I Obtained Guan Yu's Martial Arts - Chapter 25

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Obtaining the Martial Arts of Guan Yunjang — Chapter 25
Qinglong Peak (5)
“Itadakimasu! Brother!”
Ju Ho, beaming with a bright smile, began inhaling the food laid out before him at an astonishing speed.
His pace was so rapid that the movement of his chopsticks was barely visible to the eye.
“…….”
How long had it been since he’d eaten?
Watching Ju Ho’s possessed chopstick technique—as though a beggar, or perhaps some beast of burden, lived in his belly—Guan Hui found his jaw dropping without meaning to.
He’d felt it before during the pickpocketing: the boy’s hand movements were extraordinarily swift.
Even Guan Hui, whose martial prowess was unremarkable, could sense the refinement in those gestures.
“Tell me. Are you alone?”
“Pardon?”
Ju Ho tilted his head, a large dumpling already in his mouth.
“What do you mean, sir?”
Ju Ho, thinking hard, clapped his palms together with a sound.
“Do I have a lover, is that what you’re asking? Of course not, Brother. We pickpockets—we can’t afford to have someone at our side. Never know what they’d steal from us.”
“……?”
Momentarily flustered by the absurd remark, Guan Hui corrected himself.
“No, I meant—do you belong to a clan or a martial school?”
“Ah, Brother. Someone like me, a pickpocket—where would such a thing come from?”
“…….”
After placing a piece of braised pork into his mouth and savoring the sweet soy sauce, Guan Hui nodded slowly.
‘Then it’s safe to ask.’
Guan Hui turned to look at Ju Ho, gathering the courage to ask the question he’d been pondering since leaving the Underground Fighting Arena.
“Join our clan.”
“……Yes?”
“Come with us. At first you’ll be a guest, but if you prove yourself worthy in time, I’ll grant you the Guan surname and the status of a branch-line member.”
It was common practice among the great clans to enlist those unrelated by blood as branch-line members.
A clan could not survive on the strength of its direct line alone; it gained power through strategic marriages and the bestowal of names.
“S-so suddenly? To me?! Why—why would you, for someone like me, a mere pickpocket……?”
Ju Ho’s pupils trembled violently.
Guan Hui, as if answering to the light in the boy’s eyes, spoke with a grave gaze of his own.
“Your circumstances made you a pickpocket—nothing more. I don’t believe that’s your true nature.”
Not everyone walks the Dark Path because they wish to.
Sometimes harsh circumstances force a person onto the Dark Path, sometimes there is no other choice.
“You chose it because no other choice existed. So I’m offering you one now.”
What sin could lie in one cast adrift on boundless waters, driven by cruel storms with no rudder to guide him?
Sometimes one must see not the sin, but the essence of the person beneath.
Guan Hui was not looking at Ju Ho the pickpocket, but at the very soul within him.
“……Why—why someone like me?”
Confounded by this approval—the first true kindness he had ever known—Ju Ho’s pupils shook wildly.
“Because I’ve seen your ability.”
“…….”
“I intend to make the Guan Clan one of the most renowned families in the Central Plains.”
A Power Family.
An epithet that every clan desired yet no clan could truly claim.
A title envied and admired by all.
Guan Hui wanted to make the Guan Clan known as a Power Family—as the Guan Clan proper.
A clan as vast and mighty as the Cheonjoa Five Clans, which were called Beyond Heaven.
“But…… is my ability really needed?”
“Yes. I need your ability.”
“…….”
A complicated expression crossed Ju Ho’s face.
‘I’m…… needed?’
Ju Ho is the illegitimate son of the Baeksi Clan, a family of considerable standing in Zhongjing.
It hadn’t always been this way for him.
Though born of a base bloodline, he had striven to be of use to his clan, to contribute to its honor, and to some measure he had succeeded.
Yet under the scheming and discrimination of his half-brothers, Ju Ho was cast out from the Baeksi Clan at last.
Talentless, lowborn, worthless.
