Let's Have a Spar
Let's have a spar. Namgung Sinjae was certainly helpful when it came to sword training. After hearing that she relied too much on brute strength, Cheong had reviewed her martial arts and realized that most of what she'd learned were indeed hard-style techniques. The Yue Maiden Sword felt like the culmination of every possible subtlety, so she could let that slide, but everything else was the same. Most demonic arts had no choice but to be hard-style. The 108 Asura Swords was based on the wild ferocity of beasts tearing into their prey. The Sosu Magong that shredded enemies and the Black Killing Demonic Palm that shattered them were the same. Even the Yeorae Shinjang was a hard-style technique. Buddhist martial arts were fundamentally rooted in straight lines and destruction. Probably because of their no-kill principle of subduing opponents by breaking bones and muscles without taking lives. Though in Cheong's opinion, just cleanly killing them seemed more merciful. Anyway, the point was that she had no sense of how to remove force from her body and weapons, how to deflect, penetrate, and shake with softness.
Fortunately, there was one suitable technique. Cheong opened her martial arts window and poured a generous amount of training points into the Shadowless Divine Hand.
Shadowless Divine Hand
As usual when learning a new technique, she rolled her eyes back, twitched violently, then barely regained her senses and rubbed her temples. Setting that aside, the applications of the Shadowless Divine Hand that flooded into her mind were quite fascinating.
This is seriously a thief's technique...
The very operation of the art was exactly that. The core principle was stealth and trickery that the opponent wouldn't notice. Attaching sharp artificial nails to the fingertips to secretly slice open pouches, clothes, or knots. Then slipping a hand through the hole to steal something or plant something inside. It was precisely the method a thief would use. And why in the world did a technique for unlocking mechanisms even exist? The bastard who created this martial art must have had truly impure intentions.
Of course, while it explained in meticulous detail how one could use these applications and forms of the Shadowless Divine Hand to commit all sorts of crimes, the forms themselves faithfully followed the principles of Golden Lock Hand—grabbing, twisting, and breaking.
And so Cheong demonstrated the Shadowless Divine Hand with her sword.
“Hmm? Sword-friend?”
“Haha! What do you think!”
The two wooden swords clashed with a cute little tok. Then Cheong’s wooden sword slid smoothly down along Namgung Sinjae’s, deflecting it. When Namgung Sinjae turned his sword to guide it outward, Cheong responded, and the two wooden swords stayed locked together, pushing and pulling without separating.
“By the heavens, sword-friend! They say a single day can bring remarkable improvement, but to awaken like this in just one day!”
“I’m pretty amazing, right? Want to praise me more?”
Namgung Sinjae rotated his wrist, deflecting Cheong’s wooden sword with the flat of his blade before suddenly thrusting straight forward. Cheong aligned both feet in a straight line, shifted diagonally to evade, then extended her wooden sword held straight like a wine cup, deflecting the thrust outward. Then came sticking, riding, pushing, and flowing. Their wooden swords rarely clashed directly, and even when they did, they only produced those cute little tok tok sounds.
After about fifty exchanges, Namgung Sinjae raised his palm and slowly stepped back.
“Hoo. Fighting with a wooden sword is still quite tiring. But why is it that after embracing softness, you’ve become vulnerable in offense? You focus solely on defense, only skilled at pushing and sticking, so there’s no real resolution to the match.”
“Hmm, yesterday you mentioned something about softness, so I tried applying Golden Lock Hand with a sword. But, well. Golden Lock Hand isn’t about thrusting and cutting, is it?”
That was because Golden Lock Hand was originally about seizing with the grip, binding, twisting, and throwing the opponent down. It wasn’t a martial art meant for swords in the first place. So while she could somehow apply it by adding an extra joint-like motion to push or pull without damaging the wooden sword, that was all it amounted to. At best, she could ride the blade and strike the gripping fingers, but Namgung Sinjae was so skilled that he never gave her an opening.
“Hmm. Then wouldn’t it be better to apply those techniques you just used to your original swordsmanship?”
“I was testing whether it would work or not. Hmm. Now I’m going to practice incorporating it properly.”
