A great pot sat over a roaring fire, simmering chunks of tiger meat with tendons and bones still attached.
The broth boiled and bubbled, releasing a strange rank smell and a rich, nose-filling scent of meat.
It held more than meat. The organs, intestines, and stomach were all in there too.
The iron pot, a full 1.2 meters across, was not merely filled; its contents rose high above the rim, piled into a mountain of meat.
But the smell of meat was only a smell. Smelling it and eating it were two entirely different things, especially when it had been boiled in nothing but water and salt. In Li Da's words, cooking spices all carried medicinal properties to some degree and would taint the tiger meat. Boiling it in plain water kept it purest.
As a result, Lian Youming nearly vomited from the rankness of his first bite. It was slightly sour too, and extraordinarily tough to chew, much like dry, stringy beef.
Still, after some thought, Lian Youming gritted his teeth, chewed hard, and forced it down.
Every part of a tiger was a treasure, especially a wild one that fed on the mountain's hundred beasts. Those beasts, in turn, all ate different things. Some devoured bloody prey, while others fed on rare mountain flowers and herbs, or various medicinal plants that had grown for years. As the food chain climbed link by link, everything ultimately passed into the king of beasts' mouth.
To a certain extent, this animal drew in nearly all the vital essence of an entire mountain. Thus people regarded the tiger as possessing a "body of pure Yang" and called it the "Mountain Lord."
Lian Youming remembered that the dietary nourishment text took this as its essential principle: "The tiger devours the world, strengthening Qi through food." Its conclusion even stated that this method could let one "eat a tiger and become a tiger, drink a dragon and transform into a dragon," nourishing oneself with the essence and Qi of dragons and tigers to strengthen one's own body.
Lian Youming was now wounded all over, his foundation insufficient and his body depleted. This sort of powerful nourishment was precisely what he lacked, so Li Da had chopped up an entire tiger, leaving flesh, bone, tendons, and connective tissue joined in every piece. He had also chopped up half the spine and added the organs to make this enormous potful.
There was only one exception: Li Da had made off with the tiger's penis.
Lian Youming sat in the courtyard. He was still in Jilin, too badly wounded to move about, and could only nourish himself first. Li Da had found him a place where Mountain Walkers rested when they entered the mountains. There was not another living soul for several li around.
Looking at the steaming pot of glistening, fatty tiger meat, Lian Youming could not be bothered to care about taste anymore. He picked out a large piece and began gnawing on it, hissing and panting from the heat.
As he ate, he did not forget to activate the Three Yin Earth-Baleful Force. His breath surged straight into his belly, continually breaking down the essence and Qi within the tiger meat, while his stomach and intestines churned faster as well.
He kept eating for more than two hours, until his belly bulged.
But he digested it quickly. Heat steamed from his whole body, his face glowed red, and his eyes were bloodshot. Knowing that the essence and Qi were too abundant, he simply stripped to the waist and began practicing punches and kicks in the courtyard. He paid no heed to individual moves, seeking only to vent the scorching heat within. His movements followed his whims: killing techniques, grappling techniques, and all the fighting methods he had seen in the past came readily to hand, wildly chaotic and without the slightest order.
Only after practicing for over half an hour did Lian Youming stop. Without another word, he ducked into the latrine.
After emptying his bowels, he washed his hands and sat beside the iron pot again, sucking marrow from bones, gnawing meat, and chewing tendons.
In short, he ate his fill, practiced, went to the toilet to empty his bowels, then ate again and practiced again.
With no outsiders to disturb him, Lian Youming kept that pot of tiger meat simmering for six full days and nights. Apart from resting at night, he ate the stuff at every meal during the day, until he felt death would be preferable.
But the changes were enormous too.
In six days, almost all his wounds had healed and scabbed over. His whole body seemed suffused with a peculiar luster, and his hair stood like halberds, glossy and black. His weight no longer increased so strangely either, presumably because the Golden Bell Cover kept his muscles constantly drawn inward. His figure was more elongated than before, his waist slimmer, but he looked fiercer as well.
