Return of The Mount Hua – Chapter 1740 – Can You Endure? (5)
Editor: Hoamzz
Co-Translator: Xoxo
Silence. Neither the one standing nor the one sitting spoke.
Even while knowing the other was there, they simply maintained silence.
The half-cast moonlight slowly shifted as if tickling Baek Cheon's face. Time passed long enough for the moonlight to slowly disappear and deep darkness to descend.
During that long time, Chung Myung just stood silently without words.
At the end of an eternity-like silence, Chung Myung's frozen lips finally twitched.
"Are you holding a grudge?"
Baek Cheon's eyes slowly turned to Chung Myung. It creaked like a rusted hinge opening. That labored movement stopped, and his now empty eyes stared at Chung Myung.
Facing that gaze, Chung Myung thought it felt a bit unfamiliar.
When he first faced Baek Cheon, what was his gaze like? He couldn't remember well. Because before he knew it, it had become something from a long time ago.
However, at least they weren't like his current eyes.
It was probably full of hope and confidence. Reckless, but for that very reason, possessing dazzling confidence.
“Grudge...”
A cracked voice seeped out quietly. It was a voice that was somewhat hollow, just like his gaze.
Baek Cheon's eyes looked past Chung Myung to somewhere further away. Chung Myung saw a reflection of his past self in Baek Cheon.
What was Baek Cheon seeing now? Chung Myung clenched his fist tightly then released it.
Baek Cheon spoke slowly.
"...If I should, where would I start?"
“...”
"Should it be the Supreme Sect Leader who made this decision.... Or Evil Tyrant Alliance who made me like this. Or maybe me, who lived recklessly without even knowing the price I had to pay. Which of those...."
Baek Cheon, who had been muttering like talking to himself, let out a sneer. No, to be precise, it was something that tried to become a laugh but ultimately failed and scattered into dregs. That hollow sound spread through the settled night.
"Who should I resent? No... Who should I resent first?"
Baek Cheon's gaze turned to his own hand.
What was it he was supposed to hold?
Well. Now there was nothing left that he should grasp in his hands.
Perhaps this hand could no longer grasp anything. He might have been the only one not acknowledging a fact that everyone else knew.
And yet….
"...I could have endured."
Baek Cheon looked up at Chung Myung again.
"I could bear it. The ridicule, the pitying gazes, the pain like my insides being torn... And even the wretchedness."
A small sneer tinged the corners of Baek Cheon's mouth.
"Even if it meant enduring everything, even if that path was no different from experiencing hell while alive, I simply wanted to choose. By my own will, not someone else's. With my own hands."
His gaze vacantly headed toward the empty air again. Though still seemingly empty, a small light flickered in his eyes as if searching for something.
But that, too, was brief. Baek Cheon's eyes emptied once more.
Because there was no place to look.
"But... even that isn't permitted. Even that..."
His words scattered hollowly.
He knew. Every decision Hyun Jong made was solely for Baek Cheon's sake. For his sake, Hyun Jong had abandoned countless things.
Others were the same. Everyone was worried about him. Perhaps he was a person blessed beyond measure. However...
"It's strange. I tried so hard, struggled so much... yet in the end, I'm back where I started."
Chung Myung's eyes sank a little darker.
"In the end, I'm living a life different from my will again. A life that is said to be for my sake, even though I didn't choose it."
Baek Cheon's eyes turn to Chung Myung.
"Where did it go wrong? No, was it wrong from the beginning? Was what I wished for too excessive and difficult? Was I perhaps too presumptuous? Was it something someone like me shouldn't dare wish for?"
“...”
“Answer me.”
Baek Cheon's voice cracked.
“Answer.”
Crouched in the darkness, Baek Cheon was so precarious that he looked as if he would collapse and melt away at any moment.
"You always gave me answers. You always showed me the path to take."
Chung Myung squeezed his eyes shut. His eyelashes trembled faintly.
"So show me now. What I should do, where I should go. What I... what on earth I can do."
Chung Myung said nothing. He couldn't. Because no words would have meaning.
Whatever he said now would be hollow.
"Do something. Even if it's not an answer... whether it's comfort, a rebuke, or a curse... anything. Just don't just stand there like that."
“...”
“Something… Say something, please..."
Baek Cheon, who had been pleading, finally collapsed. Helplessly, as if melting away.
"Please..."
His emaciated hand weakly scraped the old wooden floor. His shoulders trembled finely.
Chung Myung, who had been looking down at that sight silently for a while, opened his mouth.
“There’s nothing wrong.”
“...”
"Loss isn’t something you can choose. Losing something even when you didn't want to lose it. That is what loss is."
As much as you gain countless things, you also have to lose many things. That's what living is.
Chung Myung knew it sickeningly well.
The pain of losing what mustn't be lost. He also knew that the deep, profound color of loss makes death itself seem gentle by comparison.
But even so, he couldn't know exactly how Baek Cheon felt right now. For a hundred people, there are a hundred kinds of loss and that many different ways of coping.
That was why Chung Myung didn't offer any clumsy consolation. Because it wasn't proper respect for one driven to the edge of despair and struggling fiercely.
Baek Cheon's empty pupils reflected Chung Myung.
"...You say nothing went wrong."
"Yeah."
Baek Cheon smiled softly.
"Is that so? Then what should I do now?"
The hollow laugh pierced deep into Chung Myung's chest. But Chung Myung could only maintain silence.
“Answer me.”
He merely stared straight at Baek Cheon. Then, in Baek Cheon's eyes that had been empty throughout, many emotions suddenly mixed and blurred together.
Chung Myung spoke with difficulty.
