A Day They Would Never Forget (2)
"Look over there."
"Huh?"
Chung Myung pointed toward the sparring grounds and spoke to Yoon Jong.
While Jo Gul was walking over, the Southern Edge Sect disciples swarmed out, hoisted the fallen Gong Jin onto their backs, and were carrying him back to their places.
"What do you think of those Southern Edge guys?"
"What do you mean, what do I think?"
"Are they strong? Or weak?"
"Of course they’re strong."
At Yoon Jong’s answer, Chung Myung narrowed his eyes slightly and looked at him.
"And yet you beat that strong guy?"
"D-don’t twist it around. That’s just how it is, so what do you want me to say?"
Chung Myung snickered and nodded.
"They’re strong. Yeah, strong. Really strong for their age. But if you put it another way, that means they’re weak too."
"...What are you talking about?"
"They’ve learned too much for what they should’ve been learning at that age."
"Isn’t it better to learn and master more?"
"Sahyung."
Chung Myung lifted a hand and drew the shape of a house in the air.
"Martial arts are like building a tower. How high you can build it depends on how solid the foundation is, and how strong the lower levels are."
"...That’s true."
"But those guys built the second floor before they even finished the first, and then the third before they finished the second. In other words, they’ve been piling on the upper levels while still trying to reinforce the lower ones."
"...."
"What do you think happens when people like that smash into a tower whose first floor was built perfectly?"
"It collapses."
"Exactly."
Chung Myung said it like it was nothing.
"All I did was tear out the rotten wood from your first floor and stack stone in its place. It’s harder to build, sure, but once it’s built, it won’t fall apart easily."
"...I still don’t get it. You mean there was a purpose behind that training?"
"What’s the basis of martial arts?"
"Huh?"
Chung Myung’s expression turned faintly serious.
"The basis of martial arts is one thing. Using your body perfectly to strike your opponent accurately. From that one thing, roots spread, a trunk rises, and branches extend. I just made sure my sahyungs could focus on the roots."
"Hmm."
"Watch."
Chung Myung pointed at the sparring ground. Jo Gul was already tangled up with a Southern Edge disciple who had come out.
"A stable lower body, a clean sword path, and the vision to observe everything calmly. And more than anything else... "
Jo Gul’s sword drove back his opponent’s blade and landed a strike.
"...the concentration to squeeze all the strength in your body into a single blow."
Thwack!
Chung Myung smirked.
The Southern Edge disciple crashed to the ground, and Jo Gul stared at the man in front of him with a dazed expression. He kept turning his head this way, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he himself had just done.
"For now, that’s enough. With just that one thing, they can beat up anyone around their own age."
Of course, that wasn’t the whole story.
Chung Myung had completely absorbed the effects of the Maehwadan, which most people would have only half used at best. And through the training that had continued since the very day he first came to Mount Hua, he had forged their bodies into ones that could hold their own against anyone.
If their physiques and inner power were no worse than anyone else’s, then the outcome would usually come down to sword mastery. And those who had only half-learned a dozen different things could never beat someone who had drilled one thing to death.
Jo Gul returned to his place and stared blankly at Chung Myung. Then, right behind him, the next third-generation disciple leapt onto the sparring ground.
They were completely fired up.
Their faces were full of eagerness to test how much they’d improved by fighting quickly.
"I still don’t get it. If it’s really that easy... why didn’t the other sects train like that?"
"Easy?"
Chung Myung tilted his head sharply.
"Sounds like the training up till now was easy for you, huh?"
"N-no. That’s not what I meant. I mean, conceptually it’s simple, so..."
"Sahyung."
"What?"
"Can sahyung spend two-thirds of every day studying, spend the rest of it conducting himself properly, serve his parents with sincerity, never deceive the weak, never covet wealth, show courtesy to those above him, never lose respect for those below him, treat friends with sincerity, and live with unwavering loyalty to the country?"
"...No, I can’t."
"Why not? Do that, and you’d be a gentleman."
"Well..."
Yoon Jong fell silent. He thought he understood what Chung Myung was getting at.
No one didn’t know how to become a true gentleman. But people who actually lived their entire lives by those standards and were truly called gentlemen? Two or three in all of history. That was all, across this vast Central Plains.
In other words, ordinary people couldn’t even do what they already knew was right.
"Dripping water bores through stone. Always strive, and strive again. Nothing matters more than effort. The sages keep stressing effort and perseverance without end. Do you know why?"
"Well..."
"Because people can’t actually do it."
Chung Myung snorted.
In truth, the same had once been true of Chung Myung himself. No matter how many times he had been told that the fundamentals were of utmost importance, he had always craved stronger sword techniques and higher realms.
Even at the final moment of his life, he had only ever looked upward. He had never once looked down.
Only after death had he come to understand it anew.
"Train until it feels like you’ll die, push yourself to your limit every single time, and keep striving and striving. If you actually make that ridiculous nonsense real... "
Chung Myung jerked his chin toward the sparring ground.
Thwack!
Another Southern Edge disciple staggered back, helplessly off balance. His face, twisted in utter embarrassment, was painfully vivid. And the Mount Hua disciple didn’t give him a single opening, pressing relentlessly forward.
"...you end up like that."
"...."
"Most people know and still can’t do it. They can’t push themselves that far. If someone forced them to? In three days, they’d all be lying on the floor screaming that they couldn’t take it anymore. Or they’d run."
Yoon Jong nodded.
Hadn’t they done the same? The one who had grabbed them by the collars and dragged them through it by force had been Chung Myung himself.
"You..."
