The Wastrel and the Young Clan Head
A week slipped by in the same easy rhythm — training with Soye every morning, then going out to wander through the afternoon.
The spar the Clan Head had spoken of, between me and the Young Clan Head, Tang Pung, was suddenly right at the door.
But training with Soye had given me a fair sense of how to break the Tang Clan's martial arts, and a measure of confidence along with it, so I was no longer strung as tight as I had been.
"How are you feeling this morning?"
"I'm fine. Peak condition, I'd say."
"Condition?"
"Ah — I mean how my body's doing. Every so often I say something strange. Just ignore it."
She had asked the moment I woke, and I drew her into my arms. Holding Soye in bed in the early morning, I found myself wishing time would simply stop.
"Gaga... you really ought to be going..."
"Don't say that. Let's stay like this a little longer."
"B-but..."
She was telling me we shouldn't, and yet she didn't seem to mind. If anything, she burrowed deeper into my embrace. Only after we had tumbled about in the bed for another half hour did we finally make it outside.
I was checking my condition in the waiting room ahead of the spar when Soye came over. She straightened my clothes with the tenderness of a new bride knotting her husband's tie as he left for work, then spoke.
"Don't get too nervous. Just tell yourself you're stepping out to have a little fun."
"Don't worry. Didn't you say you'd be at ease about this too?"
"I did, but..."
"I'll keep a sensible amount of tension on hand. Just in case."
"Then do your best!"
"Yeah."
I pulled her in for one brief embrace — she had made me look presentable, after all — and turned my steps toward the training ground.
The moment I entered, countless members of the Tang Clan stood ringed around the floor, every eye on me and on him. When I stepped up onto the grounds, Tang Pung, waiting on the far side, tossed me a provocation too cheap to be worth the breath.
"You actually came out, and without running? Don't tell me you climbed up here thinking you might win."
"..."
"Lowborn trash is all the same. Not a scrap of manners, and they look down on their betters just the same. You'll fit right in with your own kind."
"Hey."
"What...? Were you speaking to me just now?"
"Who else is here but you?"
"How dare you..."
"What were you even thinking, blowing this up so big? Don't you have a thought in your head? Does that skull of yours not turn? You make a spectacle like this, and what exactly do you gain?"
"Ha... hahahaha! This is why the lowborn are — naturally it's revenge against you! Did you truly think you could insult me and simply walk away?"
"You're the one who picked the fight first."
"That doesn't matter. What matters is that you — the fiancé of that lowborn bloodline — insulted me."
"There's no talking to you, you empty-headed bastard..."
Another word would only have tired my mouth, so I dumped a full load of curses on him, and his face twisted hard.
"How dare you... I might have lightened your punishment according to your attitude. You are courting your own death."
"Shut your mouth. Today you're going to take a beating from me until you drop."
He was gearing up to say something else, tireless as ever, when the Clan Head came down onto the training ground.
"The spar begins now. It ends when one of you admits defeat, or is no longer able to fight."
"Killing, of course, is forbidden."
"Then let the spar begin."
The Clan Head's gesture had barely fallen when Tang Pung hurled two hidden blades.
Opening phase is a probe.
Through Soye I had already tasted most of the Tang Clan's martial arts, but I kept those first moments to reconnaissance anyway — against the unexpected, and to take the measure of his skill. He used the same arts she did, yet his speed was so far beneath hers that comparing them would have been an insult. I slipped the hidden blades without much effort.
Two or three minutes of reading him confirmed he had no hidden card left. I charged him head-on.
"Ha! After all that big talk, how long do you mean to keep running...!!"
"I told you. Shut your mouth."
BOOM!
It was a speed that had startled even Soye, who had already broken past that wall. To this one, who had not, I must not even have been visible. I took him down into a mount and started beating his face as if I meant to kill him.
CRACK! CRACK!
With every punch the floor of the training ground shattered, and the hall went quiet. I would have finished it there, but he began to unleash his poison arts, and I had no choice but to open the distance.
"You... how dare a wretch like you do this to me!!"
"And what are you going to do if you get angry?"
"What!?"
"What can you even do? Besides lying on the floor and taking a beating from me, what exactly can you do?"
"Y-you son of a bitch, are you mocking me!?"
The taunt had landed completely. He lost his reason and rushed me, and after that it was a one-sided slaughter. I kept both hands in my pockets, never allowing him a single blow, and toyed with him. The more I did, the more wretchedly he fell.
THUD!
In the end his strength gave out, and he dropped to his knees where he stood.
"Th-this... this isn't... this can't be."
"Pathetic bastard."
Judging there was nothing left worth looking at, I turned from him and started down off the training ground. The Clan Head, too, had decided the match was over and was about to announce the result — and that was when Tang Pung moved.