Just now she had used it purely with the sword instead of her hands, so it was her own attempt to piece it together. Having confirmed it worked well enough, it was time to integrate it into her sword arts.
But then—
Smack!
“Ow!”
“Oh no! Are you alright!?”
“This much is nothing. My body is incredibly sturdy, so something like this doesn’t bother me at all.”
Cheong said while rubbing her shoulder. Contrary to her words, she had just taken a proper clean hit for the first time in a while. If it had been a real sword, it would have been a painful defeat that cost her an arm. It was because Cheong’s swordsmanship had suddenly become clumsy.
Not knowing something at all allowed for experimentation. But twisting the forms that were engraved into her mind and body like habits was no easy task. On the contrary, Cheong’s own will interfered, turning her movements into awkward, half-baked flailing. The moment Cheong moved her sword by her own intent, her entire body became one massive opening.
“Hmm. This is strange, sword-friend. You suddenly seem at a loss. You’re acting like someone experiencing real combat for the first time.”
“Hmm. What do you mean by that?”
“It’s like someone who has only practiced perfect forms alone in isolation, without any sparring or real fights, is using them in actual combat for the first time.”
The forms Cheong used took the most complete shape possible when the martial art reached perfection. Rather than using her own mental image, she simply stored and reproduced the mental image of the technique’s founder. However, since she could break them down into extremely fine fragments, her proficiency was similar to the master level of “form disassembly” that experts spoke of.
But when she tried to transform them instead of simply reproducing them, the limitations of her half-baked learning were immediately exposed.
“Hmm. Sword-friend. The truth is, I have an incredible memory for forms, but I’m completely hopeless at application.”
“You were using swordsmanship you had memorized? It’s extremely peculiar, but… hmm. Now that you say it, I can somewhat understand.”
Whenever Namgung Sinjae faced Cheong, he always felt as if three different swordsmen were taking turns. When she used the Yue Maiden Sword, there was a childlike innocence. When she used the Goddess Sword Art, there was the bold spirit of a great hero standing proudly in the world. And occasionally, there was one nameless sword art filled with an extremely vicious killing intent that sought to trade blows without regard for defense, going for the throat. Since she never explained it herself, he could only assume it was one of the killing swords scorned by the world.
Until now, he had thought his respected sword-friend was accurately reading the essence of each sword art and reproducing the founder’s mental image. But if she was simply memorizing and copying them, he didn’t know whether to call her comprehension incredible or say that her excessively outstanding brain was actually hindering the development of her skills.
Listening to what she was saying now, it ultimately meant—
“Sword-friend, you haven’t made any progress at all since that time we went to Mount Hua two years ago, have you?”
“Hmm. Are you… disappointed?”
“To be honest, yes. In the end, you’ve only developed the strange habit of crushing opponents with physical strength and internal energy. As a swordsman, one could say you’ve actually regressed. Just what kind of training have you been doing all this time?”
At that, Cheong glanced around nervously and said,
“Hmm, I’m going to try doing it properly from now on. It probably won’t be any help to you, sword-friend, but… could I keep asking you for sparring sessions…?”
“What are you saying! Now that my sword-friend has finally stepped onto the proper path, I’m overjoyed and want to congratulate you!”
Namgung Sinjae bared his teeth in a wide grin. Cheong responded with the same smile.
----
Namgung Sinjae had completely unpacked his luggage in one of the Mucheon Pavilion guest rooms, so from morning it was sparring. After lunch, Paeng Daesan and Paeng Cho-ryo came looking for them, and it was sparring again. There was a minor incident where Namgung Sinjae muttered something about “half-sword” and got beaten by Paeng Cho-ryo under the pretext of a spar, but that was all.
After dinner, she spent time with Dang Nan-a, who had been watching idly all day. Dang Nan-a wasn’t participating in the Hidden Dragon Tournament anyway. “The noble one has been poisoned with the Seven-Step Deadly Poison. If you don’t surrender within six steps, not even Hua Tuo could save you.” Not only could she not say such things after applying the poison, but what would be the point of a spar if she announced what poison she was using?
