A Wolf Bares Its Fangs
Before the massive gates of the Black Dragon Sect, the air seethed with the killing intent of men who had spent their lives at the very bottom.
Ronin had gathered from every corner of the Central Plains — worn-out leather boots, chipped sabers, ragged clothes bearing the faded bruise-marks of a hundred beatings.
Ptui.
One man spat yellowed phlegm and ground his teeth.
"Self-righteous orthodox sects. 'Your qi is turbid,' they say. 'Your bones are set in their ways.' Being turned away at their gates is nothing new…."
"Hah, you still haven't given up hope? The moment you're past your mid-twenties they treat you like a child and throw you out. That's their nature."
The old ronin beside them, gulping down bitter wine, slammed his gourd down roughly and picked up the thread. "And you think the unorthodox sects are any different? When you're useful, you're a blade-catcher. When you break, you're a pile of meat."
"…Tch. All I ever wanted in this life was to learn a single proper cultivation art…."
Beneath every voice lay a sorrow deeper than rage.
A life without a master, without a single secret manual. That was the story of nearly everyone who lived by the blade on the streets.
With nothing but scraps of technique picked up in alleys, the shackles of third-rate could never be broken, not even by death. And what ached worse than the countless scars carved into their bodies was the unquenchable thirst for a 'learning' that would never come.
Their eyes lingered on a corner of a torn-down wall poster.
WIND CLOUD BOARD — RANK 100: BLACK DRAGON, YUN CHEON
"If I just bring down that one man…."
Someone traced the name with a trembling finger. "Even the bottom rung of the rankings would earn me a place as a hired sword at some small-to-mid sect."
"They say the Black Dragon Sect's hall master changed, but it's still nothing more than a den of rabble."
"Worth a try. No — I must try. This is the last rope I have left."
If you wanted to eat so much as a proper meal from your blade, a reputation was everything. With a name, you could beg your bread anywhere, serve as a house sword anywhere. It was then that word reached them: the Black Dragon Sect had made a business of charging challenge fees, lost, and handed the entire sect over to an outsider.
A complete mess of a place, then.
The new hall master surely won't amount to anything either.
If I could just carve out a place here—!
Ronin nursing such thoughts had drifted all the way here, to Qinghai Fortress on the remote fringe of the Central Plains.
"Open the gates! How long do you intend to hide in there?"
"The epithet's wasted on you, Dragon! Come out, coward!"
Just as the jeers reached their peak—
Kiiiiiiik—.
With a thunderous groan, the great gates of the Black Dragon Sect yawned open.
"It's opening!"
"Move! I'm first!"
But the ronin surging forward like an angry tide froze stiff at the threshold, unable to take another step.
"…!"
What confronted them was no den of rabble drunk on cheap liquor.
A banner of deepest black — the Black Dragon.
Beneath it stood a hundred-odd martial artists in flawless ranks.
A chilling stillness. And a killing qi so cold it pricked the skin.
This was the bearing of true warriors — something third-rate ronin had never once beheld in all their lives.
"Wh-what is this…? Why are their eyes like that?"
"I heard they were a pack of third-rate thugs…."
At the center of the formation, atop a raised platform, Yun Cheon stood with arms folded, regarding them with indifferent eyes.
So Ryong stepped forward and thundered, "Anyone who crosses that gate will be treated as an enemy. Enter only if you've made peace with that."
The ronin flinched — but these were men with nothing left to lose by retreating.
"Don't make me laugh! A pack of thugs talking big?"
One hot-tempered ronin drew his saber and crossed the line.
In that instant—
"You were warned."
At the cold voice, the woman at the head of the formation moved.
Shuaak—!
Jin So-wol's bannered spear swept across his field of vision with a heavy rending of air. In the heartbeat that the fluttering banner scrambled his sight, the shaft struck like a serpent into his abdomen.
Thud—!
"Kghk!"
With a single cry, the man's body was flung back out beyond the gates. A flawless expulsion — without spilling a single drop of blood.
Jin So-wol whirled her bannered spear again and again, driving back the ronin who charged.
"Wh-what is that?"
"Is… is that woman the Black Dragon?"
"No, the Black Dragon's hall master is a man!"
Among the crowd, one ronin of no small renown ground his teeth and drew his sword. "Hah, blinding me with a banner! That won't work on me!"
This time So Ryong stepped forward.
As the Black Dragon Rigid Body unfolded, a dark crimson sheen rolled across his skin.
Kaang—!
The keen blade cracked against So Ryong's shoulder — and all it bought him was a metallic shriek that set his teeth on edge.
"…!"
The sword rebounded, and So Ryong's rock-solid strength buried itself in the ronin's chest.
