4

The Refined Plum Blossom Qi Art

Before he had come back in time to his younger self, Ju Seo-Cheon had lived for more than 77 years. Of course, he couldn’t remember the all memories he had when he was young properly.

But there was something that he vaguely remembered, it was the refined version of the Plum Blossom Qi Art.

The Plum Blossom Qi Art was the first method taught to anyone who entered the Mount Hua sect to help form their inner core. To form a dantian and build a foundation for one’s martial arts. It was a method that he had learned, as well as one he could never forget.

‘Back then, I just tried to feel the energy somehow’

When Ju Seo-Cheon was a child, he was always worried about how good he was in martial arts when he was taken as a disciple by his teacher.

If he didn’t perform well in martial arts, wouldn’t he be abandoned by his teacher?

This was also not limited to only Ju Seo-Cheon, but also to the other disciples who were orphans and had experienced starvation.

The training of the Hua Sect, although very difficult and tormenting, at least didn’t make them starve, the Hua sect gave them food and they were always filled up without any worries of starving. Also, there was no need to worry about food during winter.

In order to not get abandoned by his teacher, Ju Seo-Cheon had worked very hard on his martial arts training.

But, no matter how much effort he had invested, he wasn’t talented enough and he had to go through a lot of suffering to become proficient in the Plum Blossom Qi Art.

‘Ha…., and now I have to forcefully delay it’

Due to Ju Seo-Cheon already having the mental enlightenment it wouldn’t be hard to train and become good in the Plum Blossom Qi Art again.

But if he were to do so, the elders and his master would notice it and they might make a big fuss about it.

Of course, they were not as proficient in the art like he was, but he couldn’t really become better than them after training only once.

It’s hard to notice talent as even if the most talented person in the world comes to you and says he is the best, it cannot be determined until their abilities are fully tested.

But now, Ju Seo-Cheon’s teacher was watching him 24/7, so he had to be patient and wait for the day that he isn’t under his watch anymore.

A year had passed.

Ju Seo-Cheon was now 9 years old.

“Oh, you finally got into the fifth stage, that’s great.”

Yoo Jung-Mok smiled kindly and stroked Ju Seo-Cheon’s head. Ju Seo-Cheon looked shy but was still smiling faintly. It was a little awkward when his master treated him like a child at first.

No matter how his exterior looks, he was still an old man who was over 70 years old. He is not at an age where he could easily adapt to things.

But there was no way Yoo Jung-Mok would know that. He patted Seo-Cheon’s head and complimented him, “You did well at everything I told you to do”.

Ju Seo-Cheon had also matured over time. He was shameful, but not necessarily bad.

For all his previous life, the only thing that he had cherished was to have someone who could be always there by his side.

And Yoo Jung-Mok was that person.

It would be a lie if Seo-Cheon said that he didn’t miss his master’s touch.

For this moment, he was happy to receive the praise from Yoo Jung-Mok, forgetting about his age and everything else.

“From today onwards, you will have to train by yourself. It’s going to be hard, but I believe you will do well.” Yoo Jung-Mok said, feeling sorry.

‘Finally!!!’

Although he was very happy, he didn’t show it on the outside due to the presence of his teacher, although he did cheer with arms wide open inside his heart.

During the past year, Yoo Jung-Mok was helping him with his training in martial arts.

And due to that, he couldn’t practice what he wanted to.

But that ends today. Now, he would be able to carry out what he had put off for all this while.

‘Fortunately, it wasn’t very boring.’

It was very tedious and boring to slowly practice the Qi Art he already knew so well.

He was sick of doing it again and again.

It was also very torturous to experience the Nakan Hell again, even if in the past Ju Seo-Cheon had suffered much more, it was still hard to go through the Nakan hell again.

When he would see the instructors who knew the limits of their bodies and trained them to the brink of death, he had the urge to kill them.

And even after all the training, if you had some energy left, they would make you train more and leave you at the brink of death. It didn’t matter that he got the chance to live his life again, he really didn’t want to experience the Nakan Hell again.

And…

The most important thing was the organizing of his memories.

He was well aware of what would happen later on. But his memories are still perfect.

There is a definite limit to how much a human’s mind can passively store memory. It’s almost impossible to remember a lifetime full of memories in great detail.

So just to make sure that he wouldn’t forget anything.

He desperately recorded and recalled any of the big events that might happen in the future.

