A Flurry of Wings and Blood
"I have mastered the final two stances of the Butterfly Dream Fist!"
At Cheon Dohwa's admirable declaration, the crowd erupted into cheers, and everyone in the sect stepped forward to shower her with praise...
"Dohwa? What on earth do you mean by that?"
...was not what happened. Why?
"Wait... what? I said I mastered them! The last two, the ninth and tenth stances?"
"Mmm...?"
A strange, heavy silence settled over the room.
"Ahem..."
A gentle-looking middle-aged woman cleared her throat.
"It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Yeonji, a first-generation disciple of the Bongrae Sect. It seems our... junior sister-disciple might have misread a different manual, or perhaps confused it with another martial art?"
"Huh...?"
Ah, right. The essential greeting for a first meeting.
"Hello, Sister Yeonji. I am Cheon Dohwa." She bowed politely.
Yeonji was secretly impressed. She really is a naturally endearing child. Not only was she beautiful, but she was also sweet-natured and well-mannered. Moreover, judging by what she had heard so far, the girl undoubtedly possessed immense talent for martial arts. However, this was not a goal that could be achieved by mere talent alone, was it?
"Listen closely, junior sister. The ninth and tenth stances of the Butterfly Dream Fist... do not exist."
"But they do? I have them right here."
"What I mean is, they must have existed once, but their secrets have been lost to time. No one knows them anymore."
Cheon Dohwa tilted her head. "...But I know them?"
"No, what I'm trying to say is..."
Just as Yeonji was growing frustrated, wondering how on earth to explain this to her, an elderly, white-haired Taoist priest named Hyeonmun, who belonged to the same generation as Hyeonsong and Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong, barked out.
"Child! What is that attitude toward your senior sister?!"
Hyeonmun held a firm philosophy: if you coddled someone just because they had talent, they would turn into an insufferable, spoiled brat.
"If your senior sister says so, you accept it! How dare you look her straight in the eye and talk back—!"
Tap, tap.
"Senior Brother Hyeonmun."
"What is it, Junior Sister Hyeonsong—"
Before he could finish, Hyeonsong locked her arm around Hyeonmun's neck in a tight headlock and slammed him face-first into the floor.
Thud!
"Gah...!"
As the two martial artists of his own generation engaged in a brief physical dialogue, Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong gave Cheon Dohwa a slight nod.
"My apologies, Miss Dohwa. It seems an old man of my generation is suffering a temporary bout of delirium."
"Oh no, it's quite alright! Is the elder okay, though?"
"Hye-Hyeonsong, what is the meaning of—" Thud! "Argh...!"
"Quiet down for a moment, Senior Brother. You will understand once you see."
"Hye-Hyeonsong...! Even if it is you, doing this to your senior brother is—"
Did I just cause a scene? Dohwa wondered. But still.
"But I really did master the remaining two stances of the martial art."
"Hmm..."
Hyeonmyeong carefully chose his words. Sensing his awkward position, Yeonji spoke up gently.
"In that case, would you mind showing us right here?"
The stances of a single martial art flowed into one another as seamlessly as a living creature's skin. Unless someone was deliberately trying to deceive, one could tell at a single glance.
Our junior sister must have misunderstood something.
It was common for beginners to learn a martial art incorrectly. Mastering a technique was not merely a matter of mimicking movements. It required grasping the underlying principles, circulating internal energy within the body, and making minute adjustments tailored to one's own physique. Only when all these elements came together could one truly claim to have acquired a martial art.
If even the slightest error occurred during that process, it was common to end up performing movements completely contrary to the original intent. It was even possible to accidentally invent and tack on a brand-new stance.
"Sure. I can show you right now, right?"
Cheon Dohwa spoke with bright, sparkling eyes and immediately took her stance.
Oh?
Her posture was incredibly precise. No wonder they called her a genius...
...Wait, isn't it a bit too precise?
This was not the posture of a beginner. One could take a photo of her right now and use it as a textbook illustration.
"Starting from here..."
She executed the first five stances, from the first stance, Blue Waves Flowing Gently, to the fifth stance, Loquat Flowers Blooming, flowing from one to the next like water. As expected, her movements were perfectly straight and correct. Then, shifting her posture, she transitioned from the sixth stance, Grass Whispering Softly, to the eighth stance, Distant Waves Piercing the Heavens.
Wow...
Yeonji gasped in pure admiration. She truly was incredible. The difficulty of the Butterfly Dream Fist spiked dramatically starting from the sixth stance, which represented the second wing. Yet, she executed it with such flawless precision.
And she only learned this yesterday?
She was a genius beyond explanation or comprehension. Even the noisy scuffle between Hyeonsong and Hyeonmun had fallen completely silent. Unless Hyeonsong had actually ended her senior brother's life, both of them had to be utterly captivated by Cheon Dohwa's every movement.
In any case, the eighth stance. Up to this point, the manual existed. It was not lost.
...Wait.
Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong belatedly realized something strange. Yesterday, amidst all the chaos, he hadn't had the chance to think it through.
If I didn't demonstrate it to her yesterday, and Hyeonsong didn't teach her, and she didn't get the manual from anywhere else...
Then how on earth did she learn the sixth through eighth stances?
And right before their eyes, Cheon Dohwa stopped, holding her hands still in midair. A tension filled the air, as if she might take flight at any second.
