He Really Chose His Moment Today (3)
Inside a spacious inner chamber, the Namgung Clan swordsmen sat with their backs against the wall, wordlessly staring up at the ceiling. Even with so many people crowded into the room, not a single person spoke.
The atmosphere was beyond gloomy. It was so heavy that even “despair” hardly did it justice.
In the middle of that crushing silence, Namgung Dan let out a quiet sigh.
Under normal circumstances, he would have tried to lift the mood somehow. Of course, leading the group was Namgung Dowi’s role, but whenever there was an awkward gap that the young patriarch could not quite fill, it had always been Namgung Dan who stepped in to help.
But right now, Namgung Dan had neither the heart nor the space to care about anyone else’s feelings.
How could he? The one who had done the most to create this miserable atmosphere was none other than Namgung Dan himself.
He lifted a hand and rubbed his face.
It was a humiliating defeat he could not even begin to put into words. The fact that he had been defeated without landing a proper counterblow by Dang So-so, who had not even been learning the sword for five years yet, had stripped away the last shred of room he had left for excuses.
What, exactly, was he supposed to say now?
How…
Even now, the image of Dang So-so’s sword flashing straight toward his head was still vivid in his mind.
What made it even harder to bear was that he could not find a single part of her victory that could be blamed on luck.
He had been outclassed in the fundamentals.
The force in her sword. The precision of her sword path. Even her internal energy.
It made no sense. How could he—someone who had devoted more than twenty years of his life to the sword—be beaten so thoroughly at the most basic level by Dang So-so?
“...How could something like this happen?”
At the murmur, everyone’s eyes turned.
Namgung Hyuk stared ahead with a dazed expression and muttered, “How… could we…”
Silence answered him. No one could offer a reply.
“Brother. Are we the ones who were wrong?”
“....”
“How can we possibly have… to Sister So-so...”
“Enough.”
Namgung Dan cut him off with a faint edge of irritation.
“Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Brother...”
“No matter how many excuses you make, the facts don’t change. We lost. Miserably.”
“....”
“What other reason could there be? We were simply weaker than Sister So-so.”
“That makes no sense, so of course we’re saying this!”
Namgung Dan let out a short laugh.
No sense, huh...
What was he supposed to do?
By all the common sense he knew, it should have been impossible. But had it not happened anyway? If that was the case, then the conclusion was obvious.
“Then our common sense was wrong.”
“Brother!”
Namgung Dan fixed Namgung Hyuk with a cool stare.
“What? Are you going to insist it isn’t true?”
“Th-that’s not...”
“Then are you going to pick up your sword and fight her again?”
Namgung Hyuk finally drooped his head. He knew it too.
No matter how unfairly he shouted, it would not close the gap in skill. As they were now, they could not take on Dang So-so.
“...I just can’t understand it, Brother.”
At Namgung Hyuk’s weak voice, Namgung Dan dragged a hand down his face. He could not understand it either.
But…
“There’s nothing to understand.”
“Pardon?”
“You just accept it. We are weaker than Mount Hua’s younger generation.”
....
The Namgung Clan swordsmen all lowered their heads.
Namgung Dan spoke in a self-mocking voice.
“We already saw them in action at Maehwado, didn’t we?”
“...Yes.”
“And yet we still refused to truly acknowledge them. Even after seeing with our own eyes that they swept away the water bandits without being able to lift a finger against them, we stubbornly convinced ourselves there must have been some other reason besides skill for their accomplishments.”
As he spoke, a hollow emptiness clung to Namgung Dan’s face.
“We told ourselves that because we had worn the bandits down at the risk of our lives, they were able to shine when they arrived later. That if the situation had been reversed, we would have done the same to the bandits ourselves.... Things like that.”
“Brother...”
“But.”
Namgung Dan slowly shook his head.
“Now that I’ve experienced it, I understand. It’s just... yes, they’re simply stronger than us.”
He did not want to admit it, but he had to accept the truth now.
Dang So-so alone was that strong.
Then how strong must the disciples who had entered Mount Hua before her be? And what kind of absurd talent must those famed Mount Hua’s Five Swords possess, if they were counted among the sect’s very best?
If it were the young patriarch, could he handle them?
Only a day ago, Namgung Dan would have answered without hesitation: yes. Namgung Dowi was Namgung Dowi; his skill belonged to an entirely different level from the other young swordsmen of the Namgung Clan.
But now, he could no longer say it with confidence.
“Still, Brother,”
Namgung Hyuk said, clearly unconvinced, “we also… we also worked hard, didn’t we?”
Namgung Dan understood his frustration.
Had they been lazy? No, absolutely not.
The Namgung Clan, humiliated in the Yangtze River Tragedy, had done everything they could over the past three years to avenge themselves against the righteous sects. And yet how was he supposed to explain the gap that had opened up so completely?
“Hyuk.”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Did you look at Sister So-so’s hands?”
“....”
