Return of the Mount Hua Sect [EN]: Chapter 5

The name ‘Six Harmony Skill’ sounded important, like something ancient and powerful. ‘Six Harmony’ means everything working together as one. It includes heaven, earth, and all directions – east, west, south, and north. It’s about balance and connection.

So, what kind of martial art is this Six Harmony Skill?

It’s the kind of martial art you’d sell for almost no money at all at a street stall. It’s not just cheap for a manual; it’s cheap for any book. It’s sold for the price of the paper it’s printed on, the cheapest martial art in the world. In other words, it’s useless.

When street thugs try to become martial artists, the first book they buy from the bookstore is this Six Harmony Skill. It’s the martial art that those who don’t want to follow the strict rules of a Taoist temple or martial arts school learn on their own, hoping to become strong heroes.

Back when Chung Myung was active in the world of martial artists, Six Harmony Skill, Six Harmony Fist, and Three Talent Sword were known as the three great street martial arts. That’s how bad it was.

But why learn such a cheap martial art?

Because it’s not cheap.

Six Harmony Skill is the first skill everyone learns at Mount Hua. Everyone who enters Mount Hua starts their martial arts journey with Six Harmony Skill.

The reason Six Harmony Skill ended up on the streets is that an ancestor of Mount Hua, wanting to share the benefits of this skill with everyone, made it public.

Unfortunately, simply learning Six Harmony Skill doesn’t make you strong. It only makes you slightly healthier.

Those who didn’t see the desired effect made fun of Six Harmony Skill as a terrible martial art and complained that Mount Hua had taken out the important parts before sharing it.

Eventually, people started to think it was useless, to the point that those newly entering Mount Hua would protest upon learning that Six Harmony Skill was the first thing they would learn.

But Chung Myung knew.

Six Harmony is definitely not a bad martial art. If Six Harmony were as trash-like as the world perceived it to be, it wouldn’t have remained the basic martial art of Mount Hua for hundreds of years.

Everything has its use.

Six Harmony Skill doesn’t make your inner power grow fast. No, if you only consider how well it helps you get inner energy, it doesn’t even reach one-tenth of the basic skills of most martial arts groups.

But Six Harmony has an incredible effect that outweighs that disadvantage.

It completely purifies the body of the one who learns it.

So, to put it simply.

It’s literally a basic skill.

Basic. Foundation work.

Six Harmony is the best martial art for refining and perfecting the energy center in your lower stomach and the body. But others are focusing on building energy, while he’s just refining his energy center, so the effect isn’t visible.

What happens when others are running ahead while you’re just crawling on the ground?

It’s a disaster.

In the end, even Mount Hua gave up on really focusing on Six Harmony Skill. Because of tradition, they just had people learn it as a starting skill, and as soon as they seemed to be able to move energy, they quickly moved on to Small Pure Qi Skill.

In his past life, Chung Myung also didn’t cling to useless Six Harmony Skill. He thought it was much better to learn a better mental cultivation technique at that time.

It was a hundred times more of a loss. Damn it!

This is what he regretted most in his past life. He now understood he had made a huge mistake in his past life.

If he hadn’t rushed to move on to other mental cultivation techniques and had instead completed Six Harmony Skill before starting other martial arts, he could have become at least twice as strong.

He thought of his martial arts skills like a tall tower. He had rushed to build the higher floors without making sure the base was strong. Now, he understood that Six Harmony Skill was the key to building a solid foundation.

Now, he had the opportunity to resolve that lifelong regret.

This time, he wouldn’t be impatient. He would put in careful work to complete it, so that the tower he would build would be even more massive and beautiful.

Hoo-oop.

Chung Myung, sitting cross-legged, closed his eyes and slowly remembered the instructions for Six Harmony Skill, how to move his ‘qi’, or inner energy, through his body.

The moment the mind stirs, the inner energy moves.

Through breathing, energy from the air around him is drawn into his body. Those entering basic cultivation usually spend close to a month just feeling this energy from nature for the first time, but Chung Myung didn’t need that process.

The drawn-in energy slowly travels through his body, guided by Six Harmony Skill, and settles around his lower abdomen.

From now on.

Of course, Chung Myung had no intention of merely learning Six Harmony Skill. Following the path laid out by the ancestors wouldn’t be bad, but one who has already walked the path once cannot be satisfied with walking the same path exactly the same way.

More refined.

He concentrates his mind and filters out the impurities mixed in with the gathered energies. He imagined a huge, messy cloth with threads going everywhere, carefully picking out any threads that were not perfectly straight and clean, filtering out and filtering out again the energies that are not perfectly pure.

Perfect from the start.

The size of the gathered energy doesn’t matter at all. What he needs now is not impure internal energy of sixty years, but a single, perfect grain of energy.

The energy is whittled away. The grain of rice-sized energy became smaller, even smaller. After more than half a day, all that remained was a single, extremely tiny grain of energy.

That energy settles in his lower abdomen, creating a small space that is almost embarrassing to call his energy center.

Flash!

Chung Myung opened his eyes.

Hoo-oo-oo-oo.

His face is covered in sweat. The rags he’s wearing are also dirtied by the sweat and impurities flowing from his body. They were dirty to begin with, but now they’re even dirtier.

It’s the first time I’ve ever concentrated so much on circulating energy.

But rather than being tired, he felt refreshed. And he was very pleased with the result.

He quietly stroked his lower abdomen. It’s a shape that’s hard to call his energy center, but anyway, he succeeded in the first step towards a perfect foundation.

It’s extremely weak right now.

