Heavenly Sword Formation (3)
To put the outcome simply: the clash between Daehwa and the pro-Cheonhwa faction that everyone had dreaded never came.
More precisely, while the supporters fretted and fidgeted, Daehwa himself remained utterly composed. It was not indifference or rejection so much as a quiet respect for the choice those who had once opposed him had made.
It was hard to believe this was the same man who had once hated Cheonhwa enough to gather people and form an opposition faction of his own. Those six months he had voluntarily spent in the punishment hall seemed to have changed him in more ways than one.
The matter of Daehwa and the supporters was safely settled for the time being. Separately, however, the formation drills and the work of correcting their flaws continued without pause.
Just when they finally grew accustomed to forming the formation with their current numbers after all that hardship, the roster would be swapped. Sometimes the allotted numbers increased and the drills grew harder still. With every expansion they had to examine spacing errors one by one, and throughout the training they were forced to keep the Six Harmony Sensory Path running at all times so they could watch every direction around them.
Still… once you keep at it, somehow you manage.
No matter how brutal the conditions, as long as a person still drew breath, they adapted. That was human nature. They began to grow used to the nearly monthly personnel changes, and even forming the formation with sect brothers they had never coordinated with before became easier.
His mastery of the Six Harmony Sensory Path had also advanced greatly; he could now survey everything inside his sensory range as if looking down from the sky. Beyond that, sharing the hardships of the formation drills had drawn the relationships among the junior disciples closer than before—or, more accurately, had forced them closer. Without that, they simply could not execute the formation properly.
A sword formation was a martial art in which many had to move as one heart, organically linked. Suppose one person’s lack of skill dragged everyone down. Then they had to operate the formation around that weaker member and plug the hole.
If instead you resent or ostracize the one who’s falling short, that’s when formation training turns into hell.
The instructors would work over the rest of the group until they matched the pace of the single weak link. The other five, desperate to escape the suffering, were forced to adjust their stride to the one who stood apart. Keep matching steps long enough and, at some point, realization dawned: advancing together was better than isolating one person. The difference of a single member might seem small, yet its presence or absence was immense. From then on, no one needed to order them; they adjusted their pace on their own.
Inwol had this to say about the change:
“In the jianghu, the only people you can truly trust are your fellow disciples under the same roof. Even if you don’t get along, never forget that you share one fence.”
It was advice that pricked Cheonhwa in more places than one. The former opposition had eventually swung over to the supporters after all their collisions, yet with Daehwa there had been no reconciliation—only mutual recognition as enemies. They had joined hands out of necessity, but the discomfort of the relationship remained unchanged.
Improving things any further will be difficult.
One side would have to yield for any real progress to begin, and neither Cheonhwa nor Daehwa had any intention of bowing his head. For now, maintaining the status quo was the limit.
Will the day ever come when we reconcile?
He did not know. At the very least, he himself had no such desire. They might remain like this forever—or some unforeseen catalyst might bring about a dramatic reconciliation. Only Heaven knew which way the current would flow.
Cheonhwa pushed the thoughts aside and threw himself back into the formation drills.
Five months had already passed since the training began. Just as they were growing comfortable with a thirty-six-man formation, his experience told him the intensity was about to rise.
Sure enough, Muwol arrived with a new assignment, a meaningful smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“You should be fairly accustomed to the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven by now. Time to gain experience worthy of the formation itself.”
He continued:
“A spar against Peak Experts.”
At Muwol’s declaration, several second-generation disciples stepped forward and lined up beside him. Myeonghwa’s voice rang out at once.
“Senior Brother Yeolhwa of the Blazing Flower Mad Sword—Senior Brother Hanwol of the Cold Moon Twin Swords—and even Senior Uncle Muwol, known as the Meteor Sword! Every last one of them is a Peak Expert!”
His near-scream finally drove the realization home for the third-generation disciples, Cheonhwa included. The second-generation disciples standing before them—Muwol among them—were the Peak Experts they were about to face. Understanding the situation, the juniors stirred restlessly. The prospect of fighting Peak Experts clearly unnerved them. Cheonhwa was no different.
