The Black Spear's Daughter
The Black Dragon Sect's training grounds lay blanketed in a merciless white, buried under the snow that had poured down since before dawn.
The disciples had just finished their morning run and were polishing their weapons in ragged clouds of white breath when—
BOOOM—!
The freshly repaired gate shrieked as it burst apart.
Through the churning haze of snow and dirt strode a figure in black, as though draped in the darkness itself.
"We're under attack!"
"Again? Again?! Who is it this time!"
The disciples, who still remembered the terror of Yun Cheon smashing through their main gate, shrieked in panic. A dozen or so of them, spirits bolstered by weeks of training, scrambled to raise their weapons first.
"Who goes there!"
"Do you even know where you are!"
The figure emerging from the settling cloud of dust was a woman clad entirely in black martial robes. Her raven hair, bound tightly at the nape, carried a quiet dignity.
Her bearing made the disciples hesitate.
In her hands she carried a long spear, a black dragon engraved along its shaft.
Vmmm—
The spearhead trembled of its own accord, letting out a resonance like the cry of a beast.
The instant the disciples tried to tighten their encirclement, the woman's spear swept across in a flawless arc.
WHAAANG—!
A single swing of the shaft.
The spear's body traced one enormous curve and unleashed a wave of blade-force.
"Guhk!"
"Aagh!"
It was, quite literally, like autumn wind scattering dead leaves. The charging men were flung, screaming, into the far corners of the training ground.
Scarlet blood began to embroider itself, dot by dot, across the pristine snow.
"…Who gave scum like this permission to use the name of the Black Dragon?"
The voice was cold and imperious, as though rebuking everyone present.
The disciples had gained a measure of genuine confidence from their training—but before this woman's martial prowess, they felt themselves regressing back to the street thugs they had once been.
'A… a master!'
'We can't fight someone like that…!'
Just then So Ryong came sprinting out of the inner hall—but what burst from his mouth was not a war cry, only disbelief.
"N-no way! S-Sis? Is that really you, Sis So-wol?!"
The woman's frigid gaze landed on him.
"So Ryong! You dare sell off Father's pride and still have the nerve to keep your feet planted in this place?!"
"N-no, wait, that's not it—owk!"
Thwip! CRACK!
The merciless shaft whipped across So Ryong's cheek. His head snapped sideways and he tumbled three or four turns through the snow before lying flat in a heap.
Drawing a crumpled Wind Cloud Board placard from her robe, she ground the words Black Dragon Yun Cheon into the snow with her spearpoint and roared.
"Where is this new sect leader who dares impersonate the Black Dragon?! This Jin So-wol does not acknowledge him!"
"Aiigo, Sis, just hold on a second! At least hear me out—!"
Clutching his cheek, So Ryong picked himself up and pleaded with a face on the verge of tears.
Jin So-wol. In the past she had been an honored guest of the Black Dragon Sect—the only daughter of Jin Mu-yang, the man So Ryong's father had loved like a brother. For So Ryong, she was someone he could only squirm before. And yet even he felt the injustice of it.
"So Ryong! Stop calling me 'Sis' and shut that mouth of yours! Today I intend to sternly punish the crime of selling the Black Dragon Sect's dignity away for pocket change!"
At that moment, a heavy metallic ring rolled across the training ground, pressing down on the tension in the air.
Clink. Clink.
It was Yun Cheon, walking slowly forward in his Black Steel Cold Iron weights.
"Hmm… now there's a spearwoman with spirit far beyond the ordinary. This… puts a taste for wine in my mouth."
Lee Mok had, at some point, settled himself atop the courtyard wall to appraise her. True to his nickname of the Drunken Sword, a wine bottle already hung from his hand.
At Lee Mok's stance of pure spectatorship, Yayul Hui sighed, cracked her knuckles, and stepped forward.
"Hahh… well, he does feed us. Guess I'll take the first turn."
"No. Stand down."
Yun Cheon rested a light hand on her shoulder to stop her.
"If this is about her ties to the old Black Dragon Sect, then as sect leader, I am the one who owes her an answer in person."
Yun Cheon's gaze settled on Jin So-wol. The black tip of her spear was still aimed squarely between his brows.
