Beam
What was a sword, really?
While staying at Wudang Sect, Jegal Cheongha kept turning that one question over and over in her mind.
To her, a sword had always been a weapon she had handled with ease since her days in the Jegal Clan, a sacred relic of the fallen angel that would embody her justice.
And her mother’s legacy.
But Song Hyeon, whom she admired and followed, had said it meant something more than that.
That the Dark Fallen Angel Sword was one with the world, and that since the sword was part of the fallen angel, she too must become one with the world.
It was an absurdly vague thing to say, yet the resonance hidden inside it kept knocking against Cheongha’s heart.
A sword is...
Cheongha stood in a daze, watching the Taoist priests train in Wudang Sect’s practice grounds.
It had already been several days.
She kept observing their training, joining in, continuing her contemplation, and speaking at length about swords with renowned Taoist priests.
Even so, none of it moved her as deeply as a single remark from Song Hyeon.
Cheongha’s feelings only grew more complicated.
Maybe there’s nothing special about it after all.
She looked down at the wooden sword in her hand.
Her martial art was Amheuktacheongeom.
If someone saw it, they might call it childish: a sword technique used in a story about a righteous wanderer saving the world.
A mysterious power that transcended the understanding of any martial art that existed in reality.
Her dream. Her childhood ideal.
How much comfort had she taken from that book during her dull, grueling childhood?
How thrilled had she been when a single imitation made that mystery bloom to life?
That was why she believed.
In her justice. In the truth of the book.
She had met a comrade who understood that unwavering belief.
A woman with a deeper grasp of power and an unshakable insight.
One thing taught by her, who could wield that mystical power to perfection.
A trial that would surpass all limits.
Even Song Hyeon’s careless words carried that much weight for Cheongha.
“Haah!”
The Taoist priests continued their training.
Their movements were graceful, the Taiji Sword, Wudang Sect’s representative swordsmanship.
And yet, strangely enough, Cheongha found their motions familiar.
There, they’ll pull the left foot back and twist the sword path upward.
The priests’ movements unfolded exactly as she had predicted.
Cheongha narrowed her eyes in confusion.
“It’s not different.”
The forms of Amheuktacheongeom and the Taiji Sword were not all that different.
There were differences if one looked closely, but they were only minor.
One could just as easily say their roots were the same.
So this is...
She didn’t know why.
To Cheongha, Amheuktacheongeom was a mystery that had never existed in this world.
The Taiji Sword was a sword art with a long, enduring tradition.
And yet the two looked like branches grown from the same root.
The world and the sword are one.
Suddenly, Song Hyeon’s words flashed through her mind.
In the end, what was a sword?
It had come from one source.
Cheongha rose to her feet and took up the wooden sword.
Following the priests from afar, she began to swing it slowly.
Though it was a sword style she was encountering for the first time, she understood its flow at once and began to internalize it in her body like a disciple who had trained for years.
Abbot Heodojin, who had been instructing the priests in the practice grounds, turned his gaze toward Cheongha.
...How long has it been since we even spoke about the Taiji Sword?
Yet she was already perfectly imitating the sword path on the surface.
Is this the talent of one traveling with Song Hyeon, the celestial maiden?
Thinking of her as a prodigy whose appearance would stir the martial world, Heodojin inwardly marveled.
Once Cheongha took up the sword, she devoted herself to it alone for the next several days and nights.
She even forgot to eat, chewing over Song Hyeon’s words as she dug deeper into the mysteries of the sword.
And when a full week had passed, Cheongha finally began to merge the principles of Amheuktacheongeom and the Taiji Sword.
The two sword arts were not different.
Amheuktacheongeom gathered potent inner energy and released it in a single strike.
The Taiji Sword contained the profundity of the supple sword.
The truth of Amheuktacheongeom was that justice destroys evil with force.
The truth of Wudang Sect was euiyeokgeukgang, that softness overcomes hardness.
If they had come from one root, why should they ever have been divided?
In the end, it was only a difference in understanding.
If the sword and the world were one, then sword arts had always pursued a single path.
“My sword is to destroy evil.”
The moment she recalled the verse of Amheuktacheongeom, the sword path flowing from her fingertips began to change.
Her sword was advancing toward a realm entirely different from before.
Destructive yet graceful, dark yet embracing everything.
Just one more step, and something would be complete—
“Whatcha doing?”
Unable to endure the boredom of the detached quarters, Song Hyeon came to find her.
My steps toward the practice grounds were light.
I was practically humming to myself. “Hmm-hmm. Hm.”
I’d come to Wudang Sect and somehow still hadn’t seen Cheongha at all. I’d been awfully careless, too. Leaving her alone like this just because she was glued to her sword. Word was she’d even stopped eating and was devoting herself to nothing but training.
As her older sister, I should’ve looked after her.
From far away, I could hear the faint ring of blades cutting the air, mixed with bursts of kiai.
When I arrived at the practice grounds, there she was, just as expected, swinging her wooden sword alone. A deeper, calmer aura than usual seemed to drift around her.
“What are you doing?”
I walked up beside her, and Cheongha lowered her wooden sword and greeted me with a bright voice.
“Older sister. You’re here.”
The way she said it, as if she’d been waiting for me, made me pause.
“I haven’t been able to see your face since coming to Wudang, so I came to check on how you were doing.”
“I’m... doing all right. Sorry for worrying you.”
A faint smile bloomed on Cheongha’s face.
That bright, fearless kid who always shouted about justice looked so pure and fragile now!
That alone made the trip here worthwhile.
But at the same time, a little ache settled in my chest.
She wasn’t eating and was only throwing herself into training, so of course she’d be worn out.
