Dying would be easier. (2)
“Huff…. “
Unable to withstand the shock inflicted upon his body, the blood vessels in his eyes burst all at once. His vision blurred so much that he could barely see because of the bleeding inside his eyes, yet even through those eyes Chung Myung could see it clearly.
Dark Plum Sword. His beloved blade, symbolizing the ties between the Tang Clan and Hwasan, was driven into Jang Ilso’s chest.
A stark white blade embedded through fabric soaked crimson.
Along that razor-sharp edge, the blood of the foremost figure in the Evil Sects dripped down.
That was not all. The feeling transmitted to his fingertips told him – this strike had certainly landed…
But in that instant, Jang Ilso’s palm slammed like a burning brand against the center of Chung Myung’s chest.
Boooom!
Coughing up blood into empty air, Chung Myung was hurled violently backward.
“Ha… ah……”
Jang Ilso let out a groan laced with both exhaustion and pain. His pale hand quickly reddened as it pressed tightly against the gaping black wound.
“Gughk!”
Spitting out blood, Jang Ilso squeezed at the injury on his chest, as if trying to wrench away the pain, and spoke.
“…It hurts, you know.”
His brow furrowed deeply. Excruciating pain spread through his entire body. The eyes that would not stop trembling flashed wickedly for a moment.
Gnash.
Jang Ilso spat out a clot of bloody phlegm, bit down hard on his own lips, and continued.
“That was a bit much, Hwasan Geomhyeop… I truly thought I was going to die.”
With great difficulty, Chung Myung pushed himself upright.
“Ptoo.”
He spat out a large clot of blood and casually wiped the darkened blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. Then he muttered.
“…What a joke.”
Slam!
Planting his sword into the ground to prop himself, Chung Myung somehow forced his trembling body up. Though he swayed as if he would collapse any second, he somehow managed to remain upright. Then, baring bloodied teeth, he smiled brightly.
“You’d better get used to it early. It’ll hurt even more when you actually die.”
“…”
“Isn’t that right?”
“Tsk.”
Jang Ilso’s expression subtly twisted.
“Even on the brink of death, you just can’t let go of that bravado.”
Looking at Chung Myung, who seemed like he could collapse at any moment, Jang Ilso channeled his energy into his right hand. The visible wounds might make it seem like Jang Ilso had taken the heavier blow, but in truth, Chung Myung’s injuries were far more severe.
That meant he had to press the attack without giving him a chance to breathe – before the bleeding from the sword wound worsened.
Just as Jang Ilso finished calculating his next move and instinctively stepped forward.
Stagger.
His body shook violently. Eyes wide, he looked down at his own legs, dazed.
‘Did I suffer internal injuries?’
He quickly circulated his energy to reassess his condition.
But it wasn’t internal injury. Of course, the sword strike that had pierced his chest was serious, but it was only an external injury [외상(外傷)*] – no more than a gash through his flesh. There was no reason at all he should be suffering internal injuries.
Then why, all of a sudden, were his legs refusing to obey him?
“Impossible…”
The tips of Jang Ilso’s fingers trembled faintly.
‘Am I afraid? Me?’
Crunch!
He grabbed his own knee hard. His fingers dug into his skin, sending a chilling wave of pain through him.
“This…”
A brutal sense of humiliation seized Jang Ilso.
He had been through more life-or-death situations than one could count. At times, he had even willingly confronted death itself, prepared to accept his own demise without hesitation.
And now, after all that, his body was freezing up from fear? Ridiculous.
At that moment, devoid of much emotion, Chung Myung’s voice reached his ears.
“Your body… cough! Cough! Damn it….”
After cursing, Chung Myung spat out another mouthful of blood and continued speaking.
“…Looks like your body isn’t listening to you either.”
Jang Ilso gave no reply. He merely glared at Chung Myung with sharp, narrowed eyes.
Chung Myung let out a short snicker.
“Want me to tell you why?”
“What nonsense are you spouting now…?”
“Death itself is nothing. We’ve both come far beyond fearing such a trivial thing. Isn’t that right?”
“…”
“You are not afraid of death.”
Scrape.
Chung Myung’s sword scraped across the ground.
“What is truly frightening… is the dread that death might prevent you from accomplishing what you must.”
