What Jamiseong Left Behind
"Parangjang."
Gong Ryun thrust out his hand.
And then—
BOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
A shockwave tore free with a crisp, ringing crack.
MOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
The charging red bull took the Parangjang full-on and died on the spot. The impact had ruptured its brain. A pitiful beast with no martial arts of its own simply lacked the durability to protect its organs.
Then came the next wave—five or six more bulls thundering in behind it.
This time, Gong Ryun switched techniques.
The fourth form of Parangjang — a barrier of surging force.
A protective shield snapped into place ahead of him. The bulls, however, did not stop their charge.
CRACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CRUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SNAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They drove their heads straight into the barrier. Every last one of them went down cold.
Watching the scene, Gong Ryun smiled with pure satisfaction.
"I've gotten better!"
The power of his Parangjang had climbed. It felt as though his proficiency had been maxed out to the absolute limit—as if his body now knew, by pure instinct, the optimal way to use the technique.
"Life really is a matter of Sai-ong's horse, isn't it… Who would have thought things like this would happen…"
A few days earlier, after being discharged from the hospital, the account he had heard from the Succubus Boss had been nothing short of shocking.
Gong Ryun had fallen hard for a shady cult of hypnotists, and had nearly surrendered both body and soul to their order. The cult, as it turned out, was a pack of hopeless extremists—nothing but a blight upon the galaxy.
And that was not all. A revolting purple tentacle monster from outer space had set its sights on him and claimed ownership. Had things been left alone, Gong Ryun would have been reduced to a tool by that rootless mass of tentacles and subjected to some vulgar personality rewrite.
Standing against that wicked scheme had been none other than the beautiful and merciful Succubus Boss. She had faced Jami-Gongryun—the fusion of Gong Ryun and a fragment of Jamiseong—and emerged victorious, thereby proving that a Succubus race with history and tradition was far superior to some rootless tentacle blob.
…Uh… Boss? Is that right?
Isn't this a rather one-sided rewrite?
Ah, no? You're saying this is definitely correct? Ah, um… yes…
When he had first heard the explanation, he had not known what to make of it. What on earth had happened while he had lost his memories?
But time was a healer. Piece by piece, the memories began to return.
Not all at once—they surfaced in scattered scenes, as if someone had taken a movie, chopped it into a few-minute clips, shuffled them at random, and was playing them back one by one.
A fragment while he was eating spicy snail noodles. Another while he was brushing his teeth. One more as he lay down to sleep.
The recovery was still ongoing, but the key scenes seemed to have more or less come back.
"Ah. There's another one."
Right on cue, another memory returned.
Let's see…
One side of his brain went cold. Gong Ryun absently dug a finger into his ear.
The whole thing left him thoroughly unsettled.
At any rate—Gong Ryun had nearly lost his body, fought the Boss, and even blown out a city shield—and yet none of it felt real. Even with the memories back, there was a distance to them, as if he were watching a film.
It could not be helped. He had not been the one acting. He had lent his body to Jamiseong while his own consciousness had been half-crushed.
So it felt exactly like a midsummer night's dream.
And why wouldn't it? The content was absurd enough.
A tentacle monster versed in martial arts had crawled into his brain and tried to brainwash him. The tteokbokki shop lady had turned out to be a hidden master. He had even fired a Heavenly Demon Death Beam—a bootleg, cut-rate version, but still.
What a mess.
Still, nothing catastrophic had come of it in the end, so perhaps he should count himself lucky.
Or should he? Was this really something to shrug off as "lucky"?
Gong Ryun honestly did not know.
One thing, however, was certain: thanks to Jamiseong, he had come out ahead in one respect.
His overall martial proficiency had risen.
The Parangjang just now was proof of that.
He was recalling what Jamiseong's fragment had done with his body. He could not yet match the level that had shattered the street and bent every lamppost, but he could already drive Parangjang harder than he ever had before.
In rough numbers—
If an ordinary martial artist's technical mastery of Parangjang sat at 10, the old Gong Ryun had been a 30. His palm talent alone had let him put out more firepower than a standard Parangjang, already well above the Profound Realm average.
Jami-Gongryun, with Jamiseong possessing him, had been a 100. A perfect score. Complete understanding of the art. That was why the power had skyrocketed. Even swinging a baseball bat with the same strength, the difference in accuracy and craft decided the score by a world of margin—same principle.
And the Gong Ryun of now, after Jamiseong's departure, could put out roughly a 60. Not only that—he felt a strange certainty that if he kept using it, he would eventually converge on 100. Having watched the perfect textbook that was Jamiseong, the road toward the full-mark answer had opened. An achievement no manual simulation alone could have given him. This was why a master mattered.
