Ominous Signs
For nearly a month, the people of Baoji had lived in a state of constant dread.
When the Black Guard Hall fell, they had dared to hope the underworld’s threat would ease. Instead, the struggle among the black-path factions that poured in from outside only made the city more dangerous than before.
Day after day, without fail, came the roar of furious shouts and the clash of steel. Traces of battle and the stench of blood lingered in every corner. For the moment those villains were busy carving up territory among themselves—but no one could say when that violence might turn upon the townsfolk.
All the residents could do was lift their eyes to the heavens and pray that someone, anyone, would appear to set things right.
Yet the heavens, it seemed, did not hear their prayers.
Boom!
An explosion rolled through the whole of Baoji. With it rose a vivid crimson-black blaze that seemed ready to claw the sky itself. At that ominous sign, people trembled.
“What in the world was that sound?”
“Don’t tell me there’s a fire—”
“Those mad black-path dogs have finally crossed the line!”
No one knew precisely what had happened, but one thing was certain: this was nothing like the underworld skirmishes they had grown used to.
“We ought to go see what’s going on.”
“Are you insane? Get mixed up in that fighting and you’re dead!”
“We still have to know what it is before we can decide how to move. We need to check whether there’s actually a fire, at least.”
Most of the residents stayed put, inventing explanations for the noise. A few, braver or more reckless, set out to find its source.
As they drew near, superheated air rushed up to greet them.
“What could have happened to make everything this hot?”
“Ugh—at this rate we’ll be burned.”
“That’s enough. We should fall back from here.”
“After coming this far? I have to see what happened with my own eyes!”
“What are you saying? What if you get yourself killed?”
Some chose to retreat, unable to endure the heat. Others forced their way through and reached the scene.
What awaited them there were two figures standing face to face before a blazing manor.
One was a martial artist burned black from head to toe. His original features were no longer recognizable; smoke and shimmering heat rose from his entire body. The other was a young Taoist, scorched in places, his robes and even the wooden sword in his hand covered in burn marks.
Either of them might have collapsed at any moment—yet neither fell. Their unfocused eyes stayed locked on each other.
“Not… yet…”
The burned corpse of a man—the Master of the Yi-hwa Sect—spoke in a voice cracked beyond recognition.
“I have become… the Peak Expert I so longed to be. Will I end… like this?!”
A body that was little more than a lump of charcoal began to move. Even if he no longer felt pain, he had to know how ruined he was—and still he burned what little life remained to fan the heat higher. The sheer madness of it carried a obsession and killing intent that overawed those who watched.
The moment the onlookers shifted and made a sound, their eyes met his.
“Heaven has not yet abandoned this body.”
The Master of the Yi-hwa Sect’s eyes flashed. He stretched a hand toward the people—and an unknown suction force seized them and dragged them forward.
“N-no!”
“S-spare us! Anyone—please…!”
As the residents of Baoji reeled in the face of approaching death—
“No. It ends here.”
Slash.
A jade-colored arc cut through the air with a chilling sound of parting flesh. At the same instant, the force pulling the residents snapped clean away.
“You bastard—interfering to the very end…!”
“Did you think I would stand by and let you steal the vital energy of the innocent?!”
Cheonhwa stepped between them and the Master of the Yi-hwa Sect as if to shield the townsfolk. Even before the madness of a man burning himself alive, his gaze did not waver. As if answering that resolve, a soft jade light flashed along the blackened wooden sword in his hand.
The onlookers swallowed dryly at the standoff. They did not know why the two men fought—but they knew this much with certainty: it was a life-and-death duel fought down to the last dregs of strength.
A hot wind heavy with heat swept between them. The moment it stilled, both launched themselves forward.
The Master of the Yi-hwa Sect poured out heat. Cheonhwa swept Okgyeong, wrapped in sword force, in a glittering arc. A jade trajectory and a crimson-black bloom of fire collided and threw up waves of shimmering air—red petals of flame scattered through the empty sky on a blue wind.
The blazing torrent came on without end, like a tide. Even so, the jade light carved through the flames and at last reached the Master of the Yi-hwa Sect’s very face.
