Movement Technique Manual

He shifted the sack to his other shoulder and hurried along, his feet seeming to ride the wind.

Ding-dong, Basic Movement Technique proficiency increased by one.

A talent notification suddenly rang out in his mind.

Immediately afterward, insights about footwork surged forth!

If he angled his landing foot a little farther outward, the strain on his ankle would spread more evenly across uneven mountain paths;

There was an optimal ratio between arm-swing amplitude and stride frequency; the timing for leaning his center of gravity forward uphill and the rhythm of cushioning his knees downhill—every detail was broken apart and reassembled.

After absorbing those insights, Feng Chen smiled.

He had clearly never practiced any systematic footwork. He had merely been hurrying along a mountain path, yet his Destiny Talent had automatically generated a Basic Movement Technique.

Just like before when he had used the woodcutting blade: he had swung it a few times on instinct, and it had likewise generated the Basic Blade Technique.

All he could say was that the Destiny Talent was too powerful.

As he traveled, he consciously adjusted his gait, applying the techniques he had just comprehended one by one to his journey.

Ding-dong, Basic Footwork proficiency increased by one.

His soles stepped over loose stones, yellow earth, fallen leaves, and exposed roots. The feedback from every landing became fresh material for new insights.

Half an hour later, another notification sounded.

Ding-dong, Basic Footwork has reached the Minor Mastery Realm.

Feng Chen clearly felt his legs become lighter in an instant, his ankles and knees like precision mechanisms that had been calibrated.

The boulders he once had to jump over, the puddles he had to detour around, and the steep slopes he had to climb on mountain paths were all effortlessly resolved through natural shifts in his footwork.

Another half hour later.

Ding-dong, Basic Footwork has reached the Major Mastery Realm. Please check it, host.

On a flat stretch of hillside, Feng Chen stopped, bent over with his hands on his knees, and panted heavily.

Sweat had soaked through the coarse cloth on his back, and when the mountain wind blew, it left him chilly.

Yet he could clearly feel that his legs were far stronger than they had been an hour ago. The outlines of his thigh and calf muscles faintly showed beneath his trouser legs, and every step was crisp and decisive.

He was faster, too.

But he was hungrier as well.

The bit of coarse-grain porridge he had eaten for breakfast had long been burned away by his hunt in the mountains. His entire body felt as empty as an overturned iron pot that rang hollow when struck.

He stopped.

Because Green Mountain Town lay ahead.

Looking down from the hillside, Green Mountain Town sat upon a stretch of flat land at the foot of the mountains. Gray-tinted tile roofs and thatched ridges were packed tightly together!

Slanting sunlight spread over the town, and several wisps of cooking smoke could be seen drifting leisurely upward between the rooftops.

Figures could be seen coming and going.

Feng Chen stood on the hillside for a moment, patted the dirt from his trouser legs, then hoisted the sack and headed toward Green Mountain Town.

The moment he entered town, the mountain path beneath his feet became a street paved with bluestone slabs, worn smooth and gleaming by countless footsteps, with clumps of moss growing between the cracks.

Shops of varying heights lined both sides of the street, and the paint on their wooden doors had already faded in patches.

The scents of wood and plaster mingled with the oily smoke wafting from roadside food stalls and the white steam bursting out whenever bamboo steamers were lifted.

"Buns! Meat buns with thin skins and generous fillings!"

"Hot flatbread! Three coppers each!"

"Candied hawthorns! Sweet and sour candied hawthorns!"

Voices of every sort intertwined, boiling the entire street into a steaming pot of mortal life.

Feng Chen did not linger to browse. He quickly walked to a restaurant in town.

Its frontage was broad, and a black signboard with golden lettering hung above its entrance, bearing the three large words: Hundred Flavors Tower.

When the door curtain was lifted, the heat and fragrance of food came rushing out all at once, and Feng Chen's stomach growled several more times.

He stepped inside, and a grinning waiter came forward to greet him.

Feng Chen did not exchange much small talk. He directly set the sack on the floor and untied its opening for the waiter to inspect.

The waiter poked his head over for a look, his eyes lighting up. He turned and called a manager out from the back kitchen.

The manager was a slightly plump middle-aged man with a grease-stained apron tied around his waist, his face flushed red from the stove fire.

He crouched down and inspected the wild rabbits and pheasants in the sack, squeezing the meat on a rabbit's hind leg before lifting a pheasant to the light to examine the color of its comb.

