Chapter 91
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 91
Chapter Title: You Dense Fools!
"Huh?"
Thunderclap Gai spotted Gong Son Mu-oe and pushed himself to his feet.
"Mu-oe. What are you doing out here?"
Thunderclap Gai tilted his head quizzically as he asked.
In response, Gong Son Mu-oe looked at him with eyes brimming with the most complicated emotions imaginable.
"Why have you only now come looking for us... Uncle Bong? Please, come inside first."
Gong Son Mu-oe spoke in a voice laced with resignation, resentment, and pity, barely holding back the sob threatening to escape.
"What's wrong with you, Mu-oe? Has something happened? Where's Dae-gwang?"
Thunderclap Gai looked flustered by Gong Son Mu-oe's demeanor.
The attendants who had followed him stared blankly at the scene.
Not only was the current Valley Lord addressing this scruffy old beggar as if it were nothing, but the old man was casually calling the previous lord by name.
There was no way such a person could exist...
Then, one of them suddenly remembered something.
"Ah! Th-Thunderclap Gai, sir..."
He recalled that Thunderclap Gai was the sworn brother and lifelong friend of the previous Valley Lord.
If the old man before them was Thunderclap Gai, then the Valley Lord's reaction made perfect sense.
"Please come inside so we can talk."
Gong Son Mu-oe said once more.
There were too many eyes around to discuss anything in depth.
Steam rose gently from the tea served by the maids.
"What brings you all the way here? We searched high and low for you, Uncle, but couldn't find a trace..."
At Gong Son Mu-oe's question, Thunderclap Gai pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his bosom.
"There were some circumstances. It's been ages since I last reached out, and now here I am, showing up shamelessly like this, hoping you might help me obtain these herbs. I felt too guilty asking you directly. Where is Dae-gwang?"
Thunderclap Gai asked again.
Gong Son Mu-oe took the paper.
"He passed away five years ago."
He tried to say it as calmly as possible, but his eyes were already reddening.
For a moment, Thunderclap Gai froze.
He had never even considered the possibility.
"Wh-what happened to Dae-gwang?"
Finally, his voice trembled faintly as he asked.
"He passed away."
"......"
Thunderclap Gai fell silent for a long while.
The time dragged on even after the steam from his teacup had fully dissipated.
"What happened?"
At last, he spoke.
"His illness had progressed too far."
"What kind of illness could claim the life of the Preeminent Medicine Valley Lord...?"
"Even Preeminent Medicine Valley can't cure every ailment. In fact, there are far more we can't treat than those we can. It's just that the ones we can't are the rarer ones."
"Mm..."
Thunderclap Gai swallowed a groan at Gong Son Mu-oe's frank words.
He himself had been wondering if even Preeminent Medicine Valley could treat Dan Mok Un-hye's blocked meridians.
With his connection to the Valley Lord, asking for her treatment would have been simple.
Yet he hadn't, due to doubts about whether her condition could even be cured.
Even without knowing it was blocked meridians.
That's why he'd told Ha Mu-baek he was looking into asking Preeminent Medicine Valley.
The truth was, he himself lacked confidence.
No, he knew they had a way to cure it definitively, but it wasn't something he could bring himself to request.
"What about the Divine Scripture? Doesn't the Divine Scripture exist?"
Thunderclap Gai forced the words out carefully, lest they sound like an interrogation.
His friend was gone, but for Gong Son Mu-oe, it was his father.
"Look at me now."
Gong Son Mu-oe gave a wry smile as he replied.
Only then did Thunderclap Gai properly examine Gong Son Mu-oe's face.
In his shock over his friend's death, he hadn't even checked on the boy who was like a nephew to him.
As he scrutinized Gong Son Mu-oe's face, Thunderclap Gai's eyes twitched.
"You've opened it. You've opened it."
A lament escaped his lips.
The deeply wrinkled face didn't match Gong Son Mu-oe's age—at least, not the age Thunderclap Gai remembered.
It looked old enough that people might mistake him for Thunderclap Gai's old friend.
"Yes. I opened it. Secretly, with two elders from the previous generation. While Father was unconscious, I did it on my own without permission. Now, in the entire valley, only I know."
Meaningful words. Three had opened it, yet only one knew.
"The two elders..."
"They didn't have much lifespan left..."
He didn't need to say more.
"The Divine Scripture's answer was 'impossible'."
Gong Son Mu-oe spoke with a hollow expression.
He had traded his own lifespan plus the elders' remaining years for that answer: impossible.
"The Divine Scripture isn't omniscient. Nor is it a panacea."
Powerless words.
This was the biggest reason Gong Son Mu-oe opposed Gong Son Woo-kyeong's claims.
A secret he had shared with no one.
He knew the Divine Scripture wasn't a cure-all.
"It was bone abscess. A poison festering inside the bones that eats away at them, then spreads to the organs, ultimately ending life. A vicious disease. There was no way to remove the abscess—not with medicine, acupuncture, nothing."
"......"
Thunderclap Gai said nothing, merely silent.
Gong Son Mu-oe fell quiet as well.
How much time passed like that?
"Dae-gwang. Where is that guy?"
"I'll take you to him."
At Thunderclap Gai's question, Gong Son Mu-oe led him to the shrine holding his father's memorial tablet.
Gong Son Dae-gwang.
Thunderclap Gai stared silently at the tablet engraved with his friend's full name.
"Dae-gwang. Dae-gwang. Even you, who I thought would outlive us all, have left me behind. Now I'm the only one remaining..."
Gong Son Mu-oe stepped back, giving Thunderclap Gai time alone with his father.
No one dared approach with the current Valley Lord standing guard.
