Book 25 Chapter 18

I was a shadow looking at the light

-Light and shadow

With light comes shadow.

Even in the most upright of places, it was impossible to keep everything clean, so shadows were indispensable to do the dark and dirty work. He who cleans up the unclean is bound to get himself dirty. Dirty to keep clean, he was one of those shadows.

He was an orphan.

He had no memory of his mother or father. When he was able to recognize himself separately from his surroundings, he was standing in a place surrounded by the sea. It was an island. There were dozens of children his age around him.

On the island, they were fed, clothed, and given a place to sleep. It was a great thing to feed, clothe, and house orphans.

"If you want to stay on the island, be strong!"

Those in charge of the island gathered the boys together and said, "If you want to eat, dress, and sleep comfortably, be strong. They began to teach them basic martial arts, and once a month they would challenge each other to a fight, kicking the weaker ones off the island.

They weren't wearing masks, but they had scattered hair and scruffy beards that made them hard to recognize. In retrospect, I think they thought that wearing masks would raise unnecessary suspicion. The children knew it as some sort of upstate guard training center. The adults called the island the "cradle". The implication was that it was a place of comfort and warmth, like a cradle, and to fight to stay there.

The weak one can no longer be in the cradle. Kicked out of the cradle, he's back to being an orphan with nowhere to turn. The boys competed desperately, to stay there.

As long as I was there, I didn't have to worry about starving or freezing to death. The likelihood of dying in an accident was insignificant in the face of survival issues of eating and sleeping. Time passed, and the children grew older, while a steady stream of five-year-old orphans washed up on the island.

To survive, boys had to be strong and ruthless. From the cradle, boys learned pain and the endurance to endure it. The children had no names. They only called each other by number. His number was "Forty-seven.

The children who were not eliminated were given new skills. They had to use the skills they had been given, the knowledge they had learned, to survive. It wasn't the strongest who survived, but the strongest who survived.

It wasn't until a decade after his arrival that he realized that the island, called the Cradle, was actually a nursery for the secret spies of the Martial Order. It was a place to raise the "shadows" of the light-filled white islands, to train beings to do what they could not do themselves. They existed to defile.

At the time, the outward peace was maintained by the balance between the White and Black Heavenly Clans, and the balance between the Heavenly Academy and the Heavenly Palace. While the outward peace was maintained, the underwater rivalries behind the scenes became more intense.

It had been nearly ninety years since they'd been collectively harmed by a fearsome foe called the Tenebrous Spirit, and collectively responded. The peace had been too long, people had become lax about the crisis, and the repercussions had unleashed pent-up greed. Rather than focusing on the common good, each side, white and black alike, was driven by the desire to get a piece of the pie. The quarrels were internal, not external.

It was the era of the silent war, the so-called "Cold War.

This quiet but fierce rivalry was already in its third decade. Good shadows were essential to keep up with the competition. Highly skilled shadows are not created overnight. Nurturing them from an early age was essential to foster secrecy and loyalty. There were limits to how much trust they could place in outside recruits, so they generously unlocked the Ascended Martial Arts and worked together to create the right martial arts for the Shadow Elixir.

As he matured, Jang Hong was formally taught advanced martial arts. This, of course, was accompanied by ample training in thought and spirit. The shadow did not need a thinking head to think for itself. All that was needed was the ability to perform a single-minded task, to carry out the orders given to him without question, and for this purpose, mental training with a combination of hypnosis and suggestion was essential. This process was not black and white. Both sides needed to be made to believe that their system was just. Sometimes, however, hypnosis and suggestion did not work well.

Jang Hong was the latter. Although his implicit learning and teaching of ideas hadn't paid off, he didn't particularly dislike this place. This was his home, after all, and he had a certain amount of money, and he had friends. But now he wanted to go out into the world, and the director of the training center told him.

"You have to be strong to get off the island."

In the past, you had to be strong to stay on the island, and now you had to be strong to get off the island.

Three years later, he finally passed the qualification examination and was allowed to leave the island. He was given the pseudonym "Jang Hongshik," along with the code name "Muyoung Forty-seven. From that moment on, the nameless orphan became a man named Jang Hongxing.

His trade was infiltration, and his mission was infiltration, but not on the enemy's side. He was a watcher, infiltrating the midst of his allies and keeping tabs on what was going on around him from the inside. He entered the Academy on a mission. Passing was easy, and he became a Kwando of the Academy.

