Chapter 58
Chapter 58
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 58
Chapter Title: The Real Reason There's No Sword Aura
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Um, are you okay?"
"Huh? Oh, uh... yeah, I'm fine."
Shaking my head to dispel the strange entranced feeling, I turned back to face Hwa-ryeon.
"What happened?"
"It's past midnight, but you don't seem to have gone to bed yet."
"Oh, has it gotten that late already?"
It had been the hour of the dog when I first opened the manual, but two full hours had already passed.
I hadn't even noticed the time flying by while delving into the Body Protection Technique.
"May I sit next to you for a bit?"
"Of course. Please, have a seat, miss."
Hwa-ryeon shot me a brief glare at my playful cheekiness before carefully sitting down beside me.
She glanced sidelong at the Threefold Protection Technique manual in my hand, then spoke up.
"If you're forcing yourself to read it because of what Seol-i said earlier today, you don't have to."
"Hm? No, that's not it. It's actually pretty interesting. It's a concept I never even imagined."
This was sincere.
After witnessing and experiencing the Body Protection Technique firsthand, and now reading through the manual, I felt ashamed of my past self for dismissing it as some worthless external art.
That said,
"So, what did Seol-i mean earlier? Something about Master doing what?"
"This Threefold Protection Technique was a special martial art that your aunt acquired through the leader of the Bang Merchant Guild. Compared to the Nangong family's Heavenly Thunder Divine Protection Art, it has no flashy external features but offers comparable defensive power."
A calm explanation.
I could sense that several key details in the middle were being omitted.
"Don't hold back—tell me exactly what happened. That way, I can properly apologize to Master."
"...It was something she went to great lengths to obtain. And it cost quite a bit of money."
After a brief silence, Hwa-ryeon revealed the hidden circumstances, and I sighed inwardly.
So she'd gone to all that trouble to get it, and I'd openly called it crap and declared I had no intention of learning it.
"...I definitely have to apologize tomorrow."
"You don't need to worry about it that much. It's already been several years."
"You heard it too—she said it was crap three times. She's definitely holding onto that grudge. People get narrower-minded as they age, you know?"
Hwa-ryeon gave me a look of utter disbelief before letting out a small chuckle.
"Hey, it's not a laughing matter. There's some basis for... basis?"
Do I have any?
It sounded vaguely familiar from my past life, but maybe not...?
I tilted my head for a moment before shaking it off.
"Anyway, it was my fault for tossing aside something she went to such lengths to get for me. So I need to apologize."
I resolved to start the day tomorrow with an apology the moment I woke up. Then, a certain mention suddenly came to mind.
"...By the way, 'quite a bit of money'—how much exactly?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but at least two hundred silver taels...?"
"Gasp..."
Over the past ten years, the total stipend our household had given to the martial hall barely exceeded one hundred silver taels, and this was far more.
"You're only asking now, but... you weren't really struggling financially, were you?"
"The leader of the Bang Merchant Guild is quite capable. She even grumbled that they're earning more now than they did back at Tyrant Heaven Fortress."
And I hadn't even known that—I'd smugly assumed back then that they were barely scraping by on the money our family provided...
Another black mark on my history without me even realizing it.
Unable to bear the embarrassment, I twisted my upper body and groaned, but Hwa-ryeon steered the conversation back to the main topic.
"So, what do you think of the Body Protection Technique? From the look on your face earlier, it didn't seem like you were too impressed."
"...Well, yeah. To be honest, I'm still not interested in training in it."
There were several reasons for that.
The biggest one being,
"It's mainly an issue with my internal energy. I don't know if it's unique to the Threefold Protection Technique, but the amount of internal energy it consumes per activation is enormous. In a real fight, there's no way I'd have any left over to use elsewhere."
As I said that, a new realization dawned on me.
At first, I'd thought the reason I had no sword aura was because of my energy circulation method.
If I just released the internal energy spinning endlessly fast inside me outward, it would fly off everywhere like Seol-i's had a few days ago.
"Just to double-check, anyone who practices martial arts learns this Body Protection Technique, right?"
"Not everyone, but at least anyone from a renowned sect or clan masters it as a basic skill. They actually prioritize it even more than swordsmanship training."
But that wasn't the case.
It was because they devoted most of their internal energy to the Body Protection Technique, leaving none to spare for anything else.
In other words, the Body Protection Technique itself was the real reason there was no sword aura.
Simply put, the martial arts of this world had developed far more defensively than I'd realized.
I found it absurd, yet it didn't quite make sense.
"Why go to such extremes to protect the body?"
Take the Threefold Protection Technique manual I was holding right now, for example.
True to its name, it was a Body Protection Technique that layered not one, not two, but three whole layers of the already massive internal energy expenditure.
One layer for protecting the organs, another for bones and muscles, and a final one for the skin—three layers in total.
Three layers? What is this, pork belly?
"That's nothing. The most famous one, the Shaolin Temple's Adamantine Indestructible Divine Skill, supposedly protects the body in nine layers to reach true invulnerability."
