The First War (2)
What is the martial way?
One might attempt a shallow definition of it, but it is a concept far too vast for any single declaration to hold.
A discipline studied, and a history forged, by countless figures across tens of centuries. Only the grand masters who had devoted their entire lives to reach a certain realm could so much as speak of their own philosophy. Everything beyond that was nothing more than a cheap joke told by ignorant rabble.
Down through the modern twenty-first century, countless warriors put their martial theories into words. Yet no theory was ever absolute for every soul who trained in the martial arts.
They could be classified, but never limited—and it would have been foolish to pin the concept down to a single definition.
And still, even among martial arts that differed wildly from sect to sect and person to person, one absolute truth existed.
The commonly spoken hierarchy of martial skill.
Those who had learned to throw a punch were Third-rate.
Those who had mastered the handling of body and qi were Second-rate.
Those who could send qi to any part of their body and wield it at will were First-rate.
Those who crossed the great wall and could project qi beyond their own flesh had reached the Peak Realm.
And those who crossed an even greater wall still, attaining a realm of inner energy arts, were the masters of the Super-Peak Realm.
Between each of those realms lay a definite gulf. Each art carried its own differences of what could and could not be done, but if one thing had to be named as absolutely different from all the rest, it was this.
Strength.
"Huh. So he won."
A First-rate could never defeat a Peak master, and a Peak would never defeat a Super-Peak warrior. It was an obvious truth that hardly needed saying aloud.
Kujo Kisara gazed at the frail warrior standing directly before her, framed between the towering skyscrapers.
Choi Gangjun, was it? Today was the first time she had seen him in the flesh, though stories had reached her through Tadano more than once.
A mere First-rate daring to match a top-ranked cadet—or even a Peak realm warrior.
In a way, it was admirable. For a warrior to surmount his own limits and realize the martial way was a miracle all could revere and marvel at.
But it did not rise to the level of awe.
Clack— clack—
Heel clicks, utterly out of place for the setting, closed the distance one step at a time.
By the time the arrogant woman's face came into perfect, unblurred view—as though she had already won—the man saw what her long legs were wearing: heels of roughly five centimeters. Footwear for a banquet, not a duel.
In all his years of crawling through battlefields, the man had never once encountered such an absurd sight.
Nor such an humiliation.
The warrior's face—young beyond its years—crumpled little by little, as though reclaiming the ages it was owed.
This was blasphemy. Choi Gangjun felt something inside his head snap.
"Crazy bitch."
Old memories must have stirred, because the curse spilled from his mouth unbidden.
"Oh my. How rude."
Kujo Kisara had lived her entire life in comfort and grace, yet she did not flare up at the sudden profanity. There was no reason to be angered by a barking dog; she simply smiled, as if the whole thing were beneath notice.
Before long she rolled up her sleeve with unhurried grace and murmured, in the spirit of one granting a favor:
"A dog only comes to its senses when it's beaten."
Gazing up at the woman's sneering face, Choi Gangjun answered quietly.
"Bullshit."
To him, the thing before his eyes was no longer an equal warrior.
It was a dull beast.
The warrior took a step forward.
Son — the Wind
He channeled strength into both legs.
As though the wind itself were shoving at his back, the warrior's frame accelerated further. In an instant, the distance between them had closed.
"Ho."
Kisara narrowed her eyes and glared at the man charging straight at her.
Certainly fast, for a First-rate. Even by her judgment, the refinement of his external art and the flow of his inner energy were not a single step behind an average Peak master.
Is he really First-rate?
The question flickered through her mind, but only for a heartbeat. Even if he were Peak—so what? Whether the bastard had hidden his inner strength all along or had only just climbed a realm changed nothing.
Peak at best. Beneath her either way.
Snorting, Kisara finally squared her stance and drew her qi upward.
Her family's support had been vast, yes—but reaching that realm at the tender age of seventeen had owed a real share to her own merit.
The blessing of overwhelming talent, no less.
Reciting the formula under her breath, Kisara stoked the energy fortifying her body higher and higher. Violet qi materialized over both her hands and both her feet—and in the same breath, she lifted her right leg and swung.
A crescent arc that rends everything in its path.
There was no sound of the wind being torn.
Choi Gangjun, who had stood roughly thirty meters from his opponent, abruptly widened his eyes and set both hands in frantic motion.
He unfolded a rough, abbreviated form of Geongondaenayi.
Just as he felt something graze his swift, strangely winding hands, an eerie resonance sounded behind his back as well.
The man turned his head.
Grrrrk—... A skyscraper, cleaved through in one great diagonal as if a blade had been laid to it, was crumbling away without ceremony.
Unlike the soundless blade, the towering building shrieked its death cry as it noisily collapsed.
Letting the thunder crashing against his ears wash over him, Choi Gangjun realized that the woman before him was stronger than he had judged.
So arrogance and skill really are separate things.
Kisara's hands and feet had long since vanished beneath violet gangki.
Her heels were gone, too—though "shattered by the explosively extended qi" would be closer to the truth than "removed."
The gangki materialized over her limbs took the shape of a beast's claws and fangs, suiting her attire not at all.
The Beast Gate. The Kujo family, renowned for its brawling arts—fist techniques, movement arts, footwork alike.
The future alias of Kujo Kisara—next head of that house and the designated Grand General of the Empire—was neither English nor Japanese.
Guillotine.
