I Am This Murim’s Crazy Bitch
Chapter 216: Let Us Have A Martial Arts Match (14)

The tensile strength per unit area of steel, even considering the primitive iron-making process of the Central Plains, ranges from about 20 jin to 60 jin.

However, steel with a tensile strength close to 60 jin was so rare that even blacksmiths didn’t know how it was made and just thanked heaven when they got it.

Good quality steel usually has a strength of about 40 jin, so calculating the unit area of the steel restraints on one segment of Qing’s finger, it would require about 90 jin of force.

However, since the device was designed to bend joints in the opposite direction, such restraints were placed above and below every joint.

For the arms alone, they were attached to each finger joint, on the palm and back of the hand, above the wrist, in the middle of the forearm, below and above the elbow, in the middle of the upper arm, and just below the shoulder, wrapping around it like a backpack strap.

The weight of the iron ball that Qing could lift with one hand without momentum was 250 jin, which, while superhuman strength, was far from enough to break the restraints.

Moreover, with her body tightly pressed against the device and her swollen flesh painfully squeezed in, she couldn’t even get into a position to exert her full strength.

Ah. This can’t be done with strength.

Qing deeply regretted.

This was the result of carelessly lying in the restraints, thinking she could break out if things went wrong.

It was a moment of realization that there are things impossible with strength, and she should be more careful in the future.

There wouldn’t be any other restraints in the Central Plains that wrap the entire body in steel like this.

Nevertheless, the clanking and creaking of the device was ominous.

While the full-body shackles were one thing, the mechanism itself, designed to bend precisely outwards, was under great strain.

At this rate, a monster wrapped in steel restraints like the steel man from Qing’s homeland would be born.

Cheon Yuhak was surprised and tried to stop Qing.

“Oh my, child. I was just teasing you. What kind of girl has strength that could knock out all the teeth of a Xiang Yu-level strongman with a slap?”

At Cheon Yuhak’s words, Qing stopped struggling and blinked her eyes.

Cheon Yuhak removed Qing’s gag again, and shook off the sticky saliva that stretched out due to her foaming and raging, with a disgusted expression.

“Huh, doesn’t it hurt?”

“It hurts. It hurts like hell. I fainted and woke up several times during it.”

“Hmm. Do we really need to do this?”

“Haah. Listen. The Divine Thief isn’t a martial arts sect that spends all day training martial arts and happily progressing towards completion, is it?”

Single-line transmission sounds impressive, but in reality, it’s an endangered species always on the brink of extinction.

Ordinary martial arts sects take in many talented disciples who achieve accomplishments, complement existing techniques or create (or steal) new ones, gradually developing the sect’s martial arts level.

But how about single-line transmission?

If a proper successor isn’t found, it not only fails to develop but continuously regresses.

Moreover, Divine Thieves have side jobs protecting world peace. With separate main jobs, they don’t even have time to protect world peace, let alone seek to develop martial arts.

“So?”

“That’s why our training methods are like this. You could call them shortcuts. Using a knife instead of hands, absorbing a medicinal bath made with melted gold and bending joints, and besides the Stinking Sewer Medicine, there’s also a Hell Fire Bath for the Awakening Divine Art. I’m even assembling shoes for your Instant Flash Step training.”

The right path originally takes time.

But without time, we had to take shortcuts. If you want to go fast in a good way, you have to endure the pain yourself.

If you want to go fast in an evil way, others have to endure the pain. This is called demonic arts or evil techniques.

“…But that much pain is a bit…”

“Well. From what I saw, you seemed very eager to go fast. Aren’t you?”

“That’s true, but…”

Indeed, wasn’t the reason Qing had been rolling around recently due to impatience?

At some point, whether it was the nth crisis or a trick of fate or the cycle of the game world, she felt like she would be caught up in some inevitable development.

“Besides, do you think you’re the only one in pain? Do you know how difficult this is? Do you think it’s just about applying force to make you cry and sniffle?”

She had joked about it being an inheritance of hatred.

But originally, it was a delicate operation of bending joints, tendons, and muscles to precisely the limit point with exact accuracy.

If the force is too weak, it just hurts without much effect, and if it’s too strong, it becomes an injury rather than training, requiring long-term recuperation.

It was truly a task that required concentration and dedication with the Divine Thief’s transcendent senses.

“I’m already completely drained from doing True Qi Daoyin for you, and you’re complaining. If you don’t want to do it, then don’t. What a waste of a three guan gold medicinal bath. Tsk tsk.”

Cheon Yuhak was clearly upset as he grumbled and started to undo the restraints with clanking sounds.

Qing looked around with an apologetic expression.

“Um, I’m sorry. I’m just really scared of pain…”

“Is there anyone who’s not scared of pain? We’re trying to compress the pain that others endure over twenty years of external technique training into just about a year, so it’s concentrated. If not this, you could do it by applying medicine and stretching your joints for about twenty years, so if you really can’t do it, what can we do?”

“No, I’ll do it quickly then.”

“Heng. You think you’re the only one going fast? It’s easier for me to just teach you qi circulation and go play around. Do you think it’s enjoyable for a master to hear screams coming from their disciple’s mouth? Right?”