"Hahaha..."
I let out a hollow laugh at Hwa-ryeon's explanation. Three layers were ridiculous enough—nine?
"At this point, it's starting to look like obsession."
As I'd muttered, the Body Protection Technique felt like an insane fixation on protecting the body at any cost.
"...No, to be precise, it goes beyond obsession—it's born out of fear of something."
After poring over the manual several times, I could see it now.
At the root of this excessive obsession with body protection lay a deep-seated fear.
Of something endlessly powerful and violent, from which this technique was created to shield the body...
"What could that be?"
"..."
Without thinking, I voiced the question aloud, and Hwa-ryeon fell silent, gazing at me with a strange look in her eyes.
Realizing what that look meant, I fully turned my body toward her.
"What is it? You know?"
"...More or less. My father told me about it once, long ago. How the Body Protection Technique came to be."
My eyes sharpened instinctively.
I shot her an intense glare demanding an answer right now.
Hwa-ryeon narrowed her eyes and glared back briefly before shrugging and beginning her explanation.
"You know about the massive purge of the unorthodox sects in the early days of the founding, right?"
"Yeah. It happened right after the Ming Cult subjugation. The Embroidered Uniform Guard wiped out entire families."
Hwa-ryeon widened her eyes at my words before chuckling softly.
"You heard that from Madam, didn't you?"
"...So?"
"You always have to take Madam's stories with a grain of salt. She dramatizes them and embellishes details everywhere."
"Embellishes? How's it different in reality?"
Hwa-ryeon nodded at my question.
"Yes. It's true that some Embroidered Uniform Guard were involved in the purge, but the Imperial Army led it. Most of the Guard were busy hunting down Ming Cult remnants."
"...The Imperial Army?"
The Imperial Army.
Unlike the Embroidered Uniform Guard, who trained in martial arts, this was an army clad in armor and mounted on warhorses.
I couldn't help but be shocked to hear that the military had been deployed to exterminate the unorthodox sects.
"Wow, they went that far?"
Deploying the army meant they were treating the unorthodox sects almost like rebels.
No, I'd heard about the family executions, but I never imagined it was that systematic...
As I reeled in surprise, Hwa-ryeon's explanation continued.
"They say the Imperial Army used cannons from the very start, obliterating unorthodox sect strongholds without a trace. Cannon fire echoed across the Central Plains almost daily back then."
"Cannons..."
"Before that overwhelming barrage of fire, there was no difference between the weak and the strong. Even the most infamous unorthodox masters were all swept away by the cannons."
At that point, I understood exactly why the Body Protection Technique had been born.
Cannons.
The most powerful weapon wielded by the Imperial Army, by the Emperor himself.
The fear underlying the Body Protection Technique was the fear of cannons.
"The terror and power of those cannons must have been seared into the minds of even the orthodox martial world, who weren't the targets. At least, my father was convinced that's why the Body Protection Technique was created."
"Yeah, now that you've explained it, I'm convinced too."
How could anyone not fear a force that could shred a body to pieces just from being near the impact zone?
But at that point in the story, one question arose.
"Still, can the Body Protection Technique really protect against cannons?"
"Who knows? There's no record of it ever being tested. Cannons haven't been used in the martial world since."
...So they were pouring internal energy into a technique whose effectiveness against cannons was completely unproven?
I was dumbfounded.
Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on dodging out of cannon range quickly instead of obsessing over body protection?
Why had unproven Body Protection Techniques advanced while lightness skills stagnated?
Hwa-ryeon had a simple answer to my question.
"Because even if it doesn't work against cannons, it's plenty effective against blades."
"Blades... you mean it's impervious to swords?"
"Impervious to swords? First time I've heard that phrase, but it's pretty apt. Exactly—master the Body Protection Technique to perfection, and ordinary blades can't even scratch you."
"...For something like that, though, my sword seemed to cut into those guys pretty easily so far?"
I could excuse Shin Je-gon or whatever his name was since he got hit by sword aura, but what about the Dark Heaven Corps or the Ronin Band?
"The Dark Heaven Corps was an assassination unit. No reason for them to train in Body Protection Techniques when they avoid direct confrontations. And the Ronin Band probably couldn't even learn it to begin with. Why do you think they're ronin? They're too weak and unskilled to belong to any clan or sect, so that's all they can be."
It was a pretty convincing argument.
But there was still one more thing nagging at me.
"Then what about that Heavenly Light Corps Leader and his men? They're Tyrant Heaven Fortress's combat unit—they had to have trained in Body Protection Techniques."
"Well..."
Even Hwa-ryeon was stumped for a moment here.
"...Maybe your attacks were just too powerful and shattered their protection instantly? Or perhaps the type they trained in took time to activate..."
She came up with a few hypotheses after a pause, but her voice lacked conviction.
In the end, the matter of the Heavenly Light Corps remained an unresolved mystery.