Chapter 297: People Only Move When a Crisis Hits
Chapter 297: People Only Move When a Crisis Hits
After the visitation ended, I turned Heavenly Sword’s words over in my mind.
As I thought, did he realize?
I couldn't be sure at what point or how much he had caught on, but at the very least, he seemed to have realized I was connected to this operation.
His comment that "nothing happened at night" was likely a sign that he wouldn't hand over detailed information to the Management Bureau.
It was a relief that this plan was a moderate one. It would have left a bitter taste in my mouth to betray Heavenly Sword’s expectations by doing something unnecessarily violent.
That aside, between Thunder God, Oxymoron, and now Heavenly Sword... everyone seemed to link me to Black Marauder so quickly after just a brief encounter.
There shouldn't be a single shred of physical evidence. Seeing them so certain based on mere suspicion or intuition made me realize just how obvious my actions must be.
While I reminded myself of the need to be more careful when acting as Black Marauder—even with Yumil as a screen—a thought occurred to me.
What about the Lord of Infinite Castles, whom I met first? Did that Old Man realize it too?
If he did, he certainly didn't show any reaction.
Hrmmm.
My head had been a mess for the past few days, and I found myself scratching it incessantly, just as I was doing now. To be honest, this was more than my brain could handle.
It had gotten to the point where I was having delusions that my old comrades had all known for a long time and had held a secret meeting without me, agreeing to turn a blind eye as long as I didn't cross the line.
...But there was nothing I could do.
If I just went up and asked, "Hey, what do you think of Black Marauder?" without any brakes, I had a feeling it would trigger a catastrophe of its own.
In a way, the situation felt similar to when I was doing spy work. Back then, I had backup, someone to confide in, and a clear objective. Now, I had none of that.
Clearly, Yumil was created to hide my identity, but the situation felt like it was snowballing out of control.
Even so, I had no intention of stopping. It wasn't as if everything was shrouded in total darkness; I could see a faint light, and I was simply following it.
Therefore, this plan would proceed as scheduled.
With that thought, I stepped out of the Management Bureau’s basement.
"Ah, Hero Lee Ha-ram. You're out. There's a package delivered in the name of the Martial Alliance. We've been holding it for you."
A Management Bureau staff member called out to me as soon as they saw me. It was the kind of hotel-like service you rarely saw at large branches, but this was a small one.
I walked over to the staff member and asked, "It's a book, right?"
"I haven't checked the contents, but according to the shipping classification, it's a book."
"Yes, I'll take it."
It was exactly what I expected. I signed the receipt and took the item.
It was a rectangular object wrapped in soft cloth. Certain of what it was, I unwrapped the cloth to check the contents.
There it was. A simply bound book without any decorations.
Perhaps they didn't have time to think of a title, as the book was simply labeled Untitled. It had an atmosphere so ordinary it could have been found anywhere.
However, there was something that immediately caught my eye. It wasn't anything supernatural, like a special aura emanating from the book.
It was something more fundamentally strange.
The package didn't contain just one book. There were two.
And in the corner of the covers, there was something written by hand.
On one book, it said: To the Heavenly Destructive Star.
On the other, it said: To the one who serves the Tiger.
"That bastard, Heavenly Sword..."
I couldn't help but let out a wry smile.
*
With that, my business at the Martial Alliance was mostly finished, but I hadn't left for my next destination yet.
Of course, there were minor things left to do, like sharing a drink with my old comrades or my disciples saying their goodbyes to the people they had befriended.
But what I was really waiting for was something else.
On the morning of exactly one week after Yumil had infiltrated, the moment I opened my eyes, my disciples rushed toward me with their phones in hand.
"Senior! Quick, look at this!"
"What is it now..."
Since A-bin had rushed in so suddenly, I did my best to act surprised, annoyed, and half-asleep—performing as naturally as possible as I took the phone.
In truth, I already knew what had them so flustered. I had received word early this morning that the plan was about to be executed.
Unless something catastrophic had happened in the meantime, the current uproar had to be about that.
And I soon confirmed that my guess was correct.
The following headlines were plastered across the phone screen:
"What is this?"
"Apparently, martial arts manuals on par with the secret manuals of major sects have been released without limit, and it's total chaos. They were spread so massively in an instant that the Management Bureau can't seem to cope."
Of course they couldn't. That was the plan from the start.
Since most of them were small image and text files, unlike videos, there were countless ways to distribute them, and they were easy to copy.
On top of that, to prevent distribution issues based on language, they had been translated into various languages and dropped onto major sites simultaneously in massive quantities.
I had worried that such a large-scale operation might be traced, but when I asked, the kids from The Society just rattled off technical jargon I didn't understand—botnets, viruses, grids, calisthenics, or whatever.
"Even if they do trace it," they had concluded, "all the Management Bureau will find is a clunky 1995-model computer chugging away in some corner of Kowloon Walled City."
In any case, the plan to mass-distribute martial arts manuals had been a success.
The biggest concern was that the Bureau might catch it the moment it was uploaded and use their authority to shut down the global network for a minute or two to wipe it out. But the Bureau failed to catch it in time, and now the files were in a state where new distributors were constantly popping up even if the Bureau tried to delete them.
In other words, it was already beyond the Bureau’s control.
"Senior. Do you think these manuals are actually effective?"
"Well, I'd have to see the contents to know. Let me use your phone for a bit."
"Go ahead."
With A-bin’s permission, I downloaded one of the books that was now so easy to obtain and looked through it.
The title was Internal Fire Method.
It was a Demonic Manual I was familiar with, but the contents written there weren't that dangerous. It was a martial art that gained strength by being close to fire (Yang energy). Usually, the user possessed ordinary strength, but it was characterized by an explosive power that could flare up in an instant.
