The Armband Heart Method
From now on I'm gonna talk some boring, pedantic shit, but you need this for the armband so read it carefully.
Internal energy heart methods are the beginning and the end for a martial artist.
If a martial artist has internal energy? Body gets healthier, you project force through fajin, your martial arts get stronger, and someday you'll split mountains and skies and just fucking do everything.
But the only ways to get internal energy are boring qi-circulation breathing or stacking a little every day through elixirs.
Lucky for you Juddak, you've even got a third method with Spirit Stones.
Anyway, once you start this qi circulation, just think of it as repeating it every single day until you die. That internal energy you pile up little by little every day will become your solid backing.
Normally you'd start even a day earlier, when you're still young—but we met you Juddak late, and we were greedy too.
In the end the whole point of this gallery is to make you Juddak the successor to every last one of us, so it has to be a heart method that can accept every martial art.
Originally each martial art has its own matching heart method, because internal energy has properties too.
For example I need explosive, intense energy like a real man. The Ice Palace's Ice God needs that cold, loser-ass energy. Yin and yang, orthodox and demonic—there's a shitload of them.
But the bastards gathered in the Uwhadeungseon Gallery are all, pretentious as they are, the best under heaven of their eras, right? Most of them are under me, but they've got knowledge, so we all put our heads together and finished a heart method just for you Juddak.
The name is Uwha Mugeuk Jingyeol.
This is important, so take note: every martial art and heart method has a name and the creator's intent attached. You need to understand this so that when you hit a wall someday you can leap over it—so just memorize it for now.
Uwha is because the ones who made this heart method are the gallers of the Uwhadeungseon Gallery.
Mugeuk means the chaos before Taiji splits—the purest state. It reduces the pure qi of the Orthodox factions, the yin of the Ice Palace, even the explosive demonic qi of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult all back to the Mugeuk state and accepts everything. That's why it's Mugeuk.
From now on, no matter what martial art you Juddak learn, with this you can take it all in. This is the true supreme pure heart method. From here on you memorize the formulas cold and do it yourself.
If we could mess with your internal energy we'd just do the true qi guidance for you and proxy your first Small Heavenly Circuit, but we can't.
You Juddak have to succeed at the first Small Heavenly Circuit yourself.
So don't you dare fail. You've been warned.
What followed was an explanation far longer than the opening.
Qi Sea? Huiyin point? Governing Vessel? Mingmen?
Drowning in a sea of words I had never heard, I kept firing questions at the gallers—what is this, what is that? Most of them turned out to be parts of the body or the channels internal energy travels through. Even though the gallery filter had made the gallers' talk easier to follow, it had no power over the technical vocabulary itself.
After wrestling with the gallery for a long time, permission finally dropped.
When the conversation had first started it had been around lunchtime. By the time I looked up, a bright moon was already hanging in the sky.
Is she still awake?
Just in case, I had the innkeeper call for Young Lady Han. Luckily she had not yet gone to bed.
"If it's guard duty, I'm more than happy to help. I needed a companion for qi circulation anyway."
"Okay. Tell me what I need to do when the time comes. I'll help you too."
With Han Yumae's help secured, every preparation was complete. I closed my eyes one last time, reviewed the gallers' explanations, then settled into a cross-legged seat, stacked my hands over my lower abdomen, set a Spirit Stone on top of them, and drew a deep breath.
What the gallers had stressed first was simply sensing the existence of internal energy. I breathed slowly, imagining a hole opening at the crown of my head and drawing breath through it, picturing the inhaled air traveling down through the lungs all the way to the lower abdomen. I kept erasing the doubt that whispered this couldn't possibly be right, and after a long stretch of breathing—
I can feel it.
At some point a certain energy mixed into the air had begun to gather, little by little, in my lower belly. A white something that had slipped in among the ordinary air.
So this is internal energy.
I marveled for a moment at the strange new sensation, then recalled the second stage Cheonma had described.
Trying to shift the energy that had settled inside me proved harder than the first stage. Just because blood was in my body did not mean I could command it at will; at first I had no sense of how to move the internal energy either.
