I Learned Very Well Thanks to You (1)
Fwaaaash!
With the sound of something shattering, Heo Gong was sent flying in a spray of blood.
Thud!
Sprawled against the floor, Heo Gong stared blankly up at the sky before him. One side of that sky was slowly staining red.
He couldn’t immediately make sense of what had happened to him, or why he was suddenly lying on his back and staring upward.
Did I get knocked down? But why?
For a moment, it almost felt as if his memory had been cut off. The only thing that snapped him out of that strange sensation of floating somewhere outside his body was the hideous pain flaring from his left eye.
“Kkgh….”
Only then did he remember that Chung Myung’s elbow had smashed into his brow.
Throb! Throb!
My eye…
His vision was nearly gone, as if every blood vessel in it had burst. He didn’t even need to check the injury to guess what state it was in. His brow was probably so swollen now that he could barely open the eye at all.
But even if the wound to his eye was severe, even if the pain was excruciating, it was nothing compared to the agony he felt in his heart right now.
Crunch.
Heo Gong’s fingernails scraped across the floor of the arena.
Forcing his body upright, he dragged the rest of himself along with a jarring, reluctant motion, as though every bit of cartilage in him had worn down to dust.
From the very beginning…
The gooseflesh prickling across him refused to settle.
The sword had seemed to lengthen all of a sudden. But that was impossible. A sword forged from hard steel could not stretch like taffy.
There was only one possible explanation.
“...You tricked me.”
A seasoned swordsman always read his opponent in battle. Which meant the range and spacing he had assumed for Chung Myung’s attacks were something he had naturally measured and accepted while the two of them fought.
The principle behind Chung Myung’s deception was absurdly simple.
He merely bent the arm that thrust out ever so slightly and adjusted the spacing of the sword aura. By doing that, he planted a false distance in Heo Gong’s head—just enough for him to believe, without the slightest doubt, that Chung Myung’s sword would reach only that far.
And then, in an instant, he changed that distance. Calmly. Naturally.
So from Heo Gong’s point of view, it felt as if the sword had suddenly grown longer.
It was simple, really. Almost laughably so.
But was it truly possible to carry out something so trivial so perfectly, in the middle of a life-or-death duel, well enough that even a swordsman of Heo Gong’s caliber wouldn’t notice anything off?
No—fine, suppose it was possible.
Even then, to deliberately seed a false distance for the sake of an attack that would come later, while fighting someone for the first time? That was still strange. Even the slightest miscalculation would tear flesh and snap bone, so why take such a risk in the middle of combat?
He’s insane…
That wasn’t logic. It was madness.
It was a tactic that worked all the better the stronger the opponent was, the sooner that opponent understood Chung Myung’s sword.
It was a technique you could only use because you trusted your enemy—what kind of insane nonsense was that supposed to be?
“Kuhk!”
His body lurched.
Vomiting climbed up from deep in his stomach.
It was still vivid before his eyes. Chung Myung’s sword, softly receiving and carrying away Heo Gong’s force.
That had been a hallmark of Wudang’s sword.
“You bastard….”
As Heo Gong staggered to his feet, clutching his sword, Chung Myung came into view, staring straight at him.
Those eyes were terrifyingly calm, stripped of all emotion. If it hadn’t been for the blood smeared at the corner of his mouth, he might have been mistaken for a painting rather than a living man—those cold, indifferent eyes made him look more drawn than alive.
“D-Don’t be ridiculous, you brat!”
Hate and fury roiled in Heo Gong’s voice.
“How dare you… attack me with Wudang’s methods?”
This was more than humiliation.
It was no different from a fist fighter being punched by a swordsman, or someone who had used a spear all his life being beaten with his own weapon by the first person he’d ever seen hold one.
“You…”
To be struck by a Wudang technique while he was a swordsman of Mount Hua—that was the most unbearable disgrace for someone who had spent his life studying Wudang swordsmanship.