A butterfly's wings do not flutter endlessly. It is the brief pause in between that creates the butterfly's signature, delicate flutter. Thus, the goddess had woven pauses into her dance, knowing that the movements following a pause would shine even more beautifully. And this martial art, born from that divine dance...
"Yah!"
Following the pause, she unleashed an explosive punch.
The Ninth Stance: Secret Flight of Willow Leaves.
Forward. Pouring. A tempest of fist force.
A wooden fence fifty meters away in a straight line from her fist shattered all at once with a violent crack!
...Ah.
It was real. It was a genuine stance. A mistake? A misunderstanding? No. In terms of its form, its harmony with the other stances, and its structural integrity in completing the martial art—and even in terms of its sheer power—it was, without a doubt, a stance of the Butterfly Dream Fist.
It was only because Cheon Dohwa's cultivation realm was low and her internal energy was scarce that the destruction was limited to this. What if Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong, or Hyeonsong, who shared a perfect affinity with this martial art, had unleashed it?
Yet Cheon Dohwa did not stop there. Her outstretched hands drew back close to her chest, like a butterfly folding its wings.
Every martial artist present held their breath, terrified that even the sound of their breathing might disturb her. If they ruined this moment of reclaiming a lost martial art, if they failed to resurrect it because of some careless noise, they would regret it to their graves, wishing they had bitten off their own tongues.
Slowly, the hands gathered at her chest extended once more. The final lost stance. The most powerful, and the most beautiful. The tenth stance of the Butterfly Dream Fist, Immortal Fan Spreading Wings—
"Gack!"
Cheon Dohwa suddenly coughed up a torrent of blood.
"Daoist Cheon!!"
Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong shrieked in horror. In contrast, Hyeonsong pinched the bridge of her nose, looking utterly exasperated and dizzy.
"Sigh... again?"
"Again?! What do you mean by that, junior sister?!"
Cheon Dohwa coughed up another mouthful of blood. To anyone watching, she looked like she was on the verge of death. Though Hyeonsong had already witnessed this once before.
"Senior Brother, you have the spiritual medicine, don't you? Giving her that will fix this."
"The medicine!"
Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong hurriedly reached into his robes and pulled out the Bongrae Sect's precious spiritual medicine, the Golden Flower Pill. It was the very item he had promised yesterday to give to the winner between Ju-seo and Cheon Dohwa. He had kept it on hand to give to her anyway, but who would have thought it would be put to use like this!
"Very well! I shall administer the pill and guide her energy myself!"
"Be careful, Senior Brother."
"Of course!"
Administering spiritual medicine incorrectly could easily cause more harm than good.
"No, not that. I mean you need to be careful, Senior Brother."
"?"
Wasn't that exactly what he just said he would do? But there was no time to bicker over semantics. Hyeonmyeong immediately helped Cheon Dohwa sit cross-legged, pried her mouth open, and popped the Golden Flower Pill inside.
"Swallow it down!"
"Mmph..."
The moment the Golden Flower Pill touched her tongue, it dissolved and rushed into her body.
Hyeonmyeong pressed both palms against Cheon Dohwa's back and began to guide her energy. If one consumed spiritual medicine alone, no matter how high the quality and how well it was digested, the absolute limit of absorption was sixty percent of the contained energy. The remaining forty percent would dissipate from the body and go to waste. Guiding the energy was a technique used to boost that absorption rate up to eighty percent.
With practiced skill, Hyeonmyeong began to calmly guide the energy coursing through Cheon Dohwa's body toward her dantian.
Her internal energy flows through her body like water.
She undoubtedly possessed an extraordinary physique. If he could just ensure that as little energy as possible leaked out...
...Huh?
Something was wrong. There was absolutely no energy attempting to leak out. One hundred percent of the energy contained within the medicine was flowing directly into Cheon Dohwa's dantian, as naturally as water flowing downhill. It was as if her body was greedily devouring any form of energy it could get its hands on, completely indifferent to whether it was medicine or poison.
Is such a thing even possible?
If this was the case, then even without Hyeonmyeong's help, wouldn't she have been able to absorb the entirety of the Golden Flower Pill's energy all on her own? Water didn't need help to flow downhill, after all.
It poured in. As if it were the most natural and obvious thing in the world, the entire reserve of the Golden Flower Pill's energy cascaded down into Cheon Dohwa's dantian—
"?!"
But it didn't stop with the spiritual medicine. Through the connection of their guiding energy, even Hyeonmyeong's own internal energy began to be sucked into Cheon Dohwa!!
"Good heavens!!"
Hyeonmyeong frantically pulled his hands away. But because he yanked his hands back so abruptly from Cheon Dohwa's back while she was sitting cross-legged, it ended up looking as though he had shoved her forward.
"Kyaah!!"
Cheon Dohwa tumbled over.
"Senior Brother!"
"Sect Leader, what on earth do you think you are doing?!"
"Are you the one suffering from delirium, Senior Brother?!"
The martial artists of the Bongrae Sect rushed forward, carefully scooping Cheon Dohwa up in their arms as if she were a precious treasure.
"At least the medicine seems to have stopped her coughing up blood!"
"To the Ui-hyeon Pavilion, quickly!"
They swarmed away in a frantic rush.
"N-No, wait... that wasn't my intention..."
Sect Leader Hyeonmyeong was left feeling utterly wronged. Beside him, Hyeonsong—the only one who had realized what had actually just transpired—shook her head in dismay.
In any case, as a result of the Sect Leader's involuntary sacrifice...
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