WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
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◈ A Wandering Warrior's Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 1: A Moment's Regression
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Darkness filled his vision. Whenever he retraced his memories, it always began with recalling a name.
─ Hwi.
He remembered when his father called his name.
Hwi. Cheon Hwi.
The Hwi at the end did not even have a Hanja character. His father said he had simply taken it from the sound of a whistle.
His father was illiterate. He could not even write his own name, so naturally, he could not write his son's either.
He had named him that because he wanted him to roam the sky as freely as a whistle.
Wouldn't the sky make a fitting surname for people like them, who lived with the heavens as their roof? As he said that, he would scratch the name into the dirt.
Even so, he could write one character of his son's name, however clumsily.
─ Look. This is the cheon character for sky. Probably... right.
His father's innocent smile.
Yet the cheon character his father had painstakingly struggled to write was the character for thousand. Its third stroke crooked strangely to the left, as though trying to follow the character for sky. It was both pitiful and cute. The two characters must have looked similar to him.
Cheon Hwi thought thousand was better, if anything. One more stroke and the character for thousand would become the character for sky.
Knowing that much Hanja, Cheon Hwi pretended otherwise and added:
"Father. What kind of third-rate martial artist uses the cheon character for sky as a surname? Isn't that just asking to be mocked?"
─ It's all right, Hwi. No one ever asks the names of third-rate martial artists like us.
─ Besides, what would be wrong with a man who has neither a surname nor a genealogy taking the sky as one?
Besides, the Chinese character for whistle was not hwi, but so, the character for whistle. But such things hardly mattered to his illiterate father.
He remembered the hand that proudly scratched at the ground, callused like a porter's rather than a martial artist's.
As a former modern man who knew a little Hanja, Cheon Hwi had shown off what he knew.
'And the character for sky needs one more stroke here.'
─ Oh? Look at this boy. How do you know how to write?
'I picked up a little learning behind your back.'
Cheon Hwi gave a vague excuse. The character for sky was only the first character in the Thousand Character Classic, but his father had been delighted as though his son would place first in the civil service examinations.
But life was difficult regardless of joy. Those who offered work did not like a father who called himself a third-rate martial artist while carrying a child under his arm.
Even when they did hire him, they often cut his wages simply because he had a brat tagging along.
Things improved somewhat once Cheon Hwi was old enough to carry a pack himself.
Naturally, though, their improved life was still that of porters, far removed from the life of martial artists.
His father carried loads far more often than he drew the sword at his waist. Even so, his father considered himself a martial artist.
Even when they ate nothing but grass gruel for ten days straight, he never sold his sword.
Cheon Hwi remembered a stale lump of dried provisions received in place of wages, wrapped in a leaf. He remembered his father's cracked, dirt-caked hand splitting it in half and offering one portion to him.
His father would save the other half, then light a fire at night, make porridge, and share it with him.
All while going half a day without eating himself.
─ You're still growing. Eat.
Those moments kept Cheon Hwi's mind together.
Accompanied by the thump of his heart, they were the grace of those intermittent flashes before death.
Amid the repeated cycle of dying and coming back to life, his modern self kept popping into his mind.
If he was going to be reincarnated into a martial arts world, shouldn't he have been born as a rising talent of the Nine Sects and One Gang instead of the son of a third-rate wanderer?
Shouldn't he have been born with an innate gift for martial arts?
But the life his third-rate wanderer father had raised him through was too precious for him to resent lacking such things.
This was a bonus life granted to someone who would have died wretchedly anyway. He might go hungry, but wandering the Martial World with his father was not so bad.
Though it had not lasted long.
Even the slow-moving deathbed flashbacks had finally caught up to death itself.
─ Son. The martial artists in the Black Dragon River we're headed for say they get a taste for the blade by taking criminals' corpses and cutting them up. Even if they are criminals, how can they do something so cruel?
─ Martial artists are nothing but ruffians who know neither benevolence nor righteousness, beasts even Confucius would give up on.
'But aren't you a third-rate martial artist too, Father?'
─ Ahem. There are different kinds of martial artists, Hwi. I am a true martial artist, one with romance and chivalry.
