Mount Hua Is Not Mount Hua Without You (5)
“...It’s Mount Hua.”
“Oh, it’s Mount Hua...”
“...We made it.”
The disciples of Mount Hua stared up at the peaks soaring high above the clouds with faces as black as if they’d already died. In the past, when they left Shaanxi and later returned to see those towering ridges again, an indescribable warmth would rise from somewhere deep in their chests. They had even felt, with painful clarity, that their roots could be nowhere else but in those barren cliffs.
But now, there wasn’t a trace of warmth on the faces of the Mount Hua disciples gazing at those lofty cliffs.
Only endless despair had settled there.
“...You want us to climb that?”
“With this body?”
“...Just kill me. Just... kill me.”
Their eyes grew damp.
When they first set out from the Yangtze River, their hearts had been full of drive.
What Chung Myung had told them was undeniably true. Facing Maninbang, the disciples of Mount Hua had felt their own inadequacy to the bone. The fear that, if things continued like this, they might have to watch their sect brothers die right before their eyes had spurred them on without mercy.
So they had been overflowing with resolve, their determination rock-solid.
That was why, when Chung Myung pushed them at a ridiculous speed and made them cover an enormous distance in a single day, not one of them complained.
But when, after wringing every last drop of moisture from their bodies, he said they would begin training the moment they found a camp to sleep in, their eyes had started to shake... And when the beating began under the excuse of training, they had cried tears of blood.
By the time they were rolling this way and that in the dark until late at night, barely able to fall asleep, they had realized something was terribly wrong. And when they were kicked awake barely one shichen after dozing off, curses had poured from their mouths on their own.
Day after day, it went on like that.
“S-senior brother... there’s blood coming out of your mouth. Wipe it off.”
“My lips are split. But why is your face all white?”
“Because I’m about to die.”
“...”
They had reached Mount Hua in such a state that even the beggars from the Beggars’ Sect would’ve looked pathetic to them, and their eyes no longer held even a shred of soul.
And at this moment, they couldn’t help but be seized by one fundamental question.
“...Why the hell did they settle here?”
“Have they got no brains? Huh? No brains at all?”
“Were they trying to screw over their descendants? Was Grand Ancestor like Chung Myung or something?”
The torrent of filial insults came down like a storm, but no one could exactly accuse them of being rude.
It couldn’t be helped.
Their legs were trembling so badly that if they so much as caught on a pebble, they looked ready to snap. And yet they had to climb that absurd cliff right away, so if curses didn’t come out, that would’ve been stranger.
While everyone was sinking into despair, there was precisely one person whose face had brightened.
“Krrr! It’s Mount Hua!”
“...”
From behind them, Chung Myung’s energetic voice rang out clear and bright.
“I was about to lose my mind, not being able to train properly out there on the road. Now I can finally do it right! My mouth’s already watering, heh-heh-heh.”
“...That crazy bastard.”
“...”
The fact that those words hadn’t come from a Mount Hua disciple, but from none other than Hyun Jong, was a concise proof of exactly what kind of situation this was.
But Chung Myung didn’t care whether he was being insulted or not. He only pointed at Mount Hua with a delighted expression and jerked his chin.
“What are you waiting for?”
“...”
“Climb.”
“...”
“And for the record, any senior brother who falls off the cliff halfway down starts over from the bottom. The last thirty to arrive start from zero, too.”
“...”
“Krrr! We should’ve been doing this from the beginning! This is so refreshing!”
“...Please just die, Chung Myung. Please just die!”
“All right! Move out!”
Ignoring the barrage of curses that flew from all directions, Chung Myung cheerfully kicked the rear ends of the senior brothers in front of him.
Only belatedly, the disciples of Mount Hua wondered whether it might have been better to join Maninbang after all.
Thud.
Jo Gul, barely managing to get through the mountain gate, collapsed face-first. The ground greeted him warmly by smashing his face into it, but unfortunately he lacked even the strength to put a hand down.
Face pressed against the dirt, he twitched and opened his mouth.
“...Senior brother.”
“...”
