Hebei Paeng Family (3)
More than ten sparring platforms stood arranged across the training grounds.
Following the bracket assignments, the referees began calling out the names of those who would face one another.
"Cheonhwa of the Zhongnan Sect! Paeng Gun-ak of the Hebei Paeng Family! Ascend the platform!"
The referee's voice rang out with both names.
"I'll be back."
"Give it your all, Junior Brother Cheonhwa!"
"Fight for my share as well."
"Please knock some sense into him."
"Come back safe."
Bolstered by his fellow disciples' cheers, Cheonhwa stepped up onto the sparring platform.
Paeng Gun-ak, already waiting there, spoke first.
"I never expected we'd meet right from the opening round."
"Neither did I."
"A pity for you. Now that you've drawn me this early, you won't be climbing any higher."
"I'll return those words to you exactly as they are."
The verbal sparring did not last long.
Paeng Gun-ak drew the willow-leaf saber from his waist. Cheonhwa took Okgyeong from his back and settled his grip.
Once both sides had weapons drawn and stances set, the referee shouted.
"Match—begin!"
The signal dropped. Cheonhwa and Paeng Gun-ak charged straight at each other.
Lightning-like true qi gathered along Paeng Gun-ak's willow-leaf saber and he swung for Cheonhwa. Meeting it, Cheonhwa answered with Okgyeong layered in threefold aura.
Boom!
When willow-leaf saber and wooden sword collided, a heavy crash rolled out and the air itself shuddered. The pressure of pure force against pure force crushed down upon the platform.
Before the shock of the first clash had even faded, Paeng Gun-ak brought the willow-leaf saber down in successive blows. Through them Cheonhwa felt the principles woven into the Paeng family's martial arts.
A school that overwhelms the opponent with strong, heavy offense.
Strength that produced fierce Jin Release. Weight born of layered internal power. Dominance that combined power and speed to drive the foe back without rest.
These three principles formed the core of the Paeng family's martial arts.
An assault that pours down without pause, like lightning striking again and again. This is no ordinary saber art.
It had to be the superior technique taught only to the direct line of the Hebei Paeng Family—the Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber.
Only a superior technique could fuse the principles of strength, weight, and dominance—all of which prized raw power—into so perfect a single whole. Its force would be formidable in equal measure, yet Cheonhwa answered with perfect calm.
A powerful saber art, but not without gaps.
The Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber's strength was also its weakness. If the wielder's skill failed to keep pace, the technique itself would drag him along. The first strike had been nearly flawless; the linked attacks that followed already showed openings everywhere. That was proof enough.
Strength demands precise control of the body. Weight demands careful management of internal power. Using even those two together is hard enough—adding dominance on top of them makes mastery no simple matter.
Even Cheonhwa, who could govern body and internal energy near-perfectly through Contemplation and Mental Consciousness, found combining strength and weight a laborious task. For Paeng Gun-ak, forced to rely on sensation alone, it would be harder still.
He means to paper over those openings with sheer force—but I have no intention of simply taking it.
Faced with the superior technique called the Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber, Cheonhwa chose the Blunt Sword as his answer.
Before the oncoming wave of willow-leaf saber strokes, the jade-colored wooden sword moved with deliberate slowness.
At that sluggish motion Paeng Gun-ak felt victory settle inside him. How could such leisurely swings ever block the linked strikes of the Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber?
The form that had been driving forward without restraint closed in on Cheonhwa—
Tuk.
Okgyeong lightly tapped the flat of the willow-leaf saber. The path of the form twisted and cut empty air. The linked strikes that followed met the same fate. Each time the wooden sword arrived a half-beat late and gave a light tap, the attack was deflected.
How… is this possible?
Paeng Gun-ak could scarcely believe what was unfolding before his eyes. The sword Cheonhwa swung so leisurely was receiving every saber stroke with ease. The situation was nothing like he had expected, and panic began to rise.
Something is clearly wrong!
He forced his mind back into order, drew up still more internal power, and unleashed another chain of forms. Innate physical strength transformed directly into ferocious Jin Release, howling through the air. That overwhelming force, if it landed cleanly, would inflict more than outer wounds—it would reach the organs themselves.
Yes—if it landed cleanly.
Before each form could finish, the wooden sword slipped in and jarred the striking point. Cheonhwa stepped half a pace or a full pace aside and let the assault pass. Slow yet economical movements. His own willow-leaf saber was unmistakably faster, yet it kept being overtaken.
In the end, having landed not a single clean blow, Paeng Gun-ak put distance between them and caught his breath.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
The rebound from dozens of continuous forms since the match began finally struck. Every muscle and meridian burned; fatigue pressed in. Roughly half his dantian's internal energy remained. Breathing hard, he stared at Cheonhwa with trembling eyes.
There was no hint of weariness—not even a single ragged breath. Paeng Gun-ak had been the one pressing the attack, yet he was the one who had fallen behind.
The Paeng family's saber art… is being pushed back by the Blunt Sword?
As a scion of a renowned house he had tasted many sects' martial arts, including the Blunt Sword. He knew how to break a Blunt Sword of equal rank: simply unleash an assault so overwhelming that the Blunt Sword could not receive it. The Paeng family's learning possessed force enough to do exactly that.
It should have been so…
Then why am I the one being pushed back?
Could the man be a Peak Expert? No—the qi he felt was only that of a First-class martial artist. Then why, as fellow First-class fighters, had he failed to so much as graze a fingertip?
Paeng Gun-ak had no leisure to find the answer, for Cheonhwa had begun his own assault. The slow sword came flying toward him.
"You think I can't block something that slow?!"
How could he fail to stop so leisurely a blade? He raised his saber, already calculating the next exchange in his mind.
