Where There's Smoke, There's Fire
Once the business of the Seven Clan Alliance had more or less reached a settlement, the days that followed slipped past in a blink...
"Once more, if you please."
"Yes... well, that much I can manage as many times as you'd like..."
I was sparring against the young disciples of the various clans, polishing them up for the Dragon Phoenix Tournament that now loomed just one day away.
"Hyaah!"
Clack—
"You've done nothing but go for my arms and legs this whole time... just aim for the chest or the head already. Why trouble yourself sparing your opponent's feelings?"
"But what if you were seriously hurt because of it..."
"The judges will be martial artists of the Transcendent Realm at the very least. If an attack looks genuinely dangerous, they'll stop it on their own."
"Hmm... I shall bear that in mind."
"Your spear certainly comes in vicious enough, but, how should I put it... you lack nerve. Just squeeze your eyes shut and commit—one clean, killing thrust. Understood?"
In other words, I was helping them prepare by watching their sparring and pointing out where they fell short.
Even just now, I'd been crossing hands with Yang Do-wi and walking him through the flaws in his spearwork...
"Haah... let's take a breather. Hours of this back to back is brutal."
Flapping my sweat-soaked clothes for whatever breeze I could catch, I called for a short rest, slumped down onto the ground, and muttered.
"It's true—this generation's talent really is overwhelming..."
Even the sharpest memories rarely outlast time, and I found myself picking through the worn edges of my own...
"Weren't the talent stats insanely high for anyone within ten years of the player character, either side? Then the Heavenly Demon can't be more than thirty by now."
Then again, they hadn't coined the ten-thousand-hour rule for nothing...
Somehow dredging the game system up out of memory, I could roughly gauge the age of that bastard who'd be coming down the mountain to carve us up before long.
"Could I not, say, infiltrate the Demon Cult right now and walk back out with his head...?"
The very thought was enough to churn my stomach, and I was busy gnawing my fingernails to the quick when—
"Young Master, what could possibly have you brooding so hard?"
Dang Giyeong, who had somehow materialized at my elbow without my noticing, came fluttering over and asked.
Here, at last, was the one person I could speak my mind to without any filters, so I kept chewing on my nails and answered.
"Du-sik, what would you put the odds at—me sneaking into the Demon Cult, cutting off the Little Heavenly Demon's neck, and walking out alive?"
"Did you perhaps eat something that disagreed with you? You say strange things on the best of days, but today you've truly outdone yourself."
"........."
"But do you genuinely believe that makes sense, Young Master? Setting out a bowl of water and praying for lightning to strike you dead would be more realistic, would it not?"
"Du-sik....."
"Honestly... it's not as if the Demon Cult is the house next door. My odds of beating Elder Bulseong one-armed are probably higher, don't you think?"
THWACK—
He just had to take a joke that was perfectly fine at one verse and run it straight off a cliff to earn himself a beating, so I booted him in the backside, hauled myself to my feet, and said,
"Forget it. Why do I even bother talking to you..."
Hearing that, Dang Giyeong rubbed his sore rear and replied...
"My point is merely that you ought to focus on what stands before you right now. A tangled knot comes undone one loop at a time. Let your heart run ahead of you and the thing only snarls worse."
Like a broken television that only worked after a good smack—the man would say something sensible only after taking a kick. I answered with a sour face.
"Right. That's the way of it. I'll spare myself the pointless headaches too. Anyway, head back first. I'll spar a little longer and come in after."
"Oh, right! Miss Baekhwa asked me to pass along a message—she's looking for you?"
"Got it... tell her I'll come by around dinnertime."
"Yessir....."
Having thus dispatched Dang Giyeong...
I called over to the Moyong siblings, who were off at the far end of the yard once again locked in a hair-pulling brawl.
"Let's pick this back up!"
Naturally, they ignored me entirely and went on squabbling between themselves.
"Hey! Let go of it!"
"You let go first!"
"Aaagh! You're pulling it all out!!!"
Watching them, I began to worry, with complete sincerity, about the future of the Moyong Clan.
Another day slipped past regardless, and then...
The first day of the Dragon Phoenix Tournament had arrived.
"Whoa... Shaolin is really this big?"
"It somehow seems to grow every time we come. I could swear it was smaller than this last time."
Shaolin had raked in so much money over the years that it had thrown up enough new halls to house the teeming crowds now pouring through its gates.
Be that as it may, we were one of the Five Great Clans, and so we were ushered to the front rows, where we waited out the opening ceremony.
As with every event that carried a name, the Dragon Phoenix Tournament began with a long-winded address from Bulseong.
"WAAAAAAAH!!!!!"
Having dozed off standing up, I wiped the drool from the corner of my mouth and clapped along with the cheering around me...
"Waaah....."
Somehow he caught me at it, and Bulseong and I held each other's gaze for a brief moment—but nothing came of it, and we all moved on to the preliminary grounds.
And once I stood where the preliminaries were being held...
"Benefactor, I ask that you strike me with the strongest attack at your command. Should I acknowledge it, I shall grant you your passing toke....."
