Chapter 161: The End of Childhood (20)

Closed-door training.

No disciple spoke those four words lightly.

It was a declaration that one would not see the light of the world again until one had awakened to something.

A minimum of three years.

Mount Hua’s closed-door training mandated at least three years.

Young Soyak, only fourteen, would not be able to emerge until she was seventeen.

Eunsong pondered Soyak’s words.

“...How long do you intend to train?”

“I... do not know either. I wish to knock on the wall of the Transformation Realm.”

The wall of the Transformation Realm.

At fourteen, she was speaking of the wall of the Transformation Realm.

But that was a qualification granted to a martial artist who had reached the end of Transcendent Apex.

No one could call Soyak arrogant for saying it.

Only, that was not what worried Eunsong.

If someone asked whether Soyak could reach the Transformation Realm, Eunsong would answer yes, with certainty.

But this was not a question of martial arts.

“...It will be lonely and desolate. Will you truly be all right?”

This young child of fourteen, even if she had returned alive again and again from blood and the fear of death... ℯℯ𝘭.

He was worried about her enduring several years alone in a cave.

Closed-door training.

Just as the words suggested, it was a span of years spent alone in a sealed place, flailing toward an enlightenment that would not come into one’s grasp.

There was no joy in it.

Only several heaps of fasting pellets piled up like small mountains, and the underground water flowing within, made up the entirety of one’s food.

It was harsh for a fourteen-year-old girl to endure.

But Soyak nodded.

She had reached the end of Transcendent Apex.

Her dantian had been prepared to a depth that could no longer be measured.

She could not simply wander the world and wait until she one day found a clue and became a Transformation Realm master.

“Promise me one thing.”

“...What is it?”

“That you will not break.”

Eunsong’s gaze was serious.

Soyak quietly thought for a moment, then nodded once more.

“I promise.”

*****

“She says she will enter closed-door training at that young age?”

Myeonggon pressed a hand to his forehead.

Jeonggang, as if he had expected this, still had not lost his smile.

Looking at his master like that, Myeonggon finally had to say something.

“I may not have seen her often, but you have, Master. Are you not worried at all?”

“She says she will train. What is there to worry about?”

“It is not ordinary training. Do you not know the dangers of closed-door training?”

Unlike other forms of training, closed-door training required a master’s permission.

Why was that?

Eun Jeong, sitting beside them, knew better than anyone.

“Fourteen years old...”

Eunsong, too, had once undergone closed-door training.

For exactly three years.

He had realized his limits early, and he had not committed the foolishness of continuing to challenge a wall he could not cross.

Then he had set out once again on his Roaming Pillar Journey for the sake of what he could do well.

Gathering and raising disciples.

That was what he had realized during those three years inside the training cave.

But for those three years...

A person who entered closed-door training was completely cut off from the outside.

Fasting pellets?

One could take in as many years’ worth as one wished.

That dried complete ration did not spoil.

Water?

Every closed-door training cave in Mount Hua was built so that underground water flowed within.

That water would not dry up until every plum blossom on Mount Hua had withered and died.

But Eunsong, Eun Jeong, Myeonggon, and Jeonggang...

They were not speaking of such physical or material dangers.

To be honest, unless all of Mount Hua was collapsed outright, the training caves were the safest places there were “physically.”

The problem lay in the mind.

Humans were creatures that lived in groups.

But closed-door training opposed that very human nature.

In other words, it was a process of enduring and withstanding the instinctive deprivation that came with being human while searching for enlightenment.

The problem was that, in this process...

Quite a few people developed problems.

No matter how much one trained the mind with a pure heart method and tempered the body through martial arts...

One had to live without seeing the sun or moon, without seeing one’s master or fellow disciples.

Even if the interior was spacious, one was still in a sealed place, staring only at walls.

And because one could not come out for three years...

The lofty pride of martial artists acted as poison.

It was more common than one might think for martial artists driven to their limits to insist that they could overcome those limits, only to remain buried in a cave until their minds broke.

Then deviation would come, and they would rave within until they slowly withered to death.

Or, failing that...

They would burst out of the training cave and scatter their madness, only to be granted repose by their fellow disciples without anyone else ever knowing.

