Chapter 372: A New Martial Art (3)
For some reason, there had been that incomprehensible incident where Seo Mun-Hwarin took my clothes, but.
For the time being, my martial arts training itself had been proceeding smoothly.
Of course, there were still various problems left to solve...... but at the very least, the movement of my sword had finally caught up to the speed at which my willpower cut things down.
In other words, the awkward motions that had burst out unavoidably at first were gone now.
Since I had filled in the immediate gap, all that remained was to organize, in my own way, a sword that moved under a system different from my old sword.
Ordinarily, this would have been the point where I established formal techniques.
But in my case, creating techniques would only amount to locking myself into a frame.
I had spent my entire life, without relying on any special techniques, pondering how to swing the necessary sword in the necessary place, and now, at this point, to create techniques again—
“No. Maybe it is worth trying once.”
The swordsmanship I needed to establish from now on was not about putting willpower into the sword and cutting, but rather handling a sword where the order was reversed—because willpower arose first, I cut with the sword.
Since it was far removed from the swordsmanship I had learned until now, there was no harm in changing the method I had insisted on all this time.
So, intending at least to test it, I gripped my sword and imagined various situations.
When the opponent charged in, when I drove in first.
When I was surrounded by many enemies, when I had to pierce through a single sturdy opponent.
And beyond that, how to cut down a swift sword before it fully accelerated, how to deflect a heavy sword with the bare minimum of force, how to discern the root from which a deceptive sword extended, and so on.
I tried to organize every trick I knew and turn them into universally useful movements, but....
“Something is strange.”
Yes. Something felt strange.
It was not simply the awkwardness that came from doing something unfamiliar.
It felt like seeing a slightly protruding nail in a well-made piece of furniture. Something was wrong...... no, was that too strong a way to put it?
In any case, something bothered me.
Which part was it?
My sword had definitely become one with my willpower. And it had also responded perfectly to the imagined enemy I had set up.
If I could swing it like this, then anyone—
“Ah.”
Only then did I realize the identity of the discomfort I had felt.
The movement I had just displayed was not particularly efficient for me, but it was still definitely something that could be called a formal technique.
The problem was that it was a technique only I could perform.
Could someone be as sensitive as I was to internal energy and willpower, go beyond seeing through an opponent’s movements and guide them as they wished, and above all, shove their own head into death flying toward them without hesitation?
There might be someone somewhere who satisfied all those conditions, but at the very least, I had never seen such a person once, whether before my regression or now.
Which meant that as a general formal technique, it lacked universality far too much.
A formal technique was both a key and a lock. One threw a question at the other, answered the other’s question, and continued the exchange of moves.
That was why one could build skill in martial arts merely by training techniques, and why, in actual combat, the ones who survived were those who did not cling too much to techniques and instead unfolded them in their own way.
Then a technique that only I could wield...... what meaning could there be in a question only I could understand and only I could solve?
It might perhaps help establish my movements a little more efficiently, but fundamentally, it would end at the level of a meaningless trick.
In the end, was it not hardly any different from swinging my sword as I usually did?
“It is not easy.”
As I let out a deep sigh, a cool breeze suddenly blew from behind me.
When I turned around in puzzlement, Seol Lihyang was sitting there in a suitable patch of shade. She was lightly fanning in my direction with her hand....... that was probably the source of the cool breeze I had felt.
Had she placed her internal energy into the small wind she stirred with a wave of her hand and delivered it all the way to where I was without letting it scatter?
It looked like nothing much, but the skill contained within it was quite remarkable.
If nothing else, her ability to handle internal energy might already have gone beyond the level of a Sub-Perfection master.
Though she herself did not seem to think anything of it.
“I appreciate it, but...... what are you doing over there, Seol Lihyang?”
“What do you mean what? I am watching you, Cheon Hwi-da.”
“It is taboo to secretly watch someone else’s martial arts training.”
“Are you saying I count as someone else right now?”
“I was going to say that you are not someone else, Seol Lihyang, so it is fine.”
“No, I only said it half as a joke, but if you react like that, it makes me feel a little bad.”
Seol Lihyang scratched the back of her neck with an awkward expression.
This was, well. A kind of habit or mannerism.
Before my regression. Seol Lihyang, who had lived a somewhat more unfortunate life than now, had a few obsessions.
One of them was that she always wanted to have the affection directed at her confirmed.
She seemed to know well enough that if she overdid it, it would backfire, so she tried to restrain herself somewhat...... but back then, when my emotions had been so dried up, even that restrained amount had still left me overwhelmed.
Because of that, I had set up my own model answers, as in this kind of question should be answered like this, and
even after my regression, it had reached the point where if Seol Lihyang poked at similar spots, the response slipped out of me before I knew it.
“Looked at one way, maybe this is also a kind of formal technique.......”
As I muttered that to myself, Seol Lihyang patted the spot beside her and said,
“I do not know what it is, but you are stuck right now, aren’t you? Then how about taking a short break? If you keep pushing too hard, good results do not come out.”
“At my level, I could train day and night for seven days and nights straight without any problem.”
“I brought various things so we could eat together, though.......”
“But my condition really is not very good today. Taking a short rest in the shade would not be bad.”
The moment I saw her pulling out a neatly packed lunchbox, I immediately changed my tune and headed toward her.
Grinning as if she had expected that, Seol Lihyang made room beside her. When I sat next to her, the coolness definitely did feel good.
Even if I had achieved immunity to cold and heat, it only meant that the chill of a summer day still felt pleasant.
Perhaps she was in a good mood. Humming to herself, Seol Lihyang opened the lunchbox and handed it over to me.
