Chapter 33: Conviction (3)

An unmistakable tension bled onto Ming Holim’s face.

He wasn’t the only one. The heirs who’d been resting and those in mid-bout all fixed their eyes on the pair.

By felling the Thunder Hero Chu Seong, Yeon Hojeong had proven his strength.

Ming Holim was the Third Young Master of the greatest household under heaven, and he had cultivated deeper than anyone here.

When the two of them faced off, an indefinable hush fell. Some might refuse to admit it, but this was a duel between the two strongest present.

Of course the attention spiked.

Ming Holim finally spoke up.

“Though I’m late to say it, I watched your duel with Captain Chu well.”

“Thank you.”

“Formidable spearwork. Does the Yeon Clan teach such arts too?”

“Hardly something to compare with the Ming Clan.”

Ming Holim smiled affably.

“Quality matters more than quantity. I opened my eyes to a marvelous spear method I’d never seen.”

Yeon Hojeong returned the smile.

“I, too, want to see the Ming Clan’s true martial arts with my own eyes.”

A meaningful line.

Not knowing what lay beneath it, Ming Holim laughed.

“Haha, I wonder if they’ll suit your taste.”

“Modest of you.”

Voom.

Yeon Hojeong gripped the middle of the iron cudgel and spun it once. He looked ready.

“The preliminaries were messy, but we’ve had our taste. Let’s move to the main course.”

By “taste,” he meant the close-range grappling from yesterday.

Recalling that clinch, Ming Holim’s face hardened.

‘He wasn’t ordinary. And today, too.’

Every method he’d shown against Chu Seong had been ruthlessly practical.

But within those grim techniques, Ming Holim had glimpsed Yeon Hojeong’s true ability.

‘It’s not that his forms are good. The point is how he unfolds them at the right moment, in the right situation.’

Yeon Hojeong could deploy his weapon at the optimal instant with exactness.

That is hard for anyone. Talent aside, without an enormous number of real fights, it’s impossible.

Where had this young man gone through such battles?

‘And furthermore...’

When Chu Seong endured his first three forms—

‘Then, there was definitely something.’

He’d felt an unknown pressure bind Chu.

No—more precisely, it seemed that way. Yeon Hojeong did something, but Ming Holim couldn’t peg what it was.

‘Whatever it was, there’s no doubt he has something beyond what shows.’

Yeon Hojeong’s eyes lit.

“Shall we begin?”

“Good.”

Ming Holim picked up a wooden saber from the ground.

It curved gently—a wood blade, not a straight wooden sword.

Yeon Hojeong’s eyes flashed.

‘Saber method?’

He remembered when his household was invaded by that inexplicable force.

Whether in his past life or now after return, he’d never forgotten it. The shock had branded almost everything into memory.

‘There were saber men among them, for certain.’

Not just saber men. Sword wielders, pugilists, even spearmen.

The raiders all used the weapons most common in the martial world. Not a single one used a tool with stark characteristics like a hidden weapon, twin halberds, whips, or an iron stylus.

If the Ming Clan truly stood behind the raid on the Yeon household—

And if he could glimpse their traces within Ming Holim’s saber method—

If the Ming Clan were truly guilty, how should he move next?

‘...’

Yeon Hojeong erased the thought.

‘It may not be the Ming Clan. Hasty judgment is forbidden.’

He hadn’t stirred up this training-ground mood merely to cross hands with Ming Holim.

He meant to cross hands with all of them. In case there was something he’d missed.

But there wasn’t. No matter how he compared them, he could find nothing in other clans’ arts that resembled the raiders’.

Whereas yesterday, from Ming Holim’s momentum, he’d felt a similar foreign tang to the raiders.

Skk.

Ming Holim lowered his stance.

“I’m ready.”

“As am I.”

“Then let’s begin.”

Snap!

They sprang for each other in the same breath.

Even without going all out, they were fast. Their footwork was swifter than anyone training here.

Yeon Hojeong unfolded his art without hesitation.

Shraaa!

The Whirlwind Staff Method spread. A staff art free and smooth as wind slashed for Ming Holim’s shoulder and flank at once.

Ming Holim’s eyes blazed.

‘Strong!’

One exchange was enough to know how extraordinary Yeon Hojeong’s weapon skill was.

A different plane from bare-handed grappling. Staffwork driven by Jade Wave True Qi held lightness and weight—opposed qualities—at once.

Ming Holim swung the wooden saber.

Kagagagangg!

A fine response.

There was no waste in the way he wielded the two-handed saber. He was cutting the iron cudgel’s force off at the root.

Yeon Hojeong stamped.

Thud!

The rebound shot up his thigh and packed his waist with power.

Paaang!

A thrust that detonated in an instant.

Driven by the rotation of the waist, the straight lunge was blisteringly fast. Ming Holim dipped and struck up across with the wooden saber.

Kagagak!

Ming Holim’s eyes wavered.

He didn’t need to look—he felt it. The cudgel’s tip-thrust had slightly dented the wood’s surface.

‘Tremendous power!’

Boom!

Shoving the iron cudgel off and springing back, Ming Holim startled—

Shraaa!

As if he’d predicted the retreat, Yeon Hojeong was already on him.

At a shockingly close range. Too close to swing a proper cut.

At the same time, the iron cudgel moved. It came in with a horizontal smash so fast the shaft seemed to bend.

‘Can’t block?!’

Barely a few exchanges, yet he was being pressed.

At this rate, he would be taken. Not a razor’s-edge fight, not an error—just a disgraceful fall.

‘Complacency...!’

Even knowing how superb the opponent’s form application was, he’d been driven to the edge. He had no excuse but complacency.

