Chapter 19

Chapter 19. Galactic Martial God Chronicle - Amusement Park Kidnapping Incident (2)

As I received training that made me wonder whether it was really appropriate for my age, strength gradually began filling my fists, which had once been so limp that it looked like a talent show.

It seemed it was not my imagination that my Bluewood Combat posture, reflected in the full-length mirror, was starting to look plausible, because Si-woo smiled and said,

“You are beginning to look the part now. It is proof that your muscles and bones are developing properly.”

Not only had my muscles and bones developed, I had also succeeded in awakening the internal energy sleeping in my qi center.

When I asked if this meant I had now left the Entry Realm and reached the Third-Rate stage, Si-woo shook her head.

“Simply drawing internal energy from your qi center is not enough. Only when you strengthen your body with the internal energy you have drawn out can it be called the Third-Rate stage.”

“But I feel stronger when I draw out internal energy.”

“That is not so much because your body has been strengthened, but because the oxygen exchange efficiency of your alveoli and blood vessels naturally increases, and the speed of oxygen transfer between your blood and cells also rises.”

Si-woo displayed a paper about oxygen transport on the screen and kindly explained the correlation between the activation of qi, blood oxygen saturation, lactic acid secretion, and the improvement of the liver’s detoxification speed.

To summarize the explanation, it was an effect similar to how people from high-altitude regions showed improved athletic ability when they came down below the mountains.

By now, Si-woo was treating me not as a three-year-old baby, but as a disciple.

Mm, studying through papers at this age. Is this my punishment for not acting enough like a baby?

Once I understood, under Si-woo’s guidance, I practiced strengthening my bones and muscles along the meridian chart with qi drawn from my qi center.

“Muscles are the source that produces power, but if you strengthen only the muscles, the bones can be crushed by those muscles. Full-fledged body strengthening begins by strengthening the bones.”

The lesson used not only papers, but also video materials. The scene Si-woo played showed a bulky, muscular bodybuilder arm-wrestling, only for his bone to break and his arm to bend in a direction it should not be able to bend.

“Ugh, isn’t that way too gory for someone my age?”

“Ah, I apologize. When I talk with you, young master, I sometimes forget that you are still a baby....”

At my point, Si-woo turned off the video, and from then on, any scene of someone getting injured was replaced with illustrations.

So when AI develops, it can convert videos for the viewer without delay and play them like that.

Usually, I couldn’t tell whether this place was the 21st century or the 50th century, but seeing things like this really made me feel it.

After the lesson ended, Si-woo held up a lunchbox and said,

“Today’s training ends here. Let us go on a picnic. I purchased tickets to a nearby amusement park.”

Living with Si-woo did not mean we only trained all the time.

When it was time to rest, we rested, and when it was time to play, we played.

Si-woo was not my training android, but my nanny android, so she tried to build various memories for my healthy and bright growth.

“Wow! An amusement park!”

I also liked playtime between the tedious and exhausting training sessions.

Si-woo’s training truly squeezed me to my limits, so there was joy in growing, but playing was still more fun.

A 50th-century amusement park attraction!

My heart pounded, wondering what strange and amazing things would fill the place.

When I was delighted, Si-woo smiled and began preparing to leave.

---

The amusement park I went to while holding Si-woo’s hand was similar to an amusement park owned by a certain D Company famous as a copyright monster.

It was quite different in many ways, but with a little rat as the main character, various characters such as ducks, dogs, pigs, and rabbits were holding a parade.

After the animal characters passed by came the princess characters, and after them, part-timers who ran around stepping on transparent wire footholds installed in the air with dazzling footwork performed acrobatics while fluttering brilliant cloths.

“Wow, martial artists do part-time jobs too?”

“From the look of them, they appear to be students at specialized martial arts high schools or universities. It is said that although spiritual medicine is mass-produced, it remains expensive from the students’ perspective, so many work part-time.”

“Aha. I saw something like that on the internet too.”

Basic cultivation methods were taught as a required subject along with language, math, society, history, and science once one entered elementary school, which was compulsory education.

This was a world where the entire galaxy’s population of roughly 3.2 trillion people had at least learned cultivation methods for their health.

