Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 23 - Registered (3)
Chapter 23 – Registered (3)
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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Martial training with Cheong-hwa was truly on another level.
Even if it was the same Mount Tai Presses the Summit, if my posture came out wrong like before, he would not count it even once.
“If you can bring it down one hundred times in a perfect posture, I’ll count that as having swung it ten thousand times.”
At first I had simply been pleased that the number had fallen to one hundred, but by now it felt like I had already swung it a thousand times by count.
And since I had put care into each one as though carving something down bit by bit, it was more exhausting than recklessly swinging it ten thousand times.
“Haa, haa.”
“Lift the sword. You can do it.”
“I told you I can’t!”
“Believe in yourself! It isn’t the sword that’s wavering. It’s only you!”
“Ah, enough already!”
I cried out, but Cheong-hwa was so impossible to communicate with that he might as well have been deaf.
He seemed to have fallen into some bizarre misunderstanding earlier, and no matter how much I tried to clear it up, he only shook his head.
‘I know your heart. What a fine boy. So you no longer need to keep acting.’
What kind of misunderstanding would even produce words like that?
Whenever I looked at Cheong-hwa, he reminded me of customers who simply could not be reasoned with.
People like that usually came to their senses only after a beating, but it was hardly as though I could beat Cheong-hwa.
Grinding my teeth, I raised the sword again.
No matter how light the wooden sword was, and no matter that I possessed the talent Sturdy Body, swinging it a thousand times was still hard.
My arm felt as heavy as a wad of cotton soaked in water.
Ever since I had bought the Lowest Grade Sword Talent, which had been discounted from ten nyang of silver to five, and started swinging the sword with it, the look in Cheong-hwa’s eyes had changed.
At this rate, I should never have bought it in the first place.
The discount-unlock condition for the Lowest Grade Sword Talent had been to use the same form one thousand times.
The reason I hadn’t bought it right away, and had instead merely been flicking the sword, was because I had wondered whether some other condition might unlock if I filled the count further.
Perhaps I should try wrist-flicking again later.
Since the discount condition had unlocked even though I swung it properly only five hundred times and then wrist-flicked the remaining five hundred, it seemed the wrist-flicking still counted numerically.
“You’ll probably be the oldest one in the evaluation match. Usually, someone your age would already be among the second-generation disciples.”
“That’ll be embarrassing. A man of twenty sweating and clashing swords with children.”
“Why concern yourself so much with the eyes of others? A Daoist ought to transcend such things.”
“I’m not a Daoist. I’m a money-man. A person made of money.”
“The fact that you’re talking such nonsense tells me your strength has come back somewhat.”
It was true that after nearly half a month of doing nothing but horizontal slashes, overhead chops, and diagonal cuts, I had grown more proficient.
So the order to swing it ten thousand times had not been completely absurd bluster after all.
In fact, after unlocking Sword Talent, each swing made me feel another flaw that needed correcting.
My sword skill was genuinely improving.
“You’re much better now.”
Cheong-hwa, who never spoke nonsense where martial arts were concerned, admitted as much himself.
That was the result of five hundred proper swings each.
“At this point, one could say you’ve fully learned the Three Calamities Sword Art.”
“It took me half a month just to fully learn a third-rate martial art like this. And you still call me someone born with martial talent?”
“It took me two months to fully learn the Three Calamities Sword Art. Though of course, unlike you, I wasn’t spending all my time swinging nothing but the Three Calamities Sword Art like some brute.”
“You’re the one who ordered it.”
I answered in a sullen voice.
I really had spent the past half month doing nothing but the Three Calamities Sword Art.
It made me wonder whether this was even the right way to train martial arts.
“Ordinarily, by the time someone swings it that much, they can no longer even raise the sword. At that point they would switch to training footwork, palm arts, or fist arts. But strangely enough, you never let go of the sword. Perhaps your stamina is simply better than other people’s. That may be what shortened your time.”
What Cheong-hwa meant was my Sturdy Body.
Sturdy Body let me endure longer than other people’s bodies could, and on top of that I had even the Lowest Grade Sword Talent supporting me.
If even the lowest grade was like this, what would the highest grade be like?
Would it be such monstrous talent that one could understand everything just by performing a form once?
“How exactly does the evaluation match work?”
