Welcome Back, Mount Hua Sword Hero (2)
What was the most important thing when welcoming a guest?
The answer would probably depend on whom you asked.
Some would say it was heart. Others, manners. Or perhaps a warm bed to sleep in.
But for the people who had grown used to living on this barren mountain peak, their thoughts seemed to run a little differently from ordinary folk.
“Drink upppp!”
“Meat! More meeeat!”
“Damn it. It’s not rabbit meat! Pork! It’s pork!”
“Hahaha! Have another one!”
An unwatchable sight unfolded here: Taoists in long robes, half of them with their tops stripped off, gorging themselves on alcohol and meat as if they’d never seen either before.
The only saving grace was that they were so high up in the mountains that there was no one around to witness this catastrophe.
Freed from the need to mind their manners, the Mount Hua disciples threw back drinks and tore into meat with such wild abandon that it was as if they meant to empty out three years’ worth of pent-up longing in a single night.
The food they had ordered in advance vanished the moment it was brought up, and every time it was wiped out, one of the disciples had to sprint down the mountain again to fetch more.
In the center of that boisterous drinking party, Tang Gun-ak silently lifted his cup toward Chung Myung. Chung Myung grinned and raised a wine bottle in response.
Tang Gun-ak’s expression looked remarkably relaxed.
He had already confirmed Chung Myung’s growth to more than enough of a degree, and he had even put his trump card to use in a spar that had been close to real combat. If one were to say that his frantic dash from the Yangtze River all the way here had already paid for itself, it would not have been an exaggeration.
“How is it?”
“What is?”
“Have you confirmed that we haven’t been loafing around and stuffing ourselves for the past three years?”
“……Hmm.”
Tang Gun-ak frowned in thought, as though considering what words to use.
“Indeed.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve faced many swords in my time, but I’ve never seen one like yours before.”
“Hmm.”
“It made me understand perfectly how Mount Hua’s sword could once speak of the world.”
“Hmmm.”
“If I searched the entire world right now, there still wouldn’t be many who could contend with you by the sword alone.”
“HMMMM!”
“You’ve had it rough. No matter how much talent a person has, this would have been impossible without blood-soaked effort. You deserve praise.”
At Tang Gun-ak’s words, which were practically a deliberate effort to build Chung Myung up, Chung Myung’s chin rose higher and higher.
“……If he keeps that up, he’ll be staring at the sky soon.”
“He’s already doing that, Sasuk.”
“Idiot.”
Baek Cheon and Jo Gul clicked their tongues, and even Yu I-seol shot Chung Myung a disapproving look, but his chin, lifted high with smug triumph, showed no sign of coming back down.
“And…….”
Tang Gun-ak’s sharp gaze moved to the Five Swords seated around Chung Myung.
“……It isn’t only Chung Myung who has grown stronger.”
A satisfied smile appeared at the corners of Tang Gun-ak’s mouth.
“No need to flatter us.”
Chung Myung, whose chin had somehow dropped again, looked at Tang Gun-ak and said, “Though that’s not really something you should be saying, Lord of the Tang Family.”
“Me? Why is that?”
“That final move.”
Once those words left Chung Myung’s mouth, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at Tang Gun-ak. Everyone had been curious about that last move.
“You made it, didn’t you?”
“……How did you know?”
“Well, the reason’s simple. Hmm. It was completely different from what you’d shown before, and…….”
When he saw Tang Gun-ak’s faintly suspicious look, Chung Myung grinned and finished, “It felt a bit rough around the edges.”
“Cough!”
Tang Gun-ak gave a loud, forced cough and gulped down his drink in one go, as if his pride had been pricked. No—rather than annoyed, he looked embarrassed.
“Rough around the edges?”
“That?”
Baek Cheon stared at Chung Myung with wide eyes. Even Yu I-seol, who rarely showed emotion over anything at all, glared at him with a face that clearly said, Has this bastard lost his mind?
And who could blame them?
What Tang Gun-ak had shown at the end had been incredible even by their standards. And yet Chung Myung was calling it rough.
But Tang Gun-ak didn’t seem offended in the least. In fact, he kept coughing like someone who had been caught red-handed.
“Did it show that much?”
“A little too much……?”
“Ugh.”
A groan escaped him. Seeing Tang Gun-ak in such a rare state, Tang Soso stared with open fascination, unable to look away.
Chung Myung asked casually, “It’s incomplete, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I thought so.”
Tang Gun-ak let out a long sigh. To speak plainly, that move was not yet something he could use in actual combat.
“Why is it incomplete? The power was honestly monstrous.”
Unable to contain his curiosity, Baek Cheon cut into their conversation.
Tang Gun-ak answered him readily.
