WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 51: Change (2)

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Change (2)

Once the headache that had rolled over him like a great wave finally stopped, Mumu opened his eyes. A wonderfully refreshing feeling washed over him.

'Ah!'

It felt something like waking from a dream he'd been trapped in for a long time. Dreams were like that. He always watched them unfold, but instead of shaping them himself, all he could do was watch them flow past.

'Feels like I was locked up and just got let out.'

He always seemed to be in some kind of daze, but now his mind felt clear. Mumu opened his clenched hand and looked inside. Some ash from the needle that had been stuck in his head still remained there.

'Was this the reason?'

Once that thing had come out, the headache and this clarity had arrived together.

'Why was that stuck in my head?'

It was strange that something like this had been there without him ever noticing. Since when had it been embedded there? And who had stuck something like that into his own head? Mumu turned the thought over carefully. Countless memories from as far back as childhood flashed through his mind in an instant.

'Huh?'

Something felt off. Those flickering memories felt too vivid, too clear, like they'd just happened moments ago. Had his memory always been this sharp? While he wondered about it, Lim Jeong spoke to him.

"Hey, are you really all right?"

At the question, Mumu turned to Lim Jeong and smiled brightly.

"Of course." "Really?" "I just had a bit of a headache. Don't worry." "...Whew. Good, then."

Lim Jeong let out a breath of relief. But there was something odd flickering in his eyes.

'Hm.'

Strange. Very strange. Why did the whole mood around the boy feel different somehow? Before he'd started his ki circulation, Mumu had clearly carried a strong sense of naivety and innocence, but now that seemed to have faded a little.

"Hey, you..." "What?"

Mumu answered back with a smile. That same bright, innocent grin, as fresh as ever.

'Am I imagining things?'

Maybe he was just being oversensitive. Still, a person changing that fast, in an instant, was strange no matter how he looked at it. Shaking his head, Lim Jeong crossed his legs again and settled back into position.

"You're fine, so I'll get back to my ki circulation." "Ki circulation... Hm. Sure, go ahead."

Mumu said it with a smile. Lim Jeong closed his eyes again and slipped back into his ki circulation. Mumu watched him closely.

"Hoo. Hff. Hoo. Hff."

His breathing was remarkably even. And the longer he breathed, the more Lim Jeong's complexion shifted, ever so slightly. Pale skin gaining a faint tinge of red, maybe.

'Is ki circulation some kind of technique that heals the body through breathing?'

While he guessed at that, everything Dan Baek-yeon had explained during the internal energy studies deep-dive lecture surfaced in his mind, laid out in perfect order.

[...Its origin is commonly said to trace back to breathing, that is, the Breathing Technique. In the very air we breathe, there is naturally occurring ki dispersed throughout. How that ki gets refined and absorbed, and how it's then circulated, determines...]

It was a strange thing. He'd listened half-asleep at the time, but most of it came back to him now. And things he'd had no interest in and hadn't understood at all back then, he could grasp just by recalling them, understanding the definitions of the Breathing Technique and Cultivation techniques.

'So it's a method for handling something called ki.'

A different kind of power entirely from the muscular strength he already knew. That was probably why the categories of external energy and internal energy had come about. It was a fairly interesting theory.

'Internal energy, huh.'

Now that he thought about it, most people here had trained in it. Lim Jeong, doing his ki circulation right now, and Hwang Won too, the one he'd fought and knocked unconscious. They pulled out tremendous strength without training their muscles at all.

'A different kind of strength?'

The idea that training could work this way was interesting to him. Of course, that didn't mean he thought it was stronger than muscle training. He'd never met anyone that strong, after all. If he turned the adjustment screw on the Ki-Restraining Bracelets all the way to one, he couldn't even guess how much power would come loose. And that was why...

'...why am I even still wearing this?'

The question suddenly struck Mumu as odd. He'd never once questioned it before. Ever since childhood, his adoptive father Yu Yeop-kyung had told him not to take it off, and he'd kept that promise, but there wasn't really any need to keep restraining himself with this cumbersome thing.

