put it on.
When I crossed the first floor and stepped onto the stage, the crowd stirred.
“What now? Another mask?”
“Isn’t that the same masked swordsman from before?”
“No, look, he’s carrying a saber, not a sword. And the mask looks a little different.”
“His nickname is supposedly Cheongdo.”
“What are the odds?”
The bronze reflectors installed around the tavern caught the lamplight, making the stage bright as day, with no shadow anywhere.
The many faces packed tightly around me were all flushed with excitement and heat.
The stares and the muttering pouring in from every direction pressed against my whole body.
I felt like a fighting dog thrown into a real pit.
I had come for the spiritual herb, but this was disgusting.
A middle-aged man with a single-edged blade stepped up from the other side.
“I’m Jo Iltae of Sandong.”
“Cheongdo.”
After that meaningless exchange of names, Jo Iltae immediately drew his blade.
I drew my long saber and lowered the tip toward the floor.
Jo Iltae stared at me, then slowly circled left like a wolf. The fact that he did not rush in without warning told me he had spent plenty of years living by the blade.
To avoid yielding my flank, I matched his pace and turned to the right, keeping him in front of me.
After a brief test of distance, Jo Iltae suddenly lunged in with a long stride.
He closed the gap quickly, then sprang off the ground with bold confidence.
He swung his saber high over his head and brought it crashing down. It was a forceful blow that looked strong enough to split open rock.
I stepped away with footwork, dodging to the side and drawing a long cut across his abdomen.
As if he had been waiting for it, Jo Iltae flung his body sideways to evade, then raised his saber straight up in a vertical cut.
Clang!
As our blades collided, I let his saber slide smoothly along my blade and aimed for his chest as it dropped through the air.
Clang! Clang!
Jo Iltae raised the spine of his blade to block the tip, then kicked off the floor again and swung fiercely with a proper form.
I matched him with basic defenses, vertical cuts, horizontal cuts, and thrusts, all connected with footwork.
I did not use a single finishing move of the Thousand Steel Saber Technique.
I had not trained that saber art just to show it to gamblers.
I had learned all thirty-six forms of the Thousand Steel Saber Technique, and I had also mastered an internal energy method and fought brutal life-or-death duels using internal energy against experts like Pyo Hol-deuk.
Because of that, my eye for martial arts had become far sharper and deeper than before.
Saber techniques looked simple at a glance compared to sword forms, so they were easy enough for beginners to pick up, but becoming a true master was another matter entirely. If you could not break free of blunt, strength-driven slashing, your attack pattern was easy to read in an instant.
That was one major reason swordsmen tended to look down on saber users.
Jo Iltae had solid fundamentals, but he was not a saber user who truly brought out the art’s flavor.
His deflections and wrapping motions were weak, and the transitions between slashing and thrusting were always a half-beat late.
I let his saber strike slide off, read the real and false openings in his movements, then drove my long saber into the loosened gap.
The arc of his blade crossed awkwardly and got wrapped up by my incoming strike. I yanked it as if pulling out a root.
Once a form was broken, it lost its power. The saber slipped from Jo Iltae’s hand, flew over the heads of the spectators, and slammed into the tavern wall.
His wrist wrenched and he lost his grip, and then the edge of my long saber touched his throat.
Jo Iltae went pale as ash, trembling as he swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple rose and fell, scraping against the blade. A bead of blood ran along the edge.
“Want to keep going?”
“...I-I lost.”
I lowered my saber and stepped back.
“Cheongdo wins!”
Jo Iltae turned away, staring blankly at his empty hands. I sheathed my saber as well and stepped down from the stage.
*
The waiting fighters, including the goat-bearded man and the sinister swordsman, all took their turns on the stage and received their results.
Some were injured, some won. Like proper martial artists who had been hardened by years in this line of work, they all somehow managed not to die.
Hwang Gangju, who had advanced by luck with a bye, came back out onto the stage.
By sheer bad timing, his opponent was the pair-saber user who had sneered at his chivalrous act.
“Heh, your luck’s run out. Still, with how merciful Great Hero Hwang is, he won’t kill you.”
When someone jeered at him, the pair-saber user grinned.
“You fools. Just watch a weasel hunt.”
“You mean leaving filth in the road?”
When I cut in, the pair-saber user’s eyes flashed with interest.
“Mister... you’re pretty sharp.”
Facing Hwang Gangju, he held a saber in each hand.
Martial artists who used pair sabers were rare.
It took a great deal of training to use both hands freely.
He skillfully swung both blades and calmly blocked Hwang Gangju’s single-edged saber.
But he looked strained trying to absorb all the force behind the twin-handed attacks.
Pushed back by the sequence of blows, the pair-saber user suddenly toppled backward in an absurdly ungraceful fall.
It was a perfect opening.
If Hwang Gangju had stabbed straight into his leg or body, he could have inflicted a crippling wound.
Nine out of ten martial artists would not hesitate in that situation. If it had been me, I would have put a blade into the thigh without a second thought.
Hwang Gangju, the man respected as a chivalrous hero, belonged to that one in ten.
Instinctively, his saber moved, then hesitated. There were too many eyes on him to attack a fallen opponent.
In that moment, the pair-saber user rolled backward at once and got to his feet.
“What are you doing? Just stab him!”
“What do you think this is, some kind of martial tournament?”
The crowd’s jeers poured down, but Hwang Gangju bit his lip and shook his head.
From that point on, the pair-saber user attacked without restraint. Hwang Gangju met him head-on, receiving and deflecting the strikes in direct fashion.
As expected of a famous chivalrous hero, he did not want to win by petty or cowardly means.
