Pay‑to‑Win King of Martial Arts (Novel) - Chapter 52 - Kick Off the Torch Stand (3)

Chapter 52 – Kick Off the Torch Stand (3)

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Disciples other than Muk Hui-yeong were exposed to the demonic qi and felt a terror so great it seemed they would suffocate.

In the end, unable to endure it at all, the others fled the formation of their own accord, weeping and streaming tears and snot. The reason this formation served as a mental-strength test was that one could escape from it on one’s own feet.

Even among that, there were children who still endured with blood running from their noses, but somehow everyone’s gaze turned toward Muk Hui-yeong.

“Kkeureureuk. Keureuk.”

Lying on the ground, rolling his eyes back, and arching his waist and back, Muk Hui-yeong looked not like someone suffering from demonic qi, but like someone possessed by it.

“Shouldn’t someone go in and drag him out?”

Several of the Cheong-generation elders spoke anxiously as they watched Muk Hui-yeong.

His own master, Cheong-hwa, however, was looking at Muk Hui-yeong with suspicious eyes. Ever since Muk Hui-yeong began practicing martial arts, it had grown more and more difficult to see through his lies, but that right there looked like a lie.

He’d briefly considered entering just in case the boy was truly suffering, but decided to endure instead. The formation gave fear that felt like death, but it did not truly kill.

Time passed, and fewer and fewer people continued to come out of the formation. Already more than half had fled because they couldn’t bear the fear and pain brought by the formation’s demonic qi. Those who remained now were all displaying superhuman mental strength.

“They’re enduring quite well.”

Cheong-ui let out an impressed sound. In truth, this time’s test had a higher survival rate than the previous one.

“Shouldn’t we stop it soon?”

Cheong-yu quietly asked Cheong-ui. When Cheong-ui looked inside the formation, Cheong-yu’s disciple Myeong-han was clearly suffering greatly. Of course, Muk Hui-yeong’s spirit-possessed acting was drawing all of the attention, so Myeong-han wasn’t receiving notice.

“No. We should watch a little longer.”

At Cheong-ui’s words, Cheong-yu let out a sound as if he were anxious.

Not long after, Myeong-han came running out of the formation, vomiting. Cheong-yu let out a sigh of regret.

“Myeong-gang is the calmest of the lot.”

Cheong-ui watched Myeong-gang with interest. If there was Myeong-il among the third-generation disciples, then among the second-generation disciples there was Myeong-gang.

Unlike the other children, Myeong-gang wasn’t screaming or outwardly showing pain. He simply sat there with his eyes quietly closed.

“And the noisiest one is that brat.”

“…Ahem.”

At Cheong-ui’s words, Cheong-hwa gave an embarrassed cough. There was no need to specify who; Cheong-ui’s gaze had already gone to Muk Hui-yeong.

By now, Muk Hui-yeong had gone beyond arching his waist and back and was twisting his neck too, drooling as he did so.

“That’s an act, isn’t it?”

Cheong-ui asked quietly. Cheong-hwa sighed. If he was going to act, he could at least do it in moderation. Hadn’t even Senior Brother Sect Leader noticed?

Cheong-hwa first considered pretending not to know, then decided simply to speak honestly.

“It seems to be.”

“Then that means Hui-yeong is enduring it well enough that he still has the mental room to act.”

“So it seems.”

That in itself was astonishing. No, if that was acting, then the one enduring the best of all was Muk Hui-yeong.

“It’s a mysterious thing. His mind training should be nonexistent. How can he be like that? Even children who’ve cultivated themselves for twenty years find it hard to endure.”

“His mind may have been completed before he ever came to Wudang.”

Cheong-hwa said that while remembering Muk Hui-yeong unfolding the Five Elements Sword all at once. Since Cheong-ui knew Cheong-hwa was not someone who spoke without grounds, he looked at Muk Hui-yeong anew.

“A pity.”

Cheong-ui spoke in a sincere voice. If only he had become a main-sect disciple, it was talent that could’ve left a name in Wudang’s history.

“That is enough.”

With Cheong-ui’s words, the mist sank back into the ground. The children who had been trembling in pain immediately dropped to their knees and vomited.

“Bleegh, bleeaaagh!”

“Urgh, mm. Bleegh.”