“The brackets are mixed at random, and the winners fight the winners. That is how the ranking is decided.”
“A winners’ bracket, then.”
I nodded.
That meant luck mattered as well.
Perhaps I ought to look through the shop and see if it had any talents related to luck.
Though now that I’d bought Sword Talent, I had no money left anyway.
“However, to take part in the evaluation match, one must first pass a certain test.”
“There’s a test too?”
“The third-generation disciples are the group with the greatest disparity in skill. If the age gap is large, it can be as much as five years. The gap between eleven and sixteen is far greater than the gap between thirty and thirty-five. If too many young children were thrown into the match all at once, then the rankings might end up being decided by luck. So the test also serves as a filter.”
“Do you think I could pass that test?”
“That depends entirely on you.”
A part of me would have preferred to simply fail the test and end everyone’s expectations at once, but this time I needed to show the elders the extent of my martial talent.
Cheong-hwa was impressed because he had seen the speed at which I learned the Three Calamities Sword Art, but the other elders might not take into account how recently I had begun learning martial arts.
So I had to show them as much as possible.
“When do I take the test?”
“Now.”
“Pardon?”
“The examiner is the master of the third-generation disciple. If he judges that you are at a level where you can contend with the other disciples, he sends you into the evaluation match.”
“But I’ve only learned the Three Calamities Sword Art.”
“If you’ve truly learned that fully, then that alone is enough.”
Cheong-hwa walked over to a nearby tree and snapped off a small branch.
It was a thin branch as delicate as a blade of grass.
“I’ll use this. You use the wooden sword.”
If it had been anyone else, I might have thought he was mocking me, but this was Cheong-hwa, one of the future Eight Venerables.
Even a slender branch did not look light in his hand.
“You must receive ten exchanges from me.”
“Understood.”
“Then begin…”
Before I had even finished hearing the words, I kicked off the ground immediately.
The graceful steps of the Azure Cloud Steps drew a curve as I closed in on Cheong-hwa.
Because the distance was short, I could clearly see his expression.
Cheong-hwa’s eyes were following my feet exactly, and a faint smile rested at the corners of his mouth.
“Forcing an exchange at the timing you yourself desire. Not a bad move.”
Cheong-hwa kept his left hand behind his back and flicked the branch with his right.
The branch merely touched the wooden sword, yet an enormous shock ran through my wrist like lightning.
“Kgh!”
“Of course, that only works when the gap in skill isn’t too great.”
Cheong-hwa, too, was using the Azure Cloud Steps.
But my eyes could not keep up with his feet.
No matter how I focused, his steps moved differently from the paths I expected, and I kept losing them.
It was like trying to track a flying insect with my eyes.
Cheong-hwa drew a soft curve and spun, turning his back to me.
Even though he had turned his back right before my eyes, I couldn’t attack.
It was like flowing water striking a rock and sliding off instead.
Before I knew it, Cheong-hwa was already standing beside me.
The branch thrust toward my waist.
I knew I would not have time to recover my wooden sword, so I kicked upward instead, trying to knock down Cheong-hwa’s wrist.
At once, Cheong-hwa’s wrist bent like a snake and slipped aside, avoiding the line of my kick.
Still, that bought me the time I needed to recover my wooden sword.
I seized the hilt with one hand and the blade with the other, blocking as though pushing the branch away.
Boom!
Even though I blocked it, shock raced through my whole body.
My feet were driven backward, furrows like plowed rows cutting into the ground.
“That’s the second exchange!”
Cheong-hwa shouted as he rushed me again.
I laid the wooden sword beside my waist and brought down a great vertical slash.
It was Mount Tai Presses the Summit, one of the forms of the Three Calamities Sword Art I had swung with maddening repetition.
The wooden sword and the branch collided head-on, but the hand that tingled was mine.
Before I could even cry out in pain, Cheong-hwa reversed his grip on the branch and tried to strike my forearm.
With a cry of alarm, I countered with Sweeping Across a Thousand Armies.
My wooden sword cut through the leaves, but the branch itself remained firm.
Qi had been poured into it, and it was no longer a frail branch.
Next, Cheong-hwa swept upward from my thigh toward my shoulder.
Reflexively, I unfolded the diagonal slash, Wind and Rain in All Directions.
