Chapter 5
Chapter 5
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Acquiring the Fire Dragon Sword!
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I gutted the few fish I'd caught from the pond, each about a span and a half long, skewered them on a branch, and sprinted up the steep slope.
My martial arts couldn't even be called third-rate, but I had trained for twelve years and learned the techniques taught to low-ranking warriors at the Martial Alliance for over two. Climbing a steep slope like this was no different than running on flat ground.
*Thud!*
I had blocked the cave entrance with a few large stones to keep wild animals out.
Usually, I ate one fasting pill a day, but when I craved something fresh, I would catch fish, rabbits, or pheasants and cook them over a fire inside the cave.
With a small shortsword, a hatchet, and a saw, I could easily catch fish or small animals and craft necessary items like wooden swords in no time.
* * *
After roasting and eating three fish, I rested for a moment before beginning to circulate my energy.
I had never learned a heart art from my master; I had only trained in fist techniques and swordplay day and night. Thus, I couldn't possibly have any internal energy.
Among the martial arts I memorized from the Martial Alliance's repository, there were dozens of heart arts. After deliberating for a few days, I decided to learn one called the Heavenly Elixir Heart Art, which was from over five hundred years ago.
Today marked sixty days since I came to this cave. Every day, I practiced the Heavenly Elixir Heart Art, circulating my energy for two hours each morning and evening.
* * *
A year passed.
*Whoosh! Vwoom! Vwoom!*
The sound of the wooden sword cutting through the air was heavy yet sharp.
*Thwack, thwack, thwack! Thwack!*
I unleashed the Heaven-Reliant Great Sword Style, striking a boulder before me in twelve different spots in an instant.
*Swish! Whoosh!*
The sounds were unbelievably powerful for a wooden sword, and my movements were too fast for the eye to see.
*Crack!*
The wooden sword snapped in half.
I tossed the broken sword aside.
*Thud!*
Even when I made a new wooden sword, it would break in less than two days, making carving them a constant chore.
Today, I finished mastering the Heaven-Reliant Great Sword Style in just four days.
Now, no matter how profound or complex a sword art was, I could completely conquer it in three or four days.
The first sword art I practiced after coming here was the Wudang Sect's Taiji Wisdom Sword, and it took me twenty days to master it.
The Taiji Wisdom Sword could only be practiced by the Wudang Sect Leader, the elders, and the first-generation disciples.
However, even after decades of training, there were hardly any Daoists who could confidently claim to have mastered it.
No, there were none. ‘Training’ is, by definition, the process of achieving perfect mastery.
But that's not how I see it.
I mastered the Taiji Wisdom Sword in twenty days because I felt there was no need to practice it any further.
After performing the entire sequence about five hundred times over those twenty days, I felt I had perfectly mastered it. So I stopped.
That was purely my own assessment. Continuing to practice something I had already perfected seemed like a waste of time.
After circulating my energy with the Heavenly Elixir Heart Art for two hours, I went to bed.
In a room-like alcove at the back of the cave, I had laid down soft grass, making a plush bed where I would fall asleep instantly.
* * *
I spent the entire morning wandering the mountains in search of a sturdy tree for a new wooden sword when I came across a strange and peculiar one.
No, I wasn't even sure if it was wood, iron, or stone.
In any case, it stood tall in the middle of the forest, shaped like a tree but with no leaves or branches, just a forearm-thick trunk standing seven feet high.
And it was pitch-black, like ink. When I touched it, no black residue came off on my hand, and I couldn't get a sense of what material it was.
‘What is this?’
I took out my shortsword and scraped it against the surface, but it left no mark. So, I thrust with all my might.
*Clang!*
“Hah!”
To my surprise, the shortsword was repelled, and a sharp pain shot through my wrist. Yet, the black wood—the Ink Wood—wasn't even scratched. In fact, the tip of my shortsword had bent.
“Hoo! If I make a wooden sword out of this, it won't break.”
I stroked the Ink Wood with satisfaction.
* * *
*Scrape! Scrape!*
I sat sprawled by the pond, sharpening my shortsword on a smooth, flat black stone that I was using as a whetstone.
To make the wooden sword, I first had to cut the Ink Wood, but in the process, my shortsword's blade became blunted and chipped.
I struggled and sweated for four hours, yet the Ink Wood didn't even have a scratch on it.
It was the same even when I infused my blade with the internal energy I had accumulated from a year of diligently practicing the Heavenly Elixir Heart Art, the full extent of which I didn't even know.
Since the Ink Wood was as thick as a forearm, there was no telling if it would take days or years to cut through it.
But it didn't matter. I would have an excellent wooden sword in the end.
*Whoosh!*
Just as I finished sharpening the shortsword and was about to get up, a sudden downpour began.
There was nowhere to take shelter, not that I intended to. Figuring I might as well take a bath, I scrubbed my head and face as I walked toward the Ink Wood.
*Flash!*
About ten yards from the Ink Wood, the surroundings suddenly turned a stark blue as lightning struck.
*Craaack! KABOOM!*
“Whoa!”
A blinding beam of light slammed into the ground, followed by a thunderclap so loud it felt like my eardrums would burst.
It was right in front of me. I screamed and fell back on my rear.
“Ah…”
The object emitting hazy smoke in front of me was clearly the Ink Wood I had just been trying to cut.
Of all things, the Ink Wood I had picked out for my sword had been struck squarely by lightning.
No matter how hard it was, it must have been shattered by a direct hit.
“...!”
But that wasn't the case. The hazy smoke rising from the Ink Wood soon dissipated, revealing it to be perfectly intact.
‘It took a direct lightning strike and it’s fine?’
I hesitated before cautiously approaching the Ink Wood.
