The Weighted Bracket
In the martial world, an event on the scale of the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe could never escape the calculus of profit and loss. The orthodox sects were a better lot, perhaps, but not so different in the end. Those who followed nothing but pure goodwill had long since met the point of a blade and fallen in the jianghu; call it an inevitable outcome.
Judged by that calculus, those who stood to gain the most from the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe were the rising warriors of the Nine Great Sects. For the convention's very essence was to serve the majority of Nine Sects prodigies who had never tasted the martial ways of the secular world.
Of course, that did not mean the benefit flowed one way alone. The Nine Sects were, after all, the face of the orthodox martial world, and their growth was tied directly to its peace. The secular warriors, for their part, gained the honor of an invitation from the Nine Sects, so calling it mutual aid was no stretch.
And so the sparring proceeded smoothly along the bracket, without ever overheating. A Qingcheng warrior faced the Tang Clan, an Emei warrior the Yan Clan, a Diancang warrior the Murong Family, each pair taking the ring in turn. Every bout was close, every exchange fierce, yet in all three the Nine Sects' warriors seized victory by the narrowest of margins.
“Hmm.”
As I had said before, there are no absolutes in a spar or a death match. I had raised the question myself, citing the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly, of whether the Nine Sects' recent young masters had not fallen short—but the right way to put it was that the difference was precisely a hair's breadth. The might of the Nine Sects that had met my eyes since I passed through Wudang's gates was worthy of every syllable of its reputation, and it would have surprised no one for them to win one match after another.
Perhaps for that reason, the warriors of the Three Great Families lamented their repeated defeats but raised no objection.
But the suspicion I had felt the moment I laid eyes on the bracket was slowly hardening into certainty.
A Qingcheng warrior versed in neutralizing poison and turning aside blades had been matched against a Tang Clan warrior versed in poison arts and hidden weapons. That the sect best acquainted with Tang poison arts—both hailing from Sichuan—should be Qingcheng went without saying. Against the Yan Clan's masters of weapon-breaking fist and foot, Emei's masters of the palm had been assigned; setting aside that the palm naturally holds the advantage over the fist, weapon-breaking itself was rendered useless, and the Yan warriors seemed unable to bring their full strength to bear. And against the Murong Family's swift-changing swordsmen, a Diancang master of the extreme swift sword had seized victory in a single stroke. It was common jianghu wisdom that the surest way to subdue mysterious swiftness and variation was to strike first—extreme speed, in other words.
…And was all of this, truly, mere coincidence?
“You don't look well, friend.”
“Ah. I was merely concentrating.”
Brother Chunbaek had struck up the conversation, but I did not lay out my thoughts. I could not begin to guess how a man whose roots ran to chivalrous daring and righteous indignation might choose to respond.
“Is that so?”
“It's nothing, so think nothing of it.”
I had said before that the martial arts have matchups. No art pursues a single form or trait alone, so 'absolute advantage' rarely exists even between counters. But that also meant 'relative advantage' did. At the very least, between warriors treading the same realm, a matchup could produce a meaningful difference.
By my judgment, that bracket had been drawn squarely around matchups—precisely, drawn so that every bout would run in the Nine Sects' favor. Analyzed from the standpoint of this beggar, who had memorized the entire Thousand Roster of Jianghu Figures and knew every sect's character down to the bone, there could be no mistake.
“Paeng Jin-hu of the Paeng Clan. Come forward.”
Cheon-am-jinin's call broke through my thoughts.
“Hahaha. I'm off, then. We may not be on the same side, but the Three Families' face must be kept, no?”
With that hearty laugh, the Mad Tiger Blade, Paeng Jin-hu, took his place at the center of the arena.
The opponent of Paeng Jin-hu, striding so boldly, was—
“Cheong-gang of Mount Hua. Come forward.”
A Mount Hua warrior said to have brought the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art to its completion.
“Haaah!”
Claaang—!