'I could just control it myself.'

If the whole point was worry over his strength being too much, then he could simply manage that himself. With that thought, Mumu checked on Lim Jeong, still deep in his ki circulation, then made his way over to a corner of the chamber. Just in case, more than anything. Once he'd settled into the corner, Mumu,

Clack!

tried to pull the Ki-Restraining Bracelet off his left wrist.

"Hff! Hff!"

No matter how much force he used, the bracelet wouldn't budge from his wrist. If anything, trying to pull it off only made it clamp down harder.

'Ow. Why's it doing this?'

He couldn't make sense of it. The bracelet simply wouldn't come off, no matter what. Feeling stubborn now, Mumu reached for the adjustment screw on the bracelet on his right hand and turned it. Since it had come to this, he decided he would put everything he had into simply breaking the bracelet apart. He turned it in one motion, from eight straight down to one. And then,

Crrrrack! Crack!

Something changed in his right arm. His muscles compressed further, the veins bulging as if about to burst, then subsiding, over and over. Then the skin of his right arm flushed a deep red, and a faint haze of steam began rising off it.

Hsssssss!

He'd never once turned it all the way to one before, and the change was bizarre. But the transformation kept going. The reddened skin darkened further, turning black instead. That was exactly the moment.

Sizzzzle! Crack!

'Hff.'

Mumu couldn't hide his shock at the sudden burst of intense heat and the terrifying tightening of the bracelet, as if it meant to snap his wrist clean off. He tensed his wrist and forced himself to endure it.

Sizzzzle!

The bracelet responded by giving off even more heat, clamping down harder still.

'Hah!'

As if daring it to see who would win, Mumu clenched his fist and pushed even harder. His forearm muscles swelled, turning black, straining against their limits. The bracelet, as if trying to force him down, kept adding more heat.

Sizzzzzzle!

The pain of flesh burning, then tearing, ran through him. Ignoring it, gritting his teeth, he tried to pull up every last bit of strength he had left, when,

CRAAAACK! Rumble!

Instead of the bracelet breaking, the floor of the chamber split apart around where he stood, and the whole area started shaking as if an earthquake had struck.

'!?'

Startled, he reflexively pulled back the power he'd been drawing up, and,

Whirrrl!

At that instant, the bracelet's adjustment screw spun on its own, turning from one back to eight. The moment it did, exhaustion crashed over him all at once, his breathing turning ragged. It felt exactly like the state he'd be in after training at full strength until every last bit of energy was spent.

"Hah... hah..."

Mumu glanced over toward Lim Jeong, still doing his ki circulation near the display cases. Whether he'd sunk fully into concentration or whether the tremors just hadn't reached that far, Lim Jeong luckily hadn't noticed what had just happened.

"Hoo."

Mumu steadied his breathing and stared at the bracelet with a look of pure confusion. He'd tried to see who would win, thinking he could simply force the bracelet apart, but he never expected things to play out this way. Push any harder, and it wouldn't be the bracelet that broke, it would be everything around him. It was truly bizarre.

'What in the world is this thing?'

He couldn't understand why he was even wearing such a strange bracelet.

'Hm.'

Thinking about it, it was strange enough that his father, in exile, had managed to get his hands on something this bizarre and put it on his arm in the first place.

'So was I wearing it from the very start?'

Mumu carefully traced back through his memories. Ever since that needle had come out of his head, hadn't every memory up until now become vivid and clear? If he thought it through carefully, maybe the answer would come. But something was strange.

'...I can't remember.'

The first thing that came to mind was Yu Yeop-kyung's face. Looking at him closely, fiddling with the Jade Medallion necklace, murmuring "Mumu?" That was all there was. No matter how far back he tried to reach, nothing came before that.

'I was already wearing this back then.'

He remembered wearing the Ki-Restraining Bracelets since he was a baby.

'If it wasn't my father, then who?'

Mumu stared at the cooling bracelet. He had no idea who had stuck that needle in his head, and he had no clear idea who had put this bracelet on him either.

'...Could it really have been my birth parents?'

