Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 68 - This Is Cost-Effective Training
Chapter 68 – This Is Cost-Effective Training
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Translated by Heavenly Cat
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
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“My! What is this monstrosity!”
“A monstrosity? It’s so cute though…”
These were the reactions of the two people upon seeing the Heavenly Silkworm Moth belatedly pop out of Ju-seong’s clothes in the morning.
Yesterday, when the Divine Physician had started pummeling Ju-seong, it had already slipped out and was sucking tree sap in the forest, so this was its first appearance.
Lady Wol-hyang gently cupped the sides of the creature’s earless head and said.
“Little one, don’t listen. You’re not a monstrosity. Just look at those round eyes. They’re like black jade. So pretty.”
Ju-seong said in a flat voice.
“It’s not a baby… normally when a moth comes out of its cocoon, it’s considered fully grown, isn’t it? Anyway, it calls me ‘mama’ and follows me around.”
“It talks too?”
“No, hmm… It conveys emotions through some kind of strange vibration. Mama, hungry, full. That’s about all it can do.”
“What, it is a baby! How cute…”
The moth, perhaps uncomfortable with the sudden attention, hid back inside Ju-seong’s clothes.
The Divine Physician stroked his beard and asked.
“That thing seems to have a strong attachment to you. How did that happen?”
When Ju-seong explained the circumstances, both the Divine Physician and Wol-hyang wore slightly startled expressions.
“So… it was born from devouring a human’s true energy?”
“It’s truly a demon creature. How bizarre… Still, strange things gather around strange people.”
“You don’t need to be so wary of it. The little thing doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t even help… it just clings to me like I’m a dead tree.”
The Divine Physician stared at the bosom where it had hidden and asked.
“It doesn’t suck your true energy or anything?”
Ju-seong shook his head.
“If it did, I would have cast it out long ago. Nothing like that.”
“Hmm…”
The Divine Physician’s expression was displeased, but he didn’t seem to feel the need to drive it away either.
Lady Wol-hyang’s enthusiasm for finding it cute had slightly cooled.
The fact that it was born from devouring the true energy of the notorious sexual predator who had been terrorizing everything from Henan to Yunnan made her feel somewhat uncomfortable.
* * *
“White Fur! Come here! Your grandfather has some honey on his hand. Come and lick it! Good boy.”
“…Master.”
The Divine Physician was spinning around the courtyard of the compound with the moth, having completely lost his mind.
It only took three days for the sinister furry flying creature to captivate the large old man.
He had even given it the name White Fur on his own.
“At first you said it was a demon creature and a monstrosity.”
“When did I ever say that? Just go do your training.”
Though Ju-seong was giving him a hard time through the wide-open main gate of the compound, the Divine Physician was turning a deaf ear.
Life at the compound was just an endless string of training.
People say martial artists grow stronger through real combat, and while that’s not wrong.
The foundation of all that was the long, tedious, painful cycle of training, training, and more training.
This was why not just anyone could become a martial artist.
If one could get stronger through combat alone, half the young men in the martial world would be carrying swords.
You’d fight to find work, get stronger while fighting, and earn compensation to make a living…
But in reality, that wasn’t the case.
Having to waste so much time not earning money, not plowing fields, not hunting.
And on top of that, you had to eat an enormous amount, and occasionally partake of expensive elixirs.
Such were the martial artists.
To the outside observer, martial artists might seem like the laziest of all people… the representatives of loaferdom… especially when they were sweating buckets while holding a horse stance as he was doing now.
Just getting stronger day by day…
The Divine Physician suddenly stopped and spoke while looking at Ju-seong.
“It seems training with sandbags won’t cut it.”
Saying this, the Divine Physician leaped up and landed on Ju-seong’s shoulders.
“Master?”
Ju-seong asked in a dazed voice, and an enormous weight began pressing down on his shoulders.
-CRUNCH!
Ju-seong’s feet sank into the ground. He channeled internal energy to both trapezius muscles to prevent his shoulders from collapsing, and asked.
“M-Master! Your disciple is dying!”
“Maintain the horse stance.”
That was the Divine Physician’s answer.
Ju-seong mentally rattled off curses while obediently maintaining his horse stance.
‘This feels like about five hundred geun (300 kg).’
He couldn’t understand what kind of technique had done this.
His thighs and buttocks felt like they were on fire, then became numb and just felt heavy.
Only when he reached that point did the Divine Physician’s torture end.
Since he had to channel internal energy to his trapezius muscles and maintain it, it felt like every muscle in his entire body, including his energy circulation, had been fully engaged.
Meanwhile, the Divine Physician stood ramrod straight on Ju-seong’s shoulders reading a medical text.
When Ju-seong was panting for breath, he asked.
“What was that technique just now?”
“It’s called Thousand-Pound Weight.”
Ju-seong’s eyes lit up when he heard terminology from martial arts novels, and he asked.
“How do you do it?”
“Just reverse the light-body technique.”
“Heavy-body?”
The Divine Physician looked at his disciple like he was an idiot, then spoke.
“I mean apply the principles of light-body technique in reverse.”
“That was a joke.”
Seeing that no proper explanation was offered, the Divine Physician was clearly in the category of people called geniuses.
He seemed to think that any person with normal comprehension would understand from that much explanation.
What was more absurd was that his disciple also understood and reproduced the Thousand-Pound Weight before even a quarter-hour had passed.
Watching the two master and disciple from her window facing the front yard, Wol-hyang murmured, dumbfounded.
“I thought the Thousand-Pound Weight wasn’t such an easy technique…”
-CRACK!
“My feet hurt.”
