The Number of Tentacles Is the Number of Hands
"They say you must gather inner energy in your dantian… But watch carefully. Nature itself is one vast dantian, is it not?"
Treasure junk lay scattered across the floor of the palace in Jamiseong’s mental world. Gong Ryun seized one piece in both hands and worked the absorption art; the object melted like a balloon losing its air and vanished into his palms.
Sluuuuuurp!!!!
"Whoa!!!! Absorption!!!!!"
This time he grabbed one of the tentacles thrusting up from the floor and used the absorption art again. The tentacle was drawn into his palm like liquid being sucked through a straw.
Shwaaaaaaaap!!!
"Whoa!!!!!!! Tentacles!!!!!!"
He kept at it. By now he had already swallowed dozens of odds and ends and tentacles. And the fragment consciousness of Jamiseong watching him…
Jamiseong was ecstatic beyond measure.
"This too!!! Eat this too!!!"
She flung a golden jar that had been rolling nearby at Gong Ryun.
Shwaaaaaaaap!!!
He took it in cleanly with the absorption art.
"This too!!! Can you eat this as well!!!"
This time she twisted several tentacles together like a braid into something resembling modern sculpture and tossed it over.
Horororororok!!!
Gong Ryun absorbed that too without trouble.
"Kyahahahahahak!!! Well done!! The child eats so well!!!"
"Kyarruk!!! Kyak!!"
The junk and tentacles Gong Ryun was absorbing were not anything with physical substance. They were pieces of the mental world—something close to spiritual energy. In other words, the more of that world he devoured, the more Jamiseong’s own energy dwindled, but she did not seem to care in the least.
She was not the true body, after all. Even if she died, it would not touch the original at all. So the slight drain on her energy mattered far less than the mysterious destiny standing before her eyes. At last she had met the human of talent she had waited for so long.
"To execute Jamiheupgong this perfectly!!! From watching it only once!!! I can scarcely believe it!!!"
"Whoa this is so fun hahahang!!!"
"Ahahahahahaha!!!!! You’re insane!!!! Truly insane!!!!!!"
"Uheheheheheheng!!! Ten·ta·cles good!!!!!!!!"
"Are you truly human!!!! Looking at you is like watching a living tentacle monster that only happens to wear a person’s shape!!!!"
"Ab·sorp·tion good!!!!!!!!"
He had only reached the basic stage of drawing inner energy in through his hands. And yet the implementation was flawless. In truth, this should have been impossible for a human. Because—
"Because I am tentacles!!! Jamiheupgong is my exclusive secret art!!! It mimics a human dantian with tentacles!! It was built on the flow of qi that arises within tentacles!! An art of tentacles! For tentacles! By tentacles!! A human brain structure simply cannot realize this!!!"
That was why a human who learned the art could never draw out its full power—even when she deliberately refined a human-adapted version and taught it. The reason the leader had put the conch shell over his head as a last resort had been to hand control of his brain to Jamiseong’s fragment inside the shell. By becoming half tentacle himself, he could finally use her martial arts completely.
But Gong Ryun had realized Jamiheupgong without any of that. Not even the human-adapted version—the original tentacle Jamiheupgong. He had learned it by watching.
"It just worked when I tried?"
"Ahahahaha!!! It just worked when you tried!!!"
"I’m good at anything I do with my palms! And tentacles are palms, so I can do anything!"
"Truly a deranged talent!!"
"I’ve got a separate brain just for my palms!! That’s probably why I can only use martial arts with my palms!!"
"Do you understand what that means!! Your brain structure is like mine!!! Just as my physical world is made of nothing but tentacles, your world is made of nothing but palms!!! A monster composed of brain and palms alone!!!"
"Whoa!! Palm monster!!"
"You can learn all of my martial arts!!! At last!!! I have found this talent!!! I will teach you!! You will become my true successor!!! Perhaps—perhaps you could even kill her!!! Starlord! The greatest monster in the galaxy!!! As Jamiseong’s strongest warrior, you and I will command the galaxy!!!!!"
Ah! This meeting would be written into history. At last, the fish that had found its water. It would leap and play against the current of the galaxy’s great river!
"You’ve mastered the first stage of Jamiheupgong, so we move on! Next I will teach you how to store the absorbed inner energy in the tentacles! In a human’s case, you store it in the hands and arms. They serve as temporary reservoirs before it is sent to the dantian!"
Jamiseong demonstrated. The tentacles rooted in the palace floor all raised their heads at once. Each seized a nearby piece of junk and used the absorption art to draw it in. As fragments of the mental world, the junk lost its shape once its energy was stripped away, and the tentacles that had drained them swelled with power.
Her fragment consciousness then showed the human-form version as well. She gripped one energy-laden tentacle and used the absorption art. With a shwaaap, her forearm glowed with a soft violet light.
