What Matters Is the Urge to Torment the Broken
KRRACK-
"Uh...?"
The instant Namgung Han's signal fell, a baffled sound spilled from the lips of Paeng Jun—the man who had hurled a saber strike straight at me.
"Young Master! That's dange...rous?"
Having shrieked at the sight of me receiving that strike without a shred of defense, Dang Giyeong soon found his cry trailing off into a question mark instead.
I took one slow look around—at Baekhwa beside me with her hands pressed over her mouth, and at Namgung Han, giggling behind that insufferable smirk of hers...
"Haah..."
With a long sigh, I let the strength drain out of my raised right hand—and with a clatter, the shards of the ruined saber went rolling across the floor.
"H...how..."
"How, what? You've got eyes, don't you? You saw it happen."
I walked up to Paeng Jun, who was still muttering with a face that had yet to process a single thing, and murmured under my breath...
"And this is the Young Clan Head of the Paeng Clan, huh. Khh..."
When I covered my mouth with an expression caught somewhere between laughing and crying, our dear Young Clan Head of the Paeng Clan seemed to take great offense, his face twisting itself into knots as he roared—
"Y...you scoundrel! What sorcery have you used?!!"
"You're one to talk—why don't you try using some sorcery for once! The spar was so boring you were about to doze off, weren't you?!!"
As he raised his voice with spittle flying, I refused to be outdone and raised mine right back...
"Ghh...ghk!"
Clutching the back of his neck, Paeng Jun growled—and then lunged to seize me by the collar.
Alas, his wish would go unfulfilled.
"That's quite enough. Any more, and you'll only make yourself that much more miserable."
Namgung Han, who had been chortling away this whole time, pressed the mouth of her scabbard against his throat and stopped him short.
Of course, I went right on snickering and needling him regardless.
"Sis, I don't mind going a few more rounds? Even if he rushes me a hundred times, a hundred flicks of my hand settles it—and whatever little effort that takes, I'll just tack it onto his guide duty."
"Mad Sword! Why on earth are you stopping me! That scoundrel has clearly used some manner of strange sorcery, and yet... why?!!"
"Tsk... You truly are terrible at grasping your own place in the world."
"Mad Sword!!!"
Watching Paeng Jun prove, yet again, the eternal law that the defeated are always sore losers, Namgung Han clicked her tongue and told him...
"You lost. And Muyeong wasn't using any sorcery in the first place..."
"You have eyes too, Mad Sword—you saw what happened just now! That scoundrel clearly..."
"He caught your saber with his bare hand and crushed it. Now, how exactly does that constitute sorcery?"
"And you call that acceptable conduct from the Dang Clan's name?!"
"Hoo... And did you truly believe it made any sense to fire such an absurd saber strike, out in the open, at a martial artist of the Transcendent Realm?"
"Wh...what..."
A face twisted with rage only moments ago now contorted anew, as though he had just heard something beyond preposterous. Namgung Han gazed at him with coolly unimpressed eyes and said...
"You've been shut away in closed-door training for quite some time, so I can well understand not having heard how the world has turned..."
Tipping her chin toward me, she continued...
"That he is a martial artist of the Transcendent Realm is a fact I confirmed with my own two eyes. I mean it—I saw it plain as day, just today."
"Impossible..."
"Setting that aside for the moment, your conduct doesn't paint a pretty picture... Until only recently I still held some expectations of you, but seeing you like this..."
Namgung Han promptly turned her gaze away from him...
"A man like that... Transcendent Realm... impossible..."
Paeng Jun stood rooted to the spot, staring vacantly into empty air, muttering to no one at all.
Tap— At the sight of him like that, I crossed the distance slowly, laid a hand on his shoulder, and spoke.
"Still, you had a decent feel to you. Keep at it long enough, and someday you might even manage a little scratch on my hand, no?"
"This cannot be happening..."
"Well, what can you do? Don't take it too hard. I felt the exact same helplessness before the Blade King earlier today, after all. It's not some gap between First-Rate and Second-Rate—you know better than anyone what the distance between Peak and Transcendent means..."
".........."
"Ah... hold on, now that I think about it—back when I was at Peak, I hunted down and killed a demon of the Transcendent Realm. So when you look at it that way, it kind of just makes you plain pathetic, doesn't it."
"...................."
"Some people train properly and reach Transcendent within a single year... By that measure, you're twenty years down the drain, aren't you? Honestly, you'd have been better off spending that time learning an instrument..."
With both hands gripping the shoulders of the man who stood there robbed of speech, I was winding up for the finishing blow...
"But whatever you do, don't let go of that saber... It's just that your opponent happens to be a bit absurdly better than you. Keep working hard, and even if you'll never be a phoenix, you might just make eagle."
And with those parting words, I flashed him a refreshing smile and dealt him a resounding slap on the back.
"Anyway, I won the spar, so hurry up and guide me to the Hao Clan."
But alas, my finishing blow had landed a touch too well...
"Was it for this that I've held the saber for over a decade..."
Soul and all, Paeng Jun began shuffling off toward who knows where.
"Hey! You lost the bet, which means you're the guide! Where do you think you're running off to?!!!"
"Young Master, please... In moments like these, the right thing is to simply let him go."
And so Dang Giyeong seized me in mid-tantrum and held me back yet again.
