Trampling the Serpent's Head
A man emerged from the darkness as though he had seeped out of the shadows themselves.
Though his face was covered and his presence suppressed, the voice was a familiar one.
"Senior Drill Instructor Ya Jin. What brings you here?"
"Heh heh. Congratulations, Yun Cheon, on formally becoming a martial warrior of the Cult."
With those words, Senior Drill Instructor Ya Jin handed something over to Yun Cheon.
It was an object encased in a heavy leather sheath.
When Yun Cheon opened the sheath, a dense metal flying dagger revealed itself, exuding a chilling, frigid killing intent.
"...Is this a flying dagger?"
Even at a glance, it was far more refined and superior than the standard-issue daggers distributed by the quartermaster.
"I saw the Single Soul Dart you used in your duel. Until now you've relied on rings and other objects for practice, but it seems your proficiency is finally sufficient. You may as well put this to use."
The moment Yun Cheon had hurled an iron ring and wounded Instructor Jeok Mu-gwang in their duel—
Ya Jin had felt a genuine shiver run down his spine.
That one is a born gambler—no, a born killer! If he joined the Shadowless Killing Sect, he might surpass even the ones the sect has poured its heart into raising.
A faint gleam of greed flickered in Ya Jin's eyes.
...Once his body is mended, he'll become a monster greater than he is now. I must bind him to me early.
Yun Cheon stowed the dagger away and expressed his thanks.
"...I'll put it to good use."
"Heh heh. Thanks to your demonstration of the Shadowless Step and the Single Soul Dart in your duel with Instructor Jeok Mu-gwang, both my reputation and that of the Shadowless Killing Sect have risen considerably. The rank tags I invested in you barely even cross my mind anymore."
"It benefited me as well."
"The Shadowless Killing Sect has its eye on you. If... if you ever find yourself interested, speak to me at any time. I'll take my leave for today."
Having said his piece, Ya Jin did not wait for Yun Cheon's answer.
His silhouette seeped into the deep darkness of the corridor and vanished without a sound.
Yun Cheon strapped the dagger Ya Jin had given him to his waist and stared for a moment in the direction he had disappeared.
The Shadowless Killing Sect, is it...
One of the Ten Demonic Sects.
He had heard the name many times, but he had yet to grasp just how far their power truly reached.
Almost none of the cadets in the Hidden Demon Cave came from the Ten Demonic Sects or the Twelve Guardian Families...
The ones Yun Cheon had crossed paths with amounted to little more than the two from the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family, Yayul Hui, and Jang Dae-san of the Iron Blood Boundless Sect.
But Yayul Hui had never been properly schooled in her family's martial arts, and the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family, for all the arts it possessed, was famous chiefly for its poisons and venomous cruelty. Jang Dae-san of the Iron Blood Boundless Sect did not appear to hold any particularly lofty position either.
Beyond them, the Ten Demonic Sects had invested almost no cadets in the Hidden Demon Cave at all.
That could mean only one thing.
They're cultivating their true talents in secret.
If he meant to compete with them, the most urgent matter was restoring his body to the point where he could at least wield internal energy.
Once he affiliated himself with some organization, opportunities to restore his body would become difficult to seize.
Not a bad offer. But not now...
Yun Cheon gazed briefly in the direction Ya Jin had vanished, then set his feet in motion once more.
His destination was the private stone chamber in the Hidden Demon Cave where he had spent the past year.
If he intended to remain in the Inner Library for an extended period, he would need to stop by the Spiritual Nutrition Hall and the Myriad Treasures Pavilion as well.
"I-it's Yun Cheon!"
As he passed through familiar territory, gazes unlike any before fixed upon him.
When Yun Cheon walked past the training grounds, the cadets mid-practice froze in place all at once.
At the sight of his newly issued martial robes and the blade at his waist, their eyes brimmed with a mixture of awe and curiosity.
"Martial robes of the Cult—and a real blade!"
"To think he's actually become a formal warrior...!"
The open contempt and disdain that had once poured over him had been washed away without a trace.
The whispers died the moment he passed, and several of the cadets instinctively stepped aside to clear his path.
Yun Cheon was no longer merely a lucky beggar.
"Incredible. Ahead of even the scions of the Twelve Guardian Families..."
Yun Cheon was already a living legend—the man who had defeated an instructor and cleared the Hidden Demon Cave in a single year.
That record would stand unbroken for a long time to come.
As Yun Cheon walked the corridors of the Hidden Demon Cave, familiar names reached his ears.
"Thank goodness those Serpent Scorpion Muk brats are nowhere to be seen. The way they lorded themselves over everyone just because they were 'Guardian Family' stock..."
"They're famous for waltzing into the Hidden Demon Cave every intake and raising hell."
"The higher-ranked ones—the Twelve Guardian Families and the Ten Demonic Sects—never show so much as the tip of their noses here."
"Then what happened to Yayul Hui of the Wild Wind Yayul Family?"
