Highly Plausible
Baek Gun-won had been in a good mood lately.
Yoo Sung-woon and Ha Seo-hwa, the two third-generation disciples who were beginning to stand out from the rest.
Whenever he thought of those two, it felt as though Mount Hua’s future had been thrown wide open before him.
Like a child who had forgotten his age and tried to hide his smile, he twitched the corners of his mouth.
“Yoo Sung-woon, that boy really is something else, haha.”
And for good reason. Yoo Sung-woon’s every move was exceptional.
It wasn’t just his progress. His martial talent was remarkable, yes, but so was his character.
After losing his home and family overnight to a calamity, he had still kept training without complaint.
And somehow, through some clever method Baek Gun-won couldn’t begin to guess, he had even solved the problem with Ha Seo-hwa that Jin Young-mae had been worrying over.
Even when he’s struggling himself, he knows how to look after others. He feels like the sort of material you’d educate for a sect leader.
He was exactly the kind of talent Baek Gun-won had always wanted.
Baek Gun-won thought back to the Falling Blossom Sword Art Yoo Sung-woon had displayed in the Library.
The shock he had felt then was beyond words.
Who would look at Yoo Sung-woon’s Falling Blossom Sword Art and think he was a disciple who had not even been training for a year?
What a shame. Such a shame.
If he had still been in the fiery-blooded years of his youth, he would have taken Yoo Sung-woon as a disciple by force if necessary.
But Yoo Sung-woon had refused to become the chief disciple.
He hadn’t even seemed willing to consider it, so Baek Gun-won had inwardly given up on the idea—but no matter how he looked at it, the regret still lingered.
Of course, the fact that Yoo Sung-woon had joined Mount Hua at all meant such worries were spoiled-man’s complaints.
In the end, Yoo Sung-woon was a disciple of Mount Hua, not another sect.
“Ahem.”
Baek Gun-won pulled his wandering thoughts back together with a dry cough and refocused on his meditation.
Lately, he had not been attending to sect affairs.
Instead, he had remained in his quarters, confronting martial arts not as Mount Hua’s sect leader, but as a solitary martial artist.
He was trying to create a new mind method and sword art.
Indeed, Mount Hua needs a martial art to replace the lost Violet Mist Divine Art and Violet Mist Sword Art.
It wasn’t for his own sake.
It was for Mount Hua’s future.
He himself was growing older every year.
Having reached the supreme realm of the Profound Realm, his aging had slowed compared to others.
But the problem was that he had never managed to take on a truly decent disciple.
If his successor possessed talent on his level, that would be one thing.
He believed that even without a martial art worthy of being called a divine art, someone with the makings of one of the Ten Great Martial Artists could still manage Mount Hua Sect.
But to date, there had been almost no disciples who caught his eye, and even when there were, he had rejected them outright.
It was an undeniable truth that profound martial arts produced masters.
Strictly speaking, because Mount Hua had lost the Violet Mist Divine Art, Baek Gun-won’s standards had become absurdly high.
But reality was cold, and when circumstances were difficult, it always forced one to choose.
Since he could not rely on raw talent alone, he had to borrow the power of exceptional martial arts.
Yet creating a martial art that surpassed the Violet Mist Divine Art was no easy matter, even for Baek Gun-won.
Until 150-some years ago, the Violet Mist Divine Art had been a peerless art that made the demons of the world tremble in fear.
Learning a martial art and creating one were entirely different problems.
It was difficult enough to create something that surpassed even the Twenty-Four Style Plum Blossom Sword Art, never mind the Violet Mist Divine Art.
He had known he needed to do it, but the wall before him had been so high that, until recently, he had deliberately looked away.
That had been the case right up until the day he saw Yoo Sung-woon’s Falling Blossom Sword Art in the Library.
The boy’s sword technique, which had not managed to bloom even a single plum blossom yet still traced such beautiful lines, stirred Baek Gun-won’s heart once more.
“Inner peace, inner peace…”
Even if his mind raced ahead, that alone would not advance the creation of a martial art.
Yet now that he felt even a little calmer, he had the strange premonition that a good art might actually come to him.
In his previous life as well, Baek Gun-won had found stability after taking Yoo Sung-woon as a disciple.
With a settled mind, he had meditated ceaselessly, and that had become the foundation for creating the White Flow Plum Blossom Sword Art and the Plum Blossom Heavenly Fragrance Mind Method.
How long had he been meditating?
The moment a faint thread of the sword art he needed to chart began to take shape—
“Sect Leader. The Law Enforcement Hall Lord has come to see you.”
the disciple waiting outside his quarters shattered the moment like mist.
“Hah.”
Baek Gun-won let out an involuntary sigh.
At the same time, he frowned.
Enlightenment came in an instant, and left in an instant too.
Even the sword forms he had been swinging in his mind had dissolved just like that.
