I Choose Nothing
I sat slumped on the ground, muttering in a daze.
“Just… why…?”
“They’re members of the same training group as you, aren’t they? Just like it says there.”
Pahwanggun laughed and shook his head from side to side.
“They volunteered for a caning over something that trivial? Do you think a caning is some kind of children’s game?”
“…That’s what I’m saying. They were both limping afterward. When you meet them later, ask them yourself. Ask them what the hell they were thinking.”
Someone making a sacrifice for my sake—this was the first time I had ever experienced anything like it.
I had lived my entire life in a world where calculating pure self-interest was taken for granted.
Pahwanggun went on.
“Still, Moyong Ryu is from the same family as you, so I could at least half-expect it from him… but Jin Muje surprised me even more.”
“Jin Muje?”
“Yeah.”
I pictured the pale-skinned, impeccably dressed thug of a Taoist who was always muttering “low-class trash,” “idiot,” and “I’ll kill you.”
Pahwanggun scratched his head.
“Originally Moyong Ryu and Jin Muje were each supposed to take thirty strokes. But Jin Muje objected. Said he was the strongest of the three and could take a lot more, so he’d take the heavier share. That’s how it got split into twenty and forty. Of course, the forty wasn’t just about that—Jin Muje completely wrecked that Hwangbo family brat… ah, I promised not to talk about that. Anyway, that’s how it went.”
“….”
I dragged a palm down my face.
If I didn’t do at least that much, Pahwanggun would see whatever expression I was wearing right now.
And that was something I hated more than dying of embarrassment.
“So, to sum up the final disciplinary measures that apply to you from this incident: normally, to take a hall promotion exam you have to pass three trials. But you, separately from that, must first complete and pass three punitive trials before you even earn the right to attempt the regular ones. For those three punitive trials, only a single failure is allowed.”
“I’ve heard the bad news. So what’s the good news?”
Pahwanggun plopped down on the floor in front of me.
“This part wasn’t going to apply at first, but I pushed hard on the grounds that it violated fairness. You remember the rule I told you about—how Cheonsubaekryeonsa offers a three-option reward package every time you finish a set of trials?”
“Don’t tell me.”
Pahwanggun nodded as if to say I’d guessed right.
“That rule will apply without exception to the punitive trials you’ll be taking as well. As long as you pass them, this will be a real opportunity for you.”
—Clank.
Sunlight I hadn’t seen in a long time.
As I was released aboveground I discarded my tattered clothes and received a new set of martial robes.
Pitch-black martial robes.
I rubbed my bruised wrists.
I had no idea how many days I’d been hanging down there, but after breathing the damp underground air for so long, the surface air felt like it was opening my chest wide.
“So you’re the third disciple of Lord Pahwanggun’s training group—Moyong Bi. That correct?”
In front of me stood a martial artist with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing blue robes embroidered with dragons.
His clean-shaven head vaguely recalled a Shaolin monk.
But the sharp, slanted eyes beneath it and the overall aura were far closer to the unorthodox path.
Under the robes, muscles that looked ready to burst hinted at a body trained to the extreme.
“Disciple Moyong Bi greets you.”
I formed a respectful fist-and-palm salute.
“For someone who supposedly causes trouble wherever he goes, you look pretty ordinary.”
“….”
His tone was full of thorns.
Keeping my head bowed, I recalled the conversation I’d had with Pahwanggun just before being released from the stone prison.
The executioner waiting for you at the prison entrance is the one you’ll face every time you pass a trial or promotion exam—from Ha-mu-gwan all the way up to the final Dong-mu-gwan—regarding rewards and punishments.
The word “executioner” had felt familiar; it was the same post Eun Seollyeong had held.
I don’t have the authority to tell you which of the three reward options to pick, but one piece of advice…
Pahwanggun had looked at me with a worried sigh.
Don’t get your hopes too high about the rewards. Especially since this guy is famous for hating great-family brats like mortal enemies.
What do you mean by that?
Pahwanggun had frowned.
Unlike trial rewards, the rewards for promotion exams are left entirely to the executioner’s discretion, not the training group’s instructor.
Only then did I understand.
A guy who already looks at the great families with a negative eye isn’t going to hand you anything good. At least with internal elixirs or weapons the list is already fixed to Ha-mu-gwan standards, so there’s a limit to how much he can mess with you. But the second option—martial arts—especially…
Would an executioner really pull that kind of stunt? It’s official business, after all.