The thought suddenly struck him, that whoever had put this on him might be the very parents who'd given birth to him. Once that thought took hold, his curiosity only deepened. Why would they abandon him and, on top of that, fit him with something like this?

'Why would they do that?'

He genuinely couldn't understand it. Had they not wanted him to grow stronger? Was that why they'd put this on him before abandoning him? Every kind of question came flooding in.

'Now I really want to ask them.'

These questions only made him want more than ever to know who his birth parents really were. Only they would know the whole truth, after all.

'Ugh. No idea.'

But there was no way to find out right now.

Plop!

Mumu trudged back over to where Lim Jeong sat and dropped onto the floor. Trying to get the bracelet off had only left him exhausted for nothing.

Throb!

His wrist, scorched from the heat, started to ache. The pain was nothing like what he'd felt when he'd only lowered the adjustment screw to four before.

'Hurts.'

Mumu glanced over at Lim Jeong, still deep in ki circulation. His complexion kept improving little by little.

'Would doing this ki circulation thing help with the pain?'

But he'd never learned how to do it, so he had no idea how it worked. He thought about waking Lim Jeong up to ask, but decided to leave him be. He remembered Dan Baek-yeon saying during her lecture that interrupting someone's ki circulation was dangerous.

'I'll just ask him later.'

Then, out of nowhere, the words he'd seen on that black stone in the ceiling came back to him. Reading them silently in his mind earlier had left his whole body feeling refreshed and good. So Mumu closed his eyes and slowly tried to recall them. And then,

Hsssssss!

He felt warmth spread through his entire body almost at once. A flush of color rose to his cheeks from the pleasant sensation. At the same time, the throbbing pain in his wrist began to fade little by little.

'Oh.'

A mysterious thing. Convinced the pain was healing, Mumu kept reciting the words in his mind.

'The abyss's fate is deep... the sea of spirit crosses over... the origin heart bears no fixed name... transformation without boundary... the heavens turn and the stars come...'

As he kept reciting the lines, Mumu slowly slipped into a state empty of all thought. Energies gathered and split, drawing together bit by bit at his head and below his navel. If anyone had known what was happening, they would have been stunned.

It was the sign that his lower dantian and upper dantian, what could be called essence and spirit, were forming at the same time. But Mumu had no choice but to stop partway through. A voice reached his ears.

"Well now. What a mess this has become."

'Huh?'

Opening his eyes, he saw an old man with a gourd flask tied at his waist. Mumu hadn't even noticed him approach, and there the old man stood, clicking his tongue as he examined the unconscious Hwang Won's condition.

"Gasp!"

Lim Jeong, still deep in his ki circulation, startled badly at the voice, breaking off at once and rising to his feet to give a formal cupped-hand bow.

"C-control room manager Lim Jeong greets Elder Hang."

Lim Jeong felt more than a little flustered by the old man's arrival. It made sense. This old man he'd addressed as Elder Hang was the one who oversaw this third underground floor of the archive, and also the head manager of the entire archive.

'Oh my goodness. Elder Hang, here in person.'

He'd figured someone would come, but he never expected the man himself to show up. He had no idea how he was even supposed to explain the situation. Seeing Hwang Won lying there badly injured and unconscious, he worried the same suspicion might fall on him too. Watching Lim Jeong fret like this, Mumu thought to himself.

'Is he someone higher-ranked than the manager?'

Otherwise there'd be no reason for him to act so nervous. Lim Jeong hurried to open his mouth and explain the situation.

"Elder. In case you might misunderstand, I want to say up front, we weren't trying to break into the third floor archive out of greed or anything like that..."

Just then Elder Hang rose from where he'd been crouched and turned his gaze to Lim Jeong.

"I know." "Sir?" "You fell down here by accident from the first floor weapons chamber, is that right?"

At those words, Lim Jeong's face brightened.

"Y-yes, that's right. If the floor hadn't collapsed, there's no way we would've fallen down here like this..." "Remarkable." "Sir?" "When I heard the Infernal Formation of Thousand Calamities and Myriad Transformations had activated and that Instructor Hwang Won had gone down, this old man rushed down here worried you and a cadet might have gotten hurt in an accident. I never imagined something like this would be what greeted me instead."