He wanted to write all his memories in a book, but he was afraid if anyone sees the book and remembers it, he wouldn’t know the number of variables it might cause.

Of course, even if someone looked at it, would they believe this? It might be overlooked, but of course, he cannot overlook the exceptions.

For this, he wrote his memories on soil and erased it as soon as he wrote it.

At the same time, while organizing these memories, Ju Seo-Cheon made plans on how to move forward from then on.

It was said there was nothing to do in the library, but in old age, he still went there a lot. It was helpful for him.

In addition to a good understanding of martial arts, a lot of intelligence was required if one wanted to be a Hua Sect Elder.

Particularly, since the era of war was over, it was necessary to have the ability to have diplomatic talks.

When he was elected as the elder, he didn’t want to be seen as someone who was only put on the seat of the elder, he wanted to be seen as a proper elder.

“And now the wait is over!”

...But the basic training was still not over....

For a while, he would still have to suffer in the Hell of Nakan and also do co-training at the training center.

However, that’s not the main problem, until they all have studied and completed the Plum Blossom Qi Art they cannot study and practice another Qi Art.

“You can now put what you have learned for the past year into action.”

A deep smile formed on Ju Seo-Cheon’s mouth after hearing these words.

In the future, sixty-six years from the present.

At that time, a genius emerged who had excellent knowledge and an abundance of talent in martial arts since the day he was born. And the genius one day revealed a secret of the Plum Blossom Qi Art.

‘Nobody could have imagined it’

It was the achievement of the decade!

Everyone in the Hua Sect came to know about it. If you wanted to achieve even higher stages, you needed to learn this refined martial art.

There was no other Art better than this.

In fact, hundreds of years have passed since the foundations were laid of the Hua Sect and its name became known throughout the Martial Alliance, but still, no one could guess this enormous secret of theirs.

Ju Seo-Cheon, like everyone else, was just a part of the time that went by. He was also among the part of the people who just went with the flow.

Thus he was very shocked to see the secret of the Plum Blossom Qi Art to have been revealed.

“It’s really scary to have a fixed and inflexible mind because once you have set in stone about something in your mind, you cannot change it. And you cannot see the real intentions or purposes behind those things.”

The Plum Blossom Qi Art is just a basic Art to build the foundations and a path. It’s just kind of a stepping stone.

This was an established notion  about the Plum Blossom Qi Art that everyone had accepted.

The Plum Blossom Qi Art was one of the better Qi arts in the Martial Alliance, and it was also a foundational Art which everyone in the Hua sect started with.

By the time, everyone was focused on achieving even greater military exploits, only one person was able to find the secret of the Plum Blossom Qi Art.

After thinking about the past, Ju Seo-Cheon sat in front of a Plum tree that was near him after confirming that no one was near him.

What entered his sight was a white flower. A white plum.

‘We have been together forever.’

The symbol of Mount Hua was the blade and the plum flower.

It was called ‘winter plum’ because it bloomed in cold weather and also had another name which was ‘plum that blossoms in the snow’.

He had grown up looking at the plum blossom, even when the Murim fell in chaos and when the Hua Sect fell into a crisis.

He saw the plum blossom when he was young when he became one of the Five Elders, and even when he was on his deathbed.

And now, he was planning to bloom the secret of that plum.

‘Whew.’

He sat cross-legged and straightened his back.

He raised his chin and closed his eyes.

He then took in a deep breath and exhaled it.

Suuuup, Haaaa.

Inhaling and exhaling. He controlled it constantly and repeated it.

But it wasn’t that he was simply breathing.

Even though it was a little, he moved the warm energy starting from his dantian.

At first, it was the normal Plum Blossom Qi Art but it started to change in the middle. It was a secret circulating method that got revealed in the future.

‘Plum Flower Life Arts!’

For reference, this secret got shared with the disciples of Mount Hua Sect as soon as it got revealed.

Although the times of war had ended by that time and peace was all around, this so-called peace was quite unstable.

Murim suffered countless damages due to the war that continued for dozens of years and suffered in its aftermath.

The forces they had were merely a third compared to when they were at their prime and that was the same for Hua Sect.

They found the need to nurture future scholars to find stability once again and they discovered the Plum Flower Life Arts at that time.

In the case of Ju Seo Cheon, he was in a position to confirm the safety of the Plum Flower Life Arts and transmit it to others and so he had to memorize it.

