Ugh, looks like I posted the wrong thing!!!
"Brother Zhang, what's going on?" Seeing Zhang Yong raise his foot to kick, Little Leopard sighed softly. He finally recognized the young man. He was a well-known down-and-out fellow from Green Ram Market named Sun Hua. His family had originally been fairly well-off; his father had run a small trading depot in Green Ram Market, putting them among the better-off households. Unfortunately, his father had died a few months earlier, leaving him alone. Sun Hua was a lazy glutton who knew nothing about business, and someone had swindled him badly enough that he lost the depot, along with everything valuable at home. In the end, all he had left was a little house, and he survived by pawning his belongings. After a while, there were scarcely any valuables left, only a few worthless odds and ends. He went hungry as often as he ate, and it probably wouldn't be long before he became a beggar.
He must have been desperately hungry this time to bring along the few things he still owned, hoping to sell them for a little money on market day. Unfortunately, he didn't know the rules and had received a beating from Zhang Yong, who was patrolling the street.
"Oh, it's Little Leopard! Buying books again?" Zhang Yong immediately smiled when he saw Little Leopard approaching. He gently lowered his raised foot, only to give Sun Hua another kick in the backside. "Get lost! If you don't leave, I'll beat you to death!"
Sun Hua was furious, but he knew he was no match for Zhang Yong. Tears and snot streamed down his face. He wiped it with his sleeve, smearing himself into a splendid mess, and the crowd around him burst into laughter again.
"Let it go, Brother Zhang. He's pitiful enough already!" Little Leopard sighed softly and walked up to Sun Hua. "Brother Sun, you came to sell books, right?"
Sun Hua sniffled a few times and glanced at Little Leopard. Seeing how young he was, he couldn't work out who he might be and merely nodded.
"I'll buy all your books. Here's the silver. See if it's enough!"
Little Leopard took out a piece of silver and placed it in Sun Hua's hand.
"Yes, yes, it's enough!" Sun Hua said between sniffles.
He had been starving and had only hoped to sell those few battered books for a handful of copper coins to buy some flatbread. The silver Little Leopard gave him weighed a full tenth of a tael, enough for several meals. He hurriedly handed over the bundle of books, afraid something else might go wrong, then took the silver and left in a rush.
"You've got a good heart, Little Leopard, but he's just a ruined wastrel. Giving him silver today won't do any good. Sooner or later, he'll sell that broken-down house and beg on the streets!" Seeing Little Leopard buy the bundle of books, Zhang Yong spoke sourly, then headed off in another direction to continue his patrol.
"Heh!" Little Leopard smiled without answering. Carrying his pile of books, he approached the bookstall. "Brother Wang, how's business? Got any new books?"
The middle-aged stallholder immediately put on an exceedingly honest-looking smile. "I picked up quite a few good books this time!" As he spoke, he patted the pile of old books in front of him as though showing them off.
Little Leopard smiled, selected a few suitable books from the stall, and paid for them. After another circuit of the market to buy some food and drink, he returned to the Wu Ironworks.
He now qualified as a Master Artisan, and with his youth, his future prospects were surely boundless. As a result, he had been given a room of his own.
The room wasn't large-by modern standards, it was only about twenty square meters-but it was more than enough for him alone.
Its furnishings were simple: a bed, a table, and a chair, along with a small cabinet. That cabinet was already stuffed with books, the fruits of Little Leopard's efforts over the past six months.
Those efforts had borne considerable fruit. Through these books, he had gained a very deep understanding of this world.
"Records of Strange Beings? Probably not as good as Journey to the West. One day, if the mood strikes me, I could adapt Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods and publish them. I might even make quite a bit of silver!" Little Leopard opened a book and glanced through it,
then tossed it aside. He no longer bought out the entire secondhand bookstall as he had at the beginning, choosing only books that interested him instead. After finishing the books he had bought from the stall, he stacked them at the head of his bed and opened the shabby bundle Sun Hua had sold him. Buying Sun Hua's books had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, made simply because he pitied him. Although pitiable people invariably had something hateful about them, Little Leopard saw no harm in offering help that cost him no more than lifting a hand.
"The Great Rhapsody of Heaven, Earth, Yin, and Yang?! Fuck, this world has books like this too? I'd better wait a few years before reading it!" Little Leopard frowned at the cover of the first book and squeezed it into the tiny bit of space remaining in the cabinet. "The Azure Emperor's Maiden Scripture?! No wonder the Sun Household went under. Why are all these books like this?" His brows had knitted into a tight crosshatch. Although he had often enjoyed the island nation's specialty films in his previous life, he was far too young now, only eight or nine. Reading books like these would turn him into a pervert. So he opened the third book. "The Decoction Formula Manual?"
Fuck, I'm a blacksmith. What do I need this for?
Little Leopard tossed the book aside, utterly uninterested.
"Huh? What's this?!"
He had only flipped casually through a few pages of the Decoction Formula Manual. They contained the most basic medicinal formula verses, such as the one for the Four Gentlemen Decoction: "The Four Gentlemen Decoction brings harmony, ginseng, atractylodes, poria, and licorice combined; add pinellia and aged citrus peel to name it Six Gentlemen Decoction, dispelling phlegm and supplementing qi for deficient yang; remove pinellia to call it Special Merit Decoction, or add costus root and amomum for cold in the stomach." There was also the Gentiana Decoction for Supporting the Weak: "Gentiana supports the weak with turtle shell and bupleurum, wolfberry root bark, angelica, and aster joined; pinellia and ginseng with roasted licorice, taken for consumptive lung fever and cough." Little Leopard didn't understand such things, but he knew these were the fundamentals physicians learned. Back in the village, the Old Blind Man had used these very verses to teach the villagers to read. Thus, after a few glances, he had tossed the book aside.