“How long did she say she wished to do it?”

Jeonggang pushed aside all other questions and asked that first.

After hesitating, Eunsong answered honestly.

“She says she wants to... break through the wall of the Transformation Realm.”

“To already have such a mind at fourteen...”

One could call it a hasty decision.

She could spend a little more time with her fellow disciples and adjust further to life at Mount Hua before doing it, and it would not be too late.

But Jeonggang could guess why Soyak had made that decision.

“...What a clever child.”

“What do you mean?”

Myeonggon narrowed his eyes and asked back.

Because he could not understand where there was any room in this for an evaluation like “clever.”

Jeonggang stroked his beard and cackled.

“Do you all remember what Soyak has done until now?”

“...I remember.”

“Then recite it.”

“As soon as she arrived, she crushed the heir of the Namgung Household, brought down an assassin group that inherited Kill Veil’s martial arts, helped the Ak Family rise again, defeated the Sword Demon, and the Dark Emperor...”

When Myeonggon had recited that far.

Eunsong was the first to understand what it meant.

“...She has drawn too much attention.”

“Correct.”

Jeonggang clapped his hands once.

Eunsong’s inference was accurate.

Right now, Soyak had drawn too much attention from the world.

All of those events had happened within barely two or three months.

News traveled slowly through the martial world.

Even if word without feet traveled a thousand li, and rumors were faster than riders...

The overwhelming breadth of the Central Plains was difficult to overcome.

And by now...

Perhaps even those at the farthest ends of the Central Plains, those belonging to the martial world beyond the borderlands, had slowly begun hearing the rumors.

Even if delayed, in another fifteen days at most, all of the Central Plains would be stirring with them.

Of course, some of those rumors would likely be passed along as deeds not belonging to Soyak.

For instance, the person who killed the Dark Emperor would be known as Jeonggang.

The problem was the first rumor.

That at a younger age, with a smaller body, and in the body of a girl at that, she had overwhelmed the heir of the Namgung Household.

That would make Soyak’s name known throughout the whole martial world.

By now, it was time for every martial artist across the Nine Provinces under heaven who had heard that rumor to take an interest in Soyak.

And that kind of attention...

The Namgung Household would never welcome it.

“...The Namgung Household has already acted and failed. But they will not give up.”

“You mean Night-Heaven Hall.”

Myeonggon added to Eunsong’s murmur.

Eunsong nodded.

And Eun Jeong, who had recently heard of this matter as well, stiffened.

“Night-Heaven Hall... was not annihilated by that child alone, but it is certain that she became the catalyst for Night-Heaven Hall’s fall. Soyak’s very existence has already dealt the Namgung Household several defeats. The reason the Namgung Household is likely staying quiet for now is that everyone fears the Sword Sovereign and does not speak openly of the heir’s defeat, but...”

“The story is already spreading.”

Eunsong finished Jeonggang’s sentence.

Jeonggang nodded.

To the world, she would simply remain a young martial artist who defeated the heir and helped the Ak Family rise again.

But the more that rumor spread, the more the Namgung Household would be forced to feel their own defeat.

And the Sword Sovereign was not someone who would let such a thing stand.

“But there is something more dangerous than anything else.”

“What is it, Myeonggon?”

“If things go wrong, could the Sword Sovereign not learn that the child is the daughter of a household destroyed for the crime of irreverence?”

He would look.

Into where that child had come from.

They could not guarantee that the Sword Sovereign had no one inside Mount Hua.

A Daoist did not ask about the past.

Because of that, Mount Hua asked children who entered nothing except their full name and age, and recorded nothing else.

In principle.

But most of those with proper origins did not hide the cradle in which they had been born.

In that sense, Eunsong roaming the martial world and gathering disciples...

Had been for the sake of gathering talents who had not been born in such bright, upright cradles.

And in the process of finding and bringing such children back, someone was bound to see him.

Talent like that was not born easily.

Any person would naturally become curious what muddy water had made such a lotus bloom.

What if the Namgung Household set its mind to digging through rumors and extracting information?

Eunsong clenched his teeth.

There was a need to silence tongues.

More thoroughly than before.

“...If Soyak enters closed-door training, I will have to go to the Gwak Household.”