That’s Something We’ll Have to Wait and See (5)
At the sharp throb of pain, Hye Yeon instinctively clutched his jaw.
But right now, what he felt most wasn’t pain. It was disbelief and shock.
I didn’t block it.
Shaolin’s fists were the way of righteousness, the fists of saving lives. They placed priority not on knocking an opponent down, but on steadying one’s own center and deflecting the enemy’s attack.
Hye Yeon had been praised for mastering those fists without any notable shortcomings. And yet he had just taken his opponent’s blow squarely, as it was?
A surprise attack?
No. Impossible.
There was no such thing as a surprise attack on a duel platform. How could surprise attacks exist on a stage where both sides had climbed up in order to fight?
This was clearly a matter of skill.
Startled, Hye Yeon staggered back a little. Then a sharp shout stabbed into him from behind.
“Hye Yeon!”
He flinched at the stern voice and turned around.
Beop Jeong, the abbot of Shaolin, was glaring at him with icy eyes.
“Pull yourself together! You are Shaolin’s Hye Yeon!”
Hye Yeon bit down hard on his lip and sprang back to his feet.
Then he fixed his gaze squarely on Chung Myung and set his stance. Chung Myung’s expression was glacial, his eyes cold as ice.
It was chilling.
It felt as if the warmth in his entire body had been drained away.
Why?
Hye Yeon could not make sense of what was happening.
He was a disciple of Shaolin.
The people he usually sparred with were all outstanding first-generation disciples of Shaolin. Even the elders never refused to personally instruct him.
And yet...
Why is there a pressure here I’ve never even felt from the elders?
Was it because this was not a simple spar?
Was it because he himself was feeling the burden of the finals of the Heavenly Martial Arts Convention?
Could those things really explain this situation?
...If not that, then...
Hye Yeon bit his lip hard.
Impossible.
This was absolutely impossible. Thinking about it logically, did it even make sense for the person standing before him to be superior to a Shaolin elder?
In martial strength, or in the bearing of a martial artist, it was the same. A young man who looked barely past his twenties could not possibly be better than elders who had spent their whole lives cultivating Buddhist law and martial arts.
Absolutely not!
The reason my heart is wavering is because I’m lacking.
If he had maintained a still mind, he wouldn’t have been so helplessly swept away by Chung Myung’s attack. And even if he had allowed the strike, he would not have suffered such a great shock.
“Amitabha.”
Quietly reciting the Buddha’s name to calm himself, Hye Yeon suppressed his trembling and set his stance once more.
He spread his legs a little wider than shoulder width, drew his left hand to his waist, and extended his right hand, palm open, before his chest.
Half-Palm Stance.
The fundamental stance of Shaolin martial arts, and the starting posture of the Arhat Fist, Shaolin’s basic fist technique.
As he took up the familiar stance, stray thoughts faded and his mind began to settle.
I...
He took a deep breath.
— If you can cast aside your weak heart and truly attain the fighting spirit of a warrior, then no one in the world will be able to stand against you. What must be set upright is not your body, but your mind.
I will not waver.
His feet pressed firmly into the earth.
Watching Hye Yeon, Chung Myung wore a strange expression.
So he learned well.
Rather than learned, it was more like he had been born with it.
That was what made Shaolin frightening.
If Mount Hua was the great tree atop a mountain, blooming with brilliant plum blossoms, then Shaolin was a thousand-year-old boulder. It was not flashy, but it did not budge no matter what storms struck it.
Stillness.
The word that symbolized Shaolin.
The reason Shaolin’s martial arts required so many long years to complete was simple. Martial skill could be overcome through talent and effort, but stillness of mind could only be solved by time.
Only after one had weathered countless storms and built a straight heart that never wavered before anything in the world could Shaolin’s martial arts truly reveal their power.
And yet Hye Yeon, at such a young age, was already clutching the very edge of that stillness.
So he was a genius.
He was the sort of genius heaven itself had bestowed.
But...
“Stillness?”
A sneer crept onto Chung Myung’s lips.
“You people?”
It was repulsive.
Who in Shaolin, of all people, was qualified to speak of stillness now?
A mind that never wavered had meaning only when its direction was upright. Could something twisted and unshakable really be called stillness?
That was nothing more than another face of evil.
Of course, Chung Myung had no sense of duty or righteousness telling him that he must punish evil.
But there was one thing he knew for certain.
