CLS-Chapter 214

Chapter 214

“Nnnngh.“

Peng Daoji, who had collapsed on the ground, struggled to raise his body with difficulty. The shock of being hit in the face with a pillow wasn’t as great as expected, but having pushed his body to the limit through training, even getting up from his fallen position was arduous.

Even as he raised his body, his gaze kept stealing glances at Wei Yan-ho, who was poking his head out from the window.

“Tch.“

Wei Yan-ho leaped down from the window.

Despite jumping from the second floor to the ground, not even the slightest sound was made.

‘Supreme Lightness Technique.‘

Just moments ago, it was a lightness technique so impressive that it made him forget he’d even been hit with a pillow—admiration came naturally.

“Ugh, it got dirty.”

Wei Yan-ho picked up the pillow and brushed it off with his hands, pat pat. After roughly dusting off the dirt, Wei Yan-ho yawned lazily and turned to look at Peng Daoji.

“Hey.”

“……Yes.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

Peng Daoji, struck dumb as a mute who ate honey, blinked his eyes.

“Why do you keep making noise when everyone else is sleeping? I can’t get any sleep!”

“I-I’m sorry.”

Peng Daoji looked around the building with an embarrassed expression. Come to think of it, he hadn’t realized that training like this could make the inside of the building noisy since the training ground was built so close to it.

‘Why am I always like this?‘

His flaw was that when he focused on one thing, he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Whew.“

When Peng Daoji let out a deep sigh, Wei Yan-ho frowned.

“Geez, getting annoyed just because you got hit with a pillow? Don’t you think about how I couldn’t sleep because of your noise?”

“That’s not it……”

“What?”

Peng Daoji chewed his lips and then looked at Wei Yan-ho before opening his mouth.

“Would you like to have some tea together?”

“……No, I don’t want to have tea with another guy.”

“P-please don’t be like that.”

“No, I’m really fine.”

Peng Daoji began receiving strange misunderstandings.

Peng Daoji’s plan had been to go down the mountain to a tavern or teahouse, but the moment he pointed toward the bottom of the mountain, seeing Wei Yan-ho’s face truly distort without mercy, he had no choice but to revise his plan.

Having barely found the kitchen and filled a teapot, Peng Daoji approached Wei Yan-ho, who was sitting on a rock.

“What were you doing staying up until this early hour instead of sleeping?”

“Huh?”

Wei Yan-ho’s expression conveyed ‘What are you saying after waking up someone who was trying to sleep?’ Peng Daoji, who understood that message perfectly, broke out in cold sweat.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Ah, forget it.”

Wei Yan-ho let out a deep sigh. No matter how noisily Peng Daoji had been making a racket, the usual Wei Yan-ho wouldn’t have woken up from that sound.

Wei Yan-ho had awakened because his mind was thoroughly confused.

‘Am I really getting qi deviation?‘

His head was filled with thoughts of his own sword.

Even when he slept, it didn’t feel like he’d slept, and even when his eyes were open, that sword flickered before his eyes.

“Nngh.“

When Wei Yan-ho scratched his head vigorously, Peng Daoji quietly poured tea and held it out to him.

“Do you have some kind of worry?”

“It seems like you’re the one with worries, not me.”

“……”

Peng Daoji clutched his chest as if hit right on target.

Wei Yan-ho blew on the tea Peng Daoji had given him, then drank it with a slurp. Since it was early morning and the temperature was cold, having something warm go down felt comforting.

“Don’t waste time and get to the point quickly. Why?”

Peng Daoji sighed and looked at Wei Yan-ho.

‘Should I consult my worries with this person?‘

The Wei Yan-ho he saw was truly an amazing person.

Though younger than him, he possessed tremendous martial prowess and always acted without hesitation.

‘I wanted to become like that too……‘

Although Wei Yan-ho disliked Peng Daoji, calling him a jinx, strangely Peng Daoji didn’t dislike Wei Yan-ho. He was certainly an arrogant and annoying young punk, but even so, he had a strangely appealing charm.

“Objectively speaking, how do I appear to you?”

“A hopeless jinx.”

“……”

“What? You asked me to look objectively.”

“No. I mean, could you elaborate a bit more……”

“Oh, really?”

Wei Yan-ho took a slight deep breath. Peng Daoji looked at Wei Yan-ho’s mouth with anxious eyes. What could he possibly be planning to say that required a deep breath?

“You have a decent build but act worse than a child, and if you know you’ve caused some trouble, you should be more careful next time, but you can’t even think that far ahead. Your work is sloppy and you’re thoughtless. On top of that, you have a strange talent for making things bigger, and you always cause trouble for others.”

“……”

“The kind of person you wouldn’t want to get close to?”

Peng Daoji’s head dropped with a thud. If he relaxed just a little more, his head might detach from his neck.

“Wasn’t this something you already knew about yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Then why bring it up now?”

Peng Daoji quietly closed his mouth and stared at the ground. After staring down at the ground for a long while, Peng Daoji seemed to steel his resolve and looked at Wei Yan-ho to ask:

“What should I do if I want to change?”

“Hm?”

Wei Yan-ho stared blankly at Peng Daoji.

“Are you asking me for advice about your worries right now?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”

“No.”

Wei Yan-ho shook his head firmly. So far, there had been exactly one person who had pestered him about consulting their worries.

‘I wonder if So-ah is living well.‘

Whether Jin So-ah would regret having confided his worries to Wei Yan-ho or not was unknown, but he would probably agree that it had been quite a reckless thing to do.

“Heh heh heh.“

Wei Yan-ho laughed.