"A martial family's daughter, isn't she? No need to look to know. She seems reasonably talented, but... she'll never measure up to her older brother."
Yun Cheon walked on in silence, listening to the chatter.
Then, the moment he turned to round a corner, he came face to face with a familiar figure.
It was Yayul Hui.
She swept her gaze over Yun Cheon's new martial robes and the heavy blade at his waist, then smirked.
"...The robes suit you. You actually look the part of a warrior now."
Her tone was calm and unbothered, as though the murmuring around her meant nothing at all.
I walk my own path in the martial way.
Ever since she had made that resolve, the whispers of the surrounding cadets had simply ceased to reach Yayul Hui's ears.
"And you've lost your hesitation. Your eyes have become a warrior's."
Just as Yun Cheon and Yayul Hui exchanged greetings, a voice thick with killing intent cut in from across the corridor.
"Well, well. Both of you pests in one place. How convenient."
A crease formed between Yayul Hui's brows.
When Yun Cheon turned his head, a man was stalking toward them, his expression twisted and vivid like a venomous snake coiled to strike.
It was Muk Ha-jin of the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family.
"Muk Ha-jin? Shouldn't you still be flat on your back in the infirmary?"
At Yayul Hui's words, Muk Ha-jin curled his lips into a vicious smile and glared at Yun Cheon.
"Hmph. I merely fainted. No real injuries. More to the point... Yun Cheon. I hear you've become a formal warrior."
Muk Ha-jin ground his teeth.
The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was striking the drill instructor and being sent flying.
He had never witnessed the duel that followed between Yu Ha and Yun Cheon.
"Luck's on your side, isn't it? If I hadn't blacked out, it would have been me who became a formal warrior..."
At his words, Yayul Hui's mouth fell open in sheer disbelief.
"Ha! Don't tell me you haven't heard who Yun Cheon dueled with?"
"Hmph. I couldn't care less about that. Just drill instructors—first-rate rabble, nothing more. It was surely that dim-witted new instructor, Ma Chung, he faced. I don't even need to look."
Muk Ha-jin believed, with iron certainty, that Yun Cheon had won his victory against Ma Chung, the newly appointed instructor.
The arrogance of a man convinced that he alone had fought a true, evenly matched 'battle' against an instructor.
In his mind, the notion that Yun Cheon—hauled in looking like a beggar—possessed skill surpassing his own as a scion of the Twelve Guardian Families was simply beyond imagining.
"You really don't know a single thing, do you? And you think you could be a match for Yun Cheon?"
The moment he was openly scorned in front of Yayul Hui, jealousy turned Muk Ha-jin's eyes bloodshot.
"...Enough talk!"
He had stormed out of his sickbed the instant he heard the news of Yun Cheon's elevation, without even learning the circumstances.
To settle the score before the man left the Hidden Demon Cave behind.
"Yun Cheon! Face me here and now. I'll personally determine whether you have any real right to that rank!"
Yun Cheon let out an exasperated sigh.
"...With that skill of yours? Why not go tend to your body in the infirmary instead."
"Yayul Hui, get out of the way! You just stand there and watch."
Shoving Yayul Hui aside, Muk Ha-jin kicked off the ground and came charging.
His silhouette writhed with an eerie, serpentine fluidity.
The hereditary footwork of the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family.
The Serpent Glide Step.
A capricious art that seemed to rush in along a straight line, only to burrow in at a diagonal in the blink of an eye.
Oh?
Yun Cheon's eyes narrowed.
Rot though the family might be, this carried the sharpness befitting a direct line of the Twelve Guardian Families.
This one has at least stepped into the threshold of first-rate. A level somewhat above Yayul Hui, even.
Threshold of first-rate or not, ascending to the first rank before even reaching his majority meant considerable martial talent.
At the first-rate level, one could pass oneself off as a proper warrior anywhere in the Central Plains.
Shwiik!
Muk Ha-jin's fingertips bored in toward Yun Cheon's throat like the fangs of a venomous serpent.
Any ordinary master would have panicked and fallen back before such a surprise strike. But Yun Cheon did not evade.
So this is the serpent's head.
Instead, he simply extended one foot—tuk—into the path of Muk Ha-jin's plunging trajectory.
Tak.
"......?!"
Muk Ha-jin's eyes went round as saucers.
His dazzlingly shifting footwork caught, quite carelessly, on the tip of Yun Cheon's outstretched foot—and stopped dead.
It was as if a serpent had its head stomped on before it could even leave its den.
"A footwork inspired by the serpent's movement, is it."
"Shut your mouth! What would the likes of you know!"
"In the serpent's movement, the essence lies in the suppleness of the waist. Yet you lead with your head thrust toward your target. That is why your next move reads so plainly."
At Yun Cheon's icy critique, Muk Ha-jin's face flushed scarlet.
The shame of having his family's signature art dismantled before an audience!
Muk Ha-jin instantly shifted his weight and unleashed a torrent of attacks.
The Serpent Scorpion Exploding Scale Fist!
