Victory Follows Momentum
I wondered if it was my brazen confidence that rubbed her the wrong way.
Her expression didn’t change, but Ha Seo-hwa lowered her voice a little when she spoke.
“You’re not looking down on me, are you? I entered the sect two years before you did.”
She seemed to understand, at least in part, that the only real opponents she had in mind were Jung Nam-jung and Seo Jin-ah.
I shook my head.
“Not at all. I’ve simply wanted to test myself against you.”
“So have I.”
“Really?”
“But not now.”
She sounded like someone who’d been waiting for fruit to ripen beautifully, only to watch it drop from the branch on its own and feel disappointed.
Instructor Kwon said, looking troubled, “Sung-woon. Seo-hwa is one of the most outstanding among the third-generation disciples. Even if you spar, there won’t be much you can learn from her.”
In other words, for someone who had entered the sect only half a year ago, I wasn’t a suitable opponent.
I answered at once.
“Instructor Kwon. I’ve heard that when someone is starving, we should share food with them, and when someone asks to learn, we should not block their path. I’ve been in the sect for half a year already, but because I’ve only practiced basic internal methods, I know almost nothing of Mount Hua’s martial arts. So I’d like to ask Seo-hwa senior sister to teach me.”
Having said it that way, Instructor Kwon let out a quiet sigh.
He had reason enough.
Flies and butterflies naturally gather around flowers.
New disciples at Mount Hua, male or female, all ended up wanting some connection to Ha Seo-hwa.
Sparring was the easiest way to do that.
And ten times out of ten, they lost to her.
Instructor Kwon finally relented. “Very well. I’d wanted to gauge Seo-hwa’s skill as well, but I suppose there’s no helping it. Seo-hwa, hold back in your exchanges. You may use your internal energy, but if you go too far, I’ll count it as a disqualification.”
“……Understood.”
At Instructor Kwon’s roundabout warning to rein herself in, Ha Seo-hwa hesitated just a moment before letting her displeasure show.
But only for an instant.
She exhaled, steadied herself, and raised her wooden sword.
“Please go easy on me.”
“Please take care of me as well, senior sister.”
After I replied, I lifted my sword too.
Even though one of the second-generation disciples rang the bell to announce the start of the spar, neither of us moved.
Among the two of us, who only exchanged looks, Ha Seo-hwa spoke first.
“……I forgot to say. I’ll let you have the first three moves.”
“Ah, thank you.”
I was of the opinion that one should never refuse generosity like that.
Keeping my sword raised, I rushed at Ha Seo-hwa.
I closed from her left flank. As the blurred world rushed toward me, I extended my blade, and Ha Seo-hwa extended hers to meet it.
Her offer of three moves wasn’t empty words. Her sword was devoted entirely to defense, with no hint of offense.
The moment our blades collided—
Plum Blossom Step.
I immediately used Plum Blossom Step to dart behind her.
Though her face wasn’t visible, her shoulder gave a slight start.
She was surprised, but if it’s Seo-hwa...
She would definitely react to my second move.
When I thrust the tip of my sword at her back, Ha Seo-hwa moved quickly.
She planted her right foot, then twisted her body with a sharp pivot, using her left foot to kick off the ground as if scraping it away.
With the force of her turn and the lift of her sword, she smoothly redirected my thrust.
I landed and bent my knees at once. The next instant, I put strength into my body and leaped hard. Riding that momentum, I brought my sword down.
Ha Seo-hwa barely managed to block the descending strike by raising her sword horizontally.
“I’ve given you all three moves, senior sister.”
At my words, her pupils widened slightly.
The next instant, her full assault began. Her sword whipped diagonally from the right, then at my left side, shoulder, shin, thigh, and sometimes straight for my solar plexus.
I deflected, redirected, and countered every one of them.
This isn’t something you should be able to unleash on a disciple who’s only been training for half a year.
But it was precisely because I wanted this kind of pressure that I had goaded her on.
The shock of it left my body tingling.
In terms of internal power, Ha Seo-hwa held the advantage.
But in technique, I was ahead.
I broke through every sword form she sent at me, waiting for an opening where I could press in.
Clack, clack, clack-clack-clack-clack!
Since what we held were wooden swords, the sounds of wood striking wood rang out incessantly.
If we’d been holding real blades, sparks would have been flying everywhere.
Instructor Kwon is...
While still swinging my sword, I flicked my eyes toward him.
He was staring at us in stupefaction.
He hadn’t stopped Ha Seo-hwa even though her attacks were growing rougher by the second, because I was still capable of defending against them.