In this world, only Chung Myung and Mount Hua had the right to judge the hypocrisy of Shaolin and the Nine Sects.
Chung Myung fixed Hye Yeon with a cold stare.
He did not like it.
Those straight eyes.
Those eyes that believed they were walking an upright path without a single speck of shame made his blood boil.
You weren’t the one who should’ve had eyes like that.
It was Mount Hua’s disciples who should have had them.
Eyes overflowing with pride in their own sect.
Eyes that took endless pride in what their ancestors had achieved, and strove to carry on that will.
Yes.
That should have belonged to Mount Hua.
Crack.
Blood seeped from Chung Myung’s lips where he had bitten down hard.
Anger surged uncontrollably to the top of his head.
While Hye Yeon had been blooming like a flower in a greenhouse, supported by all of Shaolin, Mount Hua—the sect that should have enjoyed that same blessing—had been worn down by storms, ground smaller and smaller, and left groaning in pain.
Even Chung Myung could not turn back time. Even if he restored Mount Hua to its rightful place, there was no way to erase the suffering they had endured.
That...
That was what he could not forgive.
“Taaaaaah!”
BOOM!
Hye Yeon’s foot sank into the floor.
He stamped down with tremendous force, then poured internal energy into the rotational power generated at his toes and drove it out through his fist.
A complete discharge of force.
The golden shape of a fist shot swiftly toward Chung Myung’s face. The process of unfolding the technique was not especially fast, but the speed of the fist force itself was astonishing.
And yet.
Bang!
With a short explosive crack, the incoming force was violently knocked off to the side.
The fist force of the Arhat Fist slammed into the duel platform floor and crushed the solid blue stone like clay.
But Hye Yeon could not spare even a glance for the scene his own power had created. He could only stare at Chung Myung in shock.
He knocked it away?
The Arhat Fist, that simply?
His eyes fell to Chung Myung’s right hand. The green qi spilling from Chung Myung’s fingertips was sharpened like a blade.
Meanwhile, Hyun Sang, watching the duel from below, gaped before he even realized it.
“...Bamboo Leaf Hand. And at full mastery...?”
When on earth did that child learn Bamboo Leaf Hand?
There had barely been enough time to learn swordsmanship, let alone anything else. That was why they had not even considered teaching him martial arts beyond the sword.
So when had he learned Bamboo Leaf Hand, and not only learned it but brought it to full mastery?
What on earth is that brat...
Hyun Sang stared at Chung Myung with violently shaken eyes.
But Chung Myung merely shook off the hand carrying the qi of Bamboo Leaf Hand, as if it were nothing much at all.
His chilled gaze pressed heavily down on Hye Yeon.
“Is that all?”
“...”
“You wouldn’t have dared to mouth off like that with just this little bit, right?”
Chung Myung, calm as ever, began to walk slowly toward Hye Yeon, who was holding the Half-Palm Stance.
Show me more.
You have to prove your own strength.
You have to convince me that you are the world-class talent Shaolin created, something precious beyond comparison with anything else under heaven.
If not...
“If this is all the world that barely survived having its throat cut managed to produce, then that won’t do.”
Hye Yeon stomped the ground and charged at Chung Myung once again.
Fast, but heavy.
His firmly braced waist seemed to speak of his uprightness.
But Chung Myung’s eyes twisted even more viciously.
A lightning-fast fist shot toward his abdomen. There was not a hint of waste in the technique, perfected through endless repetition and bone-scraping training until perfection had been pursued with ruthless precision.
It was almost beautiful.
And yet.
“Too weak.”
Bang!
Hye Yeon’s flying fist was stopped by Chung Myung’s Bamboo Leaf Hand.
Hye Yeon’s eyes wavered briefly.
It felt as if he had slammed into a massive iron wall. No matter how much force he used to push, it would not move even an inch.
Was this possible?
His internal energy rivaled that of the elders, surpassing even the first-generation disciples. Naturally, no second-generation disciple in the world should possess stronger internal energy than him.
And yet a third-generation disciple—not even a second-generation one—had blocked his fist so easily. It made no sense.
“Ngh!”
Hye Yeon gritted his teeth.
He withdrew his extended fist and struck again in short bursts. Relying on a firmly grounded lower body, he unleashed three consecutive attacks at once, then twisted his body without even checking the result and drove his shoulder into Chung Myung.
No, he tried to.
But before he could even finish surging forward, Chung Myung stomped on the foot he had just planted.
