I Need to Make Sure (6)
There was a fierce web of red veins in Chung Myung's eyes.
Grrk!
His grip tightened little by little around the hand clamped to Jin Yang-geon’s throat.
The pressure was so great that the cracked wall behind him creaked, looking as if it might collapse at any moment.
“Ghkh… Kk….”
White foam bubbled from Jin Yang-geon’s mouth, his eyes rolled back in his head. He looked as though he might bite off his own tongue and die at any second, but Chung Myung didn’t seem to have even a shred of sympathy to spare.
“Talk.”
“Kkurrk….”
“You—!”
Chung Myung, on the verge of smashing Jin Yang-geon back into the wall again, suddenly froze. Then he slowly turned a cold gaze behind him.
“What.”
Baek Cheon stood there with his sword leveled at him. Beside him, Yu I-seol idly flicked the tip of her blade.
“What else?” Baek Cheon said, tilting his head slightly. “I figured if the idiot junior was doing something stupid, I’d poke a hole in his back and maybe bring him to his senses.”
“You’re getting punished.”
“…….”
Thanks to that, a sliver of reason returned to Chung Myung, and he let out a snort of laughter.
“……Well, that’s real thoughtful of you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Tch.”
Chung Myung clicked his tongue once and flung Jin Yang-geon away as if dropping him.
Thud!
Jin Yang-geon slammed into the wall and crumpled to the floor, coughing over and over.
“Kek! Keh! Cough! Cough! Huuuup!”
Making sounds that bordered on retching, he gasped for breath and hacked helplessly. Chung Myung stared at him for a moment, then slowly turned his head away.
“What’s going on outside?”
“As you can see.”
Baek Cheon shifted aside slightly to show him the scene beyond. People Chung Myung vaguely recognized had surged in and were driving the Iron Spear Hall disciples back.
The Iron Spear Hall men, already half-mad with panic, seemed to have lost all will to resist. They didn’t even dare fight back and were scattering in every direction, desperate only to flee.
“I don’t know who the Open Heaven branch chief here is, but he must have some real talent. He apparently convinced the Geum-geom-bu chief and brought the whole manor with him.”
“If you’re a beggar, you’d better have some sense or you’ll get your bowl smashed.”
Nodding faintly as he looked toward the chaos outside, Chung Myung turned his eyes back to Jin Yang-geon. When their gazes met, Jin Yang-geon, who had just been spitting saliva and choking, jolted upright and tried to tuck himself into the corner as if he could crawl back into the wall.
“S-S-Save me! P-please, save me!”
Chung Myung simply stared at him without a word.
Worried for a moment that Chung Myung might lunge again, Baek Cheon unconsciously stepped forward.
If it had been usual Chung Myung, he would have heard enough by now to get the gist of it and settle down with a calm face. But today, something about him was definitely off.
“What’s your name?”
Fortunately, instead of charging him, Chung Myung opened his mouth.
His voice was lower than usual, carrying a strange pressure, but at least he wasn’t already shouting about killing him outright, which was a relief.
“J-Jin… Jin Yang-geon!” Jin Yang-geon answered, his face paper-white.
Normally, he could lie with ease in front of the Geum-geom-bu chief and twist the story to suit himself, but now he didn’t even have the courage to try.
That look said he could kill me without blinking.
No, forget the look.
Hadn’t that butcher of a man just made two people into vengeful ghosts right in front of them? And not just anyone—visitors from Maninbang, no less.
To lie in front of a man like this would be no different from drawing a knife with his own hand and pressing it to his throat.
“Answer me.”
“……Huh?”
“That martial arts manual….”
Chung Myung started to speak, then stopped for a moment.
It was as if even he couldn’t quite organize the question in his head.
“Where’d you get that martial art?”
“M-Martial art?”
“The one you’re learning.”
Chung Myung’s eyes twisted again, just slightly.
“Where did you learn it.”
“M-My martial art? This is just….”
Jin Yang-geon swallowed hard.
“Something passed down in our sect….”
The moment Chung Myung’s hand tightened around the sword hilt, Jin Yang-geon screamed and clutched his head with both hands.
“No! No! Let me finish! Please, just let me finish listening! I only combined it with the contents of an old manual I happened to obtain!”
Listening quietly, Baek Cheon frowned.
“……Combined?”
“Yes! Well, ‘combined’ makes it sound grand, but I really just mixed the forms together, yes.”
Sweat poured down Jin Yang-geon’s face in fat drops.
Damn it, all because of that cursed martial art!
Combining two different schools of martial arts was never something to take lightly. If Jin Yang-geon had known it would end up like this, he never would have tried it.
Because he had carelessly blended incompatible techniques, his swordplay had become all shine and no substance.
It had never been anything special to begin with, and once he tried to create a martial art by mixing two different systems, it became only half-formed. Flashy, yes, but impossible to properly unfold.
Worse, his original swordsmanship kept getting warped as well, leaving Jin Yang-geon in a miserable position where he could hardly survive as a martial artist at all.
Seeing Chung Myung’s cold expression, Jin Yang-geon babbled on with every explanation no one had asked for.
“The, the combined technique didn’t have much real power, but someone saw me using it and asked if I might be from Mount Hua….”
“Does that make any sense?”
Baek Cheon cut in, but Yoon Jong, who had entered quietly and was listening now, nodded as if it did.
“If someone didn’t know better, I suppose they could think that. The form we just saw did look like a badly crushed plum blossom.”
“It just looked like red and white stuff flashing around to me.”
“There aren’t many techniques like that either. If someone had only heard of the sword of Mount Hua in stories, it wouldn’t be strange for them to misunderstand.”
“……Really?”