Dozens of fist-shadows descended upon Yun Cheon like a swarm of vipers.
Yet Yun Cheon remained utterly composed as he watched the downpour of fists.
No—rather, he studied Muk Ha-jin's movements with close attention, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
"That looks interesting."
The next instant, Yun Cheon's hand moved.
Astonishingly, it was not a defense.
It was a fist tracing the exact same trajectory as Muk Ha-jin's Serpent Scorpion Exploding Scale Fist—no, extending at an angle even more perfect than the original.
Thwack! Thud! Crack!
"Kugh! Khk!"
Fist collided with fist in midair.
But it was Muk Ha-jin who was driven back.
The same technique—yet Yun Cheon's fist was faster, and struck with greater precision into every gap in Muk Ha-jin's guard.
Im... impossible! That's our family's secret art! Why would you—of all people—!
Muk Ha-jin was dumbstruck.
Yun Cheon was returning his own martial art perfectly, like a mirror—or rather, like a master reflected in that mirror.
"The linkage between your forms is not smooth. When you bare your fangs, you must be silent and concealed. You are far too loud."
Yun Cheon pressed him back, offering instruction all the while.
The final strike.
Having lost all reason, Muk Ha-jin swung his fist in a massive, sweeping arc.
The form of Poison Fang Piercing, the most vicious technique of the Serpent Scorpion Exploding Scale Fist.
"Die!"
Yun Cheon deflected that fist by a margin of a single sheet of paper and bored into the hollow of Muk Ha-jin's guard.
"Even when shown... you cannot learn it, it seems."
Keeping the momentum of his entry, Yun Cheon drove his palm forward.
A heavy palm strike, laden with the weight of his iron rings.
BOOM—!
"Khhak!"
Muk Ha-jin's body shot into the air with an explosive whump.
As though struck by a cannonball, the burly man's frame went cartwheeling through the air like a sheet of paper and slammed into the corridor wall.
"Kraaagh...!"
Muk Ha-jin rolled across the floor, his face a mask of disbelief.
This was no ordinary defeat.
He had been utterly ravaged by his own proudest martial art.
It was a humiliation Muk Ha-jin had never once suffered in his life.
"You... you bastard... how in the world did you copy my family's art..."
Yun Cheon approached him slowly.
His eyes were those of a predator gazing down at cornered prey.
"Do not climb to prominence on your family's name alone. That art you take such pride in—through my eyes, it is nothing but a fabric of holes."
An overwhelming gulf.
It was not a wall that could be scaled with a family's reflected glory or a stroke of fortune.
"...Nnghhh. A m... monster."
Hearing Yun Cheon's icy pronouncement, Muk Ha-jin lost consciousness once more.
Muk Ha-jin was not the only one left aghast.
Yayul Hui's eyes, too, had gone wide as saucers.
...He stole the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family's martial art on the spot?
It was a talent that raised gooseflesh.
Everything she had believed herself to know about Yun Cheon until now had been an illusion.
All this time, she had glimpsed nothing more than the faintest frayed edge of his genius.
Having subdued Muk Ha-jin with room to spare, Yun Cheon stood as composed as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
...He is decidedly not cadet-caliber.
Yayul Hui felt, viscerally, the distance between herself and Yun Cheon.
"So you're leaving the Mad Path Pavilion now?"
"Not yet. I remain under Instructor Gal Mu-heun's command. For the time being, I will be in the Mad Path Pavilion's Inner Library."
"Wait for me. I'll clear the Hidden Demon Cave soon enough, and then I'll catch up to you."
So Yayul Hui declared—yet somewhere in her heart, Yun Cheon's talent felt a little frightening.
He might even... surpass my older brother.
Just then, Yun Cheon asked her:
"By the way, have you seen Yu Ha anywhere?"
"...Hm? I haven't laid eyes on him since the evaluations either. Maybe try his chamber?"
"I suppose I must."
After all that commotion, it was almost strange that Yu Ha had not appeared.
The man who would normally have materialized to meddle in every possible way had vanished like smoke.
...Where has he gone? He showed results in the duel too. Has he already departed for some other organization?
Returning empty-handed to his own stone chamber, Yun Cheon's footsteps froze solid at the door.
Protruding from the gap beneath the firmly sealed door was a single scrap of white paper.
Could it be...?
He carefully drew it out and stepped inside. Unfolded, the letter bore a line for its recipient:
To Yun Cheon.
And beneath it, a singular hand of writing danced across the page.
One look at the calligraphy is enough to know.
The characters flowed like water, liquid and effortless.
In the unbroken strokes, written without a single hitch, one could feel ease and refinement.
But at the tail of each character—especially the final upward flick—the line turned as keen and piercing as a blade's edge.
They say a man's character bleeds into his writing...
Like a frigid blade hidden behind a gentle smile.
It was, in a word, calligraphy that could belong to none other than that damned Yu Ha.
Return of the Cloud Dragon
Author | Chu Sang (Autumn Frost)
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
Published by | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dreambooks
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