The method for building internal energy focused on being near fire, and the book even detailed minor forms and their subsequent combinations.
Looking at this alone, one wouldn't know why it was classified as a Demonic Manual. But the biggest problem with this martial art lay elsewhere.
It was the side effect of the training.
Usually, there were no issues, but the moment one tried to explode that power after accumulating it past a certain point... fire would literally erupt from the body.
No one knew exactly why, but that fire used internal energy as fuel, so it wouldn't stop until the Dantian was burned away. The user would gain immense power at the cost of being reduced to ash.
Surprisingly, the person who wrote this book was a fairly decent Martial Artist. It was only after Oxymoron saved his disciple from nearly dying that he realized he possessed a special ability: near-total immunity to fire damage.
Because of that, he had thought his body heating up whenever he used his power was just him getting excited by the heat of battle. The disciple who almost died eventually found another way to use the power and had a happy ending by becoming a Great Master in a different field. I saw him once; he was running around with some kind of fire sword.
Anyway, because of that, the manual was designated as a Demonic Manual and sealed.
I explained this to A-bin.
"Ah, this one. You'll burn to death if you use it."
"...Huh?"
"I mean it literally. You'll burn to death."
"...You're joking, right?"
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
When A-bin’s eyes started darting around in shock, I gave her a deep smile to show I was serious.
Was my word that hard to accept? After a moment of silence, A-bin spoke with a trembling voice.
"Then... shouldn't we stop this?"
Yes, it should be stopped. That was likely why the Management Bureau was in such a frenzy.
Among the Demonic Manuals released now, the Internal Fire Method was actually one of the milder ones. At least it didn't cause harm until you reached a certain level. Something like the Life and Death Threshold, where the initial requirement for training is your own death, was truly beyond help.
However, there was a reason why I believed there would be no victims of this plan.
"No, there's no need to stop it. I don't know what the people who released this were thinking, but these aren't the original texts."
I knew exactly what they were thinking, of course.
"...They're not the originals?"
"I don't know about the other books, but I know the Internal Fire Method I just opened. In fact, the 'Amplification' technique used by Magical Girls was partially inspired by this."
That was the truth. Though it wasn't the only thing that influenced it.
"But looking at this now, the most important parts are either missing or distorted."
How to absorb the Yang energy gained from being near fire—that was what was originally needed, but this book just said to stay near fire. And that wasn't all; you needed a way to store it in the Dantian, but that part was completely gone.
The method for exploding the energy was written as something like, 'Just make it happen with a kiai shout.'
Of course, it wasn't written that bluntly; it was phrased quite elegantly. But to anyone with martial arts knowledge, the inconsistencies were glaringly obvious.
Even in the Life and Death Threshold, the first sentence, which originally read: 'He who reads this book, take your own life,' had been changed to: 'He who reads this book, watch a movie where people die. ※Note: Real snuff films are not allowed.'
Whose sense of humor was that? And what was with the small footnote?
Anyway, even after flipping past the first page, I didn't understand most of what was written, but I could tell that even if someone followed the instructions, the structure of the martial art was so broken it wouldn't even apply to the body.
Of course, there might be some profound logic I was missing, but since martial arts Type S like Quilp and Liger had swarmed over it to verify, it couldn't be wrong.
"This book is the same. Nothing will happen even if you follow what's written here. You might build a tiny bit of energy and feel a bit healthier, but it won't be much different from just getting fit through regular exercise."
I hadn't looked through all of them, but methods to intentionally neutralize the power were likely slipped into the training instructions. After all, The Core of this plan was that no one should get hurt.
"...Then these books are completely useless?"
"Exactly. If they were the originals, people everywhere would be certifying that they work by now, and it would be total pandemonium."
If some of those books had been the originals, the moment someone performed what was written, they would have been forcibly Awakened on the spot at a terrible cost.
But such reports were nowhere to be found. The Management Bureau seemed so busy trying to take the books down that they hadn't even realized the texts were fakes yet. They would probably release a statement as soon as they figured it out.
At my explanation, Han A-bin let out a sigh of relief, but then her expression turned puzzled.
After about twenty seconds of thought, my disciple spoke up.
"Then, what is the goal of the people who did this? It seems meaningless other than causing a controversy... If they wanted social chaos, they could have just released the originals."
"Who knows? Maybe it's some thrill-seeker who wants attention? The scale is a bit large for that, but the world is big and there are plenty of crazy people."
I mean, even The Queen of the Magic Kingdom was incredibly petty for someone of her stature.
"I suppose..."
A-bin didn't seem entirely convinced, but she kept thinking.
However, no matter how much she thought, it would be difficult to realize the true purpose at this stage. She lacked information.
If she had all the facts, she might realize that the Management Bureau was already preparing to open training methods to the general public and was organizing data to discuss those methods.
Then, she would see the real goal of this plan.
What is the best way to push out dangerous, fake data?
It is to flood the world with a massive amount of reliable, real data.
Of course, some people would continue to believe the fakes, but they would dwindle into a tiny minority, and those who shared such data would gradually disappear.
Therefore, the public release of martial arts, which was supposed to take ten years, would now accelerate exponentially. The incident had already happened, and the mess had to be cleaned up.
That was the primary goal.
And as for a secondary goal—though not the main one—the Management Bureau’s credibility would take a bit of a hit.
I wondered how the Bureau’s factions would move now.
With those pleasant thoughts, I returned A-bin’s phone and took out my own to look through the other martial arts.
Watching the results of The Society kids butchering the martial arts was quite entertaining in its own way.