Thirin the Unicorn (1)
Rebirth.
Changing bones and shedding the womb.
The ultimate realm where one reforges the fundamental structure of the body and is reborn as a new 'self' instead of the current one.
And Thirin believed without a shred of doubt that achieving Rebirth would turn her back into a man.
The reason was simple. Thirin’s mind was that of a perfect man.
If the essence of Rebirth was reconstructing the body according to one’s own will, then naturally the result had to follow the mind.
The body follows the mind, not the other way around. It was crystal clear.
And Thirin, utterly convinced she was a man, usually indulged in extremely manly behaviors.
Things like burning aromatic candles that calmed the mind and body while bathing, or making sure to slather her hair with copious amounts of aroma oil after every battle to prevent split ends, or refusing to give up high-quality silk underwear no matter how broke she was.
Of course, every single one of those actions had an extremely manly, rational, and practical justification.
The subtle fragrance of the bath candles relaxed tense muscles and served as the optimal way to summon extreme focus when it was needed.
It was simply part of a manly self-care routine to recover a spirit exhausted by fierce combat.
The same went for keeping her hair as smooth as silk.
When disturbing enemies, the way it fluttered and swayed became an excellent distraction device in itself. A tactical hairstyle that could never be replicated with stiff, frizzy hair.
This was the manly combat preparation stance.
Insisting on high-grade silk underwear required no further explanation.
To minimize friction between rough leather armor and skin, ensuring agile movement in any situation, the material of one’s underwear was paramount. Prioritizing mobility and performance above all else.
This too was an extremely manly choice.
Yes.
A man among men.
That was Thirin.
“......”
Could Rebirth truly turn Thirin into a man?
Perhaps, contrary to her wishes, she would simply become a woman of even more perfect beauty.
Thirin could have sunk into such fundamental worries.
But worrying was not her style.
She had a tendency to just slam into things rather than waste time pondering. It was far better to act first and clean up the mess later than to freeze while thinking.
This personality of hers sometimes produced near-catastrophic results, but this time it worked as a clear advantage.
Instead of groaning ‘What if I can’t become a man?’, Thirin immediately threw herself into training to reach the First-class realm.
The First-class realm. The stage where internal energy could flow smoothly through every martial technique.
Smooth control over the release and retrieval of internal energy.
When the goal was clear, there must be no hesitation in carrying out the process.
“......”
Thirin immediately dressed in a manly outfit for her manly training.
She wore a loose shirt on top and nothing but the highest-grade silk underwear below, then sat cross-legged in lotus position on the bed.
This was the perfect man’s training attire, simultaneously pursuing manly comfort and mobility.
Thirin tried to move the flame in her dantian by recalling the sensation from her fight against the sand ghost.
The Divine Core embedded in the center of her lower abdomen remained stubbornly silent.
Thirin decided to ignore it for now and struggled to move only a portion of her own pure flame—her internal energy—circling around it.
But......
“......”
It’s not working at all.
Far from flowing freely like it had during the battle with the sand ghost, it simply flailed around like a fly trapped in sticky honey.
Thirin frowned.
Generally, there were three paths in the static exercises used to circulate internal energy.
Standing cultivation and seated cultivation. She had already failed at both of those last time.
This time, Thirin tried lying down.
Lying cultivation.
The most ill-mannered and utterly blasphemous training method imaginable.
Thirin had to count herself lucky she had fallen into a fantasy world.
If the fanatics from her old sect who would have severed all her limbs and meridians for leaving had seen this, they would have drawn their swords on the spot.
But Thirin had neither a master who would vomit blood at the destruction of orthodox techniques nor a sect that would rage and threaten to cut her meridians.
Lying down with her eyes closed, she shut out every external sense and focused solely on contemplating her inner self.
The faint warmth of the dantian in her lower abdomen.
In the previous battle, the flame had moved along a clear path.
The most basic principle in all internal energy training.
The two great axes that penetrated the center of the body front and back, circulating.
Thirin recalled that flow once more—the Ren Meridian and the Du Meridian.
Generally, for an ordinary murim wannabe to sense ‘qi’ and operate it properly, True Qi Guidance was essential.
True Qi Guidance. A senior would pour internal energy into a junior to help them feel the qi and acupoints.
The detailed process of True Qi Guidance went roughly like this.
First, the murim wannabe seeking enlightenment would completely relax every muscle in a quiet secret room and lie or sit comfortably.
Then a high-level murim master who had already reached a certain realm would approach from behind and insert his warm something into the wannabe’s body.
