Four Years of Gains

"Quick, quick! He's awake! Goudanzi's awake!"

Goudanzi's consciousness had only just returned to reality, and he was still dazed when Wang Tianlei's unmistakably booming voice rang in his ears. Then came a bang as the door was shoved open, and Goudanzi's mother rushed in, wailing, and gathered him into her arms.

"You little bastard who deserves a thousand cuts! You scared your mother half to death-boohoo!"

He felt helpless, miserable, and thoroughly unlucky.

What had happened was simple enough. When the Old Zhou Household woke that morning and discovered Goudanzi missing again, another frenzy erupted, with everyone searching high and low. Eventually, they found him unconscious in the bushes behind their courtyard wall. They hurriedly carried him home and fetched the doctor, who had been packing to leave. After a frantic scramble, things finally settled down, but Goudanzi's mother, overwhelmed by worry and fright, fainted.

She had barely been carried out when Wang Tianlei shouted from the room that Goudanzi was awake. The news jolted her straight out of her faint, and she rushed inside, leading to the scene just described.

The touching scene did not last long.

Once everyone saw that Goudanzi was awake and unharmed, they relaxed. And once they relaxed, Goudanzi was in trouble.

"So this is what they mean by settling accounts after the harvest, huh?!"

Goudanzi lay helplessly on a pile of firewood, his hands behind his head. He stared up at the tangled cobwebs overhead, thick with black ash and swaying in the breeze, and listened to his stomach and intestines doing battle. His smile turned bitter.

Only a day after he woke, Old Zhou-his father in this life-locked him in the woodshed and forbade him from eating for three days.

Old Zhou was a mountain villager through and through, born and raised there. He was an excellent hunter, but raising children was not his strong suit.

He believed in a maxim from Goudanzi's previous life: "Filial sons are raised beneath the rod." His methods were rough and direct. But Goudanzi had always been obedient and had never given him anything to seize upon, so he had never been locked in the woodshed like this before. Usually, Sangouzi was the one who ended up there.

But times had changed, and this time Goudanzi had truly stumbled. Old Zhou decided he would no longer tolerate his son running around immediately after waking and falling unconscious again. He sent him to the woodshed to starve for three days, using the same method he had once employed on Dagouzi, Ergouzi, and Sangouzi.

In the days that followed, Old Zhou was extremely pleased with this decision. After three days locked away, the old, wonderfully obedient Goudanzi returned and never gave him cause to worry again.

Time hurried on, the years flying like a weaver's shuttle.

Before anyone knew it, four years had passed, and Goudanzi was eight.

For most people, the years from four to eight were a hazy stretch, and also their most innocent. But for Goudanzi, those four years had been richly fulfilling-so fulfilling that he wanted to throw up his hands and cheer.

Through Wang Tianlei and Old Blind Man's combined efforts, four years had given the village's young people enough literacy to read and write. Their education might not have been advanced, but at least they could write now. When sending letters to distant relatives, they no longer had to go to every possible trouble to find someone to write for them. Naturally, mistakes still cropped up between the lines.

It was a remarkable achievement.

Goudanzi was not particularly impressed. All he cared about was that he no longer had to deliberately conceal his literacy in front of others. Most village children his age recognized at least a few characters now, and there were even one or two "child prodigies" who could recite long passages of ancient poetry and the sages' writings. Their parents had even gotten carried away enough to consider sending them to sit the imperial examinations.

Goudanzi was no child prodigy, nor was he interested in the cultural system of this other world, which so closely resembled ancient China.

He only needed people to know that he could read.

His cultivation of the Flameheart Method progressed smoothly. After his eyes underwent their strange transformation and he acquired the cultivation method for the Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword, he cleared the Flameheart Method's hardest hurdle: drawing fire-aspected energy from the primal energy of heaven and earth, converting it through a special inner cultivation method into fire-aspected Internal Energy of a uniform nature, and storing it within his body.