Watching Muk Hui-yeong glance around and vomit cautiously, Cheong-hwa and Cheong-ui exchanged bitter smiles.

***

That was the end of my test. In any case, I had endured until the end. To be honest, since I had passed far too comfortably, it pricked at my conscience a little, but what could I do? It wasn’t as though I was the one who’d prepared a Demonic Cult formation.

“You carried on like hell itself.”

Secretly, I was admiring my own acting. That was why I was convinced Cheong-hwa would worry for me the moment he saw me.

But Cheong-hwa’s eyes held not concern, but scorn.

“You could’ve just gone through it quietly. Why bother acting?”

“Ah.”

A beat too late, shame and humiliation welled up. That meant he had known from the start that all my writhing around like some bug on the verge of death had been an act.

“How did you know?”

I asked while cooling my burning face with a cold palm.

“What do you mean, how? One glance is enough.”

“Ahem…”

“Even so, permission has been granted for the transmission of the Dual Intent Heart Art. Senior Brother Sect Leader seems to think very highly of your acting skills.”

“My acting skills rather than my mental strength?”

“Yes.”

Even Cheong-hwa seemed to feel secondhand embarrassment, because his face had reddened too. But strangely, I was freed from my own shame. In the end, what mattered was that I had been permitted to learn the Dual Intent Heart Art.

“What happened to the other senior brothers?”

I’d been too immersed in my own acting to pay attention to who had passed. Cheong-hwa smiled.

“Myeong-seong and Myeong-gyeong passed.”

“Then Senior Brother Myeong-jin failed.”

“That is how it turned out.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“There is too little sincerity in those words.”

“Well, in any case, I got what I wanted.”

I grinned broadly. At any rate, the Taiji Sword Guardians test lasted for fifteen days, he said. Today they had tested mental strength, so the next day they might test learning, and so on. Of course, that had nothing to do with me.

We went straight to the Three Peaks Pavilion. Cheong-hwa pulled a single book from one of the higher shelves inside. Needless to say, it was the secret manual of the Dual Intent Heart Art.

“I will teach it to you, but you may not understand it. And as you practice it, if you feel anything unpleasant or strange, you must stop at once.”

Even as he handed over the secret manual of the Dual Intent Heart Art, Cheong-hwa repeatedly warned me. He said there was nothing he himself could teach me about the Dual Intent Heart Art. He hadn’t learned it himself, and besides, being a heart art, it was ultimately something I had to accomplish on my own.

Grinning all the while, I took the secret manual of the Dual Intent Heart Art back to the Hall of Exhausting the Way. To be honest, I was confident.

As a merchant, I had read many books and accumulated all kinds of knowledge in order to sharpen my competitiveness. I thought I could easily handle the reading of a text like this without even borrowing help from the Martial Talent Shop.

“Gngh…”

But that was my arrogance. The secret manual of the Dual Intent Heart Art was absurdly difficult.

“Did someone just spill ink on it?”

On one side was blackened paper, and on the other side was white paper. That was the entirety of the secret manual of the Dual Intent Heart Art. There was not a single written character, and even when I turned the pages, all I saw were black and white sheets.

“Bunch of lunatics.”

I immediately cursed some unknown grandmaster who’d made this secret manual of the Dual Intent Heart Art. If this counted as a secret manual, then I could make a thousand of them myself. Since it was one of Wudang’s supreme arts, I’d expected a text filled with mysterious principles.

If I were the old me who valued practicality above all else, I’d have thrown the book at the wall immediately, but the talent Unyielding made me continue looking even at a book like this.

I stared at the pages as though locked in a contest of will with them.

On the left, black paper. On the right, white paper.

I tried every possible method just to look at them. At times I looked only at the black paper. At times only at the white. At times I closed one eye and looked.

The Dual Intent Heart Art created two dantians. But that couldn’t literally mean dividing the Qihai acupoint into two.

Two minds. Could a person possess two minds? But if two were possible, then why not three? Why was there no Sanyi Heart Art…?

“Ah. This is hard.”

Tormented inside all those stray thoughts, I finally closed the book. Of course, I hadn’t given up. I had only closed it for a moment because my eyes hurt too much. Even so, I’d looked at it so long that black and white sheets still lingered before my eyes.

