As expected, the martial skills of Sima Young and Cho Sung-won were nothing to scoff at.
Just in case, I had asked them to deal with the men in black if I had to truly deal with Kwak Gyung, and they did so in such a short amount of time.
Actually, even Sima Young alone could have handled both of them.
“You have excellent colleagues,” said Kwak Gyung, shaking his head.
“These are my sajae and friend.”
Cho Sung-won’s lips twitched at the word friend. Wasn’t it good that he wasn’t showing a reaction?
But the guy’s interests were elsewhere,
“Sajae? Then you too?”
Chak!
Sima Young greeted him,
“Second disciple Ma Young greets Warrior Kwak.”
Kwak Gyung couldn’t help but be surprised.
“I was worried the great warrior had been missing for too long, but to think he was nurturing disciples of his own all this while.”
Respect in his voice.
Looking at this, it felt like he liked the South Heavenly Swordsman. It could not be easy to live a life that was respected by so many.
Chak!
I picked up Iron Sword which Kwak Gyung was holding, but then he asked,
“I couldn’t recognize it because there was rust on the sword, but isn’t that the South Heavenly Iron Sword?”
-Oh, he knows
-Hmm?
Short Sword sounded confused, and Iron Sword tried to play it cool. Unlike other normal swords, Iron Sword was made with a mix of cold iron, which could only be handled by the best craftsmen, so the rusted and damaged parts couldn’t be casually restored.
Even so, this man managed to recognize it.
“That isn’t all, but Teacher lent me his sword.”
I did my best to avoid saying that he had given it to me. If I had to put it into words, well, the South Heavenly Swordsman had retired.
I am sorry, but I had to put a title on it.
“Huh. To see the sword of that warrior again. It is quite emotional.”
Kwak Gyung looked like he was thinking back. I was curious about the real face behind the mask.
At that time, the guy pointed to the passage,
‘This isn’t right. If it wasn’t for Na Yuk-hyung, I would have really wanted to talk to the disciple of my old acquaintance, but it is unfortunate there is no time, you need to hurry,“ said Kwak Gyung.
Things were messed up because of Na Yuk-hyung. The purpose for coming here wasn’t done but then he said,
[Asong that servant, I will find him. I will take measures so that I can find the information from any branch.]
Fortunately, he wasn’t neglecting my request.
[Ah. come to think of it, didn’t you say 2 requests?]
He also didn’t forget about the second one. I told Sima Young and Cho Sung-won to go ahead before me. And when they did I took out the jade from my sleeve,
[Do you know about this jade?]
Kwak Gyung looked at the jade and frowned, it looked like this was his first time seeing it.
Kwak Gyung looked at it and asked,
[Where did you get this?]
[… I apologize, I cannot tell you that.]
[Hmm.]
[Do you know about it?]
[The picture is of a flying crane.]
[Yes.]
Does this guy know of a family which uses this? But then he said something weird,
[If you look closely at the jade plaque, it is like looking at the full moon with intaglios all over the place, right?]
With that said, he turned the jade and looked. I never thought that the round jade itself was in the shape of a moon.
He was looking at it like it was a piece of art. Then, could the plaque be related to the moon along with the crane?
Kwak Gyung who looked at it said,
[You might not know since it has been such a long time.]
[Uh?]
[The Flying Moon Blooming Sect]
Flying Moon Blooming Sect.
I had never heard of it. There were no writings that spoke about a crane.
[Are you aware of the four martial sects?]
No one could not know.
Martial sects were placed where one pursued only martial arts above things such as political affairs and factions.
Thousands of warriors made and inherited their own martial arts, and I had heard that there were hundreds of large and small clans within them.
Among those numerous martial artists, four were known to be the strongest.
They were called the Four Great Martial Arts. And of the four there were two sects that produced a few of the Eight Great Warriors.
[The Flying Moon Blooming Sect was a place that once almost made it the Five Great Martial Arts. Although it is now forgotten by the younger ones.]
Five? Does that mean there was another martial arts clan as strong as the other four?
I was too shocked as I never could have guessed and I never thought that the sects would be mentioned as they were all in hegemony.
[If this old man’s thinking is right, the pattern here is of that clan.]
