Chapter 186: Adversary (5)

A dark room.

Cheon Soyak sat alone inside.

A lamp burned beside her as she copied the words she had memorized into the blank pages of a white-bound book.

With every stroke of the brush, the smell of burning seemed to rise.

“...Haa.”

Nothing was actually burning.

It was just...

Writing out the Harmonization Scripture brought back old memories.

She still had not forgotten that horrific smell.

Or what she had seen.

...Even after taking revenge.

She had cut down the Flame-Saber Lord in a single stroke.

Without even breaking a sweat.

Of course, there was still a long way to go before she cut down the Sword Sovereign and truly brought everything to an end.

But revenge was something she had longed for so desperately that she had thought it would leave her feeling relieved.

It had not.

Not at all.

Every time she copied another character of the Harmonization Scripture, the smell of charred flesh seemed to linger at the tip of her nose.

She knew this was an inner demon.

And yet...

In the end, it was lingering regret.

If only I had been stronger back then.

If only I had been as strong as I am now.

Soyak understood better than anyone how meaningless such regrets were.

At seventeen, she had already reached the middle stage of the Transformation Realm, an achievement without precedent in the history of the Central Plains.

Trying to oppose the Flame-Saber Lord when she was nine or ten years old would have been suicide.

She knew there was no point now in entertaining such hypotheticals, such regret, such attachments.

...And yet she still could not sever them completely.

Because the images remained vividly branded into her eyes.

Her father’s headless corpse.

Her mother’s body crumbling like charcoal.

Reaching the Transformation Realm did not free a person from regret or worldly anguish.

If it did, Ak Jupae would have been the first to prove it.

And with every character she wrote, her father’s faint voice seemed to echo at the edge of her hearing...

Enough to make it difficult to continue.

Soyak slowly set down the brush.

Then she blew out the lamp.

She had filled roughly half the book, but she did not think she could write any more tonight.

It had been a long time since she had been alone in this room without Cheonhwa.

Ever since their Master brought Cheonju and Cheonhwa back, they had always shared the room.

Of course, Soyak had also slept alone throughout her three years of closed-door training.

Still, she had expected everyone to welcome her when she returned here...

Only to find no one around.

“Are you disappointed the others aren’t here?”

“...I cannot honestly say I’m not.”

“You don’t have to phrase it so indirectly.”

Soyak slowly turned her head.

Cheonjeong was leaning against the doorframe.

He looked somewhat wistful himself.

“...If you were going to make that face, why didn’t you go with them?”

“If I’d gone too, who would be here to keep you company like this?”

“That... I am grateful for.”

Cheonjeong chuckled.

Then he shrugged.

“Get to bed. If you don’t sleep enough, you won’t grow.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

“It’s never too late.”

He said it with a straight face, but it was a joke.

Soyak knew that too.

She was already nearly done growing.

If she gained even half a span from here, it would be a miracle.

“I was about to sleep anyway. Have a good night, Eldest Brother.”

“You too. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that, Cheonjeong closed the door Soyak had left open.

But despite what she had said, Soyak did not lie down.

Instead, as she had in the past, she perched on the windowsill and looked up at the bright moon.

A martial artist who had reached the Transformation Realm did not strictly need sleep so long as they performed a little circulation practice.

They could even go several days without sleeping at all and continue functioning without difficulty.

It was still better to sleep whenever possible, in case something unexpected happened...

But Soyak saw no reason to lie down when she was not sleepy.

Flower-Haze Hall was nearly empty anyway.

And she had no intention of stirring her internal energy at this hour and waking Cheonjeong.

Silently, Soyak slipped out through the window.

Her Lightness Arts were so refined that even her feet touching the ground made no sound.

She moved lightly through the steps of her Lightness Arts until she reached the center of the training ground.

Then she slowly pushed up the sword at her waist with her left hand.

Click.

The blade slid partway from its sheath.

Cold moonlight caught on the steel.

A pale gleam shattered and scattered.

Without drawing upon even a trace of internal energy, Soyak slowly began to move her sword.

It was not a form from Falling Plum Elegy.

It was from the Ninefold Heaven Plum Sword, which she had continued to practice without fail even throughout her closed-door {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} training.

No vision of fluttering plum petals appeared.

