Chapter 143
Chapter 143
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Translator: penny
Chapter Title: Long Heaven Sect (2)
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The instructor didn't show up until well after the sun had reached its zenith.
"Ah, you little punks."
The instructor grumbled as he appeared, lamenting all the unfairness in the world.
"I was the one who caught the Silver Moon Bandit, wasn't I?"
"So all the credit and rewards should be mine, right?"
"Acting like whiny brats, nitpicking every detail."
He really did seem like a total punk.
'You only landed the finishing blow.'
The Silver Moon Bandit had been captured through Wang Wu the Old Master's efforts, combined with the instructors pooling their strength in a hard-fought struggle. In terms of shares, Wang Wu the Old Master had the biggest portion, while the instructor's was the smallest.
Even so, the instructor insisted.
"The finishing blow is what counts, originally."
That's how it was where I came from!
It didn't really matter anyway.
"Oh?"
The instructor glared at the cats bristling up at him.
The cats scattered in a panic.
"You're looking down on me too, huh?!"
Chasing after the cats with punches and kicks at empty air, the instructor looked every bit the punk.
I wished he'd just stop.
The instructor, having returned, waved his palm lazily.
"Hey, hey. Enough. Come here."
Glancing at his mood, he didn't seem particularly upset.
Approaching hesitantly, the instructor held out a tattered booklet.
"Here. Take a look at this."
"What's this?"
"A martial arts manual."
Examining the manual again to see what technique it was, the cover was so worn from age that it was frayed.
Flip.
Turning the cover revealed characters written on one side that Nangong Yun-ho could finally read.
"Flo...at...ing... Fea...ther... Lightness Skill?"
"Gasp! Isn't this the Silver Moon Bandit's martial art?"
The instructor cackled.
"What do you think? They handed it over recognizing my great instructor merits."
He'd just been complaining that the punks wouldn't hand it over nicely.
It seemed a substantial middle process had been omitted, but no one felt like digging into the truth.
They knew prodding the instructor at times like this would earn them a kick.
Instead of questioning the truth, Baek Ri-seol shrewdly extended her arm fully and asked something else.
"Instructor. We have a question."
"Yeah. What is it?"
"Is this really the Silver Moon Bandit's martial art?"
"Yeah. It is. You've experienced it yourselves, right? That eerie lightness skill."
Baek Ri-seol pressed her index finger to her lips and nodded.
"It was definitely a frightening lightness skill."
Even with the supreme expert Wang Wu present, they kept ending up in dire straits because of Gon Ya-pyeong's elusive movements.
"Soaring into the air, then suddenly bursting out from the darkness! It was truly terrifying."
The lightness skill that rode the wind was incredibly fast and bizarre.
"Yeah. So you get how important lightness skills are, right?"
Jegal Tan, who had been listening, chimed in.
"Instructor. Deciding to learn a martial art isn't something to take lightly."
"Why not?"
"You have to get permission from your sect elders at minimum. Moreover, isn't this an unorthodox martial art?"
Learning an unorthodox martial art privately wasn't something a righteous faction member should do.
There were moral reasons, but the next point was most crucial.
"From the start, unlike the profound arts of the orthodox sects, unorthodox arts are shallow sorcery pieced together. If you mess up learning it, you could fall into qi deviation."
Nod.
Even Nangong Yun-ho, who usually sided with the instructor, rarely agreed.
This was common knowledge, even to the Ghost of Bronze Hall in Bronze Hall.
- Orthodox martial arts are like a long journey, slowly building foundations.
- Unorthodox ones, on the other hand, are learned hastily if they're useful, charging ahead blindly.
- You can't study them together since their foundations differ.
- At best, qi reversal. At worst, death.
The instructor's response was simple.
"How does a person live on rice alone?"
"Pardon?"
"Sometimes you want snacks, spicy stuff too."
"That's true, but."
"Martial arts are the same. Try it, and if it doesn't suit your taste, stop."
Treating martial arts like side dishes.
"No need to worship it like a sacred relic. It's just a way to kill people anyway."
Moyong So-hye, unable to listen further, started retorting.
"Instructor. Then why do stories exist of righteous warriors falling into qi deviation from learning unorthodox arts?"
"They forced it down when it didn't suit their taste and got indigestion."
But the instructor countered with his simple, straightforward logic.
In the repeating argument, Baek Ri-seol asked something else.
"So, is it okay to learn it?"
"If it doesn't suit you, just learn the parts that do."
Why couldn't they grasp something so simple?
Flipping open the manual, the instructor pointed rapidly at the text.
"This is the incantation for Light Body Technique to make the body lighter."
"This is clearly the footwork for stepping patterns and walking methods."
"This is exploding qi to ride the wind."
"Can't you see that?"
They couldn't.
No matter how many times they read it, they couldn't even grasp what it was saying.
It was a long, chaotic incantation exceeding a thousand characters to begin with.
Just reading and understanding it would take at least a month or two.
'Is it because I'm lacking?'
Turning to look, she thought.
'No.'
Jegal Tan had a lion-masked expression.
Seeing her usually stoic friend dumbfounded confirmed it wasn't a normal situation.
"Hey, Jegal."
"Yes, Instructor."
"Even a know-it-all like you can't do this?"
"This... it shouldn't be like this. No, it shouldn't."
What shouldn't be?
