WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 61: Flower That Blooms in Winter (1)

──────

Flower That Blooms in Winter (1)

A study decorated with antique furniture.

Lanterns lit the room brightly, but a lone shadow fell over the window, where a man stood with his arms crossed.

Master Yang Baek-jeon studied him for a long moment before speaking.

"It doesn't seem there's anything to worry about."

"What did you think there might have been?"

"I called him to the Discipline Bureau and confirmed it myself. He wasn't relying on the power of some artifact."

At those words, one of the shadowed man's eyebrows lifted. The answer had come out differently than he'd expected. He stroked his chin and asked in a low voice.

"...Are you certain?"

At the question, Yang Baek-jeon's mind went back to a conversation from barely two hours earlier, one he'd had with Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu.

[You're telling me he enrolled in the academy to find his parents?]

[That's right.]

[That's it? Just that?]

[To you it might sound like nothing much. But not to a boy who's lived seventeen years as an adopted son.]

[...I suppose I spoke out of turn.]

[Not at all. This vice-master went through the same worries you're having now, because of that boy.]

[And this is where those worries landed you?]

[That's right.]

Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu had known about the boy Mumu's strength all along. And still, he said, he'd turned a blind eye so the boy could keep attending the academy.

[As you know, he hasn't trained in any Martial Arts.]

[So it seemed.]

It was true, he hadn't cultivated Martial Arts. The way he moved made that obvious enough. It was just that his strength, beyond all common sense, made him easy to misjudge.

[...He has a power he can't control. I think I understand now why he wears that artifact.]

[The artifact?]

[Yes. He uses it to control his strength. Didn't you already know that?]

[...Hrmph. Of course I knew. Does this vice-master strike you as the sort to bring up such a matter without knowing that much?]

[Is that so.]

[So I have a favor to ask of you.]

[Don't tell me you want me to look the other way on his strength too.]

[That's right.]

Yang Baek-jeon had found the request deeply awkward. A sharp awl always found its way through the sack eventually. However it happened, Mumu's strength, so far past common sense, would come to light sooner or later. So why would the vice-master, of all people, want to keep it hidden? A man who held the second-highest post in the entire academy.

[I'm not simply asking you to overlook it.]

[Then what are you asking?]

[As you've seen, that boy is pure at heart, and kind. But if he keeps colliding with the world the way he has, there's no telling how he might turn out.]

[...]

[Imagine that boy, with all that monstrous strength, cast out into the world without ever having learned anything.]

[...That could turn into real disaster.]

[Exactly. So this vice-master hopes that boy can learn the righteous convictions of the force of justice here at Changcheon Martial Academy, and master control over his own strength.]

The words had come as a surprise. Yang Baek-jeon hadn't expected Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu to hold such convictions as an educator. Every master at the academy had assumed the man was simply consumed by ambition. And yet here he was, revealing such depth underneath.

[...It seems I never really knew you, Vice-Master. Allow me to apologize, here and now.]

[Heh heh heh.]

[I understand your intentions now. I'll lend my strength to this as well.]

Right then and there, he'd decided to help Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu. As an educator of the academy, he intended to do everything he could to help Mumu master his own strength and become a great hero of the force of justice. And to do that, he first had to clear away the pointless suspicion swirling around.

"I'm certain. That artifact wasn't for manipulating his muscles. It was just weighting his body down like sandbags, to condition it, nothing more."

"For conditioning the body?"

"Yes. A bit strange, admittedly, but nothing more than that."

"...Is that so."

"Yes. In any case, meeting him this time, he struck me as good-natured, a decent boy. Taught well, he could become a fine talent for the force of justice."

"A fine talent for the force of justice..."

"Well, I've reported the Discipline Bureau's findings, so I'll take my leave."

Yang Baek-jeon offered a formal cupped-hand salute to the man. The shadowed figure, arms still crossed, returned it with an easy smile.

"Glad to hear it turned out to be nothing to worry about. I was concerned some rule had been broken. My thanks for telling me."

"Of course. Then."

Once Yang Baek-jeon had left the study, the smile faded from the shadowed man's face. He threw open the shuttered window. A cold night wind poured into the room.

Shhk!

The man launched himself out the window. In an instant, an astonishing display of movement skill carried him straight up onto a rooftop, and from there he leaped roof to roof, heading somewhere with purpose. After a long stretch of traveling this way, he arrived at,

[Discipline Bureau]

Around the bureau, ropes strung with signs reading UNDER RENOVATION and dense clusters of NO ENTRY notices barred anyone from getting near the building. The sudden renovation of the Discipline Bureau had been the vice-master's doing. As the man overseeing the academy's budget and operations, he'd pushed the renovation funding through quickly, making sure no one could set foot inside.

