It was not easy, switching to the Crouched Eagle Talon training method. After Garen was sent straight to the borders of the Blackboard Region by the Flying Saucer, he came down using one of the single-person flying machines His Highness Mingway gave him. Without much delay, he arrived back inside the Blackboard Region directly.
Just as Garen expected, the security and scanning were the same level as they were back in the Blackboard Academy. So he had been scared for nothing, he could cheat his way through with just that little Moonfang.
The whole Blackboard Region was currently in chaos thanks to the White Light, it had been proven that the Pulse Wave Incident was the terrorist organization White Light’s doing. The policemen and army squads from all over began to move out in earnest, and for a moment there the whole region was being rocked by the reaction.
On the way back to the Academy’s Blackboard City, Garen could see new notices and declarations by the police all over the place, such as how to save oneself in the face of a terrorist attack.
After two days on the road, he finally returned to Blackboard Academy. Upon replying to the greetings from his friends and fellow students one by one, he went straight back to his dorm.
Ker-chak!
The door opened, and the first thing Garen saw was the student card on the table.
“A new card? Someone’s been in my room.” He reacted quickly, and looked around to see if he could find any clues.
The position of the curtain was not right, that was probably tampered with before. There was a slight mark on the thin layer of dust on his desk, that someone must have messed with it.
Garen bent down and wiped the handles of the drawers lightly, then he brought it to his nose and sniffed it. All three handles had a faint smell of perfume.
“It’s a woman. Perfume like this must be a fairly young woman.”
His expression was calm.
“It should be the girl who brought the student card here, seeing as there was no one here, she could not help but mess around a bit. If the higher-ups let her bring the student card here, she must be someone who seems to be closer to me in the eyes of the public, and a member of the school as well. And in this school, the ones who seem to be closer to me are the likes of Vivienne, Celine and the rest.”
Garen’s brain turned slightly, and he quickly came to a conclusion.
“Celine does not like perfume, and Vivienne always uses the most expensive and trendiest brands. This perfume smells like the type those innocent-looking girls like, but it’s not too expensive. If it’s not that valuable, it can’t be Vivienne. In that case, it has to be those people, Kell or Vera.”
“I just have to ask who helped to send me my student card, and I’ll know.”
He pulled open the last drawer. The notes and documents were exactly as he left them, but the wad of notes seemed to be slightly thinner.
“As I thought, I need a more private room.”
Standing up, Garen shook out his joints.
Now that he had reached Level Three Willpower, he felt as though his base was not too steady, and his Willpower was not solid enough. It was evidently because he progressed too quickly.
After the Willpower in his arms was activated, before he even learned to control them properly, he had already reached the next level, Level Three.
The Level Three Crouched Eagle Talon had very powerful malleability and general accessibility, but Garen had advanced too quickly. As soon as he reached Level Two, he went straight into Level Three. He did not have time to get used to controlling it at Level Two at all.
“I need to spend some time on stabilizing my power.” Garen was aware of this problem as well.
After washing up, he began to spend time in his room training his body in correspondence with the Divine Statue Technique. Adapting it with his battle experience that went even beyond King of the Century, he began to slowly create an even more perfect version of the Crouched Eagle Talon. Most importantly, the Crouched Eagle Talon used to be a very normal Level Five training method, one that could not reach Level Six inheritance. Under Garen’s changes, however, it seemed to be moving to a new level. He could not be sure if he was right about the deductions regarding the training method after this, but it was vaguely moving away from the original path.
He trained and tweaked it a bit in his room, and then he practiced the Waterbird Fist that he was most familiar with in the previous world. Due to the difference in universe and space, the Waterbird Fist required a makeover before it could be used again. Out of the Waterbird Fist Profounds, only the purest and most powerful Profounds could be isolated away. Using his Willpower as well as his body, he could use the Final Profound, Flight, with up to 90% of its original power.
Garen rearranged the pure combat techniques from the Totem World. Other than the Living Secret Techniques, the only things he could still use from the Totem World were the Ten Thousand Mammoth Battle Skills. The Ten Thousand Mammoths Battle Skills were actually a complete set of fighting skills that he crafted from his foundations in the Secret Technique World, and it was basically a head-on fighting style.
Meanwhile, Flight used the pinnacle of skill, so the two were completely different.
Combat skills were combat skills, the purest combat skills had nothing to do with secret techniques or methods, but certain combat skills had different methods at the core driving them, so naturally, they would have wildly different powers and styles.
Garen figured out everything he could use in this world, and spent three days in his room, completely isolated. He even turned off his Watch Terminal, so that he could concentrate properly on perfecting it. From his own martial arts, from the Demonic Book martial arts, from the Seven Star Life’s Secret Point, he collected and gathered them all.
He cut out all the parts that could not be used due to the different world setting. Vaguely, he noticed that after his Willpower grew stronger, the ideas his mind came up with also seemed to be more perfect, as though there was a second brain helping him out with thoughts and calculations. For many questions, as soon as he started thinking about it, he could instantly and clearly get his intended answer. The simple logical processes in the meanwhile were all solved in an instant.
He brought out all the pure combat skills, the things he could use in this world. He filtered them through these past three worlds, assessing them with different rules. Many of them looked strong, but Garen threw away the parts with many limitations.
Three days later…
A brand new form of martial arts finally began to take shape in his hands.
