I Shouldn't Have Joined the Martial Arts Alliance - Chapter 2

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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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Episode 002
As Sa Cheol-gang’s body grew colder, his son Sa Urin’s weeping only grew louder.
These were tears he had never shed before in his life.
Thirteen-year-old Sa Urin did not know.
That he would be rendered this helpless before his father’s death, pierced by such aching sorrow.
No.
He had never imagined that his father loomed so vast, so impossibly large in his own existence.
And so Sa Urin’s tears did not stop, hour after hour stretching toward half a day.
Then the door opened. But Sa Urin, drowning in grief and bitter anguish, did not even notice.
An elderly man stepped into the room filled with the sound of Sa Urin’s weeping, looking down at the boy who would not stop his endless tears.
“By now your father knows. So cease your crying.”
Sa Urin’s eyes, brimming with tears, turned toward the voice.
“…Jang Chun…?”
Jang Chun let out a soft laugh and acknowledged Sa Urin’s words.
“Impressive. You remember my face.”
Five years prior, they had crossed paths for a mere moment — truly nothing more than a fleeting brush in passing. Yet the fact that Sa Urin remembered his face seemed remarkable to Jang Chun.
“Have you come to take me? But Father’s funeral rites haven’t even…”
“I would wish it were so, but unfortunately there is no time.”
“What do you mean there’s no time? That can’t be. Father’s dead, and I’m grieving beyond measure — and now I can’t even hold a funeral? It makes no sense. I won’t accept it. I will hold his funeral rites. I must.”
“Before your father died, he left me with a final testament. He asked that upon his death, I arrange his swift cremation and burial atop the mountain peak overlooking the Moorim Alliance.”
Sa Urin shot to his feet, wiping away the tears that streaked his wet cheeks.
“Then I’ll go with Father to that place where he’s buried.”
“You cannot.”
At Jang Chun’s refusal, Sa Urin cried out in protest.
“Why not?! Why can’t I?! You say I can’t do this, I can’t do that — then what can I do for my dead father?! Tell me!”
“Don’t you understand?”
“Understand what?!”
“What you’ve done.”
“…What did I…”
“The matter with the Unweol Sect and Haeweol Pavilion.”
He had thought it was merely children at play…
That it could weigh so heavily…
Sa Urin’s chest, still so young at thirteen, felt as though it might tear apart.
…
“Yes. Good that you understand. Before word spreads of your father’s death, we must cremate him swiftly and lay him to rest where he wished, must we not?”
“…I understand.”
Sa Urin stepped back from his father’s cooling side. Then Jang Chun opened the door and called in the men who had been waiting outside.
“Treat him with proper respect.”
Jang Chun was five years Sa Cheol-gang’s senior. Yet he addressed Sa Cheol-gang as his elder. How else would a mere information broker treat a warrior of the Demonic Cult?
Better to call him elder if you wanted to keep your skin intact. Such was the way of the Gangho — the strong were your seniors, your superiors.
“Yes, sir.”
Before long, preparations for Sa Cheol-gang’s cremation were complete.
Jang Chun turned to Sa Urin.
“You will light the pyre.”
No reply was necessary.
Had Jang Chun denied him even this, Sa Urin would never have stepped away from his father’s corpse.
It was only right.
It had to be.
Sa Urin approached the blazing kiln with heavy steps and took up a burning piece of firewood.
Once more, tears traced a path down Sa Urin’s smooth cheek.
At the cremation platform where his father lay, Sa Urin lit the pyre.
Whoosh.
In an instant the flames engulfed the stacked wood, then consumed Sa Cheol-gang within them.
“Father…”
Now I believe.
I believe everything Father told me.
And I will never forget. I will never forget again.
And watch over me.
I will become a warrior greater than you ever were.
* * *
Jang Chun gazed down at Sa Urin with pitying eyes, watching the boy sit listlessly before the table.
“What troubles you about the dishes?”
“……Yes.”
The side dishes arranged on the table filled Sa Urin with profound sadness and a creeping melancholy.
