Past and Present
Dan Myeong-geuk lay sprawled on the floor, nursing internal injuries from the unexpected rebound force of the counter-qi technique. Jeokhwa and Yeonhwa stayed close by his side to tend him.
Ordinarily the presence of such attentive young ladies might have stirred his heart. That it did not was only because his attention was fixed entirely elsewhere.
Just what does he intend to do?
Dan Myeong-geuk watched Cheonhwa’s back as the young man stepped forward without hesitation. Having crossed blades with him even once, he knew the truth well enough: the protective qi of the Damjeok Branch Leader could not be broken by ordinary means.
Do you truly have a way?
As if answering that silent question, a soft jade light began to coil around the scorched wooden sword in Cheonhwa’s hand. Strands of qi then welled up and whirled around the blade itself.
Sword wind? No—something different.
The difference was too subtle to name clearly. The Damjeok Branch Leader felt the same unease and faltered, but Cheonhwa’s sword strike crashed toward him without mercy.
The branch leader flung up his arms in desperate defense. The instant the vortex of qi wrapped around the blade collided with the internal-energy barrier—
Krrrk-krrrk-krrrk!
A harsh grinding sound filled the air as the protective armor began to be sheared away. The whirling qi battered the barrier like a relentless gale of blades, finally crushing even the rebound force of the counter-qi technique and severing the structure of true qi strand by strand. From the outer edge inward, the internal-energy barrier started to collapse.
All of it happened in a single exchange.
“Keuk?!”
Sensing the danger, the Damjeok Branch Leader twisted away, but he could not completely evade the blow. The sword strike that had shattered the barrier slammed into him full force.
Crunch.
An ominous sound came from the man’s arm.
“Cough!”
The branch leader staggered back, writhing from the pain of the broken limb, blood spraying from his mouth—clear evidence of the Internal Weight Technique. Clutching the fractured arm, he stared at Cheonhwa with eyes that refused to believe his internal-energy barrier had been breached.
“The Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor… was broken?”
His entire confidence had rested on that supposedly impenetrable defense. With the counter-qi technique pierced, he was nothing more than a second-class black-path thug.
Cheonhwa leveled the tip of his sword at the man’s throat.
“I won’t kill you just yet. There are more than a few things I need you to tell me. So stay quiet.”
Cold sweat beading on his face, the Damjeok Branch Leader wordlessly nodded. For all the excellence of his protective qi, he was at heart a common ruffian—one who would never refuse the order of a stronger man.
He actually did it?
Dan Myeong-geuk could scarcely believe the scene before him. The same protective qi that had casually rebounded even a heavy sword reinforced with Stored Jin had crumbled so easily.
Dan Myeong-geuk was a martial artist of no small talent. Without it he could never have reached the first-class realm at so young an age with only crude techniques. That very talent let him recognize the foundation of the form Cheonhwa had just used—and left him stunned.
Qi-Impelled Sword, Sword Wind, and the Internal Weight Technique… all at once?!
Using Qi-Impelled Sword and Sword Wind together was one thing; the Internal Weight Technique was another matter entirely. Among the many true-qi arts it was infamous for its difficulty. Even focusing solely on that technique would have been hard enough—yet Cheonhwa had layered it with several others. The form was simple, and for that very reason it was ruthlessly selective. Dan Myeong-geuk himself would never have dared attempt it.
He merely gathered several arts into one, and it became a form of such profound refinement…
Was that the true depth of a great orthodox sect? Or was Cheonhwa simply extraordinary? Perhaps both. One thing, however, was certain: he himself had made a fool of himself trying to impress a young lady, and the cause had been his own inadequacy.
I want to become strong like Cheonhwa Daoist as well.
A new heat kindled in Dan Myeong-geuk’s gaze as he looked at Cheonhwa. For the first time, a young master who had grown up wanting for nothing keenly felt his own lack.
Having subdued the Damjeok Branch Leader, Cheonhwa had a clear reason for keeping him alive: to analyze the demonic art. There had been no leisure for such study with the Ihwamun master, but a foe so easily overpowered might yield secrets of the demonic art that had remained hidden until now.
There are things one simply cannot learn from a martial manual alone.
