“……”
Silence instantly filled the air.
No one dared to speak.
They hadn’t expected Ha Sochan to discard his sword and launch an attack, nor had they expected Ha Jinho to be struck and sent sprawling so disgracefully.
It was Ha Sochan who broke the silence.
He chuckled softly.
“Oh. You didn’t bite your tongue, did you? My bad if you did.”
“You, you!”
Ha Jinho sprang to his feet, shouting.
He seemed fine, likely because the blow had been delivered with controlled force.
‘Can’t exactly destroy him completely.’
Of course not.
It was his first day at the main household; what would happen if he broke all of his younger brother’s teeth right after arriving?
Honestly, he wanted to, but he held back for the sake of the future.
If he went too far, Ha Jinho’s maternal family might genuinely send assassins after him.
Perhaps later, but for now, such troublesome matters were to be avoided.
“‘You’? I told you to call me ‘Brother’.”
“Shut up! You have no shame!”
“No shame?”
“You threw away your sword and used your fists!”
“Oh, so that’s what you’re talking about.”
Ha Sochan shrugged.
“Shouldn’t you be the one who’s ashamed?”
“What?”
“You were holding a sword, trying to strike someone who was unarmed.”
Ha Jinho’s eyes trembled for a moment.
But he quickly regained his composure.
He had found a flaw in Ha Sochan’s words.
“Don’t talk nonsense! You threw away your sword to launch a sneak attack!”
“That’s right.”
“Aren’t you ashamed as a practitioner of the Righteous Path?!”
“Not really.”
Ha Sochan shrugged.
He meant it.
He barely considered himself a member of the Righteous Path to begin with.
And for good reason.
Ha Sochan had honed his martial arts not within the Ha Clan, but during his time as a wanderer.
His habits and values were far removed from the Righteous Path.
‘And I even went easy on him.’
A sneak attack?
If such a duel had occurred during his wanderer days, he would have thrown sand in their eyes before they could even speak.
Discarding his sword for a punch after his initial attack failed?
In a real fight, he would have used a hidden dagger to slit their carotid artery, not a punch.
To Ha Sochan, that was fighting, and that was martial arts.
‘Well, I should probably restrain myself a bit here.’
After all, the current Ha Sochan was the Third Young Master of the Ha Clan, a member of the Righteous Path, not a wanderer.
Using overly aggressive methods wasn’t ideal.
In fact, even with just this much, he could hear whispers from all around, agreeing with Ha Jinho.
‘What to do?’
It didn’t really matter much to him, though.
Ha Sochan pondered for a moment, then spoke.
“So, you’re saying you don’t admit your defeat?”
The match was over.
The moment Ha Jinho was sent flying by Ha Sochan’s punch, the outcome was decided.
If it had been a real fight, it would have ended right there.
But Ha Jinho was still young.
And stubborn.
He refused to admit he had lost.
In fact, he didn’t even think he had lost, let alone admit it.
“I didn’t lose!”
“Seriously.”
Ha Sochan scratched his head and picked up the wooden sword that had fallen to the ground.
“Then come at me properly.”
“You…!”
Ha Jinho gritted his teeth.
‘This insolent punk?’
His attitude was insulting enough as it was, but on top of that, many martial artists of the clan were gathered here.
That meant everything that happened here would reach the ears of everyone in the clan.
What then?
‘I can’t let him get away with this.’
To end the duel here, after already suffering such humiliation?
If he did, Ha Jinho wouldn’t be able to show his face for a long time.
The talk would be that he got beaten by a half-wit who couldn’t even gather internal energy.
Ha Jinho absolutely couldn’t allow that.
No, he didn’t want to.
‘At least here and now, I have to properly teach this arrogant bastard a lesson!’
To do that, he had to give it his all.
‘Damn it. I wanted to finish him with the Thunder Shadow Sword Art.’
He had wanted to proudly display his achievements to others.
But he couldn’t.
He hated to admit it, but Ha Sochan also seemed to possess a certain level of martial arts skill.
Therefore, Ha Jinho changed his stance.
Lightning Fist.
It was one of the fundamental martial arts learned after mastering the basic Thunderbolt Sword Art.
It was also what Ha Jinho was most confident in among the techniques he had learned.
“Here I come!”
Thud!
The floor cracked with a single forceful stomp infused with internal energy.
Murmurs of admiration rose from the onlookers.
Ha Jinho didn’t smile, even as he heard the praise.
No, he couldn’t smile.
His entire focus was on Ha Sochan.
“……Indeed.”
No matter how much he disliked his opponent, he had to admit it.
Ha Sochan watched Ha Jinho demonstrate the Lightning Fist and felt a surge of admiration.
The sequence of forms Ha Jinho displayed was perfect.
And it flowed as naturally as water.
‘But it’s excessively rigid.’
He seemed to be deliberately obsessed with making it so.
‘Is it because he lacks experience?’
More precisely, it was painfully clear that he lacked combat experience.
In that case, the answer was simple.
‘Break his flow.’
Whack!
A light, seemingly casual thrust of the wooden sword interrupted Ha Jinho’s technique mid-sequence.
Ha Jinho’s eyes widened.
His expression showed he hadn’t expected his attack to be blocked.
“You!”
Ha Jinho hastily retreated.
Since the flow of his technique was broken, he intended to pull back and restart.
But Ha Sochan wouldn’t allow it.
“Once you’ve got a flow going, you should force it through, whether it’s broken or not.”
Real combat wasn’t decided by who could perform techniques more elegantly or accurately.
Ha Sochan’s swift lunge surged forward, his wooden sword aimed at Ha Jinho’s chest.
Thwack!
