The Initiation Trial
Namso-ryong—I had already heard the name from Yang Jeon’s mouth. Elder Nam’s son, or so I had been told.
Still, since he was smiling brightly at me, I gave him a slight nod in return.
But as though my tepid response displeased him, he subtly hardened his expression and continued, “Oh? So our Disciple Neung still doesn’t know who I am?”
“That’s right. I haven’t yet heard what great feats Disciple Nam has accomplished.”
Of course, I said this not because I truly did not know him, but because I wanted to see him speak of himself without borrowing his father’s prestige. I wanted him to tell me what kind of man he was.
Yet, unexpectedly, he did not flare up at my words. Instead, he went on, “I’ve been so diligent with the duties entrusted to me in Jibodang that I seem to have neglected the matters of the trial for a while. I haven’t accomplished some outstanding feat like Disciple Neung did when you captured a great demon beast at the Foundation Establishment level, but I do keep close company with many brothers and sisters and haven’t neglected my cultivation studies. Thanks to that, I’m all but certain to reach the later stage of Qi Refining within a few years.”
It was self-praise, of course, but not so poor that I would call it the worst possible answer.
So I nodded once more, a little more openly than before. “I see.”
Then he let out an awkward little laugh—“Haha~”—and looked at me again. “Now then, Disciple Neung, why don’t you speak as well? I’ve heard that Disciple Neung played a very important role in capturing a Foundation Establishment-level demon beast. Is that really true?”
What he wanted to hear, no doubt, was the story of how I had risked my life as bait to catch that fox demon. Many people still believed that was all there was to it.
But I answered with plain truth, a truth that fell far short of his expectations.
“It is.”
Yet when he heard my answer, he instead clapped his hands and laughed. “Ha ha!! Of course! Disciple Neung even wagered his own life, didn’t he? My question was wrong from the start!”
It was not really admiration for my contribution at all, but more like mocking the fact that I had served as bait and still considered it a great deed.
But I had never paid him much attention in the first place. What he thought of my words hardly mattered to me.
So I asked him what I was truly curious about. “I heard the last initiation trial was climbing Jangseongak. Is it the same this time as well?”
He looked mildly put out by my unexpected response, then answered, “Our Hyeondo Sect’s initiation trial has always been the same, Disciple Neung. You and I joined the sect without taking this trial, but all the other brothers and sisters here were initiated in exactly that way.”
Seeing that he knew I had become a disciple without taking the initiation trial, I could almost understand why he had greeted me so warmly just now.
He had assumed that because I had entered through the same special arrangement as he had—that private, insider path known as guanxi—I would naturally be on his side. When my reaction failed to please him, he had only then begun to show his true colors.
After giving a nod to his obviously transparent scheme, I turned my gaze toward Jangseongak, the place where today’s initiation trial would be held. I simply had no interest in him.
Jangseongak could be reached by climbing only a few hundred stone steps. That such a climb was itself the initiation trial was interesting enough, but what I found even more amusing was that our second brother had once needed three days and three nights to ascend it.
Most likely, those visible stone steps were not the whole of it. There must have been hidden formations or mechanisms in place as well.
“If commoners, who are no more than pebbles rolling along the roadside, want to prove themselves, then of course they must endure a hardship like that.”
Namso-ryong kept flapping his mouth at my side, unable to mingle with the others. Just as Yang Jeon had warned me, the others also seemed reluctant to get involved with him.
But I paid it no mind and asked him again, “Then everyone who takes the trial must climb Jangseongak, and those who finish the ascent become disciples?”
“Of course, before that, anyone who doesn’t even have a spirit root is sent back. At the very least, one must possess the talent of the five spirit roots to get this far.”
Perhaps because no one else was speaking to him besides me, Namso-ryong answered immediately despite his obvious irritation. It hardly seemed to bother him that he stood beside me.
Just as I was about to ask another question, a huge flying boat—like a great wooden pavilion laid on its side—suddenly came rising up from below.
“They’re here! It’s finally starting!”
Although Elder Nam still had not appeared, and no orders had yet been given to the disciples assigned as overseers, all the Hyeondo Sect disciples gathered there straightened their robes and welcomed the flying boat.
In response, a tremendous voice rang out from the boat.
“Listen well, disciples assigned as overseers for today’s trial! I entrust to you the Ascending Immortal Formation laid across the stairway leading to Jangseongak. Each of you, take the flight of steps you desire!”
The heavy voice seemed to fill the entire space, so massive it felt as if it could shake the body itself, and the disciples acting as overseers all clasped their hands in salute at once.
“We obey the elder’s command!”
Then they immediately ran or flew toward the stone stairs leading up to Jangseongak. Seeing that, I also began to move, and before long Namso-ryong had come to my side again and spoke.
“Disciple Neung, stand beside me. Watch carefully and follow what I do.”
It was hard to imagine learning anything from him, but once again I did not bother to stop him from standing next to me. We took our places together, one above the other, beneath the stone stairs wrapped in a barrier of spiritual energy that looked like a giant water droplet.
“Hoo—ahhh. Being in a place so full of spiritual energy really does feel good on its own. As you’ve probably noticed, this Ascending Immortal Formation draws in the surrounding spiritual energy and seals it away. Thanks to that, even commoners who cannot manipulate spiritual energy have trouble so much as breathing.”