Jegal Tan seemed more bothered by the bizarre event before him than the instructor's iron fist to his solar plexus.
He kept flipping through the manual, writing and erasing characters in the air with his finger repeatedly.
The instructor clicked his tongue.
"Can't even handle something this simple because you lack grit."
"Before grit, how do you instantly understand and break down this complex incantation?"
"Grit! That's! Grit!"
"Grit...!"
At the instructor's prodding, Jegal Tan mournfully echoed "grit."
Wasn't this the moment cold intellect was brutally defeated by evil and toughness?
"Um. Let me read it first."
"Yeah. No need to memorize it all. At first, I'll guide your qi."
Qi Guidance Technique.
A precise skill where one infuses their internal energy into another's body to move their qi.
A technique far above sealing or blocking meridians, usually only possible for those proficient in human anatomy and medicine, or those whose power reached human limits.
Though such an advanced technique was mentioned, no one asked further questions.
Baek Ri-seol stepped up first.
"Me! Let me learn it first!"
"Yeah. Turn around and bare your back."
Smooth. As the instructor placed his hand on her back, Baek Ri-seol shuddered.
"Hehe. This feels nice."
"Shut up. Opening your mouth mid-infusion can hurt you."
Ssssss.
Steam-like qi flowed from the instructor's hand on her back.
Woooong.
As profound energy moved, the surrounding air hummed like a swarm of bees, soon shaking their clothes with hot gusts.
'It's like the air is resonating.'
Nangong Yun-ho swallowed hard, watching the instructor.
Yawning widely with a bored face, he didn't seem to be exerting much effort.
The Qi Guidance didn't take long.
Step.
Stepping back, the instructor lazily jerked his chin.
"How's it feel?"
"Power overflowing in my body."
"Move now. While the energy lingers, you can easily use Floating Feather Lightness Skill."
"Yes."
After explaining the movement tips from the manual, Baek Ri-seol kicked off the ground and leaped into the air.
She hooked her instep on a pine branch meant for cat playgrounds and hung upside down like a bat, or stepped on thin twigs and jumped skyward.
After moving for a while, Baek Ri-seol's movements visibly slowed.
"Huff huff. This seems too hard."
"Gets harder to breathe the more you move?"
"Feels like my meridians ache more as I circulate qi."
The instructor scratched his chin regretfully.
"Hmm. Doesn't suit you, huh."
Well, not completely unusable.
Picking up a small twig, the instructor wrote a hundred characters on the ground.
"Still, you can learn the Light Body incantation to lighten your body."
"Lightness skill isn't just about lightening the body?"
"Light Body to lighten. Horizontal Body for quick direction changes. Footwork for walking methods. Bouncing Body for acceleration. It's a combination."
Just lightening the body would make White Crane Swordsmanship even faster and lighter.
At the added comment, Baek Ri-seol scurried off, grabbed a small brush and paper, and returned.
She soon squatted by the characters and began copying them.
"Next."
The Qi Guidance and lightness skill demonstrations continued.
Unfortunately, Nangong Yun-ho was an even poorer match than Baek Ri-seol.
"Tch. Too much for someone not used to footwork yet?"
"Sorry. My shortcomings."
"You could tweak the Bouncing Body incantation to make use of it."
Next was Jegal Tan.
Surprisingly, Jegal Tan gained quite a bit.
He internalized the Light Body, Horizontal Body, and Bouncing Body incantations right away.
"Lucky guy."
"How... is this possible? My body feels so light."
"It suits you."
"An unorthodox art suits my body."
"Turns out you have more talent for unorthodox than orthodox arts?"
Jegal Tan's face turned ambiguous, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
"Hmm. Let's see."
Humming, the instructor wrote down a three-hundred-character passage.
It amounted to a third of the Floating Feather Lightness Skill.
"Fast footwork and light movement should suffice. It'll let you unfold Phantom Swordsmanship faster and more variably."
"Yes."
"You're not writing it down?"
"I memorized it while you wrote."
Asserting it confidently, Jegal Tan got kicked in the shin.
"Why hit me?"
"Just because."
Last was Moyong So-hye.
Ta-tat!
Kicking lightly off the ground, Moyong So-hye leaped a zhang high and blinked.
"Huh?"
Something felt off, so she stepped on a tree trunk, climbed the pine performing acrobatics, or landed on finger-thick thin branches repeatedly.
Then, lightly flicking her toes, she floated through the air like swimming and landed on the eaves roof, crunching a tile.
"Can't control the power yet."
There were awkward parts, but she adapted quickly with repetition.
Kicking off the ground lightly, stepping on pine branches, landing on the eaves again—it took less than a quarter hour to get the hang of it.
Didn't she look just like a flying squirrel?
Standing on the eave edge, Moyong So-hye wailed with teary eyes.
"Why does this work for me?!"
"Why? Your body's perfect for unorthodox arts."
"Why does it work?!"
"Cool. Flying over blood letters. Soaring the skies, dyeing the jianghu red."
"Waaah-!"
Unexpectedly gaining the most, Moyong So-hye burst into tears.
After teaching the lightness skill, the instructor got to the main point.
"Alright. Now onto the requests."
So that's why he taught so diligently for once.
But no one expected the instructor to handle his duties flawlessly anyway.
No one raised any objections.
"First, the first request."