Promotion Exam (3)
Every gaze in the training ground turned toward the examiner.
Even he looked less than pleased to have stopped the match. Still, bound by his duty, he forced open eyes he had squeezed shut and delivered his verdict.
"In accordance with the rules of the promotion exam, Initiate Disciple Yeonhwa, having used a sword art other than the Four Introductory Martial Arts, is disqualified for foul play."
A heavy silence settled over the training ground.
In the heat of the clash they had forgotten, but this bout was part of a promotion exam. Its true purpose was to see how the initiates applied the Four Introductory Martial Arts under conditions close to real combat. Yeonhwa had used another sword art entirely; her disqualification was only natural.
Bound by the ruling, Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa had no choice but to leave the platform.
The moment he stepped down, Cheonhwa crumpled as if his strings had been cut. With the tension snapped, the rebound of every forced movement came crashing back at once. The examiners rushed him to the Medicine Hall.
Only then did the quiet training ground erupt into noise.
"He collapsed all of a sudden—is he going to be all right?"
"He'll be fine. There are skilled physicians standing by at the Medicine Hall."
A few people fretted over Cheonhwa as he was carried away, but they were the minority. Contenders being hauled off after a bout was common enough. Most of the crowd was far more eager to argue about the match itself.
"Did you see that? The talentless one almost won, right?"
"No way! He must have used some foul trick!"
"If he had, the examiners would have spotted it first."
"If it had gone to the end, it might have been different. He looked ready to drop at any second."
"Still, he won in the end. You have to count that as a win."
"True enough. I never thought Junior Sister Yeonhwa would get disqualified."
The third-generation disciples reeled from the unexpected result. To a man, they had assumed Yeonhwa would take it. There were walls in this world that no amount of effort could breach, and her talent was so overwhelming it barely seemed human.
And yet look at what had happened. Someone of ordinary gift had seized victory through sheer effort and grit. That truth shook more than a few of the initiates.
Could I become like that too?
It might only be an ugly thrashing about. Even if they poured everything in to the end, they might never win. They might regret it later and call themselves fools for trying. Still, no one could deny the small miracle that had unfolded before their eyes. And a miracle that had happened once could happen again. The slender chance that they themselves might stand at its center—that was a chance they wanted to take.
It was not only the third-generation disciples who stirred at the outcome.
"Hah. Junior Brother Cheonhwa actually did it."
"I hoped for a one-in-a-thousand shot, but I never thought it would truly happen!"
So murmured the second-generation disciples serving as examiners.
"Utmost will can work miracles. That was something worth seeing."
"I wonder how it would have ended if this had been a proper duel rather than a promotion exam."
Even the first-generation disciples and elders watching from the side felt the ripples. The bout had stirred every heart present—and the combatants themselves were no exception.
"…"
Down from the platform, Yeonhwa looked at her own hands. The palm that had gripped the wooden sword still burned hot, as if the heat of the match lingered in her fingers. She closed her eyes and replayed every exchange.
Why did I lose?
By any measure it had been a match she could not lose. Her skill was clearly superior. His defense had been hard to break, yet the flow of the bout had favored her from start to finish. He had worn himself down forcing the distance closed while she had not so much as broken a sweat or let her breath falter. When she seized the opening and drove in the finishing blow, she had been certain of victory.
But he had risen again—and what followed was a complete reversal. Overwhelmed by an unfathomable presence, crushed in spirit, she had found herself unfolding another sword art without meaning to. The chief cause had been the raw force of his emotion and will, so naked it threw her into confusion. Her senses had always been sharp, yet never like this.
How is something like that even possible?
Faced with a situation she had never known, the girl felt curiosity stir.
His name was Cheonhwa, wasn't it?
Perhaps the heat of the bout had not fully left her. Her heart was still pounding hard.
Cheonhwa did not regain consciousness until a full three days later.
The first thing he felt on waking was pain that struck every inch of his body. There was not a place that did not ache—the price of driving himself past his limits. At his bedside, the sour-faced old woman who headed the Medicine Hall, Danwon, clicked her tongue.
"When they brought you here, there wasn't a single sound place left on you."
Outwardly he might have looked whole enough; inwardly he was anything but. Taking the wooden sword's barrage with his body had left muscle, bone, and organs damaged. His qi and blood were twisted out of place, on the brink of true internal injury. Worst of all was the utter exhaustion of his mental strength—the main reason he had lain unconscious for three days. Outer and inner wounds could be treated with medicine, but spiritual depletion yielded only to time.
"I heard you ended up like this from a bout. What in heaven's name did you do to yourself?"
"I simply gave everything I had."
"There's a limit even to giving everything! It wasn't a life-or-death duel, and you still went that far—have you lost your mind?"
Danwon crumpled her face into every possible fold of disapproval.
"Will I recover?"
"If the injuries don't worsen, you'll mend within a fortnight."
"That's a relief."
"Relief, my foot! Abuse your body like this and you'll never live out your natural span!"
What am I supposed to do with this idiot! Danwon looked down at him with a gaze full of worry.
"You'll need a full fortnight of convalescence, so lie still and behave."
"Does that mean I have to stop martial training for the time being?"
"Of course it does—what kind of question is that! And if you dare thrash that body around—"
The old woman pinned him with a murderous glare.
"I'll teach you with your own bones how tendon-splitting and bone-twisting works."