He was chatty enough to explain the truth hidden within this initiation trial, but I was more focused on observing the participants descending from the flying boat. I expected that among them would be the daughter of the Baengri Clan, the one my second brother had been waiting for with such longing.
But no matter how sharply I strained my eyes, I could not see her among the trial participants who had arrived by flying boat.
So it seemed the bold woman who had declared she would find her own partner rather than accept a marriage arranged by her family had abandoned her resolve after all. Or perhaps something had happened to her...
“Just look at them. They’re grinning like fools just because they have spirit roots, as if they’ve already entered our Hyeondo Sect without even knowing what sort of place Jangseongak is. We need to show those fools their place.”
At Namso-ryong’s strange words, spoken while he seemed to be studying the participants just as diligently as I was, I immediately asked, “Aren’t we here to move injured or exhausted people?”
Then came an answer I had not expected at all.
“Why should we care about maggots who can’t even survive something as trivial as this initiation trial? Naturally, we’re the sieve that keeps those maggots from passing.”
At first glance this sounded similar to the law of the righteous factions—the strong survive—yet even a little thought made it clear the meaning was very different. Those people were not granted even the most basic chance, unlike the warriors of the righteous sects.
In the righteous sects, they at least taught the basics of martial arts first, then held examinations or duels to determine rank.
But these people had learned nothing from Hyeondo Sect at all. They were being made to test their fate with nothing but their own raw talent.
Even in the martial world, not even the bandit gatherings of the Green Forest would make such a nonsense of things; they taught martial arts first and then assigned status according to achievement.
“And what becomes of those who are filtered out like that?”
“The dead are thrown off the cliff, and the injured are made to crawl back on their own.”
The moment I stiffened at Namso-ryong’s words, so far beyond common sense, he who had been speaking with such grave seriousness suddenly burst out laughing.
“Pfft! What’s with that expression? You really think our Hyeondo Sect would just let such trash die? Of course, I do resent the resources used to save such trash, but even so, we do have some standards to uphold, don’t we? We can’t just let them die. At the very least, we patch them up enough to walk on their own and send them off, so don’t worry.”
He had told a malicious lie just to toy with me.
Of course, even the truth he had dressed up afterward amounted to little more than saying they would keep the failures from dying.
“I see...”
At my stiff response to his offensive lie, he too hardened his face, then shut his mouth.
But only for a moment. As soon as the participants began climbing the stairs, he started to snicker and mutter to himself again.
“Heh heh~ Come on, then. Which one of you is going to make things interesting for me?”
As if answering him, one of the people laboring up the steps cried out.
“Aaaagh!!”
One of the overseers standing on the stair the man had just stepped onto made a gesture as if launching a fire spell at him. Startled by the ball of fire that had suddenly come rushing toward his face, the participant fell backward and rolled all the way down the stairs.
“Kekekek! Look at that! He’s collapsing with all the strength of a straw doll, isn’t he? One more maggot has already been filtered out.”
Even wicked demonic cultivators would not have been so delighted to see an injured man—his ankle twisted from tumbling down the stone stairs.
After all, the man was not some blood feud enemy. He was merely a participant in an initiation trial for entry into the same sect.
But Namso-ryong only became happier as more people were hurt or broken in spirit. Even from the mouths of the other overseers besides him, little snickering sounds occasionally slipped out.
And just as my expression was hardening at that, a trial participant who was panting for breath had somehow reached our vicinity.
She was not as strikingly beautiful as the daughter of the Baengri Clan, but judging from her bearing she was clearly from a martial family, tall and robust in a way that was not at all fragile for a woman.
“Oh? Not bad at all.”
Namso-ryong seemed to notice her as well, and a curious smile appeared on his face. Then, all at once, his still hand moved.
Whir—!
As though this were a technique used by a Qi Refining cultivator at the middle stage, a single stealthy yet razor-sharp sliver of gray wind sliced across her body at his gesture.
Startled by the sudden attack, she staggered and stumbled back.
But he did not stop. His hand kept moving, creating more than a dozen shards of wind in the air.
Then, every time she clenched her teeth and tried to press forward, he hurled one of the shards at her.
The first only snipped a bit of her clothing and sent it fluttering, but as the sharp wind kept grazing her again and again, the clothes she wore were gradually torn apart, revealing pale skin beneath. Worse still, red lines of blood began appearing across the exposed flesh.
Before long, she—already struggling—began to breathe hard from the mounting pain and humiliation.
Inside the Ascending Immortal Formation, where even ordinary people had trouble breathing, once her breathing was thrown into disorder, the body that had seemed to endure for a moment finally collapsed. Her posture sank lower and lower until at last she was sitting directly on the stairs, reduced to gasping desperately for air.
It was the moment when the dignity she had carried into this initiation trial, staking her fate on it, was brutally trampled under someone’s ridicule.
“Heh... if I keep at it a little longer, I could strip her completely.”
The participants who entered the formation seemed unable to see the overseers or hear what they said, but as one of the executors myself, Namso-ryong’s conduct was plain enough for me to see.
My brow furrowed on its own... and just as that fellow was about to send out another shard of wind to sever the strip of cloth hanging from her shoulder, a flying knife shot out from my belt and cleaved the air.