Martial Arts Training - 1
The stat ceiling for a Second-rate martial artist is nine. Even counting only the years piled up after I hit that number, it had already been a long time.
People on all sides had scolded me for being lazy, but I had at least kept up a few simple calisthenics every day to hold the line. After five years of microscopic improvement, my real stats were probably sitting somewhere around 9.99 if you wanted to be precise about it.
Strength has risen to 10.
Agility has risen to 10.
Endurance has risen to 10.
Focus has risen to 10.
Comprehension has risen to 10.
So even a little training produced immediate results. In Murim Cheonha the stats actually accounted for decimal places anyway, so aside from the numbers flipping there wouldn't be much real difference in combat power… but there was still a particular pleasure in watching the visible values climb.
Aside from Mixed Blood, two traits dragged my stats down. One was Severed Tendon, and the other was Underdeveloped Body. In this body of Ho Cheon-an's, the final joint of the left little finger was permanently bent.
It could become a problem when using palm techniques or hand arts, but simply gripping things was fine. It just looked a little ugly—and there was nothing to be done about an injury that had already been there before I arrived.
I didn't exactly expect the severed tendon at the tip of my left little finger to get me killed someday, either.
In terms of actual impact, Underdeveloped Body was the bigger problem. Bone and muscle structure affected the growth of every single stat. I had pushed as hard as I could right after becoming Ho Cheon-an, but the trait only eased; it never disappeared.
"Your body really is evenly developed. I'm only asking now, but building a physique like that must have taken a lot of work. I still don't understand the mindset of someone who only ever did light warm-ups every day."
Black Cat, who had been training alongside me, spoke in a tone of genuine puzzlement. I felt the same way. I had been a ten-year veteran of Murim Cheonha, and I had never once heard of a Second-rate martial artist stuck at the absolute limit.
As I said before, a stat of nine was something even First-rate fighters struggled to reach—so of course it looked bizarre when a man who had already pushed himself that far never bothered to push for ten and just loafed around instead. If you didn't know growth had been sealed at the ceiling, the whole thing would seem deeply strange.
Training was something you did for a lifetime anyway. I had already laid the foundation for my stats back in the Second-rate stage; from here on I only needed to stack them up little by little. I was already well above the First-rate average.
Guess I won't have time to read wuxia novels anymore.
If I've got time to read wuxia, I should be running another round of qi circulation instead.
The stats I could raise right away had hit ten, my body was sweating in that good way, and I drew my sword.
I still fell short of calling myself a proper First-rate. Simply being able to use Qi Reinforcement made you First-rate on paper, but you ought to be able to deploy it smoothly in a real fight before you could say the title with any pride.
Shhk-shhk-shhk!
I tried performing Moonlit Elusive Traces, the technique I had used for showmanship back at the Gyeongsu market. Executing sword forms with the body while controlling qi at the same time was not easy work.
This is hard.
Unlike my Second-rate days, when I had simply poured qi out in time with the motion, I now had to create a bottleneck at exactly the right moment in the movement. To produce that bottleneck I had to send qi ahead of the swing, hold the leading flow, and push the trailing flow forward behind it.
"Senior. Expecting to handle the Qi Reinforcement phenomenon efficiently from the very start might be too greedy. You've only just begun working with it, so of course you're inefficient. Forget efficiency for now and just achieve the purpose properly."
"Right. Got it."
Black Cat was, no matter what anyone said, a martial artist of a higher realm than me. She had already lived through the exact floundering I was doing now.
Shhk-shhk-shhk-shhk-shhk-shhk!
In the space of a single step I unleashed no fewer than seven sword strikes. The actual power behind them was almost nothing. Rather than triggering Qi Reinforcement precisely in time with each motion, it would be more accurate to say I had pre-loaded everything and then scrambled through the forms while qi leaked out in streams.
"Huh. Now I finally understand why First-rate fighters gas out after trading a few moves."
"Senior. Once you're in a real fight, you'll be exactly the same."
It was hard enough standing still. Trying to control qi with precision while blades that could carve your body into pieces danced right in front of your face was never going to be easy.
If I had to compare it, it was like trying to drink water while running. You know you ought to conserve every drop, and yet you can't help spilling it everywhere.
"The foundation of Qi Reinforcement is best begun by reinforcing the legs."
I turned and found Yeo Il-ye standing there. From the way she had packed her various belongings, she had stopped by to say her farewells before leaving.
"The movements of the arms are complex. Sometimes the wrist lies flat, sometimes it stands upright; sometimes you must put force into drawing the arm back, sometimes into extending it. The motion shifts so violently that even if you trigger Qi Reinforcement, the efficiency collapses unless you match those changes with perfect precision."