“I told them not to report unless it was urgent.”
If his heart had its way, he would have gone to a cave no one could find and done wall-gazing cultivation in peace.
But Baek Gun-won was the sect leader of Mount Hua Sect.
If something time-sensitive happened while he was absent, he couldn’t respond at once.
I know the burden of this seat is heavy, but as a lone martial artist, it’s far too much to bear.
He could do nothing about the sword form he had already lost.
After straightening his disheveled robes, Baek Gun-won spoke.
“Bring her in.”
The door opened the moment the words left his mouth.
It was a rather dramatic entrance.
Baek Gun-won looked at Jin Young-mae, who entered holding a sheet of paper, with mild confusion.
This was not a reaction one would easily see from her, and even her expression carried the same urgency as her steps.
“Elder Jin. What happened to make you come in such a hurry?”
“Please take a look at this.”
Instead of greeting him, Jin Young-mae thrust the paper toward him.
“I stopped by the Library just now and received this from Yoo Sung-woon.”
“That boy again?”
Oddly enough, hearing Yoo Sung-woon’s name eased his sour mood a little.
And with that came a sliver of anticipation.
It was rare for Jin Young-mae to be unable to keep her composure even in front of him.
Muttering about how absurd this was, Baek Gun-won took the paper from her.
The writing was shorter than he had expected.
Only five lines of verse were written in the corner of the blank sheet.
“……”
But as his eyes moved over the lines, the faint smile at his mouth gradually faded.
Before long, Baek Gun-won had almost forgotten Jin Young-mae was even standing there as he calmly traced each line of the verse in his mind.
Blue clouds rise, red sunset falls. Clouds and afterglow resonate, then unite in yin and yang, ending in blue and red transforming into purple.
To put the verse into plain words: blue clouds ascend into the sky, and red dusk descends upon the earth.
Cloud and sunset resonate with one another and merge as yin and yang.
Red and blue harmonize.
“...and turn purple?”
The hand holding the paper trembled faintly.
Baek Gun-won looked up at Jin Young-mae, bewildered.
“Where did you get this?”
“Sect Leader, as I said, this is the verse Yoo Sung-woon organized.”
“What do you mean, organized?”
“I’ll tell you everything I saw and heard, without leaving anything out.”
Jin Young-mae reported the conversation she had had with Yoo Sung-woon.
According to him, he had been examining the martial manuals created by the founding ancestor in order to understand the roots of Mount Hua more precisely.
And among them, he had collected and arranged the verses that stood out to him.
Baek Gun-won, hearing this, frowned.
“You expect me to believe that?”
Jin Young-mae responded as if she were equally speechless.
“But it’s true. More importantly, doesn’t the verse itself sound plausible?”
“Exactly. That’s the problem.”
Was such a thing even possible?
Separating the verses from other martial arts and turning them into the verse of a new martial art was not the sort of idea one arrived at easily.
It was like taking a stone from a stream and using it as a foundation block, then taking a pestle from a commoner’s house nearby and using it as a pillar, and finally taking a table from an inn to serve as the roof of an imperial palace.
To compare it to architecture, a verse was one part of the blueprint.
Even if a master had drawn countless blueprints, the structures built from them would all be different.
If one took specific pieces from those blueprints and tried to build a structure from them, nothing would fit together properly, and it would collapse at the slightest impact.
That was what martial artists called deviation into madness.
But...
Even as a hypothesis, it was extremely plausible.
Not just the meaning of the verses.
Even the circulation routes the verses pointed to.
They connected as though they had once been a single whole.
As the sect leader of Mount Hua, Baek Gun-won was required to read and memorize all of the sect’s records.
Of course, when he was young, he had also pored over the records left behind by his ancestors in order to restore the Violet Mist Divine Art.
Elder Jin focused on the final verse, Blue-Red Transforming Purple, but that can’t be helped.
The records Baek Gun-won and Yoo Sung-woon had confirmed were forbidden to anyone other than the sect leader.
It was only natural that she, as merely an elder, would not know the meaning contained in Blue Clouds and Red Sunset.
Blue Clouds and Red Sunset must refer to the Blue Clouds and Red Sunset Sword, which the founding ancestor practiced before creating the Violet Mist Divine Art!
That instant in which blue and red interlocked and gave birth to something new—
there was a record that the founding ancestor of Mount Hua gained enlightenment at that very moment and created the Violet Mist Divine Art.
But he still could not reach a conclusion too hastily.
He had a strong intuition, but no proof.
After much thought, Baek Gun-won finally spoke.
“For now, it’s too early to say.”
This was something that could only be understood after further observation.
“Are there no other verses Yoo Sung-woon arranged?”
“He’s a third-generation disciple. He’s only been here a little over half a year.”
“I see. Even with Elder Oh making exceptions, there would still be limits to the manuals he could access.”
