chapter 22
22. The Man Who Wields the Sword Well
My senior brother was indeed a genius among geniuses.
He almost perfectly reverse-engineered the form of the Demonic Sword Technique from the sword marks left by the Mixed Origin Sword Technique.
“Senior brother, I think it’s better to swing the sword horizontally there.”
“Like this? Yes, it seems to connect the sword movements more naturally.”
Sometimes the form was wrong, but whenever that happened, I corrected his posture.
Of course, only with words, without physical contact.
The sword technique, unlike hand techniques or finger techniques, was not directly helpful for the pleasures of the flesh.
But as the saying goes, the sword is the king of all weapons, and the sword was the common weapon of most martial artists.
Especially among the orthodox martial artists I was part of, there was a high probability of using the sword.
In such a situation, if one were learning a high-level sword technique?
Naturally, one could attempt physical contact under the pretext of teaching sword techniques to peerless beauties who were less skilled than oneself.
Like a back hug, naturally wrapping around their waist and back, touching their slender and white forearms while correcting their sword movements.
‘The quick sword suits you better than the phantom sword, miss.’
Saying such cool lines as well.
‘This young master has deep knowledge of the sword! There is much to learn! Can you continue to guide me in the future?’
‘Oh my! This young master’s body is really firm!’
Subtle physical contact with beautiful young ladies!
—
—
In the process, even the subtle appeals of the young ladies who felt my perfect physique!
But that wasn’t all.
If you wield a sword well, you can naturally have many duels with beautiful women.
In modern psychology, there is a concept called the suspension bridge effect.
When a man and a woman meet on a dangerous suspension bridge, the thrill of the bridge makes their hearts race, and they mistake this feeling for love. This effect also applied to duels.
In the commonly spoken duels, the thrill from the danger was often mistaken for romantic feelings.
It’s like saying, “You’re the first man to defeat me.”
‘A master of the sword is my ideal type! I fell for this young master’s sword!’
The scene of a beautiful woman, who had been burning with competitive spirit towards me, confessing her feelings vividly came to mind.
I, too, could aim for the suspension bridge effect when dueling with beautiful women.
Even if it wasn’t the suspension bridge effect, most duels in the martial world were akin to social events.
So, the more duels you have, the more contact points you have with beautiful women, which is good.
First, you have to meet beautiful women to win their hearts, don’t you?
The advantages of the sword didn’t end there.
As the saying goes, “The spear for a hundred days, the sword for a thousand days, the king of all weapons is the sword,” the sword is the most universal weapon and at the same time the most coveted weapon among martial artists.
Therefore, a man who wields a sword well was popular in the martial world.
A top swordsman could be considered a brainy and s*xy man in modern terms.
A s*xy man who practices swordsmanship, you could call him a “sword-s*xy man.”
So, the sword saint Yu Jin-hwi of my previous life, with his top-notch swordsmanship and handsome appearance, reached the pinnacle of being a “sword-s*xy man,” enjoying earth-shattering popularity among the women of the central plains.
Therefore, to become the “sword-s*xy man” of the central plains, I had to diligently practice swordsmanship along with other techniques.
I would never again use the claw technique, Nine Yin White Bone Claw, which I learned in my previous life, that was unmanly, unpopular, and unimpressive.
If my senior brother had been a sister, I would have personally guided her. In fact, directly correcting the posture is more efficient.
But unfortunately, Yu Jin-hwi was a dark-skinned man, and I had no intention of making physical contact with a man.
Naturally, it was more appropriate to guide him verbally, even if it was less efficient.
However, my senior brother was a genius among geniuses, and he perfectly understood and corrected his posture based on my verbal instructions.
*
After about two days.
The work of restoring the Demonic Sword Technique while holed up in the warehouse, eating the fasting pills, was finally completed.
“We did it! Junior brother! We did it! We finished deciphering the sword manual! We have recovered the lost ultimate technique of our sect!”
