Chapter 290

System

Skill Window

Martial Arts Manual Creation

Grade: None

Restriction: Martial arts at Great Completion

Description: The caster can create a martial arts manual only for martial arts they have achieved Great Completion in. If their understanding of the martial art is deep, they may produce an even better result.

Special Note: Materials are required to create a martial arts manual.

I stared at the Skill information window and thought.

Hold on. When did I get this?

Was it when I achieved Great Completion in the Jin Family’s Manoeuvre Technique? Or the Jin Family’s Spear Technique?

It had been over a year, so my memory was hazy.

I had somehow received the Skill, but I had never used it even once because I had no opportunity to do so.

No, that’s not quite right. It wasn’t that I had no opportunity. I just never intended to use it.

Whenever I faced the members of Peace Guild after returning to the modern world, I occasionally felt the urge. But every time, I reached the same final conclusion.

What kind of trouble would I get into if I leaked martial arts?

Imagine one person fighting with bronze weapons when some idiot showed up with a steel sword and started hacking everyone apart.

Everyone would envy him, and they’d swarm him like a pack of dogs to get their hands on that steel sword.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the members of Peace Guild, but at least at the time, I thought it was the right decision.

But there’s no reason to hesitate anymore.

After directly crossing blows with Lee Jungryong and his subordinates, Park Jihoon and Go Jun, I had realized that there were secrets in the modern world I knew nothing about.

Their movements and use of mana were clearly closer to those of Murim people. If the enemy was armed with steel swords, we needed to equip ourselves with something similar.

“Hoo…”

As I drew in a deep breath, the foul stench was sucked into my nostrils.

The place where I was squatting right now was a bathroom stall.

The environment was terrible, but it was the perfect place to avoid being seen while creating a martial arts manual.

Then let’s get started.

I spread out the A4 paper and pen I had bought from the convenience store inside the hospital.

Then I muttered inwardly.

Activate Martial Arts Manual Creation.

Beep.

System

All materials are ready.

The Martial Arts Manual Creation Skill is activated. You can create a martial arts manual for martial arts that have achieved Great Completion.

Currently available: Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique, Jin Family’s Manoeuvre Technique, Jin Family’s Spear Technique.

Select the martial art you want.

None of the Fire Gate Clan’s martial arts I had learned had reached Great Completion.

The Jin Family of Taiyuan’s hereditary martial arts, on the other hand, were stable, and their power was just right.

Of those, I chose the most fundamental one.

Select Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique.

Beep.

System

Create a martial arts manual for Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique?

Y / N

Yes.

Beep! Beep!

System

Intelligence insufficient! Brainpower insufficient!

Teaching is several times more difficult than learning!

To create a manual for a Peak-Grade martial art, you need at least 100 Intelligence!

“…You bastards. Seriously.”

With tears of blood streaming down my face, I opened my Status Window.

As I invested my precious points into Intelligence, the hand holding the pen began to race across the A4 paper like lightning.

Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch!

“Gasp!”

I was surprised twice.

Once by that incredible speed, and a second time by the fact that everything being written was in Chinese.

“…”

Fuck, I can’t work like this.

I began searching for the language settings.

Slide.

I entered the hospital room where the Peace Guild members were staying. The people who had been huddled together talking turned their heads toward me.

“Where did you go that took so long… Wait, did you go to the bathroom?”

At Song Song’s words, spoken while she held her nose, I answered gloomily.

“How did you know?”

“The smell of shit was overwhelming.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Yeah. It felt like a giant turd was walking toward me.”

“Thanks for the kind words. I feel invigorated.”

After spending more than an hour inside a stinking bathroom stall, my nose had gone numb.

I answered in a completely drained voice and handed her the stack of A4 pages I had stapled together.

“Here.”

“What is this?”

“A love letter for you. I wrote it while having diarrhea.”

“Blech! Bleegh!”

“What a passionate reaction.”

“Bleeeggh!”

“…”

That wasn’t a reaction. She was genuinely sick.

I thought things between us were already over, but I couldn’t help the dull ache in a corner of my heart.

“I loved you…”

“Bleeeggh!”

“Hunter Song Song, are you all right?”

As her retching grew more violent, Butler Kim flew over to pat her on the back.

In the meantime, the A4 pages Song Song had been waving around like the Taegeukgi¹ passed into someone else’s hands.

After reading the words on the first page, Team Leader Choi let out a quiet laugh as he looked at me.

“Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique? That’s an unusual title for a love letter.”

“The contents are even more unusual.”

“…Pardon?”

“Keep reading.”

Team Leader Choi was quick on the uptake. He immediately straightened his posture and turned the pages with a solemn expression.

A pair of eyes moved busily over handwriting so mechanical that it was hard to believe I had written it myself.

Flip. Flip. Flip…

His pace grew faster and faster, and hot breaths escaped between his lips.

After rapidly reading through more than ten pages, he suddenly lifted his head. His eyes had widened like trays.

“This is…!”

His reaction surprised even me.

He knows what this is?

It was called a martial arts manual, but once I had actually created it, the manual for the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique looked enough like a book of traditional medicine that anyone unfamiliar with it might mistake it for one.

It showed the locations and functions of the countless acupoints in the human body, along with the paths used to circulate internal energy.

Song Song would have read a few pages and closed it, but Team Leader Choi’s reaction was far beyond what I had expected.

“Do you recognize what this is?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Then a name I was hearing for the first time slipped between his lips.

“This is a Mana Cultivation Method.”

“A mana what?”

“A Mana Cultivation Method!”

Mana Cultivation Method?