Boom—!
"Kuaaagh!"
A body of steel that shed even blades, and strength beyond reckoning.
"What IS this monster…!"
"This… this is the level of a sect ranked a mere 100th on the Wind Cloud Board?"
The challengers staggered back in terror, faces drained white.
They understood now. The Black Dragon Sect was no longer a last rope they could grab at to scrape out a name for themselves. It was a vast swamp that would swallow them whole and leave not even bones behind if they touched it wrong.
"This isn't what the rumors said…!"
"They're not a rabble at all! What in the world ARE these people?"
As a wave of stunned murmuring spread through the crowd, Yun Cheon descended slowly from the platform. With every step, a heavy internal pressure pressed down upon the training ground.
"The Black Dragon Sect does not shy from challenges."
The voice was low, but carried on his internal power it rang crystalline in every ronin's ears.
"Each day at noon, I will receive challenges at the dueling stage before the Black Dragon Inn. If you wish to face me, first prove your worth by defeating this sect's instructors."
"Instructors? He won't fight us himself?"
"Hah. Probably just stalling for time, if you ask me."
"But… even the instructors' skill was anything but ordinary…."
A sneering voice shot out — but it did not last long, for Yun Cheon's frigid gaze pierced the speaker straight through.
"One condition, however. Those who lose their duels will submit to the discipline of the Black Dragon Sect."
"The price of defeat? What… do you mean to demand our lives?"
"Hmph. You think we'd back off just because you try to scare us?"
Yun Cheon quietly shook his head.
"No. When the duels end, those who wish to plead for instruction may stay. Those who do not — leave."
For a moment, stillness fell as if time itself had stopped.
"…What? Instruction?"
"Don't… don't tell me he means to teach us?"
"Is… is that really true?"
The ronin's eyes churned violently.
"You are warriors who came to the Black Dragon Sect without sparing the long road. That devotion deserves respect. To those who have seen their own limits through the martial path, I will show the road that suits them."
These were men who had lived their whole lives being turned away at the gates of sect after sect.
No aptitude.
Too old.
No foundation.
The humiliation of a lifetime of rejections for every reason under heaven. And yet the hall master of the sect they had come here to mock as rabble was treating them — as warriors.
"I… I will take the challenge! Grant me instruction as well!"
"Give me a chance too!"
The ronin's response was explosive.
"No need to rush. My four instructors will take turns receiving your challenges."
Noon.
The dueling stage before the Black Dragon Inn.
The crowd that had swelled like rolling clouds held its breath.
The first to step onto the stage was Yayul Hui.
Her opponent was a ronin who claimed seven years of living by the blade on the open road. His appearance was shabby, but there was nothing shabby about the seriousness in his eyes.
Shuaak!
The ronin swung his saber as though to pour out a lifetime of sorrow — but Yayul Hui's footwork skimmed across his trajectory like a soft breeze.
Thud!
She hadn't even drawn her blade. The mere touch of her scabbard's tip against his sternum, a single light tap, and the match was over.
"…Kkh… I lost… I lost."
A humiliating defeat. The ronin hung his head.
But what came from Yayul Hui's mouth was not mockery.
"Your shoulder tenses up too much when you swing. That's why your trajectory gives itself away. You'd do best to rebuild your stance from the lower body up."
The ronin's head snapped up.
It wasn't scorn. It was a cutting diagnosis of flaws that no one, in his entire life, had ever bothered to point out. It was the 'instruction' he had never once received.
"Th-thank you! I accept your teaching with gratitude!"
Thump!
The ronin bowed his head to the stage floor, overcome.
The duels that followed were much the same. Jin So-wol taught the proper spacing of long weapons; So Ryong taught the honest honesty of external hardening; Lee Mok pointed out bad habits the ronin themselves had never known they had.
It feels like a meridian that's been blocked for ten years finally opening….
Like facing a lantern for the first time after a lifetime in the dark….
The ronin marveled at the instructors' needle-sharp guidance and gave thanks to the Black Dragon Sect. And as they watched, the eyes of both spectators and challengers began to change — past astonishment, into awe.
"Masters of that caliber, and they're mere instructors?"
"They don't even charge a tuition fee, they teach through the duels themselves… aren't they better than most martial officials!"
"I want… I want to take the challenge too!"
Before anyone noticed, a long line of ronin had formed before the dueling stage. They no longer stood in line for money or fame. They stood in line for the chance at the 'learning' they had craved all their lives.
And among them, a new question began to bloom.
"Wait a moment. If the instructors are this strong…."
"Just how powerful is the hall master who commands them — Black Dragon Yun Cheon?"