My senior brother, who had perfectly restored the final move of the Demonic Sword Technique, the Demonic Sword of Destruction, burst into tears of joy and ran towards me.
—
—
Why is he acting like this all of a sudden?
Is he really attempting a surprise hug like this?
My hands trembled.
But what if I refuse the hug here? Senior Brother would surely look at me strangely.
Damn it, what kind of trap is this?
I have no choice.
The first hug was already tainted.
With tears in my eyes, I had no choice but to give in to the hug this time.
Embrace.
I swallowed my tears, hiding my boiling emotions, and hugged Senior Brother.
A sweet scent of wildflowers brushed past my nose.
“It’s all thanks to you! Without your advice, I wouldn’t have been able to perfectly decipher the diagram of the Demonic Sword Technique! You are the benefactor of our sect!”
Senior Brother, who was in my arms, muttered while shedding tears.
Benefactor, my foot.
Even without me, Senior Brother would have been able to obtain the Demonic Sword Technique on his own, just like in his previous life.
I merely shortened the trial and error process, bringing the inevitable result a bit sooner.
‘As expected, his insane talent is truly insane.’
Even though I minimized the trial and error through my advice, to reverse-engineer the sword marks and restore the Demonic Sword Technique in just two days is truly absurd, an unbelievable level of martial talent.
“No, Senior Brother. How can you call me the benefactor of our sect? Your words are too gracious. All I did was give a bit of advice. The credit for successfully deciphering the diagram of the Demonic Sword Technique belongs solely to you, Senior Brother, thanks to your outstanding comprehension and martial talent.”
At my words, Senior Brother shook his head.
“No. If it weren’t for your timely advice whenever I got stuck in the middle of deciphering, it would have taken much longer. Thanks to you, I was able to decipher it quickly. So the credit for deciphering the diagram belongs to you.”
Senior Brother subtly acknowledged that he could have deciphered it without me.
Yet, he still went out of his way to praise me. If it were a woman instead of a man, it would have been a reward in the industry, but alas.
Anyway, the hug is enough now.
There’s no need to stay in contact with a man any longer.
I carefully detached Senior Brother from my embrace.
“Thank you for acknowledging my insignificant contribution, Senior Brother.”
“No, it’s thanks to you. By the way, we should leave the cave now. We’ve been delayed for too long. Master must be worried.”
—
—
Senior Brother spoke to me with a serious expression.
While we were holed up in the secret cave restoring the Demonic Sword Technique, Jeon Yeong couldn’t find us.
I didn’t leave any traces, and there was no information in the records of my previous life that Jeon Yeong found the missing Yoo Jin-hwi first.
Well, Jeon Yeong might be wandering around the communal mountain with sweat on his feet by now, but there was no chance he would find the secret cave in either his past or present life.
So, it is right for us to go out and return to the main mountain.
“Understood. But Senior Brother, there might still be arrangements left by our ancestors in the secret cave that we haven’t found yet. Please give me some time to search the cave.”
“Alright.”
Senior Brother nodded readily at my request.
I turned my gaze towards the stone wall engraved with sword marks.
But we can’t return to the main mountain right now.
Why would I have spent two days in a confined space with Senior Brother restoring swordsmanship?
It was all to find the ultimate secret of vitality left by the Demonic Sword Master.
I placed my hand on the stone wall.
“Junior Brother, why the stone wall? Is there something there?”
I nodded slightly at Senior Brother’s words and closed my eyes, projecting my senses into the stone wall.
Buzz.
The stone wall vibrated faintly, and the internal structure of the stone wall detected through my senses emerged in my mind as a three-dimensional shape.
Along with it, the design of the mechanism installed inside the stone wall unfolded in my mind.
To open this stone wall honestly, we had to perform the Demonic Sword Technique to the extreme according to the sword path engraved on the stone wall.
