So It Wasn't a Dream
So it hadn't been a dream.
In the silence that had settled over the darkness, Baek Sang and Baek Seol's eyes darted this way and that. In their hands were not the Taiji Swords that Hyeon Un had confiscated from them, but cheap iron swords bought from the neighborhood blacksmith.
"What in the world…"
Baek Sang muttered to himself, his voice tight with tension. It was genuinely hard to make sense of the situation. First, all trace of the inn waiter had vanished without warning. Second, there was no understanding how a mere waiter at an inn could be a master of this caliber.
"Behind you."
Seo Yugyeom's low voice jolted Baek Sang wide awake.
Baek Sang was, after all, one of Wudang's most promising young talents. Even with several senior disciples above him, he was a prodigy rumored to perhaps become the sect's Great Disciple one day.
Whoosh—!
Baek Sang spun his frame and swung the iron sword. Even in that sudden strike, the principles of the Wudang sword were preserved in full.
But the blade carved nothing but empty air.
Baek Sang's eyes went wide. The waiter had bored through the sword's trajectory with a bizarre, serpentine footwork, and before Baek Sang knew it, he was standing right in front of him.
The sword was long, and his arm comparatively short. With his blade extended far out, Baek Sang stood utterly exposed to the man slipping in inside its arc.
"Ah—"
The instant Baek Sang let slip an uncharacteristically foolish sound, Jin Seongun's fist came flying.
The moment he saw the dark crimson qi coiled around that fist, Baek Sang realized that something had gone very, very wrong. Too late, of course.
BOOOOM—!
With a sound like something bursting, Baek Sang's body was launched clean off his feet. It was, quite simply, helplessness incarnate. All Baek Sang could do was surrender himself to an unstoppable force while thinking, what on earth is happening?
His body hurtled in a straight line and slammed into a corner of the courtyard wall. Thud — Baek Sang's frame crumpled like wilted bok choy.
"S-Senior Brother!"
Baek Seol cried out in alarm. A blow of that force could easily have ruptured his organs.
But beside her, Seo Yugyeom just snickered.
"Don't worry. You think Seongun would actually go and kill the young masters of the Five Great Clans? It's training between martial artists — you might get hurt a little, sure."
As if to prove the point, Baek Sang's limp body gave a brief twitch. Just as Baek Seol was exhaling a breath of relief—
"Let's see how sturdy a martial artist's wrist really is."
With those words, Seo Yugyeom gave Baek Seol a light push on the back, and she stumbled one step forward.
Standing there before her was Jin Seongun, the man who had just sent her senior brother flying with a single punch.
"……"
The qi in Jin Seongun's fist was truly ferocious. Even Baek Seol and Baek Sang, whose minds and bodies had been tempered by months on the road, flinched hard at the sight of it.
The Sword Immortal had taught him the sword. Daji, the mental cultivation arts. Sangwang, the way of commerce and movement; Shintu, the art of the shadowless step.
And then there was fist-and-palm technique — the art of close combat, taught to him by the Blood Demon.
Faced with a qi that had once stained an entire era red, Baek Seol blurted out before she could stop herself:
"W-Wait a moment, please!"
But there is no "wait a moment" in a martial artist's training.
Seo Yugyeom gave a small nod toward Jin Seongun. His eyes might as well have said: Go get her, Jin Seongun!
Jin Seongun charged in response.
Baek Seol, her face drained of color after witnessing her senior brother's collapse, swung her iron sword in desperate haste. The distance closed in an instant, and Jin Seongun's fist came hurtling in. The blade she swung on pure instinct carried the unique subtlety of Wudang's art — meeting hardness with softness.
Softness suppressing strength.
It was the reason a warrior of equal footing could never injure a Wudang Taoist.
Of course, if the gap was vast enough, that logic ceased to matter.
The moment her sword met Jin Seongun's fist, Baek Seol felt as though her sword-hand wrist was about to snap clean off.
As a child, she had crossed blades with warriors of the Paeng Clan, the Moyong Clan, and the Seomun Clan — but she had never once in her life met a strike so senselessly, destructively crude.
"Hnngh!"
A groan escaped her lips. Just before she could no longer bear it and released her grip—
CRACK!
The iron sword shattered outright.
It spared her, at least — the pressure hammering into her hand eased somewhat. But there was no room for relief. A second attack was already charging in behind the first.
This time, it was a palm strike.
