Chapter 15: Looting the Cavern-1
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 15: Looting the Cavern-1
Inside the secret hideout of the Cheonmu Alliance.
A man with thick, sword-like eyebrows, a sharp nose, and firm lips sat in a cross-legged position, performing internal energy circulation.
His momentum was so immense that the energies were visibly shimmering and swirling around him. Before long, three flower buds blossomed above his head, and the ripples of qi grew even more violent.
Whoosh!
His eyes snapped open, gleaming with a piercing light.
"Hahaha! I’ve finally reached the stage of Three Flowers Gathering at the Peak!"
The man burst into a hearty laugh, his expression bright.
His name was Sun-woo, a reader who had possessed a MacGuffin character named Jang Sam in a smutty wuxia novel.
It was miserable enough being suddenly dropped into a novel while living a perfectly fine life, but as soon as he arrived, he had been beaten up by a young brat, framed for murder, and turned into a fugitive.
Fortunately, he had managed to save his life by fleeing to a secret underground hideout of the Murim Alliance—a disposable setting mentioned in the novel. There, he had reached the Super-Peak Realm by absorbing the elixirs and martial arts of the Yin-Yang Demon, a legendary lecher and absolute master.
The first thing Sun-woo did after reaching the Super-Peak Realm was focus on his recovery. He had gambled his life to resolve the overflowing internal energy, which had severely damaged his acupoints and dantian.
Avoiding physical exertion as much as possible, Sun-woo spent nearly a month quietly recuperating, doing nothing but internal energy circulation. On the thirtieth day, he was finally fully recovered.
As soon as his body was healed, Sun-woo began moving to familiarize himself with his new realm. He could now perfectly execute the trajectories of the forms and body movements he had only visualized in his mind during his month of recuperation.
Perhaps his mental image training had helped, as Sun-woo gradually began to look the part of a Super-Peak expert. Two months after his recovery, he finally reached the stage of Three Flowers Gathering at the Peak, where three flower buds manifest above the head during meditation.
Reaching this stage meant he had fully matured as a Super-Peak martial artist. This was an absurd achievement for someone who had only recently entered the realm, but it was a feat made possible by the combination of the transcendent Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art and Jang Sam’s extraordinary comprehension.
Now, even most experts out in the world wouldn't be able to hold a candle to him. At the young age of his mid-twenties, he had reached a level equal to the elders who represented entire sects.
Sun-woo gripped his sword, feeling jubilant. He began to swing it freely, following his heart and thoughts.
Since the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art was a martial art that transcended fixed forms, it had no specific sets. Whatever he swung according to his will became a form in itself. Because his forms were free, every movement of his heart was a technique, and every step was a movement technique.
Consequently, the art was structured so that it was easy to learn regardless of whether the practitioner used a sword, a saber, or a spear. It stood in stark contrast to the Sage's Martial Arts, which forced practitioners to endure agonizingly slow energy accumulation and repetitive form training until their hands blistered, and could only be learned by swordsmen.
After a bout of sword dancing, Sun-woo used his internal energy to evaporate the sweat soaking his body. Steam rose from him as the beads of sweat turned into gas and drifted away. It was a method he had devised because there was nowhere to wash, despite the hassle.
He knew people of the Central Plains weren't fond of bathing, but he couldn't believe they hadn't built a single bathhouse in a secret hideout. It made no sense for a place meant for hiding out for months to lack a place to wash. Without washing, plagues would spread or the stench would become unbearable, but it seemed no one had thought that far ahead.
This was a matter of the author's lack of competence in failing to consider such detailed settings.
After drying off, Sun-woo moved toward the archive where the secret manuals were kept. While he was recuperating and doing nothing but meditation, he had spent his time in the archive in the third tunnel to stave off boredom.
The archive contained numerous martial arts, and reading them was a decent way to kill time. In the process, he had discovered several quite useful techniques.
The first was the Formless Shadow Stealth Technique.
It was a type of stealth art that allowed the user to submerge their body into shadows. It was the technique used by the man known as the Traceless Killer, who had assassinated the Sect Leader of the Wudang Sect fifty years ago without leaving a single trace.
At the time, Wudang was enjoying great prosperity as the head of the Nine Sects. To keep them in check, the Imperial Court had dispatched an assassin. Despite the non-aggression pact between the government and Murim, it was the Emperor's decision, as he did not want the martial arts world to grow too powerful.
The assassin successfully infiltrated Mount Wudang alone and killed the Sect Leader, who had reached the Transcendent Realm. His fame for the traceless assassination spread throughout the Murim, and people began calling him the Traceless Killer.