A new world awaited him.

Receive a fake name,

I received a fake identity.

Then he entered the Hall of Heaven.

His job was to infiltrate the ranks, live among them, and extract information from each family and sect. It wasn't just the information from the Black Heavenly Pavilion and the Heavenly Pavilion that the Martial Academy needed. In order to maintain their organization, they also needed to keep a close eye on the movements of the Nine Families and the Eight Great Families. It was essential in order to properly suppress their rebellion and discontent and keep them moving in the desired direction. The time of peace had been too long for ideals alone.

Despite the fake name and fake identity, Jang Hong was amused. After all, all he'd learned was moderate martial arts, except for stealth, and few humans were as disciplined as he was. Under the systematic instruction of the Heavenly Martial Academy, he became even stronger. His name began to rise and fall within the academy, and he was warned not to be too conspicuous, but he didn't care. Standing in the center of the light, under the spotlight, he felt like he was the light. But he was still a shadow, and every time he tried to forget that fact, the organization reminded him of his position. If he set his mind to it, the organization could tear down everything he had built in an instant. It was a tower built on a lie anyway. Once the lie was exposed, everything would crumble like a sandcastle. It was a warning to always remember where you stand, he said.

"Now I'm going to give you a real assignment."

"A real mission?"

"Yes, all that experience was for this mission."

All the external activities that had brought him into the spotlight had been calculated. Does this mean that everything he had built up was also a lie? He couldn't tell what was his own work and what was not.

"Accompany me as an emissary to the Tower of Heaven. And fulfill your mission."

"What's the mission?"

"Gather information about the Seven Pillars of the Black Sea, the 'Black Lacquer'. Gather information by getting close to the figures in the Ten Thousand Pavilions."

He did as he was told, and headed for the Temple of Heaven.

Black lacquer (黑七柱).

The seven pillars that hold up the Black Earth.

In terms of Baekdo, it corresponds to the Eight Great Segae. Originally there were thirteen states, but after the Heavenly Blood Tax a hundred years ago, six families were destroyed and only seven remain. Their influence on the Black Sword Forest is still immense. And they have not hesitated to recruit talent to further strengthen their influence. The Black Sword Forest was always a place where skill was everything, so regardless of family or origin, skill was the first priority, and when it came to recruiting talent, they didn't hesitate to accept anyone from a political faction. The ninety years of peace and the surprise marriage a few years ago between Nai Bai Tian, a martial artist, and Ye Qing, the eldest daughter of one of the Seven Families of the Moon, further fueled this atmosphere. The interaction between the White and Black Islands was now taken for granted.

For ninety years, since the Ten Thousand Blood Tax, there has been an unwilling but outwardly peaceful relationship between the Black and White.

Jang Hongshik's name had already spread far and wide in the Black Sea, and many families were targeting him, especially since he had no connections to the Samsung Empire.

He was not a disciple of any famous school or sect, nor was he a disciple of any famous master, as if he had dropped out of the sky and sprung up from the earth. It was almost miraculous that he was able to eat the Three Treasures in the Hua Shan Covenant Hall without being taught by a prestigious teacher. This made him all the more coveted in the Black Island, which valued individual ability and skill. Since he had no ties, it was easy to attract him. There were quite a few people who switched over that way. If you were a master who wasn't an old pilgrim or an Eight Great Families, you could completely assimilate into the family without being tied to your origins. Rather than a dichotomous view of good and evil, it was now a power struggle. There was no way the House of the Black Sun, with its bright calculations, would leave him alone.

And the simplest way to recruit was through marriage.

After going to the Temple of Heaven as an envoy, he had to deal with a lot of confusion from all sides, and he wasn't the only one who was baffled by the suddenness of the confusion.

"No."

Summoned to the family home and seated in front of her father, Feng Feng Mantian, the girl spoke in a firm voice of refusal. Although she was still young, her breasts were extremely voluptuous for a girl her age. However, compared to her large breasts, the girl's eyes were as sharp as a fierce hornet's, and a hint of defiance could be seen in her eyes. It was the story of her marriage that had come so suddenly to her, when she had been living freely.

"Why me?"

"It doesn't mean anything. It's just that we're the same age, so it's probably easier for him to be more comfortable with you. It's easier for him to approach you."

Despite reading about his daughter's rebellion, her father didn't get angry with her. He had read that the harder you suppress something, the more it will rebel against you.

"Lie!

She exclaimed to herself.