“…”
“The dread that your end might render everything you’ve achieved meaningless – that anxiety is what’s holding you back.”
Jang Ilso stared blankly at Chung Myung, as if struck on the back of the head.
“…Anxiety?”
“Exactly.”
Jang Ilso slowly tilted his head to the side, as though he simply couldn’t grasp what he’d just heard.
“Isn’t that the same for everyone? Who doesn’t know everything ends when they die?”
“Does it?”
Chung Myung let out another faint chuckle.
Scrape.
The tip of his sword, tireless, scraped the ground once more.
“There was a time I lived like you, convinced without a shred of doubt that everything depended on my sword.”
At the end of his words, Chung Myung slowly shook his head.
“But not anymore.”
From beneath his swollen eyelids, a calm gaze emerged.
“Because I’ve seen them – people whose story doesn’t end with death, those who forge something that will continue after they’re gone.”
After staring at Chung Myung for a long while, Jang Ilso let out a hollow laugh.
“Hah. I was wondering what nonsense you’d spew this time….”
“But do you know?”
Chung Myung smiled back at Jang Ilso. Yet the nature of his smile was clearly different from Jang Ilso’s.
“You’ve already failed.”
A sharp twitch ran across the corners of Jang Ilso’s eye.
“Failed?”
“Yes. Because you will leave nothing behind.”
Chung Myung slowly nodded, then found himself laughing again. Strangely, quiet chuckles kept slipping out of him.
Everyone has something they must achieve at all costs. To reach that destination, they’d sacrifice anything. But once that desperately desired goal is accomplished, what’s left afterward?
“There is nothing there.”
Chung Myung laughed bitterly. With each shudder of his body, darkened blood gushed out from the holes pierced through his flesh.
“Nothing… nothing at all. All that awaits is just emptiness.”
He had been there before.
Cutting off the Heavenly Demon’s head – Chung Myung had once devoted himself entirely to that single goal, even more desperately and ruthlessly than Jang Ilso now.
Yet in the final moment, all that remained in Chung Myung’s grasp was regret, and regret alone.
“What matters isn’t what you accomplish, but what you leave behind.”
“…”
“But you probably wouldn’t understand no matter how I put it.”
Chung Myung chuckled softly again.
– No matter what I say, what could reach you as you are now?
The way Chung Myung looked at Jang Ilso now could hardly differ from how Chung Mun once looked at Chung Myung.
One who is ‘consumed’ can neither see nor leave anything behind.
That was why Chung Myung saw his own past in Jang Ilso’s figure now. Their destinations differed, but their methods were essentially the same.
But at the very least…
“‘What you leave behind,’ is it.”
At that moment, Jang Ilso looked up at the dark clouds filling the sky. Reaching out his hand as if to grasp the falling rain, he suddenly laughed quietly.
“You’re joking, right?”
Fwoosh.
Suddenly, Jang Ilso’s body stretched like taffy**, surging towards Chung Myung. Chung Myung reflexively tried to swing his sword, but his wounded body refused to obey his will.
Boom!
His half-hearted swing was effortlessly deflected by Jang Ilso’s fist.
Kwaaang!
A moment later the left fist that came flying buried itself in Chung Myung’s solar plexus up to the wrist.
“Gah!”
Unable to bear the shock and pain, Chung Myung’s mouth gaped wide. Jang Ilso instantly kicked Chung Myung, whose body had reflexively doubled over.
Booom!
With a thunderous crash Chung Myung was hurled backward, yet Jang Ilso did not allow him the slightest chance to escape. He snatched Chung Myung’s wrist as he recoiled and yanked him straight back, then gripped the back of his head and drove it towards the ground.
Boooom!
“Kk….”
Chung Myung’s body convulsed.
“What will you leave behind?”
Booom!
Jang Ilso smashed Chung Myung’s head down again. He then grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up, causing Chung Myung’s limp body to appear as if he knelt before him.
“What you leave behind, you say? Hahahahahaha! Isn’t that hilarious! Ahahahahahaha!”
Jang Ilso burst into manic laughter. Blood trickled down his pale face, streaming down like tears. After laughing for some time, he roughly jerked Chung Myung’s collar, pulling his face right up to his own.
