Prove With a Spar That I'm the 'Weakest' - 2
Gazing at Jeong Sam's deathly pale face, I drew my sword, and a deep calm settled over me.
I had already seen through that black heart of his the moment he stepped forward. When it came to advantages and disadvantages between Jeong Sam and me, I held the upper hand.
The reason was simple: his weapon was a type of irregular armament. Anyone could see that a crescent moon blade had a peculiar shape and gained its edge through unconventional techniques. The true strength of an irregular weapon lay in how easily it could pierce an opponent's openings.
But Jeong Sam and I had been staring each other down for seven years. I already knew every last detail of that crescent moon blade, so the advantage of the irregular weapon had withered away to almost nothing.
Which was exactly why he had come out as my first opponent today.
"You bastard. Did you really think I wouldn't notice you planned to win once today and then dodge me for the rest of your life?"
Jeong Sam flinched as if I had struck a nerve.
Once he started taking commissions as a Sichuan Nangin and tasting real combat, my skill would improve by leaps and bounds every single day. Before that could happen, he had to beat me first no matter what! That was the thought that made him volunteer as my opponent today.
"Here I come."
I unfolded the forms and struck first at Jeong Sam.
Clang!
What advantage was there in a hilt a full foot and a half long? For one thing, depending on where you gripped the handle, you could shift the weapon's strengths entirely. Grip it short and it resisted impact better; grip it long and the reach increased.
That was not all. Widening the space between both hands on the hilt made it stronger against sideways shocks, while closing that gap raised the raw power.
My thrust, robbed of any real force by the heavy blade and long handle, bounced off weakly. But I paid it no mind at all and closed right in on Jeong Sam.
In ordinary real combat, diving in this straight and hard was nearly impossible. You never knew what move the other side might pull, so you would never gamble the match so quickly.
But Jeong Sam and I had already been looking at each other's faces for seven years. We had gone out on plenty of commissions together. Both of us knew exactly what the other would try.
"Kh...!"
In a single breath the distance between us vanished.
It was so close that even I could barely swing my sword properly. Yet the range was far more agonizing for Jeong Sam than for me. Get this near and that long hilt of his could only get in the way.
From that position I continued straight into the next form of the Ilcheon Sword Technique.
A low thrust linked instantly into a high thrust.
Jeong Sam spun the crescent moon blade and blocked the low thrust, but the high one forced him to twist his body just barely out of the way.
As expected, his response to the weak point was still clumsy.
Because a crescent moon blade stood out so much, Jeong Sam had no choice but to carry an ordinary saber on actual missions. That left him short on real combat experience with the crescent moon blade itself.
Tap. Clang-clang!
I kept driving him back with a string of thrusts. Even so, five years of difference still counted for something. I was pressing him from a superior position, yet Jeong Sam looked ready to collapse and still held on with stubborn grit.
"Hup!"
The final attack was the Falling Sun of the Ilcheon Sword Technique. A sword heavy with fierce power came crashing down on Jeong Sam, but—
Shiiing!!
It was stopped cold by the crescent moon blade and bounced away. He had gripped the hilt long and easily absorbed the side-on impact.
After exchanging three forms, the two of us opened the distance again and steadied our breathing.
In a normal spar, trading three forms meant switching offense and defense out of courtesy. That was not why we had pulled back to catch our breath.
Jeong Sam needed time to recover from the defensive. And I knew that if I kept attacking any further I would leave an opening, so I had reopened the range myself.
"Cha-hap!"
Jeong Sam took the initiative.
Whoooom!
The crescent moon blade howled through the air with a heavy cutting sound and dropped on a diagonal. A downward slash packed with the full weight of the thick moon blade and the long hilt. Deciding there was no need to take Jeong Sam's fierce attack head-on, I shifted sideways and closed the distance instead.
Jeong Sam yanked the blade back in a flash to keep me in check, then swept it horizontally.
The crescent moon blade's arc stretched out long. He had gripped the very end of the long handle to maximize the attack range. I bent my waist backward and pulled my upper body clear just as the blade's path hissed past right in front of me.
I had given myself plenty of room, yet it was still a tight shave.