White rice topped with wilted greens that lay limp and graceless in the bowl——or rather, far from filling it, the vegetables sat so sparsely arranged that patches of the bowl’s bottom showed through.
And there were only two dishes in total.
Sa Urin had never once in his memory faced such a table.
He had known only tables laden with meat glistening with fat and fresh fish brimming with plump flesh——tables where such bounty was the bare minimum. This present offering lay far beyond anything he could have imagined.
For the first time in his life, Sa Urin was confronted with such a humble, meager spread.
And in that moment, he felt the weight of his father’s death settle into his very bones.
“This is infuriating.”
Tears, bitter as bile, spilled down Sa Urin’s cheeks once more.
Why had he not grasped his father’s worth until now?
At thirteen years old, Sa Urin’s mind and heart were torn open by the weight of all those lost years.
“There is no use in regretting now. And besides, you are far too weak.”
What was he talking about?
In this district, Sa Urin was the strongest there was.
“Your father was too soft-hearted, raising you with indulgence at every turn, so you grew up knowing no hardship. You do not realize this, but it is the truth.”
Was that truly so?
It did not seem so at the time, but when he looked back now, it began to feel that way.
“……I understand now.”
“Good. It seems your father has left you with profound wisdom. Now, there are things you must remember as you live here from this moment forward.”
Had Sa Cheol-gang still been alive, Sa Urin would have grumbled, “Remember again?” But he had resolved not to do so anymore.
He had learned that when someone said something must be remembered, there was always a weighty reason for it.
Sa Urin’s grief-stricken eyes met Jang Chun’s with newfound resolve.
“No one knows that you are here, save for me and my brothers who dwell with me.”
Those who worked at Sa Urin’s estate had been given substantial sums and ordered to leave the region——accompanied by threats, unspoken yet unmistakable, that their lives would be forfeit if they refused.
“And in this region, no one knows the connection between your father and me.”
Sa Urin wanted to ask how that was possible after all those years of meeting, but he set aside such childish curiosity and kept his attention fixed on Jang Chun’s words.
“From this moment forward, you must not leave this estate. You already know the reason, so I need not spell it out. Do you understand?”
“What if I do?”
“Should you venture outside, you will catch someone’s eye. They will learn of your presence here, and then all of us——you, me, and my brothers——will be endangered. More than that: you will surely follow your father. We will not escape unscathed either.”
It chilled him.
Sa Urin had heard such things from his father and understood them in principle, but whether such severity was truly necessary lay beyond his thirteen-year-old comprehension.
It was a punishment too harsh for a child to bear.
“……Must it be so extreme?”
“It is not extremity——it is necessity. From their perspective, it must be so. Only then do they save face, only then does their position in Gangho grow firm. That is Gangho. Or rather, it is not Gangho itself, but selfish men who have shaped Gangho into such a place. Remember this always: until you grow strong enough to stand alone.”
“……Yes.”
“And……”
Jang Chun faltered, his words catching in his throat.
With Sa Cheol-gang’s death, danger could descend upon Jang Chun and his brothers at any moment.
If only……
There could be no misfortune until Sa Urin had grown.
Such was the Gangho that Jang Chun walked.
It was a place where one had to trample others and steal their wealth to eat well and live well——the Gangho beneath Jang Chun’s feet.
One never knew who might covet what Jang Chun possessed, or when, or how.
“Why? Why do you stop mid-sentence?”
“……No. Let us leave it at that for today. Ah, yes. After you finish your meal, clean the courtyard as well. It will be your training ground, so you ought to tend to it yourself, no?”
With his father gone, Sa Urin had become someone who had to do even the cleaning.
“……Yes.”
* * *
He forced down the last of his meal and finished the courtyard work. Standing in the space he had swept clean, Sa Urin drew his sword and took a deep breath.
“Exhale. Yes. I must grow stronger.”
His father had told him this.
In Gangho, the weak must bow their heads; those who bow begin to be trampled; and once trampling begins, one crawls endlessly if one wishes to keep breathing.
If one wishes to cling to life in such a place.
Sa Urin had never bowed his head to anyone. And because of that pride, this calamity had come upon him. Yet still, Sa Urin harbored no intention of bowing to anyone in the future.
