A Half-Step of Contempt
A quiet sigh escaped his lips.
It was not resignation, nor fear.
It was an expression of pure tedium — weariness laced with contempt for the pitiful little creatures standing before him.
He looked sickly to the point of emaciation, a gaunt, wasted frame barely holding itself upright.
And yet the words that followed from such a boy's mouth were mockery, plain and simple.
“That's all you've got, at your level?”
That single line was more than enough kindling.
“You little piece of trash—!”
“You dare mock the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family? You must be dying for it!”
The leader of the gang ground his teeth and growled like a beast.
Serpent Scorpion Muk Family, is it…?
One of the martial clans of the Demonic Cult?
But they certainly carry a great deal of pride, don't they.
Yun Cheon decided he would turn that pride against them.
“The Serpent Scorpion Muk Family? Never heard of it.”
“One of the Twelve Guardian Families that shields the Cult itself — and you don't know us?!”
“Was I supposed to?”
Clearly, the Muk gang had not anticipated this reaction. Time and again, they had prowled the Hidden Demon Cave picking out the sons of mid-tier warriors to torment at their leisure — no one had ever simply failed to recognize them.
But Yun Cheon had been dragged in from outside. He knew nothing of the Cult's organization or hierarchy, and it showed.
With their tongues tied, the Muk gang resorted to bluster.
“Th-this insolent whelp! I'll carve terror into your bones so deep you'll never forget the name Muk again!”
Four boys circled Yun Cheon.
“Oh ho… 'Serpent Scorpion,' was it? So the Muk Family is four snarling dogs yapping at once?”
It was a deliberate jab — twisting the characters for serpent and scorpion into those for four snarling hounds.
“Why, you—!”
To the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family, who had long savored their standing as one of the Twelve Guardian Families, this was mockery from a nobody whose name they'd never heard. All four at once brimmed with killing intent and closed in.
Handpicked from among thousands, each had trained in the martial arts for over a decade from birth — the very best of the 'supreme' caliber.
Well now… not bad for their age.
But that was all.
To Yun Cheon's eyes, they were merely clumsy gestures stuffed with raw power, their fundamentals hollow at the root.
The flow of my training just got shattered. Let me clean this up quickly and refocus.
The leader lunged first with a shout.
“Let me smash that arrogant nose of yours in first!”
His fist shot toward Yun Cheon's face with a ferocious whip of displaced air.
Yun Cheon stood rooted in place, utterly still.
The very instant everyone expected to watch the boy's face burst open—
a whisper of movement.
Yun Cheon's body slid half a step sideways, gliding like a sheet of paper caught in a draft.
…No need to move more than necessary.
The fist carved through empty air, and that full-swing momentum did nothing but collapse its owner's own center of gravity — a self-inflicted blunder.
“Wha—?!”
With a light tap of his foot, Yun Cheon nudged the staggering leg.
That was all it took. The boy, undone by his own force, went sprawling across the ground in a thunderous tumble.
Crash!
“Khagh!”
Even as he rolled through the dirt, the leader could not bring himself to believe this was Yun Cheon's doing.
“Pfft.”
Someone snickered.
That laugh severed the last thread of the leader's reason. Humiliated at having kissed the floor, he lashed out at the wrongest possible target.
“You brainless idiots! What are you gawking at?! Do something — take him down already!”
At his furious, prone snarling, the remaining three snapped back to their senses and charged.
“You uppity little—!”
This time too, Yun Cheon did not dodge.
No — it did not even look like dodging. He simply took one unhurried step.
As the kick came slicing in from the right, Yun Cheon shifted only his upper body, letting it slip past like water around a stone — then gave it a light push outward.
The kick's trajectory changed.
The foot buried itself in the flank of a companion on the far side, one whose fist was already mid-swing.
“Kehk! Why me—?!”
Taken in the ribs by his own ally out of nowhere, the punching boy's blow veered wildly off course.
Yun Cheon dipped his head and stepped forward. The instant a fist whistled past his face, he caught the wrist as though hooking a fish on a line — and pulled.
“Whoops!”
The extended fist flew well past its target.
Where it landed was the face of yet another companion charging in from behind.
Wham!
Like a meticulously staged comedy, the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family proceeded to beat each other senseless in the most ridiculous fashion.
“Pffah — what on earth are they even doing?”
Not one of their attacks ever grazed Yun Cheon's sleeve.
And all he had done was answer them with footwork alone. It was, quite literally, an art of attack and defense as one.