This was the most fundamental principle behind the vast majority of inner cultivation methods in this world. Of course, accomplishing it was not easy. There was not just one kind of fire-aspected primal energy between heaven and earth, but countless kinds. The sun overhead alone emitted over a hundred varieties, the most famous being solar true fire. Even the tiniest trace of that true fire could melt steel, so very few people meddled with it apart from certain legendary figures. Naturally, the Flameheart Method was merely a basic introductory method for fire-aspected inner cultivation. Goudanzi knew none of this yet, and his current sensitivity to the primal energy of heaven and earth could not distinguish so many varieties.

By now, he had completely converted the Great Strength Vajra Qigong cultivated by this body's original owner into flameheart inner qi and incorporated it into the Thousand-Army-Breaking Fist. When he performed the fist sequence, its inherent might was accompanied by scorching gusts from his punches, making it several times more destructive than the ordinary Thousand-Army-Breaking Fist.

He also discovered that as his Internal Energy gradually changed from Great Strength Vajra Qigong into flameheart Internal Energy, it seemed to have remarkable effects on strengthening his muscles, bones, and meridians. In other words, Wang Tianlei's explanation of working from the inside out had been correct. Proper internal power greatly helped strengthen the body; internal and external cultivation worked upon one another.

In a sense, Goudanzi had already attained modest mastery in both his fist technique and inner cultivation. He would not improve much over the next three years, and forcing further advancement might even damage his body. His internal and external cultivation had already reached the limits of his current age.

He was only eight, a little brat of eight whose body had yet to finish growing. He had not even reached puberty. His bones and vital blood were both at their most fragile. Even if he successfully forced an improvement at such a time, his future accomplishments would be limited. Moreover, Goudanzi strongly suspected that forcibly increasing his strength with his body in this condition might leave him looking eight for the rest of his life. That would be mortifying.

Thus, three months earlier, he had turned all his attention to the Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword.

The Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword was a strange martial discipline. Even with Li Haoran's memories, he still did not know that disciplines of this kind were called unusual arts.

As mentioned before, ordinary martial cultivation methods absorbed the primal energy of heaven and earth from outside the body, drew it within, and converted it into one's own Internal Energy through an inner cultivation method. This converted Internal Energy then nourished the body's meridians and vital blood. It circulated, released, and withdrew at will. This was what working from the inside out meant.

The Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword was a unique martial discipline unlike anything Goudanzi had ever imagined. He even considered it an entirely separate martial system beyond everything he knew. Of course, this also reflected how narrow his understanding of martial arts was: it extended no further than martial arts novels and comics.

It directly gathered killing intent and used a secret method resembling an inner cultivation method to refine the absorbed killing intent into peerless Sword Qi, which was then stored within the body.

It sounded no different from the breathing methods used to cultivate Internal Energy, but the essential difference was enormous.

Practitioners of inner cultivation absorbed the primal energy of heaven and earth. This energy existed in countless varieties with all manner of attributes, divided into two broad categories: spiritual energy and killing intent. Very few kinds could actually be absorbed by humans and converted into internal power. Those easily absorbed and converted were called spiritual energy, and their attributes were generally mild. Even the fire-aspected primal energy absorbed and converted by the Flameheart Method was mild enough for the human body to take in, much as drinking water might be either cool or warm. Far more varieties were killing intent: primal energy that humans could not absorb and convert into Internal Energy. They were like fiercely boiling water—not only impossible to drink, but capable of scalding someone with the slightest touch.

These varieties of killing intent were violent in nature, but their power likewise surpassed anything mild primal energy could match. The Flameheart Method Goudanzi currently practiced, for instance, absorbed and converted only ordinary fire-aspected primal energy. Compared with solar true fire, its power fell short by far more than ten million miles.

Thus, unusual arts came into being to harness such violent primal energy.