The situation refused to follow his calculations.
The instant his willow-leaf saber met the wooden sword—
Crackle-crack.
A portion of the willow-leaf saber flash-froze under the sudden cold.
"What in the—?!"
Shocked, he tried to open distance, but Cheonhwa gave him no space. Closing the gap as fast as Paeng Gun-ak retreated, he swung Okgyeong again and again. With every clash he poured yin-cold qi into the saber through the Internal Weighting Water Method.
Paeng Gun-ak poured internal energy into the willow-leaf saber, desperate to resist, yet all he managed was to slow the freezing. From that moment the flow of the fight belonged entirely to Cheonhwa.
The essence of the Zhongnan Sect's Blunt Sword is to dye the opponent.
Restricting movement and seizing space were merely extensions of that principle. If reading the opponent's moves proved difficult, one simply made them simple enough to read. The means was the Internal Weighting Water Method through ice arts. The more they clashed, the more the weapon froze; cold climbed steadily until at last even the hand that gripped the blade was invaded by yin-cold qi.
Anyone would feel the danger at that point.
With the knowledge that prolonging the fight meant certain disadvantage sinking into the skin, and with no ready counter to ice arts, there was only one choice left: a short, decisive clash.
"Kh…!"
A groan escaped between Paeng Gun-ak's clenched teeth as he wrung out every remaining scrap of strength. To lose helplessly would be to stain the family's honor. He had to throw everything he had into one final collision.
I'll use the finishing form!
The finishing form of the Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber was no easy technique. Even draining every last reserve, he doubted he could complete it properly—yet it was still better than going down quietly. He cast the die that might overturn the board, never realizing the situation itself had been guided by his opponent.
When impatience makes a man rush, his actions grow simple.
And when actions grow simple, the path of the form becomes that much easier to read—which means it becomes that much easier to counter.
If it had been fully mastered, answering this way would have been far harder.
A saber art steeped in the principles of strength, weight, and dominance was specialized for frontal breakthroughs. The problem was Paeng Gun-ak's insufficient skill and the openings left by imperfect training.
Cheonhwa did not miss the gap that appeared as the man prepared a great form. Threefold aura coiled around the jade wooden sword. First Clear Wind Fine Rain, then Wind-Scattering Cloud Peaks. Yet those two forms were only stepping-stones for what came next. Preparations complete, Cheonhwa fixed his gaze on Paeng Gun-ak.
Savage energy like leaping lightning boiled along the willow-leaf saber—the result of drawing the paired divine art of the Paeng family, the Hunyuan Thunderclap Divine Art, to its extreme. The tingling sensation that raced through the five senses and the qi sense announced the monstrous force dwelling in that blade. To meet such a strike head-on was clearly reckless and foolish.
Cheonhwa chose that foolishness of his own will.
The moment the willow-leaf saber carrying the finishing form of the Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber crossed the jade wooden sword—
Twenty-fourth form of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven — the image of a thunderbolt falling from a clear sky without warning. Energy Disruption Sword, Jin Release waves, and the Internal Weighting Water Method concentrated into a single point to sever the opponent's form and internal flow in one stroke.
KRA-KOOM!
A thunderous roar exploded, and a shock incomparable to anything before swept the sparring platform. The mere aftermath of the collision cracked the floor and whipped the air into a gale. The spectators held their breath at that all-or-nothing clash, eyes fixed on the scene.
"Cough!"
One figure staggered and spat blood. The one who bled was Paeng Gun-ak. He stared at Cheonhwa with eyes that refused to believe.
He broke the finishing form…?
The internal injuries he had taken stemmed from the shock of the finishing form being dismantled. Great forms carried great power—and equally great backlash when shattered. Yet even if the execution had been crude, it was still the finishing form of a divine art. How it had been broken simply would not settle in his mind.
To resolve that question, Paeng Gun-ak moved his lips even as his face paled from the internal wounds.
"That form just now… what was it?"
"The twenty-fourth form of the Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven—Heavenly Thunderclap."
The final form of the mid-section, carrying the image of a thunderbolt that falls from the heavens without the slightest warning. A counter-form that focused Energy Disruption Sword, Jin Release waves, and the Internal Weighting Water Method into a single point to sever the opponent's technique and internal energy flow in one stroke.
"The Thirty-Six Swords Under Heaven? You're telling me the Paeng family's Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber was broken by the Zhongnan Sect's basic sword art?"
"The Hunyuan Thunderclap Saber was not broken because of any flaw in the art itself."
"…What do you mean by that?"
"Exactly what I said. No matter how supreme a divine art may be, if the martial artist who wields it is lacking, it cannot display its true power."
There might be no single greatest martial art under heaven, yet there were greatest martial artists. Anyone who pursued the martial path had heard the saying at least once. Even the finest learning was meaningless if the martial artist's own capacity failed to match it. That Cheonhwa, using a basic sword art, had overwhelmed Paeng Gun-ak, who used a divine art, followed the same principle.
With his current ability Paeng Gun-ak could not properly handle the treasured blade that was a divine art; he was merely swung about by it. Cheonhwa, by contrast, had drawn every last drop of potential from the ordinary longsword that was a basic form.
At Cheonhwa's answer Paeng Gun-ak wore a blank expression for a moment, then let out a hollow laugh.
"Is that so… So the problem wasn't the martial art, but my own skill. Yes. That was it."
Something seemed to have dawned on him. He turned his head toward the referee.
"I can no longer move. I forfeit."
The referee nodded and raised his voice so that all could hear.
"Victory in this match goes to Cheonhwa of the Zhongnan Sect!"
The moment the judgment fell, a roar of cheers erupted from the spectators' seats that had been holding their breath.