“Kgh!”
The heavy strike of the Five Tigers Severing Gate Saber had at last hammered against the plum blossom sword. A groan burst from the lips of the swordsman who had barely held the line; at a glance, Paeng Jin-hu looked to have the upper hand.
But that was not the truth of it. Therein lay the reason I had said at last: Paeng Jin-hu had unfolded one hundred and thirty-seven moves in all before his blade met Cheong-gang's weapon for the very first time.
Shff—
The plum blossom swordsman's footwork flickered nimbly, slipping his frame free of the line of attack. It was the lightness skill called Hidden Fragrance Drift, cut from the same cloth as the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art and as fleeting as its name implied.
As if to gather himself against the shock, the swordsman opened the distance, and Paeng Jin-hu, unwilling to let the chance slip, came on rough and relentless.
Thud!
But the Paeng family's lightness skill, the Seven Star Blunt Step, was ill-suited to chasing the traces of Hidden Fragrance Drift—at least where pursuit was concerned, it could be nothing else. The plum blossom swordsman was a warrior at his peak in his own right, and settling the shock in his arm took him no great time. Five breaths on, the grip that had trembled faintly was firm again.
“Hah!”
Shushushk—
The plum blossom sword surged back to life against the Five Tigers Severing Gate Saber that had been hounding him. By my guess, it was the Nine Transformations of the Plum Blossom, one of the ultimate techniques of the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art—even among Mount Hua's sword arts, steeped in variation, speed, and illusion, a technique whose swings of change ran unusually wide.
“Kgh!”
Whuum—!
Sensing the crisis, Paeng Jin-hu unfurled the Five Tigers Severing Gate Saber in all its ferocity, yet it fell somewhat short of chasing the Nine Transformations.
“…I am beaten.”
Unlike Paeng Jin-hu's saber, which had torn through empty air, deceived by a feint, Mount Hua's plum blossom sword rested precisely at his throat.
“The victor is Cheong-gang of Mount Hua.”
Against the backdrop of Cheon-am-jinin's declaration, Paeng Jin-hu performed a cupped-fist salute and withdrew.
“Kahaha. Mount Hua's sword is a hard thing to crack, as ever.”
He laughed heartily enough, but the fist clenched tight at his side told his true state of mind. Knowing that hollow comfort is no kindness to a warrior raging at himself, I had nothing to say to Paeng Jin-hu.
“Well fought.”
That was all, along with two light thumps on his shoulder. Uncle Yeobaek had once done the same for me, and I remembered how much it had steadied me.
Paeng Jin-hu's gaze found me, but I looked away. I had no taste for trading burning glances between men.
“Namgung Tan of the Namgung Clan. Come forward.”
Cheon-am-jinin's voice rolled across the grounds again, and Namgung Tan, seated far off, rose to his feet. His gaze rested briefly on me and Dancheon Hak before he made for the sparring stage.
I did not care for the man Namgung Tan, but I knew he had not learned his martial arts idly. Even so, his fight would be no easy one.
“Wusang of Wudang. Come forward.”
For his opponent was a warrior of Wudang. In truth, judged against the bouts before them, Paeng Jin-hu and Namgung Tan had drawn the harder fights: the Paeng family's Five Tigers Severing Gate Saber against Mount Hua's Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Art, the Namgung clan's Boundless Firmament Sword Art against Wudang's Flowing Cloud Sword—each pairing was a matchup of extremes.
Whuum!
Swish—
My guess had not been wrong. The Namgung heavy sword against the Wudang yielding sword was a contest that could only unfold one way.
“Haah!”
Whuum—!
It was a battle of the Boundless Firmament Sword's ceaseless offense against the Flowing Cloud Sword's endless deflection. To those who knew nothing of the martial arts, it was a fight to marvel at Namgung Tan's overwhelming assault; to those who understood, it was Wusang's mastery of flow overcoming weight that deserved the awe. For a long while, the heavy sword that ought to have crushed Mount Tai flowed away like passing cloud.
