WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything ◈
Chapter 321: The Black Forest
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After everyone had left the meeting hall, Buk Wonpyeong let out a long sigh.
“Crazy bastard...”
There was no other way to describe him.
What else could one call someone who bared his teeth at the lecturers holding his leash and told them to go ahead and stab him with their swords?
‘...Is he really the Black Path’s Joint Successor?’
The absurd rumors were starting to sound more and more believable.
Buk Wonpyeong pressed his thumb against his throbbing temple.
“That bastard is making me age by the day.”
Jin Sowoon was the benefactor who had given him a fated encounter that would allow him to find the successor to the Three Pure Supreme Sword. Yet he felt as though the brat would make him die of old age before he could even establish a sect. Buk could no longer tell whether Jin was a benefactor or an enemy.
“Still, it’s surprising... The lecturers actually backed down.”
The Martial Alliance’s entrenched powers did not back down easily.
No, it would be fair to say they never backed down.
Why would a group possessing money, authority, and exceptional martial strength ever retreat?
They never doubted the massive fortress they had built for themselves.
They only kicked down anyone trying to climb it, then poured oil over them and set them ablaze.
Most people who tried to climb that fortress met similar ends.
At some point, they would fall. The only difference was how high they had managed to climb first.
Buk Wonpyeong had hoped Jin Sowoon would at least climb higher than he had.
Not because of lay disciple status or personal interests.
He had simply grown curious about what might happen if that brat succeeded.
Yet before Jin Sowoon had even begun climbing the fortress, he kicked away his own ladder.
[Go ahead. Do as you please. No, please, I beg you, do exactly that. Then I won’t feel guilty when I make a move against you lecturers.]
Then he threatened to kill every last person inside that fortress.
“Good grief... Crazy bastard...”
It had naturally been a dizzying moment.
The entrenched powers, especially the Orthodox Society led by the Nine Sects One Gang, would never tolerate someone like Jin Sowoon.
Why could those in power maintain their positions?
Because they crushed every sprout that dared challenge their authority, no matter how insignificant it was.
Buk had been certain that this would be as high as Jin Sowoon could rise, as well as the beginning of his fall.
But then...
[...Grit. That’s enough.]
The lecturers backed down first.
‘Why?’
Before he could even feel relieved that Jin Sowoon had survived, confusion came first.
The lecturers were not the kind of people to retreat easily.
If they stepped back now, Jin Sowoon’s accomplishments and the lecturers’ humiliation would follow them like shadows for the rest of the term.
Rumors would spread even after they returned to the Martial Alliance, and the Qingcheng Sect would surely be outraged by the story.
Even so, the lecturers had retreated first.
“I truly don’t understand.”
Then Buk Wonpyeong imagined what he would have done.
As he had told Jin Sowoon, he would have adjusted their relationship appropriately during the meeting.
When the lecturers made their offer to Jin Sowoon, Buk had clearly thought it was a decent arrangement.
“...”
He would have judged it to be the only way to climb the fortress safely without being obstructed.
Jin Sowoon, on the other hand, did not care.
As though climbing that fortress meant nothing to him, he burned even the rope they had lowered to him and dropped to the ground.
As though he was not afraid of what came next.
As though he could fall much further without caring.
A hollow laugh escaped him.
“...Is that the difference?”
Then a thought struck him.
Perhaps Jin Sowoon’s decision had been the right answer after all.
The ones who had ultimately retreated were the lecturers.
His head began to ache again.
“I don’t understand anything anymore.”
Had a brat barely past twenty somehow made his strategy work, or had Buk himself failed to understand the world despite living twice as long as Jin Sowoon?
Even after the meeting ended, Buk Wonpyeong could not leave the hall for a long time.
#
“Damn it!”
No Jinha kicked an innocent stone away.
That still did not calm him down, and he continued venting his anger in every direction.
“Damn it! Damn it! That damn bastard! I’ll kill him for sure...!”
Cultivating the mind was a basic Taoist virtue, so the sight of him even resorting to curses was far from pleasant. Still, Kang Suntak did not stop him.
Kang Suntak’s mood was not much different from No Jinha’s.
Even so, he worried that someone might see them.
“Calm down. It’s already over, isn’t it?”
No Jinha, who had been breathing heavily with rage, shot Kang Suntak a sharp glare.
“Have you found out why the Azure Dragon Pavilion Master and Red Dragon Pavilion Master are protecting him?”
“...I’m looking into it.”
“You still haven’t?”
A sigh escaped Kang Suntak.
No Jinha was not normally this much of an idiot.
