Sitting-in-Forgetfulness Sutra

It took half a day. Most of the apprentices found the martial arts manuals they wanted, then left.

Ye Qin stayed until the end. He used the time to think carefully about what kind of martial arts technique he should choose.

He had never seen martial arts from the time he was little. Even after spending half a year wandering around Zhuqi County, he had only seen a few hurried-looking men of the martial world. He had never seen them demonstrate any martial arts, and had no idea what martial arts were or what they were for.

However, he had once heard the elders in his hometown of Mountain Gully Village say that, according to legend, martial arts in the world were incredibly powerful. Practitioners could scale rooftops and leap over walls, tear tigers apart and rip wolves to shreds; they could do anything. They ought to be able to accomplish just about anything.

Ye Qin thought for a long while before voicing, somewhat uncertainly, the kind of martial arts technique he had in mind.

"Senior Brother, do you have anything that would give me plenty of stamina, let me endure hunger when there's no food, withstand the cold in winter, and go without water during a severe drought?"

The young man was so taken aback by Ye Qin's pitiful request that he was struck speechless. He hadn't expected Ye Qin to ask for such a "strange" technique. The other apprentices all wanted something powerful, something that could help them fight and win, or run especially fast. Why did he want a technique that would let him toil, endure hunger and cold, and go without water?

The young man couldn't help frowning.

Being able to toil, endure hunger and cold, and drink less water sounded like the sort of thing an internal cultivation method could do. External techniques simply couldn't achieve it.

The young guard thought for a moment, then went to the bookshelf holding basic internal cultivation manuals and leafed through them. He picked out several relevant manuals.

The Drunken Man's Long Slumber Art. This cultivation formula was excellent for enduring hunger. You could go ten days or half a month without eating, but you had to drink a lot of wine. The kid probably couldn't afford to buy wine, either, so it'd be hard for him to make much progress.

The Mysterious Origin Internal Classic. An internal cultivation method for attacking, so it wasn't suitable.

The Body Nourishing Classic. Uh, this one seemed to strengthen the body. It should help with enduring toil, hunger, cold, and thirst.

The young guard took it down from the dusty shelf.

He had been stationed here for over ten years and had once read every manual in the collection, so he remembered a little about them. But a low-level internal cultivation manual like this wasn't something a core disciple of the Herb Gathering Hall would ever practice. The core disciples of the Herb Gathering Hall only practiced the Hall's highest-level internal cultivation methods.

"This basic internal cultivation manual, the Body Nourishing Classic, is decent. I don't know which small gang it came from, but the technique inside can meet your requirements. Take it back and practice this method properly. If you can survive gathering herbs, then after a few decades, you might make something of yourself in our Herb Gathering Hall and rise to become a medicine craftsman or a pharmacist."

After taking the book down, the young guard casually flipped through the introduction that came with it to see where it had come from.

"Oh, the introduction says this technique was a family heirloom. Later, the family couldn't make ends meet and was forced to sell it for money... It also says practicing it strengthens the body and prolongs one's life. Hmph. I guess you might live a few years longer after practicing it."

The young guard's expression was cold as he explained what the manual could do, then casually tossed it to Ye Qin. He sneered inwardly. What kind of insignificant martial family would treat a low-level internal cultivation manual as an heirloom?

What the young guard didn't know was that the book had indeed come from a family, but its history wasn't as simple as he imagined.

A thousand years ago, it was said that a mysterious and powerful family had appeared in Ping Province. The family possessed an ancestral manual, and its patriarch had relied on it to lord over one prefecture and eight counties in Ping Province.

The manual's original name had been the Sitting-in-Forgetfulness Sutra, not the Body Nourishing Classic.

But the family's fortunes hadn't lasted forever. Over the course of more than a thousand years, it had risen and fallen twice, and ultimately declined.

According to the family's disciple who sold the book, only people with a special constitution could practice this manual. Among several thousand disciples, only one in several dozen generations might have the constitution needed to practice it. Hundreds of years after the first patriarch's death, one descendant with a special constitution had once again mastered the techniques in the book, bringing the family back to glory. But over the following centuries, no one else ever managed to master them, and the family eventually declined all the same.

This mysterious family gradually became a legend in Ping Province of the Wu Kingdom.

The man who sold the book was the family's last male descendant. He had fallen into such poverty that he had to beg for food in the streets, and was forced to sell it for the paltry sum of ten gold coins to the Carp Gang, a moderately powerful martial gang in Ping Province.

