Shang had no idea how long he had already been training, and he wasn't even thinking about it. He had completely let go of everything and only focused on training.
When he got thirsty, he simply drank a bit from the bucket.
When he became hungry, he simply took out some of the dried meat from his old backpack.
The training was also very draining on his stamina, but his stamina got quickly replenished by his Mana.
When his Mana ran out, Shang simply sat down to gather some more. Refilling his Mana only took him like an hour or so.
As long as Shang didn't have any serious injuries or broken bones, his Mana refilled with a lot of speed. Apparently, healing fatigue and slightly torn muscles wasn't eating up even nearly as much Mana as an actual injury.
As Shang continued looking at every single technique and practicing them, he slowly began to feel mixed feelings.
On one hand, he wanted to incorporate all of the techniques. He was making great progress, and he would soon reach his goal of having completed all the basic techniques in the book.
On the other hand, Shang didn't want it to end. This book had increased his power greatly, and nearly all of Shang's movements had become more satisfying. It was like some imperfections had finally been solved.
When Shang inevitably finished the book, he had no more techniques to analyze.
Even more, the more Shang thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed to him that these were all the techniques he was supposed to learn.
Soran had said that students in the Caterpillar Class had no access to the actual techniques of the school. These students were supposed to create their own path and their own style. They were supposed to create their own complex techniques.
All of these were basic techniques and basic ways to move.
However, all the techniques were disjointed, singular movements.
They weren't designed to flow into each other like an actual battle style.
The end of one technique might end in a slightly different spot than another good technique would need to be in to be unleashed.
This made everything feel disjointed and awkward.
Training the individual techniques on their own was great, but quickly switching between them felt horrible.
They simply didn't fit together.
'I guess that's the purpose,' Shang thought as he awkwardly kept going from one technique into the next. He had already finished all of the techniques, and he was trying to get rid of the awkwardness.
Nearly all of Shang's attacks had been elevated, but the drawback was that his battle style was filled with the thing he hated the most.
Awkward moments.
It was like a video that skipped a couple of frames every two seconds or so.
It was infuriating, and Shang hated that feeling.
His previous training in the wilderness had completely focused on becoming faster and getting rid of these awkward moments. Shang wanted his techniques to flow perfectly, and he didn't want to have any downtime during a fight.
He wanted to attack and attack and attack and attack.
He wanted his attacks to never stop.
And that had been possible in the past, but not anymore. Now, he had to deal with all these awkward moments of transition.
It sounded easy to simply alter the techniques a bit to make them start or end in a convenient place, but by doing that, the techniques themselves started to feel a bit awkward. After all, these techniques weren't supposed to be used from such a position.
On some occasions, they became slower.
On other occasions, they lost a lot of power.
Sometimes, they left Shang completely open.
After practicing for who knew how long, Shang realized that this wouldn't be a short affair. Changing the techniques became harder and harder.
It was like he had, at some point, made an error in a Sudoku puzzle, which caused the entire puzzle to end up with wrong numbers everywhere that only came to light when the last two numbers became impossible combinations.
Then, he would need to go back from the end and calculate everything again until he finally found a change he could make and continue from there, just to realize that he had made another mistake.
It was really difficult and frustrating.
At one point, Shang managed to make five techniques flow into each other just to realize that not a single other technique would be able to comfortably start from the endpoints of any of the previous five techniques.
It was a dead end.
So, he altered one of the techniques to make the sixth one fit, but that change resulted in the previously fitting technique no longer fitting, which meant he had to change that one, but this technique had been the connector that connected all the other techniques together, meaning that change destroyed everything else.
It was like Shang had to solve a colorless jigsaw puzzle with no border or corner pieces.
He simply had to start with a random one and try random pieces. However, not every outcropping of every piece was unique, which meant that some pieces that weren't supposed to be there fit into the outcropping regardless.
It was ridiculous.
Even more, there were so many permutations to unleash all these different techniques that it didn't even make sense to write them all down. Sure, the changes one could do in a technique could only be so numerous until it stopped being that technique, but with every single technique having so many potential changes, the total number of combinations reached ridiculous levels.
'How many possibilities even are there? That technique has like five possible changes. That one has three. That one has six. That one has four. That one also has five. That's 5x3x6x4x5…'
'1800…'
'1800 for five techniques…'
Shang glanced over at the book, which had about 50 techniques in it.
'1800x5x2x4x7x5x3x4x8x3… I lost the number…'
'I think the latest number was nearly at a billion, and how many techniques had that been? Like fourteen or fifteen.'
From a number of five changes, the number went to nearly a billion in only fourteen steps or so…
And there were over 30 left…
How many zeroes would that number have?
Sure, not every technique would flow into every other one, but even if Shang divided the final number by a thousand, it would still be a number far above anything even remotely practical.
For a while, Shang only looked at the book with techniques.
Right now, Shang's feelings toward the book had changed.
Earlier, he had loved it, but now, he wasn't so sure anymore.
He had already practiced all the relevant individual techniques several times, and he had already changed the way he was attacking.
But now, he was stuck with these awkward transitions between attacks.
'Yeah, no,' Shang thought. 'I don't have time until the heat death of the universe sets in.'
Shang sighed.
'I guess I can't get through this methodically or with brute force. I think I can only trust my feelings on this and slowly make progress. As long as I keep practicing repeatedly, I will eventually manage to combine several of them in a way that makes sense.'
Shang put his head in his hands as he looked at the book.
'There are essentially infinite combinations in that book, and I'm pretty sure there are far more ways than one to combine all of them.'
'I have to say that this book is insanely useful for students of the Caterpillar Class. We get a couple of techniques to give us a rough guideline on how to move in a fight, but the possible combinations are impossible to fathom.'
'Sure enough, I'm forced to completely rely on my instinct, which is probably what they want. They want me to create my own style, after all.'
'Anyway, I made quite good progress, and I managed to combine at least some of them. Brute-forcing like this would only have so much effect.'
'Guess I should actually visit the lessons now.'
'How late is it anyway?'
