You Say She’s a Genius of Mount Hua
So they say I’m a genius of the Mount Hua Sect.
I hate talent.
I hate geniuses.
I hate martial arts too.
And that is why I keep hating myself more and more.
Of all things, I had talent.
Before I knew it, people were calling me a genius.
So every day, I threw myself into training and practiced martial arts until my bones ached.
And in the end, I—the one who despised martial artists—was becoming the very kind of martial artist who had brutally killed my parents.
There was only one reason.
To take revenge on the martial artists who killed my parents.
But had all that time truly meant anything?
I had trained without pause for two years, and yet I was losing to a junior disciple who had entered the sect only half a year ago.
Every time our wooden swords crashed together, the effort and hardship I had piled up until now.
And the world I had barely managed to build for myself.
It all came crashing down.
Even though I had learned martial arts until my hands were blistered raw, it was no different from that day, when I had watched my parents die in danger and been unable to do a single thing.
Time and again, I was being beaten by someone who had appeared so suddenly, like a disaster.
In truth, I already knew.
I wasn’t angry at my junior disciple. I was angry at myself.
I was only venting all that aimless rage on a child who had appeared before me like a bundle of absurdity incarnate.
I was weak.
In martial arts, and in spirit.
And today was no different.
* * *
The match was decided in a single exchange.
I used the Violet Mist Divine Art to drive my opponent back with the wooden sword in her hand and sent her sprawling.
Ha Seo-hwa muttered in disbelief.
“...I slipped.”
“You slipped? Still, Senior Sister lost.”
“The ground was just slippery.”
“That’s part of skill too.”
“Again.”
I shrugged.
“Anytime.”
Ha Seo-hwa brushed the dirt from her clothes and said, “Get into your stance.”
“I’ll do it myself, so just come in already.”
“I warned you...!”
Wooden sword in hand, Ha Seo-hwa lunged at me like lightning.
So this was the Falling Blossom Gentle Phoenix of the future.
For her age, her movements were astonishing.
I could see that, just as I would have, she had poured her inner force into the wooden sword and tried to crush me with sheer power.
If we met head-on with wooden swords, this time it would be my side that broke.
I bent my knees and leaped hard.
The instant I sprang, Ha Seo-hwa sliced through the empty air where I had been standing.
Dodging by a hair’s breadth in midair, I grabbed a tree branch overhead with my left hand.
I spun once like a monkey.
And then drop without hesitation.
I drove my foot down into the exposed back of Ha Seo-hwa.
“Ghk...!”
The moment I struck, she let out a short burst of breath from her lungs. Once again, she collapsed in an undignified heap. This time, in fact, she fell face-first.
As she tried to get back up, brushing dirt from her face, I said to her back, “Don’t bother dusting yourself off. It’s a waste of time.”
I added, “You said you wanted to spar, didn’t you? You said you’d take me on as many times as it took.”
Ha Seo-hwa seized her wooden sword again and charged.
There was no warning this time.
Maybe because she was worked up, her movements were broader than usual.
The wooden sword swept in from the right in a wide arc.
This time I met it head-on. The instant the clash rang out, I slipped inside her guard.
Without a trace of hesitation, I slammed my elbow forward, striking as though I were piercing her solar plexus.
“Ugh...!”
Ha Seo-hwa clutched her stomach and sank to the ground.
Thanks to that, the back of her neck was left fully exposed.
Ordinarily, if I were dealing with a black-path thug, the proper move would be to slash the neck or kick the face and bring them down.
Instead, I deliberately brought the blade of my wooden sword close to the nape of her neck as if to show it off.
After letting the silence stretch a little, she slowly caught her breath.
“That makes three losses. If you’re not going to keep going, I’m leaving.”
At my words, Ha Seo-hwa reacted at once, swinging her wooden sword to shake me off.
The look she gave me was no ordinary one.
It was the ferocious stare of someone looking at the enemy who had murdered her parents, but underneath it, her expression was complicated in ways I couldn’t quite read.
She’s obsessed with strength in a way that’s almost abnormal.
I didn’t know why, but I could tell the path she was walking had gone crooked.
The sect was supposed to correct that.
If a disciple had taken the wrong road, it was the sect’s duty to guide them back to the right one and help them avoid making the wrong judgment.
That was why a sect existed.
As though determined to reveal her true skill at last, Ha Seo-hwa moved with dazzling speed.
It was an attack that blended the Falling Blossom Sword Art with the Seven Stars Steps, and from the forms alone I could see how steadily she had trained.
Good talent and good instruction had joined hands and finally blossomed.