His father looked delighted after finally securing some work.
They only had to deliver goods to the middle of the lower reaches of the Black Dragon River. They would guard travelling peddlers while carrying their loads.
It was not even work for a proper escort agency.
Just a small merchant caravan made up of a few peddlers.
That was right. His father had joined less as an escort guard than as a porter. Still, he insisted it was escort work.
In any case, his excited father was talkative.
Wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes as he happily said he had even received a pure-barley rice ball as an advance.
People did not die as easily as one might think. The calluses on his father's hands and feet proved that.
At least, that was what Cheon Hwi had thought before he saw his father's waist split in two, bone exposed like a pig at the market, as he carried his pack.
"Do my fucking words mean nothing to you?"
The caravan leader had decided not to hand over valuables to the bandits and expected those hired as guards to earn their pay.
Cheon Hwi had often watched his father swing his sword and practice swordsmanship, but this was the first time he had seen him fight.
─ Third-rate martial artists are strong. The difference between the beginning and end of the third-rate realm is beyond comparison.
His father had once told him that.
─ For a martial artist at the beginning of the third-rate realm to defeat one at the end, they would have to rush in like they had no tomorrow. Even then, it might not be enough.
'But Father, people say third-rate martial artists are no different from thugs carrying swords.'
His father had been so serious, as though discussing the level of peak masters, that it had seemed funny at the time.
But today, Cheon Hwi learned it was true.
His father's sword, though he was only at the beginning of the third-rate realm, was faster and stronger than Cheon Hwi had imagined.
The blade drawn from his father's waist tasted blood for the first time in a long while, cutting through two bandits in an instant.
Only after one bandit's shoulder was pierced and another collapsed while clutching at their spilling intestines did the one who appeared to be their leader step forward.
He was a tall, hairy man.
He was only an unnamed wandering bandit wielding an axe, not even a sword. Yet that was more than enough to split his father's body.
Just as his father had said, no one asked his name, and he died without one.
There was no exchange of moves. With one heavy swing, the axe blade sank halfway through his father's waist.
His father dropped his sword. Like a thin tree felled by an axe, he toppled to the side.
Thus everyone, including his father, lost their lives.
Everyone except Cheon Hwi.
"Leave the brat! Drag the goods into the brush first! Move!"
"Take the bodies! Hurry!"
Worried that more witnesses might appear, they were too busy checking and gathering the caravan's wares, erasing bloodstains, and hiding the bodies and cargo in the forest.
They barely paid attention to Cheon Hwi, starved and skinny enough to look as though he might die soon anyway.
His father's sword lay on the ground.
Cheon Hwi reached for it.
Blood soaked the grimy hilt. The warm blood felt alien.
Could he pick it up?
If he did, he would die. He knew that. He would surely die.
The moment he thought he had seen enough of the Martial World's vast wilderness, enough for someone who had spent a lifetime in a hospital room before dying with a weak body, strength filled the hand lifting the sword.
─ Son. Not everyone called a martial artist deserves the name merely because they belong to the Martial World or possess a high level of martial arts.
─ You will become a good martial artist, Hwi.
Clatter.
"Hey, what the hell is that brat doing? Hahaha!"
"Boss, the brat's got a sword."
"Kid. Put the sword down."
It was a hand that clearly did not know how to hold a sword.
Yet his eyes gleamed savagely, like those of a wild beast.
Cheon Hwi drew the sword and pointed it at his father's killer.
If his father's waist had been cut like a small, thin tree,
Thwack!
Cheon Hwi's neck was severed as cleanly as a young sapling.
* * *
Everything went dark.
[Quarter-Hour Return activates.]
Whenever he retraced his memories, it always began with recalling a name.
─ Hwi.
The moment he raised his head again at that voice, the hellish sight unfolded before him once more.
An axe blade was sinking into his father's waist.
'...Regression?'
Cheon Hwi instinctively knew that he had returned to the moment before his death.
It was a cruel joke. After being reincarnated into a martial arts world, he had often complained inwardly about receiving no transmigration perk. Yet it only activated after he died.
But not ten years ago.