Whoosh!

The men standing guard around it with torches, grim and watchful, were the vice-master's people too.

'Gone to a lot of trouble, hasn't he.'

The man launched himself from the roof of the neighboring building, clearing some twenty jang in a single leap. He slipped inside through a third-floor window, and his gaze lifted upward.

'...What's this?'

From outside, the Discipline Bureau's roof had looked perfectly intact. But the ceiling inside was gone entirely. Renovation hadn't even started yet, and there wasn't so much as a scrap of debris.

His eyes narrowed at the sight.

'Not the power of an artifact, he says?'

A scoff escaped him. He'd suspected something the moment access to the Discipline Bureau had been deliberately blocked off. Just as he thought, Yang Baek-jeon had hidden the truth from him.

'Won over, is he?'

The vice-master was the likely cause again. Every single time that man did something, the vice-master moved to keep it from reaching the rest of the academy. But for Yang Baek-jeon, of all people, to be brought over to his side, that was unexpected. A rule-abiding man with a sharp, sensitive temperament, not the type anyone could easily win over. And yet here it was, beyond expectation.

'Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu... I took him for nothing more than a fool coveting the Academy Director's seat.'

Had he underestimated the man's true measure that badly?

Right as that thought crossed his mind,

Twitch!

A faint breath of sound reached him, and sensing a presence, the man turned his head toward it. Someone stood there, quietly watching him from behind a pillar. It was none other than,

'The vice-master?'

Dan Pil-hu.

The man's eyes narrowed. For an instant, his own ki sense had been fooled, and that alone told him the man's skill in concealment ran far deeper than he'd guessed.

'So the rumor wasn't false after all, that he came from the martial artists' alliance's shadow agency before he ever became an inspector-censor.'

An unexpected side to the man. While he stood puzzling over it, Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu spoke.

"When I heard where Master Yang got his information, I thought about letting it go, but I decided to wait here just in case. And sure enough, here you are."

At those words, the man played dumb.

"I'm not sure what you mean. I only heard the Discipline Bureau was being renovated and stopped by quietly out of curiosity."

"Quietly, is it."

Dan Pil-hu scoffed, then stepped slowly out from behind the pillar.

"One of Changcheon Martial Academy's Six Stars of Heaven, the Formless Ten Fingers, Sa Mu-heo."

"Why bring that up all of a sudden..."

"Ten years ago you appeared out of nowhere in Guangdong Province like a comet, made your name with the Ten-Finger Art, then eight years ago you beat the previous holder among the Six Stars of Heaven, Ha Sang-hui, and took his seat."

"Vice-Master. I don't know what you're getting at, but..."

"But whatever you did before you made your name with the Ten-Finger Art, no matter how deep I dug, it stayed a total blank. Not even in the martial artists' alliance's vast records."

At the vice-master's pointed remark, the man, no, Sa Mu-heo, curled his fingers slightly. Deep life energy was already gathering into his index and middle fingers. Sa Mu-heo looked at Dan Pil-hu and spoke in a low voice.

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

"I don't know what intentions brought you into this academy, but this vice-master prides himself on having a keen enough eye."

"A keen eye, is it..."

"You're the same breed as me. Something rotten underneath."

Dan Pil-hu's glaring eyes flashed like a hawk's.

"..."

"Consider this a warning. Changcheon Martial Academy is no place for someone of unclear origins like you to go coveting. So don't waste your time setting your sights on it."

At the warning, Sa Mu-heo let the life energy gathering in his fingers dissipate. If things had come to touch on the truth of the matter, he'd have had to act even at the cost of exposure, but it didn't seem to have gone quite that far yet. Sa Mu-heo put on an easy front and said,

"How could I harbor any such greed with the vice-master standing right here? I have no such ambitions."

"Funny, then, that you keep such close company with Elder Hang, the manager of the Changcheon Martial Archive. Every move you make grates on me more and more."

At that, Sa Mu-heo's eyes turned sharp. So he'd been keeping an eye even on his ties to Elder Hang, something no one else had ever bothered to notice. Just then, Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu turned and set his hand against the pillar.

"I've given my warning. Let go of your pointless ambitions. And the boy Mumu, this vice-master has his eye on him too, so stop your digging there as well."

Crack! Boom!

The moment the words left his mouth, cracks spread out from where Dan Pil-hu's palm touched the pillar, spiderwebbing through the whole thing until the once-solid pillar crumbled into powder and scattered to the ground.

Force of ki beyond anything he'd expected. An internal force strike of that magnitude without even a stance to root it meant his true strength ran far higher than what was known of him.

Shk!

Dan Pil-hu's figure dissolved and vanished. Once his presence had completely faded, Sa Mu-heo relaxed the tension in his fingers.

