Chapter 77: Three Boxes

For the first week after Muscle Great Completion, Joe became stronger without cultivating Muscle.

That bothered him. Not because he disliked the result.

Because he did not understand it.

The ninth tempering was finished.

He had confirmed it repeatedly.

Blood Energy passed through the muscle layer without finding meaningful weakness to refine. The panel showed Muscle Tempering at Perfection. No tenth pass appeared no matter how carefully he experimented.

Yet ordinary movement kept changing.

The difference was subtle on the first morning.

A water barrel felt lighter.

Two days later, Joe caught a medicine crate one-handed when Edwin's assistant lost his grip and nearly overcorrected because he expected more resistance.

By the fifth day, his steps had changed enough that he deliberately slowed himself during guard drills.

Nothing new had been added.

What he already possessed was becoming easier to use.

Joe spent three evenings testing the explanation.

Not maximum strength.

Controlled force.

Weighted carries.

Slow lifts.

Movement from awkward positions.

Short bursts followed by examination of joints and bones.

The result became obvious.

Muscle Great Completion had not merely strengthened individual regions.

The ninth pass had integrated them.

Now Perfect Body was continuing to settle that completed structure into ordinary movement.

Previously, Joe could possess strength that required conscious alignment to express safely.

Increasingly, that alignment happened on its own.

No Regression preserved each legitimate adjustment.

Perfect Health removed the small accumulations of strain that might otherwise distort adaptation.

Every Hard Work Pays Off continued returning insight whenever the tests were valid.

And One Effort Equals a Hundred accelerated the learning involved in controlling the finished body.

The Muscle layer was no longer becoming stronger through tempering.

Joe was becoming better at accessing the strength already there.

----------

He returned to the warehouse twelve days after Great Completion.

Seven hundred kilograms rose smoothly.

Joe lowered it.

Waited.

Checked wrists.

Knees.

Spine.

No problem.

He increased the load slightly.

Seven hundred and twenty.

Manageable.

Seven hundred and forty.

His muscles could do it.

His skeleton disliked it.

Joe stopped.

There.

That was the boundary.

Not absolute.

Safe.

The difference mattered.

He suspected that if survival demanded it, he could produce considerably more force for a moment.

He also suspected he would regret doing so.

That was useless for training.

Joe unloaded the frame.

His muscles had surpassed the structure carrying them.

Bone was no longer simply the next realm.

It was the bottleneck.

---------

Unfortunately, Bone was also where public instruction became irritatingly incomplete.

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Joe discovered that over the next several weeks.

The guard reading room contained more information than he expected and less than he wanted.

There were descriptions of Bone Tempering.

Warnings.

Preparatory exercises.

Common failures.

Several diagrams showing broad Blood Energy routes.

Nothing resembling a complete inheritance.

Joe spent three nights copying harmless anatomical notes into his medicine records while keeping the actual cultivation comparison entirely in memory.

He eventually divided what he knew into three categories.

Three boxes.

The first was martial knowledge.

The guard had plenty of it.

Bone Tempering strengthened the skeletal frame, improved force transmission, hardened joints against greater loads and allowed the body to express muscular strength that would otherwise damage itself.

Very useful.

Also obvious.

The public records described what Bone Tempering accomplished far better than how to accomplish it safely.

The second box was medicine.

That one was much larger.

Joe understood bone anatomy considerably better than most martial practitioners he had met.

Outer compact structure.

Internal architecture.

Marrow.

Joint surfaces.

Ligaments.

Growth history.

Healing.

Blood supply.

The relationship between muscle attachment and skeletal stress.

Years of medicine had taught him what bones were.

It had not taught him how Blood Energy should temper them.

Anatomy could tell him what not to destroy.

It could not provide the inheritance.

The third box was the most frustrating.

Observation.

Garrick.

Alex.

Theodere.

Other Bone practitioners.

Joe could see the results in movement.

Late Bone Garrick transferred force through his frame far better than Simon could.

Alex's recent breakthrough had changed how his structure accepted impact.

Theodere's body, despite old injuries, carried the deeper stability of someone who had long since crossed Bone.

Joe could study all of them.

He could not see Blood Energy moving inside their bones.

Three boxes.

All useful.

None complete.

---------

Simon discovered him staring at a skeleton diagram one evening.

“You have looked at that leg for ten minutes.”

“Eleven.”

“That makes it worse.”

Joe turned the page.

Simon sat across from him.

His own Muscle Tempering had progressed steadily, although compared with Joe's hidden advancement it seemed almost painfully slow.

That was normal.

Joe had to remind himself of that sometimes.

Simon nodded toward the book.

“Bone?”

“Yes.”

“Ask Theo.”

Joe looked up.

Simon shrugged.

“He gave Alex a method.”

“To Alex.”

“He likes us.”

“That is different from trusting us with a private inheritance.”

Simon considered.

“You could offer money.”

“Probably still different.”

“A contract?”