While Cheong trained, Dang Nan-a threw hidden weapons on her own, occasionally boiled medicinal herbs, mixed ingredients, roasted them, or burned them—showing the process of preparing poisons. But anyone could tell at a glance that she was bored out of her mind.
That night, after wandering around a bit, washing up, and lying down in bed—
“I can’t take this! What is this!”
“Hmm. Traces of effort?”
“Sparring is one thing, but you should know when to hold back! You said you kept getting hit all day today. Then at least tell me to go easy, why didn’t you say anything until it got this bad?”
Dang Nan-a exploded in anger at the sight of the bruises covering Cheong’s fair skin.
“Well, going easy wouldn’t have helped much. And anyway, it’s just bruises. There’s no damage to bones or muscles.”
“Am I the doctor or are you the doctor? Look at this.”
After taking her pulse, Dang Nan-a muttered in disbelief.
“Ha. But you really are perfectly fine. Just what kind of body do you have? Still, no matter how fine you are, how can you let a woman get beaten until her body is covered in marks? What kind of stupid training is this?”
“The sweat shed today saves blood in the future.”
“Your tongue is smoother than a flowing spring. Besides, did you train like this in the Goddess Sect too…? I mean, did you train… like this?”
Dang Nan-a suddenly seemed confused. Now that she thought about it, Cheong had indeed done those bizarre things in the Goddess Sect claiming it was training. But if she was trying to train hard, it felt wrong to criticize her for it.
“Never mind. Come here.”
“What? Something feels… off…”
Dang Nan-a tilted her head. There was something that didn’t quite add up. What was it?
----
The training Cheong had done in the Goddess Sect, mostly sparring with Seomun Su-rin, had always been geared toward real combat. Thanks to that, she had become more skilled than anyone at pulling out and using her forms, with the focus on properly utilizing what she already possessed.
This time, however, the sparring focused on completely melting what she had into something that was truly her own.
With Namgung Sinjae, the Paeng siblings, and even Gongson Yoye joining in, after getting beaten for about five days straight, the sparring matches that used to be ten losses out of ten became one win out of ten.
There was one person who clicked his tongue at the sight.
“The Grand Matriarch’s disciple, huh. Ruthless. Truly ruthless.”
The man known as the greatest thief under the heavens, Shintu, clicked his tongue.
The tracking incense had split into two paths—one weak, one strong. Naturally, he had followed the stronger one, only to find that the Boksinjeok he was looking for wasn’t there. However, he had discovered a strange group called the Seol Family Trading Company that had an unusually high number of experts and an abnormal flow of money.
Suspicious, he dug deeper and achieved the feat of uncovering a secret branch of the Demonic Cult. But it wasn’t particularly interesting to Shintu. After all, the fact that the Demonic Cult had established trading companies in the Central Plains to siphon money was an open secret everyone already guessed at. Finding one of them didn’t give him any particular use for the information.
And so, after returning to Kaifeng and tracking the nearly dissipated tracking incense, it had led him to the VIP guest quarters of the Mucheon Pavilion in the Murim Alliance.
And while he was lurking around, waiting for an opportunity, he had witnessed Cheong demonstrating the Shadowless Divine Hand with her sword.
“That… that girl! She properly read the manual back then! She was pretending not to know at all! Hah, the greatest Shintu under the heavens has been completely fooled!”
It was slightly different, but not all that different. In the end, the fact that his martial art had been stolen was the same.
Once that happened, the matter of the Boksinjeok was no longer important. He had found the successor he had been searching for—the fate that had troubled every Shintu throughout history. Since she had stolen Shintu’s technique, she was obligated to inherit the name of Shintu.
Upon further investigation, however—oh dear. She already had a master. None other than that Grand Matriarch.
But if he gave up just because of that, he wouldn’t be qualified to bear the name of Shintu. A Shintu never gave up.
And so Shintu thought to himself:
If the greatest thief who can steal anything in the world can’t steal someone else’s disciple, then what kind of thief is he? On the contrary, if it’s the named disciple of the greatest woman under the heavens, wouldn’t that be the perfect opportunity to make the name of Shintu resound throughout the world?