He had known there was some worry, but he thought it would end with asking a few questions—he never imagined that someone would seriously come to consult their worries with him.

Probably, if they ranked the people in all of Central Plains you shouldn’t consult your worries with, Wei Yan-ho would compete for the top spot.

“Do you think I can provide some kind of solution?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

Peng Daoji smiled bitterly as he spoke.

“There are just times when you want to get things off your chest. If a few words of advice from someone else could change things, I would have changed long ago. I know that won’t work. However……”

Peng Daoji’s expression looked utterly lonely.

“Even if I couldn’t move ahead, I didn’t want to fall behind. Even if I couldn’t become a son to be proud of, I wanted to become a son who wasn’t shameful. And…… I wanted to become someone who could confidently ask to be called elder brother……”

Peng Daoji stopped speaking and wiped his face.

“That’s not proving to be easy.”

“Hmm.“

Wei Yan-ho listened to everything Peng Daoji had to say, then spoke indifferently.

“Right, did you say everything you wanted to say?”

“Yes?”

“Then can I go?”

“……”

“Before that, give me one more cup of tea. The warm stuff is nice.”

Peng Daoji poured tea into Wei Yan-ho’s empty cup with a disgruntled expression. He hadn’t expected to hear any meaningful answer, but he hadn’t expected him to so blatantly show his lack of interest.

“I seem to have bothered you unnecessarily.”

“Yeah. No, that’s fortunate.”

Wei Yan-ho sipped his tea and stood up from his seat.

“Well then, I’m going. Don’t overdo the training.”

“No, wait a moment.”

Peng Daoji stopped Wei Yan-ho, who was about to return to his room.

“How can you have such confidence?”

“Hm?”

“That’s what I mean.”

Peng Daoji’s face was desperate in a certain sense. It was filled with an earnestness rarely seen from him.

“How can you have such confidence? Aren’t you a lazy person?”

“So what?”

“Everyone else will criticize you. They might pretend to acknowledge you in front of your face, but behind your back, they’ll blame and condemn your laziness. Don’t you know that?”

“I didn’t know that.”

Wei Yan-ho clicked his tongue.

“Usually, people who know me curse at me openly.”

“……”

“And even if they do curse behind my back, so what?”

“What?”

“Do I need to worry about people who don’t have the courage to curse to my face and do it behind my back? I can’t do that.”

Peng Daoji’s pupils trembled.

How could he live with such certainty about himself?

To Peng Daoji, Wei Yan-ho seemed like a human from a completely different world.

“Let me tell you one thing……”

Peng Daoji quietly waited for Wei Yan-ho’s next words.

“Living like that, nothing will change even after a hundred years.”

“……What?”

Wei Yan-ho spoke indifferently.

“You ask how to change. There’s no reason you need to change in the first place.”

“But I’m timid and incompetent……”

“So after you change into a capable and outstanding person, will others have no more expectations of you? Will they say ‘Just stay as you are’?”

“……”

He couldn’t answer.

Because he already knew the answer.

Even if Peng Daoji changed, the demands from his surroundings would continue. People are creatures who, once they satisfy one goal, inevitably set new goals.

“The reason you feel empty isn’t because you can’t change. It’s because you’re not satisfied with your current self.”

“With myself……”

That was right.

“There are two ways to be satisfied. Setting goals and ideals and somehow achieving them, and being satisfied with your current self.”

Wei Yan-ho shrugged his shoulders.

“Usually people choose the former, but the latter isn’t bad either.”

“But if you choose the latter, don’t you gain nothing?”

“Peace of mind and the effort you’d have to put in if you chose the former.”

Wei Yan-ho grinned.

“No matter how I think about it, the latter is a profitable deal.”

“But……”

Peng Daoji quietly looked at Wei Yan-ho, then shook his head.

“That’s impossible for me.”

“I never told you to do it.”

“Even if that were possible, that way I couldn’t meet the expectations of those who look at me.”

“Expectations……”

Wei Yan-ho yawned as if he’d heard something ridiculous.

“Why do you want to change in the first place?”

“……Because I want recognition.”

“From whom?”

“From everyone.”

There wasn’t any specific person. It wasn’t that there wasn’t someone he particularly wanted recognition from, but it wasn’t for just that one person.

He wanted to make everyone who looked at him acknowledge him.

“Recognition…… What happens after you get recognition?”

“I’ll be able to give recognition to others.”

Wei Yan-ho snickered.

“That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve heard recently.”

“……What?”

“You don’t even acknowledge yourself. So how are you going to acknowledge others?”

Peng Daoji’s pupils shook for a moment.

“Shouldn’t that recognition go to yourself before others? It’s strange to hope that others will acknowledge you when you don’t acknowledge yourself.”

“Ah……”

“My master said that those who don’t love themselves cannot love others. Just as someone who thinks they don’t deserve to be loved cannot readily accept the love of others.”

“That sounds quite profound.”

“It’s not really like that in practice. He’s just someone who lives thinking highly of himself.”

“……”

“But just as even dog shit has its medicinal uses, that master’s words are often helpful. So I’ve made my master’s words my philosophy. Even if the whole world calls me pathetic, I’ve decided to live thinking I’m a decent guy.”

Peng Daoji clenched his fists.

“Even without others’ recognition?”

“Why is that necessary?”

“Recognition is……”

Wei Yan-ho waved his hand and stood up from his seat.

“Forget it. I don’t care if you don’t acknowledge what I’m saying. I’m just going to think that way and live.”

Watching Wei Yan-ho walk away after leaving those words, Peng Daoji let out a deep sigh.

But somehow, his face looked lighter than it had a moment before.