“Did you make this, Seol Lihyang?”
“No? I asked the cook here. How would I know how to cook? I got dragged away by you when I was little and only learned martial arts.”
“When you put it like that, it makes me sound like some kidnapper obsessed with martial arts.”
“Is that not close enough? Ah, this is good.”
Seol Lihyang tilted her head for a moment, then popped a piece of meat into her mouth and smiled brightly.
It definitely was delicious.
And so, while continuing a light conversation with no particular substance but one that eased my mind, I finished the meal.
As I casually put aside the empty lunchbox, I suddenly realized that Seol Lihyang was naturally surrounding the area around us with her internal energy as if breathing.
For me, that was naturally possible, but for Seol Lihyang, it should have been impossible.
Wrapping internal energy around one’s own body would have been no problem, but sending one’s qi outside the body and maintaining it this precisely and for this long was absurd.
I had always known that Seol Lihyang had talent when it came to handling internal energy, but this was beyond even what I had imagined, and before I knew it, I spoke.
“You have been keeping internal energy around the outside this whole time since earlier—how is that even possible?”
“Mm? It is simple. No matter how confident I am in the amount of my internal energy because of my constitution, it is not enough that I can just let it leak out all day, right? So I just grab it tightly and carry it around here and there.”
“???”
Normally, the moment internal energy left the body, it was natural for it to scatter quickly.
That was why there was such an enormous difference between simply strengthening the body and cloaking a sword in sword qi, and
well, depending on one’s ability, one might hold on to it to some extent, but doing it all day like this should have been impossible.
Because I had handled killing intent like willpower, I wondered whether Seol Lihyang too was unknowingly handling part of willpower, so I activated my Heavenly Insight Eye and examined her, but.......
“Huh?”
I could not sense any special willpower at all. No, it was there, but it was only at the level of a Sub-Perfection master, not at any extraordinary level.
Pure talent. She had fixed qi that wanted to scatter purely through her innate ability to manipulate internal energy.
Without using willpower, she surrounded herself with internal energy all day and even extended it like her own limbs whenever needed?
Even I, as I was now, could not do that.
“How in the world...... is something this insane even possible???”
“Calling it insane is too much. From my point of view, you look even stranger, Cheon Hwi-da.”
Seol Lihyang shrugged. Still, perhaps intending to answer, she thought for a long while before continuing.
“You were asking how I can keep internal energy outside all day, right? It is not like I have any special trick. Ever since I went to the Ice Palace, there was only one thing I had been training.”
“What was it?”
“Internal energy control.”
As she said that, Seol Lihyang pulled up the corners of her mouth in a grin.
“My fist-and-kick arts and my improvised methods are not much different from before. Just the basics, really. Instead, I focused only on handling internal energy. So that I could handle more internal energy, more precisely, and farther away.”
“That is......”
“Inefficient, right? It would have been, for ordinary martial arts.”
But Seol Lihyang was an exception.
The Glacial True Qi she had learned had, from the beginning, been a martial art meant to draw out the overflowing cold of the North Sea and somehow make the environment livable for people.
The skill of attacking and defeating enemies was only a side branch of it.
Not that it was weak.
If only martial arts made to harm people were strong, and those that were not were weak, then all the Daoist and Buddhist sects in Murim would have remained weak sects.
If one mastered Glacial True Qi to the extreme, one would become capable of causing natural disasters with a human body.
And before the great forces of nature, most people were helpless.
Well. That was only true in theory, though.
In the end, was it not people who learned martial arts? All this time, Seol Lihyang had felt tremendous pressure from her own lack of power.
She also had no shortage of real combat experience, so she must have wanted martial arts that could simply bring down enemies more directly than the true meaning of Glacial True Qi.
And yet, without losing sight of the root, Seol Lihyang had steadily focused on handling internal energy.
The result was the current level of internal energy control, which had gone beyond that of a Sub-Perfection master.
Seeing me stare blankly at her, Seol Lihyang gave a crooked smile. Then she wiped away a trace of food at the corner of my mouth with her finger, and
started wiping that finger against my chest as naturally as breathing.
“You are wondering how I kept training only this one thing, right?”
“That is right.”
“You do not remember? You were the one who said the basics were important, Cheon Hwi-da. I am only still doing a good job of following your words.”
That was true.
Back when Seol Lihyang had only just begun to learn martial arts.
At the time, Seol Lihyang had thought that because she had entered the path of martial arts late, she was behind, and she had tried to catch up even by overexerting herself.
Naturally, that had only damaged her body and backfired, so I had told her not to rush and to build up her basics properly first.
Now, Seol Lihyang had followed my words and trained those basics to the extreme, breaking through her limits in her own way.
If even without some great skill or anything, the basics alone were enough—
“Ah.”
I had said I would forget my old swordsmanship and build it up again from the beginning, but I had not actually intended to start again from the basics.
To fill something new in, I had to empty out what was already there.
I forgot all the various profundities and willpower and such. And, like when I first held a sword, I started again from the basics.
To cut down an opponent, all I needed was to dominate the gap of a single inch.
Had I not known long ago that I needed no grand skill, no anything else?
I had been thinking of techniques and such in far too complicated a way. In the end, the basics of the sword were only thrusting and cutting. Everything else was no more than minor applications.
As if possessed by something, I drew my sword and swung it just as it was.
After learning countless sword arts, gathering their profundities, and making them my own, what I arrived at in the end was
nothing more than an ordinary slash.
“If you move right after eating, your stomach is going to hurt.......”
I ignored Seol Lihyang’s voice coming from behind me.