Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 48 - I Still Don't Know Yet (3)

Chapter 48 – I Still Don’t Know Yet (3)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Before making his move, Zhuge Hyeon spoke. His voice was quiet enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond the sparring platform.

“May I ask one thing?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you can defeat me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know that even that is an incredibly arrogant answer?”

I understood Zhuge Hyeon’s feelings. What kind of place was this? It was the Central Plains, where if you went around taverns shouting that kings, nobles, generals, and ministers were born no different from others, the Embroidered Uniform Guard would drag you away.

In a place where rank was, in effect, clearly fixed, the mere fact that I thought I might be able to beat him was unbearably offensive from Zhuge Hyeon’s point of view.

“I know.”

“Then why answer that way?”

“Because I truly don’t know.”

“I heard from Yan that it’s not even been a year since you entered as a lay disciple?”

“Yes.”

“I have spent a full fifteen years learning sword arts since I was five.”

“I’m sure you have.”

Zhuge Hyeon’s expression soured. It seemed my answer struck him as insincere. But at the moment, my mind was focused on the tip of my sword, so I had no choice but to answer like that.

Still, there was something I wanted to tell him. It was a truth of life I had felt endlessly in my previous life. Since it was an insight earned from the accumulated experience of my prior life, it was an enormous stroke of fortune for Zhuge Hyeon, but there was a reason I was willing to scatter it about for free. It was because at that age, even if I gave it, he couldn’t eat it.

“Young Master. This world is full of injustices. There are always people who seem to live better than I do despite having done less, and people who seem to live worse despite having done more.”

“I am very curious what point you think you’re making by saying that right now.”

“It’s likely exactly what you’re expecting.”

“Arrogant.”

Zhuge Hyeon drew his honed sword. Myeong-seong and Myeong-il were children, so they’d been given wooden swords, but because we had already passed fifteen, we were given real blades.

“I’ll yield the first move.”

“I won’t refuse.”

After drawing in and settling my breath deeply, I stepped out with Azure Cloud Steps. Zhuge Hyeon at first looked as though he were smirking, but then quickly turned surprised.

That was the nature of Azure Cloud Steps. It came as if slowly, yet if you let down your guard, you’d be swept away.

Sword and sword collided. A sharp reverberation rang through my grip. What a remarkable thing.

That someone like me, who once lived a life far removed from the martial world, had now built enough calluses into his palms that the clash of real blades no longer tore them open.

“Your talent is certainly astonishing. To unfold sword strikes like this in less than a year.”

Zhuge Hyeon acknowledged it readily. The hallmark of Zhuge Clan people was that they were clever. And if one was clever, one was quick to acknowledge things.

“However, you seem to think far too lightly of the martial world of the Central Plains.”

Together with Zhuge Hyeon’s chilly voice, a crafty sword strike shot in along three branches. Its speed and curves were sharp enough to be rare even in Wudang. That swordsmanship, which came in trying to pierce three acupoints in an instant, sent a chill through my guts.

“The Minor Star Sword Art!”

Below the sparring platform, I heard Cheong-hwa exclaim in admiration.

So the Zhuge Clan apparently had something called the Minor Star Sword Art. Of course, I didn’t know it well.

But my own talent for the sword was nothing to scoff at either. Gracefully treading Azure Cloud Steps, I slipped past one line of attack. That left only two lines I needed to block.

I struck out with my sword and blocked one line. The final remaining line was stabbing into my shoulder. No matter that the shoulder wasn’t a place tied directly to life, if that pierced me with a real blade like that, I’d need to recuperate for at least a month.

I dropped my body with the method of the iron bridge and, using that rebound, kicked a foot upward. Zhuge Hyeon calmly withdrew his line of attack. If he had continued stabbing in, my toe would likely have hooked his wrist.

“Whew.”

It was the first difficult linked movement I’d ever attempted in my life, but somehow I managed it. Still, ever since buying the talent Unyielding, the fact that I had diligently practiced fist and kicking arts was helping me move my body more flexibly.

Zhuge Hyeon had withdrawn his sword, but that didn’t mean his attack had ended. His sword danced again.

