Pride Makes the Blade Sharper (4)
“Wow….”
“As expected of Sahyung.”
The Mount Hua disciples clenched their fists as they watched Baek Cheon seize the advantage.
This match was clearly different from the earlier ones. Of course, Mount Hua had won every match so far, but those victories had come from successfully countering an opponent’s relentless offense.
In other words, the side doing the attacking had always been Wudang, while Mount Hua had merely endured their onslaught and fought back.
But now, the mood had changed completely.
Anyone could see that Baek Cheon had the upper hand in this duel.
“Against that Wudang disciple…”
“...Exactly.”
Everyone was astonished by Baek Cheon’s performance, but there were a few whose jaws had truly dropped.
“Th-that…”
“No, that’s just…”
Jo Gul and Yoon Jong, who had actually crossed swords with Wudang, were stunned on an entirely different level from those who were only watching.
He cut that?
No way, that’s insane. Does that even make sense?
Cutting through sword qi was not, by itself, such a miraculous feat. If you could produce sword qi that was more refined and more powerful than your opponent’s, that was all it took.
The real problem was the nature of the opponent’s sword qi.
“...It’s like slicing water with a knife.”
“That doesn’t even make sense…”
Jo Gul and Yoon Jong kept their eyes locked on Baek Cheon, letting out disbelieving laughs again and again.
Wudang’s sword qi flowed on and on like water. Its source was the sword qi that never stopped pouring from the tip of the blade.
Think about it.
How could you cut flowing water?
Of course you could cut it. It wasn’t as though that sword qi were as hard as steel. But water could be severed and then gather back together; even if you blocked it, it would still clump and flow around you.
But Baek Cheon had, in the truest sense, cut water apart. He had cleanly severed it.
“...Hey, Chung Myung.”
“What?”
“Can that really be done?”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
At that indifferent answer, Jo Gul turned his head to look at Chung Myung.
“I can’t do it.”
“Because you’re Sahyung.”
“But Sasuk can?”
“Because he’s Sasuk.”
“...”
As Jo Gul tightened his grip on his sword, Yoon Jong quickly laid a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.
“Don’t. If you get beaten up on top of your injuries, you’ll really die.”
“...”
Chung Myung snickered as he glanced at Jo Gul’s reddening face.
“Of course you can’t cut water.”
“Right!”
“But is that water? It’s sword qi.”
“...”
Chung Myung said dismissively, “Daoist martial arts are nothing more than an imitation of nature. If Mount Hua speaks of blossoms, then Wudang speaks of flow. Wudang’s martial arts are just trying to resemble water that never stops flowing; they can’t truly become water. Maybe they could, but if that were possible, then the one doing it wouldn’t be a first-generation disciple—they’d be a first-generation master.”
“That may be true, but…”
“In the end, that sword qi just linked the flow by drastically reducing the interval between the release of energy and the next release. No matter how perfectly you imitate water, there will always be tiny breaks somewhere in it.”
Jo Gul’s eyes shook violently.
“So he stabbed his sword into those tiny gaps?”
“Simple, isn’t it?”
“...You bastard, it’s easy for you to say that…”
Jo Gul clicked his tongue and looked back at Baek Cheon on the ring. Driving a blade between the gaps in that flow was practically the same as reading his opponent’s sword qi perfectly.
To think he had attempted something none of the seniors who sparred with one another had even dared to try, and he was doing it now against someone he was facing for the very first time.
Has he lost his mind?
If he slipped even slightly, it could backfire catastrophically. And even if it succeeded, the gain wasn’t especially great. Who would attempt something like that when failure could spell disaster? It was sheer stupidity.
No, wait.
As he kept thinking, Jo Gul bit his lip hard.
Baek Cheon had it.
Confidence that he would never fail. The certainty that he would never make a mistake. It was something Jo Gul could never even dream of trying, but for Baek Cheon, it apparently wasn’t that difficult. That was the distance between Jo Gul and Baek Cheon.