Even if we’ve learned the formation, ordering us to spar Peak Experts…
Peak Experts were the elite permitted to study a sect’s superior arts. No matter how useful a formation was against stronger foes, they were still far too much for third-generation disciples.
Muwol stamped a heavy footwork step that cracked like thunder and quieted the uproar.
“I understand your alarm. But this is something you must experience eventually.”
A one-on-one spar between a third-generation disciple and a Peak Expert would end exactly as expected; most would collapse before they even properly tasted that strength. Only a gifted few would take anything away from so brief an exchange. Facing a Peak Expert through the Heavenly Sword Formation, however, was another matter entirely.
“Learn with your own bodies how far a formation can reach—and just how strong a Peak Expert truly is.”
The moment he finished, new teams of thirty-six were selected, and a Peak Expert was assigned to each. Cheonhwa’s team drew Muwol himself.
Muwol released the full force of the presence he had kept restrained until now. A crushing pressure swept over every third-generation disciple like a weight of air. Under that overwhelming aura Cheonhwa broke into a cold sweat. The others fared no better: faces went pale, and some even trembled violently in their hands and feet. This was the true power of a Peak Expert—something never once revealed while they had been teaching. Confronted with the sheer gulf, the juniors hesitated to fight. This was nothing like sparring among themselves. Numbers alone would not bridge the gap.
Cheonhwa looked over the faces of his sect brothers and thought, This won’t do.
Morale was already scraping the bottom before the spar even began. At this rate they would lose fights they might otherwise have won. Something had to be done.
But how?
How could he lift their spirits? He possessed neither Myeonghwa’s silver tongue nor Daehwa’s natural authority. Then the words the supporters, Myeonghwa, and Heogong had once given him flickered through his mind.
Don’t go looking for what you lack. Simply go with the flow. Speak my thoughts honestly.
Cheonhwa drew a deep breath and opened his mouth.
“Let’s give it a try.”
Every gaze in the team snapped toward him. The stares struck like arrows, but he refused to show the pressure and continued.
“For the past five months we have worked ourselves raw to learn this formation.”
They had begun with six. Personnel had been swapped without end. Numbers had grown step by step. Through every hardship they had arrived here.
“So let’s throw ourselves against it once.”
How far had their efforts brought them? How strong was a Peak Expert, really? The only way to answer those questions was to challenge them.
“If we who put in the work do not believe in victory, who will believe for us?”
He simply poured his heart into the appeal: fight together, not alone. The sect brothers exchanged glances. In the tense silence someone finally spoke.
“All right. Let’s try.”
One voice.
“We did suffer for five solid months, that’s true.”
Another.
“When Ox-Step puts it like that, we can’t just walk away.”
Agreement spread.
“Fine—let’s do it!”
“We nearly died practicing the formation; we at least have to see the results.”
“When else are we going to face a Peak Expert head-on?”
One after another they sided with Cheonhwa and steeled their resolve. Thirty-six hearts became one and stood before Muwol. A deep, proud smile touched the senior’s lips.
“That spirit—knowing the gap and still choosing to challenge it—is excellent. Therefore I will face you with everything I have.”
Muwol’s fighting will rode the air and nearly shook the resolve they had just forged, yet Cheonhwa, standing at the front, settled his stance with fresh determination. The sight pulled the other juniors back to themselves; they formed their ranks. Then a single Peak Expert and the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven collided.
The result, stated first: the third-generation side lost.
Even thirty-six disciples thoroughly polished in the Heavenly Sword Formation could not win; simply enduring was the limit. They changed tactics and deliberately ran a wheel-formation rotation, yet the outcome never shifted.
Many factors contributed to the defeat: the overall level of the juniors’ martial arts was still low; the Heavenly Sword Formation was, at base, a fundamental array whose only real function was closing ranks; their opponent knew the formation inside and out; and the juniors simply lacked experience. None of that, however, diminished the value of their challenge. On the contrary, the second-generation disciples highly praised the fact that they had fought knowing they might lose. In the jianghu one sometimes met a battle that could not be avoided no matter how desperately one wished to flee, and what was required then was the courage to stand and fight.
