Heaven-Blossom Dao Accumulation Art (3)
Among the Zhongnan disciples who had advanced to the main tournament, who were the strongest contenders for the championship?
Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa, of course.
Cheonhwa was, without question, the foremost of the third-generation disciples, a martial artist who had reached the extreme of the First-class realm. Yeonhwa, judged purely by natural talent, was the finest prodigy of her generation. In a Dragon and Phoenix Gathering that even Peak Experts had entered, they were the only two with any realistic chance of victory.
The ideal outcome would have been for them to meet in the finals. That they might face each other from the very first match was something Gakhyeon had never imagined, and he clicked his tongue in irritation.
I called it fixed, but that can’t actually be true.
The Sichuan Dang Family had its pride. They would never stoop to such a cheap trick. The brackets themselves had been drawn in full view of everyone—each main-tournament entrant stepping forward one by one to draw lots. The chance of any tampering was vanishingly small. Eccentric as the Sichuan Dang Family might be, they were neither of the unorthodox path nor of the black roads. They would never sabotage an event like this.
“Tsk. Nothing for it. They would have met eventually on the way up. Better to take the beating first and be done with it.”
So saying, Gakhyeon looked toward Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa. The two of them had sparred regularly even back at the main mountain. In a sense, this match was only the continuation of that long habit.
And both of them look as if they’re looking forward to it.
Many disliked facing a fellow disciple in a tournament of this scale. These two, far from shrinking from it, seemed almost to welcome the bout. He had read them with a Super Expert’s senses; there was no mistake.
Better this than fighting with half a heart and throwing the match away?
Matches between fellow disciples always drew suspicious eyes. One side could forfeit, or deliberately lose, and carry the other through. That was why such bouts had to be fought more thoroughly than any contest against an outsider. If the spectators so much as suspected that either fighter was holding back, the jeers and accusations would come at once.
Those two won’t be the problem. The problem is the opposite.
With them, the danger was that they would pour out everything and injure each other. Injury against another sect was simply the fortune of war. But if two disciples of the same mountain crippled one another and both fell in the next round—what then?
Not merely one eliminated, but both gone. A disaster for the whole sect.
And it would not end at the embarrassment of the day. A stain like that could cling for a lifetime. There was a reason people dreaded drawing a fellow disciple in tournaments of this kind.
“Fight as you always do in sparring. But stop at a proper moment so neither of you is hurt.”
Gakhyeon delivered the warning with stern force, though he did not truly believe it would hold. Once a bout grew heated, emotion almost always overran reason. All he could hope was that, in the instant before disaster, the words would rise again in their minds.
The day of the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering’s main tournament dawned.
After a month of preparation, the newly refurbished sparring grounds were packed with spectators. The sixteen platforms that had stood before had been cleared away and replaced by a single arena, larger and broader than any of the old ones. In the space thus freed, seating for honored guests had been arranged. Without that measure, the sheer press of the crowd would have made even the main matches almost impossible to watch.
“I hereby declare the main tournament of the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering open.”
Dang Tae-un, head of the Sichuan Dang Family, poured internal energy into his voice and unleashed the Six Harmonies Voice Transmission. The declaration rolled over the entire grounds. The crowd answered with a single roar of cheers, and the first pair of contestants stepped up onto the arena for the opening match of the main tournament.
“Fellow disciples from the first match—those Zhongnan Taoists have rotten luck.”
“Five from one sect made it through. I figured they’d meet eventually, but never in the first bout.”
“Still, they’re two of Zhongnan’s finest. For the people watching, it ought to be a feast for the eyes.”
The spectators clicked their tongues at the thought of martial brothers and sisters who had trained together now facing each other—and at the same time waited with real anticipation. Matches between fellow disciples tended to become ferocious precisely because each knew the other so well, and sometimes they produced results no one expected. Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa were, moreover, the strongest championship contenders among the five Zhongnan martial artists who had reached the main tournament. The crowd fixed its eyes on the two who had mounted the platform, expectancy sharp in every gaze.
“…….”
“…….”
Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa drew Okgyeong and the Hyeonhwang Sword and regarded each other in silence. There was much each wanted to ask, much each wanted to say; none of it left their lips. Instead they settled into ready stances and tracked every shift of the other’s body, hunting for an opening.
In that taut stillness, the referee’s signal fell.
“Begin!”
Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa lunged at once.
Wooden sword and iron blade crossed. A sharp report rang out, and the shock of clashing sword force whipped their robes. After that first exchange it was Yeonhwa who gave ground. She had met head-on a Middle Path Sword that held the principles of the heavy blade, the strong blade, and the blunt blade all at once. Even though she had slipped the point of impact in the instant of collision and lessened the blow, a tremor still seemed to run through her fingertips.
She flicked the Hyeonhwang Sword lightly and shook free the residue of Jin Release. Meanwhile Cheonhwa looked down at Okgyeong’s blade. After only a single exchange, nearly half the wooden sword was sheathed in frost from her yin-cold energy. That chill had invaded so far in so brief a span—truly, her control of ice arts was exquisitely fine.
