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A refreshing cool breeze swept across the mountain peaks, caught the flower petals, carried them along and dropped them straight over the heads of the tired students who were cleaning up piles of stones and bags of sand. Tired, they wiped sweat from their foreheads and, hiding their eyes from the light with their palms, watched as petals fell from the sky. If they didn't know better, they would probably have confused the real plum tree petals from Mount Hua's technique.
One of the boys who had recently finished arranging wooden swords on risers reached out and caught a petal, bringing it to his face. A pleasant aroma enveloped his mind, relaxed his body and calmed all uninvited thoughts.
BAM
An explosion was heard from the medical room, after which black smoke poured out of the windows and door. Everyone gathered around the building, after which some ran for buckets of water. The sect leader and elders came running at the sounds of the commotion, but none of them dared to enter, if only because the stinking smoke made it almost impossible to breathe. Even Cheong Myeong, who had come running here, recoiled as soon as he took a breath, and poor Baek-Ah almost lost consciousness, hanging on his owner’s neck.
When the smoke had settled to the ground and the coughing of the person inside had almost died down, a figure appeared from the doorway. Only by the silhouette of the body could one understand that it was a girl. Her long hair, which stood on end around her head like a halo, served as a seat for the birds, who decided to take advantage of the opportunity to rest. Against the background of a pure black body, large green eyes stood out brightly.
“Soso?”
The girl opened her mouth and a new portion of smoke poured out.
“I shouldn’t have decided to add more... What exactly... did I..?”
Soso fainted straight into the arms of Cheong Myeong, who ran to her in time. He picked her up and ordered her to bring clean towels and water as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the prudent Iseol was already standing with a bucket of water in one hand and a towel in the other. She began to gently wipe the unconscious girl's face. However, this was not so easy to do, if only because the hair seemed to be frozen in one position and did not want to fall.
While the elders were outside tending to the damaged building, Hyeon Jong ran closer to the children and checked the girl's pulse before breathing a sigh of relief. No one could know what could happen during the development of a new poison or medicine by members of the Tang family. Moreover, the daughter of the King of Poisons himself. The sect leader sighed heavily and was about to say something, but he was interrupted by the youngest child in the sect, who clicked his tongue with great displeasure.
“Like a leech, like his descendants. The same face, the same habits and the same efforts to die in the same way. How strong must the blood of these Thanes be?!” he burst into screams, roughly pushing the girl’s hair into the buckets he brought, when he laid her on a blanket brought by one of the students. “And am I the most problematic here?! Give free rein and these poisonous bastards will blow up an entire estate! No, of course, then only the laboratory and part of the warehouse were blown up. But! Such recklessness! Here in my time..!”
“Cheong Myung, shut up,” Hyeon Jong wearily wailed, watching as someone ran with a set of clean clothes for Soso. Iseol quickly picked up the girl, took her clothes, threw another clean, dry towel around her neck and went to the nearest lake or river. Nobody stopped her. “Clean up this mess as quickly as possible.”
“What if there... is poison?” one of the students asked hesitantly, who from the very beginning had been hovering in front of the entrance to the medical hall along with other guys from the third and second generations. No one wanted to be poisoned by a poison for which there might be no antidote.
“Then let's wait until Soso comes to his senses,” however, when he thought about the harsh training that children go through almost every hour, he immediately changed his mind. “Cheong Myeong, can you check the warehouse? As far as I remember, you have a high resistance to poisons.”
“Why should I check the warehouse? Oh, there's a stash of alcohol in there?”
“No, idi-!” Baek Cheon cut himself off mid-sentence, biting his tongue forcefully. He clenched his fists so hard that you could hear the bones crunching. “All the medicines are there. We will have to wait for some of them for at least a month due to too great a distance from the places where it grows.”
“What, tell me, will you do when the war starts? Wait for medicine while the enemy is still alive?!” the youngest student became furious, pointing his finger at the cheek of the older one, who, to the surprise of the crowd, fell silent and made no attempt to say anything against. “Tsk! These children. If I were you, I would rush into battle even with a hole in my stomach until the enemy’s head fell to the ground! Eh, Dongryong? Do you understand? Or should I explain everything in more detail?
“No. I understand... Everything is clear to me. It is true!”
“Yes? Somehow I don’t hear the confidence in your voice,” the frightened second generation student took a step back, then another. His movements were repeated by the students standing behind him. This could have continued until they reached the cliff if the elders had not intervened.
“Cheong Myeong, there is no war now,” Hyeon Sang reproached him, and Hyeon Yeong, no matter how strange it may sound, did not stand up for his pet as he had been accustomed to do for several years. “It is possible that Hua-Um may need Soso’s help as a representative of the Tang family, and she needs to prepare medicine from something.”
Quiet agreements were heard from all sides.
“Ha... Got it.”
The young man stood up, shook off the dust from his clothes and stepped through the open door with indescribable confidence. When his steps died down, the students breathed a sigh of relief, after which they turned their gaze to Baek Cheon, whose cheeks had acquired a slight blush due to such close attention. He coughed into his fist, but it did nothing to help his situation.
“Sasuk,” one of the guys from the third generation turned to him. “Why have you been acting so strange all these two months?”
“Yes. You would think that there was something else in the poison of those bandits.”
