Everything I Do Is for Your Own Good (4)
“Hmm.”
At the sight spread before him, Hyun Jong smiled faintly.
How should he put it…?
Burning passion.
Beads of sweat streaming down faces.
Teachers doing their utmost to instruct, and students throwing everything they had into following those lessons.
Watching that beautiful, heartwarming scene, there was only one thought that came to him.
Is this really going to be okay?
Could this actually be all right?
Seeing disciples trembling under boulders the size of houses while Hyun Young stood atop one of them and delivered a grand speech, cold sweat kept beading on his back.
“Your feet’ve stopped, haven’t they?”
“Kkeueueueueueu…”
“Aaaah…”
“I told you to use your footwork, so what are you doing standing there? Huh? Has Mount Hua got some stance like that? Move. Now.”
Sweat poured from the bodies of the disciples holding the boulder, soaking the ground beneath them dark with moisture.
“I’m only doing this for your own good. If you can’t even handle this much, how the hell are you supposed to earn your keep?”
Right then—
“Ughhh!”
Jong Hoi, who had been staggering forward with the boulder, finally gave out and collapsed on the spot. At the same time, the rock he’d been holding came crashing down toward his head.
“Ahhh!”
“No!”
KUUUUUUUNG!
Jong Hoi squeezed his eyes shut. But strangely enough, the pain he’d braced himself for never came.
Am I already dead?
No, surely that couldn’t be…
When he cautiously opened his eyes, someone stood before him, their body backlit by the light. Looking up at that figure, the blood slowly drained from Jong Hoi’s face.
Ah.
I should’ve just died.
Hyun Young, holding up the boulder, looked less like a man than a demon.
With one hand he held the rock. And the other…
Huh?
One hand?
KUUUUUUUUUNG!
Hyun Young hurled the house-sized boulder aside and glared fiercely.
“How long have you been at it, and you’re already out of strength?”
“……”
“Tsk! You’re useless! Senior brother!”
“Very well.”
“This one is excused! Please give him a proper mental education.”
“Understood.”
Hyun Sang approached with a broad smile, then snatched Jong Hoi by the nape of his neck and dangled him there.
“Heh. Come with me somewhere nice.”
“……”
“Heh heh heh.”
Then, at a leisurely pace, he walked off into the dense undergrowth.
A moment later, dreadful screams began erupting from within.
“Aaaaaaah! Agh! Elder! Elder! I’m sorry! Eldeeeeeeer!”
At those screams, the faces of the disciples instantly went pale.
What… what are they doing to him?
I’m curious. But I absolutely do not want to know.
No matter what, I can’t let go of this rock!
Hyun Young looked at the disciples still holding the boulders and smiled in satisfaction.
“Yes, yes. Good. You’re doing well. Good lads.”
Then he gave a subtle nod toward Chung Myung and said,
“Chung Myung.”
“Yes!”
“Put one more rock on each of them.”
“…More?”
“Hurry up.”
“Yes.”
Watching Chung Myung trudge over with yet another boulder on his shoulders, Baek Cheon shut his eyes tightly.
Chung Myung.
Why do you always start with me?
You bastard.
＊ ＊ ＊
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
“……”
Baek Cheon stared sadly at the grains of rice spilling off his chopsticks.
His fellow disciples had apparently given up on using chopsticks altogether and had shoved their faces straight into their bowls.
“Guys.”
“Yes?”
“Can you still swallow that?”
“It feels like chewing sand, but we’ve got to eat if we want to keep going.”
Baek Cheon lowered his gaze and let out a sigh.
That was true.
You have to eat. You have to if you want to keep going.
In the end, even Baek Cheon brought the bowl to his mouth and shoveled the rice in.
It really does feel like I’m chewing sand…
And then—
Chwap-chwap-chwap-chwap-chwap-chwap!
“……”
Chwap-chwap-chwap-chwap-chwap-chwap!
Baek Cheon turned his head weakly.
Seated beside him, Chung Myung was literally inhaling his meal. After neatly emptying a bowl of rice, he even lifted the plate of stir-fried pork in front of him and dumped the whole thing into his mouth.
“Krrr! Food after training is always the best!”