"Tahaahap!"
Unlike before, I was the one forced to give ground. Jeong Sam must have decided to throw the decisive move, because he stepped forward and converted the horizontal spin into a vertical one.
When he had been cutting horizontally, Jeong Sam's shoulder line had been parallel to the ground. Instead of absorbing the rebound of that horizontal cut, he spun forward a full turn and laid his body on a diagonal. Twisting his waist from there brought his shoulder line perpendicular to the earth.
The rotation that had been horizontal to the ground flipped into a vertical trajectory and came crashing down as if it meant to split me from crown to groin.
He took the rebound force of the horizontal spin, laid his body out in midair, and turned it into a vertical rotation. Extending a heavy blade with full power and then performing a move like that usually shattered either the leg forced to endure the twist or the waist forced to wrench the axis—one of the two was almost guaranteed to break.
The only reason such a motion was even possible was that he had reinforced his body with Qi.
A First-rate martial art form that assumed the use of Qi reinforcement from the start.
That ultimate form of First-rate martial arts came dropping down in a situation where I could not pull my body free.
"Oh!"
The Nangin watching tossed out cries of admiration at Jeong Sam's all-or-nothing strike. They must have decided I was the one in crisis this time.
They were right—and also wrong.
In truth, if I simply rolled sideways I could just barely dodge it. Then Jeong Sam would bury the crescent moon blade in the ground and expose a fatal opening. And my social life would be buried in the ground right along with it.
If I had still been the Second-rate expert Ho Cheon-an, my only choice at this moment would have been to unleash a descending strike. But the First-rate Ho Cheon-an was different.
My answer to Jeong Sam's decisive move was this.
A defensive form of the Banryugok Sword Art that carried the subtle principle of the Transformation Realm, guiding the blade away.
It met Jeong Sam's crescent moon blade head-on.
To answer an ultimate form powered by Qi reinforcement, I pulled up every scrap of Qi I could muster. A sword that should have bounced off weakly held firm through the force of that Qi and endured the first impact.
Kaaaaang!!
The blade shuddered as if it would snap, yet the principle of Mirror-Surface Flowing River just barely received the falling saber.
My shoulder and wrist already ached from that single clash, but I could feel the path of the blade twisting. It was sliding along the face of my sword.
Jeong Sam had been too hasty. Or perhaps he had boldly targeted what he believed was my weakness.
Instead of ordinary exchanges, he had dragged the match into a contest of how one handled Qi. By unleashing an ultimate form that used Qi reinforcement right from the start, he had forced me into a position where I could only use my own Qi defensively.
I had to give credit where it was due.
In everyday life Jeong Sam was so impatient he manufactured black history after black history, but that same quick decisiveness shone brightest in life-or-death combat. Realizing at the first clash that a normal trade of blows would only hurt him, and immediately throwing out an ultimate form—that was no easy call.
The problem was that I was not nearly as easy a mark as he thought.
Jeong Sam had truly looked down on me. If we collided power against power without any tricks, I would win for certain. Seize the advantageous position of the attacker, fully exploit Qi reinforcement, and victory was guaranteed. That conviction had been sitting in his head, which was why he had unleashed the ultimate form with such confidence.
If I had still been training alone even after entering the First-rate, I might not have been able to stop the attack just now.
But this body was Ho Cheon-an.
I had received a special lecture on the Diancang Sect's Qi reinforcement training methods that had been sitting inside Yeo Il-ye's head. On top of that, during the period when the poison research was underway and the entire journey back from Yunnan, I had poured out sweat under the guidance of the Peak Realm expert Heukmyo.
The time I had spent sweating was less than three weeks, yet I had detonated five years of pent-up passion in an environment whose efficiency was worlds apart from self-study. How much could my skill have shot up?
Kuuung!
Unable to cut me, the crescent moon blade's path twisted and drove deep into the floor of the training ground. Jeong Sam wore a blank, devastated expression. He seemed shocked that I had cleanly received his ultimate form.
"M-my Wheel-Path Falling Sun Flash..."
The spar was over. Jeong Sam's crescent moon blade was buried deep at my feet, and Jeong Sam himself had completely lost his balance and collapsed. For the final touch I leveled my sword at him.
