Why are you so surprised? (3)
Thud. Thud, thud. Thuuud!
After rolling several times, accompanied by loud noises, Jwa Gohak fell facedown in a posture that seemed to embody the very word ‘splat.’
Everyone blinked as they stared at Jwa Gohak, sprawled on the ground and trembling all over.
“Uh……”
“Well… um…..”
It was not an especially unusual sight. For anyone who lived while learning martial arts, countless sparring matches would pass before their eyes. The sight of one side being sent flying miserably in a bout was something they could not help but grow accustomed to.
That would be true not only for Hwasan’s disciples, but also for the scholars standing on the other side.
And yet, the reason none of them, regardless of side, could continue speaking now was because the person who had just been sent flying was Jwa Gohak – the very man who, until moments ago, had been overwhelmingly driving his opponent back.
“Ugh…. Cough! Cough! Khaah…”
Jwa Gohak rattled as he forced himself upright, like a puppet with a few of its strings cut.
“W-Wait… Wait… Cough! Cough! Khehk! My nose…”
Jwa Gohak, blood pouring from his nose, flinched as he looked at the fresh blood running down his face.
“Goodness.”
Baek Cheon looked at Jwa Gohak and snickered… Yes, he snickered just like Chung Myung, having seized the upper hand. Even though he himself did not look to be in particularly good shape, covered in cuts all over his body.
“I meant to take it easy, but my control slipped a little. Honestly. My apologies.”
“Y-You damned bastard…”
Jwa Gohak’s eyes went bloodshot.
But unlike before, Jwa Gohak could not rush at Baek Cheon so easily. He knew that if the strike just now had been fully infused with internal energy, it would not have ended with a mere nosebleed.
“What kind of conduct is this! In a sacred martial sparring match!”
But that point was not particularly important to Jwa Gohak. What mattered was that this horse-faced Taoist bastard – so worthless not even a dog would drag him away – was fooling around in the middle of a sparring match.
“What?”
“I’m asking why you are fooling around instead of fighting properly!”
Jwa Gohak shouted, looking genuinely furious.
And faced with that fury, Baek Cheon fell into thought for a moment. There were quite a few answers he could give Jwa Gohak right now. A serious response, an aggressive provocation… But in the end, the response Baek Cheon chose at this moment had already been decided.
“I did fight properly, though?”
“What kind of nonsense is that…”
“Oh? Then are you saying you were beaten so badly and rolled all over the ground by someone who was not even facing you properly? Hm?”
“…”
At Baek Cheon’s shameless taunt, Jwa Gohak’s eyes began to twitch.
“Tsk. I didn’t realize that. I should’ve gone even easier on you! You should’ve said something. These days, now that I’m getting older, I just can’t control my strength very well.”
Overcome by a humiliation he had never experienced in his life, Jwa Gohak finally began trembling from head to toe as though he had been struck by lightning.
The disciples of Hwasan watching the scene let out groans of awe and admiration.
“That is Chung Myung.”
“Yeah. It is Chung Myung.”
“He has brought out the most infuriating tone he could possibly think of. The malice is incredible.”
“Amitabha… You have lost your compassion, Baek Cheon Siju.”
Yet Baek Cheon himself seemed extremely satisfied. Letting out a frivolous laugh, he began walking towards Jwa Gohak with an air of confidence… Though his appearance did not support that confidence in the slightest, his attitude, at least, remained self-assured.
“You look like you can’t make sense of it. Why don’t you just experience it for yourself?”
“Y-You…”
Jwa Gohak ground his teeth.
‘A coincidence?’
That could not be. Jwa Gohak was not a fool. No, he was someone who could not possibly be a fool. Was Jwa Gohak not the very person considered the most outstanding among all the scholars gathered from across the realm?
His keen intellect quickly arrived at the proper conclusion to explain the situation. That Taoist had undoubtedly found a way to deal with his Ten Thousand Swords.
But Jwa Gohak’s misfortune was that even with that exceptional insight, he could not infer what method the other man had found.
‘That is absurd. It cannot be.’
Jwa Gohak gripped his sword with all his strength.
