Chapter 43: Snow Plum Sword (1)

Following the path my masters told me to take, there was a place from the start that was steep, practically no different from a cliff.

Was I supposed to climb this?

[As you climb, you will find there are more places to step on than you think.]

“Ah, yes.”

It seemed to be correct.

I understood why it was a shortcut that the Mount Hua Sect disciples did not know.

It was not a path for humans to walk.

[With the Cloud-Soaring Golden Light Step, it is no problem.]

[As long as it is properly unleashed, it is a body-lightening method that allows you to walk anywhere under heaven as if it were your own front yard.]

[For something made in a split second, it turned out magnificently. Gee, who knew such a jackpot would pop out.]

[Hurry up and try unleashing it.]

Though they were masters whom I would believe even if they said they could make malt out of red beans, looking at this cliff, a sense of bleakness rushed over me.

Did I make the bet for nothing?

“Huh?”

Thinking that I would give it a try even if I was deceived, the moment I stepped onto the cliff, I felt a bizarre sensation envelop my lower body.

Operating my internal energy through the mnemonic of the Cloud-Soaring Golden Light Step, my feet felt like they were sinking slightly. I had stepped on hard rock, but it felt like stepping on squelchy mud. And yet, it did not hinder the movement of my feet.

It was not a unique characteristic of Mount Hua’s rocks, but rather the sensation touching my feet.

“Oh?”

Squelchy meant I could transmit the force of my stepping as it was.

As if testing it, I kicked off toward the cliff.

My body shot straight upward.

“This is?”

Clearly, the direction I kicked off in was a diagonal slant.

Since I was climbing a cliff that was almost vertical, my body should gradually drift away from the cliff. Naturally, bouncing away was normal.

Yet, I was leaping up the cliff as if it were flat ground.

At the absurd reality, I stopped my feet for a moment.

Naturally, I should have fallen as is.

“What is this?”

[I told you. It was made properly.]

“When a lightness art is made properly, do suction cups form on the soles of the feet?”

But I was standing horizontally on the cliff. If someone looked at me while lying on their side, it was a posture that wouldn’t feel out of place at all.

Even though it was a martial art I was unleashing myself, it felt like my common sense was leaving the building.

[Suction cups, my foot. Call it assimilation. Honestly, the way you talk.]

“Assimilation?”

Different things resemble each other and become the same.

Did it mean my flesh and blood, where blood flowed, suddenly turned to stone?

I didn’t understand.

Sensing my inner thoughts, Master Bodhidharma explained.

[A novice of body-lightening methods focuses on simple leg power. Kicking off solely with the force of the legs. A mid-level practitioner goes further from there to make the body light. Making the body light enough to place it on a thin tree branch, they employ strong leg power to move.]

“And this?”

[That is high-level. The method of assimilation. It can be said that realizing the way to not stop at simply moving the body is the beginning of that state. If there is wind, you receive the help of the wind, and if the stepping place is unfavorable, you become one with the air and borrow the foundation to kick off. It is carrying oneself on the energy that exists in the world.]

“Does that happen as soon as one learns it?”

[Normally, it is natural that it doesn’t. If it worked as soon as one learned it, would any dog or cow be flying around? It works because it is you. Don’t ask others about such things because you’re curious. You’ll get stabbed.]

Master Zhang Sanfeng said as if it were absurd.

Indeed, if this worked as soon as one learned it, everyone would have been flying through the sky comfortably. Why would they run on the ground with difficulty…

Huh?

“……Fly?”

[Is it strange for a fellow with a high state of body-lightening method to fly around?]

“It would be strange if a human flew around, wouldn’t it?”

[That’s for ordinary people. In the first place, martial artists are no different from monsters and chaotic gods to ordinary people. You shouldn’t think based on ordinary people’s standards.]

Stated that way, it seemed correct again. I felt like my common sense was being ground away.

[Once you realize that the energy of heaven and earth is not tied up in one place but forms a giant flow and moves, you will eventually realize the way to carry your body on that flow as well. Reaching that, it can be viewed that you have reached the true state of the Void-Soaring Heavenly Ladder.]