Cheonhwa drove out the infiltrating yin-cold energy with triple-layered internal power, then gave Okgyeong a light sweep and cast the ice away.
From that one exchange both of them had taken the measure of the other as they stood now. Compared with before the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering, each had grown beyond doubt. Inwardly they marveled at the other’s progress—and at the same time began to calculate how they might win.
As expected of Junior Brother Cheonhwa. To complete the Middle Path Sword to this degree…
What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Middle Path Sword? Because it leaned to neither extreme, it could answer attacks from every direction—and for that same reason it was usually overmatched by sword arts specialized in a single path. Cheonhwa’s Middle Path Sword was different. Bearing the elements of heavy, strong, and blunt swordplay alike, it did not yield even to arts devoted to one of those paths; and even where it fell short of an opponent, it could overwhelm by drawing on the character of another style.
In pure blunt-sword contests of move against move, I still hold the edge.
But in Jin Release, in internal energy, and in every other measure of force, Yeonhwa was clearly the weaker. What advantage she still possessed lay not in martial skill but in endowment—the innate sense that Cheonhwa simply did not have.
His basic capacity is superior. That doesn’t mean I have no path to victory.
The extreme polarity of the sword art Cheonhwa was using was a heavy burden for a First-class martial artist. Immense power demanded immense expenditure. Only because his foundations were so solid could he wield it as he did. Any other First-class fighter would have emptied body and energy after fewer than ten forms and collapsed in exhaustion.
So I endure, and take ground little by little. As I am now, that is fully within my reach.
Yeonhwa adjusted her grip on the Hyeonhwang Sword. The stance was unmistakably defensive. Cheonhwa’s eyes narrowed.
Junior Sister Yeonhwa’s capacity has come this far…
He had known she trained her foundations without cease. He had not imagined the base would be finished to this degree. Among the third-generation disciples of Zhongnan, the most complete foundation had been Cheonhwa’s, and after him Yeobhwa’s. The Yeonhwa before him now stood well above even Yeobhwa.
Her outer-art attainment is comparable to Gyunchon Chukgi-gong, yet the grain is entirely different.
Through observation and mind-sense he understood his own flesh perfectly, and so he could read hers. This was not Yeobhwa’s path—the tempering of a body born with exceptional bone and sinew. Nor was it his own—the long labor of outer training that slowly remade the flesh.
I knew she was working at something. So this is the result?
It carried no special power, only the utmost elevation of pure physical performance. To raise a body to that state through outer training alone would normally have taken years. That she had shortened that time so drastically was proof enough of her genius.
If Junior Sister Yeonhwa settles fully into defense, breaking her will be no easy matter.
Together with him she had taken the Snow Moon Flower and perfected Hyeoncheon-jingi. By her own methods she had pushed her outer arts as far as they would go. Measured by base capacity alone, she stood just beneath him. An already difficult opponent who had now completed her foundation—piercing that defense would not be simple.
Even so, it must be done.
Cheonhwa reset his grip on Okgyeong and charged, opening his assault. He unfurled his Middle Path Sword, seeking to crush her under its weight. She met it on the knife’s edge of blunt-sword defense, determined only to hold.
Spear against shield. A contest of who would first tire and fall.
With every exchange their sword force shook the air. The aftermath of Jin Release scarred the arena floor and threw up clouds of dust. Their swordsmanship held none of the flash of techniques that hurled sword-wind; instead it was crude and honest enough that even ordinary folk who had never opened their senses could follow it. At the same time it looked like a sword-dance whose every step had been rehearsed together long ago.
“They’re speeding up, aren’t they? The rate of exchange.”
“You felt it too? Then it’s no illusion.”
“It isn’t a fast sword—nothing the eye can’t track. Why does it feel faster?”
The spectators watching the bout felt a growing unease. Neither fighter moved quickly; both were using the blunt sword. Yet apart from the actual speed of the blades, the sense of pace kept rising. The reason lay in the flow of the fight itself.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Jade wooden sword and silver iron blade rang with every collision. The longer the bout ran, the shorter the gaps between those sounds became. It was not that the swords themselves had quickened; each was answering the other with the smallest possible motion, and that was the result. A match that should have been a slow duel of blunt blades had, after one full circuit, transformed into something like a contest of the fast sword. In effect the two of them were now playing a kind of speed-chess with blades.
A single missed breath, and one would be driven back in an instant. A single error of judgment, and the same. Such a war of moves was Yeonhwa’s specialty—yet even so she could not seize the upper hand, because a real bout was not true go. In go each player set down only one stone at a time. In a spar, every body moved by its own laws. The “stones” could be massive; several could fall at once; the place a stone seemed to occupy and the place it truly held could differ. That endless web of variables was exactly why the blunt sword was so hard to master.
Even this contest, though, could not last forever. The stones each held were running out. Before they were gone, a finishing move had to be played. Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa both began to shape the final stroke that would end the bout.