Baek Seol stared at the bizarre red palm-force stretching toward her face… and burst out laughing.
So this is how it ends.
A moment later, the palm connected, and her head snapped violently backward. That was Baek Seol's last memory.
Baek Seol and Baek Sang had dreamed remarkably similar dreams.
Dreams in which the waiter and the cook of some inn were absurdly strong and beat the living daylights out of them.
Ridiculous. If a waiter and a cook like that actually existed, why on earth would they be running an inn? They could strut across the whole Jianghu making a name for themselves and earn far greater glory and money on the spot.
Baek Seol and Baek Sang each woke up thinking, what a stupid dream that was.
"……"
An unfamiliar ceiling.
No — a ceiling they were starting to get a little too familiar with.
The ceiling of Seongun Inn greeted the two of them. Before long, a handsomely smug face popped into view above them, grinning ear to ear as though nothing could possibly please him more. It was Seo Yugyeom.
"Oh, you're up."
"……"
The brother and sister were momentarily speechless. They still hadn't fully worked out whether what they'd experienced had been a dream or reality.
Then they sat up and looked at each other — at the blue and red bruises marring each other's faces.
"Ah. It's real."
"So it wasn't a dream."
Baek Sang and Baek Seol nodded gravely at one another. At that, Jin Seongun appeared out of nowhere and abruptly held out two teacups.
The siblings flinched hard at the sight of his face. Call it fear branded into them by instinct.
"Drink."
The siblings stared blankly at the teacups. Could they really just meekly accept tea served by the strange waiter of this bizarre inn?
They were cold and shivering, but the situation was genuinely suspicious, and they hesitated.
"It's ordinary bohea tea."
Saying so, Jin Seongun held the cups out again. Realizing there was no other way to refuse, the two of them drank without another word.
Truthfully, they knew it was nothing but irrational fear born of being beaten senseless. These were people acquainted with the Elder and with Master Cheong-u, after all.
The warm tea settled their bodies considerably. A brief silence passed, and then the two of them could no longer hold back the question that had been burning in them the whole time.
"…What are you, exactly?"
"You're not just a cook, are you."
Baek Sang asked Jin Seongun; Baek Seol asked Seo Yugyeom. Baek Seol in particular felt her cheeks burn — she'd spent the whole day learning knife work from the man, muttering on about martial artists this and martial artists that.
"A waiter. Also the owner of this inn."
Jin Seongun said it as if it were nothing. And in truth, it was the only word that described his identity at the moment.
Seo Yugyeom simply shrugged and said he was just a cook. It wasn't as though he could admit to being a special-grade assassin out of Salmak.
"Give me your wrist."
Seo Yugyeom suddenly grabbed Baek Seol's wrist. She flushed for a moment with shame and an odd embarrassment — ashamed that she'd been spouting off about martial artists to a master far beyond her, embarrassed that a rugged man her own age had snatched her wrist without warning.
Oblivious to any of it, Seo Yugyeom probed her wrist this way and that, then nodded.
"Huh. Martial artists' wrists really are sturdy, I see. Thought it was broken for sure."
"……"
"Still, from tomorrow, hold the knife the way I showed you. Cutting a man down with a sword and slicing ingredients with a kitchen knife are two very different things."
Baek Seol gave a small nod. The rebelliousness she'd felt that day had long since evaporated.
All the while, her brother Baek Sang stared fixedly at Jin Seongun, lost in thought.
Now he finally understood. That's why the Elder said we had to earn the waiter's recognition before we could have the Taiji Swords back.
Before long, Baek Sang dropped to his knees and bowed his head before Jin Seongun with the utmost reverence.
"Could it be… are you a veteran of the Jianghu who has achieved the Return to Youth, restored to the prime of life?"
It was a perfectly reasonable deduction. Baek Sang himself had precious few peers among the young talents who could match him. That was a given within Wudang, and true of most of the prodigies he'd met at the Martial Alliance as well. Only the handful who stood out even among the sects and the Five Great Clans had been worth crossing hands with.
So for the waiter of some tiny inn — one whose name he'd never even heard, whose existence he hadn't known existed — to be a master of this level was utterly beyond common sense.
It must be an old Jianghu legend who attained the Return to Youth, quietly running an inn in retirement.
Baek Sang was certain of it. Then Jin Seongun spoke.
"I passed twenty this year. And I'm no martial artist."
