Pressing On With Courage

Another morning dawned, sunlight shining through the paper windows and spilling into the room.

Chu Tianshu sat up in bed, sweat pouring down his head and his lips dry and peeling.

He stood, stepped barefoot onto the bamboo-and-wood floor, and picked up the teapot on the table with his left hand, pouring the water straight into his mouth.

After gulping down two pots of cooled boiled water, Chu Tianshu let out a satisfied breath, set down the teapot, and wiped his mouth with his left hand.

In yesterday's nightmare, a wolf had bitten off his left hand, and it still ached faintly.

So he was determined to put that hand through its paces.

Today was his twenty-fourth day in this world.

It was also the twenty-fourth day since he had formally awakened to boxing.

He had done quite a few things during those days, but what he had done most, without question, was practice boxing.

Gluttonous Tongbei Fist truly lived up to its gluttonous name. As long as he trained hard, its development of the stomach and intestines was astonishing.

Yesterday, he had eaten five chickens and four large ducks, crunching up even the bones. He had still managed a few plates of vegetables for a change of taste, and had drunk plenty of hot water.

In just over twenty days, he could feel that his originally somewhat slender frame had grown noticeably thicker and sturdier.

As his muscles grew in such a short time, his bones, organs, and the rest of his body adapted to the change, bringing an aching itch deep inside that he simply couldn't scratch.

But Chu Tianshu was used to nightmares, and he could still bear it. He continued to practice at the highest intensity he could manage every day.

Before, he could only see the muscles in his arms bulge and shift when he had stimulated himself with needles.

Now, he didn't even need to enter the awakened state. He only had to extend his left hand and exert a little force to feel his muscles move.

It wasn't very apparent when he had clothes on, but his actual weight should have increased significantly as well.

That hadn't made him feel more cumbersome or heavy.

Instead, he felt full of vigor, and every movement of his hands and feet was lighter and quicker than before.

Phew!

After stripping off his soaked clothes, Chu Tianshu spread his arms and began exerting force from his waist and back.

The beads of sweat on his upper body had been smeared across his skin as he undressed, leaving him uncomfortable.

But as Chu Tianshu exerted himself, that sweat slowly gathered into tiny droplets again. It was especially noticeable on his shoulders and arms, with beads of sweat covering his forearms.

He gave a low grunt, and his shoulders and arms abruptly tensed and jolted. The sweat on his arms was shaken loose, bursting outward like a fine mist.

He remembered that, back at the Tongbei boxing school, an uncle who had practiced boxing for over ten years had shown the apprentices this very trick.

At the time, Chu Tianshu had regarded him as a Celestial Person, his face full of envy. Now, he could finally do it himself.

In twenty-four days, he seemed to have caught up to all those years of accumulated practice.

It wasn't just because the manual for Gluttonous Tongbei Fist had been transmitted directly into his mind, allowing him to continually correct his experience of practicing the art.

It was also because he had discovered that the sensation of awakening in boxing had things in common with his experience of awakening as a spirit medium, each bearing out the other.

It was strange. Before, when he couldn't practice both, he had thought the two were as unrelated as wind and cattle.

But once he successfully crossed that threshold, the two seemed to share something that was hard to describe.

At times, Chu Tianshu even felt as though he were turning twenty years of accumulated experience as a spirit medium toward boxing.

Perhaps, once his mastery of boxing caught up to his attainments as a spirit medium, his progress would slow.

But he wasn't worried about that. Instead, he wanted to reach that point as soon as possible.

Since he could advance quickly now, he would go as fast as he could!!

"I can still only shake the sweat off my shoulders and arms. I wonder when I'll be able to shake every drop off my body at once."

Chu Tianshu fetched a towel, wiped the sweat from the rest of his body, and changed his clothes.

There was nowhere in town that sold shirts with plastic buttons.

The outfit he now wore had been made to order at a tailor's shop, and resembled a kung fu outfit from a later age.

It was made of thick blue cloth, with a row of cloth-knot buttons down the front and somewhat loose sleeves. He wore black trousers and cloth shoes with layered soles.

Over the past twenty-odd days, his body had grown stronger and his hair had grown quite quickly. Too lazy to go out for a haircut and unwilling to leave it loose, he had casually tied it into a low ponytail with a thin cord.

If his hair grew another few inches, washing it would become too inconvenient, and he planned to cut it himself with scissors.

Once he had tidied himself up, Chu Tianshu walked out of his room.

A few doors away, Shopkeeper Ma was also getting up and heading out.

The two had often run into each other in the mornings over the past twenty-odd days.

"Heading out again?"

Though Shopkeeper Ma's hair was gray, and aside from the slight redness of his nose, he was as hale and hearty as ever. He smiled and said, "Your appetite keeps getting better. You've eaten your way through every dish in the restaurant, and most of them were only side dishes for you."

"Now, if I count everything in my restaurant, the only thing you haven't tried is this medicinal wine. Would you like a taste?"

He carried a wine pot in his left hand and held two cups between the fingers of his right. He had clearly come prepared.

Chu Tianshu replied, "Who drinks wine this early in the morning? But I am interested. Give me half a cup."

Shopkeeper Ma poured him a cup. "This is jujube wine, especially nourishing. Three small cups every morning, and you're guaranteed to live to a hundred."

Chu Tianshu took it and sniffed. It was indeed jujube wine, and he recognized several medicinal ingredients as well.

Vinegar-prepared softshell turtle shell, Zhejiang fritillary bulb, red sage root, Chinese angelica...

