Chapter 5

When I felt that my will and body were becoming more and more solidified, the uncle said that he would teach me internal arts and swordsmanship from now on.
I looked puzzled at his whim, but his answer was the same.
“You don’t expect to be recognized by me if you lose a few pounds.”
I wondered who it was who said that losing a few pounds was enough.
It was the same old story.
I wonder if the drunkard, still holding the bottle in his left hand, even knows how to use a sword.
Whirrrrrrrrrr.
A wooden sword landed at my feet.
“These are the Iron Sword Ten Forms and the Thunderbolt Ten Thunderbolts, the basic swords taught at the Southern Palace. I don’t intend to show them to you twice.”
At that moment, my throat stopped moving and my eyes were drawn to the bottle flying in the distance.
A tinge of sourness flashed across the nape of my neck. I could smell the strong scent of blood. I frowned at the simultaneous onslaught of liquor, but I couldn’t look away.
There was no trace of blood anywhere, but the fact that the blood incense was so strong meant that the blade had been soaked with the scent of countless bloodshed.
On top of that, beads of sweat were dripping from my body.
The knife-like momentum that made the back of my neck stiffen was the kind that couldn’t have come from a drunk.
You see what you know.
You know what you see.
Ten swipes and thirteen swift, lightning-fast slashes later, I watched with my mouth clenched shut.
The two sword techniques he demonstrated were ones I had also mastered.
“See it with your eyes and express it with your body. Tomorrow, we’ll work on swordsmanship together, and I’ll correct your stance. Anything beyond that, you’ll have to learn on your own.”
As he turned away, the old man’s expression was not happy. I could see why.
The Iron Sword Sixty-Six and the Thunderbolt Sixty-Three are good sword techniques. No wonder they’re publicized so that everyone in the Southern Palace can learn them.
Nevertheless, the fact that they were only passing swordsmanship for others remained a regret, but it seems I wasn’t the only one.
I assumed that it was because I was not a member of the direct line of the Southern Palace family that I was unable to learn more than that. I hadn’t mastered the true swordsmanship that only those of my immediate family could master, such as the Spearless Sword, the Thunderbolt Sword, the Emperor Sword Form, and the Heavenly Wind Sword.
And I thought.
“I like it better.”
I felt a sense of sympathy in the back of my mind. The figure of the old man who had practiced and practiced these two sword arts to the point of exhaustion overlapped with my own figure in my previous life.
The Iron Sword Sixty-Six and the Thunderbolt Sixty-Three had been my companions at the South Palace Wall in my previous life.
For the time being, they were enough, never considered insufficient or lacking.
The person of Nan Gongban.
Or his uncle’s background.
The swordsmanship that was marginalized by others.
All of them appealed to me. I’m one of those lonely humans who are just like him.
* * *
Just as I was about to grip the wooden sword and focus on my swordsmanship, my uncle’s expression hardened.
“Grandmaster?”
I nodded as he grabbed my wrist. It was I, the widely recognized Grandmaster of the Southern Palace Family.
I wondered what his face would look like when he saw his nephew’s talent, which was said to be less than stellar.
“You’re terrible. Who taught you to be a grandmaster?”
The sigh was not directed at the size or neatness of the danshen. It was a rebuke of something essential.
Puzzled by the sigh, I thought about how I had come to master the art.
Where did I learn it?
“You should learn it. You are of the same Southern Palace family, and you should learn the techniques of the Southern Palace family in time so that you won’t be delayed.”
There was one memory that flashed through his mind like a lantern. I remembered nodding my head and exclaiming in gratitude at the suggestion of a cheerful child, plucked from the fragments of my past life.
“Someone told me that the direct descendants of the Southern Palace Family start with the Great Yan Gong. The Great Yan Gong of the Spear Palace and the Great Yan Gong of the Thunder Emperor. The two are right around the corner.”
If it weren’t for the fact that he had only mastered the basic kung fu, he wouldn’t have been able to sense the annoyance in his uncle’s expression.
“You taught me in a very…… nasty way, nasty way.”
I couldn’t say anything back.
The fact that the inner core technique he had learned, which was only a basic technique, had been twisted somewhere.
“I’m only going to cultivate at the lower levels now, but an Inner Defense Technique that can block the path to the Spear Bow and Thunder Emperor Divine Technique? Who are you?”
“Blocking the path to the Thunder God Realm.
“Even if he becomes a peak master after a decade or so, it will take him twice as long as others to manifest his full strength, let alone the poisonous vein pain.”
So it was.
In my previous life, I was a swordsman of exceptional prowess, but I was a poor practitioner. The inability to back up my exceptional swordsmanship had caused the monkfish master, Huang Tianhou, to lament every moment.