Namgung Hyuk fell silent. Namgung Dan slowly swept his gaze over everyone watching from the room.
To persuade others, he first needed to find an explanation that even he himself could accept. He was not fully convinced yet, either, but standing in the position of the one doing the persuading made him see things that had not been visible before.
“Let me see your hands.”
“....”
“Hold them out.”
Namgung Hyuk awkwardly extended his hands. There were a few scars on them as well. But the number of those scars could not even begin to compare with the marks on Dang So-so’s hands.
Silently looking at them, Namgung Dan finally spoke.
“I... remember the old Sister So-so.”
“Pardon?”
“She was truly beautiful.”
The eyes of the Namgung Clan swordsmen narrowed at once. Seeing their reaction, Namgung Dan startled and hurriedly waved both hands.
“N-no! That’s not what I meant!”
Having been misunderstood, he cleared his throat, his face reddening.
“Back then, Sister So-so’s hands were so fair and clean. The white hands that showed beneath her splendid robes suited the phrase delicate jade fingers perfectly.”
Several of those who remembered the old Dang So-so nodded in agreement.
“But what about Sister So-so’s hands now?”
At that, many of them turned solemn. The hands they had seen from Dang So-so today belonged to a swordsman—hands thick with calluses and covered in scars.
Just looking at them was enough to guess how grueling her training had been. She had endured hardships harsh enough to completely lose the hands she had once had.
Namgung Dan spread his own hand wide, then looked at the scars etched across it.
“You worked hard?”
“....”
“I’m sure you did. Yes, you must have tried. But... it seems our ‘effort’ and theirs are different things altogether. Just look at how clean my hands are, even though I’ve trained longer than they have.”
“...Brother.”
Namgung Dan suddenly felt ashamed.
He had thought he had worked hard. He had thought he had lived more diligently than anyone else. But his hands bore none of the proof.
While the Mount Hua swordsmen swung their swords over and over until both hands were covered in scars, he had been content with the same obvious training he had always done.
“Did we truly make an effort?”
“....”
“Can you honestly stand before them and say we worked as hard as they did? We who shouted that our bodies would be ruined if we trained for just a few days—were we really?”
No one could answer.
They had realized it too.
The training they had once mocked as nothing but brutal self-abuse was something those Mount Hua disciples performed as a matter of course. And not only that—they did it at an intensity far beyond what the Namgung swordsmen had managed in a matter of days.
Namgung Dan let out a deep sigh. At first, he had only meant to calm everyone down, but now his words were filled with genuine feeling.
“Talent, environment, the superiority of one sword art over another—those things only matter between people who have done the same amount of work. We have no right to compare swords with them.”
The Namgung Clan swordsmen, their faces flushed red, could not even lift their heads.
“What makes me most ashamed is...”
Namgung Dan bit his lip.
“Even after witnessing the end of those who died to save us at Maehwado, we still couldn’t throw away our useless pride.”
“...That’s...”
“Is it really so humiliating to learn from Mount Hua?”
After asking the question, he gave a hollow laugh.
“At this point, I find myself far more ashamed of the current me—the one who knows there are people working harder than I am, and yet still clings to pointless pride.”
No one answered him. They only lowered their heads.
“I’ll join tomorrow’s training.”
“Brother...”
“I don’t intend to force anyone. The choice is yours. But I... if it means I can grow stronger, if it gives me a way to restore the Namgung Clan’s name, I won’t turn it down. I won’t just keep talking about it like I have until now. I’m going to test where my limits really are.”
Namgung Dan rose to his feet. Then he turned his gaze to the man sitting in the corner.
Namgung Dowi was looking at him in silence.
Namgung Dan bit his lip lightly.
The young patriarch must have already understood.
The unbridgeable gap between Mount Hua and Namgung. So how frustrating must it have been to watch them cling only to pride?
Namgung Dan bowed deeply toward Namgung Dowi. Then, without hesitation, he walked out.
After he left, a thick silence settled over the room. The Namgung Clan swordsmen sitting against the walls each sank into deep thought.
Seated in the corner, Namgung Dowi watched them with a small smile.
So this is only the starting point.
After so many twists and turns, they had only just arrived at the starting line. If they were going to run forward, they first needed to know exactly where they stood.
Tonight was likely to be a very long one for them.
They would have to find the answer to a question no one else could answer for them.
But Namgung Dowi believed in them.
At the very least, if they were people who understood the weight of the name Namgung, then whatever choice they made deserved respect.
Namgung Dowi would simply watch over that choice...
“Young Patriarch.”
“Hmm?”
At that moment, Namgung Hyuk approached him cautiously. Namgung Dowi looked at him with a puzzled expression and asked, “...What is it?”
Namgung Hyuk hesitated for a moment, then carefully opened his mouth, glancing at Namgung Dowi as if worried he might be rude.
“Um... Young Patriarch. If it’s not too presumptuous... may I ask you something?”