CRACK!
His foot drove completely into the floor.
In that instant, his center of gravity faltered, and he could no longer put full force into his shoulder.
The result was obvious.
Boom!
The shoulder drained of power was blocked by Chung Myung’s hand.
Then Chung Myung stamped on Hye Yeon’s knee, pinning him in place, and kicked out at the body whose waist had bent from the impact.
Hye Yeon rolled across the floor like a child’s kicked ball.
Swishhh.
The sound of his yellow robe dragging across the floor rang strangely in his ears. Hye Yeon, being pushed backward as though someone had grabbed him by the hair and dragged him off, once again convulsively slammed a foot down and sprang back upright into stance.
“Haaah! Haaah! Haaah!”
His stance did not waver.
But his expression could not maintain true stillness. His eyes, filled with shock, trembled as they followed Chung Myung.
What is happening right now?
That man was a swordsman.
Mount Hua was a sect of swords.
In the past too, Mount Hua had been a sword sect that contended for the strongest under heaven—not a sect known for fists.
So how?
How could he be losing in hand-to-hand combat to a Mount Hua disciple?
How in the world?
He could not understand it.
No matter how he thought about it, he could not understand it.
But even more incomprehensible was the fact that Chung Myung, who had gained complete dominance through the series of exchanges, looked far angrier than Hye Yeon did.
“Is that really all?”
Looking at his expression, Chung Myung ground his teeth. Then he walked toward Hye Yeon. Rage simmered and overflowed with every step.
Bloodshot veins began to show in his eyes.
Those people had stolen what Mount Hua should have enjoyed. They had taken what Mount Hua should have obtained.
If Chung Myung had survived—no, if even a few of the Cheong generation besides Chung Myung had survived—then all the glory and splendor those people enjoyed would have belonged to Mount Hua.
If that had happened, the world would have been different.
Baek Cheon might have been standing where Hye Yeon stood now. Yu I-seol, or Yoon Jong, or Jo Gul might have been standing there instead of Hye Yeon.
Trained under the Cheong generation’s guidance, they would have grown into superb swordsmen, adored by the world as Mount Hua’s bright hopes and the stars of the Nine Sects.
“And that’s all you’ve got?”
After clawing down their consciences and pretending not to see, after all that effort, this was all they had produced? This pathetic amount?
It was no better than the talent Mount Hua would have raised if it had remained whole. That made Chung Myung even angrier.
“Come at me again.”
Chung Myung glared at Hye Yeon with bloodshot eyes.
“Come at me again, you idiot. This can’t be all you’ve got!”
Hye Yeon bit his lip until it bled, then shouted as he gathered himself.
“Haaahhhhh!”
WOOOOOOONG!
At that moment, Hye Yeon’s entire body began to be dyed in a golden aura.
A majestic gold, as if a Golden Buddha had descended into the mortal world. Soon, the light that had burst out in a flash converged into Hye Yeon’s fist.
“Hundred-Step Divine Fist!”
“Chung Myung!”
Wasn’t it a technique they had already witnessed several times?
Realizing that Hye Yeon was unleashing the Hundred-Step Divine Fist, Mount Hua’s disciples screamed reflexively.
But before their voices could even reach the duel platform, Hye Yeon’s fist erupted with immense force, like water bursting through a broken dam.
At this close range, the chance to avoid injuring his opponent was long gone. The Hundred-Step Divine Fist Hye Yeon unleashed at full power instantly engulfed Chung Myung’s entire body.
And then.
To the eyes of Mount Hua’s disciples, wide with shock, something strange appeared.
Through the sea of golden light, a blazing red energy began to surge outward.
The crimson qi tore through the fist force of the Hundred-Step Divine Fist, said to be the divine fist, as if splitting illusion itself.
Wh—
Chung Myung burst through the surging golden power and kicked away Hye Yeon, who had not even managed to regain his stance.
Unable to withstand the force in that kick, Hye Yeon’s body was flung away and rolled across the floor.
Even after taking the heavy impact, Hye Yeon somehow lifted his head again. In his eyes now lingered an emotion that had not been there before.
“Get up.”
Chung Myung swept a hand through the air and cut into the floor.
His cold gaze pierced past Hye Yeon and locked onto Beop Jeong, standing directly behind him.
“Compared to what Mount Hua went through, this is nothing.”
That icy voice stabbed sharply into Beop Jeong’s ears.