Early morning.
In the wide clearing behind the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe, five Ghost Blade Sect saber fighters, including Choo Sahyeok, were sprawled across the ground. At the center stood Jin Sohan, holding an ordinary saber.
The outcome was the same every time.
Every morning, they fought like this.
Today, Choo Sahyeok was the least battered. The other saber fighters had swollen faces, or clutched their abdomen as they writhed on the dirt. One of them, as if seething with anger, slammed the ground and let out a pained, rage-soaked howl.
Jin Sohan watched the scene with a blunt expression.
And only Choo Sahyeok’s Joyful Death Saber remained intact. Every other weapon had snapped.
Jin Sohan, too, held a straight saber with chips missing along the edge—then tossed it onto the ground. He hadn’t used Twin Moon. He had faced five men with a single ordinary saber and still broken four weapons.
Jin Sohan offered a brief assessment.
“Slow progress.”
Every morning, Jin Sohan reduced the saber fighters who charged him together into a miserable state. Even so, no one had broken bones or suffered internal injuries. They were simply flailing in pain from blunt impacts, or gasping for breath from exhaustion.
Jin Sohan spoke to Choo Sahyeok, whose face was drenched in sweat.
“Sahyeok.”
“Yes.”
“Even if I’m not here, do this sparring among yourselves. Same time.”
“What? Every day?”
Choo Sahyeok looked at the comrades who had been beaten alongside him.
One had a black eye. One had a nosebleed. One had split lips. Whenever Jin Sohan saw an opening, he punched with his fist, clubbed with the saber’s handle, hooked a foot to trip someone, and even deliberately stepped on people as he passed them when they fell. You could call it the first truly savage sparring they had ever experienced.
When Choo Sahyeok didn’t respond, Jin Sohan smiled and asked,
“You don’t want to?”
“Won’t it wear our bodies down?”
Jin Sohan shook his head at Choo Sahyeok’s words.
“Soon, I’ll give each of you one of the rare elixirs I picked from the black market goods. Bruises like this will heal naturally. You’re making a big fuss.”
“Ah… understood.”
Choo Sahyeok was thinking of the phrase about giving sickness and then giving the cure. The others, still sprawled on the ground, stared at Jin Sohan. Today, Jin Sohan had beaten them even more brutally, and their insides were boiling. Except for Choo Sahyeok, they still had little rapport with Jin Sohan, which made it worse.
Jin Sohan looked at the resentful stares of the saber fighters, clicked his tongue, and said,
“Sahyeok.”
Perhaps because his tone was oddly gentle, Choo Sahyeok answered politely.
“Yes.”
“Unorthodox men die before thirty, right…… you said that.”
“On average, yes.”
“Looking at your skill, you’ll die before thirty—hell, you’ll die before you even get there. Like you said, you don’t have some incredible inner energy method. You haven’t mastered some famous saber art either. Then at least your real combat experience should be rich. This kind of real practice will help you more than learning another trash saber art floating around the black market. It’ll help your martial growth more, too. If you just want to live carelessly and get stabbed to death before thirty, I won’t lay a finger on you. Do what you want.”
One saber fighter, a man who looked stubborn and simple-minded, asked with a flat tone.
“Troupe Master, you’re not doing this just because you want to hit us, right?”
Jin Sohan gave a faint smile.
“It’s a hassle for me, too, taking my time to beat you every day. If you don’t like it, you can leave. I won’t force you. And…… Sahyeok, if there are any decent weapons among what we gathered from the black market, pick some out for these idiots.”
Choo Sahyeok replied,
“Understood.”
Jin Sohan nodded.
“Rest until afternoon.”
The saber fighters struggled to their feet. A few sighed as they headed back into the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe, as if they couldn’t understand Jin Sohan’s methods at all.
Watching them go, Jin Sohan lifted his eyes to the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe plaque and thought,
I’m giving them a chance to become stronger than they are now, and they don’t even recognize it.
Choo Sahyeok stayed behind for a moment and asked Jin Sohan a question.
“Troupe Master.”
“Yeah.”
“Will this make us stronger? It helps me a lot, but I don’t think it’s the same for the others. For one thing, your attitude is too stiff, Troupe Master, so they misunderstand. They were already afraid of you to begin with.”
Jin Sohan burst out laughing.
“Ridiculous. Is that what being afraid of me looks like?”
“Well, being beaten every morning probably has something to do with it.”
Jin Sohan looked quietly at Choo Sahyeok, who had said that so frankly. Choo Sahyeok was a man with plenty of room to rise. He kept asking questions, and those questions came from genuine thought.
Jin Sohan nodded and said,
“Trust me and follow. You’ll get strong faster than you think. Especially you. You correct your movements quickly, so you’ll benefit more.”
“Understood.”
“It’s a bit vague to put it this way…… the more you don’t want to get hit, the more your movements get corrected. If you think I just hit you every time no matter what, you’re an idiot. I hit you every time I noticed a bad habit. That’s why, Sahyeok, you got hit the least. The others complain a lot, but they’re gradually shedding their bad habits, too. And if their capacity is so poor that they can’t even digest training like this, there’s no point learning higher saber arts. Besides, you’re all too old to be learning new arts anyway.”
