Blood Qi First Stage

Two days passed.

Sun Mazi had disappeared for several days, but no one in Three Trees Village thought anything of it.

Even when a villager remembered him, they only cursed, "That rotten bastard Sun Mazi's gone missing again?"

"Probably off looking for some back-alley whore in the next village. His belt's looser than that old dog at the east end of the village."

No one went looking.

No one asked around.

Yi Yang was not surprised.

A village thug like that annoyed people while alive, and no one missed him dead.

That was how brutally practical this world was.

If a good person was an hour late getting home, the neighbors would ask whether they had fallen into a ditch.

If a rotten bastard vanished for three or five days, everyone only hoped he would die somewhere far away and not bring the stink back.

In the Yi Family Courtyard, Yi Yang stood beneath a tree, feet apart, knees slightly bent, arms curved as though embracing something.

The Yi Wood Longevity Stance.

Compared with those first few days, Yi Yang's stance was much steadier now.

His back was still an old man's back, but it no longer sagged so badly.

A ball of warmth nestled in his abdomen.

With every breath, that warmth circulated through his limbs, like embers buried in an old stove-nothing showed outside, but inside, they burned hot.

Jiang Yuexin crouched beside the well, washing clothes.

The girl had rolled her sleeves up to her elbows, baring two slender, pale forearms. Her fingers soaked in the water, chilled pink by the well water.

She stole several glances at Yi Yang.

At last, she could no longer hold back.

"Grandpa."

Yi Yang did not move.

"Hmm?"

"That pose looks awfully tiring."

"An exercise for keeping healthy."

Yi Yang kept his eyes shut, his breathing slow and deep.

"I learned it years ago, then let it gather dust for decades. Recently, I picked it up again. These old arms and legs will rust if I don't move them."

Jiang Yuexin wrung out a garment and tilted her head skeptically.

"An exercise for keeping healthy makes you stand there sweating all over?"

"What do you know?"

Yi Yang did not even lift his eyelids.

"Even an old tree needs sunshine. Let the sun soak through, and there'll be fewer bugs."

Left without a reply, Jiang Yuexin puffed out her cheeks.

"Grandpa, you're getting better and better at pulling the wool over people's eyes."

Yi Yang relaxed his stance, picked up the coarse ceramic bowl beside him, and drank some warm water.

"I might fool anyone else, but not you. Remember, don't tell anyone about this exercise."

Jiang Yuexin immediately nodded, her bright, dewy eyes shining.

"I won't."

She paused, then lowered her voice.

"Not even Aunt Yang?"

"Not her."

"What about Er Niu?"

"Not her."

"What about the yellow dog by the village entrance?"

Yi Yang glanced at her.

"If it could talk, the first thing out of its mouth would be a complaint about you."

Jiang Yuexin burst into laughter, her shoulders shaking.

When the girl smiled, even the courtyard seemed a little brighter.

The sun climbed higher.

The shadows in the courtyard grew shorter.

Yi Yang returned to his place beneath the old locust tree.

Today was the sixth day.

All this time, he had practiced the stance three times a day, without fail, come thunder or lightning.

Other people honed their skills little by little over the years.

Yi Yang was different.

His destiny, [An Old Steed in the Stable Still Aspires to Gallop a Thousand Miles], was brutally straightforward.

He was sixty.

One round of practice counted as sixty.

Young people competed through talent, medicinal broths, and masters who spoon-fed them every step.

Yi Yang fought tooth and nail to live longer.

Living long enough was a skill, too.

Small words floated before his eyes.

[Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art, first level: (960/1000)]

Only forty points remained.

In other words, once he finished this round, he could cross that threshold.

The threshold a Martial Arts Hall instructor had sealed shut when he was sixteen with the words, "No affinity for martial arts."

Sixty years.

An entire sixty-year cycle.

Yi Yang closed his eyes and lightly clenched his teeth.

His body ached a little.

But what did this little pain amount to?

In his youth, his parents' favoritism had left his heart rotting.

In middle age, he had carried firewood back to the village through a snowy night, the soles of his feet rubbed raw, blood caking his straw sandals, and still kept walking.

In old age, he had dragged Sun Mazi into a dirt pit to give one little girl a peaceful life.

Could a single stance exercise bring him to his knees now?

What a joke.

"Come on."

Yi Yang breathed the words low in his throat.

He sank all his attention into his lower abdomen.

His breathing lengthened.

Sweat rolled down the wrinkles in his forehead, dripped to his chin, then fell into his collar.

His faded short jacket was soaked through, clinging to his lean, withered body.

The midsummer heat was already enough to make anyone irritable, but the heat in Yi Yang's chest and abdomen burned hotter than the sun overhead.

It was burning.

It burned through sixty years of stifled frustration, regret, and defiance, turning them all into fresh fuel for Yi Yang's rebirth.

