Star Reversal
A few days after the marriage talks concluded, Seolha and I held our engagement ceremony. Just as I'd expected, the elders were beside themselves with delight, and with that, the subject of my marriage was laid to rest for the foreseeable future.
Then I returned to the Flag Bearer Corps, where Seolha and I were promptly bombarded with questions until neither of us could think straight.
Well, I figured as much. I never thought it was actually true. You son of a—
Hold on. Who exactly just called me a son of a bitch?
My best guess was Wang Ojong.
And now, several days later still, I was doing my own self-directed training out on the Flag Bearer Corps training grounds.
With so much happening lately, I hadn't been able to train properly, and as a result my cultivation had plateaued. One look inward during my breathing meditation confirmed it — I wasn't noticeably stronger than the day I'd joined the corps.
And here I thought this was supposed to be some kind of academy. In the end, I've learned absolutely nothing.
Nari had told me the Flag Bearer Corps was a school where one studied both martial arts and scholarly learning. Yet since enlisting, I hadn't studied martial arts, let alone books.
So what did the rest of the corps — myself included — do all day? Absolutely nothing. We just sprawled about.
"Waaaah!"
"Whoa, a butterfly!"
It was nothing short of a children's playground. The boys lay sprawled across the dirt in a heap, squirming and rolling around, while the girls had gathered in little clusters to admire butterflies and flowers.
In-name-only or not, I had to wonder if this place was really an army at all. But there was a bigger problem.
Gah! I want to play too! I want to play so badly it hurts!
Watching them goof around within earshot of my training made me itch to join in. It was driving me half-mad, wanting to roll around in the dirt with the boys on some grand adventure.
Then again, training anywhere else wasn't really an option. The Flag Bearer Corps consisted of a single hall, one training ground, and two dormitories — a tiny outfit through and through. In other words, aside from this training ground, there was nowhere suitable to train at all.
Maybe I could ask Wang Inho to let me train alone at Jeongsongjang.
Jeongsongjang — the pine-filled training ground I used to frequent. Nobody else was using it anyway, so surely I could. I was still mulling it over when—
Seolha?
Off in the distance, a white-haired girl was walking toward me. Seolha and I had grown close since that day, so I raised a hand in greeting — and the instant I waved, she flinched and came sprinting over.
"Sogaju-nim!"
"Morning. Sleep well?"
"Yes. Did you sleep well too, Sogaju-nim?"
"Me? I always sleep the same."
After exchanging our morning greetings, the two of us naturally picked up wooden swords together. With classes on hold lately, we'd been passing the time sparring.
Training deeply alone was all well and good, but sparring with Seolha like this kept my combat instincts sharp in a way solitary practice never could.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The boys' whooping and the girls' shrieks of laughter gradually faded from the training ground until only the clatter of wooden swords remained.
True warriors indeed — the moment our bout began, they all stopped to watch with rapt attention. If they were going to gawk like that, they could at least spar amongst themselves instead.
Clack!
I shook my head and refocused on the bout. Seolha's attacks had grown fierce.
This girl. She's stronger than she was yesterday.
A true genius, it seemed — she was growing by leaps and bounds with each passing day. Meanwhile, I had stalled.
When my particular talent — a kind of crisis-triggered intuition — activated, my abilities would leap forward in the span of a single incense stick's burning. But with no such event occurring, my cultivation had ground to a halt.
If my internal energy grew, I could reclaim my former heights, but I was still trapped in a child's body; even swallowing a single Hwandan pill required caution.
My one consolation was that the energy of the Tiger Dragon Body Pill — the one that had nearly killed me — still lingered within me.
At this rate, Seolha will overtake me.
With that thought, I lowered my wooden sword. Seolha did the same.
"Shall we stop here for today?"
"Let's end the sparring here. If you only ever spar against the same type of opponent, you'll panic the moment you meet a completely different kind of fighter in a real battle."
Seolha stared at me with wonder in her eyes.
"You know so much. It's as if you've had real combat experience."
"Huh? Oh, ah — my father told me. Haha."
"As expected of the Gaju-nim! Or wait — should I be calling him Father now...?"
While Seolha drifted off into her own world, I turned my mind to how I might grow stronger. My internal energy was too shallow to use any of my past-life techniques. And it wasn't as if practicing the Flag Bearer Corps' rudimentary swordsmanship would make me any stronger.
So in the end, the Moyong Clan arts are all I have left.
Granted, "the Moyong Clan arts" really just meant the ones that didn't demand much internal energy — that was the only category I could actually use. Still, refining those had to beat squandering my days doing nothing. And as it happened, I had an excellent sparring partner right here.
"Could you help me train my techniques?"
"Oh, of course — though since we're not married yet, calling him Father might be jumping the gun a little... no wait, we are engaged, so I ought to show proper courtesy and call him Father—"
"Seolha?"
"Ah! Yes? What was I saying?"