The harder they flailed, the more they collided and tangled with one another, their formation crumbling under its own momentum.
And amid the chaos, Yun Cheon made a startling discovery.
With every unfolding step, the Heaven and Earth Moving Art responded — instead of fatigue accumulating, his body felt lighter.
Warmth flowed back into his withering frame; his joints moved as though freshly oiled, smooth and effortless.
Used together, they produce an unexpected synergy….
A faint smile touched Yun Cheon's lips.
Shall I play with them a little longer?
From that moment on, he went beyond mere evasion — he began to dominate the board. Under the pull of his subtle movements, the boys crossed into each other's paths and tripped over their own feet in an endless comedy of errors.
It was enough to make the onlooking children doubt whether these really were the sons of the Muk Family, one of the Twelve Guardian Families.
…The infamous Serpent Scorpion Muk Family, humiliated by some nobody nobody's ever heard of?
They say they throw their weight around every entrance ceremony just to flex their strength… and now they're being turned on their own heads?
The leader who had brought the gang here was frustrated to the point of madness. If they slunk home wearing nothing but this farce, Muk Ha-jin would grind him into dust.
“You morons! Get it together and surround him! Unfold the Serpent Scorpion Formation!”
At his cry, the shattered formation reformed.
It's already four against one. Retreat now and we swallow nothing but disgrace… better to beat him to a pulp so thoroughly that no one dares whisper of it! That is the way of the Serpent Scorpion Muk Family!
The four boys, slithering like serpents and skittering like scorpions, seized cunning positions and sealed off every avenue of Yun Cheon's retreat.
Nearly a decade of accumulated internal energy, honed through years of coordinated drills — a formation wielded by mere boys, and yet it exuded an oppressive weight that no one could dismiss.
Low gasps rippled through the watching crowd. The Muk Family's Combined Strike Art carried no small reputation.
Still… unfolding a full formation against a single opponent….
As vicious as the rumors say. He held his own alone, but this is the end of him.
Everyone thought so.
Even Yayul Hui, who had vaguely sensed something extraordinary in the boy, swallowed dryly.
Four of them — the Four Symbols. The perfect number for even a basic formation. Can he really handle this too?
Yet face to face with the Serpent Scorpion Formation, Yun Cheon's expression remained as composed as ever.
The Combined Strike Art, is it. The shape looks convincing enough… but topple that pivot in the center, and the rest is a sandcastle.
“Die!”
The instant all four attacks descended on him like one great crashing wave, Yun Cheon did not retreat an inch — he stepped straight into it.
Attempting a combined formation while you can't even control your own bodies? You don't even understand the danger you're courting.
With steps steeped in the subtle logic of the Limitless Step, he burrowed into the very heart of the wave.
And then — a single motion.
Like flowing water, he simply stirred his hand, light as a ripple.
It was a movement so ordinary it would have been embarrassing to call it a martial technique.
But what that movement summoned was anything but ordinary.
Thock.
The moment Yun Cheon's palm brushed aside the wrist of the boy at the formation's center, every current of the attack twisted at once.
The poisoned hands meant for him collided with each other instead.
“Kehk!”
“Gyaahk!”
The two vanguards crashed together — and from there, it unraveled in a single unbroken cascade.
Crash!
In an eyeblink, all four of the Muk gang were hopelessly entangled, tumbling across the floor.
The Serpent Scorpion Formation collapsed in its entirety.
“Ugh… my arm…!”
“Aagh! My leg!”
Their own merciless blows, meant for a single boy, had met each other head-on. Thanks to that, arms and legs — perhaps even broken — sent pained moans echoing across the cold stone of the Hidden Demon Cave.
“H-how… how could the Serpent Scorpion Formation…?”
With the pivot of the combined formation destroyed, every preordained sequence of their art had warped out of true. Unable to recall their strikes, they had simply marched down their rehearsed paths — straight into ruin.
“…The formation isn't the problem. Your level is. If you want to become strong, stop cowering behind your family name and your gang, and put your strength into forging yourselves.”
At those words, Yayul Hui burst out laughing before she could stop herself.
And the mysterious boy who had leaned against a pillar watching it all roared with laughter and piled on the mockery.
“Haha, well said! Four against one, and this is what you've got? Learn to stand on your own before you try unfolding formations.”
At his jeering, the leader — buried at the very bottom of the pile — howled in humiliation.
“Damn it! You stray-dog bastards — if you'd just mastered the Serpent Scorpion Formation properly—!”
