Chapter 290

System

Skill Window

Martial Arts Manual Creation

Grade: None

Restriction: Martial arts at Great Completion

Description: The caster can create manuals only for martial arts they have achieved Great Completion in. A deeper understanding of the martial art may produce better results.

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 acquired the Skill, but I had never used it because there had been no opportunity.

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

After returning to the modern world, I had occasionally felt the urge whenever I saw the members of Peace Guild. But every time, I reached the same conclusion.

What kind of trouble would I be asking for if I let martial arts leak out?

Imagine everyone else fighting with bronze weapons when some bastard showed up with a steel sword and started cutting down anyone in his path.

Everyone would envy him, then swarm 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 the time, I believed holding back was the right decision.

But now there’s no reason to hesitate.

Crossing blows with Lee Jungryong and his subordinates, Park Jihoon and Go Jun, had taught me that the modern world held secrets I knew nothing about.

Their movements and use of mana were distinctly similar to those of Murim martial artists. If the enemy was armed with steel swords, we needed comparable equipment.

“Hoo…”

I drew a deep breath, sucking a foul stench into my nostrils.

I was currently squatting inside a bathroom stall.

The surroundings were awful, but it was the perfect place to create a martial arts manual without anyone seeing me.

All right. Let’s get started.

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

Then I muttered inwardly.

Activate Martial Arts Manual Creation.

Beep.

System

All materials are ready.

The Martial Arts Manual Creation Skill has been activated. You can create manuals 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 desired martial art.

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 reasonably powerful.

Of those, I chose the most fundamental.

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 harder than learning!

Creating a manual for a Peak-Grade martial art requires at least 100 Intelligence!

“…You bastards. Seriously.”

Weeping tears of blood, I opened my Status Window.

The moment I poured my precious points into Intelligence, the hand holding the pen began racing across the A4 paper like lightning.

Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch!

“Gasp!”

I received two shocks.

The first was the incredible speed. The second was that everything being written was in Chinese.

“…”

Fuck this. I can’t work like this.

I began desperately searching for the language settings.

The door slid open.

I entered the hospital room where the Peace Guild members were staying. Everyone had been gathered together talking, but they turned toward me as I came in.

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

Song Song pinched her nose. I answered gloomily.

“How did you know?”

“You reek of shit.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Yeah. I thought a giant turd had walked into the room.”

“Thanks for the kind words. I feel stronger already.”

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

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

“Here.”

“What’s this?”

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

“Blech! Bleegh!”

“What a passionate reaction.”

“Bleeeggh!”

“…”

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

I had thought there was nothing left between us to salvage, but I still 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 to her side and began patting her back.

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

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

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

“What’s written inside is even more unusual.”

“…Pardon?”

“Keep reading.”

Team Leader Choi was quick on the uptake. He immediately straightened and began turning the pages with a solemn expression.

His eyes raced across 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 tearing through ten-odd pages in an instant, he jerked his head up. His eyes had widened like saucers.

“This is…!”

Even I was taken aback by his reaction.

He knows what this is?

It might have been called a martial arts manual, but now that I had made it, anyone unfamiliar with the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique could easily have mistaken the manual for a traditional medicine text.

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

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

“Do you recognize it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Then a term I had never heard before slipped from his lips.

“This is a Mana Cultivation Method.”

“A mana what?”

“A Mana Cultivation Method!”

Mana Cultivation Method?

What a bizarre name. Whoever had coined it possessed a strange sense of style.

Butler Kim hurried over when he heard Team Leader Choi raise his voice.

“Did you just say Mana Cultivation Method?”

“Yes. Here.”

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

Before long, he reacted much the same way.

“Gasp.”

“What do you think, Butler Kim?”

“There’s no doubt about it. This is definitely a Mana Cultivation Method. But where on earth did this come 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 finish, Butler Kim’s head snapped toward me with a series of violent cracks.

“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 did he mean, it could break? This old man seemed to be getting tougher by the day.

Of course, that only showed how important this was.

So Lee Jungryong learned a Mana Cultivation Method.

The compound term had sounded strange at first, but after repeating it a few times, it began to roll smoothly off my tongue.

It wasn’t hard to infer from the name that it referred to an internal cultivation technique used by Hunters.

And that Lee Jungryong and his subordinates had learned precisely such a technique.

“Could you please answer my question?”

“Taekyung, this is extremely important.”

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

I glanced around as though 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 said it was just a health regimen passed down through our family.”

“A health regimen?”

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

As the two stared at me in disbelief, I pointed to the cover.

Four neat characters were printed there in lettering as clean as an office document’s font.

Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique

Even the name was perfect.

If Shanxi Province had the Jin Family of Taiyuan, then Gyeonggi Province had the Jin Family of Goyang. Simple as that.

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

As expected, they were both briefly rendered speechless. I continued.

“It’s a kind of breathing method. My father started teaching it to me when I was young, saying that practicing it would make me healthier. He even made me memorize something called a formula word for word.”

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

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

“After my father passed away, everything was so chaotic… I looked for it after we moved, but it was gone.”

“Ah…”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“It is. Fortunately, I memorized every last word.”

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

Perfect destruction of evidence. When they heard that even the original was gone, both of their shoulders sagged.

I’d love 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 reeking of rat piss.

They could go play jokgu.² I didn’t have any of that crap.

I stood the crisp stack of A4 paper upright and slammed a stapler through it. Murim martial artists would have been appalled, but a twenty-first-century martial arts manual deserved to look the part.

“Still, this is extraordinary. A cultivation technique… I never imagined such a thing truly existed.”

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

“You are correct, Young Master. In a sense, a Mana Cultivation Method is also a form of martial arts. Look here. It says that you circulate and accumulate qi by circulating your energy, does it not? That follows the same principle as a Mana Cultivation Method…”

Yeah, it is martial arts.

While I fought back the words itching to escape my mouth, Team Leader Choi asked me a question.

“Then, Mr. Jin Taekyung, have you been practicing a Mana Cultivation Method—or rather, the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique—since childhood?”

Yes.

“I’m sorry to put it this way, but its effects seem 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?

A sharp question. Also one I had expected.

I answered without batting an eye.

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

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

Granted, it had been a tiny, weak Guild, but F-rank Hunters were treated like punching bags wherever they went—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. Hunters with higher ranks and more experience than me complained about seniority and grumbled that they should have come first… In the end, I proved myself through sheer ability. And the reason I could do that was the Jin Family’s Cultivation Technique.”

“Hmm.”

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

I knew. 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 and looked around. Song Song had finally stopped retching, and even Im Kkeokjeong was watching me with curiosity, waiting for what I would say next.