Jang Ilso’s mad eyes glared at Chung Myung from point-blank range.
“How naive.”
“…”
“A person can never truly know another’s heart. They merely assume what it would be like and take comfort in that assumption, because otherwise the anxiety would consume them.”
“Jang Il…”
“Leave something behind? Trust someone other than myself? Believe my will shall be carried on? Believe others will do what I could not? Believe? Trust? Someone else?”
Chung Myung’s body trembled slightly.
It shouldn’t have been possible, yet in that instant Chung Myung felt himself completely overwhelmed by Jang Ilso for a brief moment.
“Trust?”
Booom!
Kicked hard once more, Chung Myung was flung away and rolled across the ground.
“Trust? It’s nothing but a petty trick, a comforting lie concocted by those worthless pigs who can’t accomplish anything on their own.”
“…”
“Those who can achieve greatness by themselves never speak of trust. Only incompetent fools hide behind such empty words.”
With trembling hands, Chung Myung pushed himself painfully up from the ground. Jang Ilso watched the effort with a strange look.
“You, of all people, should know, shouldn’t you?”
Hostility surged in his eyes – and yet, there was also an unfathomable depth of faith in those eyes.
Reading this clearly, Chung Myung let out a faint laugh. To call it a laugh was generous – it was merely a slight twitch on his ravaged face.
“…Yes. I know.”
Now even his hands would no longer obey him, yet Chung Myung forced his body upright again.
Crunch.
Gathering the last of his strength, he gripped his sword firmly.
“I know exactly… how damn wretched it is.”
His body was at its worst, yet for some reason hollow laughter kept escaping him.
“So, I’ll tell you.”
“…What?”
“That the one who says trust is worthless is merely someone who hasn’t yet stood at the very end.”
He should have trusted a little more.
In his final moments, Chung Myung had resented Chung Mun. He’d blamed Chung Mun’s blind trust and naive kindness.
But the Chung Myung of now resents the self he was back then.
Why couldn’t he trust a little more? Why didn’t he try a little harder to help him?
If he had, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe he wouldn’t be standing here now, like some lingering wraith, trapped in this place.
Hoo…
Chung Myung slowly steadied what little inner energy he had left.
‘How much do I have left?’
Then again, what’s the use of such things now?
All that was left was to bring him down. Use every last ounce of strength he had. After that, the rest would be up to them.
As Chung Myung took a deep breath, making his final preparations, Jang Ilso spoke.
“Trust, huh… Yeah, perhaps you might be right.”
Chung Myung narrowed his eyes – not because the words surprised him, but because he caught the faint spark in Jang Ilso’s face as he spoke.
“But that thing you call trust – it’s a word you can only use when there’s someone to give it to, isn’t it?”
“…What?”
An unknown unease swept through Chung Myung’s chest, and before he knew it – forgetting even his resolve not to – his gaze shifted towards the spot a little way off, the place Jang Ilso had been watching since moments ago.
“Answer me.”
The instant Jang Ilso’s voice brushed his ears, Chung Myung saw it.
A red tide surging towards them from the far end of the earth, the ground stained black by darkness.
“Ah…..”
A groan, half sigh and half lament, slipped from Chung Myung’s lips. Even from this distance, there was no mistaking what they were.
Jang Ilso’s hounds were racing towards their master in a mad frenzy.
“If everyone dies and disappears, then where will your trust go?”
Jang Ilso’s laughter-tinged voice pierced the frozen Chung Myung with merciless cruelty.
‘No…’
Red Dogs, another name for despair, were rushing in.
________
*외상(外傷) – physical injuries that are visible or affect the exterior of the body. It doesn’t mean “superficial,” it means it’s a flesh wound like a stab, a slash etc. On the other hand, in martial arts context, 내상(內傷) – internal injury – refers to the injuries to dantian(s) and the meridians. The longer a fight drags on, the more these internal injuries interfere with the flow of qi, worsening the damage within the body. So Jang Ilso isn’t saying that the wound is shallow, or not life threatening (he mentions he can bleed out basically so he should attack faster), he is saying this is just not as bad as having an injury to the qi circulatory system.
**Yeot taffy – traditional Korean confectionery.
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Return of the Mount Hua 
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