The First War (3)
Gaining a title does not, in itself, elevate one's mental maturity or one's mastery of the martial arts.
But there are things that only become visible afterward.
It is not that one's perception broadens through the realm of martial enlightenment — rather, one's field of vision widens as someone who must govern and command a great many people.
And if that is true, how enormous must the shift in perspective be for someone who was, until recently, an ordinary civilian, suddenly placed at the head of the world's foremost academic institution and martial organization?
"Hmmm."
Vice President Lee Chung surveyed the arena with her usual gentle smile in place.
The place where she stood was a kind of waystation, connected to each of the passages leading off the dueling grounds — a waiting area where those whose duels had already ended gathered to await the final results.
Even without observing from some lofty vantage point, plenty of information still reached her.
A red-haired martial artist whose expression suggested things were not unfolding to her satisfaction, seated with composed stillness beside a woman dressed in plain traveling garb. The two of them had been ruled to have abstained the moment they entered the dueling grounds, and now waited on the outcome without a single wound between them.
An air of anxious silence hung over the waiting room.
And just now, one more duel had concluded.
"Elixir! Get the elixir over here!"
Thanks to her exceptional hearing — or perhaps her sharpened perception — the frantic cry reached her clearly. It seemed the supervisor had failed to intervene in time, and something had gone wrong.
At Lee Chung's signal, one of the waiting healers sprinted toward the commotion.
Crossing paths with him in the corridor came a blood-soaked assassin, walking out with unhurried steps.
Hanging on his face was a victor's smile.
The moment the faint stench of blood reached them, Cheon Yuha shot to her feet, her face frozen in disbelief.
The assassin's victory was startling enough — but that was not the reason.
Tadano Ansatsusha, who had followed a step behind, paused for a moment as though measuring something, then let his smile fade. In an instant his face went perfectly blank, and he murmured quietly to himself.
"Looks like there's been an accident."
At those words, Lee Chung smiled in agreement and was already moving. This time, if no one intervened in time, someone was going to die.
KWAANG!
His fist finally connected.
The sudden shock against her cheek twisted Kujo Kisara's face, and she scrambled backward in a rapid retreat.
Choi Gangjun did not press the chase recklessly.
He had struck her squarely in the face, yet the damage she had taken amounted to little more than a bruise. His own fist, slammed against her protective aura, actually hurt worse.
And still — he had landed a blow.
A thin trickle of blood ran down from between Kujo Kisara's lips.
The Super-Peak Realm martial artist's eyes went wide.
The person most shocked by the current state of affairs was none other than she herself.
"...Huh."
Tracing her own cheek and lips with her fingertips, Kujo Kisara abruptly let out a hollow laugh. Blood was smeared across her pale white hand.
Her protective aura had absorbed the vast majority of the impact — the blood came from no more than a small split in her lip.
As someone who walked the path of martial cultivation, this should have been a familiar thing. And yet she could not contain the emotion boiling up from within.
...It's been a long time.
The last time anything she had dismissed as a mere beast had managed to bite her was before her childhood had even ended.
Kujo Kisara finally fixed her enemy before her with a gaze steeped in killing intent.
There he stood — an arrogant man who neither cowered nor flinched, meeting her head-on.
Yes. Still there, are you.
"You lowborn wretch."
Kisara ground the words out through a contorted expression.
"Know your place. Don't you dare climb."
In that moment, she abandoned any thought of a perfect victory.
The prospect of being scolded by her family's elders? She couldn't have cared less. The only thing that mattered to her now was winning — nothing more, nothing less. She meant to make unshakably certain that the one left standing at the end would be her.
"Release."
CLACK—!
With the sound of metal disengaging, the bracelets and anklets bound around Kisara's limbs came unlocked. What had looked like an ordinary set of colorless accessories dropped straight to the ground the instant their seams split apart.
KUGUGUGUNG—! With a thunderous roar, they smashed through the asphalt and drove themselves deep into the earth.
Kisara squared her stance.
Now that her body had been freed of its crushing weight, it was only natural that it would accelerate beyond anything before. And more — the internal energy that the metal restraints had long sealed away came flooding violently out of her, overflowing like a breached dam.
Kisara glared at her enemy, violet will-o'-wisps blazing in her pupils.
The seals of the Kujo bloodline break. From every limb's furthest reach, a violet wolf bares its fangs.
"Shit."
Even as he cursed at the unexpected turn of events, Choi Gangjun readied his stance.
What was this, a final boss fight? He'd been hoping to wrap things up cleanly if he could, but it seemed the whole thing had gone sideways.
If he hadn't broken through to the Peak Realm last night, the one losing without even landing a hand would have been him.
"Ah, my life."
Having thus lamented his own fate, the martial artist thrust his fist into empty air.
KWAJIK—! The blow, having struck through space itself, buried itself squarely in Kisara's face.
...This bastard.
Kujo Kisara's face twisted yet again.
Twice now. The moment it happened a second time, it could no longer be called chance. This was something that could only be called inevitability — and she knew it, too.
URDEUGEUK—!
More than the face she'd been struck on, Kisara felt something collapsing inside her chest. Her pride — or perhaps her sense of superiority.
