Return of the Mount Hua Sect Chapter 1443: What Should I Do? (3)

“Indeed… there might have been a better way.”

“…”

“Even if it wasn’t, as the Family Lord said, about sacrificing the family’s people, there surely was a way. A best path that could have satisfied everyone.”

Tang Gunak turned his gaze to Chung Myung.

Perhaps in a corner of his heart he hoped for a small consolation. Or at least a sharp rebuke would not have been bad. But now Chung Myung neither comforted nor scolded him. He simply acknowledged it.

“That’s why it’s hard, isn’t it?”

“…What do you mean?”

“Because there is a ‘best.’ Whatever choice you make, there will be wrongs. Perhaps… there were surely chances to make choices without any regret.”

But Chung Myung did not bother to add that people ultimately cannot do that. He knew such a statement would mean nothing to Tang Gunak now.

“What can you do? It’s already happened, and holding on won’t change it. All you can do is shoulder what you’ve done and take one step, then another.”

“Like you?”

No answer came from Chung Myung. Tang Gunak closed his eyes for a moment.

He had always thought of him as remarkable. Whether as a man or a warrior, he could not deny Chung Myung’s greatness. In a way, Tang Gunak might be the one who valued Chung Myung most in the world.

But in this moment, Tang Gunak felt that even that high praise was insufficient to discuss the path Chung Myung had walked.

How could that be?

Mount Hua was a sect whose foundations had all crumbled, a sect destined only for ruin. How could one not be crushed seeing such a sect?

Even the Tang Family now, flickering like a candle in the wind, was better off than Mount Hua a few years ago. Only if all Tang Family warriors, including Tang Gunak, had died out and only elders who never fully learned martial arts barely survived could it be compared to Mount Hua back then.

Yet Mount Hua revived even from that dreadful state.

So should Tang Gunak take comfort from that fact?

“If it were you…”

Finally opening his eyes, Tang Gunak looked at Chung Myung and spoke.

“If you were the Tang Family’s Family Lord now, it would have been better than me.”

“…”

“You would restore the Tang Family to solid ground without the slightest wavering. You are that kind of person.”

Hearing that, Chung Myung gave a quiet laugh.

“You think so?”

“…To be honest, I do.”

“Do I really look like someone who has come this far without wavering?”

Chung Myung tilted his head back. His eyes were filled as if the sky might pour down.

Tang Gunak had said those countless stars felt like the eyes of their ancestors. What did those stars look like to Chung Myung now?

“If I truly were, as the Family Lord said, someone who never wavered… someone who wouldn’t look back at the past, who wouldn’t doubt their choices, who could steadfastly believe that what they’d done was the best…”

A bitter smile formed on Chung Myung’s lips during a moment of silence.

“…I would have been fine too. Yes, then I would have no wishes left.”

Chung Myung knows. Even if everyone in the world believes that, it’s not his true self.

“You…”

“But sadly I’m not that kind of person. Instead, I cling to a past that left us long ago, endlessly doubt the choices I made, and am so seized by what I’ve already done that I cannot sleep.”

Unable to believe it, Tang Gunak stared intently at Chung Myung.

“Even now?”

“Yes. Even now.”

Suddenly a question flashed through Tang Gunak’s mind—one he shouldn’t ask if not now. Or perhaps even now he shouldn’t ask it.

But Tang Gunak ultimately voiced it.

“Do you… regret heading to the Southern Island Sect?”

Chung Myung did not answer. He only stared up at the sky. A colorless silence, yet it contained so many answers.

“Well…”

After a little time, Chung Myung shrugged.

“If I don’t answer, there might be misunderstandings, so I should answer… Yes, I regret it.”

“…”

“But if I went back in time, I’d ultimately go to the Southern Island Sect again.”

Tang Gunak’s pupils trembled slightly.

“So I’ll do the same thing and regret it again. Like a fool.”

“…Why is that?”

“Is the Family Lord different?”

When the question turned to himself, Tang Gunak closed his mouth.

“You’ve been through it all. And now you groan at the results of that decision. If the Family Lord could return to the day before, what order would he give? Even if everyone were to die, would he command to protect the home, the Poison Vault, and the workshop?”

Tang Gunak could not answer.

He felt it now: what he had lost, what the Tang Family had lost, and how hard the Sichuan Tang Family’s path ahead would be as a result.

Yet still he could not say they would have chosen differently. He remained silent.

“You wouldn’t.”

“…”

“The Family Lord is the same. You’ll regret and despair, curse that that choice was terrible, yet you’d make the same choice again. And then you’d regret and despair like a fool once more.”

Tang Gunak’s hand trembled slightly. He couldn’t bluntly say otherwise.

You cannot lose nothing. But there’s no way to protect everyone. Something must be lost. Where is the way to make such a choice without leaving regrets?

“It truly feels cruel. If I had known the Family Lord’s position was like this…”

“Everyone is the same.”