“Get a grip. This could develop into an investigation of the Pavilion Masters. You know we have to proceed carefully, don’t you?”
“It’s because something this absurd happened!!!”
Kang Suntak gave a dry chuckle at No Jinha’s words.
He was right. If the Azure Dragon Pavilion Master and Red Dragon Pavilion Master had not intervened, they had certainly intended to crush Jin Sowoon.
“It isn’t as though those people acting strangely is anything new.”
It was certain that neither the Azure Dragon Pavilion Master nor the Red Dragon Pavilion Master had any connection to Jin Sowoon.
Yet, as if they had foreseen their actions, they exerted outside pressure through the White Tiger Pavilion Master.
Even they could not ignore Pavilion Masters they would have to face in just a year.
That was why they had arranged the meeting in the first place.
Even that had not gone well.
“Since that day... I’ve been so wronged that I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep!”
“...”
No Jinha pounded his chest as if he had let an irreconcilable enemy slip away right before his eyes.
Then again, if the same thing had happened to Kang Suntak, he would have left Jin Sowoon half-dead before worrying about the Pavilion Masters.
Kang Suntak patted No Jinha on the shoulder.
“Perhaps this has worked out better for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Academy Representative and the lecturers have practically become enemies. Can’t we use that as an excuse?”
“...”
“Either way, our evaluations are absolute for the rest of the term. That alone will be enough to drive him into a corner.”
“...That’s true.”
Jin Sowoon would probably sleep soundly tonight, savoring his victory.
No Jinha, on the other hand, would not get much sleep.
But that would only last for a while.
“It isn’t over yet. No, you could say it’s only beginning now.”
From now on, Jin Sowoon would go to sleep every night full of regret.
Their power was not something that revealed itself visibly right before one’s eyes.
“Come on. Drinks are on me today.”
For now, they only needed to soothe their wounded feelings.
A more comfortable time would come soon enough.
#
After the confrontation between the lecturers and Jin Sowoon, the term began again.
The Academy students wanted to know how the matter had been resolved, but neither Jin Sowoon nor the lecturers spoke of it. They simply acted as though nothing had happened.
Naturally, the students could not let such a juicy story go to waste in their dull Academy lives, and all sorts of rumors began to spread.
“I heard Representative Jin finally fell to his knees before the lecturers and bawled his eyes out, begging them to spare him just once.”
“I heard Jin Sowoon led Black Path experts to raid the lecturers’ quarters one by one.”
“I heard Jin Sowoon handed the lecturers blank bank drafts.”
The subject came up often during drinking sessions and meals, but no one could verify whether any of it was true.
Like all rumors, the stories that had flared up like wildfire eventually faded away. Yet they left something else behind.
“No... Why did I get a Grade C? I made it all the way to the final four in the sparring matches...”
“Tch, the lecturers said your understanding of the forms was lacking.”
“Are they insane? What kind of nonsense is that?! How many times have they even seen our sect’s forms?”
“Ever since the grading changed to an absolute system, things like this have kept happening... Tsk. Maybe what Representative Jin said was true after all.”
People who did not belong to the Orthodox Society began receiving harsh evaluations more often.
Of course, it could have seemed as though the standards had risen, just as the lecturers claimed when they said the students’ overall level was low.
Yet the members of the Orthodox Society, along with those connected to them, began receiving higher scores than before.
“...This is strange. That guy goes out drinking every day and has missed plenty of classes, yet he got a Grade B.”
“Um... Maybe there’s some hidden move we don’t know about?”
“What hidden move? Damn it! He got a good score because they favor him, obviously!”
At first, the discrimination had been carried out quietly. As time passed, it became clearer and clearer.
By the time three months had passed and the end-of-term evaluations were released, it had become unmistakable.
Most of the Orthodox Society members received the highest scores, while around half of the White Path Society members received favorable ones.
The Twelve Peak Alliance members and everyone else received the lowest scores and filled the bottom ranks.
Once discrimination became this blatant, the atmosphere within the Academy began to turn increasingly hostile.
Those outside the Orthodox Society began to resent the injustice they suffered.
The Orthodox Society members regarded their treatment as natural and dismissed the hostility of others as envy.
“I heard the Twelve Peak Alliance lot went to the Academic Affairs Department again yesterday. They said the evaluations weren’t fair.”
“Idiots. Instead of thinking about improving their skills, all they do is whine.”
“Exactly. They don’t even consider that they got good evaluations so far because of that damn bastard Jin Sowoon.”
“One day, we need to teach that Jin Sowoon bastard a lesson too... Huh? Who are you?!”