"Not yet... not yet..."
At that refusal to give up I sighed and turned my head. There was Tang Pung, swallowing a small pill.
"What...!"
BOOM!!
Before I could even finish the word, hidden blades came screaming in at a deranged speed that bore no comparison to anything before. I managed to deflect them and slip clear by a hair — but that was secondary. What was certain was that something deeply wrong had just happened.
"What in the world...!!"
"I'll kill you..."
His hands turned far blacker, far darker, than Soye's poison — darker even than his own had been only moments before. A turbid haze bled into his green eyes until they sank deeper into shadow, and the air around him curdled with a wicked presence nothing like what he had been.
"What is happening...!"
I was still taking in the change that had come over him when Tang Pung flew at me together with his hidden blades. Dodging the blades was the lesser problem. As I was, I didn't think I could evade his charge on top of them, so I did what I had done in the spar with Soye a few days before.
I throttled the internal energy running through my acupoints, and my speed climbed.
Just as it had against Soye, that burst of speed let me slip both the hidden blades and Tang Pung's rush.
"Graaah! You! Youuuu!! I'll kill you!!!"
"He's already lost his mind."
I could not use my fists.
Unless I had gauntlets on, at my present speed I had no way to strike and withdraw before the poison spread through my body. For now I would have to fight him mainly with the feet that still had shoes on them.
Left.
A kick that was neither quite a roundhouse nor a front kick — something caught between the two — slammed into Tang Pung's left flank.
The ball of the foot drove straight into the liver — the strike the world calls a three-day moon kick, or a crescent kick.
The blow landed, and Tang Pung clutched his side and went down. The liver is a place no amount of training can harden, so the damage would be all the worse. Of course, it would be a different story for someone who possessed a protective qi barrier or a Diamond Indestructible Body — but there was no chance this one had either.
"What in the world did he do?"
"Ghh... ghk! Y-you...!"
Whether they had grasped how serious this was, the Clan Head and the Tang Clan's elders and senior councilors came down onto the training ground. The Clan Head looked over Tang Pung, who lay face-down and heaving for breath, and his face twisted violently.
"Young Clan Head Tang Pung. What in the world have you done."
He did not shout, yet every word carried an anger he could not hide. The elders around him only looked at him in silence. When Tang Pung still gave no answer and only gasped, the Clan Head went on, furious.
Imprison Young Clan Head Tang Pung on suspicion of using heretical arts. From this moment, he is stripped of the office of Young Clan Head.
"Father!!"
"Silence!! Do you still hope to be forgiven, looking like that!? What are you waiting for! Take this wretch away at once!"
In the end the Clan Head could not contain his rage. He roared, settled Tang Pung's fate, and the spar came to an abrupt close.
This was no moment for me to step into. I was heading down off the grounds toward Soye when Tang Pung moved.
"This is all your fault. If it weren't for you...!!"
Down a moment ago, he wrenched his internal energy up in a flash and charged me. It was so sudden, and he drew that power so fast, that even the Clan Head lost track of him for an instant.
"Gaga!! Look out!"
"You there!"
BOOM!!
The blast rolled across the training ground. Dust thrown up with the explosion cut off every line of sight, and Soye, undone by it, cried out.
"Gaga!! Gaga! Are you all right? Gaga!"
"I'm fine, Soye."
Fortunately I had already drawn up a fair amount of internal energy, so I was able to answer his attack, if late. I failed to dodge the blow itself, but I came away with something better.
"Ghk! Let go! Let go of me!!"
"If you were me, would you let go? You moron!"
I caught the arm he had thrust at me and pinned it under my side, then gathered internal energy into the other. I would knock him out with the greatest force I could produce as I was. I had poured in so much that blood leaked from the arm that could not bear it, but I paid that no mind and drove Tang Pung's face into the floor of the training ground.
Drove it in. And again. And again.
WHAM!
BOOM!
KRA-BOOM!!!
Dozens of punches — and even after Tang Pung lost consciousness and passed out, my fists did not stop. They stopped only once the dust surrounding me had all settled.
"Gaga!!"
I saw Soye running toward me. Anxiety and worry had darkened her face a little, and a thin film of tears stood in her eyes.
Sorry, Soye. I'm going to make you worry a little.
I could feel the poison energy rising. I had beaten him senseless to knock him out, never sparing a thought for being poisoned myself, ignoring the venom as it climbed — and perhaps because of that, the symptoms seemed to come on all the harder. My eyes began, little by little, to close.
Well. It's not as if I'm going to die, is it?
I gave Soye, running toward me, one smile as if to say I was fine — and then I lost consciousness.