Lian Youming even drank the broth in the pot. Sour, rank, and musky, it tasted worse than swill.
Once nothing remained of the tiger but its hide and a skeleton, Lian Youming slept another two days before Li Da appeared again.
"You ate all of it?"
Looking at the great pot, which had nearly burned through, the smile on Li Da's face froze.
That had been several hundred jin of tiger meat, all eaten in the space of a week.
Lian Youming paused. "Didn't you say this stuff was powerfully nourishing, and that eating more would help me?"
Li Da frowned slightly, but seeing Lian Youming's current appearance, he grew more surprised. "Your bearing has changed quite dramatically. You're almost at the Ming Jin stage where the hair stands like halberds and the body feels filled with lead. You ate your way there?"
Lian Youming changed into the clothes Li Da had brought. Of course he could not say that he also possessed the Golden Bell Cover. That was a secret no one knew, the hidden trump card at the bottom of his chest, as martial arts tales would put it.
No, Yan Lingyun knew too.
This ought to be a secret between the two of them.
And Li Da, versed in the martial arts of every school and sect, familiar with a thousand fighting methods and ten thousand variations, had still not seen through his foundations. How could Lian Youming reveal them himself?
Time to return to Tahe.
After putting on a white shirt and green army trousers, Lian Youming packed up the tiger hide and bones, picking out even those he had boiled for broth and gnawed clean of meat, along with the two large gold bars and a bag of large Eastern Pearls...
On this trip, he had not only broken through two levels of the Golden Bell Cover but also obtained the Springing Leg and seen so many fighting methods. His gains had truly been considerable.
Lian Youming asked, "How are things on the mountain?"
Li Da said quietly, "The White Lotus Sect blew up the entrances to the Underground Fortress. Everything's buried inside."
Lian Youming sighed. "What a shame."
Li Da smiled. "If they could blow them up so readily, they probably have another way in and out. Perhaps it has something to do with that tomb deep inside."
Lian Youming wanted to ask a few more questions, but Li Da seemed unwilling to say more, so he could only let it drop. He picked up his packed belongings and prepared to return to Tahe.
Perhaps Li Da's conscience had stirred. This time, rather than traveling day and night on foot, they boarded a northbound truck.
On the way back, Lian Youming asked curiously, "Brother Li, I heard those people say that only supreme masters who've kept their essence and Qi firmly contained until a certain age encounter the calamity of dissipating cultivation. May I ask how old your senior brother is now?"
Li Da smiled faintly. "Eighty-three."
Lian Youming stared blankly. "Then your master?"
Li Da made no secret of it either. Sitting cross-legged in the truck bed, he said gently, "I never met my master. My senior brother took me in on our master's behalf after he turned sixty. My master's surname was Li, and he was a grandmaster of the Baji Sect... Seeing how little you know, I'll give you a few books another day. They contain basic introductions to the various schools and sects... Oh, right. I have something good for you."
"What?"
Lian Youming stood in the truck bed, continuously shifting his center of gravity according to the Springing Leg stances. The muscles within his body spiraled rapidly around his spine, yet his body remained perfectly still. Much like holding a horse stance, it trained and stabilized his lower body.
Then Li Da took a book from his pocket, its cover nearly worn away, and tossed it over.
Lian Youming caught it and looked. His eyes immediately went wide. It was actually Journey to the West.
Li Da said slowly, "This is a fine thing. My senior brother gave it to me back then. It's handwritten. Now I'm giving it to you, in recognition of the fate that brought us on this journey together. If you return to the ordinary ranks in the future, perhaps this trip will be our last meeting, and we'll hardly have another chance to see each other in this lifetime."
Lian Youming leafed through it and found that it really had been copied by hand, stroke by stroke. "Is there some secret to this?"
Li Da smiled. "There is. But I can't tell you outright. You have to see it for yourself. If you can glimpse what ordinary people cannot, you'll be able to fight Xue Hen within three to five years. But if you can't, you may only wander among the three Jin stages until you're thirty-five, squandering your life."
Hearing this, Lian Youming carefully put it away.
"Xue Hen? I have to beat him to death."
(End of chapter)
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