“Are you alive?”
Then, from beside him, where Yoon Jong lay motionless, a voice like the buzz of a mosquito leaked out.
“...Dead.”
Usually, the word “meticulous” was a compliment.
But right now, the only things the Mount Hua disciples could use to describe Chung Myung’s meticulousness were “damned” and “son of a bitch.”
That bastard had been so painstakingly meticulous that he adjusted the intensity of training according to each person’s level. Thanks to that, even the Five Swords, who were clearly stronger than the others, had been reduced to utter wrecks all the same.
“You, damn... ridiculously fussy bastard.”
“...He’s a genius at making people suffer...”
Worse still, Yoon Jong and Jo Gul had fallen off the cliff and then been forced to climb all the way back up from the foot of Mount Hua twice.
It had felt, at the moment of falling, as if someone had stepped on their faces with a boot... But what was the point of arguing about that now?
And then, right at that moment—
Kuuuuuuung!
At the sound of something massive moving, Yoon Jong and Jo Gul, still sprawled on the ground, jolted and turned their heads. The sight of Mount Hua’s gate closing without leaving even the tiniest gap was clearly reflected in their eyes.
“Lock it.”
Kuuung! Kuuung!
A great beam slid into place and firmly barred the gate.
It was a familiar sight, but today it looked as if the gates of hell themselves were being shut.
“There. That’s the closure of the sect.”
“...That’s it?”
At Baek Cheon’s question, Chung Myung shrugged.
“What’s so grand about closing the sect? Shut the door, stop going out, don’t accept visitors—there, that’s a closure of the sect.”
Chung Myung rolled his neck from side to side.
“All right, everyone up.”
“...”
“Huh? You’re not getting up?”
The human body was honest.
Whatever opinions their minds might have held, the bodies that had been rolled, beaten, and overworked reacted instantly to the voice they heard.
The Mount Hua disciples hurriedly got to their feet and lined up in neat rows.
Looking over the ragtag, bedraggled disciples of Mount Hua, Chung Myung tilted his head.
“A closure of the sect, preparing for the future...”
His voice was just as slanted as his posture.
“I guess some of you senior brothers think this is supposed to be some romantic, noble thing or something like that.”
When Chung Myung’s snake-like eyes swept over them, the disciples flinched and subtly averted their gazes.
“I sincerely hope you understand the situation correctly. See that over there?”
He jerked his chin toward the closed gate.
“...Why the door?”
When Baek Cheon asked in a fading voice, Chung Myung grinned brightly.
“If even one person among you...”
“...”
“...fails to reach the level I want...”
“...”
“then none of you will ever see outside Mount Hua again. You’ll just spend your whole lives with me inside this gate and then die here, living all cozy and intimate together. Got it? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“...”
“So straighten up. Straighten up.”
By this point, everyone had no choice but to understand.
There was a distance spanning the entire Central Plains between the closure of the sect they had imagined and the closure of the sect Chung Myung had imagined.
But now that they knew, there was no way to turn back.
“And...”
Chung Myung’s gaze drifted slightly to the side.
The senior disciples of the Un generation, who had been left out of the lineup because they were technically still recuperating, had been sitting down to rest; when they caught Chung Myung’s look, they quietly turned their heads away.
“As for the people whose joints have gone stiff, since there are still issues of dignity to consider, come talk to me separately later.”
At those words, Un Geom turned to Un Am with a pleased expression.
“Senior brother.”
“Yes?”
“Doesn’t Chung Myung seem to have become much kinder? He’s even thinking of our senior uncles’ dignity.”
“Did you eat something wrong?”
“...”
Un Geom lost the ability to speak. Somehow, Un Am had grown quite rough over time.
Sching.
Chung Myung slowly drew out Dark Plum Sword. Then he planted the sword into the ground and looked around at everyone.
“Enough joking.”
“...”
As Chung Myung swept his gaze over them, he said,
“Even I can’t just suddenly improve your skill...”
“Ah. So there’s no shortcut to making us stronger quickly?”
“...”
