Chapter 226
Chapter 226: Broken Sword (2)
Among martial artists, there were few who did not know the name Kim Rae-won, that high school student.
At least among those of the generation of Jin Ha-gyeong, a Branch Lord of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect.
Over twenty years ago. A boy of unknown origin appeared alone in the Martial World and practiced chivalry. Without a sect, without a master's school, entirely alone. He was no one's disciple and belonged nowhere.
Having become one of the Three Eccentrics.
That boy wandered the Martial World for nearly ten years, resolving matters great and small. He cut down evil, saved the weak, and sought no reward. He used martial arts that no sect in the world taught, and no one was able to trace the origin of those martial arts.
And then one day, he vanished without a trace.
There were rumors that he had died, and rumors that he had gone into seclusion. There were also rather strange whispers that he had returned somewhere.
Time passed, and the Martial World had half-forgotten that name.
Many had asked why he practiced chivalry. None had received an answer.
Yet among the elders of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect, that name still surfaced from time to time. Martial arts of untraceable origin, a martial artist of unknown affiliation. To the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect, which placed great importance on the principles of the Orthodox Martial World, "a powerful stranger of unknown provenance" was also a subject of wariness.
'……Could it be.'
Jin Ha-gyeong looked again at the man before her.
The age did not match.
If that Kim Rae-won had appeared in the Martial World as a boy, he should by now be entering his forties. The man before her looked to be in his mid-to-late twenties at best.
A person with the same name, perhaps.
She tried to think of it that way.
But.
Unknown affiliation. Martial arts of untraceable origin. A powerful stranger of unknown provenance.
The texture of that energy she had just felt was unlike Vast Heaven Energy, unlike Evil Energy, unlike any martial art Jin Ha-gyeong had encountered in her lifetime.
The martial arts of "that Kim Rae-won" were also said to be precisely like that.
"……Kim Rae-won?"
The words slipped out on their own.
"High school student Kim Rae-won……. Are you that Kim Rae-won?"
The man looked at Jin Ha-gyeong for a moment.
His expression did not change. He neither showed surprise, nor denied it, nor confirmed it.
Only a single breath of silence passed.
"I have no memory, you see."
His tone was composed.
"Whether I am that person or not—I do not know either."
Jin Ha-gyeong narrowed her eyes.
No memory?
Earlier this year, a rumor that an unidentified powerful stranger had appeared in a city called Gangdo to the south and swept away all the forces in the area. She seemed to recall hearing, too, that this stranger called himself "Kim Rae-won."
At the time, she had let it pass without much thought. The Martial World was full of impostors who would steal famous names.
But now, in the state of directly sensing this energy—
'This is not impersonation.'
One who impersonates may steal a name without permission, but can they borrow the very presence as well?
The mismatch in age still nagged at her. But was it even meaningful to apply conventional standards to one who used "martial arts of untraceable origin"? Besides, in this Martial World there existed martial arts and realms such as Meditative Cultivation, Bone Transformation, and Rejuvenation—things that made one younger, or appear younger. Those who had achieved such things were exceedingly rare, of course.
Whether the same name and different person, the very man himself, or his disciple—
Either way, it did not matter.
In this moment, that was not what was important. What was important was whether this man would take in two hundred people.
"You said there were injured?"
Kim Rae-won spoke. It was a tone impossible to tell whether he had let the earlier question drift away, or had already closed it.
"Bring them in. Whether it be two hundred or two thousand."
Jin Ha-gyeong momentarily doubted her own ears.
"……Are there conditions?"
"Sheathe your swords when you come. That is all."
Jin Ha-gyeong looked up at the man.
Was he serious?
Knowing of the war between the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect and the Dark Net Rakshasa Path, he would take in two hundred defeated soldiers of that war—without conditions?
Depending on how things went, it would amount to drawing the Dark Net Rakshasa Path's pursuit upon them as well?
"Guild Master. If you take us in, disaster may follow. There may yet be pursuit from the Dark Net Rakshasa Path behind us."
That was a kind of final conscience.
While seeking help, at least not concealing the fact that such help might become a calamity. That was the duty of one who bore a sword.
Kim Rae-won tilted his head slightly.
"I know."
Two words.
The weight contained in those four words was peculiar.
It did not take long to realize that "I know" carried the same meaning as "Even so, it does not matter."
Why?
Why did it not matter.
The Guild Master of a sect that had only just held its Founding Ceremony?
'……No.'
If this man truly was "that Kim Rae-won"—
If he was that man who had wandered the Martial World alone over twenty years ago, without a sect, without a master's school, practicing chivalry—
Then a decision of this degree was nothing strange.
Because that was the kind of person that man had always been.
At least, the "Kim Rae-won" of rumors had been that kind of person.
At that moment, there was movement from the direction of the training grounds.
A young woman came running over. Fourteen, perhaps fifteen. The heat of the training bout still lingered on her fists.
"Mister, is this a guest?"
Kim Rae-won lightly ruffled the girl's hair.
"That's right. There are many injured. Go and prepare some water."
"Yes sir!"
The girl turned around and called out toward the training grounds.
"Everyone, stop! We have guests, and they're injured! Go fetch water and clear some space!"
The disciples moved all at once.
There was no chaos. At the girl's single word, some went to fetch water, others began laying out spaces inside the stronghold.
Their skills still seemed lacking, yet these people had something different.
There was no hesitation in their movements.
'……They are not rushing about. It is not that they are fast—it is that they do not hesitate.'
To Jin Ha-gyeong, who had seen only the ugliest sides of humanity over the past several days, that scene was strangely, indelibly striking.
'Is that the sect of that person.'
The Kim Rae-won of rumors had always been alone. He had wandered without a sect, without companions.
