“Ha? Ha! Hahaha! Hahahahaha!!”

Namgung Seon burst out laughing.

He snickered as he tore into a skewer from the plate, then tapped Cheonjeong’s leveled sword with that little wooden stick.

“Sorry, but I’m not drawing my sword on you, Cheonjeong.”

“I know.”

“This wooden stick is plenty.”

“Yeah? Then I can probably take two of your fingers.”

A fierce contest of will.

Of course, if Namgung Seon chose to release his inner power in earnest, the other wouldn’t even be a match.

But he didn’t go so far as to trample him.

Because…

He’d gotten interested.

He had never seen a weakling stiffen his spine this far.

Within the Namgung Clan, he was an overwhelming, peerless existence.

The young clan lord, and a prodigy acknowledged by the Sword Sovereign.

Beyond the Azure Sky Scripture, the boy slated to inherit the Sword Sovereign’s Azure Sky Hardened Qi—a thing even the current clan lord had not mastered.

He was the future of the Namgung Clan itself.

Therefore no one ever challenged him.

Even the clan elders who had already crossed the wall into Transcendent Apex.

Even the head of the Namgung Clan’s shadow group, the Night-Heaven Hall, kept his courtesies.

But the boy his own age in front of him wasn’t like that.

Do all peers from other prestigious sects act this way?

No. They didn’t.

From the start, there had never even been a reason for this to happen.

No one had ever managed to catch his interest.

They couldn’t even provide a pretext for something like this.

But Mount Hua had provided the pretext—and then stirred a different curiosity on top.

“Fine, fine. I’m not some villain who makes the Head Senior kneel in front of my junior sister. Let’s leave it at that.”

Namgung Seon raised both hands as if in surrender.

Cheonjeong clenched his other fist at the mockery.

“…Head Senior.”

Warmth on his fist.

Soyak quietly took Cheonjeong’s hand and shook her head.

Only then did Cheonjeong lower his sword.

“So it’s true what they say about Mount Hua’s Daoists being stubborn. Really is.”

He shrugged on the outer garment hanging over his chair back and shook his head.

Then he set a jingling pouch down on the table with a thud.

“That should cover the bill. My mood’s soured, so I’m leaving.”

Cheonjeong didn’t offer a farewell.

Soyak did not follow his lead.

Staring steadily at Namgung Seon, she declared, firm and clear:

“Do you know what the ‘nine heavens’ in the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword means?”

“Out of nowhere?”

“The heaven above heaven—the highest of the nine heavens.”

The Namgung Clan’s signature sword canon was the Sky-Vault Unfettered Sword.

A martial art that takes the boundless, open vault of the sky as its image.

Which meant…

This was a declaration that Mount Hua’s martial canon had risen to a superior place—a sky beyond the sky—above Namgung.

“…You know how to get under a man’s skin, don’t you?”

“I’ll see you on the Sparring Stage.”

“So, you’re saying we should compare whose sky is higher right now—the Namgung sky or yours?”

His mouth was smiling.

His eyes were not.

A madman’s gleam flashed toward Soyak.

But Soyak did not look away.

She met him instead, with eyes black and hollow.

“I’ll show you.”

Even the corners of Namgung Seon’s mouth lost their smile.

A sentence staking a martial artist’s pride.

Not a line for a friendly match, but killing intent befitting a life-and-death duel.

“The difference between a commoner’s sky and a sovereign’s sky.”

With that last line, he slammed the door and walked out—SLAM.

Only then did Cheonjeong collapse into his chair, spent.

“Ah, damn. My legs went weak.”

He muttered it with a long sigh.

Soyak looked down at him in silence.

Then she gently set a hand on his shoulder.

“Rest a bit, Head Senior.”

“I made a disgrace of myself. Sorry.”

Soyak shook her head.

Then she pulled a chair close and sat beside him.

Cheonjeong quietly patted her head.

That this small, slender child could stand against the Namgung Clan’s firstborn—

Maybe you could call it a touch of cognitive dissonance.

His feelings were complicated.

“Think you can win?”

“Yes. You don’t need to worry.”

“But the opponent is…”

Soyak took the hand that was patting her head and moved it away.

Then she gently tapped the back of his hand.

“Head Senior. I’ll go and win.”

“…Right. If it’s you, you will.”

A trust with no knowable origin.

A belief that there was no one this small, slender girl in front of him could not defeat.