Needless to say, whether the man's psyche survived or not, I went right on shouting for him to come back.
"A-woo, that's quite enough now. Haven't you mocked the poor man plenty? Keep it up and his heart will snap clean in two."
"What mockery? When did I ever— Look, if a few words like that are enough to make a man lose his mind, he should quit the martial path, hole up in some corner, and take up farming instead..."
"A-woo... I shall handle the guiding myself, so kindly leave him be."
"My lord, whatever you choose to do, you have my support—always."
Seeing Namgung Han appoint herself the guide, and Baekhwa say her piece with a face that looked somehow troubled, I finally calmed down a little and spoke.
"Haah... That man is a lost cause. Fine, have it your way, then..."
"A wise choice. Then follow me."
Shaking my head as I watched Paeng Jun's retreating back—shoulders slumped, legs wobbling as he staggered away—I fell in step behind Namgung Han.
And so, as we walked along behind her...
"Dushik, be honest—even by your standards, was I too harsh?"
"Pardon? What sort of needless question is that—of course you were. The Blade King likely sent him your way hoping he might learn a move or two from the one among his peers who reached the Transcendent Realm..."
"Which would have made it an instructional duel, and you ought to have pointed out the man's flaws for him... What manner of technique shatters the poor fellow's saber to bits?!"
"Well... that's..."
"And on top of that, you heaped every humiliation known to man upon him. Were it me, I'd have genuinely quit and gone off to learn a trade."
"It's that bad? Seriously? Sis, even in your eyes?"
"Well, I can't exactly say it's wrong..."
"Kids these days are rotten straight through the head, I swear. Back in my day, we'd hear words like that and grit our teeth, plotting revenge."
"And just how long have you lived, A-woo, to be talking like that?"
"Long enough."
And so we traded stories about this and that on the road to the Hao Clan's Hebei branch.
Though as it happened, the one guiding us there was not Namgung Han, but another warrior of the Namgung Clan.
"Fifteen years—fifteen full years I swung this saber every single day. How can this be possible..."
Back in his quarters, Paeng Jun sat crumpled into a corner of the room, murmuring in a hollow voice.
"From the age of five, the calluses on these hands have never once faded..."
His hands, after all, were so covered in callus and scar that anyone would know at a glance they belonged to a warrior.
"And yet it was all for nothing."
Soon enough, he clenched the hands he had been staring blankly at, and let them fall, strengthless.
"Why did heaven give birth to me... only to give birth to that man as well..."
Was this how Zhou Yu of old had felt?
Hollowed out, Paeng Jun murmured the words as he dwelled on Dang Muyeong—a man he could not, even in his imagination, picture himself ever surpassing.
The Mad Sword was a few years his senior.
At the very age he was now, she had all but reached the Transcendent Realm, while he had only just grasped its threshold—but he had never believed the gap so unbridgeable. By thirty, he had thought, he might yet defeat her.
The Poison Butterfly, too, was older than he was.
And if she were ever made to duel without her poisons, twenty-five-year-old him had simply assumed victory would be his.
As for the Young Clan Heads of the Hwangbo and Jegal Clans, he had never once considered them worth measuring himself against.
And yet...
"Then how—how is that fellow of the Transcendent Realm? When he has trained in the martial arts for barely a year..."
This was the very man once rated as possessing less martial talent than even the Jegal Clan's treasured jewel.
Yet that same man had reached the Transcendent Realm at the youngest age he knew of—and he had shattered Paeng Jun's saber strike, saber and all, with his bare hand...
The Blade King's words replayed, over and over, inside Paeng Jun's skull.
"Heh heh heh... Have but a single spar with that Muyeong fellow, and you shall come away having learned a great many things."
Before long, Paeng Jun was speaking aloud to no one, his voice hollow in the empty room.
"Former Clan Head... what am I to do... In a single instant, the ten-odd years I have held this saber were denied outright. Is it truly right for me to keep walking this path..."
No answer came. He simply buried his head between his knees.
Meanwhile, Dang Muyeong was in the middle of a tug-of-war with Jegal Baekhwa...
"My lord, allow me to go in instead."
"What? No. It's my errand—how does it make any sense for me not to be the one going in?"
"How could I possibly send you into a place like this!"
"Baekhwa, it's not as if I'm going to do anything strange. I'll just have a little conversation and come right back out."
"Then all the more reason you should take me in with you."
"It's just... I'd rather not have you witness anything unsightly, that's all..."
"And just what do you intend to do in there—something so unsightly you cannot even show it to me?!"
The two of us stood before the courtesan house known as the finest in all Hebei...
...and Baekhwa was doing her utmost to talk me out of slipping in alone and coming back out.
I had insisted on going by myself because I had no particular wish to make her watch the bloodbath that would, in all likelihood, break out inside...
The real problem, however, was what had come out of the Namgung Clan warrior's mouth.
"From what I hear, the Hao Clan's Hebei branch head is a beauty who, despite nearing thirty, is still hailed as the finest beauty in all Hebei. Do be careful in there... They say she is highly skilled in honey traps and the arts of bewitchment."
At those words, Baekhwa—who had been quiet until then—raised her voice, and the two of us were soon going back and forth at each other...
Wearing a face that had turned exhausted in record time, I thought to myself...
Ugh... I'm seriously about to lose my mind...