Episode 1
- Prologue -
Mount Hua Sect was a prestigious major sect recognized by all who walked the murim. And the Plum Blossom Swordsmen of Mount Hua were considered foremost even among the younger generation disciples.
Wherever they went in the world, and whomever they met, Mount Hua disciples were never looked down upon. But the Mount Hua disciples knew. They knew their names were absent from the summit that denoted the absolute best.
Since the establishment of the Martial Arts Alliance, Shaolin had claimed the seat of Alliance Leader four times, Wudang three. Mount Hua had ascended to that seat only once.
It was a woefully insufficient number to stand alongside Shaolin and Wudang. Moreover, the process of becoming Alliance Leader had been arduous as well.
While the Alliance Leaders of the former two sects had been elected with near-unanimous support, the Alliance Leader hailing from Mount Hua had been forced to wage a fierce battle to the bitter end against a renowned swordsman of the Zhongnan Sect.
Furthermore, the attitude of enemies who faced Mount Hua disciples also weighed heavily upon their hearts.
Unlike the Taiji of Wudang or the Arhats of Shaolin, the Plum Blossom of Mount Hua simply did not feel all that threatening.
The Mount Hua disciples made certain such enemies paid the price for their complacency in full.
Do Myeonghwan, Sect Leader of Mount Hua, found this situation unacceptable.
And so he thought.
He would create not merely the greatest under heaven, but the greatest martial artist in all of history, so that Mount Hua's might would be acknowledged.
The elders of Mount Hua shook their heads upon hearing his thought.
Mount Hua was not the Demonic Cult. Mount Hua was a sect rooted in Taoism. Martial arts were learned for the sake of self-cultivation; for them to become the primary focus was unacceptable.
The elders spoke thus:
"Martial arts must be accumulated step by step, like achieving the Tao. Pursue it recklessly, and far from achieving the grand undertaking, you will destroy body and mind, becoming nothing but a cripple."
However, Do Myeonghwan was adamant.
"How long must Mount Hua linger in the shadows of Wudang and Shaolin?"
The elders fell silent.
For they, too, had possessed the ambition to surpass Wudang and Shaolin in their youth, and had trained tirelessly in martial arts.
To surpass Wudang and Shaolin, Do Myeonghwan came to attempt a training method never before tried in Mount Hua.
It was a type of internal energy transfer method known as the Mind Transmission Method.
Departing from conventional methods of building a disciple's internal strength through Linking Pills or meridian unblocking, it involved an expert possessing profound internal energy directly injecting his own energy.
Such an internal energy transfer method was scarcely used anywhere, whether one looked to the Nine Great Sects and One Great Faction, or to all of the orthodox and unorthodox sects.
The reason was that after transferring internal energy to a successor, the previous expert would suffer a loss of internal energy to the point of becoming nearly a cripple.
Therefore, although the internal energy transfer method had been researched by a few great houses, it was generally studied more widely among the unorthodox factions than the orthodox factions.
Do Myeonghwan, the Sect Leader of Mount Hua, was attempting to create the supreme expert of the orthodox faction using a training method of the unorthodox faction.
The elders of Mount Hua rebelled once more. They tried to turn the Sect Leader from his thinking, but Do Myeonghwan quelled their opposition by explaining that he would personally be the one to inject his internal energy.
Do Myeonghwan knew that his internal energy alone was insufficient to create the greatest expert of the martial world.
He declared that a total of six experts, including two of his own junior brothers, would participate in the Mind Transmission Method.
Mount Hua was truly staking everything.