Changes (2)

The issue of reassigning Seonu Jin and Hae Cheong-yeon to a different squad could not be decided on the spot in the end.

It was simply too sudden a matter, too weighty to resolve lightly.

Seol Pung said that the squad leaders were about to conduct a search for the Iron Fiend and asked that a decision be made only after that was finished, giving the two of them some time.

Then he immediately returned to headquarters to prepare for the search.

After Seol Pung left, silence lingered for a while in the Thirteenth Unit’s waiting room.

They did not want to send the two of them to another squad, but knowing they had no real justification to stop it, none of them could bring themselves to speak.

After a brief moment, Bi Sayoung was the first to open his mouth lightly.

“Tch, this is why people shouldn’t be too outstanding. If you stick out, you’re bound to get smacked down. Who told you to be so damned exceptional, you brat?”

It was a joking remark filled with regret.

At that, faint smiles appeared on the lips of the previously heavy-faced squad members.

Cheon Jueun also smiled, sounding a little hurt as she picked up Bi Sayoung’s words.

“Right. Why are you both so outstanding that you can’t even stay in the same squad anymore? It’s really upsetting.”

Seonu Jin gave a small laugh as he replied.

“That’s why I tried not to reveal my brilliance to the world, but I ended up being found out. Krr, is this why absolute beings can’t help but be lonely?”

At Seonu Jin’s playful rambling, Bi Sayoung shot back with a look of utter disdain.

“Oh, shut the hell up.”

As Seonu Jin joked and Bi Sayoung snapped back, the squad members laughed. In that moment, Bae Jonggwan, who had been seriously thinking about something, spoke to Cheon Jueun.

“Miss Cheon, I intend to cut back on my training from now on.”

Understanding what he meant, Seonu Jin and Bi Sayoung instinctively squeezed their eyes shut.

It sounded like he was about to say he had to avoid becoming too outstanding so he could stay with Cheon Jueun for a long time.

They felt they had to stop him quickly before the mood turned strange.

“Jonggwan, that’s—”

But before he could, Cheon Jueun answered with a bright smile.

“Oh my, I’m going to train even harder, you know? It’s so cool to have your skills recognized so much that you’re being mentioned as a candidate for squad captain. I’d like Young Master Bae to be like that too.”

At her words, Bae Jonggwan looked stunned, then sank back into thought.

While everyone else held up their thumbs toward Cheon Jueun, Na Seoyu asked with a regretful look.

“Then has Young Master Seonu made up his mind?”

Seonu Jin looked into Na Seoyu’s eyes for a moment, then answered slowly.

“I’m still not sure. As the captain said, it does seem better to stay in the Thirteenth Unit, even if it’s in another squad, than to be dispatched off to some other Flying Dragon Unit altogether… but I want to think it over a little more.”

Everyone silently nodded at Seonu Jin’s words.

Only Hae Cheong-yeon gazed at Seonu Jin without saying anything.

Once he left the waiting room, Seonu Jin headed first to the Seventh Squad’s shared storage.

His feelings were a bit tangled, but there was something he had to take care of before anything else.

Inside the warehouse, standing in front of the elixir vault, Seonu Jin rubbed his palms together and muttered.

“Well then, squad reassignment is one thing, but how about I finally push my internal energy a bit higher?”

During this latest deployment, Seonu Jin had managed to break through the wall of seventy years of internal energy.

Barely two to three months after stepping into the realm of Peak, he had already elevated himself another full stage.

It was all thanks to Mukrang’s instruction.

Such rapid progress was both astonishing and deeply meaningful to Seonu Jin.

In his previous life, he had already reached the peak of the top first-rate realm.

He had even stood just a short step away from Peak.

Because of that, the fact that he had reached Peak in this life had been something he could more or less accept.

But breaking through the wall beyond that was a completely different story.

That was purely an achievement of this life.

Seonu Jin, who had grown at a breakneck pace in this life thanks to his memories of his last life, now saw that he could advance quickly enough even without relying on those memories.

‘So if I can just maintain this pace of growth to some extent…’

If that was possible, then it might not be impossible to surpass the wall of Super-Peak within five years.

Then the plan of going on the offensive against the Demonic Sect would gain real viability.

Moreover, he had Black Wolf on his side.

If he could just unravel the secret of the Black Wolf Sword…

Then perhaps, like the current number one under Heaven, Sword Sovereign Ban Jungyang, he too might obtain the Sword God’s legacy.

It felt as though a light of hope were shining brightly just ahead.

At that moment—

Sensing another presence entering the warehouse, Seonu Jin turned toward the door.

