Sichuan's Number One Nangin Ace Instructor ~History of Sichuan Nangin~ Part 2
Before we get to the results of this sparring tournament, there's a premise we need to establish first.
Namely: how do mid-sized and small sects actually grow?
For mid-sized and small sects, the single most important thing is disciples. The number of students seeking to learn martial arts is the very measure of a small sect's strength.
Talent is everything.
The more apprentice disciples paying tuition fees, the healthier the sect's finances. Disciples mean people you can send to mediate street brawls, people you can dispatch when merchants request protection. And if you train them long enough, a First-rate master occasionally pops out from among them.
Securing new initiates is the supreme mission of every mid-sized and small sect.
And the driving force that first brings those initiates knocking at a sect's door is reputation.
In the early days, winning a sparring match or showing off some flashy technique was enough to get people rapping on the gate. But once sparring matches became commonplace across Sichuan, the public's standards rose. Unless a match was spectacularly intense, disciple numbers simply refused to grow.
Even unveiling martial arts quietly subsidized by a powerful backer sect earned nothing more than lukewarm shrugs.
Sichuan had sunk into a stagnant, directionless deadlock.
There was no real justification for attacking other sects, and no real opportunity to expand either.
But as the saying goes—when you're desperate enough, a way opens.
Someone, somewhere, came up with a solution.
I heard which sect it was at the time, but I can't quite remember the name.
"It was the Yeongji Sect."
"Tsk. You want me to stop talking?"
"Please continue."
Back then, the pride of the Sichuan people was enormous. They had accomplished something no other province had managed—a complete, thorough cleansing of the unorthodox factions! The purest province under the Nine Provinces of Heaven! Selected by Forbes as the most livable region in the Central Plains, where chivalrous warriors kept the people safe!
Strongest of the Nine Provinces—Sichuan Murim! Sichuan Murim, invincible and undefeated!
That sort of regional swagger was everywhere, more or less.
And then the Yeongji Sect threw a massive event.
They announced they would invite a famous master from Hubei for a public sparring match.
At the time, the heart of the murim was considered to be Hubei and Henan. Shaolin and Wudang—the twin pillars of the martial world—were based in Hubei and Henan respectively, and great houses like the Namgung Family and the Moyong Family were also rooted there.
The title "Sichuan Murim vs. Hubei Murim" sent Sichuan people, already at peak regional pride, into a frenzy of interest.
Hubei's representative was the Swift Leopard Sword, Pyo Chang-gi—a nangin who had made a considerable name for himself. The Yeongji Sect's master, widely rated a notch below Pyo Chang-gi, fought him to a brutal standstill and ultimately defeated him. Yeongji coin, which had been stuck to the floor of the Sichuan murim, shot straight to Mars in a single day.
Sichuan Murim had done it! The pride of Sichuan Murim—the Yeongji Sect!
The Yeongji Sect became the undisputed hegemon of Sichuan Province overnight.
Mom, when I grow up, I want to be a disciple of the Yeongji Sect!
Men and women, young and old—countless aspiring disciples came pounding on the Yeongji Sect's gates. Other sects, eyes spinning green with envy at that success, scrambled to copy the model.
But it was not so easy.
Benchmarking proved difficult. The first problem alone was finding a suitably famous master whose invitation would generate buzz. Those masters had their own standing in their home regions.
Sichuan murim might be number one in Sichuan, but from the outside looking in, Sichuan was just another province. Spar with a Sichuan master and you broke even if you won—and took a catastrophic loss if you lost. Nobody was lining up to accept those challenges.
The ones who simply failed to arrange a match were the lucky ones.
Some sects overreached, issuing challenge letters to external masters a full tier above them while shouting that Sichuan murim could do anything. Others actually managed to invite someone, drew crowds like storm clouds, and then lost.
A sect that lost a public sparring match was instantly branded a disgrace to Sichuan murim and torn apart in short order.
Yes.
Around then, someone among the mid-sized and small sects must have realized it.
They could not afford the risk of defeat.
And from there, the branches of thought might have spread further.
How on earth did the Yeongji Sect have the guts to stage something that big? Just because they had nothing to lose? Or was there something they were counting on?
The Swift Leopard Sword Pyo Chang-gi is a nangin… if the money was right, couldn't they have commissioned a fixed match?
If someone had thought that far, they would have thought this next:
Couldn't this take down the Yeongji Sect in one shot?
Whether Pyo Chang-gi had actually accepted a match-fixing commission was something no one could know for certain.
What mattered was that Pyo Chang-gi publicly declared he had "received a match-fixing request from the Yeongji Sect"—and then vanished from the murim entirely.
Whether he had truly fixed the match or simply claimed he had without doing so, the fact remained: someone had bought his silence open.