[Then the crane on it?]
[If it is true and what I remember about the crane is that something about the origin has to do with the crane.]
[Origin?]
[I don’t know exactly. Apparently, there are high-level and low-level requests.]
Even if I was the disciple of the South Heavenly Swordsman, nothing was free to me.
Actually, work should be separated.
[I will pay the price.]
[I see. But we, too, need to investigate this as this was an incident from a long time ago. We don’t have the time right now, so I will take information from the branches or give it to them. Let’s go now!]
Since I had to hurry before we got caught, I moved to the passage. It was said it would be around 200 meters out of here, and the time it took to traverse the passage seemed long.
On the way, Iron Sword called me,
-Wonhui
‘What?’
-I have heard about the Flying Moon Blooming Sect.
Considering the age and period that the South Heavenly Swordsman lived through, he would have seen enough. It seems that he couldn’t think of the name when looking at the jade though.
‘What do you know?’
-Ahh, I don’t know anything too detailed like you expect. However, Han Sung-won was the master of that sect with whom my former master confronted.
‘Ha Sung-won?’
My mother’s surname was Ha.
If the surname matched with one of the sect leaders, did that mean my mother was related to him?
-I don’t know that
Wait.
But, doesn’t it seem like how you said it was, he confronted him, and the outcome of the fight?
-As I said, he was supposed to, but the sect leader wouldn’t come out
‘Why?’
-I don’t know. There was some problem with the Martial Twin Swords. Shortly after a war had broken out and the peace treaty was shattered. So I remember my former master being disappointed.
It was said that the fight didn’t happen due to a civil war. So what happened?
It was understandable if the man didn’t want to fight against the South Heavenly Swordsman as the sect was supposedly going down.
And now, no one remembers this forgotten sect.
‘… sigh.’
My mind felt complicated.
We could not yet be sure of who my mother was, and her relation to the Martial Twin Swords. But if my mother’s jade was tied to this sect, then what had happened twenty years back?
After running through the passage for a long time, I saw two people. Sima Young and Cho Sung-won,
“Vice!”
“We were waiting.”
They had been waiting for about half an hour.
As soon as I joined them, we began to run faster. It wasn’t long before light appeared. The light was shining from the top and bottom and when I looked over, I saw a rope ladder.
“I think we should go up.”
“Right…”
Before I could even finish my words, Sima Young fearlessly climbed up first. Cho Sung-won was being careful about it while she wasn’t.
We soon heard her voice,
“Nobody is up here. I think we should just move up. This is a well”
“Well?”
As she said that, we began to climb the rope ladder. As we climbed up, we saw that it was the exit of a well.
An abandoned well, and it seemed to have been deliberately left like this.
“I am glad we got out safely. Then let’s head out now”
As we moved from there, a village appeared. It was a bit more to the northeast and we managed to find our way into the village.
It seemed like everything was going well. We hurriedly reoriented ourselves in the village, and then immediately departed for the hill.
But the problem came when we entered the forest,
[Vice commander. I think there is an ambush ahead.]
It was as Sima Young said. On the other side of the hill, there was a group of 20 men blocking the forest path.
None of them had a sword, so I could only sense them from their qi presence.
‘Enemy,’
They were skilled with stealth as we didn’t notice them till now.
[What do we do?]
At her question, I ordered a retreat. There was no reason to waste our time fighting those ready to ambush us.
It was better to avoid them. I was about to change our direction.
‘…?!’
A man was standing right behind us. Neither Sima Young nor I were aware of them.
The moment we saw the man in half-white behind us, I felt goosebumps. He had an eye patch with a snake pattern on it, he had this strong energy, and it had the same feeling as the energy I had felt on the top floor of Heuk Hyun-jong.
-Wonhui… that is Na Yuk-hyung
-He is?
Even if I hadn’t been warned, I recognized who it was. But what I couldn’t understand was how this man had appeared right behind us when we had escaped through the secret passage.
When I looked around, Cho Sung-won was trembling, he was from the Beggars Union so he must have recognized this guy at once.
‘This is insane.’
We did all we could to get away from him, but I didn’t expect this situation to turn out like this. The opponent was a warrior who was skilled and notorious through Murim. Maybe he could be someone in the same realm as Hae Ack-chun.
