A Man Must Strengthen Himself
"A man must strengthen himself?"
So Jeongmun's ponytail swayed.
"Ha."
His face twisted into something grotesque.
"Ha… hahaha! Uwahahaha!"
His laughter climbed higher and higher, until his face flushed as if it might burst—then cut off as cleanly as if severed by a blade. Mouth shut, he stared at me, his dark face gone scarlet. The muscles of his clenched jaw stood out in hard ridges. So Jeongmun roared.
"What kind of infantile, worthless dogshit is that supposed to be?!"
His massive frame shot forward like an arrow. So Jeongmun bellowed.
"Even if you try, do you really think you can punch through my mountain-like defense and leave so much as a scratch?!"
A colossal fist came crashing down like a storm. Every punch seethed with internal energy enough to shatter stone.
This was no longer a spar.
It had crossed into a duel to the death.
One strike to kill.
The fists flying back and forth boiled with the very thing that set martial artists apart from ordinary people—true internal force, intent on crushing everything in its path.
Fists lashed out like a gale. I snapped my head left and right, dodging at lightning speed as I settled into my stance. My feet dragged across the ground. With a snap of my martial robes, I spread both arms wide.
Hot blood, hot victory, red as daylight — boiling blood burns hotter than the sun itself.
I would not use Baekryeon-pal-ya-jong.
I set aside every body art I had trained until now. Unfamiliar as it was, I moved solely on the foundation of Biyeoksanryeon—the sixth-grade martial art of the Dangsa Sect. Whatever it lacked in quality against So Jeongmun's high-peak mastery, I filled to the brim with my extremely refined physique and vast internal energy.
I struck aside the fist driving straight at my face. I blocked the leg snaking toward my thigh. A mad exchange of blows erupted between us. Destructive punches and kicks exploded from So Jeongmun's enormous frame, raining in from every direction.
"H-how… How is my martial art being matched by this kind of third-rate trash?!"
So Jeongmun's face flooded with dismay as my technique held even with his own. I did not yield a single step. I blocked it all. I let it all flow past. I drove my fist forward.
So Jeongmun gritted his teeth and deflected the blow—but the flesh of his massive forearm burst open under a punch laced with lightning flame.
"I clearly redirected it, and still… W-what kind of power is this?!"
Bloodshot veins stood out in So Jeongmun's eyes.
"This humiliation!"
He roared with veins bulging in his neck.
"I can't lose—die!!"
In a flash of lightning and thunder, both of us launched fists ready to pulverize the other. Blows were slapped aside and dodged left and right. A fist grazed past and tore open my cheek. My fist skimmed past and ripped So Jeongmun's ear. What followed was closer to a brawl than a duel. Dust began to rise. Clothes began to tear.
"Good heavens."
Everyone watching a spar that had become a death match swallowed hard.
"They're both insane."
Someone muttered it under their breath.
It was a contest of pride between two martial artists—a blade dance in which both would sooner have their skulls burst than bend. Through every motion, neither of us gave ground by so much as a single step.
Body arts that rely on the limbs have one classic weakness compared to weapon techniques: the effective range is short. To offset that, bare-handed fighters usually depend on rapid footwork. But So Jeongmun and I refused to retreat. To take even one step back would have felt like admitting defeat, so neither of us moved. Better to have our hearts explode and our bones snap than give way.
The distance between us shrank. Blood sprayed as fists flew without pause. Half a step closer with every exchange, the pace of the fight only climbed higher. Our forearms shed each other's frost-sharp attacks and were torn and cut in turn, flinging blood into the air.
Lightning flame seethed through my body. I drove my fist straight ahead.
"Kraaaagh!!"
So Jeongmun screamed in agony. He was hitting the limit of what he could redirect. One side of the forearm sheathed in his enormous muscle began to rupture. The taut balance of the fight started to tip.
Courage like tempered iron, bones like forged steel.
In the thick of an exchange where a single mistake could blow a man's head apart, as I unfolded Gang Ilbi's ultimate secret art—Biyeoksanryeon—memories flickered one by one across my vision like current through a wire.
