A Beautiful Girl Appears
As soon as I came to my senses, I sprinted to the stream.
The face reflected in the water was unmistakably that of a girl—young, dazzling, and breathtakingly beautiful.
“Is this... me?”
The figure in the water moved its mouth right along with me.
The sight somehow irritated me, so I thrust out a hand to disturb the surface and splashed water over my face.
No matter how hard I rubbed my eyes or washed myself clean, the stream still showed only that dazed girl staring back at me.
Calm down.
Was it really so strange for a man who had already lived through reincarnation into another world to freak out just because he’d become a TS beauty?
The answer was yes.
“This is insaneeeee!!”
My scream rang out over the mountain.
But this damn rocky peak didn’t absorb my anguish; it only threw the echo right back at me.
Flap, flap.
I heard mountain birds shrieking and taking off in alarm.
If fate was going to hand me some miraculous opportunity at this point, shouldn’t it have been regression or some absurdly broken martial art? Why TS, of all things?
This was unfair.
Utterly, miserably unfair.
I dragged my mind back together and ran to the hut.
Tap-tap-tap.
The light sound of my own footsteps rang in my ears.
I had only run such a short distance, yet I was already gasping for breath.
There was only one culprit behind this disaster.
My own damned dark history.
I snatched up the book that had been flung carelessly onto the floor.
Wolhameiingyeong.
I rifled through the pages at random and searched for anything useful, but of course, there was nothing.
I had read it several times over the past two years; there was no way I had missed something.
There wasn’t a single word in it about TS, naturally.
It was nothing but descriptions of poses and embarrassingly cringey praise about how beautiful those poses were.
“There’s no way this can be real.”
This book was nothing more than a bundle of delusions I’d written when I was neck-deep in middle-school-syndrome.
There were detailed instructions for each movement, sure, but that was just how chuunibyou worked.
Needlessly elaborate settings and information nobody wanted to know.
A completely worthless collection of scribbled fantasy nonsense.
“What the hell is this thing?”
My legs gave out, and I collapsed with a sigh of helplessness.
“Ow.”
This body, turned into a beauty, complained of pain at even the slightest impact.
It was the first time I’d felt this weak since I was a child.
Clutching the loose clothes that slipped off my body because they no longer fit, I muttered, “How am I supposed to live like this...”
The words that came out of my mouth were so forlorn and delicate that even I was startled by them.
What the hell, that’s adorable.
A cute way of speaking I’d never in my life imagined myself using.
Me, talking like this?
I remembered once seeing something in my previous life about mental imbalance caused by the body one inhabited.
Did it say the body would malfunction in order to restore balance?
Then the mind of a thirty-something man trapped in a beauty’s body should be collapsing, not producing cute little reactions and girlish speech just because the body had changed.
Anyway, everything I’d written while lost in delusion was garbage.
“This is annoying.”
Grumbling, I pushed myself back to my feet.
I folded my arms and naturally started bouncing one leg.
It was a habit I used to have whenever I pouted as a child.
I’d thought I’d grown out of it.
Maybe the younger body had dragged it back up again.
Creak, creak.
The flimsy hut groaned in protest with every movement.
What am I supposed to do now?
I wasn’t stupid.
I had, after all, lived a previous life.
No matter how hopeless things looked, once reality actually slammed into you, there was no time to stand around collapsing in despair without even understanding the situation.
I had spent thirty years in Murim, never knowing when I might die.
Those who couldn’t adapt to the world around them were all fated to die by some blind sword stroke.
It wasn’t the time to lament my fate; I needed to find a way to survive.
TS was shocking, sure, but compared to reincarnation into another world, it wasn’t some earth-shattering catastrophe.
Wasn’t there even a proper TS martial art like Qinggong Reversal Technique or whatever?
It was just hard to believe that it had happened to me.
A younger body was good news.
Better than getting old, no matter what.
And on top of that, I was a beauty.
A stunning beauty, enough to make your eyes fly open.
That was also unquestionably better than being ugly.
But that didn’t mean I could look at this positively all the time.
If this were modern society, I could’ve tried streaming, or posting online, or doing something.
But this insane Central Plains was absolutely not a world kind to beauties.
If I walked out into the jianghu defenseless like this, it was obvious I’d become the plaything of lecherous bastards.
