The Birth of a New Star
The Maiden of Yue Sword Art was an incredibly inconvenient sword technique. Every stance demanded a completely different blade in length, weight, and shape, so she had never even touched several of them. It did not even distinguish between sword and saber. As Namgung Sinjae had once said, it must have come from that distant past when the two were not distinguished and were simply called “blades.” Hmm. Sword friend, sword wise one, whatever. It could even extend to sword idiot or sword nemesis. He seemed knowledgeable about swords, yet he had been wrong this time. The Maiden of Yue had not used many different blades. Whatever she held in her hand was simply a sword. Long branches, short branches, swaying willow switches, fire pokers, iron rods—without an edge, single-sided or double-sided, as long as it was gripped in the hand, it became a sword.
Before she knew it, Cheong realized she was standing before a wall. A wall so tall it blocked her entire field of vision. A barrier built all the way to the end of the sky, severing the world so thoroughly that nothing beyond it could be known or scaled. And there, she saw a massive iron gate. It was wide enough that one would have to sprint from one side to the other, its enormous hinges—each twice the size of Cheong’s torso—stacked endlessly upward into the distance.
Cheong let out a snort of laughter. For something that looked so imposing, it was covered in a ridiculous number of tiny stickers. All sorts of “No Entry” signs in various shapes and languages were plastered over it in chaotic layers. This wasn’t modern art, for crying out loud.
“All right. So this is what ‘climbing the wall’ means, huh? There really is a wall. Open the door and step out, and I’ll be Transcendent? Then let’s go out.”
Cheong clapped her hands together to dust them off, then pressed both palms firmly against the gate. She pushed with all her strength.
The door let out a long, groaning creak. Cheong poured every ounce of power into it.
And then a voice suddenly spoke.
“Hey. You’re trying to go beyond?”
When Cheong turned her head, a girl holding a beautifully extended tree branch was staring at her. The branch was so perfectly formed that, despite being nothing more than a piece of wood, it looked desirable.
“Hmm. Are you the Heonwon Xuanwu, by any chance?”
“Is that important? So, are you going to go out? Do you even know what’s out there? Aren’t you scared? Haven’t you heard that it’s dangerous outside the blanket? If outside the blanket is dangerous, you’re still going to go out there?”
Cheong hesitated. “Uh… This… Is it actually kind of dangerous?”
The child burst into bright laughter.
“Beyond there is a world of starlight. Here, listen. Feel the immense malice waiting just for you to arrive, longing to devour you.”
A tremendous roar shook the earth from beyond the wall. A howl that was malice itself. It was calling Cheong. Come quickly. I’ve been waiting for you. The petty pains you felt while living were nothing but a joke. I will trap you in an eternal agony where even if every organ is torn out and put on display, you still cannot die. That was the threat it made.
Cheong’s legs trembled. No, not just her legs. Her hands, her body, her jaw shook uncontrollably. Her teeth chattered. She was terrified. The thing lurking beyond was too frightening.
“See? Wouldn’t it be better to just wait quietly? If you wait, won’t a solution come flying to you someday? A mission that will lead you to the Transcendent realm will appear eventually. There’s no need to climb over a wall like this where you don’t know what’s lurking beyond, where you can’t even catch a glimpse. Just stay safely inside and wait.”
Yet even though she trembled, Cheong did not collapse or sit down. She looked at the child again and shook her head.
“What? I thought you were the Heonwon Xuanwu. Guess not.”
The child suddenly grew, transforming into a woman. An impossibly beautiful girl—the one always reflected in the mirror, the one whose astonishing beauty still startled her every single time. A beauty that never grew tiresome no matter how often one looked, always thrilling.
Cheong reached out toward her.
“Give it here.”
But her mirror image shook her head, stepping backward, trying to stop her.
“Not yet. Let’s wait. If we wait, it will resolve itself. Can you really handle that? Can you handle the malice beyond?”
Even with her body still shaking, Cheong smiled.
“I told you to give it. Even if you don’t, it’s mine anyway.”
And then, a sword appeared in Cheong’s hand. A shabby, half-broken rusty sword.
