Shall We Make a Wager?
“Mmmngh...”
At that hour, in Baemaegak, a woman was slowly opening her eyes.
“When did I fall asleep... Huh?!”
The instant her eyes opened, the scene from right before everything went dark came flooding back, and Myeonghwa jolted upright in horror.
“U... Unnie? Where's Unnie?”
Soyul was nowhere in the room. Looking very near tears, Myeonghwa hastily straightened her disheveled robes and bolted outside.
No, no. I got so carried away I went and made an absolute fool of myself. I have to explain. That's the only way I'll ever get near those feet again... Haah... No. I can't let this drive us apart. Please. Please...
“Eh? If it isn't Myeonghwa. What brings you out only now?”
It was Pungdan, a first-generation disciple, who called out to her as she sprinted past in a panic — and she whirled on him at once.
“Martial Uncle! Where has our guest gone?”
“Mm? Everyone's just headed off to watch the duel — our guest there, against Senior Brother Pungjin. What the Sect Leader is thinking, I can't quite fathom, but there it is.”
“A d-duel? With Martial Uncle Pungjin?”
“That's right. Didn't Senior Brother Pungjin and the whole lot of us wrinkle our noses at that guest's manner of dress? So when the matter came up in talk — eh?”
She never heard the rest. Myeonghwa was already tearing toward the training grounds at a dead sprint.
“Haa... haa...”
“Ah, Myeonghwa's here? Come and sit.”
She was the sect's only female disciple, doted on by her martial uncles accordingly, and the moment she appeared at the arena the first-generation disciples at once cleared a spot for her.
“I-it hasn't started yet, has it?”
“About to, I'd say. Look there.”
Out on the training grounds, Pungjin and Soyul stood facing one another.
Pungjin. As Eldest Senior Brother of the great Mount Hua Sect's first generation, he was — the elders excepted — in effect the most senior figure among every disciple the sect had. True, Mount Hua's generational turnover was a recent affair, and he himself had risen from the second generation to the first barely three years ago; but if anything, that fact only sent his confidence soaring past the clouds.
And now this Pungjin was being made to duel a courtesan? Was that not an insult to him — and through him, an insult to Mount Hua itself? He would win, of course, but the very fact that the match had been arranged on the assumption that the two were at worst evenly matched was indignity enough.
Small wonder, then, that the gazes resting on Soyul as she stood before the grounds without a care in the world were anything but kind. Worse still — a swordsman with no sword of her own, reduced to borrowing the Zixia Divine Sword from the Sect Leader, of all things! Neither the Sect Leader, laughing his hearty laugh as he grudgingly surrendered the blade, nor that wench, accepting the Zixia Divine Sword — a sword he himself had never once dared to lay a hand on — as though it were the most natural thing in the world, sat well with him.
Today I shall show the Sect Leader what I have attained — and while I am at it, I shall change that woman's clothing as well.
As Soyul returned to her place with the borrowed blade, Pungjin addressed her.
“I say there, miss.”
“What?”
She answered churlishly, as if something displeased her, and Pungjin forced his temper back down. What good was a beautiful face? This was a woman who had sold her smiles and sold her body on the strength of that face, and was rude into the bargain — how could he let himself be beguiled by so shallow a shell?
“Shall we make a wager?”
A wager? Ooh, this might actually be fun.
Soyul was simmering in her own way. A duel against a whelp? Unless it was a match to the death, where was the fun in that? And yet refusing a favor asked by Mount Hua's Sect Leader in front of every disciple of the sect seemed, however she turned it over, a breach of manners — so she had swallowed her reluctance and accepted.
“A wager? What kind?”
“If I win this duel, how would it suit you to never again wear those shameless clothes on Mount Hua?”
“So I should just walk around naked instead?”
The retort caught him utterly off guard, and Pungjin's face flared scarlet as he stammered.
“N—no. Naturally I mean that you would wear ordinary clothes.”
“And what counts as ordinary?”
“Common garb. Plain clothing — something that covers the body in full.”
“Hm... that I could do. But why? Why go so far as a wager?”
“Because attire such as yours does not befit a Daoist sect, that is why.”
