The Calm Before the Storm (2)
Compared to the Central Plains, the West had a relatively small absolute amount of aura. Or to be more precise, the quantity of aura one could hold at the same realm was lower.
There were several reasons for this, but the biggest one was that Europe had spent over a century playing at war under the name of holy crusades.
Got some talent? Conscripted.
Son of a noble? You’re not joining the crusade? What kind of noble are you? Conscripted.
To restore the glory of the great Roman Empire or whatever. Conscripted.
They scraped together talented individuals from all across Europe by any means necessary, made them serve as squires doing menial chores while training them, and if they showed promise, promoted them to apprentice knights and raised them properly.
Then they threw them into real combat… and didn’t care whether they lived or died. The survival rate was roughly around thirty percent, if I remembered correctly.
That was the current European method of raising knights.
Was it inefficient? Sure. But the madness called the crusades continued because it actually produced results. As the number of knights increased, overall combat strength rose. The ones who survived grew stronger the more battlefields they crossed, becoming harder to kill.
The current generation of knights had been raised in a way that made even the Demonic Sect look tame by comparison.
Because of that training style, their meditation techniques had developed more toward increasing stability rather than improving aura accumulation efficiency. After all, when you mass-produced knights like instant ramen, the gap in skill between them became too severe.
You couldn’t expect some random country bumpkin and the precious son of a prestigious knight family to both handle complex meditation methods that required a good head on their shoulders. What if one of them ended up suffering qi deviation?
That aside…
“The effects of a hundred-year-old He Shou Wu are truly remarkable.”
Looking at the aura densely packed into my pitiful mana core, I finally understood why martial artists in the Central Plains were so obsessed with spiritual herbs. One dose gave me more aura than I could have accumulated in a lifetime of meditation.
Of course, eating it wrong could lead to qi deviation instead of gaining power… but my meditation method was ridiculously focused on stability, so it absorbed the energy of the hundred-year-old He Shou Wu without any issues.
It would still take a few more days to fully digest it all, though.
“I’m truly grateful.”
“It’s only natural compensation, so don’t mention it. More importantly… it’s about time we discussed the Demonic Sect. Tell me, do you believe Hainan Island’s forces can stop them?”
“I don’t know exactly how powerful the Demonic Sect has become… but from the rumors I’ve heard, the Hainan Sword Gate will struggle to completely repel an assault. As for the government troops who might help… I understand they don’t involve themselves in matters of the martial world.”
I wasn’t even sure if a proper government army existed in this world. In the original story, the government forces only ever appeared as gatekeepers. There seemed to be a country, at least.
“There aren’t any decent government troops on this island right now.”
“They don’t do their jobs?”
“Who would pay attention to a place that was originally used as an exile ground? They simply mark it as their territory on paper and leave it alone.”
An exile ground, huh. So that’s what Hainan Island originally was?
Well, that wasn’t important right now. The pressing issue was stopping the Demonic Sect’s attack.
We had strengthened our defenses, but simply standing guard wasn’t enough to feel at ease.
“Sect Leader, I heard the major ports have been placed on high alert… but is there no way for them to sneak in?”
“Hmm. There are a few places where smuggling is possible… but those areas are already under surveillance. Only someone very familiar with Hainan’s geography could find them, so the Demonic Sect won’t be able to use those routes.”
How would the Demonic Sect attempt to invade?
In the original story, the process of the Demonic Sect destroying the Hainan Sword Gate and occupying the island was completely skipped over, which was a shame. If I knew their entry route, I could just wait there and turn them all into drowned ghosts. Wait, no—they’d probably learned water techniques, so they wouldn’t die that easily, would they?
“It must be difficult for you because of those Demonic Sect bastards.”
“Those fellows have been talking about unifying the Central Plains for quite some time now, so don’t worry too much.”
Despite his words, the Sect Leader’s face was filled with worry. He told me not to concern myself, but he himself looked incredibly burdened.
It was only natural.
After suffering losses from the Japanese pirates that the sect couldn’t ignore, they now had to face the Demonic Sect as well.
If I were the Sect Leader, I would have exploded in anger, cursing how unfair this all was.
“Have you sent a letter to the Wuxia Alliance?”
“Even if they come, it will take quite a while. The letter itself would take at least a month to arrive, no matter how fast it travels…”
“And even if they send reinforcements, it would take another month—or roughly two months—for them to get here.”