“Yeah. It’s been a while. The Moonlight Sword must be starving. I guess I’ve been too indifferent and forgot to feed it.”
Tomorrow is always frightening. The unknown malice had always resided in tomorrow. Yet had she ever once peeked at tomorrow in advance? Still, the reason she had not died, the reason she could not die, was the belief that tomorrow would be all right.
Yes. Maybe tomorrow she could catch a rat with this. Maybe a kind passerby would take pity and give her a coin. If she filled her training points and raised one more star, perhaps she could even kill that king beggar bastard. So it would be fine. She had never been without fear, but just as she had managed until now, she would manage in the future too.
Cheong raised her hand high. She was still scared and trembling, but still—still, it felt like somehow it would work out. Because she believed she could do it.
Cheong’s hand came down.
The Moonlight Sword scattered a chilling blue moonlight. A slash mark appeared across the giant barrier.
Gwoooong. The sound of the world tilting. Slowly, the massive barrier toppled backward. Kwarung. The sound of an entire world collapsing. Thick clouds of dust filled the space between heaven and earth. As they gradually settled, what lay beyond was—
“What? There’s nothing there. It was no big deal.”
Cheong broke into a bashful, pretty smile.
Seomun Su-rin shot up from her seat. Like this? So suddenly?
The masters in the special seats all rose as well, watching with bated breath as a young martial artist finally broke out of her shell. The faint starlight revealed to the world for the first time. The complete moment when a martial artist forged her own image and shone with her own light.
The spectators all held their breath. They knew nothing of martial theory, yet they understood that something extraordinary was happening. Because this was the birth of a star. The moment a new star claimed its place in the vast universe and first exhaled its own color. Thus, a divine being let out its first cry.
In that instant, the watching crowd let out a collective gasp, expelling all the air from their lungs at once.
What remained was a single sword. Clearly it was a woman holding a sword, yet when one looked at the woman the sword disappeared, and when one looked at the sword the woman disappeared. There was no distinction between them. Person and sword had become one, completed in the form of a swordsman.
The person who was a sword, the sword that was a person, danced.
In Cheong’s dantian, the qi wriggled and collided, crumpling and crushing one another as each fought to rush out first. The moment it first coalesced into starlight was proof of existence that neither the pure qi of the Daoists nor the demonic qi of the Demonic Cult could possibly miss. And so all the qi was released at once.
Gently undulating, a slow swirling sword. Sword energy of every color—warm yellow like the setting sun, hopeful spring blue, pitch-black tenacious resentment, coldly white chill, and a crimson of utmost lewdness. Five-colored flower petals bloomed. The five colors that formed the root of all colors, the colors of the world itself.
Thousands upon thousands of sword gangs scattered like flower petals, fluttering and flowing, entangling and frolicking, swirling and surging in a dance of color that simply made the entire surroundings shine brilliantly. A spectacle that seemed like it could continue forever, one that made people wish it would.
Yet beauty is always fleeting, so it eventually withered away. The colors that had filled heaven and earth vanished without a trace.
A collective “Aah” of regret burst from every throat at once, filling the world with longing.
And at the center of it all, Cheong opened her eyes.
“Phew. Well, it was no big deal.”
“Lady Seomun? Just now… what exactly…?”
Gongson Yoye’s voice trembled with excitement. She could not believe the sight her own eyes had witnessed.
“That martial art just now—what on earth was it?”
Seeing Gongson Yoye ask so urgently, Cheong simply tilted her head.
“Huh? Did I do something? Sorry, was I spacing out in the middle of the match? But I crossed the wall. This body is now Transcendent Cheong. Will you please call me Chojeolcheong? Then let’s try again—”
Cheong staggered and collapsed to the ground. Just like when she had completed her Flowing Softness Softening Refinement training, every muscle in her body screamed “This is the limit, just kill me” and went on strike all at once.
“Uh? Uh?”
Cheong tried to circulate her qi and force herself up, only to be stunned by her completely empty dantian. Not even a single strand of qi remained, not even the faint internal energy one might draw from a single breath. It was utterly, cleanly empty.