The blade that leapt and thrust toward me looked as though a meteor shower were falling all at once. I didn’t know if such a description suited swordsmanship, but the Zhuge Clan’s sword art was logical.

It delivered attacks that had to be blocked, and stabbed where openings were bound to appear. It was enough to make one think that an enormous amount of calculation must have gone into creating such martial arts.

If all I had known were the forms of the Three Calamities Sword Art, which consisted only of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal cuts, my hands would have tangled and I would’ve eventually left an opening.

But I had the Five Elements Sword that my senior brothers had taught me just before we departed for the Zhuge Clan. When I unfolded the Five Elements Sword and met his attacks with it, the exchange more or less held together.

The Five Elements Sword wasn’t a sword art that excelled extraordinarily in any one aspect, but by the same token, it also wasn’t one with any serious weakness. For countering the Zhuge Clan’s sword art, which wasn’t specialized in any one subtle principle, there was hardly a better sword art than this.

“…This!”

Zhuge Hyeon seemed to be growing impatient at the fact that he couldn’t subdue me quickly.

And what was rather laughable was that, even in the middle of sparring with me, Zhuge Hyeon kept furtively checking Clan Head Zhuge Gyeom’s reaction.

Was it because Zhuge Hyeon was stupid or arrogant, doing something else in the middle of a sparring match? I didn’t think he was that sort of man. That was simply something carved into the deepest parts of his body.

‘The Zhuge Clan isn’t an easy place either.’

How harshly must he have been kept under control for a child to watch his father’s face like that? It wasn’t necessarily admirable to live like me either, heedless of everyone, but that wasn’t what one would call a good household either.

Zhuge Hyeon’s sword grew faster and faster. He was clearly stronger than I was. The Zhuge Clan might be said to have less martial talent than the other Five Great Families, but it was still a great house, and they must’ve poured immense time and money into education accordingly.

Seen that way, it truly was absurd that I, who had learned martial arts for not even a single year, was holding out against him for eighty exchanges.

“Is that really a lay disciple?”

“He’s incredible.”

In truth, even the Zhuge Clan observers were paying more attention to me than to Zhuge Hyeon. Since I could hear it, there was no way Zhuge Hyeon, who had far more leisure than I did, couldn’t hear it as well.

For an instant, I saw blue flames seem to surge in Zhuge Hyeon’s eyes. It meant he was circulating internal energy.

“So in the end, you make me use internal energy.”

“I suppose forms alone weren’t enough.”

“You really do know how to speak in the most aggravating way possible.”

Zhuge Hyeon’s sword glowed with rippling blue qi. Then the blue qi was gathered into the interior of Zhuge Hyeon’s blade. The sword itself began to emit a dim blue glow.

To be able to gather internal energy inside an object like that meant that one truly knew how to wield internal energy properly.

“Wait. This has to stop. Stop it at once!”

At that moment, a commotion suddenly broke out beneath the sparring platform. The source of the commotion, embarrassingly enough, was my own master, Cheong-hwa.

The judge, Zhuge Chan, looked flustered and turned to Zhuge Gyeom, while Zhuge Gyeom said with a smile,

“The sparring is not yet over.”

“My disciple still doesn’t know how to use internal energy. You know what will happen if he clashes against a sword gathered with internal energy like that with nothing of his own!”

“Wouldn’t you only know that after they clash?”

Though his voice had carried a smile, Zhuge Gyeom’s tone turned cold again in an instant.

“Are you saying you mean to ruin a sparring match presided over by the Zhuge Clan? Is that the will of Wudang?”

“…That isn’t what this is.”

Cheong-hwa was probably worried about a heavy internal strike. That was only natural. If I clashed with that sword, the internal energy Zhuge Hyeon had packed into it would seep into my dantian and tear it apart. That was what an internal injury was. If the internal injury grew severe, it might even lead to deviation.

Of course, that was only under the assumption that I had no internal energy.

By the time Cheong-hwa and Zhuge Gyeom were quarreling, Zhuge Hyeon had already rushed right in front of me. Even if Cheong-hwa intervened now, it was too late.

“Haaat!”