“Because power isn’t everything.”
“……Pardon?”
“That move consumes far too much internal energy. After using it once, I’m so exhausted I can barely keep fighting.”
“Isn’t there such a thing as a one-strike kill? If one blow is enough to bring the opponent down for certain…….”
“But it didn’t bring him down.”
“……Ah, no. That is…….”
Baek Cheon stumbled over his words, unable to continue.
That’s right. Yes, it hadn’t brought him down. But that was because…….
No, how the hell am I supposed to put this?
Wasn’t the bastard who blocked it the strange one, not the move itself?
If it had just been a little more refined, maybe it could have taken that bastard’s head off?
Neither answer sounded very good.
“It’s too crude, so it can’t become a one-strike kill, and yet it still burns through an absurd amount of internal energy. So, in other words, this kind of thing is…….”
“All bark and no bite?”
“…….”
Tang Gun-ak’s eyebrow twitched at Chung Myung’s words.
“Hm? No? Then maybe a pretty face on a worthless melon?”
Crack!
The wine cup in Tang Gun-ak’s hand shattered instantly.
“Hmm…… It seems the wine cups at Mount Hua aren’t made of very good material. I should tell the Tang Family to send some new ones.”
Even if they were made of iron, they’d probably still break……
But no one said that aloud. Whatever Tang Family gave them, even poison was still an advantage if you could take it first.
Trembling with agitation, Tang Gun-ak finally let out a long sigh.
“It’s incomplete. And I don’t even know when it’ll be finished.”
“Ah. So you used that dangerous incomplete technique in a spar?”
Twitch.
Tang Gun-ak’s brow twitched again.
“……I used it in a spar precisely because it was incomplete. If it were finished, do you think I could have brought myself to use it on you? I’m not going to kill the friend I finally got back.”
“Even if it were complete, I doubt it’d kill me…….”
“A person can lose his head for being too certain of himself.”
“Even when I’m certain, my head doesn’t come off.”
“…….”
“…….”
Tang Gun-ak and Chung Myung glared at each other with murderous eyes. Overwhelmed by the tension between them, the others turned to Tang Soso with desperate looks, silently begging her to do something. She let out a deep sigh.
“Could you two stop it already? You’re not children!”
“Cough.”
“Tsk.”
Only then did Tang Gun-ak and Chung Myung turn their heads away from each other and resume drinking straight from the bottle.
Im So-byeong, who had been watching quietly, clicked his tongue.
“Sword-wielding men, every one of them…….”
Here, on Mount Hua, the lord of the Tang Family and a Taoist of Mount Hua were being criticized by a bandit.
“Still, that aside.”
As if trying to refresh the mood, Tang Gun-ak spoke again.
“It’s still not a move suitable for sparring or real battle. I was too greedy. I’m thinking I may need to sacrifice power and make it more refined.”
“Maybe you don’t need to do that.”
“Hmm?”
Chung Myung shrugged.
“Isn’t the excessive internal energy consumption happening not because the power is too great, but because the way you’re forcing the internal energy into it is too brute-force?”
“The method?”
“Yes. You’re drawing it in through rotation, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Then instead of compressing it and detonating it, you should make the energy rotate inside the flying dagger from the start. The most waste happens when something that’s been standing still suddenly starts moving all at once.”
“Oh?”
Tang Gun-ak’s eyes brightened. He looked as if he had just caught hold of a thread.
“……Unifying the direction of the weapon with the direction of qi…… That’s basic. The most basic of the basic. But…….”
“Yes.”
Chung Myung nodded as though he already knew what Tang Gun-ak was about to say.
“When you’re aiming for a higher realm, the most basic things are exactly the ones you forget without noticing.”
“……I see. To think I’d make such an obvious mistake.”
It wasn’t as simple as Chung Myung made it sound. Forcing qi to rotate inside a fixed flying dagger would be much more difficult than what Tang Gun-ak was doing now. But if he could only solve it properly, he could definitely slash the internal energy cost dramatically.
Maybe the power would rise too.
If that happened, the Twelve Flying Daggers would no longer be the Twelve Flying Daggers.
Thirteen Flying Daggers? No. Let’s just keep calling it Twelve Flying Daggers.
What a hideously awful name…….
“I see. Yes, that could work.”
As Tang Gun-ak muttered to himself and nodded as if convinced, Chung Myung casually pressed on.
“It’s not only that move that’s incomplete, is it?”
“Hmm?”
Tang Gun-ak asked as though he didn’t know, but Chung Myung only grinned.
“Originally, all the flying daggers that fell to the ground were supposed to fly at the same time, right?”
“……Were you perhaps a Tang by birth in a previous life?”