"It was the sahyungs who did it."
Chung Myung said it firmly.
"This."
"...."
"Once they endured that, the outcome was already decided. There was nothing left to see. The ones who can’t see beneath their own feet and only stare upward have nowhere to stand. A bird whose wings haven’t even grown yet leaps into the sky thinking it can fly, and only then does it realize..."
Chung Myung clicked his tongue at the Southern Edge disciple being carried away.
"...that there’s nothing beneath its feet. And then it falls. Just like now."
Yoon Jong’s eyes trembled.
He had thought the training was excessive. There had been more than once when he’d wanted to curse that coercive method of training to the heavens.
But he endured. He kept going, thinking that if they just kept rolling forward, they’d somehow become stronger. Yet all of that had been meant to look this far ahead?
Where in the world did this brat learn something like this?
Yoon Jong could not understand Chung Myung at all.
But there was one thing he knew for sure.
Thwack!
Another Southern Edge disciple went down to the floor.
He could tell.
His martial siblings were not that different in strength. At least the ten who had come out as representatives were all more or less on the same level, except for Yoon Jong and Jo Gul.
If there had been such a huge difference in the earlier matches, then the result of the bouts that followed would not change either.
In other words...
They’re winning?
Mount Hua’s third-generation disciples were beating Southern Edge?
Mount Hua was beating Southern Edge?
Only now did it feel real.
They were winning against Southern Edge. Against that Southern Edge.
"A-are we... winning?"
No one answered Yoon Jong. They had no means of denying what was happening before their eyes, but believing it was another matter. Up until now, not one of them had ever dared imagine that, as Mount Hua disciples, they could beat Southern Edge.
But there was no need to force themselves to believe it.
No matter what Yoon Jong thought, the matches were proceeding, and the results were manifesting right in front of them as reality.
One person.
Then another.
"Aaaaaaah!"
With a sharp scream, the match ended.
In the blink of an eye, all ten bouts were over.
"Woooooo! We won! We fucking won!"
"We won them all! Dammit!"
"Chung Myung! We did it! We actually did it!"
The third-generation disciples clenched their fists and cheered. Some of them were even in tears. Even the second-generation disciples rushed over and embraced their junior brothers, lifting them up.
The atmosphere felt like a festival.
Ten straight victories.
Every single third-generation disciple had defeated a Southern Edge disciple.
After ten straight losses, they had followed it with ten straight wins.
Which side had the better momentum, which side had gained the greater sense of triumph—there was no need to ask.
At last, Mount Hua’s third-generation disciples had completely defeated Southern Edge’s third-generation disciples.
"Chung Myung!"
Yoon Jong, his face lit with emotion, grabbed Chung Myung by the hand.
"We won! We won! Thank you! Thanks to you... "
Yoon Jong was just about to spill the truth he had kept buried, the words he really did not want to say, when—
"Won?"
With that blunt voice, the whole mood was doused as if cold water had been thrown over it.
Everyone’s gaze turned to Chung Myung. And they saw his head tilt to the side, crooked with unmistakable annoyance.
What the hell is wrong with him now?
Here we go again. Again! My heart can’t take this!
Under everyone’s uneasy stares, he spoke at last.
"This?"
"...What now? What are you about to say this time?"
"You’ve already lost ten. Winning ten back just makes it a tie, doesn’t it?"
Well, yes.
"But still, that’s pretty good..."
"Looks like sahyung doesn’t know."
"Huh?"
"There is no such thing as a tie in my dictionary!"
Chung Myung’s eyes began to glint wildly again.
Oh, please.
Can you at least rein it in when the mood is good? Chung Myung, come on!
"A tiiiiiie? A tie with Southern Edge? If I had to suffer through that, I’d be too ashamed to show my face for the rest of my life!"
And he’d get cursed out till the day he died, even in the afterlife.
The sect leader-sahyung would smile gently and jab at him with words that twisted around like a blade sinking into his chest. And what about the other martial brothers? They’d surely drag him around by the rope and publicly roast him for it.
I’m not seeing that happen.
Fire flared in Chung Myung’s eyes.
If this was going to end with nothing but a tie, then he shouldn’t have started it in the first place.
They’d stolen Mount Hua’s precious Plum Blossom Sword Art and still not paid that debt in full, and now these bastards had the gall to mouth off in front of the sect leader and look down on Mount Hua? And he was supposed to send them back politely?
Then he wouldn’t be Chung Myung.
Chung Myung began to grin like a lunatic.
"This is just the beginning. Yeah, just the beginning. Now! Those bastards aren’t walking back on their own. Heh, heh, heh."
Seeing the madness gleaming in Chung Myung’s eyes, the third-generation disciples began inching backward.
He’s completely lost it.
Did this guy die in his past life because he got stabbed by some Southern Edge brat? Why does he go feral the moment Southern Edge gets involved?
If all that still isn’t enough, what the hell is he planning to do now?
At that moment, Chung Myung sprang up from his seat. At the same time, Yoon Jong shot to his feet as well.
"H-hey! We’ve gotta stop him..."
"Sahyung!"
Just as Yoon Jong was about to shout as he usually did, Chung Myung spoke in a cold voice unlike him.
"Hm?"
Yoon Jong, stunned by the force in that voice, looked at Chung Myung with a dazed expression.
"From now on, don’t miss a single movement of what I do. The same goes for all of you. Understand?"
Once the martial siblings nodded, Chung Myung headed for the sparring ground.
Everyone stared after his back as if bewitched.
It was the back of the one who led Mount Hua, the back they would come to see countless times from now on.