"I lost..."
Jeong Sam lowered his head and admitted it.
"I must have taken you far too lightly. Even after you reached the First-rate I assumed you had not trained even once... I never imagined you would possess this level of skill."
At Jeong Sam's admiring expression I wordlessly held out my arm. He took my hand, rose, and clapped me on the shoulder.
"As a fellow of the same class, I am truly proud of you! You have finally returned to the path of a martial artist from that life soaked in gambling and martial arts novels! My sincere congratulations."
"Heh heh heh..."
I laughed and pulled the crescent moon blade free, handing it back to him.
"Appreciate the kind words, Number Twenty-Eight."
Jeong Sam's face froze. Haha, Jeong Sam. I had been looking at your face for seven years—did you really think a shallow trick like that would work on me?
The moment he realized the flattery operation had failed, Jeong Sam dropped the act at once.
"This is a scam! I refuse to accept it! What kind of outrageous nonsense is this, picking up some fortuitous encounter somewhere and coming back like this?! Ecological disruption! Injustice! Uwaaaagh!"
Watching Jeong Sam hop around in a rage, I smiled.
"No matter how much you deny it, the fact that you are the 'weakest' among the Sichuan Nangin does not change."
"I'm the weakest?! I refuse to accept that! There are plenty of guys weaker than me!"
Jeong Sam lost all reason and dug his own grave.
"Brother Jeong, I understand you're angry about losing, but that is a bit much to say!"
"You have to accept the result. Brother Jeong himself treated Brother Ho as the weakest, so the one who lost to the weakest is now the weakest, is he not?"
"Exactly right!"
"Wh-what?! You bastards! You! You're weaker than me! Spar right now!"
"You think I cannot?!"
The Nangin Jeong Sam had pointed out snorted and was about to draw his weapon when the man beside him held him back.
"Hold on. Even if you go out there and beat Jeong Sam right now, you would only become Number Twenty-Seven."
"What? How does that calculation work?"
"Is it not obvious? The only ranks decided so far are Twenty-Eight and Twenty-Seven. You beat Twenty-Eight, so you become Twenty-Seven. And the current Twenty-Seven is Brother Ho, so even if you beat Brother Ho you would only become Twenty-Six."
What kind of hellish logic was that? I had never intended such a vicious ranking war, yet as expected the Sichuan Nangin thought on an entirely different wavelength from me.
The Nangin who had been ready to draw his weapon a second ago suddenly spoke in a calm voice.
"Hmm. Fighting again against an opponent who just finished a fierce spar is something my pride as a martial artist simply will not allow! Another time!"
"Hey, hey! Get back here!"
Jeong Sam dashed after the fleeing Nangin, trying to grab his pant leg.
Hmm. This was not a bad situation for me at all. Everyone was clearly trying to avoid sparring with me in my current state. If I pointed someone out, the Nangin who did not want to face me would probably drag that person to the training ground at dawn and hold him there.
"Ah, right. Then tomorrow's ranking match will be with Yeo Jinsang."
Yeo Jinsang's face went pale in an instant.
"A-ah, no, I am still mid-to-upper tier in this Wanderer Inn. Would it not preserve the objectivity of the ranking matches better if I faced someone lower?"
"Nonsense! Mid-to-upper tier? Where do you get off spouting such arrogance! You only know which is longer or shorter after you measure them! Looking at that conceited remark of yours, it seems you need a taste of the bottom of the rankings!"
"Exactly right! Since we have started, it seems proper to settle the order among the same class first!"
"Hear, hear!"
I watched with warm eyes as the Nangin piled onto Yeo Jinsang.
I must have misunderstood. These Nangin who were rolling up their sleeves for the sake of my sparring experience—calling them malignant tumors or talking about teaching them a lesson... my eye for people still needed more training.
They had all been such kind and good-hearted people all along!
Spars at dawn to pile up experience, commissions during the day to pile up more experience. I could practically hear the sound of my skill rising.
"Hahahahaha!"
At the premonition that I could reach the peak of the First-rate at high speed, I burst out laughing.