WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Asakusa
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◈ A Wandering Warrior's Survival Guide ◈
Chapter 32: The Outer Hall Archive (3)
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In the dim archive, a single candle flickered, casting long shadows across the old shelves.
Cheon Hwi sat cross-legged on the floor before a writing desk, his eyes closed. Shoddy, watered-down martial arts manuals lay scattered across his knees.
As he steadied his breathing and sank inward, his dantian soon appeared in his mind's eye.
Of the many manuals, Cheon Hwi had narrowed the ones he would study down to three.
Returning Star Sword Primer, from which he would steal the principles of returning and turning.
Yan Cloud Step Primer, from whose flawed, hollow footwork he would reverse-engineer a proper framework.
And Locking the Meridians Hand Essentials, which would apply a basic understanding of the human body, acupoints, and blood vessels to martial arts.
He also added Murong Iron Sand Art, a foundational external art that would strengthen his body's durability.
Cheon Hwi did not blindly accept the mnemonic formulas in those half-finished, watered-down martial arts manuals, nor in the books that appeared more neatly organized.
‘I will take them apart.’
Could he do it? What could possibly be impossible?
At the doubt of whether he could learn anything this way, Yi Mu-gwang's voice echoed inside him.
‘Nonsense. That is what unorthodox martial arts are. You gather a handful from here and a handful from there, patching them together like a garment of rags. Anyone would think your martial arts were the pure teachings of the prestigious Nine Great Sects.’
‘That's right, Master.’
Yi Mu-gwang's voice gave Cheon Hwi courage.
He was not dismantling any profound martial arts, so there seemed little reason to worry about serious side effects.
Thus, Cheon Hwi began taking apart the manuals, which were precise yet loose, hollow, incomplete, and twisted.
He thoroughly picked out only the bones he could use, throwing away without hesitation the traps and scraps the clan had planted within them.
Even if something was not scrap, he boldly omitted, condensed, and discarded anything he could not use.
Such was the nature of unorthodox martial arts. One desperately scraped together every possible scrap to secure practical combat strength.
Having died hundreds, thousands of times, Cheon Hwi knew what would help someone survive a real fight.
Swoooosh...
After greedily swallowing, chewing, tearing apart, tasting, savoring, vomiting back up, and chewing over the manuals for several hours, Cheon Hwi finally closed the books and sat cross-legged among them.
He had torn into them with gusto. Now it was time to digest them.
“Phew...”
As he focused on his breathing, his dantian soon began to appear in his mind's eye.
The little pool seemed to have grown a little larger.
‘I’ve improved.’
Cheon Hwi rubbed beneath his nose. He was still far from satisfied, of course.
The inner qi of the Black-Shell Softshell Turtle Elixir was still slowly dissolving and rising within the pool. Drops of water fell one by one upon its surface, gradually driving back the surrounding mist.
He could feel the pool trembling.
He had not learned the martial arts properly, but through a strange method. It was like chewing and swallowing raw meat that ought to have been cooked. Naturally, his stomach would churn while trying to digest it.
‘It’s shaking.’
The pool trembled faintly. It was likely because the mnemonic formulas from the mixed manuals had yet to settle into order.
Another person might have been unable to bear that churn and given up.
Cheon Hwi instead walked straight into the mist within his consciousness.
Human figures flickered past like phantoms through the fog on either side.
They were afterimages of the forms and mnemonic formulas he had pictured and repeated dozens of times while reading the manuals.
Some were fragmented. Some extended their swords only for their arm muscles to twist and their bones to break. Others ran until their knees buckled beneath them, sending them tumbling across the ground.
As he walked between those afterimages, a mist-covered view of the interior of the Black Pheasant Valley stronghold unfolded within his mind.
He recalled the leader of that stronghold, known as Black Hound.
Cheon Hwi had never crossed blades with Black Hound during the actual battle at Black Pheasant Valley.
Han So-gyeom had told him, “You are out of your depth,” ordered him to fall back, then sliced through the necks of Black Hound and the guards standing to either side in an instant.
Watching that battle briefly, Cheon Hwi had clearly understood his own limits.
‘I cannot defeat that bastard with my current martial ability.’
But if he had faced the bastard head-on...
Cheon Hwi's insight gleamed coldly within his mindscape.
He recreated Black Hound's swordsmanship there.
As though Cheon Hwi before them was not worth their time, Black Hound rested the sword hilt on one shoulder and crooked a finger.
