Form Refinement (1)
Hyun Si-woon unconsciously rubbed the area over his heart with his left hand.
The chill of a blade driving deep and stripping everything away still lingered, vivid as if it had just happened. The final agony of organs crushing together and breath cutting short clung to his skin like an afterimage.
"Si-woon, what's wrong?"
"Are you unwell, hyung-nim?"
At his companions' worried questions, Hyun Si-woon simply shook his head.
"I'm fine."
He said he was fine, yet another voice kept dominating his mind.
You were weaker than I thought.
Your world is abnormally weak.
She's right.
Until now he had focused only on climbing the Tower, earning TC, and acquiring good items. He had never truly devoted himself to martial arts itself.
I just lost because I was weak.
On the path to the library, a veteran's knowledge was useless. To break through that place, he needed to drill pure martial power. Not the stats the Tower handed out—actual advancement in martial arts.
"Si-woon, are you really okay? You're pale."
Even Baek Do-hee stepped in, and only then did Hyun Si-woon force a smile onto his lips. He could not stay like this.
"Everyone worked hard."
He had no intention of giving up on the Spiral Whisper. That book might be the only key that could approach the Tower's truth. To obtain it he needed to meet Yoo Jin-hyeok, and to meet him he needed the stage of the Atla Raid.
Same path until the raid.
Sweep every Despair Stone again this time, receive the book from Yoo Jin-hyeok. After that, stop everything and focus solely on training.
Hyun Si-woon dug through past memories and explained to the members about the Autumn Wind that Kang Si-a had obtained. They returned to Eden Camp and followed the usual flow of events.
Ha-wol.
Speak.
That path to the library—what stage do I need to pass through it?
Heh. So now you finally want to properly learn this lady's martial arts?
You said it yourself. The swordsman who appeared at the end was at the Peak. What stage do I need to reach to beat him?
Ha-wol stared steadily into Hyun Si-woon's eyes. Not the eyes of someone gripped by the fear of death, but the eyes of a seeker facing a wall he must surpass. Her usual slyness was gone.
To face Peak, you must become Peak yourself. In our Moon Spirit arts we treat the seventh stage, Moon Gang, as Peak.
I have to reach Moon Gang?
Hyun Si-woon's current stage was the third: Heart Lake. That meant he still had to climb four more stages.
Huhu. The Peak of those worthless mongrels and the Peak of our Moon Spirit arts differ in rank from the very foundation. Their crude martial arts are things they roll around learning in the dirt. Moon Spirit Divine Art is a divine method that contains lofty, perfect principle like the moon in the night sky. Even if you merely step into Moon Gang, you will be able to chew up ten ordinary Peak masters with one hand. Even if that swordsman specter stands at the threshold of Transcendent Peak, once you reach Moon Gang you will more than handle him.
"...!"
Hyun Si-woon's eyes lit up. There was not a shred of bluff in Ha-wol's words—only the absolute confidence of someone who had mastered the strongest martial arts. Truly worthy of a Ranker once called the Sword God.
"Moon Gang... how much training will it take to reach that stage?"
In this lady's world, for one who has reached Heart Lake to surpass the wall of Moon Gang requires a full half-cycle of the sexagenary calendar at the least.
"Half a cycle?"
Yes. A solid thirty years. Considering that Moon Spirit is a single-lineage transmission, that is the span measured against a talented person, not an ordinary fool.
"Hah."
It was a truly staggering amount of time.
Moreover, you are not walking the orthodox path. You are twisting Moon Spirit principle by mixing in the alien power of spirit arts. Carving a new road is twice as hard as walking an existing one. It may take a full cycle rather than half.
Her voice dropped lower.
Above all, your martial talent does not exceed that of an ordinary man. Your senses are abnormally sharp and I acknowledge the sheer venom that lets you overcome the fear of death, but the pure talent for absorbing and mastering martial arts is nothing special.
Ha-wol's evaluation was merciless, yet Hyun Si-woon could not refute it. He had seen Yoon Seo-a, who possessed the Heavenly Yin Body.
"Interesting."
A strange competitive fire welled up. It felt exactly like facing a brand-new game of extreme difficulty he had never cleared before.
"Moon Gang or whatever—let's try it."
This lady desires that as well. It never made sense for a Moon Spirit disciple to climb the Tower at mere Heart Lake.
After that, everything flowed the same way. Hyun Si-woon adjusted just enough to follow the current of the past. The Atla Raid became even more precise. He had already taught Baek Do-hee the method using Saint's Prayer in advance, and the results were even more overwhelming. Because he had walked the path before, their contribution this time was far higher.
"Whoa."
"As expected of hyung-nim's foresight..."
"How did you even know about this one?"
Calling him a veteran no longer explained it. The clear, error-free instructions that felt as if he had seen the future bordered on divine skill. He obtained eighty Despair Stones again, and the meeting with Yoo Jin-hyeok proceeded smoothly as well.
And then—
In Hyun Si-woon's room at Eden Camp, the Spiral Whisper lay waiting. He had received it as the condition for accepting Yoo Jin-hyeok.
Going there now would just be a dog's death.
So what now? There were two options. First: keep climbing the Tower of Despair while preparing his martial arts. Second: set everything aside for a while and drill only martial arts. Both could be rational choices, yet Hyun Si-woon chose the latter. It stemmed from his original nature—the rotten-water player who pursued perfection over efficiency. The reason he had climbed back from the first floor hundreds of times even after reaching the thirtieth was the anxiety that he might have missed some unknown opportunity. If his control was lacking he practiced only control; if a specific pattern was the problem he repeated until only that pattern appeared. Forcing his way through with other specs without fixing the root cause was never his method. That was not a strategy—it was evasion.