The person who opened it and stepped inside was none other than Hae Cheong-yeon.

“Miss Cheong-yeon?”

When Seonu Jin called to her happily, she spoke in a natural tone, as if she had already known he would be there.

“Elixirs, is it? I suspected as much. It seems you really did break through the wall of seventy years, didn’t you?”

At her question, Seonu Jin scratched his head with an awkward smile.

As expected, there was no fooling her eyes.

“Yes. I’d planned to surprise everyone during the next spar, but I suppose I was already found out.”

Cheong-yeon simply nodded in silence.

No particular change in her expression could be sensed.

Now that she had let her bangs fall again, it was not easy to read her face.

Feeling a faint regret that he could no longer clearly see her beautiful features, Seonu Jin asked her,

“But what brings you here, Miss Cheong-yeon?”

She answered just as casually.

“I came to break through the wall as well.”

But Seonu Jin could not possibly be casual after hearing that.

“…Pardon?”

When he blinked and asked again, Hae Cheong-yeon replied once more.

“I also broke through the wall of seventy years during this deployment. So I came to take some elixirs.”

“……”

Seonu Jin stared at her with a dazed face.

His head throbbed.

As far as he knew, the time when she had stepped into the Peak realm was not much different from his own.

And yet she had already broken through to the next stage?

He had managed it only because he had encountered the fortunate opportunity that was Black Wolf, but she had done it without anything like that?

Stammering from shock, Seonu Jin asked again,

“M–Miss… did you perhaps gain some kind of fortuitous encounter?”

But Cheong-yeon merely shook her head as if it were nothing.

“No. I was just training, and it happened.”

She had broken through the wall just by training.

The wall of seventy years of internal energy, at that.

Suddenly, the earlier emotion he had felt at his rapid breakthrough seemed to drain away.

An odd thought crossed his mind.

Had the wall of seventy years always been something anyone could cross easily?

Had he been moved all this time over something anyone could do?

But he only had to think about it for a moment to know.

Absolutely not.

Most Peak masters stopped at the threshold of Peak and were unable to cross that wall for the rest of their lives.

So then what in the world was this young lady…?

He suddenly remembered how, back then, Sword Saint Hae Unbaek had bragged like a doting fool about her.

He had boasted that in all his life he had never seen a girl as beautiful, wise, and talented as she was.

At the time, Seonu Jin had dismissed it as the excessive daughter-obsession of a doting father, but perhaps it had simply been the plain, objective truth.

Gulping, Seonu Jin barely managed to regain his composure and spoke.

“Congratulations, Miss. That is an incredibly fast advancement.”

Hae Cheong-yeon answered with a faint smile.

“I thought so too, but now that I look at Young Master Seonu, maybe not so much.”

The two of them each took the elixirs they needed and stepped back outside.

At that moment, Hae Cheong-yeon suddenly called out to him.

“Young Master Seonu.”

“Yes?”

Hae Cheong-yeon gazed at Seonu Jin in silence for a moment.

Then she finally opened her mouth.

“Are you… going to accept Captain Sa’s proposal from Lady Tang?”

At that question, Seonu Jin gave a bitter smile and shook his head.

“I don’t know. It does seem like a far better choice than being transferred off to another Flying Dragon Unit… but I still find myself hesitating.”

Hae Cheong-yeon asked again.

“Because of Miss Seoyu…?”

Seonu Jin could not help but be startled when Na Seoyu’s name came from her lips.

She had known even about that.

But he soon accepted it.

Because if it was Cheong-yeon, it made sense that she might already have figured it out.

After all, she read right through him.

He answered with an embarrassed smile.

“Ah, so you knew even that. Goodness, this is a bit embarrassing. Yes, well. I don’t want to be separated from Captain Seol Pung and the other squad members either, but… that is the biggest reason, yes.”

Hae Cheong-yeon quietly gazed at Seonu Jin, who smiled so innocently.

She suddenly felt it was truly fortunate that she had let her bangs down again.

This way, he could not see her eyes right now.

Her chest… hurt too much.

Barely holding herself back from clutching at the throbbing pain in her heart, Hae Cheong-yeon suddenly asked again,

“What about… just confessing?”

Seonu Jin exclaimed in shock.

“Wh–what? C–confess?!”

Confess?

In two lifetimes, Seonu Jin had never once dated a woman. The word itself was beyond his imagination.

Just hearing those two syllables—

Just imagining that moment—made his whole body stiffen.

He felt more afraid than when he had stood before Masked Demon Lord Sa Won-yang.

Watching him like that, Hae Cheong-yeon bit her lip.

