Martial Arts Encyclopedia - Chapter 14

This is the final chapter of the mass release.

Paradign shift (3)

The next day I’m busy preparing the supplies for my training: food, water, clothes, soap, and other essentials. In the back of the temple there is an unused patio that is perfect for training, and there is an extra room inside the temple when I need to isolate myself on the late stages. For now, Artoria doesn't need to guard me twenty-four seven, but she asked to work part time during this month with provisions to stay several days away, and surprisingly the manager allowed it. I need to visit the café one of those days.

…

Stage 1, Body Tempering.

The harder part of this stage is to rebuild my foundation, to shift away from the body created purely through the Hercules Method and instead incorporating all available methods. Using the Peerless Heavenly Scripture as a base, I slowly nudge my body to take the shape dictated by the cultivation scripture. Thanks to my Cultivation Talent, Martial Talent, and high Utility stats, I can be considered a “genius” of cultivation, at least on the same level as a Genius Young Master, and while that’s a far cry compared with a protagonist level talent, it is more than enough for now.

To be more precise, the laying of the foundation goes through the following phases: Peerless Heavenly Scripture creates a universal base to accept all concepts within, then Clear Qi Profound Method determines the basic architecture of the Post Great-Calamity Martial Cultivation. Hercules Method, Prana-Bindu and Niko Style are the physical aspects of this initial phase to temper the body, while Touki, Mentat, Outer Body Training Method, and Abyssal Insight form the mental aspect that will guide the building of muscle memory.

During the day, I break down and reshape my body, while at night I meditate and focus on the mental disciplines, combining Mentat and Outer Body Training Method to consolidate my growth, and together with Touki and Abyssal Insight I simulate battles to course correct my actions.

In just a few days, my muscles reach the expected form, and I can feel an increase in quality compared with before, signifying I finished the early stage. Breaking through to the middle stage is easy, as my sinews quickly respond to the training regime, and much like in the previous instance with only the Hercules Method, I work on every single sinew of my body, no matter how small it is. By the time I reach the peak of the middle stage my body flexibility reached new heights. The breakthrough to the next stage comes when I use my muscles and strengthened sinews to shift one of my back vertebrae into place, feeling both pain and relief at the same time.

On the late stage of the Body Tempering Stage my bones are shifted, stretched, and compressed to match the ideal “immortal bones” designed by the cultivation scripture, and it is a process that requires me to work on all bones of my body. Thankfully, I am still young enough that this task isn’t too onerous to my body, and I reach the peak of the stage when I relax all my muscles and my skeleton still retains the same position. While I can still further optimize the bone structure, once I reach a certain threshold that pursuit can be combined with other cultivation practices. Thanks to my experience with the Hercules Method, this part also goes swiftly, and my new training in Prana-Bindu ensures that my nervous system will quickly adapt to the new status quo.

Stage 2, Meridian Connecting.

The breakthrough to the next stage, the Early Meridian Connecting Stage involves relaxing my muscles to a certain extent where the meridians aren’t being unconsciously restricted by my body until they’re unclogged. It’s like relieving a tight knot on my muscles but affecting a greater area in my body. This process must be repeated on all meridians, and thankfully I know about all of them. Once all meridians are open, I assess my proficiency with Shiaori, and the intensity and speed of relaxation and contraction become much stronger than before.

For the Middle Meridian Connecting Stage, I realized that my meridians were like spaghetti. While they were already “connected” as one great system, they’re not “properly aligned,” for lack of better words. This stage reminds me of sliding puzzles trying to recreate a picture of my body. In this stage, the Mentat discipline helped simulate the proper shape for a swift passage, only remaining long enough for all meridians to connect in synchronous movement without my conscious effort.

The Late Meridian Connecting Stage is another stage of Accumulation because I need to train those meridians to enlarge them at least three times their original size. Normally, accelerating those accumulation stages is difficult unless you use special resources, however with the aid of Hercules Method, Mentat, and Outer Body Training Method I can quickly enter active recovery mode to quickly build up my meridians. It was also the first time I asked Artoria for a special request: buy me several buckets of ice, which will further enhance the recovery. Eventually, the meridians reach the optimal size as pushing them further becomes exponentially more strenuous.

