Black and White Martial Emperor

There was a great tree whose leaves seemed to overflow with life.

From a distance, the branches and foliage spreading from its trunk somehow resembled an enormous lotus flower.

Jeongan liked that tree. Ever since arriving in Guangdong, she had often sat against its trunk to meditate.

Today was no different.

She worked to clear away every stray thought, emptying her mind again and again in an attempt to enter a state where the self fell away entirely.

But...

“Whew.”

A quiet sigh escaped Jeongan’s lips.

Just as she had for the past several days, she had tried to sink into meditation.

And just as she had failed for the past several days, she failed again to enter any truly deep meditative state.

Perhaps this was not a time when she could simply sit here and meditate as though nothing were wrong.

If anything, that was precisely why she had tried even harder to master herself.

But it was anything but easy.

“You’re going to sigh a hole in the ground.”

Jeongan raised her head.

Yeon Hojeong stood there with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Ah, Hero Yeon.”

Yeon Hojeong smirked.

“Hero, my ass. Drop the embarrassing title.”

He was a strange man.

His manner of speaking was quite rough, yet somehow it never sounded unpleasant. Perhaps because it fit his nature so perfectly.

To someone who disliked empty ceremony and pretension, his manner would probably come across as unusually candid instead.

“Then I’ll call you Commander.”

“Anything but ‘Hero.’ Call me whatever you like.”

“All right.”

“Anyway.”

Yeon Hojeong tilted his head.

“Did you find your answer?”

“Excuse me?”

“Ever since what happened that day, you’ve been coming here every day and trying to meditate without end. Even for a practitioner, that’s excessive. Unless you’re trying to find something, there’d be no reason to go this far.”

Jeongan gave a bitter smile.

“My training must still be lacking. I’ve made plenty of attempts that sounded good in my head, but instead of finding an answer, I’ve only managed to make myself more confused.”

“Is that so?”

Yeon Hojeong smiled.

There was something very peculiar in that smile, something difficult to define.

“The harder you try to forget something, the more vividly it comes back. The deeper you try to bury it, the more insistently it rises to the surface. That’s meditation for you.”

“Do you know much about meditation?”

“Countless people who have run headlong into their own limits become experts at meditation. I’m no exception. Of course, meditation is also something even experts fail at quite often.”

“Ah...”

“Don’t try so hard to forget. Sometimes it isn’t a bad thing to let your awareness drift with those stray thoughts. Examine them one by one. Dig into them, then dig deeper. Sometimes what you were looking for suddenly becomes clear in the very place you had been refusing to look.”

There was a profound quality to his words.

At least, that was how they sounded to Jeongan.

They were not merely an impressive collection of phrases. They were words that could hardly have come from someone without experience, words carrying the unmistakable weight of sincerity.

More importantly, Yeon Hojeong was a greater master than Jeongan.

His martial arts were not merely crude displays of overwhelming force. He was a true master capable of placing martial principles of unfathomable depth into every individual move.

That fact lent even greater weight to what he said.

Jeongan lowered her head.

“Thank you. That’s advice worth taking deeply to heart.”

“Don’t worry about making my advice part of you. Put that effort into protecting that gentle, sincere heart of yours instead. Preserving it for an entire lifetime will make your life difficult enough as it is.”

Jeongan looked up at Yeon Hojeong.

He was still smiling down at her, his eyes clear and deep.

For a moment, Jeongan felt something strange.

He feels familiar.

Why?

When they had first met, and even during the handful of conversations they had shared over the last few days, she had never felt this way.

But today, Yeon Hojeong somehow felt strangely familiar.

Almost...

Almost like family, or someone from her own lineage.

There was a subtle profound aura emanating from his entire being, carrying a kind of ease and depth that Jeongan would have expected more from an accomplished Buddhist master.

Perhaps that was why.

Before she realized it, Jeongan asked a question she normally would never have voiced.

“Have you ever watched someone who felt like family change in a way you couldn’t understand?”

She was clearly speaking of Hwaun, her martial aunt.

Yeon Hojeong nodded.

