Grandfather’s Switch Is Supposed to Hurt (5)
The poison smoke scorched by flame spread high into the sky.
Tang Oe could only gape at the sight, his mouth hanging open.
“H-How…?”
Watching him, Chung Myung let out a snort.
It had to be absurd. Who could have imagined that some blue-green youngster would wield Samadhi True Fire—the mark of a Peak Realm master—and not just any flame, but one of such scale?
In truth, Samadhi True Fire was not a technique that demanded vast inner power. What mattered was not raw strength, but state and understanding. The key was repeated cultivation until one could wield inner energy at will, as easily as breathing.
In terms of controlling inner energy, Chung Myung had already reached a realm unmatched under heaven.
Still, I was the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, after all.
Calling that a “background” was a little strange, though.
In any case, for Chung Myung, igniting Samadhi True Fire was no difficult thing.
Any lingering poison his body could not cleanse on its own could simply be burned away like this, just as he had once burned out alcohol poison.
Chung Myung glanced sidelong at Tang Oe.
A grin slipped out at the look of utter shock on his face.
“You really are frogs in a well, aren’t you?”
Tang Bo had once tried to break the Tang Family’s insularity. He believed that if they lived while clinging only to their own martial arts under the name of the dominant family of Sichuan, they would never become the true hegemon of the world.
But judging from Tang Oe’s reaction, it seemed that a hundred years had passed and the Tang Family had changed at all.
“Then I guess I’ll have to make you change.”
Even if he had to crack their skulls open to do it.
Chung Myung drew his sword and advanced slowly toward Tang Oe.
Tang Oe hurriedly stepped back and flung out a Seven Treasure Soul-Chasing Sand from his sleeve, scattering it wildly at Chung Myung.
“D-Die! You monster!”
Fsssss.
The sand that came flying struck Chung Myung’s body and scattered away.
“Ah, spit!”
Chung Myung spat out the grit that had gotten into his mouth.
“Damn, that’s disgusting.”
Tang Oe stared blankly at the scene.
The sand soaked with Seven Treasure Soul-Chasing Poison—poison said to kill a water buffalo before it had taken seven steps—was being brushed off like ordinary grit. Watching it, he almost felt empty inside.
“Poison… the Tang Family’s poison…?”
Tang Oe screamed, his face twisting with rage.
“This is impossible! Absolutely impossible! Aaaaargh!”
From his sleeves poured every kind of poison imaginable.
Black and red smoke, blue liquid, purple poison pills—they all flew at Chung Myung in a wild storm. The force of it was so terrifying that even the Tang Family members watching the duel staggered back in alarm, retreating farther and farther away.
But Chung Myung simply parted the poison smoke blooming like clouds with his hand and knocked aside the poison liquid raining down like water with his sword.
“I’m telling you, it’s useless.”
His voice was utterly calm.
“You, you son of a—!”
Tang Oe let out a howl of fury like a man who’d lost his mind.
How! How could this happen?
He could not lose.
Even if he were to lose, it could not be like this.
If he were defeated so completely, then he would lose the very reason for his existence.
It would all be denied.
Everything he had built.
If the poison he had spent his whole life mastering became worthless, if even the judgment that had been his final pride were invalidated, then what reason did he have to exist as a martial artist at all?
“I won’t! I won’t end like this!”
With murderous intent flooding his eyes, Tang Oe drew hidden weapons from within his sleeves.
Sharpened flying daggers shot toward Chung Myung at terrifying speed.
Chung Myung swung his Plum Blossom Sword, knocking them aside.
Weak.
His expression twisted.
The flying daggers were merely fast. They held none of the strange variations found in Tang Gun-ak’s daggers, nor any of the seasoned mastery that came from relentless practice.
“You bastard!”
From Tang Oe’s fingertips, more than ten coins shot out.
Tang Family Coins.
The generic term for the coins used as hidden weapons by the Tang Family.
The coins Tang Bo used in the past had been worn, grubby with use.
Even when Chung Myung told him to take care of them, Tang Bo had only puffed up with pride, saying they were proof of training. But the Tang Family coins now flying toward Chung Myung were spotless. So unused they looked like brand-new money.
Chung Myung’s face hardened.
