The next day.
"One! Two! One! Two!"
The warriors' running drill went on in the Baek Clan's great training ground.
It was the day of the regular group training.
And yet.
Hooooom!
Somehow their faces showed even more tension than during a promotion test.
There was one reason.
A person who should never have been in this place had slipped in among them.
'Who on earth called him here?!'
'Why is the scoundrel here of all places?!'
It was none other than the young master of the house, the scoundrel Baek Do-gyeom!
A man who normally would not even be awake at this hour, at group training from the crack of dawn.
What's more.
"Phew, this is rough."
He had only just started running?! His stamina itself was a disaster.
Why in the world had such a man come here?
With everyone left full of questions, Chief Steward Dan called them all to a halt.
"Today the Young Master has joined us especially. Do not feel any needless pressure, and approach it with your usual mindset."
As if that were possible!
"Answer."
"Yes—!"
But what could they do?
When you are told to jump, you jump.
Chief Steward Dan had a chair brought over and seated the panting Baek Do-gyeom.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, more or less."
Baek Do-gyeom answered as if it were nothing, but Chief Steward Dan was in agony inside.
Since childhood his qi and blood had circulated poorly, so he was forever falling ill, and martial arts had been out of the question.
And now, all of a sudden, he meant to enter the Myriad Talent Assessment.
"No matter how I think on it, this seems like madness. Please, stop even now."
He appealed in earnest.
But.
"How could I? Once you start a thing, you've got to see it through."
Baek Do-gyeom kept it all behind a smile.
"Haah......"
Chief Steward Dan let out a sigh. One look told him. That was not the look of a man who would ever give up.
In the end there was only one way.
"......Understood. Then allow me to show you."
Chief Steward Dan turned on his heel with resolve.
The way to make stubborn men like this yield was not to talk them out of it.
It was to show them.
To show them that there existed a realm of aptitude which no amount of effort could ever cross!
"All of you, listen well! You know as well as I do what kind of person the Young Master is."
"Excuse me, Chief Steward Dan."
"So if any of you goes at this halfheartedly, I can promise nothing for your future!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Lay down your lives—! White Flower Sword Forms, ready!"
Hah!
The warriors' thunderous battle cry rang out.
Baek Do-gyeom was dumbfounded, but he shut the mouth he had opened.
What was the use of arguing now? What mattered was their stance.
The warriors raised their hands beside their ears and took the starting stance.
They said the clan lacked nothing even against the Six Clans of the Divine Land. The force of them was certainly different. It felt like looking at a single well-forged sword.
Baek Do-gyeom's eyes had turned serious before he knew it.
And then.
"Begin!"
At Chief Steward Dan's shout, the warriors' demonstration began.
"Haah! Hah!"
Unlike their restless muttering, the warriors' movements were crisp and full of force.
Their discipline was so much sharper than usual that even Chief Steward Dan marveled inwardly.
'This much will surely have made it clear. That martial arts are no cheap trick a man can copy overnight!'
Nose high with pride, Chief Steward Dan glanced confidently at Baek Do-gyeom.
But.
"It looks simpler than I expected."
"Wh-what......!"
The words that came out of Baek Do-gyeom's mouth after watching it all were truly outrageous.
Chief Steward Dan's eyes half popped out, and fury rose on the warriors' faces.
What kind of nonsense was this?
Simple, he says!
Chief Steward Dan let out a forced cough and explained further.
"Young Clan Head. The White Flower Sword Art is the martial art that represents the main family, and its defining trait is a strong irregularity built around centrifugal force. Merely copying the movements takes a hundred days, and it is a good few years before the sword tip draws a natural line."
In a word, he should not rile up the warriors when he did not know the first thing about it.
But Baek Do-gyeom meant it.
'I can't know all of it from one look, but the movements at least don't look difficult.'
Especially compared to the martial arts the Seven Evils wielded, calling it simple was being as generous as he could be.
In any case, a hundred words were worth less than a single try.
"Might I borrow a blade?"
"Wait, why a blade, all of a sudden......"
"If I came to learn, it's only right that I try it."
The warriors began to murmur, and Chief Steward Dan's face hardened.
What was this sudden foolishness? It was not as though the boy were desperate to humiliate himself.
"Young Master, I say this with no disrespect, but the White Flower Sword Art is not something you can imitate after seeing it once. Only those who have drilled for a long time......"
"Ah, you there."
"No, you must hear me out......!"
Ignoring Chief Steward Dan, Baek Do-gyeom walked over to a warrior with a tough-looking face. Then he said calmly.
"Would you lend me your sword?"
At that, the warriors around him sneered inwardly.
Everyone knew perfectly well what it meant to lend Baek Do-gyeom a sword. He would get bored of it and go off to slice raw meat.
But.
"I will give it to you!"
Whatever had gotten into him, the warrior prostrated himself and offered up his sword. The men around him stirred, but he paid them no mind.
If anything, a strange loyalty seemed to show in his eyes.
Baek Do-gyeom must have felt it too, for he smiled faintly and said.
"The ice must have done its work."
"Yes, thanks to you, Young Master......"
It was him. The warrior who had been slapped by Baek Tae-jin.
"Your name......?"
"They call me Chun-seong."
"I'll remember it."
"Thank you!"
