Return of the Mount Hua Sect [EN]: Chapter 338

Even now, when I close my eyes, I see it clearly: a dark night.

The image of my father, wielding his sword, his face twisted with pain, like he was fighting a terrible battle inside.

Rain or snow, he swung his sword. His hands bled where he gripped the handle, and his lips cracked in the cold, but he never stopped.

Always. Always.

In her memory, her father was always swinging his sword.

Young Yiseol watched him, her small heart heavy with worry. She didn’t understand why he pushed himself so hard.

She remembered him always swinging his sword, from morning until night. Even when he was so tired he could barely stand, he would hold a worn-out book and cry.

Sometimes he would fall to his knees, head in his hands, whispering apologies to someone who wasn’t there. Other times, he would roar with frustration, throwing books across the small room.

He grabbed young Yiseol and said, “I am going back.”

He said if he could bloom a perfect plum blossom someday, he would hold her hand and return to Mount Hua. And he would ask the elders of the sect for forgiveness.

“I will bloom the plum blossoms.”

Yiseol quietly opened her eyes.

“Father wanted to return to Mount Hua.”

“…”

“I think he thought he needed a justification. Father abandoned and turned his back on the sect. Such a person cannot return empty-handed and beg for forgiveness.”

“So, that book… the one he was working on?”

Yiseol quietly nodded.

“Father was going to restore it. If he restored that manual and returned the plum blossoms to Mount Hua, he thought they would forgive him for running away.”

At those words, Baek Cheon groaned.

Restore it?

“*With that*? It’s impossible. Completely pointless,”

Chung Myung sighed slightly and looked at Yiseol.

“So?”

She quietly looked down at the books.

Those dozens of books were the result of her father’s research on the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Technique. And all those essences were gathered in the last book.

“He grew weaker day by day. Clinging to the impossible gnaws at a person.”

“…”

Moreover, it wasn’t just his body that weakened.

Before his last breath, her father was almost insane. He swung his sword with arms withered like winter branches, and he read the manual madly with eyes sunken like a corpse. He wrote down countless new things and repeatedly tried to establish them all.

But, her father could not reach the sword of Mount Hua in the end.

On a day when snow poured down endlessly, her father, swinging his sword madly in the blizzard, vomited blood several times on the floor. And he tore apart the manual he had been establishing.

“I cannot reach it! I! I… I cannot reach it…”

The image of her father sobbing desperately is etched in Yiseol’s memory like a brand.

“Yiseol…”

As he was dying, he grabbed Yiseol’s hand and said, “You must bloom the plum blossoms. No, you must never be obsessed with plum blossoms! No. No. You…. No! You must not. You must not become like me.”

Words that young Yiseol could not understand.

“Will the sect forgive me…? Will they understand me for abandoning them and leaving…? I want to see the plum blossoms of Mount Hua…. The plum blossoms…”

That was her father’s last words.

Yiseol stayed in the small, cold cabin for days with her father’s body. The fire had long gone out, and the air was still and heavy with the scent of death and old paper. Without eating or drinking, she pieced together the torn books next to her father, who had grown cold.

In the meantime, someone found the cabin. It was Hyun Jong, who had rushed over after receiving the last message sent by her father, who had sensed his end.

He found Yiseol on the verge of starvation and burst into tears on the spot.

“You foolish man…! Why! Why!”

Hyun Jong held the young girl and sobbed for a long time. The warmth he felt from his hands still remained on her back.

Still, Yiseol said in a seemingly indifferent voice, “Father was a fool.”

“…”

“He abandoned Mount Hua but couldn’t let it go. He must have wanted a different life when he ran away from Mount Hua, but Father was more obsessed with Mount Hua than anyone else. So he regretted and suffered his whole life.”

Her gaze was fixed on the burning bonfire.

She still found it hard to understand her father.

If he cherished it so much, why did he abandon Mount Hua? If he abandoned it, he should have forgotten it, but why couldn’t he let it go? And if he missed it so much, why couldn’t he bow his head and return?

It was still hard for her to understand.

“Sahyung,” Tang Soso started, then stopped, her brow furrowed with unspoken sympathy. She looked at Yiseol, searching for words, but found none that felt right.

At that time, Jo Gul, who had been listening quietly, opened his mouth.

