Chapter 962: Passing the Martial Alliance (2)

Training was in full swing on the Justice Division’s Training Grounds.

People dressed in the Justice Division’s uniform formed a sword formation and pressed in, and at the center, a middle-aged man in a different uniform blocked their offensive.

Looks like they were drilling a combined-formation squad.

A combined formation referred to the skill of multiple martial artists facing an enemy.

Several people moved like a single body to drive the enemy back, pooled their strength to defend against the enemy’s attacks, secured and protected each other’s routes of retreat, and cut off the enemy’s escape route—so that the many did not waste their individual capabilities and moved efficiently as one.

In other words, a combined formation was a martial artist’s group-combat technique.

The most famous combined-formation art was Shaolin’s Arhat Formation—so they said it was fully stocked across scales: the Eighteen-Arhat Formation with eighteen men, the One Hundred Eight-Arhat Formation with one hundred eight men, and even the Five Hundred Arhat Grand Formation, where every monk-warrior in Shaolin was mobilized.

Anyway.

Three versus fifteen—yet despite that, it was the three who had the advantage. The gap in realm was obvious, and the Justice Division’s combined-formation work was still clumsy.

First, the empty slots in the formation jumped out.

You could see them trying to fill those spaces somehow, but it wasn’t going well.

The Justice Division’s combined formation had holes punched all through it; even though the three they were fighting were blatantly giving them time—acting like they didn’t notice and basically saying, Hurry up and patch it—it still wouldn’t come under control.

And in the middle of that, there was an overwhelmingly strong presence that stole her eyes.

A woman draped in leopard skin—bright yellow base, black stripes that seized your gaze.

Qing looked at her and nodded.

Yeah. Miss Chang still wears leopard skin.

“Three-side! Three-side is empty! Gobong, cover it—patch it! Hwan, don’t space out, go to the technique trigram!”

The Leopard-Skin Girl—Chang Yohong—was shouting herself hoarse, fighting to stabilize the formation.

But when was that ever easy?

A combined formation is truly a hard technique.

In truth, if everyone assigns themselves positions, memorizes their own changes, and moves exactly as drilled, you can produce a decent-looking combined formation.

But what happens when someone drops out?

To fill the vacancy, other members have to perform that position’s job.

Which means they also have to memorize that vacant position’s directions and changes to move properly.

But if your body is only one, how do you cover two positions? If you try to bounce back and forth to do it, someone else has to help you—block your blind side—and then another formation member has to help the helper, and then...

In the end, to deploy a combined formation, everyone has to memorize every change of every position, and flexibly patch empty slots on the fly as the situation demands.

Easy to say.

In a chaotic melee where you can barely tell east from west, do you really think “I memorized it in my head” means you can find the correct position and move cleanly?

“Aaagh! Come on! Seo-ga, you—no, Eumjo, you bastard, why are you coming this way—hey, you! Snap out of it! No, hey, he—yaaa!! HEY!!!”

Chang Yohong tried to stabilize it, but—

instead of stabilizing, the sword formation twisted tighter and tighter, until she finally let out a raw, feral screech.

And her condition?

“Kyaaaah!! Chae Seong-ha! Where the hell is that bastard Chae Seong-ha?! Why is it only me—why is it only me suffering like this!!”

“The Squad Leader’s pissed!” “No!” “Squad Leader! Get it together!” “Calm down—calm down!”

“Chae Seong-ha, you bastard!!!”

That was the moment—FWOOSH!

Flames suddenly rose from Chang Yohong’s body, and eerie will-o’-wisps spread in every direction.

“Ugh! Squad Leader’s burning again!” “Water! Water!” “Put it out, hurry!” “Where’s the Deputy Squad Leader?”

At the same time, the Justice Division members scattered like an ant swarm hit by water.

Like it wasn’t the first or second time, the ones who sprinted out came running back with buckets and dumped them on her.

SSSSS!! The roar of boiling water was loud, and thick steam fog billowed up.

The center of the Training Grounds vanished in mist in an instant.

The sparks that had been spraying everywhere died down, leaving only dense, lingering vapor.

“Did we get her?”

Someone muttered it.

Unfortunately, it was the promised spell of resurrection.

KWAAANG!

In an instant, a pillar of fire shot up through the steam.

Big fire doesn’t go out with a little water—if anything, it looked like they’d only stoked her anger, heat blasting out in a wave.

Qing watched and delivered her overall assessment.

Yeah. This is a total dumpster fire. Completely.