Unusual arts were secret methods created by martial cultivators of antiquity, who combined various applications of Internal Energy and martial disciplines with the different properties of killing intent. These methods converted violent killing intent, which warriors could not safely absorb, into fixed forms that could be housed within the body's meridians.

Because the primal energy converted by unusual arts was incredibly violent, storing it within the body like Internal Energy and making it one's own was almost impossible. Unusual arts solved this problem by allowing it to exist within the body in a fixed form. The Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword, for instance, used a secret method to condense killing intent into peerless Sword Qi. Once condensed, its violent properties were completely smoothed away and converted into the Sword Qi's killing power. However, not just any kind of killing intent could be used to cultivate the Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword. Every unusual art had extremely demanding requirements. The Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword required the simultaneous refinement of two varieties with completely opposite natures: one of extreme yang and another of extreme yang. Even after refinement through the secret method, they could not be stored and freely wielded like true Internal Energy. They could only take on a particular fixed form and be housed within the meridians. Most importantly, the meridians housing Sword Qi needed far greater endurance than ordinary ones.

Goudanzi was only eight, and his muscles, bones, and meridians had not finished developing. Even if he found two varieties of killing intent with completely opposite natures, he could not store them within his body. His meridians simply could not withstand them.

"What a shame. I thought I'd found something to keep me alive!"

At that thought, Goudanzi found himself rather ridiculous. An eight-year-old child growing up in a remote mountain village, yet his mind worked just like those martial adventurers outside, always wanting some means of saving his life. He did not know what kind of mindset this was. Perhaps he had read too many martial arts novels in his previous life?

Of course, those four years had done more than help him grasp the nature of the Flameheart Method and the Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword. His complete understanding of the Flameheart Method was the most practical gain, cultivating the Twofold Heaven-Piercing Sword interested him most, and his greatest gains came from his strange eyes.

After four years of training, he could keep his eyes in that strange state for roughly half an hour. Once it ended, he no longer suffered extreme weakness; at least fleeing for his life was no problem. Of course, maintaining that state still placed a heavy burden on his body. But while it lasted, his reactions, perception, control over his body and Internal Energy, speed, and strength all underwent a qualitative leap. His overall strength increased at least five or sixfold. His only regret was that these were not Sharingan, after all, and could not copy other people's martial techniques.

He still had not mastered the Wu Household's archery techniques, which he had coveted for so long. Carefully observing every detail of how Wu Qinglong drew his bow and nocked his arrows had benefited him immensely, and his archery had improved greatly, but he still had not truly mastered the Wu Household's archery.

"I've practiced this Tai Chi Fist for seven whole years now, and I've probably uncovered a few of its mysteries. Heh, when I cultivated Great Strength Vajra Qigong, it could strengthen that. Now I've completely converted my Great Strength Vajra Qigong into flameheart inner qi, and to think it can still strengthen it. Not only that, but its effect on strengthening my body keeps increasing too. It's practically a super fist technique that can level up. How strange. Why didn't I feel any of this in my previous life?!"

After completing a round of Tai Chi Fist, Goudanzi was drenched in sweat. He felt as though the heat of his Internal Energy had washed through his entire body, leaving him indescribably comfortable.

"The old man's been restless lately. It seems to be about sending me away to become an apprentice. Heh, going out would be good. Anything's better than staying cooped up in this poor backwater. I don't expect to soar to glory someday, but at least I should take a good look at this strange world. Staying here probably wouldn't give me many chances, would it?!"

That was exactly how Goudanzi felt. Although the mountain village was peaceful and tranquil, and Wang Tianlei had made it an excellent place to retire, Goudanzi was only eight and did not want to retire so early. He was therefore eager to become an apprentice at Green Ram Market. Of course, he still did not know what sort of future his second uncle had arranged for him.

I've finally fleshed out the framework for unusual arts. Of course, this chapter doesn't explain everything. Unusual arts form an enormous system with plenty of room to develop, and this will gradually unfold for everyone in the content to come. Please click, recommend, and bookmark.