Three Chances to Change Fate
“They say every person meets three chances in life that can change their fate! Have you been the lucky sort so far?”
It was one of the few questions I could answer without the slightest hesitation.
“No.”
I meant it. Not a second of doubt.
After a brief pause, I added,
“There were times I wondered if I’d committed some unforgivable sin in a past life. That’s how rotten my luck’s been.”
“There, you see! Meeting me today so you can learn martial arts—that’s exactly why your luck has been so terrible! I mean me, the genius martial artist Gang Ilbi! What do you say we head to my main hall and discuss our sect, or the philosophy I live by? And if the mood takes you, you might even consider joining!”
At first I nearly cut him off cold and refused the absurd suggestion on the spot.
“….”
Then I saw his sunken cheeks.
The threadbare clothes.
The scrawny frame visible between his sleeves.
A frail body that would go flying if I swung my arm at full strength.
It reminded me of a certain old man I had met once before.
I bit down hard on my lower lip.
“…Just a moment.”
“Of course! Excellent choice!”
Gang Ilbi nearly leapt for joy at my answer.
I followed behind him.
“Teacher Gang Ilbi, it’s been a while. How have you been?”
“Aigoo, Mother Lee! That roof I fixed last time—no more leaks, I hope?”
“Not a drop!”
Even in that brief stretch of walking, countless people called out to the man—Gang Ilbi—and greeted him with warm smiles.
“Teacher Gang, thank you for the rice last time. We ate well.”
An old man in rags seized Gang Ilbi’s hands and poured out his gratitude.
“Thanks to you, we made it through again. If only the tenant fees would ease up a little we could manage somehow, but Unwol Jiju’s exploitation just keeps getting worse…”
“If things get hard, you come to me anytime! A martial artist doesn’t even need food—we’re tough as nails!”
Gang Ilbi rolled up a stick-thin arm and flexed what passed for a bicep.
The old man, so wasted his ribs showed, nodded weakly—but answered with a bright, open smile.
“Teacher Gang, thank you for fixing our fence last time.”
“Because of you, Teacher, our child…”
“Teacher.”
“Sir…”
Trailing after Gang Ilbi, I watched it all with my own two eyes.
“….”
As I followed and took in every exchange, the faint irritation and venom that had been sitting in my gaze slowly drained away.
At last we reached the destination he had spoken of.
“…Listen, this might be rude to ask, but.”
I looked around and opened my mouth.
“Is this really the main hall you mentioned—the one with that lofty, pure history?”
Gang Ilbi swept his sweat-matted bangs back and laughed heartily.
“That’s right! This is the main hall of our Dangsa Sect, proud of its long history since my great-great-grandfather’s day! And I am its master, Gang Ilbi! Why do you ask?”
“…No reason.”
Where I stood was, by any measure, an ordinary house—a fairly wide yard and a shack on the verge of collapse. The only things that could even pretend to be martial training gear were a wooden training post shoved into one corner, two broken and mold-spotted staves, a three-section staff, and a fist-conditioning stand wrapped in straw.
There are traces of footwork training, at least.
I glanced at the regular stamped prints of advancing steps in the dirt.
I ran a hand over the wooden post.
My eyes narrowed.
This wasn’t hit for a day or two.
The post was dented where palms, fists, and knees had struck it. Smooth black polish from long use coated the wood. I felt the rough grain under my fingers—and the flakes of callus packed between the bark.
I knew, because I had put myself through hellish training worse than anyone.
To leave marks like these on solid wood, someone had to have beaten this post regularly for at least ten years.
“Ahem! Even cold water has its proper order! That isn’t something you’re ready to touch yet!”
Gang Ilbi, who had been sweeping, came scrambling over in a fluster.
“Ah—sorry. I saw training equipment and just took a look.”
Feeling awkward, I pulled my fingers away from the post.
“Still, you recognized it at a glance?”
I shrugged.
“It’s a wooden training post for striking practice, isn’t it? A basic tool for body arts and fist techniques.”
“So you did have some interest in martial arts after all! Recognizing a wooden post and everything! Come on up. You’ve come this far—I ought to at least offer you a cup of tea.”
On the way here I had seen with my own eyes how the villagers answered him. Whether he was a true martial artist who had mastered real arts or a fraud, I still couldn’t say—but that everyone liked him, and that he had lived by doing good, I could feel as clear as day.
