Chapter 5: Limit
Kratos mixed some water in a basin, then poured in the medicinal powders according to a specific ratio. He began mixing with his bare hands until it formed a thick paste.
"Take off your clothes. Let’s give this a try," Kratos said.
Zhang Ji complied and took off his shirt.
Kratos grabbed a clump in his palm, slapped it forcefully onto Zhang Ji’s back, and began to spread it.
An icy sensation spread across his skin. Before he could even react, a fiery pain, like being pricked by a thousand needles, followed. It was accompanied by an indescribable itch that Zhang Ji couldn’t possibly scratch.
He grit his teeth, holding back a cry of pain.
"Normally, we could do a medicinal bath, which would be much better. But conditions aren’t right for that now, so we can only apply it directly to your body. It’s going to be much more intense," Kratos said, watching Zhang Ji grit his teeth.
"Can we start now?" Zhang Ji asked.
"Yes, we can."
Kratos nodded and then lightly slapped him on the back.
THWUMP!
With that one palm strike, a powerful force spread evenly across his entire back.
Zhang Ji staggered. If Kratos hadn’t caught him, he would have been sent flying.
But Kratos didn’t stop. He held Zhang Ji steady, striking him with one hand while continuously applying more of the medicinal paste with the other.
The pain grew more intense, but the unbearable itch was also being suppressed. Zhang Ji found it hard to describe the sensation, and even his breathing pattern began to change.
"Your breathing rhythm is wrong!" Kratos reminded him.
Zhang Ji quickly corrected his breathing.
About half an hour later, Zhang Ji’s entire upper body was bright red and covered in a layer of the gray medicinal paste.
"Now for the lower half. Apply it yourself," Kratos said, tossing the paste to Zhang Ji.
Zhang Ji obediently applied it to his legs.
"You’d better apply some down there, too. You don’t want such an obvious weak spot besides the nine apertures, do you?" Kratos said.
Zhang Ji turned his back, grit his teeth, and applied a layer around the area.
HISS~!
The moment he finished applying it, he couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath, nearly crying out.
But he managed to endure it.
"Don’t break your breathing. Now, start striking yourself all over. The Breathing Skill will help you spread the force evenly across your skin. Keep going until you’re as red as your upper body. Then you’ll be done," Kratos said.
Zhang Ji nodded, picked up a thick brick, and started hitting himself with it.
"Too much force. Go lighter. Don’t hit so hard just because it itches; you’ll damage your muscles and bones," Kratos said.
Zhang Ji adjusted his force and resumed striking himself.
Kratos stood to the side, pointing out issues from time to time. Zhang Ji was a fast learner and quickly grasped the basic training techniques.
There are three key points to the "Iron Shirt" technique.
The first is the Breathing Skill.
This is the core. Only by mastering a Breathing Skill that can manipulate Qi and Blood can one make them surge when hit, dispersing the force throughout the body.
The second is the medicine.
Without the medicine, the body won’t recover easily from damage. It will leave behind hidden injuries, and the practitioner will become uglier the more they train, their body covered in a thick, unsightly layer of calluses.
The third is the striking technique.
The force of the strikes must be adjusted according to the body’s condition.
Too much is no good, but too little is even worse.
Without enough experience, it’s easy to cause problems.
Zhang Ji quickly beat his lower body until it was also bright red.
Kratos nodded slightly and said, "Leave your head to me. Watch and learn. This is the one place where you absolutely cannot make a mistake."
"Okay," Zhang Ji replied with a nod.
Kratos coated Zhang Ji’s entire head with the medicinal paste and then began to pat it lightly.
As he patted the scalp, the force, guided by the Breathing Skill, instantly spread across the back of his head, then to his cheeks, his neck...
Before going to sleep, Zhang Ji applied another layer of the paste to his body to speed up his recovery.
The process of sleeping after training was agonizing.
His skin was more fragile and sensitive. The pain of a million needles pricking him and a billion ants gnawing at him was incredibly hard to endure.
Tossing and turning, Zhang Ji only managed to fall asleep around midnight.
When the morning whistle blew, Zhang Ji woke up to find the pain in his body had lessened considerably.
He looked at his skin; the medicinal paste had hardened into a solid piece that flaked off with a little effort.
On the surface of his skin, the unnatural redness had faded significantly.
"From the looks of it, apply it one more time before you go out. After you come back tonight and have recovered, you can train again," Kratos said from his bed.
Zhang Ji nodded in understanding and then went out to get food.
...
After two consecutive days of training, Zhang Ji had basically mastered the method. He could clearly feel that his body’s resistance to blows had grown stronger.
Yet, his sense of touch hadn’t been weakened much. His skin was still fine and smooth, able to feel sensations on its surface.
This was true orthodox martial arts.
It couldn’t be compared to those flawed, third-rate techniques.
SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!
Zhang Ji slapped his entire body until he had turned himself into a "red-skinned duck" before stopping.
It now took him more effort to beat himself into a "red-skinned duck" than before, as his body’s resistance was rapidly increasing, and the resilience of his skin, muscles, and bones had improved.
After applying the medicine, pain washed over him, and Zhang Ji couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath.
’No matter how many times I feel it, the sensation always makes me want to curse.’
"Cherish this feeling. It means the medicine is still working very effectively and your body hasn’t developed a resistance to it yet. Once you’re initiated, this effect will gradually weaken, and your training efficiency will slow down. You know about diminishing returns, right? Before your body breaks through its limits, the closer you get to the human limit, the slower your improvement will be. Theoretically, for someone to master the ’Iron Shirt’, it takes at least thirteen years of hard training," Kratos said, holding a cigar.
