City of Yellow Sky

What was the jianghu?

Some said the jianghu was all about navigating human relationships.

Some said the jianghu meant having no choice in how you lived.

Lying on the worn-out thatch bed in his own home, Shi Feizhe felt that the jianghu was actually quite simple: it was about staying alive!

He was utterly exhausted. He had started working at the clinic at dawn and hadn't finished until nightfall, when he finally made it home.

Now his legs were weak and his hands trembled. His body sank into the bed, and he couldn't even bring himself to lift a finger.

Other people crossed into another world and got fishing or blacksmithing systems, and as long as they were willing to grind, miracles would happen. Before crossing over, he'd been worked like an ox; after crossing over, he was still worked like an ox.

It felt like he'd crossed over for nothing!

The thatch bed was rough and prickly. When he'd first crossed over, hunger had once kept him tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Now, all he had to do was close his eyes, and he could fall asleep in a second.

But he couldn't sleep yet. He still had to practice martial arts!

For someone who'd crossed into another world, there were plenty of ways to change his fate. For instance, he could become a wealthy gentleman, sleep until he naturally woke each day, and spend his time fishing and walking his birds. Wouldn't that be a happy life?

But two months ago, after the yellow sky had covered all of Yi Yang City and a golden, three-story pavilion had risen from the City Lord's Mansion, Shi Feizhe's entire worldview had been shattered!

What was that thing?

A god? A demon?

Shi Feizhe was utterly baffled!

The thunderous clash between the Yellow Sky and the golden pavilion had rumbled for two days and two nights, leaving many people throughout Yi Yang City in a state of panic. In the end, the Yellow Sky took over Yi Yang City, and from then on, the city belonged to the Sun family!

Afterward, every morning, a swath of "Yellow Sky" rose above the City Lord's Mansion, only dissipating at the Chen hour. It became a sight to behold in Yi Yang City.

Many people clad in yellow hemp robes and wearing triangular headscarves also appeared throughout Yellow Sky City, spreading their faith through its streets and alleys.

No one knew how many people had died in that battle across all of Yi Yang City! Even after it was over, shouts of slaughter could often be heard in town. Sometimes, when Shi Feizhe went out, he would even come across corpses in the side streets.

It was from the clothes of one such corpse that Shi Feizhe had pulled a martial arts manual: "True Origin Sword Finger Technique"!

Only the first half of the manual was legible. The second half had been soaked in blood and stuck together, making the writing impossible to read.

At first, Shi Feizhe hadn't planned to practice a manual of unknown origin. But that very day, he happened to hear someone say that the current city lord was a True Person Realm expert who cultivated the "Yellow Sky Establishment Great Art," and that was how he had defeated the former city lord and seized Yi Yang City.

His heart stirred!

Should he keep working like an ox for the rest of his life, or take a chance and fight for something better?

Did he even need to think about it?

He'd already died once. What the hell did he have to be afraid of!

Death wasn't the scariest thing. The scariest thing was reaching the end of your life without a single thing to be proud of or remember fondly!

It was only a martial arts manual of unknown origin, right?

What was there to be afraid of?

If he bet right, he could roam the jianghu with abandon, powerful enough to suppress an entire city!

Only after he started practicing martial arts did Shi Feizhe realize he'd oversimplified things.

Who said that having a martial arts manual meant you could actually practice what was in it?

He recognized every character in the "True Origin Sword Finger Technique," but put them together and they made no sense at all. It reminded him of the philosophy books he'd read in his previous life.

What did "Hand Sanjiao," "Shaoyang," "Guanchong," and "Yemen" even mean? He didn't understand any of them!

And "Yin Wei Meridian" and "Yang Wei Meridian"? Don't even get him started.

The only two characters he understood were "Dantian."

Knowledge of the martial path was like a threshold blocking his way. That basic knowledge was hidden in the city's martial arts schools!

In this world, he was nothing but a penniless orphan. He had a dilapidated house in the city, so he didn't have to drift through the jianghu, and he made a living doing odd jobs for people.

You couldn't really say he was living. He was just managing not to starve.

Where would he get the money to pay the martial arts school's initiation fee?

A living person couldn't be strangled by his own piss. After thinking it over for two days, he decided to try his luck at a clinic. It might not teach martial arts, but at least it would teach him about meridians and acupoints.

Fortunately, ever since the Yellow Sky had taken over the city, things had been unsettled for the past month, and even the clinics were short-staffed.