The assassination of the Sect Leader, who was a spiritual pillar of the Murim, caused the martial arts factions to rise up in protest against the Emperor. Frightened, the Emperor settled the matter by handing the Traceless Killer over to the Murim Alliance and apologizing. Had the Emperor not surrendered him, the case would have remained an eternal mystery—that was how powerful the Formless Shadow Stealth Technique was. It was a stealth art so subtle that even a Transcendent master could not detect it.
Sun-woo had studied the manual every day and practiced diligently, achieving a significant level of mastery, though not quite at the level of the Traceless Killer.
The next technique Sun-woo found was a movement technique called the Wind-Dust Step, used by a thief once known as the Flying Fox. His thieving and combat skills were mediocre, but he was a master thief who always escaped danger with his incredible footwork. For instance, his feat of losing a Beggar Sect elder—who had mastered the Eight Immortals Step to the limit—after a thousand-mile chase was still a famous story among the Nine Sects.
After outrunning the Beggar Sect elder, the Flying Fox became overconfident and committed a crime he shouldn't have. The Murim Alliance Leader at the time had a beautiful daughter, and he had secretly infiltrated the Murim Alliance to kidnap her.
However, the Flying Fox overlooked one fact: the Alliance Leader's daughter, Joo So-yang, possessed such immense martial skill that she was called the future "Best Among Women." Though he was the best in the world at running, his combat skills were weak. He was instantly suppressed by Joo So-yang and, after various tortures, was forced to give up his secret movement technique, the Wind-Dust Step.
The Flying Fox barely managed to save his life, but he was castrated by the Heavenly Sword Empress and spent his final years in lonely misery before dying. The man who once roamed the world as if it were too small had met a pathetic end due to his own arrogance.
And now, Sun-woo had found that very technique in the archive.
"Wow, there really is everything here."
Sun-woo was deeply impressed. He remembered the novel vaguely describing the archive as being filled with "most martial arts," likely because the author was too lazy to describe them one by one, but the collection was truly exhaustive. He never imagined the author's lazy world-building would be this helpful.
Both the Formless Shadow Stealth Technique and the Wind-Dust Step were incredibly useful for Sun-woo, who was currently a fugitive. Even better, the nature of the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art allowed him to learn any martial art alongside it, making it easy to acquire various techniques.
Normally, it was impossible to learn only the techniques of a specific martial art. This was because techniques required a corresponding foundation. For example, to learn the Formless Shadow Stealth Technique, one usually had to learn the Black Moon Art, the internal cultivation method used by the Traceless Killer.
The Black Moon Art was an internal energy method primarily used by assassins, designed to be fast, subtle, and advantageous for generating instantaneous power. It was a vital foundation; attempting the Formless Shadow Stealth Technique without it could lead to Qi Deviation.
However, the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art, which could transform the nature of one's qi at will, could bypass these restrictions. When the user desired, they could transform their Yin-Yang Harmony Qi into the same property as the Black Moon Art to execute the stealth technique.
This was a broken, "cheat-level" ability that even surpassed the Sage's Martial Arts learned by the protagonist, Lee Jae-won. Because the Sage's Martial Arts had properties almost identical to Nature Qi, it was versatile enough to allow the practitioner to learn any Orthodox martial art. This was why Lee Jae-won could learn and use the representative techniques of the Nine Sects, such as Shaolin’s Muscle-Tendon Changing Classic, Wudang’s Ten-Part Brocade, and Kunlun’s Cloud Dragon Eight Forms, without hesitation.
But the Yin-Yang Harmony Divine Art was even more broken. While Lee Jae-won merely mimicked them, Sun-woo could fully manifest the martial arts themselves. Furthermore, unlike Lee Jae-won, who was limited to Orthodox techniques, Sun-woo had no such restrictions. He could learn any technique he wanted, whether it was Orthodox, Unorthodox, or Demonic.
Thanks to this cheat-like nature, Sun-woo was able to acquire useful techniques from the archive without much difficulty.
The last martial art he learned was the Zhu-Rong Art, which was said to have come from far-off India. The Zhu-Rong Art was a technique that increased the flexibility of every part of the body—muscles, skin, bones, and even blood flow—to the extreme, allowing the user to control them at will. If mastered to the limit, it was a mysterious art that could create near-miracles, such as enlarging one's hands or increasing one's height.
Sun-woo focused on a specific technique within the Zhu-Rong Art that allowed the user to mold the bone structure and shape of their face to change their appearance for a certain period.
