Return of the Heavenly Sword

Chapter 5. It's Nothing So Grand (1)

I walked along a quiet path with a bundle on my back. Inside the cloth wrapper was a spare set of martial arts attire I had packed, in addition to the rice balls, medicine, and cloth the elder had prepared for me.

Of course, it was all plundered from the Black Serpent Gang.

Additionally, a water bottle hung from my right side, and two swords were slung from my left. Both swords had also belonged to the men of the Black Serpent Gang.

By the time the scenery of Heavenly Sun Village was visible in the distance, I drew up the speck-of-dust-sized inner energy in my dantian.

Phat!

With a powerful step as if stomping the ground, I unleashed my movement arts and launched my body forward.

“Foolish bastard.”

It was a curse spat at my foolish self from my past life.

All I had to do was train my sword or movement arts like this every time I traveled, and then regulate my breathing when I camped out for the night or slept at an inn.

Why did I hole myself up in a martial arts academy for the first ten years just to train, and then again in Heavenly Sun Village for another ten years just to train?

The me from my past life must have been a fake.

Phat!

I moved my legs fiercely, reflecting on my past self.

The movement art I had originally learned was, as expected, the grandly-named-but-ordinary Five Elements Movement Technique from that common martial arts academy.

It wasn't the Five Elements because it dealt with the five types of energy. It was the Five Elements Movement Technique because it contained five movements: forward, backward, left, right, and finally, jumping.

It could be called the most basic of basics, but as a foundation, it was a solid movement art.

Naturally, just as with my cultivation method and sword technique, I melted my various real-combat experiences into that solid foundation to create a patched-together movement art.

Phat.

Like that, I ran for a while, practicing the movement art I had learned in my past life.

My dantian, which had only been formed for the first time last evening and had its breathing regulated this dawn, was already empty.

But I had no intention of leisurely sitting cross-legged and employing the Revolving Cloud Divine Art.

If I were to sit down and regulate my breathing every time I practiced my movement art for a short while, it would take an eternity just to get to Wondrous Ridge Mountain.

Thus, I walked at a brisk pace while simultaneously repeating deep breaths.

“Swoooosh. Whooooosh.”

Then, the energy of nature was sucked deep into my lungs, and I used the Jade Cloud Divine Art to capture that energy and guide it to my meridians.

The Jade Cloud Divine Art, the basis of the Revolving Cloud Divine Art, was a very stable cultivation method. So stable that the rate at which inner energy accumulated was extremely slow.

Conversely, thanks to that stability, when I had mastered it, I was able to circulate my energy while moving like this. It could be seen as a type of what is called Dynamic Cultivation.

Of course, the one who had mastered the Jade Cloud Divine Art was the me of my past life, not the me of now.

Even though all the enlightenment about the Jade Cloud Divine Art was in my head, my body was not yet very accustomed to it.

In other words, it meant that the moment I made even a slight mistake, I could fall into qi deviation, but it didn't matter.

As long as I didn't make a mistake, it was fine.

I walked quickly with the concentration of someone walking on thin ice, employing the Jade Cloud Divine Art, and when my tiny dantian filled up, I trained my movement arts. After doing this several times.

“Hooh.”

Countless trajectories were drawn in the air.

Perhaps thanks to the dangerous training method where I could have at least become a cripple or died, my eyes had finally opened again.

I observed the trajectories visible in the air for a very brief moment.

I realized they were slightly different from what I had seen before.

“Ah.”

The things I had seen and tried to imitate in my past life were embroidered in the air.

I didn't mean the sword techniques.

Perhaps because my eyes had opened while I was training my movement arts, the trajectories of the movement arts I had trained in the past were all interwoven.

As soon as I realized that fact, the countless trajectories tangled together, and soon, only a single, fluid trajectory remained.

A trajectory similar to the one I originally followed, but different in some way.

For some reason, a laugh naturally escaped me.

“Hahaha!”

I willingly threw my body to follow that trajectory.

As expected, just like with swordsmanship, it was not an easy task.

The trajectory drawn in the air effortlessly twisted the body to move to the next step, but it was a movement that was overwhelming for me to follow.