They were memories transferred, vivid and unintended, in the process of copying the martial art. Memories I had relived night after night in cold sweat as if they were my own—the memories of a man who had chased chivalry to the end.
A heart that holds ambition a hundred thousand feet wide; eyes that shine across ten thousand li.
There was a boy who wanted power.
But to the very end, that boy received no fated encounter, no luck, no opportunity. All he had was a shabby martial art bestowed by an old man rolling around a marketplace floor.
I swear with my whole heart that I will strive and become a true man.
Even that was enough to make the boy leap for joy. Clutching a mold-spotted manual to his chest, he cried out to the world that he would take this chance as his cornerstone—that he would become a martial artist who pursued righteousness and chivalry, and stood as strength for the common people.
To become a true man, you must strengthen yourself every single day.
On rainy days he struck the wooden dummy without counting, again and again. His body was frail. He had no talent. An internal cultivation method that might have grown him even a scrap of true energy was beyond dreaming of. Mocked by everyone, he flailed through the forms, aping the postures. Branded a fraud, he still hit the dummy. He went hungry, rain leaked through the ceiling, and still he trained with only his childhood dream in mind. Bare to the waist, ribs showing, he drilled while reading the books of the virtuous. He helped his neighbors. He tried to be of use.
A hot-blooded man must burn hotter than the crimson sun.
Trying to shield common folk threatened by thugs, he took the beating himself. The art was low-grade—and the body meant to wield it was weaker still. Even after learning martial arts, he could not put out any force before a burly thug and simply got pounded. When the exhausted thugs finally went home and the weak he had protected looked at him with worry, he pretended composure. Alone at home, he smothered sobs of pure frustration.
Why do I have no strength?
Why do I have nothing but a third-rate art?
Why is there nothing in me but this wretched, pitiful weakness—so unlike the heroes in the stories?
Gazing upon towering blue waves and the vast azure heavens, raise a spirit as boundless as they.
Even so, he never broke his will. He believed that if he kept walking, spring would come at the end of the road. Everyone called him a fraud. Everyone called him third-rate. They laughed and pointed. Still he pressed stubbornly on.
This winter.
Yes—this winter, too.
He believed this winter would one day end, and that he would be repaid. He clawed his way forward. Even if the path of righteousness and chivalry was a lonely road no one acknowledged, filled only with mockery, he meant to walk it to the end.
His martial art may have been third-rate.
His strength may have been feeble.
His frame may have been slight.
But that man's will alone was the real thing.
Since I am a man, I cry out that I must strengthen myself…!
Moisture gathered in my eyes. Tendons rose along my fist. A fierce force poured into every strike. They grew sharper. So Jeongmun's defending arms burst open.
"This can't be!"
So Jeongmun reeled in shock.
"Ah… aah!"
Watching it all, Gang Ilbi pushed himself up on thin, trembling arms. Hot tears poured down his face without stopping.
"Th-that is… Impossible. It can't be. That—that is unmistakably…!"
Regret and long-held bitterness melted into the tears streaming from his eyes. The figure he had pictured his entire life was taking shape right before him. It had been written in the manual. He had practiced it until the pages wore thin over decades—and still, with not a handful of internal energy and a body that would not keep pace, he had never been able to unfold it.
"My path was never wrong."
All of it was unfolding before his eyes in brilliant form, founded on vast internal energy. Everything he had wanted to walk, everything he had so desperately prayed to see through to the end, was becoming reality in front of him.
"My whole life, chasing the childhood dream of righteousness and chivalry—"
Chest bursting with passion, Gang Ilbi cried out through his tears.
"—was never wrong!"
So Jeongmun's thick defense, strained to its limit under the rain of blows, finally broke. He shouted in panic.
"Y-you bastard!"
I clenched my molars until they nearly cracked. I drove my lead foot forward with everything I had. The sole of my foot smashed into the stone floor and planted. I launched an uppercut with every ounce of power left in me.