Having never emptied her dantian to this degree in her life, Cheong could only panic even more. The only thing left was the heavily compressed Pacheon-magi that refused to listen. It had been unusable anyway, so it was practically nonexistent, but even the tiny portion that had been moving was now gone. What was this? Did becoming Transcendent reset your resources? Instead of filling them, it emptied them?
“Um. Yeah. I don’t think I can continue the match. Sorry. It was just getting fun, but I guess I have to withdraw. Excuse me, Judge—”
Just as Cheong tried to call for the judge to declare her defeat, a tremendous vibration shook the floating stage. It trembled violently, then collapsed with a thunderous crash.
Splash. Cheong fell into the waters of the Grand Canal.
Fortunately the surface was covered with floating pieces of wood, large and small. As Cheong reached for one of the sturdier ones to hold onto—
No way!
It felt as if every muscle in her body was screaming those words. Having unconsciously unleashed divine techniques far beyond her current realm, her entire musculature had been tortured to the extreme. Now the muscles poured their resentment onto their owner. The revenge of the muscles manifested as cramps—one of the most terrible pains known to man.
“Ack! Cramp! Cramp! Urgh, blegh, glug, cramp! Save me!”
Not only her arms and legs, but her shoulders, back, and even neck muscles rampaged wildly to vent their grudge. Even her jaw muscles—why the hell does the jaw get cramps too?!
Cheong didn’t know it, but jaw cramps were surprisingly common. They could happen if one ate too enthusiastically. The truly surprising part was not the jaw but the abdominal muscles. Cramps in the rectus abdominis were genuinely rare.
“Urgh, glub, gulp, pah, keuk, kkeuek.”
With her jaw convulsing, Cheong couldn’t even scream properly. She swallowed water until her stomach felt like it would burst. Water flooded her nose, burning her airway as if it were on fire. Her mind went blank. Save me, someone save me…
As Cheong began to lose consciousness, she thought she saw her master’s face.
It was a grand and utterly tragic conclusion to the Hidden Dragon Tournament.
Originally, after the tournament ended, there was supposed to be a ceremony where the winner and runner-up exchanged greetings. However, thanks to Cheong dismantling the floating stage far too quickly, the entire schedule was ruined.
As a side note, the Murim Alliance organizers had screamed with genuine despair. The military division committee members screamed because every single procedure had been thrown into chaos and they would have to rebuild the entire plan from scratch while trying to control the crowd. The general affairs department, who had been planning to carefully dismantle the stage and sell the lumber, could not even produce a scream due to cosmic horror.
“Huh? Me? I did that?”
Cheong blinked.
Sword and person as one? I merged with a sword? Does that even make sense? How can a person merge with a sword?
Seeing that expression, Seomun Su-rin felt her heart sink. It was hopeless. It seemed that in a state of no-self, something inside had been released by chance. Still, even if she herself did not remember it, the fact that she had performed it once with her body was a tremendous boon.
Moreover, she had achieved the Transcendent realm. She was a disciple to be immensely proud of. With this, the record for the youngest Transcendent had been renewed. The female martial artist Seomun Cheong had done it at the tender age of twenty. It would be recorded permanently in the annals of Murim as an immortal achievement!
Fortunately, Cheong’s disgrace did not remain in the official records. The absurd sight of the youngest Hidden Dragon Tournament champion, the first female champion, and the simultaneous breaker of both the youngest Transcendent and youngest female Transcendent records—who then immediately suffered a full-body muscle rebellion, fell into the water, and nearly drowned—never made it into the history books.
It was only thanks to Seomun Su-rin, who had been watching Cheong’s condition closely. She flew over on her sword and used the disciple-rescue technique she had perfected through nuclear-fist precision strikes to pull her out. They had narrowly avoided what would have been the most tragic story in Murim history.
If only the Goddess Sect disciple had not fallen into the water and died, the second Mucheon-daeje, the Mucheon Martial Marquis, would not have appeared in the world. Such meaningless, pointless what-if talk about the past.