But neither Senior Brother nor I could perform the Demonic Sword Technique to the extreme yet.
The restoration of the Demonic Sword Technique was successful, but we didn’t have the matching internal energy technique, the Mixed Origin Internal Energy Technique.
So, performing the proper Demonic Sword Technique was impossible at this point.
Senior Brother might be able to perform the extreme Demonic Sword Technique without the Mixed Origin Internal Energy Technique based on his genius talent, martial prowess, and internal energy accumulated over sixty years, but he couldn’t do it right now.
And I didn’t intend to wait until then.
‘The secret cave could collapse at any moment.’
Even in my previous life, Senior Brother returned to the Guangcheng Dan Blood after growing up, but he couldn’t enter because the secret cave had collapsed.
So, we had to open the door right now.
And just like you don’t necessarily need to enter a password to log in to a computer honestly, the mechanism was the same.
What I was about to do was a kind of hacking.
‘It’s old-fashioned since it was installed 300 years ago.’
—
—
I thought while looking at the anatomical diagram of the mechanical device I had drawn in my mind.
If it were my senior brother, he might not know, but I had acquired knowledge related to mechanical devices in my previous life.
In this field, I wasn’t as good as the head of the Jegal family, but I could call myself a master.
Originally, I learned this knowledge to create my tomb, which I would use in the future after executing the Great Reincarnation Technique.
There was no better security device to protect my tomb, which was buried with gold, silver, martial arts books, and elixirs, from greedy grave robbers than mechanical devices.
So, I learned mechanical devices to personally supervise the installation of mechanical devices and traps in my tomb.
Although my carefully crafted tomb disappeared because I returned instead of reincarnating, the knowledge of mechanical devices was still stored in my head.
‘Every security device must have a weakness. Mechanical devices are no exception.’
Thanks to the knowledge from my previous life, I was able to find the weakness of the mechanical device that the Mixed Origin Sword Master had installed on the stone wall.
Even though it was a mechanical device hiding the arrangement of the world’s best, it was an old thing from 300 years ago.
Naturally, compared to the latest mechanical devices that had developed over 300 years, its level was crude.
For someone like me, who possessed advanced knowledge of future mechanical devices, solving this level of mechanical device was as easy as flipping my hand.
I quietly placed my palm on the identified weakness and secretly flowed my internal energy.
Pssss.
Creak, creak! Creak, creak, creak!
As the internal energy injected into the weakness of the stone wall exploded, the sound of metal bursting echoed from inside the stone wall.
It was the sound of the mechanical device breaking.
“Sa, Sa-je?! What is this sound?!”
I ignored my senior brother’s words and focused on my work.
Knowing the weakness didn’t mean I could break through the mechanical device.
I had to break the device just enough to open the door by precisely hitting the weakness.
If I applied more or less force than necessary, the mechanical device would explode, causing the cave to collapse, or the device would break strangely, and the door would never open.
It was like picking a lock with a hairpin or opening a safe by turning the dial while listening with a stethoscope.
Therefore, delicate and precise force control was essential for this work.
And for someone like me, who had reached the state of transcendence, controlling internal energy to this extent was as easy as doing it with my eyes closed.
I repeated the process of finding the weakness of the stone wall, injecting internal energy with my palm, and breaking the device with the appropriate amount of force.
‘They say a man absorbed in his work is attractive…’
In modern times, the scene that women often chose as the s*xiest moment of their boyfriends was when they looked back while reversing the car from the passenger seat.
—
It was truly a pity.
With this level of concentration, he could probably win the favor of a beautiful woman.
At the moment he injected his inner strength into the eighth and final weak point, destroying it.
Creak, creak, creak!
With a grand metallic tearing sound, the mechanism was completely destroyed.
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
Along with it, the entire storage room shook, and the stone wall, engraved with sword marks, split in half, revealing its dark interior.
‘Security deactivation successful.’
Finally, the path to the ultimate power was opened.