WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle

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◈ Raised by a Ruthless Swordsman ◈

Chapter 36: Consistency

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No sooner had I finished speaking than the man drew his sabre.

His sabre was thick and heavy. It was not large and crude like a broad sabre. Its blade curved gently, and it was solidly made.

The man came around the table, holding the tip of his sabre lowered at an angle.

I moved with him, keeping the distance between us. Worried about my back, I glanced over. The two men blocking the door had not moved.

Perhaps reading my glance, the man spoke.

“Do not concern yourself with them. They will not interfere.”

His voice was low and calm. I studied his face for a moment, wondering whether to trust him, but he showed no sign of lying. The two by the door also did not seem inclined to join in.

They might act if I ran for the door, but they did not seem likely to interfere in this fight.

“My name is Wi Jin-ak.”

He offered his name without being asked. Introducing ourselves with weapons drawn? Yet faced with that serious expression, I felt as though I should speak as well.

“I am Jin Song.”

I let the false name slip out.

Wi Jin-ak’s eyes narrowed slightly. Then he slowly raised the sabre he had held low. When its tip reached shoulder height, the spine tilted slightly toward him, its edge slanting toward me.

His right foot scraped briefly across the floorboards as he stepped deeply in. The gap of two or three paces was cut in half at once.

Carried by that step, his sabre fell toward the top of my head like lightning.

I instantly angled my sword and pushed it beneath the blow. The moment the sabre touched my blade, I lowered my arm with it and twisted my wrist.

Wi Jin-ak’s sabre slid down my sword to the right. I drew back my left foot and turned, and the deflected sabre brushed past my shoulder before dropping near the floorboards.

I followed that motion. Curling my sword upward, I drove toward the wrist holding the sabre. I had no intention of cutting it off. I only meant to strike hard enough to make him drop his weapon and stop.

But his wrist was no longer there. Wi Jin-ak did not resist the sabre’s course. He simply pulled his wrist away with it, and my sword tip cut through empty air.

In that brief instant while my sword missed, the sabre that had slid near the floorboards was already being drawn back up.

I set my sword at an angle and turned the rising blow outward. The sabre missed to the side again, cutting through the air.

I thrust at his exposed chest.

But Wi Jin-ak swiftly drew back his sabre and pressed down on my thrust with its spine. With a heavy clang of steel, my sword stopped a handspan before his chest.

His sabre came cutting toward my shoulder again.

Strike, block, cut, thrust. Sword and sabre crossed without pause.

With every exchange, I was the one losing a little ground. A dull ache accumulated in the wrist that took the blows, and the breath I spent deflecting them grew short faster than his.

The hem of my silk clothes had been cut at some point and fluttered whenever I moved.

The difference was not great, but if we traded another hundred exchanges like this, I would undoubtedly be the first to fall.

How could I turn the tide?

Even as we fought, my mind constantly watched the paths his sabre drew.

There were no feints in Wi Jin-ak’s sabre. Unlike those sinister men in black martial attire, he did not pretend to thrust before cutting, or aim high before slashing low. He struck directly at what he intended to strike.

But it was heavy and fast, coming one after another without giving me room to breathe. Even when I saw the attacks coming, it was difficult to receive them.

I blocked several more moves, but nothing changed. Then there was no need to keep receiving them.

Seizing an opening, I drove my sword first into the path of his next sabre stroke. By cutting it off before he could put his full weight behind it, the blade that had felt as heavy as a thousand catties suddenly became weak and light.

I pushed my sword in through that opening. Wi Jin-ak withdrew his sabre and blocked it, but for the first time, the force of it made him retreat half a step.

That half step was the beginning. As I anticipated the paths of his descending sabre, Wi Jin-ak’s attacks were often stopped before they could show their full strength.

With every exchange, his feet were pushed back half a step, sometimes more than a full one. The balance began to shift. The one driving forward was sometimes driven back, and the one pursuing was sometimes pursued.

When his sabre was forced far back once, I shot a sidelong glance toward the door. The two men still stood there. Even in such a tense moment, they showed no sign of joining in.

Then what about the woman?

I received an incoming sabre stroke and pushed forward once, making Wi Jin-ak retreat another half step. In that moment, I turned my eyes toward the woman seated at the table.

A faint surprise had appeared on her composed face.

But that was all. She showed neither urgency nor alarm. She simply watched us as though witnessing something curious.

Then Wi Jin-ak’s sabre swept out in a wide arc. It knocked my intercepting sword upward and away, then Wi Jin-ak used the recoil to retreat two or three steps.

The distance between us widened at once.

“Seeing as you have time to look away.”

Wi Jin-ak’s voice reached me. His breathing was still unhurried.

“You seem quite at ease.”

“At ease? Hardly.”

I answered and drew back my sword into position, but then my heart sank.

A hairline crack had appeared along the blade. The cheap sword from the ironworks had finally failed to withstand the weight of Wi Jin-ak’s sabre after several exchanges.

I had paid two taels for it. How could this happen? Was Wi Jin-ak’s sabre simply too heavy, or had the forge at Guju sold me a poor weapon?

While I was dismayed, Wi Jin-ak adjusted his grip. He abandoned the stance where he held the sabre angled above his shoulder, lowered its tip, and held it close to his waist. His guard stance had completely changed.