And he gripped the sword Chun-seong handed him in one hand.
They normally trained with wooden swords, but today, for a proper demonstration, they were using live blades.
Which was actually a piece of luck.
'Not the least bit unfamiliar.'
He could feel all over again that the aptitude he had gained through the spirit nexus was no lie.
The feel, the length, the weight, the light off the steel. And the keen, well-honed edge.
He examined the sword as though meeting a lover he had known for years.
Of course, even that looked laughable to the warriors.
'Oh, so he knows how to look a sword over?'
Anyone could see that his starting stance would be a mess.
When a man first learned the White Flower Sword Art, the thing he repeated for a month or more was precisely the starting stance.
That was how hard it was to put the weight into the lower body and set the angle exactly, so the sword could shoot straight out.
And so the starting stance was also the one that looked most absurd when clumsily imitated.
So they all smirked inwardly and waited for Baek Do-gyeom's next move.
But then.
Shff.
"......!"
The instant Baek Do-gyeom slid his front foot forward, the warriors' eyes, so full of contempt, went wide.
'What?'
Far from absurd, it looked rather convincing. No, it was more than that.
'H-how!'
Chief Steward Dan's mouth fell open in outright shock.
The weight was properly set in the lower body, and the direction of the sword was so perfect that from the front it would have looked like a single point.
A stance with nothing at all to fault.
This was absolutely not something a man holding a sword for the first time could do.
But it was too early to be amazed. The starting stance was, as the name suggested, only preparation.
The real thing began now.
He had begun to unfold the ten forms of the White Flower Sword Art!
'Start slow.'
The moment the first form cut through the air, the noise was wiped from Baek Do-gyeom's head.
The paths of the White Flower Sword Art lodged in his mind were drawn in the air as blue solid lines.
In truth, his confidence had not been a simple matter of memory.
Quite the opposite.
'Memorizing a martial art isn't all there is to it.'
It was because something beyond that made his heart race.
The aptitude of the Sword God, which had belonged to the Annihilation Evil!
What had to be done to make a blade's power stronger? No, what was a form, really?
'It is the flow of force.'
Tuning and shifting force so that the movements connect completely, as though the body were riding a melody.
And so creating the ideal situation.
This was what a form was.
In that sense, for the White Flower Sword Art, built on centrifugal force and rotation, nothing mattered more than never breaking the flow.
The sword tip drew an arc and raised the centrifugal force.
Shwoooosh!
At the second form a sword wind rose, and at the fourth his sleeves fluttered.
By the seventh form, an instinctive brilliance had replaced reason in Baek Do-gyeom's eyes.
'Faster. The flow must not break. Flow like water, but rage like a storm.'
Now his body moved not by his will but wherever the sword art itself led.
The circle that had begun slowly had picked up so much speed that the eye could barely follow it.
The dust of the training ground swirled and was sucked toward his sword tip.
And Chief Steward Dan and the warriors watching could not take their eyes off him either, as if they too were being pulled in.
No, they could not even close their gaping mouths.
Spellbound was precisely the word for it.
And no wonder.
'This is impossible. Is the sword not being completed with every form he unfolds?!'
It was literally so. The White Flower Sword Art was being completed in his hands.
It felt as if he were reaching a new height with every form that passed.
'Do not tell me he means to reach great completion at the final tenth form?! Insane......!'
A curse of admiration rolled around Chief Steward Dan's mouth.
His palms were soaked with sweat, and his heart was pounding with anticipation.
If the boy achieved great completion in the White Flower Sword Art, it would not be a matter for simple congratulations.
Why?
Because he would earn the right to learn the White Moon Sword Art, the higher martial art said to be passed to the heir alone!
'Young Master......!'
Chief Steward Dan swallowed hard and watched him with his own eyes, clear and unblinking.
And at last, the final tenth form.
At the peak of the rotation, Baek Do-gyeom thrust the sword as if letting it fall.
He could not be certain.
But he could feel it.
That the instant the last thrust landed, thousands of white lotus petals would bloom in full.
And so, with everyone caught between excitement and expectation, at the very instant Baek Do-gyeom's sword was about to unfurl!
"......!"
Suddenly the world spun, and both his legs staggered.
"Gahk."
And then he vomited blood and collapsed to the ground.
"Y-Young Master!"
Everything went black.
***
When Baek Do-gyeom came to and opened his eyes, he was inside a room.
"Are you awake?"
When he looked to the side, Chief Steward Dan was standing there with a face full of worry.
"How long has it been?"
"About half a quarter-hour has passed."
What sort of state was this?
"Just as you feared, Chief Steward Dan, all I did was make a fool of myself."
When he shook his head and tried to rise, Chief Steward Dan rushed at him in alarm.
"You must rest!"
"I'm fine."
"You are not fine!"
"Pardon?"
When he asked back, dumbfounded, Chief Steward Dan abruptly dropped to his knees and let his tears fall.
"It is all my fault. I have done wrong. Sob, sob."
"Chief Steward Dan......?"
"I knew full well that you would collapse if you kept unfolding the art, and still...... still I could not stop you. I could not halt the sword that was being completed in the hands of the Baek Clan's true heir! Waaaah!"
What on earth was this about?
"Look, can you explain it so I understand?"
"The returning light."
What?
"Young Master, right now you are dying!"