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"I'm not getting up," Jo Geol groans
"You will get up. Yourself. Otherwise, I'll call HIM, " Soso crosses her arms over her chest.
Only she wasn't traumatized enough by Cheong Myeong to threaten with his name without shuddering herself. And Cheong Myeong was surprisingly gentle with her (by his standards), either because of the fear her courtship inspired in him, or because of his friendship with her father.
Jo Geol gets up, grabbing Yun Jong's hand, who looks at him sympathetically, but doesn't stand up for him.
"Why are you so afraid of him anyway?" Soso tilts his head to the side.
Shock appears on the face of even the usually neutral Iseol. Baek Cheon opens his mouth first, but in the second of hesitation created by dozens of blows to the head, Jo Geol manages to get ahead of him, his mouth only became faster from these blows.
“He hits really hard and he’s so damn strong. My jaw and the back of my head hurt just thinking about saying something against him.”
“He denies common sense,” Baek Cheon adds, finally finding his words.
“He has a lot of secrets, and he probably won’t tell them even under torture,” Yun Jong opens his mouth.
Soso almost growls, clutching her head.
"He's torturing himself more than all of you combined!" pointing somewhere towards Hua Um, she adds, "Every time I need to treat him, I'm surprised he's still alive with such wounds and such an emaciated body! And his liver?! If he weren't a warrior, it would have rotted by now!"
"He's definitely not a human," Baek Sang rubs his face. "He's more like a possessed corpse, he knows too much and is too good. And his slips of the tongue..."
Iseol frowns, boring into him with her gaze.
"Sajil is a human."
"That's right! Samae is telling the pure truth!" Soso explodes, forcefully pulling needles out of the tree behind Jo Geol's back. "He's just very, very stubborn and sick in the head!"
On the one hand, they agreed with her, but on the other...
She didn't see him single-handedly, with his own hands, prevent Huashan from falling. She didn't see the changes, the new breath that Cheong Myeong gave the sect. She hadn't lost to Zhongnan for years, only for this monster to ensure victory with his own hands. She didn't know how weak they were.
Iseol knew. But she kept silent, worried about Cheong Myeong and awkwardly trying to share his burdens.
"Geol," Soso smiles, feeling the gap between herself and the others in the silence. It was so frustrating that she even forgot about how she had lost her temper again and started using needles in sparring. "We're not done yet. I still have a lot to learn from you. Raise your sword."
Jo Geol shudders. Even if he was stronger, even if he had lost more from surprise and his legs giving way from fatigue... there was something frightening about Soso. Especially now, when tears welled up in her eyes from resentment and desolation.
"Why me?!"
Before Cheong Myeong, perhaps Yun Jong would have stood up for him, but after? He only steps back, leaving his friend to be torn to pieces. The others repeat his maneuver. Cheong Myeong had killed their desire to help their neighbor, and yet, in moments when it was really important, they stood up for each other like a mountain.
Cheong Myeong's influence is strange, unpredictable, contradictory. It is difficult to describe, only one thing is clear.
That it was.