Return of Mount Hua Sect

While dealing with Gal Cheon-rip, Un Geom never let his manners slip.

No matter how much the opponent was a leader of the Evil Sects, he believed that certain manners had to be observed when facing someone risking their life and fighting with a weapon. That was Un Geom’s way of teaching Mount Hua’s disciples.

However.

Now, the respect for his opponent had completely vanished from Un Geom’s eyes.

He also knew that there were people in the world who didn’t deserve even the minimum of respect.

And…

The eyes of Mount Hua’s disciples, who had stopped their swords and were looking at Gal Cheon-rip, were fiercer than Un Geom’s.

Stabbing your own comrade in the back?

At least in Mount Hua, such an act was unforgivable.

As one hundred swordsmen from a single sect glared at him with killing intent, Gal Cheon-rip flinched as he looked around.

“What?”

As if he did not understand the situation, his face twisted in pale confusion. But there was not a single person who would kindly open their mouth to explain the situation to him.

They just glared at him with ice-cold eyes.

“What the hell! These damned bastards!”

When Gal Cheon-rip shouted, Un Geom lowered his sword and slowly spoke.

“You…”

A cold and indifferent tone pierced Gal Cheon-rip’s ears.

“You are not qualified to lead people.”

Even though his intentions were not good, these people had gathered here and were all people who believed in and fought for him. If Gal Cheon-rip cared about them even a little, he wouldn’t have stabbed his allies in the back while being drunk in his fight.

At Un Geom’s cold words, Gal Cheon-rip’s gaze turned to the side without his knowledge. The eyes of the Evil Sect people who had stopped their blades and weapons were looking his way with killing intent.

“…fucking morons.”

It was something he couldn’t understand.

“You morons! Are you so stupid that you don’t get it? If I don’t defeat this one-armed bastard here, we all die! I need to win at any cost for you all to survive!”

And dozens of them have stabbed others in the back, yet they still looked at him with those eyes?

‘You morons don’t even know what is right and wrong!’

He had only hit five of them at most.

When attacking on the battlefield, wasn’t it common to get hit by your own comrades’ weapons?

But the Evil Sect people who heard his words only bared their teeth at Gal Cheon-rip.

“This moron…”

“So hopeless.”

Just as Gal Cheon-rip was about to curse, Un Geom cut him off as if he couldn’t listen to him anymore and started to approach him.

The tip of jos sword was covered in a reddish glow.

“This…”

Un Geom, the disciples of Mount Hua, and even the Evil Sect people all looked at him with hostile eyes. It was as if the entire world hated him.

Feeling cornered, Gal Cheon-rip clenched his teeth.

No.

This wasn’t it.

This wasn’t the gaze he should be receiving.

The eyes looking at him should be filled with respect and fear. And jealousy along with horror. The gaze of someone who dared not even think of rising to that position, looking at the absolute.

“You cannot match Jang Ilso.”

Clench!

Those emotions that were in his eyes whenever he thought of Jang Ilso should be in the eyes of everyone here.

But…

“But why are you looking at me like that! Why! WHHYYYY!”

A beastly roar burst out of Gal Cheon-rip’s mouth.

He could not admit it!

He absolutely could not!

“I will kill you!”

Gal Cheon-rip roared and rushed towards Un Geom. A violent killing intent and a storm-like force. The sight of Gal Cheon-rip rushing ahead with his eyes rolled back and his face covered with nerves was terrifying in itself.

Kwakwakwang!

The Evil Sect’s blade qi, which he released, was gushing out with incredible force. No matter how much one hated Gal Cheon-rip when they saw this, they couldn’t help but acknowledge his skills.

‘Fucking dog!’

The blood vessels in Gal Cheon-rip’s eyes strained to the limit, began to burst. His eyes quickly turned bloodshot.

In martial arts, the strong were respected. Only the strong were right.

The weak feared the strong and followed them. The qualification to lead someone? Strength was what that was.

Didn’t Jang Ilso create the Ten Thousand People Clan with his own strength and seize the Evil Sect?

‘Then what is this nonsense you are talking about!’

Kwakwakwang!

The blade qi spun more violently. A new blade qi began to create a trajectory above the extended blade qi, and dozens of blade qi irregularly entangled, creating a fierce storm.

A human body would be reduced to nothing more than a chunk of meat in the blade qi storm, which swept in with such incredible power.

Meanwhile, the sight of Un Geom standing in front of that ferocious storm of blade qi with a single hand and sword looked like the sight of a man standing before a typhoon.

But.

Kuak.

Kwak Ho, who had been watching the scene, clenched his fist quietly.

No one stepped forward. No one even shouted out to tell him to be careful.

Everyone simply looked at Un Geom’s back with eyes filled with deep trust.

If they were the disciples of Mount Hua, if they had seen the kind of training Un Geom had done over the past three years, they all knew. Worrying about Un Geom now would be nothing more than belittling the blood he had shed and the effort he put in.

What should fill them was not a sense of worry.

But faith in their teacher.

“Hoo.”

Un Geom took a short, deep breath.

