Return of the Mount Hua Sect [EN]: Chapter 111

“This is…”

Jin Geum-ryong watched the red color appear in the snowy scene he had made.

It was just a small, faint blossom.

It was like a drop of blood on pure white snow. A small red dot, but very red.

Quickly, that red dot became the shape of a plum blossom.

One blossom. Then another. Suddenly, plum blossoms opened and mixed with his snowy scene.

Melting away.

Like snow melting in warm spring sun, the snowy scenes where the red plum blossoms appeared disappeared gently.

“Plum blossoms?”

He had heard Mount Hua could not grow plum blossoms anymore. That’s why people thought Mount Hua could never become strong again.

The plum blossom was definitely the symbol of Mount Hua. A Mount Hua that could not grow these flowers was not the same Mount Hua as before.

But right now, plum blossoms from Mount Hua, which everyone thought were gone, were blooming again in front of Jin Geum-ryong.

And they were so bright and beautiful.

“Eek!”

He couldn’t believe it.

He could almost understand how Chung Myung’s sword could make plum blossoms again.

But that wasn’t what Jin Geum-ryong couldn’t understand.

It was that his snowy scenes, which he had worked so hard to make, were melting because of Mount Hua’s plum blossoms.

“Why?”

The Snowflower Twelve Swords.

This sword style held Jongnam’s hard work from the last hundred years. It was a new way of fighting with swords, holding the best parts of all Jongnam’s sword styles. It proved Jongnam’s swords were getting better, right?

Even if Mount Hua’s plum blossom sword skill, which sounded like an old story, was used again, the Snowflower Twelve Swords should be much stronger.

They couldn’t lose to something old and outdated like that!

But still… Why was this happening?

Melting away.

Falling apart.

As soon as his pure white snowy scene touched Chung Myung’s red plum blossoms, it disappeared completely.

“Why?”

Jin Geum-ryong’s eyes began to waver.

He couldn’t fight with a better sword than this. It was so complete, it was almost beyond perfect. But why couldn’t it even beat those weak plum blossoms?

Crushing.

The Snowflower Twelve Swords.

Twisting.

Jongnam’s sword.

Falling apart.

His pride.

“Uh…”

Everything he had made was now breaking apart and turning into those red plum blossoms.

“Whyyyyyyyy!”

Jin Geum-ryong screamed, and his voice echoed across Mount Hua.

Chung Myung swung his sword, his eyes half-closed. From the end of his sword, small branches of red plum blossoms opened in groups. Jin Geum-ryong’s snowy scenes, when the plum blossoms touched them, twisted and broke easily.

“Shell.”

It was just an empty shell. No, to be exact, it was like a copy of a shell, pretending to be a shell.

The people of the world misunderstood the swords of Mount Hua. Even the disciples of Mount Hua misunderstood their own swords.

They thought the Plum Blossom Sword skill, or rather, the swords of Mount Hua, were swords that made the shape of plum blossoms. Swords that copied the amazing and beautiful sight of plum blossoms falling.

Many people wrongly thought that Mount Hua’s swords became perfect by making more beautiful and detailed plum blossom shapes.

But, was that really the case?

Mount Hua was a Taoist group. All the swords of Mount Hua were just ways to understand the Tao.

Wudang focused on Taiji as their base.

Jeomchang focused on the Sun.

Gongtong focused on the Five Elements.

The Taoist groups in the world were like different parts of nature. Their main goal was to show the Tao in their own actions.

But Mount Hua was different.

Mount Hua only seemed to focus on the plum blossom in their swords.

When Wudang’s swords became the best, they were like Taiji. When Jeomchang’s swords became the best, they were like the Sun. And Gongtong’s swords showed the rules of the Five Elements in the world.

But only Mount Hua was the plum blossom. Just the plum blossom.

This made Mount Hua different from other Taoist groups. People said they were more interested in things of the world, and loved what was amazing and beautiful.

But was that really the case?

Did the swords of Mount Hua really only pursue the shape of the plum blossom?

“There’s no way.”

Everyone was wrong. Swinging the sword again and again, making plum blossoms bloom, after spending his whole life with Mount Hua’s swords and finally reaching a level no one else had, he understood.

Mount Hua’s swords were never trying to just copy the plum blossom.

The swords of Mount Hua did not imitate the plum blossom. The swords of Mount Hua bloomed the plum blossom.

“Not the plum blossom.”

It was ‘blooming.’

“Blooming.”

It was the birth of life.

The result of waiting, finally blooming after getting through the long winter.

Because Mount Hua had many plum blossoms, they used plum blossoms in their swords. If they could make new life bloom from their sword, what flower it looked like didn’t matter.

The essence of Mount Hua’s swordplay was ‘blooming.’

People who only focused on the beauty of the plum blossoms and the power of the sword could never understand the real meaning of Mount Hua’s swordplay.

If someone knew that Mount Hua’s swords were not about plum blossoms but about ‘blooming’… Yes, if someone was as skilled as Chung Myung, they didn’t need to worry about different sword styles.

Even if it wasn’t the Plum Blossom Sword skill, or the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Swordplay. From the Seven Plum Swords, the Falling Blossom Sword, even the Six Harmony Sword, plum blossoms bloomed.

That was the real meaning of Mount Hua’s swordplay.

That’s what people who followed Mount Hua should remember.

People who didn’t know this and only focused on the beauty they could see would be lost in that beauty forever.

