The Mouth Is the Root of All Trouble
The conflict between the Sichuan Dang Clan and the Qingcheng Sect came to a close — wrapping up about as cleanly as a shit interrupted mid-squat, forever awkward and forever unresolved.
"Uwaaaaagh!!! Dang Muyeong... you... I'll get you for this if it's the last thing I do...!"
Someone who had lost his sect brothers in a single stroke shut himself into secluded training, savoring his grudge with every breath.
"Tsk... a genuine pity we couldn't beat those bastards dead right there, for daring to pull such a stunt in the Dang Clan's own front yard..."
Someone else — one who had been practically salivating for an outright war — clicked his tongue and busied himself grinding the edges of hidden projectiles that had done nothing to deserve it.
"That might be a touch difficult, you know... will you truly be all right?"
And one last someone was answering, flustered, the words of a younger sibling who had turned up out of nowhere with a most unexpected request.
After her meeting with the Clan Head, Dang Mulin had resigned herself to the fact that the whole affair was going to be smoothed over just like that, and she was out on a walk, trying to shake the frustration sitting heavy in her chest.
Ha... well, at least Muyeong wasn't badly hurt. For that much, I suppose I should be grateful.
She had no idea how he'd managed it, but the thought of her once-so-fragile little brother trading his shoulder for his life against a First-Rate martial artist loosened the weight in her chest, if only a little, and she tipped her head back to look at the sky.
The moon had already climbed overhead. Deciding it was about time she returned, Dang Mulin trudged her way home to her quarters — where her bed had already fallen under occupation by enemy forces.
"Took you long enough."
Stepping into her room, she found Dang Muyeong sprawled across her mattress, waving hello around a mouthful of honey sweets. Dang Mulin could only give her brother a flatly incredulous look.
"What is it this time, that you had to come all the way to my quarters and make yourself at home?"
At her question, Dang Muyeong unhurriedly finished chewing, swallowed, and answered.
"Oh, nothing much... Sis, teach me martial arts for real."
He was grinning from ear to ear as he said it. Mulin faltered for a beat at the sight, then managed to find her voice again.
"What do you mean, 'for real'? I already teach you every morning, don't I..."
"Not the little morning sessions. I want to learn properly — the kind you learn like your life depends on it."
Her little brother had just asked her, in the sunniest of terms, to set him down on a road of thorns. She dragged a chair over with a screech, sat down, and let out a long, long breath.
"Hoo... what on earth blew in to put this in your head all of a sudden?"
At her question, Dang Muyeong — who had been draped across her bed in the most bonelessly comfortable pose imaginable — let his expression harden, sat himself upright, and began to speak, slowly.
"Sis..."
"Yeah?"
"Want to take a guess at the biggest thing I felt, going through all this?"
At the sight of her little brother speaking with genuine gravity, Dang Mulin put on a more thoughtful face, chewed the question over, and laid down her answer.
"Judging by how you came to me in the dead of night, saying all those things... I'd say it's helplessness."
At the answer she offered so carefully, Muyeong nodded a couple of times.
"Right. Honestly, this only ended at my shoulder because the situation happened to smile on me. If even one thing had rolled wrong, my head coming off wouldn't have been strange at all..."
She simply kept nodding in silence as she watched him dig up the words he'd kept buried deep, a self-mocking twist to his mouth.
"What if that insolent bastard had loosed his killing strike at my throat or my heart from the very start, instead of my shoulder? Or what if he hadn't been merely First-Rate, but Peak — or, hell, a master of the Transcendent Realm and beyond? And if I really had come within a hair of dying this time... well, that scoundrel Dang Giyeong would probably have thrown himself in the way, so..."
"Heh..."
Watching him laugh hollowly, the corners of his eyes crinkling with self-deprecation, Dang Mulin reached out and took his hand.
"What happened was nothing more than an accident, a stretch of bad luck... And even with all that luck lending you a hand, you — still rebuilding your martial arts from scratch — managed to beat a First-Rate fighter. That's a tremendous thing. You don't have to keep whittling yourself down like that."
But her comfort didn't seem to reach him. He slid his captured hand quietly out of hers and spoke.
"That's exactly the problem... that I'm Third-Rate. If it had been you standing there instead of me, do you think those idiots would have picked that fight, brains switched off?"
"No... they wouldn't have."
"Sis... you know it too. You can't just live off lucky breaks. Honestly? I don't much care if my own life gets taken. But if the people around me die because I was weak — or worse, if they can't even avenge me afterward — I think that would break me. So I want to get strong. As fast as I possibly can."
Whether my earnest plea reached her or not, Dang Mulin wore an expression through which complicated feelings drifted, and sank into thought for a while.
A stretch of silence passed before she nodded at me.
"All right, then. If your resolve is really that firm, I'll help you."
At the answer I'd been waiting for, I threw myself a private celebration, howling Nice! on the inside.
"In exchange... I'm going to be very harsh with you. Are you truly, fully prepared for that?"
To her warning, I put on my most easygoing face.
"If it's you being harsh on me, sis, I'd call that a perk."
The moment the words left my mouth, her eyes shifted — into those same terror-inducing eyes I'd seen at the Medicine Hall not long ago — and I felt a faint, cold prickle of foreboding.
"It's late today, so go on back. We'll start tomorrow... no, the day after — usual time, usual place. I have a few things of my own to prepare, you see."