“Heeat!”

With a rough kiai, I tried to imitate the trajectory in the air, but my feet got tangled, and I ended up rolling on the ground.

“Hahahaha.”

But I laughed. Just as with swordsmanship, seeing the path forward was an incredibly joyful thing.

I awkwardly threw my body, following the trajectory in the air, and rolled on the ground a few times.

“Haa.”

As my dantian emptied and a sense of void washed over me, the trajectory visible to my eyes vanished like melting snow.

However, the emptiness did not last long.

The corners of my mouth kept twitching.

“So it works this way too.”

To open my eyes, I needed to raise my concentration to the extreme.

And based on my experience so far, concentration tended to increase in difficult, dangerous, and painful situations.

Difficult things. Dangerous things. Painful things.

All three of those were no different from my daily life.

“These eyes are truly made for me. Ah, they were my eyes to begin with.”

So perhaps, to accommodate me, this perfectly fitting condition had arisen.

I once again began to walk with long, fast strides while employing the Jade Cloud Divine Art to fill my empty dantian.

I considered swinging my sword while walking since Dynamic Cultivation was possible anyway, but right now, I was on the verge of a seizure just from walking quickly. I wasn't crazy enough to attempt something like that.

I trained my movement arts again and employed the Jade Cloud Divine Art with Dynamic Cultivation a few more times.

“It's coming. It's coming. It's coooming!!”

At the feast of trajectories that began to embroider the air once again, a joyful exclamation escaped my lips without me realizing it.

Seeing the hope of being able to become stronger, being able to confirm my growth with my own eyes, was an immense joy.

The problem was that the sense of exhaustion that came after the trajectories disappeared was also intense.

“I'll have to go a little more dangerously.”

I immediately drew my sword and, while performing Dynamic Cultivation with the Jade Cloud Divine Art, swung my sword.

Perhaps because my body was still not accustomed to the Jade Cloud Divine Art, my meridians screamed.

It was a warning. A warning that I could die doing this.

As if reacting to that warning, the world slowed down again, and trajectories appeared in the air.

“Hehehe.”

This time, it was a sword path.

I stopped employing the Jade Cloud Divine Art, drew up the inner energy that had filled my dantian, and swung my sword along the sword path.

If I had my way, I would have wanted to continue absorbing inner energy with the Jade Cloud Divine Art while simultaneously using inner energy to train my sword technique, but this was impossible from the start. It was because the principles of the Jade Cloud Divine Art and the principles of the sword technique were different from each other.

After that, I continued training and traveling in parallel for a long time.

When my concentration wavered and the trajectories disappeared, I continued to swing my sword, chasing the afterimages of the trajectories.

When my dantian was empty, I swung my sword while inhaling with the Jade Cloud Divine Art, and when my dantian was full, I used my inner energy to train my movement arts or sword technique.

When I got thirsty, I quenched my thirst with the water the elder had prepared, and when I was hungry, I took out a rice ball wrapped in a bamboo leaf from the cloth wrapper to appease my hunger.

Thanks to rolling on the ground while training my movement arts, they were all squashed and even had dirt on them, but it was better than nothing.

“I'm sorry, elder.”

I was just sorry for having ruined the rice balls the elder had prepared for me.

Like that, I was so absorbed in training that I lost track of time, and after traveling for a long while, around the time the sun began to set, the outline of a village came into view.

“I can stay a night there today.”

To arrive at Wondrous Ridge Mountain early, the best option was to pass this village and camp out.

However, my purpose was not just the spiritual herb.

In the first place, I had set out to clean up all the trash on the way to Wondrous Ridge Mountain.

Since it was late anyway, if there was trash, I would clean it up, and if not, I could just sleep and leave early in the morning.

“Hoo.”

Perhaps because I had decided to rest for a day in that village.

My body, which had been relentlessly pushed since early morning, began to cry out.

In fact, for the past two hours, my eyes had not opened even once.

No matter how dangerously I circulated my energy and pushed my body to its limits, instead of my concentration being raised, I felt somewhat dazed.

