Confrontation (3)

The day after the wager with the opposition faction was struck, six people came looking for Cheonhwa.

They were five entry-level disciples belonging to the opposition, along with a martial instructor. The hostility in the disciples’ eyes was thicker than before—hardly a surprise, given how Cheonhwa had answered them the previous day. Even so, he felt no regret. Hostility with the opposition was inevitable from the start.

The opposition is a problem, but our side isn’t exactly soft either.

Cheonhwa cut a sidelong glance at the martial instructor who had come with them. Faint enmity toward him smoldered in the man’s gaze as well. He already knew that some among the second-generation disciples harbored the same resentment as the opposition. The root of it lay in the day Cheonhwa ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had gone around bowing his head to every second-generation disciple for the sake of his training. They had helped him according to sect regulations, yet more than a few had found his behavior distasteful. The opposition had drawn those men into their camp.

At least this is only a sparring match where the referee’s judgment doesn’t matter much. Small mercies.

In a formal duel, biased rulings would have been a real danger. Cheonhwa looked away from the instructor and addressed the one who seemed to speak for the group.

“You said you would handle the preparations yourselves. Where do we go?”

“This way.”

Guided by the opposition, Cheonhwa made for the sparring ground. Word had somehow gotten out; the place was already packed with spectators. Most had simply come to watch a fight, yet the hostility that cut cleanly through the flood of eyes told him members of the opposition were mixed among the crowd.

Cheonhwa looked toward the source of that gaze. At the center of the cluster of opposition disciples stood Daehwa. Given his skill, stepping onto the stage himself would have been far quicker—so why was he content to play spectator?

The question had barely formed when their eyes met. It was the look of a predator sizing up its prey before the hunt began.

There’s hostility, but he doesn’t see me as a real rival. Does he think he can settle this without lifting a finger himself?

That much confidence in today’s line-up, perhaps.

As Cheonhwa stepped onto the sparring platform, the martial instructor serving as referee began the final confirmation.

“Martial arts permitted are limited to the four foundational arts of entry-level disciples. At the challengers’ request, the match will proceed in successive-challenge format. Do both sides agree?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, sir!”

Answering the instructor, Cheonhwa studied the opposition members who had come to face him.

I assumed they would throw everything they had at crushing me…

Every one of them had clearly reached at least the fifth star of the second stage of the Balanced Heaven Qi Accumulation Art and had trained in the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven. Yet against him, their skill was still wanting.

What exactly are they aiming for?

The more he thought, the less the puzzle resolved; he felt as though he were sinking into a swamp.

All but the first opponent left the platform. The two remaining men leveled wooden swords at each other and waited for the signal.

“Begin!”

The instant the referee’s voice fell, the opponent charged.

Cheonhwa received the attack with calm precision.

Kak!

The wooden blades met with a dull crack. With the swords crossed, Cheonhwa shifted at once into the counter.

Caught off-guard by the seamless reversal, the opponent scrambled backward and tried to defend, but the link between his movements was clumsy. He failed to take the blow cleanly and lost his balance. After only two exchanges, the opening stood out as plain as day. Cheonhwa did not let it pass; he set the tip of his wooden sword against the man’s throat.

Anyone watching could see the match was decided.

“I yield.”

At the declaration of surrender, Cheonhwa let the wooden blade hang at his side. From the place where the opposition had gathered, a piercing stare stabbed into him. Its owner was Daehwa, regarding Cheonhwa with an expression of mild surprise. The last time they had met, murderous intent had rolled off the man in waves; he had clearly expected limbs to be broken. That Cheonhwa had shown ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠restraint—had not even knocked his opponent unconscious—seemed to leave Daehwa nonplussed.

I can see those black intentions of yours perfectly well. No reason to play along the way you want.

Part of him would have liked to beat the opposition half to death, but that would only have served their purpose. Their goal was to tarnish Cheonhwa’s reputation and keep him from becoming a senior disciple. There was no need to hand them free ammunition.

Ignoring their stares, Cheonhwa prepared for the next bout. The four matches that followed differed little from the first. Most were settled within three forms; none lasted longer than five. He won them all with ease, yet the uneasy feeling would not leave him.

The average level of my opponents was low.

Crossing blades with them had made it obvious. All five had only recently begun learning the sword. Relative to the entry-level disciples as a whole they ranked upper-middle, but they were still not enough to stand against him.

What are they thinking?