“Hah… hah…”
The watershed of the contest was slowly coming into view, for Namgung Tan was beginning to struggle for breath. In most cases the attacker burns through qi and stamina faster than the defender; such is the way of things. And the way of the heavy sword made the swings of stamina all the steeper. That he had swung his sword at full strength until now spoke to how faithfully he had trained his body—and naturally, Namgung Tan knew his own situation as well as anyone watching.
“Take care. There is nothing behind this technique.”
Namgung Tan spoke in a voice steeped in a great family's dignity, utterly unlike the tone he took when needling me. Announcing one's final technique before unleashing it was, properly speaking, bluster—but remembering that this was a friendly exchange, one could dress it up as a great family's courtesy. In any case: bluster was bluster, and skill was skill. At the very least, Namgung Tan possessed skill to match his bluster.
Guuung—
A new momentum seeped into Namgung Tan as he unfolded the Boundless Firmament Sword Art. It was the Namgung clan's supreme learning: the King's Sword Form. I had watched him unfold its mere shape in the trials of the Dragon and Phoenix Assembly, and his King's Sword Form had since advanced a great stride beyond that day—which meant the Spear Dragon had put in bone-grinding effort of his own.
“Pay it no mind. Come.”
Wusang-jinin, too, seemed to sense that this was no ordinary moment, taking up a full opening stance for the first time. The Taiji Wisdom Sword. The trace of Grand Master Sambong-jinin had revealed itself upon this ground.
“If you block this, it is my defeat.”
Namgung Tan said, and—
“Then I shall have to block it.”
Wusang replied. Matchups aside, for this one moment the ground held nothing but the unadulterated spirit of young warriors brimming with fighting pride.
Kwaaaah—
The King's Sword Form Namgung Tan unleashed stretched straight and true, tearing through the air—
Shhh—
—and the circling Taiji wrapped its arms around the sovereign's violence. Call it the meeting of heavy sword and yielding sword, but only after more than twenty exchanges of shifting techniques had tangled within it did the two break apart again. It was a struggle between warriors who had already shed the frame of 'rising talent'—a contest between full-fledged martial artists, plain and simple.
…
“Kgh.”
Namgung Tan held his silence; a faint groan escaped Wusang-jinin. But the outcome belied appearances.
“…I have lost.”
In the end, the King's Sword Form had failed to sever the Taiji Wisdom Sword's unbroken flow; there was no mistaking his declaration. Namgung Tan performed the cupped-fist salute and withdrew in silence.
“Mm.”
Only then did groans begin to rise here and there among the Three Families' party, for every one of them was beginning to see it, however dimly: that the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe, up to now, had been nothing but a procession of Nine Sects victories. The Nine Sects had always stood at the summit of the martial world, so their might was no shock—but to the Three Great Families, a clean sweep at the Sinjin Gyoryuhoe was a bitter pill all the same. Their warriors had come to exchange arts, after all, not to be schooled.
“Hmm.”
If even I, who disliked Namgung Tan, felt an inexplicable fire rise at the sight of his defeat, one could only imagine how the others felt.
“Dancheon Hak of the Dancheon Clan. Come forward.”
Dancheon Hak rose. Even before he stepped onto the ring, there was a proud, unyielding air to the way his hand closed around the hilt of the Dancheon Sword.
“Brother.”
“What is it?”
Dancheon Hak answered without so much as turning his head. His focus, I could tell, had climbed to its very peak.
“Win.”
Properly, one ought not burden a warrior on the eve of a contest, but I decided not to care. My brother Dancheon Hak had built himself on hours of relentless training, and I knew how firm that foundation was—far too firm to be shaken by a single word of pressure.
“Hmph.”
Dancheon Hak snorted, then went on—
“I meant to win whether you said it or not.”
Truly, the bearing of the Dancheon Clan's rightful heir.