"So you are Yun Cheon? I will see for myself whether you have the right to bear the name of the Black Dragon."
"The right, is it…"
A cool self-mockery touched the corner of Yun Cheon's mouth.
"When the Black Dragon Sect collapsed into a den of thugs with nothing left but its name, you watched in silence. And only now you appear, to question my right?"
"…That… I had circumstances of my own!"
"If those circumstances led you to turn a blind eye while the pride of this sect rotted away, then you have even less right to weigh the worth of this name."
Jin So-wol's eyes trembled with fury and shame. Yun Cheon's words were a dagger she could not deny, driven into her chest.
"…Enough."
She bit down on her lip until it bled.
"You talk a long, winding road, don't you."
Yun Cheon tucked one hand behind his back and beckoned lazily with the other.
"In the end, what you want is a bout. Am I wrong?"
"…I'll waste no more words on excuses! Proving it with strength is all that remains!"
Jin So-wol's heel stamped the snow. "Let's see if your skill matches your arrogance!"
SHWAAA—!
The Black Dragon Spear slid across the white snow like something fired from a bow, drawing a single line of black.
It was no mere thrust. Though it traveled in a straight line, the spearhead carried a ferocious rotation within it.
The ultimate technique of Jin Mu-yang—honored guest of the old Black Dragon Sect, known as the Black Spear. Across the years, it had bloomed gloriously in his daughter's hands.
'She's… no small talent.'
Yun Cheon did not retreat. He pressed a step forward instead, lifting the heavy load bound within his sleeve.
TOONG—!
A dull metallic note rang across the training ground. Yun Cheon lightly deflected the incoming blade with the Black Steel Cold Iron band on his left arm.
"…?!"
Shock flared in Jin So-wol's eyes. The rebound traveling up the spear shaft surpassed anything she had imagined—the crushing density of a man who had just shouldered an entire mountain of rock.
But what truly chilled her was her opponent's eye.
'He read my spearwork?!'
A rotating spearhead moved fast enough to escape the naked eye. She had been confident of skewering any part of his upper body—yet the man hadn't even drawn a weapon, fending her blade off with nothing but the iron rings coiled around his wrist.
'I thought for certain he'd draw his weapon…!'
And yet Yun Cheon, calm as still water, kept parrying the spear with the rings on his wrist alone.
'…Someone like this has been stuck at rank 100 on the Wind Cloud Board?!'
Kang! Kang! KAANG!
Steel screamed against steel across the training ground, sparks flying like shrieks. Jin So-wol pressed the advantage of her weapon's reach, hurling down a storm of consecutive strikes—but the only thing her spearpoint ever caught was the same cold, dense Black Steel Cold Iron.
'Impossible…!'
Gritting her teeth, she spun the shaft. Using the recoil of the deflection, she wheeled the spear in a full circle and raked low. A light blizzard swirled up from the snow-white grounds, and the razor-sharp trajectory lunged for Yun Cheon's ankle.
Swirrl.
Yun Cheon lifted his body lightly and slipped past the blade.
"He's left the ground? There's my chance!"
In duels between martial artists, rising into the air was usually a blunder. With nowhere to plant one's feet, changing direction became impossible.
Seizing the opening, Jin So-wol's spearhead reared up like the head of a venomous snake—and struck for his chest. The blizzard was swept up in the wind-pressure of the thrust, and a colossal dragon-vortex rose along the spear's path.
'Black Dragon Ascending Heaven!'
But what answered her was a metallic note she did not expect.
KAANG—!
In his past life, Yun Cheon had been a grandmaster of the Great Eight Styles of Cloud Dragon—the art of a dragon roaming the sea of clouds, turning in midair as it pleased. Exploiting that inner logic, Yun Cheon twisted his body into an impossible shape while airborne and kicked the spear shaft aside with the iron ring on his ankle.
"Wha— don't tell me… your legs too?!"
"Your form is fine. But for all that this is a sparring match, you're far too honest. Your martial art fails to capture its own true meaning."
"And what would the likes of you know about it!"