Looking at the calendar I realize I’m slightly behind schedule if you include the practical testing of some of my other purchases from the Encyclopedia. Thankfully, with my newly developed mental acuity, it is easy to recalculate and re-assess my previous expectations. I should still reach the last Stage on schedule.

Stage 3, Qi Directing Stage

The Qi cycle is the cycle of energy in your body. It is not just inhaling air from your nose, absorbing oxygen, exchanging it on your blood, carrying the oxygen through the red cells towards all parts of the body, taking the carbon dioxide and transporting it towards the lungs so you can expel it when you exhale. When you cultivate, that cycle extends through the meridians, as more energy passes through your body while reaching deeper areas, and then they extract more turbid Qi to expel from the body.

The Early Qi Directing Stage starts when I can extend the normal breathing cycle towards the meridians, creating a larger cycle of my body in a process I call “breathing with your whole body.” The Total Concentration Breathing would have helped here, but Mentat and Outer Body Training Method help speed up the process, giving me more time to train and helping me evaluate my progress.

…

Artoria Pendragon, Goddess of Rhongomyniad

I patiently wait outside his door, this extra room in the temple chosen for its privileged location. In another time, it might work as a prison for solitary confinement, however for a “cultivator” it is the perfect area for their specialized training.

In life I never met those “cultivators,” only meeting Asian magi while wandering as a ghost, occasionally hunting down monsters and monsters in human skin that threatened humanity. All of that before…

I let out a sight, the weight of my mistakes coming back to me once again, shame and self-recrimination being recent companions of mine. I welcome those feelings, for I deserve the shame and guilt after the events that led to my fight with Chaldea.

Despite this, He never gave up on me, and only He had the courage to try and correct my behavior. Despite considering the weakest among my knights, He might have one of the strongest wills.

With Andrew's appearance just a few months after I arrived in this world, it can’t be a coincidence. There is much that we need to discuss, but I’m not brave enough to put it into words, not yet. However, without the weight of duty, bloodlines, and politics forcing my hand, perhaps this time I can allow myself to smile more, to be human once more.

I glance at the door again, remembering what Andrew told me a while back.

“The Early Qi Directing Stage requires me to concentrate, as I need to perfect the base technique. I will take one wisp of Heaven and Earth Qi and cycle through my body, and until I can perform this process one hundred times in a row without errors I can’t advance further, so I need an environment without any distractions.”

“Once I do that, I will enter the Middle stage, where I will gather more than a whisper of Qi at the time. At that point I will undergo a process called ‘First Washing of Marrows’, where my bones will be cleansed of impurities through the intake of Qi. This stage also has the nickname of Thundering Bones stage, since the marrow washing process will be loud like thunder. So, unless I scream for your help, don’t be alarmed by the noise you hear from the room.”

Boom Boom BOOM

“FUCK!”

“It might also hurt, so please don’t mind my language. If you keep hearing thunder despite the profanity, it means things are proceeding according to plan, so don’t worry about it.”

BOOM BOOM BOOM

“MOTHERFUCKER!”

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

“SON OF A BITCH!”

I hope Andrew is alright.

…

Thankfully, the pain stopped after the third day. No wonder people recommend starting cultivation as early as possible. While I wasn’t too old to cultivate my bones had already settled, and I had to put extra effort on the marrow washing. I bet Yan Zhaoge, the main character of History Strongest Senior Brother, didn’t have to deal with this kind of pain since he was already a Martial Scholar at seventeen when he had to deal with this.

It took a full week of constant cultivation around the clock for the marrow washing process to finish. I became intimately familiar with all two-hundred and six bones of my body, and I will probably need to clean this room with powerful chemicals after I’m done with the amount of gunk that came out of my pores and secretions. Our Familia next recruit will have herbal bath supplies for this stage of their cultivation if I have any say in it.

