Myst, Might, Mayhem (Novel) - Chapter 99 - Treasure Vault (2)

Chapter 99 – Treasure Vault (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“You think it doesn’t seem to be a copy?”

-Yes. At least this one.

At Mok Gyeong-un’s question back, Blue Spirit spoke as if she herself found it unexpected.

Even if something was a copy, naturally a book would wear down over a long time.

However, since it had been newly copied from the start and was not something used often, there should have been no way for traces that looked like bloodstains to remain on it.

“I suppose that’s true. Well, there could be various reasons. Maybe they brought the original here by mistake. Or maybe the copy was so clean that they kept that one at the main stronghold…”

-There is no way the original and the copy would be exchanged for such reasons.

Blue Spirit firmly denied Mok Gyeong-un’s guess.

“Pardon?”

-You do not yet know this, mortal, but an original has meaning.

“Meaning? In what way?”

-Most original secret manuals are written directly by the person who created that martial art.

“If so, then one could say it has value as the creator’s own work.”

He seemed to recall hearing something like that from his grandfather.

His grandfather had said that a copy of Confucius’s poems and poems written directly by Confucius did not hold the same value.

It seemed perhaps to mean something of that sort.

But Blue Spirit continued speaking.

-That value of the author and things like that may be one reason, but more important than that are the strokes carved into it.

“The strokes?”

-A stroke is a trace. What did I tell you when I taught you martial arts?

“A trace is…”

-martial art itself.

Would Mok Gyeong-un really be able to understand exactly why she said this?

The breadth of understanding differed according to one’s enlightenment.

Even if one’s skill had reached the extreme of the peak realm, if one’s enlightenment was still lacking, one might not understand her words in the slightest.

Yet,

“There is nothing that contains more than strokes. In each and every trace contained there, the habits of the one who created that martial art could be embedded. And within those habits, the grain of the forms would also be contained.”

‘!?’

At Mok Gyeong-un’s words, Blue Spirit could not hide her surprise.

She had not expected much.

Yet Mok Gyeong-un had spoken exactly the answer she wanted to hear.

‘This bastard…….’

He did not merely possess superhuman memory.

His understanding was also exceptional.

This was a bastard who had not learned martial arts very long, yet he was naturally speaking of matters in the advanced category that one would only barely be able to understand upon entering the transcendently high realm.

Of course, that did not mean he had truly attained enlightenment from them, but it was still quite astonishing.

‘……..It makes me curious what he would have been like if he had learned martial arts from a younger age.’

Perhaps he might have blazed his way into the transcendently high realm before even reaching twenty.

That was how much Mok Gyeong-un’s talent felt frightening, regardless of whether she liked him or not.

To her, astonished in this way, Mok Gyeong-un said,

“Was I wrong?”

“……You understood it well enough, more or less.”

Because if she praised him too readily, his arrogance might swell, she answered without going too far.

But at her reaction, Mok Gyeong-un let out a short laugh.

She had only answered after a long pause following what he said, so how could it be merely a matter of him understanding it more or less?

‘It seems I was right.’

But he had no intention of making a display over something like this.

To him, learning martial arts well was nothing more than sharpening the blade that would serve for revenge.

Blue Spirit then said to him,

-Ahem… in any case, as you said, each stroke of an original contains the original intent of the one who created the martial art, so it is no different from enlightenment condensed into it. That is why even masters of high realms try to look at many originals of martial arts manuals in order to broaden their eye.

“I see. I learned something good.”

-In any event, the fact that this secret manual is here does not seem to be a mistake.

Since copies did not contain the creator’s original intent, she judged that this was neither a mistake nor something swapped merely because the book had become dirty.

At this, Mok Gyeong-un nodded and said,

“Understood. For now, since there isn’t much time, I’ll continue memorizing.”

-Do so.

-Flip! Flip!

Mok Gyeong-un turned the pages.

As before, he tried to stamp them into memory with his eyes, but,

‘The strokes…’

Human consciousness sometimes moved differently from one’s intention.

Having come to realize for himself, through Blue Spirit, what significance a stroke held, Mok Gyeong-un began memorizing while consciously taking in not just the words but the shapes of the strokes.

‘The lines of the strokes…’

According to the thickness, he could see how the wrist had moved.

Then at some point, in the course of imprinting them, a strange phenomenon began to occur in Mok Gyeong-un’s head.

It was something even Blue Spirit had not predicted.