Yun Cheon descended like a feather, stepping into the Shadowless Step. In an instant he had claimed her blind angle, his palm rushing for her shoulder. Jin So-wol spun her shaft desperately to guard—but Yun Cheon had already read that trajectory. He withdrew his palm mid-motion and instead kicked his heel straight up.
TOONG—!
The overwhelming mass of the Black Steel Cold Iron struck the shaft dead-on.
Screeeech.
With the searing pain of her grip tearing open, the Black Dragon Spear ripped free of Jin So-wol's hands.
A spearwoman parted from her weapon. The duel was over.
"Whoaaaa…!"
"Victory to the Black Dragon Sect Leader!"
The disciples had watched with their own eyes as the basic movements they repeated every dawn, groaning through their exercises, had dissolved seamlessly into Yun Cheon's uncanny footwork.
'What we're learning is the real thing.'
'The Sect Leader… really is a dragon.'
And so the disciples, watching the duel, had naturally poured themselves into Yun Cheon's side of it, shivering along with every exchange.
"……It can't be."
Jin So-wol stared blankly down at her empty palms. Her father's legacy had been stripped from her, effortlessly, by a man who hadn't even bothered to draw a weapon. A hollow emptiness rippled through her eyes. The Black Dragon Heaven-Churning Spear, which she had spent her entire life honing, was her pride itself.
"Do you know why you were undone so completely by a man who never drew his weapon? Because your spear is dead."
Yun Cheon twirled the captured spear lightly and drove it into the snow.
THOOM—.
Before the vibration had even settled, his frost-cold voice struck at her mind.
"A martial art learned alone, sealed away in solitary cultivation. Your spear is shackled to the ghost of the past. You chased the glory of a former age—and never once looked your opponent in the eye, never once swung your own spear."
Jin So-wol's face went pale. In a single bout, Yun Cheon had laid bare the chronic ailment of a woman who had learned her entire art in isolation.
"…Insult me no more. Kill me and be done. If the Black Dragon ever makes its name shine again, I'll have no regrets."
She closed her eyes and waited for judgment.
"Shame? Begging for death over a single defeat—how childish. And how arrogant."
What came back was a cold sneer.
"Think on how many times a child falls before it learns to walk. The martial way is, above all things, completed only after a thousand falls."
Yun Cheon's gaze swept across the frozen disciples.
"Look at her hands. True, her solitary cultivation left her with limits—but if any disciple here believes he has poured out more sweat and blood than she has, step forward now."
As he rebuked them, Yun Cheon was teaching them at the same time.
'Those calluses and scars… they're staggering…!'
'When I think of the torment she must have endured, training as a woman… I'm ashamed of myself.'
At the mention of her hands, Jin So-wol hastily hid them behind her back. Blisters raised and burst over and over, calluses cracked and rebuilt—it was a rough, workman's pair of hands, nothing like a woman's.
"Why would you hide a warrior's pride? Let her keep it. Pride in the years you built with your own two hands is worth more than an empty name like the Black Dragon."
Face turned up into the falling snow, Jin So-wol clenched her empty hands tight.
"Jin So-wol, was it? If you wish to go further, steel yourself to be broken, and broken, and broken again."
Then a coat, warm with lingering heat, settled over the shoulders of the woman staring blankly at the ground. It was So Ryong.
"…Sis, see, this is why you should've heard me out. The Sect Leader is the very man who will raise the Black Dragon's name again."
So Ryong rubbed his cheek and carried on with a sly grin.
"If you're willing, join us as a spear instructor for our disciples. Stand at the Sect Leader's side, and you might just live to see the Black Dragon truly ascend to the heavens."
When So Ryong bowed and disappeared into the inner hall, the training grounds once more filled with the disciples' thundering battle cries, punching through the blizzard.
'…As a martial artist, I was still a child who hadn't taken so much as half a step.'
In the end, Jin So-wol rose to her feet on unsteady legs. She smoothed her disheveled hair back into order, walked to the door of the inner hall, and knelt on one knee.
"Jin So-wol, daughter of Jin Mu-yang… from this day forward, I wish to become a disciple of the Black Dragon Sect. Will you accept me?"
Return of the Cloud Dragon
Author | Chu Sang (Autumn Frost)
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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