“Funny — the Sect Leader never said a word.”
“Ahem. That is surely because the matter is far too trifling for one such as him to take personal issue with.”
“Mm... So it isn't that your training runs so shallow that a bit of clothing is all you can find to occupy yourself with, Master Daoist?”
The barb landed squarely on the words the Sect Leader had fed him only moments before, and Pungjin flared up before he knew it.
“What—! They do not occupy me in the least! But they are not clothes befitting the Dao, I say!”
“Aah, got it. Doesn't matter anyway — you'd have to honor it if I lost, so honestly it means nothing.”
“What did you—”
At the sheer insolence of it — of speaking as though his defeat were a foregone conclusion — Pungjin tried to erupt, but Soyul talked straight over him.
“And if I win? What then?”
“What do you mean, 'then'?”
“You're not telling me that if I lose, I change my clothes — but if you lose, you'd just wave your hand and say 'keep wearing them, then' and that would be the end of it? Right? Right?”
“That—”
“Surely a Daoist of a fair and upright orthodox sect wouldn't dream of proposing such a one-sided wager. Right?”
Laid out like that, the man had to concede she had a point, and Pungjin nodded. He had never once entertained the thought of losing; the question of her terms simply hadn't existed for him. So what did it matter what condition she named? He would win regardless.
“Very well. Yours is the fairer reading, I grant you. If you win, then — tell me what you would have of me.”
“Oh, nothing difficult. We do the same thing, in reverse. In reverse.”
“...? In reverse of what?”
“Aigoo, honestly. You really are slow on the uptake, aren't you? If I win, Master Daoist, then you put on the same clothes as me.”
At a demand beyond his imagining, Pungjin's jaw hung open.
“That is absurd!! Those are a woman's clothes!”
“Hm? What — scared you might actually lose? Already planning around your own defeat, are we?”
“Y—you...!”
The hand gripping Pungjin's sword trembled violently. To be told to dress himself in garments like those — somehow it struck him that being ordered to take his own life upon defeat would have been the lesser insult. And yet there were no grounds to refuse. Say no, and all he would reap was the jeer that he feared losing; and he was going to win anyway, so what did it matter?
“Very well. I accept.”
“I'll trust you not to go back on your word, then. Now — plenty of people are waiting, so shall we begin?”
Smiling her sweetest, Soyul stole a glance at Sect Leader Cheonghyeon.
Cheonghyeon and every disciple of Mount Hua had heard the whole exchange, and showed hardly a flicker in response. Cheonghyeon was thinking, Pungjin, you fool — you're digging your own grave. — but betrayed nothing of it outwardly, while the rest of the disciples, certain that Pungjin would win as surely as the sun would rise, simply listened in silence.
Catching Soyul's look, Cheonghyeon gave a nod.
“Now then — let the duel begin.”
At that, Soyul, robes stirring about her, stepped forward and was the first to offer a respectful cupped-fist salute.
“Kang Soyul. I'm in your hands.”
His opponent having extended courtesy first, Pungjin likewise bowed his head and returned the salute with proper form.
“They call me Pungjin of Mount Hua. I'm in yours.”
Eyes locked, the two drew their swords almost as one.
And in that instant, Pungjin felt it. Every one of the countless openings Soyul had shown him until that very moment — gone, all of them, the instant her blade cleared its sheath.
“Hm...”
She had taken no particular stance for circulating her qi, and the posture she had settled into was, by any honest measure, sloppy — and yet not a single point of entry presented itself. Pungjin let a low groan escape him.
What in the world is this?
“What's the matter? Shall I come to you first, then?” Soyul needled him as he hesitated.
“Do. I'll yield you the first move.”
Soyul gave a soft snort of laughter at his attempt to shore up his pride — and bore down on him.
“Then don't mind if I do.”
In her grip, the Zixia Divine Sword crossed the distance at a ferocious pace and, before he knew it, came whipping in at Pungjin's midsection.
“What in the—”
Startled by an acceleration far beyond anything he had expected, Pungjin barely managed to turn the assault aside — but hardly had he thought himself safe when her blade slithered up the length of his own, smooth as a serpent, and with that same momentum shaved a thin red line across his cheek.