A weakness in the Ten Thousand Swords? It could exist. Nothing in this world was perfect. So someone might well have devised a secret means of countering this technique.
That alone wounded his pride, but Jwa Gohak was not a fool who blindly trusted in himself and walked straight into a trap.
‘But then, does that mean that fangshi managed to discern the weakness of my Ten Thousand Swords merely from seeing it a few times?’
If so, was that man unimaginably exceptional, or were the Ten Thousand Swords simply that flawed?
Were the Ten Thousand Swords trash, or was that piece of trash truly such an extraordinary talent?
Forced to choose between two answers he could not choose from, Jwa Gohak simply gave up thinking altogether.
Instead, what he chose was to charge at that detestable face.
“Uwaaaaaaah!”
It may have been a reckless charge, but that did not mean his sword wavered. The Ten Thousand Swords was, from the beginning, a sword technique that could not waver in such a way.
Countless afterimages of swords drawn by Jwa Gohak embroidered the blue sky. Dazzling, yet rather than splendid, it was a sword that conveyed a strict sense of order. It was a sword that carried the grandeur of countless soldiers moving without even a slightest error.
‘My sword is perfect.’
Jwa Gohak was certain. This sword form was flawless beyond compare. It was the finest sword he could possibly unleash at this very moment…
Thwack!
Jwa Gohak’s head snapped back.
“….Huh”
A question rose in his eyes. What was that? What had just happened to me?
Tap.
At that moment, the thing that had struck his head and bounced upward fell to the ground.
“A… a stone?”
Jwa Gohak’s eyes shook wildly. Had he just been hit by a stone that bastard threw?
Smiling faintly, Baek Cheon took out several pebbles he had apparently picked up and tucked into his sleeve in the meantime, repeatedly tossing them lightly into the air and catching them as if to show them off.
“Why are you so surprised?”
“How could this…”
Jwa Gohak’s hands began to tremble. He could not understand it. What on earth had just happened? He, who could fend off even sword strikes aimed at his vital points in an instant, had failed to stop a stone, thrown so obviously?
No, even before that.
“You threw a stone? A swordsman?”
“Yeah, I threw a stone. A swordsman.”
“Y-You lunatic. If you did something like that in a real fight…”
“What would happen?”
“…What?”
“I asked what would happen.”
As Jwa Gohak stood there, utterly dumbfounded, opening and closing his mouth without a word, Baek Cheon clicked his tongue and looked at him with complete disdain.
“This is why you bookworms are hopeless.”
“…”
“Do you even know what a real fight is? Is there some law saying that in a real fight, swordsmen must use only swords, and spearmen only spears? One lunatic I know is supposedly a swordsman, but he bit people to death. He was practically a dog. A dog.”
From behind them came the sound of Chung Myung grinding his teeth.
“Since we’re at it, there are tigers or wolves, too.”
“Oh, spare me. Honestly, the fact that he did not call you a rabid dog alone shows how much affection he has for his Sajil.”
“Agreed.”
At that moment, Baek Cheon flicked one of the pebbles in his hand at Jwa Gohak.
Jwa Gohak reflexively swung his sword and knocked the pebble away.
“See? You can do it just fine.”
“What?”
“I am not from the Sichuan Tang Clan, and it is not as though a stone thrown by my hand could be anything special. Normally, there should be no way you would get hit by some mere stone I threw. So why did you get hit just now?”
Unable to find anything to say, Jwa Gohak stared blankly at Baek Cheon. Baek Cheon grinned and continued.
“The reason your sword, the Ten Thousand Swords, is strong is because it predicts in advance exactly what I will do and how I will respond. As long as I’m acting within the bounds of your predictions, no matter how I move, I cannot escape from your grasp. But… what if you cannot predict my actions?”
As though to give him the answer, Baek Cheon lightly tossed a pebble once and caught it.
Seeing that, Jwa Gohak clenched his teeth so hard they seemed about to break.
“What utter nonsense. We analyzed every martial art, calculated every variable that could possibly arise in order to prepare for exactly that. A method we can’t respond to simply cannot exi…”
“Oh, you are bleeding from the cut on your forehead.”
