Way of the Knights

Chapter 53 - Iron Mountain Blows

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On the backyard of the stone house, five figures could be seen sparring with the steel dummies.

Each of them were sending ferocious attacks that kicked up a huge commotion. Not far away from them, is another person who was sitting cross-legged while continuously summoning blue-ish energy on his palms.

This was Raven who had already woke up this morning from his severe exhaustion, unfortunately he didn't manage to see what transpired during his sleep, or else he had some unnecessary explaining to do.

"Well, my control of my energies are quite good, though It's still lacking compared to how I used to do it back in my past life but it should help me a lot."

Energy control is one of the things that many tend to neglect nowadays. It seems that they forgotten that controlling their energies would help them a lot when it comes learning battle arts.

He deliberately left his friends to their own accord, he wanted them to realize that in order to learn and execute battle arts in a better way, they have to get better at control.

"What should I practice then?"

This was a question that Raven had to think carefully. His friends already started practicing their own battle arts while he hadn't chose one for himself yet. Considering that he will be pursuing a pugilist type of fighting, of course he had to make sure that his technique would fit on the same category as well.

After a while of brainstorming, his attention gravitated towards the [Iron Mountain Blows]. It was a set of hard hitting techniques that could shake up a mountain if he get perfected it. This technique is also very common in the kingdom, in fact this was practiced by a lot of commoners who can't afford other techniques. It was treated as trash by many nobles and even disdained looking at it.

It wasn't their fault really, after all not a lot of people pursued the pugilist style of fighting, but just because they haven't had any success from this technique, doesn't necessarily mean that it would be the same for him. He figured that it's about time for the people of this kingdom to witness the might of the True Iron Mountain Blows.

Raven remained cross-legged, he used his full concentration and covered his entire body of a thin layer of energy. He remained at this state for five minutes before deactivating it. He rested for fifteen minutes to regain his lost energy and covered his body with a layer of it once more.

He repeated this process multiple times until he was able to stay at that state for a straight hour before getting tired. With this, the first hurdle for the first Iron Mountain Stance was done. This took him a whole day before he was able to do it.

His next target was to concentrate a larger amount of his energy to his hands while maintaining that layer of energy. He took it one step at a time, one finger at a time rather. First was his thumb, he created a denser energy film around it and maintained it for a long time. After getting the hang of it, he did the same towards the second finger.

At first he failed, but it didn't took long before he gotten than hang of it as well. By the end of the day, he was able to create a denser amount of energy film on his hands.

On the third day, his agenda was to make the energy film even denser to the point that it solidifies around his hands. This was certainly harder but Raven persevered, and before the third day of training was finished. He was successful on doing so.

He stood up from his spot and took a deep breath. He muttered: "Iron Fist." And then his hands turned a tinge darker due to the solidification of energy. Raven raised a hand and placed it on the surface of the tree.

As soon as his hand made contact, he applied a bit of pressure and the bark of the tree shattered. Raven applied even more pressure and he felt his hand penetrate the tree even deeper until his entire hand penetrated all the way through the tree.

A satisfied smile appeared on his face. "Okay, I reached minimal mastery of this. I should focus on this first before moving on to other moves."

***

The following days passed by quick and the crew were busy with their training.

Raven became even more proficient in Iron Fist that he had no troubles keeping it on for hours. Whenever he activated it, his hands will turn into a darker color almost similar to steel and it even reached all the way to his elbows.

To train it even further, Raven always tried to raise the energy output more each day. The results are fine since it had reached the point where normal bladed objects could no longer damage his hands, but he can't hold this out for too long simply because it eats up on his reserves like crazy. He could hold on to this state for no longer than five minutes, but he wasn't worried since as long as he raises his cultivation this technique will improve as well.

For now, he reached the mastery limit of the first move for the Iron Mountain Blows. His next target was of course next move which is called: 'Tremor'. This technique is where the true force of this technique shines.

Tremor isn't really considered as an attack, it's more of an additional effect. Tremor allows one to have each of his movements to cause vibrations, and if he mastered this technique then he would be able to control how strong this Tremors are.

To practice this, Raven had to start internally once more. First he sat down and took a couple of deep breaths in, then little by little he urged some of his energies to move along his breath. Just like what he did to the Iron Fist, he took this one step at a time. It started on the tip of his fingers, then it became a whole finger, two fingers, all fingers, palms, entire hand, arms, elbow, shoulders the other hand and etc.

This took much longer compared to the Iron Fist, it took his two full days to have the energies in his whole body to breathe with him and this was just the first hurdle, it can't be called a Tremor if it doesn't vibrate fiercely right? Plus, vibrations should be fast, so he had to pursue two things now.

First he worked on the intensity of the vibrations, he could achieve this by doing a pulsing movement throughout his body. It of course started very weak and unstable, but as days passed on his practice, he was able to give more strength behind those pulses. The result of that could be seen whenever he did this weird leaf exercise.

He would place a leaf on top of his palms and send a pulse there, and if the leaf was pushed out of his hands, then that means he succeeded on the exercise. Additionally, the intensity of the push also tells him how strong the pulses he sends. Currently, he was able to push the leaf at a ruler's length which isn't bad but not too impressive either. But he reckon that he should work on it's speed.

And that's precisely what he did. Towards the next following days, he resumed his breathing exercise but he made adjustments to it. His first goal was to have his energy pulse twice in one breath. This was actually harder than it sounds since he was used to practicing it once per breath before but he took his time and gradually got used to it and after three days of practice, he was able to do it twice in one breath.

Next was his attempts on doing three pulses in one breath. And just like this, his arduous exercise began. And by the end of the month, he finally reached the limit of six pulses in one breath.

Now he was practicing regular fist strikes with tremor, each time he threw a punch, there will be multiple clapping sounds coming from his fist which signals the Tremor doing it's work. If he tried punching a boulder like this, his attack will damage it at least seven times. First would be the original strength of his fist, and the other six comes from the Tremor. Even so, this isn't the true form of Tremor, because in records, the strength of each pulse should be equal to the original fist force. The current stage of his Tremors are only at least a fourth of his original fist force so he still have a long way to go, considering that he will be adding Iron Fist on the mix, then he truly had to practice even longer.

But for now, he should look towards more live combat experience, that way he would advance this technique of his faster.