It would be a lie if he said he wasn’t afraid. That formidable blade qi could tear his body apart at any time.

In the past, he wouldn’t have dared to confront it and would have retreated again. And then…

Un Geom seemed to see a sight in his two eyes. The figure of a person jumping ahead to protect him. A slightly smaller shoulder standing proudly in front of him.

Un Geom’s lips curled up into a smile.

He was standing here to avoid seeing that sight.

Kuak.

The tips of his feet pressed firmly against the ground. Everything always starts from below.

He kept his mind calm like a lake, and his two eyes observed the opponent with intelligence.

He could see it.

‘Internal qi isn’t everything. Even technique isn’t everything.’

It was fierce and strong beyond comparison.

But it was definitely off.

Once upon a time, these blade attacks would have been intricately intertwined like gears, slaughtering their opponents. But not anymore. These attacks had become rusty, covered in dust and creaking.

Gal Cheon-rip’s gap and twisted attacks.

‘Right. Chung Myung. Guess you were right.’

Gal Cheon-rip must have believed that he had gotten stronger. As time passed, his internal qi would have grown stronger, and the power he carried in his sword would have become stronger.

But that wasn’t everything for martial arts.

No matter how powerful a technique was, if it was not managed delicately and consistently, it would eventually rust.

This attack was ultimately just a gear that was twisted and forced to turn.

Un Geom took a step forward.

It seemed reckless to approach that fierce blade qi storm, but Un Geom’s eyes as he extended the feet were as calm as the lake.

Woong.

His sword, filled with his internal qi, trembled.

‘Can I be an example to those kids now?’

To his shame, those kids still call him their teacher. They still showed him their respect and admiration, even though there were more than a few who had surpassed him and gone before him.

That fact was powerful, but sometimes it felt like a burden that weighed him down.

What should he show the kids? What should he do to help those consistent kids? How could he not be ashamed to be called a teacher by those kids?

Without a shred of fear, Un Geom took another step forward.

The force of the blade qi made his hair stand on end and shook his skin as if it would tear at any moment.

At that moment.

Paat!

The plum sword in his left hand pierced through the storm of blade qi like a ray of light.

Kakakak!

As if a metal bar had been pushed into these heatedly rotating gears, the seemingly delicate blade attacks suddenly shook violently.

Paat!

The sword of Un Geom, which had been retrieved in an instant, released light.

Wasn’t it obvious what he had to show those kids?

The will to face things fearlessly. And the determination not to be dazzled by flashiness and to keep to his original intention!

And!

‘It is all just a façade.’

If one evaluated the strength contained in the tip of the sword, if they evaluated the depth of its process, if they evaluated how much more flashy and strong the attack could be, the world would naturally consider the opponent to be strong. Un Geom would have been the same.

But now he knew. This wasn’t what martial arts was.

Now, his disciples had taken their first proper step into the murim world. In the not-too-distant future, they, too, would face a crisis and be shaken.

He had just one thing to say to those kids.

‘You need to believe.’

The feeling of the sword in his hand vanished.

But the dull weight was clearly felt. The weight in the hand wasn’t the weight of the sword. It was the confidence and trust in himself that he hadn’t been generous to himself for even a moment in the past.

‘Just the effort.’

The sword of Un Geom became a ray of light again and cut through the storm of blade qi.

One sword became two, and two to three.

Within a moment, Un Geom’s sword, which had released seven sword forms, stabbed through the gap between the red blade qi without shaking an inch.

Kakakaka! Kakakak!

A creepy noise erupted as the sword and blade became entangled with each other.

Clench! Clench!

A pain that felt as if his wrist would break. A shock that twisted his internal organs.

Un Geom, who forcefully gulped down the blood rushing from his throat, gripped the sword so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

Observe.

No matter the situation, both eyes must watch everything.

The blade attack, spinning like a storm, was like a gear with an indestructible foreign substance stuck in it, shaking violently.

And the Plum Blossom Sword of Un Geom, which had not rested even once for three years, didn’t miss that moment.

‘Now!’

Lightning Movement.

The tip of the sword held effort.

The tip of the sword held time.

And the sword was a person. It held a person too.

The moment everything was contained in a sword, without a single doubt, the sword became the person, and the person became the sword.

Paaaat!

In an instant, the sword qi, which had become a ray of light, dug into the swirling porcelain.

Kakaka!

The gears, twisted as much as they could be, collapsed like an illusion before the powerful attack.

The red sword qi and the bright blue blade qi vanished.

The sword, filled with patience, effort, qi, and a human’s grasp, deflected the fluttering blade. Soon, it dug into the body of the person, who opened his eyes wide in shock.

Puaak!

The strange feeling in his entire arm disappeared as if it had been washed away, and the world returned to him. A dull and heavy sensation was felt at his fingertips.

‘And…’

If there was one more thing to believe.

Un Geom quietly turned his gaze. He saw his disciples clenching their fists as if they wanted to scream. And behind them were their teachers, who seemed even more excited than the kids.

‘These are the ones standing behind you.’

Believe in yourself, and believe in those who were with you.

That was enough.