WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
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◈ A Wandering Warrior's Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 11: What It Means to Live as a Wanderer (3)
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He was a wanderer, all right. What Gyu Pae wanted to know was which school had taught him.
Swift swordsmanship built on solid fundamentals. Gyu Pae had naturally assumed that a boy of his caliber must have received formal training.
‘Did some country sect throw him out?’
“I am Gyu Pae, vice leader of the Blood Serpent Gang, known as the Soul-Chasing Saber.”
Narrowing their eyes, Gyu Pae wiped the blood dripping from beneath their chin with the back of their rough hand.
It had been a long time since Gyu Pae had smelled their own blood, having reached the late second-rate.
The boy’s swift sword had clearly carried a faint trace of inner energy.
It seemed the boy had not come charging at Gyu Pae merely out of foolhardiness.
“To make me use this against a brat barely worthy of the second-rate. Consider it an honor.”
‘Second-rate?’
Cheon Hwi smiled inwardly at those words. Gyu Pae had mistaken him for a second-rate martial artist.
Gyu Pae had severed the throats of countless wanderers over a lifetime, yet there was something different about this Cheon Hwi. It was like the chilling sensation Gyu Pae felt when facing someone raised as an assassin.
The reed field was already a mess. Severed reeds lay strewn across the mud, while the smells of blood and medicinal herbs stung Gyu Pae’s nose. In the distance, a C-rank wanderer collapsed while coughing blood, and Blood Serpent Gang members were trying to remove crates of herbs beside the cart.
Gyu Pae slowly raised the Nine-Ring Saber.
Chrrring.
Nine metal rings rang along the back of the blade.
‘I did not wish to draw this.’
The Soul-Chasing Three-Ring Saber.
It was the signature technique that had raised Gyu Pae, vice leader of the Blood Serpent Gang, to the late second-rate.
Gyu Pae’s massive figure charged forward, trampling the reeds. The jangling of the metal rings suddenly swelled into a thunderous roar that shook the ground.
The ear-splitting sound spread out as though forming a battle formation.
Ringing filled Cheon Hwi’s ears, and his vision distorted. Just as he forced his eyes open and tried to extend his sword toward the incoming saber’s path,
Chrrring!
The rings on the advancing saber trembled. Fierce saber winds rushed in from every direction.
Front. Left. Right.
Three great sabers came at him at once, each aiming for his life.
Trusting his instincts, Cheon Hwi twisted toward the right, where the energy felt strongest, and thrust out his sword.
It was a fatal misjudgment.
What cut through the air was merely an empty feint.
The true blade, carrying Gyu Pae’s full weight, pierced Cheon Hwi’s blind spot and bit into the back of his neck.
Thwack!
Cheon Hwi’s vision spun up into the sky alongside a fountain of red blood.
Even amid the agony of death, as though his organs were twisting apart, his eyes followed Gyu Pae’s final motion as Gyu Pae withdrew the saber.
Thud.
Just before his severed head fell into the mud, Gyu Pae met Cheon Hwi’s eyes, staring down at Gyu Pae from the air with a grotesque smile.
A shiver ran through him.
A cold chill raced along the back of the second-rate expert.
Even in death, Cheon Hwi was staring at him with his eyes wide open, without blinking once.
‘If that bastard had met me one year later, today’s severed head would have been mine.’
Only a few deaths ago, Gyu Pae had looked at the charging Cheon Hwi and told him that he was ten years too early to challenge him.
Somehow, Cheon Hwi had become someone Gyu Pae might not have been able to handle if they had met just one year later.
Cheon Hwi’s vision slowly darkened.
He had endured this damned pain countless times, yet he could never grow used to it.
[Quarter-Hour Return activates.]
Jingle. Jingle.
In the middle of the valley, where the sound of a cowbell carried through the air.
Cheon Hwi gripped his sword hilt and let out a ragged breath.
‘Khk...’
The phantom pain of his neck being severed raced through his body as if it would set him alight, but he soon grew accustomed to it. Cheon Hwi recalled one of those famous sayings, the sort that might be posted on the wall of a public restroom.
Whatever pain does not kill me only makes me stronger.