Gong Ryun copied that too. He seized tentacles and junk and sucked them dry. Before, the energy had felt as if it scattered the moment it entered his skin; now it accumulated in his hands and arms.
"You’re copying this as well!! You don’t even need the theory explained!!!"
"Probably…"
"Probably?"
"You move your fingers ↖ ↗ ↘ ↘ ↙ ↙ ↗ ↗ ↗ ↗ ↖ ↕ and the overall flow goes ↗ ↘ ↖ ↗ ↘ ↘ ↑ ↓ ↗ ↗ ↓ ↙ ↙ ↖ ↗ ↘ ↗ ↗ ↖, right?"
"Indeed!!! Perfect!!! From there, a slight ↘ ↘ ↕↑ variation overloads the energy stock and expands the capacity!!!"
"Whoa!!!"
Now Gong Ryun began to devour the mental world in earnest, greedily. He was even absorbing the carpet and the pillars. Bit by bit the palace’s floor space shrank. And yet Jamiseong had no intention of stopping him.
"How heartily he eats!!!"
Watching a mukbang had rarely been this delightful.
"And when you advance past this stage… you can finally send the inner energy held in the hands down into the dantian for storage. Now we enter the realm of the heart method!!! Jamiheupgong is originally the union of hand technique and heart method! But take care! Because Jamiheupgong takes the opponent’s inner energy as it is, without transforming it, if it is incompatible with the energy already settled in your dantian, they will collide!"
"Ah! That! The color of inner energy!"
"Exactly! If yin energy occupies the dantian, you must not absorb strongly yang energy. That is why it is normally stored in body parts like the hands or arms. Ah—of course, everything you have absorbed from this mental world is the purest energy, so eat without worry!"
"Whoa!!!"
"Now! Watch! Watch me! This is the core operation of Jamiheupgong!"
Energy stored in the hands and forearms is drawn down into the dantian. Precisely speaking, the dantian itself employs the absorption art and pulls the inner energy from the hands. The energy then cycles through the dantian several times before settling into stable residence.
She showed it several times, and by then she fully expected Gong Ryun would be able to follow. But—
"I can’t…"
"…Hm?"
"The dantian… won’t move…"
"???"
"The dantian… isn’t a palm… I can’t learn by watching…"
Anything related to palms, he could do. Anything unrelated, and his talent collapsed toward zero. At least he had Hon-won-gong, so his dantian was not crippled; he could still circulate energy for healing internal injuries or purging poison. But that was all. His dantian could be used, yet when it came to learning anything new, he could not escape the curse of being a hopeless dullard.
Gong Ryun’s face fell. Jamiseong, however, was unbothered. If anything, she pressed in with even keener interest.
"Ah! Child!! Your problem is the same as mine!! I had no dantian either!! I was simply a monster made of tentacles!! And yet how do you think I could use martial arts? How do you think I created a dantian?"
"…?"
"I made a dantian out of tentacles. After dissecting dantians, studying them, and repeating experiment after experiment!! With tentacles. I found a way to imitate a dantian. And do you know what the conclusion of that entire process was?"
Where, in a human body, is the space called a dantian? Below the navel. The middle of the torso. What on earth is there that makes it so special?
After dissecting people herself, Jamiseong had found nothing. Only the small intestine. A place where organs, the spine, fat, and the rest simply gathered. There was no special organ that generated inner energy.
In other words, a dantian is a virtual organ.
"Humans already have three dantians. Upper, middle, and lower. The upper dantian sits in the brain, the middle in the heart, the lower near the small intestine. But even when a master grows their dantian, the biological structure does not change. The brain does not gain more folds, the heart does not sprout eight vessels, the small intestine’s structure does not rewrite itself."
Then what is a dantian?
"Anything can become a dantian. As long as a flow can be installed. Meaning…"
"Meaning…?"
"Tentacles could become dantians too. So long as you construct an internal structure for the flow of qi to pass through."
It was similar in principle to the telekinetic engines used on starships. Those imitated a dantian with metal—and though the usable martial arts were limited to telekinesis, the principle held.
"So you, too, will someday overcome this limit. Your martial talent shines far too brilliantly to be stopped by something as trifling as a dantian."
"Tentacles equal palms, so maybe I make a dantian with my palms…?"
"Well. That may be difficult for now. But there is a far more certain method."
"Oh, what is it?"
"You receive a transplant of a tentacle dantian."
"?"
"We implant an artificial organ made of tentacles into your belly!! Then you bid farewell to the dantian problem forever!! You will surely handle tentacles well!!! The birth of the ultimate lifeform!!!!!"
"That…!! That!!!"
Gong Ryun’s whole body trembled.
"That sounds so cool!! Whoa!! Purple tentacles are so cool and sleek and beautiful starlight!!!"
The kid still had not shaken off the brainwashing.