“Of course. Though my situation was different from yours. I had never imagined my father was the sort of man who could laugh so easily or carry himself with that much ease.”

“I see.”

“If anything, my father and brother were the ones bewildered because of me.”

“Why? Did your personality change that much from when you were younger?”

“Completely.”

“That’s fascinating.”

Yeon Hojeong shrugged.

“Whatever the case, sitting here all day and letting time pass isn’t exactly productive either. Do you circulate your qi every day?”

“What? Ah, yes. Of course. I never skip that.”

“Good. Then how about we exchange a few moves?”

“...All of a sudden?”

“You tried to meditate and couldn’t. And even if you tried surrendering yourself to stray thoughts, you’ve spent your entire life training to empty yourself of self and thought. I imagine even attempting that feels unnatural.”

Jeongan’s face reddened slightly.

She was embarrassed by how easily he had seen through her.

“At times like this, there’s nothing better than working up a good sweat with a sword. Come on.”

“Will you personally spar with me, Commander?”

“There aren’t many people here capable of properly receiving your sword. Of those few, I’m the least busy.”

Jeongan found herself oddly pleased by Yeon Hojeong’s high assessment.

The two made their way to a small training ground tucked away in one corner of the residence.

“Here?”

“That’s right.”

“But this place is...”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

Jeongan cleared her throat.

“Not exactly a serious problem, but... as you saw before, the range of my sword is rather broad...”

She was too embarrassed to say outright that this narrow training ground might not withstand the power of her sword.

Yeon Hojeong smirked.

“One thing before we start. Learning to expand and contract your sword domain at will is part of training too. If all you ever do is expand the area in which you manifest your martial arts, you may eventually lose finesse.”

“Ah. Yes.”

“If the space is narrow, then work with the narrow space. Focus on concentrating as much power as possible while adapting to the situation.”

He was not wrong.

Jeongan felt embarrassed, as though she had just been caught boasting about herself.

“Then... here I come.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Yeon Hojeong was barehanded.

But Jeongan did not ask why he had no weapon, or whether he intended to bring his axe.

The martial prowess Yeon Hojeong had displayed before was so overwhelming that whether he carried an axe or fought barehanded hardly seemed to matter.

If anything, in such a confined space, his bare hands might be even more frightening than his axe.

BANG!

Jeongan moved without taking a formal opening stance and without announcing the start.

Whatever else one might say about her, Yeon Hojeong liked her understanding of a contest.

Once both sides had agreed to spar, there was no need for someone to shout that it had begun.

In that regard, at least, she understood combat perfectly.

SWISH!

The sharply thrust sword grazed past Yeon Hojeong’s hair.

It was an exceptionally clean swift sword.

Even without using the Myriad Flowers Still Sword Art, her sword was vicious.

There were many reasons she had managed to build a level of cultivation comparable to Mookbi’s at roughly the same age, and fundamentals like these were surely one of them.

Yeon Hojeong kicked off the ground.

BOOOOM!

His leg tore through empty air.

With a sound like a great drum being struck, an invisible shockwave burst outward in a circle.

Fast!

Fast and powerful.

That single kick made the tension surge at once.

Had she failed to evade it, her head would have been blown apart.

Even blocking it would likely have left her too stunned by the impact to think clearly.

One could die even in a spar.

That was true of every martial bout in the world.

Jeongan’s concentration rose to its absolute peak in an instant.

SWISH-SWISH-SWISH!

The paths drawn by her sword were astonishingly beautiful.

Beautiful—and fast.

Before one slash even had time to leave an afterimage, the second and third strikes followed in an unbroken chain. An ordinary swift-sword practitioner would not have been able to contend with her at all.

Yeon Hojeong’s hands moved sharply.

TING-TING-TING-TING!

Jeongan’s eyes shook.

She was not using the Myriad Flowers Still Sword Art, but her sword forms were still undeniably dangerous.

And Yeon Hojeong had knocked aside those perilous attacks with his bare hands.

What terrifying dynamic vision!

