Oh God, Mount Hua Has Fallen (1)
“Finally!”
Chung Myung gripped the staff in his hand tightly. At last, Mount Hua’s grand silhouette came into view.
“Finaaaallyyy!”
Tears welled up in his eyes.
How much had he suffered to get here? He had dragged along the body of a child no better than an ordinary person—no, worse than one—and had skirted death more times than he could count just to reach this place.
Of course, the dangers he had faced were a little different from the ones most travelers encountered. More often than not, they had been threats of starvation or exhaustion. But danger was danger, wasn’t it?
In any case, after pushing through that horrific ordeal, Chung Myung had finally reached Mount Hua.
“……That took forever.”
If he started listing everything he’d gone through to get here, it would turn into an epic worthy of a hero. No, a beggar’s epic.
So it went without saying that Chung Myung looked like anything but a human being.
He had managed to gain some strength while learning martial arts, but every scrap of energy that should have gone toward restoring his body had instead been burned on walking and running. Rather than growing sturdier, he had only become weaker.
He was so gaunt that anyone who saw him would frown without thinking.
And the clothes that had once at least vaguely resembled rags were now at the stage where they had to be described as a bundle of something that used to have the shape of cloth. As for the dirt clinging to him, that was another story entirely.
But that wasn’t what mattered.
What mattered was that Chung Myung had finally arrived at Mount Hua.
Without realizing it, he wiped at the corners of his eyes.
“If I ever meet the bastards who said I’d live great once I was reborn, I’m gonna bash their heads in.”
Being reborn only mattered if you were born as the right kind of person.
If you came back as a beggar with no parents, no home, and nothing at all, then it would have been better not to reincarnate in the first place.
But all hardship ended here! He had finally reached Mount Hua! So now, he needed to see for himself. What exactly had happened to Mount Hua.
“I’m going up!”
With a hearty thrust of his staff, Chung Myung began climbing Mount Hua.
And a little while later.
“Huuuuuh! Hah! Huuuuuuh!”
Clinging to the sheer cliff face, Chung Myung panted so hard it felt like his lungs were about to burst.
“What the hell kind of Daoist temple is this!”
It sat on top of a mountain like this? On top of this mountain! Was it even sane to build a temple somewhere like this?
No wonder Shaolin and Wudang were said to have visitors pouring in by the boatload while Mount Hua had no one at all, no matter how hard you searched.
Chung Myung leaned his head out and looked down below. A sheer cliff stretched into the abyss, so far down that he couldn’t see the end of it.
You think that was exaggeration?
It was an undeniable fact. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t see the bottom—clouds were floating below him right now! This insane mountain rose so high it pierced through the clouds, and the only way up was a narrow trail carved into a vertical cliff.
No, not even a trail.
If this was a road, then sparrows were phoenixes.
Could you even call it a road when you couldn’t place both feet down at once and had to keep your back pressed to the cliff while crab-walking forward?
“Damn it! What kind of idiot builds a Daoist temple on a mountain like this!”
The instant he reached Mount Hua, he wanted to run straight to the Grand Hall and point an accusing finger at somebody. But if he thought about it, Chung Myung wasn’t exactly in any position to complain either.
- Sasuk. Don’t you think Mount Hua is exactly the kind of place that deserves to be a sword sect? Those towering peaks are the very image of a blade, aren’t they? It seems the Founder chose a truly excellent site.
“……What nonsense. What utter nonsense.”
What, the peaks looked like swords?
Yeah, they did. They looked exactly like swords. So much like swords that climbing this mountain felt like ascending along a blade’s edge.
They said Mount Hua’s terrain was the most treacherous and steep among the Five Great Mountains. It was only after ending up in a body that couldn’t use martial arts that Chung Myung truly understood what that meant.
“I’m seriously gonna die.”
This was no joke—he really had to gamble with his life here. His arms and legs were already beginning to shake, and he still had a long way to go.
And yet they had even gone so far as to sigh about how there weren’t many people entering the sect.
Just that alone made it obvious how badly the Mount Hua Daoist temple had been run.
“Ughhh.”
Chung Myung pressed himself flat against the wall and groaned.
Still, he couldn’t give up here! What kind of giving up was that after coming all this way? If the mountain was there, then climbing it was a human being’s duty! He climbed on, relying on grit and willpower!
……Actually, going back down was probably more dangerous now.
……Seriously.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Thunk!
A hand shot up over the edge of the cliff.
The trembling fingers seized the top of the ledge.
“Kuuuuugh!”
The pale fingertips looked pitiful. The hand, straining with all its might, dragged the rest of the body upward.
“I’m gonna die!”
At last, Chung Myung hauled himself over the edge and collapsed flat on the ground.
“Hah! Hah! Hah! I nearly bit it!”
Turning his head, he saw clouds hanging far, far below.
The thought that he had climbed all the way here in the body of a small child made him want to praise himself.
Somehow you didn’t fall. Somehow you really didn’t fall.
After lying there for a long time, wheezing up at the sky, Chung Myung finally forced himself upright again. The only small mercy was that he didn’t have to descend this monstrous mountain in this body again.
All that was left now was to bury his bones at Mount Hua.
Let’s see.
Chung Myung rose and looked around. It should be around here somewhere.
He spotted a sloping path leading toward the summit ahead. If he followed that road a little farther, Mount Hua would appear. Chung Myung’s legs began moving slowly.
His heart swelled at the fact that he had made it this far. After a hundred years had passed, he had finally arrived at Mount Hua.
“……Though in reality, it’s only been about a month.”
Still, let’s just say it had been a hundred years. It sounded cooler that way.
