Sim Gwan awoke to the aching poetry of regret.
His ribs throbbed like drumbeats. His arms felt like wet rope. His legs traitorous bastards screamed with every twitch. The bunkhouse air was damp, filled with the scent of young men pretending they weren't failing at their dreams.
He sat up.
"Gwan," whispered a voice to his right.
He turned, wincing. Baek-Ha sat cross-legged on her cot, sharpening a meat cleaver with an unsettling amount of focus.
"What."
"You fought like a drunk goose," she said matter-of-factly. "A goose that lost its wings and forgot how to honk."
"I'll take that under advisement."
She pointed the cleaver at him, deadly serious. "Don't die. If you do, they'll make me cook for double duty again."
"…Touching."
She winked. "You're lucky you're kind of cute when you get beat up."
He rolled his eyes, pulled on his robe, and limped outside.
---
Morning training was canceled.
Apparently, someone in the Inner Court broke a leg doing a flashy technique on a muddy slope. Elder Han declared a half-day of "meditative self-study," which basically meant "go away, I'm tired."
Sim took the chance to wander.
The Howling Tiger Sect had been built poorly and expanded worse. Corridors ended abruptly. Staircases led to sheds. Half the rooms weren't labeled, and the other half had doors that groaned like old men with hernias.
But he wasn't sightseeing.
He was hunting.
In this world, every sect no matter how garbage-tier had forgotten corners. Hidden storerooms, collapsed training halls, unregistered libraries full of scrolls no one bothered to read. Not because they were worthless.
But because no one had time.
Sim had nothing but time.
---
He found the room by accident.
It was behind the western herb shed, past a cracked shrine of the Tiger Ancestor that smelled faintly of mold and dried rat piss. The door was fused shut with rust.
He pulled.
It creaked like the gates of a bad decision, then gave way.
Dust. Cobwebs. Silence.
Inside: shelves stacked with old scrolls, cracked jars, dented incense burners. Broken spears. A training dummy missing an arm.
But what caught his eye was the book.
Bound in cracked leather, the spine stitched with twine. The title was faded, but still legible in sun-scorched ink:
"Manual of Viscera Strengthening Through Intent and Suffering."
He blinked.
"Of course."
It was a Body Refinement technique. Old school. Crude. Possibly dangerous. But not useless.
Viscera strengthening was a path that had fallen out of fashion replaced by flashy qi projection and elegant inner arts. But for someone stuck in Early Qi Gathering with trash meridians and no time?
It was a roadmap.
He flipped the book open.
The writing was dense, handwritten, filled with side notes in a crabby, impatient style. Diagrams of organs overlaid with qi pathways. Descriptions of intentional injury as a way of forcing qi into dormant meridian lines.
It was, in a word, insane.
But it would work.
It would hurt like hell.
But it would work.
He tucked it under his robe and left before anyone noticed.
---
Night came again.
Sim sat behind the bunkhouse, alone, shirtless, breathing deep.
He followed the manual's first instruction:
> "Compress breath until ribs ache. Circulate base qi through lower dantian. Release tension slowly. Focus pain into flow."
He exhaled. Bent forward. Pain bloomed in his side. He forced his awareness downward.
The qi was thin, scattered like dying embers. But he could feel it now. Like hot smoke curling in his gut.
He guided it barely toward his liver.
The manual said the liver stored rage, and the qi would respond if he relived anger. So he thought.
He thought of the vending machine coffee.
He thought of the 9-to-9 shifts with no thanks, just a sigh and another task dumped on his desk.
He thought of the face of Manager Gyu, who once told him: "You're replaceable. Be grateful you're even here."
The qi flared.
Heat burst in his side. It wasn't much. But it was real.
He gasped. Fell back. Grinned.
Progress.
---
[Qi Flow: Stable. Cultivation Slightly Improved.]
Still in the same stage. But now, the qi didn't feel so distant. It responded. Resisted less.
He could work with this.
He had something now.
Not a cheat.
Not a system.
But a tool.
And a very high pain tolerance.
---
A week passed.
He trained in secret nights spent grinding through the viscera technique, mornings filled with bruises and verbal abuse. His body screamed. His ribs ached. His temper sharpened.
But little by little, his strikes landed faster.
His stance grew firmer.
His qi grew thicker.
Baek-Ha noticed first.
"You've stopped flinching when people swing at you," she said one morning. "Proud of you. You'll make a decent meat shield someday."
Sim just nodded and kept training.
Shin Rok noticed next. During a casual spar, he commented with a hint of confusion, "You're not bad at footwork anymore."
Sim grinned.
"Guess I stopped being bad."
Rok narrowed his eyes. "You hiding something?"
"Only my shame."
---
But nothing stays hidden forever.
One night, after everyone else had collapsed from training fatigue and fermented radish wine, Sim snuck back to the storeroom.
Baek-Ha followed him.
He didn't hear her at first. She was quiet when she wanted to be.
She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching as he pored over the pages of the Viscera Manual under dim lantern light.
"So that's your little secret."
He froze.
She walked inside, grabbed the book, flipped a page.
"...This technique's banned in most sects."
"I know."
"You could shred your organs if you screw up."
"I know."
She paused. "...You planning to die trying?"
He looked her in the eyes. "No. I'm planning to live through it."
Baek-Ha was quiet for a long moment. Then she handed him the book.
"Good. 'Cause if you die, I'm gonna have to find someone else to taste my soup batches. And everyone else here has the palate of a shoe."
---
That night, after they returned to their beds, Baek-Ha leaned over from the next cot.
"Hey," she whispered.
"Yeah?"
"Next time you find a secret training room, let me come too."
He smiled into the darkness.
"Deal."