Flameheart Method

"Slow down, slow down, don't choke... nobody's going to let you starve... don't use your hands, use your chopsticks!"

Zhou Hua sat across the little table, her belly swollen with six or seven months of pregnancy, watching Goudanzi wolf down his food. She was torn between irritation and amusement. She had no idea what had gotten into this little brother of hers. He had always been such an obedient child, but over the past few months, he had become increasingly unruly, roaming all over the mountains whenever he had nothing to do. And every time he came back, he reeked of sweat. He claimed he had been practicing martial arts, but what the hell kind of martial arts could a child his age practice? Nobody knew what he was really doing out there. He would not even listen when called home for meals. Eventually, he drove their mother to the end of her patience: if he came home late, he got no food. This worked quite well at first, but then Goudanzi wised up. When his mother refused to feed him, he came to his sister's house to cadge a meal.

"Sis, this is good, really good. Your cooking's the best. Mom's isn't nearly as good as yours!" Goudanzi mumbled his flattery between mouthfuls. A few sweet words were enough to make Zhou Hua's heart blossom with delight, and despite her great belly, she kept fussing over him.

"You little brat. You're not very old, but you've got plenty of tricks up your sleeve. Just eat. What's all the buttering up for?" Wang Tianlei sat nearby with a thread-bound book in his hand, grumbling at his little brother-in-law.

"Hehe, Brother-in-law, what are you reading?!"

Ever since he first came to his sister's house to cadge a meal a month ago, Goudanzi had noticed the book in Wang Tianlei's hands and the four large characters on its cover: "Flameheart Method."

From the title alone, Goudanzi could tell it was a martial arts manual. Compared to his excitement when he first saw it, he was much calmer now.

Because he had already memorized the entire book.

The moment he first saw those four characters, Goudanzi had darted over for a look. From the words and diagrams in the book, he could tell it was an internal cultivation manual, and considerably more profound than the Great Strength Vajra Qigong Wang Tianlei had taught him.

After that, Goudanzi stopped going home for dinner every few evenings. Cadging meals was the pretext; memorizing the manual was his real aim.

Although Wang Tianlei treasured his copy of the Flameheart Method and usually kept it safely tucked away, he had a habit of taking it out every evening after dinner to study it for a while. Naturally, this gave Goudanzi an opportunity.

Wang Tianlei had no reason to be on his guard against Goudanzi.

A three- or four-year-old child knew nothing, so it hardly mattered if he looked at it. Taking advantage of Wang Tianlei's lack of vigilance, Goudanzi actually managed to memorize all the written instructions in the Flameheart Method within a month. The book was thin, only fifteen or twenty pages, and it was all in Chinese characters, far easier than the English vocabulary Goudanzi had learned in his previous life. Still, he did not dare practice it yet, because he had not completely committed the diagrams to memory.

Having practiced Great Strength Vajra Qigong, he naturally knew that there could be absolutely no deviation in the circulation routes of internal qi. A mistake could, at best, send his cultivation running wild, and at worst, send him to his grave. Goudanzi had a knack for memorizing words, but no experience with memorizing diagrams. Although he had gradually remembered all of them, he could not guarantee that they were entirely correct.

That was why he seized every opportunity to steal another glance, checking whether the diagrams in his mind contained any errors.

As for the question, "Brother-in-law, what are you reading?" he had asked it several times already, but always received the same three-word answer.

"I don't know!"

Before, whenever he heard that answer, he would simply say, "Oh," and stop asking.

Today was different, however. He had only one final diagram left to verify, so he needed an excuse to take a few more looks and finish this last step.

Shoveling down his final mouthful of rice, Goudanzi darted over to Wang Tianlei again and brought his little head close to the book.

His eyes sparkled. "Brother-in-law, if you don't know what this book is, why do you read it every day?!"

"Because I can't read, damn it!" Goudanzi's question had struck a sore spot. Wang Tianlei lowered the book onto his knees and said indignantly, "If I could read, I wouldn't have to keep studying these pictures over and over!"

"What do the pictures in this book mean?!" Goudanzi casually picked the book up from Wang Tianlei's lap, holding it upside down, then flipped it open to the very last page, bringing the final diagram into view.

"These diagrams show the circulation routes of internal qi!" Wang Tianlei suspected nothing and continued, "Unfortunately, you can only understand them properly together with the words."

"If you can't read, you can learn!" Goudanzi's eyes lingered on the final page of the Flameheart Method as he spoke casually. "Doesn't the Old Blind Man know how to read?"