"...Right."
Doing my best to ignore that creeping sense of dread, I gave my answer and promptly retreated to my own quarters.
Back in my room, I flopped onto my bed and let my thoughts wander.
Well, I coaxed Mulin around nicely enough... her eyes did kind of roll off into somewhere disturbing for a second there... eh, whatever. It'll work out somehow.
With thoughts of that caliber drifting through my head, I fell asleep.
KRA-BOOM—
The thunder woke me. I pushed the window open, took one look at the wind and rain sheeting down as though the sky had gone berserk, and muttered with a grimace.
"Ugh... I really do hate rain."
Watching the downpour pour as if the heavens had sprung a leak, I waited for breakfast, ate the beautifully laid-out meal, and then curled up in my room.
Come tomorrow, I suppose, the tutorial's basically over and the main story finally kicks off...
There had been no shortage of twists and tribulations along the way, but with the time truly upon me to learn martial arts in earnest, I spent the day watching the rain-drenched scenery of the Dang Clan from the comfort of my room — half thrilled, half anxious.
KRA-BOOM— BAM—
It was while I was idly sipping tea to the sound of thunder — as though the heavens were firing celebratory fireworks to bless my current situation — that, elsewhere:
"Ah! Found it!"
Dang Mulin, together with a handful of servants, had spent the day turning the Dang Clan's armory and storehouses inside out, gathering this and that.
"This is what you were looking for, isn't it, milady?"
When one of the servants pointed at a set of thick iron chains and ball-hung shackles, she nodded.
"That's the one. I'll carry them myself, so all of you step back now."
"But milady, we really should be the ones to carry—"
"Quite all right. Those would be a fair bit too much for the likes of you."
"...That's true enough. Haha..."
Leaving behind the servants and their strained laughter, Dang Mulin dragged the — even to a glance — ponderous lumps of iron out of the storehouse.
Watching her go, one of the servants asked, his face creased with curiosity.
"By the way, milady..."
"Hm?"
"Have you... captured someone from the Qingcheng Sect or something? Why on earth would you suddenly need those..."
At his question, its tail trailing off into uncertainty, Dang Mulin answered with her usual languid expression.
"Oh, these? They're for Muyeong's training."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Muyeong came to me and said he wants to grow strong. So naturally, I intend to prepare for him with the utmost devotion and sincerity..."
So saying, she promptly hauled the chains out into the rain. The servants left standing in the storehouse watched her go — and quietly offered up prayers for the repose of Dang Muyeong's soul.
Having left the servants behind her, Dang Mulin carved her way through the downpour, a smile on her face that carried something bleak and frost-rimed in it.
"Brrr... the rain's making it properly cold. I'd better close the window."
Perhaps because I'd left it open, a sudden chill crawled over me. I was rubbing one arm and reaching to shut the window when a strange sound drifted in from somewhere outside, and I cocked my ear toward it.
Skrrrrrrk..... skrrrrrrk.....
Threading faintly through rain coming down hard enough to make me wonder whether the sky had lost its mind came a sound like something being dragged across the earth. I closed the window, muttering.
"With it raining this hard, who the hell is doing construction out there... weird."
A flicker of doubt stirred in me at the sound — and I brushed it aside almost at once.
I didn't know, then, that the moment might have been my last chance not to.
....y.. ..t..y.. stay..
"Hah... hah... hah..."
On the morning of the day I'd promised Dang Mulin, I jolted bolt upright out of sleep at a voice that sounded like someone crying out with everything they had.
What on earth had I been dreaming? My back was soaked clean through with sweat I'd leaked out in my sleep.
"What... what was it? I know I dreamed something just now..."
I racked my brain trying to dredge the dream back up, but as luck would have it, like every dream ever dreamed, it had already slipped out of my memory the instant my eyes opened.
Chugging a glass of cold water to quiet my still-thundering heart finally steadied me a little.
"This is strange... really strange."
Muttering to myself, nagged by a nameless unease from the very first breath of morning, I shuffled over and pulled the window open.
Outside, the torrential downpour had stopped. One look at the sky told me the promised hour was drawing near, and I threw on my clothes and dashed for the training grounds.
Dang Mulin was already out there waiting.
"Sis! I'm here!"
Clank—
Delighted, I waved her a greeting — and she closed the distance on me in a few strides, seized my hand without a word, and snapped a shackle around my wrist.
"Huh?"
"From now on, whenever we train here, you'll be learning your martial arts with these on. Always."
Listening to her explain while staring down at the thing now locked around my wrists, I had no choice but to be profoundly, comprehensively flustered.
"What even is—"
They were unmistakably shackles — except instead of my ankles they were locked around my arms, and the iron balls hanging from them on heavy chains swung at just about the height of my hips.
"Muyeong. Tell me — what do you think is the most important thing in learning martial arts?"
As I stood there gaping at the shackles now locked around both wrists and both ankles, Dang Mulin asked, smiling pleasantly.
"Um... internal energy?"
"Nope. Stamina and raw strength come first. Those are your foundation."
Cold sweat already trickling down my back, I answered the smiling face in front of me.
"Sis... no, right? You're not actually saying I train in these..."
Cutting me off mid-sentence, Dang Mulin replied in a voice soft as syrup.
"Muyeong. To start, let's run the training grounds. Just until lunch."