Plum Blossom Sword Saint? Not Me (2)
“Exactly. A person ought to live honestly.”
“He tried to be clever and ended up falling into his own trap.”
“Serves him right.”
Trying to hold back the voices that were deliberately muttering loud enough for him to hear, Chung Myung finally shot upright and grabbed a pillow, hurling it at the door.
“Ka-a-aak! Get out!”
But the pillow he threw lacked its usual vicious speed and flopped weakly to the floor.
The ones standing at the door and watching him burst out laughing like a handful of salt had been scattered over them.
“He’s got no strength at all.”
“He’s practically dying.”
“Oh dear. Our Chung Myung is all grown old now. Or should I say the Plum Blossom Sword Saint? Tsk, tsk. He’s really getting up there—”
“No, you bastard, are you out of your damn mind, talking about the sect founder’s death like that?”
Thwack!
Yoon Jong’s fist whipped around and smashed into Jo Gul’s jaw like lightning. Struck completely by surprise, Jo Gul sprawled onto the floor with a thud, then sprang back up with a wronged expression.
“W-What was that for!”
“How dare you mouth such nonsense about the Plum Blossom Sword Saint being old! You filthy fool, I ought to fry you in oil!”
“……Oh, right.”
Watching his fellow disciples make a fool of themselves, Chung Myung muttered as he flopped back down with no strength left.
I should’ve just died.
I’m the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, you idiots! Me!
No, wait. I should’ve just said I wasn’t the Plum Blossom Sword Saint. I should’ve kept talking until it got through to them, no matter how dense they were.
Why the hell did I have to pretend to be me and end up like this? Like this…
“Grrrrrngh.”
He dragged the blanket up to his neck and trembled. His whole body ached, and a chill ran through him.
“……I really thought I was going to die.”
“Then why did you try to be so sneaky?”
“Was I doing it for my own damn benefit? Huh? You think I did this just so I could have it easy?”
Still lying down, Chung Myung bared his teeth and glared. But the disciples weren’t the least bit intimidated. If anything, they only grinned wider.
After all, wasn’t it only natural to mock a tiger once its claws had been pulled?
But their delight came to an abrupt end. Unfortunately for them, this toothless tiger still had a terrifying guardian.
“Stop bullying the patient and get out!”
“Tsk.”
“That’s a shame.”
“I wanted to mess with him a little longer…”
“Get out now!”
Dang Soso shouted furiously, eyes blazing.
At once, Baek Cheon and the other disciples backed away from the doorway with sulky faces. Soso, the junior disciple, wasn’t scary—but Soso the physician was.
“Lie down properly, sahyung.”
“Ugh.”
Chung Myung obediently lay flat, and Dang Soso carefully placed a cooled wet cloth on his forehead.
“Now tell me. Why on earth did you do that?”
“No, I was just going to convince that damn Ah-pyeong—!”
Thud!
“…….”
The second wet cloth flew straight into Chung Myung’s face with no mercy.
“How dare you talk about the Tang elder.”
“……Right. I was trying to persuade Tang elder…”
“Tsk.”
Dang Soso clicked her tongue and removed the cloth from his face.
“Your muscles were startled. Even if you’re the sahyung, you cut through that much Thousand-Year Cold Iron—of course your body’s going to be messed up. It’d be strange if you were fine.”
Then voices erupted again from the doorway.
“He even chewed through the sword too!”
“Exactly! The sword too! He gave me hell for saying I’d messed up the sword, and then he goes and—”
“I said get out!”
Dang Soso shouted, shaking her fist, and the others flinched and scattered.
“Honestly, what is wrong with these people!”
They never act their age! Never!
Shaking her head, she turned back to Chung Myung.
“Anyway, how do you feel now?”
“……My right arm won’t move.”
“No kidding. Of course it won’t.”
Dang Soso clicked her tongue.
He had cut that much Thousand-Year Cold Iron; if his arm could still move, then that would be the real problem.
He really isn’t human.
Whether he was bedridden or not, the fact that he had pulled it off was incredible.
Dang Jo-pyeong had only drawn out such a long length of iron because he trusted that the Plum Blossom Sword Saint was there. If it had simply been a normal Tang Family forging job, he wouldn’t have even dared to dream of it.