Even if you searched through the entire history of the world of martial artists, there wouldn’t be anyone who created a weaker energy center than Chung Myung did in their first energy circulation.

But Chung Myung knew.

This small energy center would lead him to another world. This small but perfect energy would roll and roll like a snowball, soon creating a massive landslide that no one in the world could stop.

Yes. Just like…

Like that powerful enemy.

Chung Myung’s body trembled.

Thinking of the Demon Lord made him feel a chill all over his body.

He wasn’t human.

Overwhelming.

No, he was an existence that couldn’t even be fully expressed with such words.

The best fighters created by gathering all the elites of the groups of fighters that looked down on the world. That elite unit wasn’t even aiming for the entire Demonic Sect. They were only charging at the Demon Lord.

Both sides were destroyed.

He was so strong, it was like fighting against everyone in the martial arts world at once.

Maybe….

This time, he might be able to reach him.

If he does everything he can, one by one.

Chung Myung jumped up from his seat.

Alright, then….

Stagger.

Chung Myung’s half-standing body slumped forward powerlessly.

Uh….

What’s this? Did I make myself weak by using up all my energy?

Kkeu-eung-cha!

He puts strength into his arm to raise his body. No, he was trying to raise it. But his arm wouldn’t listen to him.

Eueung?

Twitch twitch.

His arm, twitching as if struck by lightning, came into view. The sight of his skinny arm trembling was pitiful.

Why, why is it like this?

No? If I circulated energy, my body should be overflowing with strength….

Wait a minute.

Chung Myung’s gaze turned to his lower abdomen, which was touching the floor.

The purest energy in the world is gathered there, really just as small as a speck of dust.

The purity of the energy was so good that even Chung Myung, who had been the Plum Blossom Sword Saint, was gleeful…. But the amount was miraculously small, enough to be exhausted if a child just threw a punch with all their might.

Which means?

No, damn it! This doesn’t help me use my body right now at all!

Chung Myung groaned, clutching his head in his hands. He collapsed onto the floor, kicking his legs in frustration.

You should have thought about it before you made it! Thought about it! Your head is there to think, so why didn’t you think! Why!

It feels like he can hear his Senior Brother Jang Moon’s voice in his ear.

-Please think before you live! Think! Why do you always do things first and then think! Why! Don’t just have a head, use it to think!

It felt like Chung Myung’s hasty personality had caused an accident once again. If I had known this would happen, I would have made it a little bigger!

I have to go to Mount Hua with this body?

How far is it from Wuhan to Mount Hua? So, roughly….

T-Two thousand li?

His eyes rolled back.

Two thousand li?

An ordinary person who hasn’t learned martial arts struggles to travel a hundred li a day. But he has to travel two thousand ‘li’ – a very long distance, like hundreds of miles – with this starving child’s body? A whopping two thousand li?

Kkeueup!

Chung Myung rubbed his face roughly with both hands.

Tch. What a rotten life!

But what can he do? It’s already done.

In fact, even if he had known, he wouldn’t have been able to create a particularly larger energy center. He had deeply realized how trying to make things easy now would become obstacles that would block him in the future.

He won’t give up the future for the present anymore!

…but that’s not such a simple problem, is it?

Kkeueueeung.

Chung Myung staggered up from his seat.

What is life.

In the end, all of this was just a hardship that Chung Myung had to endure.

Hardship makes a hero!

There’s nothing you can’t do with determination!

Despite his weak body, Chung Myung forced himself to stand. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and started walking back towards the road. He would not give up.

Plop!

Kkeueu….

There are things you can’t do with determination.

What a brand new realization at this age.

Chung Myung was newly reminded that there are forces beyond one’s control in the world.

He could endure the pain in his legs. He could somehow endure the screams of his body.

But there was one thing he couldn’t endure.

I’m going to starve to death.

The hunger that scratched at his stomach couldn’t be solved with anything.

In the past, he thought he was somewhat used to being hungry. Cultivating often requires strict self-discipline. Eating something is an act of accepting inner energy, but naturally, it also means accepting impure things.

Therefore, those who cultivate strictly forbid cooked food. During very hard training, there were even times when they stopped eating grains like rice and wheat. Chung Myung was also someone who trained at Mount Hua, a Taoist temple, and he thought he could handle hunger.

No, that’s what he thought.

But Chung Myung didn’t know.

How big of a difference there is between not being able to do something because you don’t have it and not doing it even though you have it!

There was a world of difference between enduring even though you have food and starving because you don’t have food. Extreme hunger cannot be overcome with endurance. It felt like sharp knives were wielding in his stomach.

He somehow managed to get out of the main road and into the city, but he didn’t have the energy to do anything more than that. He had almost crawled to the marketplace.

The first death crisis I’m experiencing since being reborn is starving to death.

Here he was, Chung Myung, who had faced down armies and demons, now about to be defeated by… an empty stomach!

Chung Myung groaned, feeling that the “going to starve to death” was not just a way of speaking but an actual threat.

He wasn’t kidding, he really was going to starve to death like this.

He tried to catch a wild animal, but he couldn’t even run and move properly because that beggar bastard, Jongpal or whatever, had beaten his body to a pulp.

No, even before that, this body was on the verge of starving to death when he left Wuhan. Maybe he had already starved to death once.

And now he’s facing the crisis of starving to death for the second time.

What should I do?

You need money to get food, and you need to work to earn money. But it was impossible to work with this body.

Then what….

It was that moment.

Jingle.

The sound of metal, heard from somewhere, echoed clearly.