Tang Oe’s position was not so different from Tang Bo’s past status.
Tang Oe was shaking the Tang Family through his supreme position as an elder council leader, and Tang Bo had been little different from an outsider who had left the family, yet both had once held the identity of a great elder of the Tang Clan.
And yet the difference in ability was this pathetic?
“Idiot.”
Chung Myung’s sword sliced through the incoming coins in one stroke.
Was this the Tang Family’s hidden-weapon art that even the Plum Blossom Sword Saint Chung Myung had once found alarming?
What if Tang Bo were standing on the other side right now?
He would have crushed the current Chung Myung in less than three exchanges.
And yet this fool had been strutting around calling himself an elder of the Tang Family with a skill level like this.
Anger surged in his chest.
You didn’t want to see the Tang Family reduced to this, did you.
Tang Bo had clearly understood that if they believed poison was all-purpose and devoted themselves only to poison, the Tang Family would inevitably regress.
And what lay before Chung Myung now was the Tang Family future Tang Bo had never wanted to see.
“If you can’t understand it with your head, I’ll pound it into your body!”
Batting away the hidden weapons, Chung Myung charged straight at Tang Oe. The sight sent a flash of panic across Tang Oe’s face.
“Aaaaargh! I won’t lose! I won’t loseeee!”
Hidden weapons and poison poured from Tang Oe’s sleeves in a frantic spray. Poison and weapons soared into the air and began to fall like rain.
“M-Mancheon-hwaeu?”
“It’s Mancheon-hwaeu!”
A cry of shock pierced Chung Myung’s ears.
No, you idiots!
Mancheon-hwaeu was one of the Tang Family’s two legendary secret arts, along with Invisible Poison. It was not something Tang Oe could use.
The unfinished Mancheon-hwaeu Tang Bo had once shown had been so beautiful it made onlookers fall into a trance.
Yes.
A rain of petals covering the world.
It had been like…
Watch this well, Tang Family!
It was only an imitation, but right now, in all the world, only he could imitate it even this much!
This was Tang Bo’s understanding, and his gift, sent to the Tang Family across a hundred years of time!
The hidden weapons and poison that had soared into the sky now came raining down like a storm.
Within that rain of poison and weapons, Chung Myung merely raised his sword and stood still.
As though the falling poison and hidden weapons did not exist at all, he pointed his sword toward the sky and quietly closed his eyes.
It trembled.
The tip of Chung Myung’s sword began to shake endlessly.
Then, from that trembling point, countless plum blossoms began to bloom.
One blossom. Then another.
Soon the blossoms multiplied into dozens, then into hundreds, until the entire dueling platform was blanketed in plum blossoms.
“Ah….”
Watching the sight, Tang Gun-ak found his mouth open before he knew it, his mind going blank.
This is…
The sword Chung Myung had shown in their duel was different from this.
He couldn’t quite explain how, but Tang Gun-ak’s instincts were screaming at him not to miss this sword.
Is this an illusion?
Plum blossoms bloomed.
The blossoms covering the mountain all at once scattered their petals in a warm breeze from somewhere unknown.
Countless petals met the rain of poison and hidden weapons pouring down from above.
And then!
Shaaaaaaak! Shaaaak!
The rain of hidden weapons, which had descended with such terrifying force, lost all its momentum the instant it collided with the plum blossom petals that looked so fragile. Then it was flung away, powerless.
Poison too. Hidden weapons too.
Nothing could break through the dance of the plum blossoms.
“A-ah…”
Tang Oe stood there with both arms hanging slack, staring blankly at the sight.
The poison and hidden weapons he had thrown were rebuffed helplessly.
And then!
They bloomed.
Plum blossoms bloomed, and bloomed again, sending their petals into the sky with indifferent grace.
In an instant, the sky above Tang Oe was filled entirely with plum blossom petals.
A rain of petals fell from the heavens.
Some petals floated lightly upward, drifting soft and slow; others fell with a precarious, impossible grace, as if about to be caught by the wind. Some plunged straight down, while others remained in place, dancing with refined elegance.
Hundreds, thousands of petals that covered the sky each showed a different movement.
A rain of petals.
And a dance of petals.
“H-How…?”
Tang Oe let out a scream more miserable than any he had ever given in his life.