Called a Lowly Insect—something beneath notice in all the world—Ju Ho had been driven from his clan and left to fend for himself on the streets.
He was only ten years old then.
For eight years afterward, he wandered the streets and stole from others to survive—and now that had made him what he was: Ju Ho.
‘This…… I’m actually needed.’
No one in the clan had ever told him he was necessary, that his abilities were wanted.
Even the woman who bore him had turned away.
Ju Ho had never heard a kind word from the moment of his birth, treated as nothing but vermin, nothing but filth.
‘So…… I do matter.’
The very woman who gave him life had deemed him unnecessary—and yet someone needed him.
Those who shared his blood had abandoned him, and yet someone was offering him a chance.
“…….”
Ju Ho, stuffing a dumpling into his mouth, felt his eyes suddenly burn red.
“……Damn it.”
He crammed another dumpling into his mouth as though trying to dam up the tears.
But his throat was so tight the dumpling wouldn’t go down, and still the tears refused to stop.
As if eight years of pain hidden beneath laughter had suddenly burst forth, they flowed without end, again and again.
Emotions he hadn’t yet understood swelled up in his chest, burning hot tears down his face.
“Hell…… why’d you have to say something like that while I’m eating?”
Ju Ho chewed the dumpling noisily and shoved another into his mouth.
If he didn’t.
If he didn’t keep chewing, keep himself distracted with food, he felt he’d break down sobbing right then and there.
“These dumplings…… taste awful salty.”
Chewing the dumpling dampened by tears streaming down his jaw, Ju Ho pulled a money pouch from his pocket and set it down on the table with a dull thunk.
“……?”
“For the clan.”
“You’re saying you’ll stay?”
“It’s not like…… I have anywhere else to go.”
“Right. Thank you.”
Guan Hui took the money pouch without objection and slipped it into his robes.
He’d never had the luxury of refusing out of politeness.
Courtesy, like dignity, required a comfort he’d never possessed.
“It’s what I saved up, so use it carefully.”
“……?”
Guan Hui tilted his head at those words.
“……You didn’t exactly save it carefully, did you?”
More precisely, he’d stolen it from someone who had.
“……Just keep that thought to yourself. Brother.”
Ju Ho wiped his tears away with a grumble.
Yet his lips bore a smile he hadn’t worn once since leaving his old home.

* * *
“Master!”
“You’ve arrived!”
As Guan Hui pushed open the weathered door, the clan members greeted him warmly.
From Guan Nancheon to Guan Yuhwa, everyone had gathered as if waiting for his return.
“We’ve been waiting for you!”
“……? For me? Why?”
“Because your reputation has spread all through Yunseong City!”
“It’s extraordinary, Master!”
“Incredible!”
“……?”
Confused by their words, Guan Hui tilted his head—and the answer to his bewilderment came from Ju Ho, who stood nearby.
“Word must have gotten out.”
“Word?”
“Yes. That you won five consecutive matches at the Underground Fighting Arena, apparently.”
“It spread that fast?”
Guan Hui’s jaw dropped.
Something that happened at noon today was already all over the city by evening?
Even for a city as small as Yunseong City, this was remarkably swift.
“News from places like the Underground Fighting Arena always spreads faster. Where else would all those people who were there have gone?”
“……Ah. The inns.”
“Yes. When people drink at inns and taverns and talk, the rumors spread quickly. Of course, Yunseong City being small helps too.”
Guan Hui nodded, finally understanding Ju Ho’s explanation.
“Wait. The master!?”
Gu Man, a squat man from the Hyeolgang School who had served as a branch leader, glared at Ju Ho with a shocked expression.
“What, what is this man?”
Gu Man’s shoulders trembled violently as the weight of the revelation struck him.
“How could you take in another Dark Path dog while I’m right here!?”
Gu Man’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as he fixed his gaze on Ju Ho.
Under the heavens of the Righteous Path family, two Dark Path practitioners could not coexist.
Gu Man and Ju Ho were fundamentally incompatible.
“It can’t be, Master! Cast out that shameless Dark Path wretch and take me instead!”