Yes.

Like Jin Geum-ryong now.

Like the Snowflower Twelve Swords they had created.

Chung Myung looked at the Jongnam students who were staring without expression at the fighting area.

“Watch.”

How your swords collapse.

Human memory is strange. In this fight that would decide Jongnam’s future, seeing Jongnam’s swords broken by Chung Myung’s brighter red swords would become a mark they could never forget, stuck in their minds forever.

Every time they used their swords, they would remember this scene. Every time they practiced, they would try to copy what they saw without even realizing it.

In the end, even the strength they thought they had would not be able to overcome this sword.

More splendidly. Even more splendidly.

But at the end of that, there was nothing. All that existed was emptiness.

The more they tried to be beautiful and amazing, the more Jongnam would lose their sword skills and get into more trouble.

Even if people they trusted turned against them.

Even if they lost the sword skills that were most important to their group.

Even if a terrible enemy attacked their main place.

Mount Hua would not disappear.

If the spirit of Mount Hua, what Mount Hua was trying to achieve, stayed alive. Just like plum blossoms that lose their flowers but survive the winter and bloom again, Mount Hua would become famous again.

But what if they lost their swords? What if they lost what they should pursue? What if they even abandoned their true meaning?

Even if no enemy attacked them, the group would fall apart by itself.

This sword was now like a poison going into Jongnam’s spirit, becoming a bad luck charm that would control their future forever.

“Watch!”

See clearly!

What you tried to take. What you wanted so much.

I will show you.

This will be like chains that you can never break, the greatest payback for your foolishness.

Chung Myung’s sword moved in the sky with amazing beauty. From the end of his sword, small plum blossom starts opened.

One blossom. Then another.

The plum blossoms kept blooming.

The flowers opened, and they spread their life into the world.

First there was Wuji, then it split into Yin and Yang to make Taiji. Taiji then split into the Five Elements. The Five Elements made up the world, and life began in that world. It keeps going. The world is always being born again.

This blooming showed the Tao that Mount Hua’s first teachers had tried to understand.

Chung Myung looked at the Mount Hua students. Their faces, staring without expression at the Mount Hua swords, made Chung Myung feel strangely sad. A small sadness touched his heart. He wished they could have learned this sooner, in better times.

“This is also my atonement.”

He should have taught them this, but he couldn’t before.

So, look at it now.

This is what you have lost.

This is where you should have been.

“Ah….”

Hyun Jong sighed. He didn’t know why he felt like this. What he saw went beyond thinking and touched his heart.

Plum blossoms were blooming everywhere.

On Mount Hua, which was still empty and sad, plum blossoms that shouldn’t be blooming yet were blooming a lot.

And there it was. A spring that felt like it would never come. A spring that didn’t come even when the seasons changed. A spring that he had waited for since he was a young boy with pink cheeks, then a strong young man, then a middle-aged man with worries, and finally an old man with white hair and wrinkles.

The spring he had waited and wished for so much, but couldn’t see until now, was right there. He remembered the cold winters, the empty training grounds, the fading hope. And now, this spring.

Tears filled Hyun Jong’s eyes. It was here. The Mount Hua he had wanted to see so badly. The swords of Mount Hua he had waited for his whole life.

It was right here.

Hyun Jong smiled. Tears were still running down his face, but he smiled brighter than ever, his face wet with tears.

“Mount Hua.”

We are here.

After getting through those hard years, again and again, the flowers finally bloomed here.

“The Mount Hua Sect Does Not Disappear.”

Because of his life, his patience, and his waiting, the first plum blossom in a hundred years bloomed here.

Disappearing.

The snowy scenes Jin Geum-ryong made disappeared like dreams. The cold, strong snow flowers were pushed away by the warm wind, and warm spring plum blossoms took their place. The air felt warmer where the plum blossoms appeared. It was like the cold air itself was being pushed back by the spring.

Blooming. And blooming again.

The red plum blossoms that bloomed a lot on the mountainside quickly filled Jin Geum-ryong’s sight completely.

It was more like a sea of plum blossoms.

It was a forest of plum blossoms that bloomed endlessly.

“This is… This is Mount Hua.”

This is the sword of Mount Hua.

The sword of Mount Hua that the older leaders of Jongnam were so afraid of, and tried so hard to copy.

Jin Geum-ryong now understood why the leaders of Jongnam were so afraid of the name Mount Hua.

This sword had something Jongnam’s swords didn’t have. It was a sword only Mount Hua had, something Jongnam’s swords couldn’t get to.

The wind blew. And the plum blossoms in the gentle wind started to fly all together. Plum blossom petals filled the whole world. It was too amazing to just call it ‘spectacular’.

“Beautiful.”

Jin Geum-ryong stared without thinking at the scene. Even though he knew he was in trouble, Jin Geum-ryong was completely drawn in by the sight of the plum blossoms falling around him.

It was like a scene from another world. A sight that captured his whole being.

“What is different?”

Why couldn’t he create this splendor?

Why wasn’t his sword so beautiful?

Why?

He tried to change his sword style, to make it stronger, faster, but nothing worked. The plum blossoms just kept coming.

The plum blossoms didn’t answer.

They just covered the world gently, beautifully, and powerfully.

And then. A single plum blossom petal, falling very gently, landed on Jin Geum-ryong’s forehead, leaving a picture he would never forget, like a mark.

Quietly.

Very quietly, it settled down.