Among elementary school students who learned cultivation methods, those who distinguished themselves before the age of ten gained the option to enter under a great sect. Among the children not chosen by great sects, most of those who had aspirations in martial arts advanced to specialized martial arts high schools.

There were cases where some entered small and medium-sized sects as well, but small and medium-sized sects did not have the resources to take in and raise large numbers of children like great sects, so unless a child was exceptionally talented, they did not accept children outside the children or relatives of sect members.

Naturally, talented children would enter a great sect if they could. There was no reason for them to enter a small or medium-sized sect.

If one graduated from a specialized martial arts high school or university, one could enter a sect depending on one’s realm, and if one’s talent bloomed late, it was even possible to enter a great sect.

“Young master, it is good to look up information on the internet, but there may be biased or distorted information, so please be careful.”

“Hahaha, I know. At the very least, I don’t go into communities where political leanings are obvious, so don’t worry.”

Maybe it was because I was someone from another world, but even if I went in, I could not empathize with or understand them at all.

“You are you, young master, so I trust that you will do well on your own, but I cannot help feeling needless worry.”

“You aren’t restoring and looking at my search history or logs, are you?”

At my question, Si-woo merely smiled.

“...You really aren’t, right?”

“I purchased Super Passes for the attractions over there. Let us hurry.”

“Si-woo?”

Holding Si-woo’s hand, I passed by the part-timers showing off splendid movement arts and entered the Mysterious Fairy-Tale Land.

She really isn’t, right?

---

Roughly three years ago.

A baby was born amid her parents’ blessings.

The baby born as a girl was special.

She was a direct descendant of the Cheon Family, the Martial God Cheon House called the greatest family in the galaxy. Both her parents had reached the powerful realm of Transformation Realm.

She had even been born with the Heavenly Martial Body that made everyone marvel at her birth. Yet all of that might have been nothing compared to her true specialness.

Within the family, “direct descendant” referred to any living descendant who used the surname Cheon, no matter how many generations removed they were from the Family Head.

The Family Head, Sword King Cheon Ja-su, was around six hundred eighty years old, and during that time, he had taken a total of thirteen wives and had two or three children with each wife.

Around six hundred years ago, his eldest son had died of illness at the young age of sixty after having four children, and those children had children, and those children’s children had children as well.

Since the family’s might resounded throughout the entire galaxy, many women of the Cheon Family took husbands into the family and passed the Cheon name on to their children rather than marrying out.

Because of that, the number of living people bearing the title of “direct descendant” of the Cheon Family reached five digits, so a blood relationship that made the baby merely Cheon Ja-su’s 17th-generation descendant paled in comparison to the specialness she possessed.

Both her parents were martial artists who had reached the Transformation Realm, but in this era, Transformation Realm was far too insufficient to take on an important post within a great sect.

This was an era where a population of 3.2 trillion people received cultivation methods as compulsory education.

Therefore, even the Transformation Realm, which was close to the peak of the pyramid, inevitably had many people.

There had once been a distant era where anyone at the Transformation Realm was treated as a god among men in the present world, but that was an unimaginably remote past.

The Heavenly Martial Body was a miraculous talent everyone envied, but since humanity had surpassed 3.2 trillion people, there were around several thousand people born with the Heavenly Martial Body or talents equivalent to it.

The secret the baby possessed, which made all those special qualities pale, was “reincarnation.”

The baby born “again” into the Cheon Family, Cheon So-yeon, realized that she had reincarnated and instinctively understood.

I’m not the only one who reincarnated.

In Cheon So-yeon’s previous life, she had been Cheon So-yeon, the central ancestor who had revived the Cheon Family of the 14th-century Yuan-Ming transition and raised it to the ranks of the great sects.

In the end, after a three-way battle against the Demon Cult leader and the leader of the Tyrant Hegemony Alliance, the alliance of unorthodox factions, all three of them had died together in mutual destruction.

At that time, Cheon So-yeon had accepted death, with only one lingering regret remaining: that she had been born a woman and had no choice but to live as a man in order to become Family Head. However, the Demon Cult leader’s close aides had not accepted it.

“Please lead us again, even in a future life! O Heavenly Demon!”

The demonic cultists, unable to accept the leader’s death, used a strange spell.