Ju-seong muttered while looking at the rock cracking beneath his feet.
The Divine Physician nodded.
“That’s why when using the Thousand-Pound Weight, you need to spread energy to the yongquan points and protect your soles.”
“Hmm… I understand.”
“Sometimes there are lunatics who use the Thousand-Pound Weight while falling from high places. Either to suppress multiple enemies with the shockwave, or to deliver a powerful opening strike.”
“Ah, that’s right. When storytellers describe martial artist battles, such scenes often appear.”
“If any amateur tries to imitate that, their knees, ankles, and spine can all blow out and they might end up crippled. In my youth, I saw an evil faction punk try that stunt and have his leg bones puncture through his stomach and die instantly. There wasn’t even time to try saving him.”
“Yikes.”
Ju-seong shuddered at the gruesome description.
Still, falling from a height and slamming down with the Thousand-Pound Weight was a martial artist’s romance, wasn’t it?
He couldn’t give that up, so Ju-seong practiced using the Thousand-Pound Weight while protecting his joints and spine with energy.
Aside from physical training, his schedule consisted entirely of meditation: morning meditation with eyes open and evening meditation with eyes closed. This was truly killing time, as doing it wouldn’t increase his internal energy or strengthen his body.
But Ju-seong felt this wasn’t useless. He actually thought it was more valuable than physical training or energy circulation.
Until now, Ju-seong’s meditation had almost always been combined with energy circulation, so most of his concentration was devoted to energy.
In other words, to him until now, his body was merely a vessel for energy and a tool for martial arts.
‘How much have I neglected my own body!’
Ju-seong felt ashamed.
Having become a martial artist, he had never deeply contemplated his own body. At best, he had only focused on the pathways through which energy traveled, or on the muscles used in combat.
But did the human body exist only for fighting and containing internal energy?
‘Absolutely not.’
Eating, excreting, thinking, circulating blood. Producing all sorts of fluids like bile and gall, and the ribcage moving and the belly contracting and expanding to draw in air.
From the pores rose hairs invisible to the eye, and from the sweat glands poured sweat.
And all those various things influenced each other, receiving and giving, making the already complex harmony even more headache-inducing.
This was why Taoism called the human body a universe, claiming that hundreds of deities resided within it.
Thus, one month passed.
Ju-seong felt confident that he had sufficiently contemplated himself and finally began his Samadhi Body Refinement practice… an ascetic discipline and a technique of tempering one’s body like metal through refinement.
The first step was samadhi, meaning the very practice of abandoning distracting thoughts and contemplating himself that he had trained to tedium for a month.
Ju-seong’s consciousness sank deep, deeper.
A bright light near his heart… that was the middle dantian. Utterly clear and transparent, yet blindingly brilliant and intense.
At its center sat a core that seemed like something one should never touch, and around the core, the relatively less precious acquired true energy enveloped it.
‘Come out.’
Ju-seong compelled a portion of the acquired true energy to emerge.
It wasn’t difficult. From the Red Crow stage onward, one naturally used acquired true energy.
When normally releasing internal energy, Samadhi True Fire ignited from true energy would mix in, and the color of the energy would begin to turn red like blood.
But the amount he needed to use now was considerable, so even he had to focus all his attention.
A significant amount of acquired true energy lined up under his control like soldiers awaiting deployment.
He looked upon the sight with satisfaction, then spoke.
‘Rub against each other.’
In truth, acquired true energy didn’t actually exist as individual soldiers, so they couldn’t rub against each other.
Ju-seong was a man who spouted nonsense even in his inner world.
The separated acquired true energy simply compressed and compressed until it heated up, and finally ignited with a burst.
Ju-seong kneaded the ignited true energy and stretched it long. Like noodles.
‘Inside my body is the world’s greatest noodle shop.’
He pulled the true energy thin and thinner, like a skilled noodle-maker, with exceptional dexterity.
Then he slowly began pushing it along his entire body’s fine meridians.
If you thrust a fire-heated iron skewer into your blood vessels, would the pain be endurable?
True energy was life force, so the fire kindled from burning it also contained the power of life. Limited to Ju-seong himself, that is.
So the flames, as they passed through his meridians and blood vessels and all the other fine channels…
Scorched all those pathways to ruin while simultaneously regenerating them tougher than before.
And that agony was not something any human should endure.
Ju-seong felt an agony greater than any he had ever known burning through his entire body.
This was training that honed energy by handling a large volume of true energy as Samadhi True Fire.
It was training that honed the body by heating the entire body with that Samadhi True Fire.
It was training that honed the spirit by enduring that pain.
Thus, it was a training of essence, energy, and spirit… all three.
‘This is cost-effective training… The pain can be endured…’
He worked hard to encourage himself, but couldn’t stop the cold sweat from pouring out and soaking his clothes.
His sclera became bloodshot and cracked with red lines.
As Samadhi True Fire slowly seeped out through every pore, it evaporated the sweat that had soaked his entire body.
Along with it, the turbid energy that the Samadhi True Fire had swept up while patrolling his whole body also gushed out.
-Hissss…
At first only faint white steam rose as sweat evaporated, but.
-WHOOOOSH…!
The combusted turbid energy poured out as smoke, throwing the room into chaos.
-CRASH! Rattle, rattle, clatter, clang…
Windows and doors alike flung themselves open and clattered madly, opening and closing repeatedly.
The massive volume of turbid energy pouring from Ju-seong’s body had created a powerful wind.
Through the gaps of the opening and closing doors, black smoke poured out and stopped repeatedly.
The Divine Physician stared blankly at the chaos and muttered.
“Damn, I forgot to tell him to do it outside.”