What Is Talent
Standing at the center of the training ground, Mujin gripped his sword with both hands. Moyong Hu answered in kind, tightening his hold on his own blade.
"First, let us agree on one condition. I will use no internal energy whatsoever. You proposed this as a 'duel,' Sogaju-nim, but I intend to treat it as a lesson."
At Moyong Hu's stipulation, Mujin's eyebrows twitched.
I knew full well that a martial artist refusing to use internal energy was like a farmer tilling his field without a hoe, and I opened my mouth to say as much — then promptly shut it again.
Oh.
Wait. I'm the one without internal energy?
To be precise, I had scraped together a little here and there since my reincarnation, but it was a level that wouldn't even qualify as third-rate. I was fairly confident that if Moyong Hu vented his internal energy at full power, I would foam at the mouth and pass out on the spot.
Short of a miracle, even withstanding his energy was impossible — a reality I could only lament.
"Fine, understood. We start the moment Nari gives the signal."
"Yes, that shall be the— hm? Ah... yes, of course, as you say."
Did he just casually drop into informal speech with me?
Watching Mujin stand there with a perfectly composed expression, Moyong Hu harbored a brief flicker of doubt. And Mujin had no intention of giving him time to chew on that doubt.
Getting to jab that precious Royal Sword Brigade Commander with a bit of informal talk was worth it just to vent.
"Nari! I'm ready, so start it already!"
"Sogaju-nim! Are you really sure about this?! Your opponent is that Royal Sword Brigade Commander himself!"
"Don't worry. Surely the great Moyong Hu, hero of the Royal Sword Brigade, wouldn't go around wailing on a little kid? You worry too much, Nari~."
Grind.
I heard teeth clenching, but I ignored it. When I tilted my head with a face that practically said but I was just stating facts~, the grinding grew even louder.
What do you want me to do about it?
If it bothers you that much, go be eight years old again.
"Th-then... one, two, three! We'll begin on three...?"
Before Nari gave the signal, Mujin recalled every martial art he had experienced in his past life. From mental cultivation methods to footwork, movement techniques, swordsmanship, and every manner of weapon art — in the span of two blinks, he had prepared himself to face it all.
Of course, the martial arts of his past life and the ones Moyong Hu practiced would be entirely different.
Naturally — in his previous life, he had never seen the techniques of the Wang Clan or the Moyong Clan. Even so, the reason he summoned his old arts was simple.
No matter how different the techniques, the process might change, but the outcome was always the same.
Killing.
How the body moves when a person kills another person.
On that point, every martial art in existence was identical. It wasn't conjecture or guesswork — it was the certainty born of watching countless techniques with his own eyes on the battlefield and enduring them with his own flesh.
And those experiences would be the kindling thrown onto the fire of his talent.
One—
Nari began counting. She had realized there was no stopping him.
Two—
Sweat gathered in his grip on the wooden sword.
He had promised no internal energy, but his opponent was, he suspected, a master equal to or greater than Namgung Hou — the man who had cut him down in his past life. He knew perfectly well he wouldn't come close to winning; he'd collapse without his wooden blade even grazing the man's sleeve.
But more than that, he was excited. Against someone so extraordinary, how far would his talent bloom? And just maybe — a single strike.
Even one. Just one landed hit.
Three!
The instant Nari called the start, Mujin flooded his legs with internal energy and hurled himself forward like a thrown spear. Moyong Hu's eyes went wide with shock as the distance between them shrank.
But only for a moment. Moyong Hu hardened his expression, retreated half a step, and swung. Mujin swung too, and their blades met.
CRAAANG!
Heavy. That was his first thought the moment his sword touched Moyong Hu's.
His strike had carried what little internal energy he had, plus the momentum of his charge. And yet the sword of a man using not a single drop of his own energy was the stronger.
Was it simply because he had the bones of a prodigy but the body of an eight-year-old? That was part of it, no doubt — but the weight he had just felt was not something mere muscle produced.
In that instant, he understood something.
The depth of the sword was different. Nothing like the blade he had swung for years — the one that carved up nothing but common thugs and untrained soldiers who'd never learned a proper mental cultivation method even in the middle of a war.
To be sure, there had been masters among them too. But at best, they were men who had stagnated at first-rate.
The distribution of force felt when two blades collided. A stance that didn't waver in the slightest despite the shock of a sudden energy-enhanced strike. The level of attainment was one thing, but this was a sword-forged-by-experience.
