Obtaining the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art

The courtyard of Zhou Liang, the hunter on the village's western side, was larger than most.

Yi Yang stood at the gate and knocked.

Knock, knock.

Footsteps sounded inside, and before long, the wooden gate opened.

The man who opened it was a burly fellow in his forties, with broad shoulders, thick arms, and carelessly shaved stubble. Beneath his brow, his eyes had spent years watching mountain trails, and whenever he looked at someone, he always seemed to be sizing up merchandise.

It was Zhou Liang.

At the sight of Yi Yang, he paused, his hand still resting on the latch.

"What brings you here at high noon? Feeling poorly? Or has something happened to that girl Yuexin?"

Yi Yang waved a hand.

"Nothing's happened."

Zhou Liang breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly opened the gate wider.

"Then come in and sit. The sun's fierce out here. With those old bones of yours, don't let it dry you into a husk."

"No need to sit."

Yi Yang raised the little cloth bundle in his hand.

Inside were a few copper coins and two short lengths of dried mountain ginseng rootlets. They weren't worth much, but in a place like Threewood Village, bringing them still showed thoughtfulness.

The moment Zhou Liang saw them, his brow furrowed.

"Old Master Yi, what's this about? Coming over is enough-why bring gifts? Aren't you slapping me in the face?"

Yi Yang got straight to the point.

"Liang, didn't you go to town to learn martial arts when you were younger?"

Zhou Liang's face twitched. It was no secret in the village, but it wasn't exactly something to be proud of.

Back then, he had taken his family's savings to town, hoping to join a Martial Arts Hall and make something of himself.

In the end, the silver was spent, but he had learned nothing.

After he returned, plenty of village idlers mocked him, saying Zhou Liang had paid for a dream, only to wake up and find he still had to chase rabbits in the mountains.

Over the years, Zhou Liang had made his peace with it.

But making peace was one thing. Having it brought up to his face still left a sour ache in his teeth.

When Yi Yang saw that he wasn't speaking, he continued, "When I was young, I went to a Martial Arts Hall to have my aptitude tested. They said martial arts weren't meant for me."

"Those words were like a gate bolt, keeping me outside for decades."

"Now that I'm old, I don't have much left to wish for. I just suddenly wanted to see what the martial arts I've yearned for all my life actually look like."

With that, he lifted the cloth bundle again.

"I'm not asking to look for free. A few copper coins and two bits of mountain ginseng rootlets. Nothing valuable, just a little gift."

At those words, most of Zhou Liang's discomfort faded. Instead, he frowned.

"I can't accept that."

He reached out to push the bundle away.

"Old Master Yi, aren't you slapping me in the face?"

"Just coming over is enough. Why bring a gift?"

"Besides, what I have isn't some valuable cultivation art."

Zhou Liang glanced into the courtyard and lowered his voice.

"When I went to town back then, I paid the tuition. Those instructors felt my bones and tendons and said I was too old and my aptitude was poor. Training wouldn't get me anywhere."

"But they'd already taken my money. They had to give me something, didn't they?"

He scoffed. "So they tossed me a copy of the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art. Said it was for nourishing the body. If I mastered it, it would strengthen my tendons and invigorate my blood. If I didn't, I could still use it to learn to read."

"I buried myself in that booklet for half a year. My legs swelled from standing, and my back ached from twisting. In the end, I got nowhere."

"I ran out of money too, so all I could do was crawl back to the village. Laugh if you want, but I really wanted to burn that booklet then."

Yi Yang asked, "But you didn't?"

"Couldn't bear to."

Zhou Liang spread his hands. "I paid for it. Burning it would've hurt. Besides, what if my son turned out to have some aptitude one day?"

At that, he shook his head again.

"Forget it. He's even lazier than I am. Rather than making him practice a stance, I might as well take him rabbit hunting."

Yi Yang chuckled.

Having said his piece, Zhou Liang turned toward the house.

"Wait here, old master. I'll go get it."

The sounds of rummaging through chests and cupboards came from inside Zhou Liang's house.

A little later, Zhou Liang emerged carrying a yellowed booklet.

It was thin, with curled corners and its title written in ink on the cover.

Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art.

After so many years, the ink had faded to gray.

Zhou Liang placed the booklet in Yi Yang's hands but didn't immediately let go.

"Old Master Yi, let me say this first."

"You're getting on in years. Don't push yourself. The stance exercises in here leave even young people aching all over. If you force those old arms and legs through them and hurt your tendons or bones, it won't be worth it."