“I thought they’d freeze up and not be able to fight properly, but the result was surprising.”
“When Junior Brother Cheonhwa’s team charged Senior Brother Muwol, the other teams couldn’t stand being left out and charged as well—it was a spectacle.”
“That’s Cheonhwa for you. In a crisis he steps to the front and pulls people together. Give him a little more experience and he’ll handle a commander’s role without trouble.”
“Taking that into account, right now Junior Brother Cheonhwa is the closest we have to a true senior disciple among them.”
One purpose of the formation training had been to cool the overheated competition and foster unity through cooperation. Another had been to observe, under group movement, whether anyone stood out as a natural commander or leader. In the eyes of the second generation, the most conspicuous junior was, without question, Cheonhwa.
“I never imagined there would be spacing errors and the like.”
“This was the first time we’d ever taught the formation to third-generation disciples, so it couldn’t be helped.”
“Finding the problem was one thing—but when I heard he’d gone and asked for cooperation from Daehwa, the very man he’d been at open war with, I was honestly impressed.”
“Setting personal feelings aside and separating public from private is an important virtue.”
From the story of how Cheonhwa discovered the formation’s flaws and joined hands with Daehwa to fix them, the praise continued all the way to the results he showed in the drills themselves.
“He handled the formation side quite well too. Whether his field of view is simply wide, he linked up even with juniors he’d never coordinated with before.”
“Any team with Junior Brother Cheonhwa in it was especially troublesome to face. Even among the juniors themselves, a lot of them say things move more smoothly when he’s with them.”
“And against the Peak Experts, his team lasted the longest.”
Favorable evaluations of Cheonhwa piled up. The reports reached the first-generation disciples and the elders as well. Without his knowing, Cheonhwa’s reputation was steadily rising.
In Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, a man entered a certain wineshop. When a waiter approached to greet him, the man briefly flashed a token he carried. The waiter’s expression flickered, then smoothed back into professional calm.
“Ah, the guest with the reservation. Please, this way.”
The place he was led to was not a guest room but a chamber deep underground. Candlelight cast a dim glow through the room, where a masked man waited.
“A client, I take it. What is the request?”
“Before long the Zhongnan Sect will bring its third-generation disciples out into the Qinling Mountains for the promotion examination. I want the sect’s young sprouts trampled there.”
At the contents of the request the masked man’s eyes narrowed; he fixed the visitor with a hard stare. Information on the Zhongnan promotion examinations was tightly controlled and not easily obtained.
“Who are you?”
“A foolish question. I was told the Dark Night Assassin Pavilion asks for nothing but money.”
The Dark Night Assassin Pavilion—the most skilled assassination organization in the Central Plains, and one corner of the Six Tyrant Coalition that held formidable sway among the unorthodox sects. As the man said, so long as the gold matched the job, they carried it out. Even so, this particular commission gave them pause.
The branch master of the Dark Night Assassin Pavilion sank into thought. Zhongnan was one of the great pillars of the orthodox path. Even for an organization as elusive as theirs, making an enemy of one of the Nine Great Sects carried enormous risk. If the main force of the Pavilion itself were to move, mutual destruction would be the best they could hope for. Yet the thick pouch the client produced held a sum large enough to render such worries meaningless.
If this is the price just for handling third-generation disciples, the profit more than covers it.
The targets were only the juniors. So long as they watched for the second-generation disciples, the assassins would come to no harm. The aftermath could be weathered by lying low for a few years. Even if the client’s true face was hidden by disguise, the Pavilion’s iron rule was to accept any job that paid its worth. The branch master agreed readily.
“We accept the commission.”
“Good. No need for top masters. The targets are third-generation disciples, after all—numbers matter more than individual skill.”
The client set a second pouch on the table.
“This is the advance. With it, hire every assassin currently under the Shaanxi branch in bulk. If you take the job, I will also provide further intelligence.”
“To prepare this much gold as an advance just to stir up Zhongnan… You must hate them with a passion.”
“Of course. I hate them enough to hope for their complete annihilation.”
The man smiled a chilling smile. And so the dark cloud that would hang over the Zhongnan Sect’s third promotion examination was sealed.