Qing’s expression became even more apologetic.

“Um, I’m sorry…”

“Enough. Anyway, the medicinal properties are good for your body, so the swelling will all go down in about a week. Then maybe we should do some qinggong training.”

“Hehe, Master. I didn’t know. Now that I know you’re doing it all for me, please do what you originally intended to, okay?”

“Only giving those gentle eye-smiles when it suits you. What a convenient aegyo. Tsk tsk.”

Cheon Yuhak grumbled as he clanked the shackles back on.

Qing was relieved at this sight.

And Cheon Yuhak laughed inwardly.

Really. How can she be so naive?

The Divine Thief is the world’s greatest thief, and thieves are naturally good at swindling others.

“Now. Say ah.”

“Ah.”

The gag was put back in Qing’s mouth.

Cheon Yuhak put on a serious expression he had fabricated.

“Keep your eyes tightly shut with force. Of course, you don’t have to if it’s uncomfortable, but if you don’t, blood vessels in your eyes might burst and you could end up shedding bloody tears.”

At this, Qing tightly closed her eyes.

No, but even if you tell me, you say such terrifying things, of course I’ll be sca- AACK!

“MMPH!!!! MMMPH!!!!!!”

Suddenly her elbow was bent outwards, causing her to scream involuntarily.

It was truly a pain that had never existed in the world before.

My arm, arm! My arm is breaking! My arm!

Indeed, under the pain of being pressed outwards, eventually there was a sound like something snapping inside her body-

At that moment, the strength disappeared like a lie.

Qing’s head, which had been unconsciously thrown back, fell limply onto the headrest.

Three shichen later.

Qing returned to her original body shape, with only her waist and limbs becoming slender. The rest was already much higher than the average in the Central Plains, or rather, higher than the average of any race under heaven.

Qing’s appearance was quite a sight.

Her hair was disheveled, her eyes unfocused and glazed over, her eye area swollen with tear stains, snot running from her nose with nostrils occasionally swollen.

As soon as the gag was removed, a bowl’s worth of clear saliva flowed out. Even her usually moist lips were dry and chapped with white skin peeling off.

“You, you said it would be one shichen… hic.”

Qing sobbed and spoke resentfully.

Cheon Yuhak replied with a tired look.

“Didn’t you absorb all the medicinal properties of the Stinking Sewer Medicine? With medicinal energy left in your body, how could we stop midway? Still, you’ve done three sessions at once, so it’s better. Oh my. I can’t even stand now.”

Cheon Yuhak said this as he sprawled out on the bath floor.

Indeed, Cheon Yuhak’s clothes were also completely soaked in sweat, looking like someone who had just come out of water.

“Originally, it would be about sixty times, once every five days for ten months, but if we do it like this, absorbing all the medicinal properties and tripling it, it would be twenty times. Even with extended rest periods, we could finish the refinement part of Flowing Willow Soft Refinement in half a year.”

“We have to do this twenty more times…?”

“You choose. Either reduce the medicinal properties and do sixty, now fifty-seven times for one shichen each. Or do it like this for three shichen nineteen more times.”

“Then can we increase the medicine and do it ten times…”

“We’ve worked on all the joints we can, so even if we increase the medicine, we’d have to rest anyway. Originally we work on the extremities, lower body, and upper body in order, but doing it triple means we’ve done it all at once.”

“Don’t say ‘worked on’…”

Qing replied weakly.

If it weren’t for the Great Meditation Art, it could have been a big problem, as the Buddhist supreme divine art comforted her every time murderous intent rose from the pain, allowing her to barely maintain her sanity.

It was also bearable because after one shichen, even Cheon Yuhak visibly aged.

Seeing the torturer himself tired and exhausted, she couldn’t get angry at someone doing all this for her sake.

With indescribable pain and no one to resent, she just cried loudly from sadness and pain.

She also remembered Cheon Yuhak saying he couldn’t hold back his tears either, so she thought there was no need to hold back.

Qing, thinking about it again, muttered the phrase she had heard from Jegal Ihyeon, horrified:

“Even ‘splitting muscles and crushing bones’ wouldn’t hurt this much…”

“What are you saying? What does ‘splitting muscles and crushing bones’ mean?”

“Isn’t it a torture method of splitting muscles and crushing bones…? Said to be the most terrible and painful in the world…”

“What did you experience then?”

“Stretching and tearing muscles, bending joints outwards. Ah… Damn…”

So what I experienced was that torture method said to be the most terrible and painful in the world.

Tears streamed down Qing’s eyes.

Since even crying requires energy, it was a sobbing that just flowed out in tears, completely exhausted.

“Oh my. I’m really dying. Focusing on True Qi Daoyin for three shichen since morning, oh my, oh my…”

Cheon Yuhak was also completely drained, so he naturally groaned and soon started snoring loudly.

Originally, snoring is proportional to fatigue, so just from the volume echoing through the bath, you could tell he had fallen into a deep sleep.

“Master…? If you’re going to sleep, could you finish untying me…”

Even when Qing tried to speak loudly, her voice was hoarse and that was the best she could do, so it was barely audible over the snoring.

“Ah…”

Qing gave up and let her head drop.

***

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