I Have Seen All You Have to Offer
Thanks to Namgung Yun's specialized training, Namgung Yeon had held his ground admirably against an opponent who outclassed him by a full step. But that was the limit. He could not seize a decisive victory; he simply lacked both the requisite skill and the battle experience to turn the tide. Inevitably, the duel dragged on, rapidly burning through both youths' reserves of internal energy and physical stamina.
"Haa... pant!"
"Whew... haah!"
Compared to seasoned masters, their reserves of qi and physical endurance were shallow indeed. Furthermore, the unfamiliar, razor-edge pressure of knowing that a single misstep meant taking cold steel pushed their bodies and minds to the brink of collapse. Yet even as ragged gasps tore through their chests, their white-knuckled grips never slipped from their sword hilts, nor did their glares waver from each other. Regardless of their skill or character, at that moment, they stood as true martial artists.
"How about we call this duel to an end here?" Hong Jong suggested, glancing back and forth between the Namgung Clan and the Anhui Mo Clan. It was plain to see that both exhausted combatants were incapable of carrying on.
"We take no issue with that," the Namgung Clan readily agreed with a nod. After all, by anyone's estimation, Namgung Yeon had fought remarkably well against a superior adversary.
Hong Jong shifted his gaze to the Anhui Mo Clan.
"...Very well," Mo Seok-heon conceded grudgingly.
With his consent, the duel concluded in a draw.
Namgung Yeon stepped down from the sparring ring. His faltering, unsteady footing as he descended the stairs laid bare just how thoroughly he had exhausted himself. Words of praise and encouragement washed over him from his clansmen for his valiant effort. Murmuring his gratitude as he pushed through the throng, he soon found himself standing before Namgung Yun.
"You did well."
"Thank you, Hyung-nim."
It was the same word of encouragement and the same expression of gratitude exchanged with all the others. Yet unlike the polite formalities offered to the rest of the clan, the gratitude Yeon directed at Yun was steeped in heartfelt sincerity. From Yun's unprompted declaration of genuine respect for his father, General Administrator Namgung Uncheon—a man dismissed by everyone else—to the rigorous training that had enabled him to achieve tangible results today, Yeon understood now.
So this is why Namgung Geol follows him with such fierce devotion.
And going forward, Yeon knew he would do the exact same.
"Well done, my son. Go to the Medical Pavilion just in case," his father said, gently patting his shoulder. For the first time, Yeon felt no lingering shame toward his father.
"No, Father. I'll remain here."
He had suffered no serious injury; his stamina was simply spent. There was no need to make a fuss and scurry off to the Medical Pavilion. Above all else, he had to witness the next bout.
"Will the next combatants step onto the sparring stage!"
At last, it was Namgung Yun's turn.
The gaze of everyone present converged upon the two figures standing atop the sparring stage.
The tally thus far stood at one win, one draw, and one loss. The entire outcome of the inter-clan contest rested upon this single clash. To make matters weightier, both combatants—Namgung Yun and Mo Unseon—were acknowledged as the strongest among their peers within their respective clans. It was a contest between the future pillars of their great families, making the stakes monumentally high.
"How do you see this duel playing out?" Namgung Geol asked Namgung Yeon.
Having caught his breath and recovered some of his strength, Yeon shook his head. "I honestly can't say."
His heart wanted nothing more than to proclaim Yun's guaranteed victory, but his opponent was by no means a man to be underestimated.
Though General Administrator Namgung Uncheon was never one to leak sensitive clan intelligence even to his own flesh and blood, being the son of the head manager afforded Yeon far more exposure to tidbits of information than the average disciple. Among those records was information regarding the youth currently confronting Namgung Yun.
Mo Unseon.
He was currently the most prized prodigy of the Anhui Mo Clan, vying for the top spot among the Central Plains' rising generation. And as if to prove that such lofty praise was no idle boast, he had already broken into the First-rate realm at an astonishingly young age.
Suspecting that the Anhui Mo Clan was merely posturing, the Namgung Clan had conducted its own discreet investigations, only to arrive at the grim conclusion that the rumors were almost certainly true. It was estimated that even if Mo Unseon were to make his official Jianghu debut this very moment, he would carve out an illustrious name for himself without delay.