"Y-You're… younger than me…"
Despair settled over Baek Sang's face. He was twenty-three this year. The knowledge that a master like this was three years his junior made him feel as though he'd been revealed as the greatest fool under heaven.
Baek Seol was no different. Both siblings looked more dejected now than they had while being pummeled — or even while training.
Seo Yugyeom studied the two gloomy faces and said, "No need to take it that hard, either of you. Seongun's the freak here. I'm the same age as you."
Baek Sang's gaze swung toward Seo Yugyeom.
His despair only deepened.
The next morning at Seongun Inn, Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom busied themselves preparing for the day's business, same as always.
Their slave — no, their employee — Seomun Ak sauntered through the door with his signature swaggering gait.
"Morning, all."
He raised a hand casually toward Jin Seongun and Seo Yugyeom. Ever since his talent had been discovered, his confidence had swollen enormously. Jin Seongun gave a nod; Seo Yugyeom chuckled as if he'd found a genuinely entertaining fool.
Seomun Ak was lounging about half-wiping the tables when the Baek siblings walked in. He wrinkled his nose.
"Disciple Baek Sang. How is it you arrive to work later than I do, hmm? And here I am, even doing a disciple's share of the labor."
Seomun Ak felt a rush of superiority. Baek Sang was Wudang's celebrated prodigy, and Seomun Ak had secretly nursed an inferiority complex — a sense of being unworthy — in the face of it. And now he, the humble waiter, had crushed Baek Sang in an overwhelming victory.
"Here you go."
Seomun Ak tossed Baek Sang a cleaning rag. Yesterday, Jin Seongun had handed Baek Sang one and effectively decreed the arrangement: cleanup was Baek Sang's job, greeting guests was Seomun Ak's.
Wearing an expression like a man chewing on a bug, Baek Sang took the rag and began wiping the tables, steeling himself with a vow: today, without fail, I will crush Seomun Ak and win Jin Seongun's recognition.
Baek Seol walked straight past Seomun Ak without so much as a nod and headed for the kitchen. With Seo Yugyeom — superior in skill, looks, and wit besides — waiting in there, even the seconds it would take to trade greetings with Seomun Ak felt like a waste.
She was on her way to the kitchen when Jin Seongun, returning from a brief trip to the backyard, stepped back into the inn.
Baek Seol flinched hard. Then, assuming the most respectful posture in all the world — a formal fist-palm salute — she bowed.
"G-Great Hero Jin! Did you rest well through the night?"
Jin Seongun himself, along with Seo Yugyeom in the kitchen and Seomun Ak mid-saunter, all stared at Baek Seol with expressions of sheer incredulity.
But that wasn't all.
Out of nowhere, Baek Sang — who had been wiping a table with his rag — hurled the cloth aside, sprinted over, and planted himself beside Baek Seol with his head bowed.
"W-We humbly beseech you! Through the night's passing, did the bright moon rise high over you, and did your four limbs and hundred bones awaken hale and refreshed in spirit?"
"?"
Jin Seongun wore the face of a man who wanted to rinse his ears out with water. He found himself genuinely worried — had last night's training perhaps been a bit too intense? Had something come loose in their heads?
Regardless, the siblings' bearing was utterly sincere. Because the night before, after the training ended, they had gone to Hyeon Un and heard something.
Seomun Ak stalked over, scowling. "What's this? Did you two eat something bad? I get the circumstances, but where's your martial pride? Bowing like that to some waiter—"
The siblings whirled around and shouted in unison.
"Silence! How dare you spew such reckless blasphemy!"
"Young Hero Seomun, it's time you came to your senses too! Were you punished like that and learned nothing?"
Faced with such violent reactions, even Seomun Ak — the most shameless reprobate under heaven — froze mid-step, thrown completely off balance.
But the two of them had no choice. The night before, reduced to rags the instant training ended, they had sought out Hyeon Un and asked:
"Elder — what in the world is that inn?"
A question heavy with layered meaning. And Hyeon Un had answered with a smile that was equal parts sly and inscrutable.
"Could you keep it secret, even with a blade at your throat?"
It was the manner of a man about to unveil a hidden history of the martial world. Baek Sang and Baek Seol's hearts had fluttered.
"Disciple, I swear I shall."
"Good. The truth is, Seongun is…"
As Hyeon Un's explanation unfolded, Baek Sang and Baek Seol had no choice but to let their jaws hang open.