Yi Yang nodded.

"I'd like to live a few more years. I won't gamble with myself."

Only then did Zhou Liang let go.

"All right, then. Take it and read it. Don't worry about returning it. It's a shabby little booklet that takes up too much room even at the bottom of a chest."

Yi Yang set the cloth bundle beside the threshold.

Seeing that, Zhou Liang's face fell again.

"Hey, Old Master Yi, why'd you leave that there? Take it away!"

Yi Yang turned and walked off.

"My legs are old, and bending down is a chore. If you won't take it, toss it in the ditch."

"You old man..."

Zhou Liang chased him for a couple of steps, then stopped.

He stood at the gate, watching Yi Yang's thin retreating back, and only after a long while did he mutter.

"At his age, he's still reading martial arts manuals."

"This world really does wear people down beyond all bounds."

Yi Yang waved and followed the dirt road home.

Yi Yang didn't look back.

The little booklet rested against his chest, and even through the fabric, it seemed to burn.

It wasn't the booklet that burned.

It was the old furnace in his chest, cold for sixty years, finally smoking again.

That night.

In the little courtyard enclosed by three small rooms, Jiang Yuexin had gone to bed early. Her steady breathing drifted from her room.

Yi Yang sat beneath the old locust tree, an oil lamp on the table.

He opened the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art.

The first page contained its general principles.

To establish a foundation in martial arts, one must first nourish and accumulate qi and blood.

A martial artist tempered the body and replenished vital essence, then strengthened the skin, trained the flesh, transformed the tendons, forged the bones, refined the organs, and cleansed the marrow and renewed the blood. Only by proceeding from outside to inside and circulating qi and blood could one knock open the gate to martial arts.

Further down, it read.

Qi and blood had six stages.

Skin refining, flesh training, tendon transformation, bone forging, organ refining, and marrow cleansing and blood renewal.

As for what lay beyond qi and blood, the booklet merely hinted that another world existed, offering no details.

At this point, Yi Yang's fingertip paused on the page.

"Six stages of qi and blood."

The shabby booklet Zhou Liang had spoken of could actually take someone through all six stages of qi and blood.

Of course, writing about those stages didn't mean everyone could reach them.

Giving a poor man a cookbook didn't put an imperial banquet on his table.

Yi Yang understood that all too well.

An ordinary person could train until their hair turned white and still fail to finish refining their skin.

But Yi Yang was different. He had his heavenly destiny. For him, martial arts training was only a matter of time.

What he had lacked was a doorway. Now, the gate to martial arts had opened.

The booklet's first half explained martial theory. The second half contained diagrams.

The little figure in the diagrams held a stance called the Wood Longevity Stance.

Feet apart, knees slightly bent, waist and back straight, arms loosely encircling an empty space before the chest, fingers naturally spread, tongue against the roof of the mouth, breathing smooth and continuous, attention resting on the lower abdomen.

It looked simple. Actually holding it was fiendishly difficult.

Yi Yang took his position according to the diagram.

Within a few breaths, his knees began to ache, then his back went numb. His shoulders felt as though they bore two bundles of wet firewood, and even his breathing became strained.

The old injuries from his younger woodcutting days flared up one after another.

He had injured his left leg in a fall years ago, and it hurt whenever the weather turned wet.

His right shoulder had endured decades of chafing beneath a carrying pole, and lifting it even a little higher made it tighten.

As for his spine, there was no need to mention it. How many old woodcutters still had straight backs?

Sweat soon streamed down his forehead.

The summer night wasn't cool. Sweat slid into the corners of his eyes, salty and stinging.

Yi Yang gritted his teeth without making a sound.

Pain was pain.

Hardship was hardship.

He had endured famine, his parents' favoritism, slippery snow-covered mountain paths, and midnight cramps in his weather-worn legs.

Could a mere stance exercise be harder on the teeth than the human heart?

Just as he forced himself to hold on and barely managed the full posture, familiar little words appeared before his eyes.

[An old steed rests in its stable, yet still aspires to gallop a thousand miles]

[Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art, level one: (1/1000)]

Yi Yang's eyelids lifted, and the old breath in his chest nearly surged into his throat.

It worked! It really worked!!!!

The instructor at the Martial Arts Hall had told him in his youth, "Martial arts aren't meant for you." That verdict had stood before him like an unbreakable wall for most of his life.

Tonight, he had rammed a crack into that wall with his old bones.

Had it not been so late, had he not feared waking Jiang Yuexin, Yi Yang would have thrown back his head and laughed three times.

