Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 5 - Evaluation (2)

Chapter 5 – Evaluation (2)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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There could not have been a greater bolt from the blue for me than this. In my previous life, even the pig I had fought had been one of Sagong Hyeon’s lackeys, and I had been beaten miserably by him. That pig had not even trained martial arts. He had defeated me with nothing but size. If it was Sagong Hyeon, there was no need to say more.

“I have no objection.”

For a brief instant, killing intent flashed in Sagong Hyeon’s eyes.

Cheong-hwa nodded as though he had expected that answer. He did not even ask for my opinion. It seemed he regarded my fighting as an established fact.

“I would prefer to be matched against someone else.”

“Why?”

Cheong-hwa asked in an openly disappointed tone. He seemed to be expecting something from me, and I felt I should at least tell him that whatever he expected was not there.

“I have never learned even a single move of martial arts.”

“Did my junior brother not teach you the Three Calamities Fist and the Three Calamities Heart Method?”

“As you know, Sagong Hyeon over there is the young sect master of a Central Plains sect. I am nothing more than the son of a mere farmer. There is nothing for me to gain from this fight.”

“We are merely trying to assess talent, so do not worry.”

Cheong-hwa looked at me steadily and continued.

“Naturally, Young Master Sagong understands that and will hold back appropriately. And if the situation turns dangerous, I will intervene.”

“There is no need for concern, Immortal. Since my fellow disciple has only recently entered the Heart Method, I too will fight without using internal energy.”

Sagong Hyeon smiled. Cheong-hwa nodded in satisfaction.

“…No.”

I started to say more, then clamped my mouth shut.

Behind me, Cheong-hyeon was glaring at me as though he wanted to devour me. Since I had dared to object to his lofty senior brother, he seemed to think his own face had been shamed.

There was no way out of this. So I reluctantly nodded. It was not as if I had prepared absolutely nothing for this. In fact, if things went well, this might even turn out for the best.

“Then I will do as you say.”

“A wise decision.”

Only then did Cheong-hwa ease his expression and nod.

I trudged out into the training ground. Unlike me, Sagong Hyeon had already assumed the stance of the Three Calamities Fist.

Even from his posture alone, you could see that he had a foundation in martial arts. His thick forearms and thighs called a racing horse to mind. He could not even be compared to soft, greasy lumps like me.

“Loosen that expression. I’ll go easy on you.”

Sagong Hyeon spoke to me in a friendly tone. Since Cheong-hwa seemed to be paying attention to me, he was even pretending to be close. He disgusted me from top to bottom.

“Begin.”

At Cheong-hwa’s command, Sagong Hyeon shot forward. There was nothing in the eyes with which he charged me that suggested he intended to go easy on me.

I would only get one chance. Thankfully, Sagong Hyeon was underestimating me. Since he looked down on me, he came straight at me without any probing.

I pulled the bag at my waist and flung it open in front of me. The sand packed inside burst outward in a spray of dust.

“Ugh!”

Startled by my sudden move, Sagong Hyeon’s speed faltered. But because he had already rushed in at full power, he could not stop. He took the sand straight in the face.

“…What in the world!”

I heard the enraged voice of Immortal Cheong-hyeon from where he was watching.

I knew. This sort of thing was what the unorthodox sects did, not something one was supposed to do in the Wudang Sect, the most orthodox of the orthodox.

But I wanted to pay back the pig that had once beaten me in my former life, and if this gave them a pretext to throw me out, I would only be grateful.

“You crazy bastard!”

Sagong Hyeon too forgot himself in the sudden situation and let his fury spill out. It seemed he had momentarily forgotten that Cheong-hwa and Cheong-hyeon were both watching.

I had no intention of wasting this chance. As Sagong Hyeon flailed with sand in his eyes, I drove my fist into his jaw.

Thwack!

The impact of my fist sinking into his chin felt deeply satisfying.

‘Got him.’

Back when I had been a market-street merchant, I had gotten into plenty of fistfights with other merchants too. We even grappled over who would secure a better spot.

Based on that experience, no one who took a clean hit on the jaw like that could get back up.

But Sagong Hyeon, a martial artist, was different. His face whipped to the side from the punch, then he snapped his posture back into place and glared at me. Perhaps because he had forced his eyes open, the whites were bloodshot.

I immediately threw another punch. But this time Sagong Hyeon caught my wrist.