He couldn't identify the others by smell, but the formulas that could include those ingredients were mostly used to treat stagnation of Qi and blood.

Come to think of it, if an awakened martial artist practiced boxing improperly, it could easily cause Qi and blood stagnation and malformed blood vessels. In severe cases, traditional Chinese medicine called it a "sinew tumor"; in modern medicine, the symptoms were those of an intramuscular hemangioma.

Had Shopkeeper Ma noticed something, or was it a coincidence?

Chu Tianshu looked at him searchingly.

Shopkeeper Ma was perfectly at ease. Smiling, he said, "When I was young, I saw people practicing martial arts, lifting stone locks, walking on large vats, and strapping on iron tiles. Your appetite's been growing by the day. You're obviously training hard."

"But forgive this old man for taking the liberty of offering a little advice from experience. Too much can be as bad as too little in many things. It's good to have the patience to work hard, but don't wear your body out."

Chu Tianshu took a small sip of the medicinal wine and smiled. "Thank you for the reminder, Shopkeeper. I know medicine too, and I'll be careful."

Shopkeeper Ma hurriedly said, "As long as you don't blame this old man for meddling."

"Shall I save you the usual tonight? Two chickens, a duck, and a steamer of mantou?"

Chu Tianshu said, "I might be back late today. Meng Shuangjiang said the weather's been good these past few days and the moonlight's bright at night. He's taking me to sample the delicacies at a little restaurant tonight."

Shopkeeper Ma couldn't help laughing. "Him? He certainly knows his food. No one in the whole town knows how to eat better than he does."

After breakfast, Chu Tianshu took his lunch and went out as usual, training hard in the bamboo grove until evening.

The red light of the setting sun slanted into the grove.

Crack!!

A hand shot out with a rush of wind and struck a bamboo stalk as thick as a bowl's mouth.

Five fingers clamped down like pincers and tore inward. The bamboo split under his grip, and he ripped away nearly half its width. Cracks spread up and down from that section of the stalk.

Chu Tianshu stepped back, pulling away a strip of bamboo three or four feet long.

The badly damaged stalk swayed, threatening to bend and fall under the weight of the branches and leaves at its top.

Chu Tianshu struck first. His body swung through a full turn, and his right arm whipped out in a wide arc.

A crack like a firecracker rang through the air.

The great bamboo stalk snapped in half. Its tough fibers broke near a joint, and though the break was a little ragged and frayed, it had been swift and forceful.

The upper half of the stalk dropped, its broken end stabbing into the soil. Over the space of a few breaths, it slowly toppled.

Originally, Chu Tianshu had regarded the great bamboo stalks as obstacles, avoiding them when he practiced his movement technique.

For the past ten days, he had begun using them to train his hands.

The old, tough bamboo deep in the grove was especially suited to practicing the grabbing, tearing, and whipping-hand techniques of Tongbei Fist.

At first, even in the awakened state, the most he could do by lashing out with his arm was strike like a wooden club, splitting the bamboo but failing to break it through.

He had to lash at a large stalk several times before its own weight would make it bend and fall.

Now, he could whip his arm out and snap a stalk like this in two.

But pain also came from the edge of his right palm. It was red and hot, and if he left it alone, it would swell slightly after a while.

Even without medicine on him, Chu Tianshu knew how to use massage and needles, along with several ways to prevent inflammation and reduce swelling. But he used none of them. Instead, he closed his mouth, breathed in purely through his nose, then held his breath, gathered his strength, and slowly pushed his right palm forward.

It was as though an invisible weight in the air pressed against his tensed right arm.

After pushing his palm out just two or three times, it was already fiery red and hot, the heat spreading to the tips of all five fingers. The pain along the edge of his hand eased considerably.

In fact, many medicines acted on the human body merely by stimulating its own ability to heal.

An awakened boxer's control over his body would grow increasingly refined, and his physical potential would be developed. By exerting force through certain movements alone, he could speed the recovery of minor injuries.

This was also a process of tempering.

Like a tree that survived an injury, the damaged spot would grow harder and sturdier than the rest in time.

A tree bore scars from resisting blades and axes; fists grew calluses from striking ten thousand times!

During this period, Chu Tianshu had also obtained quite a few fine medicinal ingredients through Meng Shuangjiang's connections and cooked them into medicinal pastes. None were for external application, however; they were all tonics to be taken orally.

As long as he could withstand and absorb them, strengthening his vitality at its root and then letting that vitality mend his injuries was the best treatment. Gluttonous Tongbei Fist's use of the stomach and intestines happened to satisfy that requirement.

He had healed the injuries to the skin and flesh of his hands and feet this way. In just over twenty days, a thin, even layer of calluses had formed on both hands, and the toughness and resilience of his limbs were beyond comparison with before.

In his battle with the ghost scholar, although his physical strength had erupted under stimulation and he had been very forceful, his physique hadn't kept up. A single kick against the stone stele had left him aching badly.

If he had to do it again now, he would never make that mistake.

"Brother Chu, where are you?"

A shout came from far outside the grove.

Chu Tianshu breathed out a turbid breath, relaxed his stance, and walked out of the bamboo grove.

Meng Shuangjiang called out a few more times over there.

"I'm coming!"

Chu Tianshu called back cheerfully. His voice rang like a great bell, stirring the bamboo leaves around him.

A weary bird overhead was just about to return to the grove, but the sound startled it into flight again.

Meng Shuangjiang stood on the bluestone bridge, his gaze following the bird as it circled above the bamboo grove.

When his gaze dropped again, he saw that his miracle doctor friend had already walked out of the grove.