Chapter 44
"I knew this would happen someday. What is this mess?"
"Martial Uncle, he's Yeonghwan, a disciple of the 'Yeong' generation, one level above me. If you want to be technical, he's a master of the same generation as you."
"Well, if you want to be technical as you say, he's half a generation below me."
"Anyway, that's not what's important, is it?"
"Right. What's important is that you lost."
"Ugh...!"
After receiving medicine from the Shaolin medical hall and returning to the guest hall, my Martial Uncle was waiting for me.
And, he was relentlessly teasing me.
I was already upset about getting beaten, but with my Martial Uncle acting like this, my frustration was turning into anger.
"Your face looks a little angry right now."
"...To be found out so quickly, you really have good intuition, Martial Uncle."
"What? Are you getting angry just because your Martial Uncle teased you a little?"
"Of course, my anger isn't directed at you, Martial Uncle. I lost, didn't I? The one who comes back defeated deserves to be teased a bit."
"What...?"
My Martial Uncle stared at me with a dumbfounded expression, and I spoke with a serious face.
"What I'm angry about is why I couldn't fight a little smarter in that situation... why I accepted the spar without any conditions in the first place."
"Conditions? Didn't you agree to receive a Small Rebirth Pill?"
"Not that. Monk Yeonghwan has trained for a much longer period than I have. If it were a fair spar, I should have set restrictions first, like him using only one arm or only five-tenths of his internal energy.... I was hasty. What was that damn Small Rebirth Pill that I was blinded by it..."
I clicked my tongue and continued.
"If I didn't think I could win with skill, I should have created a situation where I could win. That wasn't like me."
I sincerely reflected.
I was still a long way from reaching the realm I desired.
That damn Small Rebirth Pill... no, I was blinded by that amazing Small Rebirth Pill. I think I need to be a little more level-headed from now on.
However, my reaction seemed to make my Martial Uncle's expression turn a little serious.
"Yes. You're right, but isn't the process just as important as the result? The fact that you fought on equal terms with Yeonghwan is what's important."
"The process... that's important too. But if the result doesn't back it up in the end, isn't that process all for nothing?"
My voice dropped a little.
Lost, but fought well. It was a close call. It's a shame today, but we can look forward to next time.
And so on....
They are all just plausible, nice-sounding words.
Especially in the orthodox martial world, they emphasize the process of a spar and say it's enough if there's something to learn from it.
But in the end, that result leaves nothing but catastrophe.
It's impossible that words like, "The content of this fight was good, so please spare my life," would work on an opponent who is coming at you to kill you.
You always have to put your heart into it, as if it were a real battle.
When you have a spar, you must always win and finish.
You have to get into the habit of winning from now on.
"Heh heh... I can't understand how a child like you came out of our Wudang. We teach to think more about what was gained in the spar than the result."
"That's also true, but I think there's more to learn from victory. Of course, under the assumption that one never becomes arrogant."
"Not becoming arrogant... that would be the hardest thing."
My Martial Uncle said with a serious face.
Greed, arrogance, pride, laziness... the hardest thing in the world is to control one's own mind.
I can't be confident that my self-control is as high as that of a high monk who has trained for decades, but I don't think I can become arrogant about my skills no matter how strong I get.
'Because I saw with my own two eyes how strong those bastards are.'
The martial arts of the Demonic Cult bastards who would invade in the future were very different from ours in the Central Plains.
Each and every one of them was an elite, and above the masters who seemed like the sky, there was another sky.
I have to stand against them, so there's no way I can afford to be arrogant.
"By the way, I was out of it earlier so I just let it pass, but they didn't bring the Small Rebirth Pill or anything, did they? I'm sure a monk of Shaolin wouldn't lie, and he definitely said he would give me one Small Rebirth Pill."
"Well. The last I heard was that your arm wasn't as badly injured as we thought, and no one has come to visit yet. If you wait, won't someone come tomorrow?"
Indeed, when I looked out the window, the sun had already set, and the moon had been up for a long time.
"That's a shame. I wanted to try that elixir, even a little sooner. Right. I have something I'm curious about."
"What is it?"
"The Small Rebirth Pill is a degraded version of the Great Rebirth Pill, and our Wudang's Micheongdan is a degraded version of the Taecheongdan, right?"
"Degraded version... rather than that, it's more like the ingredients were simplified to greatly increase productivity, but, well, yes."
"Then is the Small Rebirth Pill better? Or is the Micheongdan better?"
"That's obviously..."
"The Small Rebirth Pill."
At that moment, someone cut off my Martial Uncle.
When I lifted my head and looked in that direction, the abbot of Shaolin, Grandmaster Gakil, who had been with my Martial Uncle until just now, was standing there.
"Abbot?"
"Grandmaster Gakil! Ouch, ouch!"
Without realizing it, I used my sore arm to push myself up from the bed, and because of that, I couldn't help but let out a pained sound.
"Tsk, tsk. Are you badly hurt?"
"No. They said my elbow bone is just a little twisted and it hurts. I think it will heal soon."
"May I take a look at your arm for a moment?"
"Yes. It's fine."
Grandmaster Gakil approached me, then took my arm and began to examine it from side to side.
After letting a little bit of energy flow and pressing here and there, he let out a small laugh and took a step back.
"Almsgiver Unhwi. Do you even know why your arm is injured right now?"
"Of course, I do. I was in a hurry to block Monk Yeonghwan's outstretched arm, so I didn't put enough strength into it. That's why my arm got bent a lot. Like this."
I reenacted the scene for him.