Cheonhwa looked toward the opposition’s gathering place. Daehwa was there, gently encouraging the defeated sect brothers. A soft smile curved the man’s lips—as though the losses themselves did not matter, only that the sparring had taken place. Soft as the smile was, Cheonhwa felt an inexplicable chill.

He understood the meaning of that smile six days later.

In those six days, not a single opponent had repeated. And each day the level of his challengers had climbed by a hair, as if they were carefully measuring his strength. Strangest of all, Daehwa himself never once stepped onto the platform.

On the seventh day, the successive-challenge opponents were the same men he had faced on the first. A rematch after a full seven days and nights.

“Begin!”

At the referee’s signal the opponent moved.

As before, Cheonhwa met it with Heaven’s Steep Summit. The sensation traveling through the wooden blade told him the man had grown. To measure how much, Cheonhwa answered with the same Predatory Dive as last time. Previously the opponent had failed to block cleanly and lost his footing; this time he held his center and took the thrust properly. Then he loaded his weight onto the locked blades and pressed down. The line of Cheonhwa’s thrust buckled under the crushing sword pressure.

The growth was remarkable—yet Cheonhwa felt a wrongness. This was not simply a better block. The man had not read the tell of the form so much as known exactly how Cheonhwa would move and answered accordingly.

The sense of unease lasted until the bout ended. The first opponent barely scraped through each exchange and finally crumbled on the tenth. The others were the same. Where the first day had seen matches decided between three and five forms, now they stretched past ten exchanges. Nearly double the length in a single week. Growth on their side was part of it—but not the whole cause.

Only then did Cheonhwa grasp what the opposition had been after.

They spent seven days observing me.

The six successive-challenge matches had never been merely about wearing him down. They had been trial and error for the sake of building a method to dismantle him. Breaking a form and dismantling a person were different arts. One shattered the shape; the other dug out the roots. The opposition had analyzed not only Cheonhwa’s martial arts but his bearing, his temperament, even his habits. Today’s successive challenges were the fruit of that work. Knowing the man called Cheonhwa so thoroughly, they could stretch the exchanges despite the gap in skill. And the longer this continued, the more the advantage would tilt their way. As the completeness of their counter-methods rose, so would the burden of each match. Meanwhile the opposition, with numbers on their side, could rotate rest, training, and sparring at leisure.

Their final aim is to drag the exchanges out with those counters until I collapse from pure exhaustion.

No wonder the ringleader never stepped forward himself. From the beginning they had meant to crush him with the weight of the group. For a faction that had staked their lives as the wager, the strategy was anything but ordinary.

Lately Yeonhwa’s mood had been foul. The cause was Cheonhwa’s sparring with the so-called opposition faction.

I was looking forward to crossing swords with him myself.

She had never imagined a pack of unexpected pests would snatch the first move. And that was not the only thing she disliked.

Junior Brother Cheonhwa’s head is full of the opposition.

Their own sparring matches seemed not to exist for him. He might even have forgotten the monthly promise they had made. In that state, any bout between them would only see his focus locked on the opposition; he would never bring his full strength. A proper match was only worth fighting when both sides poured everything they had into the opponent right in front of them. Facing a Cheonhwa worn down by successive challenges was not what she wanted. Forcing a bout now would only help the opposition. Better to postpone indefinitely until the confrontation ended.

I’ll cancel the reserved sparring schedule.

But how did one go about canceling? Unfamiliar with the procedure, Yeonhwa did what she always did and went to Jeokhwa for help.

“I can help, of course—but are you sure you want to cancel? You were looking forward to sparring with Junior Brother Cheonhwa.”

“I was. But it would only be a burden on him right now.”

The clipped answer left Jeokhwa covering her mouth in open astonishment.

“Junior Sister Yeonhwa… considering someone else’s feelings?!”

Having stuck to Yeonhwa’s side—whether Yeonhwa wanted her or not—Jeokhwa knew better than anyone how utterly self-absorbed the girl could be. And now that same Yeonhwa was setting aside her own stubbornness for another person’s sake? It was a sight she had never once seen.

“Does Junior Brother Cheonhwa weigh on your mind that much?”

“Yeah. He does.”

Yeonhwa meant it as a rival; Jeokhwa took it another way entirely.

The same oblivious Yeonhwa actually has a boy she can’t stop thinking about!

A magnificent misunderstanding. Anyone who had watched their usual behavior would have known better, but the assumption hardened into prejudice and clouded judgment. From that moment Jeokhwa began reinterpreting every past interaction between Yeonhwa and Cheonhwa.

I always thought it was strange that she sparred with him once a month… so it was just an excuse to meet the boy she likes on a regular schedule!