The moment he truly felt that enormous gap, his hands began to tremble. He had known, of course, that Baek Cheon was stronger, but lately he had thought the distance between them had narrowed quite a bit.
Yet with just a single exchange, Baek Cheon had proven that the gap between them had not actually closed at all.
“...”
Unable even to speak, Jo Gul heard Yoon Jong’s sigh-like voice by his ear.
“He really is exhausting, isn’t he?”
“...”
“Right?”
Jo Gul wordlessly nodded in agreement. That heavy reaction was unlike him. Yoon Jong quietly shook his head.
It must be far more shocking for him.
In truth, someone like Yoon Jong was not especially affected by Baek Cheon’s existence. He had never once entertained the delusion that he could catch up to Baek Cheon in the near future.
But Jo Gul was different.
A diligent genius is basically a demon that steals hope.
Those who chased after him would feel as though they were running a race whose finish line kept receding further and further away. Their lungs burned, their legs trembled as if they might buckle at any moment, and yet the finish line grew no closer—instead, it only slipped farther off into the distance.
How could anyone bear that despair easily?
Yoon Jong watched the handsome figure of Baek Cheon standing on the duel platform.
At least, that was what he thought while assuming that the one most shocked right now must be Mu-O.
“...”
In Mu-O’s eyes, an indescribably tangled whirl of emotion was raging.
Despair? Frustration?
No.
Despair and frustration only began once a person acknowledged what had happened before their eyes. But Mu-O still couldn’t properly understand what he had seen with his own eyes.
The sword qi he had obtained through a lifetime of effort had been cut apart by a single motion that looked no different from a child’s play.
There was no way he could readily accept that.
“...This is…”
A mistake.
No, a coincidence. Perhaps both. Maybe he had made a mistake at just the right moment, and by chance Baek Cheon’s sword had slipped into the sword qi.
He knew rationally that it was nonsense, but there was no other way to make sense of it. He was flustered, as though he had reached a dead end.
Then, at that moment—
“Come.”
Baek Cheon lifted his sword and pointed it straight at him. His posture was utterly unwavering. Only the air around Baek Cheon seemed to sink heavily. Mu-O’s mind was still violently tossed about, yet Baek Cheon was as serene as a lake without a ripple.
Only then did Baek Cheon’s earlier words strike Mu-O’s mind.
- You’re not the only one observing your opponent’s sword.
Observing. He had clearly said observing.
Then didn’t that mean that, through these few matches alone, he had understood the traits of Wudang’s sword and used that understanding to cut through Mu-O’s sword qi?
There’s no way something like that is possible!
Mu-O gritted his teeth.
It was a fluke!
He had never underestimated Baek Cheon. He had eyes of his own, and he had watched every single duel up to now. He could not possibly look down on Baek Cheon, who was obviously stronger than the other Mount Hua disciples who had come before him.
But to understand the nature of Wudang’s sword qi and then adjust his blade accordingly was a completely different matter. If something like that could be done in an instant, would Wudang have been able to preserve its reputation as a great sect all this time?
“...I showed you an embarrassing sight.”
Forcing down the turmoil in his heart, Mu-O pushed himself back up. Then, desperately steadying the trembling tip of his sword, he pointed it at Baek Cheon.
Nothing more needed to be said. He glared at Baek Cheon with eyes that blazed with unrest.
The moment Baek Cheon read the frustration contained in that stare, he couldn’t help but feel something strange.
Arrogant.
If Mu-O heard that, he would be heartbroken.
Mu-O had already acknowledged that Baek Cheon stood above him. The word arrogance might not seem fitting for a first-generation Wudang disciple who admitted that a second-generation Mount Hua disciple was stronger than him.
But Baek Cheon could not shake the feeling that he was arrogant.
Admitting that your opponent is stronger than you does not make you humble.
Mu-O did recognize Baek Cheon’s strength, but at the same time, he was trying to force that strength back into the boundaries of what he himself could still handle. It was as though he believed that no matter how strong Baek Cheon was, it could never shatter his common sense.