In that instant I saw the night sky and felt a huge impact hit the back of my head and my back. Sagong Hyeon had seized my arm and thrown me as though hurling me over his shoulder.

“Kuhk!”

Hitting the ground, I let out a groan as though vomiting it up.

The strength of a martial artist who had trained his body since childhood was terrifying. He had not even used internal energy, yet I flew three jang through the air.

Sagong Hyeon’s fury had not ended. He was already charging at the body he had thrown. The fist he had clenched tight was packed with the desire to beat me senseless.

Do they say that when a person is pushed to the brink, the body awakens on its own? I felt that if I lay there any longer, not a single part of me would escape unbroken, so I flung myself up.

Then, clumsily, I took the stance of the Three Calamities Fist. I had not even been paying attention when Cheong-hyeon explained it, but right now this was the only thing I had to rely on.

“Damn it.”

Relying on hazy memories, I stepped through the footwork.

But suddenly my feet moved far more fluidly than I expected. In my memory, my body had never moved like this.

Sagong Hyeon’s fist carved a semicircle as it hurtled toward me. Without thinking, I bent my upper body sharply backward. His fist brushed over the bridge of my nose and passed by.

If I had bent back this far normally, I should have toppled over, but unlike my dazed mind, my body did not lose its balance and settled back into stance.

“You little!”

Perhaps enraged, Sagong Hyeon began taking another posture. From that unfamiliar stance, it seemed he meant to use one of his inherited martial arts rather than the still-unfamiliar Three Calamities Fist.

At once, kicks poured out like a storm. We had learned the Three Calamities Fist, not the Three Calamities Leg. As expected, that was one of his family techniques.

With a single chain of kicks, he aimed for my shin, my solar plexus, and my nose. I swayed left and right, slipping past them.

As my body moved, my eyes too began adjusting to Sagong Hyeon’s speed. Or perhaps the eyes are part of the body too, and reading movement was only natural once the body could keep up.

‘I can see the path.’

How could that be possible? Sagong Hyeon, like the other children of martial families, must have learned martial arts from the moment he could walk.

How could I possibly read the path of such a person’s attacks? I had experienced a handful of fights in my previous life too, but never anything like this.

Only then did my thoughts reach the Martial Talent Shop. The thing I had definitely purchased was Nimble Movement.

‘What kind of sorcery is this?’

Could buying that single thing really change me this much? It defied all common sense. Then again, coins vanishing into thin air did not make sense either…

“Eeeih!”

When I continued to evade his attacks, something venomous entered Sagong Hyeon’s eyes.

A faint blue glow gathered around Sagong Hyeon’s foot. He was using internal energy now.

Bang!

When Sagong Hyeon’s heel stamped into the ground, dirt flew and cracks spread across the earth. Infused with internal energy, the strike was stronger and faster. I barely managed to roll away.

A fistful of sand got into my clothes, but I did not even have the presence of mind to care.

Immediately, Sagong Hyeon came at me again with both hands curled like claws.

“Enough!”

I blinked and suddenly the back of someone wearing a blue Daoist robe was in front of me. It was Immortal Cheong-hwa.

“To use internal energy against one who has not trained martial arts. I could not continue watching that.”

“He was the one who used a cowardly trick first!”

Sagong Hyeon protested loudly in his sense of injustice, and right behind him Cheong-hyeon roared.

“Who do you think you are shouting in front of!”

Even if Cheong-hyeon was said to be the weakest in the Cheong generation, that was only within the Cheong generation. At the shout infused with his internal energy, it felt as though the inside of my body had been shaken.

Sagong Hyeon felt it too, apparently, because his body flinched.

“Junior Brother, it is all right. The child is not wrong. So I do not intend to hold you responsible. However, using internal energy against one without internal energy is a taboo. What Huiyeong did first, throwing sand, was indeed something only the unorthodox would do, but using internal energy on one who does not possess it is something even the unorthodox do not do.”

Cheong-hwa spoke in a stern voice. Come to think of it, such an unwritten rule did exist. Of course, there were still reckless men who ignored it, but they were objects of contempt for flaunting martial arts before common folk.

Sagong Hyeon ground his teeth and glared at me. Sand I had thrown still clung around his eyes. They must have been stinging badly, yet he still looked at me as if he wanted to kill me.

But what could he do? Between me and him now stood Cheong-hwa. I rolled my eyes upward at him in mockery.

“Muk Hui-yeong.”

Cheong-hwa suddenly turned toward me. I immediately set my wildly rolling eyes back in place.

