Genius Martial Arts Trainer

The Jade Vajra Art.

It was not originally a martial art of Shaolin.

The Jade Maiden Art of the Zhuge Family, gifted to him by Zhuge Jinxi.

And an external cultivation art formed by adding several principles to Shaolin’s Iron Shirt.

It was a martial art created solely for Mujin by his great-grandmaster, Hyungwang, who had attained anuttara-samyak-sambodhi, supreme perfect enlightenment, and achieved Buddhahood.

The Jade Maiden Art, which served as the foundation of the Jade Vajra Art, was originally a type of bone-contraction art.

And the primary effect of the Jade Vajra Art, which combined that Jade Maiden Art with the Iron Shirt and several other martial arts, was precisely this.

The compression of muscle and skin.

“Whew. Now I will be able to fight a little more comfortably.”

Saying that, Choi Kanghyuk looked down at his forearm.

His tremendously thick forearm.

Strength came from muscle.

However, having large muscles did not necessarily mean being strong.

Muscles that were too large collided with one another and interfered with movement.

Just as hulking gym-goers could not scratch their own backs, their range of motion was inevitably restricted.

That was why combat sports athletes did not build their muscles excessively.

The same was true of athletes in sports such as soccer and basketball.

For someone who had to move his body violently and in many different ways, excessive muscle only became an obstacle.

In truth, Choi Kanghyuk had not been able to properly utilize the principles of the martial arts he had learned until now.

Because of his hulking muscles.

But things would change once he mastered the Jade Vajra Art.

Because those excessively swollen muscles would be compressed.

“Of course. Dense muscle is better than inflated muscle.”

Muttering that, Choi Kanghyuk drew up the internal energy in his dantian.

The internal energy that flowed out gathered in his palm.

Immediately afterward, Choi Kanghyuk struck his own chest with his palm as hard as he could.

A noise like a sledgehammer striking a boulder burst out.

Bang!!

A deep, aching pain surged through his chest.

At that, Choi Kanghyuk grinned.

“Good. Good.”

It was pleasure born from experience.

Was lifting iron truly enjoyable?

It was boring. And the muscles hurt.

Gym-goers enjoyed lifting iron because they knew what reward awaited them after enduring that pain.

The firm muscles that formed after years of perseverance.

The Iron Shirt. Training in the Jade Vajra Art was no different.

Bang!!

“Keugh.”

It hurt like hell.

And the more it hurt, the faster he grew.

Most importantly, Choi Kanghyuk already knew what fruit this pain would bear.

Because he had already reached the highest realm once before.

The realm known as the Indestructible Vajra Body.

“Hehehehe. Delicious. So delicious.”

Enduring pain severe enough to make his bones ache, he repeatedly struck his own body with all his strength.

Before long, bruises began appearing one after another across his body.

On skin that had suffered no more than a scratch from a chainsaw.

Choi Kanghyuk continued training in the Jade Vajra Art until his dantian was completely empty.

His entire body had turned bluish-purple.

Horrific pain surged from every part of him.

“Keugh.”

Only then did Choi Kanghyuk put on the Troll Necklace.

The energy flowing from the necklace immediately wrapped around his entire body.

“Ooh?”

A strange sensation swept across him.

Cool, yet stinging and hot?

It felt similar to applying a pain-relief patch.

The bruises rapidly began to fade.

Choi Kanghyuk sat down cross-legged just as he was.

After recovering his internal energy with the Prajna Heart Method, he sent that internal energy into the Troll Necklace, which had exhausted its power.

“Hehehe. Shall I try just one more time, then?”

The night of training only grew deeper.

***

Until that night. And throughout the following day.

Whenever he found a spare moment, Choi Kanghyuk used the Troll Necklace to train in the Jade Vajra Art.

To the point that he lost all sense of time.

And that evening.

“Tsk.”

Choi Kanghyuk left the gate with a regretful expression.

Because of a personal training session.

It was time for Member Kim Jicheol’s ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) session.

As usual, Kim Jicheol was accompanied by Yang Hyeonsu.

“Hello, Gym Owner.”

“HELLO, SIR!!”

After greeting him energetically, Yang Hyeonsu suddenly tilted his head.

For some reason, Yang Hyeonsu approached Choi Kanghyuk and began peering around his body.

“Is there something on me?”

At Choi Kanghyuk’s question, the oblivious Yang Hyeonsu replied.

“Gym Owner. Did you lose muscle?”