Pahwanggun had sighed again.
That’s because you don’t know the bastard. He learned martial arts at Shaolin, but his personality was so narrow-minded and rotten that they even expelled him.
I snapped out of the memory.
I could tell at a glance.
There was absolutely nothing friendly in those eyes.
It was the exact same look I had encountered countless times after Mother died, when I wandered the capital aimlessly trying to learn martial arts.
“My name is Lee Jasuo. I handle rewards and punishments within Ha-mu-gwan as its executioner. You’ll be seeing a lot of me from now on—whether in a good way or a bad way. I’d prefer we only meet in the good way.”
“Understood.”
“Of course, I’m not expecting much. From what I’ve heard, you made quite a racket from the moment you entered.”
I swallowed dryly.
Lee Jasuo frowned and muttered,
“This is exactly why I can’t stand great-family brats. They’re not even proper orthodox sects—why the hell do they come sniffing around Cheonsubaekryeonsa?”
It was shaped like a soliloquy, but it was clearly meant for me to hear.
“Well, whatever. Let’s get started. I came looking for Disciple Moyong Bi today for one punishment matter and one reward matter. First—for passing the promotion exam, which reward will you choose?”
For some time now a thread of suspicion had been creeping into a corner of my chest.
I had no proof.
It could easily be overthinking.
But the life I had lived and the status I could never escape had forced this way of thinking onto me.
Someone inside Cheonsubaekryeonsa is deliberately obstructing me.
I hoped it was just excessive suspicion.
Then it would be nothing more than my own baseless anxiety.
But if it was real?
I would prepare before I got stabbed in the back.
If it turned out to be wasted effort, I would gladly raise a toast to that wasted effort.
At first I had thought it coincidence.
I had found the entrance exam that was suddenly applied starting this cohort strange, but I let it slide.
Then came the promotion exam whose nature had been completely rewritten—something without precedent, enough to leave even Pahwanggun flustered—and I began to feel something was wrong.
It had been an exam that struck precisely at my greatest weakness.
No matter how rich the spiritual energy of Chunmu Hall’s grounds made rapid internal energy growth possible, reaching half a gap in a single month was absolutely impossible.
Without Mumyeong’s sensory perception and the sheer luck of finding the Heavenly Flower White Ginseng and Heavenly Thunder White Ginseng, I would have been eliminated for certain.
On top of that, the drastically strengthened disciplinary measures that had almost been applied this time—without Moyong Ryu and Jin Muje’s cooperation, who knew what the outcome would have been.
And then the sudden replacement of the executioner with someone who held a critical view of people like me.
Having come this far, even without hard proof, refusing to be suspicious would have been the real absurdity.
“….”
It was true that no single great sect or family could openly control Cheonsubaekryeonsa.
But a little influence over circumstances might not be difficult at all.
Since I couldn’t even grasp who the culprit was, I had no sense of what they might try next.
I put myself in their shoes.
Facing three punitive trials that allowed only a single failure, what would they expect me to choose?
And what kind of trap would they plant to sabotage that choice?
I looked at the executioner in front of me.
This man would only ever give me disadvantages; he would never act fairly.
As my silence stretched, Lee Jasuo prodded me in a sharp voice.
“This is getting on my nerves. Hurry up and choose. Whatever you pick is meaningless anyway. What good do you think a nobody like you can do? Giving a knife to a baby mouse—”
“I.”
I raised my head.
I had decided.
This was the best decision I could make.
“I will choose nothing.”
Lee Jasuo stared at me.
“Choose nothing? Are you serious…?!”
I would have to pass the next two trials raw, with no capital from this reward—my first and last chance at one.
I had thought carefully about what I currently lacked most.
An internal elixir?
Of course more internal energy was always better.
I had no idea how treacherous the path ahead would be; the more-than-one-gap of energy I currently possessed was certainly substantial, but I could never call it enough.
A weapon or armor?
Embarrassingly, I still hadn’t even decided what my main style should be.
No matter how fine a weapon they gave me, it would be nothing more—and nothing less—than a pearl necklace on a pig.
What I needed most right now was a superior martial art that could actually make use of the overflowing internal energy I already had.
But there was an even more urgent martial art I needed at this moment.
Not some destructive technique, but something that could bridge the gaps between forms and fill the openings—my greatest current weakness.
If I failed to fill that gap with this opportunity, I was as good as dead.
As Pahwanggun had said, even a third-rate martial artist could kill me in an instant.
