Meat Gets More Tender the More You Beat It
The Paeng estate was a hive of commotion, packed with servants bustling about in preparation for the Saber King's birthday banquet, and yet...
Cheep-cheep—
Around the Saber King's residence, tucked away in one corner of the compound, it was so still that the only sound to be heard was the chirping of sparrows.
We were passing through that hush with a gentle breeze washing over us when I asked.
"So what in the world was that about earlier, sis?"
"You mean what happened before?"
She had come at me like she fully intended to take my life, then passed out, only to wake up giggling just like her usual self. Unable to hold the question in any longer, I had finally asked.
"Anyone watching would've thought you'd sworn a duel to the death. The Emperor's Sword Form, the sword gang and all... you went genuinely berserk."
"Hmm....."
At my question, Namgung Han pondered for a moment before coming out with her answer.
"Are you aware, A-woo, that I went through absolute hell thanks to that letter you sent me?"
"Can't say I am."
"Well, it is true that I was rather angry over it. So I decided it was high time I whipped this adorable little brother of mine into shape, and I deliberately set the mood."
"Unbelievable..... you are genuinely shameless."
"But didn't the air turn strange the moment you conjured that Far Shore Mist? I had only meant to put a scare into you at first, but from that point on, I confess I took things a bit more seriously."
"Sis, you really do have a gift for pointless nonsense."
"Well... you came out of it with an enlightenment of your own, so it all worked out in the end, no?"
"That part's true, but..."
"On that note, hand over a few more swords. In a way, it was thanks to me that you opened the gate to the Transcendent Realm."
"Do you even hear yourself? That was my own brilliance—what does any of it have to do with you?"
"Aigoo! Don't be like that—just give me a few. If you don't, I'll march all the way to the Dang Clan and lie myself flat in protest. Think you could handle that?"
"You already hauled off a whip instead of a sword, and now you want more? What kind of extortion is this!"
"Father was so furious over that letter that he confiscated my whip! He says if I want it back, I had better bring him a sword. What's a girl to do?"
"No! Not a single one! Go home!"
"Then I suppose I have no choice....."
With those words, Namgung Han made to flop flat onto the ground, when.....
"That's enough now. Come inside."
A voice reached us as though it were being hammered straight into our ears, and Namgung Han peeled her rear end—already planted firmly on the ground—right back up.
"Ahem... I suppose I've no choice. We'll continue this discussion later."
"Sure. I'm still not giving you any, though."
"Then I shall simply cling to you and pitch a fit until you do—and I do wonder how much Baekhwa will enjoy watching that. I intend to observe it closely with my own two eyes."
Just as another round of bickering threatened to break out, the door to the residence slid open, and a small, slight old man stepped out with a hearty chuckle.
"Heh heh heh... So much energy. Enjoy it while it lasts—those are the good days....."
His frame was far too petite for the Paeng Clan, a family of hulking brutes through and through—yet the pressure that seeped off him, subtle as it was, was like...
Almost on par with Father... no, maybe even a step above?
Like a great mountain.
At the very least, his presence dwarfs anyone I've met in the Central Plains so far... no, at this level, even counting Earth and the ones from that place, he'd hold his own pretty well.....
While I stood there dazed, staring at the Saber King...
"It has been a long time, Elder. You seem even more vigorous than you were all those years ago."
"Heh heh... Thank you for humoring this old man, even if it is only flattery."
"An honor to meet you, Saber King. I am Dang Muyeong of the Dang Clan."
As Namgung Han bowed in greeting beside me, I followed suit.
"Yes... Muyeong, it has been far too long for you as well. You have grown so much since last we met—a fine sight to see. Hahahaha....."
"Thank you?"
He was far too unassuming for a giant of the righteous factions, and a question mark hovered over my head.
"I will have tea served, so sit yourself on the porch for now."
Looking for all the world like the grandfather next door, the Saber King seated us on the wooden veranda, then disappeared back into his residence and emerged with a teapot and cups gathered up in both arms.
Glug-glug-glug—
He poured the tea himself into cups of rough-hewn clay, and...
"We'll drink it gratefully."
Namgung Han and I dipped our heads in thanks and were quietly sipping when...
"Thank you for coming to celebrate the birthday of this old man who spends his days simply waiting to die."
Pfft—
The death joke came hurtling out of nowhere, and I sprayed a mouthful of tea straight into Namgung Han's face...
"........."
She said not a word, but her eyes were flaying me alive. Ignoring her, I turned to the Saber King.
"What kind of talk is that...? You're as vigorous as ever—you have to live to at least a hundred."
"So you are telling me I have ten more years left in me. Very well, I shall live exactly ten more years, then depart this world."
"No... that's not what I..."
"It was a joke! Must you take everything so seriously? Bwahahaha....."
As I floundered, utterly unable to keep pace with the Saber King's sense of humor...
"So why exactly did you summon the two of us?"
Having wiped her thoroughly soaked face dry with her own sleeve, Namgung Han went straight for the throat, asking point-blank why he had called for us.
Watching her offer manners that were roughly half-gulped down to a man a full generation senior even to her own grandfather, the Sword King, I was wearing a dumbfounded expression when...
"Heh heh... I called you here because I wished to have a word with the young ones who will one day lead the righteous factions."
The Saber King answered with the easy chuckle of a kind grandfather from any village you please.
Honestly, no one would ever guess that man is the Saber King... and not some elder digging wild greens in the mountains...