However, he continued to laugh, then took my arm again and tried to bend it further in the direction I had bent it.
"Grandmaster Gakil, what are you doing right now..."
"Does it hurt?"
"No. It doesn't hurt like that."
"Then how about this?"
"Aargh!"
He flipped my arm in the opposite direction and gently pushed my elbow towards my shoulder.
Then, a pain as if I had been struck by lightning passed through my body.
"As I thought. Tsk. Yeonghwan was right. He said he didn't win."
"Aigoo, it still hurts. What do you mean?"
"Your arm wasn't injured by Yeonghwan, almsgiver. You injured it yourself."
"Myself?"
"Yes. If your arm was injured while blocking Yeonghwan's attack as you said, it should have been twisted like this. But look now. It hurts when your elbow is pushed inward like this, right? That means that when you struck Yeonghwan, the force that went into your arm was great, but you couldn't properly support your arm with internal energy and couldn't withstand the rebound force."
"Ah..."
For a moment, I frowned without realizing it.
At the same time, a sense of shame began to rise.
I wouldn't know if it hurt because I got hit, but to think my arm ended up like this because my palm technique was clumsy....
Actually, it was something I could have figured out if I had thought about it.
The time I couldn't continue the spar because I was in too much pain wasn't when I was hit by Monk Yeonghwan, but when I had unleashed my palm technique.
"Because my palm technique is clumsy..."
"Clumsy palm technique... no, my thoughts are a little different. How can you generate such great power with a clumsy palm technique? Almsgiver, your palm technique is not immature, but your internal energy is significantly lacking compared to your skill."
My head nodded on its own.
Looking at my body's condition calmly now, my internal energy was indeed significantly lacking compared to my skills and experience.
No matter how superior the Taiji Divine Art I had learned now was compared to the Un Family Internal Technique, there is no shortcut to learning internal energy.
Because you have to accumulate it little by little through long training.
'And it's also because I'm not just accumulating internal energy haphazardly right now.'
Besides, if I had been obsessed with increasing the amount of internal energy itself and had built it up haphazardly like before, I would have had much greater internal energy than now.
But, now I am building it up from the very bottom of my vessel, step by step. And only with pure energy at that.
Of course, the time it takes to accumulate energy will be much slower, but it is obvious that I will be able to accumulate much more high-quality internal energy when it is all built up.
"In conclusion, internal energy. It's something that time will have to solve."
"That's right. If you want to know how to increase your internal energy rapidly, you could easily find out by asking those Unorthodox Faction groups over there."
"But, the price to pay for that would also be great. I don't want to use such a method."
"Your energy is very pure, almsgiver. I said it because I thought that you wouldn't do that no matter how rushed you were."
He, pleased with my answer, smiled brightly and continued.
"There is another way to increase your internal energy rapidly."
"An elixir."
"That's right. But, even that, strictly speaking, whether you can increase your internal energy rapidly or not depends on you, almsgiver. People think that if they eat an elixir, they will unconditionally become a peerless master, but if you don't have a considerable understanding of internal energy and qi circulation methods, you can't even absorb it properly."
"If ordinary people who have no understanding of internal energy consume it, they're just wasting a precious medicine."
"Of course, there are side effects like chronic diseases disappearing or health improving, but it doesn't suddenly create internal energy that wasn't there."
Grandmaster Gakil reached into his kasaya and took out a small wooden box.
The same small box I had seen yesterday. It was the box containing the Small Rebirth Pill.
"Yeonghwan couldn't come because he has something to do now, but he made sure to tell me. He promised to give this elixir to you, almsgiver, and told me to be sure to pass it on because he couldn't give it to you."
"I am just grateful that you didn't forget."
As I bowed, he placed his hand on my shoulder, then turned his head to look at my Martial Uncle and said, "Hyeon Yang. I would like to help this almsgiver consume the elixir. May I do so?"
"A-Abbot? What you're saying now is...!"
"What's there to be so surprised about. It's nothing special, I'm just trying to help with the qi circulation a little."
Although he said it nonchalantly, for a master of Shaolin, and a person in the position of an abbot at that, to personally help with qi circulation is a huge deal.
And not to a martial artist of the same Shaolin Temple, but to a complete stranger, a martial artist of Wudang.
"Of course, you could help him too. But the nature of the energy of Wudang's elixirs and Shaolin's elixirs is a little different. If it were a Taecheongdan, it wouldn't be my place to interfere, but if it's the energy of a Small Rebirth Pill, wouldn't I know it best in the Central Plains?"
My Martial Uncle nodded his head without realizing it.
In fact, it's not that someone was making him do it, and since Grandmaster Gakil wanted to do it himself, there was no need to refuse.
"That... I'm afraid it might be too much of a bother."
"Haha! The bother already started when this little almsgiver beat all of our sect's rising stars. For just this much."
He said playfully and then said to me, "I haven't asked for your opinion, almsgiver. So, do you dislike it?"
"Ah, no. Please."
"Then let's do it right now. Although I may seem to be chattering idly here, I'm actually a pretty busy person."
"I understand."
They say you should seize an opportunity when it comes.
I quickly nodded my head in response, then got off the bed and sat on the floor in a cross-legged position.
While Grandmaster Gakil sat behind me, my Martial Uncle found his sword and held it.
"What could happen in the great Shaolin, but just in case, I will stand guard."
"That would be reassuring."
He smiled brightly, then handed me the wooden box and placed his hand on my back.
Because it was the first time in my life I was eating a Small Rebirth Pill, my heart began to pound a little with anticipation of how amazing it would be.
(End of Chapter)