Now it was different.
There were disciples.
If this was Kim Rae-won's return—if he had returned not alone but having built something like this—
What twenty years had made was not a legend, but a new root, perhaps……
And then.
Two more people appeared from behind the training grounds.
A rare beauty and a man with the air of a scholar.
The woman walked over with a sword at her waist, and the man followed slowly with a folded fan in hand.
Jin Ha-gyeong's breath stopped.
'……Peak of Transcendence. No—beyond it, perhaps?'
Both of them were like that.
Two unknown powerful strangers had appeared, and there were no less than two of them.
And these were no ordinary powerful strangers. The presence radiating from the woman with the sword was close to raw killing intent in its most unrefined form, while from the man with the fan came the sense of an Energy depth sunken all the way to the bottom.
The Guild Master—a powerful stranger beyond all norms.
Beneath him, two who seemed neither martial artists nor not martial artists, at the peak of transcendence or beyond.
'……This cannot be a newborn sect.'
As Jin Ha-gyeong was silently taking stock of things, the man with the fan, who had been quietly watching her, was the first to speak.
"Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect……"
It was a murmuring tone. Not one of confirmation, but of weighing information.
The woman with the sword looked Jin Ha-gyeong over and immediately shot back.
"My, has Vast Heaven already been pushed back this far?"
She was blunt. The reaction was not one of surprise at hearing the name Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect, but of immediately grasping the state of the war.
Prior even to the thinking of a martial artist tempered on the battlefield, she felt no surprise whatsoever at the prestige of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect being so ruthlessly trampled.
That in itself was enough to shock Jin Ha-gyeong. Unless the two who had just appeared were of a standing worthy of it, or powerful strangers of that caliber, such a reaction would have been impossible.
"……That is so."
"Losing one's senses is understandable enough."
Jin Ha-gyeong did not deny it.
It was true that her wits had left her.
The man with the fan looked at Kim Rae-won. The folded fan was closed once more.
"Guild Master."
After that brief address—
"If you take them in, will it not make things complicated down the line?"
"Do you know the difference between a hero and an ordinary person?"
"……"
"The difference between the two is not in talent. It is whether, in the moment one feels afraid, one takes one step further, or does not. That small difference, and nothing more."
"A curious thing to say."
The folded fan was shaken once. Then the scholarly man smiled faintly.
"Yet there is something to it. If it is such a thing, then it would be as though a hero has come to Hero Gate."
"That is so. A hero has come to Hero Gate, so at the very least should I not give them a meal?"
He spoke lightly.
A man who concluded the decision to take in two hundred defeated soldiers with a single word—"a meal."
In that moment, Jin Ha-gyeong felt her knees begin to buckle.
It was not only from exhaustion.
What she had lost over the past several days came pouring out all at once. The things she had gritted her teeth and endured as the Branch Lord of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect, the things she had tried not to look back upon, the faces of those she had been forced to leave behind—all of it came flooding in like a dam breaking at the moment her knees gave.
All that is permitted to the defeated is their knees.
But if the Branch Lord's knees buckle first, the legs of the two hundred standing behind her will break together.
That, she could not allow.
Yet she did not kneel.
She gritted her teeth and endured.
If she crumbles, the two hundred behind her crumble.
Not yet.
Jin Ha-gyeong grabbed her broken sword again, reversed her grip, and planted it into the ground. Using it as a crutch to support her body, she bowed her head. This time, unlike before, she put her true sincerity into it.
"……Dragon Spring Sword Manor Branch Lord Jin Ha-gyeong. I entrust to you the lives of two hundred disciples of the Vast Heaven Limitless Sword Sect."
Before she had even finished speaking, Kim Rae-won turned to look behind him.
"Ho-ae."
"Yes!"
"There are people on the mountain path. Bring them here."
"Yes sir!"
The girl took three or four disciples with her and ran toward the mountain path. A large man silently drew alongside the girl and ran with her. He had the build of a beast.
The woman with the sword looked up toward the mountain path and murmured quietly—yet as though she meant Kim Rae-won to hear.
"The way it looks, they might have brought all sorts of things dangling behind them."
Jin Ha-gyeong let out a sigh at those words. She wanted to deny it, but could not.
She exhaled one deep sigh more, then looked up again at Kim Rae-won.
There was a mountain of things she needed to ask.
Whether he was truly "that Kim Rae-won." What it meant that he had no memories. What had happened in the ten-or-so years of his absence.
But in the end, what came out of her mouth was none of that.
"……I have but one more thing to ask."
"What is it?"
"Guild Master……are you not afraid? Did you not say that if you take us in, the disaster of the Dark Net Rakshasa Path may follow?"
Kim Rae-won looked at Jin Ha-gyeong for a moment, then—
Smiled.
The same smile as before. The corners of his mouth just barely lifted—hardly something that could be called a smile.
But this time, that smile was slightly different.
Cold yet warm.
No—warm on the outside, cold within.
A smile whose true nature was utterly impossible to discern.
"Branch Lord Jin."
"……"
"What manner of host frightens their guest?"
Kim Rae-won moved toward Jin Ha-gyeong.
"Please rest comfortably."
And then he vanished from the spot as though he had never been there—leaving only a single trailing voice.
"Do not trouble yourself over uninvited guests."
The woman with the sword looked in the direction Kim Rae-won had disappeared. Her hand went to the sword at her waist.
"Haaa…… That's right, that's right. In the end, he's gone and done it, done it again."
The man with the fan called out quietly from beside her.
"Chief Eom."
"I know, I know."
The two of them looked toward the mountain path at the same moment.
But they only shook their heads once, then immediately kicked off the ground.
Left behind in that place now was—
"……Uninvited guests?"