"…"
"If you've understood, go quietly to sleep."
When Danwon left, Cheonhwa lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Three days of unconsciousness had left him wide awake. He looked at his own hands. A sharp ache rose from beneath the bandages. In the middle of the bout he had never even realized he was this badly hurt. No wonder the head of the Medicine Hall had raged at him as if he had gone mad.
But this victory wasn't empty.
It had proven that everything he had poured in until now was not meaningless. Measured against the satisfaction of a hard-won win, the pain racking his whole body was a cheap price. It felt all the greater for being the first victory he had taken by contest alone, without taking a life.
Still, this is probably the last time I'll ever beat Junior Sister Yeonhwa.
Victory in that bout had been a miracle born of many things overlapping. Put another way, she was an opponent he could not defeat without a miracle. With time, the gap between them would only widen. One day he would not even see her back. However hard Cheonhwa ran, Yeonhwa would simply fly beyond the horizon.
Come to think of it—what was that thing that happened in the match?
Replaying the bout, he caught something strange. At the time he had already reached his limit. He had overcome it by moving his body through will alone and forced the fight to continue—like a puppet dancing on invisible strings. The sensation of moving by will was far too clear to dismiss as mere chance or miracle.
If I could consciously move by will alone…?
It was possible. An unaccountable certainty settled in him.
Martial Uncle Jinhyun might know something about it.
Even wounded, the boy did not shrink back; he meant to use this as a foothold and climb higher still. That hunger for growth was worthy of praise—
"I told you to sleep! What are you rustling around for!"
—but the head of the Medicine Hall did not see it that way. For some time afterward, scolding never ceased in the Medicine Hall.
The next day, somehow hearing that Cheonhwa had woken, Myeonghwa came to visit.
"You were out for three days, but you look better than I expected. That's a relief."
Once he had confirmed Cheonhwa was all right, Myeonghwa's relief was plain on his face.
"I told you that you didn't have to win—and you went and won anyway. Junior Brother Cheonhwa, you really are something else."
"Giving up without even trying just doesn't sit well with me."
"Of course not, not when you train day and night without rest."
At Cheonhwa's unchanging manner, Myeonghwa let out a soft laugh. Then he filled him in on everything that had happened while he was unconscious.
"While you were sleeping, Junior Brother, the promotion exam turned into quite the affair."
"An affair?"
"Your bout with Junior Sister Yeonhwa lit a fire under everyone. Their fervor was unreal."
After Cheonhwa and Yeonhwa's match, the initiates' bouts grew far fiercer. No one yielded easily; they clung on with everything they had and fought as if their lives depended on it. A stranger watching would have taken them for death matches rather than sparring.
"So this promotion exam put more initiates in the Medicine Hall than any in history."
Rumor even had it that the head of the Medicine Hall had lost her temper over it—demanding that someone keep the children properly in line during the exam.
"Now that you mention it, the Medicine Hall head did seem out of sorts. You don't think…?"
"Nah. That woman is out of sorts in every season. She can't stand martial artists."
"What? She's part of the Zhongnan Sect herself—isn't she a proper martial artist too?"
"From what I hear, she's more physician than martial artist. She says martial folk treat their lives too lightly."
That explained the perpetual scowl well enough. Surrounded by the very people she disliked, of course her expression never softened.
"Did you pass the promotion exam, Senior Brother Myeonghwa?"
"Naturally. And not just pass—"
As if he had been waiting for the question, Myeonghwa poured the rest out.
"I won five bouts in a row. That put me inside the top ten."
"That's impressive. They said the top ten would receive spiritual medicines, didn't they?"
"Right. They'll be handed out individually soon."
Spiritual medicines—drugs and materials of wondrous efficacy. Anyone who trained in martial arts coveted them for the boost they gave to cultivation. A great sect like Zhongnan could even refine its own through alchemy. For Cheonhwa, though, spiritual medicines had never been a concern. He had been far too busy simply trying to pass the exam to think of ranking in the top ten.
"How long until you're fully healed?"
"They said at least a fortnight."
"Longer than I thought. You'll be climbing the walls by then—you going to manage?"
"There's nothing for it. I'll just have to accept it."
Myeonghwa left the Medicine Hall with a promise to visit often.
How am I supposed to pass the time now?
In the Medicine Hall there was nothing to do but rest. His injuries were part of it, but more than that, the head of the Medicine Hall watched him with a hawk's eye. The slightest suspicious movement and she would appear from nowhere to unleash a torrent of scolding. He had never imagined martial senses being used quite like that.
Unable to bear the boredom, he asked Danwon if she had anything to pass the time.
"If you're that bored, look at this, then."
She handed him a medical text on the meridians, including the Governing and Conception Vessels. Line after line of nearly impenetrable content filled its pages. At his present level, Cheonhwa could hardly read a medical treatise properly—and he could hardly seize one of the hall's physicians and demand an interpretation. That would only bring the head of the Medicine Hall running to roar at him for getting in the way of their work.
After some thought, he reached a decision.
I'll just memorize the whole thing.
Learn it by heart first and figure out the meaning later. And for killing time, nothing beat rote memorization. From then on, whenever he had a free moment, Cheonhwa read the medical text and committed its contents to memory. When Myeonghwa later came to visit and saw the scene, he stuck out his tongue and muttered that only Cheonhwa would study even as a patient.