WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ The Martial Genius who Remembers Everything ◈
Chapter 435: Wings Flying South (5)
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The Taeul Sect had fought well so far.
Its young disciples had displayed their skill against experienced, middle-aged martial artists.
Then, when it was Jin Sowoon’s turn, even renowned figures had been utterly overwhelmed, unable to match him.
At this rate, the Taeul Sect would be able to make quite a name for itself.
“They’re pretty good, aren’t they?”
“They deserve to be among the One Hundred Eight Peaks.”
“They really are a prestigious sect with five hundred years of history!”
“...?”
“...Come on, even so.”
But could they truly be called a prestigious sect?
That fundamental question gave people pause.
“They’re not a prestigious sect.”
A prestigious sect was not something that bloomed brilliantly for a moment, only to vanish.
The contests continued.
Yet the atmosphere had changed completely.
The earlier matches had been decisive battles settled in a single blow, but the current ones lasted for at least twenty exchanges.
Those who knew nothing of martial arts slowly began to grow bored.
“Is the Black Flame Dragon finally getting tired?”
“He’s nearly fought ten people already.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The people who had been about to object to the man suddenly joining their conversation pursed their lips when they saw the sword in his hand.
“Then do you know something?”
Without taking his eyes off the contest, the man spoke quietly.
“Jin Sowoon isn’t fighting like that because he can’t win.”
“...”
“He’s fighting that way despite being able to win.”
“...”
“...”
At the escort warrior’s words, the ordinary onlookers exchanged glances and quietly shook their heads.
He probably just wanted to show off how much he knew, like some drunken lunatic.
Who knew how many people had suffered misfortune after picking a fight with someone carrying a sword?
Their gazes returned to the training ground.
The protesters who stepped forward attacked with the same wild killing intent and fighting spirit as before.
Jin Sowoon, on the other hand, faced them with movements as calm as the surface of a still lake.
The matches no longer ended in a single blow, but they were strangely absorbing.
Those who had been bored soon found themselves immersed in the contests.
#
In my previous life,
“I have something I need you to do.”
It was a time when I was used as a tool for recordkeeping in place of ink and paper.
“They say you discovered a way to deal with demonic beings this time?”
Jegal Cheongi had created the Jegal Three Forms.
When I was tasked with delivering the Shattering Form and Ascendant Form to the Nine Sects One Gang and the Five Great Clans,
“You will deliver them.”
I thought an opportunity had come.
I knew I would have to cross land controlled by the Demonic Cult and that someone as weak as me could die along the way.
Even so, I thought it was an opportunity.
A chance to become an expert.
A chance to steal and learn the insights of great sects.
Yet, after learning all three forms of the Jegal Three Forms and delivering them, I realized something.
Of course they would not entrust such an important task so easily.
I was nothing more than a tool.
A third-rate martial artist who did not know the formulas or how to circulate internal energy could do nothing simply by memorizing the forms.
When my internal energy greatly increased in this life and I reached the realm of Five Dragons Serving the Sage, allowing me to imitate the martial arts of other sects, I realized two things.
“Ah, idiot...”
First, I could not become a great tree by merely imitating something that was not my root.
Second,
“I can’t teach what I know to my junior disciples.”
That longing to fill what was lacking had driven me to seek out the founding patriarch from five hundred years ago.
Of course, finding my roots did not mean everything was over or that a new world had opened before me.
The Taeul Sword Emperor had not kindly left behind an annotated guide, and I had to learn a martial art that had resumed after five hundred years through written text alone.
I had to begin from the very start.
I did not even have time to despair.
If I did not move forward, death was all that awaited me.
The memories of my previous life were always on my heels.
Without even a moment to let down my guard, I pressed onward, chased by time and nightmares.
Ironically, what helped someone as close to a dullard as me, aside from my memory, were the forms of the Nine Sects One Gang and the Five Great Clans that I had learned in my previous life.
As I passed on their teachings, I also came to understand what the Taeul Sword Emperor had truly wished to convey.
What I needed was never a written explanation or teachings passed down by word of mouth.
The Taeul True Scripture was the study of exploring the principles of all things and contemplating oneself.
There was no correct answer.
You simply moved forward while creating your own answer.
Not to defeat an enemy.
Not to survive.
It was the fundamental teaching for attaining the Way.
Even the pain and despair I had suffered in my previous life melted away and vanished within my study of the Taeul True Scripture.
And the Taeul Sect’s teachings I had come to understand that way.
This was the place to show them.
To prove that I had reclaimed my roots.
To prove that the Taeul Sect had returned to its rightful place.
“Ugh!”
The opponent who had dropped his sword trembled from head to toe as if he could not believe what had happened.
We had exchanged dozens more moves than I had with the previous opponents, yet he looked as though he had encountered an insurmountable wall.
He wore the expression of someone who had realized what he lacked before that wall.
If he had been my friend or companion, I would have given him time to collect his thoughts.
The small shock and realization gained at the end of a martial contest.