"That's right! Why didn't I think of that?!" Wang Tianlei suddenly let out a strange cry and jerked upright in his chair. "The Old Blind Man can't see, but he can still teach people to read!"

"Right, right! I want to learn to read too!" Goudanzi said. He took one last look at the Flameheart Method, then gently set it down. "Brother-in-law, how about teaching me once you've learned?!"

"That old swindler has nothing to do anyway, and hardly anyone actually falls for his tricks anymore. He might as well open a school in the village and teach us to read. Not just me, either. Anyone in the village who wants to can come and learn. Especially those little brats who run around making trouble all day-haul the whole lot of them over there to learn their letters. And those hunters, too. Every one of them has energy to spare. Let them study a few characters every day after practicing martial arts. It'll help settle their minds and cure those hot tempers. Besides, the old swindler could earn enough for a few meals instead of sitting at the village entrance all day pretending to be pitiful!"

"Would that work?!" A trace of doubt crossed Zhou Hua's face as she listened to Wang Tianlei. "Would anyone come?"

"Whether they want to is up to them. Something like this can only be voluntary. But as for the little brats in the village, the ones like Goudanzi, we should get as many of them there as possible. Ah, not being able to read has cost me dearly all my life!"

He sighed, his breath carrying the weariness of someone who had weathered a lifetime of hardship.

"What are you sighing for? You're only twenty, and you're acting like some seventy- or eighty-year-old man!"

Hearing Wang Tianlei sigh, Zhou Hua frowned and gave him an irritated pinch.

Teach us to read? Goudanzi was momentarily taken aback, then understood, and his admiration for Wang Tianlei grew. Wasn't this just a literacy campaign? In this era, ordinary people's level of education was extremely low. In a little mountain village like theirs, apart from an oddity like Goudanzi himself, the only person who could actually read was that old swindler-and he was blind.

Besides, in the eyes of people in this era, or at least these villagers, literacy was not particularly useful. Reading and writing were things for the grand gentlemen in the county town. Their own duties were simply to hunt and farm by day, then hold their wives in bed at night and produce the next generation.

Wang Tianlei saw much further ahead than ordinary mountain folk. Still, putting this plan into practice would probably be very difficult.

"All right, Brother-in-law. I want to learn to read too. When the time comes, could you talk to Dad and have him send me as well?!"

"Of course. You're still so young. Learning to read early will do you good in the future. Doesn't Father-in-law want to send you to Green Ram Market as an apprentice? If you learn to read, your prospects will be far better than an ordinary person's!" Wang Tianlei patted Goudanzi's little head with a cheerful smile.

Goudanzi wriggled a few times, moving his head out from under Wang Tianlei's large hand. "Great, Brother-in-law! When you get the Old Blind Man to teach you to read, make sure you tell me!"

"Stop calling him the Old Blind Man. He'll be your teacher from now on, and you must respect your teacher!" Wang Tianlei's expression turned solemn. "These are rules and principles. Remember, no matter when or where, you must never neglect rules and principles!"

"Yes, Brother-in-law!" Goudanzi nodded hastily, looking every inch the obedient pupil.

"All right, all right, Goudanzi. You've eaten, so it's time to go home. If you don't go back soon, Mom will scold you again!"

"Oh, okay. Thanks, Sis. Sis, I'm off!" Goudanzi felt as though he had been granted a royal pardon and trotted out of Wang Tianlei's house.

There we go. I've checked the last diagram, and learning to read with the Old Blind Man will give me a cover for already knowing my letters. Not bad, not bad at all. This brother-in-law of mine really is talented. It's a bit of a shame to have him buried in this little mountain village. Still, without him, I wouldn't have gotten so lucky!

Goudanzi shared a room with Sangouzi and Ergouzi, but it was a very large room. Although the Zhou family was not particularly well-off, space was the one thing mountain households never lacked. The three brothers slept in the same room, but far apart, each with his own earthen bed. These beds were rustic and thoroughly lacking in elegance, but they were warm and reassuringly solid.

Goudanzi's bed stood against the south wall, which had a hole just large enough to let the bright moonlight outside shine through.

Climbing into bed and pulling up the covers, Goudanzi fumbled beneath the bedding and drew out several crumpled sheets of paper. He carefully examined them in the moonlight streaming through the little hole. A naked human figure had been drawn on the paper in charcoal, with several black lines running across it. At the points where those lines met, the names of individual acupoints had been written in tiny characters. These were the diagrams and annotations Goudanzi had painstakingly memorized from the Flameheart Method, and today he had made his final checks!