Time flowed quickly.

So quickly that the One-Branch Gathering was already upon them the very next day.

For nearly a month, Cheon Soyak had come to feel what Cheongu once said.

Head Senior Cheonjeong was, indeed, a romantic.

“Today the scattering plums look unusually beautiful.”

“Pardon?”

“Everyone, sit here for a while. Let’s spend the morning simply watching the blossoms.”

Whether because of her, or because it was his way from the start—

Master Eunsong was absent from the remote lodge more days than he kept it.

Each time, instead of putting them to practice, Cheonjeong would slack off in reverse.

“Come on, Head Senior. Is that really okay?”

“Cheongak. What is it that our sword depicts?”

“...Plum blossoms.”

“And how will you depict the plum without looking closely at it?”

“You sound just like Master, Head Senior.”

Cheongu snickered beside them.

Cheonjeong took it as a compliment.

“I do try rather hard to emulate Master.”

“But if we idle like this, how are we supposed to improve?”

Cheongak kept chattering, and Cheonjeong only smiled.

“Even if we overdo it today, would tomorrow be any worse?”

“But Head Senior, Cheongu and I aren’t even entering the One-Branch Gathering.”

“Soya and I are entering, aren’t we.”

Cheonjeong quietly looked at Soyak.

Just as he’d told her, she was blankly watching the whirling blossoms.

Kneeling with her legs neatly together...

She hugged a longsword in her arms.

When you break a plum branch, the end stands up sharp.

It is a flowering tree, yet it hides a sword—one could say so.

Her straight-seated posture with the scabbard hugged close was the same.

That child is a plum blossom.

Not only when she takes up a sword, but even ordinarily.

Her life itself would be plum.

“Union of body and sword... the look of a master who has touched the level of Apex...”

A child who had achieved the union of body and sword with Mount Hua’s sword.

Literally a realm where body and blade are one.

Naturally, even her bearing would become something that resembled plum blossoms.

But Soyak had something beyond that.

Even here on Mount Hua, thick with plum, hers was a uniquely vivid, deeply red-and-black fragrance.

It was the far-off, sweet scent of plum.

“Head Senior Cheonjeong. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Tilting her head, she asked in a small, slender voice.

At Soyak’s question, Cheonjeong smiled.

“I was wondering when I might become like you.”

At that candor, Cheongu and Cheongak flinched for a moment.

He was Head Senior among the Third Generation.

And he openly acknowledged that his skill lay below Soyak, the youngest.

“...You will surely reach it.”

Cheonjeong blinked.

It was a statement spoken with certainty and finality.

As if she had rewound time to look and returned.

“Head Senior will surely surpass the place where I stand now, and climb to a higher realm.”

It was so firm he couldn’t lightly joke that she was flattering him because he was Head Senior.

Soyak’s black, deep eyes looked at him with their cool darkness.

As if reading his past, seeing his present, and inferring his future.

“...Thank you.”

“Head Senior... will surely become someone greater than me.”

A quiet smile spread at Soyak’s lips.

Only then did Cheonjeong break into laughter as well.

He brushed off the piled petals from her small head as he stroked her hair.

“Of course. If I were smaller than you, how would I serve as Head Senior?”

“...I suppose that’s true.”

Soyak remembered that day.

The pre-dawn spar.

He envied and begrudged her, and yet in the end he embraced her.

Learning what right principle and proper duty are...

These were Daoists even before they were swordsmen.

Cheonjeong dusted off his seat and stood.

One could not watch fluttering petals forever.

“Well then, let’s loosen up a little.”

“Thinking of a practice spar?”

Cheongak sprang to his feet.

From the way he rolled his shoulders, he must have been stiff.

“Right. Will you pair with me?”

“For Head Senior? Anytime.”

Cheongak was Mount Hua’s prodigy.

Setting Cheon Soyak aside, he was a boy who could be called the foremost genius.

He agreed even knowing he would lose to Cheonjeong.

As he had done with Cheon Soyak.

Defeat in learning was nothing to be ashamed of—that was Cheonjeong’s creed.

Even so, before an overwhelming gap, he had despaired for a time...

He stood back up, and overcame it.

“Soyak.”

“Yes, Head Senior.”

“If you see anything to point out while we spar, say it as much as you like.”

“Yes. I will do so.”

The one who oversaw the education and leadership of the Third Generation as a whole was precisely the Head Senior, Cheonjeong.

Even so, he asked Soyak to point out his shortcomings.

From the beginning, and continuously until now.

Thanks to that, his skill was being honed sharper and sharper.