“…”
Seeing Jwa Gohak abruptly fall silent in the middle of his impassioned speech, Baek Cheon let out a snort.
“So this is why that brat Chung Myung shudders whenever someone mentions those desk-bound scholars. Hey, are those really the words of a guy who’s standing there bleeding because he got hit in the forehead with a stone? What kind of mindset is it to deny something happening right in front of you just because it doesn’t fit your theory?”
The disciples of Hwasan watching began whispering among themselves again.
“What is this? Sasuk is incredibly good with words, is he not?”
“When he has the momentum, he has always been someone whose words flow like a mountain stream.”
“Then why isn’t he like that normally?”
“Because he never gets the upper hand.”
“Ah…”
The disciples of Hwasan could watch the situation at their leisure, but Jwa Gohak was on the verge of losing his mind.
‘The Ten Thousand Swords is flawed?’
He could understand it. But he could not accept it.
“Once we have crossed swords, should we not strive to win with everything we have?!”
“More nonsense.”
Baek Cheon sighed and clicked his tongue once more.
“Everything I have? This is everything I have. A sword is a means to win. The sword itself cannot be the purpose. If I have to put down my sword in order to win, then I put it down. If I cannot do that, then I am not a swordsman, but merely someone who relies on a sword.”
Baek Cheon’s reasoning flowed as naturally as running water, leaving Jwa Gohak’s mouth hanging open.
“Someone who gets this shaken has no business talking about the sword. In a real fight, you’ll run into people who do things far stranger than this. No matter how much you study or prepare, it’s impossible to predict every response your opponent might make. Go fight some Sapa bastard who suddenly spits poisoned needles from his mouth – that’ll wake you up.”
“…”
When something one had believed in steadfastly suddenly collapsed, it usually came with a shock too overwhelming to imagine. Most people caught in such a situation choose to deny reality. It is a far easier path than enduring the feeling that their entire world has come crashing down.
Unfortunately, Jwa Gohak could not do that. He was simply too intelligent to turn away from reality. In that instant, he had no choice but to understand. What they had overlooked, and what limitations had confined his sword.
“Uwaaaaaaaah!”
Even so, Jwa Gohak raised his sword. And paradoxically, that action itself proved the mistake Jwa Gohak and the scholars had made.
Though he already knew he had no chance of victory, though he now understood that the swordsmanship he had devoted himself to was flawed, Jwa Gohak still charged at Baek Cheon. And because of that, he realized it. That he himself was now committing the very irrational act he had excluded until now.
At that moment, Baek Cheon raised his sword again.
“When one’s conviction wavers, so does one’s sword.”
Hummmmm.
The tip of Baek Cheon’s sword trembled violently.
But though the tip of his sword trembled, the sword intent [검의(劍意)] contained within it did not waver by even a fraction. A will as steadfast as the roots of an ancient tree. Bearing that will, countless petals bloomed forth.
“Th-This…!”
Claaang!
Jwa Gohak’s sword struck down the oncoming petals as though shooting them down from the sky.
But it was different. His sword was certainly piercing through Baek Cheon’s sword energy one after another, yet somehow, it was neither as steadfast nor as perfect as before.
Crack!
Baek Cheon’s Plum Blossom sword energy, which appeared infinitely fragile, slipped between Jwa Gohak’s sword shadows. And that sword energy created tiny cracks in wall of the sword shadows that had been so unshakably solid, without even the slightest gap.
In the end, a sword is wielded by a human being. No matter how fervently one pursues perfection, a sword that even its wielder no longer believes in can never truly be perfect.
Craaack!
The countless sword shadows Jwa Gohak had created collapsed. Those sword energies that had stood like iron fortress shattered and broke apart with astonishing ease.
And together with the scattered remnants of that sword energy, Baek Cheon’s Plum Blossom sword energy came fluttering down and swept over Jwa Gohak.
Swaaaaaa.
Unable to even scream, Jwa Gohak trembled violently before collapsing to the ground where he stood.
Click.
Baek Cheon slid his sword into its scabbard, then clasped his fist in salute with the same smile as before.
“I have learned much.”
It was a gesture of courtesy so impeccably respectful that not the slightest fault could be found with it.
________
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