CRACK—
I drove a fist square into the face of the Shaolin monk standing there as my examiner.
"Aham... splendid, truly. However, patience is—"
In an instant his nose had been smashed, and with the blood now streaming freely down his face, he moved to lecture me anyway—and I fished the pass out of his hand and left without waiting for the rest of the sermon.
The moment Dang Muyeong—the man behind the rumors that had set all of Henan abuzz—departed, chatter broke out among the remaining participants...
"My... so he truly does have the skill to back up such brazen, lunatic talk?"
"Why do you carry on so over a single punch? Besides, if he's the sort to strike a man mid-sentence, then even I..."
"Spare me. Talk all you like—how would you ever draw so much as a drop of blood from a master of the Hundred-Eight Arhat Fists?"
Among them, too, were those who were genuinely awed by Muyeong's prowess...
"Tsk... was the boy never taught manners? However fine a blade, in a butcher's hand it is nothing more than a meat knife... what a waste of talent."
"Well, hardly surprising, is it? He never had anyone about to teach him decorum."
"True enough. Either way, the boy rubs me the wrong way, that he does."
"Then how about this—if you meet him in the main draw, you teach him his manners personally?"
"Ha... as if it would end with manners. I'll make sure the wretch can't show his face anywhere again."
There were also those who made no effort at all to hide their hostility toward Dang Muyeong.
And of course, a few reacted rather differently.
"Oho... now that looks fun. I'm gonna try it too."
A woman whose horizontally slitted pupils had glittered and danced as she watched Dang Muyeong's antics heard her name called, and she stepped up in front of the Shaolin monk...
"Now, if you could just mana—"
BONK—
She slammed her head straight into the monk's face, snatched the pass from the hand of the bleeding, unconscious man, and went bounding off somewhere at a jaunty trot.
Meanwhile, while the preliminary judging was in full swing on the far side of Shaolin, a guest had arrived at Bulseong's quarters.
"What on earth brings you to a place like this?"
"My, my... this place has turned downright gaudy since I last laid eyes on it."
"And here I thought you had sworn never to show your face in Jianghu again..."
"It's changed so much I very nearly lost my way in here, you know. Hehehehe....."
So stood two old men, each carrying on a conversation the other wasn't having.
Bulseong addressed the old friend who had graced him with a visit after all these years in a voice edged with irritation.
"Just what do you think you're doing?"
At that, the other old man peeled his hand off the Buddha statue he'd been petting and replied with a sheepish smile.
"Oh, come now... you'd think a touch or two would wear the poor thing down, carrying on like that."
"Sword Saint... enough nonsense. Tell me why you have come. You left this world in disgust with the murim—why have you returned to it?"
The old man called the Sword Saint chuckled at the question and answered...
"Hehehehehe... this cursed murim still turns my stomach as thoroughly as ever. But my disciple has to live out her life in it, so I reckoned I ought to bring her out into the world while these old bones still obey me."
"You took a disciple? You?"
"Somehow it worked out that way. Human connections tangle together in stranger ways than one expects."
"Hah....."
Bulseong laughed in sheer, awed exasperation at how breezily the man said it...
Before long, the Sword Saint pushed the door open to leave, saying as he went,
"I've no particular wish to introduce her to you, so I'll be off to my disciple. It was good, seeing you after so long... it was not."
Once he had gone, left alone in his quarters, Bulseong muttered through a twisted face.
"Back then as now, not one thing about the man has changed. Tsk....."
Meanwhile, the Sword Saint was busy absorbing, with his own two feet planted, the full charge of his disciple, who came barreling toward him from the far end of the grounds.
"Oof—....."
"Master! I found the most fun kid ever!"
Body-slammed by a disciple whose tackles were getting harder to absorb by the year, he reflected wryly on just how old he'd become...
"...so then, out of nowhere—BAM! right in the face!"
He patted the head of his disciple, who chattered away breathlessly at him.
"I see. Sounds like you had yourself a grand time."
"Yep! So I gave that baldy's face a headbutt too—BAM!"
The content was rather violent, of course.
"Heheheh... well done. If anything of the sort happens again, you do the very same, Haemu."
"Yes, Master!"
Since I had passed my preliminary early, I'd come back down toward the inn and was wandering the marketplace when...
"I sense... that you are soon to meet again a connection from long ago....."
"A connection from long ago...? You conning piece of trash, GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK!!!"
I had a fake fortune teller—the kind that peddles 'miracle elixirs' on the side—by the collar and was shaking him like a rag doll.
"Young Master, please compose yourself... I'm begging you! No, wait—Miss Baekhwa, please, hold him back!!!"
The sight of the Young Clan Head of the Dang Clan throwing a tantrum in the middle of a market square set the onlookers snickering behind their hands.
"They do say rumors don't take wing for no reason..."
"You said it. Even the Poison King must have his share of troubles."
"As if a man like that were capable of troubles. Back in his younger days he was worse, that one—far worse..."
My infamy—and the Dang Clan's along with it—climbed higher with every passing day.