"By contrast, the movements of the legs are far simpler than the arms. Pull, push, twist… Unlike the arms, which perform countless varied motions, the legs need only drive against the ground. The difficulty is lower, and continuity is unnecessary."
"And…"
Yeo Il-ye passed on a number of training methods. Where else could you receive instruction from a representative master of one of the Nine Great Sects? Black Cat was a Peak Realm expert as well, but she was the self-taught, self-made type. Yeo Il-ye had received her martial arts through centuries of systematic teaching methods.
Separate from any difference in realm, the gap in how to teach others and in pure martial scholarship was inevitable.
I felt a little sorry for Black Cat, who was kicking at the dirt in obvious dissatisfaction, but training methods from a Jeomchang Sect master? What was a stroke of fortune if not this?
"If Benefactor trains according to the methods I have shared, you will see at least some small achievement."
"I'm grateful for the advice. I almost feel I've received too much."
"Compared to what Benefactor has bestowed upon me, it is nothing. Though late, I congratulate you on ascending to First-rate."
Being congratulated on reaching First-rate by a Super-Peak expert who was barely any older than me left me with a strange feeling I couldn't quite shake. With the Poison Doctor or Black Cat I could have spun the story of my breakthrough for two or three straight hours—but in front of Yeo Il-ye I couldn't get a word out.
Just imagining it flooded me with shame.
"It is still an insufficient realm."
Yeo Il-ye regarded me for a moment, then clasped her fists in a formal salute.
"This humble Yeo believes it is time she returned to her main sect."
"Mm. So it is. Please take care of yourself."
It was definitely a subject that made warm parting words difficult.
"I hope Benefactor, too, will achieve great mastery."
Loaded onto the carriage stripped from the mountain stronghold was Mak Yeo-bu. So she had decided to spare him after all. Yeo Il-ye climbed into the driver's seat, bowed her head one last time, and cracked the reins.
"Hyah!"
I watched her dwindle into the distance for a moment, then turned away. Meeting by chance and parting by chance—wasn't that just how life went? The things Yeo Il-ye was about to set in motion would be noisy enough that I would hear news of her through rumors alone.
"Senior, do you know anything about Yeo Il-ye's enemies?"
"Of course not. Do you?"
"I'm the one who had Jeon Hu-dam feed her the leads in the first place."
My head snapped around.
"…What?"
"The people suspected of being Yeo Il-ye's enemies aren't ordinary heavyweights. I was worried the sparks might fly as far as us. So you could say I'm the one who summoned Yeo Il-ye to Hyeongwi Mountain."
That was genuinely startling information.
"So… you knew the Poison Doctor was here, called Yeo Il-ye over, and pinned her feet down on this mountain?"
"Not quite…"
Black Cat's explanation quickly brought me around. She had known Mak Yeo-bu was carrying a treasure called the Seven-Jewel Jade Belt and had passed that information to Yeo Il-ye—but when Yeo Il-ye actually arrived at Hyeongwi Mountain, the Poison Doctor was already there, and that was what had kept her pinned in place.
Black Cat herself had had no idea the Poison Doctor was on Hyeongwi Mountain either.
And after everything had already played out, I had been summoned to the Tang Clan and coincidentally received a chance to be examined by the Poison Doctor. Black Cat couldn't leave my side and couldn't reveal her identity, so she had simply followed along, chalking it up to fate.
"Whew. You scared me."
I had thought the Wolbok Hall's intelligence network was tracking the Poison Doctor's movements in real time and had a full grip on Yeo Il-ye's enemies as well, deliberately chaining her to Hyeongwi Mountain.
It was just coincidences stacking on top of each other.
If this hadn't been coincidence—if it had been deliberate—it would have meant Wolbok Hall was an intelligence organization capable of toying with Super-Peak masters at will. Of course I would have been shocked.
Wolbok Hall, huh.
In the end it's a group that follows Black Cat. I'm not sure it's safe to stay attached to them for long. Not knowing their leader's every move doesn't make sense. I wouldn't put it past some fanatical Black Cat devotee to jump me one of these days.
I need to get stronger, fast. I was already itching to train with Yeo Il-ye's methods anyway.
"Let's train. Train."
"Yes! Let's train! No matter how incredible the Nine Great Sects' methods are, if secondhand verbal instruction were that amazing, what would anyone need a master for?!"
Apparently Yeo Il-ye's advice earlier had gotten under Black Cat's skin. If a Peak Realm expert was offering to instruct me, I had no reason to refuse.
"Come at me, temporary master!"
"Prepare yourself, temporary disciple!"
Until the sun went down, my battle cries and Black Cat's raised voice rang out across the inn courtyard.