But this wasn’t the time to just spectate.

Qing lightly lifted off the ground.

Moon Maiden Stride’s antigravity walk—she cleared several spans in a bound and slipped into the steam fog, then landed soundlessly in front of the burning Chang Yohong.

Then, in a posture that said I’m mad, she gently grabbed Chang Yohong’s burning hand.

“Miss Chang? Take a breath. Calm down for a second.”

“What—hands! Let go! Fire—fire!!”

“It’s fine. Miss Chang. Chang Yohong, Hall Cadet?”

In an instant, Chang Yohong’s eyes went wide.

“Ah—Instructor Seomun? Ah.”

PSSSHK. The fierce blaze that had been surging up sank as if nothing had happened.

A moment later.

Justice Division First Squad’s Deputy Squad Leader, Chang Yohong, had her head bowed low, with one hand tightly held.

Because if you hold her hand, she doesn’t spew fire.

Chang Yohong, too, subtly put strength into her grip and hung on without letting her weight sag—since back at the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy, hadn’t she always quieted down the moment someone held her hand?

“But Miss Chang—where’s the Squad Leader? I’m guessing it’s Hall Cadet Chae Seong-ha? Why isn’t he here? It didn’t look like you were standing gate duty.”

First Squad’s Squad Leader, Chae Seong-ha.

Qing had roughly expected it.

He’d been an Azure Dragon dancer at the Supreme Peak level—worthy of being a Squad Leader.

So where did the Squad Leader go, leaving only the Deputy to run training alone?

“That’s because, that bastard—”

“Miss Chae? I’m here! Please calm down! Ah—Instructor? Isn’t that Instructor!”

Speak of the tiger and it shows up—at that moment, Chae Seong-ha appeared.

He looked like he’d rushed over and was catching his breath—and Chang Yohong’s eyes immediately sharpened like an axe blade as she glared at him.

What the hell was this situation?

It was maternity leave.

The two women who’d been following the Azure Dragon dancer were both pregnant—side by side—both at full term, about to give birth.

“Oh, congratulations. Damn—so you’re a father now?”

“Haha, thank you.”

“Then when are the babies due?”

“They say around mid-month.”

So he’d been too busy taking care of his full-term wives to care about being Squad Leader or anything else.

Which meant Chang Yohong, the Deputy, had been suffering for both their shares—so naturally her anger had been getting worse.

Of course, the Martial Alliance had no maternity leave.

But in this era, workers’ treatment was entirely up to the employer’s mood—and the Martial Alliance wasn’t that ruthless or rigid a group.

They’d given him unlimited leave, telling him to take care of the baby until the mothers recovered their strength.

Then Qing tilted her head, suddenly.

That’s weird. Full term?

It’s the first week of May right now, and if the due date is mid-month, then counting back about ten months would land you around mid-July, wouldn’t it?

Mid-July would’ve been right in the middle of the Righteous-Proper Martial Academy’s academic schedule.

Qing’s eyes narrowed.

Chae Seong-ha quietly averted his gaze, like there was something he felt guilty about.

Yeah. But what can you do. They’re already full term.

Justice Division lodging annex.

There, Qing took the Black Warrior Dance’s secret manual from her robe and set it on the tea table.

“This is the Black Warrior Dance’s secret manual, and this is Hero Kim Heojung. He used to be the Black Warrior Dance’s owner. Hero Kim—this is Miss Chang, as you saw, the inheritor of the Vermilion Bird Dance. And this is Young Hero Chae, the inheritor of the Azure Dragon Dance.”

Chang Yohong and Chae Seong-ha’s gazes locked onto Kim Heojung.

Kim Heojung snorted.

“Owner, my ass. It has nothing to do with me now. I just wondered what kind of people the other successors were. I’m sick to death of the Four-Direction Dances, so take the manual and learn it, burn it, steam buns with it—do whatever you want. I don’t care. Just know this: I have no intention of getting tangled up in it anymore.”

The Four-Direction Dances’ successors were supposed to seek out the other successors and fight, and the winner would take the loser under them and unify the four martial schools.

But Kim Heojung was saying he was done—he was stepping out.

“What are you saying! Are you saying you won’t follow our founding masters’ will? Rebuilding the Four Guardian Sect is the sect’s will, and it is our rightful duty—”

“Will, my ass.”

“Miss Chang! That’s too much!”

“Too much? Of course you can say that shit. You benefited from the sect.”