Such things rose up from within.

Cheonjeong decided to believe in that junior sister.

“I’ll believe.”

****

“So you’re telling me there’s a plum on this Mount Hua that won’t look upon its Sect Leader?”

Red-Tile Pavilion.

A boisterously drunken voice.

At any time he could purge the intoxication with inner power, so he drank all the more freely.

Seven bottles of Sword-South Spring already lay emptied to the side.

He was on the eighth.

It was, in a word, a drinking binge.

“Right, right. I don’t care for that girl one bit.”

“Within the fence of the Great Mount Hua Sect, what is there that does not go the Sect Leader’s way?”

“Exactly!”

“Cut her down. Cleanly.”

Namgung Hyeong’s eyes lit.

Because he had the perfect trump to break that “girl.”

To put the Sect Leader of the Great Mount Hua Sect in his debt—

A very tempting choice.

“I haven’t not prepared a move. I just don’t find it all that reliable.”

He meant Cheonhwa and Cheonju.

It was the Sect Leader who had ordered the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword taught to them.

He had even told them to use it proactively in actual combat.

Against children far weaker than themselves, they could surely subdue with a crude Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword.

But against someone whose skill outstripped theirs—or even matched it?

Trying to respond with a sword art learned only in outward form—

Blood would be spilled.

They know what happens if they lose.

They’ll be desperate.

The moment they lose their composure, an unseasoned sword turns blind.

“Not all that reliable, you say.”

“That girl taking the championship… I’m already getting a headache.”

“Why not just leave it be?”

At Namgung Hyeong’s low voice, Jeongyang knit his brow.

But he soon revised his thought.

If he was talking like that, a stratagem must be attached.

“Let her win, is it?”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

He gripped the neck of an empty bottle.

Then, with the edge of his hand, drew a light line.

His fingertips seemed to flash, and the bottle’s neck fell off cleanly and rolled.

“Don’t I have a blade that cuts very well?”

“You mean your son.”

“That’s right.”

After a moment’s silent consideration, Jeongyang shook his head.

To the clan lord of the Namgung Clan—order his son to harm a disciple of the Nine Great Sects?

That was a debt too heavy to bear.

It would be no different from handing him a hold over himself.

“Heh. How could I possibly ask something so vicious of your son…”

“No. Not that. It’s just…”

Namgung Hyeong lowered his voice.

“If it’s my boy, won’t he beat that girl so miserably she won’t have a scrap of pride left?”

“…True. He was born with the Heaven-Forged Body, and he’s a prodigy recognized by the Sword Sovereign.”

“So you don’t have to ask me for anything. Just wait.”

Of course, the Sect Leader asking him directly would make for a bigger debt.

But if he insisted on forcing that, the whole thing would end up spoiled.

Even this much would be more than enough—no different from having ‘received grace’ from him.

“…I’ll look forward to it.”

“What’s there to look forward to in a foregone result? Ha!”

****

Even after paying for everything, there was money left.

So this was how Namgung Seon spent.

“We should return this.”

Cheonjeong quietly looked at the pouch—with perhaps a quarter left.

But to his surprise, Soyak shook her head.

“He never asked for it back.”

“So… you’re saying we just swallow it?”

“Why not?”

Soyak snatched the silk pouch off the counter and tucked it into her clothes.

Cheonjeong’s eyes went round at the sight.

“That’s… unexpected.”

“Why?”

“I thought you’d have no desire for money.”

Soyak shook her head.

“It isn’t about desire.”

“Then what?”

“Because I don’t like him.”

Simple and clear.

But Cheonjeong understood as if something had just clicked.

His junior sister wasn’t a doll.

She was a person with clear likes and dislikes.

It was just that, usually, there hadn’t been much to divide into like and dislike.

“I’m getting to know you all over again today.”

Cheonjeong smiled and patted Soyak’s head.

Quietly, Soyak looked up at him with those black eyes.

Then tossed it off, light as a flick.

“You still can’t have this pouch.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“Kidding.”

Her eyes didn’t look like a joke at all.

But right now, Soyak was smiling.

Faint, but… what hung at the corner of her mouth was unmistakably a smile.

When you looked up at the sky, the sun was sinking in the west.

As the scarlet afterglow set the once-blue sky ablaze…

From the far eastern corner beyond, the sky charred and spent would come on as black night.

It was time to head back.

Chapter 25

Comments