This was obvious arrogance, and a clear lack of experience.
By contrast, Baek Cheon knew very well that the world was full of monsters beyond common sense and geniuses impossible to measure.
He also knew just how insignificant he himself was in comparison.
If I hadn’t gone through it, I wouldn’t have known either.
Within the small walls of Mount Hua, or while trapped inside the narrow cage of Zhongnan, there were things he could never have learned.
Traveling the world beside Chung Myung, Baek Cheon had learned what the world truly was—and he had come to know, painfully and unmistakably, just how powerless he really was.
“I’m coming.”
And now it was Wudang’s turn to learn that helplessness.
Whoosh!
Baek Cheon kicked off the ground and charged straight at Mu-O.
Mu-O’s eyes flew wide open. The way he had originally planned to deal with Baek Cheon was to close the distance. But now Baek Cheon was the one doing it, narrowing the gap between them instead.
As though the difference in distance meant nothing at all when facing him.
“Y-you…”
Offended by that blatant dismissal, Mu-O slashed his sword fiercely. His sword qi began to pour out like a raging waterfall. In an instant, Baek Cheon’s entire body was swallowed by the surging blue sword qi.
But at that very moment—
Fwaaaang!
With a sound that seemed to rip the air apart, a red line appeared through the middle of the sword qi that had been crashing down like a wave.
Though dozens of strands of sword qi were cascading at once, Mu-O had also trained himself through relentless practice in Wudang. His clean, economical sword strikes blocked every one of the dozens of thrusts unleashed in a single instant.
No chance!
He had been momentarily thrown by Baek Cheon’s stroke of luck, but if he could just recover his composure, he would not be defeated so easily.
Clang! Clang!
After thrusting out dozens of strikes like that, the opponent would have to catch his breath eventually. If Mu-O could drive his sword into that opening, he could turn defense into offense.
Clang!
If only one opening appeared…
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The moment he had barely recovered his calm, bewilderment crept back into Mu-O’s eyes.
Why isn’t it stopping…?
Fwaaaat!
In a split second, Baek Cheon’s sword slipped past Mu-O’s eye, so close it nearly grazed it. The blade veered upward and sliced lightly across the tip of his ear.
Throb!
The pain, sharp and vivid, dragged Mu-O back into reality in an instant.
Why won’t it stop?
Pouring power into a single strike was harder than it looked. But unleashing thrusts packed with that same power, over and over without pause, was dozens of times more difficult than that.
Yet Baek Cheon’s sword showed no sign of stopping. Countless thrusts seemed to pour down like rain, battering Mu-O relentlessly.
Unbroken sword qi. It was almost like…
T-this bastard…?
The moment his thoughts reached a certain point, Mu-O’s emotions violently surged for an instant. And just like that, as though waiting for the opening, a thrust far faster than anything before shot through the field of sword shadows and came crashing down like a beam of light.
Crack!
He blocked it with the blade he had hastily raised, barely avoiding having his throat pierced, but the force behind that thrust was not something he could disperse with such a rushed parry.
At the moment of impact, Mu-O’s body was hurled backward like a cannonball.
Crash! Thud!
His head slammed into the ground, and his body rolled across the duel platform several more times. Only after tumbling and rolling across the floor over and over did Mu-O finally come to a stop. He scraped at the ground as if clawing for purchase, then his whole body convulsed.
“Uweeeaagh!”
A surge of red blood burst from his mouth.
Unable to endure the force of that sudden impact, he had suffered internal injuries. But as though pain meant nothing to him, Mu-O looked up at Baek Cheon with unsteady eyes.
“You… that…”
“The elder told us,” Baek Cheon said calmly, his expression indifferent. “That this would be a good place for us to observe each other’s swordsmanship.”
“...”
“So I decided to learn from it. Not bad, Wudang’s sword.”
Something inside Mu-O snapped.