Soon, that warm something would locate the deepest and most secret passage inside the wannabe and slip inside.
At that moment, the wannabe’s entire body would open up and they would awaken to a new world.
After repeating the act several times and growing familiar with it, the wannabe would finally be able to create and move the warm something inside their own body without anyone’s help.
Murim men truly were maniacs.
To think they would offer up even the deepest inner passages of their bodies for the sake of martial arts.
But Thirin was different.
She had realized everything completely alone and had even created her own dantian.
This meant Thirin herself was the very embodiment of perfect purity—a Unicorn.
“...”
Thirin was drenched in sweat. Handling internal energy was far more difficult than she had imagined.
Still, she somehow managed to complete one full cycle.
The faint flame began at the dantian in her lower abdomen, passed behind her buttocks, traveled up her spine to the crown of her head, then descended the front, pierced through her chest, and settled back into the dantian.
Without even realizing it, Thirin had completed the Small Heavenly Circulation—the most basic and essential foundation of internal energy training.
Of course, it was her first attempt at energy circulation breathing, so it was clumsy. Even one cycle had consumed a great deal of time and mental strength.
“...!”
While contemplating her inner self, Thirin’s sharp senses detected energy from somewhere other than the dantian.
Breathing.
With every inhalation, something minute she had never been able to feel before was seeping into her body.
Thirin instinctively understood.
That refreshing energy entering through her breath was fundamentally the same type as the flame burning in her lower abdomen.
Her guess was accurate.
The Tu Na Method.
A martial artist breathes in the essence of heaven and earth, exhales the turbid qi within the body—exhaling the old and inhaling the new—and accumulates the clear energy gained this way in the dantian to form internal energy.
However, Thirin was not yet accustomed to moving her internal energy at all.
Guiding the clear energy she had barely drawn in through breathing all the way to the distant dantian in her lower abdomen was nearly impossible.
It was like trying to perfectly lift a single newly fallen snowflake using only a fingernail.
There was no way it would go well.
Not only was it difficult to lift with a fingernail, but the moment it touched a finger the snowflake would melt away from body heat and vanish.
...But that doesn’t mean I can’t eat it.
Thirin had a sudden change of perspective.
She was greedy. This snowflake rolling right in front of her eyes should rightfully belong to her.
What she could do right now was obvious.
One full circulation. Circulating internal energy once around the body following the meridians.
And adding the tiny bits of energy she had barely caught with her breath onto that circulating mass.
It was like how small snowflakes couldn’t be picked up alone, but if you pressed them against a large snowball you had already rolled, they would stick on easily with a few pats.
Thirin steadily piled the tiny energies entering through her breath onto the massive lump of internal energy circulating through the Small Heavenly Circulation.
Then she felt it—the flame in her dantian, the lump of internal energy, growing ever so slightly but unmistakably larger.
If Thirin had been even a little more proficient, she could have made the internal energy flow through her body like a moving flame rather than a lump, carrying external qi to the dantian without pause like a conveyor belt.
This was exactly why the Tu Na Method and energy circulation breathing were more important than anything else for martial arts beginners.
The more familiar one became with them, the greater the efficiency of absorbing external qi.
After turning the Small Heavenly Circulation a few more times, Thirin’s entire body was soaked through with sweat.
She was currently walking the path of gradual cultivation—the steady, incremental practice needed to fully claim enlightenment as her own.
The problem was that gradual cultivation really wasn’t to Thirin’s taste. She wanted immediate scores she could grab right away.
At this rate, when the hell am I supposed to achieve Rebirth?
Thirin was a walking bundle of greed.
The type of person more easily swayed by sweet immediate results than by the stodgy process of patient training.
The First-class realm the system had shown her meant flowing internal energy into every technique.
Into the hands, the feet, and finally even the tip of the sword.
Thirin wanted to shoot the same flame that had burned the sand ghost from her fingertips and sword tip right this instant.
She desperately recalled the sensation she had felt during that battle.
Back then the flame had started from the dantian in her lower abdomen, exited below her buttocks, climbed the spine to the top of her head, then flowed back down through her chest and out the ends of her arms.
Put elegantly, it could be described as internal energy traveling along the Du Meridian, passing through the Ren Meridian to reach the Tanzhong acupoint, then being released through the Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian among the twelve meridians to the fingertips.
The name didn’t matter.
Thirin didn’t know such complicated terminology, but she felt like she roughly understood how it worked.
Once again, she had a change of perspective.
Why insist on that long, complicated route? Can’t I just take the shortest path?