Becoming a Disciple

Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall stood at the end of South Street in Anping County. Its two faded wooden doors stood open, and a plaque hung above them.

The four characters on it read "Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall," written in bold, vigorous strokes said to be the work of some important figure.

When Ye An arrived, dawn had barely broken.

Someone was already training inside the hall.

A burly young man stood in the middle of the courtyard practicing Azure Cloud Finger. Each thrust stirred a low whistle of air, while the green bricks beneath his feet creaked under his weight.

His name was Zhao Tieshan. He looked to be in his early twenties, with thick brows, large eyes, and an honest face, yet every thrust of his finger was fiercely sharp.

Beside Zhao Tieshan stood a younger man of seventeen or eighteen, arms folded across his chest and a rather pleased look on his face.

His black hair was tied behind his head, and he had handsome features. His clothes were not silk, but the fabric was plainly much finer than what ordinary people wore.

In a corner, a girl dressed in green was wrapping strips of cloth around a Wooden Dummy with practiced ease.

"New here?"

Ye An turned and saw a round-faced young man smiling at him.

The speaker wore a brocade robe and a fine jade pendant at his waist. One glance told Ye An that he had money to spare.

He held a folding fan, though the weather gave him no reason to use it. It simply made him look impressive.

"Ye An," Ye An said.

"Qian Duoduo." The round-faced young man grinned and looked Ye An up and down. His gaze paused on Ye An's bandaged fingers. "Your hand... you've already been practicing?"

"I heard Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall taught Azure Cloud Finger, so I tried figuring it out at home."

"That's the spirit." Qian Duoduo gave him a thumbs-up and lowered his voice. "Let me tell you, our hall might not have much else going for it, but the hall master's the real deal. Know where he came from?"

Ye An shook his head.

"The Four Symbols Sect." Qian Duoduo spoke the name with the particular awe of a county townsman mentioning a high official from Capital City.

"The Sect with the four legacies: Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise!"

Ye An's interest stirred.

In the ten years since he had crossed over, he had never practiced martial arts, but he had heard what there was to hear.

"The hall master came from the Four Symbols Sect?" Ye An asked.

"Shh." Qian Duoduo put a finger to his lips. "Don't go telling everyone. The hall master used to be a disciple of the Four Symbols Sect. That Azure Cloud Finger of his is supposedly an introductory body-tempering martial art from its Vermilion Bird Branch. Master all four layers, and it leads straight to the Meridian Opening Realm."

"Don't listen to his wild boasting."

A booming voice came from behind them.

The burly young man who had been practicing Azure Cloud Finger had finished without either of them noticing. He walked toward them.

Zhao Tieshan wore a short gray jacket that exposed his thick forearms. Veins stood out beneath the skin, the clear result of years of training.

"Senior Brother." Qian Duoduo grinned and cupped his fists.

Zhao Tieshan ignored him and looked at Ye An. "You're the newcomer?"

"Yes. I'm Ye An."

"Zhao Tieshan." Zhao Tieshan, the senior disciple of Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall, gave his name briefly. "Have you had your Bone Structure tested?"

"High-Grade C."

Zhao Tieshan's expression did not change, but the handsome young man nearby let out a soft scoff.

"High-Grade C?" The young man came over and circled Ye An as though inspecting some curiosity. "You came to practice martial arts with Bone Structure that poor?"

"Lin Shaoyun, that's enough." Zhao Tieshan frowned as he stopped him.

Lin Shaoyun shrugged and said nothing more, though he made no attempt to hide his disdain.

The girl in green had finished wrapping the cloth. She looked up at the commotion and said evenly, "Ignore them. Poor Bone Structure doesn't matter. Comprehension and temperament also decide whether someone can practice martial arts."

She did not speak loudly, but everyone in the courtyard heard her clearly.

Lin Shaoyun's lips twitched. He agreed with that.

But Bone Structure determined the floor.

High-Grade C Bone Structure? Passable. First Body Tempering might just be within reach.

Zhao Tieshan turned to Ye An. "Come on. I'll take you to meet the master."

Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall was not large. The training ground lay in front, with a small courtyard behind it.

An old locust tree grew in the courtyard, with a bamboo chair beneath it.

A middle-aged man in his forties sat in the chair, holding a cup of tea and sipping it unhurriedly.