When molten Thousand-Year Cold Iron was poured in portions, the chances of splashing were high, and if that happened, the chance of someone getting hurt was astronomical.
So, in the end, it was fair to say that because Chung Myung was there, the Tang Family artisans had become a little safer.
Which means I should definitely be grateful.
So why does he look so pathetic? Why does he—
Watching someone who had chopped a mountain of that same Thousand-Year Cold Iron into hundreds of pieces somehow look utterly pathetic was, in its own way, a remarkable feat.
“It’s not just the muscles—it’s because you overused your internal energy and exhausted yourself. So for a while, you’re not to move a single step. You’ll rest and recover, understand?”
“……Fine.”
When Chung Myung answered so readily, Dang Soso stood up. But instead of leaving the room as he expected, she walked slowly toward the corner.
Chung Myung blinked, a little thrown off.
“Uh… hey….”
Before long, Dang Soso had thoroughly searched behind a small cabinet and came back hugging a whole armful of liquor bottles. Her eyes were fierce.
“I swear I’m just going to dump this right on your face!”
“…….”
“Rest!”
With even her gone outside, the room finally fell quiet. Chung Myung stared at the ceiling with a hollow expression.
“Aigoo, my fate.”
He’d suffered through all that trouble and still couldn’t even drink.
Sect Leader Senior Brother.
Do I really have to live like this? Hm?
- What nonsense.
“…….”
That old man’s gotten a little colder lately, hasn’t he?
Am I imagining it?
* * *
The following afternoon.
“Grrrgh. Even after resting, my body still doesn’t feel like my body.”
Ah, so this is why old people ought to die—no, wait. I’m still young, aren’t I?
With his face twisted in a grimace, Chung Myung hammered at his lower back and headed for the forge.
Perhaps because he had pushed himself too hard, even after a full day of rest and nonstop circulation of his energy, his body still hadn’t quite recovered. But that didn’t mean he could just lie in his room forever.
Making the Thousand-Year Cold Iron sword was an enormous milestone for Mount Hua’s future. He couldn’t just let something that important be done however they pleased.
“Go on, make it however you like. This time I’m going to rip out the Tang Family’s roots and all!”
Eyes blazing, he strode toward Dang Jo-pyeong’s forge. Then he let out a dumbfounded snort.
“Look at this! Look at this! It’s been a whole day and they haven’t even started!”
Lazy bastards, every one of them!
There wasn’t even the sound of hammers, and there wasn’t a single sign of life.
Heavens!
There wasn’t even anyone there!
“Huh?”
……Why isn’t there anyone here? That can’t be right.
Glancing around inside the forge, Chung Myung happened to catch someone passing by and grabbed him.
“Hey.”
“Oh! Mount Hua Divine Dragon, Chung Myung Dojang!”
“Let me ask you something. Where did everyone go?”
“Ah. This is the forge where they draw out the ingots. The quenching is done somewhere else. Go straight that way and then around behind the large hall.”
“Ah, yes. Thanks.”
Chung Myung even bowed politely and then waddled his way toward the big hall.
As he got closer, the sounds he had been longing for grew louder and louder.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“That’s right! That’s the sound of a hammer!”
CLAAANG! CLAAANG! CLAAANG!
“……That hammer sound is a little too good.”
A ruckus gradually swelled up. People being noisy while working was a good thing—it meant they had the energy to do it. The problem was that what they were saying didn’t sound normal at all.
“Catch it!”
“Damn it, don’t let it slip over there!”
“Hit harder! Harder! What are you doing? We went to all the trouble of heating it up! Hit it harder!”
“Why the hell aren’t you hitting it properly?”
“…….”
Chung Myung tilted his head and headed around behind the hall.
What’s all this commotion for making one sword…?
“Whoa?”
Chung Myung’s eyes went wide.
It was a huge forge.
The gate of a forge far larger than Dang Jo-pyeong’s from before had been thrown open, and inside the Tang Family artisans were all hammering away at red-hot lumps of metal at once.
How many of them are there?
One, two. Uh… ten? Twenty?
All those people stood before furnaces burning with charcoal, each hefting hammers as tall as they were and sweating buckets.
Hisssss!
One of them pulled out the heated Thousand-Year Cold Iron with tongs and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Hit it!”