“Simply being allowed into the Library as a third-generation disciple is already extraordinary.”
Baek Gun-won returned to his seat with a hollow ache in his chest.
Jin Young-mae sat opposite him.
The two of them spread the paper with the verse across the table and stared at it in silence.
This was something I already confirmed in the Library, but even when I circulate my internal energy again, it connects without any snag. Truly strange.
But as a verse of the Violet Mist Divine Art, it’s absurdly plain.
Most sect leaders of Mount Hua had been recognized as geniuses in their era.
And yet, from the moment they began learning the Violet Mist Divine Art, records showed nothing but doubts about their own talent.
The accepted view, from rumor to record alike, was that the Violet Mist Divine Art was difficult and profound even for extraordinary geniuses.
While they continued to ruminate, Jin Young-mae called to Baek Gun-won.
“Sect Leader.”
“What is it?”
“It may be a leap, but I think these verses are somehow connected to the Violet Mist Divine Art.”
“That’s exactly why I’m thinking about this so hard.”
Even if they weren’t the verses of the Violet Mist Divine Art, it was still a new discovery.
Jin Young-mae nodded and continued.
“But I don’t understand why they were scattered among the manuals accessible to third-generation disciples.”
“I was wondering the same thing. Even if this is only the beginning, to think that the manuals practiced by third-generation disciples would plainly contain the verses of such a difficult martial art…”
No matter how he considered it, it felt excessive.
Just as he was about to finish that thought, Baek Gun-won stopped.
“...No, if it was something made easy, that changes things.”
“Pardon?”
“We were only fixated on the verses that pointed to the Violet Mist.”
Looking back on it, the martial arts from which these verses had been taken were all arts assigned to third-generation disciples.
There was no reason for the circulation of internal energy to become overly complicated in the first place.
Baek Gun-won slapped the table with his palm, satisfaction flashing across his face.
“It wasn’t simplified because it was plain—it was simplified to be plain!”
Simple enough, and clear enough, for a third-generation disciple to practice.
All at once, Baek Gun-won recalled something he had heard in a prior report.
“Yoo Sung-woon—what did that boy say before?”
“What do you mean?”
“That, er... about how he figured out how to circulate his internal energy just by looking at the Falling Blossom Sword Art’s sword forms.”
“That could just have been the boy bragging.”
“We may have treated it as such at the time, but I doubt any of the elders truly believed it at face value.”
Jin Young-mae nodded reluctantly.
Oh Joo-yup had said Yoo Sung-woon had only looked through the Falling Blossom Sword Art manual for a brief time.
Enough time to glance over it once, perhaps, but not enough to memorize everything he had read.
It had ended as something too hard to verify, and so the matter had been dropped.
If, by chance, that wasn’t empty boasting...
What if he had not merely been born with martial talent, but with the making of a first-rate grandmaster?
At that thought, Baek Gun-won clenched his fist without realizing it.
Jin Young-mae was no different.
He was only a third-generation disciple. Only a child.
She knew full well, in her head, that he was the wrong person to pin such hopes on.
But the restoration of the Violet Mist Divine Art was Mount Hua Sect’s long-held dream.
“Before we speak of Yoo Sung-woon, we need to judge this from our own perspective first.”
Jin Young-mae drew a steady breath and organized her thoughts.
“Please instruct the Library disciples to examine the founding ancestor’s manuals as a whole and identify the verses hidden within them.”
As soon as she finished, Baek Gun-won replied.
“Young-mae. You still haven’t grasped the essence of this.”
The way he addressed her changed.
Jin Young-mae asked carefully, “What do you mean?”
“There is no martial art in Mount Hua that you and I do not know. Since ancient times, the only martial art not taught to the elders has been the Violet Mist Divine Art.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
“Up until now, we’ve looked through manuals like the Soqing Skill and the Jade Maiden Skill countless times. There are innumerable verses in those manuals. That’s because a verse doesn’t merely explain how to circulate internal energy; it also contains the insight that allows the martial art itself to be performed.”
Jin Young-mae nodded.
Seeing her reaction, Baek Gun-won pressed on, frustrated.
“Still don’t understand? Yoo Sung-woon went through the manuals with all those verses scattered through them and copied only these onto paper. And he arranged them in the exact order, too.”
A martial artist who has reached a certain level can trace the marks left on a battlefield and determine which techniques were used there.
Yoo Sung-woon’s feat was similar to that.
He had looked through the manuals and discerned the intent behind the creation of the martial arts.
The manuals were his battlefield, and the words written by brush were the techniques of a master.
“It’s impossible unless one understands the founding ancestor’s enlightenment and sees straight through his inner vision. I can’t say it for certain, but if he were given enough time, it would mean he had talent enough to uncover any martial art.”
“...Ah!”
Only then did Jin Young-mae cry out in realization.