Everyone’s expressions were different.

Jo Gul’s face twisted, and Hye Yeon, his face slightly pale, quietly muttered a soft ‘prayer.’

Tang Soso looked as if she would cry at the slightest touch, and Yu Yiseol standing beside her remained expressionless, though her gaze was darker than usual.

And Yoon Jong, whose thoughts were hardest to read, let out a low sigh.

‘This always holds us back.’

Every time, one realizes the world does not run only according to what we’ve been taught.

We were taught to revere the pact. Everyone in the Justice faction would have learned that: that even to the point of laying down one’s life, keeping the pact is the path a swordsman must walk.

And we were taught to value our sahyung even more than our lives.

Those words are not wrong.

But... if the pact they so desperately want to uphold drives even the sahyungs they should value above themselves down an irreversible path, then what on earth are they keeping the pact for?

“...That’s an extreme thing to say.”

Jo Gul spat it out bluntly, and Baek Cheon shook his head.

“You felt it too, didn’t you?”

“...”

“Honestly, there’s no one here who hasn’t had this thought. Isn’t that so?”

Baek Cheon raised his head. In that moment no one could bring themselves to meet Baek Cheon’s eyes. Though he bore no guilt, they furtively averted their gaze as if he were an awkward presence.

“I’ve had that thought at times too. Perhaps the reason we’ve been able to speak of the pact without hesitation is because we haven’t experienced loss.”

“No... sasuk. Where else has suffered losses like Mount Hua?”

“Have you lost them?”

“What?”

“Are the things Mount Hua lost the things you personally possessed?”

Jo Gul fell silent at that. Baek Cheon, who had been staring at him, sighed.

“We are disciples of Mount Hua. So we think of what Mount Hua has endured as if we had endured it ourselves. But... to be frank, the one who lost was Mount Hua, not us. Think objectively: did we lose anything by joining Mount Hua?”

Jo Gul bowed his head deeply.

Lost something? There was nothing like that. From the moment they joined, Mount Hua had been so ruined there was no worse state to fall to, and after Chung Myung came in, it developed with unbelievable momentum.

Paradoxically, because they had joined the sect that had lost the most, they were the ones who gained the most.

“Those who haven’t been struck don’t know the pain of being hit. Those who haven’t been cut by a blade don’t know how terrifying that light edge can be. So... we who have never lost cannot fully know the pain of those who have lost.”

Baek Cheon smirked.

“Isn’t it laughable? If someone who’s never been cut says, ‘I’m not afraid of knives; I can be cut ten or a hundred times,’ what would you think of them?“

Jo Gul bit his lip lightly. What would be ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) the point of speaking? Those who don’t know the pain of being cut would have laughed it off as bravado.

“That’s the thought that comes to me. Perhaps what we’ve proudly proclaimed up to now may have been nothing more than the bravado of those who haven’t been cut by a blade. Because we haven’t lost, we could shout that we’d accept loss.”

Baek Cheon quietly closed his eyes. They had always risked their lives. They had always fought for what they believed. But....

“Looking back, I seem to have been a rather cowardly man.”

“Sasuk... what do you mean by that all of a sudden?”

“When we went to Hangzhou, I had not a trace of hesitation. Only certainty filled me. I thought it was what a disciple of Mount Hua ought to do.”

“Isn’t that natural? How does that become cowardice?”

“But that thought comes to me. If Chung Myung had not been before me then....”

“...If we had to head to Hangzhou without that bastard, could I really have taken a single step without hesitation? Do you think you could have?”

Yoon Jong shook his head.

“Sasuk. That’s a meaningless assumption. The pact doesn’t mean you should throw yourself at the impossible by default, does it?”

“Is that so?”

Baek Cheon’s mouth twitched slightly.

“You said that when you can win, you fight without weighing gains and losses, yet when you cannot win, not fighting a reckless battle becomes the pact.”

“...”

“I’ll ask again. Could you really have gone to Hangzhou without him? Because you believe it’s right, could you have gone to practice the pact without caring for your own life and the lives of the sahyung beside you?”

No one could answer. A rather long silence dragged on. Baek Cheon, who had been silently waiting for an answer, spoke heavily.

“If not, then the pact we’ve been shouting about is ultimately the bravado of those who haven’t lost... no, the cowardice of those who cannot lose. It’s no different from a three-year-old child standing his father behind him and shouting that he’s a righteous boy who won’t tolerate the injustice of his ten-year-old brother.”

“Amitabha...”

Hye Yeon, having uttered a short ‘prayer,’ looked at Baek Cheon with solemn eyes.

“Taoist Baek Cheon. What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying we should acknowledge it. And we should think about it.”

“...”

“Looking back now, we have never once escaped Chung Myung’s shadow. We haven’t even experienced fighting in a place without Chung Myung.”

Hye Yeon’s expression stiffened.