‘Ah!’

In Mok Gyeong-un’s head, he saw an old Taoist priest whose face was unclear trace the trajectory of a palm art as gently as if dancing.

They were the forms of Taiji Soft Palm.

It was an astonishing thing.

How was it that while reading words, he could see each and every movement so accurately?

He could even see where strength entered and left.

It was most strange.

Because of this, the most primal forms intended by the creator of the martial art were imprinted directly into Mok Gyeong-un’s mind.

At that instant, a mnemonic verse flashed through his head.

-Flip! Flip!

When he turned the final page, Mok Gyeong-un’s expression was somewhat excited.

‘What is this?’

It was an emotion he had never felt before.

For only an instant, it felt as though he had become one with the person who created this martial art and tasted the true flow of the forms held by Taiji Soft Palm.

It was a completely different feeling from merely imprinting it and then thinking of following it with his body.

‘This isn’t bad.’

He wanted to taste this feeling again.

But unfortunately, apart from this manual of Taiji Soft Palm, most of the martial manuals here would likely be copies.

If that was so, he might not be able to taste this feeling again.

Wearing a disappointed expression, Mok Gyeong-un asked,

“…….What would be good for me to memorize now?”

-There is nothing here. Look at the sixth one from the bottom on the next shelf.

“The sixth one…”

This time it was a sword-art manual called Boundless Fifteen Swords.

Mok Gyeong-un opened the manual, naturally assuming it was a copy, but because of the habit he had just formed, he had no choice but to imprint in detail the strokes carved in the writing.

Then,

‘Hm?’

Once again, he saw in his head a middle-aged master unfolding a sword art.

The middle-aged master’s sword forms were based on a heavy sword, and every time he swung the sword once, the force carried at the tip of the blade surged sharply upward in a single moment, just as the word “boundless” suggested.

For Mok Gyeong-un, who had never once learned a heavy sword with such weight to it, this sword art could only be called a new experience.

-Twitch!

‘……This bastard?’

As Blue Spirit looked at Mok Gyeong-un turning the pages, she could not hide her puzzlement.

That was because his speed in turning the pages had slowed slightly compared with before.

Now, to skim through a single volume, one had to count to around twenty-five or thirty.

Of course, even this slowed speed was still incomparably faster than that of ordinary people.

“Ah……”

-What is it?

“That took a little time, didn’t it?”

-……Even if it was slower than before, do you think it took as long as it would take to count to twenty-five or thirty?

“It was only that much?”

-Yes.

At Blue Spirit’s words, Mok Gyeong-un was inwardly surprised.

With Taiji Soft Palm and again with this Boundless Fifteen Swords, because he had felt as though he were becoming one with the one who wrote the calligraphy and unfolding the forms together, it had seemed to him as if time was passing very slowly.

Yet had only that much time actually passed?

“Strange. To think only that amount of time passed.”

-……Wait. Did it feel to you as if time were flowing slowly?

“Yes.”

-Ha.

She let out an exclamation as though dumbfounded.

At this, Mok Gyeong-un asked curiously,

“Why do you ask?”

-That is the state of selflessness.

The state of selflessness.

Literally it meant a state in which there was no self, a stage where the mind sank into one place and forgot itself.

And yet Mok Gyeong-un, who still lacked enlightenment, had entered the state of selflessness while reading mnemonic verses.

That sort of case was extremely rare.

‘Should I be glad about this?’

She had no sense of what she ought to say.

Whether one was untalented or talented, once one learned martial arts, the order of learning and the direction of enlightenment tended to flow in broadly similar ways.

But with Mok Gyeong-un, that order was completely mixed up.

To enter a state of selflessness not in meditation but while memorizing martial manuals?

Had there ever really been such a case?

‘But what exactly did he sink into?’

He was in the process of memorizing secret manuals at a speed far beyond speed-reading, so exactly what was it that he had sunk into during that brief instant?

She was curious, but because there was not much time,

-Do not become conscious of entering the state of selflessness. It means that much is being gained from it.

“Is that so?”

-More than that, let us hurry and memorize the other secret manuals. We must quickly finish with the second floor and go to the third.

The second floor could be called only a sampler of advanced martial arts.

On the third floor there were even some top-grade advanced martial arts that Blue Spirit herself acknowledged.

If he memorized all of those, then Mok Gyeong-un’s eye for martial arts would become incomparable to what it had been before he came in here.