“If you think about it like that, it’s not just Sahyun who started acting strange,” Baek Sang added his word. But he did not have the courage to stand next to his brother in arms at that moment. “Other guys too. I think it would be nice if they were examined again by doctors from the Tang family.”
“HEY! I'm not going to lie in bed for another week!” Jo Geol shouted, whose scream was not going to stop Yun Jong. They remembered very well those days when thick needles stuck out of their bodies at all acupuncture points so that it was impossible to move. What about the taste of medicine? If someone ever suggested they drink that disgusting, but very effective, muck again, they would have a desire to spend several days in solitude in the Shiwandashan Mountains. It was not as scary as those doctors whose eyes, like snakes, shone both day and night. Especially after they learned the identity of the Dark Saint, which Soso became even more proud of from then on. “What if they open me up?”
The young man shook like a leaf and became covered in a layer of cold sweat, which almost flowed down his face and the back of his head in streams. However, his fear disappeared as quickly as it appeared when Yun Jong hit him on the head this time. If before he completely agreed with this idiot, he was not going to tolerate such nonsense in his presence.
Meanwhile, Hye Yeon stood with his shoulders slumped, holding a bucket in his hands. He had no idea what happened to the boys when they joined the battle against the bandits. Whenever he was asked a question, he could only spread his arms to the sides.
“Everything is intact there!” Cheong Myeong came out of the medical room, covered in flames from his own energy. The bones of his neck crunched. “You have to give credit to the carpenter who worked on that door. Not even a speck of dust got in there.”
The flame went out abruptly, but just in case no one dared to approach the young man. However, instantly everyone parted, opening the way to the mountains, where one could walk along the path to the lake.
“These children have no respect for old people at all,” he grumbled quietly under his breath.
Except for the three students who felt a pang of guilt, the others noted with displeasure that this guy was the youngest among them.
***
“Is it true?” Baek Cheon, like a small child, moved closer so as not to miss the slightest detail of the story that was being told by the Plum Blossoms Sword Saint to the sound of cups of alcohol. The other guys could not blame him for inappropriate behaviour, since they themselves sat in the same poses and with the same bulging eyes. Learning something about the past not from treatises, but from the lips of the man himself who lived in those days was much more exciting. “So this is what the Righteous Sword of Cheong Mun was like.”
“And elder Cheong Jin too,” Jo Geol said, sitting on the grass in a clearing in the middle of the forest in the light of the setting sun with other guys. “I would never have thought that such a person could be the weakest among the Chon generation of that time.”
“He was physically weak, but even Sahyun Cheong Mun would envy his intelligence,” Cheong Myeon took a sip of wine, but rather carefully. His whole posture expressed greater restraint than was usual. He even sat not like a robber, but like a noble swordsman. But this was only at those moments when stories about the past began or when an answer was required from him as an elder. “But that didn’t save him in his worst hour.”
The children remained silent. They could not afford to interrupt his speech.
“When he disappeared, I was going to go look for him, but Sahyun forbade me to do so. Then no one could afford to look for the one who escaped, otherwise too many people would have died. Who would have thought that after so many years he would help us with techniques.”
He smiled, bitterly and sadly. He probably became too sentimental when the children found out the truth about him.
However, since then it has not been so difficult for him, but his responsibility as a senior in the eyes of these guys has increased. If others find out about this, then everything will become much more complicated than before. However, until then, he was going to enjoy these moments when he could not run anywhere and sit calmly next to his children, telling them about the events of days long past, without worrying that someone might break into their home.
“Oh, can I ask?” Soso raised her hand and lowered it after his nod. “What were the women in the sect like before the war? Were they very strong? Was their training different from that of men? Oops, too many questions!”
“Pha-ha!” the old man laughed sincerely, clutching his stomach. When he calmed down, plum petals fell on his head and shoulders, drawing even more attention to his person. The Mount Hua Swordsman was always at the center of his techniques, surrounded by pink and red petals. “Yes, their training was different. Women from birth have greater body flexibility, so girls were given additional training from an early age. At first the boys laughed, but then they deeply regretted their frivolity when the girls could arch their bodies so that the tip of the sword could not touch them. I remember that women sometimes deliberately walked with their hair down so that their every movement would look more... memorable.”
At these words, a blush covered his cheeks, which was clearly not caused by alcohol.
“And these vixens were not ashamed to use us as training targets for seducing men.”
While Iseol smiled quietly and Soso giggled into her fist, the boys moved away from them and blushed deeply, realizing what they were talking about. It was no secret that Soso, who had read about such things, taught some techniques to Iseol, who immediately found situations in which she could apply it. Whether it's a minor hair adjustment, a twitch of the hips, or a mysterious smirk, almost everyone has suffered from these actions.
It was obvious that Cheong Myeon did not react to any of this simply due to his actual age and experience. The same applied to other older men. However, the sect leader made sure that all this light teasing did not turn into the basis of conflicts, strictly ordering the girls to know when to stop after the time when they did go too far. Poor Baek Sang could not come to his senses for a long time to finish working on the documents, during which he was interrupted.
“Soso, don't look at me,” Jo Geol hid behind Yun Jong, who quickly changed places with him.
Baek Cheon sat quietly with his legs crossed because Iseol, although she was a ghost in the sect, was not as scary as the daughter of the Poison King. Moreover, he could calmly react to her every action after so many travels together.
“Oh, these children...”
Cheong Myeon chuckled quietly as he sipped his alcohol. It amused him to watch their interactions.