Multiverse , Leveling Up in the World I Created

Chapter 424: 424 Return to the Volcano 10

Yui-seol ate four meals a day, and one of them was the late-night snack I made for her.

She insisted it was just a snack, though.

"As expected, the snacks you make are the best, Brother."

"At this rate, what will you do when I’m not around?"

"I think it’ll be fine if I stock up on dried meat."

"..."

"How about you just stay here permanently, Brother?"

"The manor has its own matters, so that’s not possible. Still, I’ll stay as long as I can."

At that, Yui-seol seemed relieved.

It wasn’t just her appetite that had grown.

She had finally bloomed plum blossoms.

My constant guidance and sparring, correcting her sword paths, seemed to have helped greatly.

Yui-seol was overjoyed when she bloomed plum blossoms.

She wanted to run straight to the manor to show the lord, but I quickly stopped her.

There were procedures at Mount Hua too, and I couldn’t let her become a runaway ninja.

It wasn’t just Yui-seol.

Baekcheon (Dong-ryong), seeing that, seemed stimulated and asked for the same guidance and sparring as Yui-seol.

After I helped him, he bloomed plum blossoms, albeit a bit clumsily.

He was certainly talented.

Thanks to that, Mount Hua was in a festive mood.

Finally, a Mount Hua disciple, not an outsider, had bloomed plum blossoms.

"Senior disciple, congratulations!"

"Congratulations!"

"Finally, disciples who can bloom plum blossoms have appeared!"

As everyone congratulated him, Baekcheon scratched his head awkwardly and spoke.

"It’s nothing. It was possible only because Master Jin guided me well."

This guy, despite his stubbornness, wasn’t a bad person.

A few days later, Hyeonsang, a Mount Hua elder who had been away, returned.

He had brought along a child who looked like a beggar, and upon closer look, it was Yoon Jong.

I recognized him instantly by his distinctive slit eyes.

Yoon Jong would later become the senior disciple of the 3rd-generation, a poor guy who would suffer a lot because of Cheongmyeong.

"This child will be a disciple of Mount Hua from now on, so keep that in mind."

"Then he becomes a Cheongja generation disciple?"

"Yes. Since we’ll be accepting 3rd-generation disciples soon, this child will become their senior disciple."

Hyeonsang, having brought the child himself, personally guided Yoon Jong and prepared lodging for him at Baekmigwan.

He then instructed the other disciples not to train Yoon Jong for the time being.

Yoon Jong was so emaciated that he was practically skin and bones.

So Mount Hua made sure to feed him regularly and first focused on putting some meat on his bones.

Then, suddenly, a meeting was called at Mount Hua, so I attended.

The Sect Leader and the elders were all present.

"It’s good that they’ve bloomed plum blossoms, but they’ve lost their sense of purpose and are training leisurely. If the senior disciple acts like that, the rest will follow suit."

"This is a big problem. The highest martial art we have is the Chilmae Sword..."

"There’s only one year left until the Hwajong Meeting. The 2nd-generation disciples have certainly grown stronger, but Jongnam will also be sharpening their swords and preparing. I wonder if it’s okay to leave them as they are."

I couldn’t help but frown at those words.

Because they were my disciples.

’Baekcheon, you bastard! Slacking off!’

But thinking about it, they had nothing more to learn and had bloomed plum blossoms, so I could understand to some extent.

So after thinking for a moment, I offered my opinion.

"Hmm... Then how about sending them out to travel the martial arts world and gain real experience? They’ve only stayed here all this time. I think they need to go out and see other martial arts to broaden their horizons."

When I offered that opinion, Hyeonjong slapped his knee in admiration.

"Oh~ That’s a great idea!"

"Indeed, that way we can also spread Mount Hua’s name, so it’s killing two birds with one stone."

"I agree too. It’s better than keeping them here."

"Then that matter is settled. And since we’ll be accepting 3rd-generation disciples soon, we can’t keep burdening Master Jin. I’d like one of the 1st-generation disciples to teach them. Who would be suitable?"

"I think Unam or Ungeom would be good... but rather than the gentle Unam, perhaps Ungeom, who is the most skilled, would be better."

