The little temple was tiny, with only three rooms and a small courtyard. Time had worn it down so badly that the clay statue enshrined in the middle room had lost all its paint. Its features were unrecognizable, and half its body had even collapsed.
All three rooms were in a sorry state: dust, cobwebs, cracked walls, and holes in the roof tiles. Shi Feizhe guessed that no one had lived there for at least twenty or thirty years.
Shi Feizhe cleaned the place, then went to Zhao Family Market, dozens of miles away, and hired masons and carpenters to make some simple repairs to the three rooms, replace the doors and windows, and patch the walls.
After seven or eight days of work, the little temple, once unfit to live in, had become clean and tidy.
Zhao Family Market was a town dozens of miles away. Most of its residents were surnamed Zhao, so it was also called Zhao Town. Though it was only a town, merchants traveling east and west often passed through, making it quite prosperous. It was easy enough to find the medicinal ingredients Shi Feizhe needed for his martial arts training.
As long as he went down the mountain once every half month to buy food and medicinal ingredients, he, Shi Feizhe, could provide for himself here and focus on his training in peace.
There was even a cold spring behind the mountain. Its water was cool, making it an excellent place to practice martial arts.
Shi Feizhe was very satisfied!
What a treasure ground, blessed by the forces of feng shui!
Surely no one would come here to disturb his training ever again!
From then on, Shi Feizhe followed his plan: every day, he practiced his stances, swordsmanship, and martial arts, and visualized. He trained at sunrise and rested at sunset, disciplined to a fault.
Half a year passed in the blink of an eye. It was already November, and the weather was gradually turning cold.
His body had grown increasingly sturdy. He felt as though he could take on ten of his former selves. In the little courtyard, he swung the Rusty Sword in his hand and finally brought a set of White Jade Capital to perfection.
White Jade Capital, Stroke My Crown, and Receive Longevity were all sword techniques from the Twelve Story Building.
White Jade Capital was the most complex and intricate, Stroke My Crown came next, and Receive Longevity was the simplest. Once he had perfected all three sword techniques, visualizing the Divine Sword as well would let him produce sword qi. Then his sword moves would no longer be constrained; complexity would return to simplicity, and he would move with unrestrained elegance!
After finishing his sword practice, he followed the Yin Law Stake from the Nether Springs Divine Shadow Record, contorting himself into an extremely twisted posture to stretch his fascia and muscles. With his Reward Good Fist and Punish Evil Leg both already somewhat accomplished, he could finally practice the Yin Law Stake!
He had originally estimated that it would take him three or four years to perfect his Blood Qi Spirit and cultivate true qi. But after half a year of training, he felt that he truly lived up to the title of Martial Arts Genius. In two more years, he could perfect his Blood Qi Spirit and attempt to break through to the True Seeing Realm!
As he practiced his stance, he suddenly heard a rumbling sound.
He looked up at the sky. It was clear! Where was the thunder coming from? The sound grew louder and louder, followed by the roar of rushing water and waves crashing against stone.
Shi Feizhe was baffled. It hadn't rained these past few days, so where could a flash flood have come from?
He leaped onto the roof and followed the sound with his eyes. Far away, between the mountains, a white line appeared. It drew closer and closer, like thousands upon thousands of soldiers and horses thundering forward, like raging ocean waves battering the plants on the mountainsides and swallowing the animals in their path.
"What... is that?" Shi Feizhe watched the surging water, not knowing where it had come from. It rose in waves a hundred or two hundred meters high, rolling onward, sweeping everything away and destroying everything in its path.
"Damn it, is there a flood in the mountains? But floods don't look like this! Could it be a tsunami? There isn't even a sea here!"
He was utterly bewildered.
There was no time to think about anything else. He rushed into his room, grabbed the bundle of gold and silver, then went to the kitchen and took the leftover steamed buns. Without another thought, he ran for higher ground!
Luckily, the highest peak in the entire mountain range was right behind him. He ran for his life toward it, and after half an hour of running, finally reached the summit. Looking down, he saw boundless waves surging through the mountains. The entire range seemed to have become a vast sea, with the peaks turned into islands.
The good news was that his three little rooms, halfway up the mountain, had somehow escaped the flood. The water had risen close to them, making the house look like an elegant villa on an island in the middle of a lake.
But Shi Feizhe didn't return to his little house. Who knew where this inexplicable flood had come from, or whether the water might rise again?
He wasn't one of those fools who pitched camp at a river mouth. To be safe, he stayed on the mountaintop until nightfall, then remained there until dawn.
The next day, after the floodwaters had mostly receded, he practiced his Sword Stance before descending the mountain and returning to his little house.
The water had come out of nowhere, so he had no choice but to be cautious.
When he pushed open the gate to his courtyard, he saw a short old man sweeping inside. The man looked so at ease, you'd think the place belonged to him.
"Uh?" Shi Feizhe froze. Could he have gone to the wrong place?
He looked at the open gate. It was the very one he had replaced half a year ago!
"Who are you? Why are you in my house?" Shi Feizhe asked the old man.
The old man looked ancient. He had neither beard nor hair, only two long white eyebrows drooping over half his eyes. His face was ruddy, and he looked full of vitality. He wore tattered gray clothes whose style was impossible to make out.
He had an utterly ordinary face, like any old man from the countryside, except that his eyes were unusually bright.
"And who are you? Why are you in my house?" The old man only came up to Shi Feizhe's shoulder. He glanced at Shi Feizhe and retorted as he continued sweeping.
"What do you mean, your house? This is my house!" Shi Feizhe found the old man ridiculous. "The pots, bowls, and chopsticks here—even the broom in your hand—I bought them all down the mountain. Of course this is my house! I've lived here for almost a year!"
"And before that year?" the old man asked.
"Before that, it was an abandoned house with no one living in it!" Shi Feizhe said.
"This was my home decades ago. I hadn't returned in all those years. I never imagined it would turn into a ruin!" the old man said with a sigh.
"Hey, hey, hey... You're not trying to scam me, are you? You saw I'd fixed the place up, so now you're claiming it's yours!" Shi Feizhe didn't believe a word of it. "I had the doors, windows, roof tiles, and courtyard wall all repaired!"
"You didn't touch the courtyard, did you?" the old man suddenly asked.
"What?" Shi Feizhe was confused.
The old man reached out and broke through the compacted earth bricks of the courtyard. From three feet beneath the ground, he pulled out a wooden box.
After decades, the box had collapsed in on itself. What remained inside was just a little blackened mess, impossible to make out. Only three characters were still carved on the lid.
Chong Jiuyuan!
"Look, my name's on it too!" the old man said with a smile.
He gently blew the dirt off the box, then carefully opened it.
"What gives you the right to bury something with your name on it in my house?" Shi Feizhe said gloomily.
The old man's expression stiffened!
A feng shui treasure ground—and there really was water!
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