A Powerful Martial Artist Reincarnates as a Nun Knight

Even after Sophia unveiled the Immovable Bright King Technique’s luminous manifestation, the Council proceedings spanned several days according to the original schedule, for many agenda items beyond the Archfiend crisis required addressing.

However, Sophia no longer needed to involve herself further. Having delivered her training methods’ records to Cardinal Andrea, she planned to accompany him to Ravenna, where she would instruct emissaries from the southern continent in those disciplines.

‘As for that…’
Cultivation could never cease. With the Archfiend’s threat materialized, Sophia needed to promptly regain her previous life’s heights. Originally, she had intended to proceed gradually while laying thorough foundations, but fate’s abruptness inspired wry amusement. How to put it – she felt exhilarated.

Carrying forth Yibum-seok’s unaltered disposition from her previous life, Sophia greatly relished difficult situations and adverse environments – harsh natural conditions, scant survival resources, hostile individuals or groups. In every case, through direct confrontations or any means necessary, she would inevitably break through all calamities, suffering and adversities to ultimately seize her desires – an indomitable spirit shared by both incarnations.

Describing Sophia’s current state: in qigong/yoga terms, she was cultivating the yuanshen (primal spirit embryo); in sword arts, the xianren jian (Sword of Epiphany); in Profound Muscle Training, halfway binding her fourth astral muscle set; and in Profound Brain Cultivation, likewise midway refining her fourth astral neural network.

While Profound Muscle Training utilized physical exercise to catalyze astral muscle development like ordinary musculature, their form, structure and properties varied across lineages – some even enabling camouflage-like skin color changes or intentionally slowing blood flow to stem bleeding.

Yet one universal principle remained: only after fully binding one astral muscle set could the next be initiated, a process termed ‘banding.’

This principle extended to Profound Brain Cultivation’s astral neural refinement, each network allowing two spell sockets. Currently, Sophia commanded seven sockets, indicating she had banded three neural networks while midway through the fourth.

On this continent, successfully banding the fourth astral muscle/neural set and beginning the fifth was reputed to transcend ordinary human boundaries, unlocking realms where sheer strength could contend with giants while soaring over dragons with a single jump.

Yet across the entire continent, individuals who had fully banded even four astral muscle or neural sets remained virtually unheard of – for each subsequent banding grew exponentially more arduous and protracted than the previous.

Sophia aimed to swiftly complete this fourth set. Since the Sword of Epiphany operated in an intensely sensory domain, immersing herself in sword study and real combat would naturally propel her towards the next level.

Though in this life she had built her swordsmanship upon Tai Chi, longsword fencing and the physical capabilities enhanced through Profound Muscle Training rather than her previous martial foundations, all martial arts ultimately converged evolutionarily under equivalent conditions. So her past life’s attainments would gradually influence and advance her current path.

And Sophia harbored inklings regarding a principle she suspected linked Profound Muscle/Brain Cultivation:

Profound Muscle Training – through repeated stimulation from exercise breaching a threshold, finally catalyzing astral musculature’s manifestation through meditative elixir refinement. Legends spoke of ascendants who forged divine physicalities through this Training in past eras. The same applied to Profound Brain Cultivation.

This was why both were rumored to have originally cultivated divine vessels.

When Sophia first encountered these concepts, her immediate association was:
‘Huh? Isn’t this the yuanshen cultivation method?’

At the qigong/yoga path’s zenith, the spiritual embryo seeds gestated within the cinnabar fields or kundalini awaken, growing into humanoid form.
Initially akin to infants requiring meticulous nurturing, once cultivated past a certain point, the yuanshen coalesces from all accumulated spiritual refinements, unleashing unparalleled potential while instantly commanding any mystical abilities previously accessed only through mediums or tolls.

In Sophia’s previous Taoist traditions, the yuanshen was considered the essential gateway to transcendence.

So when first introduced to Profound Muscle/Brain Cultivation – cultivating spiritual corporeal divisions, eventually forging divine vessels – Sophia initially perceived them as somewhat unorthodox yuanshen cultivation methods.

While deeper study revealed their distinct natures, that initial inspirational impression prompted subsequent conceptual experimentation synergizing both worlds’ mystical paradigms:

‘If the fourth astral muscle and neural sets could be offered as sacrificial fuels during the yuanshen’s gestation, it might accelerate both processes.’

After ceaseless contemplation since first encountering Profound Training, Sophia had reached this conclusion:

Unlike the yuanshen method nurturing an infantile form into maturity, Profound Muscle/Brain Cultivation assumed fully developed templates, progressively filling in specific bodily components.

Sophia simulated fusing her half-completed fourth astral muscle/neural sets with the incipient gestating yuanshen. Her ideal scenario involved the yuanshen’s growth rapidly accelerating by consuming those astral components, subsequently perfecting the incorporated astral muscle and neural sets within its nascent form.

Of course, inherent risks existed. Yuanshen gestation was an extremely delicate process, so any unforeseen variables could prove catastrophic. Even successful gestation offered no guarantees – she may simply lose those half-completed astral components for naught.

And who knew what side effects that could trigger?

Yet Sophia trusted herself.

Having rendered her astral muscles and neural network malleable through grueling physical/cognitive conditioning while overlapping every possible stimulation, Sophia invoked the Immovable Bright King Technique to maintain focused equilibrium, awakening the kundalini serpent coiled within her chakras and the cinnabar fields’ congealed essence.

Golden radiance flooded Sophia’s private chamber.

+++++

Their journey from Toriento to Ravenna required scarcely a few days’ travel. Originally intending to return home after the Council, Hildegard changed her mind and decided to accompany Sophia to Ravenna instead.

“At this rate, if I want to properly fulfill my nun knight duties going forward, I might as well learn an extra thing or two from you.”

Though expecting Hildegard to possess a certain pride befitting a regional representative Paladin nun knight, Sophia accepted her pragmatic reasoning. Hildegard Ritter von Wolfstein proved an immensely rational, straightforward woman who simply did as she deemed correct without regard for ostentation.

Even while traveling to Ravenna, Sophia freely shared her various cultivation methods with Hildegard and Ezio. So by their arrival several days later, the party had grasped the essence of Sophia’s training regimen:

A rational systemic framework perpetually iterating through assumptions and verifications, rigorously refined and optimized for peak efficiency and perfection.

Just how much genius and intense thought experimentation had Sophia invested to produce such masterfully sculpted paradigms?

Of course, the physical and neurological components purely derived from 21st-22nd century Earth science and technology – any assumptions otherwise represented gross misjudgments.

Regardless, with her companions’ enthusiastic diligence, Sophia gladly obliged as their instructor – securing skilled tutors upon reaching Ravenna certainly held no downsides.

Meanwhile, Conra had sensed a subtle shift in the aura Sophia exuded. Where her previous presence radiated overbearing heaviness, in the days since Toriento Bishopric, a peculiar diffuseness seemed to permeate her demeanor.

Sure enough, through close observation Conra made a startling discovery:
As Sophia walked past swampy puddles, her footsteps left no impressions upon the muddy soil.