Encountering Villagers in the Mountains

In the mountain woods beside the town.

Chu Tianshu held the monocular he had taken from the old eunuch's residence and watched what was happening in town.

"Uncle Ma, just as you said, he seized the chance to save face right away. It looks like the mayor and his people have all started mourning the old master along with him."

Chu Tianshu collapsed the monocular and sighed. "But I didn't expect the fellow to have a full suit of heavy armor. He looked truly imposing."

"If I'd had a good pair of armguards before, my arms probably wouldn't still be aching this badly."

Zhong Jinqiu leaned against a pine tree and stretched out his neck. "Give me another one."

Chu Tianshu pulled a strip of dried radish from the small pouch at Zhong Jinqiu's waist and put it between his teeth.

Unlike Chu Tianshu, whose arms were only left aching, Zhong Jinqiu still had silver needles stuck in his arms.

Uncle Ma took the monocular. "The spyglasses I played with when I was young weren't nearly this clear or able to see this far. It feels even more useful than my sparrow."

Chewing on the dried radish, Zhong Jinqiu said, "This thing only works when you're looking down from a height. For actual tracking and infiltration, you still need spells."

Uncle Ma said ruefully, "That's hard to say. Back in the Tang and Song dynasties, only thunder-art sorcerers were good at using gunpowder. And later? All sorts of gunpowder guns and cannons appeared."

"Who knows? These machines might someday be more convenient than my spells in every way."

Chu Tianshu grew interested. He wanted to hear what a sorcerer of this era might imagine the technological creations of the future would look like, relying on his own guesses.

Shopkeeper Ma was happy to talk about it too.

"For example, cars burn oil now, and trains burn coal. They're too bulky. In the future, might there be something like a stone the size of your palm that could burn for a long time?"

"Even if it produced less power, you could make the whole thing smaller, about the size of a skateboard."

"A person could stand on it, and it would move on its own. Oh, and it would need a handlebar to steer with, swift and effortless like the Divine Movement Armored Horse Art in the stories..."

The three chatted as they walked deeper into the mountain woods.

If their whereabouts remained unknown, that would also serve as a subtle deterrent to Adjutant Zhou.

It was just no longer convenient for them to return and stay in the town.

Zhong Jinqiu knew the way. The three had brought provisions and silver dollars, intending to travel over a hundred li to stay in another town for a while.

The mountain paths were difficult, and in some places there was no path in the ordinary sense at all.

Zhong Jinqiu was fine. Though he couldn't use his hands properly, his legs could still carry him as swiftly as the wind.

Uncle Ma was sturdy enough, but he wasn't an Aperture Opening fist master, after all, and found the journey somewhat taxing.

Chu Tianshu carried their bundles and helped support Uncle Ma, who in turn held an umbrella over him.

They walked on like that until evening.

Zhong Jinqiu led them to an abandoned tea shelter.

It had a bamboo-and-wood frame and a thatched roof.

The tables and chairs inside were either overturned or missing legs, and all were covered in dust.

More than half of the earthen stove in one corner had collapsed.

"When I went back to my hometown to tend the graves, I sometimes stopped here to rest."

"I don't know what year the shelter was abandoned," Zhong Jinqiu said. "I repaired the roof myself a couple of years ago."

"Let's sleep here tonight and continue tomorrow morning."

Uncle Ma plopped down on a bench without even wiping it off. Panting, he asked, "Do we have to go that far? Aren't there any other villages or towns nearby where we can stay?"

Zhong Jinqiu only said, "Little Chu is still improving his martial arts and needs enough meat. How could he stay in an ordinary village?"

"And you said a sufficiently prosperous town shouldn't be too close to Yuannan City, so we can only go over there for now."

Chu Tianshu agreed with him on that.

Without enough food at hand, he didn't dare train without restraint.

He reckoned that only after he mastered both Dragon Coils Around the Body and Eating Makes an Immortal, and his fist technique made great strides past his attainments as a medium, would his training speed cease to be as wildly fierce as it had been this month.

On top of that, in someone who had truly achieved "Eating Makes an Immortal," all the internal organs worked together more smoothly, allowing them to extract and make use of more nutrients even from an ordinary amount of food.

Only then would the amount of food he needed for fist training decrease.

"Even if I can't train without restraint, it'd be good to familiarize myself with the manual."

"Uncle Zhong," Chu Tianshu said, "the sun hasn't set yet, so it's too early to sleep. Tell me the rest of what's in your fist manual."

Zhong Jinqiu rested for a while, then nodded. "All right."

Zhong Jinqiu practiced Taiji Fist, but not its most famous branch today, the one passed down from Chenjiagou to Yang Luchan, who had made his name in the capital, founded a school, and spread it.

His fist technique came from the Wudang Golden Toad Sect. Its secrets had been worked out by people of old from the conception of a recluse gazing at the moon and listening to toads.

The Chenjiagou branch, on the other hand, blended the conceptions of the battlefield and the routines of farming life. It was weightier, harder, and more unrefined.

