I Agree With That. (3)
Hyeong Pyo of the Red Snake Unit stared at the disciples of Mount Hua with a look that said he simply could not make sense of what he was seeing.
What the hell are these bastards?
The Red Snake Unit was made of people tempered in battle.
Like most of the evil factions, they had fought countless real battles since childhood. Sometimes to survive, sometimes to take what belonged to others, and sometimes to carry out orders. They had fought and fought and fought again.
And through all those long years of bloodshed, they had proven themselves and earned their place in Maninbang’s Red Snake Unit.
Compared to them, the bastards in front of him now were nothing more than brats who had probably never killed a man properly in their lives.
At first, when they crossed blades, they had shown the nervous stiffness you would expect from greenhorns.
But then…
“Hahaha! Where do you think you’re running?”
“And you call that a saber swing?”
Hyeong Pyo’s eyes twitched violently.
Are these really righteous brats who’ve barely seen real combat?
It had barely been long since the battle began, and there was no trace left of their earlier tension. The way they swung their swords with gleaming eyes made them look less like martial artists and more like Rasetsu.
This shouldn’t be happening.
Usually, brats facing real combat for the first time would buckle under saber strikes aimed at their vitals and the murderous aura that sliced into their flesh, unable to show even half their true ability.
How many people had Hyeong Pyo killed that way?
This wasn’t simply a matter of righteous versus evil. Any inexperienced martial artist stepping into the Jianghu would eventually face the same thing, no matter what side they belonged to.
And yet the Mount Hua bastards rampaging before his eyes were unquestionably different from the brats he had met before.
Claaang!
A sword came flying in.
The saber barely managed to block it.
“You bastard, you blocked it?”
“So these evil bastards really aren’t gonna die cleanly, huh?”
“Take this!”
Look at them…
By this point, it was hard to tell who the evil faction was and who the righteous faction was supposed to be.
Wasn’t Mount Hua a Daoist sect?
Then what the hell were those bastards, Daoists?
Had he mistaken something? No matter how he looked at it, they seemed more suited to that side than this one.
But Hyeong Pyo’s thoughts could not continue for long.
“Haah!”
Claaang!
A sword shot in with frightening speed, angling for his shoulder.
He hurriedly swung his saber to knock it aside, but the sword didn’t go flying back. Instead, like a venom-struck snake, it twisted nimbly and drove for his ribs again.
“Kugh!”
Hyeong Pyo barely escaped by practically rolling across the ground.
Even after throwing away every shred of dignity to execute a clumsy roll, he still couldn’t avoid a long gash opening along his side.
Blood ran down in a stream.
As he looked at the long tear in his flesh, a chill ran down Hyeong Pyo’s spine.
Whoosh!
The speed of the sword strikes was terrifying. He could not understand how children that young could swing their swords with such razor-sharp precision.
An attitude unworthy of brats.
And a sword even less worthy of brats.
As Hyeong Pyo looked around, his eyes began to shake uncontrollably.
The Red Snake Unit.
One of Maninbang’s main forces was being visibly pushed back without even having time to properly test their strength.
“Y-you motherfuckers! To some second-generation disciples, no less!”
Hyeong Pyo roared in fury, his eyes bloodshot.
Baek Cheon, by contrast, took a short breath and loosened the tension in his shoulders.
I’m using too much strength.
Combat was combat. When blades wrapped in killing intent whirled before his eyes, there was no way not to tense up.
What mattered was not whether he was tense. What mattered was drawing out as much of his strength as possible even within that tension.
Wasn’t that exactly what Chung Myung always hammered into them?
Cooling his mind once more, Baek Cheon stared at the Red Snake fighter standing before him with a saber in hand.
Since the end of the martial competition, there had been one question that would not leave his mind.
How strong am I?
He already knew roughly where he stood among the younger generation. He had gained confidence by defeating Jin Geum-ryong, then reinforced that confidence by watching Chung Myung, and through the feats of his fellow disciples, he had glimpsed the possibility of the future.
Which made the next step all the more important.
The place I stand right now.
Baek Cheon’s eyes shone.
From this day on, the second generation of Mount Hua would become its main force and range across the world. In that sense, being merely “strong among the younger generation” meant nothing.
At the very least…
“Only when I can defeat the likes of you without trouble can I claim to be one of Mount Hua’s elite.”
Baek Cheon muttered coldly and stamped his foot into a firm stance.
The sword, weighted with all his strength, pressed down on the saber with even greater force.
Thud!