Then again, I can’t exactly relax just because I hide in the mountains.
Over the past three years, I’d seen plenty of greenwood scoundrels roaming around the mountains.
When I was still an old man, I could at least keep them in line by telling them interesting stories while they came looking for trouble.
But if I were a beauty?
Worse, one who looked young?
Just imagining it was horrifying.
Should I go down to the city right now, then?
That was practically suicide too.
Heading into a city with this face and no support was basically the same as declaring I wanted to become a courtesan.
Me, a courtesan?
Just the thought made me want to vomit.
Besides, the Beggars’ Sect was every bit as terrifying as the greenwood.
Sure, novels always showed Beggars’ Sect disciples doing righteous and heroic things with swagger to spare.
But in truth, the Beggars’ Sect was a nightmare where the ceiling and floor were terrifyingly far apart.
In the end, there wasn’t anywhere safe for a beauty.
Wait. A novel?
Come to think of it, something had been off from earlier.
I’d been naturally pulling modern knowledge and words into my thoughts.
The vivid memories of my modern life, which had once been clear in childhood, had slowly faded over the years until there was almost nothing left to remember.
So why now?
The more I concentrated, the more those forgotten modern memories resurfaced one by one, like puzzle pieces snapping into place.
Was this what a healthy brain looked like when it had no wrinkles?
I didn’t know why, but regaining my memories was a very positive change.
But what can I do with that?
No matter how hard I made my fresh brain churn, I still couldn’t find an answer.
I stopped bouncing my leg and looked down at my thin arm.
My frail forearm looked nothing like a body that could accomplish anything in this harsh world.
At the very least, to live in this hut I’d need to chop wood right away.
With these arms?
“Absolutely impossible.”
There was no way I could manage it.
Wait, what did I just say?
“What exactly did I just say?”
Oh, hell.
Why was my speech like this?
“I can’t even speak properly.”
Goosebumps broke over my skin, and I immediately slammed my head into the floor.
That was my second fainting spell of the day.
**
After I came to, I sat on a rock and opened the book again.
In the end, I had no other choice but to cling to the source of all this disaster.
If faithfully following the same movements for two years had turned me into a beauty, then maybe reversing those movements would turn me back.
Reverse it, and the effect should reverse too.
That was just common sense.
“It would’ve been much better if this had at least granted me a martial art instead.”
Every time I opened my mouth now, some strange way of speaking spilled out.
At first it had at least been something vaguely familiar, but now it was mutating into an odd intonation of unknown origin.
Still, what could I do?
Once something had already happened, I had no choice but to adapt.
Something had happened to me at last.
I didn’t want to be dragged helplessly along by events and die like this.
I carefully placed the book on the rock and straightened my body.
I traced back through the countless movements I had repeated in my mind and began them in reverse.
“...This is a bit much.”
Slowly, I reached out, holding down the oversized clothes that kept slipping off me, and completed the motion as best I could.
I still wasn’t used to this body, so it took some effort, but perhaps because I had done it so many times before, my body moved naturally.
Then came the next posture.
I caught one leg and slowly lifted it over my head.
My legs stretched far more easily than they had when I was a man.
Maybe becoming a woman had softened the muscles.
With the leg held near my ear, I took a moment to steady my breathing.
No, wait. This pose looks strangely familiar.
I slowly retraced the posture I was making.
A flash of memory cut through my mind.
Isn’t this an I-frame balance?
“I was out of my mind, wasn’t I.”
My past self.
That crazy bastard.
As my modern memories returned, the bizarre names of the poses written in the book began to connect in my head, piece by piece, like puzzle fragments.
I-frame balance, Jack-O challenge, Yoruiichi stretch, JoJo standing pose.
It would’ve been better if I’d stayed ignorant and simply kept following along.
I’d naturally assumed they were just yoga poses.
“I’m completely a female now, deshaa.”
Once I learned this horrifying truth, it was embarrassing to keep going through the motions, but I had no other method now.
This book was my only lead.
I couldn’t stop just because I was embarrassed.
I had no choice but to keep going.
**
Three months had already passed.
“Huu...”
I exhaled long and slow, lowering the leg I’d been holding up.
I had grown much more used to this body now.
Strangely enough, a beauty’s body was comfortable.
No, let me correct that.
It was softer and more flexible, which made the movements easier to perform.