KA-ANG! KA-A-AANG!
In an instant, hammers crashed down in a chain reaction, sending sparks flying in every direction.
“What the hell is this lump of iron? Why is it so damn hard!”
“Damn it, why does it cool off so fast!”
“We’ve hit it more than ten times already—why won’t it spread!”
And from the mouths of the Tang Family artisans came cries that sounded almost feral.
“Uh….”
Watching the scene, Chung Myung shut his mouth.
Uh… so this is…
Kind of different from what I expected…
“Grrrrrk.”
“You spineless fool! What have you done to collapse already? Switch out, now!”
“Yes!”
One of the people hammering without pause finally toppled backward.
The problem was that even after he collapsed, the others barely reacted. They dragged the fallen man off and immediately the next person in line rushed into his place.
“Damn it! It’s already cooled off! Heat it again!”
“W-How long are we supposed to keep hammering this? We’ve been at it for half a day and it still isn’t even halfway flattened.”
“Did you think handling Thousand-Year Cold Iron was easy? Be prepared to hammer it for seven days and nights!”
“Se, seven days and nights….”
Seven days?
Someone’s already passing out after half a day, and they want seven days?
Just then, someone came walking out from inside the forge, looking around.
It was Dang Jo-pyeong.
With his hands clasped behind his back, he clicked his tongue and shouted in a grumpy old voice.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk! Eating expensive meals and still looking like you’ve only had thin gruel! How many times did you hit it for you to be collapsing like this? Your fathers back in the day could hammer for three nights and three days and still have enough strength left to throw a drinking party!”
“…….”
No, that just means they’ll drink and then pass out cold.
You can’t interpret it like that.
“Grrk… gurgle….”
“Salt! Bring salt here! He’s dehydrated!”
“He’s sweating too much!”
Chung Myung’s eyes, fixed on the forge, trembled as if an earthquake had struck.
Is this a battlefield?
Why is making one sword such a damn circus?
“You came?”
At that voice, Chung Myung snapped his head around. The other Mount Hua disciples were approaching with the same worn-out look on their faces as him.
Chung Myung asked,
“Since when has it been like that?”
“Since before sunrise, so… since the crack of dawn?”
It was high noon now, so it had been far more than half a day.
“But why’s it like that?”
Chung Myung pointed at the ingot being pounded under the hammers. They said they’d been beating it for more than half a day, but the Thousand-Year Cold Iron had only become blunt at the edges.
“It’s so hard it won’t flatten.”
“So what do they do?”
“……They hit it until it does, apparently? For a week, two weeks—however long it takes?”
“…….”
Chung Myung’s mouth dropped open.
How can these people be this brutish?
Huh?
If it’s the Sichuan Tang Family, shouldn’t there be some nice satisfying precision to it—something like whizz, whirr, click-clack, then snap, it’s done? Who would’ve thought they’d just beat the life out of it with brute force?
I should’ve realized the true nature of the Tang Family the moment I saw Tang Bo, that bastard.
They’re an uncivilized bunch too.
Just then, Dang Jo-pyeong spotted Chung Myung and hurried over.
“Sword Saint elder! You’ve come?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“Don’t worry. It’s going very well.”
“……Doesn’t look that way.”
“Hahaha. It’s actually faster than expected.”
“……Your sense of time seems a little off.”
Staring blankly at Dang Jo-pyeong, Chung Myung asked,
“So how long is it going to take to make all this?”
“Not very long.”
“……It doesn’t look like it’s moving at all.”
“You get used to it once you work at it.”
Chung Myung opened his mouth to complain again at the hollow response that kept coming back. But before he could, Dang Jo-pyeong said firmly,
“Those boys are Tang Family artisans too.”
“…….”
“The chance to handle Thousand-Year Cold Iron with their own hands doesn’t come often. It may look a little foolish, but this is the best way for them to truly understand it. Once the training is over, I’ll use my own methods, so don’t worry.”
The old man’s eyes had, before Chung Myung realized it, become those of a craftsman who had spent his whole life holding up the Tang Family.
Meeting that gaze, even Chung Myung couldn’t find it in himself to argue anymore.
“More importantly!”
At that moment, Dang Jo-pyeong stretched out a hand and dragged Chung Myung along.