“How can you be the one—!”
The petals that had covered the world all flew at Tang Oe at once.
“Aaaaaaaargh!”
Tang Oe flailed his arms madly, pouring in inner power as he tried to knock aside the incoming petals.
His sleeves moved so quickly they could no longer be seen.
Clang-clang-clang-clang-clang!
His sleeves, reinforced by inner power until they were harder than steel, struck at the delicate petals with all their might.
But the petals flying toward him were simply too many for a man’s two arms to block.
Shhk.
“Ghk!”
A petal grazing his side carved out a small cut.
Thwip!
“Urk!”
A petal landing on his back sliced through flesh.
“I, I am—!”
Tang Oe’s eyes were bloodshot red.
“I am Tang Oe of the Tang Family!”
The swirling petals covered Tang Oe’s entire body.
“Aaaaaaaargh!”
Now Tang Oe could no longer be seen. Only his pitiful screams echoed thunderously through the Tang Family grounds.
Ssshhh.
And at the same time, the petals that had seemed ready to whirl through the entire world melted away like snow touched by spring sunlight.
Swish.
Chung Myung slid the sword he had drawn back into its scabbard.
Then he lifted his head and looked at the man standing before him.
Tang Oe.
He stared at Chung Myung with half-lidded eyes, dazed.
His clothes had long since been torn to rags. Through the tatters, countless tiny wounds were visible across his body.
Tang Oe forced the words out.
“...What sword is that?”
“Plum Blossom Filling the Sky.”
“...Plum Blossom Filling the Sky. So this… this is the sword of Mount Hua.”
“Uh….”
Chung Myung scratched the back of his head a couple of times.
In truth, it was a sword he had crafted by mixing Mount Hua’s Plum Blossom Filling the Sky with the insights of Mancheon-hwaeu that Tang Bo had once shown him.
In other words, it was a sword of Mount Hua, but also a secret art of the Tang Family.
Of course, Tang Oe would never know that.
“Truly….”
Tang Oe’s body slowly toppled.
“It was a sword like a dream….”
Thud.
Tang Oe collapsed to the floor.
At the same moment, a cold light entered Chung Myung’s eyes.
Now that his martial arts have been ruined, I’m sure the Tang Family Lord will take care of the rest.
No matter how much Chung Myung fought in public and brought Tang Oe down before everyone, in the end everything depended on the Tang Family’s will.
This was as far as Chung Myung could take it.
He had brought Tang Oe down and crippled his martial arts. He had proven, before countless witnesses, how useless the elder council truly was. That was all.
Chung Myung turned and looked at the Tang Family Lord and the family members beside him.
“How was that?”
Tang Gun-ak’s expression as he looked back at him was complicated and unreadable.
But only for a moment.
After a short breath, he looked Chung Myung straight in the eye and said, “This duel is the victory of Chung Myung, the Mount Hua Divine Dragon!”
The cheers that followed were not especially loud.
The sky was clear beyond words.
It was a moment that hinted at change within the Tang Family, a moment where awkwardness and a faint sense of expectation existed side by side.
Feeling that strange coexistence, Chung Myung looked up at the sky.
Is this enough?
He stared for a long while, then lowered his head with a bitter smile.
There was no way they could hear him.
He knew that.
Everything they said was nothing more than an illusion he had created himself.
The dead do not speak, and the dead do not return.
Only Chung Myung, who had failed to die when he should have and fallen alone into another world, kept clutching at regrets, turning the past over and over in his heart.
Slowly lowering his gaze, Chung Myung looked at his martial brothers and sisters.
Then he murmured inwardly, Don’t worry, you bastard.
I’ll keep an eye on the Tang Family now and then.
Of course, not for free.
Just as Chung Myung was about to descend from the dueling platform with a bitter expression,
- Thank you, Taoist big brother.
Chung Myung turned around before he even realized it.
Tang Bo.
Tang Bo was smiling brightly at him, exactly as he had looked in life.
But that figure vanished like an illusion almost immediately.
Clench.
Chung Myung closed his eyes slightly, fists tightening hard.
The bond that had continued between them ended here. The promise he had failed to keep in his previous life was fulfilled in this moment.
So then…
Rest easy.
Goodbye.
My only friend.