“I feel like I’m wearing the wrong clothes. I wonder if the Zheng Ning Family has taught me the right inner core techniques.”
At the time, I shrugged it off, thinking that my talent was just not good enough.
I used to laugh it off, saying that it was nothing.
But not anymore.
Perhaps my fate has been twisted and turned even further since the moment I encountered the master I had come to know as a favor.
“Even now, I will teach you a new method of inner qigong. It may not be as good as the Great Spear God Gong or the Thunder Emperor God Gong, but it will still be far better than the Great Yan Gong you’ve mastered.”
As he said this, there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. It was the first time he had ever looked at me.
“No.”
“Don’t be so stubborn, if you learn it now, it will be more helpful for you to develop your strength…….”
“That’s fine, I’ll take care of the judging, and as for the swordsmanship, Iron Sword Sixty and Island Warfare Thirty-three are enough for me, let’s bet on that.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hear more of his words; I just didn’t like the pity and sympathy in his gaze.
At my words, the old man stared at the water, then nodded.
“Still the same damned flesh. You’ll have to sharpen your two swords while you chop it up.”
His expression returned to that of the thunder beetle as he stared at me. I felt myself relax.
The Great Duke is broken somewhere.
Two sword skills that the Grand Duke is not good enough to master.
But the uncle doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that the history of the Great Duke that he’s only glimpsed is not only in the lower battlefield, but is spread throughout his body, in every vein, in every cell.
It’s a trick that even the most brilliant minds can’t easily find when they look at me.
It is a skill that I have agonized over and honed on the battlefield for over a decade, and I will not allow it to be dismissed as a broken skill.
After that day, I became even more desperate.
I ran and ran and ran.
I slashed and stabbed, and my steps were relentless.
I honed my greatsword without ceasing, building up my strength and summoning a sword the size of a chestnut.
His once pure tofu-like grip had become callused, and the thick chunks of metal had been charred beyond recognition. Where they had been burned away, they had been filled with muscles that swung, slashed, and ran, until they were nothing more than inanimate objects.
The day after I collapsed in exhaustion and fell asleep, feeling less tired than the day before, I heard a word from my uncle.
“Do you realize that when you collapse, the nannies and maids have to work overtime to carry you up and loosen up your stiff muscles? You’re a pain in the ass, anyway.”
There was a flurry of discomfort at first. Even when I told the nannies and assistants not to, they didn’t stop.
As usual, when I let my guard down after a grueling training session, I would feel lighter the next day.
Half a year went by like that.
* * *
“……There are rumors of suspicious movements in and around Anhui Province.”
“Suspicious movements?”
“I think it’s the greenery. The number of raids on the capital and the upper reaches has been increasing lately.”
“Heh…….”
“The recent damage alone is too much to ignore.”
ChangcheonNamgungse.
Elders and leaders, including Namgung Mu Baek, sat down to discuss and resolve important matters in family meetings like this every day.
Nangong Mu Bai frowned as he skimmed the report handed to him by the fifth elder.
“Dispatch thirty more Chang Tian Swordsmen and a hundred more Iron Swordsmen to ensure that no damage is done to the top and the country.”
“Yes, sir, go.”
With that, the meeting was about to conclude.
“The Second Confucius, Namgung Hyuk, is looking beyond the Heavenly Wind Sword Technique to the Emperor Sword Technique. Isn’t he a genius? It’s like he’s looking at his younger self.”
“Why are you talking about the Fourth Duke without mentioning the Fourth Duke?”
“Nonsense. Like the Second Duke, the one who is the fastest to adopt the Southern Palace’s swordsmanship as his own should be the Sovereign.”
“Swordsmanship is swordsmanship. Don’t you think that the 3rd Duke, who has already reached the 3rd level of the Southern Palace, is even more talented?”
The discussion lasted longer than the main meeting, as each of them wondered if there was a next generation they were pushing for, and what there was so much to say about the story of the family’s Confuciuses once it broke out.
Then someone spoke up.
“The rumor I’ve heard lately is that the Grand Duke hasn’t left his training grounds.”
There was a hush in the air.
“That can’t be good news, you bastard…… No, not if you’re sober.”
“It’s not good news. You can’t even stand up to the Second and Third Dukes with such talent. You’ll only cause trouble.”
The majority of the Elders were unimpressed with the Grand Duke. Apparently, his behavior had already cemented his place in their minds. In a negative way.
As he spoke, the Elders began to rise to their feet, uncomfortable.
“Bunlan, Bunlan. You still swallow what’s sweet and spit out what’s bitter.”
The man sitting at the far end of the room, swigging from a flask and working his uvula, smiled cynically, his face pale.
He was pale.
“What do you think of Jia Zhu, does he think the Grand Duke is nothing but a troublemaker?”
An Bai’s gaze was fixed on the Grand Duke.