[18 years old. You barely survived the attack on the Shaolin Temple. Blinded in both eyes, your future as a martial artist was considered destroyed.]
[19 years old. Realizing that with your poor talent, cultivating no longer had any meaning now that you were blind. How could you protect anyone when you couldn’t see anything? As an orphan, you had no home to return to nor anyone you could truly call family. The Shaolin Temple is all you have known. Yet, you could not stay at the temple as a useless leech. You comfort yourself through the teachings from the older monks who took pity on you.
[45 years old. Decades of learning have filled the void in your heart. You no longer reminisce on the days you had your sight. The only thing filling your mind is martial arts and Buddhism.]
[70 years old. You’ve reached the end of your lifespan. Reaching a high position in the Shaolin Temple. As you rested on your deathbed surrounded by friends and peers, you gained an enlightenment. However, it was far too late to gain any use out of it. You died the next day.]
[The simulation is over. You can choose one of the following.]
[Gain a large boost to Qi] or [Gain two random techniques learned in the simulation]
Haneul chose the second option. Knowing that even if he received a large boost to his inner energy, he would be helpless to defend himself against the attackers. That much energy would force him into a meditative state unless he wanted his body to explode from the inside out. Seventy years of cultivation was not insignificant, and neither was he talented enough to handle that much energy as a 3rd Rate Martial Artist. Not to mention, he can’t even cultivate qi. Hanuel was born with reverse qi-veins.
Haneul was quite happy to know that even without his eyes, he lived a long life. Only one of the skills he received from the Simulation System would help him survive this unexpected attack on the Shaolin Temple. The other, he wasn’t so sure about… Right now, he didn’t understand what it truly meant, even with the system somehow placing the information in his brain. In fact, he still didn’t understand what the system itself was. He only received it just before the attack.
Right now, he was hiding with the rest of the weak disciples as their seniors defended them outside. Strangely enough, he wasn’t as scared as he was before this strange system latched on to him at the start of this attack. Haneul grabbed a quarterstaff from the weapons stand and tightly gripped the nine-foot-long sturdy hardwood rod. Memories that were his and yet not his own flowed through both his mind and body. The simulation was more miraculous than he thought…
Haneul received a basic staff technique and a sleep technique. Seventy years of staff-wielding experience flowed through his body, and it felt both amazing and terrifying. As the screams of their enemies and seniors easily reached the young disciples' ears, they huddled together, shaking in fear, resignation, or fury.
“Our senior brothers will protect us! We have nothing to fear, everyone!” A boy around Haneul’s age shouted.
His legs weren’t shaking, and his voice was strong and full of confidence. In the next moment, several masked martial artists broke into the dojo, causing cries of terror to ring throughout the building. Haneul closed his eyes as he twirled his staff. Several of his brothers went running past him to reach the back of the dojo as the elders bravely fought against the assailants.
“This little retard has closed his eyes in terror! Haha, die!” Haneul focused all his senses but sight as he took in everything around him.
The bloody smell wafted off the wicked martial artist, his heavy footsteps echoing from stepping on the ground, and the vibrations of the man’s steps. Using all of that and more, Haneul stepped up to protect those who could not defend themselves. With a low crouch to the ground just as the masked swordsman was about to decapitate him, Haneul swung his staff, knocking the man off his feet.
As the man fell to the ground, Haneul brought his staff down on the man’s skull, preventing him from ever harming anyone else again. Yet, that wasn’t the end of it. Behind him, Haneul could sense someone behind him. Not through qi or any other sort of spiritual technique, but the natural senses of his body. Senses honed for more than 50 years in the simulation.
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Haneul flipped forward, avoiding the sneak attack and counterattacking simultaneously with a forward stab in the throat, incapacitating her. He brought his staff down on top of the woman’s head, dropping her to the floor face-first. After dealing with that martial artist, in the distance, he could hear the strained voice of that guy from earlier who was attempting to calm and cheer them up in their time of distress. Opening his eyes, Haneul saw the boy putting up a fierce struggle with the temple’s Arhat Fist.