What a bizarre name. Whoever came up with it had a strange naming sense.

At that moment, Butler Kim hurried over after hearing Team Leader Choi’s raised voice.

“Did you just say Mana Cultivation Method?”

“Yes, here.”

Butler Kim took the manual from Team Leader Choi and frantically turned the pages.

Before long, he gave a similar reaction.

“Gasp.”

“What do you think, Butler Kim?”

“It’s certain. This is definitely a Mana Cultivation Method. But where on earth did you…?”

I got it from the bathroom.

Team Leader Choi raised a finger and pointed at me.

“Mr. Jin Taekyung…”

“Hunter Jin Taekyung?”

Whip! Crack!

Before Team Leader Choi could even finish speaking, Butler Kim’s head snapped toward me with a violent sound.

“How does Hunter Jin Taekyung possess a Mana Cultivation Method?”

I answered calmly.

“For starters, I don’t know what a Mana Cultivation Method is. Naturally, this is the first I’ve heard of this being one. By the way, is your neck all right? I think I just heard a bone break…”

“Is that important right now? This little neck of mine can break for all I care.”

“…It sounds pretty important to me.”

What do you mean, it can break? This old man seemed to be getting tougher by the day.

Of course, that only meant this matter was that important.

So Lee Jungryong learned a Mana Cultivation Method.

It had sounded strange at first because it was a kind of compound word, but after muttering it a few times, it rolled smoothly off my tongue.

It wasn’t difficult to infer from the meaning of the word that this was the internal cultivation technique used by Hunters.

And that this was precisely what Lee Jungryong and his subordinates had learned.

“Could you answer my question, please?”

“Taekyung, this is an extremely important matter.”

Butler Kim and Team Leader Choi looked more serious than ever.

I rolled my eyes as if flustered, then gave them the answer I had prepared in advance.

“Well, my father taught it to me when I was young…”

“Pardon me, but are you referring to your late father?”

“Yes.”

Team Leader Choi furrowed his brow.

“I understand your late father was an ordinary man.”

“That’s right.”

“Then how did he know a Mana Cultivation Method…?”

“He probably didn’t know either. When he taught it to me, he told me it was just a health regimen passed down through our family.”

“A health regimen?”

“A Mana Cultivation Method passed down through the family…”

I pointed at the cover as the two of them stared at me in disbelief.

Four neat characters were written on it in a font as orderly as that of an office document.

Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique

The name was perfect.

If there was a Jin Family of Taiyuan in Shanxi Province, then there was a Jin Family of Goyang in Gyeonggi Province. That was all there was to it.

If I claimed it was a family heirloom passed down through the generations, they wouldn’t have much to say.

Just as I had expected, both of them were briefly rendered speechless. I continued.

“It’s a kind of breathing method. My father taught it to me from a young age, saying it would make me healthier if I practiced it. He even made me memorize something called a formula.”

“It is similar to a Mana Cultivation Method, but…”

“Could we see the original? The original manual?”

“After my father passed away, I was too distracted by everything that happened… I looked for it after we moved, but it was gone.”

“Ah…”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“It is. Fortunately, I memorized every word of it.”

It was true that something I owned had disappeared. I had simply inserted the nonexistent original manual for the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique into the story.

Perfect destruction of evidence. When I said even the original was gone, I could see both of their shoulders droop.

It would be interesting to see their faces if they knew this was the original.

The martial arts manuals people imagined all looked more or less the same.

Half-rotted bamboo slips. Ancient books that smelled of rat urine.

Tell them to go play jokgu.² I don’t have any of that crap.

I stood the stiff stack of A4 paper neatly upright and slammed a stapler into it. Murim people would have been aghast, but a twenty-first-century martial arts manual had to look something like this.

“By the way, this is incredible. A cultivation technique… I never imagined something like this existed.”

“I’ve seen things like this mentioned a few times in novels and movies. I think they called them martial arts.”

“You are right, Young Master. In a way, a Mana Cultivation Method is also a form of martial arts. If you look here, it says that channeling circulates and accumulates qi, doesn’t it? This follows the same general principle as a Mana Cultivation Method…”

Yeah, it is martial arts.

While I held back the words itching to escape my mouth, Team Leader Choi asked,

“So, Mr. Jin Taekyung, you’ve been practicing Mana Cultivation Method—or rather, the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique—since you were young?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to put it this way, but its effects seem to have been somewhat less impressive than expected…”

Translated directly, he was asking, If you had this, why did you spend seven years as an F-rank Hunter? It was a sharp question. And one I had expected.

I calmly opened my mouth.

“As you know, I was quite skilled for an F-rank Hunter. I even received a commendation as the top graduate of my training center.”

“Ah, yes. I’ve heard about that. I also know that you served as a deputy team leader at your former Guild.”

It had been a tiny, weak Guild, but F-rank Hunters were treated like punching bags wherever they went and like dog shit on the street.

Unless they were related by blood to the Guild’s leadership, it was extremely rare for an F-rank Hunter to serve as a deputy team leader. That was why my appointment had been a subject of conversation within the Guild for quite some time.

“There was a lot of talk about it. People complained about seniority and all that, while Hunters with higher ranks and more experience than me grumbled about the pecking order… In the end, I proved myself through my ability. And the reason I was able to do that was the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique.”

“Hmm.”

“Looking at that, it does seem to have had an effect.”

I knew it. This alone wouldn’t be enough to convince them of my past or the effectiveness of the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique.

I smiled faintly as I looked at the others. By then, Song Song had stopped retching, and even Im Kkeokjeong was watching my mouth with eyes full of curiosity.