"A person's internal organs are closely linked to their emotions. To get the best results from a fist technique that trains the organs, you have to grasp the emotional conception just right, too."

"When I was young, I thought the Taiji of every school and sect followed the principles of supreme goodness being like water and softness overcoming hardness. The conception behind my Golden Toad Sect's Taiji Fist was purer, so its mysteries had to be deeper than Chenjiagou's."

"As I grew older, I thought it over again and again, and came to regret a little that I hadn't gone to the capital to see that branch of Taiji for myself."

"The conceptions of soldiering and farming are easy to cultivate and learn. You can see farmers practically anywhere you go. But the ways of a recluse are truly too hard to learn."

Zhong Jinqiu let out a long sigh.

Living in the mountains didn't make someone a recluse. A person cut off from civilization might also be a wild man.

A true recluse wasn't necessarily free of worries, but had most likely forgotten them, having experienced the ways of the world and managed to withdraw from it.

That was truly difficult, and might even require an innate gift.

Zhong Jinqiu had experienced his share of rises and falls, but he knew he still couldn't attain that state of mind.

"You don't look much like a recluse to me, either. The Spirit Yang Gallbladder's effects have just about run their course, so I'm afraid it'll be a long, slow grind for you to practice my Golden Toad Sect Taiji Fist from now on."

Chu Tianshu listened closely and smiled faintly.

He wasn't a recluse, true, but after he used the token to deduce and optimize it, the fist technique that emerged might no longer follow the path of a recluse.

[Red-Tailed Swallow: A blade of fell execution, red rust accumulated over years, Metal Qi and blood resentment combined into poison, its edge graceful in flight, choosing its victims to devour.

Properties: Its edge cuts iron, its rust poison corrodes bone. It is restrained by crystal. Draw it into and expel it from the lungs using a secret method, and one may become its master.]

[Gold-Swallowing Beast Face (Five Rampancies divided spirit): Windfall wealth buys life, mocking human souls. If the sacrificial rites accord with the proper rules, they can entertain the gods.

The Five Chang Gods send down a sliver of divided spirit, imprisoning essence Qi and turning it into invisible body armor.

Properties: Locks away essence Qi, hard and unyielding as metal.]

After the jade coffin was smashed, they had gained nothing from it. Presumably, that magical artifact had not yet met the standard of being "ensouled."

But the old eunuch's coin body armor was an unexpected windfall.

It wasn't the kind of thing described in the rumors, which could turn essence Qi directly drawn from others through evil arts into body armor.

Its most crucial component was actually a sliver of the Five Chang Gods' divided spirit.

Chu Tianshu had been slightly startled when he first saw the token's description.

But after the old eunuch died, the divided spirit could only passively take a beating, and even when it was beaten to death, the Five Rampancies showed no reaction. Clearly, though they were called gods, they must have certain limitations, so there was no need to make too much of it.

That sliver of divided spirit and the Red-Tailed Swallow were enough to meet the requirements for one deduction.

After Zhong Jinqiu had gone through the entire fist manual, Chu Tianshu went over it from memory and asked several more times about the parts he couldn't remember clearly.

As he had hoped, a new cultivation technique material appeared on the token.

Chu Tianshu selected the Gold-Swallowing Beast Face's properties as the primary element and began the deduction.

[...Deduction complete.

"Toad Art Palm Thunder": Intent stirs the five organs, swift as thunder; the toad's cry is the first sound of the four seasons.

The conception of this fist technique is like an ore vein buried deep or a wondrous beast in hibernation, quietly awaiting the appointed time. Once mastered, the essence of the five viscera and six bowels is retained within, thick, resilient, and full.

Even when the internal organs are driven to release force at their utmost speed, they will suffer not the slightest harm. After the heart and lungs release force a hundred times, one need only take a brief breath for vitality to flow on unceasingly.

It is like a peal of heavenly thunder stirring the toads to sing, followed by the vast surging tide of spring.]

Chu Tianshu closed his eyes and felt the fist manual in his mind. The corners of his mouth curved into a smile before he knew it.

Once Uncle Zhong's hands had fully healed, he would find an excuse to tell him about some of the improvements.

By now, the sky was tinged with night, but a strange sound came from the mountains.

Chu Tianshu opened his eyes and looked in its direction, puzzled.

Shopkeeper Ma also raised his head and muttered, "Where's that donkey braying?"

So it was a donkey braying.

Chu Tianshu recalled hearing donkeys in town too, but hearing one up close really was very different from hearing it in the mountains like this.

The fine rain among the trees had stopped, but the ground was muddy and slippery.

Two men in straw rain capes came walking through the woods, wearing patched coarse-cloth clothes, their trouser legs rolled up to their calves and straw sandals on their feet. One also had a sickle tucked into his belt.

The two of them were leading the donkey.

A man wearing a conical bamboo hat sat on its back. His face was sallow, his body hunched, and he looked listless.

They looked like three villagers, but for some reason they were still in the mountains after dark.