Hearing that, it became clear how unnatural the battles they’d fought until now had been.

“Over the past few years, Mount Hua has fought countless fierce battles and risen from a small sect in Shaanxi to the leadership of the Heavenly Friends Alliance.”

“...”

“Yet through all that, Mount Hua has never once split its forces. It has never even operated a small detachment, nor divided formations within a single battlefield. Do you understand what that means?”

Yu Yiseol bit his lip. Seeing that expression, Baek Cheon nodded.

“Yes. That bastard never let us fight out of his sight. On any battlefield, he tried to keep all of Mount Hua within a range he could protect.”

“...”

“But now that cannot be. No, it must not be so.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. Baek Cheon let out a long sigh.

“I spoke as if I knew, but I don’t have a clever answer either. This is a problem for all of us to consider. And doesn’t everything start with knowing where you stand?”

“...That’s right, sasuk.”

“Is it right to keep the pact? Is it right to save more people even if it means abandoning the Southern Island? Is it right to drive those I cherish to death to save strangers? Am I truly unafraid to risk my life to keep the pact?”

Baek Cheon listed the thoughts that surfaced in his mind in a disordered way. There was no need to organize them; this wasn’t a problem to be solved by compressing into a single answer.

“Everyone values different things and has different priorities. But... yes. It seems there is only one way to find this answer.”

Baek Cheon’s voice was utterly subdued.

“Someday when we stand in the midst of the battlefield, someone will inevitably go to the abyss. Inevitably.”

“...”

“What will matter then is not whether you can walk into the abyss. It will be whether, knowing a comrade beside you is walking into it, you can refrain from seizing them and let them go—only then would the pact you’ve championed be true.”

Yoon Jong’s shoulders trembled. Those were unbearably harsh words.

“If Mount Hua truly pursues the value called the pact, then it must be willing to sacrifice not only my life but the lives of Mount Hua’s disciples for the pact. Saying ‘I’ll go; I’ll die before others’ is merely an escape to avoid making a choice.”

“...sasuk.”

“Can you really do that?”

Again, no answer came.

“Think on it. What were we truly trying to do? Is this really the only way? If not, should we choose another path even now?”

Jo Gul bit his lip harder, almost drawing blood. Even the usually composed Yu Yiseol’s fingertips trembled slightly.

Everyone was unsettled.

“If that’s impossible, it might be better to follow the chamberlain’s words. At least then Mount Hua would bleed as much as others and meet the same outcome as others. We wouldn’t have to accept harsher consequences in the name of the pact. I’ll make it so.”

Baek Cheon stood up from his seat.

His face was calm. But those who knew Baek Cheon could tell that beneath that calm expression there was a cold ruthlessness they’d never seen before.

“Think it over. I’ll relay the conclusion you reach to those above.”

As Baek Cheon turned to walk away, Yoon Jong called him and grabbed him.

“Sasuk.”

Baek Cheon’s feet stopped dead. Yoon Jong asked.

“Sasuk, have you decided on an answer?”

“Would that have any meaning?”

“...”

“Right and wrong are for oneself to decide. Do not ask others. There’s nothing to discuss together. At least ask yourself how you will use your life.”

Yoon Jong bowed his head.

Baek Cheon, who silently looked back at Yoon Jong, left them without hesitation. Those left standing like statues for a long time briefly glanced at one another, then silently turned and headed to their own quarters.

A weighty moonlight settled upon their shoulders.

Baek Cheon’s slow footsteps echoed in the darkness.

‘It’s difficult.’

Even trying not to, sighs kept escaping.

“It’s hard...”

A few years ago, he wouldn’t have had such worries. He only needed to aim to become stronger and focus on reviving Mount Hua.

It was just a matter of striving, clattering and shouting together with those inept juniors, the Samae and Sajil rascals.

But... now the world forces choices upon them. It demands they shoulder a weight befitting their power. Even though they haven’t yet borne many burdens, their shoulders already feel too heavy, as if they’d be crushed and vanish.

‘So that’s what it was.’

Fighting a mighty enemy. He hadn’t realized until now how much meaning was packed into that simple phrase.

That phrase meant fighting against everything they’d preserved until now—life, relationships, values—everything.

‘What kind of fight was it?’

What did the ancestors a hundred years ago, who fought harsher battles than those of today, see and feel? If they were beside Baek Cheon now, what would they have wanted to tell him?

Baek Cheon turned his gaze to the moon.

Time had so flowed, and the world had changed accordingly. There was no way to hear the voices from a hundred years ago. Yet that moon, a hundred years ago or now, remained floating in that place....

Suddenly Baek Cheon’s face went blank as he looked at the moon. No, actually his gaze was aimed beneath the moon.

On the eaves half-embracing the moon.

He saw the back of one person—shoulders half overlaid with the moon, looking somewhat forlorn.