Cha Yu-sik's head held nothing but the Emperor's Sword Form.
After dawn training ended, he pored over the interpretation hidden under his desk even during regular class hours.
‘It's a tremendous sword art.’
The more he read, the more it drew nothing but admiration out of him.
Merely imagining himself performing this art flawlessly made his chest swell.
‘My brother will be learning it in earnest, won't he?’
Cha Du-sik had graduated top of Class 17.
Which made him all the more anxious.
Because his brother would not be having his time stolen by a pointless class like this.
A few days later, the Old Hall drill grounds.
“Haaap!”
Cha Yu-sik was repeating Earth of the Three Powers Sword Art as always, when.
‘Look at this.’
Sipping whiskey up on the platform, Kang Hyeon's eyes narrowed.
‘His heart is chasing a different sword.’
His body was here, but his spirit was wandering somewhere else entirely.
The others might not see it, but to Kang Hyeon's eye it was all visible.
Tak.
Kang Hyeon set the whiskey glass down.
“Stop.”
At the cold voice, all movement ceased as one.
The cadets' eyes went to the platform.
“Cha Yu-sik. Forward.”
“Yes.”
Cha Yu-sik wiped away sweat and stepped out.
Kang Hyeon looked down at him indifferently and spoke.
“Today I had intended to move on to Man, the third stage of the Three Powers Sword Art. But it seems I can't, because of you.”
For a moment, silence flowed across the drill grounds.
“......Have I made some mistake?”
Stung, Cha Yu-sik asked back carefully.
“It doesn't look to me as though you don't know.”
His mind had wandered, but his posture had certainly been flawless.
In that case, did this professor read a person's very thoughts?
“Come into some plausible secret manual somewhere?”
“......!”
Cha Yu-sik's pupils shook.
‘How did he know that?’
At moments like this the man was uncanny.
Whatever he did, whatever he thought, the professor had a knack for putting a finger precisely on it.
So he resolved to come out harder rather than hide it.
“I'll speak honestly. I know in my bones how excellent your Three Powers Sword Art is. There is nothing to match it for laying foundations. But.”
Cha Yu-sik spoke with his teeth clenched.
Believing that the other cadets were certainly thinking the same thing.
“In the end the Three Powers Sword Art is only the Three Powers Sword Art. Compared with other higher sword arts, are its limits and its level not plainly lower? And are you not far stronger yourself, Professor, when you use a sword art other than the Three Powers?”
Kang Hyeon spun the whiskey bottle round and round.
He knew why Cha Yu-sik was like this.
In fact Kang Hyeon had grasped at once, from a single wavering movement, which manual had bewitched him.
‘The Emperor's Sword Form.’
The final secret of the Namgung Family.
A domineering art that pins an opponent immobile under the overwhelming presence pouring from the blade, then cleaves him in two in a single stroke.
Along with the Vast Azure Boundless Sword Art, it was one of the sword arts that represented the Namgung.
It suited Cha Yu-sik, with his elite temperament, rather well too.
‘If he's seen that, his heart drifting is understandable to a degree.’
Because it was an art profound and excellent enough that even Kang Hyeon, with a Heavenly Martial Body, had taken half a year to bring it to grand completion.
‘But.’
The finer the martial art, the more solid the foundation must be.
Learn the Emperor's Sword Form in his current state and it was obvious the result would be a hollow shell with nothing but surface polish.
And so Kang Hyeon decided to apply a decisive shock to Cha Yu-sik.
“The Emperor's Sword Form, is it?”
“......Hgk?”
Cha Yu-sik's breath stopped outright.
Impossible.
It was a secret art his family had obtained under absolute secrecy.
And he had only just read the early portion of the interpretation, and a moment ago the movement had bled out unconsciously for the very briefest instant.
How could that name come out of Kang Hyeon's mouth?
“It is a sword art that suits you fairly well, though.”
Gulp.
Swallowing a mouthful of whiskey, Kang Hyeon warned him.
“If you don't lay your foundations properly, you won't be wielding the sword — you'll be dragged along by it.”
Cha Yu-sik's mind was reeling.
Kang Hyeon's admonition did not even enter his ears.