“To look away—!”
Ha Seo-hwa murmured when she realized my gaze had drifted toward Instructor Kwon.
She gripped the wooden sword with both hands and swung it in a wide horizontal arc.
That was the opening.
I bounced from where I stood with the full force of a monkey leaping through the trees, dodging the strike.
The instant my wooden sword came down, Ha Seo-hwa drew hers up from the floor in a sweeping motion.
Crash!
The dull impact drove us into a contest of strength, guard against guard.
Even though I had seized the higher ground, our strength was matched evenly.
This was where my true worth began to show.
I knocked her wooden sword aside and quickly reset my stance.
It was the starting posture of the Falling Blossom Sword Art.
She had no way of this being the first time I’d used it, and her eyes flew wide.
So you were hiding that.
I had been saving it to show her today.
Ha Seo-hwa was probably flustered, unable to understand how I knew the Falling Blossom Sword Art, but I gave her no time to voice her confusion.
Instinctively, she thrust her wooden sword at my chest. It was the proper way to break the Falling Blossom Sword Art.
But I moved first, and that made me faster.
Starting from a high guard, I brought my sword down in a clean arc.
And then—softly, like plum blossoms falling from the ends of branches—the wooden blade dropped in a gentle descent. The moment our swords touched, I let her thrust slip away toward a useless low line.
Then I cut upward at an angle. Unable to recover her blade in time, Ha Seo-hwa twisted her neck and narrowly avoided the strike.
In a single exchange, offense and defense had reversed.
Victory in sparring follows momentum.
Once the flow is established, it is terribly hard to reverse. The more I swung my sword, the more Ha Seo-hwa was drawn into my rhythm. Each strike came faster than the last, and she found herself forced to defend against an onslaught without pause.
By the time my arm had begun to tingle from the strain, I swung my sword hard and met hers head-on. Neither of us could withstand the impact, and our blades flew upward over our shoulders.
At the same moment, I let go of my sword in midair.
Startled by the sudden move, Ha Seo-hwa’s gaze dropped to the falling wooden blade.
Turning her eyes to the sword instead of me, and still holding the wooden weapon in her hands as if it were heavy because of her smaller frame—that was the mistake.
Because I had already cast my sword aside from my body, I could move just a little faster than she could.
I drove my foot into the ground.
Then, putting all my weight behind it, I hurled my right fist forward.
Plum Blossom Fist!
My fist slammed into Ha Seo-hwa’s lower abdomen. The spot of the dantian, the most vulnerable point for any martial artist.
Even for a third-class warrior, it was a place that made the body go cold with shock when struck.
And that pain was something I understood better than anyone, having had my own dantian shattered once before.
The moment I felt my fist make contact, I leaned my whole body in and lashed out with my shoulder and arm together.
Bang!
The sound of the blow burst from the end of my fist.
It wasn’t merely a technique and footwork copied in form; I had poured into it as much power as my current state allowed.
The problem was that the amount of power I possessed was pitifully small.
Being struck in the vital point by Plum Blossom Fist had only stunned Ha Seo-hwa for a moment.
After rolling across the floor several times, she quickly righted herself. Then she shot straight toward me and swung her wooden sword.
The blade swallowed the sky, swelling larger and larger in my vision.
Just before my skull was about to be crushed, I dragged the sword I was holding upward with force and set it at an angle.
Crash!
The impact exploded through the wooden sword.
It didn’t break, but the sheer strength drove my knees buckling first, and then the rest of me followed.
In the end, when I couldn’t hold the force any longer and landed on my backside, Ha Seo-hwa’s wooden sword stopped just a breath from my throat.
“……”
We held each other’s gaze in silence. And because we did, the training yard did the same. Instructor Kwon ought to have been the one to decide the winner, but perhaps he was too stunned to speak, because no sound came from him yet.
Though she had forced me to my knees, Ha Seo-hwa wore the expression of someone who had already sensed defeat.
Even in my previous life—no, including this one—I had never seen such fierce emotion on her face.
There was a trace of resentment, a great deal of embarrassment, and the sharp distortion of shame.
To measure herself against a disciple who had only been training for half a year with internal energy rather than sword skill was, in effect, to admit her own shortcomings.
Unable to remain where I was any longer, I got up and clasped my hands in a formal salute.
“I learned a great deal, senior sister.”
Ha Seo-hwa drew back her sword and met my eyes.
She stayed that way for a long moment before finally answering.
“……So did I.”
After that brief declaration of victory, I looked back at Instructor Kwon.