One of the men cursing Jin Sowoon grabbed the shoulder of the small figure who had bumped into him and tried to pass without apologizing, then spun them around.
“How dare you walk away without apologizing...! Huh... Mad Weasel?”
The instant the man saw the face, the man’s complexion changed.
“Mad Weasel?”
The young man, who looked as though the flush of youth had only recently faded from his face, furrowed his brow. The man hurriedly took back his words.
“N-no. It was nothing, Yayul Geuk.”
Only Yayul Geuk himself did not know that people called him the Mad Weasel because once he bit down, he never let go and attacked night and day.
If Jin Sowoon was an awl hidden in a pocket, this guy was a massive pile of cow dung lying in the road.
The moment someone stepped on it, only that person suffered.
The Orthodox Society man cleared his throat and tried to turn away.
“W-well, I’ll be going...”
“Wait...”
“Y-yeah?”
“But you said you were going to teach Jin Sowoon a lesson?”
“Huh?”
“You said that just now. Didn’t you?”
Crack.
Yayul Geuk suddenly cracked his fingers.
The man’s face turned white.
“What? Why? What did I do...?”
The mad weas... no, Yayul Geuk’s eyes gleamed.
“Jin Sowoon... That bastard is mine. I’ll smash him to pieces.”
“...”
“But you can’t teach him a lesson before I do, can you?”
What was this crazy little brat even talking about?
Just as the man tried to make an excuse...
Thud.
The man’s body was already toppling to the ground.
The man still cried inwardly.
‘What the hell does that even mean?!’
#
Even though the summer recess had ended, there was no disappointment or gloom on the Academy students’ faces.
No, before that.
Hardly anyone had spent this recess actually resting.
Once the summer recess ended, the two-month Great Journey would begin.
It was both a process that tested a major portion of their academic evaluations and a starting point for Academy students to make a name for themselves in the martial world.
“Has anyone heard anything about the Great Journey?”
Seong Moran chewed her nails anxiously.
“Sister, why do you look so nervous?”
“I hate the heat too, but... I really, really hate bugs.”
There were three candidate locations for the Great Journey.
Fire Desert
Ice Sea
Mukrim
The location of the Great Journey was extremely important to the Academy students because it could greatly affect who held the advantage.
“I hope we go to the Ice Sea.”
At Eun Seollan’s words, Seong Moran’s eyes widened.
“Right! Seollan, you’re from the Northern Sea, aren’t you? There aren’t bugs there, right?”
“...Well.”
Eun Seollan could not bring herself to answer.
Her expression alone made it clear what she wanted to say.
There was hardly anything alive in the Northern Sea to begin with.
“Young Master Jin, you really haven’t heard anything?”
I hadn’t heard anything, but I knew where we would be going.
The academic plans were drawn up two years at a time.
In my previous life, the Great Journey was ultimately cancelled due to the Sichuan Bloodbath, but the destination had already been decided.
“I haven’t heard anything, but I know where we’ll be going.”
“What?! Really? Where?”
“Mukrim.”
“...Ehh?”
Seong Moran shook her head as if she could not believe it.
“N-no... Right? You’re joking, aren’t you? You’re just trying to tease me? Ha ha... Please? Tell me it isn’t true! Tell me it isn’t!!!”
As Seong Moran’s hands shook me back and forth, I held firm and spoke.
“In the previous cohort, Yong Soa made a name for himself by single-handedly subjugating the Takun Tribe of the Fire Desert, didn’t he?”
“...T-that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to Mukrim.”
“In the cohort before that, half the Academy students who went to the Ice Sea suffered from frostbite.”
“...”
Seong Moran’s face darkened beyond pale blue.
“N-no way! No... No! It can’t be!”
With a scream, Seong Moran ran out of the representative office.
Why did she hate it so much?
Other than the humidity and abundance of venomous insects, it had far more advantages.
More importantly, Mukrim was a place through which a massive spirit vein flowed.
Academy students throughout history had eagerly hoped to visit Mukrim for the Great Journey.
Mukrim was normally designated as a forbidden area, so people could not enter it freely.
Then Namgung Seonhwa opened her eyes wide and asked me a question.
“Huh? Young Master Jin, that’s a necklace I haven’t seen before.”
“Ah... This? Woojae’s father gave it to me as a gift some time ago. I asked him to alter it a little during the last recess.”
“Oh, it’s so pretty.”
“Is that so?”
I fiddled with the necklace and looked toward the place Seong Moran had rushed out from.
I really could not understand her.
Mukrim was such a wonderful place.
Footnotes:
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