It seemed to be from one of the boxes Zhang Ji had brought with him.
"Thirteen years?" Zhang Ji’s expression changed slightly.
"And that’s assuming they started laying the foundation from childhood. For someone like you who started halfway, mastering it before you’re forty would be considered talented," Kratos said, taking a long drag from his cigar.
Zhang Ji fell silent for a moment.
’This is a harsh reality, but I still want to train. I want to step into the world of fighters.’
’Otherwise, wouldn’t my coming to this world have been for nothing?’
The lights went out, and Zhang Ji endured the pain as he fell asleep.
「Midnight arrived.」
Dimly, Zhang Ji saw a pitch-black space.
[Notification: Acquired "Iron Shirt" (Common) Fighting Skill Essence x1. Can be extracted and stored in the Limited Space.]
"What? How do I extract it?"
Zhang Ji was still groggy.
[Notification: Extract "Iron Shirt" (Common) Fighting Skill Essence x1 to the Limited Space?]
"Yes?"
In the next instant, within that space, a thumb-sized, white, translucent, rhomboid structure quickly materialized and floated in the void.
At the same time, in the outside world, the foundation of the "Iron Shirt" technique that Zhang Ji had worked so hard to build vanished.
His body reverted to its original state, as if he had never practiced "Iron Shirt" at all.
Suddenly, Zhang Ji’s eyes snapped open.
He was awake.
He stared into the darkness, his breathing suddenly becoming a little ragged.
’My cheat is here!!’
The cheat he used before he transmigrated was here too.
[Limit]!
That was the name of the cheat. Its function was to give the player a space where they could store Fighting Skill Essences and Fighting Skill Crystals and synthesize them.
The leveling system in "Ultimate Fighting" was very troublesome. There were no clear-cut levels; rank was judged solely based on the skills collected and one’s combat record.
In other words, you raised your attributes and strength by training skills, which allowed you to participate in ranked fighting competitions to earn a combat rank.
And acquiring experience for fighting skills became harder and harder the further you progressed.
This was the diminishing returns Kratos had mentioned.
It was very realistic, but for players, it was torture.
You could get a skill to the introductory level in ten minutes, but reaching Minor and Major Mastery would take you a month.
That’s why [Limit] was created.
It broke the training of a skill into ten parts. Each part could be condensed into an Essence and temporarily stored in the Limit space.
Once stored, it was as if you had never trained that skill at all.
This seemed self-limiting, but it had one major benefit.
You could re-experience those ten minutes of rapid leveling, completely bypassing the effects of diminishing returns.
This meant a skill that originally took a month to master could be done in ten ten-minute sessions.
And its function wasn’t limited to just that.
Ten Skill Essences of the same tier could be synthesized into one Fighting Skill Crystal.
And they only had to be the same tier; they didn’t even have to be the same type of skill.
Furthermore, ten Skill Crystals of the same tier could be synthesized into a Skill Crystal of a higher tier.
In other words, as long as Zhang Ji relentlessly trained "Iron Shirt," he could keep leveling it up, continuously increasing his strength without any diminishing returns or skill limitations.
By constantly practicing a single common skill, he could reach the pinnacle.
Zhang Ji calmed himself down and began to think.
’I got one Fighting Skill Essence in three days. Does this mean with [Limit], I can master "Iron Shirt" in just one month?’
’Even with a cheat, my martial arts talent is just heaven-defying.’
’Wait, if I transmigrated as my game character, then it all makes sense!’
In the game’s story, the official setting for the player character was that of an absolute fighting genius, with talent at the peak of humanity.
Only with such talent could a player adapt to various schools of fighting skills and easily learn them to their peak.
Zhang Ji’s emotions surged again, but he quickly suppressed them.
’I thought I didn’t have a cheat, and my starting point was trash beyond words. Who knew a cheat would suddenly show up? And now that I think about it, I have two!’
’Peerless talent and the Limited Space.’
Zhang Ji centered himself and silently thought the word ’Limit’.
The next moment, he saw that pitch-black space again, with the thumb-sized, white, translucent Essence floating inside.
By focusing his gaze on it, he could read the Essence’s information.
["Iron Shirt" Essence (Common)] x1.
"Common" represented the skill’s tier.
"Ultimate Fighting" had eight skill tiers: White-text Common, Green-text Fine, Blue-text Excellent, Purple-text Epic, Red-text Legendary, Orange-text Myth, Gold-text Supreme, and Rainbow-colored Origin.
These eight skill tiers corresponded to eight combat ranks.
The higher the tier of a skill, the greater the bonus to attributes and combat strength.
Of course, they were also correspondingly harder to train.
Without cheating, without grinding like crazy, and without running a ton of dungeons and quests, you might not even be able to max out a [Myth]-tier skill in ten years of playtime.
This was also why Zhang Ji had chosen to use a cheat.
’But now, I’m a little grateful I went down that crooked path.’
’If I’d stuck to the rules back then, I’d have one less asset to rely on now!’
With a thought, the Essence vanished from the space, and in its place, Zhang Ji’s skin, flesh, muscles, and bones became tough and resilient once more.
Zhang Ji couldn’t help but clench his fists. As he recalled the inhuman combat power of the peak fighters from the game, a glint of something called ambition appeared in his eyes.