"Ngh!"
So Jeongmun spread both palms to catch the rising fist. The punch drove on. It met his palms—and shattered those thick, trained hands. The fist buried itself in his gut, sunk so deep you could see the bulge behind his spine.
"Urk."
Blood sprayed from his mouth as So Jeongmun's body—a full head taller than mine—went rigid. Every means of defense was gone. His entire frame hung exposed and helpless.
So Jeongmun screamed.
"No—!"
Stride tall, chest high — stand as a pillar for all, and become a true hero!
I hurled myself at him and roared like something out of hell.
"Dangsa Sect Ultimate Secret Art! Biyeoksanryeon — A Man Must Strengthen Himself!"
Exploding lightning flame. A body that blurs. Fists that shatter everything in their path.
With a detonation of lightning flame, my form went hazy. Both fists smashed So Jeongmun's blocking hands to pieces outright. I shattered his elbows. Leaping right, I drove two side punches like a cloudburst, then stomped his knee and crushed his hip. His right leg folded like a collapsing pillar. Circling behind him, my fists punched into the gaps of thirty-seven tendons and ligaments; his whole body twisted out of true. A side kick as I sprang left completely destroyed his last remaining left axis.
Broken in every limb, the enormous So Jeongmun dropped to his knees. In his pupils I was reflected—wreathed in vast lightning flame, fist already chambered.
Terror-stricken, So Jeongmun cried out.
"W-wai—!!!"
I howled in a blood-choked voice.
"Go to the afterlife and beg forgiveness from everyone you mocked!"
With a forward surge that shook heaven and earth, my outstretched fist snapped So Jeongmun's head back as if it had burst. The force was enormous. His neck broke, and even that was not enough—his massive body went flying backward and tumbled in a wild roll. It smashed through the sparring arena's wall and kept going, flesh pulped, until So Jeongmun, Vice Commander of Unwol Jiju, died on the spot.
…
The faint red light that had been glowing in my eyes went out. A wave of dizziness hit me and I planted a hand on my knee. To wring maximum power from a freshly copied sixth-grade art that had not even been fully internalized, I had burned through internal energy in a sharp, inefficient surge over a short span. It would have been a lie to say I was not tired.
The moment I bowed my head, a sound like a steel downpour rose around me as countless martial artists began to ring me in—armed troops in the dress of Unwol Jiju.
…
I lifted my head. Steadying a faintly ragged breath, I swept the surroundings with sunken eyes.
"You son of a bitch!"
Beyond the wall of men surrounding me stood So Cheonpa, rage having stripped him of all reason.
"How dare you! Did you really think you could kill the vice commander of our Unwol Jiju, ruin everything, and walk out of here unscathed, you unwelcome mongrel?!"
Eyes that had always kept their cold composure were now seized by a madness ready to burst.
"Because of you—because of you, every effort I made to win the recognition of the Hwangbo Clan's head and climb higher…!"
Hundreds of spears and blades leveled at me. So Cheonpa raved.
"Even if it costs every elite fighter Unwol Jiju has, I will kill you! I swear it to the heavens—I'll tear you apart down to the last scrap of flesh!"
"No. That will not do."
A colossal crash of steel rang out as a figure dropped in front of me.
"Huh?"
It was a voice cool as clear glass. She caught the hem of my slightly swaying robes and pulled me against her for support. At the same time she flicked a hand toward the empty air.
Seven blades surged up from her body and began to orbit overhead. The black-clad fighters ringing us screamed, eyes nearly popping from their sockets.
"Th-that's Qi Sword Control!!!"
"Good gods—and not one, but seven at once!"
"I declare it. Here, on this ground, today."
The silver figure barring the way before me lit cold, burning silver eyes.
"From this moment, no one lays a hand on this man without my leave. And if you insist on trying—"
Eun Seollyeong, Guardian of Mount Hua, murmured like a nightmare from beneath her trembling veil.
"—you had best come ready for the extinction of your house."