Climbing the slope, if he exaggerated just a little, wasn’t hard at all. His body was completely worn out, but the thought that he had reached Mount Hua seemed to fill him with strength on its own.
“Ah……”
As the roof tiles of the main gate of Mount Hua came into view from afar, Chung Myung’s eyes softened with nostalgia.
As the years passed and the world changed five times over, the roof tiles before his eyes remained the same. That gentle curve still held within it the spirit of Mount Hua—soft on the outside, but never once bent.
Yes, those old eaves with missing tiles here and there…….
Huh?
Old?
Missing tiles?
Chung Myung rubbed his eyes with his sleeve.
Did I see that wrong?
But no matter how many times he rubbed them, the scenery in front of him didn’t change. The closer he came, the more clearly the half-collapsed main gate came into view.
“…….”
Chung Myung stopped, speechless.
After all, a main gate was the first thing visitors saw when they came to a sect. That was why every sect, even if it kept the inside only decently maintained, made sure the main gate looked as grand and immaculate as possible.
Mount Hua had been no different in the past.
Given the modest, unpretentious nature of a Daoist sect, it couldn’t be made flashy, but at the very least, it had been built sturdy and majestic enough to convey Mount Hua’s spirit. And they had always tried to keep it neat and tidy.
But…….
What the hell am I looking at?
He could understand missing roof tiles and chipped edges here and there. Roof tiles inevitably wore out, and when the time came, they had to be replaced.
But cracked pillars with their paint peeled away, and a gate that had rotted black and crumbled apart? And on top of that—!
“S-spider webs…….”
The other things could be grudgingly understood as repairs that just hadn’t been done often enough. But the fact that white spider webs hung from every eave, left completely untouched, was something he couldn’t understand no matter how hard he tried.
And the final nail in the coffin was…….
“Where’s the signboard! The signboard!”
Wasn’t the signboard the single most important symbol of a sect? So where the hell had it gone?
The plaque that had once read “Great Mount Hua Sect” in a brush style like flying dragons and serpents was nowhere to be seen.
That was the one our sect brother used to climb up and polish every morning! Where the hell did it go? That thing!
Chung Myung’s legs began to lose strength. With a staggering gait, he barely managed to reach right in front of the main gate, then stood there in silence, staring at Mount Hua’s entrance in a daze.
- If I remember right, that place collapsed, didn’t it?
- Mount Hua Sect? I think I’ve heard of it. Wasn’t it that famous sword sect from back in the day? Word is it got wrecked by the Heavenly Demon and utterly ruined. Is it even still around?
“……Ruined?”
Mount Hua?
Chung Myung’s eyes twitched violently.
“What the hell kind of bullshit is that!”
For anyone else, this would have been a moment of despair. But Chung Myung couldn’t stand the rage boiling up in his chest and nearly flipped over on the spot.
Mount Hua had fallen?
Anything could fall, but why Mount Hua? Why the hell Mount Hua!
“Oh my God, Mount Hua has fallen. Mount Hua. Hah…….”
No matter how much he tried to deny reality, what he saw did not change. After trembling all over several times, Chung Myung could no longer hold himself back and finally let out a furious roar.
“Sect Brother! Why’d you go and do that! Why! I told you not to, over and over again! You stubborn old fool! I told you so many tiiiiimes!”
In truth, a part of him had feared this might be the case.
During the entire journey here, no matter how wide he opened his ears, he hadn’t heard a single word about Mount Hua. He had caught bits and pieces of stories about Wudang, Shaolin, and even Zhongnan in the same province of Shaanxi, but Mount Hua itself had been absent, as if everyone had agreed not to mention it.
If Mount Hua were still enjoying its former prosperity…… no, if it had merely managed to keep up the appearance of a proper sect, that could never have happened.
“That’s why I told you to keep things reasonable, Sasuk.”
- Hey, you brat. Mount Hua is a Daoist sect. What’s the point of a bunch of lofty Daoists holed up in the mountains, polishing only their own Dao and becoming immortals? Those who ignore the hardships of others aren’t even qualified to speak of the Way.
“……Still, you should’ve had some restraint.”
The elders, the first-generation disciples, and even the second-generation disciples had all been wiped out on Great Mountain. Other sects had sent their elite forces as death squads too, of course, but there was no sect that had poured in everything it had the way Mount Hua did.
The sect leader and elders, who should have been leading the faction, were all dead, and the first- and second-generation disciples who were meant to carry the torch had been nearly annihilated as well. All that remained were third-generation disciples barely into their twenties and young second-generation disciples who hadn’t even properly learned martial arts yet.
How could the Great Mount Hua Sect possibly continue its name under those circumstances?
“……Even so.”
It felt as though the last thread of hope had collapsed as well. One look at the main gate—so old it seemed ready to fall apart—was enough.
Mount Hua had fallen.
“Sasuk. Sasuk! That’s what I kept telling you, wasn’t it? I said that giving everything away and trying to follow the Daoist way would leave us with nothing! Is this what you wanted to see? This? Mount Hua fell on your watch, Sasuk! On your watch! How are you supposed to face the Founders in the afterlife, you hopeless man!”
Still lying there on the ground, Chung Myung howled. His resentment echoed back at him from the mountains.
“I’m losing my mind. Seriously.”
He had come back to life after a hundred years, only to find that his sect had collapsed.
He had fought to protect this sect and to protect the martial world…… and if this was the result, then what the hell had they even sacrificed their lives for?
The emptiness felt like it was melting his whole body.
That was when it happened.
“Who’s there?”
A strange voice cut into Chung Myung’s ears.