"Hmm... I suppose so. Let’s do that."

Listening to them, I sensed that my work here was coming to an end.

They must have also felt uneasy about keeping the young master of another sect for so long.

A few days later, the 2nd-generation disciples packed their bags and, led by Baekcheon, began to leave for the martial arts world.

Of course, not everyone left.

Some who still lacked skill took Byeokgokdan and headed to training chambers prepared in the mountains not far from Mount Hua for secluded training.

Yui-seol didn’t go.

Because she was going back to the manor with me.

She seemed eager to show the manor lord that she had bloomed plum blossoms.

She had already obtained permission from Sect Leader Hyeonjong.

"Brother, chicken gangjeong."

"Yes, yes."

On our way back to the manor by carriage, I kept handing her the food I had prepared earlier.

Munch, munch...

She ate in silence for a while, then suddenly dropped a bombshell.

"I’ve been thinking, I want to marry you, Brother. I don’t want to marry someone else and leave the manor, and the only people who can make food this delicious are Father and you. But I can’t marry Father, so..."

"What?!"

"Do you not like me, Brother?"

She said that with a glare, and the atmosphere inside the carriage rapidly cooled.

If I refused, something bad would probably happen.

"It’s not that..."

"Even if we’re family, we’re not blood-related, so it’s fine. And if I marry you, I become not just family in name, but truly family."

"That’s true."

"Anyway, just give me the rest of the chicken gangjeong."

"Yeah..."

Munch, munch...

Yui-seol ate the chicken gangjeong I gave her and turned her gaze out the window.

Her face was slightly flushed, but it was unclear whether it was because of the sunset or embarrassment.

I had designated Yui-seol as a love interest when I entered this world.

But since I had raised her, those feelings had faded, and I just wanted her to grow up well.

I never expected it to turn out like this.

’Since things are going as planned, I suppose it’s fine...’

Because of that, we arrived at the manor in a somewhat awkward state.

"Father!"

"Oh~ you’ve grown! Welcome back."

Thump!

"Ugh!"

Yui-seol ran to the manor lord and hugged him as soon as she saw him.

"Have you been well?"

"Ugh... I’ve been fine. You look very healthy too."

"Come with me for a moment. I have something to show you."

"Alright."

Yui-seol moved to the private training ground, which only the manor lord could use, and showed him the plum blossoms.

The manor lord pretended to be surprised and was delighted.

In fact, my clone must have expected it, since I had been teaching her.

"Amazing. Blooming plum blossoms. You’ve worked hard."

"Brother helped me a lot."

"I see. You’ve worked hard too."

We moved to the manor lord’s office and happily talked about what had happened.

Then Yui-seol told the manor lord the same thing she had told me about getting married.

"Don’t object."

"O... okay."

When Yui-seol glared and said that, the clone, flustered, gave his permission.

Thus, I became betrothed to Yui-seol.

I took the opportunity to reset my clone.

Other than one disciple being slightly injured during a mission a few months ago, there had been no major incidents at the manor.

The clone and the general manager had managed everything flawlessly.

During the months I stayed at the manor, cooking delicious food for Yui-seol and helping her train, I also received frequent news of Baekcheon, who was active in the martial arts world.

He had suppressed bandits in one county, cut down tyrannical demonic cultists in another—there was no end to his heroic tales.

Thanks to these accumulated achievements, Baekcheon earned the nickname ’Hwajeonggeom,’ and at the same time, rumors spread that Mount Hua was once again making its name known in the martial arts world.

It seemed sending them out was a good decision.

But Mount Hua still had a problem: its internal energy was weak.

Other sects and families were investing large sums of money to feed their younger generations elixirs made from their own secret recipes.

But Mount Hua, having lost all of that, had nothing of the sort.

Our manor was no different.

In the early years, we bought elixirs, but now we had grown enough to establish a medical hall to research and produce our own.

So if we compared the pure internal energy of our disciples, we were ahead.

That made me a little worried.

Even though Baekcheon had bloomed plum blossoms, he would struggle against a truly skilled opponent.

’Well, he’ll manage on his own.’

And during this stay at the manor, I also created a new internal energy mind technique.