He was far more curious how the man knew a top-secret matter his father had sternly ordered him never to disclose.
“H-How did you know that?”
“All right.”
Grinning instead of answering, Kang Hyeon walked slowly down from the platform.
His gaze swept over the five of them.
“I know what's in your hearts. It must be maddening, wondering how long you have to go on swinging some neighborhood junk technique. You want to get visibly stronger right now.”
Stopping in the middle of the drill grounds, he spoke firmly.
“But a castle built on sand collapses at a single wave. The reason I work you to death on nothing but the Three Powers Sword Art is to temper your vessels into iron that can hold any martial art at all.”
At the end of a short silence, Kang Hyeon's eyes flashed keenly.
“Fine. All right. If you want it that badly, I'll give you a standard.”
His eyes glinted.
“When are the midterms?”
The Academy's midterms were held in the form of a martial tournament by year group.
A long-standing traditional event.
“Two months from now.”
Gwak Do-jin answered.
“Good.”
He had made a promise to the Dean, hadn't he.
To show a definite result that would quiet the disgruntled professors.
Since he had said he would teach them how to get stronger, showing them genuinely stronger would do it.
“At the tournament two months from now, each of you place in the top five of your own year group.”
“......!”
“If you do, I'll pass on the thing you want so badly — a real martial art suited to each of your constitutions and dispositions.”
The eyes of the five cadets went wide as one.
At last!
At last they could escape the Three Powers Sword Art and learn a real manual?
Just as excitement was about to fill the drill grounds.
“However.”
Kang Hyeon added the condition indifferently, like a bucket of cold water.
“At the tournament you must use only the Three Powers Sword Art. Nothing else.”
“......Sorry?”
It was preposterous.
This was the Academy, where the finest prodigies in South Korea gathered.
Placing in the top five there was a bloody business in itself, and he wanted them to fight with the Three Powers Sword Art alone?
“Professor! That's impossible!”
Cha Yu-sik protested at once, his voice rising.
“However important foundations are, how is anyone supposed to make their year's top five with only the Three Powers Sword Art?”
And there was one more problem.
Cha Yu-sik had to learn the Emperor's Sword Form for the succession fight.
He thought that Kang Hyeon might know of the Emperor's Sword Form, but could hardly teach it.
Had he read that thought?
“I'll teach you the Emperor's Sword Form.”
Kang Hyeon said it first.
“You know it, Professor?”
“Step out.”
“......Sorry?”
“I'll show you, so step out.”
Cha Yu-sik swallowed and came forward.
His expression was still full of doubt.
“You'll have been reading some sorry excuse for an interpretation, so don't get airs — keep both eyes open and watch.”
Sliiide.
Kang Hyeon slowly raised the wooden sword in his grip above his head.
It was a very simple, unhurried movement.
No energy poured off him.
But in the moment the wooden sword reached its apex and halted in the air.
Booom!
A roar like an auditory hallucination rang in Cha Yu-sik's ears.
‘What?’
His breath stopped.
The air of the drill grounds seemed to have grown dozens of times heavier in an instant.
The figure of Kang Hyeon in his field of vision looked like a vast mountain range — no, like an absolute emperor himself, commanding all under heaven and looking down upon creation.
‘I-I can't move......!’
Cha Yu-sik's two legs trembled like aspen leaves.
His instincts were screaming at him to flee, but the soles of his feet might as well have put down roots into the earth; he could not lift a single step.
By nothing but the formless presence pouring off the blade, the space had been seized and the opponent perfectly pinned.
That was the first stage of the Emperor's Sword Form: Subjugation.
“I'll cut.”
The languor in Kang Hyeon's eyes flashed coldly for an instant.
And the raised wooden sword came down vertically toward the crown of Cha Yu-sik's head.
Cha Yu-sik knew it instinctively.
Had this been a real sword, he would have been cleaved clean in two.
Yes.
This could not be a fake.
This was the true Emperor's Sword Form he had read of in those lines!
The wooden sword stopped above the crown of Cha Yu-sik's head.
“Hgk, hah......”
The strength gone from his legs, Cha Yu-sik sank to the ground where he stood.