It was an astonishingly sharp observation.

Even though Choi Kanghyuk had already reached that realm once before, this was only his second day of training in the Jade Vajra Art.

His muscles had truly compressed by only the faintest amount.

Because of that extraordinary eye, a vein bulged on Choi Kanghyuk’s forehead.

Muscle loss.

Was there any phrase more terrifying to a gym-goer?

But Yang Hyeonsu remained as oblivious as ever.

“Ah. I guess you have been doing too much cardio while working as a hunter.”

At that, Choi Kanghyuk barely managed to raise one corner of his mouth.

With a forced smile, Choi Kanghyuk opened his mouth.

“Member? This is not called muscle loss. It is called dense muscle.”

Choi Kanghyuk immediately struck a side-chest pose.

“Here. Touch it.”

Yang Hyeonsu willingly began feeling Choi Kanghyuk’s chest and arm muscles.

“Oh. Ooooh. Ooooooh. Wow. They really are completely rock-hard.”

The vein on Choi Kanghyuk’s forehead subsided slightly.

“Hahahaha. Right? Since hunter work involves actual combat, would dense muscle like this not be more important than muscles that are simply large?”

“Ah, right. You said you gained some ability called the Iron Shirt, did you not? No wonder you felt so hard. It was thanks to your ability.”

“.......”

The vein that had subsided rose twice as high.

“Member? I made this through my own ef. Fort.”

Would that bastard ever understand the effort involved in pressing a chainsaw against one’s own skin?

Of course, without the Iron Shirt or the Jade Vajra Art, he could not even have attempted such effort.

But that was not important to Choi Kanghyuk.

In any case, he was natural.

Fortunately, Kim Jicheol stepped into their conversation.

“Hyeonsu. The Gym Owner already had a great body to begin with, did he not? Let us not say unnecessary things.”

“Yes, Senior.”

“And Gym Owner. May I ask you one thing?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“You said you built your muscles for actual combat. Then would it perhaps be possible for me to do the same?”

Kim Jicheol was thinking back on what had happened yesterday.

'That was a B-rank hunter?'

No matter how many times he reconsidered it, that could not be right.

Soon, Choi Kanghyuk would reach A-rank.

No, considering that his ability was growth-type, it felt as though he would soon rise beyond Kim Jicheol himself and reach S-rank.

That did not mean Kim Jicheol was jealous of Choi Kanghyuk.

He wanted to grow as well.

Rather than simply finishing his rehabilitation and stopping at A-rank.

At Kim Jicheol’s question, Choi Kanghyuk stared at him quietly.

'His ability was called Vortex, was it?'

An awakened ability that maximized rotational force by twisting the entire body while attacking.

'Honestly, it really is somewhat similar to martial arts.'

Advancing martial arts.

Two people suddenly came to mind.

One was, naturally, his great-grandmaster Hyungwang.

The person who had gifted him the Jade Vajra Art.

And the other was his fellow disciple, Mukyeong.

An unprecedented genius who had mastered all seventy-two supreme arts of Shaolin.

A monster who could understand most martial arts after reading the secret manual only once.

A martial-arts thief who had successfully stolen the Blood Demon’s Blood Rain Divine Art and transformed it into the Golden Rain Divine Art, which suited Shaolin.

'If it were Mukyeong, he would have stolen it after watching once or twice.'

However, Mukyeong’s method had one minor problem.

'What is the point of upgrading it and using it himself? He has to make it usable by others.'

Something about the flow of qi, something about the principles of martial arts.

Advancing martial arts through Mukyeong’s method was far too lengthy and abstruse.

“Of course it is possible, Member!”

Choi Kanghyuk’s method, on the other hand, was simple.

“You must have heard this saying before. When the body is strong, the mind has it easy!”

“Pardon?”

“When I watched you last time, did your ability not require you to twist your entire body to increase rotational force?”

“Th-that is right?”

“Then the way to strengthen your ability is also extremely simple!! You merely need to make your body strong enough to withstand any amount of rotational force!”

Choi Kanghyuk shouted with complete confidence.

His expression seemed to ask:

See? Is that not easy?

In Formula One terms, it was something like this.

If Mukyeong and Hyungwang were the greatest drivers, Mujin was the greatest engineer.

Instead of improving the driver’s skill, he completely modified the machine itself.

Suppose there was a car whose original maximum speed was three hundred kilometers per hour.

All he had to do was modify it so thoroughly that it became sturdy enough to withstand speeds of four hundred or five hundred kilometers per hour.