“You did that on purpose…!”
His teeth clenched so hard that one of them finally cracked a little.
Heo Gong’s eyes had gone beyond malice now; they looked at Chung Myung as if at an enemy who shared a blood feud with him. But Chung Myung, under that gaze, remained utterly cold.
Step.
Chung Myung stopped walking, looked Heo Gong dead in the eye, and spoke.
“You’ve got the wrong idea.”
“...!”
“Smacking your face wasn’t some grand statement or anything.”
“Shut up!”
Heo Gong shouted in a fit of rage. Chung Myung merely shook his head, expressionless.
“Idiot.”
His cold voice slid straight into Heo Gong’s ears.
“The moment you started spitting killing intent at me, this stopped being a friendly match. If it had been a friendly match, I would’ve gone along with it. The way you wanted.”
“...!”
“But this isn’t a friendly match. It’s a real fight. In a real fight, none of yours matters and none of mine matters either. The only thing that counts is who’s still standing at the end.”
Heo Gong’s eyes trembled violently at Chung Myung’s words.
Chung Myung asked quietly,
“Is that so hard to understand?”
“...!”
“Listen up, brat. The moment you draw a blade to hurt someone, or to kill them… that’s war.”
“...!”
“And in war, weapons don’t matter. You’ll steal your enemy’s sword and slash his throat with it. You’ll throw yourself on top of a corpse and play dead, then bury a knife in the groin of the first bastard who walks by.”
A clear sneer formed on Chung Myung’s face.
“And now you’re going to complain about me stealing your sword and swinging it at you in war?”
“...!”
“Enough already, you morons.”
Heo Gong’s body shook.
He’ll do anything to win.
He had heard those words countless times. And because he was a direct elder of Wudang, he had never even thought to distinguish between what should be done and what shouldn’t.
Only…
He had never truly understood what “anything” meant.
To deceive the enemy with every breath of the fight, to throw everything you had into the struggle, to use every method available until you finally buried a blade in your opponent’s body.
Wasn’t that less like a war and more like a brutal struggle for survival?
The tip of Heo Gong’s sword trembled again. Watching it, Chung Myung’s eyes sank lower.
No point talking. He won’t understand it with words.
Forcing someone to act as though they understood what they had never experienced was a kind of violence in itself.
Heo Gong would understand it in his head. He must have heard it often enough. Wudang, after all, was not a sect that had never seen war. There was no way such a prestigious sect would fail to pass down what it had endured in those terrible years.
But this wasn’t something the head could truly grasp.
He can’t possibly understand.
Imagine an ordinary person opening his eyes and finding himself suddenly thrown into the middle of a battlefield.
Imagine someone who had understood murder only as an abstract concept suddenly witnessing a head fly off in front of him, hot blood splashing over his entire body in the chaos.
Could he truly understand it all, adapt to it all, right then and there?
There was no way.
What was so natural to Chung Myung was not natural to Heo Gong. Even as a Wudang elder, even as a martial artist who should understand the line between life and death, it was impossible for him to understand Chung Myung.
The look in Heo Gong’s eyes now was not much different from the eyes Mount Hua’s senior brothers had worn the first time they faced the Demonic Sect. Chung Myung knew that fear well—the fear of staring at something beyond understanding.
It really is fucking irritating.
Heo Gong was looking at him with the same eyes they had once used to look at the Demonic Sect, as though Chung Myung were some asura crawling up from hell.
Still, it didn’t matter.
Chung Myung knew better than anyone that he was not necessarily right.
There was no need to understand what war was. There was no need to understand how to fight like a beast, the way Chung Myung did.
But strength was not goodness.
True strength did not come from the way you swung a sword.
If it had been the Chung Myung of not long ago, he would have clicked his tongue at the sight of Heo Gong, but he wouldn’t have thought him wrong.