The man in front of me, Gang Ilbi, genuinely saw me as a talented young man and wanted nothing more than to take me into his sect and teach me his martial arts.
Whether those arts were worth anything was a secondary question.
—Creak.
It was a shabby one-room shack half ready to fall down, but the inside was meticulously tidy. The four treasures of the study were there. A somewhat clumsy painting of the Four Gentlemen, done by his own hand, hung on the wall. And more than anything else, one entire wall was lined with books so old and tattered from reading that they were falling apart.
“It’s humble, but sit.”
Gang Ilbi lit the cold hearth, set water to boil in a teapot, and spoke.
“You seem fond of books. Those in particular.”
I sat and eyed the titles.
“Especially the old hero tales of the jianghu.”
I didn’t know about the rest, but among the volumes on that shelf was one titled The White Specter of Mount Hua—and I wanted to borrow it, show it to Eun Seollyeong, and watch what face she made.
“Ah? You looked at the books? Of course. It’s been my only hobby since I was a boy—my everything!”
Gang Ilbi brightened as he brought the teapot over.
“I always liked the stories of Seon Bihong myself.”
“Ah! Seon Bihong! I love that hero’s tale most of all—he’s the one who influenced me the deepest!”
I smiled and answered in kind.
“A man must strengthen himself. A true man ought to pursue strength of his own will. Right?”
“Right! Exactly! I thought young people these days barely touched those old stories, calling them outdated—and here I meet someone who knows them!”
Gang Ilbi clapped and nearly danced with delight.
“When I was young and wandering the capital, of all the jianghu chivalry tales the storytellers told, that was my favorite.”
I had had a dream once.
After escaping the hellish mountain valley where my mother had frozen to death, while I scraped by at the bottom of the capital, I would slip into the biggest crowds at noon—having no coin to pay—and listen to the storytellers. It was the only joy in my day.
Listening to the old heroes of the jianghu, my heart would pound. I would grip my knees white-knuckled, lost in the journey of an ordinary nobody who found a fateful chance and rose to command the martial world. The sweet romance with some fairy-like beauty of the Central Plains who had eyes only for the hero made my own chest tighten for no reason. And when the hero refused to tolerate injustice, punished the wicked in others’ stead, and thrashed the villains, I would cheer and stamp my feet.
Then every one of those fantastic tales would end, and I would return to a cold, merciless reality.
I did every odd job there was, counted the coins for my next meal, and still curled up to sleep dreaming of the day a chance to learn would come to me.
There had been a time when I tried to sleep through the cold curled tight, dreaming that someday I, too, would become a hero who commanded the jianghu…
Gang Ilbi stood, stroked a few volumes on the shelf, and clenched a fist.
“Someday I, too, will become a proud martial artist with mighty arts—like the heroes in these books—pursuing righteousness and chivalry, standing on the side of the weak.”
“….”
I watched the steam rising from the teapot he had poured for me.
Compared to the hot tea, the surface of the cup was endlessly cool and cold.
“…Now that we’ve left the world of orthodoxy, heresy, and the demonic path, this ‘jianghu’ that chases righteousness and chivalry—”
Gang Ilbi looked at me.
I spoke in a dry voice.
“—is something that only shows up in old stories little kids believe. You know that, don’t you.”
“….”
I toyed with the rim of the ice-cold cup with fingertips dulled and blunted by brutal training.
“An absolute powerhouse might still exist somewhere. But that powerhouse standing up for the weak and pursuing chivalry? That doesn’t happen anymore. It’s all garbage.”
“No.”
Gang Ilbi was holding a book titled The Chronicles of Seon Bihong.
“I still don’t think so.”
“What?”
“Of course I know the world has grown cruelly cold and chill, a place that chases only money. I know that even if strong men exist, the idea of those strong men speaking of chivalry is an outdated notion and a dream. But.”
He looked me straight in the eye.
“I still believe that somewhere in this world, there remains at least one master—just like in the jianghu of old—who stands for the weak and pursues righteousness and chivalry.”
I frowned. Thorns crept into my tone before I knew it.
“There’s a limit to how much nonsense I’ll sit and listen to. Wake up.”
My rough rebuttal painted surprise across Gang Ilbi’s face.
“Realistically, what would a master with that kind of overwhelming skill even gain from acting that way? Hero stories are just stories. We’re not little kids anymore—we’re adults who can’t afford to live believing that kind of idiotic—”
Gang Ilbi shelved the book and rolled up the martial robe that had slipped down his wasted arm.