At that moment, Na Yuk-hyung shouted,
“Fight!!”
It was so loud that it felt like my ears would burst. I wondered why he would scream but then a group of about 20 or so men appeared from over the hill.
I had wondered who they were, but now I realized that they were his men. It was quite a dire situation now.
‘…’
After hesitating for a while, I spoke to Na Yuk-hyung,
“Your junior So Wonhui greets Warrior.”
I decided to try negotiating first. As Iron Sword had said, there could be a grudge he held against my teacher and it would be necessary to solve it.
Na Yuk-hyung spoke,
“I never had a junior like you.”
The power he held in his voice wasn’t normal. Even if I wasn’t sure, I knew that he was better than Mount Hyeong’s First Sword.
And there were quite a few men in the crowd who were amazing warriors.
Even if the three of us tried to work together, this was a battle that would be difficult to win or even escape from.
“Senior. There seems to be some misunderstanding.”
At my words. Na Yuk-hyung smirked and said,
“You cannot deny it anymore, you are the descendent of the South Heavenly Swordsman, why else would you secretly escape the Lower District Sect through that secret passage.”
How does this man even know about the secret passage? This seems to be a situation that even Kwak Gyung didn’t seem to have predicted. And the man held out a red hand.
Shhh!
A dark red that wrapped around his wrist slithered out like it was a serpent. It was a weapon that had partially caused his notoriety.
There weren’t many martial artists in Murim who used whips, and this man was the best with a whip.
“Where is Ho Jong-dae?”
His purpose seemed to be finding the South Heavenly Sword.
Of course, I, who called myself his disciple, might be of help. Intense killing intent erupted from his whip.
Srng!
Sima Young drew her sword. Cho Sung-won protested a bit.
“Miss Sima. That man…”
“It is nothing. and this isn’t something that can be resolved with talks anyway.”
She was right.
Na Yuk-hyung wasn’t an enemy who would fall from just words.
Even if they fought against this man with everything they had, the probability of winning was not very likely.
Srng!
I also drew my weapon, grabbing Iron Sword. I then told Sima Young and Cho Sung-won,
“From now on, victory or defeat will be different depending on how quickly they are dealt with.”
The ones I pointed to were his subordinates.
“Then Lord?”
“Vice commander?”
They looked at me in shock as they understood my meaning.
At that time, Na Yuk-hyung spoke like he had heard the most absurd thing,
“Kuahahahaha! Even if you three attack me at the same time, you cannot do much and you want to come against me alone? Your courage seems baseless.”
As soon as he said that, his hand moved. And the whip which looked like it was alive came for me.
The momentum felt so great that even the thickest tree would fall down at once.
“Hurry up!”
I shouted at Sima Young and Cho Sung-won when the whip moved. This wasn’t a situation where one could sneak away and hide.
After opening my stance, I decided to bring up the qi from my dantian.
Clang!
The whip and Iron Sword collided.
The impact made my hand tremble as I got pushed back three steps.
Na Yuk-hyung frowned,
“You can stop this?”
He seemed to be a bit shocked as I had used innate qi which was different from normal qi. But it didn’t last long,
“After all, you are his disciple. I cannot help but expect such things from that man’s disciple.”
Na Yuk-hyung really seemed to have gone against the South Heavenly Swordsman.
He even knew about the innate qi considering how shocked he looked.
And I could clearly see the difference between me and him with just one clash.
This man was clearly ahead of me yet, I felt like the gap wasn’t too large.
Maybe it was because I had my foundation of innate qi. Yet that didn’t mean I would be neglecting to recognize the difference.
‘Should I put my life on the line?’
Was that the only way out I could think of?
Na Yuk-hyun snorted and laughed,
“Do you think you can get away from here by using your head? Even if your teacher comes…?!”
At that moment he went stiff.
It was because of the changes happening within me.
Swish!
It felt like my body was on fire as I rushed to him, causing him to go numb with shock.
“You, what is that?”
Vapor was rising from my skin.
This was a symptom from using the technique that Hae Ack-chun had taught the twins.
I might not have the perfect body like the twins or Hae Ack-chun, but even I could handle it to some extent.