It also helped that this clinic was close to Shi Feizhe's home. The clinic's owner saw that he was young and came from a respectable background. The clinic needed help, so he agreed to hire him as an assistant for twenty cash coins a month.

Twenty cash coins wasn't much, but it was just enough for Shi Feizhe to stay alive.

There was so much work at the clinic, and it was so varied, that it had far exceeded Shi Feizhe's expectations.

He'd thought an assistant's job meant drying, grinding, and boiling herbs. In reality, it meant turning patients over, changing their dressings and bandaging them—and carrying out corpses!

For example, one patient had been slashed several times. The wounds were more than an inch deep, and his whole body needed bandaging to prevent him from bleeding too much.

Patients like that needed their dressings changed every day to keep their wounds from festering. Some wounds were on the front, others on the back. That meant someone had to turn the patients over.

Those martial artists had arms as thick as Shi Feizhe's thighs, with solid muscles and the build of a bull calf.

With Shi Feizhe's thin, frail build, turning someone like that over was hard physical labor.

The scary part was that there weren't just one or two patients like that. Sometimes there were ten or twenty. Most were members of the city's gangs. They arrived covered in blood, barking orders and bossing everyone around.

And then there were those who were covered in blood and on the verge of death but didn't make it. Shi Feizhe had to help carry them out, too. Someone else would take care of their bodies.

By the end of the day, Shi Feizhe was utterly worn out. Sometimes he wondered if laying bricks would be easier than this.

Still, all that hard work had brought him plenty of rewards.

First, there really were diagrams at the clinic showing the body's meridians and acupoints. On top of that, while bandaging wounds, he'd chat with the patients, and that helped him understand the locations and functions of the acupoints mentioned in the martial arts manual.

Second, Shi Feizhe learned a lot of characters.

It wasn't surprising. Many characters looked like other characters because they'd been written carelessly.

Shi Feizhe had once misread two of the calligraphy pieces inside the clinic.

He'd read "Miraculous Hands Restore Spring" as "Fried Dry Noodles Smell Delicious."

And he'd read "Honesty Is Gold," written from right to left, as "Everything's a Ball," from left to right.

Once he recognized those characters, he looked at the manual again and realized he'd misread quite a few of them! Shi Feizhe broke into a cold sweat, his heart pounding with fear!

Damn it, which bastard had copied this? Couldn't he have written it more neatly?

But who said a martial arts manual had to be written in standard script, without a single mistake or correction?

Being good at martial arts didn't mean you had to be handsome or have pretty handwriting!

Thinking of all the hardship he'd endured over the past month, and the faint sensation of qi he'd felt a few days ago, Shi Feizhe gritted his teeth and climbed out of the thatch bed.

He looked at the moon. It was bright, so he took the "True Origin Sword Finger Technique" out to the courtyard, where he could read without lighting a lamp.

You didn't know how precious firewood and rice were until you had to provide for yourself. Lamp oil was expensive, too!

He opened the half of the "True Origin Sword Finger Technique" he could read and pondered it slowly. He'd clearly felt a faint trace of qi a few days ago. What was he doing wrong?

At last, he thought it over and calmed his mind. Following the instructions in the "True Origin Sword Finger Technique," he assumed a Sword Stance. He planted his feet, pressed his hands against his thighs, and stood straight, like a long sword thrust into the earth.

His head was the hilt, his hands the sword guards, his body the scabbard, and sword qi lay hidden in his heart! With every breath, following the special breathing method, threads of "True Origin True Qi" appeared out of thin air in his Dantian!

He'd done it!

Shi Feizhe was overjoyed!

According to the "True Origin Sword Finger Technique," the qi rose from the Dantian, passed through the "Shuifen" and "Xiawan" acupoints, and reached "Chengjiang." Then it flowed back down to the Dantian, completing one small cycle of the Ren Meridian.

Throughout this process, his little wisp of true qi continued to grow! As long as he accumulated it day after day, his true qi would open the Ren and Du Meridians and connect the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, allowing him to reach the minor mastery stage of "endless true qi, transforming qi into a sword"!

By then, he'd be able to make a place for himself in the jianghu!

Just then, a shadow flashed past Shi Feizhe and snatched the manual away.

"So this is what the legendary divine manual is? Turns out it's this piece of trash!" The man was as burly as a bull. He glanced at the "True Origin Sword Finger Technique" in his hand, then tossed it aside.