Unexpected Victor
The one who had fallen was Gwak Ho-shin.
Thud.
And the one still standing was Gwak Yeon.
It was a result almost no one had predicted, and so a silence like the dead of night settled over the entire training grounds.
“………”
“………”
“………”
“………”
“………”
Their faces showed they could not understand the situation—or rather, that they simply could not accept it. Right up until the moment he collapsed, Gwak Ho-shin had been driving Gwak Yeon back like a storm.
He had leapt high with the sun at his back, spinning like a top at high speed in midair, and the thick line drawn by his wooden sword had crashed into Gwak Yeon—
Clack!
A strange sound, and Gwak Ho-shin had gone down.
He had not lost consciousness.
But his knees seemed to have given out. He would rise, take a step or two, then nearly topple again. After barely finding his balance and standing, he would try to swing his arm only to stagger once more, over and over.
“What the hell is wrong with him?”
“Did he pull something?”
“The third young master?”
“No, what in the world…”
“What just happened?”
It had all unfolded in an instant.
As the crowd began to murmur, Gwak Ho-shin took another step—and his left leg gave way completely.
He swayed.
His knee hit the ground again.
That was when a deep, resonant voice charged with inner force struck every eardrum present.
“……Enough.”
It was the family head, Gwak Seo-ryong.
“Gwak Yeon’s victory. One month from now, the one who will represent our family in the spar is the second young master, Gwak Yeon.”
Boom-boom-boom——!
An irrevocable declaration from the family head. The moment the words left his mouth, the great drums announcing the end of the match thundered high into the sky.
Flutter.
Gwak Seo-ryong turned on his heel and vanished. Once Chief Steward Yu confirmed his lord’s will, the announcement began to spread from mouth to mouth among the family retainers throughout the training grounds.
“F-from this moment, the banquet begins!”
“Prepare the feast!”
“Come, everyone, clear the grounds and rise!”
And so the spar ended.
Bewilderment.
That atmosphere lingered until most of the people had begun to eat and rest at the banquet that followed the spar.
“……I want to be alone.”
Leaving only those words, Gwak Ho-shin returned to his quarters.
“……He wants me now? Understood.”
The moment the spar ended, Gwak Yeon moved in answer to the family head’s summons.
And so, once the two protagonists of the day had disappeared, the banquet proper began and the mood grew lively and noisy once more.
Twenty oxen and sixty pigs.
The moment the generous cuts of meat and jars of wine prepared for this special day were brought out, a festive atmosphere formed of its own accord.
The first to get properly into the spirit was Cheon Gang.
“Pu-puhahahaha!”
A laugh so free and clear his face turned red.
The second young master Gwak Yeon, whom everyone had dismissed, had won.
“See?! I told you! Our young master can do it if he tries!”
How he had won did not matter.
Whether it had been luck, the opponent’s carelessness, or even if the other had gone easy on him—what mattered to Cheon Gang was that Gwak Yeon had stood and fought without running away.
He had found the courage to step onto the stage.
He had not fled in tears.
And he had shown that sight to everyone.
That alone left Cheon Gang so full of emotion he hardly knew what to do with himself. Of course, that was not the only reason for his joy.
“Khah! I knew he’d win! I knew he’d take it! I believed in you, Young Master!”
His fortune had doubled.
Through the one-silver-tael bets he had started both to show his faith in the young master and to protect his own pride in that faith.
If he collected one silver tael each from several warriors of Biryongdang and every single warrior under Samho-gak… just how much would that come to?
Grinning from ear to ear.
The corners of his mouth would not come down.
Was this what ecstasy felt like?
From the crown of his head to the tips of his toes, Cheon Gang was drunk on a thrilling sense of victory as if lightning had struck him, and he shouted in high spirits.
On the other side—
“What the hell was that…”
“Does that even make sense?! Huh?!”
“My money…!”
“That’s it? It ends like this?”
“By the way, shouldn’t we go after the young master too?”
“Didn’t you hear him say not to follow earlier? Go near him now and you’ll just get hit for nothing.”
“He came to his senses pretty fast, though.”
“Exactly. You sure he didn’t just go easy on him?”
“Do we still have to pay out a silver tael for this?”
Because the family head himself had declared it, they could not openly object, yet the warriors of Samho-gak grumbled with faces full of clear dissatisfaction.
As the family’s foremost martial force, the warriors of Biryongdang heatedly debated how to interpret what had just happened.
And then there were the countless laborers and retainers of the family, freed from their duties and enjoying meat and wine, as well as the guest retainers who were simply thrilled to have witnessed such a rare spectacle.
“The smell is insane.”
“So just now, with the shoulder…”
“The second young master? Doesn’t match the rumors.”
“Do they throw a feast like this every time here?”
“Heh heh heh, look at the quality of that meat.”
“Judging by the elusiveness of the movement itself, that last technique…”
“Wow~ all the young masters here are so handsome~”
“Wine! Bring more wine over here!”
“I’m telling you, he didn’t dodge!”
“Khahahaha!”
Everyone was noisy for their own reasons.
And they were not the only ones raising their voices.
“Do you all agree?”
The elders of the family.
Talk of the spar that had just ended and its outcome was circulating among them as well.
“We must do it again!”
“Did you not hear the family head’s words?”
“It is difficult to accept.”
“Hmm. From what I saw, the second young master clearly revealed strength he had been hiding, and regardless of whether we accept it or not, the result is already decided.”