He hadn’t been a Tang in his previous life, but he had been something close to it. If I’d gone to the Tang Family, the lord would’ve come running out in his bare feet. Yep. To tell me not to cause trouble.
“That’s right. That’s what completion means. But…… with my current skill, it’s impossible to realize.”
“If the internal energy consumption can be reduced, it’ll definitely be possible.”
“……Do you think so?”
“Of course.”
The image formed clearly in Chung Myung’s mind.
A single flying dagger flying out with overwhelming force. Then the daggers and hidden weapons swarming in from every direction, along with the eleven other flying daggers closing in around it.
It would undoubtedly become a technique like a fantasy made real.
And the day that technique revealed itself to the world, another Dark Saint would appear in this world.
“But…….”
“Hmm?”
“Why did you suddenly decide to make a new technique?”
“Hmm.”
At Chung Myung’s question, Tang Gun-ak smiled faintly.
“Of course, it’s a bit much to try creating a new technique when I haven’t even mastered what I already have.”
“…….”
Chung Myung didn’t answer.
There were two reasons.
The first was that Tang Gun-ak was right.
Even Tang Bo, who had been a superior martial artist to the current Tang Gun-ak, had not devised a new technique for the Twelve Flying Daggers. So for Tang Gun-ak to create a new one was indeed a little overreaching.
But the second reason he stayed silent was the exact opposite.
Because even with all that, the new technique Tang Gun-ak had created clearly surpassed the existing techniques of the Twelve Flying Daggers in ways Chung Myung understood all too well.
“But if you ask me why I went to the trouble of making this technique, there’s really only one answer.”
“What is it?”
“Because I needed to.”
Tang Gun-ak shrugged and went on.
“The Tang Family’s flying dagger arts and hidden weapon arts are certainly fine martial studies. But…… they do have clear limitations when facing masters worthy of being called ‘absolute.’ Especially for flying daggers, where the number of techniques you can use becomes limited the more you throw. That trouble only gets worse.”
“True.”
“It would be ideal if you could retrieve the flying daggers, but if you’re fighting an absolute master, they’re not likely to give you that luxury.”
Chung Myung nodded slowly.
It was clearly a problem Tang Bo had once worried over as well. Otherwise, why would he have even considered attaching a tough silver thread to the tips of the flying daggers? Of course, he had abandoned the idea because it caused problems with the daggers’ trajectories.
“While I was training and worrying over it all, I looked at the flying daggers strewn across the ground and thought—why should I only use the flying daggers in my hand? The hidden weapons scattered across the sky are no less mine, and the flying daggers in my hand are not the only flying daggers that belong to me.”
“Ah…….”
Tang Gun-ak cleared his throat, looking a little embarrassed.
“Well, I began with that thought, but…… it still isn’t working well. It’s rather embarrassing to show such shortcomings.”
“No.”
Chung Myung shook his head seriously.
“It was the best.”
“…….”
“Really.”
As Tang Gun-ak stared at him, a small smile bloomed on his lips.
“……Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Chung Myung refilled Tang Gun-ak’s cup, and Tang Gun-ak in turn took the bottle and filled Chung Myung’s cup.
“Drink.”
“Yes.”
Chung Myung emptied his cup with obvious satisfaction.
It’s moving forward…….
Over the past three years, Mount Hua had certainly gained many things. But Mount Hua had not been the only one putting in the work.
His descendants were creating a technique even Tang Bo himself had failed to produce in the past. It was still incomplete, but one day this move would become perfect, just like the other Twelve Flying Daggers.
If Tang Gun-ak could not finish it, then someone who inherited his will would, and after that another would carry it on, slowly refining it little by little.
That was how martial studies progressed.
Right?
Chung Myung lightly asked the one person who came to mind, then smiled and looked back at Tang Gun-ak. Just then, as if something had occurred to him, his eyes widened slightly.
“Ah, but there’s something I’m curious about.”
“Hmm? What is it?”
Chung Myung chuckled mischievously.
“It’s about running short on flying daggers. Why only use twelve of them? Is there some special reason?”
“……Hm?”
“You don’t have to stick to only twelve just because it’s the Twelve Flying Daggers, do you? You’re already carrying hidden weapons all over your body, so if you had, say, twenty-four flying daggers, wouldn’t you never have to worry about running out?”
“…….”
“Even if the final goal is to control all twelve at once, there’s no law saying you have to carry only twelve. Having spares can’t hurt……?”
Unlike Chung Myung’s playful grin, Tang Gun-ak’s face grew steadily paler.
“…….”
And seeing that, Chung Myung could no longer smile either.
……Hey.
Wait.
Did you seriously not think of that?
For real?
— Wow, I didn’t think of that.
Apparently…… willpower alone wasn’t the only thing needed after all.