Since my opponent had used the Falling Blossom Sword Art, I met it head-on without the slightest hesitation.
First form of the Falling Blossom Sword Art.
“The sword blooms like a flower.”
One Sword, Like a Flower.
I swung the wooden sword, infusing it with inner force, in a vertical slash.
The moment I struck, I cut deeper to the inside line than Ha Seo-hwa, shifting the center of power toward my side and turning the exchange in my favor.
No matter how quickly one entered the Violet Mist Divine Art, there was no way to close the gap of time all at once.
Every time our blades collided, my arms screamed in pain, so if I dragged it out too long, defeat was inevitable.
Even so, I was still a few moves ahead in sword forms.
I stopped hiding my skill and swung my wooden sword openly.
While I took her attacks directly, I kept striking her shoulders and arms, and at times her hands, to inflict damage.
First form into second form. Second form into third.
As the blade work linked together with delicate precision and was about to flow into a fourth form, I gently redirected Ha Seo-hwa’s attack with a yielding sword movement.
With nowhere left to receive the force she had unleashed, Ha Seo-hwa could not master her own momentum. Like a stream collapsing into a shallows, she staggered forward.
“Ah—?!”
I did not miss the opening and swung with all my strength.
Ha Seo-hwa raised her wooden sword a fraction too late, trying to react, but her balance had already been thrown badly off.
The moment our wooden swords met, Ha Seo-hwa was sent crashing to the ground as if flung aside.
She rolled across the dirt, between scattered stones and broken twigs, and this time she could not get back up.
I looked down at her from close by.
Her face, staring up at the sky, looked utterly hollow.
“I heard the rumors about Senior Sister. They say you’re a genius of the Mount Hua Sect.”
Ha Seo-hwa, still looking at the sky, rolled her eyes toward me.
“And yet you lost to me, even though I’ve only been in the sect for half a year.”
“I’m... not a genius.”
That was a strange thing to say.
When I stayed quiet, waiting for her to continue, Ha Seo-hwa slowly went on.
“You’re the genius. The one who can watch martial arts once and copy them. You’re the one who should be called a genius.”
“So you were training like a madwoman just to look like a genius?”
“No.”
Ha Seo-hwa denied it shortly.
“That kind of title is secondary.”
“Huh?”
“Since I entered the sect, all I’ve done is train. While others played and ate and slept, I swung my sword and read manuals. So it’s only natural that I’d be stronger than everyone else.”
“...Ah, yes. I see.”
I wanted to say something back, but the unspoken bitterness in her voice stopped me.
There was a time and place for things. If I was going to say something right, I could do it later.
Since I didn’t cut in, Ha Seo-hwa turned her arrows toward me as if a dam had burst.
“But not you.”
“Me? What about me?”
“You haven’t trained longer than I have. You aren’t trying harder than I am either.”
“You entered the sect two years before I did.”
“And yet you’re stronger than me.”
Ha Seo-hwa lowered her head as though to indicate her own sprawled body on the ground.
“That’s why I don’t understand why you’re strong. Why are you strong? Why were you able to beat me? How were you able to pass the entrance test without having learned martial arts? What’s the secret behind your strength?”
I was startled in my heart.
First, because I was surprised that Ha Seo-hwa could talk so much.
Then, because I was surprised that she was asking me why I was stronger than her.
“Hold on, hold on. You’ve asked me a lot, but before I answer, there’s something I want to ask. Are you trying to beat me to prove your own strength?”
Ha Seo-hwa shook her head.
“I wanted revenge.”
“Then why are you taking it out on me?”
“Because you look like them.”
“In what way?”
Ha Seo-hwa did not answer.
She had pressed her lips tightly together, so I spoke without expecting an answer.
“I don’t know who it is you want revenge on, but seeing other people in their place is only another way of deceiving yourself. It might feel satisfying in the moment, but in the long run it’ll only deepen the problem.”
Ha Seo-hwa said nothing for a while after hearing me.
She stared down at the ground without moving. It wasn’t a silence without reason. I could see her lips opening and closing as though she had things she wanted to say.
I stood there and waited, giving her time to sort out her thoughts.
Only after a full moment passed did Ha Seo-hwa speak again. She began with “You,” then slowly raised her head and met my eyes.
“...How did you enter the Mount Hua Sect?”
“I climbed Mount Hua on my own, without anyone’s help, and entered the sect.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m asking about before you entered the sect.”
I didn’t answer right away.
I thought about what I should say.
I had been abandoned by my parents and had nowhere else to go, so I entered the Mount Hua Sect.