Having finished treating Dan Myeong-geuk, Yeonhwa approached the two men. She eyed the branch leader’s ruined arm.
“I’ll start with the internal injuries. Drop the protective qi.”
At her command the internal-energy barrier clinging to the man’s body vanished. Yeonhwa then tapped several points on his body; his complexion improved at once. Temporary treatment through acupoint striking—a skill she had polished while frequenting the medical pavilion.
“I’m beginning.”
She placed her hands on him and began reading his pulse. Something made her frown, and she asked,
“Lately your body feels heavy and your head aches, doesn’t it?”
“Th-that’s true, but…”
Having grasped the gulf in strength between them, the Damjeok Branch Leader’s speech had turned respectful.
“You keep drinking to dull the headaches, right?”
“Y-yes. Alcohol dulls them. Though even that hasn’t been working well lately…”
“The cause of those headaches is your protective qi.”
“W-what?”
“Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor, was it? When your internal energy runs short, it starts drawing on your innate true qi.”
In the martial world, innate true qi carried two meanings. One was the true qi that formed the vessel of the dantian and determined the total capacity of internal energy. Increasing one’s reservoir through qi circulation meant enlarging the dantian by expanding that innate true qi; consuming it would nullify all one’s accumulated effort, so no one used it except in the direst extremity.
But the innate true qi the Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor was siphoning was not that kind. It was the vital essence a person is born with—also called original true qi. Vital essence was the life force of the flesh itself, more efficient than internal energy in some respects. Drawing upon it carelessly, however, inevitably produced severe side effects. The fatigue and headaches had been the body’s warning.
“If you’d kept using the protective qi like this, you wouldn’t have been able to bear the drain and would have died.”
“That’s… impossible…”
As the absurd secret behind the Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor’s power was laid bare, the branch leader’s face turned ashen. The thought that the martial art he had cherished might have killed him seemed to shock him deeply.
But this confirms it.
A martial art that drained vital essence without even the practitioner noticing—clear evidence that Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor was demonic.
Cheonhwa pressed the man for information. The manual for Heaven-Overturning Qi Armor had been purchased from a merchant posing as one of the Muksang Sect’s traders shortly after the Damjeok Branch was founded. Lacking any solid backing, they had been allowed to buy it on credit in exchange for a commission. The nature of that commission was the problem.
Bring people—living or dead, it doesn’t matter.
The words made Cheonhwa think of Seo Mun-il of the Muksang Sect. Under the influence of soul-stealing arts, Seo Mun-il had been collecting people separately from the auctions. The detail that even corpses were acceptable, however, stuck in his mind. Even the Damjeok Branch Leader did not know why the dead were wanted as well.
Still, I obtained one solid piece of information.
A merchant who had gone missing a few days earlier had visited this place to collect the debt—an unexpected lead. The branch leader’s reaction, though, was oddly evasive. He was clearly hiding something.
“How did you pay off the debt?”
“What? Th-that is… just, somehow…”
Cheonhwa pressed the wooden sword against the man’s throat.
“Answer.”
The Damjeok Branch Leader began to tremble violently.
“P-please spare me! I sold off the servers and courtesans who worked in this tavern. But I had no choice! If I hadn’t, the Muksang Sect would have—”
So that was why no one but black-path ruffians remained in the tavern—they had already been sold. And for nothing more than their own greed. Cheonhwa’s grip tightened on Okgyeong. He wanted nothing more than to take the man’s head then and there, but the analysis of the demonic art was not yet finished. There would be time enough to remove his head once the investigation was complete.
“Where is the martial manual?”
The Damjeok Branch Leader produced the booklet he had kept in his robes. His hand shook with the force of his reluctance to let it go—torn between the will to live and his obsession with the manual. There was no outright madness like that of the Ihwamun master, yet it was far from normal.
Cheonhwa wrenched the manual from his grasp.
“…Yeonhwa, the rest is yours.”
“Mm. Leave it to me.”
At his words Yeonhwa touched the man’s body again. The Damjeok Branch Leader went rigid and lost the power of speech—she had struck the paralyzing acupoint and the mute acupoint.
“……!”
