The Bear's Loyalty and the Fox's Schemes
"Training. From sunrise to sunset. Anyone who doesn't like it can pack their things and leave right now. I won't stop you."
Yun Cheon's frosty declaration split the heavy air of the training grounds.
As Ma Do-yeon and his crew swallowed dryly and traded uneasy glances, a wretched procession appeared through the shattered front gates.
"Uh… uh oh? Young Sect Leader!"
Ma Do-yeon's men shrieked and scrambled out to meet them.
The man being carried in on their shoulders—So Ryong—was a sight too horrible to behold.
His once-fine white formal robes hung in tattered rags, and his slicked-back hair was matted into a filthy mess of sweat and dust.
He looked like a man who had been run through the wringer by dozens of challengers.
"Mo… move it, you bastards!"
So Ryong shoved aside the men supporting him.
Then, dragging his swaying body forward, he crawled the rest of the way to Yun Cheon.
"Sect Leader… *hah, hah*… as you commanded… I dealt with every last one of them and returned."
So Ryong wiped his split lip with his sleeve and made a show of straightening his ragged clothes.
He bowed with exaggerated formality.
It was the flawless posture of a vassal who had long served his lord.
"I, So Ryong, have learned a bitter lesson out there, absorbing the fists of dozens of men. Your kick, Sect Leader, weighs far, far heavier than a hundred of theirs."
"Mm. Well done."
Then, still playing the fool, So Ryong quietly slipped into position half a step behind Yun Cheon.
Not too close, not too far.
A perfectly judged spot that declared to anyone watching: *right hand of the Sect Leader*.
That was when it happened.
So Ryong's eyes narrowed to razor slits.
At the edge of the training grounds, a handful of Ma Do-yeon's men were shuffling toward the exits, trying to slip away unnoticed.
"Whoa there! Hold it right there."
The whining tone he'd been milking moments ago turned ice-cold in an instant.
So Ryong darted forward, snatched the deserters by their napes, and slammed them into the dirt.
CRASH!
"You… you oblivious little—"
WHACK! THUD!
"Agh! Young Sect Leader!"
"Stop! Please, stop!"
"The Sect Leader told us to leave, so why are you doing this?!"
So Ryong dragged them by the collar to the center of the training grounds and dumped them in a heap.
Then, donning a stern expression, he tore into the terrified men.
"All of you, snap out of it! Why have we been treated like gutter trash all this time? Because we never had a single proper martial art, that's why!"
So Ryong spread his hands toward Yun Cheon and launched into his sermon.
"And who is standing before us right now? The rising dragon of the Heavenly Demon Cult—the Sect Leader, Yun Cheon himself! His arrival means that even sewer-rats like us of the Black Dragon Sect finally have a chance to learn real martial arts!"
The men's eyes went wide.
"Do the math, you idiots. Walk out now, and you're nothing but third-rate thugs forever. But stay here?"
Under So Ryong's agitation, the men's eyes began to waver.
"Listen up! If I go all out, I can handle a few dozen challengers at once. But Sect Leader Yun Cheon? He sent me flying with a single strike."
So Ryong drove the wedge home without missing a beat.
"I swore loyalty to the Sect Leader not just because of the Black Dragon Sect's rules… but because I fell for his strength! A man like him won't stay at Rank 100 on the Wind Cloud Board forever! Don't come crying with regrets later!"
In the eyes of men who had been thinking of nothing but escape, a slow spark of hope began to kindle.
Yun Cheon watched with his arms crossed as So Ryong orchestrated the whole scene with surprising skill, and let out a quiet chuckle.
…Keeping this one around will make managing Ma Do-yeon's men far easier.
Just then, So Ryong bent his back toward Yun Cheon once more and bellowed.
"Sect Leader! I've rounded up every one of this rabble. Now work them to the bone! Break their spines if you have to—just make them act like human beings!"
The former Young Sect Leader who had once lorded over the Black Dragon Sect was now lending his authority to elevate another.
He looks every inch a bear, but he schemes like a fox.
Yun Cheon understood that So Ryong's loyalty was rooted in fear and profit.
As Yun Cheon's gaze swept over the men, it was the look of a cold-blooded tamer.
I must forge this rabble—hammer them, temper them—until the day they can stand against the Demonic Path's armed units without breaking. And for that….
Everyone was watching. It was the perfect stage.
"As long as I am Sect Leader, the Black Dragon Sect will be reborn not as gutter trash and thugs, but as a bulwark of the martial world."
"……?"
Murmurs. Doubt.
Even after Yun Cheon's declaration, the men's reaction was lukewarm at best.
Street brawlers who'd spent yesterday rolling in the gutters, reborn overnight as a pillar of the martial world?