I recalled Cheonma's advice and kept at it with stubborn patience. At last—
Got it.
The internal energy began to move, bit by bit. Once I had the feel for it, I focused on volume, following Cheonma's instruction to transfer the greatest amount I could manage in a single effort.
Just a little more… more…
I fought not to lose concentration. With steady focus, the energy gathered in my lower abdomen eventually became something I could move all at once.
Stage three—the part we had discussed with the gallers the longest. The difficulty had only been the vocabulary; now that I had it memorized, it was no great obstacle.
I guided the energy pooled in my lower abdomen down to the Huiyin point between my legs.
Carrying the yang energy cradled at the Huiyin, the power raced up my back, past the cervical vertebra called the Dazhui point, and surged in a single burst toward the crown of my head.
Ugh…!
A searing pain like fire racing up my spine slammed into me.
I had been warned there would be pain, but I had never imagined it would feel like being branded with fire. Against the unexpectedly fierce agony I clenched my jaw, crushing the moans that kept trying to escape and the breathing that kept trying to shatter, and forced every last thread of energy all the way to the crown.
As if the warning had been a lie, every shred of agony vanished and my head felt cool and clear. The energy that had burned so hot moments before cooled, and my mind grew sharp and bright.
Recalling the Spirit of Seeking Justice's Gunryeo Gwonhak, I let the energy descend slowly from the forehead to the center of my chest.
Just as Cheonma had described, the energy that settled slowly finally arrived back at the lower dantian where the journey had begun. The internal energy that had completed one full circuit was no longer the white energy of the start—it had become transparent.
The amount of energy was smaller than when I began, yet within it I felt a far more intense power.
At last I finished my first Small Heavenly Circuit and opened my eyes. The sense of being sealed off from the world vanished at once; sight and hearing opened and information poured in—fierce sunlight, the chatter of birds, and a stench.
I was still wondering where the stench was coming from when—
"Congratulations on the great achievement."
Han Yumae's voice greeted me.
Great achievement? What was she talking about? No—more importantly—
"…Is it morning? Did I stay up all night?"
"You didn't notice. I thought that might be the case. I've never seen a scene like this myself, but they say when people break through a wall they lose track of time and keep circulating for hours."
Her expression as she spoke did not look nearly as pleased as her words.
Something immediately occurred to me.
"You stood beside me all night. I'm sorry."
"No, that part doesn't matter, but that…"
Mid-sentence Han Yumae raised a hand and covered her mouth.
"How about we talk after you wash up first?"
"Huh? Urgh…!"
The ferocious stench flooding in through my nose brought a natural gag. What in the world was this reek dozens of times worse than a sewer?
I instinctively looked toward the source of the smell—and immediately drew another startled breath and gagged again.
"What is this?"
Sticky black liquid spread across the floor. I shot to my feet in horror, and Han Yumae answered.
"Probably waste matter from inside the body? I've heard it comes out when someone undergoes bone-marrow cleansing or receives hair-and-marrow washing at an older age, but this is the first time I've seen it myself."
"Bone-marrow cleansing??"
"I've already had bathwater prepared, so can we talk after you bathe? I've been holding it in for a while and—urgh…!"
Han Yumae, still gagging, finally could not endure any longer and bolted outside.
I had known her for a single day and already this was happening. But I could not stand the stench any longer either, so I scrambled up and followed the innkeeper's guidance straight to the bathhouse.
Thankfully, at Han Yumae's request the water was already heated. I scrubbed off the mysterious black clumps clinging to my body and sank into the hot water; every last bit of tension melted away.
"Hah… finally alive again."
The stench still seemed stuck inside my nose, so I dug at my nostrils a few times—then my eyes fell on the bandaged abdomen.
When did the wound heal completely?
The bandage had been soaked with that same black liquid, so I had taken it off, but now that I looked, the wound on my stomach was fully healed. Only a day earlier it had still been a livid, dark bruise. What on earth was going on?
What the hell did you lunatics teach me?