Naturally, he was also the prime candidate to inherit the coveted epithet Bungcheon—a name that made the Namgung Clan grind their teeth in fury. As such, the Namgung Clan had marked him as an existential threat long ago.
Before Yun's meteoric resurgence, the clan had championed Namgung In as Mo Unseon's counter. But that was nothing more than an artificial rivalry constructed by propping up the strongest disciple of the same age bracket; nobody had truly believed In could match Mo Unseon.
Still, they seemed to harbor a sliver of desperate hope, telling themselves the future was unwritten.
Yet that feeble hope had crumbled to dust when In suffered a humiliating defeat not to Mo Unseon, but to his junior, Mo Un-su. Because of that, while the score sheet appeared balanced on the surface, the atmosphere between the two clans was starkly different. The Namgung Clan wore expressions tinged with nervous tension, whereas the Anhui Mo Clan looked thoroughly relaxed.
After hyping him up as the future of the Namgung Clan...
Yeon recalled Namgung In slinking away from the stage earlier. The boy's downcast head hadn't been solely due to the physical pain of his wounds.
To swagger around within the clan acting like an untouchable tyrant, only to be rendered so utterly helpless before the Anhui Mo Clan, our sworn rivals.
A frog in a well. No words suited Namgung In better.
Even so, the Namgung Clan's spirit was not entirely extinguished. A new star had burst onto the scene, completely overturning every expectation: a youth who had once languished in the Third-rate realm, only to leapfrog past the Second-rate straight into the First-rate, subsequently resolving the jiangshi incident that had shaken the entire martial world.
Had it not been for Namgung Yun, the Namgung Clan camp would resemble a funeral parlor right now.
A quiet chuckle almost slipped from Yeon's lips. How utterly ironic that the clan was forced to pin all its honor and pride on the very person they had spent years scorning and ridiculing.
Hyung-nim was right all along.
If the clan truly claimed to abide by Respect for the Strong, they should have granted everyone an equal opportunity to become strong. Had they done so, the clan could have held its head high and cheered for Yun's victory with genuine conviction.
"What are you grinning about?"
It seemed his smirk had leaked out after all. Meeting Geol's puzzled stare, Yeon replied, "Oh, nothing. Just thought that Hyung-nim is bound to win."
"Naturally! I never doubted him for a single second!" Geol declared proudly, puffing out his chest with his arms crossed. Yeon couldn't help but smile again at Geol's unabashed, almost mindless faith.
Upon the stage, the two combatants faced each other. Mo Unseon watched him with a faint, mocking smile.
A classic specimen of someone who has never tasted failure, Yun mused.
No doubt, every bit of training had yielded immediate progress, and every duel had ended in effortless victory.
Reached the First-rate realm already, has he?
At a glance, the boy was barely any older than Yun's present body. Even by the rigorous standards of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, breaking into the First-rate at that age was an exceptionally swift achievement. Considering that, his brimming confidence and composure were entirely understandable.
"I trust what you spouted before still holds?" Mo Unseon remarked.
"What of it?"
"That 'The Weak Are Meat for the Strong' and 'Respect for the Strong' are two different things."
"Naturally."
It was a philosophy he had pondered, honed, and practiced throughout his reign as the Heavenly Demon over the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. Why would he change it now?
Mo Unseon sneered. It was a remarkably expressive smirk, conveying absolute derision without needing to utter a single curse.
"The words of the weak are utterly meaningless, no better than trash discarded in the gutter. Today, I'll demonstrate to you why the law of the jungle is the one true way of the strong."
"Sure. Give it your best shot."
In his current journey to master Righteousness and Chivalry, Yun couldn't care less about the boy's posturing. Nothing this brat could do would invalidate Yun's conviction. Besides, as if he could ever lose to someone like this.
Perhaps offended by Yun's nonchalant brush-off, the crack in Mo Unseon's smirk deepened.
"...We'll see if you can keep up that arrogant facade once the match is over."