A stubborn, honest sword built from the endless repetition of a single motion. Even a casual swing carried extraordinary depth. It was a sword he himself had never possessed.
I want it. I want to make it mine. I want to unleash a sword with that kind of depth.
SHKRK-KRAK!
'...!'
Mujin angled his blade against the clash, deflecting Moyong Hu's sword clean off its line. The moment Moyong Hu's stance broke, Mujin drove his own blade in.
"Hup!"
Moyong Hu twisted his body to slip past the thrusting sword, borrowed the centrifugal force of the turn, and swung straight back.
SWOOOSH!
Air split with a hiss, and a sudden jolt ran through the side of his head. A sensation he had experienced hundreds, thousands of times.
The sword never found its mark, cutting empty air in vain — Mujin had ducked his head aside. Moyong Hu stared down at him with bewildered eyes.
'He's using internal energy? No — before that, what in the world was that movement just now?'
Question piled upon question. Nothing made sense.
He had never taught the boy a single mental cultivation method — so how had he accumulated internal energy to that degree? And where had he learned swordsmanship? How had he just dodged that? True, Moyong Hu had used barely a tenth of his strength, but was any of this even possible?
"Heh heh heh. Now it begins."
"Sogaju-nim?"
The feeling had come. The one that arrived only when fighting someone stronger than himself, or when death breathed down his neck.
The sense that bridged the gulf between himself and his opponent — the thing that carved out a path to victory. Mujin called it Yeokgam, the Reverse Sense.
He grew stronger as he fought. The stronger the opponent, the more his weaknesses were patched and his strengths sharpened. He claimed the opponent's advantages as his own. He burrowed into their flaws.
And then, on the spot, he built a technique tailored to that opponent, that moment — and won.
That was Mujin's talent: the Reverse Sense.
But even this talent had its limits. If the gulf was too vast, victory was impossible. He knew that well from his past life.
When he had fought Namgung Hou, Mujin had been among the quite formidable of first-rate warriors. Namgung Hou was a master at the peak, and Mujin had fought with the Reverse Sense fully active — and still could not win.
In the course of that battle, his swordsmanship had unmistakably transcended the peak realm. The reason he lost anyway was the ceiling of his physical ability and internal energy.
The longer the fight dragged on, the more it favored him. Every extra moment was another moment to close the gap.
But he needed the strength to buy that time. In this life, he had been born with the body and the family for it. So he wanted to draw out this talent to its absolute limit.
Mujin swung his sword. Perhaps because of his small stature, even a full-height swing barely reached Moyong Hu's chest — but the killing intent packed inside it was monstrous.
Their blades met again. This time, it was Moyong Hu who was shaken.
'It's changed! We've only traded a few strikes, and he's already different!'
Unbelievable. As he stared at Mujin in disbelief, Mujin flashed a wide grin — as if to say he'd expected exactly that reaction.
They exchanged strikes a few more times after that, but as time passed, Moyong Hu's questions didn't dissolve — they only piled higher.
The first question: Mujin was growing stronger even as they fought. The second: no systematic martial art was visible in anything he did.
Moyong Hu's confusion was only natural.
Mujin had never formally learned a single martial art from anyone. At most, he'd glanced through the Samjae Sword Art and the mass-produced technique manuals handed out to low-ranking officers and imitated what he saw.
He'd abandoned the Samjae Sword Art after three days out of sheer boredom, and the supply manuals were so shoddy that halfway through memorizing them he'd gotten irritated and burned them.
And so Mujin's martial arts had no names. No name for his footwork, no name for his movement arts — not even his swordsmanship.
Except for one. Just one thing bore a name: his mental cultivation method.
Yeokgam Shingong — the Divine Art of the Reverse Sense. A method built entirely on reliance upon his innate talent. Even the name was a complete afterthought, nothing but a hasty "-shingong" slapped on the end. In everyday life, it functioned only at its most basic level — an utterly ordinary cultivation method.
But the moment he entered a battle for his life — or anything close to one — it harmonized with the martial arts Mujin improvised on the spot better than any technique ever could. And it was this Yeokgam Shingong that made his talent shine all the brighter.
Mujin kept swinging. His form looked, if anything, dazed — absent, unmoored.
'The realm of No-Self...!'
Barely eight years old. Never even taught a martial art in his life. A genius? There are degrees of genius. The word doesn't come close to covering this.
His technique changed with every clash of blades. One moment he pressed in with overwhelming force, wielding something like the Tyrant Blade style; the moment a counter came, he flowed away like water. The shifts were too drastic.