“Then…” His gaze was directed at the piled-up manuals.

“Why didn’t the Sect Leader recover those manuals? Even though it’s less than half a manual, it’s still Twenty-Four…”

Chung Myung said in an indifferent voice, “That’s useless.”

“If I had brought that to Mount Hua, there would have been people who would have tried to restore it. Then Mount Hua would have really been ruined. Everyone would have suffered clinging to the impossible.”

False hope can hurt more than facing the truth.

Chung Myung bit his lip slightly.

Endlessly foolish, endlessly foolish.

But… He must have been that desperate.

He wouldn’t have thought of returning to Mount Hua and dying with Mount Hua. He would have wanted to find a key to revive Mount Hua somehow, even if it was a futile obsession.

“So, Sahyung is…”

“No.”

Yiseol shook her head. “I don’t defend my father. Father abandoned Mount Hua. As a disciple of Mount Hua, I cannot forgive him.”

“…Sahyung.”

“The Sect Leader says he forgives him, but it’s not something that can be forgiven. How can someone who abandoned the sect be forgiven? So…” She closed her eyes after speaking for a long time, unlike her usual self.

“Don’t say useless things…”

A heavy silence fell.

Knowing that clumsy comfort could be cheap pity, they all simply looked at each other and remained silent.

Then Chung Myung blurted out, “Okay, let’s sleep.”

The disciples’ gazes turned to him.

“It seems like we’ve said everything we need to say, and it’s not that great of a story anyway. Looking at the conclusion, we just stopped by our father’s grave on the way. Isn’t that about it?”

“Chung Myung!” Baek Cheon stood up from his seat with an angry face.

But Yiseol nodded with a calm face.

“That’s right.”

Since the person in question said so, Baek Cheon was momentarily at a loss for words. Yiseol said calmly, “I just wanted to stop by. Anyway, I thought he would be happy to know that Mount Hua is regaining its former glory.”

But Chung Myung got up from his seat with an indifferent face.

“The dead are just the dead,” Chung Myung said, but his eyes flickered to Yiseol, a hint of something unreadable in their depths.

“I thought you were going to tell some great story. I’m going to sleep. If we’re leaving tomorrow morning, everyone should go to bed early. We’ll have to run faster to make up for the day we wasted.”

He walked into the cabin without looking back. The remaining disciples of Mount Hua looked at his back with uncomfortable faces.

Yiseol said, “Sahyung.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go to sleep too.”

Baek Cheon nodded slowly.

She wasn’t sleepy, but Chung Myung was right. Talking more wouldn’t help her or Yoo Iseol.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“It’s nothing.”

Her gaze returned to the dark night sky.

“Because we’re not strangers.”

Not anymore.

Yoo Iseol suddenly opened her eyes.

She looked around, confused. Inside the small cabin, the Mount Hua disciples were asleep on the floor.

‘When did I fall asleep?’

She didn’t remember closing her eyes.

She remembered coming into the cabin and lying down, but… ‘Was I that tired?’

Everyone else seemed to be in a deep sleep.

Then, a voice mumbled beside her. “…Accident…”

Tang Soso was talking in her sleep, eyes still closed. “…Accident…”

Yoo Iseol watched Tang Soso sleep for a moment, then closed her own eyes again. But quickly, she felt uneasy and sat up suddenly.

Chung Myung wasn’t there.

He wasn’t sleeping in the cabin.

‘Where is he?’

Yoo Iseol got up quietly.

She slipped out of the cabin into the cold night air. Chung Myung was nowhere to be seen, not even near the dying campfire.

Yoo Iseol looked around, her worry growing. A cold fear touched her as she hurried away. She felt a knot of worry in her stomach as she searched for him in the dark. Then, in the dim light, she saw him by a grave.

*Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.*

The strong smell of alcohol filled the air as Chung Myung poured it over the grave.

The dry earth around the grave drank in the alcohol quickly.

Soon, one bottle was empty. Chung Myung opened another and poured it out again.

After pouring for a while, Chung Myung lifted the bottle to his lips.

He drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with a rough sound. “Kuh,” he muttered, his voice low and bitter. “You stupid bastard.”

He couldn’t understand this man.

He shouldn’t have left Mount Hua. But if he did leave the failing group, he should have tried to live a good life. He had a young daughter and dreams that were impossible. He threw away his life. There’s no excuse for that.

