You've Heard of the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven, Haven't You?
Sun Wukong did not know fatigue. Even stripped of his celestial power, his flesh was not a mortal's. He was a noble existence that had fashioned itself into being — a body of bronze skull and iron brow, a head like forged copper, a forehead like steel. In sheer physical hardness, Sun Wukong already possessed a body perfected to its utmost limit.
And yet even he felt a faint weariness now.
"Master Sun."
"Ah... you're here again."
It was Namgung Muyoung, his face as earnestly serious as ever.
Seowol in the morning, Muyoung in the afternoon, Ojeong in the evening. How am I supposed to not be busy?
Sun Wukong clicked his tongue.
I think I'm living way too hard.
A sense of injustice welled up in him. The pilgrimage to India was over. He should have been taking it easy. Coming down to the mortal world and mixing with humans — what kind of hardship was this supposed to be?
This is all Sanzang's fault.
When he actually found the man, he was going to beat him until he bawled his eyes out. Sun Wukong looked at Muyoung with drooping eyelids.
"Aren't you tired? You're the young master. I heard you're plenty busy."
"Busy I am. The Grand Assembly of Murim draws near, so I have no shortage of work."
"Then do you really have to come find me like this?"
"As a disciple, seeking out one's master is only natural, is it not?"
"No, that's..."
Looking at those lips pressed into a firm, unyielding line, Sun Wukong felt thoroughly stifled. Muyoung's reason for coming was simple.
"I request your instruction again today."
A movement so courteous it went beyond politeness into something carved from pure propriety. Sun Wukong sighed. He had always thought dealing with the unpredictable Seowol was the hardest part. Lately, that opinion had shifted.
This kid has to have mixed blood with Sanzang in a past life. How can anyone be this stubborn?
Sun Wukong looked at Muyoung with a thoroughly fed-up expression. A will as unbending as iron sinew. The very embodiment of inflexibility. The man always left him feeling as if he were staring straight at Sanzang himself. As the young master, as the heir who would one day lead the Namgung Clan, it was an admirable stance. But as Namgung Jinbaek worried, he was a man whose convictions would never break.
Tch. That's exactly what makes him even more like Sanzang.
He couldn't be certain, though. That was why Sun Wukong, however reluctantly, kept accepting Muyoung's sparring requests.
If I beat him until he genuinely thinks he might die, maybe his soul will show itself — the way those demon bastards did.
Muyoung definitely carried more of Sanzang's scent than Seowol did. Sun Wukong figured the sparring was a perfectly legal excuse to pound Muyoung half to death. Who knew? Maybe then that ironclad mental barrier would crack, and the Fiery Golden Eyes would see past it into his inner landscape.
"You've stocked up on medicine, right?"
"Yes. I will give my all today as well."
Muyoung actually welcomed these spars all the more. He could feel it in every bone — that Sun Wukong was facing him in earnest. Enough that Seowol would watch with eyes full of envy.
A staff came flying in without a sound.
No greeting, no preparation, no opening stance. Muyoung, as if long accustomed to this, reacted without a hint of panic.
KAGAGAGANG!
A sword drawn on reflex caught the staff. An overwhelming rebound force shot through his wrist. Muyoung's face went rigid.
No matter how many times I see it, I cannot get used to that monstrous speed.
It had been a staff of ink-dark steel strapped to the man's back. The instant he registered it, it was already dropping toward his face at a speed that defied comprehension. If it were only speed, that would be one thing. The shock that traveled from wrist to elbow, shoulder, neck, and waist, stacking layer upon layer, was nothing short of staggering.
But I will endure it.
A faint smile even touched Muyoung's lips. His blade drank in a blue radiance and carved through space. Unlike his usual composure, Muyoung's sword was the pinnacle of the Namgung Clan's martial arts — a dominating force that looked ready to shatter even an iron wall. Each strike carried a crushing, oppressive weight, and yet he still managed, barely, to match the speed of Sun Wukong's staff.
Muyoung had grown conspicuously. Enough that Seowol, who watched every spar, seethed with jealousy. Of course, even so, grazing so much as a hair on Sun Wukong's head remained a distant dream. Sun Wukong gave him not an inch of mercy.
CRASH!
"Kh!"
The impacts stacked until he could hear the sickening sound of joints slipping out of place. He blocked, he dodged, he kept moving — but as time wore on, it became increasingly impossible. That he had lasted this long at all was itself proof of how far he had come.
THWACK!
"Guh!"
Muyoung let out a death-rattle of a scream. The staff's crushing weight slammed into his thigh. He had guarded with inner energy, but that did nothing to erase the pain. The moment his thigh was struck, the foundation of his lower body collapsed in an instant. What followed was indiscriminate violence.
As it always was.
He had heard they were spending so much on medicine that it would have been a serious problem if the Namgung Clan's assets hadn't recently increased. Half of that, he suspected, was going to Muyoung.
Muyoung clasped his fists in a formal salute to Sun Wukong, looking as though he might drop dead at any second. Even after that indiscriminate beating, he still stood firmly on both feet.
"I thank you... for the instruction."
His voice trembled in fine shivers, mixed with groans. A face filled with pain. And yet, within it, a faint heat was stirring.
"I have taken one more small step toward enlightenment. Master Sun's teachings are of great help to me every time."
Muyoung's eyes flashed with a feverish light.
"..."
Even the legendary Sun Wukong found himself taking an involuntary step back.
"D-doesn't that hurt?"
He had hit him for real. He had pressed him hard enough that Ojeong would have soiled himself. And this kid actually looked like he was enjoying it. That upright young man's face.
"Pain is the shortest path to making a person advance, is it not? That is why you drive Lord Ojeong so relentlessly as well."
"Well, yeah, but..."