Garen renamed these martial arts the Ten Thousand True Technique. It was a very simple and very plain name. Ten Thousand meant many, and True meant true nature and thusness(1), it could mostly be used limitlessly even across universes.
Actually, the Ten Thousand True Technique was not just a normal external martial arts technique, it was also a method that could temporarily stimulate his body’s explosive power.
Garen used all the secret methods he knew, taking away the limited parts and then continuing to model and derive the usable parts, finally forming the Ten Thousand True Technique’s Nine Level Body System.
This Nine Level Body System was related to the Seven Star Life’s Secret Point, but it was not as ridiculously powerful. Instead, it was gentler. According to Garen’s calculations, this would be more adaptable to other universes as well.
After running his techniques past so many rules from so many worlds, it was equal to him straining the impurities off his martial arts, revealing the smooth surface underneath.
The Ten Thousand True Technique represented Garen’s aim for his future position.
No matter what power system it was, as long as he was in human shape, as long as he had his basic organs, the Ten Thousand True Technique would work.
After melding his own fighting techniques into one, Garen began to train the Ten Thousand True Technique anew. His roots were strong, and he had long achieved the nine levels of state of mind required, so he very easily reached Level Three. After that, he needed to constantly train his own body.
***************
The Academy’s physical fighting training area was a special place that the Blackboard Academy had designed especially for students who liked to practice their actual combat. It was as large as five football fields, and there was a transparent ceiling of reinforced glass above them. The sunlight came shining down, and the high-powered air ventilation machines around them kept buzzing lightly.
There were rows of punching bags and alloy pillars lined up closely, and every so often there were even cube-shaped three-story buildings. The buildings were made completely of glass walls, so everything outside could be seen clearly.
In the afternoon, there were still many people sweating it out in the training arena, training relentlessly. They trained in alone, in pairs, even in groups surrounding one person. There were also those doing health exercises… boys and girls as well, including some middle-aged people or members of the elderly.
There were also some professional athletes. Track, endurance, sprint, hurdles, they were all there. Many people came here every day to train their bodies, all the equipment was free to use, and it was very close to the canteen as well, so it was very convenient.
Garen changed into some black gym clothes, wearing a black belt around his waist. Walking into the training field, he heard the yells of a group of people playing football in the distance, while on the other side, there was also a group of girls practicing aerobics. Other than the mech course, there were also many other students in the other courses.
Although piloting was indeed a very important and prized profession, that did not mean everyone wanted to be a pilot. There were students majoring in battleship command, or art, or languages, or engineering.
On the field, there was an uproar of shouts. In the large area in the center, there were several dozen students dressed in different clothes and running sparsely from each other, while two coaches count the time at the side.
Alone, Garen walked to a row of training equipment that no one was using. The equipment was very old, and there were even some sweat stains left over on them. Evidently, someone had just finished using them.
The area in front of this was a small plastic training field. Several boys and girls were gathered in front of a female teacher as she taught them to dance, while there were things like double or single bars beside them.
From here, he could just see the situation on the running track diagonally ahead. The athletes were all running round and round at even speeds. Although they looked to be sweating a lot, their breathing was still even and rhythmic, clearly showing that they were very experienced runners.
Garen pulled back his inquisitive gaze, and walked up to the heaviest black sandbag.
Bam!!
The heavy black metal sandbag was hit by Garen’s forearm, and was sent rocking wildly out.
Garen took off his shirt, revealing his well-defined muscles. He put black gloves on his hands, and all his skin was slightly dark. Among those on the training field, he was considered average.
He came here just to get used to the changes in his body, in his Willpower, and to sort out the conglomeration of his martial arts. By going into the Third Level Ten Thousand True Technique straight away, his body had improved by three times that of others. This was also the change brought by the Hellfrost Peacock Technique, but this change was not something he had controlled and built up over time. So if he wanted to utilize his most powerful potential smoothly, he needed to get used to his own level.
Bang bang! Bang!
Garen began to punch the target again and again. He did not put a lot of force into every punch, but he tried to keep it in a very small and precise area, carefully sensing the waves and tremors in his body.
Using tremors to understand his own body, that was a special martial arts that only Garen had, it was one of the training methods from the Secret Technique World.
There were no special movements, he just let loose punch after punch, occasionally unleashing a side-kick, knocking the heavy sandbag into swinging back and forth, as though it was going to snap and fall at any moment. It whooshed loudly, the giant swinging metal sandbag giving off a very unstable and dangerous feeling.
After showcasing all of his basic fist techniques, Garen carefully felt his own power level, and the minute changes in his body. At the same time, he used the Ten Thousand True Technique to use the different levels of vibrations from all over his body to strengthen and open up his body from a very deep level. Unlike training methods, this started from the outside and worked inwards. In some manner of speaking, the Ten Thousand True Technique was one of the most balanced external techniques. Especially after merging with Garen’s Seven Star Life’s Secret Point secret method, each level had some of the power as though he had permanently opened one of the secret points, hence permanently activating his body’s potential and increasing his body’s quality. It was not by much, not too exaggerated, but it had also lost the Seven Star Life’s Secret Point secret method’s terrifying backlash effect, becoming gentler and safe.
The Divine Statue Technique trained one’s body, but merging the Divine Statue Technique with the Crouched Eagle Talon, he could strengthen his Willpower, and he could strengthen his arms and body to a certain degree as well.
Together, the two of them trained his body and his Willpower at the same time, balancing it out as they progressed together.