She drew on no internal energy, so no mysterious plum fragrance swept from the sword tip either.

Alone, in silence, she simply moved slowly and surrendered herself to the sword.

Even after she had completed every form, the night remained still.

Soyak quietly looked around.

She was still alone on the training ground.

Then she began walking.

Her destination was...

Jeonggang’s residence, now standing empty.

*****

Jeonggang, Myeonggon, and Eunsong all shared one thing in common.

None of them lived in particularly grand residences.

Jeonggang’s stood out most of all.

He had been an elder of the Great Mount Hua Sect and even the Sect Leader’s senior brother.

And yet his residence had been nothing more than a shabby little hut, scarcely different from Eunsong’s.

The place itself was clean.

Only the yard was covered with fallen petals and dry leaves.

Soyak stared at it for a while before picking up the worn twig broom leaning against one corner.

Then she began sweeping.

It took quite some time.

Once again, she used no internal energy and did everything with her own hands.

By the time she finished, the eastern sky had already begun to brighten faintly.

“You were here?”

Eun Jeong had been watching her.

Soyak returned the broom to where she had found it, then sat down on the wooden porch.

“A house should still be kept clean even if no one lives in it.”

“...I suppose so. Everyone must have cleaned only the inside and neglected the yard.”

“It seems that way.”

The house had been empty for three years.

Myeonggon had suggested Eun Jeong live there, but Eun Jeong had declined.

Instead, he had built another small hut like Eunsong’s on a little unoccupied peak.

From the outside, there was hardly any difference between this hut and the new one...

But this place carried history for everyone because Jeonggang had once lived here.

They must have thought it better to preserve it as it was.

“So... you came here to sweep the yard?”

“Yes, Master Eun Jeong.”

“...I swept it from time to time too.”

Soyak looked up at him.

Come to think of it, there was no way three years’ worth of leaves had accumulated here.

At most, what she had swept looked like only a few days’ worth.

Which meant someone had been cleaning the place regularly even before her return.

“...Were you the one keeping the yard clean all this time?”

“I said from time to time. Someone came more often than I did.”

“Someone more often...?”

“Eunsong came almost every week to sweep the yard.”

Soyak blinked.

“Master did...?”

“Eunsong is a sentimental man. You know that.”

“...Yes. I suppose he is.”

She had sat on this wooden porch several times and drunk tea.

The tea Jeonggang brewed had always carried a pleasant fragrance.

Eun Jeong seemed to be remembering the same thing, because a gentle smile crossed his face.

“...Did Grand Master Jeonggang pass peacefully?”

“He returned to his homeland. As I remember it, he went peacefully.”

“That... is a relief.”

Soyak lowered her head for no real reason.

Her lips had gone dry.

He had given her everything and faded away, yet she had not even been there at his deathbed.

That guilt gnawed at her.

During her closed-door training, she had deliberately tried not to think about it.

If guilt drove her into an inner demon and caused her to fall into deviation, that was surely not what Jeonggang would have wanted.

But now that the training was over and she had returned here...

She could no longer hide how sorry she felt.

Eun Jeong quietly watched her bowed head.

A master at the middle stage of the Transformation Realm.

She had achieved such a thing at only seventeen.

But that did not mean her heart had hardened.

The deaths of enemies did not shake her, yet the death of someone she loved left her suffering like this.

...Calling that a hardened heart would be strange too.

Eun Jeong let out a deep sigh.

Becoming accustomed to pain and numb to loss was not the same as becoming strong of heart.

It was nothing more than callus worn over a wound.

“Do you feel that guilty?”

“...Yes.”

“Even though all of this was Great Grand Master’s own decision?”

“...Yes.”

The guilt of the survivor.

There was simply no helping it.

No matter how much Jeonggang had made that choice of his own will...

If Soyak had already been dead beyond saving, Jeonggang would not have died.

She had been prepared to die, yet survived by receiving another person’s life.

And one of the great stars of Mount Hua and the Reverse Heaven Society, someone who should have lived longer, had given that life to her and died instead.

Whatever anyone’s intentions, that was the cold fact of it.

And just as she was thinking that...

“You’re being foolish.”

Eun Jeong abruptly flicked her hard on the forehead.