So that’s why we were chosen as their first target. Because the distance between the Central Plains and Hainan Island was too great to ignore?
Of course, the Demonic Sect also had to force-march all the way from Xinjiang, but strategically, targeting the isolated Hainan Sword Gate offered far greater benefits. And in reality, that’s exactly what happened.
In the original story, quite a bit of time passed after the Hainan Sword Gate was destroyed before the news even reached the martial world.
“You should go back and rest. You haven’t finished digesting the medicine yet, have you?”
The Sect Leader seemed to have a lot on his mind and urged me to leave.
I quietly rose from my seat and bowed to him.
“Sect Leader. Please don’t worry too much. I’ll try to find a solution as well.”
“…Thank you.”
“Compared to the grace of saving my life, this is nothing.”
Time to head back.
I closed the door of the hall and left the main building.
“Mister, you’ve been training really hard lately!”
“I need to practice handling aura—no, internal energy.”
“I see…”
The amount of aura accumulated in my mana core was greater than what I had built up over two years. If I didn’t hurry and adapt to it, there would definitely be problems in real combat.
Because my aura reserves were so pathetic before, I rarely used it except when absolutely necessary. This was a good opportunity to test exactly how far I could go.
I gripped the wooden sword and slowly drew up my aura.
This was the process of manifesting the so-called Sword Qi. I carefully channeled the aura that had traveled through my mana roads into the sword.
Until the wooden sword was on the verge of breaking. The sword began to tremble violently, wrapped in a blue glow.
“That’s amazing! Sword Qi! No matter how much internal energy I put into a sword, it never produces a blue light!”
“You have to reach a certain realm first.”
“But even when I train hard, my skills don’t improve much. You only trained for two years, mister—how did you become a Peak expert?”
When I withdrew my aura and looked at Hye-ryeong in response to her question, she stared up at me with sparkling eyes, her face full of curiosity.
“Just kill about two thousand people.”
The number of enemies I’d killed on the battlefield was probably around that much. Every battlefield I’d been on was basically a suicide charge.
In a single battle, I sometimes cut down nearly a hundred men. So it wasn’t a joke—I might have really slain around two thousand.
“Two thousand? Don’t joke like that!”
Hye-ryeong waved her arms in shock. To this sheltered girl who knew nothing of the world, my words must have sounded like nothing more than teasing.
But what could I do?
It was the truth.
“A soldier on the front lines has to kill people until he’s sick of it. That’s his job.”
Fighting in the name of a holy war. Killing with meaningless hatred. Killing without thinking.
My two years had been nothing but slaughter.
At first, just seeing corpses made me vomit so badly I couldn’t eat. Now I could watch a man’s head get severed right in front of me and casually crack jokes while eating.
…It was a faded past now.
Sigh.
What was the point of thinking about such a dark past?
I had finally come to the relatively peaceful Central Plains, so I should be thinking about how to stop the Demonic Sect.
If we could just block the Demonic Sect, everything here would stay peaceful.
“Mister? Are you okay?”
“What?”
“The wooden sword… it broke…?”
Hye-ryeong’s worried voice reached my ears. I lowered my gaze from where I had been staring blankly ahead and looked at the wooden sword.
The wooden sword, having failed to control the aura infusion, was horribly shattered from the middle. It looked like a small bomb had exploded inside it.
“I must have been thinking too much.”
I set the broken wooden sword aside and took out a new one.
“Training hard is good, but you should rest at times like this!”
“Aren’t you resting a bit too much?”
You’re a martial artist of the Hainan Sword Gate too. At my words, Hye-ryeong averted her eyes and answered.
“Anyway, my uncle—no, the Sect Leader—will just tuck me away somewhere and tell me not to fight…”
Her voice carried an unmistakable hint of resentment.
Wait, uncle…?
She was the Sect Leader’s niece?
Only then did I begin to understand why the Sect Leader didn’t strictly stop Hye-ryeong even when she moved around freely.
So that was it.
Well, that was the Sect Leader’s business. From my perspective…
“Hye-ryeong. Pick up a wooden sword.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s have a light spar.”
In the original story, this girl eventually reached the Super Peak realm. I couldn’t just let her keep fooling around.
I decided to take care of Hye-ryeong in my own way.