"I've never given Sasuk answers. If Sasuk felt that way, it's your misunderstanding."
In truth, Chung Myung had never thought of himself as 'showing' the right path. Because he was a person who hadn't even found the right path for himself.
Rather... the one who relied on others was Chung Myung.
He hadn't found the 'right path', but he believed that these people could find it.
Yet the one he trusted most had lost his path. The one he believed would open the path for them was here, collapsed. At a cliff from which he could go no further.
Even Chung Myung didn't know what to say to such a person.
What could someone who was permitted neither to turn back nor to advance further do?
It was then that Baek Cheon asked back.
“Is that so?”
At that moment, Chung Myung saw a single emotion blooming very clearly in Baek Cheon's eyes, where dregs of countless emotions had settled.
“Then what are you here for?”
It wasn't something like a grudge.
"To comfort me?"
It was... jealousy.
"Did you come to mock me? Hah, or perhaps to preach with your righteous words? What are you going to babble with that great mouth of yours again?"
He thought he understood.
It must be blinding. So bright he could hardly bear to look. Because everything Baek Cheon desperately wished for would now be in Chung Myung. At least that was how it would look in Baek Cheon's eyes.
When thinking they walked together, when thinking he was following the trajectory, it would have simply looked brilliant. But once he realized he could no longer do so, that light became too blinding.
Enough to blind. Enough to burn one person's heart pitch black and more.
Chung Myung was familiar with such gazes. Yet this moment was suffocatingly painful because the person before him was the one he had believed furthest from ever having such gazes.
“I….”
Chung Myung hesitated for a moment. It felt like self-mockery might spill out.
Baek Cheon probably didn't know.
"You seem to be mistaken... I'm not as great or remarkable a person as Sasuk thinks."
He had already said it many times. It wasn't clumsy humility. He had said it repeatedly with all his heart.
"Someone like me has no words for Sasuk."
Someone might see brilliance in Chung Myung, but that was nothing more than a fake. Chung Myung himself was precisely the ship in the vast sea filled with strength without will that Baek Cheon had discussed.
A ship that wouldn't even know where to go unless someone told it.
“Then why did you come…?”
“I didn’t come because I had something to say.”
Chung Myung interrupted Baek Cheon's words with an indifferent voice.
"I came to talk about myself."
Even in the midst of deep despair, Baek Cheon was bewildered. It was only natural, considering Chung Myung intended to talk about himself while standing before someone in such a state.
“No one asked me, you see.”
“Asked what…?”
"How I escaped from Evil Tyrant Alliance’s encirclement. Why that bastard just let me go."
Baek Cheon's eyes fluttered slightly. He hadn't thought of it. It was just fortunate that Chung Myung had arrived in the midst of the crisis.
But hearing this now, a belated question arose.
Why had Jang Ilso just let Chung Myung go?
If he had wanted to, even if he couldn't kill him, he could have driven him enough to prevent interference on the battlefield. Why did he readily let Chung Myung go?
“Do you know how I got out?”
“Don’t tell me you…?”
Chung Myung chuckled as if he could guess.
“Don’t get me wrong. There was no deal or anything.”
“...”
"He just let me go."
"What?"
"Just readily, without any conditions or demands for compensation."
Suspicion arose on Baek Cheon's face.
At the same time, the corners of Chung Myung's mouth twisted strangely. It was a completely different feeling from what Baek Cheon had seen until now.
Chung Myung suddenly looked up at the night sky. It was as if he could hear Jang Ilso's sneer in his ears.
- Why do you think I'm wary of you? Hm?
"That bastard said."
- After all, you're just another well-fed pig.
Chung Myung blinked slowly.
- Aren't you?
“The moment I chose Tang Family and turned away from the annihilation of Qingcheng, I too was nothing more than a hypocrite who just babbles with his mouth."
Jang Ilso's bright smile comes to mind. It felt as painful as a physical weight constricting his entire body.
- Tell those who died there. Tell them you're upholding that precious chivalry of yours. Don't you think that would be interesting?
Jang Ilso left those words and backed down first.
But in reality, he didn't back down. At least, the words he left remained etched in Chung Myung.
No, in fact, the brand had already been carved. He had merely dug into scars that couldn't heal like a ghost and sprinkled salt.
“It was something I was prepared for.”
From then on. No, perhaps from even before.
That if the moment of choice came, even if difficult, he would absolutely not hesitate. That if there was a price to pay for that choice, he would bear everything alone.
However...
"You said you wanted to hold your will in that hand, right? Good words. But, Sasuk."
Chung Myung chuckled dryly.
“I’m not someone who can hold that.”
“…Chung Myung-ah.”
"I am... only I..."
He wanted to be able to face himself with pride. This time he tried to do his best. However, he realized.
A best effort without will, an ignorant struggle, was no different from swinging a blade with your eyes closed.
Those who have lost the power to carry out their will, and those who have the power but don’t know the way.
Two people who should have become pieces fitting each other could no longer stand back to back. Then...
“You told me to answer you. But before that, please answer me first, Sasuk.”
“...”
"What should I... do now? What should I do?"
Baek Cheon's hand flinched.
The moon peeked out from behind the clouds again. Pale moonlight washed over Chung Myung, whose gaze remained fixed on the sky.
"I don't know."
“...”
"Now, I too... don't really know."
Only then did Baek Cheon realize. That Chung Myung's small shoulders were collapsing.
Unable to bear the sight, Baek Cheon closed his eyes.
'I was leaning on him.'
Chung Myung's strong back now looked infinitely precarious. But even though he wanted to support him, Baek Cheon no longer had the strength.
The one who had stopped, lost because they had lost what should never have been lost… was not just Baek Cheon.
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