Once inside the vault, I hurried to find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture.
Otherwise, I might not find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture within the time limit.
Why, you ask?
First of all, the Yellow Dragon Vault was far bigger than I had imagined.
From outside, it had looked like nothing more than a tall tower, but once inside, it was so wide the only word for it was vast.
Hm.
As for roughly how big...
'A sports complex? It's about that size, I think.'
I figured finding the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture within the time limit wouldn't be easy.
[ Time Limit ]
[ 02 : 00 : 00 ]
I wasn't fooled by the time I could see.
'The world I know isn't that kind. There's no way it would give me this much time.'
To test it, I picked up a secret manual lying in front of me.
[ You have selected the Fire Spirit Heart Art. ]
[ As a Middle-grade martial art, it deducts 10 minutes from your time limit. ]
[ Remaining Time ]
[ 01 : 45 : 00 ]
The time limit dropped as if it had been waiting for this.
"Just as I thought."
I gave a little snort— exactly what I'd expected.
I hadn't learned it, only picked it up. And it still took time off.
"Just as I thought, this place is disgustingly unkind and nasty."
Shaking my head, I slid the manual back onto the shelf.
I thought maybe putting it back would return the time, but no such luck.
In other words.
"I have to find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture in all this without touching anything. Otherwise the time limit just keeps getting cut."
There looked to be well over a few hundred secret manuals in here alone. And I was supposed to find one without even looking?
A truly ridiculous difficulty.
Now I understood.
'Why no one has ever found the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture, even though it's classed as Supreme by this world's standards.'
Of course, I didn't think people had failed to find it just because of the time penalty.
'There must be a specific way to obtain it.'
Otherwise, someone would have found the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture in a place that had existed for hundreds of years, no, more than a thousand.
So what was that way?
'Even I don't know that.'
However much I prided myself on knowing this world, that meant the world outside; the Imperial Palace was unknown ground even to me.
So there was no way I could know the method.
And whoever left the record on the Nine Yang Severed Meridians hadn't left a way to find it either.
[ Time Limit ]
[ 01 : 40 : 32 ]
Time kept slipping away.
At this rate, I might be thrown out without the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture, and all my trouble getting into the vault would be for nothing.
Anyone else would be getting anxious.
But not me.
"I may not know the Imperial Palace all that well. But I know exactly what kind of place this world is."
I didn't know the Imperial Palace.
It was my first time in the vault.
But I knew.
'How to find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture.'
So I waited.
For midnight, the Hour of the Rat (00:00).
And so.
[ Time Limit ]
[ 01 : 20 : 00 ]
Thirty minutes after I entered the vault.
When the Hour of the Rat (00:00) finally came.
SPLASH—!
I dumped the bucket of water I had prepared in advance right over my head.
***
When was it, again?
It was probably when I made an Avatar after picking the Nine Yang Severed Meridians by mistake. Back then, I dug into the Imperial Palace obsessively.
Why, you ask?
'To survive, obviously.'
I had picked it by mistake.
But I wanted to survive, no matter what.
So I searched for a way like crazy.
Everything I knew about the Imperial Palace now, I had found out back then.
Like the book with the records on the Nine Yang Severed Meridians, and stuff like that.
When I first found the book with those records, my first thought was that I was screwed.
'Of all places, one of the means to fix my body is in the Imperial Palace.'
So when I found that record, I had half given up.
But partway through, I changed my mind.
'I might find a way into the Imperial Palace someday. Then I could just pick the Nine Yang Severed Meridians and find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture, couldn't I?'
Right.
I decided to bide my time.
But what if, when that day came and I got my chance to enter the vault, I couldn't actually find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture?
The sense of loss would probably be enormous.
'I bet you can't just walk into the vault and find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture.'
So from then on, I started searching. For a way to obtain the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture.
I began digging deep into the Four Divine Beasts.
I figured that if there was an art for the Black Tortoise, there had to be martial arts named after the other divine beasts too.
