Chương 36: Beneath The Skin

Simon had explained Skin Tempering correctly. He had not explained why it worked. Joe only appreciated the difference after receiving formal instruction from Hall. Hall's teaching was practical because practicality was what kept students from injuring themselves. He demonstrated where blood energy should be guided, how slowly the pressure should increase, how the energy should spread instead of concentrating in a single point and which sensations meant the trainee should stop immediately.

Joe eventually asked the question Simon had failed to answer.

"What exactly changes inside the skin?" Hall looked at him.

"The skin becomes tempered." Joe waited. Hall did not continue. Apparently Simon's explanation had been more complete than Joe had realized. The Hall knew how the method worked. Follow the correct process and the skin became stronger. Make certain mistakes and the trainee injured himself. Nobody needed to understand the microscopic mechanism. Joe did not need to either. He wanted to. The anatomy books and his previous-life memories gave him enough information to construct a working explanation.

Skin was not one uniform sheet. The outer portion was the epidermis. Beneath that lay the dermis, followed by the softer tissues connecting skin to deeper structures. The epidermis itself did not possess a direct blood supply. The dermis did. Blood vessels, nerves, connective tissue, hair follicles and much of the machinery responsible for touch, pressure and temperature existed there. Joe returned to Hall's practical instructions with that structure in mind.

Correct tempering produced warmth beneath the visible surface rather than on top of it. Blood energy was supposed to settle into the living tissue instead of being pushed outward. The likely target was therefore the dermis. Exactly what blood energy changed there remained uncertain. Joe's working theory was simpler. Repeated tempering strengthened the living tissue beneath the surface while gradually improving its ability to receive blood energy.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. That also explained why tempered skin did not become rigid armor. Skin needed to stretch across joints, compress, bend and move over muscle. Turning it into a hard shell would destroy mobility rather than improve the body. Tempered skin instead became tougher while retaining elasticity. That matched what Joe had observed. Advanced Skin Tempering practitioners still looked human.

Their skin did not visibly become armor. The difference appeared when something tried to damage it. At Completion, an ordinary person using an ordinary knife would have difficulty driving the blade cleanly through properly tempered skin unless he used considerable force or struck a naturally vulnerable area. That was not invulnerability. A trained martial practitioner was not an ordinary attacker, and weapons designed for martial use were not ordinary knives.

But against ordinary violence, the difference was enormous. The increase in sensitivity was more interesting. If Skin Tempering simply produced thicker, harder tissue, Joe would have expected sensitivity to decrease. Simon claimed the opposite. Joe tested it. He pressed two pieces of cloth with slightly different textures against Simon's forearm while Simon closed his eyes. Simon identified the rougher one. Joe switched them. Simon identified it again.

"You could probably do this before," Simon said.

"Probably."

"Then this proves nothing."

"Correct." Simon opened his eyes and frowned.

"Why am I helping you?"

"Because now you want to know too." Simon looked annoyed because Joe was right. The airflow test was more interesting. Joe held one hand several inches above Simon's exposed forearm and moved it quickly without touching him. Simon hesitated.

"Again." Joe repeated the motion from a slightly different direction.

"I felt something."

"Where?" Simon indicated roughly the correct side. His accuracy was inconsistent. Joe did not care. The important point was that durability and sensitivity did not necessarily contradict each other. The skin already contained structures capable of detecting pressure, temperature, touch and the movement of fine hairs. Strengthening the living tissue did not require destroying those functions. Skin Tempering might improve both. Joe wrote a warning beside the thought. Not sight.

Someone standing motionless behind a martial practitioner would not magically appear inside his mind. Movement, contact or displaced air could provide information through the skin. Heightened physical perception. Nothing more. The connection to the later tempering stages also became clearer. Static Foundation taught the practitioner to perceive blood energy. Dynamic Foundation taught him to preserve and guide that energy while moving.

Skin Tempering was the first stage where controlled blood energy repeatedly altered living tissue. Muscle came afterward. Then Bone. Then Internal Organs. Each stage prepared the body for the next. That made the quality of the first stage more important than Joe had originally assumed. A stronger and more uniform Skin foundation would not stop mattering simply because he eventually began tempering muscle. Perfect Body created one final question.

Ordinary Skin Tempering techniques produced weaker regions partly because the method was imperfect and partly because anatomy itself was unequal. The skin of the eyelids was not the skin of the back. The soles of the feet were not the neck. Trying to make every part physically identical would be ridiculous. Perfect Body had never worked by making everything identical. It seemed to push each part toward an unusually healthy and effective version of what that part was supposed to be.

Joe wondered whether Skin Tempering would interact with it the same way. His eyelids could remain thin while becoming unusually resilient for eyelids. Skin around joints might retain the flexibility needed for movement while losing much of the weakness ordinary practitioners struggled to remove. His palms could become tougher without turning stiff. Every inch durable. Not every inch the same.

If that happened, Perfect Body might quietly compensate for one of the largest limitations of Theodere's ordinary Skin Tempering inheritance. Joe wrote the theory down. Then beneath it he added: Hypothesis. Test later. An elegant explanation was still only an explanation until his body proved it.