Say, for instance, that a martial art is a pebble. Ordinary martial artists turn the pebble into a boulder — merely bigger and harder. Renowned masters carve that boulder into sculpture, transforming the form of the stone.
But Mujin belonged to neither category. He turned the pebble into gold, into diamond. He changed the very nature of the thing.
Insane talent.
That was what Moyong Hu believed.
But even a Mujin could not reinvent martial arts from nothing, without a foundation of knowledge. The reason he could build and reshape techniques to fit each situation was not the Reverse Sense alone — it was the background knowledge of his past life's battle experience.
And not knowing this, Moyong Hu could only rate Mujin's talent ever higher.
SWOOOSH!
Mujin's sword flew at Moyong Hu's throat. Moyong Hu hurriedly wiped the thoughts away and bent his wrist, turning the edge to block. The next attack was already coming.
If the previous strike had been an attack steeped in sharpness, the one pressing at him now carried depth. The very sensation Moyong Hu himself felt when he unleashed his own blade.
It was unpleasant. This wasn't even his own sword, and yet its depth was becoming the same as his. It felt like having something precious stolen from him.
Anyone at the summit of any field would understand, martial art or no. If someone watched a technique you had spent a lifetime building and immediately copied it — no, if they so much as tried, it would gall.
And Mujin was going beyond copying. He was attempting to reproduce it.
Between the unpleasantness and some nameless unease creeping up on him, Moyong Hu's shoulders shuddered without his consent.
That moment. Moyong Hu released his internal energy. Witnessing the incomprehensible had clouded his judgment and let his emotions run ahead of him.
KWAAAAAAH!
The vast aura pouring off Moyong Hu bound Mujin down. Pressure crushed him from all sides. His movements slowed. Even so, Mujin walked toward him, step by step.
He advanced straight into the man's released qi. To be fair, Moyong Hu had merely vented it — he had not deliberately wielded it to crush the boy. But even so, no child alive could simply walk through that.
And the closer Mujin came, the more Moyong Hu — without meaning to — retreated, step by step.
He had despised the Moyong Clan, yet he'd taken pride in being called the greatest talent the family had ever produced. He had come to the Wang Clan and become commander of the Royal Sword Brigade, the clan's supreme fighting force. He had felled masters in battle after battle. Juniors revered him. Lately, even the common folk sang his praises as a great hero.
And everything he had built over all those years — this child could copy it just like that?
"KRAAAAAGH!"
Then Mujin let out a beast-like howl. Moyong Hu flinched and finally looked at him — truly looked.
At the boy walking straight toward him with bloodshot eyes.
Hair hanging in wild strands, his once-pristine silken clothes worn and ruined to no better than a commoner's rags. Bruises bloomed across his whole body from enduring that crushing aura with a thimbleful of internal energy, and blood ran in a steady line from his mouth.
Whether his insides had been injured, or whether he was biting through his own lip to hold his mind together, Moyong Hu couldn't tell — but nothing about him was remotely normal.
Is this... really something a person just copies? The thought flickered through Moyong Hu's mind.
Mujin's talent was extraordinary. The Reverse Sense didn't just dismantle an opponent's techniques — it broke down the opponent's very existence.
But. Even so.
Nothing in this world came without effort. Not anything.
Mujin's Reverse Sense was not some crane that delivered enlightenment to a man sitting idle. Quite the opposite — it was a talent that manifested only through more toil than anyone else.
To truly draw it out, he had to fight opponents far beyond his strength, or throw himself into battles where his very life hung in the balance.
They say death is what stands closest to a person. For those of the murim, it stands closer still. And for Mujin, death was the one standing shoulder to shoulder at his side — because calling forth the Reverse Sense meant, inevitably, shoving himself toward the edge of the grave.
Moyong Hu did not yet know Mujin. Did not understand him. But he grasped one thing, at least.
This child, Mujin, had never once — not for a single instant of their duel — been free of the thought that he might die.
Shwaaa...
"Heh... heh heh."
The aura binding Mujin began to gutter out. Mujin laughed — delighted, for whatever reason. Before long, Moyong Hu understood why.
"You... you son of a... absolute cheating... bastard..."
Thud.
With those words, Mujin pitched forward. Moyong Hu stood for a long while, staring down at the boy sprawled at his feet. Then, hearing Nari's shriek of alarm and the slap of her sprinting footsteps, he hurriedly scooped Mujin up and ran for the infirmary.
When Mujin opened his eyes, he was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.