Chapter 192 – The Greatest Talent Since Wudang’s Founder

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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Edited by Celestial Knight

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Two men were staring at Ju-seong with dumbfounded expressions.

The first was Deung-pyeong.

He had once been the chief of this band of Diancang Mountain bandits, and when they’d met last time, Ju-seong had thought well of his character and bestowed gold upon him.

And the second was…

“Why are you here too?”

Ju-seong asked incredulously.

April.

So much had happened that April’s name had almost faded from Ju-seong’s memory.

But he definitely remembered.

‘That assassin fellow.’

A man who had recklessly tried to attack his master, only to be beaten to a pulp and force-fed a Qi-Scattering Pill before being sent to Ju-seong.

His master had left the fellow’s disposition to Ju-seong.

And Ju-seong had in turn passed that responsibility to the old man called the Sword Saint of the Western Frontier.

‘…A man of the Sword Saint’s caliber surely wouldn’t have carelessly abandoned this fellow.’

The Sword Saint’s reputation was spread wide across jianghu. Ju-seong had also personally met him, and he wasn’t an irresponsible person.

Rather than the appearance of an immortal who spoke in riddles, he had been a calm man who communicated clearly like a scholar.

Surely he wouldn’t have left a man he’d agreed to take responsibility for to roll around with bandits.

“Hmm…”

Come to think of it, both Deung-pyeong and April were also dressed in the ridiculous temple garb and robes.

Whether from a cheap cloth shop, they were all the same dark blue color but each slightly different in saturation.

‘Deung-pyeong has a tidy personality.’

Deung-pyeong’s robe was the most faded from frequent washing.

The fact that you could tell someone’s washing frequency at a glance from the cloth’s color suggested these people’s circumstances weren’t exactly abundant.

“…Why the sudden Taoist act in the mountains?”

“…Why did you, my lord, beat up our lads like that?”

Each had more than one or two things to ask the other.

* * *

“Haha, it was a greeting, a greeting.”

All misunderstandings were resolved. Ju-seong shamelessly explained to the two men who were looking at him with sullen eyes.

“Just checking how lively you’ve all become since I last saw you, eh? Seeing how healthy you’re all living thanks to the gold ingot I generously handed over.”

“Mm.”

Deung-pyeong quietly lowered his gaze, owing Ju-seong a debt. He would never forget Ju-seong’s willingness to readily offer the gold from his own pocket during difficult times.

The heart that bestowed gold upon someone who had tried to rob him was surely more precious than the gold itself.

Meanwhile, April still looked somewhat sullen.

Ju-seong turned to him and asked.

“Where is the Immortal, and how are you here alone like this?”

Immortal referred to Immortal Hyeon-su, the Sword Saint’s Taoist title.

April scratched the back of his head and answered.

“The Penitence Journey concluded, and I’ve been settled here for about a year now.”

“A Penitence Journey, you say.”

Ju-seong nodded. What kind of person was April? None other than a man who had been an assassin.

They said selling one’s sword to make a living was the fate of martial artists, but assassins received unfavorable looks even from such martial artists.

Martial artists had their own sense of righteousness and chivalry, but assassins were those who treated people like slabs of meat without such convictions or beliefs.

How had Immortal Hyeon-su made this man repent, and with what confidence had he released him like this? And what was this man thinking, building a Taoist temple on Diancang Mountain?

April bowed his head slightly and said.

“I felt much during the Penitence Journey. Most of those I killed were ruffians of the black path, but sometimes they too had families, or friends and subordinates as close as family.”

Ju-seong asked.

“So you felt guilty about that? About having harmed people with families and friends?”

April shook his head.

“What shames me is that I harmed such people without any thought, simply because it was a commission.”

Ju-seong slowly nodded.

“How remarkable. This actually makes a man out of someone?”

Eighteen years on the streets, and six or seven years in jianghu.

He was confident in his eye for people, and was fairly certain that people didn’t easily change.

