I Saw Something I Shouldn’t Have
Episode 10
Ssreung—
"Y-you! You bastard!"
A face flushed red with humiliation came charging at me.
"Young Master Namgung’s completely lost it...! This is bad."
"Shouldn’t someone stop him?"
"How are we supposed to stop that? As long as we don’t get dragged into it, we should count ourselves lucky. Namgung Jin was the one who screwed up just now."
"That Jin Sojin bastard is done for. He should’ve just stayed quiet...."
Namgung Jin, having forgotten entirely that other people were watching, stormed toward me, unable to rein in his temper.
"S-Sojin! Watch out!"
"......"
"You think picking up a sword changes anything?"
The veins in the bastard’s neck bulged.
He was the type who took the bait far too easily.
He’s easy to handle. Let’s see how much skill he actually has.
Whoosh—
As befit a family famous for swordsmanship among the Eight Great Clans, Namgung Jin’s first move was Blue Sky Without End Sword Technique, the first form of the Blue Sky Without End Sword Technique.
But...
This bastard still thinks he can look down on me.
It was twice as fast as before, but the target was once again my face.
He meant to land this strike and wipe away the shame from before.
"Die!!!"
Of course, I had no intention of taking it head-on.
I ducked my head and slipped past the form that came flying straight for the center of my face.
"W-What the—"
"Jin Sojin?"
The instant his thrust missed,
You think that’ll hit me?
Without killing the momentum of my turn, I used the rebound to whip a leg up at him.
It was the sharpest attack I’d seen yet from the bandits and martial artists I’d faced so far, but...
That was all it was.
The bastard’s heel passed in front of my eyes by a hair’s breadth.
"W-Wha—!"
Crash!
Because he’d rushed the attack, Namgung Jin couldn’t control his own force and went sprawling forward.
He’d lost his balance, and I could’ve smashed him hard right there—but there was no need.
"Ahhh... what the hell is that guy doing? He got completely shut down."
"He’s staining the Namgung Clan name. I’m embarrassed just watching him."
I didn’t need to reveal my hand to those bastards analyzing the duel with razor-sharp eyes.
Arrogance and carelessness are a martial artist’s greatest weaknesses.
"Wow...."
"What did I just see? Is that really Jin Sojin, the academy’s bottom-ranked loser?"
"Did you see that?"
"Uh... but how did he dodge just now? He was all swish-swish, and Jin Sojin dodged everything."
When I evaded his second attack too, startled voices rose around us.
"No way.... Sojin actually beat Namgung Jin? Then what was I suffering for...?"
"......"
"...There’s no way he’s that strong."
Fools who live like frogs at the bottom of a well...
Even if the Namgung Clan’s Blue Sky Without End Sword Technique was counted among the finest sword arts in the martial world, the result was obvious if the one using it hadn’t even reached the pinnacle of the technique.
If he’s lost to someone like that, he ought to bury his face in a plate and die before he ever comes back.
His inner power was pathetic, but experience was something you couldn’t just dismiss.
"H-How? What... what kind of absurd nonsense is this... me... I...?"
"Hey! This is real. Someone stop him!"
"Tell the teacher at once!"
As Namgung Jin’s entire body trembled, his killing intent rose by the moment.
Before long, the brazen look and easy arrogance he usually wore vanished somewhere into the air, and the bastard clamped both hands around his sword.
"I’ll... show you... what happens when you mess with someone like me!"
Even after I avoided every attack by a paper-thin margin, Namgung Jin showed no sign of reflection and once again adopted an offensive stance.
Fights between real masters weren’t won just by slinging forms around blindly.
Though, to call the man in front of me a master felt a little generous.
"......"
I didn’t avoid the fight once it was thrown at me.
Especially not in a situation like this.
I’d leave it to Namgung Jin’s stubbornness—or maybe his fighting spirit—to decide which it was.
The bastard glared at me with bloodshot eyes.
"Keep going and it’ll be the same. Put the sword down already."
I spoke calmly, not gloating over the upper hand, almost as if I were trying to talk a child down.
Crack—
As expected, the bastard snapped, as though his reason had been severed cleanly.
Because he’d been relying on the prestige of the Eight Great Clans and had little real experience, this was what happened when he ran into a wall.
"S-Shut up! I-I’m carrying the Namgung name on my back. I can’t lose!! I’ll show you the real Blue Sky Without End Sword Technique!!"
"Just admit it already. I’m your opponent."
"You worthless fool, how dare you!"
And what, exactly, does that make you, then?
Watching Namgung Jin react exactly as expected to every cheap provocation, I could already tell he’d make a fine stepping stone later on.
"Namgung Jin, this is getting pathetic. Stop already."
"Yeah, idiot. You think you can win just because you’re better at inner power?"
If Namgung Jin had snatched the team members only to spite me, then Gwon Jeong-gyeom had lured talented people over because he had a goal of his own. And with the Cheonjin Squad right there, they’d become a convenient target.
I didn’t care if he destroyed himself, but if he damaged his own reputation by mistake, it could interfere with his talent recruitment.
That was why his behavior was so unwelcome.
No need to stir up trouble for nothing.
"Shut up!! Inner power is a fundamental part of martial arts! A guy who doesn’t have it is a cripple!!"
The bastard drew up his internal force from every part of his body.
The situation wasn’t good.
"......"
If we were only fighting with the subtlety of sword forms like before, it might be different...
However you looked at it, the bastard was a Peak-level master, and as the young master of the Namgung Clan, he would’ve trained in a sacred mountain with dragon veins flowing through it, eating all manner of rare elixirs.
