If you went into the outlying woods a little away from the snow-covered pasture, there existed a training ground granted by heaven, where no one would disturb you.
The best possible place to train in martial arts with no eyes watching.
Before entering the Manor, it was better for Seol Ha and me to spend enough time here.
“How is your attainment in the Cold Lake Hidden Seclusion Art right now?”
The Cold Lake Hidden Seclusion Art was the martial art Seol Ha had reworked and newly devised by turning the Cold Water Tribe's inherited art, the Water Armor Art, in an aggressive direction.
“Frankly?”
“Yes.”
“After hearing what you said, I discarded the training method I had chosen for faster attainment despite its instability, so naturally my attainment has slowed from before. I am at a standstill.”
Seol Ha wore a gloomy expression.
Hearing this, I was grateful for two things.
One was that she had taken my advice not to rush to heart and changed her training method at once, and the other was that, even having met a wall because of it, she did not resent me but waited for my next word of advice.
“That's good news.”
“How so? I have to grow stronger….”
“Yes, I know. You mean to grow strong so no one can dare harm me, Noona?”
“…….”
“I understand that feeling well enough, but you can't protect me from every danger in the world. So don't cling to a goal you can never make perfect. That doesn't mean I'm telling you to become a burden.”
Seol Ha bristled.
“I have never once been your burden, Young Master. Nor will I be.”
“What do you mean, never? There must already be discomforts in your body that began when you chose the training method for fast attainment. Isn't that so?”
As I took a step closer, Seol Ha reflexively drew back half a step.
Before she could retreat further, I took hold of her left shoulder.
“The left shoulder will be only the beginning. With your balance scattered and your qi handled past its limit, in the end you won't even be able to grip a sword properly.”
“How could you know that….”
“Did you think I wouldn't know if you kept hiding it? That isn't for my sake. And it certainly isn't for yours.”
This is her wall.
The Water Armor Art was never an inherited art handed down over long years in order to harm anyone, and the limit of forcing it into a martial art of rapid linked attacks had now begun to devour her.
A woman of her aptitude could not fail to know it.
She had simply been turning her eyes from it in her haste.
“From today, throw away the Cold Lake Hidden Seclusion Art. I gave you this time so you could feel the wall for yourself.”
“Is there another road for me?”
“There is. I'm going to teach you a different ice art. It's a superior martial art, more than enough to fill in the aggression the Water Armor Art lacks. Above all, the Water Armor Art's strengths will make this one stronger still.”
The Water Armor Art has one truly outstanding strength.
In exchange for slow emission and handling of qi, the true qi it moves does not scatter easily; it is heavy and stable.
“All this time you've thrown away the Water Armor Art's strengths and chosen aggressive attainment alone, so your true qi has only grown more unstable, Noona. But if you choose a balanced method of attack with the Water Armor Art's strengths woven in, your thirst can be quenched.”
A martial art I had thought of even before the regression.
It was the North Sea Ice Palace's hidden supreme art, the one the Dark Hollow Ice Demon, who laid the Ice Palace to waste, ultimately failed to steal away.
A supreme art whose existence not even the Ice Palace's Palace Head knew of until the Dark Hollow Ice Demon appeared, and in which the insights left by the first Palace Head of the North Sea Ice Palace were steeped.
-The Ice-White Snow Wind Art.
“The Water Armor Art's true qi is heavy. Because the handling of qi is slow, the more you unfold it in techniques of frequent linked attacks, the slower your attainment looks. But heavy does not have to mean weak and slow.”
At my words Seol Ha's eyes gleamed, as though she had grasped something.
Just then snow began to fall between us again, scattering in the air.
I pointed at the piled snow, crunching underfoot.
“Snow that has piled up doesn't move easily; it settles layer upon layer. And then at some moment, when a strong wind blows that shakes its center.”
The snow swept up by my sword rushed to one side all at once, like an avalanche on a snow mountain.
“It collapses in the direction you want. What matters is the wind's direction and the right control of force.”
“Not frequent linkage, but piling up, holding, and pouring it out at the position and direction I want.”
This supreme art, which I had devised from the essentials of the Ice-White Snow Wind Art and the Water Armor Art, would open a new road for her.
“This supreme art is called the Ice-White Black Tortoise Art. Learn well the techniques of the Black Tortoise Immovable Step and the Ice-White Black Tortoise Sword, which you will unfold on that foundation.”
It was a supreme art I had devised anew, but what wall she would strike while interpreting it, or how far she would grow, were things even I could not yet answer clearly.
One thing was certain, though, for when she had attained some measure of it.
Noona would reach the level I had held before the regression at an age far younger than mine.
Because.
If my memory and experience held true, Noona possesses the heavenly bone the first Palace Head of the North Sea Ice Palace was said to have had, the Northern Abyss Golden God Body.
“Why don't you ask how I know this supreme art?”
At the question that suddenly occurred to me, Seol Ha answered with a calm look in her eyes.
“I have been thinking about it all this while. How I should treat a Young Master who has changed so much….”
“No doubt. And?”
“Just because your many changes cannot be explained, and because I cannot grow used to them, it makes no sense for my will and my heart toward you to change. Whether you explain or do not explain, I….”
Seol Ha gripped her sword tight.
“I want to stay at your side, Young Master.”
I had expected it, and still Seol Ha moved me to admiration once again.
And the past in which I had lost a being who held such blind trust and faith in me, far too soon, hurt my heart terribly.
Right, this time it would be different.
