In front of the faculty building, which adjoined the New Hall.
Several large trucks pulled in one after another.
“What is all that?”
“Is someone moving in? Why are there so many trucks......”
Just as the cadets passing by tilted their heads.
Creak, clunk!
The rear doors of the trucks opened and burly workmen began carefully unloading the cargo.
Inside the sturdy crates, mid-to-high-priced whiskeys were packed tight.
“Insane, why is there that much liquor?”
“Wow, aren't those all worth hundreds of thousands each?”
“Which professor is it, exactly?”
“What professor is going to drink whiskey like that?”
“The contract professor?”
“......Unbelievable. Don't tell me he's secretly a conglomerate heir? Then again, maybe having money rotting away is how he got in as a parachute hire.”
The cadets were astonished, and so was Kang Hyeon, walking up from a distance.
He had come from running the children's dawn training, and what on earth was this commotion.
And what was Lee Se-a doing up front there with a baton, marshalling the workmen?
“Oh, Mr. Kang Hyeon! You're here?”
“Chick, what is all this.”
“What do you mean, what? It's your water of life!”
Lee Se-a pointed proudly into the trucks.
“I made rather a scene at the Bureau yesterday, you see. Draw up the budget properly. Stop being stingy!”
“Did you now.”
“Of course. Do you know how much loss the state avoided thanks to the matter you handled?”
“And they're settling that against the price of liquor?”
Somebody else was offering up half a company.
When Kang Hyeon looked unexpectedly indifferent, Lee Se-a broke into a nervous sweat.
“Haha, more is being prepared, naturally. It's just that the office is rather cramped for space...... As you drink it down we'll top it up.”
“Never mind. This much liquor is plenty.”
“Sorry?”
“I'm saying you can stop buying liquor from now on.”
There was no longer any need to buy drink out of the national budget.
Once Taejeong Trading was back to normal shortly, he intended to transcribe a few of the manuals in his head and sell them.
Would that alone not remove any worry about drink for the rest of his life?
“Then is there anything else you'd like? The truth is a fairly generous budget was allocated as your reward this time.”
“Those people who died unjustly in this business. Use that money to look after their bereaved families better.”
Mercenaries earned money in a trade that accepted the prospect of death, but what crime had the families left behind committed?
The man who instigated this tragedy was Park Dong-cheol.
And that Park Dong-cheol had been none other than a core executive of Taejeong Trading.
With him about to receive half the shares of Taejeong Trading and become its major shareholder, innocent people had bled over the company's affairs, and it was hardly a thing he could simply pretend not to see.
‘Better to start by taking responsibility, properly, for what has to be answered for.’
Not knowing the inner circumstances, a fierce emotion crossed Lee Se-a's face.
“I thought you were without blood or tears, and you'd been thinking about that side of it too.”
“What's that supposed to mean? An insult? A compliment?”
“Respect!”
Scurrying out of range, Lee Se-a took out her notebook and scribbled.
- Raised compensation for victims' bereaved families before his own reward. Unexpectedly attentive.
It was an observation log that would be reflected in the Code Name Black report.
***
When Kang Hyeon went into the professor's office.
“And what are you here for?”
Yoon Hyeon-jong was waiting.
“I heard from my father.”
“You can stop with the thanks. I've received everything there is to receive, and the liquor piled up out there has me quite distracted enough.”
“Thanks offered a thousand times, ten thousand times, would still fall short.”
“Did you hear as well that I've boarded the same ship as your father?”
“I heard.”
“Doesn't it gall you? It might have been your shares in future.”
“If anything it's reassuring. My father said this: that even if I miss every regular class at the Academy, I am never to miss yours. It's the first time in my life I've seen my father put that much faith in anyone.”
“Your tongue runs smooth as a stream. Instead of wearing your mouth out talking, go outside and do more of the horse stance.”
“Yes, I'll bear it in mind!”
Clunk.
Watching Yoon Hyeon-jong close the door briskly and go, the corner of Kang Hyeon's mouth lifted.
