Coming to Terms
"You've all worked hard sitting through the evaluation the moment the entrance ceremony ended. Return to your assigned dormitories and get some rest. The ranks determined by the evaluation will be announced in due time."
The evaluation matches that had begun so abruptly after the entrance ceremony didn't wrap up until the sun was sinking. The instant Principal Song Muja finished speaking, the new students — exhaustion written plainly on their faces — headed for the dormitories without a backward glance.
Unlike the others, who looked ready to drop, Baek Woohyeok was still perfectly composed. He was just starting toward his quarters at an easy pace when a voice cut across his path.
"Hey. Young Hero Baek. Let's talk."
"Oh, how's the face?"
"And whose fault is that...? Are you seriously offering me medicine after you were the one who did this?"
It was Jegal Hui, an ice pack pressed to a face swollen almost beyond recognition.
"That was me going easy. You felt it too."
"Well... that's true. But why are you talking so casually?"
"Never had much schooling. You know I'm an orphan."
"...I'm older than you, you know. I heard you were fifteen."
"Who knows. Nobody knows my exact age. I might even be older than you."
"...Did I do something wrong?"
"Not particularly."
"Hnnngh... Fine. Then I'll drop the formalities too. Happy?"
"Suit yourself. So why'd you call me?"
Exchanging names after you'd already beaten the stuffing out of each other was pretty absurd, but at least the two of them had finally been introduced properly.
"How did you even read my movements? Was it your martial art? What's it called? Who taught it to you? It has to be some famous master whose name is known throughout the jianghu, right?"
Half her face hidden behind the enormous ice pack, Jegal Hui fired off questions in a breathless stream, her eyes glittering with curiosity.
Tsk. Doesn't even hurt that much, huh? She's still got the energy to ask pointless questions... Should I have hit her harder?
Baek Woohyeok couldn't quite hide his discomfort as Jegal Hui inched closer and closer.
I did answer her questions, more or less. Of course, I mixed in a healthy dose of lies.
"So... you're saying you found a secret manual in a cave you happened to stumble into on your way from home to Cheonryong Academy?"
"Got lucky."
"Does that even make sense...?"
"Street-born experts like me — the ones who didn't come out of some famous clan or sect — usually run into at least one stroke of fortune like that."
"I've heard stories like that, sure... but this still feels way too convenient..."
Sharp kid.
"Does it matter? The martial scholars already verified the art. It's orthodox, founded on Buddhist principles."
"Oh, I never thought it was a demonic art. ...Come to think of it, you were a provisional student, weren't you? If you had a martial art like that, how did you fail the entrance exam?"
"I was too busy getting to Cheonryong Academy. Didn't have time to properly learn it..."
"The formulas of a high-level art are supposed to be incredibly complex. You taught yourself? You said you were an orphan. How did you even learn to read? Is there some secret to your birth? Or are you a once-in-a-generation genius?"
"A martial arts nut, through and through..."
"Huh?"
"Nothing. Anyway, I just figured it out as I went, and I don't really know where the art originally came from. Some master from a previous generation, probably."
"Hmmm... Sounds like a lie."
I held my ground without a shred of shame under Jegal Hui's narrowed eyes.
Go ahead and suspect me. What are you going to do about it? What can you even do?
"Well, I'll let it slide for now. That's not what's important anyway."
Thank god.
"So the technique you used to wreck my pretty face — that was in the manual too?"
"You've got a high opinion of yourself."
"Well, I am pretty. Even my father said I'm the most beautiful woman in Hubei."
Boasting like that with her face swollen like a dumpling only made it funnier.
Divine Stratagem Scholar... If that old man finds out I wrecked Jegal Hui's face, he's going to lose his mind.
Jegal Hui's father, and the current patriarch of the Jegal Clan — Divine Stratagem Scholar Jegal Hyeon. Among the orthodox path's renowned masters — a bunch of old fossils, most of them — he was one of the few you could actually have a conversation with. A man worthy of respect, if you overlooked the fact that his affection for his daughter bordered on madness.
"...You're not going to tell the Jegal Clan Leader, are you?"
"Even if I don't, you think Father won't hear about it? Cheonryong Academy is an educational institution under the Murim Alliance. The report's probably already gone out."
"Damn it."
The curse slipped out before I could stop it.
Maybe I should've hit her a little more gently.
With that thought, I more or less ended the conversation, circulated my movement art, and headed for the dorms.
"Hey! Baek Woohyeok! What was that technique?! At least tell me the name of the martial art!"
I naturally didn't answer the questions trailing after me. Once you start playing along, there's no telling when it'll end.
"I'm going to ask you everything next time! Don't even think about running away!"
We'll see.
Cheonryong Academy divides its students into four ranks based on the evaluation: Heaven, Earth, Profound, and Yellow.
In my previous life, I had been a Yellow-rank student.
Life as a Yellow-rank student is relentlessly busy. You're too consumed with learning the new martial arts Cheonryong Academy teaches you to think about much else. The arts that Yellow-rank students learned before entering the academy tend to be of a fairly low caliber, and to them, the academy's martial arts — jointly created by the foremost martial scholars — are a stroke of fortune in their own right.
I, too, had once felt my chest swell at the thought that I was finally learning a proper martial art. That's why I'd lived like a model student among model students, throwing myself into training and attending every lecture. Of course, being a model student doesn't mean you get good grades — I was living proof of that. But still.
