Not Even Reaching His Toes
When Baek Yu-yeon returned to the dormitory, an old tome waited for her.
Heavenly Meridian Compendium
The sheer thickness was staggering. It looked like two ordinary internal energy manuals bound into one.
Memorize this in a week and he’ll take me as his disciple?
It was almost funny. She had never even asked to become his disciple…
Might as well see what’s inside.
Baek Yu-yeon drew a deep breath and turned the first page.
Rustle, rustle!
The first ten pages were basic human meridians—the Twelve Primary Meridians, the Eight Extraordinary Vessels, and the three hundred sixty-five acupuncture points. Any martial arts medicine major had already drilled those into memory during their first semester.
Rustle, flip!
Yet the further she read, the more her expression shifted.
They’re connected… like this?
At first she thought it merely an unusual approach. By the twentieth page, then the thirtieth, a chill raced down her spine.
What in the world is this?
Every vessel and every point was drawn with the precision of an engineering blueprint. It went far beyond the simple pathways of qi; it detailed exactly how each point interacted with each organ, how they generated and restrained one another in the cycles of creation and destruction.
Rustle, flip!
Her hands turned the pages faster and faster. She had fallen in without realizing it.
This is entirely new! A theory that never existed before!
Outside the window, darkness gave way to the first red light of dawn. She forgot hunger entirely.
“This is insane… completely insane.”
Sometimes she gasped in shock; sometimes she could only sigh in awe. Every unsolved problem that had plagued the field found its answer here. At the same time she understood why modern martial medicine had stalled.
The foundations were full of holes. Of course progress was slow.
If this book were released to the academic world tomorrow, the entire global martial arts medical community would be turned upside down. An entirely new paradigm would open.
A fierce question rose unbidden.
How does the professor even have this?
A secret manual of this magnitude should have been registered with the Association. Major guilds would have thrown hundreds of billions at it just to monopolize the knowledge. Yet he had tossed it to her as if it were nothing.
Kang Hyun had told her to memorize the entire book in one week. After that she was to report to his office and learn. Which meant this book was only the beginning. There was more.
“Haa…”
She let out a long breath. How could she possibly go back to Professor Hwang Ye-rim now? She had seen the open ocean with her own eyes. How could she return to a narrow well?
Professor Hwang… I’m sorry.
I have to save Yu-seol.
And… as a scholar, my blood is boiling.
Rustle, rustle!
She turned the remaining pages and began memorizing at a terrifying speed.
“Next pair, step forward.”
Regular swordsmanship class. On the training ground where the female cadets’ sparring was in full swing, twentieth-batch student Seo Hae-in walked out. Her epithet had always been “eternal last place.”
“Only the first three forms of the Clear Wind Sword Style are permitted. No variations. Begin!”
At the instructor’s command the bout started.
Clang!
A single exchange. Seo Hae-in’s body was driven helplessly backward. Her opponent was a classmate who consistently ranked in the upper-middle tier.
No—I’m being pushed again.
She tried to continue the Clear Wind forms the way she always had, but her opponent’s swift, sharp successive strikes left no opening. At this rate she would drop her wooden sword and lose once more.
In that desperate instant her body moved before her mind.
The motion she had repeated every dawn until her breath burned in her throat.
Lower, hold, thrust.
Seo Hae-in dropped her center of gravity without thinking. She planted her lower body into the ground like a stake and raised her wooden sword to meet the incoming blade head-on.
Three Talents Sword Style—Earth!
KRAAAANG!
“Wh-what?”
Something astonishing happened. The girl who always got shoved back held firm, and the opponent’s sword—the one that had been pressing the attack—was knocked aside.
Next is Heaven?
The moment she saw her opponent’s balance break, her wooden sword rose and fell in a natural arc.
“Kyaaak!”
The other girl tried to block, lost her grip, and toppled backward. Seo Hae-in stared blankly at the scene.
It… worked?
Her heart pounded. Everything that endless training had failed to fix came loose the instant she used Professor Kang Hyun’s Three Talents Sword Style. It was a thrill she had never felt in her life.
“That’s enough.”
The exhilaration lasted less than three seconds.
“Seo Hae-in. Disqualified. Recorded as a loss.”
“What?”
She looked up in confusion.
“Professor, I won that—”
“Won? Does that look like a win to you?”
The swordsmanship instructor clicked his tongue coldly.
“This is an evaluation of the Clear Wind Sword Style. And you’re swinging some back-alley trash technique? Just because you luckily knocked someone down, don’t delude yourself into thinking that was proper swordsmanship.”
“B-but—”
She wanted to argue. No matter how she looked at it, Clear Wind simply did not suit her. And if one insisted on right and wrong in swordsmanship, wasn’t the stronger sword the correct one in the end?
“I’ll deduct points. Get out of the ring.”
Seo Hae-in bit down hard on her lower lip. It was so unfair.
The professor is wrong.
Her conviction only hardened. In this entire Academy, the only person who truly taught her what a sword was supposed to be was Professor Kang Hyun.
Unlike the quiet Seo Hae-in, Han Tae-ho was naturally sociable. As a result he had plenty of friends.
“Hey, Han Tae-ho.”
On the way to class a group of classmates approached.
“You still going to that class?”