Against an opponent inferior to him, as with Yu Chanjing, he could still show restraint and win handsomely.
But once the pair-saber user began showing his true ability, he became a much more troublesome opponent than expected.
Realizing that this was working, the pair-saber user took risks, and if it did not land, he kept enough distance to flop dramatically onto the floor as if his foot had tangled.
Each time, Hwang Gangju flinched. Even from a distance, I could feel his frustration and inner conflict.
A desperate desire to win, claim the prize, and go home. A belief that he ought to fight fairly and squarely.
It seemed as if those two thoughts were battling each other fiercely inside him.
With his mind growing tangled, Hwang Gangju gradually started losing the exchange. The rhythm of the fight tilted in the pair-saber user’s favor.
The pair-saber user’s blade hovered over Hwang Gangju’s chest after slicing his shoulder by a hair’s breadth.
“I lost.”
Hwang Gangju accepted defeat with a hollow face.
The pair-saber user clasped his hands in salute and rattled off words that were impossible to tell were sincere or mocking.
“They say a man won’t walk a road that isn’t his, and it seems Great Hero Hwang’s reputation didn’t come out of nowhere after all. This Park has been impressed.”
Hwang Gangju steadied himself, rose, exchanged farewells, and then left at once.
A long wave of sighs, encouragement, curses, and cheers washed through the hall.
The pair-saber user, who had used his wits to get past Hwang Gangju, was then pitifully knocked out by the masked swordsman in the final showdown.
The masked swordsman advanced straight to the final match.
There was still time before the next bout, so I stepped out through the back door to ease my hunger with dry rations and tea, and to catch some air.
Once I escaped the stifling heat and breathed in the late-autumn night, I felt a little more alive.
My breath turned white as I walked, and then I stopped at the sound of someone nearby.
On the steps leading into the alley, someone was sitting down with his back against the wall.
Under the bright half-moon, a tall man with a broad, rugged face came into soft view.
It was Hwang Gangju.
A defeated martial artist needed a little time alone. It was the time to slowly retrace the exchange, review it, and turn it into nourishment for the stronger self that would come tomorrow.
I had gone through that countless times myself.
But Hwang Gangju was not brooding over his defeat, nor was he reviewing anything.
His face was as dark as if he had sunk into mud. His lifeless eyes were staring into a deep despair.
It was hard to believe this was the same Great Hero Hwang I had seen inside just a little while ago.
He no longer wore the face of a chivalrous hero. He did not even wear the face of a martial artist.
The time of the admired hero on the bright stage was over.
Now it was time to go home as a husband to one woman and a father to several children, walking into a shabby alley toward the house where hungry family members were waiting.
If Hwang Gangju had shut his eyes and put a blade into the leg of the fallen pair-saber user earlier, he might have reached the final match.
He had been unable to do that.
The pair-saber user had seen that Hwang Gangju was fixated on the reputation of an honorable hero and had exploited it thoroughly. That was why he had mentioned hunting weasels in the first place.
The fur of a sable was famous for being fine and beautiful, and it fetched a high price in the market.
The sable itself knew how lovely it was, which was why it hated having its fur dirtied so much.
Except when eating and sleeping, it spent all its time licking and grooming its coat.
When hunting a sable, hunters took advantage of that habit.
They would scatter large amounts of filth and stale urine along the paths the beast liked to travel, then drive it that way.
Even with death closing in from all directions, the sable would cling to the cleanliness of its fur in front of the stinking muck, and then it would be caught and skinned.
For Hwang Gangju, the title of “chivalrous hero” must have been the sable’s fur.
It probably began with accidental, trivial good deeds.
He must have started by beating up local thugs who bullied villagers, and then people would have begun seeking him out one by one.
Being praised for righteousness would have made his shoulders rise high, and he likely gained some measure of pride and responsibility in return.
He might even have savored, for the first time in his life, the joy of being recognized by someone after years of hard labor just to make a living.
From that point on, whenever people needed help, he would have set aside his own livelihood and rushed out to lend a hand.
And when they offered rice or coins in gratitude, he would have refused again and again, insisting he had not done it for a reward.
Taking justice seriously and disregarding profit is the basic requirement for a chivalrous hero.
Doing something for payment is not chivalry. It is just being a hired fixer.
No matter what, if you get something that exceeds your means, it can become a disaster you cannot bear.
His name might continue to be synonymous with a chivalrous hero in the region, but his family’s circumstances would not improve.
I suddenly remembered the drunken grumbling of some middle-aged ronin who had once said he had played the hero in his youth.
Something useful to have in your neighborhood, but not someone you’d want in your family.
That was a chivalrous hero.
Hwang Gangju covered his face with both hands. After watching a little longer, I returned to the tavern without a word.
The tavern, which had only moments ago been so loud it was painful to the ears, had strangely gone still.
The brightly lit stage was empty too.
“What happened? Why is everyone so unsettled?”
“I heard Blood Sand Gang was attacked by surprise.”
Bok Ha-gyu’s face flashed through my mind. Had the Black Night Gang moved this quickly?
“What does Blood Sand Gang have to do with the tournament...”
“There he is.”
As if my words did not reach him, the man hurriedly turned toward the entrance.
The murmuring crowd and the martial artists all turned their eyes to one place. I turned that way too.
An old man with white hair and a sword at his waist appeared, accompanied by a group of martial artists at his side.
His face was weathered and wrinkled, his skin darkened by age spots, but even without a cane he walked forward with a strong, brisk stride.
At a glance, he was clearly no ordinary old man and had very likely mastered martial arts properly. He stepped onto the stage alone.