He stared at them with desperate eyes, but both returned only cold gazes. This was a man who had raided a thriving tavern and sold people into trafficking. There was no reason to show him mercy.
Leaving the subdued branch leader, Cheonhwa went to check on Dan Myeong-geuk. Though Yeonhwa’s treatment had healed his internal injuries, the young master’s expression remained dark.
“Are you all right?”
“Cheonhwa Daoist. The body is fine enough—my heart is not.”
Dan Myeong-geuk offered a bitter smile. Being unable to defeat even a second-class black-path ruffian had clearly shaken him to the core.
“The Damjeok Branch Leader was simply special.”
“And you smashed that special defense head-on.”
Dan Myeong-geuk looked up at him. A soft heat glimmered in his eyes—the familiar light of admiration and resolve Cheonhwa had seen countless times.
“How can I become as strong as you?”
“How do you normally train, Young Master Dan?”
“I set aside time every day to accumulate qi and polish my forms.”
“So you do no external training to temper the body.”
Heavy-sword techniques centered on Jin Release, and the foundation of Jin Release was a thoroughly tempered body. Any martial artist who wielded a heavy sword needed external training as a matter of course.
“First, keep at external training consistently. That alone will make you better than you are now.”
Cheonhwa gave the advice sincerely. Though Dan Myeong-geuk had once been an ill-fated acquaintance and had tried to court Jeokhwa, Cheonhwa was not so petty as to abandon a martial artist earnestly pondering his future path.
“External training, is it? I’ll find something suitable and begin. Thank you for the counsel.”
“No need for thanks. What I told you is only the basics.”
Whether this incident would change Dan Myeong-geuk, and how much, remained unknown. He might improve—or he might give up soon enough. Yet the act of gathering courage and challenging oneself was always worthy of praise. Cheonhwa hoped the young master would become a better man than before.
With the capture of its leader, the Damjeok Branch was effectively dismantled. Cheonhwa’s party left the aftermath to the Dan Family Manor—a decision born of Jeokhwa’s shrewd insight.
“If we take on the cleanup of the Damjeok Branch ourselves, there is simply too much to do. Besides, we are outsiders; it would be difficult to act freely.”
From punishing the black-path ruffians to managing the now-ownerless tavern and returning the wealth the branch had extorted from the surrounding area—every task would have demanded far too many hands. More importantly, the interests of the region were deeply entangled; outsiders openly rearranging them would not look well. Better to accept the help of the Dan Family Manor, which already enjoyed high repute in Tianyang County.
“Right now the Dan Family Manor’s prestige has suffered because they failed to handle the Damjeok Branch alone. If left as is, something like the situation with the Geon-gon Sect in Baoji could develop.”
“So you want to bring the Dan Family Manor in?”
“Yes. Even if only on the surface, we need to present the subjugation of the Damjeok Branch as a joint effort between the Zhongnan Sect and the Dan Family Manor.”
Fortunately the young master of the manor, Dan Myeong-geuk, was already with them. If both sides coordinated their story, they could claim he had lent a hand in the subjugation and smooth everything over.
“If the goal of this journey through the jianghu were simply to make a name for ourselves, it might be different. But since our purpose is to track traces of demonic arts, it is better to cooperate with local powers than to hoard credit.”
The advantages were twofold: restoring the Dan Family Manor’s prestige would stabilize Tianyang County, and they would secure the manor’s full cooperation—killing two birds with one stone.
Impressed by Jeokhwa’s deft handling, Cheonhwa accepted the proposal. When they visited the Dan Family Manor and laid out the plan, Manor Lord Dan Seong-baek spoke with deep emotion.
“Not only have you resolved Tianyang County’s troubles, you have restored the Dan Family Manor’s standing and even generously overlooked the young master’s rash actions. I hardly know where to put myself.”
“We acted out of our own necessity as well. Please do not take it so much to heart.”
“That will not do. To repay this kindness, the Dan Family Manor will cooperate with you completely.”
Willpower blazed in Dan Seong-baek’s eyes. The reaction was so enthusiastic that Cheonhwa was privately taken aback. Far beyond mere friendliness, the man looked ready to offer up his very liver and gallbladder. In that moment the local power of Tianyang County became one of Cheonhwa’s most ardent supporters.