I went outside the Hall of Exhausting the Way to get some air. Wudang Mountain in darkness was black. Even so, I could still hear the sounds of people training.

Quietly, I went to the back yard. It was, by unspoken agreement, the place where our little group of senior and junior brothers trained.

As expected, the only ones there besides Myeong-jin were the other two. Myeong-seong and Myeong-gyeong. The two of them were sparring with one another.

Now that I thought about it, this might have been the first time I’d seen my senior brothers spar. Yet astonishingly, Myeong-gyeong was overwhelming Myeong-seong. By my understanding, Myeong-gyeong and Myeong-seong were only about three to four years apart.

Once people grew older, that difference became nothing, but at their current age, it was a large gap.

“It wasn’t this much before.”

The fallen Myeong-seong smiled bitterly. Myeong-gyeong wore an embarrassed expression as he caught Myeong-seong’s hand and helped him up.

Certainly, by my eyes too, Myeong-gyeong and Myeong-seong had originally been at a similar level. Of course, taking age into account, Myeong-gyeong’s achievement was the more impressive one.

But now, it seemed Myeong-gyeong had begun to pull ahead of Myeong-seong.

Come to think of it, I’d heard of Myeong-gyeong in my previous life, and of his sobriquet Taiji Invincible Sword, but I’d never heard Myeong-seong’s Daoist title.

“I just got lucky.”

“No.”

Myeong-gyeong tried to comfort him, but honestly, there was no way that would help.

Myeong-gyeong did train hard in his daily life too, but compared to Myeong-seong, it was still somewhat less. Myeong-seong’s training volume ranked at the top even among the third-generation disciples. It was probably because of that mental strength that he’d been able to pass the first test as well.

Even so, to still be pushed back by a younger junior brother was enough to leave anyone bitter.

“Let’s stop for today. Junior Brother, if you want to keep going, then do so.”

“No. I was about to stop too.”

Smiling, Myeong-gyeong went back inside the Hall of Exhausting the Way. After silently watching Myeong-gyeong’s back as he went in, Myeong-seong lifted his sword again.

“Haat.”

With a small shout, Myeong-seong unfolded the Five Elements Sword.

I knew it. When the heart has crumbled, nothing one does will work. Even earnest flapping only matters if there is still a heart that wants to fly. As I saw it, Myeong-seong’s heart was broken right now.

“Hoo.”

Just as I expected, Myeong-seong let his sword tip fall and soon put it back in its scabbard. Then he walked into the shadows of a tree and covered his face with both hands.

Inside the deep shadow, a small figure was shaking. It was a darkness no one could see unless they concentrated. Among Immortal Cheong-hwa’s disciples, he was the eldest; for him, there wasn’t even a proper place to cry.

In that darkness, no sound at all could be heard, to the point of eeriness. It swallowed even the sound of sobbing.

I knew that bitter ache myself. That was because every person eventually collided with the wall that was another person. I too, when I was young, remembered feeling wretched after seeing peers who earned money better than I did.

After a while, Myeong-seong came out of the darkness. His steps were solemn, as though he’d made some kind of decision. For some reason, those steps were headed not into the Hall of Exhausting the Way, but toward the outskirts of Wudang Mountain.

Having once worked as a courier for the Hall of Preserved Wholeness, I knew perfectly well there was nothing out there. Quietly, I began following behind Myeong-seong. Azure Cloud Steps were so leisurely they were excellent even for tailing someone. Of course, the grandmaster surely hadn’t created them for such a purpose.

Soon Myeong-seong stopped in a moonlit clearing. Then he rummaged inside his robes and pulled something out. Even if others didn’t know, I recognized it immediately.

‘The Supreme Clarity Pill?’

I seemed to recall the Sect Leader saying he was to take that later, once his body had matured.

Before I could stop him, Myeong-seong tossed the Supreme Clarity Pill into his mouth. In an instant, a blue flame blazed up from his body.

That blue flame was rough and gloomy, as though it contained all of Myeong-seong’s pent-up resentment. Faced with that magnificent sight, I could only stop thinking for a moment and stare.

“…Huh?”

But the blue aura surrounding Myeong-seong’s body gradually began to turn black. Something was going wrong.

Without thinking, I ran toward Myeong-seong.