At the moment sword and saber met, Baek Cheon saw the other man’s face twist.
It’s not difficult.
More strength settled into his legs.
Was it because the opponent was weak?
Not at all.
The opponent was definitely strong.
It was simply that Baek Cheon was stronger.
The disciples of Mount Hua had endured a brutal training regimen that would have caused trouble dozens of times over in any other sect. And now, on top of that solid foundation, the structure called “confidence” was beginning to rise.
Confidence, after all, came from results.
Once those results were added to his firm trust in himself, there was no reason for Baek Cheon to be weak.
Thud!
Baek Cheon stamped down again, driving his opponent back.
Not the dazzling swordsmanship unique to Mount Hua, but the basic sword forms.
He was faithfully following Chung Myung’s words: when your mind starts to race and you feel yourself getting tense, return to the basics.
“Don’t get carried away!”
Baek Cheon shouted, deep and unyielding.
“Stick to the fundamentals! Lower your stance and drop your center of gravity! The sword starts with the lower body!”
Something he had heard again and again until he was sick of hearing it.
If they could hold to that alone, nothing would change just because this was their first real battle. In the end, a sword was just something a person used.
“Yes, Sahyung!”
“Yes!”
Even amid the fierce clash, loud acknowledgments rang out from all around.
At the same time, the stances of the Mount Hua disciples pushing back the Red Snake fighters all dropped slightly.
Baek Cheon watched that sight and gave a faint nod.
Then he turned back and fixed his gaze squarely on his own opponent.
“You, you brat!”
“You keep going on about brats.”
A crooked smile touched the corners of his mouth.
“From where I’m standing, the brats look more like you lot.”
“What did you say?”
“And…”
Baek Cheon tilted his head once, then narrowed his eyes.
“That guy’s words are annoying, but he isn’t exactly wrong. Today, for some reason, I find myself agreeing even more. How dare some evil bastard lift his head in front of a Mount Hua disciple? Should I cut your throat off?”
“……”
“Come on. I’ll show you exactly what Mount Hua is like.”
“I-Irksome!”
The Red Snake fighter’s bloodshot eyes bulged as he charged at Baek Cheon.
Baek Cheon, looking far more composed now, leveled his sword.
“……Huh.”
Hyun Young let out an involuntary sigh.
Even while watching the disciples of Mount Hua drive the Red Snake fighters back one-sidedly, he still could not quite believe it.
When did our children…
Of course, he knew that Mount Hua’s younger generation was second to none anywhere in the world.
But they were still the younger generation.
Compared to Maninbang’s Red Snake Unit, he had assumed they would inevitably fall short. He had thought Chung Myung’s confidence came from the fact that Chung Myung himself could make up that difference.
Who would have thought the children alone could push back the Red Snake Unit like this?
They say the person who most underestimates a child is the parent, and the person who trusts a disciple the least is the master.
“I suppose I was just an old man with too many worries after all.”
“Come now, Elder. Don’t say it like that. It’s because you believed in them that they were even able to swing a sword.”
“……When you say the Red Snake Unit of Maninbang, those are still people with quite a name in the world……”
“They’re still evil faction bastards.”
Chung Myung replied indifferently while staring at the Red Snake Unit.
What, real combat swordsmanship?
What a load of crap.
Of course he did not dismiss real combat experience. People tempered on the battlefield sometimes forged something that could surpass those who had spent their whole lives training in the mountains with a sword.
But.
That’s talking about bastards who’ve actually fought proper battles.
In this peaceful era, how much real combat could those evil bastards have actually seen?
If this had been during the war with the Demonic Sect, it might have been different. Back then, battles broke out dozens of times a day.
They fought before dawn, then kept shoving blades into one another even after the sun had set. Surviving a single day on such a battlefield was no different from training nonstop for ten days straight.
But there was no way those Red Snake bastards had experienced combat on that level.
At best, once every ten days. If they’re lucky, once a month.
There was no way people who trained like that could beat those who had worn themselves down day after day.
“There’s no need to worry.”
“Hmm?”
“Those bastards are weaker than you think, and our senior brothers are stronger than you think.”
Hyun Young, visibly brightened, looked back and forth between Chung Myung and the disciples of Mount Hua.
There was a time…
There had been a period when this sight was his dream.
Mount Hua’s disciples, clad in robes embroidered with plum blossoms, driving back evildoers and ranging across the world—that had been what Hyun Young had wished for, again and again.
And now that dreamlike scene was unfolding right before his eyes.
If Sect Leader had seen this, he would have been overjoyed.