[Void-Soaring Heavenly Ladder, my foot. Just call it Void Walking. It’s confusing, so don’t use terms only used in Shaolin.]

[Haha.]

I should just accept it as it was.

I would park my common sense far away and use it to wrap wraps when my mouth was bored.

Anyway, the reality (the bet) right in front of my eyes was the priority.

I could climb this cliff.

“Hahaha!”

Every time I kicked off, my body shot up vertically. It felt like running on flat ground. No, it was faster.

Cloud-Soaring Golden Light Step. The reason the character for ‘light’ was included in the name of the martial art was not for nothing.

[Fast, isn’t it? If you raise your achievement, a distance of ten zhang will feel like it’s right in front of you.]

[Fundamentally, the Cloud Ladder Stride and the Vajra Immovable Body Method have the subtle principle of movement within stillness. If you wish to use it, you can also use it as footwork, so when the Cloud-Soaring Golden Light Step reaches its peak, enemies facing you will feel like they are dealing with an illusion. For it will look as if you suddenly appeared before their eyes without a sound.]

My masters’ explanations continued one after another.

As the words went on, nothing but admiration came out.

However, the moment I realized I was too distracted by that, I suddenly felt my head spin.

“Hua!”

My breath was cold. Suddenly, the air felt chilly.

Elated, I had leaped up the cliff quickly, and before I knew it, I had entered the clouds. The ground could not even be seen anymore.

In such a place, my mind had faltered.

[Even a martial artist wouldn’t have a whole corpse left if they fell from this height. If one dies from falling, all the bones break from the impact and protrude out of the body, they say?]

Yes! Thank you very much for broadening your disciple’s common sense, Master Zhang Sanfeng!

‘However, I would have been more grateful if you had told me after I finished climbing to the top!’

My mind snapped awake.

If I lost my grip on my mind even for a moment and fell, that day would be the day I went to pay my respects to my masters in heaven.

Ah, since I committed the filial impiety of going before my parents, would I meet Master Heavenly Demon first in hell?

“Hup!”

With the sole determination not to see that sight, I pulled myself together again and leaped upward.

The moment I tore through the clouds that were densely set today and climbed up, I saw him.

“Ack! What is it? A ghost?”

A person who appeared to be a disciple of the Mount Hua Sect.

He looked quite advanced in years, and he was extremely startled upon seeing me.

I was also in a very startled state.

[Why does that guy have his hand on his pants strap in a place like this?]

[Come to think of it, our disciple’s hair looks a bit damp… No. It must be because he came through the clouds. Haha.]

“……Do you masters know the phrase ‘superfluous addition’?”

I didn’t really want to know.

Whether that was before or after.

By the way, don’t people usually not perform natural physiological acts in places like this?

For a person who looked advanced in years, it was a loss of face.

“Hmm.”

By the time I stood on a place where I could comfortably step, the elderly Taoist of advanced years, who was tidying his pants strap over there, had also calmed his startled heart and entered into grasping the situation, making a brain-whirring sound with his mouth.

“Are you human? Or a ghost?”

He stared intently at this side while letting out a groan, and it lasted for a long time. It seemed he was thinking some very surreal thoughts.

Where in the world are ghosts… No, they probably exist. Considering my masters, they must exist.

Even so, to ask a living person if they were a ghost.

“As you can see, I am strictly human.”

“Why does a human brat crawl up from a place like that?”

“Then do ghosts crawl up from there often?”

“I wouldn’t know that either. Since this is the first time I’m seeing this.”

Fortunately, it seemed this elderly Taoist was also seeing it for the first time.

“Hmm……”

As the elderly Taoist pondered again and again.

Clang.

He drew his sword.

“Since someone who doesn’t even look twenty climbed up from there, he couldn’t be human.”

“Excuse me?”

“If I stab and no blood comes out, it’s a ghost. If it comes out, it’s human.”

Stab what?