This was for Yui-seol.

No matter how many elixirs there were, I couldn’t keep feeding them to her forever, and her body had already grown enough that the body-purifying effects of Yukhap Gong were no longer as significant.

Also, to accumulate a larger amount of pure internal energy in the future, Yukhap Gong alone had its limits.

So the new mind technique I developed combined Mount Hua’s Jahasin Gong from the Nanomachine universe with Shaolin’s internal energy technique to maximize the gathering of pure internal energy, allowing the practitioner to handle the energy of nature as their level increased, and also enabling rapid recovery of consumed internal energy through circulation.

If you heard that, it might sound like the ultimate internal energy technique, but it had a major drawback: it was so profound that it was difficult to learn, and advancing in levels was also extremely hard.

To the extent that even experts who had already reached a certain level would find it difficult to understand.

That was only natural, since I had made it while being too engrossed in the [(EX) Divine Martial Origin Absolute Martial Art] ability.

’I must have been too greedy...’

So I used the already completed mind technique as a base and lowered its level to create a new version.

Even this one surpassed Mount Hua’s strongest mind technique, Jahasin Gong.

Moreover, the difficulty had been greatly reduced, making it learnable.

"Brother, this is too difficult. Can’t you make it into a book?"

"No, this mind technique is not meant to be passed on to others. I intend to teach it only to our family."

"Really? Then I’ll try my best."

Perhaps because I said "family," Yui-seol began to learn earnestly.

But there was one problem.

When using this mind technique to bloom plum blossoms, the blossoms were red instead of pink.

This seemed to be an unavoidable phenomenon caused by the effect of burning away impure energy to strengthen martial arts using pure energy.

"By the way, what do you call this mind technique?"

"Hmm... I don’t know, I just made it recently."

I thought for a moment and then spoke.

"Since it’s red, how about Jeokmyeong Divine Art?"

"I like it. Let’s go with that."

I simply named it after its characteristic, and it sounded quite plausible.

I seemed to be getting better at naming things, having made so many new things.

A year passed, and when the original story was about to begin, we packed our bags and moved back to Mount Hua.

In the meantime, many more 3rd-generation disciples had been accepted, and Baekmigwan was almost full.

Yoon Jong had also gained some weight from eating well and was training hard under Ungeom’s guidance.

I also saw Jogeol, who was suffering along with Yoon Jong because of Cheongmyeong.

Jogeol was the second son of the Sahae Merchant Association, one of the largest trading companies in Sichuan, and since they occasionally did business with our manor, I had seen him once when he was young.

He had a "manly" personality—to put it positively—but his habit of charging in without thinking or speaking without consideration often got him hit by his senior disciple, Yoon Jong.

Ungeom didn’t push the 3rd-generation disciples as harshly as I did.

But the training intensity was clearly higher than in the original.

As the strongest of the 1st-generation disciples, yet unexpectedly sentimental, he had designed the training with particular consideration for the underweight Yoon Jong, which naturally led to that result.

Of course, I had no intention of criticizing his training methods.

With the 2nd-generation disciples gone, Yui-seol and I had nothing particular to do.

So we just trained together at the back mountain of Mount Hua or cooked and ate.

Then, when the chickens I used for cooking ran out, I went to town to buy live chickens and was on my way back up Mount Hua when a beggar-like child suddenly called out to me.

"Wait a moment!!!"

"Hm?"

I stopped climbing and looked at the child, asking.

"What is it?"

"I have a question. Are you a Taoist priest of Mount Hua?"

"I’m affiliated with Mount Hua, but I’m not a Taoist priest. I’m an outsider."

"If you’re an outsider..."

"I’m from a different sect. I’m serving as the master of Mount Hua’s 2nd-generation disciples."

At that, the child seemed utterly shocked.

"Wha, what did you say? The Great Mount Hua Sect hired an outsider as a master? What is going on..."

I was curious as to why he was asking and reacting with such shock, so I looked closely and realized his face looked somewhat familiar.

"Who are you?"

When I asked, the child came to his senses, cupped his fists, and introduced himself.

"Ah, I’m Cheongmyeong. I came to join Mount Hua."