As she died, Cheon So-yeon thought those heretical cultists were doing some bizarre, insane nonsense, but it had not been nonsense.

The heretical cultists’ reincarnation secret art had succeeded.

It had simply swept her into the secret art as well, since she had died at the same time and in the same place as the cult leader.

If she herself had successfully reincarnated, then the cult leader must also have succeeded in reincarnating.

Perhaps not only the cult leader and herself, but also the leader of the Tyrant Hegemony Alliance, who had fought in that three-way battle, had reincarnated with them.

Thinking that, she, now reborn as Cheon So-yeon, lived her life again as an infant.

She had no idea how much time had passed, but the world she saw through an infant’s eyes looked like another world, not the Central Plains Murim.

What made her realize that this was not another world, but simply the future, was Bluewood Art, which her parents taught her through Meridian-Acupoint Circulation and genuine qi guidance as they took turns.

“Now, this is a healthy massage. Our little princess.”

“Don’t hurt yourself. Just grow up healthy.”

At her parents’ words, tears flowed from Cheon So-yeon’s eyes.

The world was full of wondrous things, and she received a parent’s love that asked for nothing in return, something she had not received in her previous life.

Her parents were not sick and weak, and they did not force her to be a boy.

All they wanted was for her to grow up healthy.

When she suddenly cried, her parents panicked and worried that she might be sick somewhere.

Cheon So-yeon was simply happy and grateful for such concern.

Cheon So-yeon, who possessed the Heavenly Martial Body and outstanding comprehension, began speaking around half a year after her birth and gradually came to understand the world.

She marveled at the more advanced martial arts and trained hard in them.

Sometimes, when she became too absorbed out of habits from her previous life, her parents even grew worried and stopped her.

Cheon So-yeon formed her qi center and entered martial arts around three months after her birth, and when she was about half a year old, she reached Third-Rate. However, she hid her realm.

Hiding her realm was not very difficult.

She simply had to avoid drawing out the internal energy inside her qi center in front of her parents.

If she were around First-Rate, perhaps it would be different, but at Third-Rate, her aura did not particularly show outwardly.

The reason she hid her realm was fear.

Fear that her talent might blind her parents with greed like her parents in her previous life, and fear that her happy life might be shattered because of it.

Then, one day, when Cheon So-yeon had been enjoying her happy new life and was around three years old, her parents cheerfully prepared to go out.

“The amusement park reopened this time! We’re going to go have fun at the amusement park now. Our little princess is excited too, right?”

“What is an amusement park?”

Cheon So-yeon did not know what an amusement park was.

At their daughter’s question, her parents finally realized their oversight and explained what an amusement park was.

At her parents’ explanation, Cheon So-yeon thought,

Ah, is it a playground bigger than the playground at the park? A parade? Does that mean clowns come to the playground and perform the way wandering entertainers perform when a market opens? It seems wandering entertainers still exist even though the world has changed.

As someone from roughly thirty-six hundred years ago, she did not even know the concept of an amusement park.

To Cheon So-yeon, the entire world consisted of her house, the park she sometimes walked to while holding her mother’s hand, and the hospital.

“Mom and Dad have been busy, so this is our first time going out to have fun like this. We’re sorry.”

As befitted people of the Transformation Realm, her parents were quite busy on weekdays, so they could not often go out to have fun.

On weekends, when they had time, they became the martial arts teachers they could not be during the weekdays, so there was rarely any time to go out.

It was an unavoidable choice for the sake of their daughter’s future, because they loved her.

Cheon So-yeon did not mind at all, because she simply liked the time she spent with her parents, but her parents felt guilty.

They had made time somehow to go to the amusement park this time in order to let their daughter know joy.

At the amusement park they visited that way, Cheon So-yeon saw a new world.

The cute animal parade, the princess parade, and the parade using martial arts.

At the last one, she became angry that they were using martial arts to play the clown, but even so, it served as a pleasant shock that helped her accept that times had changed.

Cheon So-yeon became distracted from playing excitedly, and only belatedly realized that, before she knew it, she was alone and separated from her parents.

For an instant, feeling the fear that she had been dropped into the world alone, she looked around, then discovered a young boy flowing with a qi wave similar to her own, and unconsciously approached where he was.