That made sense, since they were originally movements women did anyway, but even aside from that, I kept feeling like my body was growing lighter and lighter.
It seemed Wolhameiingyeong was no ordinary TS must-read after all.
This was a secret manual.
I’m the miracle now.
My past self had been a truly mysterious person.
How do you write a secret manual out of sheer delusion, with no foundation whatsoever?
Past me.
You insane, settings-obsessed bastard.
As the days went by, my body grew stronger and my mind steadier and more at peace.
Even though I trained every day until I was drenched in sweat in this frail body, I never suffered from even a minor illness or the slightest bodily ache.
Even when hunting, I didn’t feel tired.
And most importantly, somewhere along the way, a warm current had gathered in my lower abdomen.
That’s right.
Inner energy had accumulated in my dantian.
“........”
Right?
That warm energy gathered in my lower abdomen is the dantian, right?
Please.
I’m begging you.
If it’s somewhere else, I’ll just die.
“Huuup.”
I drew in another breath and carefully bent at the waist.
By now, I felt no shame over the postures anymore.
As I continued the sequence, my back curved like a cat’s.
If anyone had seen me like this, they would probably have found it alluring.
I’m glad I can’t see myself.
I’m really glad I’m alone in this mountain.
If anyone saw me, I’d bite my tongue off and die on the spot.
“Huu...”
I exhaled and steadied my breathing as it grew a little rough.
The book even described the breathing method for each movement in detail.
Even though the motions themselves weren’t difficult if I simply followed them, once I completed a full cycle, I was soaked through with sweat from head to toe.
So this was that so-called breathing technique, or whatever it was.
Which meant inner energy was building up.
Call it inner energy, please.
Just please.
“Good. That’s it for today too.”
I finished the final movement neatly and rolled my shoulders.
Now, as long as I stayed conscious of it, the strange speech wouldn’t come spilling out anymore.
Instead, I’d developed the habit of muttering to myself while checking my speech.
But hey, a beauty muttering to herself was still cute, right?
Better than being a crazy woman with bizarre speech.
Clip-clop.
I made my way to the stream to wash the sweat from my body.
Eat, lounge around, exercise, take a shower.
That was what a healthy life looked like.
“Did I get... a little taller?”
I splashed water over myself with a ladle and checked my body.
I had grown a little.
Probably because it was a body still in its growth period.
Consistent training had surely helped too.
Of course, I had also touched my chest while washing.
Unlike my height, there was no difference at all from when I’d first changed, but even so, it was a woman’s body, soft to the touch.
After checking myself against a nearby tree, I looked to be about five cheok tall now.
By modern standards, that was probably around high-school-girl height.
“That’s a little disappointing, maybe.”
If I was going to become TS, shouldn’t I have been able to stay in the cute middle-school-girl phase and get spoiled and patted on the head and all that?
Smack.
I slapped both cheeks hard with my hands.
Get a grip. What are you thinking?
What would I even do with being patted on the head?
Since becoming TS.
This beauty’s body had been slowly consuming my mind.
I could control it to some extent now, but with the added habit of muttering to myself, if I let my guard down even a little, strange words would come tumbling out.
I was scared I might one day turn into a “hawa-hawa high-school girl” without even realizing it.
“I need to protect this one body I’ve got.”
Don’t let my guard down.
This was Murim.
A world where the strong devoured the weak, where blades flew freely.
The moment I relaxed and let even a little of my femininity show to men, they’d roll their eyes white and rush in to covet me.
“I’d rather die.”
If that happened, I’d rather take my own life first.
Only after becoming a woman did I finally come to understand deeply why women carried short daggers on their bodies.
Chastity was important.
Swishhh.
After pouring water over myself to wash off the sweat, I wrapped a cloth around my hair to dry it and headed home.
I was sitting in one corner of the room, shaking out the moisture, when suddenly I sensed someone outside.
“...!”
Greenwood bandits?
So the day had finally come?
I held my breath and peered through a crack in the window at the uninvited guest.
There stood a beauty every bit as lovely as I was now that I had become a beauty myself.
A mysterious girl in black from head to toe, with blood-red hair spilling down to her waist.
The girl stared silently at the hut, then slowly opened her mouth.
“I have come to see the teacher.”
What.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
What did she just call me?