Only then did I understand what Cheong-hwa was forcing me to do.
He was checking whether I had truly learned the Three Calamities Sword Art.
I had to unfold the Three Calamities Sword Art I had practiced until now in a shorter, sharper way.
Cheong-hwa’s examination of my Three Calamities Sword Art continued.
They were sword paths that I could never have blocked if I had indulged even the slightest laziness in my training.
Still, by somehow using the Three Calamities Sword Art to respond, I managed to block up to the ninth exchange.
Only one more, and I would pass the test.
Cheong-hwa suddenly leapt high into the sky.
Cunningly, he flew with the sunlight behind him, making it difficult even to look at him properly.
And yet my instinct told me exactly when he would fall.
Strangely, the length of his hang time and the timing at which I should release my sword were being calculated in my head automatically.
It was the same sensation I had often felt while assessing the value of goods.
“Your judgment is good.”
But martial artists were people who stood far beyond my common sense.
I certainly swung my sword according to the speed at which he seemed to be falling.
Yet while my sword was still aimed at the sky, Cheong-hwa had already dropped to the ground.
Only then did I remember.
I had heard that martial artists possessed a technique called Thousand-Pound Drop, which let them fall rapidly to the ground.
Cheong-hwa, with deliberate malice, used an attack that could not be blocked by any form of the Three Calamities Sword Art.
He had put something not even on the test into the final question.
My sword point was aimed at the sky, but Cheong-hwa’s branch was thrusting toward my solar plexus.
As far as I could tell, Cheong-hwa had no intention of permitting me to pass the test.
The force contained in that strike made it easy enough to guess.
“Hup!”
But I could not give up like this.
No matter what Cheong-hwa was thinking, I was someone who needed the elders’ acknowledgment.
I forcibly halted the sword while it was still traveling upward and chopped it back down.
The reverse motion placed an immense burden on my muscles.
I felt them tearing, and a tremendous pain followed.
For a moment, I nearly burst into tears despite all the years I had lived.
It was pain beyond endurance.
It felt as though someone had reached inside my skin with both hands and was tearing me apart through sheer tension.
“Aaaagh!”
I drowned out the pain with a scream and slammed my sword into the ground.
Even in that instant, I angled the sword diagonally.
It was a desperate attempt to create the greatest defense possible within my range of motion.
Of course, even that came from pure instinct.
If not for Sword Talent, I probably could not even have thought of such improvisation.
Bang!
My sword struck the ground, and Cheong-hwa’s branch pierced not my solar plexus but my left arm.
I instantly dropped the wooden sword.
My left arm swelled rapidly, as though stung by a wasp.
“…Hah. You actually blocked it.”
I let my left arm dangle there uselessly.
“You’re going to fix it, obviously, right?”
“Of course. I struck an acupoint, so it is only unable to move for a short while. There is no harm to the bones or meridians, so be at ease.”
“I see.”
“How did you block it?”
“How would I know how I blocked it? You kept steering me into the Three Calamities Sword Art and then suddenly used a variation.”
At my reproachful words, Cheong-hwa laughed awkwardly.
“I didn’t expect you to block it.”
“Did you not want me entering the evaluation match?”
“Could I really show unfinished goods to others? That would only disgrace me. I wanted to refine you as much as possible before sending you out.”
“To think you’d describe a person as goods. Wudang’s sense of morality has truly fallen into the dirt.”
“Heh heh. I only said it in terms you would understand.”
Well, in truth, people were not all that different from goods.
Wasn’t labor itself bought and sold for money?
Then what value did a person like me possess right now?
I clenched the wooden sword tightly in one hand.
“Still, since you’ve passed the test, there is nothing I can do. Just go to the Three Purities Hall and say that you wish to enter the evaluation match.”
“How kind of you. No, should I even say thank you for this?”
“After sparring with your master, one must always give thanks.”
“You’re not my master yet.”
“You will soon be calling me that.”
With that, Cheong-hwa pressed the acupoint in my left arm and let the swelling subside.
At the time, I had no idea what he meant.
It was only when I arrived at the Three Purities Hall to enter the evaluation match that I understood.
“You’re not a main-sect disciple, so you can’t participate.”
“Pardon?”
Cheong-hwa. This bastard, seriously.