“In other words! The stronger your body becomes, the more rotational force you can generate, and if your body is strong enough, it can withstand that greater rotational force!”

Of course, such extreme modifications were prohibited by Formula One regulations, but that was none of Choi Kanghyuk’s concern.

'Life is actual combat anyway. Of course.'

Kim Jicheol stared blankly at Choi Kanghyuk.

Judging solely by what he was saying, he reeked of a con artist.

Then the scene from yesterday suddenly came back to him.

That was right.

The man before him had already proven it with his own body.

Proven that he was not a fraud.

After organizing his thoughts, Kim Jicheol nodded.

“Then starting today, I would like to train my muscles in order to strengthen my ability, Gym Owner.”

Another person was added to the list of victims for the mad engineer Choi Kanghyuk’s extreme modifications.

No, to his list of advancements.

A man named Kim Jicheol.

Naturally, the highest priority on the modification list was Choi Kanghyuk himself.

***

The abnormal gate incident.

And the Association President’s response announcement held the following day.

Around a week had passed since those two events.

In just that one week, an enormous change had occurred in Korea.

“Association President. The speed at which gates are being cleared cannot keep up with the rate at which they are appearing.”

The number of newly appearing gates had not exploded after the abnormal gate incident.

The problem was the number being cleared.

The abnormal gate incident.

One wrong move after entering a gate could mean death.

That fear had inevitably caused hunters to become less active.

“In particular, the clearing rates for C-rank and D-rank gates are insufficient.”

Several problems had overlapped.

The income earned from clearing a C-rank or D-rank gate was not particularly large.

Compared to ordinary office workers, it was still fairly high.

However, it was physically demanding work that carried the risk of injury.

Perhaps because of that, most C-rank and D-rank hunters did not work as hunters full-time.

A reasonably profitable side income.

And in addition, the hope that if they improved their skills and rose to B-rank or higher, they could become full-time hunters.

For those two reasons, most continued hunter work as a side job.

The majority entered gates once a week.

Or perhaps once every two weeks.

The problem, once again, was the abnormal gate incident.

It might be a profitable side job, but how many people would truly want to risk their lives for it?

Of course, abnormal gates were not a particularly common phenomenon.

If no other abnormal gate incident occurred for some time, there was a high possibility that the hunters would resume their activities.

Ultimately, there were two things the Association had to do.

Find a way to deal with abnormal gates.

And until the hunters began entering gates again, prepare by any means necessary to prevent an incident from occurring.

Naturally, they were preparing for both, but neither was easy.

“The number of incidents involving monsters emerging from gates is gradually increasing.”

The clearing rate could not keep up with the rate at which gates appeared.

There were even gates that had remained uncleared for more than five days.

Because gates worked in both directions, if too much time passed, monsters began emerging from them one by one.

Whenever that happened, the Association dispatched its own hunters or requested cooperation from military units to eliminate the monsters.

But if things continued this way, the situation could only worsen.

As he listened to the secretary’s report, the Association President rose and walked toward the window.

The Association President was no fool, so he had already anticipated this trend.

'Unfortunately, people like Hunter Kim Jicheol are rare.'

How many hunters truly worked out of a sense of duty to save people from monsters and gates?

For most, it was closer to earning money while doing something good on the side.

That did not mean he intended to blame them.

Even if money was their goal, they were still people who risked their lives to fight.

He merely found the present situation regrettable.

And.

'In times like these, I should simply be grateful that a man like that has appeared. Of course.'

The Association President looked beyond the window at a massively built man walking toward the building.

The Association President had summoned Choi Kanghyuk to the Association today.

It was because of what they had promised several days earlier.

Rehabilitation treatment for retired hunters.

The Association had already called in several retired hunters who wished to undergo rehabilitation.

So that Choi Kanghyuk could treat them.

It could be considered the Association President’s hidden card for overcoming the present crisis.

C-rank and D-rank hunters had reduced their activities because of their fear of abnormal gates.

The Association would fill the vacancies they left with retired hunters.

It was a method only Choi Kanghyuk could make possible.

However, there was one very minor problem.

Choi Kanghyuk had said there was a limit to how many people he could treat at once.

As the Association President lamented that limitation, something occurred to him.

'Wait. Did he say he learned it at Shaolin?'

The Association President turned toward his secretary with a thought.

“Send an official request to the Chinese Hunter Association. Regarding Shaolin’s qi treatment.”