“Attack!”
Amid the chaos of assassins pouring through the reed field, Cheon Hwi once again crossed the mud with blood spraying around him and blocked Gyu Pae’s path.
“Consider it an honor, even in hell.”
Gyu Pae’s arrogant words repeated without fail.
There had been a few variations, but Cheon Hwi was beginning to tire of hearing even that line.
The Nine-Ring Saber tore through the air again, unleashing the killing moves of the Soul-Chasing Three-Ring Saber.
Chrrring!
The sound of the rings created a gap in his senses, and the saber split into three advancing paths.
Cheon Hwi already knew which one was the feint.
He easily chose one and blocked it.
Boom!
Even as he deflected the force of the saber, pain shot through his wrist. Had his sword met the blade for even a moment longer, it would have been cut in half.
Instead, Cheon Hwi kicked up the mud with the tip of his foot.
The cloud of dirt disrupted Gyu Pae’s vision for an instant. This was a fight to the death, with no room for pride. Cheon Hwi tested one thing after another, changing them little by little. To survive, he had tried everything, even using a Lazy Donkey Roll, doing all he could to create an opening.
Taking advantage of that momentary gap, Gyu Pae’s true trajectory, the third blade, came crashing in.
Slash!
The difference in their martial ability was too vast for Cheon Hwi to evade perfectly. Gyu Pae’s Nine-Ring Saber cut deeply from Cheon Hwi’s shoulder to his chest, sending up a thick spray of blood.
The pain of his bones being scraped apart made his knees buckle. Yet even as he was cut, the tip of Cheon Hwi’s extended sword did not stop.
A thrust from the Three Powers Swift Sword tore deeply through the veins on the back of the hand gripping Gyu Pae’s saber hilt.
“Khk!”
Gyu Pae groaned in pain and retreated.
Hot blood burst from the back of his hand, staining the hilt of the Nine-Ring Saber red.
Cheon Hwi rolled across the ground with a fatal wound, but his eyes shone like those of a starving beast as he watched Gyu Pae bleed. The price of throwing himself endlessly toward death was that he had finally carved a crack into that colossal Mount Tai.
Blood sprayed from the long wound split across his shoulder and chest. He could feel something hot pouring out of him. Even when he tried to breathe in, what entered his lungs was not air but a ball of fire.
His knees sank into the mud.
Splutch.
Gyu Pae looked down at their bloodied hand and ground their teeth. At the same time, seeing Cheon Hwi cough up blood, Gyu Pae felt even a little afraid.
.
.
.
His vision was dark.
There was no light, no sound. Only the floating sensation of sinking downward.
Cheon Hwi did not open his eyes for a long time. Perhaps it was closer to not wanting to open them.
He had thought he had grown used to death, but he had not grown used to pain.
He was tired. Exhausted. It felt as though there were no answer. All he could think was that he did not know whether he could rise again.
The sensation of cold metal cutting into his flesh every time was horrifying and agonizing.
He had thought he would become numb after experiencing it several times, but that could never happen.
Should he stop?
Had he not done enough?
He had made Gyu Pae bleed.
A blade had grazed Gyu Pae’s neck once, and Cheon Hwi had left a serious wound on Gyu Pae’s hand.
Was it not enough for a third-rate martial artist to have endangered the life of a second-rate one?
He did not want to hear the cowbell again. The sound of the signal arrow shooting into the sky sickened him as well. Once, fear had risen so instinctively that he could not even call out to warn the others of the ambush. His voice had died in his throat.
He could bear the blood spraying through the reed field, the wanderers being torn apart, and his own flesh being shredded by Gyu Pae’s Nine-Ring Saber even less.
On the other hand, surrendering himself to the darkness was easy and comfortable.
He only had to sink down and forget all the pain.
‘If I keep my eyes closed like this...’
Then it happened.
“Hwi.”
A voice came from beyond the darkness, and everything brightened at once.
Before him was his father’s back.
The back that had always walked ahead of him.
It was thin, but it had never collapsed.
His shoulders bent beneath the weight of his pack. His clothes were torn and visibly mended, soaked through with dust and sweat. Yet to Cheon Hwi, that back had never once seemed small.