Stupid, pathetic, and idiotic.

But…

“But I like idiots,” Chung Myung chuckled.

Chung Myung’s face changed. He sat heavily in front of the grave, took a drink of alcohol, and sighed deeply. His true feelings came out with that sigh.

“…I’m sorry.”

He knew.

This was Chung Myung’s sin.

What sin was it to leave a group that was falling apart? Who could blame them for not wanting to die with it?

Staying was brave, but leaving wasn’t wrong.

“Why did you do that? You stupid bastard…” Chung Myung muttered, as if arguing with someone right there.

If you left, you should have forgotten it.

Why were you so stupid that you couldn’t forget it even after abandoning it, and regretted it?

You stupid bastard.

“I…”

Chung Myung leaned back against the grave and looked at the stars.

“I actually wanted to go to the Northern Sea.”

From the moment he heard “Demonic Sect,” his blood ran cold.

If Hyun Jong hadn’t been there, he would have grabbed Beop Jeong by the collar and demanded to know where it was. He didn’t want to leave a single thing related to the Demonic Sect in the world.

Even now, when he closed his eyes, he could see the faces of his dead martial brothers on the summit of the Ten Thousand Great Mountains.

Still.

“But I can’t go. Not yet…”

If something happened to him, Mount Hua would fall apart again, like before. If Chung Myung, their leader, was gone, Mount Hua was still too weak to fight against the other powerful groups.

Mount Hua would fall again, and more people like Yoo Iseol’s father would suffer.

So he couldn’t go.

Therefore.

He couldn’t repeat the same mistake.

Even if his insides rotted and he was torn to death, he couldn’t bear to see that sight again. If the moment came when Mount Hua collapsed again, he wouldn’t be able to close his eyes even in death.

“I may not be qualified to talk about forgiveness with you…”

Chung Myung’s fingertips gently stroked the wet grave mound.

“…Now rest. Plum blossoms will bloom again in Mount Hua.”

Then, with the bottle to his lips, he tilted his head back sharply. The strong alcohol burned his throat, and today it felt especially painful.

“Yeah.”

He put the bottle down as if throwing it and staggered to his feet.

“You said you wanted to see the plum blossoms, right?”

Shhh.

The sound of a sword being drawn echoed through the silent mountains.

“If you want to see them, you should see them. You’ve wanted to see them for so long, I should show them to you. Yeah.”

Chung Myung, who had been staggering as if drunk, slowly lowered his sword.

Then he slowly closed his eyes.

It was as if he could see it.

The figure of someone wielding a sword in these deserted mountains, again and again.

Someone tormented by unabandoned regrets and an unyielding reality, clinging only to the sword.

It was like…

*Swoosh.*

Chung Myung’s sword began to move slowly.

Soon, starting with the Plum Blossom Blooming, the Twenty-Four Plum Blossom Sword Technique unfolded.

The perfect plum blossom sword style in its original form, without any tricks.

The plum blossom sword style Yoo Iseol’s father loved, now bloomed beautifully from Chung Myung’s sword.

Look.

You stupid bastard.

These are the plum blossoms of Mount Hua that you wanted to see so much.

Something that had fallen once.

Something that had to spend so many years to bloom again.

The plum blossoms of Mount Hua, drawn by the perfect plum blossom sword technique, began to transform the barren land into a forest of red plum blossoms.

Wherever the plum blossoms of Mount Hua bloom, that place is Mount Hua.

So this place is just Mount Hua.

In the forest of plum blossoms blooming profusely, a swordsman performs a sword dance.

As if cutting away the regrets he had not yet been able to let go of. The beautifully moving tip of the sword was resolute but sorrowful.

And…

Yoo Iseol, who was watching the plum blossoms blooming like a mirage in the distance, quietly closed her eyes.

‘Father…’

Her lowered eyelashes trembled. And soon, a single tear flowed down.

– Have you found your plum blossoms?

Not yet.

Not yet.

But…

Yoo Iseol opened her eyes.

A forest of plum blossoms, like a fantasy, unfolded before her.

‘Someday…’

The day will come when perfect plum blossoms bloom from the tip of her sword as well.

If that happens, her dead father will finally be able to rest in peace.

Someday.

Yes. Someday.