Elder Hang was genuinely astonished. What was the Infernal Formation of Thousand Calamities and Myriad Transformations, after all? It was the finest formation ever created, a joint effort between the Master of Ten Thousand Wisdoms, known as the wisest man in the Central Plains, and the Grand Patriarch of the Jegal Clan. These two had survived that supreme formation without harm. No, according to what he'd heard from the mechanism control room manager, they'd apparently even managed to break it. And on top of that,

'Bringing down Hwang Won.'

Hwang Won was one of the Six Stars of Heaven. The Six Stars of Heaven meant the finest masters among all the instructors at Changcheon Martial Academy. Who could have imagined Hwang Won lying here in such a wretched state?

'...Has Lim Jeong's mastery in Martial Arts always run this deep?'

Elder Hang found it hard to believe. He'd invited Lim Jeong to serve as manager of the archive, but he'd understood Lim Jeong's skill to be roughly on par with an ordinary instructor at the academy.

'Hm. That can't be right.'

Elder Hang studied the surrounding traces with a careful eye. A master of his caliber could tell just from the marks left behind how a battle had actually unfolded. But as he examined the scene, his eyes narrowed.

'This footwork is crude.'

The marks scattered across the floor, shattered and gouged out here and there, had nothing to do with any refined Body-Lightening Technique. It was nothing more than someone running with tremendous force. Judging from the faint traces of refined Body-Lightening Technique that remained here and there, it looked like someone had gone all out just to shake something off.

'Was Hwang Won really pushed this far?'

There was urgency in those footprints. And around one particular spot, he could see the floor sunken in, nearly six jang deep.

Whish!

Elder Hang looked up at the ceiling above that spot. The mechanism had stopped and never self-repaired, leaving the hole in the ceiling still open. Studying it, Elder Hang murmured.

"No. It wasn't you."

However he looked at it, the martial arts of the Eastern Eunuch corps in the imperial palace were never this crude or destructive. And if these marks were accurate, it meant someone had brought down Hwang Won with a single fist strike, something utterly impossible given Lim Jeong's level of mastery.

'How am I supposed to explain this?'

Lim Jeong couldn't hide his distress as he looked at Elder Hang. Once Hwang Won woke up, the truth would come out anyway, but he doubted anyone would easily believe that some brand-new cadet had knocked out one of the Six Stars of Heaven with a single strike.

"Elder Hang, I know this is hard to believe, but..."

Just then, someone cut him off.

"I did it." "Yes. That's right. He's the one who..... oh my goodness!"

Lim Jeong couldn't hide his shock. He'd been trying to figure out how to explain this properly, and Mumu had suddenly cut in without warning.

"What did you say?"

Elder Hang frowned and turned his head toward Mumu. Mumu scratched his head and got to his feet.

"You... you're that child from before."

Studying Mumu closely, Elder Hang recalled it. This was, without a doubt, the boy who'd split the water of the artificial lake with a single leap during the second gate of the entrance examination. The impression had been strong enough that he'd remembered it clearly.

"You know me?" "Yes. I remember you."

But he hadn't quite noticed it from a distance, and seeing him up close now, something felt off.

'This child... has he actually trained in Martial Arts?'

He could sense the faintest trace of ki, but by ki sense alone, it didn't even reach the level of a third-rate martial artist. And yet this child was claiming, to his own face, that he'd been the one to put Hwang Won in that state? While Elder Hang wondered about it, Mumu stepped closer and asked.

"Are you higher-ranked than Manager Lim Jeong?"

At the question, Elder Hang stroked his beard and answered.

"Within this archive, yes."

At that, Mumu smiled brightly and said.

"Then this should go quickly. Elder, how exactly are you planning to make up for this unfortunate ordeal we've been through?"

'!?'

At that sudden, out-of-nowhere remark, both Elder Hang and Lim Jeong frowned at the same time.

Footnotes:

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