“I said I’m human!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll stab you gently.”

That sounded very similar to the words ruffians say, ‘I’ll shake you down gently.’

“Even if you stab gently, wouldn’t I die if stabbed in a dangerous spot?”

“Huh?”

Thinking it was a reasonable question, the elderly Taoist tilted his head for a moment.

“Hmm……”

Then he pondered again.

“If no blood comes out, it’s a ghost. If it doesn’t come out, it’s a ghost.”

“What did you do with ‘if blood comes out, it’s human’!”

“I told you not to worry. I’ll stab gently.”

“You’re not listening to me.”

Thanks to my grandfather, I had a thorough respect for the elderly, but this elderly Taoist had crossed the line.

Even so.

‘I can’t win.’

I knew the moment that elderly Taoist held his sword.

This was impossible.

A pressure that weighed down on my limbs and rushed over me. The momentum of someone who had polished his sword on Mount Hua his entire life was no different from a weapon in itself.

Through the listening force learned from Master Zhang Sanfeng, and through the principle of emptiness and fullness learned from Master Heavenly Demon, the sensation read penetrated its essence more clearly and read it starkly.

The sword of the elderly Taoist, who must have devoted his life to training on Mount Hua, was not yet something I could handle.

“Your disciple is thus going to see you, masters.”

[What do you mean ‘going’? Aren’t you going to snap out of it?]

“Pardon?”

[Is what you need right now to beat that fool down? Or is it to first avoid that sword?]

Fight and win?

Impossible.

But if it was to avoid it?

[We taught you everything. This master must have told you? That it was made very well. How great do you think a martial art that I or Bodhidharma said was well-made would be?]

It meant it was a split-second, yet perfect martial art. In Master Bodhidharma’s case, he said he refined even that monstrous martial art, the Supreme Attack, a thousand times because it was insufficient.

I immediately pulled together my mind, which had been scattered by the pressure weighing down on my limbs.

‘Focus!’

Read with Master Zhang Sanfeng’s listening force.

Observe with Master Heavenly Demon’s emptiness.

Master Bodhidharma’s Heavy Earth Divine Art. My trained body reacted and moved.

The single sword strike that rushed through the gap.

Swish!

I avoided it.

Narrowly. By a paper’s margin.

Though it was truly a narrow escape, it proved it.

I could avoid it. And if there was a first time, there could be a second time.

Therefore.

“Run!”

“Hahaha! This Jabu can spread his fame throughout the seas and Martial World in his old age for cutting down and repelling a ghost!”

You said you were going to stab!

I wanted to bicker immediately, but unfortunately, there was no such luxury.

Behind me, who was determined to run and avoid at all costs, an elderly Taoist who revealed himself as Jabu rushed with fire in his eyes.

***

“It seems you won the bet.”

“It was a bet I was bound to win.”

To Adept Zihe’s words about the bet, Baek Mu-ho replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

However, Baek Mu-ho was not assured of victory.

“The problem is that he’s a fellow who can overturn the board at any time, anywhere, with any kind of act. And he’s even more of a fellow to do so when a bet is on the line.”

So when they made a bet on who would arrive at the Mount Hua Sect first, Baek Mu-ho moved along the shortest path without looking back.

It was the path that Adept Zihe and the Mount Hua Sect disciples climbed.

Since it was a path only those skilled in lightness arts could take, there were few stepping places, so it was a path where only one person could climb at a time.

He even cut in front of the Mount Hua Sect disciples waiting on that path to climb. The winner was as good as decided.

So Baek Mu-ho thought.

Yet, he felt somewhat uneasy.

“Huh?”

“There is some commotion…”

Baek Mu-ho, Adept Zihe, and the Mount Hua Sect disciples realized that some noisy sound was echoing by the time they drew close to the Mount Hua Sect.

And a moment later, they could see.

“My word…”

With unknown, bizarre movements, avoiding the sword of the Mount Hua Sect elder, avoiding all attacks by a paper’s margin and playing with him (so it seemed to them), the winner of the bet.