“…What kind of madness is this fool spouting.”
Crack!—
Guan Hui personally brought his fist down across Gu Man’s jaw.
Even this lunatic needed a beating now and then to come to his senses.
“Patriarch. Patriarch! The Epithet—did you hear? You got one!?”
“An Epithet? I did?”
Guan Hui’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise.
Ordinarily, an Epithet was something only earned by martial artists who had built a name for themselves and accomplished deeds worthy of legend.
Even skilled Late-Stage Experts needed at least a year of traveling through the Central Plains before earning one.
To receive an Epithet already—!?
“They’re calling you the Bone-Breaking Crooked Fist!”
“…The, the Bone-Breaking what?”
Guan Hui blinked in bewilderment.
A fist that shattered bones and twisted them out of place.
That was the kind of Epithet only Dark Path practitioners would earn.
And Guan Hui wasn’t even a fist master.
“Kh…Bone-Breaking Crooked Fist. It sounds impressive.”
Ju Ho seemed satisfied, as befitted a Dark Path man.
But Guan Hui disliked the Epithet.
“What kind of stupid epithet—”
But then.
“The patriarch got the Bone-Breaking Crooked Fist!”
“Bone-Breaking Crooked Fiiiist!”
“Our Guan Clan finally has an Epithet!”
The clan members gasped in joy and wonder, each uttering expressions of delight at even this Epithet.
When good news had been nothing more than “we don’t starve today,” this was extraordinary.
For their patriarch to earn an Epithet was like pouring pride into hearts that had grown parched.
“You’re pleased too, aren’t you, Patriarch?”
Seeing a clan member ask the question with an uplifted expression, Guan Hui smiled faintly.
‘Yes. What else matters.’
And he nodded, as if accepting the inevitable.
“If it pleases you, then it pleases me.”
Yes. What did the meaning of an Epithet matter.
‘As long as my people are content, that is all.’
Even if the Epithet reeked of the Dark Path, even if others mocked him for it, it no longer mattered.
As long as his people found joy and smiled because of it.
‘That is enough.’
After all, that was all there ever was.
“Brother. Brother.”
Ju Ho stepped closer and whispered.
“If you don’t like the Epithet, shall I slip around and change it for you?”
“Change an Epithet? Is that even possible?”
“Well, if I go around to a few inns and start spreading word of a different Epithet, it becomes the new one. That’s how it works.”
Epithets grew from rumor and reputation, so Ju Ho’s words weren’t entirely wrong.
Of course, once one’s martial mastery deepened and one’s fame spread across the entire realm, such a thing would be impossible—but now, barely beginning to make a name in Yunseong City, it was feasible.
“Hmm. What kind of Epithet did you have in mind?”
Seeing Guan Hui’s interest kindled, Ju Ho grinned.
“How about the One-Fist Demon King?”
“……”
“Growl. Isn’t it impressive? Very sinister and powerful-looking, don’t you think?”
“Ju Ho.”
“Yes?”
Smack—
Guan Hui brought his palm down hard against Ju Ho’s head.
The fact that he was spouting such nonsense meant it was time for a beating.
“Ugh, ugh!”
“Am I some Evil Path martial artist? Why? Should I add the character for ‘blood’ to make it feel more like the Hyeolgang School? Perfect for the imperial court to stamp out.”
“No, no. It’s just…….”
“Stop talking like a madman and go rest in the other room. It’s late and I need to sleep. I’ve been moving all day—I’m exhausted.”
Crack—
Guan Hui struck Ju Ho’s head one more time as the latter wore an aggrieved expression, then headed into his own room and collapsed flat onto the floor.
“Phew. I’m worn out.”
His body, having endured brutal training followed by five rounds of actual combat, had begun to cry out in protest.
Guan Hui closed his eyes at once and sank into sleep to recover.
—Wake up.
Barely an hour after he’d fallen asleep.
Guan Yunjang’s voice rang out in his mind like an alarm bell.
—Wake up. An enemy has appeared.
“Mm…… just a little more sleep…… what was that!?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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