And that even if they really existed, they wouldn't all be in the Yellow Dragon Vault.
So I spent a very long time digging into the Four Divine Beasts.
A few playthroughs later, I obtained a martial art called the White Tiger Life-Severing Scripture in the vault of a nameless Martial God.
That was when I became certain.
'This is it.'
The way I had obtained the White Tiger Life-Severing Scripture.
That was the way to find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture.
That was why I had poured water over my head.
'The Black Tortoise is the divine beast of the north and the pole of water and yin. It stands for the deepest darkness and for beginnings.'
Translate the deepest darkness and the beginning into time, and you get the Hour of the Rat (00:00); and the element of water means actual water.
In other words.
To find the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture.
'I have to raise water qi at the Hour of the Rat (00:00). Only then will the time and the energy mesh, and the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture reveal itself.'
But having learned no martial arts, I couldn't raise water qi. So I borrowed the power of water itself.
Because the most fundamental water qi was water.
I had found the White Tiger Life-Severing Scripture the same way. So I figured the other Four Divine Beast martial arts, the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture included, would work similarly.
Of course, apart from the White Tiger Life-Severing Scripture, it was still only theory.
[ Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture ]
But now, holding the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture I had obtained that way.
"Just as I thought."
I was sure my method had been right.
Of course.
Drip, drip—
Anyone who saw me soaked to the bone would click their tongue, but I didn't care.
"If this is all it takes to get the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture, it's a steal."
Shaking the water from my hair, I stared at the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture in my hand.
'I wanted this so badly... and I actually got it.'
Part of me wanted to learn it right away.
But it wasn't time yet.
Learning it could wait until I was out of the vault.
'What I need to do now is...'
I was inside the Yellow Dragon Vault, the one called the best of all vaults.
'Grab everything I can.'
Only then could I raise my odds of survival, even a little.
Swish—
So I tucked the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture away inside my robes and started walking.
To raise my odds of survival.
***
Truth be told, there were no peerless martial arts or weapons on this floor.
The vault having seven floors meant the higher you went, the rarer the treasures.
'From what I saw out of the corner of my eye while looking for the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture, the stuff on the first floor isn't that great.'
So at first, I thought about going up to the second floor.
I had been told some method was needed. But maybe it was one I knew.
Unfortunately, the door to the second floor wouldn't even budge.
I couldn't waste all my time trying to open it, so I gave up and decided to get the best I could from the first floor.
Well, the first floor might not have peerless martial arts or weapons, but it wasn't all junk either.
-Clear Spirit Pill / Middle
-Hundred Herb Pill / Middle
Middle-grade elixirs, tossed in a corner any which way.
-Azure Cloud Sword / Middle
-Dark Iron Saber / Middle
And middle-grade weapons. Outside, things like these would be treated as perfectly good finds.
But for a vault called the greatest of all time, they were a letdown.
Maybe that was why no one had found the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture?
'Nobody would think an art like that would be sitting in a place like this.'
And on top of that, you needed the right time and the right method, and not many people would try something as drastic as I had.
That must have been why no one found it.
And according to Baek-no.
'He said most people who go into the Yellow Dragon Vault are disappointed by what's inside and leave after a short while.'
So these days, the vault was less about what you got out of it and more about having been granted the right to enter by the Emperor.
But not me.
As I said, I prided myself on knowing this world extremely well.
Which meant I knew a lot of odds and ends that others didn't.
To others, this place might look like a pile of nothing special...
'This place is a gold mine.'
A gold mine with gold lying all over the place.
And so I began roaming the gold mine every which way.
[ Time is up. ]
[ You have been expelled from the Yellow Dragon Vault. ]
When time ran out and I came out, my robes were stuffed full of things.
***
Click—
Leaving the vault, I went straight back to my room and opened the front of my robes.
Clatter-clatter-clatter—!
As if they had been waiting, the things I had brought out of the vault spilled onto the floor.
