Chapter 351. The Feeling of Witnessing the First Martial Art.

Just how quick on the uptake were the Lust Demon and the Ghost Demon?

Now that I thought about it, that Lust Demon bastard, who could hold his liquor as well as I could, seemed to have deliberately crawled off like a dog and fled somewhere. The Ghost Demon, whose whereabouts had become unclear, also appeared to have slipped away from the drinking bout early.

“…….”

I had never prospered because of alcohol, yet it felt as though I was being ruined by it. When the dizziness subsided for a moment, Cheonak’s words flowed out.

“Sect Leader, if that Baekga bastard and I competed in lightness skill, who would win?”

In truth, Baekga’s lightness skill was nothing to scoff at, but since his opponent was one of the Three Calamities, the answer came easily.

Wouldn’t a tiger be faster than a fox?

I glanced sideways at Cheonak and answered.

“Wouldn’t you be faster than that Baekga bastard, Senior?”

“I am faster.”

“Congratulations.”

Cheonak, who had somehow come right up beside me, tapped my head with his tiger forepaw and said,

“What would the reason be?”

“If you’re fast, you’re fast. I don’t think there’s any particular reason…”

Cheonak poked his own thigh with a finger and said,

“The thighs.”

Even at a glance, they looked about twice as thick as Baekga’s thighs. At times like this, being quick on the uptake was not especially a good thing. Having resigned myself to life, I gave a halfhearted nod.

“Aha, so it was the thighs.”

“The largest muscles in the body are located there.”

“Are you perhaps drunk?”

“I’m completely sober. In any case, not only in lightness skill, but the longer and more intense an exchange of offense and defense becomes, this is also the center of various movements, and it is also the place that raises one’s firepower.”

I looked at Cheonak, then nodded.

Cheonak pushed the Twin Iron Heavy Staff toward me with his foot.

“Lift it. Put it across the back of your neck and hold it with both hands.”

Flustered, I unconsciously looked at Eldest Brother.

The moment Eldest Brother met my eyes, he calmly closed them and prepared to circulate his qi and regulate his breathing.

“…….”

That was not circulating qi and regulating breath. It was closing his eyes in avoidance while pretending to circulate qi and regulate breath, but there was no way to confirm that in this atmosphere.

Here, I gained enlightenment. While I had been diligently drinking, intending to face Cheonak alone, the rest of the Four Great Evils had foreseen what was about to happen and had all taken refuge…

This was how frightening alcohol was.

I pointed at Cheonak with my finger.

“Fine. It’s not as if I can’t do it. You’re making me do something interesting again.”

I stood, loosened up a bit, then lifted the Twin Iron Heavy Staff and set it on my neck and shoulders. Had life always been this heavy? I liked the crushing weight very much.

Cheonak folded his arms and looked at me as he said,

“Sit. In a horse stance.”

“Fine. I thought that would be it.”

I sat while carrying the Twin Iron Heavy Staff.

Cheonak corrected my posture.

“Don’t sit all the way down. Yes. Your backside slightly raised. Start from there and stand. Good. You’ve trained your lightness skill and external arts quite a bit.”

There are times when being acknowledged does not make one happy.

Cheonak continued.

“Sit. Stand.”

“Of course.”

“Stand.”

“I should stand.”

“Do you still have some strength left?”

“I do.”

“Stand.”

Cheonak sat on the bed, and perhaps finding it bothersome to speak, made me repeat the motion with his finger. Without using internal energy, I repeatedly sat and stood as Cheonak ordered, and for a moment I considered whether I could subdue Cheonak if I charged at him while swinging the Twin Iron Heavy Staff.

It was such an absurd notion that the consideration did not last long.

I was already sober.

After making me repeat it over a dozen times, Cheonak nodded.

“Good. Put it down.”

I used internal energy to set down the Twin Iron Heavy Staff, then steadied my breathing. The wind blowing from somewhere was quite cool. I had now learned that expelling alcohol through sweat was more efficient than drawing it out through the fingers.

Cheonak, who had been staring at me, said,

“Sect Leader, with external arts, it is easy to distinguish rank or stage. But with internal arts, distinguishing stages is ambiguous. That is because their uses and types are diverse. External arts, however, are different. What would the reason be?”

I looked around at the lumps of iron of various sizes in the training hall and answered.

“Lifting a hundred geun, lifting two hundred geun. Since the weight can be calculated, I suppose it means the rank can be quantified by stage. It is fairly concrete.”

“Correct. For your age, that level means your external arts are on the high side. Even by the standards I set. To tell you one thing, both in the past and even now, my rank in external arts is higher than that Beggars’ Sect beggar bastard’s or the Cult Leader’s.”

I felt the last remaining trace of drunkenness flee all at once.

“Hm, truly?”