Despite being surrounded by three opponents at once and bleeding from several cuts, his determination to continue fighting was overflowing. Haneul leaped and delivered a flying kick to one of the masked martial artists, knocking him into the other. When both of them fell to the ground, he didn’t hesitate to stomp down on the throat of one and smash down the bottom of his staff on the neck of the other one. Both clutched their crushed throats as they desperately tried to bring air into their lungs.
Turning away to leave them to their fate, Haneul sees the brave guy continuing to fight. At the cost of a cut across his cheek, he dashed deep into the third martial artist’s space, sunk his fist into his gut, and, as he bows over, brought his elbow down on the back of the man’s neck. The man fell without further movement, and the guy looked at Haneul. “Thanks.” A bright, wide smile was present on his face.
“Amitabha,” Haneul responded with a slight bow of his head.
“I’m Bohyun!” Bohyun introduced himself.
“Haneul.” Haneul gave a polite smile back.
The two of them then turned and focused back on the invaders. They fought alongside each other to help protect the honor of the Shaolin Temple and those who could not fight for themselves. Thankfully, their seniors who were fighting outside managed to return in time to help the elders. After a long battle, the Shaolin Temple survived the sudden attack. Yet, they did not escape unharmed.
Many monks lost their lives in the battle. Haneul and the others began preparing for a large funeral for their lost brothers. As sorrowful as the atmosphere was in the temple, it gave Haneul the chance to understand the Sleep Technique he received from the Simulation System and how the Simulation System worked.
When going to bed after the attack, Haneul woke up inside his dream. He was back at the attack on the temple. However, this time, he wasn’t hiding inside the dojo. Haneul was out there in the middle of the battlefield, facing off against martial artists stronger than himself. Second-rate martial artist and higher. Before he was escorted into the dojo, he saw his senior brothers and elders facing off against the masked attackers.
In this dream world, he was taking their place, facing off against those same attackers. As Haneul spun his staff with his eyes closed, the 2nd Rate Martial Artist chuckled. The young monk didn’t even get a chance to realize what he was truly getting into as the man attacked immediately. Haneul tried to block the man's incredibly fast downward sword chop, but he was flabbergasted when he felt the sword effortlessly slice his wooden staff into two pieces.
As Haneul's body crumpled under the merciless force of the sword, a searing jolt surged through him, defying the dream's ethereal nature. The sensation, alarmingly vivid, tore through his being with an unsettling authenticity that blurred the line between dream and reality. The cold steel bit into his chest, and horrifyingly real sensations racked through him—the tearing of flesh, the metallic tang of blood, and the agonizing pull that seemed to stretch the very fabric of his existence. He was really dying!
His vision fractured into two as the sword went past his staff and also divided him into two. In that moment, Haneul grappled with the paradox of knowing it was a dream yet feeling the excruciating tangibility of his own demise. The metaphysical rending of his body tore at the seams of reason, leaving an indelible impression of suffering that transcended the boundaries of the subconscious.
Just as the pain of death hit him, he reappeared at the start of the attack, facing off against the second-rate martial artist again. Staring into his cruel, sadistic eyes, Haneul shook in terror. The very real feeling of dying paralyzed him. Those seventy years of staffmanship experience as a blind monk meant nothing in the face of death.
He turned and ran. Haneul didn’t have the time to think about how shameful it was to turn his back on an opponent. As an 18-year-old boy whose life experience consisted of reading Buddhist texts, lectures, and martial arts, what did he know about death? Nothing. And in this moment, after experiencing death, the only thing running through his mind as he ran for his life was survival. Nothing mattered more than surviving right now.
As Haneul made his way to the dojo, he cried out as a spike of pain erupted in his chest. With his legs failing to respond, he looked down to see a sword sticking out of his chest. He reached out toward the dojo, seeing several of his brothers and the elders making it inside as he fell to the ground. “Help me…” He weakly cried out to the elder, staring him in the eyes. The elder broke eye contact as he herded the last of the other young monks inside the dojo and barricaded the doors.