“Why don’t you take it easy? If you get impatient, even things that could be done won’t get done.”
“I see! Impatience.”
Cheongha reacted to every word I said and came closer to me.
Her response time was fantastic. Talking with Cheongha really was fun.
She gulped down the water I handed her.
Then, unable to hide her excitement, she began pouring out the results of the past few days’ training without stopping for breath.
“...So I tried wrapping the destructive force of Amheuktacheongeom in softness, and I felt it change. It was like yin and yang were complementing each other.”
“I see.”
She kept rambling on about the principles of the sword and the process of its development, and honestly, I didn’t understand a single thing she was saying.
But she looked so delighted while talking that I just smiled and nodded along because she was cute.
“So you already knew, Older sister. That the sword ultimately comes from one source.”
“R-right?”
There was a whole line of thought among martial-arts fans that the basic sword form, the Three Talents Sword, actually contained the mysteries of all swords and was secretly the strongest sword art of them all.
Was this... kind of like that?
When I gave my vague agreement, Cheongha only grew more animated.
“If the Taoist priests here heard me, they’d probably scold me for this, but the foundations of Amheuktacheongeom and the Taiji Sword aren’t different at all. The moment I realized that, I was able to take a step forward.”
“Mm-hm.”
I could only smile awkwardly and nod at her cheerful explanation.
That part was embarrassing.
Even if you’re writing pure delusions, you still need a basic foundation.
Back when I was writing what I’d now call my darkest, cringiest work, I’d laid out a few sword manuals for reference and borrowed their movements while describing things.
The Taiji Sword must have been one of them.
“Now that you’re here, Older sister, would you mind if I showed you what I’ve realized?”
Full of energy, Cheongha walked out to the center of the practice grounds before I could answer.
The mood made it awkward to stop her, so I followed her in.
Just then, the Wudang priests began gathering one by one in the practice grounds for their midday training.
Seeing us standing in the middle, they sat down and began to watch with interest.
Ugh. Somehow this is becoming a whole thing.
I was used to being stared at, given how often people praised me as a celestial maiden, but this was still uncomfortable. Their eyes were shining, as if they intended to carve every one of our movements into memory.
If I acted clumsily here, I might expose the fact that I was nothing special beyond my mysterious atmosphere.
“Then, I humbly ask for your guidance.”
Cheongha raised her wooden sword and pointed it at me.
Huh? Wait. She’s using it on me?
Cheongha’s sword art was the ability to fire indiscriminate inner-energy projectiles.
She was using that on me? Really?
Everyone’s attention shifted to Cheongha.
She drew a deep breath, then launched into a sword dance.
A blue haze shimmered at the tip of her sword.
Sword aura?
This was definitely different from before.
Admiring murmurs rippled through the priests seated in groups.
After a few graceful movements, Cheongha suddenly thrust her sword at me.
At the same time, a beam of light shot from the sword tip.
Fortunately, I’d expected it and twisted my body lightly to dodge.
But the attack didn’t stop at once.
Before I knew it, Cheongha had gone from a beautiful woman dancing with a sword to the final boss of a bullet-hell shooter, blasting beams at me nonstop.
How did this happen?!
I hurriedly dodged the beams.
The basic rule of bullet-hell games was to minimize movement.
I just shifted my feet here and there, slipping through the attacks at the last possible instant, and before long I was even starting to have a little fun.
Maybe because there was no malice behind it.
There were a few close calls, but time never froze.
As the fruitless standoff continued, Cheongha, who had been swinging her sword all this time, changed tactics.
This time, she extended not her sword but a finger.
I naturally assumed it was a preparatory motion.
But to my surprise, a beam shot from the tip of her finger instead.
What the—!?
An unexpected ambush.
Thankfully, before the beam could pierce my brow.
Time stopped again.
I exhaled in relief as I looked at the frozen beam before me.
“It’s illegal for a magical girl to fire beams from her fingers instead of a staff, you know.”
This was a blatant violation of the universal rules.
It was the very definition of a surprise attack with no wind-up at all.
Cheongha would never do something like that on purpose, of course, but still—this wasn’t even tanjigong; it was finger beams.
I was starting to wonder whether this world was really a martial world at all.
For some reason, I felt oddly fascinated and gently poked the frozen beam with my finger.
At that instant, time resumed.
Huh?
To my surprise, the beam that had been shooting toward me like a mad thing a moment ago now curled softly into my palm, as if being drawn inside.
When I turned my hand upward, a warm but powerful mass of energy hovered in my palm like a bead.
I had no idea why it worked.
It just did.
The nearby priests stared in shock, and Cheongha was looking at me with round eyes.
...A qi bullet.
It was something I’d only seen in comics.
Did martial arts have this too?
Well, energy control was probably native to this side, so I guess that made sense.
Having something I didn’t even know how to handle suddenly land in my hand was a little troublesome.
If I threw it now, I had the feeling something very bad would happen.
I carefully clenched my fist around the orb of light in my palm.
Then the light faded away, scattering between my knuckles.
“...”
Cheongha was now staring at me with her mouth hanging wide open.
...How is this working?
Yeah, I definitely shouldn’t say that out loud right now.
So I just smiled as calmly as I could and offered her praise.
“Excellent.”
At my words, Cheongha dropped her wooden sword and clasped her hands in a martial salute.
“I have received your teachings.”
I had no idea what I’d taught her, but I gave an awkward smile and nodded.
““I have received your teachings.””
The Taoist priests watching from one side of the practice grounds all stood and saluted me in unison.
...Why are you doing that?
It had been a day full of nothing but misunderstandings piling on top of misunderstandings.