That had felt dangerously close to something.
Someone's face flickered at the edge of my memory, but I forced myself to ignore it and spoke again.
"Will you help me train? Just give me the strongest single strike you can manage."
"Of course. Shall I use the Archer's Guard formation?"
"No, not that. A Moyong Clan technique. Moyong Hu taught me personally."
"The Commander of the Royal Sword Brigade taught you? That's remarkable — he hardly seems the type."
"Why do you say that?"
According to Seolha, Moyong Hu commanded respect within the clan second only to Wang Inho himself. A man of few words who spoke only when necessary, he had never once drawn controversy, and in all his years he had never disobied an order of the clan — nor failed to carry one out.
In fact, when I'd nearly been torn limb from limb over the Moyong Hu affair, no one had believed it was his doing until he confessed himself.
That guy? That guy?
I tried to picture Moyong Hu that way. Reserved, deeply loyal, universally respected.
"SOGAJU-NIM!!! PLEASE, I BEG YOU, TAKE MY LIFE!!!"
No matter how I turned it over, the information spreading through the clan simply had to be wrong. Could this be the Choe family's doing?
I was still fretting that unless we dealt with the Choes soon, the whole clan would be in danger, when Seolha settled into her stance.
"You won't tell me what technique it is?"
"Why don't you try to guess?"
"That sounds fun."
With that, neither of us spoke again. Perhaps true masters could chatter mid-exchange, but for anyone else, talking during a bout — even practice — was a good way to get hurt.
Sssssaaaah.
Frost-laden air bloomed around Seolha's wooden sword. Two years ago she had simply hurled raw ice; now she was generating cold itself, which meant she'd gained fine control and versatile application.
The frost began to wind itself around her sword, and the temperature where I stood plummeted. I'd hardly finished anticipating her attack when she swung.
The distance between us was roughly ten paces. Swing a sword from there and, ordinarily, nothing at all would happen.
Shiiiiing!!
But something shot out along the arc of her blade. That blade-shaped thing was—
Sword qi?!
Impossible.
Sword qi — the technique I'd barely managed to master in my past life — and this girl was already using it? Even for a genius, was that possible?
The thought flashed through me, and then I saw the truth of it.
Too slow.
An ordinary person couldn't have dodged it, but by any murim standard, the speed was absurdly lacking. She had probably just launched the cold air itself. To wield it as true sword qi would demand far greater application and internal energy.
Looking forward to the finished technique someday, I charged. My wooden sword met the pseudo-sword-qi Seolha had loosed.
The instant they touched, I channeled my internal energy into the principle of rotation, and in the same breath spun my whole body through a full turn.
When I faced forward again, Seolha's frost was coiled around my own wooden sword. At the sight, every member of the Flag Bearer Corps froze in open disbelief.
Coating one's blade with an opponent's own technique? An impossible art.
That was what they all thought. But it wasn't over yet. I swung the sword — and frost burst forth, just as it had from Seolha's blade.
Dou Zhuan Xing Yi — turn the Dipper, shift the stars.
The opponent's own technique is returned to them.
Not merely returned — returned faster, and returned harder.
"Eep!"
With a rare, strangled cry, Seolha slammed her wooden sword straight down into the ground. The earth froze around it, and in an instant a thin wall of ice rose to shield her.
KRAKOOM!
My released frost struck her ice wall head-on. The wall shattered, and Seolha was knocked back a step.
Whoa. Too much?
Regret came flooding in, but what was done was done. The dirt caked in Seolha's white hair, the teary glare she leveled at me — none of it could be undone.
Could Star Reversal turn this back too?
Of course, it could not.
The next morning, I was still rubbing my tingling ears.
Who does something like that in a practice bout? You could have at least warned me first! The nagging had come down on me until my ears all but bled.
So the first thing I did after our engagement was get scolded. It seemed every woman who liked me had a real gift for lecturing.
Not that I brought it on myself or anything.
Aigoo.
With a single long sigh, I headed for the training ground as usual. Today was the day of our first actual class, if I remembered right.
I had no idea which of the instructors would be teaching, but I found myself hoping it would be martial arts. As I walked along thinking that, the Flag Bearer Corps trainees began to come into view in the distance.
Their faces were all familiar by now. Yet aside from Seolha and Wang Ojong, I still hadn't held a real conversation with any of them.
The seniors avoided me — I'd beaten them all black and blue on my first day, after all — and my fellow recruits found me intimidating. Above all, the business with Seolha had left no time for anyone else.
I was starting to worry that if I didn't befriend people beyond Seolha soon, I'd end up an outsider. The young clan lord, an outcast? What a humiliating thought.
Lost in worry over my future, I reached the training ground before I knew it — and at that very moment, a gravelly voice greeted me.
"You're late."
Red eyes. A frame far too slender for a warrior. Thick eyebrows, and hair that waved slightly at the ends.
"Class will now begin."
It was Wang Yeomsu.