The fourth duel commenced. As the deciding clash of the entire competition and a battle between the foremost prodigies of both clans, the exchange exploded into furious violence from the very first breath.
Boom!
It was a heavy, deafening sound, hard to believe it was produced merely by sword and sabre colliding. Dense, razor-sharp qi was visibly condensed along the edges of both weapons: Sword Thread and Sabre Thread—the undeniable hallmarks of true First-rate mastery.
Clang! Boom! Clang!
In the blink of an eye, dozens of exchanges flashed across the ring. The spectators held their breath, murmuring in awe.
"Incredible..."
"We expected as much, but still..."
In that moment, clan rivalries faded away; there were only martial artists who had dedicated their lives to the martial path, mesmerized by authentic excellence.
"Whoa... our duels really were child's play compared to this," Geol marveled.
"Those in the First-rate realm possess voices that carry weight across the entire Jianghu," Yeon replied calmly, though his own heart pounded violently against his ribs. "Naturally, there's no comparing us to them."
It was a level of combat that neither Yeon, stuck in the Third-rate, nor Geol, a Second-rate martial artist, dared fathom stepping into.
"Still... Hyung-nim seems to have the upper hand, doesn't he?"
"He does."
To any spectator, Namgung Yun appeared to be seizing control of the momentum. The expressions on the Namgung Clan's side brightened visibly. Yet Geol tilted his head, scratching his cheek in confusion.
"Wait, something feels off."
"What does?"
"No, it's just... this duel feels weird..."
Right at that moment—
KABOOM!
The clash of steel resonated with far greater violence than before. Mo Unseon brought his sabre down in a vicious cleave. Astoundingly, the Sabre Thread cloaking his blade surged into far sharper, denser brilliance.
Boom! Boom! CRASH!
The quintessential tyranny of the sabre unleashed an unrelenting storm of strikes. The smiles that had just begun to grace the faces of the Namgung Clan evaporated into grim shadows; in a mere heartbeat, the balance of power on the stage had completely inverted.
"Felt good while it lasted, didn't it?" Mo Unseon sneered through gritted teeth, making it abundantly clear that he had been holding back his true strength until now.
The Anhui Mo Clan disciples chuckled derisively from the sidelines.
"Look at them, thinking they actually stood a chance!"
"He's as ruthless as ever."
"Did they seriously believe Brother Unseon, who breached the First-rate realm so early, would only have that much to show?"
"Those bastards..." Yeon glared daggers at the Mo trio, but there was nothing he could do.
He snapped his eyes back to the stage. Namgung Yun parried the torrential barrage of sabre strikes, yet to all appearances, he looked like a battered wooden skiff caught in the vortex of a raging waterspout. It seemed as though Mo Unseon's ruthless blade might cleave into Yun's neck at any second.
"Hmm... what is this, really?" Geol muttered beside him.
Normally, Geol would be panicking and making an almighty fuss over Yun's predicament. Strangely, however, his voice held no genuine sense of crisis. Turning to look, Yeon saw Geol deep in thought, holding his temples as if trying to solve a perplexing riddle.
"What on earth are you thinking about right now?"
Despite Yeon's question, Geol merely grunted, racking his brains.
Come to think of it, he did say something felt off about this duel...
Could Geol have noticed that Mo Unseon was concealing his strength? Just as Yeon was about to be amazed by Geol's unexpected discernment, Geol jerked his head up.
"Ah!" His eyes went wide. "Now that I think about it... when Hyung-nim beat the living daylights out of those jiangshi, that wasn't all he could do at all!"
At that exact moment—
BOOOOM!
An ear-splitting detonation shattered the air, dwarfing every clash that had come before. Both Geol and Yeon whipped their heads back toward the stage.
An entirely different sight greeted them.
Yun and Mo Unseon were now separated by several paces. Judging by their positions, Mo Unseon had been forcibly hurled backward. His face was frozen in pure, unadulterated shock; not a shred of his smug mockery or relaxed arrogance remained.
In contrast, Namgung Yun stood as leisurely as ever.
"I've seen all you have to offer."
The aura radiating from the sword in his hand surged, blazing with terrifying intensity.