Hang Until Only Ten Remain
"Right! Get yourselves hanging from that cliff! And until only ten of you remain, not a single one of you had better think about coming down!"
The children's faces had already drained gray.
Some collapsed on the spot, their legs giving out beneath them. But the killing intent radiating from the instructors at their backs drove them forward, step by shuffling step, toward the edge of the cliff.
Then one boy cried out in a trembling voice.
"I—I can't do it! I don't care about Highest standing or any of it—I'm going down!"
His voice was on the verge of sobbing, and fear and shame fought for space on his face all at once.
With those words as the spark, a couple more children raised their hands and shouted their surrender.
"Me—me too!"
"I give up!"
They seemed paralyzed by terror, their reason utterly swamped.
Yun Cheon clicked his tongue.
Tch. Would those vicious devils really let them walk away so easily? There's bound to be a price for this….
But Instructor Jeok Mu-gwang, unexpectedly, gave a calm nod. Yet a faint sneer flickered across the corner of his mouth.
"Fine. Honesty is better than cowardice. Anyone else who wishes to give up?"
Mistaking it for a magnanimous attitude, three or four more children raised their hands and stepped forward. In all, five children gave up and came down.
"Very well. As for those who gave up—"
The mockery clinging to the instructor's lips vanished in an instant.
"—strip them of every qualification this moment and mark them as Lowest. Send them to the labor camp to be worked as slaves!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Useless wretches. Drag them off right now!"
The instructors standing by roughly hauled the children away who had surrendered.
"I'll—I'll hang from the cliff! I'll do it!"
"Forgive us, please!"
The children shrieked their regret too late, but it changed nothing.
"To live as a warrior of this Cult means putting your life on the line at any moment. I have no use for rotted grit," Jeok Mu-gwang said, shaking his head. "Burn this into your minds! The instant you set foot in the Mad Path Pavilion, every single action—even the way you breathe—is subject to judgment!"
Watching this unfold, the remaining children began, without being told, to form a picture of what kind of talent the Cult truly wanted.
They dig a trap called comfort, and cut down without mercy anyone who runs from it… opportunity is granted only to those who gamble on danger. So this is the way of the Demonic Path.
If so, then Yun Cheon stepping into the trial even while holding the worst possible hand—his blocked meridians—might itself have proven exactly the quality they were looking for.
Still, being taken to a labor camp instead of killed—if you can call that mercy, then perhaps it is.
Just then the instructor pressed them again.
"Now then, we have twenty-five of you left. The trial begins—line up!"
At his thunderous command, the children's shoulders flinched.
The sight of their comrades being dragged off as slaves was still vivid in their minds. There were only two choices: become Lowest and be dragged away in chains, or prove their worth as warriors of the Cult.
Some children swallowed dryly and nodded with grim resolve. Crack—. One of them slapped his own cheek, as if to beat back the fear. One way or another, not a single child gave up after that.
"Nnngh…."
"If we fall, it's death at best…."
Beneath the feet of the children standing at the cliff's edge, crumbled dirt and dust drifted down into the dizzying depths below.
"Quiet! Stop whining and get hanging!"
In the end, the children began clinging to the cliff face one by one, each bracing himself against a precarious outcropping of stone.
Yun Cheon was the first to leap out, taking his position with the wind at his back. He searched for a stable crack to grip, drove his hands deep into the rock, and hung there.
Several cadets who witnessed Yun Cheon's quick judgment and decisive movement—Yu Ha above all—had their eyes gleam.
As entertaining as ever, that one.
Even in the instructors' eyes, Yun Cheon stood out. And so, quietly, they began to size up his talent—whether he might prove useful to the factions they each belonged to.
His bone structure is an unknown. But there's no hesitation in his movements.
Quick judgment matters more than raw martial skill for an assassin or an informant. He might suit that line of work….
Instructor Jeok Mu-gwang's eyes sharpened to a gleam.
Does he truly intend to prove the blade he carries? His bones are poor, but every single one of his decisions catches the eye!
Jeok Mu-gwang stroked his chin as he studied Yun Cheon.
And if… if that boy's bones were remade into demon bone through the Demonic Bone Metamorphosis Art…?
Once all twenty-five children were hanging from the cliff, a quarter of an hour crawled past.
The bite of sharp stone digging into fingertips. The ache tearing through muscles from shoulder to arm. And the valley wind that brushed past their ears and shoved against their bodies.
"Hhk…!"
"No… no more…."
Coarse groans spilled from the children's mouths, and the sweat beading on their foreheads slid down their chins and dropped away into the abyss.
It was a trial of the cruelest kind—one where you survived on nothing but your own strength and willpower.
And Yun Cheon, among them, was the smallest and frailest of all, a wretched figure anyone could see had no real strength to speak of. Not only the disciples of the Demonic Cult—even the other children hanging beside him seemed to expect him to be the first to fall.
But Yun Cheon's thoughts ran along a different track entirely.
…Isn't this trial almost insultingly easy for me?
He had climbed up and down Mount Kunlun every single day, tempering his circulation method. He had brought the Great Eight Styles of Cloud Dragon to perfection and earned the moniker Cloud Dragon for it. On top of that, he had mastered the Cloud Dragon Claw, which trained the senses of the fingertips to their absolute limit.
When it came to the craft of clinging to a cliff, he outclassed every child here. In the end, hanging on was never about raw strength—it was about how you used it.
The ones with good bones can barely support their own weight. But… my case is different.