Of course it sounded like castles in the air.
But Yun Cheon had no intention of persuading them with words.
He simply jerked his chin toward So Ryong.
"So Ryong. Come here."
"Yes, Sect Leader! Just say the word!"
So Ryong scampered over like a dog wagging its tail and bowed his head.
Yun Cheon looked him up and down.
His muscles were massive, but the flow of his energy was muddy.
"The Black Dragon Rigid Body—your sect's secret art. Show me."
"Oh, of course I'll show you! It's the pride of our sect!"
So Ryong let out a kiai and tore his shirt open.
Hsss—
His muscles swelled with a creaking sound, and his skin darkened to a deep crimson-black.
There was real heft to his external art, but Yun Cheon clicked his tongue without mercy.
"Tsk… nothing but a shell."
The criticism struck true. So Ryong's shoulders sagged visibly.
"External art without internal energy to back it has a hard limit. You know that yourself. What became of the mental cultivation method that pairs with the Black Dragon Rigid Body?"
"How… how did you know about that? The truth is, my father's secret manual survived badly damaged… I could never learn it…."
So Ryong pulled a battered old booklet from inside his clothes, its characters blurred and smeared with blood and sweat.
It was an object steeped in longing for his father and a warrior's lifelong regret.
"Let me see it."
"He… here you are."
The manual was as ruined as So Ryong had said.
Is this… dried blood?
Stained with someone's blood, the text was nearly impossible to make out.
"You taught yourself… from this alone?"
"I did. I trained the external art into my body as a boy, but… the mental method I never learned. Is there… is there really any way?"
So Ryong's voice cracked.
Even the man everyone took for a money-grubbing cur had his story.
Yun Cheon nodded.
"There is a way. It isn't hopeless."
"R… really? The writing's all smeared… I never even dreamed the manual could be read again!"
"However… you'll have to choose one of two paths. Preserve the manual itself, or inherit its meaning?"
An unexpected question.
The manual was the last trace of a father who had vanished. The object itself mattered—but what truly mattered was the knowledge it contained.
So Ryong thought for a moment, then reached his conclusion.
"…I'll inherit its meaning!"
"Then step back."
A chill radiated up from Yun Cheon's palm.
Vmmm—
The Limitless Ice Heart Canon.
Where his fingers touched, white frost began to creep across the dark-red bloodstains coating the manual.
Freeze the blood… and peel it away from the paper.
The bloodstains, frozen solid, flaked off the pages with soft little clicks.
In that fleeting instant, the hidden ink characters revealed themselves.
Yun Cheon's eyes flew across the pages.
With the resolve to miss not a single character.
But old paper could hardly withstand his overwhelming cold.
Rustle.
"N… no… S-Sect Leader! No!"
Amid So Ryong's wail, the manual crumbled into a handful of ash.
In the space of a heartbeat.
Even the goal of inheriting his father's legacy had become impossible.
Convinced he had lost his father's manual forever, So Ryong clawed at the ground and howled.
"My father's manual…!"
But Yun Cheon merely brushed the ash from his hands and spoke flatly.
"Quit blubbering like a child… the whole text is already in my head."
"Wh-what? That's… that's possible? In that little time…?"
"Bring me paper."
So Ryong scrambled off and returned with paper, and Yun Cheon wrote out the text without a single pause.
"There. This is the manual, restored exactly as it was written. It's yours."
So Ryong received it with trembling hands.
From the paper, where the ink had not yet dried, he felt his father's trace and a new hope, both at once.
"Th-this is really it? Th-thank you! Thank you!"
So Ryong bobbed his head again and again, unable to believe his eyes.
But Yun Cheon's brush did not stop.
He began writing something else on a fresh sheet, swiftly and steadily.
"That said… the original mental method can't bear the brutality of the Black Dragon Rigid Body. Had you trained it as written, nine times out of ten you'd have succumbed to qi deviation."
"Don't tell me…! Is that… is that why my father—?!"
So Ryong's eyes went wide.
The reason his father's gaze had suddenly gone clouded, and why he had vanished without a trace.
It had never once crossed So Ryong's mind that the manual itself might have been the cause.
Yun Cheon handed over the second completed manual.
"Compare the two texts yourself and you'll understand. It is the Black Dragon Moving Art—the original text reinforced with the subtle principles of Heaven and Earth. Train it alongside the Black Dragon Rigid Body, and you'll see real attainment."
An art of ascension, where external and internal power rose in harmony—capable, perhaps, of reaching even the peak.
"S-Sect Leader…!"
"Your internal energy will build slowly, but your roots will be firm, and there will be no qi deviation. If you don't want to live and die as gutter trash, carve it into your bones."