His face was lean, his cheekbones slightly high, and his eyes were as still as a pool of dead water. They betrayed neither joy nor anger.

He wore a somewhat worn green robe with its sleeves rolled up, exposing part of a wrist. A deep scar crossed it, as though left by a sharp blade.

This was Su Yuanshan, the master of Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall.

"Hall Master." Zhao Tieshan stood at the courtyard entrance and cupped his fists. "This new student is Ye An. He wants to become your disciple."

Su Yuanshan lifted his eyes and glanced at Ye An.

"High-Grade C?"

Ye An froze for a moment, then understood.

"Yes." Ye An cupped his fists. "Please accept me, Hall Master."

Su Yuanshan did not answer at once. He raised his teacup and took another sip. "Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall doesn't select students by Bone Structure, but we do care about affinity. Can you endure hardship?"

There was really only one thing that mattered when the hall accepted students—whether they could pay the tuition.

"I can."

"Have you practiced martial arts before?"

"No."

"Then do you have the resolve?"

Ye An was silent for a moment. "My Bone Structure may be poor, and my family doesn't have much silver. I have no connections or resources, either. But I have time!"

"If someone else trains for one hour a day, I'll train for two. If they train for two hours, I'll train for four!"

"I don't have any other advantage, but I can still... persevere."

The courtyard fell quiet for a moment.

Standing some distance away, Qian Duoduo heard him and snapped his folding fan shut.

Some of the disdain faded from Lin Shaoyun's face. Ye An had made a better impression on him, though it did nothing to change what he thought.

"Easy to say."

Zhao Tieshan said nothing. He only took a long look at Ye An, the junior disciple who had just joined the hall.

Su Yuanshan set down his teacup and stood.

"The introductory technique of Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall is called Azure Cloud Finger. It's a foundational finger technique of the Four Symbols Sect's Vermilion Bird lineage."

"The First Layer trains finger strength. Strike stone with your finger and drive your force three parts through it. Mastering it brings First Body Tempering."

"The second layer trains you to break defenses. Pierce wood with your finger and drive your force seven parts through it. It corresponds to Second Body Tempering."

"The third layer trains Piercing Gold. Pierce gold with your finger and drive your force nine parts through it. It corresponds to Third Body Tempering."

"The fourth layer is called Mystic Penetration. Enter the Dao through your finger, and you can reach the Meridian Opening Realm."

Su Yuanshan spoke slowly, enunciating every word.

Ye An listened carefully, not missing a single one.

Su Yuanshan took a thin booklet from his sleeve and handed it over.

"This contains the mnemonic and training method for the First Layer. Practice for an hour every morning and evening. You'll be doing well if you manage to get started."

Ye An took it with both hands and opened to the first page.

Several lines were written there.

"Strike stone with your finger; drive your force three parts through. A thousand times a day, and success in a hundred days."

Su Yuanshan pointed to the bluestone slabs in the corner of the courtyard. "Those are for training. Start with the smallest. When you can leave a finger hole an inch deep in it with a single strike, you'll have achieved some proficiency."

But even the smallest bluestone slab was as thick as a palm.

"Tuition is three taels a month. Buy your own medicinal materials; the hall doesn't provide them. Pay the following month's tuition at the end of each month. If you can't pay, don't come back."

With that, Su Yuanshan sat down in his bamboo chair again, picked up his teacup, and stopped looking at Ye An.

Becoming a disciple was that simple.

There was no serving tea, no kowtowing, and no formal master-disciple bond.

Pay the money and receive a Body Tempering technique, and you were a student of Green Bamboo Martial Arts Hall.

Ye An put away the booklet, took six taels of silver from his clothes, and paid next month's tuition in advance.

"This is for next month."

Su Yuanshan glanced at the silver but did not touch it.

Zhao Tieshan came over and patted Ye An on the shoulder. "Come on. I'll take you to the training ground and show you a spot."

Ye An followed Zhao Tieshan back to the front courtyard.

Zhao Tieshan pointed to a place in the corner. "The stone slab over there was just replaced. Use that one."

"Thank you, Senior Brother."

Zhao Tieshan smiled. "We're not that formal here. Su Qing is your senior sister, Lin Shaoyun is your second senior brother, and I'm your senior brother. You can call everyone else by name."

"Su Qing?"