'Vice-Master Dan Pil-hu.'

This man was a nuisance in a different sense entirely. His fierce ambition was turning into an unexpected variable. It seemed the timetable for the great plan needed to move up.

* * *

Cho Na-yeon stood in front of someone's door, shifting her feet, hesitating.

The door belonged to the study and research room of Dan Baek-yeon, one of the Six Stars of Heaven, the Northern Seas Ice Palace.

There was only one reason she was hesitating in front of Dan Baek-yeon's study like this. She'd come for a star mark. And yet she couldn't bring herself to knock.

'Do I really have to show her my body just for a star mark?'

She wondered if what she'd heard from Mumu was even right. Even so, Dan Baek-yeon was a Special Master Grade instructor. Was showing her body really the standard for handing out a star mark? Wouldn't that cause trouble down the road?

After a long stretch of agonizing, she bit down hard on her lip.

'...No. Maybe I heard him wrong.'

Whatever Mumu meant by showing her body, maybe it wasn't as blunt as it sounded. And rumors were just rumors, weren't they? She figured the whole thing was probably just talk, born from the fact that Dan Baek-yeon, for all her stunning looks, still hadn't married.

"Hoo."

She steadied her breathing, then knocked on the study door.

Knock knock!

"Yes."

Dan Baek-yeon's voice answered from inside.

"Master, it's Cho Na-yeon, third-year cadet. Might I trouble you for a moment, for some guidance?"

"Come in."

With permission granted, Cho Na-yeon opened the door. Fitting for a Special Master Grade instructor's research room and study, its size was nowhere near comparable to the other instructors' offices. She stepped through the door and froze mid-stride.

'!?'

Cho Na-yeon's face went rigid.

There, in the middle of the study, lay Mumu, wearing nothing but his undergarments, all but bare, and Dan Baek-yeon sat perched over him, running her hands over his body.

"What is it?"

Dan Baek-yeon turned her head and asked, perfectly composed.

"..."

Cho Na-yeon's face burned red as fire, and she stumbled backward.

"Cadet Cho Na-yeon?"

Bang!

Cho Na-yeon slammed the door shut. From outside came a shriek of "Kyaaah!" followed by the frantic pounding of feet racing away.

Dan Baek-yeon's fine brow furrowed at that. She'd said she wanted guidance, so why the outburst? She had no idea.

"Hm?"

Lying there, Mumu had no idea either why the girl had fled like that. While he puzzled over it, Dan Baek-yeon pressed her palm back onto his body and resumed feeling around.

"Let's continue."

"Ah... yes."

Dan Baek-yeon's eyes narrowed as she pressed against his body. She'd wanted to study this, but the quality of his muscle was nothing like an ordinary person's. That he'd forced open his own blood pressure points and chi sealed by muscle alone didn't seem like pure coincidence.

'Incredible.'

Every muscle in his body was developed to an extreme. It was hard to even imagine how something like that was possible.

'If his muscles are developed enough to force open his blood pressure points and chi on their own, could they reject life energy too?'

She didn't think the possibility was zero. Twisting the muscles and bones through pressure points using life energy was the method known as muscle-and-bone manipulation. If the reverse were possible, it would overturn a whole set of established theories. Dan Baek-yeon spoke to Mumu.

"I'm going to send life energy into you. Since you haven't cultivated internal energy, it'll probably just feel like a warm sensation to you, but try to push it out using your muscle strength."

"With muscle strength?"

"Yes. I know it sounds vague, but try to recall the feeling from when you forced your blood pressure points and chi open."

"Um... okay."

At his answer, she laid her hand over Mumu's washboard-hard stomach muscles. His body, wild and rugged, stood in strange contrast to that boyish, almost cute face of his. She tried to look at it with the cool detachment of a researcher, but couldn't quite suppress a small gasp of admiration all the same.

"Aren't you going to do it?"

At Mumu's question, Dan Baek-yeon cleared her throat.

"Ahem."

She seemed to have drifted into some pointless distraction without realizing it. What a maddening body this was. Dan Baek-yeon steadied herself and sent life energy flowing into Mumu's stomach. She was curious whether abs developed to their absolute limit could really reject life energy. But as the energy flowed in, Dan Baek-yeon's brow creased.

'!?'

Something was off.

She'd meant to see how the muscle would reject the life energy, but instead the energy flowing in seemed to be absorbed, pulled toward somewhere inside him instead. Dan Baek-yeon pulled her hand back from his abdomen at once. Then she asked, with a look of utter disbelief on her face.

"...What is this?"

"Huh?"

"You... how is it possible that a dantian is forming in you after just one day?"

Dan Baek-yeon (illustration)

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried