Eunsong’s face went pale.

Cheon Soyak thought that was rather amusing.

“W–who did you say was calling for me?”

“Master Myunggon told me to fetch you.”

“Good heavens. Of all people, my teacher?”

“Is there a problem, sir?”

Eunsong let out a long sigh.

Then he shook his head.

“Master Myunggon… would be your Grandmaster, I suppose. In any case, best you avoid him.”

“May I ask why…?”

“I was beaten a lot. He’s someone who hits often.”

“Ah.”

Cheon Soyak blinked quietly,

then slowly nodded.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good. Let’s go quickly, then. If we’re late, he might strike me on the head again…”

A bad premonition never misses.

This time was no exception—Eunsong barely stepped through the door before Myunggon chopped the crown of his head.

“Eunsong, you brat!”

—BANG!

It was a sound no simple hand-chop could make.

Eunsong clutched his head, groaning.

“Master! To strike a disciple returning after half a year—!”

“I should be the one saying that, you rascal! I should!”

Second Generation disciple, Eunsong.

Back when Elder Jeonggang, Master Myunggon’s own teacher, was still the First Generation disciple, Eunsong was one of the two pupils he had personally brought in.

At that time, Mount Hua had been thrown into an uproar.

A sect’s Sect Leader and Elders are usually old men.

Their First Generation disciples are in their forties or fifties.

Their Second Generation disciples, in their twenties or thirties.

By the Third Generation, they’re in their teens.

But to have two barely past ten as Second Generation disciples?

The Third Generation’s complaints could be crushed, but—

how would one explain it to the Second Generation?

“These green little brats are now your teachers?”

In the end, Jeonggang’s disciple Myunggon had taken the pair in formally as their acting master.

And yet, Eunsong and his fellow disciple, Eunjung, proved their worth.

Eunjung defeated all his senior brothers within three years.

Then, five years ago, he won the Dragon-Phoenix Conclave.

He became the most promising young talent of his generation.

Now, he was the young face of Mount Hua—

a highly regarded master in his own right.

Eunsong had also benefited Mount Hua.

Alongside his profound understanding of martial theory, he possessed a discerning eye for hidden talent—no less keen than his teacher Jeonggang’s.

…The problem was that in the martial world, talent worth recruiting usually meant children.

Just as Jeonggang had taken in Eunsong and Eunjung.

“Cheonjeong, Cheongak, even Cheongu! I’ve already assigned you three Third Generation disciples under your wing! Are you obsessed with collecting students or what?!”

“Well, but if someone shows promise, what am I supposed to do?”

“That doesn’t mean you can just pick one off the street!”

“She’s not just ‘one’…”

At that pitiful excuse, Myunggon’s fury rose all the way to his scalp.

“You call that talking back?!”

Myunggon roared loud enough to shake the room.

It was a relief they weren’t standing at the front of the Admissions Hall;

otherwise, it would’ve been quite the spectacle.

Then someone knocked on the door.

Thump, thump, thump.

Myunggon, his face flushed red and blue, strode over and yanked it open.

“Which clueless bastard dares knock on my—!”

“Oh, dear.”

Myunggon’s mouth clamped shut.

Eunsong sighed.

The visitor was an old man with a long beard.

“Seems your master must be that clueless bastard, eh? Ha-ha-ha.”

It was Elder Jeonggang.

And both men knew that laugh was anything but sincere.

Myunggon dropped to his knees at once.

“I—I’ve committed a grave sin, Master!”

“I haven’t, Grandmaster.”

Eunsong lifted his shoulders in a half-shrug.

Jeonggang’s eyes flashed sharply.

Under his snowy brows, his gaze slid over to Cheon Soyak.

She stood small and slender, yet upright, meeting his eyes.

“…Ho.”

Jeonggang kicked Myunggon aside and stepped forward.

The blow landed square on Myunggon’s shin, sending him writhing on the floor,

but Jeonggang paid him no mind.

All his attention was fixed on Cheon Soyak.

“So you’re the disciple Eunsong picked up?”

“…Yes.”

“A child with cold eyes, I see.”

A child with cold eyes.

Cheon Soyak accepted that assessment.

Her self-awareness was more than sufficient.

“To watch your teacher get beaten by his master without flinching… you’re quite an odd girl.”

“Are you referring to the sir?”

“Sir?”

That peculiar address made Jeonggang glance toward Eunsong.

Eunsong sighed and explained everything that had happened.

Her background as the only daughter of the Black Plum Sword Lord—Sect Master of the Flower-Halo Sect, executed for Blasphemy.

Her fate under the Heavenly Killing Star.

Her current state: not yet formally accepted by Mount Hua, so unable to address Eunsong as Master.

It was enough to make Myunggon, finally sitting upright again, foam at the mouth and collapse back into his chair.

“…Master. I don’t know if it’s proper for a Daoist to say this, but we should not take that girl in.”

Myunggon spoke solemnly, seated now.

Jeonggang appeared lost in thought.

Cheon Soyak looked between the three men, then spoke to Myunggon.

“I have a question.”

Her steady tone made him frown.

“You’re speaking to me?”

“Yes.”

“Hmph. Go ahead, then.”

“Do you dislike me that much?”

Myunggon’s eyes went round.

So did Eunsong’s.

Only Elder Jeonggang found the moment entertaining.

“It’s not that I dislike you. I’m saying you don’t belong in Mount Hua.”

“And what kind of person belongs in Mount Hua?”

Her voice was small and low—

the voice of a fourteen-year-old girl not yet grown.

“…That is—”

“Is it that only those not born under the Heavenly Killing Star, or those whose fathers weren’t executed, may enter Mount Hua to seek the Dao?”

Myunggon heard no resentment in her voice.

Only a deep, dull resignation.

As if she had never expected otherwise.

“I saw and heard much while waiting in that long line at the Admissions Hall. I know what people think of me. So please—speak without holding back.”

Her black eyes glinted with depth.

“Master Myunggon, do you truly dislike me that much?”

To receive a Daoist name—to enter a sect—meant severing worldly ties.

To sever worldly ties meant to lay down all sin, merit, and past attachments.

Once one received a Daoist name, the past ceased to exist.

Only the fact of being a Mount Hua disciple would define one’s identity and essence in the Central Plains.

Thus, the Dao did not discriminate by birth or background.

That was precisely what Cheon Soyak was asking.

If it wasn’t personal dislike, on what grounds was she being rejected?

A chill wind drifted through the open window.

Silence lingered.

Then Elder Jeonggang broke it.

“There is a condition.”

“…Master?”

Myunggon’s eyes went wide.

Eunsong, however, smiled faintly.

“You said your name is Cheon Soyak?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Can you keep your origin and lineage secret?”

The orthodoxy of the Dao.

If only it truly worked that way.

Sect Leader Jeongyang would surely oppose it—

no matter how senior Jeonggang was, he couldn’t simply ignore the Sect Leader.

So it was better to conceal it.

Even before invoking Daoist doctrine, it was an unspoken law of the martial world not to pry into another’s past.

“I will keep it secret.”

“Good. Do you bear resentment? When the Flower-Halo Sect Master was executed, Mount Hua did nothing.”

“How could I not resent it?”

“And yet?”

“But I understand that not all things flow as they should.”

A glimmer flickered in Jeonggang’s eyes.

“How old are you?”

“I turned fourteen this year.”

“A disquieting child.”

Rough, weighty words.

Cheon Soyak lowered her head slightly.

But Jeonggang’s tone was gentler than ever, his gaze soft.

“You have the voice of a child, yet inside it coils a serpent no lesser than an adult’s. Your heart is thick with hardened callus.”

The old man’s hand brushed her hair.

“Children who grow up the hard way often turn out like this.”

“…I won’t deny it.”

“I’ve taken in many talents. Eunsong and Eunjung among them—and Myunggon no less so.”

Jeonggang glanced at his disciple and his disciple’s disciple.

Both bowed their heads.

“But you, child… are no talent.”

Myunggon tilted his head.

“What do you mean, Master? If so, why would we even—”

“To speak of a child so carelessly—can you still call yourself a Mount Hua Daoist?”

“…My apologies.”

“This child isn’t a talent.”

Jeonggang looked to Eunsong.

A smile curved Eunsong’s lips.

For Jeonggang to say that meant he had recognized Eunsong’s judgment.

“This child is a monster.”

Only Myunggon failed to understand what he meant.

“She will become Mount Hua’s phoenix. You’ve chosen well, Eunsong.”

“I knew Grandmaster would recognize her.”

“Indeed…”

Jeonggang’s brows rose.

“So you brought her knowing I’d never turn away a child of such potential, is that it?”

“No, that’s not—”

“I hear you even taught her the Hidden Fragrance Drift.”

“That was because Soyak didn’t know any lightness arts…”

“OUT!”

Jeonggang’s roar thundered through the room.

“You knew plenty of other lightness arts and still chose that one, didn’t you?!”

“…Yes.”

“And you knew that if I ever saw her crippled of her inner arts, I’d sooner wrestle the Sect Leader himself than allow it, didn’t you?”

Eunsong closed his mouth.

That silence was admission enough.

Jeonggang stared at him for a long time, then sighed.

“Hah… well. Who am I to scold you for this? I used to do the same.”

At last, he stopped berating Eunsong and lifted Cheon Soyak, setting her on his knee—

like a grandfather might.

Startled, her eyes wavered.

“Well then. The journey here wasn’t too hard, was it?”

“…Why are you suddenly being so kind to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m your teacher’s teacher’s teacher—

you’re my great-great-granddisciple. What kind of master wouldn’t dote on such a child?”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

Cheon Soyak gazed quietly into Jeonggang’s eyes.

“What if someone asks about my past?”

“Then tell them what I said.”

Jeonggang looked at her and smiled.

Yet the words he spoke were entirely sincere.

“To dig up and judge another’s past is not the work of a Daoist.

Once you enter Mount Hua, you are a Daoist of Mount Hua—nothing else.

No other explanation or past will ever stand before that.”

Ambition for talent—

She had thought that was what drove him, that he looked beyond her birth and name.

But it wasn’t that.

This old man was a true Daoist.

Cheon Soyak looked up at him with those black eyes for a moment.

“…Mount Hua is vast.”

“Of course. Mount Hua is vast indeed.”

Chapter 7

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