That damn bastard…
Eating well was fine. But did he really have to sit there next to them and gorge himself like that, just to rub it in?
In the end, Baek Cheon’s face twisted as he asked,
“Is it good?”
“Heavenly!”
“…Fine. Eat as much as you want.”
What else was there to say? Honestly, what else…?
He didn’t even have the strength to complain. Baek Cheon shook his head and tried to return to his meal, but Jo Gul, who had finally lifted his face from his bowl, spoke up weakly.
“Hey, Chung Myung.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m asking because I really don’t get it… why did the elders suddenly get so monstrously strong?”
Baek Cheon’s ears twitched. He hadn’t said it out loud, but he’d been wondering the same thing.
“Is Zixia Divine Art really that amazing? If we all learn it, will we become like that too?”
“What dreamland nonsense are you talking about?”
But Chung Myung only snorted and set his chopsticks down with a clack.
“Do you think Zixia Divine Art is some heavenly peach or something? Like you’ll just become strong because you learned it?”
“N-no, but the elders really did get way stronger.”
“That’s a different case, you idiots.”
Chung Myung clicked his tongue as if they were hopeless.
“Of course it’s true that Zixia Divine Art is Mount Hua’s best inner energy technique.”
Even mastering Zixia Energy alone would promise a leap of at least one level. It was a divine art far beyond Plum Blossom Energy or Seven Stars Energy.
So if they learned Zixia Divine Art, there was no doubt their internal energy would rise dramatically in efficiency.
But that didn’t mean the result would be the same as the elders’.
“A divine art is like a cook.”
“A cook? You mean a chef?”
“Yeah.”
“…What does that even mean?”
Do I really have to spell everything out for you people? Chung Myung muttered irritably before explaining in earnest.
“If a chef’s skills are better, they can make tastier food with the exact same ingredients. Obvious, right?”
“Right.”
“Same thing here. If you get a better divine art, you can bring out greater power from the same amount of inner energy, and use more refined inner energy too. In other words, your output gets stronger for the same amount of internal cultivation.”
“Ah…”
Jo Gul nodded as if he finally understood. Yoon Jong, who had been listening, quietly added,
“Then what do you mean when you say our situation is different from the elders’?”
“I told you already. A divine art is like a chef.”
“Hmm?”
“How many years do you think the sect leader and elders have spent cultivating inner energy?”
“…Uh, well…”
Forty years? Fifty?
Even if he couldn’t say the exact number, it had certainly been a span of time that couldn’t compare with theirs.
“There are no shortcuts in inner energy. The hierarchy is decided only by how long you’ve trained and how steadily you’ve built it up.”
At that moment, Yu I-seol raised her hand.
“Good. Ask.”
“Jaso-dan.”
“Right. That’s what elixirs are for, to help you overcome that. But even elixirs have limits. No matter how well-made they are, they’re still impure compared to inner energy you built with your own strength.”
“Jaso-dan. Impurity.”
No, that’s not what I meant…
Honestly, I can’t say anything right in front of her.
“Anyway.”
After a brief fluster, Chung Myung coughed and continued.
“Up until now, the sect leader and elders had been taking the good ingredients they’d cultivated for decades and handing them to a lousy chef to cook. But this time, that chef got changed to….”
“A royal chef?”
“Yeah, something like that. The best restaurant in Beijing started cooking for them, so of course the taste is going to be different, isn’t it?”
Baek Cheon nodded. The analogy was a little odd, but it made the point easy to grasp.
“Fifty years…”
“Right, fifty years.”
For a martial artist, the cultivation of inner energy was as fundamental as the start of each day. Hyun Jong and Hyun Sang had naturally been cultivating their inner energy steadily for fifty years, and Hyun Young, even if he had abandoned swordsmanship, would not have abandoned inner energy cultivation.
At the very least, they would have accumulated nearly a hundred years’ worth of internal energy between them.
Add to that the inner energy gained from the elixirs Chung Myung had given them, and their reserves would easily surpass those of the average elder from the Nine Great Sects.
Until now, that power hadn’t been especially visible because the inner energy technique they’d been using to handle it was so crude. But once the technique was changed and Chung Myung adjusted their existing inner energy to suit Zixia Divine Art, it had finally begun to show its true force.