Compared to him, I’d only just broken halfway through my meridians, so the amount of inner power we each possessed was fundamentally different.
On the other hand, because my art was a divine skill, my training progressed slowly, and the purity of the sun-and-moon energy caused my internal force to scatter easily.
The only reason I’d managed to evade his attacks at all was because I’d reached the level of the first blossom in the Sun and Moon Yin-Yang Divine Art, which let me slip away as naturally as water flowing.
Even if you knew an attack was coming, if your body couldn’t keep up, you were going to get hit.
That’s why I came to Jeongdo Academy.
I was after the Yin-Yang Pill said to be deep within the academy.
Right now, what I needed most was inner power that suited me.
Until then, I had to avoid direct contests of internal force.
"Jin Sojin! This is the end!"
When inner power gathered into the bastard’s sword and sword qi began to form,
"What the hell do you think you’re doing!!!"
"That Namgung Jin fool... he’s in serious trouble."
A thunderous shout shook the lecture hall.
They arrived sooner than I expected.
The person walking toward us was Teacher Raeji, who had gone deep into the lecture hall to handle the disbandment procedures for the Cheonjin Squad.
"Namgung Jin! To seriously try to harm a fellow student at this academy!! Have you lost your mind!!"
"N-No, Teacher! I was only trying to have a practical duel...!"
Only after hearing the teacher’s voice did Namgung Jin seem to recover his senses enough to offer a frantic excuse, but...
It was already too late.
I hadn’t drawn a weapon, while he had drawn a sword.
It was an unfair duel by anyone’s standards.
"Silence! I won’t hear your excuses! We’ll determine your full punishment later; for now, I hereby order you confined to the Confinement Hall for wall-sitting penance!"
"M-Me alone? What about Jin Sojin—"
"Namgung Jin, the very idea of tying you and me together is enough to piss me off."
"Do you want to keep talking? You...!!"
Keeping his mouth shut would’ve been the smartest choice,
but he still hadn’t figured that out.
"You bastard, you’re still...!! Take him away quickly!!"
At the teacher’s roar, the direct disciples rushed over and dragged Namgung Jin out of the lecture hall in a hurry.
How stupid.
For someone like that to be the Namgung family’s heir...
The Namgung Clan’s decline was right around the corner.
"Sojin, it seems you’ve gained some insight."
"Yes, Teacher."
"You have both merits and flaws, so I expected you’d be rewarded in one way or another. The procedures for disbanding the Cheonjin Squad have been carried out without issue. There’ll be no disadvantage to you either."
"Thank you for looking out for me."
Teacher Raeji closed his eyes and nodded quietly.
"I was a little worried, but looking at your skill, I see you’ll be fine. At first, I wondered what you were thinking... but I won’t say any more. Keep striving diligently from here on."
"I’ll keep that in mind."
"You look like you still have something to say, so I’ll be on my way. Settle things peacefully."
With that, Teacher Raeji disappeared outside the lecture hall.
"Ahem... S-Sojin?"
"......"
"You’re not busy anyway, right?"
Before long, only a few people remained in the lecture hall.
Well, aside from the few onlookers still staring this way.
"Sojin... can you talk to me for a second?"
"......I’ve got something to say too. Can you spare me a little time...?"
"Jin Sojin, I have something to discuss with you. Make time right now."
Han Seola. Shin Juha. Tang Soyeong.
And as if it were only natural, they were standing in front of me.
When I’d been falsely accused, they believed the rumors more readily; when they heard I’d gone missing, they transferred to another squad—and now I couldn’t even begin to guess what face they had coming before me like this.
Were they always this thick-skinned? Or was this the result of Jin Sojin indulging them for too long?
Either way, it didn’t matter to me.
One of them was wringing both hands together, another was stomping restlessly in place, and another kept sweeping her hair back behind her ears.
Their thoughts were obvious enough.
"What do you want to talk about?"
"W-Well, that’s..."
"......Mm."
"...Just come with me."
If this had been Cheon Sojin, he probably would’ve gone along obediently, but...
I wasn’t him.
My steps were light.
"Huh?"
"Wait...."
*
*
*
Do you know why so many promising young martial artists from all over the world rush to enter Jeongdo Academy?
I’d said it before—the academy served the social purpose of small and mid-sized sects—but in the end, the martial world was a place where the strong ruled.
In other words, you had to make yourself strong.
By now, you’ve probably figured it out.
The academy was the best place to take your martial arts to the next level.
There was a teacher to guide you, fellow students of roughly equal ability to sharpen each other through relentless competition, elixirs that would be hard to get even if you paid for them every month, and a scripture library open to those high enough in rank.
Where else in the martial world could offer conditions like that?
What I need is an elixir. A top-grade one.
It would be great if it showed up as the winning prize in a sparring tournament or martial contest, but if that didn’t work out, I was even considering sneaking in and taking one by force.
If it’s deep within the academy, then I’ll need at least the Transcendent realm.
Sitting on the bed in my private room, I was running through my future plans while cycling my breath and resting my qi when someone knocked on the door.
Knock, knock.
Knock, knock.
There weren’t many people who would come looking for me, but I already had a good idea who it was.
Click—
When I opened the door, long violet hair came into view.
"Hello? Jin Sojin, you’ve become a truly impressive man in just a few months.... Not long ago, you were such an unreliable man..."
Bang.
I slammed the door shut.
I’d seen something I shouldn’t have.
"Huh? W-Wait, what do you think you’re doing? It’s me! Open up, now!!"
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