Each Their Own Main Stage
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The sharp ring of clashing blades filled the air—a relentless clamor that raced forward as if it would tolerate not even a breath of leisure. The moment that fragile balance slipped, this precarious tightrope walk would end with someone’s fall.
Cheonhwa exhaled a breath that had grown fiercely heated. White steam rose from his lips. The instant he saw it, a chill raced down his spine.
When did it get this cold?
Given the yin-cold true qi of Yeonhwa’s Hyeoncheon-jingi, the chill itself was nothing strange. What unsettled him was that neither the Yukhapgamgakdo nor his qi sense had detected it until now. That meant she had been scattering her qi waves with extraordinary stealth.
She’s been sparring with blunt-sword techniques to steal my focus while secretly spreading her qi behind me. She clearly has a plan.
As if to confirm the guess, the yin-cold energy she had sown began to gather toward her. Cold surged in like an avalanche that had arrived without warning. Cheonhwa tried to hold it off with the internal-energy barrier of his Long Heaven Armor, yet he could not stop his entire body from freezing by degrees.
She recovered qi waves she had scattered across the entire training ground—wide and utterly concealed?
Controlling qi that had already left the body was never easy; it usually slipped free and dispersed of its own accord. That she had held it while trading probing blows with a blunt sword was absurd internal-energy mastery.
This is close to the Boundless Infinite Sword.
The essence of that advanced blunt-sword art lay in spreading yin-cold energy wide enough to seize an entire space. Using only the Subtle Fullness Sword Art—which itself contained the secret of broadly projecting the Internal Heavy Water Method—Yeonhwa had recreated it.
And this cannot be the end of it.
The ambush that used the yin-cold true qi she had already sown was excellent, yet it could only seal movement; it could not finish a fight. Cheonhwa’s protective qi was still holding the invasion at bay, proof enough. She would need a separate means of ending it.
Sure enough, Yeonhwa wound the recovered yin-cold energy around the blade of her Xuanhuang Sword. The form that took shape was an applied technique Cheonhwa knew well.
Clear Wind Soft Rain—combining sword-charged qi and the wave of Balgyeong to forge a blade of pure force. Wind-Flow Cloud Mountain—its extension, using the vortex of force wrapped about the blade to unleash the Internal Heavy Water Method.
They were the applied forms Cheonhwa himself had created from the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven. Yeonhwa had watched them countless times at his side; imitating them was hardly impossible.
Her Subtle Fullness Sword Art is itself derived from the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven, so using the two applied forms is no surprise. She must have judged them the most effective way to shatter protective qi in a single stroke.
Yet she had overlooked one thing.
Because I created those applied forms, I also know their weaknesses.
The instant the Xuanhuang Sword, wreathed in white snow-wind, came crashing down, the Long Heaven Armor Cheonhwa wore suddenly detonated. The pressure blasted away the qi coiled around her blade. With a thunderous report the ice that had sheathed his protective energy shattered; ice powder swirled through the air.
Yeonhwa’s eyes narrowed as she analyzed what had just occurred.
An explosion of protective qi… Did he detonate Chukgyeong through the medium of his internal-energy barrier?
Loading force into qi waves was the foundation of Balgyeong’s wave technique; a skilled practitioner could raise that force from a weapon or from any part of the body. Using protective qi as the medium for a stored release was therefore not strange—only that the explosion of force at point-blank range left the user himself with no guarantee of safety. Cheonhwa had accepted that risk for the chance it bought him.
That is not the only problem. The blast of force just now has scattered the qi I worked so hard to gather.
The internal-energy control had been unstable to begin with. Yeonhwa had known it and had sealed Cheonhwa’s movement so she could finish him with a single decisive blow. His strategy of offering flesh to take bone had undone it all. The unexpected counter shattered her balance; Cheonhwa did not miss the opening.
Qi waves and Balgyeong force wound about the jade-colored wooden sword in his hand. The very applied forms Yeonhwa had just used—Clear Wind Soft Rain and Wind-Flow Cloud Mountain—took shape in the hands of their creator. The scale was pitiful beside what she had displayed, yet that was only because he had compressed the blade of pure force to its absolute limit.
A strange humming vibration rose as the sword-strike hurtled toward her. Yeonhwa hastily raised her protective qi.
An internal-energy barrier that harnessed the yin-cold nature of Hyeoncheon-jingi. Hexagonal patterns covering the body recalled a tortoise’s shell, and its defense was absolute enough that ordinary means could scarcely break it.
At last the ice-forged armor collided with the jade wooden sword that seemed wrapped in transparent silk. The contest between barrier and blade did not last long. The blade of pure force chewed through the ice wall; the moment the sword tip touched Yeonhwa’s flesh, the shock stored within Okgyeong erupted all at once.
The stored impact detonated in a single instant.
Boom!
With a thunderous blast Yeonhwa was hurled backward. She tried desperately to stop herself, yet regaining a broken balance was never easy. By the time she finally skidded to a halt, she was already outside the ring.
“….”
Once her exit from the ring was confirmed, Yeonhwa’s lovely face crumpled without mercy. Even Cheonhwa had never seen her feelings of frustration written so plainly across her features. She steadied herself with several deep breaths, then spoke.
“I lost.”
