Iron Body

Garen Garen found this technique along with three others in the White Cloud Gate's secret library. In the form of four books:

**Iron Body**, Dark Iron Palm, Lark Blade and Flame Fist.

Those Secret Martial Arts were common and almost all the Dojos had them. They were usually taught to the normal disciples, but the White Cloud Gate had the Explosive Fist Arts as the basic and the four low-level Secret Martial Arts were just kept in the library as part of the collection.

The four Secret Martial Arts were very similar to the Red Hand Fist Garen encountered before. They could not be put into skill combos, and it would take him a very long time to master them, so the benefit wouldn’t justify the cost.

Although they were put in the library, disciples read them just for fun. Secret Martial Arts like the four could be found anywhere, and they were just like the Iron Tunic that was in almost all the martial arts novels.

All of them required a lot of time for one to master. Disciples needed to spend at least five to seven years on the Level One Mastery of those arts. Even more so, Flame Fist required eight years for the Level One Mastery. It had four levels in total, and the required time doubled for each level, which meant it would take 64 years for one to finish the last one.

*"One won’t become any stronger if he can’t master one Secret Martial Art before the age of 25. No one is going to spend 120 years to master the Flame Fist. No wonder no one touches these low-level Secret Martial Arts…"*

Garen combines this secret technique and Boulder Martial Art with the Mammoth Secret Technique to create the Mammoth Variant Secret Technique: Explosive Level.

## Overview

Iron Body can increase one’s body defense. It is an average Secret Martial Arts that can be learnt by taking hits while maintaining a special way of breathing. It is easy to learn, but it takes a long time to master. Five years to complete the Level One Mastery, 10 years to complete the Level Two Mastery, and 15 years to master it. If one could master the Iron body, his body would become as hard as iron, and he would be able to resist small caliber pistols.

Garen read through the instructions, but did not find them important and quickly finished the book. It was short, and the training method did not need to be paired with drugs. There were no complex techniques involved, and the person did not need to be talented. The only requirement was the will to handle all the pain during the long training years.

The most important thing in this whole book was the special breathing technique.

*Garen remembered everything quickly and put the book down. "That’s why it’s called low-level Secret Martial Arts…*

The Level One Mastery of the Iron Body required the special breathing technique from the book.

Garen needed to imagine himself as an inflated balloon, and once his skin turned grey, he would be able to start the Level One Mastery. Garen slowly inhaled as the book said. He needed to inhale once and exhale nine times in a specific rhythm. It would take him 20 minutes to finish one set of inhaling and exhaling. He stood up and started practicing the special breathing technique beside the desk.

The first time he could feel his muscles and skin tighten, and they also became denser. Garen was excited about the change and decided to start the second try right away. His muscles and skin tightened again. His skin turned red on the third try, and he felt like it was extremely tight. He tried the breathing technique six times in a row and felt relaxed after the last try. His skin’s temperature was very high, and he felt like he’d just left a hot bath.

He closed his eyes and looked at the Iron Body skill:

Iron Body: Level One (Two Levels).

"I knew it! It changed!"

Garen opened his eyes and tore off his collar. He could see his skin turning darker. Although its hardness hadn’t reached the level of metal, he believed he would finish the Level One Mastery after a bit more training.

The **Iron Body** secret method. It only required one more level which needed an external force to aid the training. Garen practice in The Martial Coliseum that had a small room with heavy iron balls hanging from the ceiling. They were meant to train against hard hits.

This was because the White Cloud Gate’s basic Explosive Fist required this condition.

He stood without any robes in the middle of tens of iron balls. They were the size of a human head, and Garen even added spikes on top of them. The dense iron balls were like urchins that surrounded Garen in the middle. He inhaled and exhaled before starting to follow the **Iron Body’s breathing method**. After a complete cycle, he began furiously pushing the iron balls around him. The sound of collision echoed within the room. Following immediately after, were the sounds of spikes hitting against Garen. The clanking noise rang like metal impacting another piece of metal.

Garen’s skin began to darken to a black color, at the same time as it gained a metallic sheen. The countless metal balls swung in the room and collided with his body. They would then get pushed back from the force of his body and come back even stronger. Every metal ball weighed more than ten pounds. With the added force, the force of the collision was at least over 100 pounds. The spikes made the area of collision decrease, which meant that the force Garen’s body received drastically increased. He only felt a tingling sensation that made him want to scratch the place hit. But he knew this was normal.

Although he had officially mastered the entry level of the Iron Body secret method, he didn’t know how much his defence had actually increased. Weapon damage differed, and even between assault rifles, there were significant variances in damage among the different models.

The assault rifle Grace managed to get was obtained through a network of connections, hence its power was limited. Since those people weren’t part of the military, the assault rifle would be different from ones they encountered on the way back.

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Chapter 98
2. ↑ Chapter 104
3. ↑ Chapter 99
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Chapter 100