How important it was for a martial artist to make that realization their own.
But that was only for someone worthy of such generosity.
Smack!
“Aren’t you getting down?”
The man, who had seemed to be groping for a path while clinging to the end of a thin thread, suddenly came to his senses.
Despair bloomed across his face.
“Aren’t you getting down?”
“...”
With slumped shoulders, despairing over the precious opportunity he had lost, he stepped down from the training ground.
This realization was for my people.
For the elders of the Taeul Sect who had been sacrificed in my previous life, and for my junior disciples who had burned to death.
Until these teachings were properly passed on,
“Next!”
I would not fall.
#
“Mm...”
Gang Yuseong opened his eyes, feeling a warm, tranquil energy envelop his entire body.
“You’re awake?”
“Master Baek...”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Ah, sorry.”
Rather than exploding in anger as usual, Baek Haegwang’s gaze was already fixed on the training ground.
Something was strange.
Many of the Taeul Sect’s fellow disciples had gathered to look after him.
Yet every one of them was looking toward the training ground.
“Did something happen?”
“Yuseong.”
“Yes.”
“What did I always tell you?”
“Strike first... No, victory belongs to the one who takes the initiative...”
Baek Haegwang’s face turned gray as he let out a sigh.
“...Not that!”
“You told me not to be distracted by what is before my eyes and to always consider my own roots.”
Gang Yuseong and Baek Haegwang shared a strange relationship.
After entering the Taeul True Scripture, which involved contemplating one’s inner self, Gang Yuseong had unconsciously been drawn to strength, and that had soon led him to fixate on Swiftness.
That process had caught Baek Haegwang’s interest.
Wondering how much this child could absorb, Baek Haegwang showed him what he had to offer.
Gang Yuseong, thirsting for knowledge, absorbed Baek Haegwang’s teachings like parched earth drinking rainwater.
Faster.
Even faster.
Still, Baek Haegwang did not find the sight wholly pleasing.
Gang Yuseong was still young.
Rather than building a solid foundation and raising his own tower upon it, he had been dazzled by strength and speed, piling stones higher and higher without restraint.
“There’s no need to see how that ends.”
Gang Yuseong had achieved some balance between the Taeul True Scripture and Baek Haegwang’s teachings for now, but one day, he would inevitably lean too far to one side.
When that happened, the precarious stone tower he had worked so hard to build would naturally collapse.
Gang Yuseong needed something that would make him look back on his own foundation.
Baek Haegwang turned his gaze toward Jin Sowoon.
That brat was not even thirty, yet he could worm his way into people’s hearts like a sly old snake.
At that level, he could simply be called a shrewd youngster.
But.
“That brat is different.”
His black eyes were deep and dark.
It was strange enough for someone who had lived only a little over twenty years to possess such depth in his eyes.
The things he did were also unlike those of other youngsters.
Look at him now.
This training ground.
This contest arena.
He had made it his stage, displaying the foundations of the Taeul Sect.
He was using enemies who had come to take their lives as teaching aids, telling everyone that this was the Taeul Sect and these were the sect’s teachings.
“Watch.”
Baek Haegwang reached out toward the solution to a concern he had held for so long.
His fingertip pointed at Jin Sowoon, who stood in the center of the training ground.
“Do not take your eyes off him for even an instant. Engrave everything in your mind.”
“...”
“That is the teaching of the Taeul Sect, and the foundation that will become yours...”
Then Baek Haegwang stopped speaking when he saw Gang Yuseong staring blankly at Jin Sowoon.
His eyes shone as if he had finally found the path he needed to walk.
Without realizing it, Baek Haegwang was overwhelmed by that pure, intense gaze.
At the same time, he felt relieved.
No matter what teachings someone who had found their roots received, their foundation would never be shaken.
Reassured, he decided it was all right to watch the Taeul Sect bloom a little longer.
Then something the madman had suggested came to mind.
“An External Elder...”
#
Mount Cang Sect’s Taehwa Unit had been defeated.
That news drove a man who had been neglected and left to wander by the Mount Cang Sect toward Hefei.
As if ruining his life and throwing it into a cesspit had not been enough, Jin Sowoon had even humiliated his sect.
It was all because of Jin Sowoon.
The reason a promising man like him had been dragged around by Moyong Gang like a dog and forced into a life of slavery.
The reason he had been unable to do anything in Yueyang while bearing Mount Cang’s name.
The man stared at the cunning figure on the training ground with a sharp gaze.
His feet were numb.
The Mount Cang Sect had brought in several of its finest physicians to treat him.
Part of his dantian had suffered irreversible damage, closing off his future potential for growth, but they comforted him by saying that the aptitude he had shown so far was enough for him to still amount to something.
His tendons had been severed, making it impossible for him to use movement arts as before, but the Mount Cang Sect had not cast him aside.
Only.
“The timing is poor right now, so rest.”
They gradually placed countless restrictions on him and no longer held any expectations for him.