His withered frame, wasted away by the blocked meridians, had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. This skin-and-bones body was, if anything, light as a feather. Thanks to that, he could hold on with the barest minimum of effort—the trial could hardly have been tailored better to him.
Compared to my Cloud Dragon Claw training in the old days, this much is child's play.
In his previous life, he could have hung by a single finger for half a day.
Another quarter hour slipped by.
The hanging children began, instinctively, to turn their heads and steal glances at one another—not knowing that the very act drained their strength all the faster.
Sweat oozed between their fingers, and the shards of rock they clutched so desperately trembled and rattled.
A creeping sensation, as if their hands were slowly sliding loose.
Crack—.
Somewhere on the cliff face, stone crumbled and dust flew. One child's arm slipped clean off its hold.
"Ah—aah!"
With that strangled cry, he plummeted straight down.
"Aaaaaagh—!"
A scream echoed through the Mad Path Pavilion. Rock and mist hid whatever happened below—no one could see.
Thud—!
But the dull, wet burst—like a ripe watermelon splitting open—branded itself into every mind present. And in the same instant came the short screams of the children watching.
Once one had fallen so hideously, terror spread through the rest like a plague.
"Hnngh… nngh…."
Some broke down sobbing; others clawed at the rock with arms shaking uncontrollably. In their eyes now there was nothing left but the primal fear of death.
…If I fall, I die!
A single thought echoed through every head. Cold sweat rained from their palms. The fingers gripping small stone outcroppings looked ready to slip at any moment. Some children had already lost all feeling in their arms, their faces gone chalk-white.
So the real trial starts now.
The trap the Demonic Cult had laid was convincing enough—but it couldn't fool Yun Cheon's ears.
That wasn't the sound of a person falling.
The burst from moments ago had not been the sound of human bone and flesh crushing. They had detonated some suitable object on purpose, nothing more.
But the other children had neither the composure nor the ability to judge it so.
Sly devils… psychological warfare….
A scheme to magnify the children's terror with a first "casualty." The human body is hardier than people think—and so, in most cases, the mind's limits arrived long before the body's did. And of all enemies, fear was the greatest.
Essence, qi, and spirit are one… yet the others have already begun to let their minds scatter.
When fear invaded the body, breath grew ragged, muscles locked tight, and the pulse quickened. Lose your composure, and falling was simply a matter of course.
The eliminations will only accelerate.
His prediction did not miss. This time it was barely an arm's length away from Yun Cheon.
"Gyaaaaagh!"
The instant the second casualty fell screaming, a third followed right behind.
"Aaaaaah!"
The remaining children gasped all the harder for breath. The fourth and fifth casualties came before long. During the first quarter hour, not one had fallen; in the next alone, five had dropped away.
Twenty left now, then.
Half of them still had to fall before the trial would end.
At this rate it'll drag on quite a while… though the instructors may well pull more tricks.
By now, the remaining children were quietly hoping the child beside them would drop.
Damn it! When does this end!
If the one next to me falls… will it be over?
An instructor read that psychology perfectly and wormed in at the exquisite moment.
"…Heh heh. So you've overcome the fear of falling, have you? Good. You've endured admirably this long."
It sounded like praise. But what came next was the dagger.
"I'll tell you the truth. You won't die if you fall. The instructors have caught every single one who dropped."
"…!"
"Heh heh… brats gathered from every corner of the Central Plains. We can't let good material go to waste, can we? Even as slaves?"
The instructor's words shook the children's hearts in an instant—a sweet needle driven straight through their taut tension. And that was precisely his design.
Let go of the rock… and I won't die?
>Here, right now, was sweet rest—while the reward hung somewhere far off, invisible.<
If falling doesn't kill me…!
As that thought circled their heads, their willpower began to snap, one by one. And sure enough, barely moments after the instructor spoke, three bodies went slack and slid silently down.
Unlike those before them, they didn't even scream.
Whoosh—whoosh—.
The sound of something slicing through the wind. The instructors seemed to be catching the cadets.
So even the Demonic Cult won't let material with upper-tier bones simply go to waste….
Whether the instructor had spoken truth, only the sound of wind being cleaved rose from below—the watermelon-splitting sound never came.
"Now then, we've cut the field in half. Only fourteen of you remain. You've worked hard. Even if you give up here, I'll acknowledge the grit you've shown—I promise you a fitting reward."
The instructor dangled sweet compensation once more. Already several children were past their limit, and a few began to eye the bait.
The instructor never said what the reward would be… and judging by everything so far, taking his word at face value would be a mistake.
It was a cunning maneuver. The instructor was steering the children whose willpower had reached its breaking point exactly as his appetite directed. And once again, at the sweet promise of reward, three more dropped away.
Through his sly psychological warfare, the instructor had shaken half the children clinging to the cliff down into the depths—in barely half a quarter hour.
"Exactly eleven left. Do you intend to just wait for someone else to drop and become the loser yourself? Have you forgotten the question from before?"
The instructor roared, dredging up someone's earlier question.
It's perfectly acceptable to drop your rivals yourself…!
Not a single child failed to grasp what the instructor meant.
Barely had the words left his mouth when Yun Cheon felt the air shift on both his flanks.
It was not simple competitiveness. It was the chill killing intent of beasts cornered past their limit.
…Oh no. It seems I looked like easy prey.
Black-smeared hands came rushing at Yun Cheon.
From both sides at once.
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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