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Initial Mastery.

Minor Success.

Major Success.

Perfection.

These are the realms of martial arts mastery. An age-old wisdom that had been passed down from one generation to the next. It’s one of the profound and generational inheritances of humanity’s ancestors that allowed martial arts to flourish to this era.

But humans are creatures that sought progress at the very core of their being.

As generations passed, humans accumulated knowledge, did many tests and experiments, and ended up discovering new things to add onto existing ones.

The four stages of martial arts mastery were formed to represent how much of the technique’s power the practitioner could use casually and in the heat of battle.

At the Initial Mastery stage, that’s 1-25% of the technique’s overall power. The Minor Success stage uses 26-50%, the Major Success stage uses 51-75%, and finally, the Perfection stage uses 76-100% of their chosen martial art technique’s power.

But as the human civilization advanced and more knowledge accumulated, a new stage was added to the stages of martial arts mastery.

The Intent Stage is what it’s called.

Originally, it’s supposed to be called the ’Artistic Integration Stage.’ However, the name was rejected for being too long. It was simplified to the ’Intent Stage,’ which perfectly encapsulates what the realm represents anyway.

When an individual becomes way too familiar with their chosen martial arts and has practiced to the point where they could shatter the sensible ceiling of their natural power while wielding the might of their martial arts technique, that’s when they’d reach the Intent Stage.

The intent stage is where one becomes so familiar with their technique that even their faintest and most mundane movement carries its charm naturally.

Take a man that had reached the Intent Stage at something called the ’Wave Surpassing Sword Technique,’ for example. Practicing swordsmanship alone will sculpt his body into something biased towards swordsmanship itself, but with him reaching the Intent Stage, the very color and feel of his chakra will change too.

Just by standing still, he would feel like a calm and serene lake. He might even start smelling like the sea, the ocean, or any body of water simply because his chakra had already developed a heavy bias towards the water attribute and swordsmanship as well.

And when he unleashes the power of the Wave Surpassing Sword Technique at the Intent Stage, his enemies wouldn’t just simply see him as a human wielding a sword. They see him as an enormous tidal wave itself crashing down on them. A fearless tsunami that will swallow them whole.

That is the power of the Intent Stage — it’s the power that could mimic or borrow the forces of nature itself through martial arts.

And it’s the very same thing that’s missing from the martial arts repository of the Banished Arms Clan.

The clan doesn’t have a single technique in the martial hall that has the potential to go beyond the perfection stage of martial arts mastery.

Whereas every other clan, even the ones with shorter histories than theirs, had at least one or two, the Banished Arms Clan doesn’t. It’s why they’re looked down upon. It’s the reason why they don’t pay respect to the name of the clan despite their rich history. It’s the reason why the clan was barely hanging by the edges of the Central City, resorting to business instead to hold on to their land.

The very root of this problem comes from the curse of the clan—the Banished Arsenal Martial Physique.

Although it’s not a terminal illness, there is a reason why martial artists preferred armed combat instead of relying on their bare fists and legs.

First and foremost, the monsters in the dungeons are no mere punching bags. They had hides that no ordinary steel can cut. They have sharp fangs that could tear apart the weak flesh of the small and pitiful humans, and most of the monsters in the dungeons move by groups. It’s very rare to see one going off on its own.

As martial arts prospered, weapons became an integral part of martial arts. Nobody’s dumb enough to explore dungeons without carrying something that has a sharp or pointy edge to serve as a deterrent to monsters.

Those who do are seen as crazy and suicidal.

And as human civilization advanced, more discoveries were unearthed and more combat means were unleashed. And at the very forefront of these were the weapon arts.

The so-called ’Path of Arms’ was established. It became one of the most popular and sought-after martial knowledge there was.

It begins when one reaches the intent stage in their chosen martial arts.

From there, they refined it and solidified the realm of mastery itself. Then it was transformed more, especially into weapon mastery.

Take the sword, for example: it starts with Sword Intent, followed by Sword Aura, Sword Core, Sword Heart, Sword Domain, and finally Sword World.

Intent, Aura, Core, Heart, Domain, and World. These are the realms of the ’Path of Arms,’ or, simply put, weapon mastery.

’Path of Arms.’ ’Banished Arms’. See the contradiction here?

The ’Path of Arms’ was a road that nobody from the Banished Arms Clan could pursue, not because they didn’t want to, but because they were literally banned from doing so by their Aberrant Martial Physique.

This is the overwhelming disparity that caused the Banished Arms Clan to fall behind others. Not being able to wield anything labeled as a ’weapon’ itself is already crippling for them, but not being able to pursue the ’Path of Arms’? Hell, it’s already a miracle that the clan was still around.

Even some vagrant martial artists out on the street could hope to pursue the Intent Stage. What does that say for the clan who are literally banned from doing so?

And before you ask, no. There is no such thing as the so-called Fist or Leg Intent here.

No martial artist ever thought about replacing steel with their bare flesh to pursue the ’Path of Arms.’

Some have tried, that’s for sure. But even those who had seen some semblance of success said that it was not worth it.

That’s why the unarmed combat style remained dry as a dessert. Nobody thought too highly of it. Almost everybody will start learning how to use weapons as soon as they have the means and the ability to do so. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Ren already knew all of this. He knew the moment he learned that he was born to this clan. He already lamented and mourned it a while back. But he still held small hope that maybe there’s something useful here.

Alas, he was disappointed.

But it’s not the end of the world. Ren wouldn’t give up with just a slight setback like this. He’s got a lot going on for him.

The moment he decided to make his own martial arts, he already swore to change his and the clan’s fate around.

Just because others failed and said that pursuing the art of unarmed combat was unwise and not worth it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’d end up with the same conclusion.

They think that it’s not an endeavor that is worth it, but for him who has the Banished Arsenal Physique, this was his and the clan’s only way out.

Ren swore that with him here, he won’t allow his new family, his clan, to fade into obscurity like many others did before them. Not only would he be doing a great disservice to his reputation as a transmigrator, it’d also be a great waste of his gifts and talents.

Besides, the clan had been more than generous to him. If he couldn’t even do something to repay the goodwill of the people around him, how could he continue calling himself a man?

Ren spent an entire week pondering over the wealth of information he bought.

He hadn’t gone to creation just yet because he was still not finished reading through everything, but he wasn’t in a hurry.

Ren was enjoying his time learning, and he’s taking his time to ensure that he won’t make mistakes.

Also, yes, he did end up buying some of those ’failed’ martial arts. Ones that had more side effects than benefits.

He didn’t practice any of them, no. He hasn’t gone crazy or desperate to do so. He bought them to serve as a reference for what not to do, to serve as a warning for himself so that he won’t end up with something horrible.

And despite those techniques being bad, they served their purpose well enough. Even though he didn’t buy many, it gave him enough and solid references for things he needs to avoid when making his martial arts.

Nobody knew that he was cooking something big.

Life at the clan continued as normal. Ren follows his routine almost religiously. The clan was in a cultivation frenzy using the Pain Demon Art 1.0 and the Green Lotus Core Technique.

The occasional chaos was caused by Alex, but that is a welcome disturbance from time to time as it improved the clan’s atmosphere.

But slowly, as time went on, Ren was becoming more and more confident about his well of knowledge. It won’t take long before he begins outlining the design of his new martial art.