Perfection

A year.

That's how long it took me. 

A year of time spent exclusively on looking into my own body. Hours upon hours upon hours I'd observe while sitting deathly still. My rhythmic breathing became the only thing distinguishing me from a corpse.

The hours turned to days. Days consisting of the same routine. 

I'd wake up, and before I could even eat anything, I'd swing my sword, practicing water breathing. Then, I'd sit down, disconnect from reality and train the observation technique for hours on end until the sun went down and the sky got dark.

Every day. Wake up, sword practice, eat, technique practice, eat, technique practice, sleep then wake up the next day to do it all again.

I achieved a degree of connection with my body that I could have never even imagined. Yet, with each passing day, the body that I grew more and more accustomed to began to feel like it was no longer mine. My mind was no longer attached to my body, as though I was looking at myself in third person while mindlessly doing the same thing day in and day out.

The thoughts of frustration, the feeling of anger I felt towards my own shortcomings were all silenced. Or maybe that isn't right. They might have very well been overpowered by a white noise. 

My body seemed to know what to do by itself. My mind was also present, interpreting the actions of my body and presenting ideas about improvements. Even so, it felt as though I was on autopilot. Like my subconscious was handling all matters about training while my active mind watched in silence, not particularly doing anything.

But I was aware. I could see everything that was happening. At points, I stopped to think. About everything. During these times, the white noise softened and my awareness returned. At first, it was a welcome change, but after a while, all the repressed emotions would come back like a tidal wave. I could have dealt with it the first time I noticed myself drifting off, it would've hurt, but I could have dealt with everything. 

Now though, it's too late. If I were to take back control, everything I repressed would come crashing down with the weight of a tsunami. That wasn't something I was certain I could endure. 

The fix was simple enough though. Whenever I became too mindful of my surroundings, more present in the moment, I would simply cut everything off with the technique. What I noticed was that in addition to external stimuli, it could also sever links to internal stimuli. Thus, every time I used the technique, a part of my own mind would be cut off, and through repetition, it could be cut off for longer and longer periods of time. Presumably, it could eventually be cut off forever.

The more I did this, the deeper the hole I dug for myself became. I got too used to this state of nothingness to the point where I couldn't fix the severed links anymore. For if I did, everything that built up would come back to bite me.

A feedback loop that I was trapped in, one that would take more effort to break out of with each passing day. 

And so, the monotonous, repetitive days bled into weeks. The weeks bled into months, and the months bled into a whole year.

After a full year of constant training. I had done it. I had mastered the first step.

It got to the point where I could still feel every single part of my body without needing to sit down and focus. It just became a part of me, an extra sense. 

Whenever my legs moved, I could feel my muscles shift. I could feel the tendons linking my bones and muscles together stretch and contract. Everything was within my sights. Everything mapped out to perfection.

In addition, I had made strides in the second step. Control.

It started out as using the awareness I had to flex every muscle in my body at a time and seeing how blood moved to them. Then I focused on the cells. I saw how the blood affected them and how much oxygen they could take.

Then, I used overload on my legs again and observed the way blood concentrated on a muscle. I did this several times, making sure to account for everything I saw, to remember everything.

After observing for a while, without using total concentration and overloading my blood vessels, I drew oxygenated blood from my body and concentrated it towards my legs. 

This came to me as a completely natural thing. There was no mental struggle, as though my body completely understood my will and followed my every command.

And then… pain. Redirecting blood was painful. Incredibly so. I almost fainted from either lack of blood going to the brain or from the pain. It was like I was torturing myself.

That definitely was not my brightest idea.

I used total concentration again. Then, I gathered the blood oxygenated by the technique and sent it all towards my legs. 

This was similar to overload. Maybe the person who came up with it also used this technique but decided to share it in a way that was easier to understand.

However, the real overload required finesse, much opposed to the barbaric way of jamming as much blood as possible into small veins.

Total concentration absorbed as much oxygen as the body could take and spread it evenly. This greatly boosts physical capabilities.

The next step requires to use total concentration while focusing on a specific body part, thereby oxygenating that part to its very limits, drastically boosting its physical attributes in a way incomparable to normal total concentration. The downside of this is that the way the blood is sent to the body part is absolutely chaotic, limiting the number of times a person can use overload.

Next, true overload. It draws the blood oxygenated by total concentration and directs it all towards a part of the body. The difference being that the user has to consciously direct the blood themselves. Because the blood is manually directed, the chaos of overload is completely bypassed. The downside of this is that it is nigh impossible to do. 

But I did it.

After crafting that theory, I put it into practice.

At first, the results were the same as with normal overload as the control I had was still poor. Yet, as time went on and I kept training, the results were incomparable. 

With the increased control, came increased efficiency. No blood flowed chaotically so no oxygen was lost, meaning that I could access the physical boosts of overload - and even more than that - with virtually no consequences. It was the perfect technique.

The water breathing that I had sunk my entire being into mastering became child's play to me. I could generate far greater offensive power than the breathing style could ever offer even while not using it. 

I worked perfect overload into it and even with my imperfect use of it while in combat, the results were certainly outstanding. But that was all. A breathing technique that was not built with perfect overload in mind had limits that could not be surpassed. It was too slow, too weak, too gentle.

I needed something different. Something new.