His back was already soaked through with cold sweat.
Withdrawing the wooden sword, Kang Hyeon tossed out.
“Does that answer it?”
At those words, life came back into Cha Yu-sik's eyes.
‘With this, maybe......!’
He could surpass his brother!
No — with the professor, he would surpass him without question!
“I-I will place in the top five without fail......!”
“The rest of you listen too.”
The shoulders of the four cadets who had been watching blankly flinched as one.
“What I have to give you will be the equal of this sword art, so if you want to learn it, reach the standard.”
At that, delight settled into the cadets' eyes for the first time in a while.
“I'll do it on sheer guts and spite, Professor!”
“Top five of the year? I'll chew up the whole lot of them!”
They were burning with fighting spirit, but Kang Hyeon knew.
That it was by no means an easy thing.
Not a year but half a semester to break into the top five.
“All mouth. Say that sort of thing after you've done it.”
Once the five had left the drill grounds, he saw Baek Yu-yeon in the corner, still holding the horse stance and shaking.
“Hgk, hhhuh......”
“Stop.”
“Haah, haah!”
At last she collapsed to the ground, sweat streaming off her.
“Right, what's today's question?”
For the past week, Baek Yu-yeon had been working on the problem Professor Hwang Ye-rim had given her.
However hard she wrung out her brain and rifled through books, no answer came, so she had come to Kang Hyeon.
Of course, she did not think Kang Hyeon would give her the answer.
Professor Hwang, called the foremost authority in martial medicine no less, had not found it herself.
She had been drawn here on the off chance.
In the spirit of clutching at a straw.
“Is there a way to release the cold congealed at the acupoints without injuring the heart meridian?”
“Is that your question?”
“Yes.”
“It depends how many acupoints are blocked.”
“Nine.”
“Nine Yin Severed Meridian, then.”
In that instant, a strange light settled into Kang Hyeon's languid eyes.
Naturally so.
The Nine Yin Severed Meridian.
An incurable congenital condition treated as mere legend even in Murim.
From birth the body is filled with extreme yin energy, and that cold stops up the nine major meridians of the whole body.
Since the circulation of qi cannot take place, it is a cursed constitution that leaves the sufferer ailing in bone-deep cold their whole life before dying young, unable to pass twenty years.
But Kang Hyeon had been searching for that constitution.
‘Because it is the only constitution that can cast the Moon Luminary Formation.’
Among the old monsters who had put him through the grinder there had been one woman.
The Sword Empress, Seol Mu-wol.
She had been of the Nine Yin Severed Meridian.
‘An old crone whose false modesty was utterly nauseating.’
Rejuvenated by return-to-youth cultivation, in Murim she had played the good, elegant soul and received the respect and love of men wholesale.
But before her disciple Kang Hyeon alone, she was different.
Come training time, the elegant smile vanished without trace and she turned into a witch without blood or tears, beating him like a madwoman.
To Kang Hyeon the true Demon God was not Asura but that old monster Seol Mu-wol.
Taking another mouthful of drink against the irritation rising in him, Kang Hyeon asked.
“Why are you digging into that?”
Baek Yu-yeon's lips moved, and then she said it.
“......To cure my younger sister.”
“Your sister has the Nine Yin Severed Meridian?”
Kang Hyeon's eyes widened.
It was astonishing.
How had it come about that one household held both a Heavenly Meridian Eye and a Nine Yin Severed Meridian?
Only then did Kang Hyeon understand.
Why Baek Yu-yeon had been mad for martial medicine.
“Don't tell me the alchemy you were digging into as well?”
“Yes, it was to make an elixir that could strip away the yin energy.”
“Hoh.”
Sighing shortly, Kang Hyeon quietly closed his eyes.
“So that's why you clung on so doggedly. Enduring even the horse stance.”
“If it's to save my sister...... I can do anything.”
Kang Hyeon felt the sincerity in those words.
In truth, sincerity emerges from action rather than speech.
She was in fact grinding her entire life down to save her sister.
Gazing flatly at Baek Yu-yeon, Kang Hyeon tossed out indifferently.
“Even if it means giving up the whole of your life?”