Not to the Demonic Cult dogs who had crippled his father’s arm, nor to the Moorim Alliance who had exploited and discarded him.
What if, instead, he claimed the seat of Moorim Alliance Leader——the very position his father had longed for?
If he became Moorim Alliance Leader, he would never need to bow to anyone again.
And even if he didn’t yet understand what a true Moorim Alliance should be, he would forge that too in time.
Learning what a proper Moorim Alliance meant—that would come gradually.
But how strong would he need to become?
No, such thoughts were unnecessary. Wasn’t it simpler than that—just become the strongest in all the Gangho?
In a word: the first master under heaven.
Even Sa Urin had to admit it sounded absurd, but wasn’t it true that the grander the dream, the better?
At least, that’s what he told himself.
Yet his father had told him that strength alone wouldn’t make him Moorim Alliance Leader. He would need to accomplish great deeds, many of them, and earn the recognition of countless people.
So then, great deeds—how would he…?
No. First, he had to grow stronger. Strength came first.
The Honwon-gong his father had taught him when he was seven.
It was the collective name for all martial arts—Heart Methods, Sword Techniques, Movement Techniques, Palm Techniques, and more—unified under one name: Honwon-gong.
Honwon-gong began with Honwon itself, the foundation and the whole.
Honwon was the source of all things in creation, and the totality of existence.
The air that lets people breathe, the water that quenches thirst, the fire that warms the bitter cold—everything that exists in heaven and earth has its origin in Honwon.
Honwon exists, yet cannot be seen.
What cannot be seen or felt cannot be distinguished.
But one who masters Honwon-gong can see and feel the Honwon that exists in the world.
In other words, Honwon-gong grants the ability to command all things in creation.
Wasn’t that utterly ridiculous?
That’s why the martial arts texts abandoned by the Moorim Alliance—or rather, the books—had been treated as worthless scraps of paper and shoved into dark corners.
Yet Sa Cheol-gang had treasured such a thing.
And Sa Urin had mastered this absurd Honwon-gong.
Sa Urin deployed the Samjae Mujik, the foundational Sword Technique within Honwon-gong.
Thrust,
slice,
strike downward.
What people commonly called the Samjae Sword Technique.
Yet what Sa Urin wielded now was the Samjae Mujik. It looked the same on the surface, but within it was different.
The Samjae Sword Technique moved in straight lines.
That’s why anyone could learn it—it was easy. But the Samjae Mujik of Honwon-gong didn’t move in straight lines; it moved in curves.
Curves like a serpent gliding across the earth. Yet to the eye, it appeared no different from a straight line.
Not mere thrusting, slicing, and swinging—the Samjae Mujik carried variation in every instant.
It was terribly difficult.
Every finger and joint of the wrist gripping the blade had to move without pause, moment after moment.
But in mastering this, one could optimize for any circumstance, capable of adapting to any change.
Sa Urin was beginning to understand his father’s words and intentions, piece by piece.
For six years Sa Urin had devoted himself relentlessly to the Samjae Mujik, and throughout those years, his father’s nagging had always supported him from behind.
But now his father’s voice could no longer guard his back.
He had to swing, think, and master it all on his own. Sa Urin’s movements grew swifter and more fluid with each passing day.
The Yusim Sojo Heart Method of second-stage Honwon-gong surged through his Dantian. Whether called Yusim Sojo or Honwon, it was the vital energy of nature itself—the essence of Honwon.
The sun sets, and the sun rises.
Days pass, and new days arrive.
Wind blows, and the scorching sun beats down.
Rain pours, and snow accumulates.
Seasons turn, and time flows on.
Before long Sa Urin had perfected the Samjae Mujik and advanced to the next stage of foundational techniques: the Amyeong Singyeol and Cheonroe Singyeol.
Clouds swept swiftly across Sa Urin’s vision.
Time continued its endless drift.
Water flowed, and sweat poured down his face.
Time never paused, never stopped—it flowed without ceasing.
And so five years slipped away.
Sa Urin had become eighteen, a young man now in his own right.

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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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