‘It’s faint but it is entering.’

A smile formed on its own.’

‘The energy of the plum blossom!’

This was the secret of the Plum Blossom Qi Arts. The reason it would be called as Life Arts in the future.

It was because of the vitality contained in the plum blossom.

Qi training was referred to as accumulating qi that circulated in nature through a particular type of breathing and storing it in one’s abdomen.

That was the most basic and fundamental principle.

However, the Plum Blossom Life Arts went step beyond that fundamental principle and that was the vitality of the plum tree.

It was impossible to do it with other trees, but you could absorb the energy near the plum tree if you circulated it while reciting a chant.

At first glance, it might look like some Evil Art, but that wasn’t the case at all. It wasn’t taking the life energy of the plum to store it one’s dantian.

If that was the case, the plum tree would wither in no time and wouldn’t be able to blossom any flowers again. If that were the case, It wouldn’t have been called a Life Art. It would be an Evil Art.

‘It’s not taking or borrowing its vitality. I’m just inhaling what the plants exhale, and as such the plum tree inhales what I exhale.’

Qi wasn’t something only humans had. It was present in animals and even the weeds that were widely spread everywhere also had it.

And if they were a creature, they would breathe.

It was the same for the plum tree.

And the Plum Flower Life Arts let him suck in the vitality that got released along with some qi to slowly pile it up in his dantian.

‘Plum Blossom Unity.’

He recited a verse of the Plum Flower Life Arts that would be revealed in the future.

‘Become one with the Plum Blossom and breathe.’

‘I feel a bit sorry.’

Originally, all of this glory and fame should go to one person.

He had a guilty conscience while thinking that he unraveled the secrets before the scholar that wasn’t even born yet.

That’s why he was only planning to seal the secret that he knew the Plum Blossom Life Arts to himself in consideration of that scholar.

‘Good, it’s done.’

The biggest reason one could only remain at the stage of the Plum Blossom Qi Arts was because of the energy condensation.

The other things were fine but if you only saw the speed in which it accumulated internal energy it was so slow it was considered as being third rated in Kang Ho.

That’s why people judged that this was the only flaw this art had.

But that wasn’t the case anymore after the secret got revealed. It wasn’t to the point it could be called a divine art but it was still a peak first-rate art.

The reason there was a problem with the condensation of the energy was because they couldn’t reveal the secret behind it in the first place. But it now became perfect after having solved it.

‘It’s not at the level of a low ranked divine art but it won’t lose out when compared to other Peak internal energy arts.’

He was currently nine years old after having created his dantian and started condensing energy at the age of eight. He had just accumulated one year’s worth of energy.

But if he utilized the Plum Flower Life Arts he would be able to accumulate a great amount of energy after only a short time.

At the moment, even if his master would examine his pulse to check he would be able to hide it. He could only say that it was perfect.

The effect of the newly discovered secret was to improve the speed at which the energy was refined; this helped further the expansion of the dantian.

‘But most of all, the thing that makes me the happiest….’

He couldn’t hold back the smile forming on its own.

He focused his mind and executed the Plum Blossom Qi Arts in an instant just as if he was letting go of all of his accumulated frustration.

‘It means that I won’t have to hold back anymore!’

Even though he had the knowledge to complete the Plum Blossom Qi Arts long ago, he had to suppress himself because his master felt his pulse every day.

But that wasn’t the case anymore. He didn’t have to do that anymore.

It didn’t mean that your boundary would increase in an instant just because you completed the Plum Blossom Qi Arts.

That’s why instructors or other disciples wouldn’t be able to notice if they didn’t intervene directly and also, being able to feel the pulse of a young disciple and teach him was the authority of the teacher.

No one felt the pulses of others except for special cases, and if they do feel something special they tell that to the disciple’s master.

Ju Seo-Cheon was relieved because of these circumstances and circulated the Plum Blossom Qi Arts quickly without holding back anymore.

The insight that was tied up with chains broke and exploded like a flowing dam and harmonized in his mind and body. His will, that rode on the passage where qi was flowing, reached his dantian and created a change.

The five stars Plum Blossom Qi Arts reached ten stars in an instant.

The completion of an art was achieved at twelve stars but he couldn’t advance to the next stage because he lacked internal energy.

But that was also a problem time would solve. He just had to utilize the Plum Flower Qi Arts to condense his energy quickly.

‘I have barely taken a step into the future.’

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***