I don't need to do that this time around.
In this life, I'd naturally been selected as a Heaven-rank student. And the lineup of Heaven-rank students was dazzling.
The future Martial God, Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero Danmok Jin. Namgung Cheon, who insisted that he was supposed to be the Heavenly Dragon Sword Hero. Jegal Hui, who would later be called the Sword Queen and rise to the position of the foremost woman in the martial world. The Peng Clan's only legitimate heir and the Tang Clan's youngest young master, who would one day stand alongside Danmok Jin and Jegal Hui as heroes of the murim. And so on.
Surprisingly, the vast majority of these Heaven-rank students didn't actually attend class. It was the complete opposite of the Yellow-rank students, nearly all of whom studied diligently.
When you thought about it, it made perfect sense.
Heaven-rank students typically came from famous clans and sects whose names alone made people nod in recognition. Of the ones I'd just listed, every single one except Danmok Jin was from the Five Great Noble Clans, and even the Danmok Clan ranked among the top ten prestigious families in the Central Plains.
No matter how remarkable Cheonryong Academy's martial arts were, they couldn't surpass the supreme arts of the great clans and sects. And the instructors' teachings weren't necessarily better than what their own seniors had taught them, so Heaven-rank students had no particular reason to take class seriously.
In the end, Cheonryong Academy was less an educational institution than a social club for the "real" rising stars of the orthodox murim. The Heaven-rank students of this class wouldn't have enrolled at all if it weren't for the prestige of being a Cheonryong Academy graduate and the chance to build connections that would prove useful later.
And more than anything, the lecture titles look boring as hell. Who'd want to sit through those unless they were starving for knowledge?
Who in their right mind would enjoy mandatory courses like Patterns of Martial Transformation According to the Teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism or Fundamentals of Martial Theory?
They said practical exercises became more frequent from the second year on, but a new student's classes took place entirely within the unnecessarily vast grounds of Cheonryong Academy. It was only natural that Heaven-rank students — who'd been receiving extraordinary instruction since childhood — had little enthusiasm for learning.
Someone once said that school is just a place you go to get a diploma.
Anyway, now that I was a Heaven-rank student in this life, I decided to live in a manner befitting the rank.
"...So this is what skipping class feels like. Not bad."
In other words, I'd decided to devote myself to other things rather than lectures.
That didn't mean I had any intention of wasting time on pointless socializing. The only people who'd genuinely want to be friends with an orphan from some backwater village in Hangzhou were Danmok Jin and maybe Jegal Hui.
And in this life, I'd started off on the wrong foot from the beginning. In the past, they'd dismissed me as a nobody. Now, I seemed to have become an object of fear among my classmates.
"Hah... My next-door neighbor is the Blood Wolf's room? Damn it, I should ask the housemaster to switch me..."
After the first evaluation match, I'd somehow acquired the vicious epithet Blood Wolf — the kind of name you'd slap on unorthodox riffraff. Even classmates who'd made Heaven rank flinched at the sight of me, so I gave up on making friends then and there.
Anyway, on the first day the semester officially began—
Right, then...
Having casually ditched class, I circulated Ghost Shadow Steps to conceal myself and headed toward a certain hidden location within Cheonryong Academy.
True to its reputation as the greatest educational institution in the murim, Cheonryong Academy was enormous. And despite having been founded a mere sixty-odd years ago, it was famous for the opportunities hidden all over the grounds.
There are even people who enroll specifically to hunt down the hidden fortunes inside Cheonryong Academy.
If I was being honest, I probably wasn't much different from those people in this life.
What I lacked most right now was the quantity of my inner energy. No matter how exceptional the Iron-Blooded Yama Divine Art was at accumulating qi, two months simply wasn't enough to catch up to the other students' reserves.
What I needed in a situation like this was a stroke of fortune.
"Found it."
A place deep in the forest that almost no one knew about, even among Cheonryong Academy's unusually abundant hidden opportunities. The energy of nature ran so rich here that circulating one's qi produced several times the usual effect — precisely the fortune needed to replenish insufficient inner energy.
"Man, it's been a while."
A strange wave of nostalgia washed over me as I slowly looked around for a good spot to sit in the lotus position.
"Tsk. So you came too, you maggot."
A familiar voice drifted over from somewhere.
"Ah... of course."
Namgung Cheon.
I never ran into Namgung Cheon at the Dragon Vein in my previous life, though.
Well, he must have gotten the information from somewhere. This was a guy who'd figured out that this world was the setting of a pulp novel, after all.
That said—
"Me too?"
There was something odd about the way Namgung Cheon had phrased it. As if someone besides the two of us was here.
...I know who it is.
I sensed a presence in the distance.
"Hahaha... Baek Woohyeok, was it? I enjoyed watching your match the other day. What a coincidence, running into you in a place like this."
Naturally, it was Danmok Jin.
Danmok Jin thought:
The plot is way too off. Why is Namgung Cheon already finding the Dragon Vein? And how the hell did Baek Woohyeok even know about this place?
Namgung Cheon thought:
Tsk. So a place like this existed. No wonder I kept falling behind Danmok Jin. That bastard.
Baek Woohyeok thought:
Well now. This is getting interesting on several levels.