Before I could consider a response, his lead foot kicked off the floorboards and he stepped in. The sabre held low at his waist rose diagonally from below with that step.

The sabre’s path had changed. The blade that had traced broad arcs with its weight now came in short, broken movements. The sabre that had fallen in one line now shot at me from all directions in fragments.

My method of anticipating its path had become useless. The next move came before I could tell where it would fall, and I could only struggle to block.

Worse, my sword was damaged. If I met his blade head-on, it could break in a single clash. I had no choice but to reduce the impact as much as possible. I angled the edge farther, loosened my wrist, and at every contact let the force pass by rather than resisting it.

But being so careful naturally made my sword slow. As I gently guided away one move, the next sabre strike was already before my nose. Even when I blocked, I often had to retreat several steps.

Just as I decided this could not continue and drew the energy from my dantian into my sword,

Crack!

Another long fracture split across the blade. The moment Inner Energy entered it, the damaged sword could not bear the force and cried out.

I had no choice but to quickly withdraw the energy I had been drawing up. I could not have missed Hyeonam’s sword, left behind in the inn room, more.

But what could I do now? I focused and deflected again and again.

Still, perhaps my care was not wasted. The uneven clashes of steel gradually became softer, and the impacts lodged in my wrist faded layer by layer.

But I would soon reach my limit.

Should I fling his sabre aside with all my strength, sword be damned, then use my Lightness Skill to leap through the window? As I considered it, I met another falling sabre stroke with my blade and twisted my wrist.

The weight against my hand vanished as if it had never been there.

I had deflected it just as I always did, yet for some reason, I felt none of the sabre’s force. That heavy weapon seemed to have lost its weight, sliding away along my wrist on its own. My sword hand did not even feel as though it had touched anything.

What was that? That move had been neither a deflection nor a block.

But before I could grasp the reason, the next sabre came down. I set my blade against it and twisted my wrist in the same way, but this time the full, heavy force struck my wrist.

The sensation that had brushed past me once slipped farther away the more I tried to catch it. With sabre strokes raining down without pause, I had no chance to calmly retrace it.

Letting that precious clue escape, I returned to the defensive.

I could receive and deflect his attacks, but the problem was that I could not strike at his wrist afterward. There was a brief gap between guiding his sabre away and returning my sword toward his wrist. Since preserving my sword had made my deflections slower, that gap had widened, and Wi Jin-ak escaped through it every time.

As I retreated again and again, the two men blocking the door were no longer far behind me. There was nowhere left to go. Cold sweat soaked my back. If I lost here, nothing would come of this.

Deflect, then strike. If the problem was the gap between those two movements that let him escape...

Something pierced through my mind.

Deflecting and striking had never been separate things. The motion that turned aside a blow was the very motion that cut in, yet I had been holding them apart all this time. If I did not divide them, there would be no gap. If there was no gap, there would be nowhere to escape.

I received his sabre again with my sword held at an angle. But this time, after pushing the sabre aside, I did not draw my sword back. I curled the sword deflecting the sabre in a circle, letting the end of that arc sweep directly toward Wi Jin-ak.

I had no intention of cutting off his head anyway. This sword would likely break after another exchange or two. Then there was no reason to spare it. Whether it broke or not, it was better to carve this move deeply into their minds.

I opened my dantian and poured energy into that single arc. The sword raced ahead of my arm, too fast for my eyes to follow.

Craack!

The hairline fractures along the blade lengthened with a cracking sound.

Wi Jin-ak’s eyes wavered for the first time.

The sabre he had meant to withdraw could not catch up. My sword drove straight into that opening and slashed downward toward his Adam’s apple.

We both froze in place. Wi Jin-ak, who had raised his sabre to block, and I, who had aimed my sword at him.

Clang.

A beat later, the broken tip struck the floorboards.

All that remained in my hand was the hilt and a broken fragment. That broken end had stopped before Wi Jin-ak’s Adam’s apple, falling short by the handspan the sword had broken away.

Silence descended over the room.

Without changing my stance, I turned my head slightly to look behind me. The two men by the door had frozen in the very postures they had taken to rush in. Wi Jin-ak had said they would not interfere, but when he was in danger, their bodies had moved first.

I turned my eyes toward the woman. At some point, she had risen from her seat. Her face was rigid as she stared at the broken sword tip.

Her gaze slowly traveled up the sword, from the broken blade to the hand holding it, then from my hand to my face. Our eyes met.

I could read many emotions in her eyes. Shock, concern, surprise. What emotion did she see in mine?

I had shown them enough. Would they let me go now?

The thought of what I would do if they still stopped me followed, but with my sword broken, there was little I could do now. If it came to that, I could only pour all my remaining Inner Energy into my legs and try to leap through the window.

I slowly lowered the broken sword and spoke to the eyes facing mine.

“Will you let me go now?”

The woman seemed to come to her senses at those words. Her gaze, fixed upon the broken sword tip, shifted, and life returned to her stiff expression.

Instead of answering me directly, she turned her eyes to Wi Jin-ak and spoke words I did not understand.

“Great Hero Wi. What do you think?”

Wi Jin-ak slowly lowered his sabre and sheathed it. Then he nodded and answered quietly but clearly.

“It is indeed Wudang swordsmanship.”

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