I recalled Cheon Yu-wol, smiling at me with that faint sneer.
My thanks, Liege. This life, I shall play it properly.
“All right, let's begin.”
Our shadows sank into snowfall that had grown fiercer still.
***
Fifteen days later we returned to the estate.
It had certainly been a short span of time, but the training bore more than that in results.
With no eyes watching I had helped her train freely, and I too had chosen a martial art suited to my newly reborn heavenly bone and begun refining it.
Now that the grand art's Second Progression was complete.
I had passed beyond Sword Qi Wounding and reached Sword Qi Perfection, where sword qi could be wielded freely at will.
I was complete as a peak-realm master.
What level Cheon Yu-wol had reached by about now, I did not know.
But judging from the talks we had shared in the past, at this point in time I had reached roughly the level of her toes.
Compared to the me before the regression who first faced her, I was already at the level of a heaven beyond heaven, and in the whole of the Golden Manor there were now only two beings who could threaten me.
Perhaps that was why Seol Ha, though she did not show it much, seemed inwardly delighted at all times.
With a tremendous light of hope beginning to shine down on a future that had always been dark, how could she not be glad enough to embrace it.
“Look at this bastard. Face is looking good. Been off meeting some famed courtesan?”
I had washed up and come out in a good mood.
But the moment I stepped out, my mood sank low because of the guest full of complaints waiting for me.
“Why do you come running in person to pick a fight with a man who's just got home after so long?”
Just then Geon Pyeong, who had been standing before the bronze mirror smoothing his hair, spoke while looking at my reflection in it.
“You. Why have you got so big?”
It was a question I had expected to some degree.
I had been a big baby, and even in childhood my height had been beyond my years.
That was why, despite being younger, I had a frame similar to Geon A-seong's and could disguise myself as him.
But now that I was looking toward the grand art's Third Progression, my build was not merely large; it easily surpassed the six-foot Geon Pyeong.
I had grown more than a foot.
Geon Pyeong could only stare at me with an expression full of every kind of suspicion and question.
But rather than explain as though making excuses, I beamed at Geon Pyeong.
“Curious? I don't feel like telling you.”
Geon Pyeong's expression hardened stiffly.
“You. Did you eat something bad? Since last time, talking back to your elder brother isn't enough, you're openly provoking me? Been treated like a grown man for a while and forgotten what your brother's like?”
Geon Pyeong closed the distance to me where I stood in a single stride and let out a savage murderous intent, as though he would strike me across the face at any moment.
I would rather he drew a blade.
Brothers dying in a knife fight can, after all, sometimes be an unavoidable accident.
As a heated fighting spirit rose, he shut his mouth.
Should I kill him now—
I considered it for a moment.
Then, to me waiting quietly, came a disappointed remark.
“Why act up when you can't say a word and shrink like a rat?”
“Me? I didn't.”
Misunderstandings are free.
“Just draw your blade. Let's have a proper round after all this time.”
Even at my provocation, Geon Pyeong laughed calmly.
“Forget it. Beating a day-old pup like you only wastes my time. Don't waste it, sit down a moment. I won't ask by what trick your build got bigger.”
At Geon Pyeong's unexpectedly composed manner, I sat down obediently, though with some regret.
Taking Geon Pyeong's head off was a thing already scheduled for not so distant a time anyway.
“So, what is it?”
“About that favor you asked your brother for a while back, I'm thinking of granting it now. How does that sound?”
What favor—
At times like this, best to stay quiet.
When I said nothing, Geon Pyeong grew impatient and resolved the question for me all too easily.
“You wanted to attend the regular gathering of the Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Society. You were desperate about it, since you couldn't even get an invitation.”
Ah, now I see.
The Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Society, a private circle of Sichuan Province's prodigies, utterly useless from where I stood yet hard to ignore all the same.
Somewhere in a very old memory there was a time when I too had thought of slipping in among that glittering crowd.
“Didn't you say I didn't qualify? Why is it allowed now?”
“Your brother pulled some strings.”
A sudden favor, is it….
Knowing Geon Pyeong's temperament, there is no such thing.
All of the Grand Madam's children were like that.
From the sight of him grinning and working that cunning tongue, I had a rough idea of what Geon Pyeong meant to do to me through the Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Society.
He probably means to lead me into causing an incident that will reach the Grand Madam's ears, or to arrange a situation ripe for public disgrace.
But why go to the trouble?
Hmm. Surely he hasn't been scolded by the Grand Madam over our earlier deal?
Tying Geon Pyeong's behavior to what had come before, a rough picture took shape.
The Grand Madam could indeed see through a situation.
Only, she would never know what lay buried in the pasture, so she must have thought I made that deal for Seol Ha's sake alone.
In any case, the situation was not bad from where I stood.
The more Geon Pyeong grew impatient and hostile toward me, the more surely I would have grounds to shake loose and take what was his.
Like this chance.
“Good timing. I've been itching for something to do anyway. Has the moment finally come to take in all the lovely women's eyes at the Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Society?”
When I played along a little, Geon Pyeong smirked.
But in my head, various pieces of information connected to the Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Society were going by.
The Sichuan Dragon and Phoenix Society…….
By about now, that man would likely be there as well.
It was a sudden proposal from Geon Pyeong, but for me the timing of the move was quite apt.
Geon Pyeong, so you can be of use after all.
“Hahahaha!!!”
As if answering my laughter, Geon Pyeong laughed louder still.
“Gwahahahaha!!!”
Same bed, different dreams.