"Whew—"
With trembling hands, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and slowly sorted through what I had brought.
'Not that I can tell whether this is sweat or water.'
The first things I sorted were the martial arts.
-Sound-Hearing Qi Flow Art
-Hundred-Li Eye
Honestly, taken on their own, they weren't very impressive martial arts.
If they had been, someone who entered the vault before me would have taken them long ago.
By grade, the two were around Lower-Middle.
You could say they were a little lacking for the Yellow Dragon Vault.
But what if you combined the two?
'Then it's a whole different story.'
Learn both at once, and the Lower-Middle arts turned into a High-grade martial art.
Supersense.
'An overpowered martial art that sharpens your senses to the extreme, until eventually, they say, you can even predict the future.'
Exactly the kind of martial art I needed right now.
Now, when I couldn't know when or how I would land in danger, it would let me notice that danger even a little sooner.
And Supersense was a martial art that would help a great deal in combat, too.
That was why I brought them out.
Next.
Second were the elixirs.
-Iron Skin Grass
-Golden Bone Pill
-Blood Qi Grass
These too weren't very impressive elixirs on their own. Honestly, calling them elixirs was a stretch.
'Because taking them always comes with side effects.'
So the ones I brought were elixirs people left behind even when they found them.
But mix these three, and it was a different story.
The Indestructible Vajra Pill.
'An elixir that toughens your bones and muscles; take it regularly, and your body can't be cut by blades.'
This too was an elixir I badly needed right now.
Even after I cured the Severed Meridians, this wreck of a body wouldn't get better in a flash— not all at once.
So I had to start taking care of it even before the cure, and the Indestructible Vajra Pill was the perfect elixir for that.
And last.
-White Scale Sword
The last thing I had brought out was a sword.
When I came out carrying this sword, Baek-no had given me a puzzled look.
-If you needed a weapon, there must have been many fine ones. Why did you bring out a rusty sword like that?
Just as Baek-no said, the sword I brought out was rusted all over, nothing like its name.
The kind of thing no one would take even if you gave it away.
But I knew.
The sword's true form hidden behind that rusty exterior.
'The White Scale Sword.'
Once the seal on it was broken.
It would become a peerless treasured sword.
That was the kind of sword this was.
So I had been shocked to see it lying neglected in the vault.
'To think this was in the Yellow Dragon Vault.'
Let alone left lying around like that. I never saw it coming.
Then again.
Honestly, going by looks alone, it was a wonder anyone had put it in the vault at all.
'Putting this sword in the vault means someone knew something of its true nature.'
So why leave it lying around like that?
It made no sense.
And.
'And who took this sword, which nobody paid any attention to, out of the Yellow Dragon Vault?'
But it was a question I couldn't answer now.
I put it aside.
For now, rather than that.
"First, let's learn the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture."
It was time to learn martial arts.
Swish—
I carefully picked up the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture from where it lay to one side.
Looking at the secret manual in my hand, a thought crossed my mind.
"...I'll be able to read the formula written in here, right?"
It wasn't a worry I'd had when playing the game. But now that I was actually inside this world, it was.
Swish—
But it was a needless worry.
[ Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture ]
Black Tortoise, Spirit of the North
The Black Tortoise is the spirit of the north.
It inherits the law of the north.
It does not follow the current.
Nor does it sever it.
Nor does it burn.
The formula I saw when I opened the book was written in classical Chinese, but I understood what it meant at once.
"Thank goodness."
I let out a sigh of relief.
With nothing in the way now, it was time to learn the martial art.
Besides the Black Tortoise Sea-Suppressing Scripture, I also had to combine the other two arts into Supersense, so there was no time to waste.
But I had overlooked one thing. And a very important one at that.
"...How am I supposed to learn it?"
Martial arts.
The fact that you couldn't learn them the way you did in the game, just by hitting an option— click.
***
I agonized over it for a long while.
After all that struggling, I made my decision.
"Baek-no. Teach me martial arts."
I would learn martial arts from a seasoned drill instructor.