Physical Rebirth (3)

Exposing and punishing the Zhuge Family could wait. It wasn't as if the Zhuge Family was going anywhere.

All I had to do was keep moving forward with my plan. My goal was clear: raise the Number One Family Under Heaven, and become the Number One Under Heaven myself!

Finding out who had originally ordered Ma Won's death and delivering fitting retribution, along with shattering the Zhuge Family's dream of becoming the greatest family under heaven — those things would fall into place naturally somewhere along the way.

To manage all that, I first had to raise my martial prowess. At the very minimum, I needed to climb to the Transformative Realm — the level befitting the body I now inhabited.

Of course, I couldn't pour every waking hour into that just yet. The Dragon-Phoenix Tournament, held once every four years, was about to begin.

"If I enter the tournament and claim the Dragon's seat, everything gets easier. It's the one place where the eyes of the entire murim converge — there's no better stage for making a name overnight."

"And Yang, you're going to take the Phoenix's seat."

"Yep! I'm ready."

Once we were there, we were bound to cross paths with the Nine Great Sects and One Union and the Five Great Families — the Zhuge Family included.

Which meant the whole world would learn that Zhuge Yang was still alive. That she had attained the Pure Yin Extreme Body, too.

"Good. Training starts right now."

During the three years it had taken to obtain the Ten-Thousand-Year He Shou Wu in Hebei and the inner core of the Ten-Thousand-Year Fire Carp, plus the extra year spent claiming the inner core of the One-Horned Flower Python, I hadn't exactly been sitting idle.

I had worked the Treasure Locator without pause to gather elixirs and secret manuals, and diligently stockpiled the knowledge needed for martial training. Zhuge Yang, who gladly made time to teach me, walked me through the meridian pathways, and I hand-picked the manuals that suited me from among my collection and committed them to memory.

"The Harmony Mental Art and the Wind Thunder Sword Art, right?"

"Yeah. Nothing so far beats that pair."

I had already settled on my arts after consulting with Zhuge Yang and Yeon Hwa. The core techniques I would master were these:

The Harmony Mental Art was a mental cultivation method with a treasure value of 70. At first I nearly discarded it on that number alone, but after discovering its astonishing effects, I made it my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠primary mental art.

True to its name, it was a method that let me learn virtually any martial art without internal backlash — everything except techniques like the Heavenly Demon Divine Art that demand a special constitution. The emission and retrieval of qi were free and swift; it was a mental art near perfection, marred by exactly one fatal flaw. The speed at which it accumulated internal energy was markedly slow.

But for someone like me — who already possessed ten Jia of internal energy, with the remaining ten Jia slowly but automatically pooling into my dantian even now — that was no problem at all. If its accumulation speed had been fast as well, it would have deserved to be called the Harmony Divine Art.

The Wind Thunder ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Sword Art was the sole-transmitted art of the Wind Thunder Divine Lord, once the Number One Under Heaven, with a treasure value of 92.

Past ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the fifth stage, whirlwinds spun off the blade; at the tenth, even lightning crackled along it. Its drawback was a punishing drain on internal energy — but then again, how many people in the murim could match my reserves?

"These are truly astonishing arts... Master just these two properly and no one will be able to touch you."

"Even the Sword Immortal?"

"The Sword Immortal is a bit... ah, but someday, for sure! You have to reach the Profound Realm. Got it?"

Zhuge Yang was strangely fixated on the Profound Realm. Then again, to achieve my goal of becoming the Number One Under Heaven, I would have to reach it anyway.

"Of course. I'll become a Profound Realm master, no matter what."

"If you reach the Profound Realm, Won... um..."

"If I do?"

"Ah, nothing! I'll tell you when it happens!"

... Is she going to hug me again?

The reason great families are great is that their masters pass down, intact to each new generation, the experience accumulated over generations of raising disciples. In that environment, masters emerge one after another, and those masters become the bedrock strength of the family.

By that logic, learning martial arts from manuals alone is extraordinarily difficult. Without a teacher, deciphering bare formulas with not a single illustration to guide you, you are all but doomed to dozens, even hundreds of rounds of trial and error.

For most people, that is.

But if you asked me whether mastering martial arts was hard, here is the answer I would give: it wasn't hard at all.

Some might ask — wasn't the Wind Thunder Divine Lord's sole-transmitted art, the art of a former Number One Under Heaven, difficult? It was honestly quite manageable. In the era when the Wind Thunder Divine Lord reigned supreme, there were no Profound Realm masters; even he had been a master of the Transformative Realm. He himself had climbed step by careful step through the Wind Thunder Sword Art — Third-Class, Second-Class, First-Class, Peak, Super-Peak — before arriving at the Transformative Realm.

In other words, every martial principle short of the Transformative Realm itself had come into focus for me, one after another.

"H-how..."

Yeon Hwa's jaw hung wide open.

"Well... it just made sense to me?"

"Th-that's cheating."

It was a result astonishing enough to leave Yeon Hwa — herself standing at the very summit of the Peak Realm — hollow-eyed and openly envious.

On my very first day with the Wind Thunder Sword Art, running through a few forms was all it took for me to grasp how to raise Sword Qi: the realm of Sword Qi Wounding, where internal energy infused into the blade takes shape as formless Sword Qi capable of cutting a man down. It was a technique only Peak Realm masters could display.

A week after taking up the Wind Thunder Sword Art, I attained the Unity of Sword and Body — the stage of feeling the sword as part of one's own flesh, where the blade moves as freely as an arm. My past life as a professional fighter helped somewhat, but the real key was this body: the Heavenly Martial Body, already standing in the Transformative Realm. Movements that should have been impossible obeyed my will the instant I attempted them.

