"The last is the sword arts lesson."
Sword arts, in the Tang Clan?
Yes. Sword arts.
It could not have been their first time learning it, yet a fair number of faces looked puzzled.
Or looked as though to say, why waste this time on sword arts when they could learn more hidden weapon technique instead.
'Learn a bit of everything while you are young. It all becomes blood and flesh.'
The Sichuan Tang Clan was famed for poison and hidden weapons, but it did not slight the sword.
Only, unlike the other clans and sects that had made their names with the sword, it had no complex principles or sword paths.
What the Tang Clan valued was striking vital points efficiently.
Hence there were many sword arts specialized in piercing the heart with a comparatively light blade.
'It helped me a great deal.'
Tang Yu-hyeon recalled the Demonic Cult followers he had felled and the left breasts he had run through with unfailing consistency.
If he raised that accuracy and mastery higher still, he could keep attacking even with broken fingers.
'I have ended up in a young body, so I had better learn with everything I have.'
As for sword arts, fix their form a little and they learn well enough on their own, so there was no worry there.
Sword arts were the foundation of a martial artist!
"Wooden swords will be handed out, so take one each and loosen up on your own for a quarter of an hour."
Like the others, Tang Yu-hyeon took a wooden sword, far lighter than a true blade.
'Tsk. How did I used to do this.......'
As he swung the sword around, the familiar sensation gradually came back to him.
Tang Yu-hyeon closed his eyes and took the upper stance.
TAP.
One step forward.
SWISH—.
A horizontal cut.
WHIIISH!
A rising diagonal cut.
TAP.
Tang Yu-hyeon stepped back one pace and repeated the same movements.
Slow, flowing motions followed one another, like a picture drawn with a brush.
And then.
SHWEEEESH!
A thrust.
"Haaah."
Tang Yu-hyeon exhaled deeply and brought the sword to his waist.
Tap. Tap.
Ah. There is no scabbard.
After a few empty motions he lowered his arm sheepishly.
When he turned his head, the elderly Instructors were all standing with their mouths hanging open.
'Whyyyyy. What is it thiiiiis time!'
Old men with beards down to their throats forgot their aching joints and came rushing over.
GRAB.
In the blink of an eye his hands were seized.
Tang Yu-hyeon immediately sent Tang Jong-cheon a look begging for help.
'You stopped her fine enough earlier. Try stopping them this time too.'
But when their eyes met, Tang Jong-cheon started violently and quietly looked away.
It meant that even for a member of the Elder Council they were difficult opponents.
'Hey! What kind of bastard calls himself a Thirteenth Elder and cannot hold back a few Instructors?! And you call yourself an Instructor of the Joint Study Pavilion?'
While Tang Yu-hyeon ground his teeth, the old Instructors stared at him with hugely widened eyes.
So much white showed around their black pupils that it was frightening.
"What did you just do?"
"Pardon? I loosened up lightly."
"Lightly? Loosened up?"
"Yes. The Instructor told us to loosen up, so I did as told."
"And that was merely loosening up?"
"If what you have declared is false, you will be shut in the Repentance Cave!"
'This crazy old man! Does this look false to you?'
"The ancestors will be wroth!"
'I am that ancestor, you bastard.'
"Oh! Gods of heaven and earth......!"
Is this something to be calling on gods over?
Just as he was seriously considering whether someone had slipped a hallucinatory poison into their meals, one Instructor had tears hanging at the corners of his eyes.
"What you unfolded was the Heart-Piercing Sword Radiance."
'Have these people gone senile?'
Tang Yu-hyeon shook his head.
What he had unfolded was the Sundering Twin Swords, one of the Tang Clan's outer-branch martial arts.
Which is to say a basic sword art that no one, direct line or collateral branch, failed to know.
'......Or was it not?'
Tang Yu-hyeon stopped shaking his head mid-motion.
What he unfolded at the start was indeed the Sundering Twin Swords.
But the last thing he unfolded.
That sword form, piercing an enemy's heart like a flash of lightning, was different.
Tang Yu-hyeon clenched his teeth.
'They are right.'
It had unmistakably been the Heart-Piercing Sword Radiance.
"Part of the sword manual burned, so until now there was no one who knew the final technique."
"Do you mean that I......."
"Yes. You have completed that sword art!"
"Hahaha! A great blessing for the Tang Clan!"
The Instructors seized Tang Yu-hyeon's hands all at once and shook them wildly.
Some hugged him tight and then threw him high into the air.
'I cannot even lay a hand on them because of their age. Honestly.'
Tang Yu-hyeon let himself be shaken as they pleased.
Yes. A sword art had been completed, so it was a fine thing indeed.
A fine thing, and yet,
'when am I supposed to look after the children like this!'
Along with the Instructors' laughter, his original plan was torn to shreds.
'Let us think of it in a good light.'
This was a chance to build a good reputation.
The perfect chance to scrub down a hopeless wastrel of a boy and make a person of him.
Of course, changing Tang Yu-hyeon alone would not settle matters.......
'At this rate, when do I get to raise the Tang Clan?'
His head ached.
***
Only after being tormented once by the Instructors could Tang Yu-hyeon attend the lesson.
Show us the sword art.
We will write it down, so show us once more.
This time we will draw it, so show us one more time.
The eternal 'once more' mercifully ended after ten times.
Patting down his thoroughly disheveled hair, Tang Yu-hyeon joined the children resting in twos and threes.
"Yu-hyeon. You are here?"
"Yes."