“This way.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Come now, hurry up and this way!”
Chung Myung was pulled by Dang Jo-pyeong’s hand into the inner part of the forge.
Passing the furnace blazing with heat, he opened a small side door in the back and found a small charcoal brazier and an anvil.
And on the anvil sat a lump of Thousand-Year Cold Iron. Its sheen looked even clearer than the piece he had seen outside a moment ago.
Chung Myung tilted his head.
“What is this?”
But Dang Jo-pyeong didn’t answer. Instead, he made an abrupt demand.
“Give me your hand.”
“My hand? Why all of a sudden?”
“Hurry.”
Still puzzled, Chung Myung held out his hand.
Then Dang Jo-pyeong suddenly picked up a knife lying nearby and moved as if to slit Chung Myung’s palm.
“Holy—!”
On reflex, Chung Myung nearly kicked Dang Jo-pyeong, only barely stopping his foot in time. He was more shocked by the fact that he had almost kicked an old man who looked half dead with all his strength.
“Hey, I attack back automatically when somebody looks like they’re trying to hit me! What the hell are you doing!”
Chung Myung barked at him, and Dang Jo-pyeong flinched, looking sheepish as he explained.
“We need blood.”
“……Blood?”
Dang Jo-pyeong nodded.
“Cut your hand, then drip that blood onto the Thousand-Year Cold Iron. Any place would do, but the blood from the right hand—the hand that wields the sword—would be better.”
“What exactly are you trying to do?”
Still suspicious, Chung Myung asked, and Dang Jo-pyeong gave a faint smile.
“I can’t make the Sword Saint’s sword the same way as any other Thousand-Year Cold Iron sword. I’m going to make it myself. Something special.”
“Huh?”
He’s suddenly making my sword?
“Why are you doing something nobody asked for?”
Flustered, Chung Myung asked, and Dang Jo-pyeong looked at him with slightly sorrowful eyes.
“Seeing you struggle just to cut that little bit of Thousand-Year Cold Iron yesterday, I thought even the Sword Saint elder had grown quite old… No matter how much one is reborn, time cannot be defied.”
“…….”
“When your strength weakens, then at least your sword ought to be a good one. It pained me to see the Sword Saint carrying an ordinary plum blossom sword. And now that I have an ingot at hand, I’ll make you something truly fine. A sword meant only for the Sword Saint!”
“My sword?”
“Yes.”
Dang Jo-pyeong nodded firmly.
“Not anyone else’s. It will be the Sword Saint’s sword. The sword of Mount Hua’s greatest person.”
“……Should I even be accepting something like that?”
No, I mean, I am the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, but I’m also not the Plum Blossom Sword Saint.
It was awkward, vague, and, frankly, a little hard to put into words.
Chung Myung would drink drain cleaner if it were free, but this was a different matter entirely.
Even as Chung Myung’s conflicted expression showed itself plainly, Dang Jo-pyeong remained unwavering.
“If not the Sword Saint, then who else could wield a sword made by Dang Jo-pyeong? Don’t refuse and hurry up—let your blood fall. A new weapon must first know its master.”
“Hmm.”
Though reluctant, Chung Myung slit his palm and let blood drip onto the ingot. Strangely enough, the blood that landed on the Thousand-Year Cold Iron did not run off to the side but soaked in completely.
“Good!”
Dang Jo-pyeong sat down before the anvil and brought his hands to the charcoal brazier.
Whoosh!
For reasons beyond understanding, the charcoal burst into flame in an instant and exhaled fierce heat.
“Thousand-Year Cold Iron and the Sword Saint’s sword.”
A smile formed at the corner of Dang Jo-pyeong’s wrinkled mouth.
“They say each person has a role to play in this world.”
“…….”
“I wondered why an old man like me was still alive instead of dead already. It seems this sword was the fate left to me.”
His voice rang out with immense strength, and with a clarity that was almost pure.
“Watch closely, elder Sword Saint. I will make you a sword with everything I have.”
Even Chung Myung, facing the force of a craftsman who had guarded Tang Family for a hundred years, fell silent.
And then.
Upon the Thousand-Year Cold Iron soaked with Chung Myung’s blood, the hammer carrying the soul of a master began to fall.