A misunderstanding born of pure fantasy. A single correction from Yeonhwa would have cleared it up at once—but unfortunately Yeonhwa had not the faintest inkling that anyone’s perception had shifted.

“Junior Sister Yeonhwa, you’re going to watch the sparring again today, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll come along this time.”

“Fine.”

Yeonhwa accepted the suggestion without a second thought. Meanwhile Jeokhwa was burning with quiet determination to learn every detail about her junior sister’s prospective husband—after all, she and Cheonhwa shared only the same private training sessions, and she still lacked enough information to judge him properly.

The sparring ground was thronged with spectators. The numbers had thinned since the first day, yet in a main mountain short on diversions, daily matches remained excellent entertainment. Not a few people, like Yeonhwa, came to watch without missing a single day.

Arriving at the spectator seats, Yeonhwa and Jeokhwa spotted a familiar face—Yeobhwa, who trained privately alongside them. He was so absorbed in the match that he never noticed their approach. Worry was written openly across his features. Jeokhwa moved in, intending to extract information from the disciple closest to Cheonhwa.

“We meet again.”

Jeokhwa offered a demure greeting. From tone to bearing she was every inch a young lady—utterly different from the way she behaved with Yeonhwa. While she exchanged light conversation with Yeobhwa, Yeonhwa studied the platform. A short distance away, Cheonhwa was preparing for the next bout. A fierce, hunted-beast air rolled off him, nothing like the flat, almost brusque impression he usually gave.

Beside her, Yeobhwa’s complaint reached her ears.

“Ever since the clash with the opposition began, he’s been sharp as a drawn blade. I ask if he’s all right, and all I get back is that nothing’s wrong.”

Yeobhwa heaved a deep sigh. Anyone could see something was wrong, yet if the man himself insisted he was fine, there was little to be done.

Yeonhwa had already heard the rumors. Entry-level disciples who found Cheonhwa displeasing had banded together and thrown down a challenge. The result was a successive-challenge format that would continue until one side gave up. And victory or defeat in the individual bouts was not what decided the overall contest.

They said the matches themselves don’t settle the wager.

What decided it was which side surrendered first. That surrender could be voluntary—or forced. Collapse, injury, or any state that made continuing impossible counted as forfeit. Losing every match was acceptable; becoming unable to continue was not.

I don’t mind that wins and losses don’t matter so long as you can keep fighting… but successive challenges aren’t my style.

Successive challenges were drawn-out affairs by nature. For someone who hated bother as much as Yeonhwa, a long war that forced careful rationing of stamina and inner energy held little appeal.

Before long the sparring began. In every bout Cheonhwa held the clear upper hand. He subdued his opponent in ten exchanges—among peers of similar age, a ten-exchange decisive edge was a stark measure of superiority.

“What remarkable skill. No wonder he placed in the top ten of the first promotion examination.”

Seeing the matches for the first time, Jeokhwa offered pure admiration. Beside her, however, Yeobhwa’s expression was dark as storm clouds. Puzzled, Jeokhwa asked the man who could never hide anything.

“Why the long face?”

“The opponent just now—he fought him seven days ago as well. That time it was over in three exchanges. Today it took ten.”

Jeokhwa was startled. Seven days was far too short for genuine growth of that magnitude. For the length of the exchanges to more than double in so little time was plainly unnatural. She turned to Yeonhwa, who had been watching in silence.

“Junior Sister Yeonhwa, do you know something?”

“Counter-methods.”

“Counter-methods?”

“Yeah. Simply put, they’ve prepared responses tailored specifically to Junior Brother Cheonhwa.”

Yeonhwa kept her eyes on the platform. The opposition’s reactions were movements that would have been impossible without knowing Cheonhwa’s habits inside and out. They were not reading the tells of forms so much as anticipating his next action and answering it.

They aren’t focusing on the Thirty-Six Swords as a martial art—they’re focusing on Cheonhwa the martial artist.

For now they could only barely stretch a bout to ten exchanges. Once the counter-methods grew more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠complete, they would be able to provoke specific actions at will.

“If the counters keep lengthening the exchanges, doesn’t that put Junior Brother Cheonhwa at a disadvantage?”

“It does. He has to endure not once, but five times over.”

If each man only held out for twenty exchanges, Cheonhwa would have fought a hundred. Stamina and inner energy would drain at a brutal rate. Should exhaustion drop him unconscious, the wager was lost.

For the same reason, injury during a bout has to be avoided at all costs.