Trickle, trickle—
Cheek split open and fresh blood scattering in a single exchange, Pungjin stumbled backward. His face held nothing but stunned disbelief.
Watching him, Soyul gave her sword a light, idle flick to shake the blood from it, and spoke with flat, incurious eyes.
“Giving up? Surrendering?”
“...How could I? I was merely careless for a moment—”
“Good.”
No sooner had the word left her lips than Soyul came at him again, her body moving like a wolf's.
Dozens of interlacing strikes rained down in the space of a breath, and Pungjin's hands tangled of their own accord.
“Ugh—!”
It couldn't be. It simply couldn't be. His opponent stood at early Peak; he himself, at late Peak. Her internal energy in no way stood above his own. She simply, plainly, understood the sword — its fundamentals — more deeply than he did.
And that was the very thing that scrambled his mind further still.
How, in heaven's name...
The unknowable swordplay Soyul unfurled wove every motion — parry, thrust, cut — into the next without a hair's breadth of gap between them. Even when Pungjin scraped together a counterattack, it was as though she had seen it coming; she rode the rebound of his own blade to keep hers whirling, and he could not gather his wits at all.
There was one way to bring his superior internal energy to bear: open up distance, spray out sword qi, seal off her approach entirely, and let raw strength speak. But as if she knew that too, Soyul clung to him with dogged, unrelenting persistence.
The disciples of Mount Hua watching Pungjin be driven steadily onto the back foot — no, watching him lose ground helplessly without once managing an offense of his own — were every bit as astonished.
“This... this is madness...”
“Good... good heavens.”
“How can a sword move like that?”
“How is Senior Brother Pungjin being pushed back so utterly helplessly?”
Pungjin had already mastered the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art through its tenth form; given so much as a few paces of room, he was a martial artist who could paint dozens — hundreds — of plum-blossom sword qi across the air. But denied that room, plum-blossom qi and all the rest of it counted for nothing. With not even a sliver of time in which to unfurl his own art, scrambling merely to keep her blade from his flesh — what could he possibly do?
If there was a path, it lay in spearing through some tiny seam in Soyul's still-falling rain of strikes, severing her chain of attacks, and tearing open distance. For Pungjin, that was beyond impossible. Granted, her internal energy sat at early-Peak — but her grasp of the sword, and her mastery in wielding what she knew, stood at the full height of Hwagyeong itself. Nothing a late-Peak swordsman could hope to hold at bay.
“Urgh—!”
As if to prove the very point, Pungjin's stance, pressed ever deeper into defense, began to come apart at the seams. There was no form to read, no system behind it — the Zixia Divine Sword simply probed at his openings, dividing its force and speed exactly as each passing moment demanded, and he could not keep his head above it.
Pungjin grit his teeth.
“Nnngh! I! Am Pungjin of Mount Hua!”
His stance a hair's breadth from collapse, he ignored the blade hacking in at his utterly exposed flank — as if bent on dragging her down with him in mutual ruin — and thrust his own sword straight at Soyul's throat.
“Th—that—!”
A strike aimed at the neck in a mere duel, and charged with killing intent on top of it — the elders shot up from their seats in horror. Soyul, for her part, narrowed her eyes at the whelp's desperate flailing.
Kill him, or let him live?
In the same breath, she recalled the sword that had been hammering his flank, spun through a full turn, and slipped lightly past Pungjin's thrust. When a full-power blade misses into empty air, anyone's posture comes apart — and the moment Pungjin's body pitched forward, Soyul's instep, loaded with the momentum of her spin, flew at his chin with terrifying force.
Damn it all—
Watching the kick come in at an angle there was no escaping, Pungjin screwed his eyes shut.
CRACK—!!
With a sound like a drum splitting, Pungjin's head snapped around and his body was flung through the air like a pebble kicked loose, slamming hard into the wall.
He came down precisely beside the spot where Cheonghyeon had been smashed into that same wall only the day before — and there, his senses gone, Pungjin slid gently to the ground.
“......”
“...Ha.”
Over the grounds there hung nothing but silence — the silence of people who had mouths, and not one word to put in them.