"She's the one who spoke up earlier." Zhao Tieshan tipped his chin toward the corner. "The hall master's daughter."

Ye An glanced at the girl in green.

Qian Duoduo sidled over and lowered his voice. "Senior Sister Su is kind, but she has a bit of a temper. Whatever you do, don't provoke her."

Su Qing heard him and turned to look. Qian Duoduo was so startled that he hurried away at a trot.

Ye An paid it no mind. He walked to the corner and looked at the bluestone slab before him.

It was as thick as a palm, with a rough surface covered in fine-grained lines.

Ye An took a deep breath, extended his right index finger, aimed at the slab, and jabbed hard.

The slab did not budge. He had not even left a white mark.

Pain shot through Ye An's finger bone.

The next instant, a small pop-up appeared in his vision.

[Azure Cloud Finger: 1/100]

Ye An froze, then jabbed several dozen more times.

[Azure Cloud Finger: 1/100]

It had not changed.

Still one.

"It's that hard to train?" Ye An muttered.

A derisive laugh came from behind him.

"Practicing martial arts with High-Grade C Bone Structure? Got money to burn?"

The speaker was a young man in a brocade robe. Two or three others stood beside him, laughing along.

"Zhou Yuanlong, he just got here. That's enough." Su Qing put down the cloth strips and intervened.

Zhou Yuanlong snorted but stopped mocking him. He turned back to chatting with the others.

Ye An committed Zhou Yuanlong's name to memory.

He ignored him and kept practicing.

Thirty strikes.

Fifty strikes.

A hundred strikes!

[Azure Cloud Finger: 1/100]

His finger had swollen a little.

Three hundred strikes.

[Azure Cloud Finger: 2/100]

Five hundred strikes.

[Azure Cloud Finger: 3/100]

Ye An shook his numb fingers and began to understand why people with poor Bone Structure struggled to make progress.

In the same amount of time, someone else might gain two or three points from a hundred strikes. He needed more than a hundred to gain one.

High-Grade C Bone Structure simply made him less efficient.

That was the difference Bone Structure made.

But Ye An did not stop.

Others would get stuck at [Azure Cloud Finger: 99/100] for half a month, even a whole month!

If they failed to break through, their vitality could decline, sending them back to [Azure Cloud Finger: 77/100].

But Ye An had [Sage of Martial Dao]!

He would not fail. When he broke through, he would succeed!

As long as he was willing to put in more time, he would surely be among those at the front!

By evening, everyone else had left. He was the only one remaining on the training ground.

When Su Yuanshan came out of the rear courtyard to collect his clothes, he saw a young man in the corner still battling the bluestone slab.

Cloth strips wrapped the young man's index and middle fingers, dark red blood seeping through them.

Su Yuanshan said nothing and turned back toward the house.

But as he passed the stone table, he glanced at the six taels of silver Ye An had left there and paused.

"Two months? Fair enough." Su Yuanshan had seen plenty of students caught up in the excitement of something new. When they felt no change after their first month, they left.

Quite a few, like Ye An, paid for two months up front.

But they could regret it, too.

Would he regret it?

By the time Ye An returned home, night had fallen completely.

His father was still at the general store and had not come home. His older brother was reading in his room.

A bowl of porridge and half a steamed bun had been left on the table.

Ye An warmed the porridge, ate the bun, washed the bowl, and went back to his little room.

The sensation of jabbing the stone slab that day played over and over in his mind.

The angle, the force, his breathing.

He went back over every detail.

By then, Ye An's fingers were badly swollen. Touching anything hurt.

Luckily, he had ointment.

Ye An took out the ointment he had just bought and rubbed it onto his fingers.

A cool chill ran from his fingertips straight to his forehead. It hurt, but the ointment would help him recover faster.

Otherwise, even if his injuries had been mild enough to let him gain four points of proficiency today, gaining even one point tomorrow would be hard.

Ye An was only an ordinary person. He could get hurt, and his progress at the beginning and in the middle stages was bound to be slower than on the first day.

That made the ointment all the more important: it could speed his recovery.

[Azure Cloud Finger: 4/100]

At this rate, he could still reach First Body Tempering in three months.

"Thinking about it won't help. What matters now is breaking through the First Layer of Azure Cloud Finger and becoming a First Body Tempering martial artist. Otherwise, it's all a pipe dream."

First Body Tempering was only the first step.