Was this the power of Jamiseong? Growth like this from a brief possession—well, you would need at least that much to go around leading cults. Being a cult leader was not a job just anyone could pull off.
What Gong Ryun did not know was that this had only been possible because it was him.
No matter how high Jamiseong's theoretical grasp of martial arts, without a user's capacity to support it, it was worthless. You could not force a body past its limits.
But Gong Ryun's capacity was nearly unlimited—at least where his hands were concerned—so the fragment of Jamiseong had been able to unleash its full power as if it were the original body itself.
In any case.
Every martial art Jamiseong had used while possessing him was now enhanced. And Gong Ryun, taking commissions, was putting each of them to the test one by one.
Yesterday he had gone to Medilla for a technique review.
"Heavens!!! Such clean, exquisite Fairy-Breaking Claw!!! You have surpassed this body at last!!! This is preposterous!!! This body has spent a lifetime upon claw techniques—a claw specialist, no less!!!"
Then Medilla had made him give her a horsey-ride—except she was the one who climbed on. She settled herself atop Gong Ryun as if it were the most natural thing in the world and proceeded to ruffle his hair into a mess.
"The student has outstripped the master, so it is!!! As expected of this body's disciple!!! Kishishishishi!!!"
And the day before that, he had taken a mine hydra commission. Just a common hydra-clearing job in an ordinary mine—perfect for shaking the rust off after the hospital.
Kreeeeeeeee!!!
He had aimed at the belly of the loudly screeching hydra and—
Organ-Piercing Claw — bypass external defense, seize the vitals within.
SHUNK!!!!!!!!
His hand sank in as cleanly as a blade. Straight into the middle of the hydra's guts.
KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!
The hydra had screamed itself hoarse. He had tried Falling Eagle Claw a few times on the ones that came after, too—before, the technique had been iffy for punching through tough hide and killing a hydra, but now a lucky hit on a vital point was enough to finish one off.
But the most interesting martial art of all was this one.
MOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Gong Ryun settled into a ready guard as another bull closed in. The two of them collided and locked into a contest of strength. Then, at just the right moment, he laid his right hand on the bull's head.
Joint-locking grip — refined into a crushing palm by Gong Ryun's peerless hand talent.
CRUNCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The bull's skull caved in the shape of a hand. The cranium was cracked, but it was still alive.
Geumnasu had gotten stronger. Not dramatically, though—Gong Ryun's Geumnasu had already been fierce to begin with. The gain was not that steep.
But it had another function.
Qi Absorption Art of Jamiseong — hands as temporary batteries, filtering and storing absorbed energy before it reaches the core.
Shhhhhhhhhhh…
The bull's vitality drained away little by little, its body withering and drying out.
Yes. Gong Ryun could use an absorption art.
And he could do it while maintaining Geumnasu. Running two martial arts at once was usually a challenge—but this particular combination came easily.
A technique that could link with Geumnasu, his strongest art. Perfect.
Tremble. Tremble.
The bull's body convulsed. The absorption was drying it out by the second.
When a martial artist was hit by an absorption art, their internal energy was siphoned away. A bull had no internal energy, so what got drawn out instead was its innate true qi—its life force itself. Even a martial artist, once their internal energy was gone, would start losing innate true qi the same way.
"Hold there! Gong Ryun! Have you no pity for the bull? To dry it out slowly like that—how much must it suffer! Let us send it off humanely!"
Un-rang, standing behind him, offered his unsolicited advice. He had come along on the bull hunt today, partly for the job and partly to see Gong Ryun's face after so long.
"It's going to die soon anyway. This much should be fine, right?"
"Nonsense! If it can be done, minimizing the suffering is only proper! Even if you mean to kill it! Do you have any idea how agonizing death by absorption is!"
"Hmm…"
At that, Gong Ryun simply crushed the head once more with Geumnasu and finished the job completely.
"Good heavens, Gong Ryun… An absorption art…"
He had told Un-rang what had happened—leaving out the bootleg Death Beam part.
"Gong Ryun! How many times have I told you to be careful of people! The moment you saw a cult like that, you should have turned right around and waved goodbye!! Did it not look suspicious at a glance?"
"I thought it might be something outside my common sense. On some planets, purple robes might be the local fashion, no?"
"What kind of talk is that?"
"Well, and as a result I learned an absorption art, so it worked out, didn't it?"
"…I really should have taught you the Shaolin Heart Method after all."