Qi Absorption Is Orthodox Martial Arts
Vrooooom!!
The car tore through the canyon on autopilot, carrying the unconscious Gong Ryun. The region was so remote that the driving AI glitched intermittently, occasionally veering off course or losing its way for a moment before correcting itself and locking back onto the route toward the city. It would take more than a few hours to arrive.
Gong Ryun lay slumped against the driver’s seat. Before knocking him out, the Conch Administrator had thoughtfully reclined the seat all the way back, leaving him in a comfortable, fully stretched-out position.
And from within that same Gong Ryun’s embrace, something began to squirm and wriggle free.
It was the baby conch.
Cute little tentacles stretched out from the shell, hauling the conch body along with determined little heaves as it climbed up Gong Ryun’s chest. At last it reached his face, raised a tentacle, and wiggled it.
Wriggle-wriggle.
It seemed to be trying to communicate something.
This was the process by which a conch selected its partner through the first imprint. Once a partner was chosen, that person could commune with the conch and gain the right to manage it. The god known as the Conch Administrator had gone through the exact same process.
The constitution that allowed communion with a conch was rare even within the cult. Conches that still lacked a partner therefore possessed an instinct to seek out anyone nearby who had “the constitution.” They would wriggle over and declare, in essence, You will be my master! This was called “Selection.”
Yes. Gong Ryun had just been Selected by a baby purple-tentacled conch monster.
Wriggle-wriggle.
A gesture that seemed to say, Choose me.
But Gong Ryun was unconscious, so the meaning never reached him.
In the end the baby conch, unable to wait any longer, lifted that adorable little tentacle and—
Pop!
—shoved it straight into Gong Ryun’s ear.
Gong Ryun opened his eyes in an unfamiliar space.
It looked like the interior of a small palace. The entire place was designed around a soft lavender base, with lavish golden chandeliers, golden candlesticks, and carpets embroidered in gold thread everywhere. Most striking of all were the purple tentacles that grew from the floor and from every corner of the building like plants in a field. Those faintly writhing tentacles somehow harmonized with the color scheme of the architecture, lending it an unexpected aesthetic beauty.
In the very center of the space sat a mountain of gold and jewels, and atop that glittering heap stood a magnificent golden throne.
Someone was seated upon it.
A woman with long, wavy purple hair that evoked tentacles, wearing a golden crown.
The purple woman spoke.
“You who have received my Selection. Raise your head and pay homage to me.”
Gong Ryun blinked.
What is this supposed to be?
His mind was a complete blank.
Whether he reacted or not, the woman continued.
“To think I would encounter a being with such outstanding tentacle sensitivity. My Selected child… you are truly a talent.”
“…?”
“Normally a Selected one can at best hear my voice. Yet you have manifested a complete mental world with all five senses fully realized. A truly perfect ‘constitution.’ How utterly lovely.”
“Who are you?”
As if she had been waiting for that very question, the woman declared with pride:
“Ahh, my child. I am none other than the Purple Queen. Master of Tentacles. The life that has swallowed planets. The distant purple star. Jamiseong Hernesh.”
“…Jamiseong?”
“Heh heh. Indeed. Though this is merely a fragment of my consciousness.”
A fragment-consciousness was a kind of miniature copy of a personality—a clone of Jamiseong placed inside the medium of a conch. Every conch was equipped with such a device.
“…”
Gong Ryun paused for a moment. Then—
“Woooah!!!!! Jamiseong!!!!!”
“Heh heh. Yes. I am Jamiseong.”
“Woooah, Jamiseong Hernesh!! Purple tentacles!! You know them!!”
“What do you think of me?”
“You’re really great and beautiful and sleek and smooth and amazing tentacle purple!!!! So cool!!!”
“The brainwashing is perfect.”
“What’s brainwaaashing?”
“Truly perfect.”
Indeed. Gong Ryun’s brainwashing was still going strong.
And that was not all. Gong Ryun was currently more than a little unhinged. After being brainwashed in rapid succession these days, his everyday mental state had already been somewhat askew. On top of that, today was the third time a conch tentacle had been jammed into his ear: once while eating a sandwich at lunch, once when he was knocked out before getting into the car, and now once more from the baby conch. The strain on the brain was considerable. Three times in a single day had essentially knocked his mind sideways.
The result was that Gong Ryun had become a bizarre hybrid of a dead-drunk blackout and a spoonful of infantile regression.
“Tentacles are the beeeest, Lady Jamiseong!”
“Your condition seems a little off, but since the brainwashing is perfect… clichés like ‘overcoming hypnosis through sheer willpower’ or ‘breaking free of the hypnotic state and awakening on one’s own’ will not occur.”
“I dunno what that is but it’s sooo amazing!!!”
“Good. Incidentally, my little believer… the signal from another conch in this vicinity has gone dark. Do you know anything about that?”
“Woooah! I dunnoooo!!!”
“What was your final memory with the other believers?”