The longer the exchanges, the easier it was for concentration to slip—and concentration slipping led to wounds. The opposition had numbers; one injured man could be replaced. Cheonhwa was alone. A serious injury would be irreversible. It was a strategy that fit successive-challenge sparring with terrifying precision.

“At this rate it’s only a matter of time before he gets pushed under. Isn’t there any way out?”

“There is. He’s already using it.”

Yeonhwa pointed to Cheonhwa, who was waiting for the next opponent. At a glance he seemed merely to be catching his breath—yet she realized a beat late that the breathing was anything but ordinary.

“Don’t tell me—Moving Cultivation Breathing?”

“That’s right.”

The Moving Cultivation Breathing of the third stage of the Balanced Heaven Qi Accumulation Art. The ability to circulate qi and regulate breath while in motion was precisely the solution Cheonhwa had devised. Even with incomplete mastery the effect was modest, yet the continuous recovery of stamina and inner energy would still tilt a long war in his favor.

“Thank goodness. At least there’s a method.”

Jeokhwa pressed a hand to her chest in open relief.

“…”

Yeonhwa looked away without a word. In truth, Moving Cultivation Breathing alone could never be the decisive stroke that won a successive-challenge war. It was only the endurance that let him stay on his feet. She chose not to mention that fact.

If I tell her, she’ll only start making a racket.

She fixed her gaze on Cheonhwa once more. He had clearly noticed the counter-methods already. Far from being cowed, he was charging in even more fiercely—thrashing against the counters head-on, determined to smash them by sheer force. From that struggle Yeonhwa read exactly what he was after.

He’s aiming for peak perfection of the first half of the Thirty-Six Swords.

The opposition’s counter-methods rested on two premises: that the opponent was Cheonhwa, and that both sides used the Thirty-Six Swords. Learning a new sword art would have rendered the counters useless—but the opposition, well aware of that weakness, had prepared rules that favored them.

In successive-challenge sparring, only the four foundational entry-level arts may be used.

A common restriction in private matches between entry-level disciples, yet here it became a wedge that kept the premises of the counters from collapsing.

If it were me, what would I do?

Yeonhwa imagined her own response. She would probably have used her natural instinct to turn the counters against themselves and wage a battle of wits. Even the finest counter-method was only as good as the person employing it. She would have driven every wedge she could into that gap.

Where I rely entirely on talent, Junior Brother Cheonhwa takes the direct path—the orthodox way.

If ordinary Thirty-Six Swords could not win, then he would simply surpass the limits of the Thirty-Six Swords. A simple-minded, brutally difficult road. In Yeonhwa’s eyes, what Cheonhwa was doing was ascetic training for the sake of the sword itself—heating the metal and hammering it the way one forges a peerless blade. He was driving himself into the extreme of successive challenges and tailored counters.

I wonder what the ultimate form of the sword he pursues will look like.

Eyes bright with anticipation, she followed every motion of his hands and feet. Inside her there was not the faintest notion that Cheonhwa might give up first. No matter what trial or hardship arrived, she believed with absolute certainty that he would keep walking his martial path. Of everyone in the Zhongnan Sect, Yeonhwa was the one most convinced of his victory.

Do your best, Junior Brother Cheonhwa.

Watching the struggling boy’s back, the girl silently poured her support into him without holding anything back.

That day as well, after finishing his successive-challenge matches against the opposition, Cheonhwa was heading back to his quarters when a visitor arrived. It was Muwol. The senior’s face was dark as he spoke.

“I have something to discuss. Spare me a moment of your time.”

“Of course.”

Cheonhwa agreed without ceremony. Muwol led him to a reception room in Gyuncheon Hall and came straight to the point.

“These successive-challenge matches of late—is it true that second- and third-generation disciples have joined hands to drive you out?”

Worry and anger both lived in the gaze Muwol turned on him. The anger was not aimed at Cheonhwa, but at the men who would stoop to such petty schemes—and at himself for grasping the situation so late.

“If it is true, what do you intend to do?”

“They privately decided the fate of a disciple of this sect. Every person involved will face severe punishment.”

“Even if the other party is a renowned house whose influence reaches the entire martial world of the Central Plains?”

“The Zhongnan Sect is likewise a great sect whose name is known throughout the martial world of the Central Plains. More than that—if we turn a blind eye to something like this, how can we still call ourselves a righteous orthodox sect, or a true righteous path at all?”

Muwol made it plain that even if the other side was the Shinchang Yang Family, with its ties to the military, he had no intention of letting the matter pass quietly. Cheonhwa seemed to deliberate for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.