Yet Immortal Hyeon-su had somehow transformed this man called April.

‘Then again… even back then, he seemed like an empty sword without an owner.’

April wasn’t an evil man to the bone; rather, he was a man who seemed empty however you looked at him, lacking a sense of self. Perhaps because he had been raised as an assassin since childhood.

“Mm, anyway, since I stopped you from beating up the temple workers, I’ve something to record in my ledger of merits and demerits.”

April murmured, then pulled out a small booklet from his robe and used a fine brush to write something down.

Ju-seong asked curiously.

“What’s that?”

“It’s called a ledger of merits and demerits. A kind of Taoist cultivation method where you record without omission the evil and good deeds you’ve committed.”

“What, if you diligently record it, you become an immortal?”

April replied calmly despite Ju-seong’s teasing.

“If you strictly observe it alongside inner elixir cultivation, you might not achieve living ascension, but perhaps corpse liberation?”

Corpse liberation meant shedding the body upon death and ascending to immortality.

Ju-seong wondered how that was different from simply dying, but April’s expression was so serious that he didn’t add any comments.

April hesitated before continuing.

“…And my nature is such that without such rules or compulsion, I’m prone to running wild.”

At this point, Ju-seong made his judgment.

‘He’s really gotten himself together as a person.’

There were those who loudly proclaimed they had reformed. Such people were nine times out of ten no different from their former selves behind the scenes.

On the other hand, those who clearly understood just how fundamentally flawed they were would instead guard against slipping through strict discipline and self-examination.

Ju-seong pulled a booklet from his robe and wordlessly handed it over.

“Here, you learn this.”

“What is this…?”

April tilted his head and examined the booklet. It appeared to be a sword manual.

“Mm, I have my family’s sword art, so I’m fine.”

April was the heir of the Shooting Sun Sword House. Long ago, the Shooting Sun Sword House was destroyed by assassins of the Assassination Curtain, and April was the survivor raised by one of those assassins.

At the time, the assassin had stolen the techniques of the Shooting Sun Sword House, but realized these martial arts couldn’t be properly learned without the Pure Yang Constitution that manifested through the family bloodline.

Thus he had transmitted the stolen martial arts to April, who was born with that bloodline, intending to use him as a chess piece.

In any case, regardless of such backstory, the Shooting Sun Sword Art itself was a martial art of tremendous power.

A fearsome swift sword, with thrusts at extreme speed as if deflecting the sun being its main techniques.

“Is that so? Then I’ll take it back.”

Ju-seong nonchalantly moved to retrieve the booklet.

This booklet was the Taoist swordsmanship from Li Bai’s legacy that Ju-seong had kept.

He had intended to pass it on someday to a swift swordsman with good character.

Obviously, it wasn’t something he had specially prepared for April.

‘It’s not like this fellow is the only swift swordsman in the world.’

At that moment, April hastily reached out and pressed down on the booklet.

“…W-wait.”

“What?”

April scratched the back of his head.

“At a glance… it seems to include not just swordsmanship but also some understanding of internal energy cultivation.”

Ju-seong nodded.

“It does discuss methods of internal energy operation.”

The swordsmanship in the booklet didn’t include a matching internal energy cultivation method.

Rather, this swordsmanship was made to be compatible with most orthodox internal cultivation methods.

“If you operate internal energy as written here, you can draw out ninety percent of the sword technique’s power.”

A martial art that displayed its full power even without a matching internal cultivation method.

It was precious, but Ju-seong had seen all sorts of things and was unfazed.

After all, this methodology only applied to that specific swordsmanship.

But April seemed to have found some value in it.

“I wanted to transmit swordsmanship to my disciples but couldn’t, which had been troubling me…”

The internal cultivation method and swordsmanship April possessed could only be properly wielded by those with the Shooting Sun bloodline.

For April, who was attempting to establish a Taoist sect on Diancang Mountain, this had been a source of concern.