But as the discarded book flew through the air, the draft ruffled its pages, and a yellowed sheet covered in writing slowly fluttered out.
Curious, Little Leopard reached out and caught the sheet. He brought it before his eyes and froze.
The sheet was densely covered in characters as tiny as flies' heads.
"Soul-Dazing Pill, Bone Tempering Pill, Sinew Changing Pill, Meridian Stabilizing Pill, Blood Changing Pill, Marrow Washing Pill!"
His entire expression stiffened until he looked like a zombie, and a little drool trickled from the corner of his mouth. When he finished reading, he swallowed hard, only then discovering that, without his noticing, his drool had formed a sizable puddle on the floor. Fortunately, nobody had seen him, or they would have laughed themselves to death.
"Could this be the legendary reward for a good deed? No, no...!" Little Leopard clutched the sheet tightly. One moment he wanted to tuck it inside his robe; the next, he wanted to lift his bedding and hide it underneath. For a time, he hardly knew what to do. "This isn't a reward for a good deed. This is fucking protagonist mode! Otherwise, how could I get a treasure like this so easily?"
Leaving aside the first formula, the Soul-Dazing Pill, the other five brought Little Leopard out in a cold sweat. These pill formulas were simply too much of a rush.
He was no longer the country bumpkin holed up in a tiny mountain village. He was now a blacksmith at the Wu Ironworks. Although his martial arts were hardly impressive, he knew far more about the martial world than he had half a year earlier. Back then, all he had learned from Wang Tianlei was that true martial artists cultivated both internally and externally, and that their cultivation was divided into three main stages, also known as the three realms: skin training, bone tempering, and sinew transformation. Wang Tianlei barely qualified as an early-stage skin training martial artist, and that was all.
After coming to the Wu Household, he had learned much more. He now knew that although martial cultivation was indeed divided into those three stages, known as the three realms, they were further divided into nine ranks. Skin training martial artists occupied the lower three ranks, bone tempering martial artists the middle three, and sinew transformation martial artists the upper three ranks. His brother-in-law, Wang Tianlei, was at most a first-rank martial artist in the lower three ranks, having only just crossed the threshold of martial cultivation.
Ninth-rank experts could be counted on one's fingers throughout the world. Only the greatest sects and thousand-year-old Aristocratic Clans could produce one or two; they were far beyond anything he could currently imagine. Even in an Aristocratic Clan like the Wu Household, the strongest elder had only just reached the seventh rank and stepped through the gates of the upper three ranks. That already made him a force whose presence deterred threats to the Lineage.
There were two reasons martial artists in the upper three ranks were so rare. First, the road was arduous. Without tremendous perseverance, wisdom, and good fortune, it was difficult to stay the course. Second, spiritual medicines were hard to obtain.
The martial arts of this world cultivated both internally and externally, emphasizing the mutual support of the two: the internal nourished the external, while the external sustained the internal. Neither could be neglected. Yet no matter what secret method one used, this mutual support always worked slowly. For instance, using internal energy to nourish the meridians and increase their resilience, strength, and capacity required a great deal of time, often a dozen years or even several decades. Life was bitterly short; where could anyone find so much time for such a thing? Thus, to speed up cultivation, one needed spiritual medicines to strengthen the body. This was why medicinal bath decoctions existed. However, their effectiveness was poor, nowhere near sufficient to draw out the full benefits of the spiritual medicines. When bathing in a decoction and practicing cultivation, making use of thirty or forty percent of its medicinal potency was already a good result. Even that thirty or forty percent greatly improved one's constitution, however, so the major sects and Aristocratic Clans spared no effort scouring every corner for spiritual medicines for their disciples.
According to unofficial histories and legends, however, long ago the martial world had favored spiritual pills rather than bath decoctions. Spiritual pills required far fewer kinds and quantities of medicinal ingredients, with losses amounting to only a tenth or a fifth of those incurred by decoctions, yet their effects were several times greater. At least seventy or eighty percent of their medicinal potency could be utilized, and with skillful refinement, even the full hundred percent. Now, however, such spiritual pills had largely become things of legend. It wasn't that the ingredients no longer existed, but that the authentic formulas and refining techniques had been lost. Although decoctions and spiritual pills were fundamentally much alike, medicine was medicine: even the slightest discrepancy mattered. One ingredient too few or too many could not only render a medicine ineffective, but kill the person taking it. And beyond that, the techniques and procedures for refining these pills had already been lost.
Of course, they had not been lost entirely. One spiritual pill still remained in this world: the Bone Tempering Pill, the only one whose formula had survived. But its formula and refining techniques were held by the greatest sect under heaven, the Profound Heaven Orthodox Sect, the legendary holy land of the martial world. Ordinary martial artists had no way to obtain them. Even within the Profound Heaven Orthodox Sect, the formula and refining techniques were passed down through a single line of succession. Aside from those used within the sect, very few pills circulated outside it. As a result, every batch of Bone Tempering Pills that reached the outside world fetched an astronomical price. As for spiritual pills a grade above the Bone Tempering Pill, those had truly been lost altogether.
That went all the more for the three formulas that came after the Sinew Changing Pill.
Meridian stabilization, blood changing, marrow washing!!
"Could this be the legendary Mystic Profundity Realm beyond the ninth rank?!"
Before you continue