While Ha Seo-hwa had been hesitating, he had recovered himself. After giving a single nod, he announced the result of the spar.
“Sparring concluded. Ha Seo-hwa is disqualified for excessive use of internal energy. Yoo Sung-woon wins!”
At Instructor Kwon’s announcement, Hwa-yeon Hall shook with noise.
“Waaaaah!”
Some shouted in excitement, while others clapped.
I returned to my seat amid the rain of applause.
For this one instant, I had broken free from envy and resentment. There were not many sects that would cheer like this for both the victor and the defeated.
Ha Seo-hwa walked back to her seat in a daze, her steps almost dragging.
She had always been a woman obsessed with training.
However young she was now, her nature would not change.
Because she was still a child whose inner self had not yet hardened, it was hard to read what she was thinking.
If I had to guess, she was probably turning over in her mind why she had been pushed onto the defensive during the spar.
I, too, felt a pang of regret.
If I’d had more muscle on this body, or even just a little more internal energy, the outcome would have been decided the moment Plum Blossom Fist landed.
More training. Harder training.
With a body this weak, I couldn’t properly bear the force of intense martial arts.
In truth, if the spar had gone on longer, Ha Seo-hwa would have had no trouble taking the victory from me.
It seemed only the martial instructors noticed it, but my sword had begun to slow as the exchange continued.
My technique was excellent, but my stamina and strength couldn’t support it.
Only because I had overwhelmed her so thoroughly had the third-generation disciples been unable to tell.
It wasn’t until I’d shown the sudden act of casting my sword from my body that I’d been able to land a single decisive blow.
It was regrettable, but with my current condition, there was a limit to what I could reveal.
Silently celebrating to myself, I looked out over the training platform.
Instructor Kwon called the next pair of disciples forward. The two of them sparred at the center of the platform, but most of the disciples’ attention remained on me and Ha Seo-hwa.
The senior brothers who had been watching me walk toward the platform with concern just moments earlier were looking at me differently now.
“Senior brother. Doesn’t this mean a new favorite for the Plum Blossom Orchid Joint Assembly has appeared?”
At someone’s question, another replied in a chiding tone, “Why are you worrying about something that won’t happen for two years? We can just work harder too.”
“No, I mean—if even Seo-hwa senior sister lost by disqualification, then the result is already decided, isn’t it?”
“The master said that if you work hard, results will surely follow.”
“Both of you, lower your voices. I can hear everything.”
I can hear everything.
They were whispering, but not very quietly.
I’d ended up overhearing them by accident, but their words made me think of something good.
The Plum Blossom Orchid Joint Assembly was held two years from now.
The Plum Blossom Orchid Joint Assembly was a martial tournament for younger disciples, hosted by Mount Hua.
Since prizes like swords and elixirs were offered, not only disciples of the Mount Hua Sect but also promising young heirs from other sects and clans would often take part.
What I lacked most desperately was the amount of internal energy I possessed.
For an ordinary third-generation disciple, the only pills they could hope to take when they were young were Soyeon Pills and Plum Blossom Pills.
You received a Plum Blossom Pill after one year in the sect, and if you fully absorbed its energy, it could build up half a year’s worth of internal force.
That still wouldn’t be enough.
Once I began traveling the jianghu, I would seek out and consume all sorts of rare medicines, but I needed to raise my cultivation early if I wanted to plan for the future. Of course I did.
How many chances would I get to raise my internal power from such a young age?
As I was putting together plans for the future, my field of vision suddenly darkened.
The area around me had gone quiet as well.
When I looked up, Ha Seo-hwa was standing in front of me, blocking out the sun.
“The Falling Blossom Sword Art.”
“Pardon?”
“How do you know the Falling Blossom Sword Art?”
It had been an intentional display, but I hadn’t expected her to ask before even a second-generation disciple did.
I said the words I had prepared.
“I copied it after seeing the master demonstrate it half a year ago.”
“Copied it? Just from seeing it once before?”
“Yes. If even senior sister could recognize it, then I’m relieved I managed to imitate it properly.”
Ha Seo-hwa didn’t seem pleased with my answer.
She stared at me for a long while, then suddenly said, “Spar again tomorrow.”
“……”
“I’ll come to Hwa-yeon Hall again tomorrow. And I’ll sign up for another spar too. So tomorrow—”
“Ah, I’m not planning to spar for the time being. Do your best, senior sister.”
“……Huh?”
Ha Seo-hwa tilted her head, then soon after furrowed her delicate brows.