It was as if my survival instinct had also reached its limit and was now staging a protest, saying it didn't care if I died or not and that I was on my own.

Dragging my body, which was screaming for a break, I trudged into the village.

Like a country bumpkin, I slowly turned my head and was lucky enough to spot an inn.

It was an inn so empty that only flies were buzzing around.

It didn't really matter. What I was planning to eat was something for which cooking skills were not important.

“Welco...”

The female waiter who was welcoming me as I entered the inn stopped mid-sentence.

It was a rare sight.

It wasn't that women couldn't be waiters, but it was mostly men. Just like I had been.

The female waiter, who looked to be around my age, opened her mouth with a bitter expression.

“I'm sorry, but our circumstances are not good, so it would be difficult to give you charity.”

Charity, what does that mean?

While I was puzzled, my reflection was visible in the eyes of the woman I met eyes with.

I was in such a beggarly state, the likes of which I had never seen.

“I ended up like this from rolling on the ground a few times, so don't worry. I can pay the price.”

The waiter made a complicated expression, then glanced at the bundle on my back and opened her mouth.

“There are plenty of seats, so please sit wherever you're comfortable. What would you like to eat?”

“Whether it's pork or chicken, please boil whatever you have thoroughly. If possible, I'd like it to be mostly lean meat rather than fat.”

The waiter made a puzzled expression.

It was an order worth being puzzled over. People usually stated the name of the dish, not order in this way.

This was a dish I had learned from the Poison Immortal. Rather than a dish, it was closer to a training diet.

- Just as with Yin-Yang and the Five Elements, there are various principles in the world. To properly execute martial arts, you naturally need to build muscle, and for muscle to form, you need ingredients, don't you? In that case, what is the most similar thing to human muscle?

With this logic, the Poison Immortal had said that the flesh and muscle of animals would be those ingredients.

The reason for eating it boiled and not grilled was simple. It was because cooked food had a lot of turbid energy, so there was a risk of turbid energy accumulating in the meridians.

After learning this knowledge from the Poison Immortal, I always ate boiled meat after training.

The girl, who had been looking at me with a strange gaze for a moment, turned around and shouted towards the kitchen.

“Father! Please boil one whole chicken!”

Now that I looked, it seemed the daughter was working as a waiter because they couldn't hire one. Or, to save the money to pay a waiter, he had his daughter do the job.

I waited for a long time, moderately employing the Jade Cloud Divine Art.

The waiter appeared, holding a bowl from which steam was rising.

Boiled chicken and a milky broth were in the bowl.

“Thank you.”

I said so to the waiter and, when I picked up the chicken with my chopsticks, it came apart very easily.

I was tearing off pieces of the well-boiled chicken with my chopsticks and eating for a short while.

I felt a presence from the direction of the inn's entrance.

“How long do you plan to sit around in an inn where only flies are buzzing? Huh?”

“Just quit this food business that doesn't even taste good anyway and work as a courtesan under us, I told you.”

As the men's voices were heard, the filial daughter who was helping her father shouted as if having a seizure.

“If you bastards hadn't blocked the customers, it wouldn't have come to this!! And I'd rather starve to death than ever work under you!!”

As if responding to her seizure, a middle-aged man rushed out from the kitchen and approached her.

“Somi!!”

The father pulled his daughter behind him and stepped forward as if to protect her from the thugs.

The gazes of the men, who had been watching that scene for a moment, soon turned to me.

“You still have plenty to spare, I see. Giving charity to a beggar.”

“Well, it is the kind of food only a beggar would eat.”

“Hahahaha.”

As I sat there and watched, I could see why only flies were buzzing in this inn despite the excellent skills.

Naturally, contradictory emotions raged within my exhausted body.

I was saddened by the reality that diligent workers were being exploited by things worse than vermin.

“Jin Yuseong. You foolish bastard.”

I loathed myself for having wandered around looking for a martial arts academy to leisurely train, without even knowing that something like this was happening in the village right next door.

Furthermore.

“Hehehe. Jin Yuseong, you foolish bastard. Hehehehe.”

At the opportunity to correct the mistakes of my past life, a smile kept creeping onto my lips.