In that moment, Kim Heojung—who’d been indifferent—startled and looked at Chang Yohong.

Chang Yohong read that flicker and met his eyes, a crooked smile forming.

“Looks like you suffered plenty too. Four-Direction Dances or whatever—this whole thing is genuinely trash.”

“You’ve suffered as well, miss.”

Somehow, it was like a quiet, mutual recognition.

Yeah. You too? Me too.

An understanding, sympathetic exchange—eyes of shared misery.

Because Chang Yohong’s suffering had been no joke either.

The Vermilion Bird Dance’s trait—spewing fierce flames every time you used the art—wasn’t exactly an easy way to live.

She’d burned down homes and gotten chased out more than once, and one time she’d nearly burned an entire mountain to the ground. If she hadn’t desperately controlled the fire and trapped it along one face of the mountainside, she would’ve caused an outright catastrophe.

Of course, since she still burned one whole face of the mountain, it wasn’t not a catastrophe. It just downgraded from “catastrophe” to “major catastrophe.”

There were no casualties by sheer luck, but she’d been cut off from her family, put on a wanted notice by government soldiers, and driven out as a disaster upon her hometown.

Training the Vermilion Bird Dance—learning to become “close” with fire—had been hard, but the end result was losing everything and being chased out, so it was only natural that Chang Yohong ground her teeth at the Four-Direction Dances.

Still, their attitudes differed.

Kim Heojung suffered under the Black Warrior Dance and planned to cut ties the moment he had the chance, never looking back.

But Chang Yohong, having suffered under the Vermilion Bird Dance, was determined to make it useful somehow—no matter what.

“Then I can learn this, right? I’ve been angry a lot lately, and I can’t control the flames. This is perfect. And if it’s the Black Warrior Dance, it’s a hard counter.”

Chang Yohong, visibly excited, opened the Black Warrior Dance’s secret manual.

But. The contents were... something.

FLIP. FLIP FLIP. Pages turning.

How to become close with water: drinking water through your nose, sleeping on a real waterbed, diving while weighted with stones, living twelve shichen a day under a waterfall...

Chang Yohong’s expression crumpled.

She flipped through and tried to “peek” at the Black Warrior Dance, but it was nothing but water torture.

“This is genuinely trash. Fuck. You did all this? Drinking soup through your nose? This kind of shit?”

“They say you must feel pure water between the solids and the spices.”

“This is genuinely trash. Fuck.”

“I wholeheartedly agree.”

“I’ve even been smoked out before, but—wow. Still—wow. This is seriously dogshit.”

Kim Heojung covered his face, and anyone could see his frame was small—exactly like a boy.

Chang Yohong was a foul-mouthed type who took forever to even speak politely to Qing, so she naturally talked down to him, assuming he was young.

Kim Heojung was, by nature, the kind of man who could be endlessly lenient toward women.

“Hey. You learn it. You’ve been running your mouth about duty and will every day. I’ll help you out, hard.”

Chang Yohong shoved the manual toward him.

Chae Seong-ha accepted it and opened it—then quietly set it back down on the tea table.

“Hm.”

“What? What is it? You don’t want to after seeing the training method? I mean, for you guys, the hardest part was getting naked and catching wind, right? The Azure Dragon Dance had it easy.”

“That’s not it. Training is fine, but... right now, as the head of a household, I feel it is only proper that I devote myself to my family.”

“Then keep it and pass it down to our nephews.”

“Ahem. Isn’t that going too far?”

At the word nephews, Chae Seong-ha stiffened.

Because now he was a father of three—(supposedly).

“You’ll learn it when the kids grow up? Then what about the White Tiger Dance? You planning to go looking for it after the kids are all grown?”

“Ahem. The Martial Alliance has shown me kindness—how could I leave for a private matter? Later, I must find suitable talent and pass down both the kindness I received and the duty.”

That was why the Four-Direction Dances had always been the Four-Direction Dances—and never merged into the Four Guardian Sect.

If you leave home to look for the Four-Direction Dances, who knows when you’ll find them and return?

Once you’ve learned enough to live, why would you leave your home? Why leave behind the wife and children you love?

So when you’re young, you’re too busy training. When you get older, you marry and live. Only when you’re old do you start shuffling around, saying you should at least keep the lineage alive, looking for a disciple.

A repeating chain of shackles.

And Qing faced the naked reality of the Central Plain’s “mystic sects” and thought:

Yeah. The Four Guardian Sect is completely ruined. Seriously.