The Master of Cards Chapter 12: Ancient Art

Alex grit his teeth and did not let go of the position for as long as he could. The pain was truly unimaginable. After five minutes, he couldn't take it anymore and released it. Surprisingly he felt a crazy pang of hunger.

"Old man, I'm going to die of hunger! Save me" Alex had a crazed look on his face. Old Ren had been ready and brought a huge bag full of the high grade nutrition bars.

Alex unceremoniously ate five in one go and only then he felt the hunger pangs go away. Five was not a small number, since once could usually gill Alex's stomach. Once he ate it, a powerful pain spread throughout his body, urging him to scream, but he gritted and controlled it.

"The heck is this scroll? Is it designed to break the body?" Alex gritted.

Old Ren sighed. "Breaking the old to forge the new. How else will you surpass the limit of your body?"

After half an hour the pain went away. Gritting his teeth, Alex continued to try the first move. He could only perform 60% of the moves intention and hold it for a little more than five minutes in intense pain. Then gorge on nutrition bars and then suffer half an hour of torture.

Over the days, Alex turned all his attention towards this art. gradually he felt like he was getting closer and closer to the first form's proper intention. He was slowly able to hold onto the position for over 15 minutes. In school, Alex appeared incredibly tired and people in class wondered what was going on with him.

One day when he was sleeping during the break, Lily suddenly came to his class to look for him. Alex saw her and went outside to talk to her.

"Are you okay? You look terrible." Lily asked.

"I am practicing a new exercise and it is taking a toll." Alex sighed. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Huh? Nothing, I just heard people say you looked very sickly, so I came to see you." Lily said.

"Thank you for your concern." Alex genuinely thanked her. "I'm closer to getting the form of the move, once I do I feel like I can finally begin to search for the source."

Lily nodded. "You should begin soon, or else you might miss the high school finals."

Later at the dojo, Alex resumed his self torturous practice. After a few days he finally was able to complete the first form of the exercise to perfection. At that moment, he felt like a juice was secreted out of his muscles and his body burned. He had an incredible urge of hunger and he ate over 20 nutrition bars. Then he rolled around in a crazy pain for half an hour.

When he got up, he felt something different. Without hesitating he visited the gravitation chamber and slowly changed the gravity to 5. He was surprised to see that his body could handle it. He then performed the exercises that Old man Ren had taught him earlier and as he did he felt the final sign of merging completely with the statue. In the gravitation room at 5 G of strength, Alex the statue, suddenly opened its eyes and felt alive.

Alex had finally reached perfection in Hearts Becoming One state of the inner world. However, he then thought about the torture exercise. He had only completed the first move. If he performed the next five moves his physical limits could further be increased, but in that case what would happen with the inner world?

Alex decided to gamble and try the second move. This moves backlash was even more painful than the first move. Over the next week as he slowly tried to perform this move with increasing precision.

Old Ren quietly observed this kid in shock. He supplied the food nutrition bars and said nothing. Alex after a week of practicing the second move to a certain extent, entered his inner world. He seemed as connected to his statue as before, not really seeing any changes. He was about to give up on this experiment, when he suddenly noticed something shocking. The tips of the statue's fingers had changed from black to transparent.

"This... could there be a stage beyond Hearts Becoming One?" Alex was fired up. He now had a new goal and began practicing the second move of the torture exercise with renewed vigor.

Back in school, Luke's two month suspension had ended. Although he couldn't attend the Card classes, he could attend the normal classes. Unlike before, he had a quiet demeanor. However, the other students felt unnerved by his presence.

When Alex noticed him in school, he also felt like something was wrong. But he wasn't able to figure out what was unnerving him. He thought that perhaps Luke was bottling in his hostility which gave him this kind of depressive atmosphere.

Alex avoided any contact with Luke. Occassionally, Lily would come to chat with him during the breaks and they would sometimes eat lunch together in the cafeteria.

Alex didn't look as tired as before and showed signs of being healthier.

As time passed, Alex continued his routine of painful torture exercises. A month had passed, and Alex had finally mastered all the five moves. He began performing the moves in a fluid sequence. The struggle was real, but with each performance, Alex could feel his body's limits improving. This exercise didn't exactly break the bottleneck, but raised it higher instead. Thus the bottle neck slowly kept increasing and along with it, Alex noticed that the statue was increasingly becoming transparent. The hands and legs had turned completely transparent.

Now Alex had completed practicing the torture exercise, but still large portions of his statue's body and face hadn't turned transparent yet. They were still black marble.

Just then, Alex had a stroke of inspiration. He could perform this torture exercise with perfection now, but could he do it in higher gravity?

Chapter end