Above it was the sky.
An endlessly vast sky, filled with billowing clouds.
Above the back of a third-rate wanderer, covered in dust from the road, stretched a sky that was strangely blue. White clouds drifted slowly across it. His father had always walked beneath that sky.
Without a name. Without an epithet. Along a road where no one knew him.
“Martial artists of the third rate, like us.”
His father did not turn around. He only spoke as he walked.
“No one asks our names. But this time, did your enemy not ask for yours first?”
“What a proud and wonderful thing that is, eh?”
No sound came from Cheon Hwi. Even when he opened his mouth in the darkness, not a breath of wind escaped.
‘If I die a thousand times.’
Cheon Hwi asked within his heart.
‘Can I get even an inch closer to the sky?’
It took only one added stroke for the character meaning thousand to become the character meaning sky.
How many times would he have to repeat death to draw that stroke?
His father did not answer.
Instead, his bent back moved a little farther away.
The world called his father third-rate. It called him a porter, a nameless wanderer, and a life so worthless that even a single tael of silver would be considered too much to spend on him.
But to Cheon Hwi, his father was not that.
His father had not left his own name behind, but he had left his son’s name in this world.
Thus, Cheon Hwi had only one thing to do.
Prove that his father’s path had not been wrong.
Etch into the world with his sword that the life of a nameless third-rate wanderer had not been the life of a worm.
That was the path Cheon Hwi would walk, the path he wished to walk. The spirit of a martial artist whose chivalric righteousness had taken root could not be broken easily.
The words he had written before his father’s grave came to mind.
Cheon Hwi’s father.
A nameless third-rate martial artist.
Yet a martial artist of romance and chivalric spirit rests here.
Those words floated in the darkness like a lantern.
Cheon Hwi clenched his teeth, made a fist, and rose.
‘Not yet. I still have not been able to tell you that.’
Making Gyu Pae bleed was not enough. Cutting down a few members of the Blood Serpent Gang was not enough.
He had to survive.
And if he could, he wanted to save others as well.
Just as his father had.
That was the human righteousness and chivalric righteousness he would uphold.
Tight.
Cheon Hwi’s hand closed around his sword hilt.
The darkness trembled and made way for him.
Jingle. Jingle.
The bell around the cow’s neck rang.
Before the signal arrow rose into the sky.
Cheon Hwi slowly opened his eyes.
His palm still held the sensation of blood that had not yet been spilled.
His neck still held the cold sensation of the blade that had not yet fallen. The wound that had not yet been carved into his chest burned as though blood were already pouring from it.
Cheon Hwi looked ahead.
The reed field.
The cart.
The wanderers still alive.
And far away, Gyu Pae, who had not yet appeared.
Cheon Hwi’s lips slowly curled upward.
It was a strange smile, filled with pain and laughter as he clenched his teeth.
Wheee!
The signal arrow tore into the sky.
Cheon Hwi kicked off first.
A dagger flew at him, but he dodged without even looking. His blade rose on instinct to knock aside the hand axe that followed.
He already knew where they were hiding.
One, two, three.
He cut them down in succession like a demon, sending reeds and blood flying.
Slash! Crack! Slash! Clang! Whoosh!
Within Cheon Hwi, the formula of the Well-Returning Moving Art began to settle into a new form.
One step, one breath.
Return, and examine the startled breath.
Two steps, one sinking.
Settle death.
Three steps, return to the well.
Return once more to the place of the living.
And thus, stand once again before a wall that seemed impossible to cross.
This was the moment when the roots of the advanced cultivation art that Cheon Hwi would later call the Reincarnation Moving Art took hold.
“A newborn pup that does not know how frightening a tiger is charges right in!”
Cheon Hwi laughed as he rushed forward with his sword extended.
Die and die, die a hundred times over.
Until the moment he killed that bastard, Cheon Hwi was ready to willingly throw himself into the abyss.
Footnotes:
Cheon in Cheon Hwi’s name is written with the character for “thousand.” Adding one stroke produces the character for “sky,” framing his wish to draw closer to the heavens.
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