In the past, there was a famous lecher known as the Thousand-Face Lecher. He had claimed countless victims among both martial artists and civilians, leading the Murim Alliance to form a pursuit team. However, the Thousand-Face Lecher mocked their efforts, often annihilating the pursuit teams and escaping leisurely. Though his martial arts were mediocre, he used the Zhu-Rong Art to infiltrate the pursuit teams and assassinate the members one by one, allowing him to wipe out groups composed of warriors much stronger than himself.
The Thousand-Face Lecher, whom even the Murim Alliance couldn't catch, grew even more infamous as he raped more women, becoming a figure of terror for parents with daughters and female martial artists alike.
Then one day, hearing the news that the Flying Fox had been castrated, the Thousand-Face Lecher laughed at him. At the same time, he grew curious. Just how beautiful was she that the notoriously cautious Flying Fox couldn't resist climbing over the Murim Alliance's walls?
Ultimately, the Thousand-Face Lecher made an irreversible choice. Unable to suppress his curiosity about Joo So-yang, he climbed the walls of the Murim Alliance just as the Flying Fox had. Using the Zhu-Rong Art, he disguised himself as a maidservant to get close to her. His plan was to strike her pressure points when she let her guard down.
He successfully struck her pressure points during a moment of distraction and began to strip her clothes to have his way with her. However, something unexpected happened: Lee Jae-won appeared.
Just before he could penetrate her, the Thousand-Face Lecher was decapitated by the intruding Lee Jae-won. At the time, Lee Jae-won was staying at the Murim Alliance as a rising star, and he had also climbed the wall with the intention of sleeping with Joo So-yang. But seeing the Thousand-Face Lecher one step ahead of him, he thought, "Perfect," and cut off the man's head.
Afterward, Joo So-yang developed feelings for Lee Jae-won for "protecting her chastity," and this incident eventually led to their marriage. The Thousand-Face Lecher, who had toyed with the Murim Alliance and violated countless virgins, ended up doing Lee Jae-won a favor before meeting his end.
Though he met a miserable end, his Zhu-Rong Art was a revolutionary technique that had mocked the Murim Alliance during its peak, so Sun-woo had no choice but to learn it.
After finishing his theoretical studies during his recuperation and practicing them physically for two months, Sun-woo had achieved enough mastery to at least mimic the techniques, even if he wasn't as skilled as the original users.
Entering the archive, Sun-woo picked up the manuals labeled Formless Shadow Stealth Technique, Wind-Dust Step, and Zhu-Rong Art.
Whoosh!
He ignited his Samadhi True Fire and burned all three manuals. He had no desire to leave them behind only for someone to find a way to counter them later. Moreover, he thought it would be incredibly annoying if someone else learned them, so he destroyed them as a preventive measure. Since the contents of the manuals were already entirely in his head, he burned them without hesitation.
Having finished his task, Sun-woo walked out of the tunnel and into the main cavern.
Thud.
He sat down against a wall, stretching his legs out. He stared blankly into the air, lost in deep thought. He felt it was about time to leave the hideout.
While training quietly in the hideout wasn't bad, he felt he had reached a limit in training alone, now that his Super-Peak martial arts had fully matured. Furthermore, half a year had passed, yet his master, Lee Jae-won, showed no sign of coming to the hideout where he was hiding. It felt like he might never come.
Sun-woo had vanished from the Cheonmu Alliance in plain sight; if Lee Jae-won couldn't deduce where the hideout was, he had either forgotten or had no intention of looking. Whatever the reason, if Lee Jae-won wasn't going to find him, there was no reason to keep squatting here.
Lastly, he wanted to go home. To his warm, comfortable home.
He was different from Lee Jae-won, whose reality had been difficult and harsh. Sun-woo had a job, and while he didn't make a fortune, he could afford the luxury of eating beef twice a month. He had a taciturn but reliable father and a nagging but caring mother.
He desperately wanted to lie on his cozy, warm bed and play with his smartphone, and sit at his desk to use his computer. Jang Sam, who lived in this novel, might feel a fleeting sense of happiness from martial achievements, but for Sun-woo, a modern man, it was nowhere near enough.
What was the point of becoming strong in martial arts? He wasn't happy.
Sniff.
Being trapped for so long seemed to have given him homesickness. A few tears escaped. Regardless, he couldn't stay hidden in this hideout forever if he wanted to return home.
Sun-woo wiped away his tears and stood up.
"Ugh, how embarrassing."
It seemed he had even been sniffing. After pulling himself together, Sun-woo headed toward the armory. Now was not the time for endless waiting, but for action.