29. Balance Breaker's Heavenly Tyrant Infinite Extreme Body
Rumble. Rumble.
The grandest of luxury carriages barreled southward from Yodongseong in Heoyang Province toward the provincial capital of Haebuk Province, Sekga Village, kicking up clouds of rough dirt along the way. The wheels churned out a steady rhythm as they pressed on.
Just a bit farther down this road, and we'd cross through Haebuk into Hanam. From there, it was straight to my sweet home in this world: Nakyang.
The inside of the carriage was eerily quiet. No—better to say a suffocating silence pressed down like a physical weight.
I sat cross-legged dead center, my body seemingly fused to the plush cushioning beneath me. Eyes squeezed shut, I sank deep into meditation. My breaths came faint and rhythmic, each inhale matching each exhale in perfect symmetry.
Deep in the core of my flesh, at the dantian, a wondrous miracle was unfolding.
Hwalcheon Simgyeol. The foundational heart formula of Jo Myeong-hwan, one of the Ten Great Masters and a member of the Saseon known as the Uiseon. It wasn't some domineering art that exploded sword qi or forcibly summoned mountain-shattering inner energy in a burst.
But in terms of stability, recovery, and the endless wellspring of life force it provided? No martial art under heaven could rival it. An otherworldly method that brooked no peers.
Hoo... haa... With every inhale, cool, pure energy flowed in through the crown of my head at the Baihui acupoint, soaking into my chest. With every exhale, foul, stagnant impurities drained out through the Yongquan on my soles. I felt it all vividly.
Just days ago, my body had been a shredded rag from a week of hellish torture. But now, the Hwalcheon Simgyeol energy coursing through my veins worked like spring sunlight melting a frozen valley stream—mending torn muscles, cradling shattered bone fragments, regenerating me at an astonishing pace.
Chugging this cheat-level healing potion through every pore brought back memories of that total freakout party right when we'd entered Haebuk Province days earlier. Naturally, unbidden.
Days earlier, at the Haebuk Province border.
Amid the carriage's jolts, Master Jo Myeong-hwan poured his true qi unstintingly into my mangled body for emergency treatment. Exhaustion etched his face, but denser still was the intense curiosity and shock directed at me.
"I've put out the worst of the fires... but your condition's still precarious. The external wounds have closed, but that empty dantian and those twisted channels? You'll have to fix them with your own power."
Master cleared his throat with a ahem and stroked his white beard.
"So, I'm going to teach you the incantation for Hwalcheon Simgyeol, the core foundation of my arts. It's packed with esoteric Daoist terms and cosmic principles—tough to grasp all at once. But I'll recite it slowly, so follow along and memorize..."
"Let's begin, Master."
I answered boldly. He twitched an eyebrow at my cheek, but soon closed his eyes and intoned the incantation in a solemn, weighty voice.
"The Taiji moves to birth yang, stills to birth yin... True qi rises from the Qi Hai, passes the Yujin, reaches the Baihui..."
The incantation flowed from Master's lips for a full shichen—two hours straight. Any ordinary martial artist would've bluescreened from the barrage of archaic Hanja, foaming at the mouth. Even Hwangbo Suyeon, hailed as the world's top prodigy, had taken three straight days and nights to memorize and unpack it fully.
But Master overlooked one fatal detail.
What was my real profession? Yeon Woon-ryong, Korea's genre novel swamp rat—a veteran web novel author who'd cranked out dozens of mega-hits over a decade of martial arts fiction! An ink-stained addict.
Qi Hai this, Baihui that? Please. I could compile a full Palman Daejanggyeong from the acupoints I typed out in my past life!
As Master recited, those complex terms typed themselves out in my head like Word processor text, auto-saving effortlessly. Hackneyed Daoist rhetoric. Familiar qi channel flows. This wasn't foreign to me—it was my native tongue.
Plus, my freakishly developed brain from the Cheon Gi Jeolmaek processed it all in a flash, no overload.
"There... that's it. How's that? Too long and tangled, right? Don't greedily memorize it all at once—chew it over slowly..."
"The Taiji moves to birth yang, stills to birth yin. True qi rises from the Qi Hai, passes the Yujin to the Baihui, through the Danzhong back to the Qi Hai, forming a perfect circle—that is the endless source of the living spring..."
"......?!"
I rattled off the entire incantation without a hitch—tone, spacing, every syllable copy-pasted perfectly. The air in the carriage froze solid.
Man, this Cheon Gi Jeolmaek was seriously busted, glitches aside. Words just flowed out naturally.
Master's eyes bugged out.
"You... just now... memorized it all after one listen?"
