Mount Hua Never Disappears (5)
'This is…'
Jin Geum-ryong saw the crimson blooming within the Snow Flower he himself had created.
Just a single, faint blossom.
Like a drop of blood fallen onto a field of pure white snow, it was no more than a tiny red speck—bright beyond measure, yet pitifully small.
And yet that speck quickly took on the unmistakable shape of a plum blossom.
One bloom. Then another. The plum blossoms that burst forth in an instant began to mingle with his Snow Flower.
They melted.
Just as snow melted under the spring sun, the snow flowers where the red plum blossoms bloomed began to dissolve away, little by little.
'Plum blossoms?'
He had heard Mount Hua could no longer make plum blossoms bloom. That was why everyone believed Mount Hua would never rise again.
Mount Hua’s symbol, by any measure, was the plum blossom. A Mount Hua that could no longer make those blossoms bloom could no longer be called the same Mount Hua as before.
And yet, in this very moment, the plum blossoms of the Mount Hua everyone had thought gone were blooming once more before Jin Geum-ryong’s eyes.
And more vividly, more brilliantly than ever.
"I-inconceivable!"
He could not believe it.
It was one thing to understand Chung Myung drawing plum blossoms again with his sword.
That was not what Jin Geum-ryong could not understand.
What he could not accept was the fact that the Snow Flower he had desperately summoned was melting away before Mount Hua’s plum blossoms.
'Why?'
This was the Snow Flower Twelve Sword.
Within this sword lay the efforts of the Southern Edge Sect over the past hundred years. It was a new sword art containing the essence of all Southern Edge swordsmanship, proof that the Southern Edge Sect was still advancing—wasn’t that exactly what the Snow Flower Twelve Sword was?
Even if the legendary Plum Blossom Sword Art of Mount Hua was being recreated here, the Snow Flower Twelve Form should still be several levels beyond it.
There was no way a relic of a bygone age could defeat them!
And yet.
Why was this happening?
It melted away.
It crumbled.
The pure white snow flowers he had created vanished the instant they touched Chung Myung’s red plum blossoms, as though they had never existed at all.
"Why?"
Jin Geum-ryong’s eyes began to shake.
He could not have unfolded a more perfect sword. It was a sword manifested in a form so complete that the very word “perfect” felt insufficient. So why could it not even withstand those shabby plum blossoms?
The Snow Flower Twelve Form shattered.
The Southern Edge Sect’s sword warped and buckled.
It collapsed.
Along with his pride.
"Wha—"
Everything he had built up until now was scattering to the winds before that red plum blossom.
"W-why why why why why!"
Jin Geum-ryong’s scream shook all of Mount Hua.
Chung Myung swung his sword with half-lidded eyes.
From the tip of his blade, red plum blossoms burst forth in streams. The Snow Flowers that touched them lost all force and broke apart.
'A shell.'
That was all it was. No—more precisely, it was a counterfeit shell mimicking a shell.
People in this world misunderstood Mount Hua’s sword. Even Mount Hua’s own disciples misunderstood it.
They thought the Plum Blossom Sword Art—no, Mount Hua’s sword—was a technique that simply created the shape of plum blossoms. A sword that faithfully recreated the sight of plum blossoms fluttering beautifully through the air.
So many believed Mount Hua’s sword was perfected by making the plum blossom form as beautiful and intricate as possible.
But was that really so?
Mount Hua was a Taoist sect.
All of Mount Hua’s sword arts were merely part of the path toward the Dao.
Wudang took Taiji as its origin.
Jingang took the sun as its origin.
Gongdong took the Five Elements as its origin.
Every Taoist sect in the world sought to resemble some aspect of nature, using their own bodies to embody the Dao as their ultimate goal.
But Mount Hua was different.
Mount Hua alone pursued nothing but plum blossoms through its sword.
When Wudang’s sword reached perfection, it became Taiji. When Jingang’s sword reached perfection, it became the sun. And Gongdong’s sword re-created the principles of the Five Elements in the world.
But Mount Hua only had plum blossoms. Just plum blossoms.
That was what made Mount Hua different from the other Taoist sects. It made them seem like a sect with a strong secular bent, one whose hearts were easily stolen by things beautiful and splendid.
But was that truly all there was?
Did Mount Hua’s sword really pursue only the shape of a plum blossom?
'As if.'
Everyone had misunderstood.
Only after swinging the sword again and again, making plum blossoms bloom again and again, living his whole life with Mount Hua’s sword until at last he stood where no one else had ever reached, did he finally understand.
What Mount Hua’s sword sought to recreate was never the plum blossom itself.
Mount Hua’s sword did not imitate plum blossoms. Mount Hua’s sword made plum blossoms bloom.
'Not the blossom.'
It was the act of blooming itself.
"Opening bloom."
It was the conception of life.
The fruit of waiting, the culmination of endurance after surviving a long, long winter at last bursting into bloom.
Mount Hua had simply drawn plum blossoms because Mount Hua was a mountain full of plum blossoms. If a sword could bring forth new life from its tip, what did it matter what kind of flower it was?
The essence of Mount Hua’s swordsmanship was blooming.
Those whose eyes were stolen by the plum blossom’s beauty, whose souls were mesmerized by the blade’s sharpness, could never reach the true essence of Mount Hua’s sword arts.
And if anyone understood that Mount Hua’s sword was not pursuing the plum blossom but blooming itself—yes, if one had reached the level Chung Myung had attained—there was no need even to distinguish between sword manuals.
It did not have to be the Plum Blossom Sword Manual. It did not have to be the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art.
At the end of the Seven Plum Blossoms Sword, at the end of the Falling Flower Sword, even at the end of the Yukhap Sword, plum blossoms would bloom.
That was the true meaning of Mount Hua’s sword art.