"I thought Cheon-seung's departure was my fault. I blamed myself. I turned my back on the world in my grief... and in that time, you left too, leaving me alone... I'm a sinner. A sinner. You must have come looking for me... You must have..."
Tears streamed endlessly from Thunderclap Gai's eyes.
"Waaah!!!"
He made no effort to hold back, collapsing to the ground and wailing openly.
Gong Son Mu-oe cast a barrier to keep the sound from spreading.
"Hoo."
Dan Mok Un-roe let out a deep breath as he finished circulating his energy.
He could feel a fair amount of internal energy gathered in his dantian.
It hadn't even been a year since joining the Fierce Dragon Corps, but compared to when he first arrived, the change was night and day.
This was all thanks to Instructor Ha Mu-baek, who was leaning against a rock, yawning boredly.
The next training was sword formation practice.
As they headed to the weapon rack with their wooden swords for it, Dang Jin-san suddenly stopped.
And turned toward Ha Mu-baek.
Ha Mu-baek glanced at him, sensing the gaze.
"What?"
A lazy question.
"Are we not participating in the Winter Combat Festival?"
Dang Jin-san's question.
Only then did the other cadets nod.
They'd forgotten.
The leaves had turned red before they knew it; autumn was in full swing.
And autumn was nearly over.
Winter would come soon.
Then the Dragon Training Pavilion would hold the Winter Combat Festival on the winter solstice, marking the end of the second semester.
If the Summer Combat Festival had been a team guerrilla battle for first-year cadets, the Winter Combat Festival was a true martial contest for all cadets in the pavilion.
One-on-one individual matches, which was why Dang Jin-san asked.
The Fierce Dragon Corps' training regimen remained the same.
The recent real combat training in the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest had been sword formation practice, after all.
"The Winter Combat Festival is individual matches, right?"
Ha Mu-baek asked, and Dang Jin-san nodded.
"Yes."
"Hmm."
Ha Mu-baek stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment.
"You want to enter?"
His follow-up question.
Dang Jin-san nodded again. Ha Mu-baek's gaze shifted to the others.
They all nodded faintly.
It was competitive spirit—they wanted to test their current strength against the other cadets from the Dragon Training Pavilion.
"They say the Fierce Dragon Corps doesn't participate much in the Winter Combat Festival either, like with the Summer one..."
The reason was obvious.
They were leagues below the Hidden Dragon Corps or Wa Dragon Corps. Entering would just lead to predictable defeats.
"Hm. Yeah. Hm."
Ha Mu-baek seemed deep in thought at their responses, then scratched his head and stood up.
"Then go enter. What's so hard about it?"
A disarmingly simple answer.
"But will constant sword formation practice be enough?"
This was what Dang Jin-san had really wanted to say.
They wanted to compete in individual matches, so would group formation drills suffice?
Ha Mu-baek crossed his arms and eyed the cadets.
"You want training geared toward individual matches, huh? Fine, then you need to know your current level. Pair up one-on-one and spar."
A sudden order.
Five cadets meant one would be left out.
As they hesitated, eyeing each other...
"More importantly, is Three Talents Sword Method and Three Talents Fist Method really enough?"
Dang Jin-san pressed on.
He was anxious.
Their opponents would be cadets from Wa Dragon and Hidden Dragon Corps, who trained in far more advanced arts. Could they face them with just Three Talents Sword and Fist?
The others nodded faintly at his words. They were anxious too.
They knew exactly what the Three Talents Sword Method entailed.
And this wasn't formation practice—it was one-on-one.
In the Summer Festival's guerrilla format, they'd lured foes into multi-man fights using terrain advantages, but the Winter Festival allowed no such tactics.
"This is just..."
Ha Mu-baek scratched his head with a frustrated look.
The seventh squad cadets had no sense whatsoever of their own abilities.
He shook his head helplessly and drew a training wooden sword.
"Watch. Slash down like this, sideways like this, thrust like this. Those three motions—what else is there? Diagonal slashes maybe, but those are just variations of down and side slashes."
He demonstrated with crisp, swift, clean strokes.
"But the Wa Dragon and Hidden Dragon cadets use arts with way more variations and higher levels..."
Dang Jin-san started to protest, but Ha Mu-baek cut him off.
"That's why I'm saying those are the fundamentals behind all the variations. Do any of their moves stray from the four I just showed?"
"......"
No one answered.
"Variations come from the basics. The Three Talents Sword Method is those basics. Master them, and you can grasp and counter any variation."
"Wh-what about internal energy..."
Dan Mok Un-roe asked cautiously.
It hadn't even been a year since he started cultivating it.
That's why internal energy was always his worry, and his inferiority complex about it ran deep.
Yeon Ha-min and Nak Woo-jin showed similar unease.
"From what I've gauged, you three now have enough internal energy to place mid-tier in the Dragon Training Pavilion."
Ha Mu-baek said, looking at Dan Mok Un-roe, Yeon Ha-min, and Nak Woo-jin in turn.
Their eyes widened at his words.
Hidden Dragon and Wa Dragon cadets had trained from childhood in prestigious clans and orthodox sects.
To match their internal energy in under a year? It was unbelievable.
"You took that good medicine twice. Of course you'd catch up."
Ha Mu-baek said it like it was no big deal.
The five cadets' faces twisted at the reminder.
That "good medicine" dredged up painful memories.
It was less "good" and more an agonizing ordeal to swallow.
"Even so..."
Dang Jin-san still hesitated, lacking confidence.
Ha Mu-baek looked genuinely exasperated.
"How many cadets in the Dragon Training Pavilion have faced bloodfiends in the Mountain-Crossing Demonic Forest? You have. You dense fools!"
His final words dripped with irritation.