He rubbed at the corners of his eyes, suddenly sore.
But he could not simply be happy. Every time a blue saber swung close to a disciple’s face, his heart sank with a jolt.
“Gasp!”
Then Hyun Young’s eyes flew wide open. A saber wielded by an evil faction fighter had grazed Yoon Jong’s shoulder.
Just as Hyun Young was about to shriek in alarm…
“You got hit?”
“……”
A voice soaked thick with irritation and malice exploded beside him like a cannon shot.
“What, now you’re getting hit by evil bastards too? How little did you train to get cut down by such cheap trash? Oh, I see? Looks like you haven’t been beaten enough in normal times, so now you’re looking to get hit by a blade?”
Geez…
Didn’t he say to relax?
Even a healthy man would end up in cardiac arrest hearing that voice, you lunatic.
Whether or not Chung Myung knew Hyun Young’s thoughts, he twisted his face into an ugly scowl and barked at the top of his lungs.
“Go on, get hurt! I’ll dump salt on it!”
At Chung Myung’s screaming tirade, the Mount Hua disciples somehow found themselves invigorated and began driving the Red Snake Unit harder.
“Aaaaaah!”
“The problem’s in the back, too! Damn it!”
“What’s a ghost doing? Why isn’t it dragging that bastard away?”
“Hey, if he’s a Daoist, how is a ghost supposed to drag him away?”
“What kind of Daoist is that?!”
The Mount Hua disciples gritted their teeth and thrust in at the Red Snake fighters.
In truth, though they complained out loud, the familiar abuse washing over them made their minds steadier and calmer than usual.
Thanks to that, their forms became ever more dazzling, and their opponents began to be overwhelmed.
Pushed by that wild momentum, the Red Snake fighters were shoved back farther and farther, not knowing what to do.
“What in the world is that sword…”
“H-how can a sword form something like that…”
Then, near the very back, one of the fighters who had been retreating with a pale, ashen face suddenly stopped. Something had touched his back.
“Ah…”
What had touched his back was Yeop Pyeong’s chest.
Realizing his mistake, the fighter’s face turned deathly white.
“L-Leader! I—I…”
“Tsk.”
Yeop Pyeong reached out and seized the fighter by the head.
“Please, sp-spare…”
Slash!
Before the plea could even finish, the saber, cleaving through the air like a beam of light, cleanly tore the fighter’s throat open.
Thud.
The body, severed from its head, collapsed to the ground. Blood burst from the cut throat, then gushed out in thick waves, staining the floor red.
The battle came to an abrupt halt.
Everyone stared, stunned, at Yeop Pyeong and the head in his hand.
He killed his own subordinate?
……Is he insane?
Mount Hua’s disciples, especially, could not hide their disbelief.
To kill one’s own subordinate with one’s own hand was something they simply could not comprehend.
“You maggots…”
Yeop Pyeong tossed the head carelessly to the ground and glared at the Red Snake Unit with blazing eyes.
“You can’t even handle a bunch of brats properly, and you still don’t know shame enough to fall back?”
“S-sorry!”
“I’ve committed a crime worthy of death.”
Yeop Pyeong bared his teeth.
“If you’ve committed a crime worthy of death, then die.”
“L-Leader…”
“But before that.”
A savage killing aura began pouring from his body.
“I’ll show you why the Red Snake Unit is called the Red Snake Unit. Get out of my way. I’ll personally cut the throats of those brats.”
Yeop Pyeong’s mouth curled into a grin.
Yoon Jong’s body gave a sharp twitch.
The moment he felt that surging killing intent, his muscles tightened on their own and every hair on his body stood on end.
Master.
So the Red Snake Unit’s reputation had been built on the strength of Red Snake Saber Yeop Pyeong alone…
He’s in a different league from the others.
He could feel, to the marrow of his bones, what it meant for a true expert to decide to reveal his killing intent.
But at that very moment—
“Is that bastard stupid?”
From behind him came an irritated voice. And with that same familiar irritation, utterly unchanged as always, the taut tension in his body loosened all at once.
“I told you not to make a scene, and you still can’t get the message through your thick skull.”
Chung Myung was already walking forward with a sword carelessly gripped in one hand.
“Well, whatever.”
Passing Yoon Jong, he took the lead and rolled his shoulders.
“Back then and now, the answer to idiots who can’t understand plain speech is always a beating. Come here. I’ll cut that pretty little neck of yours off for you.”
The smile vanished from Yeop Pyeong’s face.