“However, I lacked internal energy compared to those two. The two of them struggled because of my external arts, and I struggled because of their internal arts. But none of our totals was overwhelming enough to surpass the others. What will happen as more time passes?”

“That is rather ambiguous.”

As I organized my thoughts, I continued with a puzzled expression.

“If too much time passes, wouldn’t you become the weakest, Senior?”

Cheonak shook his head.

“Not necessarily. The beggar is fairly old as well. But it is true that external arts have an aspect that degenerates with the passage of time. That is the limit of external arts.”

“Hm.”

“One must also estimate when the external arts of the two of them will deteriorate. On the other hand, internal energy is a power that accumulates sequentially, so it does not grow weaker simply because time passes. That is why I, rather, cannot neglect training my external arts. In any case, I will have to face the Cult Leader while maintaining them. The three of us walk different paths. There is no way to know who is right.”

I sat down on the floor and listened closely to Cheonak’s words.

“I see.”

“At the level of the Three Calamities, it is only natural that I would be at a disadvantage. My internal energy was the shallowest from the beginning. However, you too must think about the fact that my external arts, superior to those two, allowed me to continue the match. There is a point where internal and external arts interlock in harmony and explode. And that creates a moment that surpasses each individual rank. This is a realm that only those who have personally raised the rank of their external arts can confirm, so explaining it in words is meaningless. You should remember it.”

Now that I looked at it, it seemed Cheonak had been making me lift heavy things in order to calculate the level of my external arts by his own standards. In other words, he was advising me because he believed there was still some room for further development in the field of external arts as well.

So when I had first witnessed Cheonak’s fight, it had not been for nothing that a tiger came to mind. There had been something there, something on a different trajectory from movements simply called martial arts.

Because that feeling brought a wild beast to mind, I had associated it with a tiger. That meant Cheonak’s current body also stood apart from ordinary masters of the murim. Because his body had been completed to a high level, one could feel his rank and pressure the moment one saw him, perhaps?

Cheonak spoke to me as if throwing me an assignment.

“You have certainly grown strong enough to belie your youth, but right now your external arts and internal arts are each below the level of the Three Calamities. Do you have a way to win? What I mean is, you must at least catch up in one of them. Of course, if the sum of the two surpasses theirs, then you will stand above the Three Calamities. Though I do not know when that will be.”

I asked Cheonak.

“Senior, was that phrase about tearing someone to death perhaps not just a habit of speech, but a kind of technique?”

Cheonak nodded.

“You’re sharp. No matter how much one has trained in protective body arts, the body is bound to be weak against a tearing, misaligned pressure. Because it is skin and muscle. So even the Divine Beggar or the Cult Leader would have easily anticipated that if they were caught in my two hands, their bodies could be torn apart. If I grab an arm, the arm tears. If I grab a place with a joint, I can twist it and rip it out.”

Cheonak pointed at his own head with a finger.

“While fighting me, they realized that if they faced me relying only on internal energy, they could die in an instant. They are no ordinary masters. Moreover, pressure from external arts must have been a first for both of them, so settling the match would have been even more difficult. I took the upper hand in the battle of nerves, but that was a method used with mutual destruction in mind to a certain extent, so one can by no means say those two are beneath me.”

I nodded.

“I see.”

Come to think of it, I had once taken the upper hand in a battle of nerves by forcing mutual destruction as well, so I understood exactly what he meant. Cheonak was truly a man like a beast that knew how to fight.

“Are you training your internal energy as well?”

“I am, but at the speed I accumulate internal energy, it will be difficult to catch up to those two anyway. I can only follow along enough so the gap doesn’t widen further.”

I learned an astonishing amount from my conversation with Cheonak.

Cheonak uncrossed his arms and said,

“In any case, today is the first day, so we’ll leave it at this. Rest.”

Leave it at this because it was the first day?

If it was the first day, did that not mean there would be a second day?

The drunken tiger sprang to his feet and returned to the tiger’s den.

I blinked, then looked at the Sword Demon.

“…….”

Only after Cheonak disappeared did the Sword Demon open his eyes and stare at me quietly.

“……Every last thing he said was right, so I do not know what to say.”

“Hm?”

“Didn’t you say that in the past, after helping the leader of the Beggars’ Sect, you also exchanged some talk about martial learning?”

“I did.”

“Then is there anyone in this era who has learned about martial learning from two of the Three Calamities? You should consider this fate and accept it.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we all learned together?”

The Sword Demon smiled faintly and replied,

“Do you truly mean that? With that personality of his?”

“Hm.”

“The martial arts of the world discuss subtle and complicated things, but Cheonak’s martial learning speaks only of repeated pain to the body and tempering the flesh. If that were someone else’s claim, it would be fine to dismiss it entirely, but of all people, he is one of the Three Calamities. You know as well that it is impossible to ignore.”

Since Eldest Brother’s words were almost always right, I could not deny it either.