"Pardon? Oh... well, the phrasing was pretty straightforward and smooth. Easy to commit to memory. The metaphors are a bit clichéd, though."
Occupational hazard—I'd critiqued the heart formula's prose without thinking.
But Master's shock didn't end there.
"F-Fine, memorizing's one thing... but you get what it means, too?"
"Sure. Gather qi in the dantian, run it up the spine to the crown, down through the chest back to the dantian—infinite loop, right? Classic Sojucheon application. I'll give it a spin."
"Infinite loop? What does that—"
No time for him to stop me. I crossed my legs, shut my eyes, and focused on my dantian.
Alright, Hwalcheon Simgyeol infinite loop—engage!
Vrrrrm!
That instant. The moment my mind touched the dantian, the horrific, cheat-level talent slumbering inside me—the Cheonpa Mugyeok Jiche—went berserk.
On top of that, the two deadly absolute meridians that would've killed any normal person on contact slammed together, blasting open a superhighway of freakish qi channels.
"Grk...!"
Explosive energy rampaged through my veins. Sojucheon? Child's play. The gentle Hwalcheon Simgyeol qi hit my abnormal body and turned into a dam-bursting torrent.
It surged up my spine like a coiling dragon, smashing through every blocked acupoint with crack crack sounds, completing the full Daejucheon orbit in one go.
Whoosh!
Pure, fierce qi erupted from my body, scouring the carriage interior.
"Pfhaaa!"
One breath. One try. I snapped my eyes open and hacked out a lungful of impurities.
My joints popped and realigned with bone-deep ecstasy.
"Uh... Master? Doesn't this normally take way longer for one full cycle? It's effective, sure, but kinda bland."
"........"
Master stared, soul drained beyond shock. His jaw hung to his chest; a trembling finger pointed at me.
"In-In sane... This is madness... A demon defying heaven's laws..."
Muttering like he'd seen a ghost, he tore into his bundle like a madman. Clothes and herbs scattered everywhere.
"Here it is!"
From the depths, he yanked a battered, discolored manual and chucked it at my face.
Thwack!
"Ow! What's this?"
"I was arrogant to think I could teach you. Tsk tsk tsk! Two absolute meridians tangled up, birthing an unprecedented martial genius that shatters all common sense! Heaven's a real troll."
Master shook his head, clucking his tongue.
"Read that when you're bored and self-study. Reciting and explaining incantations feels like it's shaving years off my life—I can't do it anymore!"
And so, Uiseon Jo Myeong-hwan's first lesson ended abruptly, thanks to my insane reading comprehension and glitchy body stats.
Days later.
The carriage halted before the massive gates of Sekga Village, Haebuk Province's capital.
"Master, getting off here?"
He shouldered his bundle and hopped down lightly.
"Mm. I joined this route because of Haebuk Paenga's urgent invitation. Seems their young master is plagued by some mysterious affliction—my medical arts are needed."
Sekga Village. Home to one of the Five Great Families, Haebuk Paenga.
That name flashed me back to Paeng Mugum, the arrogant Cheongryong Mugwan instructor swinging his massive cleaver with that punchable face. I scowled involuntarily.
Master heading to that guy's home base felt off, but who was I to block the world's Uiseon?
"I'll head to Nakyang once Paenga business wraps."
"Yes, Master. Take care."
"And..."
He glanced inside the carriage, then fixed me with deep pity and whispered,
"Between those two ladies... just survive, alright? Tsk tsk."
With that gut-punch parting shot, he vanished into the Sekga crowds.
And sure enough. With the sole brake gone, the zealots eyed me like hyenas on prey.
I whipped out a book from my bosom. They backed off, wary of interrupting.
Good kids.
Anyway, the manual Master left behind detailed three arts built on Hwalcheon Simgyeol:
Hand technique: Bungwangchimhyeolsu.
Footwork: Cheksu Saengryeonbo.
Acupoint sealing: Jaha Bongmunjeom.
With just these three, the Uiseon claimed a spot among the Ten Great Masters. Attack with Bungwangchimhyeolsu, defend with Cheksu Saengryeonbo, support with Jaha Bongmunjeom.
Martial arts that doubled as medicine.
Top of my list? Bungwangchimhyeolsu, naturally. Those needle-like hand movements still burned in my eyes from my treatment. The motions and trajectories etched perfectly in my mind.
But that was just the shell. I'd already dived deep into its qi circulation method.
My right hand twitched, just like during my healing. The motion spread from wrist to elbow, then my whole arm.
Speed built up.
Shh, shh-shick.
My right hand sliced the air, filling the carriage with whooshes.
And so, we crossed from Haebuk into Hanam.