It would actually have been less shocking if he had hardened his hands with Inner Qi and struck the blade itself aside.

Instead, within those tiny fractions of a moment, Yeon Hojeong struck the flat of her sword with the backs of his hands, twisting each sword path off course.

It was a defensive feat several times more difficult than simply protecting his hands with Inner Qi and batting the attacks away—a display bordering on divine skill.

And that was not all.

THUD!

With a stamping step, he slipped into her space like a snake.

The movement was so natural it almost made her laugh in disbelief.

Fast, smooth, effortless.

His ability to read the engagement and seize control half a beat before his opponent could retreat had reached an extraordinary level.

BOOOOM!

Jeongan snapped her head backward.

A fist like solid steel shot upward like a cannon blast.

Had she failed to evade it, everything from her jaw to her skull would have been pulverized.

SNAP!

Ugh!

She tried to bring her sword down with a short stroke, but the rising fist shifted in an instant and seized her shoulder.

Her right shoulder.

The side holding the sword.

The blade she had been swinging stopped an inch from Yeon Hojeong’s ribs.

With her shoulder joint immobilized, she could no longer move it.

It was a shocking experience.

At Putuo Hermitage, where the sword was used as a tool of cultivation, there existed sword arts worthy of being called among the finest under heaven.

But there were no close-combat arts or killing methods founded upon an exhaustive understanding of the human body.

Still gripping Jeongan’s shoulder, Yeon Hojeong swung his arm.

Unable to resist at all, Jeongan spun helplessly through the air and slammed into the ground.

BOOM!

Her eyes trembled.

She had gone down from the back of her head to the length of her spine without even managing a breakfall.

And yet strangely, there was no pain.

The force had looked more than sufficient to crack her skull and damage her spine.

Instead, all she felt was a heavy jolt.

Yeon Hojeong looked down at her and grinned.

“I was hoping you’d work up a sweat, but that ended far too easily. You weren’t this weak before.”

“I think you’re simply too strong, Commander.”

“For you, yes. But you still shouldn’t have gone down that easily.”

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“I think I know why you did.”

“What is it?”

“You were half-hearted.”

“...!”

Yeon Hojeong released her shoulder and dusted off his clothes.

“You never decided whether you were going to swing with the intent to kill me or simply respond without going too far. That’s why you lost so quickly. If you’d been more focused, I would never have caught your shoulder, and your sword art wouldn’t have been shut down like that.”

“...”

“Whether it’s meditation or a fight, doing something half-heartedly is worse than not doing it at all. Once you’ve chosen a path, clear away your confusion as quickly as possible and throw yourself into it without hesitation.”

He looked down at her.

“Don’t be afraid of taking risks.”

Still lying on the ground, Jeongan closed her eyes.

“I’m a coward.”

“I know.”

“I watched the adults around me change in ways that horrified me. I knew what they were doing wasn’t right. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to actively stop them.”

“I know that too.”

“Putuo won’t change just because I step forward alone.”

Her voice tightened.

“But I still should have stepped forward. I should have risked my life to stop them.”

“No.”

“...What?”

“The moment you step forward, Putuo has already changed.”

Jeongan stared at him.

“The reason I thought you were a coward wasn’t because you failed to stop them from running wild.”

“Then why?”

“Because you were half-hearted.”

Jeongan’s eyes flew open.

Shock filled them.

When he had called her half-hearted before, the words had not truly struck home.

But now...

Now they tore mercilessly through her heart.

Yeon Hojeong watched her quietly for a moment before turning away.

“I’m leaving Guangdong soon. I’m heading back to the Martial Alliance.”

“...”

“But there’s somewhere I intend to stop along the way.”

Jeongan’s gaze sharpened.

“It’s the organization led by the man who provided the spark that left Putuo Hermitage in its current state.”

“...?!”

“If you intend to come with me, start getting your body and mind in order today.”

Yeon Hojeong glanced back at her.

“I’ll warn you now.”

His voice was calm.

“I can’t guarantee you’ll come back alive.”

A fierce light flashed in Jeongan’s eyes.