“There is other work I can entrust to you, so rest a little longer.”
That was when the man realized it.
He was slowly being discarded by the sect headquarters.
He settled in a brothel, stopped participating in the Dragon-Phoenix Association’s activities, and postponed his return to the Martial Alliance indefinitely.
After all, carrying such disgrace made it impossible for him to be active in the martial world.
His days became an unbroken chain of pain and despair.
The permanent disability ate away at his mind, and his broken mind ate away at his body.
Then, when he believed he had been sufficiently ruined, the man realized it.
“The Mount Cang Sect... has abandoned me.”
They no longer sent warning letters, no matter what trouble he caused.
No matter how long he rested, they did not send letters containing missions.
They only sent letters of false concern and banknotes generous enough to let him indulge in drink and women.
As he spent his days with alcohol and women, he kept thinking.
How had this happened?
He had long known that he fell behind Yong Soa, Ilmyeong, Dang Seohui, Hwa Jeongsan, and the others.
He had not been discouraged by it.
He was powerless compared to those monsters, but the Mount Cang Sect itself was not powerless.
Jin Sowoon had only been another one of those monsters.
He simply had not recognized it.
So he thought it was only natural that he had been abandoned.
For the glory of the Mount Cang Sect.
Since he could no longer be of help, disappearing quickly would be better for both Mount Cang and himself.
When this era passed and history moved on, if a monster like that appeared in the Mount Cang Sect as well, then the Mount Cang Sect would once again have a day when it shook the martial world.
That was how he consoled himself.
But.
“How...!”
How could the Mount Cang Sect lose to the Taeul Sect?
Not to Jin Sowoon, but to the Taeul Sect itself. How could the Taehwa Unit be defeated?
Was Jin Sowoon not simply a mutant monster born in the Taeul Sect?
Then how could someone else from the Taeul Sect defeat the Taehwa Unit?
“Young Master Jong, where are you going?”
“There’s something I need to confirm.”
“What is it?”
“That I’m the one who is lacking.”
“What?”
The man shook off the hand of the courtesan clinging to his arm and headed straight for Hefei.
The Taeul Sect he arrived at was no longer the Taeul Sect he had known.
Its shabby front gate, which had seemed ready to collapse, had been rebuilt.
The buildings that had looked as though insects might crawl out of them were newly constructed, and the scent of pine resin had not even faded yet.
More than that, look at the guests invited there.
Even so, he felt more strongly that it could not be true.
The Taeul Sect could not have changed so greatly in such a short time.
To avoid Moyong Gang’s attention, he wore a human-skin mask and joined the protesters.
Among the lay disciples and people from lay martial sects, people recognized him and treated him with consideration.
Through this Infinite Martial Contest, he learned that the Taeul Sect had many talented people.
They were not as exceptional as Jin Sowoon, but they were quite talented.
But that was all.
“As expected.”
The Taeul Sect could not surpass the Mount Cang Sect.
The Taehwa Unit incident had been nothing more than another coincidence.
The Taeul Sect’s foundation could not surpass the Mount Cang Sect’s.
Just as he was about to turn and leave,
“Next!”
Jin Sowoon began to reveal the true strength of the Taeul Sect.
“...!!!”
Something people from lay martial sects and those born as wanderers could not know.
The strength of a sect with deep roots.
The reason the man had joined the Dragon-Phoenix Association and gained such fame as the Mount Cang Sect’s Guardian Disciple was not simply because he had been lucky.
It was because he had possessed the qualifications.
His aptitude and talent had made his past shine brilliantly.
That was why he could clearly understand.
How deeply rooted the Taeul Sect’s teachings were.
How vast and expansive they were.
It was even more astonishing than Jin Sowoon defeating One Saber Against a Thousand in fewer than ten moves.
“N-No way...!”
Jin Sowoon was displaying the foundations of the Taeul Sect.
Setting aside his own uniqueness, talent, and aptitude.
He was openly showing them.
How far the Taeul Sect would spread.
How much greater it would become.
And the fact that those foundations did not fall behind the Mount Cang Sect’s own made rage surge within the man.
“No! No! That can’t be! The Taeul Sect of all places!”
Countless transformations.
Countless illusions.
The near-limitless potential of Change.
All of it made his mind spin.
“The Taeul Sect of all places! The Taeul Sect of all places!”
That obsession took form as killing intent, and the sharpened killing intent cleared his mind.
“Is there no one next?”
He had to prove it.
That the Taeul Sect’s foundations were nothing.
That the Taeul Sect’s hidden strength was nothing.
“There isn’t... Hm?”
At that moment, his eyes met those of the hateful man who had been searching for his next opponent.
“Look who it is.”
Jin Sowoon smiled as if he recognized him despite the human-skin mask.
Then he pointed the tip of his sword directly at him.
“Next!”
The man was Jong Byeokgi of the Mount Cang Sect.
He rose without hesitation.
“Huh, you can walk?”
Step by limping step, he headed toward the training ground.
Footnotes:
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