“What? Stray dogs? You're a cadet branch yourself, aren't you?”
“Hah! I'm nothing like the lot of you. I've been promised the main family's martial arts!”
“Where the hell is Muk Ha-jin?! He said we'd be more than enough!”
Yun Cheon looked down once at the wretched tangle of them, each shirking blame onto the others, as one might regard insects — then turned away without a trace of regret.
So they whip these lackeys along with promises of inherited family arts. No wonder their fundamentals are so hollow.
With that, the commotion ceased to concern him. But the very instant he moved to leave the chamber—
“Hold it.”
A low voice, yet one weighted with an authority that could not be refused.
Yun Cheon's feet, already turned without a backward glance, stopped.
Where his gaze landed, a man stood with arms crossed, watching him with frostbitten eyes.
I did feel someone's eyes on me… but I hadn't expected it to be him.
The drill instructor who'd been thrown into chaos when Yun Cheon lifted his rank tag right out from under him during the bone assessment — and a master of leg arts.
Blood Wind Leg. Instructor Ma Chung.
A storm of tangled emotions churned behind his eyes. Surging fury at the brat who had scraped off his dignity. Pure, unclouded awe — separate from that fury — at the footwork he had just witnessed. And beneath it all, greed for a raw gem overflowing with talent.
Three days. It's been barely three days since he took the manual. And in that span, he's internalized the footwork to this degree?
As a master of leg arts with deep insight into footwork, Ma Chung could read exactly how far Yun Cheon had come.
That was no accident. Perfect weight transfer. He read the opponent's strength, speed, even his next line of movement — and slipped it by with exactly half a step to spare.
Ma Chung shot a glance at the cadet-branch Muk gang groaning on the floor, then locked his gaze back on Yun Cheon. With a jerk of his chin, he gestured toward the dark corridor.
“Too many watching eyes here. We're moving. Follow me.”
Yun Cheon trailed after him without a word of protest. Only the sound of two sets of footsteps rang out along the chilly corridors of the Hidden Demon Cave.
Ma Chung led him to a small training hall, well away from any foot traffic. The moment he shut the stone door, every sound from outside was sealed away, leaving a space that belonged to the two of them alone.
“Let me ask you this. Just what the hell are you?”
Ma Chung's voice was cold as a frozen lake, sharp as a blade.
“Three days of training on a footwork art, and you toy with the Serpent Scorpion Formation? Leg arts and footwork are my specialty. You hid your martial arts before you entered the Cult, didn't you!”
He bore down on Yun Cheon, exuding pressure at full force.
“Was it not you yourself, Instructor, who graded my own constitution as rock-bottom? Are you saying someone like me concealed his martial arts?”
At Yun Cheon's level reply, Ma Chung found himself inwardly conceding.
No… at that time, the boy truly had never trained in any art. I'm certain of it.
Yun Cheon's cool gaze seemed to pierce straight through to the man's inner thoughts.
“…Or is it that you harbor some personal grudge against me, over the matter of my rank tag the other day?”
The words struck dead center. Ma Chung's face hardened for an instant. Then, with a cough, he forced his composure back and snapped,
“Hah, don't flatter yourself! I was merely surprised that your footwork had come along so far, that's all.”
“Then may I ask why you summoned me here separately?”
“You went and picked footwork out of the beginner's archive, so I — a master of footwork and leg arts — simply intend to grant you some instruction. That's all.”
It was a flimsy excuse invented on the spot — and at the same time, a veiled threat dressed in the authority of a drill instructor.
Yun Cheon caught the meaning instantly.
He wants to teach me?
Yun Cheon clicked his tongue inwardly — then a thought surfaced, and his eyes gleamed as he asked,
“Could it be that no other child chose footwork or leg arts besides me?”
Ma Chung's brow twitched.
The boy had hit it exactly.
“…That's right. Tch. Footwork is the foundation of every martial art there is, and these brats can't even grasp its importance….”
He let the silence hang for a moment, and only then did his true feelings begin to surface.
“Well, as you know, I haven't exactly got warm feelings toward you. But… you picked footwork, so what can I do about it? Do you want to learn from me or not?”
The instant Instructor Ma Chung flung that blunt question at him, an unexpected figure materialized in the training hall like drifting smoke.
“Hold it, Ma Chung! Wait a moment. I also have business with that boy.”
Return of the Cloud Dragon
Author | Choo Sang (Autumn Frost)
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
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