That was, if he hadn’t known that the Demonic Sect still bared its teeth toward the Central Plains. And if he hadn’t known there was a good chance the Heavenly Demon still lived somewhere in this world.
“I suppose I look like the devil to you.”
“...!”
“But the real devil hasn’t even shown up yet.”
“...What do you mean?”
Chung Myung’s lips curled up.
“We were beaten down without understanding a damn thing. But at least now there’s someone who knows… one person, anyway.”
Heo Gong’s eyes darkened with suspicion at the meaningless words.
“So count yourself lucky.”
Chung Myung flicked a glance toward the Mount Hua disciples, then shifted his gaze past Heo Gong to the Wudang disciples.
His sword tip dragged across the floor.
Scrrrrch!
The sound made those watching, dumbstruck, flinch.
“This time, there’s someone to teach you!”
Rumble!
Chung Myung kicked off the floor and shot toward Heo Gong.
“Kuh!”
Heo Gong gritted his teeth. He couldn’t understand a word of what this monster was saying, but what he had to do was already decided.
If I get dragged into his pace, I’ll lose.
This had become a free-for-all, and Heo Gong had no choice but to admit that in a muddy brawl where everyone bared their teeth and scraped at each other’s killing intent, he had no chance of winning.
He didn’t know why, but this bastard fought like he had lived through a thousand battles, ten thousand battles. If he stepped into that field, defeat was already decided.
If he wanted to win, he had to drag his opponent into familiar territory.
Chung Myung’s age and generation had long since vanished from his mind. Facing an incomprehensible existence he had never met before in his life, he, too, had to become something different from what he had been until now.
Bang!
Heo Gong kicked off the floor.
Backward.
Retreating before an enemy had never once been part of his life. And using a fleeing footwork aimed not at Mount Hua’s flowing, distinctive steps but simply at escaping his opponent’s attack was almost the first time he had ever done such a thing.
Right and wrong were no longer things to decide now.
He had to stake everything on dodging Chung Myung’s sword and unleashing his own.
The Dao vanished from the sword’s tip.
The decorum collapsed beneath his feet.
“Huaaaaaaaaaap!”
As he retreated, an immense surge of sword aura burst from the tip of his blade, exploding outward. It was like a sea driven mad by a typhoon, hurling furious waves against the shore again and again.
KWAOOOONG!
At the same time, his left hand unleashed a blinding white palm force like snow. Blue sword aura and white palm force twisted together and churned in a scene so vast and violent it resembled a colossal tidal wave.
But Heo Gong had to see it.
The blinding sword aura revealed between the tidal waves as they surged more than three jang into the air.
Shwaaaaaaaak!
The wave split in two, and the world split in two. Through the space cleaved by that Severing Heaven sword aura, Chung Myung burst forth like lightning, his sword held in reverse grip.
KAAANG!
The sword Heo Gong had lifted on instinct blocked Chung Myung’s blade at point-blank range.
“Hup!”
His left hand flashed toward Chung Myung’s side with a Ten-Step Gold strike, but Chung Myung merely pressed down with his sword and lifted himself into the air, effortlessly neutralizing the attack.
And then.
Fwoooooosh!
Countless red blossoms burst into bloom above Heo Gong’s head.
Blossoms.
At the sight of those flowers unfurling with the force of a sky being swallowed whole, Heo Gong began swinging his sword in a frenzy.
One.
This…!
There was no water that could continue rising endlessly into the sky.
Even Heo Gong had failed to truly understand that fact. The sword that followed principle could not display its full power the instant it began to defy principle.
This, this is…
Red petals danced wickedly through the dying sword aura around Heo Gong.
Leaping over it, diving through it, swaying as if to toy with him.
Slash!
His shoulder was cut open, blood spilling out.
Slash! Slash!
The flesh of his thigh split apart, and sword aura tore into his side.
“Aaaaaaaaaaagh!”
Fwoooooosh!
Tens, hundreds of petals fell at once and ruthlessly swept across the frail human body before them.