To climb the Spiral Library he needed at least Moon Gang. Therefore Moon Gang was now the absolute top priority.
"From this moment on, all external activities including Tower climbing will stop. Until further orders, everyone focuses solely on training at Eden Camp."
"What?"
"Huh?"
"...Martial arts?"
The members were thrown into confusion. Until now they had never stopped for a single day. Yet suddenly he would not climb the Tower? Still, no one questioned him. That was the unspoken rule. The leader's command always had a reason, and his judgment had always been correct. They simply answered quietly.
"Got it."
"Kenzo was already telling me to polish my defense more, so I'll just grind that."
"I'll refine Eagle Claw Divine Archery with Master Chu Pung as well."
Afterward, Hyun Si-woon focused only on martial arts with Ha-wol. He felt sorry for Yoo Jin-hyeok, but he did not even open the community. He ignored every event that popped up along the way. Treating himself as a blank slate, he rebuilt from the foundations. Mixing Moon Spirit and spirit arts together revealed new things.
First stage. Qi Sensing was not simply feeling energy. It was recognizing one's dantian for the first time and drawing it out beyond one's sight. Flowing Stream was making the river of life flow through that dantian. Heart Lake was the stage where that river gathered into a still lake that reflected all things under heaven.
"Seo-a."
"Yes, Master."
"I'll watch from the side, so keep training. Tell me everything you feel while you train."
"Yes!"
Thus the strange joint training began—an ordinary master and a genius disciple. The master filled his own shortcomings by watching the disciple's miraculous talent; the disciple tempered her talent even further by learning the master's obsessive spirit of inquiry. And behind them, of course, stood Ha-wol.
Draw the gnome's energy up through the soles of your feet into your dantian! Yes! The sensation is different, is it not? Now feel the flow of pushing that energy back out to the tip of your sword!
Your sword is not a lump of metal! It is part of your body! An extension of your arm!
Ha-wol's thunderous scolding rang across the training ground. Hyun Si-woon spent more than ten hours a day solely on basic energy circulation and swinging a wooden sword. Everything except meal times and the bare minimum of sleep was poured into training. The spirits were no exception. He never stopped experimenting to perfectly fuse spirit arts with Moon Spirit Divine Art. When unfolding Swimming Step he laid Undine's water membrane under his feet to erase friction; when thrusting Moon Point he twisted the sword's trajectory with Sylph's wind—countless such studies.
At first it was clumsy. The power even dropped below pure Moon Spirit Divine Art. Yet he did not give up. Through hundreds, thousands of failures he hunted for the most efficient point of contact, like a veteran digging into the hidden route of a game of extreme difficulty. That manic obsession even made Ha-wol click her tongue.
Your imagination alone has already reached Peak.
Three months passed. Hyun Si-woon finally stepped into the fourth stage of Moon Spirit Divine Art: Qi Condensation—the stage of condensing flowing qi into a single point by will. Silver-white energy repeatedly formed and scattered like water droplets at his fingertips.
Half a year passed. He crossed the wall of the fifth stage, Moonlight. Faint moonlight began to leak from his body. Every time he swung his sword, unstable yet distinct sword qi carved the empty air. According to Ha-wol it was an enormous speed. But did he know what was even more enormous?
Yoon Seo-a.
Her achievements were insane. They had trained together, yet she had already reached his goal—Moon Gang.
Ha-wol, you said it takes half a cycle.
That is why... this lady is so shocked she cannot close her mouth either.
Yoon Seo-a had become a Peak master. Her footwork? She had mastered Swimming Step and Crescent Moon Step to completion and even reached the entrance of Moon God Step. Her swordsmanship? She had learned three of the Seven Cuts of Moon Spirit Swordsmanship: First Cut—Flash; Second Cut—Moon Trace; Third Cut—Full Shadow.
Hyun Si-woon felt a faint sense of self-loathing.
Do not worry. Even by Moon Spirit standards you are above average. Seo-a is the abnormal one.
The problem arose here. Hyun Si-woon's stage was so far beneath his disciple's that he could no longer explain things with his body.
"Master, you said the sword principle of Moon Trace you just showed is the sword of deception. Yet I cannot quite grasp the sensation of shaping the flow of qi outside the body. The sword's trajectory and the qi's trajectory seem to deviate slightly, but I do not know what that feeling is."
Cold sweat ran down Hyun Si-woon's back.
Damn it.
No matter how precisely Ha-wol conveyed the formulas and true meaning by mouth, in the end Hyun Si-woon had to express it with his flesh and demonstrate. Yet he was still only at the Moonlight stage—merely spewing unstable sword qi. Fully demonstrating Moon Trace, which required the Form Refinement stage, was impossible.
How much more time passed? In the end the troubled Yoon Seo-a carefully asked,
"Master... I have something to say."
"What is it?"
"Until now I have focused on realizing the principles of martial arts under Master's teaching, but... I lack real combat. You said that even if I cut a scarecrow a thousand or ten thousand times, I cannot learn the sense of predicting and responding to a living monster's movements."
Did I say that?
No—Ha-wol must have.
"So I want to climb the Tower as well."
Hyun Si-woon's eyes widened a fraction. The problem he had fretted over most had now surfaced. Before he could even open his mouth, Yoon Seo-a delivered the finishing blow.
"Would it be all right if I went alone, without a climbing party?"
Hah.
The aura rising from the girl before him was no longer that of a disciple who needed protection. Yoon Seo-a knew it too—that she could cover the lower floors alone. She hungered for growth. Just as Hyun Si-woon once had, she wanted to test her limits and advance to higher places. This safe Eden Camp had become a well far too small to contain her growth any longer.
Hyun Si-woon read every one of those emotions clearly in his disciple's clear eyes.
No choice, then.
And so he could only nod in silence.