The Carp Gang had nearly a thousand members and made its living from river transport in Ping Province. As soon as they acquired the manual, they organized people to study it closely, hoping to uncover its secrets. They examined every page, every line of text, and every layer of the book, searching for hidden treasures, treasure maps, or secret codes that might point to something.

But unfortunately, after spending decades and all their financial resources on studying it, the Carp Gang discovered nothing at all.

They even persuaded several dozen of the gang's most talented children to practice it, hoping to raise a group of peerless experts. But not one child achieved any results. Once they grew up, these children were even worse than ordinary people of the martial world.

Only then did the Carp Gang reluctantly accept that this manual could be practiced only by people with a special constitution, and that it was useless to ordinary people. As for what counted as a special constitution, no one knew. Even the members of the family that had owned the manual didn't know what a special constitution was.

Because the Carp Gang had spent more than ten years having its most talented children practice this "legendary manual," those children missed the best time to learn martial arts. The gang was left with no successors among its experts and soon declined, until another gang wiped it out.

The incident caused quite a stir. At the time, people of the martial world mocked the manual as "the legendary useless manual," saying it had made a respectable gang of more than a thousand members cripple itself and cut off its own inheritance.

The Carp Gang's last leader had been forced to sell all its manuals to scrape by. The book passed through the hands of several small gangs in this way. Eventually, it reached the Medicine King Gang for the price of one gold coin.

At the time, the Medicine King Gang had only just risen to prominence in Ping Province. It had over a thousand members and was a small gang of moderate strength.

The Medicine King Gang's leaders had heard that this was an internal cultivation manual left behind by an ancient family in Ping Province eight or nine hundred years earlier. They bought it to see what was inside. They even used the gang's special medicinal solution to examine it for invisible writing, but still found nothing unusual hidden in the book.

The Medicine King Gang's leaders studied the book's contents repeatedly. They felt that calling it "the legendary useless manual" was a little unfair. The book seemed to have at least some effect, such as strengthening the body and prolonging one's life.

However, strengthening the body and prolonging one's life weren't what people of the martial world sought. They were only interested in peerless martial arts, powerful attacks, and strong defenses.

So they added an appraisal to the book: Anyone who can persevere in practicing this book for several decades should gain considerable benefits in strengthening the body and prolonging life. However, it has none of the offensive or defensive power found in ordinary internal cultivation methods. Proceed with caution. Do not practice it lightly!

Having learned from the Carp Gang's painful lesson, the Medicine King Gang's leaders didn't mobilize all the gang's children to practice this "legendary" manual.

The manual's old cover had been damaged by the medicinal solution during the examination, so it was replaced with a new one.

On the new cover, the Medicine King Gang's leader also gave the book a more suitable name: the Body Nourishing Classic. He classified it as the lowest-grade basic internal cultivation manual and stored it in the manual library, where it was put away on a high shelf. As time passed, the manual gradually faded from memory.

Over the following hundred years, the Medicine King Gang continued to grow and expand, eventually putting down roots in Zhuqi County. Along with a large number of other low-level external and internal cultivation manuals, this book was sent to the Secret Manual Room in the Library Pavilion of the Herb Gathering Hall in Zhuqi County. It stayed there for decades, gathering dust, and almost no one knew where it had come from.

The young guard had flipped through it once or twice, but he didn't know its detailed history or that it was the legendary useless manual. He simply thought of it as a low-level internal cultivation manual from some unknown small family and handed it to Ye Qin. The Herb Gathering Hall had far too many low-level internal cultivation manuals. The one Ye Qin took was just one among several hundred, nothing worth making a fuss over.

Ye Qin hurriedly accepted it, nodded gratefully, and thanked him before leaving the Secret Manual Room.

The young guard remained cold and expressionless. After Ye Qin left, several other equally cold young guards came over. Looking somewhat confused, they asked the young guard in charge:

"Senior Brother, why did you give him the Body Nourishing Classic? He's just a Herb Gathering Apprentice, going up mountains and down into valleys every day. If he learns an internal cultivation method with no offensive or defensive power, he'll probably be dead before long."

The young guard in charge walked out of the third-floor Secret Manual Room and said coldly, "Since he specifically asked for a strange internal cultivation method that lets him endure toil, hunger, cold, and drought, why do you care so much? Our Herb Gathering Hall isn't a charity. If he dies, he brought it on himself. It has nothing to do with anyone else. People die in our Herb Gathering Hall every year. One more or less makes no difference. Don't crowd around here. Go back to the second floor and practice. Tomorrow, I'll be testing your martial arts progress!"

"Yes, Senior Brother!"

The young guards didn't dare say anything more and hurried back to the second floor.