‘Old men, are you watching?’
They had said it to Kang Hyeon constantly, like a verbal tic.
That a human being is by nature a beast that knows nothing but itself, and so must be governed and tamed with fear and violence.
‘What nonsense.’
They knew nothing but themselves, so they had assumed everyone else was the same.
And even supposing a human does know nothing but himself, what of it?
Give food to the man who is hungry, and show the man who thirsts for recognition a higher place.
Make him walk because he wants to, and that will do...... so what on earth were all those beatings for.
‘I still do not understand you. So watch. Here, I will prove clearly that you were wrong.’
Glug, glug.
Kang Hyeon poured whiskey into a glass out of habit.
***
Walking in front of the martial medicine hall, Baek Yu-yeon looked for all the world like a newborn calf.
“Aaaugh......”
Unable to control her trembling legs, her face contorted with every step she took.
Watching that wretched sight through her laboratory window, a crease formed on Professor Hwang Ye-rim's brow.
‘What will she do if she wrecks her body at that rate.’
She could tell in a single glance that it was not an injury making her walk that way.
It was the characteristic gait of muscle pain that appears only when the muscle fibers of the lower body have minutely torn and lactic acid has built to an extreme.
‘Why on earth is a cadet majoring in martial medicine doing brainless lower-body training like that?’
She was puzzled.
Especially as this was a girl who had always kept her distance from physical conditioning.
‘There's something to it, at any rate.’
The Baek Yu-yeon of before had been a girl who came to the laboratory almost daily, burning with a hunger to learn.
The level of her questions was always sharp too, and Hwang Ye-rim had marked her as the next head researcher to lead the lab.
And then for the last few days, the girl's visits had stopped dead.
Rattle.
Rising from her seat, Hwang Ye-rim went down through the building and stepped into Baek Yu-yeon's path.
“Baek Yu-yeon.”
“Oh, Professor? Hello!”
“Take these.”
She held out several thick medicated patches.
“What are these?”
“Patches made on a spirit-herb base. They should be effective for muscle recovery.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Baek Yu-yeon was touched.
She had realized that the professor had been worried about her.
“But what's brought on this lower-body training all of a sudden? Are you doing some sort of martial arts practice?”
“It isn't quite that......”
“I'm not scolding you. Learning martial arts yourself for the sake of martial medicine is admirable too. But I would like you not to forget that your essence is that of a physician.”
“Yes, I'll bear it in mind.”
“And your preparation for the laboratory selection exam is going well?”
“Of course!”
At an answer without a hair's hesitation, the resentment Hwang Ye-rim had felt inwardly melted away.
Yes — stamina did matter for studying, after all.
“Then, Yu-yeon, while we've met, would you take a look at this as well?”
Hwang Ye-rim held out the tablet she had been carrying.
On the screen was a complex diagram of the body's meridian channels.
“This is.”
Baek Yu-yeon was startled.
The form of it: an abnormal, cold energy pooled at nine major acupoints, clamping down on the heart meridian!
“Yes. It's a meridian chart I've tried to structure on the basis of your sister's symptoms.”
“You've been working on this even while you're so busy......”
“Of course I have to look into it. And I dug rather deeper this time. I've measured the location of the causal meridian precisely.”
“Really?”
“The problem is that if yang energy is introduced, the vessels around the heart meridian can't withstand it.”
“Ah.”
“Honestly, the road is completely blocked at that point. I'd like to hear your thoughts too.”
Baek Yu-yeon was touched all over again.
She was grateful that the professor was looking at her sister's case, and grateful to be asked for her opinion.
The professor was the country's foremost authority in this field, no less.
“Thank you, Professor. I'll look at this material and analyze it too. I'll report to you by next week.”
“Do, but don't overexert yourself.”
***
That evening.
A secluded corner of the Academy's Old Hall drill grounds.
Having finished all his regular duties, Cha Yu-sik had stayed behind alone and was holding the horse stance.