“Professor Kang Hyun’s?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m still going.”
“Isn’t it exhausting? What are you even learning from a drunk professor?”
Among all the freshmen, Han Tae-ho was the only one still attending Kang Hyun’s lectures. Naturally a few of them had taken an interest.
“I’m just learning whatever.”
He brushed it off casually, but inside he snorted.
Drunk? Nothing to learn?
These frogs in a well who didn’t know a thing!
Cha Yu-sik, second son of Cheonrang, and the Mad Dog Kwak Do-jin couldn’t even breathe loudly in front of Professor Kang Hyun. And only a few days ago he had seen it with his own eyes—the overwhelming pressure of the Emperor’s Sword Form that seemed ready to crush the heavens, unleashed with nothing more than a tree branch.
Actually, it’s better this way.
The less his classmates understood Kang Hyun’s true worth, the happier Han Tae-ho was. They were competitors in the end.
“But is it true? That the guy only teaches the Three Talents Sword Style in class?”
“What’s wrong with Three Talents?”
“It’s a scam, honestly. Teaching a style even neighborhood kids know at the Academy? Does that make any sense?”
Other classmates piled on.
“Exactly. I’d feel like I was wasting tuition.”
“You got played.”
“What are you gonna say at guild interviews? ‘I learned Three Talents’?”
When the snickers rose around him, Han Tae-ho’s irritation finally flared.
“Hey, don’t talk about things you don’t understand. Three Talents is incredible. You need solid foundations before you can learn advanced martial arts—don’t you get that?”
His serious tone made the others pause for a second, then they burst into full-throated laughter.
“Puhahaha!”
“What did he just say? Has this guy actually been brainwashed?”
“Make sure you use Three Talents during dungeon practice.”
“Or better yet, only use Three Talents on the midterms!”
That last jab was the one Han Tae-ho finally bit on.
“Yeah, I was planning to anyway.”
“What?”
Unable to rein in his pride, he snapped back in the heat of the moment.
“The professor already promised. If I place in the top five of our year using only Three Talents in the upcoming tournament, he’ll teach me an advanced martial art. Just watch. I’ll show you.”
Having said his piece, Han Tae-ho strode off. He no longer wanted to waste energy arguing with those ignoramuses.
“……What is he even talking about.”
“Is he crazy?”
His classmates watched his back with pitying looks.
Han Tae-ho’s slip of the tongue let the rumor spread like wildfire until it finally reached the ears of the professors themselves.
A few days later, during another swordsmanship practical.
“Hup!”
Seo Hae-in, who had been desperately dodging with Clear Wind forms, finally used the Three Talents Sword Style.
Crack!
“Ow!”
Her opponent’s wooden sword spun through the air and clattered to the floor. Perfect control.
It’s amazing.
How could an opponent who had always felt so strong become this easy the moment she used Three Talents? Honestly she wanted to erase Clear Wind from her mind completely.
“Seo Hae-in!”
But of course the instructor had seen it. He strode down from the platform and blocked her path.
“I clearly told you to spar using only Clear Wind. Do you find a professor’s words amusing?”
“I’m sorry. My body just… moved on its own.”
“Your body reacted first? Hah.”
A sneer twisted the instructor’s lips.
“These past few days a thoroughly unpleasant rumor has been circulating around the Academy. That you’ll place top five on the midterms with nothing but Three Talents? Is that why you’re doing this?”
“……”
Seo Hae-in bit her lip. The instructor continued his venom.
“That empty-headed lunatic of a professor must have filled your head with hot air about giving you advanced martial arts. Don’t delude yourself. The only reason he teaches that back-alley trash is because it’s all the capital he has. Watching you dance to the scam of an incompetent professor is so ridiculous I can barely stand it.”
Public humiliation. The classmates gathered on the training ground began snickering and mocking her.
The old Seo Hae-in would have shrunk into herself and hung her head. That was how it had always been.
But now her fists clenched tight.
Professor Kang Hyun was incompetent? A scam?
“……Professor Kang Hyun is not that kind of person. He is neither a fraud nor incompetent.”
“What did you just say?”
The instructor let out a hollow laugh.
“Where do you get the nerve to talk back like that?”
She should have stopped there. But Seo Hae-in had seen the Academy Net posts, and everything that had been building up finally exploded.
“……Honestly, Professor, you don’t even reach his toes! Don’t speak so freely when you know nothing!”
“……!”
Silence crashed down. No one had expected a bombshell like that to come out of Seo Hae-in’s mouth.
“You little bitch have finally lost your mind!”
The last thread of reason snapped. The instructor roughly backhanded her across the face.
SMACK!
A sharp crack of flesh on flesh. Seo Hae-in’s head snapped to the side. A vivid red handprint bloomed on her pale cheek, yet she did not flinch away. She turned her head back and stared straight at the instructor.
“……Still haven’t come to your senses. Did that drunk professor teach you that vicious attitude as well? Fine. Today I’ll discipline you properly until you learn your place and restore the authority of the faculty.”
The instructor rolled up his sleeves, breathing hard—
“What do you think you’re doing?”
A languid voice drifted from the entrance of the training ground.
Every gaze swung toward the sound.
There stood Kang Hyun, whiskey bottle in hand, leaning at a crooked angle.