Noon.

Sunlight slipped through gaps in the locust leaves, falling across Yi Yang's shoulders like scattered gold.

After one particular breath.

A low rumble of thunder seemed to rise within Yi Yang.

The thunder was not beside his ears, but in his flesh, in his bones.

The panel before Yi Yang's eyes flickered.

[An Old Steed in the Stable Still Aspires to Gallop a Thousand Miles]

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

I did it.

Before Yi Yang could think further, the warmth in his abdomen abruptly spread, surging heat rushing through every limb and bone.

His dried-out meridians were flushed clean.

His slack skin and flesh were nourished.

His skin took on a bronze hue, and the muscles that had sagged like old tree bark slowly tightened.

His limbs were like fields parched for years, finally greeting a downpour.

Gray-black filth seeped from his pores, sticky and foul, its stench shooting straight up his nose.

Yet Yi Yang did not mind in the slightest.

He even wanted to laugh.

The rheumatic aches of past years, the hidden injuries from chopping firewood, and the lingering troubles from tumbling down a mountainside in his youth were washed over again and again by that hot current.

The pain did not disappear entirely.

But more than half of it was gone.

That lightness felt so unfamiliar.

So unfamiliar that Yi Yang almost thought he had returned to his twenties.

He exhaled a breath of stale air.

The breath was astonishingly long.

It flowed from his chest for several full breaths' worth of time before finally running out.

When he opened his eyes again, a sharp gleam shone in those clouded old eyes, like the cold, pale edge of a freshly sharpened woodcutting blade.

Yi Yang lowered his head and looked at his fists.

Age spots still marked their backs.

But the strength hidden beneath the skin and flesh was completely different.

"Sixty years..."

He murmured, his throat tight.

"I've finally pushed this damned door open."

After saying that, he felt heat rise behind his eyes.

It was not sentimentality.

It was the exhilaration of finally lifting his head for a breath after fate had held him down in the mud for sixty years.

When he was sixteen, the Martial Arts Hall instructor's verdict had weighed on Yi Yang for half his life.

No affinity for martial arts.

How little those words weighed.

Coming from someone else's mouth, they were merely a few words tossed lightly into the air.

But when they landed on Yi Yang, they became a mountain that burdened his entire life.

Now, in just six days, he had forcibly torn an opening through that mountain.

For ordinary youths in town, even with a Martial Arts Hall's medicinal broths and an instructor's guidance, reaching the threshold of skin refining in six months to a year was considered good.

Even the children of great families, piled high with choice meat and Treasure Medicine, needed at least three months.

And Yi Yang?

A sixty-year-old village man had broken through to this realm in just six days.

If word got out, never mind anyone in Three Trees Village believing it—even the Martial Arts Hall masters in Yunlin County would wonder whether they had drunk too much the night before.

Yi Yang finished his practice, lowered his head, and sniffed himself.

"Whew."

He wrinkled his nose.

"With this smell, even a dog would take the long way around."

There was a well in the backyard.

Yi Yang carried a wooden bucket over and drew water to rinse himself.

Cold well water poured over his body, sending gray-black filth streaming down his back and spreading across the muddy ground.

Only after three buckets did he feel presentable.

Once clean, Yi Yang looked at his arms.

They were still thin and aged.

But compared with before, they had changed considerably.

He pinched the skin of his forearm and twisted hard. Even the pale mark it left was faint.

"Skin refining."

Yi Yang murmured the words.

Tougher skin, stronger blood qi.

This was only the first step on the martial path.

But in a place like Three Trees Village, it was already enough.

Yi Yang turned and walked over to the pile of scrap wood.

An ironwood stump lay pinned down there.

The stuff was annoyingly hard. A few chops with an ordinary axe could chip its blade, and every man in the village cursed his luck at the sight of it.

Yi Yang did not pick up his woodcutting blade.

He flexed his right hand.

His knuckles cracked.

He drew a full breath.

Planted his feet.

And punched straight out.

Thump!

The ironwood stump shuddered violently, cracks spreading from where his fist struck.

Wood chips flew up. A few scraped across the back of Yi Yang's hand, but left no wounds.

With a single punch, he had driven deep cracks into the ironwood that was hard enough to make the villagers curse their mothers.

Yi Yang looked down at his knuckles.

They were red.

The skin had not broken.

He could no longer suppress the joy swelling in his chest.

This was a Qi-Blood Warrior.

This was strength.

If a layabout like Sun Mazi, hollowed out by booze and women, stood before him now, Yi Yang would need no rope, no pit, no schemes. He could simply raise his hand and beat him until even his parents could barely recognize him.

And Yang Er?

That fat worm had swaggered around the village on the strength of a few days' martial training.

Now, he would be a matter of one or two punches.

Damn, that felt good.

Really good.