Chung Myung stared at Baek Cheon with wide eyes.
Then Jo Gul, standing beside him, clicked his tongue.
“He’s probably about to say something like, ‘Martial arts are damnably honest. There’s a limit to what shortcuts can do.’”
“...”
Yoon Jong slowly nodded and opened his mouth with a solemn face.
“Then he’ll say we should cut back on sleep, cut back on rest, and train and train and train and train some more. It’s boring. So boring.”
“...”
Having had his lines stolen completely, Chung Myung stared at the three of them blankly.
Then Yu I-seol delivered the finishing blow with perfect timing.
“Old man.”
“...”
Dang Soso wasn’t about to stay quiet either.
“Anyway, he opens his mouth and tries to scare people. Like there’s anyone here who doesn’t already know that.”
Their bodies were exhausted enough already.
But the more tired the body became, the more fiercely stubborn their spirit burned; and if Mount Hua wasn’t defined by stubbornness, what else was it? Take away that grit and all that remained would be corpses.
Baek Cheon let out a snort.
“You’d better worry about yourself. No matter how good you are, you won’t be able to handle all of us.”
Jo Gul chimed in, snickering.
“You’ll be sweating buckets before long. Don’t come crying later that you can’t handle it anymore.”
Yoon Jong also nodded.
“You’d do well to think carefully about what we mean. Even if you wanted to run, that door won’t open.”
“I’ll put holes in your body. I promise.”
There was murder in Yu I-seol’s eyes.
The lined-up Mount Hua disciples glared as one and chimed in agreement.
“You watch yourself, you bastard! You think you’ll be safe once we get stronger?”
“Right now you can do whatever you want! Just wait until the closure ends.”
“The resentment we’ve built up until now? We’ll repay every bit of it in one shot!”
“...I’m not like that, Chung Myung. I’ve always only felt grateful.”
“Which bastard said that?”
It had gone beyond murderous intent and into outright killing intent, and Chung Myung let out a hollow laugh.
Watching this, Hyun Jong stepped forward with a gentle smile.
As Hyun Jong walked to the center, the Mount Hua disciples’ eyes, which had been brimming with murderous energy just a moment before, instantly softened and they stood quietly.
“In the past...”
In the midst of the quiet, Hyun Jong spoke.
“Those who had refined the sword of Mount Hua to the highest level were called Plum Blossom Swordsmen.”
“...Plum Blossom Swordsmen.”
“That name was none other than the title bestowed by Mount Hua upon its disciples. Those who received the name of Plum Blossom Swordsman, it was said, could proudly declare anywhere in the world that their sword represented the sword of Mount Hua.”
A clear light appeared in the eyes of the Mount Hua disciples.
“It will be difficult. Training while confined within the sect will be harder than you imagine. However...”
Hyun Jong took all the disciples in at a glance and smiled.
“When that closed gate opens again, I hope all of you will be able to proudly call yourselves Plum Blossom Swordsmen.”
If that could come to pass, then no one in the world would dare look down on the name of Mount Hua.
“Can you do it?”
“Yes, Sect Leader!”
“We’ll do it!”
Hearing the loud answer that came back, Chung Myung clicked his tongue.
“Like hell it’s enough just to have motivation.”
“That bastard, seriously...”
“Still, well, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Chung Myung gripped Dark Plum Sword and twisted his lips.
“I’m going to make sure you do.”
Time was short. Too short to turn those yellow chicks into eagles.
And yet...
I’ll make it happen.
Just like Mount Hua of old. No, beyond that.
He would make the plum blossoms they raised bloom across every corner of the world.
“Let’s begin. If you start whining, I’m not going to go easy on you, so brace yourselves!”
Chung Myung’s thunderous voice rang out.
A cool breeze slid down from the summit along the ridges of the mountain, gently wrapping around Mount Hua before drifting back down the slope.
The plum trees endure the long winter for the sake of their blossoms.
Only after passing through a harsh and grueling season of endurance do plum flowers bloom—red, brilliant, and so fierce with color they will one day stain the spring of Mount Hua that is bound to come.