“Yes.”

“You failed to uphold the dignity that one of Wudang should possess. A disciple of the Wudang Sect throwing sand in a bout and using the Roll of the Lazy Donkey is unacceptable.”

The Roll of the Lazy Donkey seemed to be what he was calling the way I had rolled along the ground. The orthodox sects certainly had a lot to nitpick. If your life is in danger, then naturally you should roll on the ground if that is what it takes to live.

Of course, this was not the moment to say something like that, so I only bowed my head.

“I am sorry.”

“I will think of an appropriate punishment for you. Wait for it.”

“…Yes. Understood.”

I lowered my head as though reflecting with all sincerity.

By appropriate punishment, did he mean expulsion? He probably did. There was no place that valued face more than the Nine Great Sects.

In any case, the fight had been satisfying. I had landed one solid punch on Sagong Hyeon’s jaw and had also accomplished my goal of making Wudang dislike me.

“Return.”

Sagong Hyeon and I both stepped back. As he drew close, he muttered to me in a voice seething with killing intent.

“I will kill you.”

That voice was packed with a depth of indignation and fury beyond description. The vividness of that emotion pleased me so much that I let out a laugh. Sagong Hyeon’s eyes grew even harsher.

Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I turned to look back. Cheong-hwa’s face was expressionless, while Cheong-hyeon stared at me as though he meant to devour me.

***

As Muk Hui-yeong had expected, Cheong-hwa had indeed placed hopes on him. Across all the cohorts of lay disciples Wudang had accepted so far, Muk Hui-yeong was the first one who had tried to do business with the main-sect disciples.

Cheong-hwa had wondered if that cleverness might somehow manifest in martial talent too.

“That brat must be thrown out at once!”

His junior brother Cheong-hyeon roared.

“He filled his bag with sand and threw it. Doesn’t that mean he had prepared it from the start?”

“Sagong Hyeon also used internal energy, did he not?”

“That at least could be taken into consideration as something born from anger. How can that compare to a bastard who brought such a thing with him from the beginning on purpose?”

That was true. Cheong-hwa smiled bitterly.

In truth, the person most disappointed when the sand had scattered was none other than Cheong-hwa himself. To think that boy had prepared such a cowardly trick. And the stance he had taken beforehand had not shown a shred of martial talent.

“Even so, we should watch him once more. You saw it too, didn’t you? That child’s movements.”

“…Hah.”

Cheong-hyeon still looked displeased at the mention of Muk Hui-yeong, but he could not deny Cheong-hwa’s words.

Cheong-hyeon and Cheong-hwa were martial artists. At a glance, they could tell whether a child had trained martial arts or not.

Muk Hui-yeong’s claim that he had never learned even a single move was almost certainly the truth. There were no calluses at all on his hands, and his body was soft through and through.

But the movements Muk Hui-yeong had shown after throwing the sand were astonishing. They were far too nimble for someone who had never trained martial arts.

Had he then thrown a punch, it would have been a perfect Three Calamities Fist. To think that someone who had never studied martial arts could move in a way so suited to the Three Calamities Fist they had been taught only the other day. Even Cheong-hwa, with all his experience in the jianghu, had never seen talent like that before.

“If he truly showed those movements without any martial training at all, then that is tremendous martial talent.”

“Could he not at least have learned a lightness skill?”

“If that were the case, we would have known.”

Cheong-hyeon pressed his lips tightly together. It was certainly true that Muk Hui-yeong had not learned any martial art at all.

Even if Sagong Hyeon possessed only ordinary martial talent, he had still trained for over ten years. For Muk Hui-yeong to evade the fists and kicks of such a person held great meaning.

“Junior Brother. Would it be all right if I involved myself a little in the management of the lay disciples?”

“Pardon?”

“I am curious.”

At the light in Cheong-hwa’s eyes, Cheong-hyeon looked troubled.

“I feel somewhat awkward saying this, but having two people in charge of lay disciples seems excessive. Senior Brother also goes out into the jianghu often, does he not?”

“That is why I would only come when I have time. I do not intend to interfere in your work.”

“…I will speak to the elders about it.”

“Good. As expected of my junior brother.”

“But did you not say you would punish Muk Hui-yeong?”

“Ah, that’s right. What should I give him?”

Cheong-hyeon clicked his tongue. Cheong-hwa did not wear the stern face of one deciding punishment, but the pleased face of one deciding on a reward.