"You're getting on in years, aren't you, and it would be nice to find a good marriage partner now. Don't you think?"

"Absolutely not, and I'm never getting married."

There was no way she could feel good about her body being used as a tool. Even in a time when marriage was a common tool for manipulation, she hated it. But she needed the power to resist convention.

"I have to be strong!

She wanted more power, to make sure her opinions weren't ignored, to enforce her will. It was with that in mind that she joined the Chilgong Frequency, the largest women's faction in the Temple of Heaven.

It was an extremely male-dominated and exclusionary environment. It was believed that the only way to prove a woman's ability was to beat a man.

It was an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth mentality.

This mindset didn't bother Yukyung Ok.

It was a place where strength ruled, and the weak were eaten by the strong. To be equal to a man, you needed to be stronger.

Though she was talented, and far more skilled than her peers, she was not yet capable of defying her family, and she had neither the ability nor the guts to do so. Small, tiny acts of rebellion were all she could muster.

"Would this father wish ill on his daughter? Who knows if he might be the one for you? Let's meet him, and then we'll talk again."

She had no choice but to comply. Her abilities were still too raw to break her family's bonds.

* * *

She wishes she had listened to her father then. If she hadn't listened to him then, none of this would have happened.

What went wrong?

Was it a mistake to ask the Princess's sisters to help her get to the meeting?

Or was it a mistake to look at him differently as he slipped through his sisters' jerseys and made it to his appointment?

Or was it a mistake that she was attracted to the fact that he didn't stare at her big boobs like the other guys did?

Or was it a mistake to boldly tell her that she could marry him if she won?

Maybe it was a mistake to think that this man could be different from the man she knew.

But the biggest mistake of all was that she fell in love with him. She was a heavenly martial woman, and martial women are drawn to strength. Moreover, he was somehow different from the fools who ran around trusting only in the clans and factions around them. He was a man with no connections, a man who had blazed his own trail and risen to his current position, a man who could stand on his own without being tied to any clan or faction, and that was exactly what she wanted. Jang Hongshik happened to be her ideal.

* * *

Jang Hongshik was also ignorant of the common sense of the world because he was stuck on the island for a long time. He was especially bad at romantic relationships. All he had learned was how to be strong, how to hide himself like a shadow, and how to get information out without being seen. Imagine his surprise when he heard the gossip around him.

She knew what marriage was, but it was a country far, far away from her. Even in the cradle, she was taught very little of the world's common sense, and that was only because it would make her look suspicious in the dark. It was only taught to prevent them from doing anything suspicious, because it would interfere with their intelligence gathering. It didn't include how to date and how to get married. So when Ok Yoo-kyung said, "If you can beat me, you can marry me," I thought it was a marriage tradition unique to Black Island, and since the organization had given me a clue, "Get the information of the vassal at all costs," I thought, "It will be easier to access the information if I get married." I was wrong. The common sense and morals of the world were very much lacking in him at that time.

She was very strong. She certainly had a point. The skills he'd developed in his struggle to escape his family weren't fiction, but he'd spent decades fighting to survive. On top of that, he had absorbed the teachings of the Heavenly Martial Academy and gotten even stronger. He had become strong enough to counter the Ascending Martial Arts. There was no way that Jade Yujing would be a match for him. No matter what, she was still a young lady who was complacent within the family.

Losing to him was devastating, but it also made her see him in a different light. She realized that a man like him might be okay. She had no reason to object, so the marriage took place naturally, and before she knew it, they were married.

It was the culmination of many mistakes and missteps.

* * *

But……

But……

"Why did you leave me, why did you leave me, why did you leave me, why did you not love me anymore?"

"No, no, no. No, I swear."

"Then why?"

Jang Hong said bitterly.

"……was for you."

The sound of crawling spoke to Ok Yoo-kyung's face.

"Bullshit, if you love someone, you're supposed to stay with them, not leave them because you love them! What a bunch of bullshit, what other bullshit do you have?"

"To me…… because something completely unexpected happened to me."

"Unexpected? What is that?"

"I have come to love you with all my heart."

"You're lying, you don't love me, that's why you left me!"

Ok Yukyung couldn't help herself and shouted.

"You won't believe it, but it's true: my time with you has been the most brilliant time of my life, when I was forced to live as a shadow."

"But why? Why!"

Ok exclaimed.

"As it was, I could not stand side by side with you."

And then, with a pained heart, he added a word.

"In the light."