He stood and nodded. "Good quality. They're all fresh catches from today. Little brother, three wild rabbits and three pheasants—I'll give you three taels of silver for all of them. How does that sound?"

The price was fair, even a little higher than Feng Chen had expected.

He nodded without haggling.

The middle-aged man called for the waiter to take away the game, then pulled out three taels of loose silver from the pouch beneath his apron and counted them out to Feng Chen piece by piece.

As he counted, he asked with a smile, "Little brother, are you a hunter?"

Feng Chen tucked the loose silver into his clothes and nodded. "Yes."

"Good."

The middle-aged man's smile deepened. "Little brother, if you catch any more game in the future, you can bring it all to our Hundred Flavors Tower. Wild rabbits, pheasants, mountain chickens, wild boars—we'll take them all."

"Game is in short supply this season. If you can provide it steadily, we can discuss a better price."

"Alright."

Feng Chen nodded.

If he had more game in the future, having such a fixed sales route would indeed be far better than bringing it into town and scrambling to find a buyer every time.

With three taels of silver in his pocket, Feng Chen left Hundred Flavors Tower and quickly calculated in his heart: three taels from selling the game, plus the two taels of silver and thirty copper coins he had previously searched from Tiger Liu and the others—he had a total of five taels of silver.

In a small town like Green Mountain Town, five taels of silver was enough for an ordinary farming household to live on for a year. It was already a huge sum.

He could buy all kinds of daily necessities, along with some meat.

Before that, though, he should first ask around about martial arts training.

He found a restaurant on the street that was not particularly large but had quite a few diners, and went inside.

He lined up five copper coins on the counter for a bowl of tea, then seized the waiter while he was bringing it over and asked him a great deal about martial arts training in town.

The waiter was a lanky young man with a quick tongue. For the sake of those copper coins, he poured out everything he knew.

There were three martial halls in town: Wang Clan Martial Hall, Zhao Clan Martial Academy, and Great Mountain Martial Hall.

The Wang Clan and Zhao Clan halls were Lineage martial halls with ancestral techniques and certain rules.

Great Mountain Martial Hall, meanwhile, was run by outsiders and had fewer rules.

But all three martial halls had one thing in common: the monthly tuition was ten taels of silver.

How much one could learn in a single month depended entirely on one's comprehension, and whether one could become a Martial Artist depended on one's fortune.

Generally speaking, becoming a true Martial Artist required at least half a year, meaning a minimum of sixty taels of silver in tuition alone, not counting other expenses!

Practicing martial arts required nourishing the body, eating meat and drinking medicine, and treating injuries from bumps and bruises. Every last thing cost money.

Ordinary households simply could not afford to learn martial arts.

"So,"

The waiter lowered his voice. "Most people who want to learn martial arts join one of the town's gangs, become underlings who run errands and risk their lives, and pick up a few moves. Or they save up money and buy a couple martial arts manuals from a bookstore to practice by themselves. But..."

His tone shifted. "Very few who practice on their own ever amount to anything. The diagrams drawn and words written in those manuals—when practicing from them alone, nine and a half out of ten people cannot make heads or tails of them."

Having obtained this information, Feng Chen did not stay long in the restaurant.

He drained his tea in one gulp and began asking around on the street about bookstores in Green Mountain Town.

After some inquiries, he learned that there were several bookstores, most of them clustered at the eastern end of the main street.

Feng Chen casually picked the nearest one and stepped inside.

The shop was not large. Several rows of rough wooden bookshelves stood against the walls, piled high with books of all sizes.

Sunlight streamed in through the street-facing windows. Fine book dust floated within the shafts of light, while the whole room was permeated by the mingled scent of old paper and ink.

Three to five scholars in long robes stood quietly before the shelves, flipping through books.

Feng Chen went row by row along the shelves. There were classics and histories, philosophical works and collections, storyteller scripts and popular tales, medical books and farming manuals.

On a shelf farther inside, he found a section dedicated to martial arts manuals.

The manuals on the shelf varied in age. Some were old thread-bound volumes with yellowed pages and frayed corners; others were newly copied books with ink still fresh.

Feng Chen picked them up one by one to check their prices, and soon grasped the pattern.

Those sold for one tael of silver per volume were mostly incomplete copies, missing pages and characters.

The two-tael ones were more complete, but their annotations on martial principles were often scant.

A complete martial arts manual cost five taels of silver per volume.