The Unity of Sword and Body was the very realm Zhuge Yang had grasped upon becoming a Super-Peak master.

"That's incredible, Won...! You're a genius! At this rate you might reach the Profound Realm in no time!!"

Unlike Yeon Hwa with her flicker of envy, Zhuge Yang marveled with pure, unguarded delight. She welcomed my rapidly growing strength as if it were her own achievement, and under her lavish praise my shoulders squared up all on their own.

"It's nothing. If you ever hit a wall in your own training, ask me anytime."

"Okay! I will! You really are amazing!"

Adorable, really. The old me — the one who used to be chased down by wolves — was gone for good!

CRACK!

Beside me, Yeon Hwa split a massive boulder clean in half — the rock shearing apart under her qi-shrouded blade.

... Was she annoyed that I'd been showing off?

After huffing and grumbling to herself for a moment, Yeon Hwa began her Moon Spirit Sword practice. That art, too, was an ascending sword art built on profound principles. But my eyes were now catching things that had been invisible before I attained the Unity of Sword and Body, and watching Yeon Hwa run through her forms made my mouth itch.

... That's not how that move goes.

I kept up my own training while sneaking glances at her. Yeon Hwa was repeating the same mistake over and over. In the end, I couldn't hold my tongue.

"Um... Lady Yeon Hwa? Why aren't you using your arm properly?"

Yeon Hwa stopped dead. Turning her head toward me with a stiff creak, she spoke as if offering an excuse.

"Wh-what are you talking about? I am using it proper—"

"A sword is not a tool to be whipped about by the arm. Don't obstruct the path the blade wants to take — assist it naturally."

Without waiting for her to finish, I mimicked the Moon Spirit Sword form I had just watched.

"That was your version, Lady Yeon Hwa. Your arm is blocking the path the sword wants to travel."

I ran through the form once more. This time, exactly as I intended, I subtly twisted the trajectory of my arm.

"And this, I believe, is how the form should be. You assist the blade naturally, so it can follow the path it wants to take."

There was a subtle difference between the two forms — but the latter was unmistakably better. Whether she felt something watching my demonstration, Yeon Hwa began her forms again.

Much better.

Having tried the form I'd shown her, she moved on to the second. Even without a demonstration, her sword arm found its proper path on its own.

... What? All I did was say one thing and show her a single demonstration.

At some point, Yeon Hwa had slipped into a state of no-mind. She ran through the Moon Spirit Sword from first form to last, then repeated the sequence again and again. With every swing, her sword grew a little more powerful, and by the time she executed the art one final time, her blade looked remarkably like the demonstration I had shown her.

And just like that, she attained the Unity of Sword and Body.

"Ah... ah...!"

Yeon Hwa stood rooted in place, staring down at her own sword.

"Sister Hwa! That's the Unity of Sword and Body! It can only be grasped in the Super-Peak Realm!"

"Congratulations, Lady Yeon Hwa."

Yeon Hwa snapped back to her senses and offered me a formal cupped-fist salute.

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry?"

"Thank you... Family Head... I look forward to serving you."

"... And I look forward to serving with you, Lady Yeon Hwa."

All I had done was raise her martial realm by a single step, and suddenly Yeon Hwa and I had settled how to address each other. Until now she had belonged to the Ma Family in name, but she had been Zhuge Yang's person through and through. This seemed to be her way of declaring her resolve to become truly mine.

Of course, if I ever did wrong by Zhuge Yang, she could turn her back on me at any time.

To someone who had lived a modern life, wuxia novels were pure fiction. Even though I now lived inside a wuxia world, that world was, in the end, a setting invented by modern people. The sects, the fortuitous encounters, the names of elixirs, the realms of martial arts — all of it bore the fingerprints of modern invention.

Novels always trotted out the same lines: enlightenment is hard to put into words, you must grasp it for yourself. And yet those same novels had no trouble describing, in writing, the very enlightenment their protagonists gained. What I'd said to Yeon Hwa earlier was simply one of those lines, explained with a demonstration attached.

I had no way of knowing whether the enlightenment described in those books was a string of pretty nonsense or genuine insight — but watching Yeon Hwa's realm rise proved it beyond all doubt. Those words were real, real enough to produce actual results.

The importance of enlightenment could not be overstated. Ascending martial arts demand that you train the body directly, but enlightenment matters just as much. Up to a certain realm, practice alone will carry you higher — but past a certain point, without enlightenment, progress simply stops. The Sword Qi Wounding realm on the road to Peak was like that, and so was the Unity of Sword and Body on the road to Super-Peak. To become a Transformative Realm master, one had to grasp Sword Gang — Sword Qi condensed and refined into something far mightier still.

I was a special case: thanks to my rebirth I had started at the Transformative Realm itself and was now backfilling all the principles beneath it. Even so, watching what happened with Yeon Hwa put a sudden thought in my head.

Even if it's the same enlightenment — why not put it to use?

Wouldn't it become a treasure that martial artists stranded at their limits, the ones desperate for a single flash of insight, would give anything to lay eyes on just once?

At last, I put the idea into action. I took a blank booklet and filled it with the insights that surfaced during ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠training, along with the sayings about enlightenment I remembered from the modern world, adding to it piece by piece over the course of several months. On the eve of our departure for Mount Song, where the Dragon-Phoenix Tournament would be held, nothing more came to mind — so I closed out the record and gave the booklet its name. Borrowing the character for "enlightenment," I called it the Record of Martial Enlightenment.

It was the birth of a treasure I had created with my own hands — one that every martial artist under heaven would covet without end.