Ha Jinho gritted his teeth and parried the wooden sword rushing towards him.
But at that moment, Ha Sochan was already twisting his body.
His momentum carried him in the direction the wooden sword had deflected.
His rotating leg swept at Ha Jinho’s ankle.
Thwack!
“Agh!”
Ha Jinho’s body flew into the air, then crashed down.
Thump!
He clutched his ankle and rolled on the ground.
“Didn’t you say you’d come at me properly?”
Ha Sochan pressed the tip of his sword against Ha Jinho’s chest and spoke.
“I also recall you saying you’d teach me a lesson.”
Many emotions swirled in Ha Jinho’s eyes.
Surprise.
Pain.
Resentment.
Shock.
And fear.
“Scared, are we?”
Seeing him, Ha Sochan chuckled softly and withdrew his sword.
Then, he shouted towards the other martial artists watching from behind.
“What are you all doing? Don’t just stand there, take him to a physician!”
Unlike his initial polite speech, he now spoke informally.
But no one protested.
Even though he had only arrived today, Ha Sochan was the Third Young Master of the Ha Clan, and beyond that, everyone was still reeling from the shock of what they had just witnessed.
“Y-Young Master!”
Ha Jinho’s loyal retainers, belatedly snapping out of their daze, rushed forward to attend to him.
Ha Sochan watched them for a moment, then turned around.
‘That felt good, though.’
Beating Ha Jinho like this had been one of his goals in his first life.
‘Never thought I’d actually achieve it like this.’
A small smile played on Ha Sochan’s lips.
It was then that text appeared before his eyes.
[The sparring match, ‘Duel with Ha Jinho’, has been recorded!]
[Storing the sparring record in the Martial Arts Archive.]
[You have stored a record in the archive for the first time.]
[An elixir has been granted as a reward!]
‘An elixir?’
Ha Sochan’s eyes gleamed.
*
Elixirs.
As the name suggested, they were medicines with miraculous effects.
While their specific properties varied, most elixirs were primarily effective in enhancing internal energy.
‘That’s why they were so expensive.’
They weren’t just expensive; they were outrageously expensive.
Selling even a moderately potent elixir could provide enough wealth to live comfortably for months.
During his wanderer days, Ha Sochan had once, by sheer luck, acquired an elixir and sold it.
He regretted not being able to consume it himself, but he had no choice.
‘Back then, it was better to just exchange it for money.’
Ha Sochan had no internal energy or anything of the sort anyway.
Even if he had absorbed an elixir, he wouldn’t have been able to properly channel its energy, rendering it a wasteful act.
It was a hundred times better to sell it for money than to squander it.
‘But now it’s different.’
He still lacked internal energy, but that was also true now.
However, Ha Sochan had cultivated the Divine Arts of the Heavens.
‘If I can convert the elixir’s energy into life force and absorb it, couldn’t I greatly expand my True Qi?’
He had never tried it, but he felt an inexplicable certainty that it was possible.
“Young Master. Are you alright?”
As Ha Sochan was lost in thought, U Seong approached and asked.
His expression was filled with concern.
It seemed he was worried Ha Sochan might have been injured during the duel.
“I’m fine. In fact, I feel great.”
“Were you perhaps injured during the sparring match…?”
“You saw it too, Guard U, didn’t you? I didn’t get hit once.”
Not only did he not get hit once, but counting the first duel, which ended swiftly, and the second duel, which Ha Jinho insisted on resuming, the total number of exchanges didn’t exceed five.
Ha Jinho was practically beaten the moment the match started, unable to do anything.
Thinking about it still put him in a good mood.
As Ha Sochan grinned, U Seong finally let out a sigh of relief.
“When you followed the Fourth Young Master, I truly felt my heart drop. To get caught up in something like this right after arriving…”
“Then you should have stopped me.”
“Didn’t I try to stop you? But you asked me to trust you.”
“And you trusted me?”
“Well, yes.”
“And I lived up to that trust, didn’t I?”
“That’s true, but still.”
“In the end, I won, and I’m not hurt. That’s all that matters.”
Ha Sochan said, moving his body exaggeratedly.
U Seong chuckled softly at the sight.
“I knew you’d changed over the past three months… but you’ve truly become formidable, Young Master.”
“Formidable? He’s just pathetic.”
“Indeed, that’s also true.”
He had called his younger brother “that punk,” but neither Ha Sochan nor U Seong seemed to mind.
In truth, neither of them particularly liked Ha Jinho.
Ha Sochan disliked him because of his memories from his first life, and U Seong disliked him for constantly provoking Ha Sochan.
‘And it’s not far from the truth, either.’
Though Ha Jinho was touted as a genius outside, within the Ha Clan, he wasn’t particularly outstanding.
What if Ha Sochan had fought the First or Second Young Master just now, instead of Ha Jinho?
Or even the youngest, who was said to possess exceptional talent?
Ha Sochan wouldn’t have been able to be so relaxed.
He might have avoided a terrible beating, but it wouldn’t have ended well.
‘I’m still weak.’
Ha Sochan calmly acknowledged this fact.
He was weak.
He had lived a life completely estranged from training since childhood.
Even if he had a constitution that couldn’t gather internal energy, it was true that he hadn’t put in the effort.
‘But not anymore.’
Ha Sochan made a resolution.
He would no longer waste his life.
He had obtained a second life, and a Martial Arts Archive, through such means; he couldn’t live carelessly as before.
He would become strong.
Far stronger than the Ha Clan’s First or Second Young Master, even stronger than the Family Head.
And beyond that, stronger than anyone else in the world.
So that no one would ever look down on him again.
To achieve that, there was something he had to do.
‘I need to claim my reward.’
He had to make use of everything he could.