“Then I’ll show you my conviction. Follow me.”
“….”
I had not a shred of expectation.
I followed him.
Gang Ilbi took a stance in the center of the yard.
“Count yourself honored. I don’t show this to just anyone—but I show it to you because you might become a disciple of our sect.”
“Ah. Right.”
“What I’m about to demonstrate is our sect’s ultimate secret art—Biyeoksanryeon.”
“…What did you just say?”
A word I never expected had come out of a fraud martial artist’s mouth.
Gang Ilbi nodded with a solemn face.
“Do you know why martial artists shout the names of their forms when they unleash tyrannical attacking sequences?”
It was an obvious question.
“Because a form’s name is the unique designation chosen by its creator—the clearest, most vivid embodiment in reality of the imagined mental image that art was meant to express.”
“Exactly. Then do you also know that in a grand ultimate secret art, beyond mere form names, there are True Words—full sentences—seated within every flow of the sequence?”
My eyes went wide.
Because I had written him off as a fraud, I had mostly let his words wash over me until now.
But what Gang Ilbi had just said was absolute fact.
Even the ultimate secret art I had learned from Asura—Sura-dae-myeol-geop-jin—had True Words for each of its four stages: Geuk, Jin, Myeol, and Ryu.
Don’t tell me.
Something about the way this was playing out felt wrong.
My clouded gaze sharpened, blade by blade, into a razor’s edge.
Gang Ilbi prepared his opening stance, sweat already beading.
“I’ll show it once at speed, then a second time properly, True Words and all. Watch carefully. This is my conviction as well!”
“….”
Just in case.
Arms folded, I fixed my focus on Gang Ilbi in his opening stance and whispered fast.
“Namsang Samadhi.”
I told myself it couldn’t be.
But just in case.
You never know with the world.
—Humm.
My eyes took on a faint crimson glow.
Ever since absorbing the gem of Mount Hua’s Guardian, the Heavenly Demon’s power to copy martial arts had soared. Copying low-level arts no longer strained my body. The speed of the copy itself had leapt as well. I no longer needed to spread a palm, aim, and clench—simply pouring red light from both eyes was enough to copy in silence.
Gang Ilbi began to move.
Possession Experience — Synchronized
Extraction Framework — Fully Displayed
Cheonma Dae-seogo — Target Form Martial Art Identified
Crimson light poured from my eyes as the Heavenly Demon’s power to copy martial arts activated at once.
And finishing the copy didn’t even take the span of a single breath.
“…Hah.”
I sighed and snuffed the red light from my eyes.
What the hell was I expecting from a fraud like that.
It wasn’t a complete fake. It was a real martial art.
But far from an ultimate secret technique, it was nothing more and nothing less than a worthless third-rate art you could find littering any marketplace floor.
For a moment I wondered what I was even doing here, and found myself unbearably stupid.
The unremarkable middle-aged man, whether he knew my thoughts or not, was pouring sweat as he performed the art. Movement by movement, he added the True Words and gave it everything he had.
"A breast of a hundred thousand zhang of ambition, eyes that shine across ten thousand li—!"
"If one is a man, then rightly pursue righteousness and chivalry…!"
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
My face burned.
For God’s sake. Even the so-called True Words are almost word-for-word lines out of a book…
I decided I was done dealing with this man.
Having treated him with even a thread of expectation was so humiliating I couldn’t stand it.
Whether I cared or not, Gang Ilbi kept shouting and driving the art forward.
“Moyong Bi.”
“…!”
My dull eyes snapped into a demon’s glare.
I spun like lightning.
Behind me, as if she had been standing there from the start, Eun Seollyeong waited with her arms folded in perfect stillness.
“What—how did you know I was—”
Eun Seollyeong quietly pointed at my wrist.
There, tied in place, was the silver cord she had given me.
As I gaped, she spoke in a calm but urgent voice.
“Explanation later. First we return to the lodging as fast as possible.”
Eun Seollyeong’s expression was not ordinary.
It was extremely rare for her to let her unease show that clearly.
I asked, startled,
“What’s going on?”
Eun Seollyeong bit her lip and spoke quickly, voice heavy.
“Emergency. Just now, the Hwangbo Family and the Jegal Family collided head-on.”