Whoosh!
A sword stroke too sharp to believe of a wooden blade tore away the haze hanging in the air. A beat later, the Master of the Yi-hwa Sect’s head fell from his shoulders.
The headless lump of charcoal crumpled to the ground. In the same breath, a choking silence settled over the scene.
A young Taoist who had walked the knife-edge between life and death stood alone. Everyone present fell quiet, overwhelmed by what they had witnessed, mouths sealed as they simply stared.
Looking utterly spent, the young Taoist turned to the people and asked,
“Are you all right?”
“Y-yes. Thanks to you, we’re unharmed.”
“I’m glad.”
A faint smile touched his lips—and then his strength gave out. His body swayed and began to topple backward.
In the instant before he hit the ground, a woman flashed past the onlookers and caught him. The people drew another sharp breath at the sight of a Taoist sister as beautiful as a celestial maiden; she paid them no mind at all, her eyes fixed only on the man in her arms.
After confirming that he still drew breath, she let out a soft sigh of relief. Moments later, the martial artists of the Geongon Sect came running in a line, calling desperately after the young Taoist.
Cheonhwa. That was his Taoist name.
One of the residents of Baoji, watching, bowed his head and cried out,
“Thank you, Taoist Cheonhwa!”
It was a cry of pure gratitude. They did not know the full story—but they knew beyond doubt that this young Taoist had saved their lives. One after another, every resident nearby took up his name.
“Thank you!”
“We live because of you!”
In time it became known that the young Taoist was a third-generation disciple of the Zhongnan Sect, and that the beheaded martial artist had been the master of a black-path faction that had stirred the chaos in Baoji. Whenever people of Baoji recalled that day, they spoke of Cheonhwa, third-generation disciple of Zhongnan, by a new title:
Ok-gwang-geom—the Jade Light Sword.
A name that praised the jade-colored arc which had cut through the black-path flames that sought to burn Baoji to the ground.
Unconscious, Cheonhwa was carried to the Geongon Sect.
His condition was far from sound. He bore burns from the heat across much of his body, and the scorching Yang energy of the Cheonyang-singong had left him with serious internal injuries as well. Recovery would take a long time.
“I’ll handle this.”
Yeonhwa, examining him, volunteered at once. She already had a record of treating those injured by the Heavenly Yang Divine Art—including the master of the Geongon Sect himself—so no one objected to entrusting Cheonhwa’s care to her.
As she studied his body, Yeonhwa could not help frowning.
Worse than what the Geongon martial artists suffered.
The internal injuries themselves were not catastrophic, but the nature of the scorching Yang energy had grown far more vicious than before. What had already been a venomous force now carried a sinister edge, as if it meant to devour his flesh from within. Only the water qi of the Hyeoncheon-jingi holding the fire qi in check had kept his meridians from collapsing entirely.
I can’t clear this in a single treatment.
She would have to restore him little by little over a long stretch of time.
From the traces left on his body, Yeonhwa pieced together the fight that had taken place.
You pushed yourself too hard again.
The marks were rough, unrefined. His opponent had simply crushed him with overwhelming internal power, brute force without art. The gap in cultivation had been absolute—one no ordinary method could bridge. So Cheonhwa had poured every scrap of his internal energy into his sword, risking burns and internal ruin to do it.
A judgment no ordinary sense of caution would ever allow. She could picture him clearly: walking straight into death in order to live, flaying his own body for the chance.
You could have held out until I arrived.
What had driven him to stake his life alone?
Did you trust me that little?
She knew that was not the truth—and still the thought lingered in a corner of her mind.
Yeonhwa sighed and began the treatment. The energy of the Hyeoncheon-jingi moved through Cheonhwa’s meridians, slowly mending the internal damage. The Hyeoncheon-jingi already present in his body answered it, and recovery accelerated.
“Hoo…”
After the first session she wiped the sweat from her brow and caught her breath. She had worked for only about an hour, yet her internal energy was nearly spent and a dull ache throbbed behind her eyes. Even so, the treatment was taking hold; Cheonhwa’s color already looked better than before.