Heaven was sixty years late, but at last, it hadn't left him utterly forgotten in some dusty corner.

The old man merely pressed the tip of his tongue against his teeth and forcibly swallowed his laughter, his shoulders shaking twice. "Yi Yang, oh, Yi Yang."

He scolded himself inwardly. You're sixty. Steady yourself. Don't act like you've never seen a cheat before. By the time he finished his first round of stance training, he looked as though he had been hauled out of a water vat.

Sweat soaked his short tunic, sticking it to the flesh of his back and making him thoroughly uncomfortable.

But the words before his eyes had changed.

[Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art, level one: (60/1000)]

Yi Yang stared at that line for a long time.

One round.

Sixty points.

This was the blessing of his years.

He was sixty. One round of his training equaled sixty rounds for anyone else.

Others ground away slowly. He had switched on a senior-citizen accelerator.

After finishing one round, Yi Yang sat in his reclining chair, picked up some warm water, and gulped twice.

Still, delighted as he was, Yi Yang hadn't lost his head.

After that first round, his entire body was exhausted, his stomach felt alarmingly empty, and his hands and feet were weak.

He had depleted his vital essence.

Martial training wasn't a matter of shouting a couple of slogans and striking a couple of poses, then freeloading off heaven and earth.

To strengthen skin, flesh, tendons, and bones, something had to go into them.

Lean meat, medicinal broths, Blood Qi Powder, Blood Qi Pills, and beyond those, exotic beast meat.

That was why scholars could be poor, but martial artists needed wealth.

When poor people practiced martial arts, the first thing they wore away wasn't laziness. It was their lives.

These days, he ate coarse grains and wild greens. Even the occasional egg had to go to Jiang Yuexin first. If he forced himself to train, his progress would rise, but his body would be hollowed out.

The person was the root; the art was the branch.

Once the root rotted, no matter how quickly the branch grew, it would still collapse.

Purplewood could fetch money, but word had already leaked. Taking it out to sell now would undoubtedly be a great risk.

No rushing.

Three rounds a day.

Any more would harm my body.

Six days.

In just six days, he could reach the Blood Qi First Stage: skin refining.

A second round.

A third round.

Only when dawn was near did Yi Yang return to his room and lie down.

Only when dawn was near did Yi Yang return to his room and lie down.

He had thought he would sleep until the sun shone on his face. Yet only four to six hours later, when the roosters outside the courtyard crowed for the second time, his eyes opened.

His mind was clear, too.

Unlike usual, when he always woke groggy, his eyelids gritty, and had to grind his lower back against the bedboards for ages before it would cooperate.

Today was different.

Warmth filled his chest and belly, and his limbs felt much looser.

Yi Yang sat up and rolled his shoulders.

The aches from last night remained, but they were no longer sharp. Instead, they felt like old firewood softened by rain, less brittle than before.

"The Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art certainly lives up to the 'longevity' in its name."

He dressed and had just pushed the door open when he ran into Jiang Yuexin coming back from the well with a wooden basin.

The young girl had not finished combing her hair. A few stray strands clung to her cheeks, but her eyes were bright.

When she saw Yi Yang, she stopped in her tracks.

"Grandpa?"

Yi Yang picked up a dipper to wash his face.

"What? Seen a ghost this early in the morning?"

Jiang Yuexin set the wooden basin on the stone stand and circled halfway around him, studying him.

"Why do you look... different today?"

Yi Yang's hand paused.

"Different how?"

Jiang Yuexin wrinkled her little nose, looking almost as earnest as the old schoolmaster at the village entrance checking accounts.

"I can't quite say."

"Your face isn't so gray, and your back's a little straighter. Also, did you sneak something good to eat last night? Why do you look a bit younger?"

Yi Yang splashed water onto his face, and droplets trickled down his wrinkles.

"You're imagining things."

"You must not have slept well last night. Your eyes are playing tricks on you."

Jiang Yuexin refused to accept that.

"There's nothing wrong with my eyes."

Yi Yang wiped his face with a cloth, his tone steady.

"Then it's because you haven't had breakfast. You're so hungry your vision's gone blurry."

Jiang Yuexin puffed out her cheeks.

"Grandpa, you're fooling me again."

Yi Yang hung the cloth back on the wooden rack and headed toward the kitchen with his hands clasped behind his back.

"So what if I am? At my age, fooling a little girl isn't against the law."

Jiang Yuexin followed close behind, and the two made their way to the kitchen.