Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The child’s eyes sparkled as he stared at the wooden sword. His pupils, like a cluster of stars, contained a power that I could not resist.
I carried him to the south palace wall where he could sit and lean against it.
I sat him down on the cotton cloth I’d brought to wipe his sweat, and then brought his face up to my nose and raised the Zimjit double heart.
“I will show you, but you must never, ever, ever approach.”
“Hmph!”
Hagan replied, well enough.
I walked to the center of the stage, watching the frightened child stare at the wooden sword. The child’s innocence disarms me.
This is not who I am.
In denial, I grabbed the wooden sword.
The wooden sword winds around my hand.
A wooden sword that he hadn’t held since An Baek told him that he had mastered the art.
He remembered how An Baek had sternly warned him to never swing the sword when he wasn’t looking, but he couldn’t be bothered with that for the sake of a couple of blows.
Grab a wooden sword and slash. Stabbing, swinging.
That was swordsmanship.
That should have been all that needed to be shown.
But as he gripped the wooden sword, the swordsmanship flashed through his mind.
The Iron Sword Ten Forms.
And the Ten Thunderbolts.
Of the two, I favored the Iron Sword Ten Forms.
Iron Sword Ten-Style.
It is a crude and rough sword art.
The joys and sorrows of an iron sword, forged by endless hammering and endless quenching.
The Iron Sword Sixty-Six, which can be said to contain the life of a single iron sword.
One wishes for it to be unbreakable, but flexible.
Many do not want it to be bent and stiff from the start.
The motto of the iron sword is.
“To bend but not to break is the life of an iron sword.”
The wooden sword I wielded, blade-less, began to unfold.
The walls of my former life’s southern palace were imbued with the profoundness I had spent a lifetime melting.
It slashed through the air.
It slashed and stabbed at the same time.
He twisted his waist, utilizing his taut muscles, but even as they loosened, the wooden sword never stopped moving.
I remembered wielding it on the bloody battlefield.
If I don’t swing, I’m dead.
If I didn’t die, those I shared life with yesterday would die.
I had to swing again if I didn’t want to lose them.
The spirit of the South Palace Wall was embedded in the life of a single iron sword.
The crude tip of the sword was filled with killing intent.
The monotonous tip of the sword was transformed into an extremely concise and practical swordsmanship.
The emotions that were contained in the tip of the sword were excluded and could only be wielded.
The bowsword was designed to save lives.
A killing sword with the will to kill.
The tip of the sword is pointing somewhere.
Thud!
At the same time, I coughed up blood and flew away.
* * *
An Baek, who usually didn’t show much emotion, unknowingly said, “You’re an arrogant nephew.
I didn’t expect him to say no.
When he replied with an impassive look and expression, Anbaek clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“You’ve been acting impatient lately, An Daihao.”
The nanny looked at the back of her nephew’s disappearing figure, then looked back at An Baek with a nonchalant expression.
I see.
I guess I could be seen as a pushover, she thought.
It had only been half a year since he’d returned from his post-amnesia bender.
“I don’t think anyone would say no if you just said you’d be patient and then went back to digging up old wounds.”
Hagiya.
An-baek’s guardianship means sparking a rivalry for Gaju. And he must have already felt the bloodshed that comes with the competition.
I was a little hasty.
I was slowly strangling him unintentionally.
“I have no choice but to admit …….”
“Is it because of the other masters?”
An Baek nodded heavily.
The sight of the other sons of the Southern Palace slowly gaining ground had made him feel impatient. Especially the recent conversations with the elders had been particularly frustrating, and the efforts of his nephew, who seemed to have come to his senses, were not too shabby either, and he was futilely clinging to the title of Grandmaster.
If only he could discover his talent for swordsmanship.
It filled him with a strange sense of hope that it would never be too late.
Swallowing his regret, An Baek let out a pained sound.
“That’s quite a change, Grand Duke, you change with every passing day. I can’t begin to express my grief at the loss of your wife and the enormous responsibility that comes with the title of Grand Duke, but I know one thing for sure.”
“I wonder what ……that is.”
“Because of the deeply rooted trust of the Great Council of An, the Grand Duke is able to stand right now, so…… will come to you first if you wait a little longer.”
A nanny who has been cleaning up feces since her sister gave birth to her nephew. An Baek, the nanny who had watched the Grand Duke for much longer than she had, her words struck a chord in An Baek’s heart.
The corners of An Baek’s mouth relaxed, and he was able to smile as he looked at the nanny.
It was obvious.
“……Crazy.”
He raised his wooden sword and swung it in the air, and Jill smelled blood on the tip. It was like that moment when An Bai had faced the Sapphires and the Madoffs. It was only ten sword strikes, and it was only a basic sword, but An Bai could feel it.