And yet he was, at present, counted among the three finest figures of the righteous factions.....
"One of you is barely past her twentieth year, and the other has not even reached it—yet here you both are, already in the Transcendent Realm..."
As the Saber King asked this, his eyes gleaming brightly, an inexplicable weight began to press down upon us.
"Ahem....."
Unlike the crushing aura of Namgung Han's Emperor's Sword Form, this pressure was slowly binding my entire body with sheer presence alone, and I had just let out a low groan when...
Shing—
The woman seated beside me abruptly tore her sword from its sheath and declared:
"Shall I demonstrate why I am already in the Transcendent Realm at this age?"
The Mad Sword.....
A person possessed by the sword... no, a lunatic who happens to carry one.
Watching Namgung Han raise her blade in a righteous world obsessed with seniority—against someone above her rank, above that, above even that—against the very giant who embodied the righteous factions themselves, I could only slap a hand to my forehead, finally grasping exactly how she had come by that nickname.
"Very well... let us see what you can do."
The moment the words left his mouth, the Saber King reached back, and...
Whoosh—
A single dao came sailing out from within the residence and settled neatly into his grip.
Then, still sheathed, the Saber King gave the porch a light tap with the dao in hand.
Whuum—
A resonance rolled out, the sort you would hear if a man were shut inside one of those massive temple bells and the bell were struck...
CRASH—
Me, Namgung Han, and the entire tea set went tumbling, swept away together.
"Aigoo....."
Cast through the air like a paper doll brushed aside by someone's hand, I was still clamping my hands over my ears—eeeeeeeeee—with my face twisted in a scowl, and...
Namgung Han, cackling like a madwoman, hurled herself at the Saber King.
Then, shrieking, she brought her blade down.
"DIE!!!!!"
Telling the guest of honor of a birthday banquet three days away to drop dead, she...
"Well, that tracks..... I mean, they do call her a sword-wielding madwoman. You'd have to be at least this deranged to earn a nickname like that."
All I could do was dig my fingers into my temples as I contemplated her nickname yet again.
Born into a branch line of the Paeng Clan, his talent was nonetheless so overwhelming that even measured against the direct bloodline, he could only be described as a peerless prodigy.
In his youth he roamed the Jianghu, cutting down the countless unorthodox-sect bands as they committed their crimes, and his name spread far and wide as a hero...
He was the man who, some forty years ago, brought an end to the Paeng Clan's internal strife.
Just as talk of the Dang Clan head's wife, and of the clan head's first son, was all but taboo within the Dang Clan, so too was any mention of that internal war all but taboo within the Paeng Clan...
The calamity had been kindled by the greed of the clan head of that era, who sought to seat the child of his young concubine in the Young Clan Head's place.
"Young Clan Head, the decision—!"
The clan, split clean in two, soon met with a terrible bloodbath.
Nearly two hundred dead and wounded, and just as rumors began to fly that the Paeng Clan would be stripped of its seat among the Five Great Clans,...
Paeng Juhon, returned home too late, took up the clan head's seat on an interim basis and somehow dragged the family back from the brink.
"I shall pass the seat of clan head to you. This seat was never mine to begin with."
"E-Elder!"
The sole direct-line survivor of that bloodbath—the young son of the Young Clan Head of that day—had grown into a man before anyone realized it, and to him Paeng Juhon relinquished the seat.
Which was why the current Paeng Clan Head spent every year begging and pleading to hold a birthday banquet for Paeng Juhon—refused every single year, until this one, when he finally wrung a grudging yes out of the old man, and so this banquet came to be.
For that reason, even now, whenever the people of the Paeng Clan were asked, "Who do you respect most?", Paeng Juhon was the undisputed champion, every time.
Though as for the nickname of his youth.....
The Mad Sword versus the Mad Saber... fuck, my chest swells with grandeur just imagining it.
Recalling the stories Dang Giyeong had fed me on the road to the Paeng Clan, I stared blankly at the spectacle before me—whether it was a formal duel or a training spar, I genuinely could not tell.
THWACK— THWACK— WHAP—
"Aaagh! Elder! You hit the bone that time!"
"Heh heh heh heh..... If you'd rather not be hit, then move those feet faster."
"Hold on....."
"And where might the one who promised to show me have gone? Off to play a round of chess somewhere?"
The Saber King was threshing her like grain without so much as drawing his dao from its sheath...
Is that a training spar? No... at this point that's just a man working out his frustrations on a sandbag.....
The Saber King's face beamed, all sunshine, as he tenderized Namgung Han like a dog bound for the soup pot, and...
"Kyaaah!"
She shrieked, well on her way to becoming pounded meat.
"Well, whatever—watching her take that beating is doing wonders for my mood."
I snickered at the sight of Namgung Han face-to-face with her own personal schoolyard tyrant.
Thud—
At last she collapsed face-first into the dirt, out cold for the second time today alone.
"Tsk... with your energy sapped this badly, what earthly good will you be to anyone?"
Paeng Juhon plucked Namgung Han up with a telekinetic pull and laid her back out on the porch, and just as I moved to shoulder her...
"Just leave her be."
"Pardon? Shouldn't she at least be carried back to her quarters?"
"She will wake soon enough regardless. That girl is only pretending to be unconscious."
Flinch—
As I stared down, eyes gone cold and flat, at Namgung Han—who had flinched ever so slightly—the Saber King turned to me and said,
"Well then, let us have a look at the Dang Clan's Young Clan Head's skills while we are at it."
"Pardon?"