The people of Sichuan reeled in shock. The Yeongji Sect frothed at the mouth denying everything. But the other sects of Sichuan Province seized the opportunity and flooded the Yeongji Sect with consecutive sparring challenges.
As a sect whose foundations had been glued to the dirt floor to begin with, the Yeongji Sect had no strength to weather that wave of assaults. Watching it unfold, the people of Sichuan became convinced the match-fixing theory was true—and erupted in fury. In their minds, the Yeongji Sect was the pride of Sichuan murim, invincible and undefeated.
The Yeongji Sect getting beaten down had nothing to do with Pyo Chang-gi's match-fixing claims, but that no longer mattered to the people of Sichuan.
The Yeongji Sect had to be Sichuan's pride, invincible and undefeated. And it was not.
The Yeongji match-fixing scandal burned out of control.
A sect that had all but conquered Sichuan Province shattered into pieces overnight—and the Zhongnan Sect, which had been riding a wave of popularity by openly declaring itself the Yeongji Sect's patron, was smashed right along with it.
Rumors spread that the Zhongnan Sect had been the backer enabling the Yeongji match-fixing scheme. The Zhongnan Sect Leader personally apologized before the crowds and declared the sect sealed.
A measure of just how fanatical Sichuan's rage had become.
Watching the Zhongnan Sect sealed, the Hwangbo Clan and the remaining three Daoist sects must have taken the lesson to heart.
They began concealing their ties to the mid-sized and small sects. If those connections were visible on the surface, any incident that blew up could drag them in wholesale.
And those moves by the Hwangbo Clan and the Daoist sects only plunged Sichuan Province into deeper chaos. With the Yeongji Sect's collapse, the internal balance of power in Sichuan had become an instant mess. And the great factions with the strength to sort that mess out had all dived beneath the surface?
A chaotic age that everyone would have to survive alone, with no help from anyone!
And in that situation, some bastard came up with yet another devilish idea.
"Doesn't a thought like that cross your mind?"
"What now."
She kept interrupting the story at every beat. Asking questions without ever answering any herself—Black Cat's attitude was thoroughly getting on my nerves.
"Isn't there some mastermind behind all of this? Someone who orchestrated a conspiracy to destroy the Sichuan murim?"
"There could be. But I don't think so."
"Why?"
"Because nobody benefited."
Something else was shattered by the Yeongji match-fixing scandal almost as thoroughly as the Yeongji Sect itself.
The public perception of nangin.
This is the fundamental reason the people of Sichuan despise Sichuan nangin.
The same Sichuan people who had raved about the Yeongji Sect raged against it with equal force—and came to hate Pyo Chang-gi just as fiercely. The largest part of that hatred was the fact that he had fixed a match for money, and so a deep loathing for money-grubbing nangin took root right alongside it.
Devils who would smile and sell their own parents and siblings for the right price.
That was how the people of Sichuan saw nangin at the time.
And someone decided to use that perception.
How, exactly, did the mid-sized and small sect people entrenched in Sichuan Province at the time keep coming up with these devilish schemes one after another?
Honestly—were the martial artists living in Sichuan back then even human, or were they Satan?
Anyway, the internal power structure of Sichuan Province at that point was consolidating into a rough three-way contest.
The Jjajang Sect!
The Jjambong Sect!
The Tangsuyuk Sect!
Names worthy of Chinese cuisine—no, names not the least bit embarrassing for representing Sichuan. The Tangsuyuk Sect was the strongest of the three; the Jjajang Sect and Jjambong Sect couldn't quite match them, but they had built forces capable of putting up a fight.
And then a sparring challenge letter arrived at the Tangsuyuk Sect.
A nangin from Yunnan delivered a challenge letter to the Tangsuyuk Sect Leader!
Sichuan Province flipped upside down all over again.
The Nine Peaks Sword, Dok Yeong-chan!
A nangin who truly would do anything for money! Not prejudice, not baseless rumor—a genuine villain who committed evil deeds as casually as eating a meal!
The people of Sichuan boiled over.
How dare a human-garbage nangin like that challenge our Sichuan's Tangsuyuk Sect!?
But another faction of Sichuan people watched the situation and sneered.
Those Tangsuyuk bastards are spreading their match-fixing wings again to seize hegemony over Sichuan.
It's a Tangsuyuk fixed match. No—it's a genuine challenge from nangin who don't know their place, aimed at Sichuan itself.
Even among the people of Sichuan, sides split and fought—and that only concentrated more eyes on the duel between Dok Yeong-chan and the Tangsuyuk Sect Leader.
Well, by this point in the story, you've probably already guessed.
The Tangsuyuk Sect Leader lost.