“The idea of making those bandit fellows into Taoists… you’re quite something too.”

Ju-seong shook his head.

Deung-pyeong, who had been listening beside them, smiled and interjected.

“After you visited, my lord, we too wanted to do some good. Then we saw the Sect Master here set up a small temple on this ridge, help the common folk, and even be called ‘Immortal,’ and we thought… that’s it.”

Ju-seong gave a sidelong glare of disbelief.

“Sect Master?”

April replied shamelessly.

“As the head of a proper Taoist sect, I am the Sect Master.”

“Fine, you be Sect Master. Whatever you want.”

Deung-pyeong watched the two men’s little comedy before continuing.

“…Anyway, yes. Like Mount Hua Sect and Wudang Sect up north, we thought we’d try it too. So we went to the Sect Master here, who seemed highly skilled in martial arts and learned, and requested his teachings.”

Ju-seong made a disinterested jab.

“Actually it’s just knowledge crammed in over the past few years, isn’t it.”

It seemed Immortal Hyeon-su had packed quite a lot of knowledge into this formerly empty-headed assassin’s skull.

A fellow who had known nothing but killing people was now able to act as a proper Taoist.

Ju-seong marveled at how the world was truly topsy-turvy and asked.

“So, what is this place… Diancang Sect or something?”

April shook his head.

“We’re still too small to represent this great Diancang Mountain… We’ve just hung a signboard saying ‘Saeil Temple.'”

“Ah, I actually saw it on the way in.”

But that signboard had clearly been hastily scrawled. He surreptitiously went around back to check.

“On the back, it’s written very grandly indeed. ‘Great Diancang Sect.'”

“Ahem, ahem!”

April cleared his throat in embarrassment.

“That’s for the future.”

Ju-seong smiled slightly.

Who would fault a man for having ambitions?

Ju-seong also boldly stated his own ambition.

“Pleased to meet you, First Sect Master Immortal April of the Great Diancang Sect. I am Tang Ju-seong, prospective first patriarch of the Great Sichuan Tang Family.”

“Mm, using an entire province’s name rather than a mountain’s seems a bit…”

Deung-pyeong interjected from the side.

“Only someone like Hebei’s Peng Family calls themselves the Hebei Peng Family. And in their case, there are no competing sects in their region… but Sichuan has both Qingcheng and Emei, hmm.”

April specifically pointed out the reality of Sichuan as a region and noted the limitations.

‘…These bastards?’

Ju-seong quietly drew Sword Aura from his index finger.

-TING!

The teacup before him, touched lightly by the Sword Aura, split cleanly in two.

The tea inside collapsed in an instant, soaking the tea table.

Ju-seong displayed the vermilion Sword Aura with a slight smile.

“Still think I can’t do it?”

April’s eyelid twitched.

‘…How old is this person again?’

Though they spoke as equals due to their history, from April’s perspective, Ju-seong was really just a kid he could talk down to.

Barely a few years past twenty.

Yet such a young man casually drew and wielded Sword Aura.

Deung-pyeong, who had essentially no knowledge of such matters, simply tilted his head.

“Oh, how is your internal energy so firmly refined? You must have learned some special martial art, my lord.”

He was originally from the military and had only learned military-issued martial arts.

He was quite ignorant of martial artists’ detailed realms or how supernatural the absolute masters were.

April sighed and said to Deung-pyeong.

“Taoist Brother Deung-pyeong… that isn’t a matter of learning a special technique or not.”

“Then what is it, Sect Master?”

“…Setting aside what it is, let me tell you what it means.”

April answered quietly.

“To exaggerate a bit, Young Hero Ju-seong may be the man born with the greatest talent since the one who settled on Wudang Mountain.”

Over two hundred years ago, a man who was considered the greatest of all time in jianghu.

In the mundane world outside jianghu, he was simply called Taoist Zhang.

And…

‘The founding patriarch of Wudang Sect.’

April sensed that Ju-seong possessed talent comparable to his.