‘What a pity.’

Blue Spirit suddenly could not help feeling regret.

If this had been the treasure vault of the main stronghold, there were a few hidden manuals she knew about.

But because this place was supposedly only where copies had been gathered, there was no way those hidden things would have been copied here as well.

Thus during this period of time, Mok Gyeong-un memorized forty-five martial manuals on the second floor of the treasure vault.

Ordinarily he would have read even more, but each time he read one volume, the time in which he fell into the state of selflessness grew longer, and so it took him this whole period.

It was not a very long time, but to Mok Gyeong-un it had felt long.

-Now then. Let us go to the third floor.

“Yes.”

Having memorized all the usable things from the second floor, they went upward.

Once he went up, unlike the shelves below, there were some empty spots here and there.

Unlike the manuals on the lower floor, most of those on the third floor were advanced martial arts, with top-grade advanced martial arts mixed in here and there, so naturally there could only be a limit to their number.

‘……They truly reproduced it almost identically.’

Seeing the shelves of the third floor, Blue Spirit clicked her tongue inwardly.

That was only natural, because though some things had changed or some manuals had increased, it was still very close to the arrangement she remembered.

Even though they were copies, they had been arranged so well that they truly brought the past back to mind.

If her memory was correct, then in the original archive, on the far right end of the top of the third shelf on the right, there should be the manual she herself had hidden…

‘!?’

For an instant Blue Spirit doubted her own eyes.

At that exact location was the manual of White Sun Sword Method that she herself had placed in the shelf.

‘Did they copy that too?’

Impossible.

Excluding the two torn pages hidden inside, it was a sword-art manual whose composition would only help second-rate or first-rate martial artists.

There was no way they would have copied that.

And even if they had made a copy while omitting the damaged sections, they would have placed it not on the third floor but on the first.

“…Spirit.”

-…….

“Blue Spirit.”

-Ah!

“Which manual would be better to look at next?”

At his question, Blue Spirit, half hoping, said,

-Take the one at the far right end on the top of the third shelf on the right.

“White Sun Sword Method?”

-Yes.

So, as she instructed, Mok Gyeong-un went to the third shelf and pulled out the manual called White Sun Sword Method from the far right end of the top row.

But the ink on the outer surface of the book had run, and the front page was slightly curled upward.

-Ha!

Seeing this, Blue Spirit let out a hollow breath as though dumbfounded.

At that, Mok Gyeong-un asked curiously,

“Why?”

-…….I too was foolish, to realize it only now.

“Realize what?”

-They moved them here.

“What do you mean by moved?”

-I mean that the manuals here are the originals.

“Pardon? This place has the originals?”

-Yes. I thought there was something strange. Now that I have seen the manual in your hand, I am certain. Haa.

At those words, Mok Gyeong-un’s eyes narrowed.

In truth, though he had not spoken of it to her, as he memorized the manuals she chose, he had entered the state of selflessness with every single one.

So inwardly he too had begun to doubt whether the manuals here were really copies.

But hearing her say this, it seemed certain that the manuals here were indeed originals.

Still, Mok Gyeong-un did not show this and opened the manual.

Then,

“Hm?”

There was a folded sheet of paper tucked inside.

-Ahhh. It was still there.

“Do you know what this is?”

-How could I not? I myself tucked it in there. To think it remained until now.

“You sound rather pleased.”

-Ahem.

“That could be so. But what is it?”

Mok Gyeong-un said this while taking out the folded sheet.

Then Blue Spirit spoke in a somewhat meaningful voice.

-It would not be an exaggeration to say that the moon sword forms I completed began there.

“Hooh.”

Growing curious, Mok Gyeong-un unfolded the sheet.

When he opened it, there were mnemonic verses for sword forms written on the front and back of a single page.

On the front, written first were the name of this sword art and its forms.

“Moonless Void Sword, Moon-Facing Defeat Sword…”

-Count it as fortune. Those are the only remaining sword forms of Moonless Void Sword, one of the Five Great Sword Arts that once symbolized the old murim.

At those words, Mok Gyeong-un imprinted the sword forms on the page with his eyes.

Then in his head he saw someone with a pale face and the appearance of a scholar unfold sword forms while holding a sword.

-Shiver!

At that instant, goosebumps rose all over Mok Gyeong-un’s body.

It was a thrilling sword art on an entirely different level from every form he had seen until now.