At those words, So Ryong smashed his forehead into the ground without a moment's hesitation.
His father's ruined manual—restored in an instant, and improved upon, no less.
THUD!
He struck the ground a second time.
"I, So Ryong, pledge my loyalty even if my bones are ground to powder! I will never forget this debt for as long as I live!"
He meant every word.
This man is the real deal! Serving this Sect Leader was the best decision of my entire life!
Yun Cheon confirmed the madness burning in So Ryong's eyes and nodded.
"Good. Then master this Black Dragon Moving Art and teach it to the men."
"You mean it! I swear I'll bring the Black Dragon Moving Art to perfection and rebuild the Black Dragon Sect!"
A flame of resolve blazed to life in So Ryong's eyes.
The mood has turned. I can leave the training of these men to him.
As So Ryong turned to return to his place, Yun Cheon stopped him.
"So be it. Ah—one more thing."
So Ryong's shoulders flinched.
"I had a look at the ledgers. There seem to be rather a lot of gaps…."
Yun Cheon's eyes were cold. He had already seen straight through every one of So Ryong's schemes.
"You skimmed a tidy sum off the gambling tables, didn't you? All of it goes to the Black Dragon Sect's operating costs. Bring it here now, while I'm asking nicely."
"H-hik?! How did you…!"
So Ryong's face went chalk white.
Yun Cheon chuckled and drove the point home.
"Skim so much as a single coin, and I'll tear up that text I just wrote for you. Remember that."
"…U-understood! I'll bring it right now! Not one copper left behind!"
So Ryong bolted off with tears streaming down his face.
Martial arts mattered more than money—and the Sect Leader's intelligence network more than either.
And yet his back looked strangely light.
He was penniless now, but he carried a far greater treasure in his chest: hope.
"And what will the rest of you do?"
Yun Cheon had demonstrated his unbelievable prowess before their eyes time and again.
From the moment he had smashed through the front gates and sent Ma Do-yeon's men flying.
The duel with So Ryong.
And now, the miracle he had just performed.
When even the Young Sect Leader bowed to him, there was no reason not to follow.
"We pledge our loyalty!"
"We'll follow the Sect Leader!"
A strange fervor spread through the men in an instant.
Riding that contagion of zeal, Yun Cheon seized the entire Black Dragon Sect in the span of a single day.
"Good. Not one of you is leaving, then? I've heard your resolve. In that case… everyone begins training tomorrow. Today… we clean up and restore this wreck of a Black Dragon Sect."
A short while later, So Ryong came huffing back with his emergency funds and the full sum of his gambling profits, and cautiously raised a hand.
He'd whipped the men into line and even been granted the Black Dragon Moving Art. The position of second-in-command should have been his by right.
Time to settle the hierarchy properly.
So Ryong spoke up, sneaking a careful glance.
"Um… Sect Leader, I have a question."
His gaze was fixed on a woman who had stood at Yun Cheon's side all this while, arms crossed, watching the entire spectacle with evident fascination.
"What is it?"
"Th-that beautiful woman standing beside you, Sect Leader—who exactly is she? Could she perhaps be… the mistress of our sect?"
At that, Yun Cheon's brow creased slightly.
But before he could open his mouth, Yayul Hui stepped forward.
"'Beautiful,' hm? At least your eyes work. Unfortunately for you, I'm no mistress of anything."
"Uh… uhh…?"
"…She is a retainer of this sect. A fellow trainee from my days at the Mad Path Pavilion, as well. When I am absent, treat her words as mine."
Yun Cheon added, expressionless.
Which means…?
In that instant, So Ryong's expression warped strangely.
The expectation he had built up—having received the Black Dragon Moving Art, he'd been certain he was the unshakable second-in-command—collapsed in a heartbeat.
Not even the mistress—just a retainer?! A rock that rolled in outranks me? If I, So Ryong, am not the number two, then who is?!
So Ryong tried to hide his wounded pride, but there was no fooling Yayul Hui's eyes.
Her pupils narrowed like a lynx's, spitting out a sharp gleam.
"You. Why are you making that face? Finding it hard to accept?"
"N-no, of course not! How could I ever dare question the Sect Leader's decision…!"
"A man with a grievance should say so to your face. You're wondering right now, aren't you—'is that woman stronger than me?'"
Yayul Hui knew that look well.
The doubtful stares she had received her whole life—from her family, and from everyone outside it.
Yayul Hui's hand slowly closed around the hilt of her saber.
In the space of an instant, a cold wind swept across the entire training ground.
The pressure of the Wild Wind.
The air touching So Ryong's skin grew sharp as a blade's edge.
"Shall we have a duel? If you win, I'll serve under you."
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. — Dream Books
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