Chung Myung flatly denied Tang Gunak’s words.

“You don’t choose because you’re the Family lord. It’s only a matter of scale. Everyone makes choices. Choices that require letting go of what you hold. Weighing and measuring the weight of things you don’t want to lose but must, and that’s how people wear down.”

You become dulled. At first it hurts like tearing flesh, but later you face it as calmly as peeling off calluses.

Those who remain here have simply not become dulled yet.

They haven’t yet been turned enough by time to fully wash away their mourning.

“How do you move forward?”

Desperation shimmered in Tang Gunak’s eyes.

“How can someone who regrets everything, despairs at everything, and is worn down by each of those things move forward again? How on earth… can they stop fearing the choices they’ll make?”

A bitter smile touched Chung Myung’s lips.

“It must be the opposite.”

“…The opposite?”

“Not by being unafraid, bold, or resolute…”

Chung Myung’s eyelashes trembled.

“Because they’re so afraid of losing, they move forward to lose a little less. If you collapse and sit there, all that’s left is ceaseless loss.”

His bitterly murmured voice spread through the quiet field.

“Perhaps it’s the same for everyone. Those who seem to accomplish great things are those who fear what others do not. Those who see further are the ones who fear in advance what others have yet to dread.”

“…”

“Something… those who achieve something great are all the same.”

Tang Gunak, who had been listening dazedly, chuckled softly for a moment.

“So those the world calls heroes… might actually have been terrible cowards.”

“Is that strange?”

“It’s not strange. If someone else said it, I’d find it odd… but coming from you, it’s not odd.”

Isn’t that terrible coward who accomplishes the impossible right in front of him—the young man before him?

A shabby fool who fears in advance what no one else worries about and therefore steps up somehow.

“Then, Mount Hua’s Sword Saint.”

“Yes, Family Lord.”

“Then what should I be afraid of?”

Tang Gunak’s gaze returned to the sky. The stars still felt heavy, pressing on his shoulders.

“I’m not great like you, worrying about the future, nor am I a meticulous man who notices and worries about what others don’t. Right now I’m simply… afraid of everything in the world.”

It was a faintly trembling, un-Tang Gunak-like voice that everyone knew.

“You’re right and wrong. At least you are a coward who knows what to fear most. But I can’t even be that kind of coward. I’m a coward who is afraid of everything.”

“…”

“So, Mount Hua’s Sword Saint. Answer me. What should I fear?”

Chung Myung looked at Tang Gunak and asked.

“Is that a question as Tang Gunak the man? Or as the Tang Family’s Family Lord?”

Tang Gunak could not answer readily. Then Chung Myung spoke.

“If you’re asking as Tang Gunak the person, it’s not actually your responsibility, so I’ll tell you to stop useless worrying and go sleep.”

“…That’s cruel in another sense.”

“And if you’re asking as the Tang Family’s Family Lord, you shouldn’t ask me.”

Tang Gunak smiled bitterly. It sounded like a problem he had to consider alone. As he was about to nod in acknowledgment, Chung Myung raised a hand and pointed to the sky.

“Ask them yourself.”

“…”

“To those who watch over the Family Lord.”

Countless stars, countless eyes. The ancestors who guarded the Sichuan Tang Family now look down on him. But no matter how he looks for answers from them, they remain silent and merely watch.

The answer Tang Gunak hoped for didn’t come from the sky but from beside him. A small voice tinged with pity lodged clearly in his ear.

“Why was the Tang Family created?”

“…What do you mean by that?”

“Why did the ancestors, who made the Sichuan Tang Family as a martial arts place and taught their descendants how to live, do such things? For what purpose?”

Sichuan was a place scorned in the Central Plains.

In such a place, when the city Chengdu in Sichuan hadn’t even come into its own, the Tang Family’s ancestors created a foundation where all those with the Tang name could live together.

They taught how to discipline oneself, how to defend the body with poison, and told them to carry on those methods forever.

Why?

Tang Gunak’s eyes widened. It felt as if the stars might pour down on him at any moment.

“There will be no answer; the dead cannot answer. But… if they could answer now, they would surely say this.”

Chung Myung opened his mouth.

In his voice, carrying the will not just his own but another’s.

“What’s important isn’t poison.”

“Poison and the cultivation of it are just means.”

“If those means hinder the Tang Family, they’d be worse than nothing.”

“What’s important is—”

“That was what the ancestors wanted to pass on to you. Just…”

Chung Myung closed his eyes. This was the message he had to convey. The message he must deliver.

But those words were also being conveyed to Chung Myung himself.

The words flowing from his mouth became Tang Bo’s voice, the ancestors’ voice, and the voices of those lost…

“Be happy…”

Moisture gathered in Chung Myung’s eyes.

It felt as if someone had laid a hand on his shoulder. So he couldn’t bear to turn his head.

The words that he had long failed to be passed on, words that had been passed but not reached, at last settled on Chung Myung’s shoulders across a hundred years of time.