“Possibly.”

Simon leaned back.

“So ask.”

Joe closed the book.

That was not a bad suggestion.

It was merely incomplete.

Theodere possessing a Bone method did not mean he had the right to distribute it freely. His own inheritance had come through people, agreements and circumstances Joe did not fully understand.

Alex being a distant relative could have mattered.

Tomas supporting him could have mattered.

Years of service could have mattered.

The contract certainly mattered.

Knowledge had ownership in this world.

Sometimes literally.

“I'll ask what he's allowed to tell me.”

Simon smiled.

“There. I solved Bone.”

“No.”

“I contributed.”

“Marginally.”

“I'll take it.”

-----------

Theodere listened without interrupting.

They met at the Hall two days later, after the younger students had finished evening practice.

Joe did not pretend ignorance.

“I’m approaching the point where I need to prepare for Bone.”

That was publicly believable.

Theodere already knew Joe progressed unusually fast.

“How close?”

Joe smiled.

“Close enough to ask early.”

Theodere grunted.

“You learned caution from somewhere.”

“My first life.”

Joe kept the answer inside his head.

Out loud he said, “Medicine.”

Theodere accepted that.

Joe continued.

“I know Alex received your Bone method.”

“He did.”

“Can I purchase access?”

“No.”

Immediate.

Interesting.

Joe did not react.

“Contract restriction?”

Theodere looked at him more carefully.

“Partly.”

He poured tea.

“The method I gave Alex isn't something I created. I have rights to teach it under conditions. Blood relation helps. Service helps. Approval helps. You satisfy some things and not others.”

Joe nodded.

Exactly as expected.

“Can you teach principles?”

“Some.”

That was enough to make the conversation valuable.

Theodere leaned forward.

“First principle: don't build your own Bone method because you think you're clever.”

Joe almost smiled.

“That sounds specific.”

“I've met clever people.”

“And?”

“Some remained clever with damaged bodies.”

Joe accepted the warning.

Theodere tapped the table.

“Muscle tolerates experimentation better. Bone mistakes stay with you.”

Joe thought of Perfect Health.

No Regression.

Perfect Body.

Those talents changed his risk.

They did not make incorrect knowledge correct.

That distinction remained absolute.

“What can you show me legally?”

Theodere considered.

“Preparatory conditioning. Recognition of bad circulation. Several routes that appear across many methods. Nothing sufficient to begin tempering.”

Joe nodded.

“I'll take that.”

Theodere looked suspicious.

“You aren't disappointed?”

“I asked for information.”

“And didn't get the method.”

“I received information.”

Theodere stared at him for several seconds.

Then laughed.

“You really are Edwin's student.”

“Partner.”

“That disease again.”

---------

Bret was drunk when Joe saw him three nights later.

Not badly.

Not yet.

Joe was returning from Edwin’s workshop when he noticed Bret outside a southern tavern with two men he had seen before.

Warehouse labor.

Dockside connections.

One wore the same knotted red cord Joe had noticed weeks earlier.

Bret was talking too loudly.

Joe would have continued walking.

Then he heard Simon’s name.

He slowed.

“—thinks because he beds a Black—”

One of the men laughed.

Bret continued.

Joe's expression did not change.

He remained far enough away that Bret never saw him.

There was no reason to confront a drunk man over words.

Words were cheap.

Information was not.

Joe listened long enough to understand that Bret's resentment had not faded.

Then he continued home.

No anger.

No plan to strike him in an alley.

That would be stupid.

But Bret moved another small distance in Joe's mind.

From irritation.

Toward potential problem.

Joe preferred identifying those transitions early.

----------

That night he opened the panel.

Static Foundation — Lv5 — Perfection

Dynamic Foundation — Lv5 — Perfection

Muscle Tempering — Lv5 — Perfection

No Bone entry.

Correct.

Knowing bones existed was not a technique.

Reading several routes was not a technique.

Watching Bone practitioners was not a technique.

Joe dismissed the panel.

Three boxes.

Martial principles.

Medicine.

Observation.

A fourth might eventually be needed.

Actual inheritance fragments from more than one source.

He did not need to steal them.

Blackwood contained old manuals, retired martial artists, medicine records, guards with partial instruction, merchants selling copied notes and practitioners willing to discuss principles they considered harmless.

One fragment would be useless.

Ten might still be useless.

But Joe did not need ten fragments that said the same thing.

He needed enough independent pieces to determine which principles were universal and which belonged only to particular methods.

Past Life Memory would let him retain them.

Medicine would help him reject anatomical nonsense.

Perfected Foundations would let him understand structure.

Every Hard Work Pays Off would reward legitimate experiments once he had something coherent enough to practice.

And the panel—

Joe stopped there.

The panel would not create the method.

But if he eventually assembled something that truly qualified as one, it would recognize it.

That gave him a standard.

Not an answer.

A standard.

Joe smiled.

That was sufficient.

For now.