"Unfolding the same sword art over and over cannot have been easy. Well done."
"Thank you."
As he staggered over, Tang San reached out and smoothed his hair.
As he slumped onto the ground and stared blankly at the sky, finely broken sweets appeared abruptly before his eyes.
"Orabeoni! Have some sweets."
"Ah. Yes. Thank you."
"Thank Third Orabeoni, not me. All I did was hold the cloth underneath."
"Hey! Why would you say that!"
"It is the truth. Is there any reason to lie?"
Tang Yeong stuck out her tongue.
Tang Eun-ho flicked a finger at Tang Yeong's forehead and spoke indifferently.
"There is no poison in it. They say sweet things are best when you are worn out."
"Yes. Thank you."
Surrounded by his siblings, Tang Yu-hyeon rested for the first time in a long while.
In the old days he counted himself fortunate if no one put poison in the sweets or drove a throwing blade into his neck partway through.
He felt tears of emotion might well up all over again.
With his mind at ease, the sounds around him came through more clearly.
"Tang Yu-hyeon, the Heart-Piercing Sword Radiance? Does that make sense?"
"Is it not just puffing him up? They say he flew circles around everyone at the meeting. They are probably trying to lend him some weight, late as it is."
"Even so, completing a manual? Does that make sense? All he did was swing a sword around a bit."
"Right. All he did was swing a sword around a bit."
Behind those inventing every possibility and speculating, a slick-looking boy appeared.
Hair slicked back, eyes that curved greasily, and thick lips made him look past dashing and well into sly.
Tang Han-su, grandson of the Third Elder.
Being the closest of the collateral bloodlines to the direct line, his influence was strong, and his distinctive smooth-talking manner made him popular.
Accomplished in both letters and arms and without a flaw to pick at, he was, in name and in fact, fifth in the Joint Study Pavilion's rankings.
Even setting aside the Tang siblings, who always held first through third, and the wastrel Tang Yu-hyeon, why only fifth?
Because among the collateral branches there was one genius he could not catch.
'His sense of inferiority must be considerable.'
Just as Tang Yu-hyeon expected, Tang Han-su spoke playfully yet could not hide that inferiority.
"What is so great about that? He must have seen it all in the library. Knowing full well and pretending not to is hardly right."
"Hey, hey. Keep it down. He will hear you. Heh heh."
'I already hear every word, you bastards.'
Laughing and carrying on like that, it would have been stranger not to hear.
Of course, that had been said openly for him to hear.
"Ahem. Hem."
Having talked loudly enough to be heard, they glanced at Tang Yu-hyeon, apparently afraid of the direct line's authority.
'Do not mind me. Talk some more. Even bullshit is entertaining when you have not heard it in a while.'
When he stayed still, Tang Han-su grew bolder and raised his voice.
He seemed to think the slander had cowed him.
"Did I say anything wrong? You know the one. That special shelf we of the collateral branches cannot so much as approach, that only the noble direct line may see."
'What the hell is that, bastard.'
In the past he had lived buried in that library, and he had been there again not long ago, and he had never seen any such thing.
If he had to find something similar, perhaps the shelves in the Clan Head's hall.
'Surely he does not mean that?'
He hoped not.
There was a limit to how far a man should push nonsense.
Tang Yu-hyeon tapped his knee with a finger.
'Barely at the threshold of first-rate by the look of him. How should I wreck him.......'
CRUNCH!
'Crunch?'
Tang Yu-hyeon turned his head toward the sound.
"How should I kill him?"
Tang Yeong muttered, biting into a mooncake with a crunch.
Hic.
Those did not break easily even with his teeth.
At her savage expression, Tang Yu-hyeon quietly looked away, and Tang Eun-ho chimed in from beside him.
"What is there to think about? Stick him with a few needles. If you offered, he would gladly hand over an arm or a backside."
"Why would I have to look at that bastard's body? Do I need my eyes to rot?"
"Both of you, calm down. We are children of a great clan, are we not? There is no need to use crude methods."
'Yes. You lot sit still. I will handle all of it.'
He was in the middle of thinking that a scholarly face came with a calm heart as well.
"Do not dirty your hands on such a thing. Hire someone to handle it and destroy the evidence, and that is that."
"Ha! The top of the entire Joint Study Pavilion really is different!"
"Orabeoni really is the best!"
Tang Yu-hyeon dropped the sweets he was eating.
Calm, my foot.
Pretending to restrain his younger siblings while going one better was not the skill of someone who had done it once or twice.
"Hyung-nim. I will do it."
"Ahaha. No. There is no need. Your hands are precious."
"That is not it. What can be used should be used to the fullest."
If someone was still tearing him down, would it not be more effective to handle it by proving himself directly?
Fortunately Tang San understood Tang Yu-hyeon's intent without a long explanation.
"Very well. Do as you wish."
Tang Yu-hyeon smiled and sprang to his feet.
"Hey."
He knew the name but did not trouble himself to use it.
He had no need to.
"Did you see it?"
The gaze looking up at him filled with alarm.
"N-no......."
"Without having seen it yourself, how are you so certain that the Tang Clan keeps a separate shelf for the direct line alone, and that I found a lost manual there by dishonest means to win attention in class?"
"Th-that is......!"
"Speak clearly. Why can you suddenly not talk? Will you tell me up on the sparring platform?"
Tang Yu-hyeon smirked.
'You bastard, you walked right into it.'
Are you that confident?
Then come up.
Let us have a conversation through martial arts, as martial artists should.