French—the infamous name of the executioner's blade.
Krrraaak—
The instant he deflected the invisible strike, somewhere across the city came the sound of something else collapsing.
Yet Choi Gangjun, without a flicker of concern, moved his feet forward.
Somehow, he had closed the gap.
He wanted to believe she could not keep hurling such monstrous things indefinitely—but even granting that, the odds said he would hit his own limit first.
She was a Super-Peak princess who had gulped down every elixir ever handed to her and grown accordingly; he was a rough-edged gutter rat who had only just clawed his way to Peak.
The gulf in internal energy was beyond all comparison.
So what he had to aim for was a short war. He had to settle this before the energy in his body ran dry.
Fortunately, she too seemed to have no intention of dragging things out against an opponent she regarded as her own inferior.
"Huh. You just won't die, will you."
Kisara spat the complaint all at once, tilted her head in wonder—then smiled.
"Then I'll simply stomp you to death."
BOOM—!
The violet wolf slammed down into the asphalt beneath her feet. An immense weight of force and qi seeped into the earth.
That single step was nothing like the Shaolin monk Il-jin's—nor like the footwork of the Heavenly Demon Cult's young mistress either.
The earth split in two and rose upright.
An earthquake raised by a single human hand—or ramparts erected in the span of a breath.
The Super-Peak warrior lifted her hand toward the fragments, several times her own height, and poured qi into them.
That her inner strength casually overshadowed her opponent's entire reserve went without saying.
"Now die."
With that declaration, her energy heaved violently.
The mass of asphalt—larger than most buildings—burst with a pop.
KWAAAAANG—!
It exploded. Shards of stone blanketed the sky and rained outward, every one of them carrying a weight of qi that could not be ignored.
But a warrior who had weathered falling meteors still had room to spare.
Choi Gangjun extended his hands and moved—letting the falling stones slide past him wherever he could, hoarding his internal energy.
When that failed, he shattered them by force. He had at least that much left in him.
Still, the man did not grow complacent.
In some ways she was a harder opponent than Cheon Yuha, who fought heavy, straight, and honest.
She moved on raw beast instinct, utterly unpredictable—and yet every single stroke she made was keener and sharper than anyone's.
A field choked with flying dust, vision stolen away—this was precisely the sort of situation such warriors loved best.
Choi Gangjun knew it.
So he kept tracking the silhouette weaving deftly through the earthen fog, never once letting her slip from his grasp.
Tae — the Marsh
The man's hand, moving a deliberate beat behind his instinct, shot out first—and met the beast's hand bursting from the fog a step ahead of it.
Drawing that hand toward himself, Choi Gangjun readied a fist.
Close-quarters brawling, against me?
Kujo Kisara snorted, and resolved to humor the insolent bastard all the way.
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
One fist. And another fist.
Fists aimed at each other's bodies, their enormous forces traded with an odd sort of courtesy. Such crude, barbaric exchange always favored the one holding the advantage.
In truth, it was hardly an exchange at all. One-sided violence.
The Super-Peak master stood levels above in both the body that stacked up damage and the inner strength driving each fist—of course she should win.
The opponent's attacks felt soft as water, while her own fists ought to have shattered bone clean past the skin.
That was how it should have gone. Surely.
Crack—!
Fist met fist and slid askew. Foot met foot and was lightly turned aside. Her attacks were being neutralized with an ease so absurd it was almost insulting.
Kujo Kisara found herself thinking: How many times has it been now?
Even as the thought formed, dozens of exchanges had already come and gone—and not one clean hit had landed.
Every single time, the opponent's fist came out to meet hers just before her intended point of impact, then twisted it away.
Her feet were no different—only the form changed; the sensation of her force being redirected was always the same.
Had the gap in inner strength not been so vast, she would long since have been wounded outright, far beyond the mere deflection of a strike.
Something is wrong here.
She had known he was stronger than she'd expected. But this much?
Kujo Kisara felt the unease quietly blooming in her chest. For the first time in her life, she doubted her own victory.
That's impossible.
Even thinking it, she could not tear her eyes from the man before her.
Through her vision—the vision that could peer freely into another's body—she saw it: a flow of qi, sluggish yet responding to her every move as though foreseeing it, matching her like a mirror.
He was reading everything.
The realization, arriving unbidden, gouged a deep scratch across Kisara's pride.
If I'm careless, I could actually lose? That can't be— then why am I the one being read right now?
In that instant Kisara's fist twisted off course, and her balance wavered and crumbled.
His bizarre technique must have dragged her body in.
Staring at the fist bearing down on her face, Kisara sounded the alarm through her mind.
What happens if I take that hit? An ordinary fist? Or some strange technique like the one just before?
She deliberated for the space of a breath, then clenched her teeth. At last, she made her decision.
Damn it.
She released her limiters.
Grrrrrrk—!
With the limits of her body and the brakes on her inner energy thrown off, Kisara's movements grew faster still.
She immediately wrenched her head aside to evade the incoming fist. Naturally—it should have worked. The gap in their specs, already enormous, had only widened further.
What—?
But Kisara stared at the fist still trailing her, bewildered.
...Why is it still right in front of me?
The moment she grasped the reality about to meet her face, she was aghast—and hauled up her protective aura.
"Shut that—"
Choi Gangjun drove out his fist.
"—damn mouth of yours."
KWAANG! The fist connected at last, and Kujo Kisara's face crumpled.