Leaping high, Zhuge Hyeon brought his sword down at me. If I had the ability to avoid it completely, then of course I would’ve done so, but my skill wasn’t enough to evade Zhuge Hyeon’s blade one-sidedly without meeting it.

But why was that? Even while looking at that blue blade, my heart was calm. I knew the reason well enough. There was qi sleeping inside my body that Cheong-hwa didn’t know about.

Bang!

The moment Zhuge Hyeon’s sword and mine collided, it sounded as if explosives had gone off.

“Ugh!”

In the instant our swords met, I saw Zhuge Hyeon’s eyes. Zhuge Hyeon couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe that strong internal energy was sleeping inside my body.

What followed was obvious. Zhuge Hyeon was thrown back from me and sent flying beyond the place where he’d leapt from, all the way outside the sparring platform.

He was driven back so far that sand and dust shot up a full three jang into the air. When the dust cleared, there lay Zhuge Hyeon, blood trailing from the corner of his mouth, unconscious.

“…Huh.”

A sigh escaped from someone’s mouth. It was probably one of the Zhuge Clan people.

Zhuge Chan, who had been acting as judge, Cheong-hwa, who had been shouting to stop the match, the other disciples of the Myeong generation, and even Zhuge Yan, watching from afar, all stared blankly at the place where Zhuge Hyeon had collapsed. It was that unexpected a result.

“He’s suffered an internal injury. Send him to the medical hall.”

I heard Zhuge Gyeom’s voice, colder than cold enough to freeze. When I looked toward Zhuge Gyeom, he had already turned his back and was walking back toward the Clan Head Hall.

“The victor of this sparring match is Young Hero Muk Hui-yeong of Wudang.”

With Zhuge Chan’s voice, which plainly sounded stunned, the end of the sparring match was declared. There was no cheering afterward, as normally followed a sparring match. Only a heavy silence followed.

This was the Zhuge Clan, and a direct-line child of the Zhuge Clan had just lost in a ruinous way that was hard to believe. The people of Wudang weren’t the sort of crass people who would shout and cheer in a place like this.

Instead, I looked toward the gathered people of Wudang. The people of Wudang exchanged glances, sharing even their joy together.

“…The guests of Wudang should return to their quarters. The Clan Head will call for you again.”

Zhuge Chan did the bare minimum of cleanup in short order. At once, people hoisted up the unconscious Zhuge Hyeon and flew away with lightness skill.

As Zhuge Chan said, we quietly returned to our quarters. When we passed others, we greeted them coolly and did not show our joy.

And only after we had returned to the quarters did Cheong-hwa finally open his mouth in a low voice.

“You pulled up a qi curtain.”

“Waaaa!”

Once there was no longer any need to worry that sound might leak outside, Myeong-seong shouted.

“That’s actually insane. How did you win? If it turned into a rebound, then that means your internal energy was stronger than his!”

Myeong-seong seemed thoroughly excited. Well, he had clearly expected me to lose, so now that I’d won, it made sense that he was happy. Myeong-seong too, I’d noticed it from the time of the grass flute, might act mature, but in the end he really was still a child.

Cheong-hwa, evidently just as excited, asked in a heated voice.

“Seriously, what happened? Did you already have internal energy?”

“I had a small stroke of fortune.”

I had already thought of an answer to this issue. After all, it would’ve been unnatural for a man like me, who had no internal energy before, to suddenly possess such a large amount.

“At the Provincial Administration Commission, because they said I’d done something great, they offered to grant me one wish. At that time, I asked for an elixir and took it. Fortunately, they even provided a master who could guide the energy, so I was able to absorb a great amount of it.”

“I see. Well, if it was something on the level of the Hubei Provincial Administration Commission, then they would indeed have had many fine elixirs.”

Fortunately, Cheong-hwa and the others accepted it without much difficulty. Then again, compared to saying I’d absorbed demonic qi from other people, that certainly was an easier story to believe.

“Well done.”

Myeong-il, who had remained quiet, lightly tapped my arm. That was more like Myeong-il.

Looking at each other, we all grinned like madmen. In the Zhuge Clan, the sparring exchange had ended in a complete victory for Wudang.