“Still, it seems a bit excessive.”
“Did you see Elder Hyun Young lifting a house-sized boulder with one hand earlier?”
“…He didn’t even seem to put any strength into it. It looked like he was lifting a pebble.”
As the conversation turned to the elders’ strength, the Mount Hua disciples who had been slumped in exhaustion all added their voices in disbelief.
And it was understandable. Hadn’t this been an almost impossible sight in Mount Hua?
Even Chung Myung, the undisputed strongest in Mount Hua, did not possess inner energy so overwhelmingly greater than the other disciples that it became absurdly obvious.
So when they saw boulders being hoisted up like toys, sword qi being fired through chopsticks, and pillars embedded in foundation stones being lifted like sticks, they could only sit there with their mouths hanging open.
“Then does that mean the sect leader and elders have become terrifying masters?”
“Masters? Not at all.”
To the question thrown out with a dry swallow, Chung Myung let out a snort.
“If just having more strength made you a master, would the senior uncles and senior brothers have survived this long? Those Green Forest bastards would’ve beaten them to death ages ago.”
“Ah… right.”
“Not yet. Not yet. But…”
“Hmm?”
Chung Myung stretched out the last word, then grinned.
“Once they learn Plum Blossom Sword Manual too, the story changes a bit. And once they’ve fully mastered Seven Stars Footwork and Plum Blossom Footwork, bringing footwork, divine art, and swordsmanship into perfect unity….”
Then he tilted his chin up sharply and drew a thumb across his own throat.
“……”
He didn’t need to say it aloud for everyone to understand the meaning of that gesture.
Baek Cheon thought with a smile, I’d better not get cocky.
Of course, he had never once dared to imagine openly challenging the sect leader, but now he wouldn’t even have the nerve to think about it, let alone act on it.
“But still….”
Yoon Jong frowned, utterly baffled.
“How in the world does Elder Hyun Young know such training methods for tormenting people?”
“…I’m wondering that myself.”
He’d never imagined it. Swinging a sword underwater, or carrying a boulder the size of a house while using footwork—was that the sort of idea a normal human being would have?
And even Chung Myung, for all his cruelty, had only ever pushed them through brute-force, grueling training. He’d never been this creatively vicious.
“The scarier part is….”
“Yes?”
“...that it works.”
All the Mount Hua disciples nodded at once.
Swinging a sword underwater let them immediately feel how their inner energy was moving, and how it should move. Since each stroke demanded more force than usual, their flaws became glaringly obvious.
And when they carried a boulder while using footwork, even the slightest shift in their center of gravity made them topple, forcing them to maintain the axis of their bodies with far greater sensitivity than usual.
“How did they even come up with training like this….”
Everyone was marveling in a slightly horrified way when Yu I-seol quietly spoke.
“...would have.”
“Hmm?”
Baek Cheon looked at Yu I-seol and asked again.
“What did you say, junior sister?”
“There must have been no other answer.”
“No other answer?”
“For ordinary training methods.”
For a moment, no one could say anything.
Baek Cheon bit his lower lip and pictured the young Hyun Young in his mind.
The man who had been forced to learn only inferior martial arts, ones that couldn’t even be compared to the superior secret techniques of Zhongnan or the other orthodox sects, swinging a sword underwater and practicing footwork while carrying boulders on his back.
He must have devised such training because he desperately needed to become stronger by any means possible. Even if he couldn’t recommend it to the other disciples.
Baek Cheon, lost in thought for a moment, picked up the chopsticks he had laid down.
“Eat. We have to endure the afternoon too.”
“Yes!”
“I’m absolutely not going to fail!”
Everyone began shoving food into themselves with far more energy than before.
“Another bowl here!”
“Soso. That’s your third one.”
“Then I’ll take two more!”
Watching them stuff themselves until their bellies would burst, Chung Myung snickered quietly.
This is nice.
The previous generation led without a word, and the next trusted and followed without question.
That was probably the Mount Hua Cheong Jin had imagined.
Wasn’t it?
Hm? You think it’s a little different from what you had in mind?
So what?
If you’re unhappy about it, come back to life and do it yourself.
Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
---