What those who bore Mount Hua’s name should hold in their hearts.
Those who failed to understand that truth and let themselves be blinded by visible splendor and beauty would spend eternity wandering the swamp of glamor.
Yes.
Just like Jin Geum-ryong now.
Just like the Snow Flower Twelve Form they had created.
Chung Myung’s gaze caught the stunned Southern Edge disciples standing on the duel platform, staring blankly at the scene before them.
'Look.'
Watch how your sword collapses.
The human memory was a strange thing.
The sight of Southern Edge’s sword being broken by Chung Myung’s brighter, redder sword in this duel that would decide Southern Edge’s fate would burn itself into their minds like an indelible brand.
Every time they swung a sword, they would remember this sight, and every time they trained, they would unconsciously try to imitate it.
In the end, even their idea of strength would be unable to escape this sword.
More brilliant. Ever more brilliant.
But at the end of it all, there would be nothing. Only emptiness.
The harder they chased splendor, the more Southern Edge would lose its own sword and sink deeper into the mire.
Even if the people they trusted betrayed them.
Even if they lost the sword art that formed the core of their sect.
Even if their mortal enemy pushed all the way to their main mountain.
Mount Hua would not vanish.
As long as Mount Hua’s spirit remained, as long as what Mount Hua pursued remained, then like a plum blossom that had withered only to endure the winter and bloom again, Mount Hua would once again shake the world with its name.
But if they lost their sword? If they lost what they were supposed to pursue? If they abandoned their very meaning?
Even without an enemy to destroy them, a sect could collapse on its own.
This sword would seep into Southern Edge’s spirit like poison and become a curse that bound their future forever.
'See it!'
Look carefully!
What you tried to steal. What you wanted so badly.
Let me show you.
This will become an eternal shackle for you, and the greatest revenge possible against the shameless fools you are.
Chung Myung’s sword moved with exquisite grace across the sky. From its tip, tiny buds of plum blossoms bloomed.
One blossom. Then another.
The plum blossoms bloomed without end.
Flowers blossomed and poured their life into the world.
The limitless Way divided into yin and yang and became Taiji, and Taiji in turn split into the Five Elements. The Five Elements formed the world, and from that world life was born.
It flowed on. In the end, the world was nothing more than an endless repetition of birth.
Within this blooming, there existed the Dao the distant ancestors of Mount Hua had sought to reach.
Chung Myung’s eyes fell on Mount Hua’s disciples. The sight of them staring at Mount Hua’s sword as if they had lost their souls stirred a strange wistfulness in him.
'This too is my atonement.'
Something that should have been passed down but never was.
So look at it now, even if only now.
This is what you lost.
This is where you were meant to reach someday.
"Ah…"
A sigh escaped Hyun Jong’s lips.
He didn’t know why he felt this way. The scene before his eyes had transcended reason and reached him through the heart itself.
Plum blossoms were in full bloom across the world.
In Mount Hua, which still felt barren and desolate, plum blossoms that should not yet have bloomed were flowering in profusion.
And there, too.
There was the spring that had seemed as though it would never come.
The spring that had never arrived, no matter how the seasons changed.
The spring that never came even as the bright-eyed boy became a robust young man, and the robust young man became a middle-aged man bowed under responsibility, and finally that middle-aged man’s hair turned white and his face wrinkled with age.
That spring, which had been waited for and yearned for so desperately, only to remain forever out of reach, was right there.
Moisture gathered at the corners of Hyun Jong’s eyes.
It was here.
The Mount Hua he had wanted to see so badly. The sword of Mount Hua he had waited for all his life, and then waited some more.
It was right here.
A smile touched Hyun Jong’s lips.
Even as the tears still would not stop, Hyun Jong smiled brighter than anyone else through that drenched face.
"Mount Hua."
We are here.
After enduring those bitter years, after enduring and enduring still more, at last the flowers bloom here.
"Mount Hua will not vanish."
Fed by his life, his patience, and his waiting, the first plum blossom in a hundred years was blooming here, right now.
It vanished.
The Snow Flowers Jin Geum-ryong had created faded away like an illusion. The cold, cutting blossoms of snow were swept aside by the warm spring breeze, and in their place, the plum blossoms of spring filled the world.
Blooming. And blooming again.
The red plum blossoms that spread across the mountains and hills soon filled Jin Geum-ryong’s field of vision beyond all measure.
It was more like a sea of plum blossoms.
A forest of blossoms that had opened so densely the end could not be seen.
'This is… this is Mount Hua.'
This was Mount Hua’s sword.
The sword of Mount Hua that the Southern Edge elders had feared so deeply, and tried so desperately to emulate.
Only now did Jin Geum-ryong understand why the older generations of Southern Edge had looked upon the name Mount Hua with such fear.
There was something in this sword that Southern Edge did not possess.
A sword that belonged only to Mount Hua, and could never be reached by Southern Edge’s blade.
The wind blew. And with that gentle wind, the plum blossoms in bloom all began to fly at once.
The whole world was filled with petals.
The sight of countless petals surging into the sky all at once was beyond what could be described as magnificent.
'Beautiful.'
Jin Geum-ryong stared at the scene, dazed.
Even though he could not possibly be unaware of his own situation, he found himself lost in the dancing plum blossoms before him.
It was a vision not of this world. A sight that seemed to draw the soul in.
'What is different?'
Why could he not create this brilliance?
Why was his sword not this beautiful?
Why?
The plum blossoms did not answer.
They simply swept over the world—softly, magnificently, and with overwhelming grandeur.
And then.
A single plum blossom petal, drifting on the breeze and pressing itself softly onto Jin Geum-ryong’s forehead as he engraved the scene he would never forget into his eyes like a brand.
Quietly.
Very quietly, it came to rest there.