“Was it not a result in which chance played a part?”
“You see it as chance, then.”
“Of course it cannot all have been luck. Even I saw something elusive in the second young master’s movements. But overall, it did not feel as though both sides’ true skills were cleanly displayed, did it?”
“That is not how I see it.”
“This is not something to speak of so lightly. If we think of the family’s future—if we truly think of this family’s benefit—we must hold the spar again!”
“So you are saying I am someone who does not think of the family’s benefit?”
“Are you not?”
“What?!”
“This is not a simple spar! Enormous interests of this family rest upon the shoulders of today’s victor!”
That was the truth.
This spar had not been a mere internal family competition.
The winner would, one month later, represent the family in the heir spar against a rival house. And that spar involved not only pride but very real interests.
Cheonhae Merchant Group
The fundamental reason for sparring against the Jusan Baek Family in the first place was that very merchant group, the greatest in Zhejiang.
Simply becoming involved brought in enormous wealth—the escort of the Cheonhae Merchant Group’s trading caravans. The picture was that the heirs of Zhejiang’s two great families would compete to decide which martial house would take exclusive charge of that escort for the next three years.
In that light—
“Are you certain that fighting again would produce a different result from today? And are you certain the second young master can defeat that mad monster on their side?!”
“……”
Such worries were only natural.
The third young master, Gwak Ho-shin.
He was already a proven martial artist—not only skilled with the sword, but a man of the jianghu who had successfully completed multiple commissions from outside.
Whereas—
“Well…”
The second young master, Gwak Yeon.
Even among the elders, talk still circulated that a fair amount of luck had played a role in the match just now. He was little more than a fledgling.
“A fight inside the house… is different from a fight outside, I suppose.”
Gwak Yeon walked toward the family head’s office, lost in strange thoughts.
Step.
Step.
A fledgling.
That most people saw him that way was a fact he had grown thoroughly used to ever since entering this body.
But—
He had not expected that fellow to look at him the same way.
He clearly… went easy on me.
Gwak Ho-shin.
A cold-blooded man with a fierce face to match—someone about whom the rumors said one could expect neither carelessness toward an opponent nor the slightest pity.
He did get serious toward the end, though.
That was an intuition only someone who had experienced it firsthand could have.
Even with his vampire senses sharpened to their peak, Gwak Yeon had felt neither killing intent nor boiling fighting spirit. In other words, he had not fully experienced Gwak Ho-shin’s true skill either.
That was why it had felt rather awkward.
His goal in this spar had been to win in a way that looked like a “chance victory.” Crafting the board so that it appeared he had won by pure luck while facing someone who was not going all-out had not been easy.
I didn’t even get to use my abilities.
His vampire powers.
That is, no situation urgent enough to test the abilities that used blood in secret had arisen.
Step.
Step.
Walking toward the family head’s office, Gwak Yeon smiled.
As someone who had not yet reached the level of strength from his previous life, there were things he could gain from this victory.
Anyway… it’s a profit.
The spiritual medicine wagered on the victory.
Instead of facing a lifetime ban on leaving the house if he had lost, he would receive a spiritual medicine that would greatly increase his inner force.
Then—
The life that followed would be the one he had failed to achieve in his previous life…
He stopped short.
Arriving before the family head’s office, Gwak Yeon suddenly tilted his head.
In truth, he was curious.
His goals from his previous life were one thing, but this spar had only deepened his questions about this family. There were still many things that could not be explained by the situation he had heard from Cheon Gang after his reincarnation alone.
Hmm.
First, Gwak Ho-shin.
That fellow whose expressionless face was always so damn fierce—
—Heh heh heh…
When the man had let out that bone-chilling laugh, the physical reactions Gwak Yeon’s senses had caught had clearly been different from what he expected.
And the martial art he used.
Above all, he was curious about that martial art.
Manhyeong Swordplay
The family’s sword art, said to have founded this house.
Unlike the sword Cheon Gang had learned after joining late, seeing the sword of Gwak Ho-shin—who had trained in it since childhood—only strengthened Gwak Yeon’s conviction.
No matter how I look at it, that is…
That was when it happened.
……!
A presence sharp enough to make his entire body tingle spread from inside the family head’s office at the same time a voice came from beyond the door.
“What are you doing standing there?”
The family head, Gwak Seo-ryong.
After hearing the words laden with such majestic inner force that they carried a sense of pressure—
Click.
Gwak Yeon opened the door to the family head’s office and stepped inside. A gaze fell upon him at once.
A pressure like a great mountain.
Breathing felt slightly difficult—far beyond what he had felt when he saw the man in the conference hall last time.
“You are slow.”
The family head pressed him without preamble.
Yet Gwak Yeon did not shrink back.
Rather—
What kind of spiritual medicine he would receive, how the current situation in the murim stood, and what the true nature of the sword art passed down in this family was… He was choosing his first words to open the conversation when—
“It is merely a matter of opening a single door. What were you fretting over so much?”
“That is…”
Without thinking, Gwak Yeon shifted his gaze—and could not help but flinch.
…………!!!
A stack of papers piled to one side of the office.
Atop them was drawn the very mark he had seen in the final moments of his previous life.
The mark tattooed behind the ear of the villain with whom he had perished together—the Shadowless Old Monster.
Exactly the same mark…
Ilwolgyo
(Sun and Moon Cult)
…was drawn upon those documents right now.