The overwhelming martial prowess of the instructors, and the vessel of the man who ruled over them. Before anyone realized it, people had begun to doubt that number — rank 100 on the Wind Cloud Board.
"Is the Black Dragon's hall master really a mere 100th?"
"Could it be… the Wind Cloud Board's rankings are simply wrong?"
Even as they faced an unbroken stream of challengers, the instructors showed not a trace of weariness.
As expected of the Hall Master….
So Ryong, too, found himself marveling at the new hall master yet again. He himself had thought of nothing but squeezing coin out of the ronin. It had never once occurred to him to hold public instruction and swell the sect's strength with it.
Word of today is going to spread far and wide! The crowds flooding into the Black Dragon Sect will only grow from here.
The reason most sects refused to take in ronin was the difficulty of building 'internal energy.' Ronin who began the martial path late accumulated turbid qi in their bodies, and by common wisdom could not hope for high attainment even if they mastered a fundamental cultivation art.
But So Ryong, who had personally trained in the Black Dragon Moving Art, knew better.
With the Black Dragon Moving Art… even those who started late can build real internal energy, if they put in the work! It may come slower — but it isn't impossible!
So Ryong himself was living proof.
A half-finished martial artist who had mastered only external hardening and never internal energy. Yet after learning the Black Dragon Moving Art and training night and day, he could now feel true qi, faint but real, flowing through his body.
I, too… can become a true warrior!
Duel after duel, So Ryong felt no fatigue at all. A smile had crept onto his lips instead.
And then—
BOOM—!
A thunderclap tore the air above the dueling stage apart.
"K-Kghk…!"
The man screaming and writhing on the ground was a ronin who had been about to sign up for his challenge. A livid boot-print was stamped stark across his chest, and blood-foam boiled at his lips.
"Wh-what's going on?!"
"Did someone cut in line…?"
Someone shouldered his way out through the ronin waiting in the queue. The roaring crowd parted.
At the end of that corridor, a man was walking toward them.
A face revealed through tangled red hair — a face covered in scars. And above all, the savage killing intent radiating from his entire body was on a different order entirely from any of the ronin before him.
"Th-that man is…? Don't tell me…?!"
He watched the instructors of the Black Dragon Sect teaching their lessons, then spat on the ground.
Ptui. "Playing at tea parties. How pathetic."
His voice carried naked contempt and hostility.
The first to react was So Ryong.
"…Gang Hwi?!"
An old nemesis of the Black Dragon Sect — and the man who had once dealt So Ryong a bitter, unforgettable defeat.
The man pulled a crumpled ball of paper from his breast and flung it to the ground. It was the Wind Cloud Board poster he had torn from the wall of the Black Dragon Inn the night before.
Grinding the word Black Dragon under his heel, the man growled.
"My name is Gang Hwi. Rank 90 on the Wind Cloud Board. People call me the Remnant Blood Wolf."
Gang Hui's gaze locked onto Yun Cheon atop the platform. In his eyes smoldered suppressed inferiority and naked madness.
"Isn't it hilarious? I'm a mere wolf — and a measly rank 100 dares to style himself a dragon."
A murky blood-light blossomed at the tips of his fingers.
This was never about liking or disliking an epithet. Any fool could see that a dragon and a wolf stood worlds apart in the rankings — and Gang Hwi could not stomach a man ranked below him bearing the name of dragon.
"A man who can't grasp his own station needs to be taught a lesson."
Gang Hwi lowered his stance. And the moment he moved to take his first step, So Ryong gritted his teeth and blocked his path.
The sting of that old defeat crawled up his spine — but there was no backing down now.
Gang Hwi swatted at him like a man shooing an insect. "Out of my way, So Ryong! A loser like you isn't worth my time! My business is with that mud-dragon sitting up there."
So Ryong's fists trembled.
In the instant that fear and fury crossed within him, he felt Yun Cheon's indifferent eyes upon him from the platform.
The Hall Master is watching. And besides — the man I was then and the man I am now are not the same!
So Ryong stepped forward.
At his refusal to yield, Gang Hwi's brow twitched.
"I told you to move. Do you actually want to die, So Ryong?"
"Don't make me laugh, Gang Hwi! Our Hall Master is not a man who answers to the barking of the likes of you. If you've come to the Black Dragon Sect, then follow the Black Dragon Sect's law!"
The true qi of the Black Dragon Moving Art began to shimmer across So Ryong's muscles. Meeting the wolf's killing intent head-on, So Ryong clenched his fists tight.
"Your opponent is me, Gang Hwi. I'll settle the debt from three years ago — right here, and now!"
—
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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