Ojeong screamed every day and spent the whole time trying to run away. Muyoung did not.
"Then I shall request your instruction again tomorrow."
Even as he staggered, Muyoung forced the words out, wrapped in a heat that was hard to name. Sun Wukong had swung his staff intending to make the boy genuinely believe he might die. It was in moments of crisis that people broke through their limits and advanced. Even through the pain, Muyoung could feel with desperate clarity that he was taking one step forward after another.
The hardest thing in martial study was that one could rarely feel one's own growth. Whether you were improving, whether you were advancing — it didn't show up in neat numbers, and countless martial artists in the world sat down in that maze and never got back up. But Muyoung felt his growth with his entire body. The magic of accomplishment. It was a driving force so powerful that even through accumulating pain, heat rose to Muyoung's face.
Of course, it was a thrill rising over a face twisted in agony.
Has he gotten hit so much he's gone crazy?
The problem was that even a faint trace of madness was visible. Sun Wukong unconsciously made a face of utter distaste.
This little bastard... does he actually like getting hit?
He had thought this one was the likely reincarnation of Sanzang, but he couldn't quite bring himself to be certain. Sun Wukong's teaching — driving a person to their absolute limit — had drawn out a nature Muyoung had kept tightly hidden. That tiny flicker of madness on his face was the proof.
But Sun Wukong let out a sigh.
He should have felt the fear of dying. So why does his mental barrier just keep getting harder?
An impenetrable wall that even the Fiery Golden Eyes could not see through.
"What, you get stronger the more I hit you?"
He wasn't a lump of iron in a forge. Getting stronger the more you hammered him? Sun Wukong sighed. Ever since the first day he'd agreed to spar, Muyoung had come seeking pain every single day without growing tired of it. Sun Wukong found it annoying, sure, but it wasn't all bad.
The martial arts of the Wudang Sect and the martial arts of the Namgung Clan. Applying both of them in actual combat, expressed through staff techniques — it was becoming familiar in Sun Wukong's hands. And with Sun Wukong's own distinctive flavor added in, it was beginning to take on a unique character. The path of reinventing sword-based martial arts as staff techniques. Sun Wukong was getting quite a bit out of these spars with Muyoung as well.
"Ugh. I'd rather die than suffer like this."
Still, all that came out of Sun Wukong's mouth was complaining. Come evening, he'd have to play with Ojeong again, wouldn't he? Sun Wukong thought anew that he was living an awfully hardworking life. The biggest reason he had ended up like this.
Sanzang. I am not letting you off.
I'll find the Golden Tightening Fillet and clap it around your neck myself.
And then, in the midst of all that, Sun Wukong received the news he had been waiting for.
"Great Hero, a message has arrived from Jo Hae of the Hao Sect."
"From Jo Hae?"
"He says he found it."
Sun Wukong's eyes lit up.
The scorching summer had passed, and days of cool, seeping wind arrived in earnest.
The Grand Assembly of Murim. The topic that had set the martial world ablaze. As the appointed date drew near, countless martial artists who claimed the banner of the Orthodox Path gathered in Anhui Province.
Aside from the Wudang Sect, none of the Nine Sects and One Gang had arrived yet. But among the Five Great Clans, the Zhuge Clan, the Hwangbo Clan, and even the Hebei Peng Clan had already arrived at the Namgung Clan Estate and unpacked their belongings. Excluding the Tang Clan, which had declared it would not attend due to internal circumstances, the Five Great Clans were all assembled.
It was the season when the great sects and clans would gradually arrive in Anhui. Naturally, the smaller sects and clans had arrived even earlier, watching how things developed. The Orthodox martial world instinctively understood the importance of this occasion.
The Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans, who had until now lived as if the others barely existed. A grand event that would gather them all in one place. Whispers circulated that a new alignment of power might be taking shape.
"Would this not be an Orthodox Alliance that encompasses even the Five Great Clans, beyond the Wulin Alliance?"
"Heh, could a union that truly unites the entire Orthodox martial world actually come to be?"
"It is an event jointly hosted by the Wulin Alliance and the Namgung Clan, and it is being held here at the Namgung Clan Estate. We wouldn't know, but perhaps some discussion has already taken place."
"If so, that would be news to make whatever remnants of the Sama Order are still alive tremble in their boots."
The gathered martial artists, regardless of origin or hometown, clustered with like-minded companions and talked without pause.
"If it is to be an alliance that encompasses the entire Orthodox Path, then our voices ought to be heard as well, should they not?"
"But with the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans as the core, what influence could regional powers like us possibly wield?"
"Alone, perhaps not. But if the mid-sized and smaller sects band together, even the Nine Sects and One Gang and the Five Great Clans would not be able to treat us lightly. That is what I am saying."
"Hoh..."
Ambitious, high-spirited martial artists had gathered.
"What method is there? Raising our voices alone is not the issue. We need a person of high repute who can deliver those voices to them."
"Hmm, our clan lord has the skill, but the reputation to match..."
"Our sect has a master who could be counted among the Hundred Great Experts, but..."
"Not 'is counted' but 'could be counted' — isn't that a bit subjective?"
"Honestly, people of high repute generally come from the great sects and clans, do they not?"
They soon ran into a wall. The problem was that finding a renowned figure who could speak on their behalf was difficult.
"Someone unaffiliated with any faction, yet possessing both skill and fame..."
"There is one such person!"
Someone shouted. The scattered gazes gathered. A middle-aged man who said he was from Hunan Province glanced around, then lowered his voice.
"There is exactly one person right now. He has the fame, he has the skill, and he belongs to no one."
"There is such a person?"
"What's more, he has ties to the Wudang Sect, the representative of the Nine Sects and One Gang, and he wields considerable influence over the Namgung Clan, the foremost of the Five Great Clans."
The man's eyes gleamed.