“Come.”
Cheon Hwi rushed in.
And so, Cheon Hwi kept dying within his mindscape.
Sweat streamed down the forehead of his cross-legged body.
‘What should I do? How can I win?’
The blade split his crown, tore off his shoulder, and cut his waist in half.
Yet the footwork, movement techniques, and swordsmanship that had been foolishly mixed together in his mindscape gradually began to take shape.
Before, Black Hound had slaughtered him in the first exchange. But the more he stitched fragments from the watered-down manuals into himself, the longer he endured. Two exchanges. Three. Then five.
Whooom!
Black Hound's long sword tore through the air and descended toward Cheon Hwi's head again.
Before, his crown would have split without fail.
But this time, Cheon Hwi's head did not split.
Swish.
It was the footwork he had newly created, which he called Returning Cloud Step.
He had stolen the lightness of “cloud” from the Murong Clan's Yan Cloud Step Primer, then attached the character meaning “return” from his Well-Returning Moving Art.
To that strange footwork, he added the silent, slippery speed of the Serpent-Shadow Step he had used before.
Returning Cloud Step. Move like scattering clouds, yet always return to one's own center.
It was footwork designed for practical combat, letting him swiftly change direction, move, regain his center, and focus on his next attack, defense, or death.
Swoosh, whoosh!
The long sword swept through the place where Cheon Hwi had stood. As though it had cut through a cloud, nothing remained there. Cheon Hwi had shifted half a step aside.
But the swordsmanship of the bastard called Black Hound was no ordinary art.
An unfamiliar form erupted forth. It was the very form Cheon Hwi had sensed while watching Han So-gyeom fight from behind.
Was it the profundity of a heavy sword? Cheon Hwi could not know. But one thing was certain. The bastard's sword seemed to seize the air and objects around it, drawing them in.
It felt as though his body were being pulled toward the blade.
It was coming. He could not evade it.
It was a sensation of the surrounding air being captured and sealed away, preventing him from escaping the sword's edge.
Thwack!
As expected, Cheon Hwi suffered a wound on the second attack. He felt the chilling sensation of the blade pushing into his shoulder.
Normally, he should have been cut from shoulder to neck.
But...
‘I’ll endure it. Can I endure it? I have to.’
Iron Chain Body.
It was a defensive technique that briefly compressed his inner power into only the small area touched by the blade, rather than covering his entire body with the crude external art of Murong Iron Sand Art.
Normally, it was little more than an external technique that bought a single breath against a fatal strike. But for a wanderer whose body was constantly grazed by enemy blades, it was like gaining nine extra lives.
“Oh?”
Iron Chain Body suppressed the pain and impact of his torn shoulder for a single breath.
The blade drove in, then was forced back. It stopped after leaving one arm unusable.
In that instant, Cheon Hwi's sword thrust forward in return.
The fifth form in the Returning Star Sword Primer, Starflow Severance.
The principle of Starflow Severance was to cut off the point where an opponent's footwork and sword path connected, while allowing oneself to continue into another form.
Based on that understanding, Cheon Hwi's Three Powers Swift Sword Forms, Second Form: Person Binding, struck again, stronger than before.
But Person Binding had now been enhanced in two ways.
First, it incorporated the subtleties of the Returning Star Sword.
More importantly, its detailed refinement had improved because he had absorbed the essential teachings of Locking the Meridians Hand Essentials.
In the past, Person Binding had sought to bind the opponent's sword path and restrict their movement.
Now, after absorbing the essentials of Locking the Meridians Hand Essentials, Person Binding had advanced another step.
Cheon Hwi's blade precisely pressed upon Black Hound's elbow joint and blood vessel passageways, locking away the bastard's next movement.
Understanding the human body, acupoints, and blood vessels to lock the person within Person Binding was worlds apart from merely restricting bodily movement through the principles of swordsmanship and footwork.
Black Hound's long sword, about to exert force, wavered as though it had lost its path.
That slight hesitation was enough.
And finally.
If Murong martial arts turned and returned force, Cheon Hwi's martial arts began with swift swordsmanship that drove the enemy into a place of death before they could exert that force.
Cheon Hwi drew out an enhanced third form without abandoning the principle of swiftness.
Three Powers Swift Sword Forms, Third Form: Heaven Piercing, enhanced through his understanding of Falling Star Point, the fourth form of the Returning Star Sword Primer.