A mere month.

You cannot meet and break a wall you couldn’t reach with only a month of training.

But you can gather the gifts you have and choose better.

‘Even if I’m lucky enough to beat everyone and make the finals...’

Cheonjeong glanced at Cheon Soyak.

Of the two who reached the final, one would inevitably be Cheon Soyak.

And no one would defeat that tiny girl.

For him to beat Soyak would not merely take a miracle; even that would be insufficient.

In truth, the owner of the Purple Firmament Pellet was as good as decided already.

Even if Cheonju and Cheonhwa learned the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword.

“...The Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, is it.”

At his mutter, even Cheongak—who had been cheerfully readying his stance with sword in hand—tilted his head.

“Why the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword all of a sudden?”

“Won’t Cheonju and Cheonhwa spend this month learning the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword?”

“You told us not to worry about that, Head Senior.”

Cheongu shrugged.

“Even so, I’m uneasy.”

“What are you worrying about so much for, Head Senior? Soyak will handle herself fine.”

“Yes, Soyak isn’t the one I’m worried about.”

Cheongu and Cheongak’s eyes gathered on Cheonjeong.

Two disciples go out under one master.

Naturally, the other one would be Cheonjeong himself.

“...Are you worrying about yourself?”

Cheongak asked, eyes round.

With a wry smile, Cheonjeong nodded.

“Soyak will be able to topple Cheonju and Cheonhwa even if they roughly learn to use the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, but...”

And himself?

Could he claim deep insight into the Sprouting Flower Sword?

He might only have been following after his elder...

Could he call it lofty enough to shatter the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, the essence of Mount Hua’s martial learning?

He could not.

Even though he had dug into the Sprouting Flower Sword alone with grim persistence.

Even bearing the name of Head Senior.

To be broken and collapse before Mount Hua’s elders was not a pretty thing.

Gripped by unease, he looked down quietly at the sword in his hand.

There’s a saying that you shouldn’t hold a live blade with training poorer than a blacksmith who hammers steel.

Had he, in truth, been unashamed before the blood and sweat fused by that heat?

Then, Soyak’s voice came from behind.

“Head Senior will not be broken.”

“Even though Cheonju and Cheonhwa come out having learned the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword?”

“Yes.”

Cheonjeong turned back.

Through the scattering plum, Cheon Soyak was gazing at him.

In Soyak’s eyes, she could see it.

The will and grim resolve writhing inside him.

Urgency implanted from outside tends to collapse and sit before a towering mountain.

But he was not like that.

Even though he had been pitifully defeated by her again and again, he stood up all the more.

He acknowledged and accepted his current level and asked for help.

Even from someone far younger and far smaller.

That resolve was the same branch as her own.

Not something obtained because someone told him to, nor because someone was hunting him...

A desperation held to gain something for himself.

“Head Senior will not lose to a clumsy shell that only imitates.”

“...Truly?”

“Truly.”

“If it’s you—if it’s you, then you would see rightly. I’ll trust that. But I want to ask...”

Cheon Soyak tilted her head.

“Have you ever seen the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword?”

“I have.”

“Have you ever learned it as well?”

“...I have.”

By rights, the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword was the main sect’s signature canon.

It was something that could not be passed to a branch family like the Flower-Halo Sect.

However, her father, the Black Plum Sword Lord, was a man of grim resolve.

If Mount Hua’s standard-bearers were holding a match, he would support them in every way and watch...

In the end, he fixed the forms in his eyes and learned them.

He could not obtain the mnemonic verses, so it was half a piece, but the forms were transmitted intact.

“...I won’t ask how you learned it. Master must know as well.”

“It’s no more than a transmission that copied only the forms.”

It was not that she had none.

Only, they were not the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword’s original mnemonic verses.

They were those of the Falling Plum Elegy, older and more exalted than the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword.

It wasn’t some clever trick her father devised.

It was a monster with the qualities to succeed at anything she attempted.

It was a feat only Cheon Soyak had done.

Therefore, she could know.

With forms alone passed down, one could not break the resolve Cheonjeong now held.

With swordplay that merely apes gestures...

You could not push back that edge that had trembled for over a thousand days.

“In dance as well, essence, energy, and spirit must array together to have meaning. Martial learning is the same.”

“Yes. In that case...”

Cheonjeong took his eyes off Cheon Soyak.

Then he looked to Cheongak, who had just finished his stretches before him.

Sssrrng—steel slid coldly from the scabbard.

“I’ll see you in the finals, Soyak.”

Chapter 15

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