Gritting her teeth against the humiliation, she drew out the gangki that had taken physical form in her hands.
A brutal beast-style art, named for the promise to tear flesh from bone and let blood run. Its purple deepens into the color of spilled gore.
The technique, named for the promise of rending an opponent's body and drawing blood, had shifted beyond its original violet into a red so deep it seemed drenched in gore. The violent hue suited her feral temperament and the raw intensity of her energy perfectly.
Qi gauntlets shaped like a beast's forelimbs, wrapping both her hands, slashed through the air with vicious sharpness.
"──I'll kill you!"
The hand she flung out as she screamed tore through empty air, nothing more. Undeterred, Kisara threw herself into a frenzied flurry, again and again, trying to shred the man before her to ribbons.
But her cunning opponent stayed half a step ahead of her, evading every single attack.
...Why?
Kujo Kisara could not understand. She was unmistakably the faster one — so how could he always move first? What possible reason could there be for a gap this glaring?
Her hands, brimming with fury, gradually lost their precision, degrading into nothing better than a wild beast's claws.
An opening was bound to appear.
Choi Gangjun drove his fist into her torso.
KWAANG—!
The energy burrowed inside her and shook her to her core. Kisara's face contorted sharply, but she did not break off her assault — and it was around then that a certain conviction settled over Choi Gangjun as well.
Right. She's this sturdy. Then at the very least, she won't die.
The martial artist made his decision. He reached for the one means he had of bringing this long fight to a close.
"So that's how it's done."
Channeling the better part of the roughly half of his energy that remained through his entire body, the martial artist — a mere Peak Realm practitioner — poured it all into his legs.
KUUNG—!
He stamped down with crushing force.
The sovereign's aura descends, crushing the very space beneath his heel.
The aura of a tyrant bore down upon the beast's shoulders.
Halting for an instant under the crushing pressure, Kisara stared through Choi Gangjun with a baffled expression.
The internal energy in his body had vanished in the space of a heartbeat.
...What is this bastard doing?
He had flung away the energy he had been husbanding all this time, casting it into the void for no meaning at all. The very thing that had let him drag the fight out — the fuel that the insect before her had survived on — was gone.
And yet why did she feel this unsettled?
Seized by a fear that had bloomed without warning, Kujo Kisara tried to put distance between them. But the pressure bearing down on her entire body a second time slowed her movement.
"...!"
She realized something was wrong. Only belatedly did she register the change that had come over the man before her.
The once-tranquil energy within him had, at some point, turned black — as though pastel paint had been blotted over with ink.
That change bore a striking resemblance to Yeokcheon — the Defiance of Heaven. It overturned the world's natural order. It defied harmony itself.
It was the very antithesis of the principle he had refined his whole life — yuneungjegang, the soft overcoming the hard, the mystery of Taiji. Rather, it was a concept far more familiar to those who wielded demonic arts and tyrannical martial paths, like Cheon Yuha.
Before one could even judge whether it was right or wrong, one fact was certain: such a path carried a price. And for a man who had learned the harmonious Taiji art in the first place, it was never something he could wield properly to begin with.
But as someone said long ago — manlyugwijong: ten thousand streams return to one sea.
The martial artist who had walked to the end of a single stream and returned now stood at the threshold of a new fork in the road. Softness conquers strength — that, too, was unquestionably a true path. But he had grasped something beyond merely controlling strength: the way to dominate it anew.
He had learned that there were countless branches leading up to the heavens. He had learned it after passing through death time and again, after facing endless adversity and the impossible. And in the end, he had mastered the way of Defying Heaven.
Choi Gangjun extended his fist.
"Cheongwon." — Heaven's Fist.
Poured into that punch was a single, unyielding will: to pierce the sky.
Relatively meager in energy, the fist travels slow and clear, tracing an unmistakable arc — the will to break through the heavens.
The punch, carrying only his comparatively meager internal energy, came toward her slowly, tracing a clear and vivid arc. At a glance, it was a strike that should have been crushed harmlessly against her protective aura.
And yet Kujo Kisara, on pure instinct, poured every ounce of power she had left into the qi gauntlets around her hands.
There's no way I lose a head-on clash.
Repeating the words inwardly, she too unveiled her finest stroke. Jeokranggwon — the Red Wolf Fist. A simple strike, but one in which every scrap of her output had been maximized.
KWAANG! The blood-red fist-gang and the scattered, ill-formed punch collided head-on.
The outcome should have been obvious to anyone. It had to be.
KWADEUDEUDEUK—!
Kisara heard the sound as if from somewhere far away. With trembling eyes, she looked down at her own arm.
KWAJIK—! In that instant, the gauntlet that had encased her fist so solidly shattered. The fortress wall known as her protective aura came crumbling down.
She stared, stricken, at the sight of her own arm folding helplessly — and then, soon after, let out a hollow laugh.
...Huh.
So I've lost.
And then the fist arrived.
One day later, a notice was posted on the academy bulletin board.
Imperial State VS 101st Korea Hometown Association
As a result of today's friendship match, the winner, the 101st Korea Hometown Association, is hereby promoted to full club status. Imperial State shall be held in provisional status.
A new wind was blowing through the academy.