The tip of his sword, compressing the inner qi in his dantian to the utmost limit, shot like lightning toward Black Hound's Adam's apple.
“...!”
It did not cut through the throat.
But the sword tip stopped precisely half an inch before Black Hound's Adam's apple.
“Phew...”
Cheon Hwi slowly opened his eyes atop the old archive floor.
It was too much to immediately apply his new realizations to a further-advanced sword art. Still, this much improvement was a decent gain.
His entire body was soaked in cold sweat, but his eyes were clear.
As he dismantled, mixed, and assembled the various mnemonic formulas to suit himself, his formerly complicated thoughts seemed to have become clear.
Cheon Hwi opened and closed his callused hand, muttering with satisfaction.
“Maybe I won't die in the first exchange.”
Creeeak.
The old door of the dusty archive opened, and dazzling morning sunlight poured in.
Having finished training through the night, Cheon Hwi stepped outside and breathed in the cold dawn air.
He understood it in his head. Now it was time to master it with his body.
That was likely why his sword had failed to pierce Black Hound's throat in his imagination.
Understanding something in one's head and carrying it out with one's body. The gap between theory and practice was truly considerable.
The disorder among the mnemonic formulas settled, and the pool within his dantian became calm once more. His breathing followed suit, firm and steady without wavering.
Just as he was about to head to the training ground and move his body...
“Hey. Are you the new recruit?”
Three or four fierce-looking men appeared from somewhere and blocked Cheon Hwi's path.
He saw the white and red cords fastening the badges at their waists.
“So you're that country bumpkin who got lucky by begging a Guarding Martial Authority member and picking up the leader's head.”
“You don’t know your place, holing yourself up in the archive and digging through martial arts manuals. Feeling some energy in your body now, are you? Huh? If you found any erotic pictures disguised as martial arts manuals in a corner, tell us about them! Hahaha!”
One of the men picking a fight snickered as he looked Cheon Hwi up and down.
At the same time as he barked at him, he stretched out a thick hand and roughly shoved Cheon Hwi's shoulder.
Inner power was behind the push.
An ordinary newcomer would have been sent stumbling back at least three or four steps.
But...
Puuush...
The pushing hand simply stopped against Cheon Hwi's shoulder.
“Huh...?”
Why isn't this bastard moving at all...?!
It looked as though the man had merely placed a hand on Cheon Hwi's shoulder to encourage him.
The two other Outer Hall warriors beside him looked at the man who had tried to shove Cheon Hwi as though asking, What are you doing, brother?
The man who had started the trouble let out a shout and strained, then soon retreated with a groan, clutching his wrist.
Cheon Hwi's shoulder, which he had tried to shove, had not budged like a massive chunk of iron or a boulder.
Instead, the recoil against his outstretched wrist numbed it, as though the bones might break.
“How dare this bastard insult a senior as lofty as the heavens?!”
But the man who had tried to shove Cheon Hwi had realized he was no ordinary person and seemed to want to stop the other two.
Only the man who had tried to shove him had a red cord. The rest had white cords like Cheon Hwi's.
“Y-you bastard. You'd better count yourself lucky.”
The red-corded Outer Hall warrior huffed and stepped back once or twice, turning his head away.
Cheon Hwi only grinned and nodded.
Then he placed a hand on his sword hilt.
“Yes. I am lucky. Ah, perhaps you seniors are the lucky ones.”
“W-what do you mean, we're lucky? Are you insane?”
“Because through sparring with me, you will gain enlightenment.”
“What?”
“W-who said anything about sparring?”
“It is fine. We are on the training ground. Even if some blood is spilled and a few bones are broken, no one will find it strange.”
“...!”
“Uh...?”
Cheon Hwi grinned and raised his sword, still in its sheath.
He had been wondering whether he should cut down some practice dummies, but that was hardly the training method of the unorthodox.
At the same time, Cheon Hwi cupped one fist in the other hand.
“Thank you for personally granting instruction to your junior.”
“Uh...?”
“Are you yielding the first move to this unworthy junior? Then, without further ceremony...”
Cheon Hwi assumed the opening stance of the more refined Three Powers Swift Sword Forms.
Surely striking people was better than striking wooden dolls. Beating up dummies was far too static a method for a street wanderer.
“Then, I look forward to your instruction, Seniors.”
“No, don't look forward to it! Don't look forward to it, you bastard!”
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