“Everyone was so happyyyyy!!! They said they were gonna throw a sandwich party!!”
“Hmm… it seems you do not know much. Well, that is fine. They will handle things on their end. And that other ‘me’ over there will have her own thoughts as well. What matters to me right now is attending to the new Selected one before my eyes.”
“Ahhh!!! Right!!! Come to think of it!!!”
“Oh ho. My believer. Has something come to mind?”
“You said you’d teach me absorption arts!!!”
“Hooh? Absorption arts? Jamiheupgong?”
“Yeah that’s ittt!!”
“Heh heh heh heh!! So you have been branded a considerable talent!!! You barely seem to have joined the cult, yet not only did they give you a baby conch—they already intend to teach you the absorption art!!!”
“Everyone likes me!! They always cooked for me!!”
“Excellent. In that case… I!!! I myself shall teach you directly!!!”
“Huuuhk!!! Really???”
“Heh heh heh! The cult always welcomes new talent. Raising promising subordinates is both a queen’s duty and a virtue!”
“Woooah! Your way of talking feels so familiar, like someone I know!! It makes me feel close to you!!”
For some reason the queen’s speech reminded him of Medilla, and the hurdle in Gong Ryun’s heart dropped dramatically.
“Heh heh. This is a privilege that ordinary conch administrators—who can at best hear a voice—could never even imagine. Consider it an honor.”
“Woooah!! It’s an honor!”
“Very well. Shall we begin the lesson? Let us see how well you understand… and take a look at your skill. First, sit over there.”
Hernesh’s fragment formed a chair of tentacles near Gong Ryun.
Once he was seated, a rough theoretical explanation of Jamiheupgong followed.
“Jamiheupgong was designed from the start under the assumption that it would be used with tentacles. After all, my true body is a tentacle monster. That is why human believers can draw out only a fraction of its power. However, if one accepts my tentacles into the body, the true power of Jamiheupgong becomes usable.”
Jamiseong wore a mischievous expression.
“For now I shall teach you the version performed with the hands. This is not yet at the level of what one would call a mental method. It is merely the stage of drawing internal energy into the hands. At this point it is closer to a hand technique.”
“Woooah!!!!! Hands!!! With the palms??!”
“Well, one does use the palm area, but it does not have to be the palm specifically. Fingers or fingertips are perfectly—”
“Palms!! It’s the palms!!”
“You are strangely fixated on palms.”
“Show me right now!!!”
“…? Right now?”
“Show meee!!!”
“Heh heh heh. First the theoretical explanation—”
“Waaaaaah!!!!! Show me!!!”
“Too much brainwashing has left you not in your right mind. Your eyes are spinning. Still, demonstrating once is no trouble.”
Shurulurululuk—!
Internal energy was drawn straight into the hand.
Gong Ryun watched the process.
He stared.
It did not feel like the simple act of looking.
A strange light seemed to gather in both of his eyes. His focus appeared to blur in an odd way. It felt less like observing a mere movement and more like witnessing a law itself.
Was not the hand a truly beautiful organ? Those beautifully moving appendages. Did each finger not seem to live and move with its own will? Did the palm not resemble a passage where the soul comes and goes, or the smooth surface of a mirror, or a towering cliff face?
And since that beautiful organ was connected through the nervous system to the brain… was the brain itself not an honorary palm?
Mad thoughts flashed through Gong Ryun’s unconscious.
Jamiseong, who had been watching him behave like a lunatic only to suddenly fall into an unnervingly calm stillness the moment he saw the martial art, hesitated slightly.
It almost overlapped with the expression martial artists wore when, by the rarest stroke of heaven’s fortune, they attained an insight of “selfless trance.”
But the thought vanished just as quickly. Selfless trance this easily? The Selected one was no Star-Lord; such a thing was impossible.
Even so, Gong Ryun’s entranced reaction was enjoyable enough that Jamiseong demonstrated the technique again and again in generous succession.
In truth, she should never have done that.
Gong Ryun suddenly asked in a low voice,
“Lady Jamiseong, Lady Jamiseong. But if a tentacle were a human body part… which part would it be?”
“It corresponds to the hand. Is not the character for the number of tentacles the same as the character for hand?”
“Which part?”
“…? What do you mean, which part?”
“The palm?”
“Uh… why have you been so obsessed with palms since earlier?”
“The palm?”
“Well, if one had to be precise—”
“Palm? Palm? Palm? Palm? Palm? Palm? Palm?”
“The tip of a tentacle corresponds to a finger, and the lower part of a tentacle corresponds to the palm. In other words, my physical body is like a life-form made entirely of hands…”
“Woooah!!!!!!! Palm ruling!!!!!!!!!!”
…And then Gong Ryun completely lost it.
He thrust both hands forward.
Even at that moment, Jamiseong’s fragment still could not tell what he intended to do.
“Uwahahahahahaha!!!!! Absorp—tion is the beeeest!!!!!”
Gong Ryun unleashed the absorption art upon the mental world itself.