Not five years ago.
Not even one year ago.
He had returned only one gak before his death, roughly fifteen minutes.
'At least if it had been a day earlier...'
This time, Cheon Hwi picked up the sword again and charged the man with the axe.
Crunch!
The dry movement was like swatting a fly with a flyswatter. He had not thought he could kill the man.
He had only wondered whether, if he hastened his death, he might regress to a moment before his father died.
By the third time, he understood.
No matter how quickly he died, it was impossible to bring his father back. He did not go farther back with each death, but always regressed to one fixed moment.
His father's voice overlapped with his despair.
─ Son. A person of the Martial World must overcome fear and act on what they believe is right. There is no distinction between good and evil in that.
Clatter.
He picked up the sword stained with his father's blood.
"Hey, what the hell is that brat doing? Hahaha!"
"Boss, the brat's got a sword."
"Kid. Put the sword down."
The hand that had not known how to hold a sword until yesterday gradually settled into the grip his father had taught him.
The Three Powers Sword. A sword style found even in cheap martial arts manuals bought from a market bookseller for a few coins.
And a breathing technique too rudimentary to call an inner cultivation method, one he had practiced while sitting cross-legged with his father and trying to regulate his breath.
That was all his father, no more than a third-rate martial artist, could pass down to his son.
─ I'm sorry. This is all I can teach you.
It was the only thing his father had ever apologized for.
Cheon Hwi had not even entered the third-rate realm. He had never swung a real sword, only a wooden one.
Clench.
But he thought it might be enough to take down the bandit before him.
After all, he only had to die over and over, a hundred times if necessary.
And so, Cheon Hwi began to die.
The more he died, the more rage surged within him.
With the first death, he read the axe's trajectory.
With the second, he learned how to evade backward.
With the third, he learned to extend his sword a little farther.
By the fourth, though his arm had been severed, his sword tip brushed the man's neck. As he died, Cheon Hwi realized something.
Of course, that man was not a master. He was even less a martial artist at the end of the third-rate realm, as his father had jokingly described.
He was merely a bandit thug who put everything into a single axe swing.
On the fifth attempt, Cheon Hwi did not lose his arm and left a scratch on the man's neck.
Stab!
Finally, on the sixth attempt, he evaded the axe blade and drove his sword deep into the man's neck.
"Urk!"
As the aorta was cut, blood bubbled out between the fingers clutching his neck. He had long since dropped his axe. Fresh blood streamed from his mouth, and his eyes reddened.
It was a sword fight against an opponent with no martial arts. One dodge and one precise thrust were enough.
That was all there was to this fight.
It felt futile. He had failed to save his father because he could not do even this.
When the leader died, another bandit came rushing at him with a snarl.
But Cheon Hwi felt no pressure.
Was it because he had died so many times? He was no longer afraid when the bandit extended their blade. He was no longer afraid of being cut or killed.
Pain did not become familiar, but knowing he could open his eyes again after death filled him with courage he had never possessed.
"If you can't kill me, get lost."
In a fight between weaklings, momentum was everything.
Cheon Hwi raised his sword and approached without wavering, as though daring them to kill him. The bandit who had been closing in to kill him swallowed their fear and stepped back instead.
"F-Fuck! He's no ordinary bastard! Run!"
The group dragging bodies into the forest to hide them fled at once.
Only then did Cheon Hwi let out a ragged breath. He looked at his dead father, then at the bandit nearby, who had died disgracefully with his hands clutching his neck.
He had thought they were all dead. But perhaps because Cheon Hwi had rushed in and subdued the bandits so quickly, a few merchants were still alive, staring at him with trembling bodies.
He did not hear their thanks.
All that remained in his ears were the surviving merchants asking his name.
There was no other reason. It was only because his father's voice overlapped with theirs.
─ It's all right, Hwi. No one ever asks the names of third-rate martial artists like us.
"...Your name... what is it?"
Drenched in blood, Cheon Hwi exhaled harshly and gave a short answer. It sounded almost like a whistle.
"Hwi."
"..."
"My name is Cheon Hwi, written with the cheon character for thousand."
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