The moment the words left her lips the referee rendered judgment.
“The victor of this bout is Cheonhwa of the Zhongnan Sect!”
A roar of cheers erupted from the spectator stands as one. The duel between the two had been simple enough for ordinary eyes to follow, yet it had possessed a brilliance far removed from common swordplay. The swirling cold and the lashing winds drew gasps of admiration; as the first match of the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering’s main tournament, it more than fulfilled every expectation.
“I won’t lose next time.”
Amid the cheers, as they exchanged formal greetings before leaving the stage, Yeonhwa spoke so that only Cheonhwa could hear. A faint smile touched his lips as he answered.
“Neither will I.”
Every time he dueled Yeonhwa he felt the same: he could never be certain of victory. By the time he looked again she had already grown. That was why she was called the foremost genius among the third-generation disciples of the Zhongnan Sect.
But I have no intention of losing gracefully.
Cheonhwa meant to give everything he had to win the next bout as well—just as he always had.
“Waaaaaah!”
And so the bout between fellow disciples of the Zhongnan Sect ended beneath a storm of cheers.
Paeng Mu-jin had been watching the first match of the main tournament. Both Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa were rising talents who had shown outstanding results from the preliminaries onward, and whichever of them won would face him next. One might ask whether he first needed to win his own match—yet Paeng Mu-jin possessed absolute confidence that he would not lose his bout.
Unless it were a Peak Expert like Brother Namgung, there is no reason I should fall to an ordinary First-class martial artist, even with the restrictions.
In other words, any First-class martial artist who was far from ordinary deserved caution. Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa both belonged to that category.
Brother Namgung and I ourselves once took first and second place while still First-class, defeating Peak Experts at the previous Dragon and Phoenix Gathering.
Back then Paeng Mu-jin had been full of confidence. Defeating Peak Experts while still First-class had indeed been a feat. Now that he himself had reached Peak Expert and was bound by the same restrictions, the view was different. He understood just how much those Peak Experts he had met at the previous gathering had been holding back.
The gulf between First-class and Peak Expert lies in Spiritual Nature. And a Peak Expert competing in the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering cannot use Spiritual Nature.
It was the same as reducing a spirit beast that had gained Spiritual Nature to the level of an ordinary animal—sealing the Peak Expert’s greatest advantage and forcing him to act like a First-class martial artist.
Of course, the skill accumulated on the road to Peak Expert does not simply vanish.
Forging Spiritual Nature required an unshakable will of one’s own, and that will was intimately bound to a martial artist’s true ability. How could a man uncertain of his own strength ever produce the extreme intent that worked miracles? Anyone capable of that would be a madman who doubted and denied the entire world. Such extreme doubt could itself become an unshakable conviction—only its direction would be the opposite of firm will.
Put another way, anyone who possesses something that can surpass that accumulated skill can still defeat a restricted Peak Expert.
Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa each possessed such a thing, yet their directions were opposite. Yeonhwa had been born with outstanding natural gifts and had polished them through later effort until they blossomed fully—the same path walked by countless rising talents, including Paeng Mu-jin himself and Namgung Myeong.
Of course, not every genius is the same.
The direction of talent differed wildly from person to person, and the martial studies they pursued were just as varied; the results they reached were inevitably different as well.
But Daoist Cheonhwa is a type I have never seen before.
His innate talent as a martial artist seemed ordinary. Conversely, the foundational capacity he displayed had long since left the ordinary track.
That external and internal arts—and every other basic skill—are important is well-known orthodoxy.
Yet following orthodoxy to the letter was never easy; it demanded time, effort, and patience. Even those called geniuses sometimes neglected the basics, trusting only their talent, and only later scrambled to repair the gap.
In that sense, no sect is more faithful to the basics than the Zhongnan Sect.
Paeng Mu-jin recalled the Zhongnan swordsman he had faced at the previous Dragon and Phoenix Gathering—Muwol, the second-generation disciple now known by the epithet Shooting Star Sword. He still remembered vividly the Nine-Image Sword Art Muwol had displayed.
Condensed internal-energy power naturally expressed outward, slowly forming a broad sword circle—it was a wondrous sword art.
What supported that art at its root was orthodoxy and foundation forged without cheap tricks, solid and unwavering. Traces of the same foundation could be found in Cheonhwa’s sword as well.
Yet no matter how I look at it, this one is on another level.
Comparing the Muwol of the past with the Cheonhwa of the present, Cheonhwa stood clearly superior—and he still overwhelmingly surpassed the Paeng Mu-jin of that same age. A realm of pure acquired effort, built by ceaselessly stacking only the basics. That foundation, solid as bedrock, was Cheonhwa’s unique distinction among the rising talents.
That foundations matter is common sense, yet I never expected to have it shoved in front of my eyes like this.
Having seen it with his own eyes, Paeng Mu-jin was certain: an ordinary First-class martial artist could not defeat Cheonhwa. The gap in foundation was simply too vast—no different from a bare-handed man charging a wild beast. At that level of disparity, unless a miracle occurred, the only ending was to be torn apart.
I never thought the day would come when a junior would stir my competitive spirit.
Paeng Mu-jin felt his heart pound with anticipation. Like a starving beast, his gaze remained fixed on Cheonhwa for a long time.