Baek Cheon still looked unconvinced, but Jin Yang-geon nodded frantically as though clinging to a rope dropped from heaven.
“Yes! Yes, exactly! I wasn’t the one going around saying it first, people kept asking me if I was a disciple of Mount Hua….”
“Hah.”
Now that he roughly understood the situation, a dry laugh slipped out of Baek Cheon’s mouth. Jin Yang-geon lowered his head, unable even to meet anyone’s eyes.
“So before long, I ended up pretending to be a Mount Hua disciple, and then things snowballed from there….”
Baek Cheon narrowed his eyes.
That was bullshit.
Even if it had started as a misunderstanding, Jin Yang-geon had eventually been boasting that he was a Mount Hua disciple and trying to swindle the Geum-geom-bu by using Mount Hua’s name.
Baek Cheon was just about to point that out when Chung Myung spoke.
“The manual.”
“Huh?”
“Where’d you get that manual?”
“……The manual, you mean?”
Yoon Jong, who had been listening from behind, tilted his head and asked Chung Myung, “Why the manual? From the way he’s talking, it sounds like he accidentally cobbled together a sword style that at least vaguely resembled Mount Hua’s swordsmanship while mixing different martial arts.”
Chung Myung didn’t answer. He only stared at Jin Yang-geon with relentless intensity.
When no answer came immediately, he grabbed Jin Yang-geon by the collar again.
“Hiiik!”
Then he shoved his face close and ground his teeth out through them.
“Can’t you hear me?”
“T-The manual! I bought it from a hunter in my hometown!”
“A hunter?”
Suspicion flickered in Chung Myung’s eyes, and Jin Yang-geon nodded with frantic vigor.
“Yes! H-he said it had been found in the mouth of a wild beast….”
The strength in Chung Myung’s hand suddenly went slack.
Jin Yang-geon, thinking he’d barely survived, cautiously looked up at Chung Myung’s face and immediately shut his mouth.
He had never seen that expression anywhere before.
Not on any person.
“……The manual?”
“Huh?”
Chung Myung’s voice, which had been trembling slightly, was gradually settling back into calm.
“Where is that manual now?”
“I-It’s in my hometown….”
“The hunter who got it probably lives nearby too, right?”
“That’s right.”
Chung Myung nodded slowly.
“Let’s go.”
“……Huh?”
“Lead the way. To your hometown.”
Jin Yang-geon’s eyes went wide at the unexpected order.
“M-My hometown is very far from here….”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Chung Myung cut him off decisively.
“Doesn’t matter. Wherever it is, even if it’s the end of the world, we’re going.”
When he finished, he turned around. By then, the Five Swords had gathered and were all watching him.
Just as Chung Myung was about to say something, Yu I-seol spoke first.
“Really.”
“…….”
“It’s real, right? That manual?”
Chung Myung nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Something that must be recovered.”
“Yeah.”
“And….”
Yu I-seol stopped midsentence and stared at Chung Myung. It was Baek Cheon who completed the question.
“You also need to confirm where that manual came from.”
Chung Myung answered only with a silent nod. A faint hesitation crossed Baek Cheon’s face.
“But Chung Myung. We’re under the sect leader’s orders….”
“Sasuk.”
Chung Myung gently cut him off. His voice was calm, not forceful at all.
“I….”
Chung Myung bit his lip for a moment, then said,
“I have to confirm it.”
“…….”
“So….”
He didn’t even need to finish.
Baek Cheon snapped his head around.
“Yoon Jong, Jo Gul.”
“Yes, Sasuk!”
Then, in a voice sharpened by cold composure, he gave the order.
“Get the situation organized. Move quickly. Confirm the destination from that man and prepare to travel without stopping in between.”
The two of them nodded at once.
“Yes, Sasuk!”
“Soso.”
“Yes!”
“Tell the Open Heaven Sect what’s happening and say we’re leaving immediately. Tell them to handle the cleanup.”
“Yes!”
Baek Cheon turned to Yu I-seol.
“Sago, just in case, explain the situation roughly to the Geum-geom-bu chief.”
“Understood.”
“Move!”
As the Mount Hua disciples scattered in perfect order to carry out their tasks, Chung Myung stared at Baek Cheon.
“Sasuk.”
“That’s enough. We’ll hear the explanation later. I need to go check the situation outside first.”
“…….”
Only after Baek Cheon turned sharply away did he let out a small sigh in secret. His steps were heavy.
Damn it.
How was he supposed to say no when the bastard looked at him like that, you wretched punk?
Baek Cheon, silently staring at the back of Chung Myung’s retreating figure, lifted his eyes to the sky. The sun shining through the shattered halls was painfully bright.
“……It was one copy, wasn’t it?”
“……Huh?”
“That manual had one divine skill and one sword technique in it, right?”
“Y-Yes, that’s right. It was so old it looked like it would crumble at a touch… it felt like two manuals stacked together. Two different martial arts….”
Chung Myung nodded very slowly.
It was too damn bright.
Why the hell did you go and stitch together a perfectly good manual?
This makes it easier to carry around.
Why would you carry it around? What crazy bastard takes a manual out onto the battlefield?
My job is to preserve Mount Hua’s martial arts. This art must never be cut off. It’s safest if I keep it on me.
What if you die first? Don’t you think that’d be a bigger problem?
Haha. With my sije on my side, how could I die? That’ll never happen.
His eyes stung, and it was hard to breathe properly, all because of that blinding, infuriating sun.
Wait for me.
Even if all that remained was a skeleton. No, even if that skeleton had crumbled into dust….
I’ll still recognize you.
Sije.
“I’ll find you, no matter what.”
It was a day so clear, so cloudless, that it hurt even more.