Choo Sahyeok replied, sounding wronged.
“How many years apart are you and us, Troupe Master? Among the guys who got hit, there are even people your age.”
Jin Sohan snorted.
“What does age matter?”
Jin Sohan looked out over West Black Road as he spoke to Choo Sahyeok.
“I’ve been here, holding a saber and playing with it since I was learning to walk. For about eight or nine years, I swung a saber without any meaning at all. It wasn’t a saber art—literally just a sword dance.”
“Did the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe give you a saber that early?”
Jin Sohan shook his head.
“I took it because it was fun. They all danced with blades, so as a kid, it was nothing but fun to imitate my older sisters. After that, I spent more than ten years learning real saber arts. Can you compare that to you?”
“Hm. When you put it that way, the gap is huge.”
“It’s not just time. I thought the fact that I swung a blade meaninglessly at the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe in the first place was a stroke of fortune.”
“That was a stroke of fortune?”
Jin Sohan nodded with a solemn expression.
“I did meaningless blade-swinging for about ten years, then I learned saber arts—arts with meaning—by splitting them apart and studying them piece by piece. And that’s when the meaningless blade-swinging and sword dance I learned earlier started gaining real meaning, too. It wasn’t wasted time.”
There was a realm called “no moves surpass moves,” a state where a sword without forms defeats a sword that uses forms. Because Jin Sohan had trained from the start with a meaningless sword dance, he instinctively understood the difference. He had learned saber arts, but he naturally applied the formless sword dance in real fights, too.
That was why Jin Sohan could be called a uniquely strengthened saber fighter.
Even so, no matter how thoroughly Jin Sohan explained, it wasn’t a realm Choo Sahyeok could immediately grasp. Jin Sohan’s level was simply too high.
Still, Choo Sahyeok sank into thought to understand him.
“Hm……”
Jin Sohan said,
“If there’s anyone among you who wants to hole up in the mountains and train for ten years, I’ll give you money and send you out. If not, and you want to keep living in the Unorthodox world, training like this is better. Your capacity doesn’t seem bad, overall. Except for that one guy who was huffing and puffing. He’ll probably leave on his own. His skill was the worst, too.”
Choo Sahyeok nodded.
“Yes. I think I understand what you mean now, Troupe Master.”
Because Jin Sohan kept glancing at the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe plaque, Choo Sahyeok asked,
“Are you waiting for survivors of the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe?”
“Yeah.”
“And if no one comes?”
“Even then, my heart……” Jin Sohan cut himself off. “No. For now, I should wait a while.”
“Then later, you’ll leave.”
“I don’t know. Right now……”
“Don’t you have some ambition? It’d be a waste for someone like you to stay on West Black Road.”
Jin Sohan turned to look at Choo Sahyeok.
“How strong do you think I am?”
Choo Sahyeok answered, imitating Jin Sohan’s tone.
“How would I know? I’m second-rate, so I don’t know.”
“You’re the type to keep things bottled up.”
“I am.”
Jin Sohan and Choo Sahyeok looked at each other and let out a brief snort of laughter.
Jin Sohan immediately thought of the Four Great Villains who stood alongside his masters in name. Even if they realized Jin Sohan was Venom Demon’s disciple, they were the kind of masters who would still look down on him.
But Jin Sohan thought differently.
You won’t know until you clash.
He wanted to confirm it.
This monstrous body Venom Demon and Medicine Immortal had made……
And beneath that was another question: if he fought the other members of the Four Great Villains—excluding his own master—could he surpass his teachers?
Jin Sohan said,
“Go in first. I’ll take a walk and then come back.”
“Yes.”
Left alone, Jin Sohan turned and walked slowly, taking in anew the West Black Road scenery he had always stared at as a child.
If there were survivors, he wanted to meet them.
He wanted to see Siwol, too. He wanted to meet Chumyeongwi, who supposedly had helped the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe. More than anything, he wanted to see the older sisters who had taught him the sword dance. It was because he didn’t have many memories of being happy. How could years of training, poisoning, and detoxifying have been happy? In the middle of it all, he had to rack his brain every single day just to avoid being sacrificed as an experimental subject.
Then, all at once, Jin Sohan remembered what Ju Yein of the West Gold Escort Agency had said.
She had said she would gather information for him, too.
I should ask her to look into it once.
Jin Sohan had taken revenge on the Blood-Whisper Sect, yet his heart wasn’t refreshed. He had parted from his parents without even a proper goodbye, and then he had been torn away from the Mystic Lunar Dance Troupe, too. Because of that, there were hollows in Jin Sohan’s heart that even he didn’t fully understand.
When he was weak, he never had the chance to protect happiness—and when he returned strong, there was no one left to share happiness with.
That was Jin Sohan’s current state.
That wandering blade was headed toward the West Gold Escort Agency when his steps stopped short. On the wide, quiet boulevard of the early morning, a man of unknown identity stood in his way.
His outfit was striking.
It was similar to what Jin Sohan had been wearing when he first arrived on West Black Road. Black clothes, with a conical hat pulled low.
Under the brim, the man’s lips moved.
“Greetings.”
Jin Sohan studied the man and did not answer at once.