That’s not the sword form I showed him.
The tip of the sword pointed at someone as if it had a will of its own. To the cute kid standing closest to him.
At the same time, a shadow fell on the ground where An Baek was standing.
* * * *
I opened my eyes. A feeling of exhaustion took over my entire body.
The power in his body was empty, as if it had been sucked out from somewhere, and the streams of power that had been distributed between his veins and arteries had dried up.
He must have subconsciously contained it as he extended his iron sword.
Mm-hmm.
After blinking a couple of times, I realized that this was my bed.
Both palms tingled at the same time.
“You’re a rag.”
The familiar voice came from somewhere and I turned to look at my palms.
All the calluses had peeled away, revealing a palm that looked like a rag.
“I’m sure I told you, don’t grab the sword while I’m gone.”
I didn’t blink at the bluntness of his tone.
“I don’t know what they say about not holding a sword in a swordsman’s house. It’s no different than leaving a cat with a fish and telling it not to eat it.”
I thought it was a plausible excuse, and thought I’d get away with it, but my uncle shook his head.
“Even though the child could have gotten hurt.”
He looked up at that.
“The tip of your sword was pointed at him in the end. If I hadn’t shown up, he would have been seriously injured.”
……I really owe him big time this time. Judging from the way he was talking, the old man had shown up at just the right time to save him from being defecated on.
“I won’t do that next time…….”
“Where did you learn that?”
I couldn’t tell him straight away. Even if I did, he wouldn’t believe me.
“I just tried to copy the sword my uncle showed me.”
“Do you mean to say that it is the Iron Sword Sixty-Six, for you have never taught me such a sword will.”
“I would say it’s all in the mind of the recipient.”
The old man’s eyes grew complex at that.
“The sword …… was a terrible, heartless sword. It was a dull, dull, dull sword.”
He sighed deeply at the same time.
“Is it all right?”
“What’s not to like?”
I looked into his eyes, which held a heavy atmosphere, and I couldn’t help but turn away.
In those eyes.
Not shallow pity.
Not cheap pity.
It was a look from the past.
It was the kind of look I’d only seen in my family.
Yeah.
It was probably worry, or something like that.
“Where’s the child?”
I changed the subject. At the same time, I quickly dusted myself off and stood up.
Something of an unbearable, itchy nature was tugging at my heart, and it was very hard to bear. Apparently recognizing my appearance, my uncle spoke quietly as I started to rise.
“Don’t be hard on yourself. Becoming your guardian won’t change anything immediately.”
At that, I stopped.
“You want to protect him, don’t you?”
……when.
“South Palace Wall, you can’t take your eyes off the Fifth Duke and Madame Bai, I don’t know why, but you should think about it. There’s no need to twist my words to mean anything other than that I stand behind you. Your words and deeds will only give you strength.”
He seems to have noticed my interrupted gaze. An Baek turned to see if he had said all he wanted to say.
“The child is fine, so take care of yourself first.”
Leaving me dumbfounded, An Baek opened the door and walked out.
* * *
After a few days of rest and care for my body, I left my footprints in the haze, my muscles taut and swollen rather than flabby.
I could clearly feel my last conversation with Anbaek, my uncle.
Guardianship.
It wasn’t worth it.
Someone would be guardian.
When the race for the family name starts in earnest.
It quickly turns into a political fight.
Of course, it’s a necessary fight. But we decided it was too early.
The ideology of establishing the right family.
and political views on the orthodoxy of the Southern Palace.
As the two sides begin to realize their mutual advantage, their eyes will light up and they will lunge.
The ones who will suffer the slashes and festering wounds are none other than the Confuciuses of the Southern Palace.
Me, the Second, Third, and Fourth Dukes.
And the Namgung Byeok, the Fifth Duke.
I, the former me, was never caught in the vortex. No, I never was, nor was I ever meant to be.
No talent, no connections, no background.
There was certainly no one to take me by the hand and lead me, nor did they seem to think I was worth using, or even willing to use me.
Still, it must be a sign of success that I had risen to the top of the ranks of the Heavenly Master, and that the great masters of my family reached out to me first.
Anyway.
Now was not the time.
It was definitely the right time.
“You are of the same Southern Palace family, and you should learn the techniques of the Southern Palace in time, so that you will not be delayed.”
The scene in my mind was vaguely recreating itself.
At that moment, a child was handing him a secret weapon.
There was no favor or affection in the way the child looked at his brother. It was not the look of a child of ten years old.
“……Namgung Dog.”
The Fourth Duke, Namgunggye.