I nodded.

“Fine. As long as I don’t die.”

The Sword Demon nodded.

“As soon as day breaks, I will take my disciple and Second Brother to Baekeungji. We also need to organize the residence and property there. In any case, it is right for us to make ourselves scarce. Even if all you learn here is how to handle heavy lumps of iron, it is proper that we do not spy on it. At least Baekeungji is close to here, so learn what you can, and join us later.”

Eldest Brother and I met each other’s eyes several times while lost in thought. Of course, since the Sword Demon had heard Cheonak’s words beside me, he too must have felt much from them.

Sure enough, after pondering for a moment, the Sword Demon said this.

“Strangely enough.”

“Yes.”

“Cheonak has mastered a martial art that stands at the perfect opposite point of demonic arts. It feels as though I have witnessed the first martial art. If techniques, sword arts, and fist arts developed in complexity because the strength that people could use against one another was similar, Cheonak’s martial learning raised the very standard of strength itself. In any case, does that not mean that, in external arts at least, he is currently the best under heaven?”

As I listened to the Sword Demon, I looked down at the goosebumps rising on my forearms.

“You’re right. This is the first martial art.”

The first martial art was to temper the body. And its purpose must have been that even in an era when swords had yet to be made, one still had to face wild beasts. In a way, it occurred to me that without ever confirming the limits of the body, some martial techniques had developed as a kind of suitable trickery. These were thoughts I could never have reached had I not come to the Steel Manor.

Strangely, Cheonak showed no airs whatsoever about teaching me such a thing.

He had merely announced that there had been a first day, and that there would be a next day.

He was a man in whom empty formalities did not exist at all.

In truth, the reason Cheonak had suddenly decided to teach me a part of his martial learning was not clear either. It felt as though it might simply have been something he did while drunk.

Because it had happened so naturally.

I could not even tell whether this was something that happened while drinking, or the sort of fortuitous encounter martial artists spoke of.

Suddenly, the Lust Demon appeared from somewhere, approached while bent at the waist, and then sat down beside the Sword Demon as if collapsing.

“Master.”

“What is it?”

The Lust Demon spoke with an expression and posture that said his head felt like it was splitting open.

“Now that I think about it, there will be a memorial rite soon…… I believe I must briefly go to Baekeungji.”

Eldest Brother and I looked at the Lust Demon with pathetic expressions. The Lust Demon looked at us with half-lidded eyes.

“…….”

The Sword Demon asked,

“Did you drink a lot?”

“Yes. I didn’t think any tricks would work, so I accepted everything he gave me.”

“There is a memorial rite?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must go.”

This time, the Ghost Demon walked over looking perfectly fine and sat beside me.

“Third Brother, suffer a little.”

“I will.”

Suddenly, the Lust Demon, his drunkenness seeming to have cleared a little, looked around at us. Seeing this, it seemed the Lust Demon had been vomiting somewhere and had not heard the conversation with Cheonak, while the Ghost Demon had been nearby and heard all of it.

Eldest Brother summarized the situation in a low tone.

“It seems a member of the Three Calamities has something to teach the Sect Master. Since we cannot watch another man’s martial learning from nearby, let us stay in Baekeungji for a while.”

The Lust Demon answered in his usual tone.

“Ah, understood.”

The Sword Demon spoke to me as if giving an earnest reminder.

“He likely does not expect your external arts to become strong in a short time. It would be more accurate to say he is sharing his very thoughts on martial learning. That, too, may perhaps be more important than any sword art or mental cultivation method, so from now on, it would be right for you to treat Cheonak with courtesy. It is true that both the one teaching and the one learning are generally people without much courtesy, but you are in the position of learning, so it is somewhat different.”

The Sword Demon, the Lust Demon, and the Ghost Demon looked at me. There are times when something that has happened is so hard to understand that it feels wondrous, and it seemed I was not the only one feeling that way.

The Lust Demon whispered in a quiet tone.

“How did things suddenly progress like this? This is no ordinary matter.”

The Ghost Demon muttered.

“Surely not because of the painting?”

I added a word as well.

“I don’t know either. Why things are flowing this way.”

We looked at our eldest brother as though seeking an answer. Then the Sword Demon continued in a quiet tone.

“Third Brother is likely the first person in recent times to have spoken with Cheonak at such length. Aside from Muje, of course. For now, what I have seen as Third Brother’s strength is that he can converse with any sort of person. If he can chatter all day with the waiters, and chatter all day with the Samjae as well, then that in itself is an ability.”

The Sword Demon said to the Lust Demon.

“No matter what happens at Baekeungji, or what happens here, go to Baekeungji and hire some people so we can connect as quickly as possible. We should be prepared.”

The Lust Demon nodded.

“Understood.”

The Sword Demon looked at me.

“Third Brother, you train.”

I only nodded.