Swinging the Three Powers Sword Art thousands of times at dawn under Kang Hyeon's direction, then remaining voluntarily in the evening to drill his lower body in the horse stance, had somehow become his new daily routine.
‘Bring it down, hold, thrust.’
A principle that was simple and yet the foundation of every martial art.
Since being wretchedly broken by Kang Hyeon, Cha Yu-sik had been quietly laying his foundations.
Ding.
Just then, the smartphone he had set to one side vibrated.
[Come to the main house. It is a top-secret matter.]
The sender was the Guild Master of Cheonrang and his father, the S-rank Hunter Cha Ha-rang.
***
“You've come.”
“You called for me, Father.”
Before the sharp-featured Cha Ha-rang, his elder brother Cha Du-sik had arrived as well.
“Both of you, sit.”
Cha Ha-rang had his sons sit at the table in his study, and on it lay a single old book and two thick interpretations.
“I'll speak plainly. We secured a new secret manual from a dungeon we deployed into recently.”
The brothers' eyes went wide at the same moment.
“Having mobilized every guild interpreter to translate it, it has been established that this manual is a sword art unfathomably above the Wolf Fang Sword Art we hold as our mainstay.”
Gulp.
Cha Yu-sik swallowed.
The Wolf Fang Sword Art alone could be called one of South Korea's three great sword arts.
Because it was the sword art that made Cheonrang.
And this was above it? Unfathomably so, at that?
“From now on we learn this. If the Wolf Fang Sword Art is Cheonrang's martial art, this art will be the exclusive art of the Cha family alone.”
At those words, the face of the eldest son Cha Du-sik hardened.
Outwardly the mood had been settling toward himself as Cheonrang's heir.
And yet his father had called the second son, Yu-sik, to sit in on the transmission of the art that would become the family's pillar?
‘Father has not let go of Yu-sik yet.’
Whatever his conduct at the Academy, it was a declaration that he would weigh them against each other on sword skill.
“Take them.”
“Thank you, Father.”
The two sons picked up the interpretations with tense hands.
And the moment they saw the copy of the original text written on the cover.
Thud!
Cha Yu-sik's heart lurched.
《The Emperor's Sword Form》
A martial art he knew nothing about, and merely looking at it sent a thrill through him?
“I shall watch to see who first grasps the true meaning of this Emperor's Sword Form. You may go.”
“I'll bear it in mind.”
While walking the corridor after leaving the study.
“Yu-sik.”
Cha Du-sik, who had not troubled to hide his discomfort throughout, brought Cha Yu-sik to a halt.
“Yes, brother.”
“I hear that since your suspension you've been attending some strange contract professor's class? The rumor is all over the place.”
Cha Yu-sik's eyes narrowed.
He had guessed a watch would be on him, but it was more blatant than he had expected.
“Whatever you do at the Academy is no concern of mine, but.”
Cha Du-sik tapped the interpretation of the Emperor's Sword Form in his hand and gave a cold warning.
“Don't smear the name of Cheonrang. It won't do for the man who is to inherit the family's secret art to be rolling around with lower-class rubbish, will it?”
The Cha Yu-sik of the past would have flared up at that.
He would have thought that not losing a contest of wills was the only answer.
But the Cha Yu-sik of now was simply unmoved.
‘Lower-class?’
What nonsense.
Gather up every fine professor at the Academy and they would not amount to Professor Kang Hyeon alone.
If anything, Cha Yu-sik was grateful that his brother did not know that fact.
“I'll bear it in mind, brother.”
Bowing his head and turning away, Cha Yu-sik's gaze rested on the cover of the Emperor's Sword Form.
‘It's certain to be a tremendous sword art. I want to learn it right now.’
But if he went back to the Academy, it was obvious Professor Kang Hyeon would have him do nothing but the Three Powers Sword Art, as ever.
He knew it well, having had his very soul wrung out once before when he habitually performed a different sword art.
‘What do I do? What if I end up mastering it later than my brother?’
Cha Yu-sik was only human after all, and his heart grew impatient.