But within the sect, I was known as someone whose family had been slaughtered by the black path and who had been left alone.
I wanted to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t leave any holes in my identity.
Especially since she was Jin Young-mae’s grand-disciple.
I couldn’t afford a mistake in my words, not knowing when the lie might be tested.
“My family was all killed after the people who saved us with kindness betrayed us. It’s not something I can explain directly, so just understand it that way.”
It wasn’t a lie.
The people of the sect were no different from family to me.
And it was also true that they had been killed after being betrayed by the people who had saved them with kindness.
Was it because I had told the truth?
Only after speaking did I realize that my voice had sunk far lower than before.
Ha Seo-hwa nodded.
“...I’m similar to you too.”
“How did Senior Sister come to enter the Mount Hua Sect?”
“Martial artists killed my parents.”
It was the kind of tone and words no child should have been able to say.
“My parents buried me in the snow so I wouldn’t be found by them. Then they charged at the martial artists on purpose to draw their attention. My father, my mother. Both of them.”
And the parents who had tried to protect their child died brutally before her eyes.
Ha Seo-hwa laid bare the scene of that day without any filter, the one where they had spewed red blood from their mouths and bellies.
The sight of viscera spilling out, blood soaking the snow red—Ha Seo-hwa recounted it all.
“My mother...”
She paused, as though forcing down her emotions, then continued with a hot breath.
“...died a little later than my father, I think.”
Ha Seo-hwa had witnessed the deaths of her parents with her own eyes.
She said, listlessly, that she had wanted to cover her ears to escape the hell unfolding before her, but that she couldn’t do so at the time.
If she moved her hands to cover her ears, the snowdrift hiding her body would shift in some way.
If her presence were discovered, it would mean turning her parents’ sacrifice into a meaningless death, so it was impossible.
“But I didn’t close my eyes either.”
“Why not?”
“So I could carve the faces of my parents’ killers into my mind and never forget them.”
As she spoke, Ha Seo-hwa’s body swayed slightly.
Her pupils had dilated, and cold sweat was breaking out across her skin. It wasn’t the sweat of an intense exchange from sparring.
She’s in a panic state.
Of course, that was not a good reaction.
Especially since Ha Seo-hwa’s training time had been long and her regimen severe enough to feel obsessive.
Taken together, it was serious.
“If I close my eyes, that scene comes back to me vividly. The only good part is that I still haven’t forgotten the faces of my enemies.”
I noticed the part she had not said.
If the faces of her enemies could never be forgotten, that meant the moments those enemies vanished from her sight also remained alive in her memory.
The moment her father died. The moment her mother was violated.
Ha Seo-hwa said no more.
I didn’t know all the details of her suffering, but I had a rough idea of how she had come into the sect.
Afterward, even when the martial artists disappeared, she had remained buried in the snow. She thought they might be hiding somewhere, waiting for her to come out.
Her mind blurred, and sensation drained from her body. Her vision dimmed, and just before she was about to lose consciousness altogether, Jin Young-mae, who happened to be returning to Mount Hua after handling business outside, found and rescued her.
That was how she had been able to enter the Mount Hua Sect.
It had been a matter of heaven’s favor.
If it hadn’t been someone like Jin Young-mae, she would never have noticed the faint trace of life from a child buried in the snow.
Mindless, indiscriminate violence that makes no distinction between people!
Could a person go against a river?
Could they split the sea or overturn a mountain?
Normally impossible, but a martial artist who had reached the higher realms could do it.
Ha Seo-hwa trained in martial arts in order to resist that kind of disaster-like power.
To her, the martial artists who had suddenly come and killed her parents were no different from those disasters.
And I, too, fell into the category of disaster.
“I’ve told you everything. I answered your question, so now answer mine.”
Ha Seo-hwa asked with a desperate expression.
“Why are you strong? How is someone like you supposed to be defeated?”
“That’s what I want to know.”
I knew of disaster-like beings myself.
The Blood Sky Demon Sect.
And the Blood Sky Demon Emperor.
I was weaker than them, which was why my dantian had been shattered and I had become a cripple. If I had known, would I have ended up a cripple?
If the gap had been small, I could have given an answer. But once the difference became vast, there was no catching up.
That was what martial arts was.
“I don’t know a way. Aside from becoming stronger than your opponent.”
I couldn’t think of any method to defeat a strong force with a weak one.
“Then what am I supposed to...!”
Ha Seo-hwa cried out as though vomiting up all the resentment she had built up.
“What am I supposed to believe in when I lift my sword?!”