Complacency. Defeat. Mistake.

Three words jabbed Ming Holim’s pride.

Huff! Kaa-ANG!

The arm swinging the cudgel turned heavy.

At some point the wooden saber had met and stopped the cudgel. He blocked it at a timing that should have been impossible.

Vroooom.

A soft golden aura rose off Ming Holim’s body as he gripped the saber with both hands.

Yeon Hojeong’s eyes flashed.

At last Ming Holim drew his true strength.

Fwaaa.

Gold radiance poured out, hazing into mirage-like waves on every side.

It was beautiful. Beyond the grandeur of the temperament itself, the very fact he could give his True Qi this much shape was astonishing.

‘Impressive.’

Ga Deoksang couldn’t help but breathe out praise.

‘With qi that vivid, he’d do no shame even among peak masters.’

Boooom!

Yeon Hojeong slid back.

Ming Holim was about to press the attack—and jolted.

Yeon Hojeong hadn’t simply yielded space. He ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) caught the cudgel by the tip and swept it out, and a powerful release of force slammed straight into Ming Holim’s chest.

It felt like an awl tied to a whip-end flew at him. He couldn’t block it with a simple burst of inner force.

“Ha!”

KWAANG!

A clean diagonal One Saber strike burst the momentum apart.

Fwoosh!

Yeon Hojeong crashed back in. He attacked before Ming Holim could reset his form.

‘This...!’

An absurd engine.

His attack and evasion were too fast. The problem was that this kind of exchange burned stamina savagely. No—before that, it was a fighting style that overworked the muscles to excess.

In truth, Yeon Hojeong’s body was flushed red. He was wringing his muscles to their limits.

‘Show me.’

Yeon Hojeong swept the cudgel.

His staffwork hammered from eight points, herding Ming Holim back again and again.

‘Unfold your art for real!’

Thud!

The cudgel tip shattered the blue stone floor.

Right then, Ming Holim’s counterattack began.

BOOOOM!

Yeon Hojeong’s eyes widened.

His arm came down on the diagonal as if it had suddenly grown longer.

A exquisite counter-form. It wasn’t Ming Holim’s reflexes—the technique itself centered on the counter.

KANG!

He whipped the cudgel back to block, but the impact soaked deep.

It didn’t end there. Ming Holim’s saber method was only beginning.

Thump!

Ming Holim drove off the earth and surged forward.

It was the Demon-Cleaving Saber Method following on the Ming Clan’s true art, the Gold Net Divine Art. Not yet a generation old, and yet a powerful art transmitted only to the bloodline.

KANG! Kagagagangg!

The two-handed saber method was grave and mighty.

But its lines had no baroque flourishes. As if to embody the truth that the simple is strong, simple movements bore great force and swift speed.

Kagagagangg!

In a blink Yeon Hojeong was being driven back. He spun the cudgel with both hands to parry, but his counters weren’t landing.

Ming Holim’s eyes flashed.

He’d seized the tempo—now he meant to finish. He drew the Gold Net Divine Art up to its peak.

Ziiiiing!

The golden True Qi blazed brighter.

At the same time, the energy riding the wooden saber began to whirl.

‘...?!’

Yeon Hojeong’s eyes narrowed.

‘This is...?!’

A triple-strike with the wooden saber came screaming in.

The forms and the logic within them were different. But the way the energy inside that edge swirled—he had seen that before.

More precisely, he remembered the method of moving qi.

Kagagagangg! Thud!

A crushing One Saber strike knocked the iron cudgel away, scraping the ground.

The True Qi within the blade spun of its own accord. But that rotation was invisible to the eye.

Yeon Hojeong’s sight—and his sense for qi—felt it.

An otherness fundamentally different from Central Plains arts.

On the surface it looked honest and deep, but the inner method of moving power was on a completely different plane from Central Plains styles.

And that art was...

‘A palm!!’

In that instant, Yeon Hojeong’s eyes flared cold blue.

Vroooom! KWAANG!

“Guhh!”

Ming Holim’s body skidded straight back.

His eyes shook.

‘A—astonishing art!’

He looked down at the wooden saber.

It was nearly shattered. If he hadn’t drawn the Gold Net Divine Art up to full strength, this one blow would have left him gravely wounded.

Ming Holim looked up at Yeon Hojeong.

Tssss.

A blue-tinged qi rippled off Yeon Hojeong’s body. The Yeon Clan’s Five Divine Arts—Jade Wave True Formula—was blazing, no less than the Gold Net Divine Art.

He had both hands on the cudgel and one knee to the ground. But the way he held that cudgel was strange.

Not like a spear-staff—more like gripping a halberd or a massive axe.

A chill ran up Ming Holim’s spine.

‘That’s not his true art!’

Yes. The grappling, the staffwork, even the spearwork Yeon Hojeong had shown so far—

None of it was his true art. The true, orthodox masterpiece he cultivated was something far stronger, far more explosive.

Sssk.

Head bowed, Yeon Hojeong rose where he was.

It looked a little like a bow—yet also like he didn’t want to show his face.

“It’s best we end the bout here.”

Was it an illusion? His voice sounded a touch roughened.

Ming Holim cast aside the broken wooden saber and cupped his fists in salute. His hands trembled, ever so slightly. The shock had been too great.

“I learned much.”

“As did I. Then.”

With that, Yeon Hojeong crossed the training ground toward the inner compound. He walked so quickly that even Yeon Jipyeong couldn’t catch up.

The narrow path toward the inner lodgings.

Murderous intent blazed in Yeon Hojeong’s eyes.

“...So it was the Ming Clan.”