Without foundations, even the most destructive form handed to me would be no more useful than giving a sharp real sword to a child.
Without the slightest hesitation I said,
“Yes. I am fully aware of what I am saying.”
“Hah, I’ve never seen a bastard like this in my life…”
“However, I have one request for the Executioner.”
Lee Jasuo spoke as if the whole thing disgusted him.
“For the record, asking me to waive one trial in exchange for refusing the reward is completely out of the question—”
“In exchange for giving up the reward, I would like even a single opportunity to witness the world above.”
Lee Jasuo’s words cut off as if sliced by a blade.
“An opportunity to witness the world above?”
This was the critical part.
“Actually, I heard about it from my training group’s instructor, Lord Pahwanggun. About Executioner Lee Jasuo’s moniker.”
“My moniker? From Lord Pahwanggun?”
I formed a fist-and-palm salute and spoke with the utmost respect.
“Yes. He said you are one of the few true gods of combat even among the orthodox path, born with a genius-level practical sense that no one in the jianghu can take lightly. That the reason you have so many enemies is because others envy that skill, not because you are a bad person—Lord Pahwanggun emphasized that many times.”
“Hah… well now. Th-that so?”
Lee Jasuo cleared his throat repeatedly.
Of course Pahwanggun had never said any such thing.
But he wasn’t going to go check.
And more importantly, my own nose was already on fire.
“To receive such words from none other than the Fighting Demon, Lord Pahwanggun—what an honor.”
Being acknowledged by a master felt good to anyone.
I had to push one step further.
“I heard one of the reasons you carry the moniker ‘Asura Blood’ is your flawlessly perfect fist art.”
Lee Jasuo nodded.
“You’re talking about the Arhat Fist, I take it. Well, no one can match my level of completion and understanding of that fist art.”
“Yes. I heard that as well.”
“But that’s only half right and half wrong. When that unpleasant business happened at my old sect, they started picking at me over that too. Those bastards.”
An ugly memory must have surfaced; Lee Jasuo growled.
“Half right and half wrong?”
“In reality, what decides life and death in most fights isn’t some flashy single form, but the countless most basic, ordinary movements underneath it.”
Lee Jasuo continued with a face full of scornful laughter.
“The reason I came to be called Asura Blood is that I took the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist as the foundation, divided it into twelve forms, and completely melted them into my body so that the gaps between forms were filled. At your level you wouldn’t gain a single thing even if you watched. Are you still fine with that?”
I did not answer immediately.
I waited one beat.
Two beats.
On the third beat—
“Yes. Even if I gain nothing, it is the choice I made, so I will have no regrets.”
“….”
Every martial artist takes pride in their own martial arts.
They carry a sky-high sense of dignity about them.
That was a common trait shared by every martial artist in the jianghu, no matter how eccentric their personality.
If that was the case, then even someone who viewed me poorly…
“Fine.”
I had believed he would not be able to refuse.
“But only once. For your sake I’ll slowly show you the twelve basic forms that form the foundation of my combat. Not that you’ll be able to copy them even if you watch. You won’t regret this?”
“Yes. Ah, and one more thing!”
Lee Jasuo twitched his brows in irritation.
I scratched my head with an awkward smile.
“Would it be all right if we moved locations before I observe? As you said, this is a precious one-time opportunity.”
“Locations?”
I looked up at the sky.
The noon sun hung overhead.
A cloudless blue sky.
I shifted position until I stood with the sun at my back.
Lee Jasuo looked at my face, then frowned at the sunlight shining straight into his eyes.
“Do you really have to stand with the sun behind you like that? It’s blinding.”
“My insight is so pitifully lacking that if shadows fall across each form I can’t distinguish the movements.”
“…Hmph. Well, it’s not like I need to look at you anyway.”
The starting posture began.
Lee Jasuo clenched his fists and spread his legs into a horse stance.
Basic Twelve Forms
“Good. Beginning. This is the Vajra Demon Subduing Fist’s Basic Twelve Forms.”
Lee Jasuo’s body began to move.
One chance only.
Mumyeong.
Understood.
It was high noon.
—Kiiing!
The intense sunlight blazing behind me completely swallowed the red glow that had entered my eyes.
With the sun at my back I spread my palm toward Lee Jasuo and quietly intoned the syllables that activated the Heavenly Demon’s power.
“Namsang Samadhi…!”
Heavenly Demon Copies Martial Arts.