After finishing the middle stage, comes the Late Qi Directing Stage. I just need to fill and form my Qi Sea, or Qi Ocean, inside my Dantian.

For a lower world like a Wuxia world, or a Korean Martial Arts Manhwa, this process might take up to sixty years of constant effort for someone with enough talent to reach Grandmaster or equivalent level. On higher worlds, such as the Eight Extremities World from History Strongest Senior Brother, or any other proper Xianxia Manhua, the process might take between months to a few years. This is the time when cultivation resources start to become relevant, with tonics, pills, and other items meant to speed up the accumulation process.

What kind of proper cultivator I would be, if I didn’t have my own cheat when it comes to something so fundamental?

I flip up a bag full of magic stones from the dungeon, about fifty thousand Valis worth from the Jack Bird Egg ambush and my descent towards the Pass Parade ambush. That monster is the gift that keeps on giving. According to the Guild, there is a special method to extract the energy from the magic stones to power our magitech items.

To me, ever since I took that first wisp of Heaven and Earth Qi the energy from the magic stones became obvious to me. It is a strong, vigorous, and hateful energy that would be harmful to a normal adventurer. The guilds have records of certain adventurers eating the magic stones, or snorting magic stone dust like drugs, all thanks to special skills they possess. If only I had one of those skills, or something similar.

Like, for example, the Peerless Heavenly Scripture.

Of course, I can’t just eat the damn things right away, that would be too easy.

Picking up one of the magic stones, I draw both the Heaven and Earth Qi and the turbid Qi inside of my Dantian, but instead of simply taking those two energies, I use the opposing natures of Clear and Turbid Qi to form a motor: the Turbid Qi spins and catches more Clear Qi from the environment than I normally could, while the Peerless Heavenly Scripture slowly grinds the thick Turbid Qi into useable bits that I can safely use. When all the Turbid Qi is gone, I fetch another stone and continue to process once more.

Slowly, the Qi Ocean forms inside my Dantian, alternating between Clear Qi and Turbid Qi to form an ocean with the qualities of Life-Giving Water, like the Primordial Ocean. While in motion, the Qi Ocean appears Clear, while still it appears Turbid, forming the idea of Chaos, until it finally settles down into Pure Qi. After a time, the Qi Ocean is filled with more Heaven and Earth Qi until it is full. Normally you would stop here, however, in a sense I already reached the Peak of the Martial Artist Realm while practicing the Hercules Method, with my current proficiency in Prana-Bindu also supporting that idea.

At least, that was what I believed in the past. I take another deep breath, drawing more Heaven and Earth Qi on my Qi Ocean, until the energy “spills”, the Qi reaching the rest of my body, and I finally understand. It’s not just a matter of control of your body through external means. Pushing your intestines out of harm's way through careful muscle control is a mere parlor trick compared with the true meaning of the Inner Discernment Stage.

I look at my hands, with sight beyond sight, and I can feel each individual muscle fiber, every nerve ending, body hair, my bones, and the inner organs. I can feel the blood flow in my veins and arteries, the autonomic movements of my digestive system and beating heart, even the workings of my brain inside the skull is visible to me.

The Peak Stage of Martial Artist Realm, Inner Discernment, is when your Proprioception turns into Propriocognition.

Now I realize why the Clear Qi Profound Art didn’t have a dedicated training regime for the Martial Artist Realm, simply giving a blueprint for this stage, while the following Realms have a more detailed instruction for each stage they touch. Once you reach Inner Discernment, pure physical training becomes obsolete as you can simply Will your body to build itself. More advanced external martial arts start to rely more on Qi not because they neglect the physical body, but because they assume the cultivator has already optimized the physical body to its utmost limit.

Well then, with the knowledge from the Hercules Method, Prana-Bindu, Mentat, Outer Body Training Method, and Abyssal Insight, how much further can I push my body?

Let’s find out.