*Flash!*
Just then, the area lit up again, and I instinctively turned and threw myself to the ground.
“Ugh!”
*Craaack! KABOOM!*
“Gah!”
I felt a searing heat on my back as an eardrum-shattering thunderclap exploded.
I remained on the ground for a while before carefully turning to look. Smoke was rising from the Ink Wood.
‘My god! Lightning struck the Ink Wood twice in a row!’
In that moment, my eyes widened.
*Sizzle! Sizzle! Pssshhh!*
Suddenly, the Ink Wood began to flash and glow brightly. It was a spectacular sight, as if a luminous Fire Dragon was coiled tightly around it.
‘Wh-what is that?’
It seemed like the remnants of the lightning lingered on the wood. Even so, it was an incredible sight.
As I sat there staring, mesmerized, the surroundings once again became as bright as day.
‘Here it comes again!’
*Flash!*
“Whoa!”
I quickly buried my face in the ground.
*Craaaaack! KABOOM!*
Half out of my mind, I scrambled away, trying to get as far and as fast as I could. If I hesitated, I was liable to be roasted whole.
As I crawled, a thought crossed my mind.
‘Could it be that the Ink Wood became so hard by being continuously struck by lightning like this?’
After moving more than thirty yards away from the Ink Wood, I confirmed with my own eyes that my suspicion was correct.
Standing in the rain for an hour, I watched the Ink Wood get struck by lightning a total of six times.
If the rain hadn't stopped, the lightning would have struck it more.
And so, I realized something new.
It wasn't that lightning was striking the Ink Wood, but that the Ink Wood was calling the lightning.
I didn't know how long the Ink Wood had been standing there, but it must have been struck hundreds, even thousands of times over a long period to become so hard.
A triumphant smile spread across my lips.
‘Hahaha! This is a stroke of heavenly luck for me!’
I decided that when I carved a sword from the Ink Wood, I would call it the Fire Dragon Sword.
The ball of fire that had coiled around the wood right after it was struck looked just like a fire dragon.
The Fire Dragon Sword. A fine name for a blade.
* * *
The blade of my original shortsword was completely ruined, so I went down the mountain to a village and bought a hatchet, a few knives, and some other tools.
But they, too, were quickly ruined, forcing me to make the trip to the village three more times.
Despite all that, I couldn't even make a scratch the size of a fingernail on the Ink Wood, let alone cut it.
Still, I didn't give up. The harder the Ink Wood was, the more I coveted it.
* * *
The rain that had started pouring yesterday afternoon finally stopped late the next morning.
The thunder and lightning had been so frequent and violent that I couldn't leave the cave, instead spending the entire day immersed in my martial arts training.
Taking my shortsword, hatchet, and saw, I headed toward the Ink Wood.
‘Huh?’
But the Ink Wood, which had been standing there just yesterday morning, was gone.
‘What? Is this not the place?’
I looked around, but this was definitely the spot. I had come here so often to cut the Ink Wood that there was no way I could be mistaken.
When I got closer, I saw that the Ink Wood had fallen.
‘What happened?’
The Ink Wood was in five pieces. Four of them were too short to be of use, but one was long and slender.
It seemed dozens of lightning bolts had struck it during last night's storm, leaving it in this state.
Every lightning strike in the vicinity must have hit the Ink Wood, since it called the lightning to it.
The Ink Wood, hardened by tens of millions of lightning strikes over countless eons, had finally met its end by that very same lightning.
So it goes, as they say—things return to their rightful state, and excess leads to ruin.
‘This is our destiny. No, our fate.’
*Clack!*
I flinched as I picked up the long piece of Ink Wood.
‘Incredible!’
It weighed as much as three or four iron bars of the same size combined.
Then, looking at it, I was surprised once more.
‘Oh!’
The Ink Wood, black as if painted with ink, had the faint shape of a dragon.
A smile spread across my face.
“Hahaha! It’s a Fire Dragon Sword, without a doubt!”
The Ink Wood, now the Fire Dragon Sword, was two feet long. Since a typical longsword is between two and a half and three feet, the Fire Dragon Sword was on the shorter side.
* * *
But a problem arose.
*CRACK!*
The power of the Fire Dragon Sword exceeded my expectations. When I performed my sword arts, any rock it struck would shatter helplessly, breaking apart like tofu.
Yet the Fire Dragon Sword remained unscratched.
The more I looked at it and the more I used it, the more I liked this Fire Dragon Sword.
* * *
In the end, after practicing my sword arts with the Fire Dragon Sword for just one day, I had pulverized all five boulders inside the cave.
With no targets left, I practiced against the empty air. When I absolutely needed a target, I went outside the cave and trained against the boulders near the pond or the giant trees in the forest.
But before a month had passed, all the rocks and trees within a hundred yards of the cave were completely shattered or broken, turning the area into a wasteland. To practice my sword arts, I had to venture even farther out.
* * *
In three years and five months, I mastered all one hundred and eighty-nine martial arts manuals.
Of those one hundred and eighty-nine manuals, twenty-five were heart art manuals.
From the twenty-five heart art manuals, I mastered the remaining twenty-four as Divine Arts, excluding the Heavenly Elixir Heart Art I had chosen to practice.
The ultimate technique of a heart art is a Divine Art. So, I skipped the heart art portions and simply trained in the twenty-four Divine Arts.
For the Divine Arts, I didn't ‘master’ them, I ‘trained’ them. Mastering means finishing completely, while training meant I had simply circulated the energy for each Divine Art about fifty times according to its formulas.
I decided that starting tomorrow, I would do a final review of all the martial arts I had learned, going through them one by one from beginning to end. With that thought, I went to sleep.
Once the review was complete, I would finally leave this tiresome cave life behind and enter the martial world.