To her, the simple, honest look on Seonu Jin’s face—on the man who always showed only wisdom and courage no matter what happened—struck her heart all the more painfully.

So Hae Cheong-yeon opened her mouth without even realizing it.

“If it’s not a feeling you mean to keep to yourself forever, you have to confess at some point, don’t you? If you end up moving to another squad, wouldn’t it be better to know Miss Seoyu’s feelings before that?”

While Seonu Jin stood stunned by that question, Hae Cheong-yeon quickly turned around and hurried away from him.

She had never felt so despicable.

She knew perfectly well that Na Seoyu would not accept his confession, yet she was maneuvering to bring Seonu Jin’s feelings to a dead end.

‘This is the worst.’

She could not believe this hateful version of herself.

She had always thought she would never be like this.

From childhood, Hae Cheong-yeon had always been interested in things different from everyone else, and had always been more talented than others. At some point she had begun to think that way.

That she was different from other people.

That she would not live like everyone else.

That she would never surrender herself to emotion over reason.

But she had been wrong.

After walking for a long time, when Seonu Jin was finally out of sight, Hae Cheong-yeon collapsed where she stood.

Her whole body had no strength left.

Clutching her throbbing chest, she murmured,

“Pathetic. You’re so pathetic, Hae Cheong-yeon.”

How had she ended up like this?

When…?

She suddenly recalled the moment she had first felt drawn to Seonu Jin.

At first, she had thought it was nothing more than a strong curiosity.

Just a fleeting interest that would soon fade, as it always had.

Later, even when she had felt her feelings grow as she watched him from his side, she had dismissed it as nothing more than an illusion caused by admitting that she admired him.

She had told herself it was a shallow emotion she could erase at will.

But during this deployment, when she had thought he might have died, Hae Cheong-yeon had had no choice but to admit it.

Just imagining that he might be dead made it so hard to breathe that she felt she would suffocate.

Her feelings had grown that deep.

They had become so uncontrollable that she could casually do things she had always despised.

She was… utterly pathetic.

“Phewwww.”

I opened my half-lidded eyes and slowly pushed myself up.

A vigor I had never felt before filled my entire body.

It was the power of a full eighty years of internal energy.

It had only been about seven months since I had come to the front lines as a second-rate with the body of a pig, and now I had reached a level where I could vie on equal terms with First Squad Captain Han Gyoseong—hailed as a genius even within the Qingcheng Sect.

That meant I was the strongest among the Thirteenth Flying Dragon Unit members, aside from Captain Seol Pung.

It was hard not to feel encouraged.

Cracking my neck, I walked out to the center of the training ground.

“Well then, let’s see what this eighty years of internal energy feels like.”

I immediately drew my sword and, dancing like a sword dancer, ran through the Seonu Thirteen Swords and the Four-One Sword Method to check my condition.

My body, moving powerfully and flexibly, felt endlessly free.

The distinctly heightened senses made a joyful smile rise to my lips all on their own.

But while I was grinning in deep satisfaction, I soon let out a long sigh.

Because Hae Cheong-yeon’s words suddenly came back to me.

‘If it’s not a feeling you mean to keep to yourself forever, you have to confess at some point, don’t you? If you end up moving to another squad, wouldn’t it be better to know Miss Seoyu’s feelings before that?’

“Mm.”

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed she was right.

If I wasn’t going to keep it locked inside forever, then I would have to confess someday, wouldn’t I?

On top of that, if I went to a different squad, I would see her far less often than I did now. This might well be my last chance.

So yes, it did seem like confessing now was the right thing to do.

The problem was that I had absolutely no confidence.

I felt unbearably anxious—and afraid.

Swallowing hard, I thought,

‘Do I look like a decent man in Miss Na’s eyes right now?’

I tried to gauge myself coolly.

To my surprise… I didn’t think I was in such bad shape.

I had slimmed down now, and these days I’d heard I was quite handsome more than a few times, hadn’t I?

There had even been several young ladies who had confessed to me.

And in terms of martial arts, I was now a proper Peak master.

I had earned the epithet “Flying-Heaven Black Wolf,” and other squads were trying to recruit me as vice-captain or even captain.

Thinking that far, I suddenly felt confidence rising in me. The eighty years of internal energy packed into my dantian felt like sheer confidence itself.

I clenched my fist before I knew it and muttered,

“Right, I can do this. I’ve finally become a man who can proudly confess to Miss Na!”

Then I turned my gaze toward the direction of the quarters where Miss Na would be.

Today—when my internal energy had reached a full eighty years—

Today, it seemed, was destined to be the day I confessed to her.