So good that even an old bag of bones like Yi Yang wanted to let out a couple of shouts.

But before long,

he tamped down that surge of excitement.

A man could not let success go to his head.

Especially in these troubled times.

Many people died not when they were weak, but just after gaining a little ability.

They earned a little money and wanted to buy a mansion.

They trained a little and wanted to pose as masters.

They killed one dog and thought they could slaughter a tiger.

The grass on those people's graves grew faster than anyone else's.

Yi Yang bent down and dragged the split ironwood stump beneath the firewood pile, then covered it with loose sticks.

He cleaned away the traces in the yard, too.

Hide what needed hiding.

Fake what needed faking.

Keep playing the half-dead old woodcutter.

Secretly stockpile resources, cultivation methods, and enough trump cards to scatter his enemies' ashes into the ditch.

That was the proper way forward.

At noon,

Jiang Yuexin brought the coarse rice porridge to the table and set out two small dishes.

One held salted radish.

The other, wild greens tossed with garlic.

There was also an egg, which she had secretly cut in half and pushed entirely beside Yi Yang's bowl.

"Grandpa, time to eat."

Yi Yang changed into a clean short jacket and slowly sat down.

Jiang Yuexin glanced up, and the chopsticks in her hand stopped.

She rubbed her eyes, then leaned closer.

A scent of soap pods mingled with grass drifted from the girl, settling lightly beside Yi Yang's shoulder.

"Grandpa."

"What is it?"

"Come a little closer."

"Do I need to pass inspection just to eat?"

"Don't move."

Jiang Yuexin reached out and brushed aside the graying hair at Yi Yang's temple.

The girl's eyes grew rounder and rounder.

"Grandpa! You really have gotten younger!"

Yi Yang's hand paused as he picked up some salted radish.

"Nonsense. I'm almost sixty. Younger, my ass."

"It's true!"

Growing anxious, Jiang Yuexin simply went around in front of him and stared at his face.

"The furrows on your face aren't as deep, and your cheeks are rosier. And here."

She pointed at the roots of Yi Yang's hair.

"There's dark hair growing under the white!"

Yi Yang touched his head. He knew what was happening, but refused to admit a thing.

"The health-preserving exercises got my qi and blood flowing. My complexion's just a little better, that's all."

Jiang Yuexin's eyes shone brightly.

"Then practice more! Practice every day!"

Yi Yang gave her a sidelong look.

"Didn't you say standing there sweating all over looked exhausting?"

"Practice even if it's exhausting."

The girl placed half an egg in his bowl, her voice earnest.

"Nothing matters more than Grandpa living a few more years."

Yi Yang's heart softened.

But he still had to tease her.

"What? Isn't it good that Grandpa's getting younger? I can protect you for a few more years, so that yellow dog won't get the chance to tell on you, you little rascal."

Jiang Yuexin's eyes reddened at once.

She put down her chopsticks and hugged Yi Yang's arm, pressing her cheek to his shoulder like a little bird returning to its nest.

"Of course it's good."

"I want Grandpa to live to a hundred and always stay with me."

Yi Yang said nothing.

He only raised his hand and rubbed her hair.

This girl understood nothing.

And she understood everything.

After the meal,

Jiang Yuexin went to wash the dishes, humming a country tune.

Yi Yang lay back in the old wicker chair.

The wicker creaked, the same old sound.

But the man lying on it was no longer the old woodcutter who could only swallow his anger.

With a thought from Yi Yang,

the panel appeared.

[Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art, second level: (0/3000)]

Three thousand.

The requirement had tripled.

Yi Yang studied the line of text and tapped his fingers against the wicker chair's armrest.

After reaching Skin Refining, his body's consumption had increased as well.

That hunger had already begun to stir when he broke through that morning.

If he kept scraping by on coarse rice and wild greens, he could still train, but it would drain him dry.

The poor studied letters; the rich trained in arms.

Those words really were not just meant to frighten the poor.

Lean meat, medicinal herbs, Blood Qi Powder, Blood Qi Pills, even Mutant Beast meat.

All of them cost silver.

A great deal of silver.

Yi Yang felt his cuff, his gaze falling on a certain spot inside the house.

That piece of purplewood on Greenwood Mountain was still hidden, but he had shaved off a small piece on his last trip up the mountain.

It had once been a source of calamity.

Now, it could become a resource for cultivation.

Of course, he could not be reckless about selling it.

Neither Cloud Pattern Town nor Yunlin County was a safe place.

Flaunting money was no different from washing his neck clean and offering it to a blade.

But if he did not exchange it for resources, his progress through the second level of the Wood-Nurturing Longevity Art would slow considerably, and Yang Er and his elder brother in the county town would not give him much time.

Yi Yang narrowed his aged eyes.

"Looks like I'll have to make a trip."

The wicker chair rocked gently.