He’s recovering faster than I expected.
It was the effect of the constant pupil breathing that continued even while he was unconscious. The power of the Gyunchon Chukgi-gong cradled his wounded flesh and worked to make it stronger than before.
Water conquers Fire. Fire generates Earth.
In the phenomena unfolding within Cheonhwa’s body, Yeonhwa felt the principle of the Five Elements. The water qi of the Hyeoncheon-jingi drove out the fire qi of the Cheonyang-singong and aided recovery, while the flesh scorched by that fire qi was being refined by the earth qi of the Gyunchon Chukgi-gong into a higher state. Only an art that could bring even mutually destructive forces into harmony—the Gyunchon Chukgi-gong—could create such an opportunity.
It won’t match the efficacy of the Yeomcheon-jingi, Zhongnan’s true heart method… but his body will still grow sturdier than before. By the time the treatment ends, he should be standing at the threshold of becoming impervious to steel. And if he ever masters the Yeomcheon-jingi completely, he might achieve true blade immunity.
We’re drifting farther and farther apart.
She had been the one in the lead. Then, at some point, she had opened her eyes to find herself chasing his back instead. She had run hard after him so the distance would not grow—and still the gap only widened.
At this rate I’ll never catch him.
She had thought it for some time, but examining Cheonhwa’s body in detail had turned the suspicion into certainty. Under Zhongnan’s current system of martial learning, overtaking Cheonhwa was impossible.
Our foundations are different from the start.
Cheonhwa had walked the brutal, thorny path of fully perfecting the Gyunchon Chukgi-gong. Yeonhwa and the rest of Zhongnan’s disciples had moved on to other heart methods before ever completing that foundational art. Once the order was twisted so thoroughly, there was no way to unwind it by ordinary means.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to salvage it.
Right in front of her stood someone who had perfected the Gyunchon Chukgi-gong the proper way. She might never gain the full efficacy of a true completion—but she could still forge a body of high completion and a foundation broad enough to support many arts.
That’s why I’ve spent all this time studying the body and the meridians.
She had not stopped at reading medical texts. She had gone to the medicine hall itself to learn the healing arts and had built experience treating patients. Yeonhwa’s natural gift shone in medicine as brightly as in martial arts, and she had reached a level where she could fairly claim to have mastered the human body. That was how she had been able to clear the Geongon martial artists’ internal injuries in an instant.
If I can’t catch him by doing the same things he does, then I’ll reverse-engineer the finished result and recreate it.
The idea was closer to the unorthodox path than to the orthodox. But a tangled thread was already a wrong road. If even a shortcut could return her to the right way, then that too was a kind of true path.
Creating a new martial art was never easy—yet Yeonhwa possessed a talent for refining what already existed. She gave a name to the unorthodox method she would build:
Cheonhwa Chukdo-gong—the Heavenly Flower Path-Chasing Art.
Exactly as the name said: a cultivation meant to catch up to Cheonhwa’s road. It was a declaration of will—that she would not spend forever staring only at his back.
In her own way, Yeonhwa began to forge a method of pursuing Cheonhwa.
In his final clash with the Master of the Yi-hwa Sect, Cheonhwa had driven himself far past his limits.
Two successive forms reinforced by intent. Then forced physical movement and internal energy circulation through pure will alone. For the first time since awakening his spiritual consciousness, he had scraped his intent down to the absolute bottom.
The backlash dragged his mind under. His awareness sank deeper and deeper. By all rights he should have sunk to the floor of his consciousness and not known when—or whether—he would wake.
But a voice caught him as he fell without end.
Wake…
Wake up.
Drawn by that voice, Cheonhwa opened his eyes.
Or rather—he felt as if he had. He possessed awareness, yet no sensation of the flesh: a strange, hollow state.
Who…?
In a daze he looked toward the one who had called him back—and then his mind snapped clear as if ice water had been poured over him.
The one who had awakened him was a Taoist of immortal bearing, a gentle smile resting at the corners of his mouth—and at the same time, a presence that now existed only in memory.
Cheonhwa whispered a name he had longed to hear again.
Jinhyun… Martial Uncle…?