Chapter 253

Chapter 253

Autumn in the Sichuan-Chongqing region brought plenty of rain and fog.

One late-autumn morning in November.

I got up at five thirty and opened the window. The streets outside were shrouded in hazy white fog.

Even so, some of the little breakfast shops selling steamed buns, mantou, fried dough sticks, noodles, wontons, and the like were already open. Dim yellow light spilled from their doorways and pierced the dense white mist…

The warm yellow glows rose and fell in the fog, faint and indistinct, lending the scene a rich sense of everyday life.

The mortal world was a place of trials.

No one’s life was easy.

I took a deep breath of the frigid air, faintly scented with breakfast. The chill sank all the way into my lungs.

At once, I felt much more alert.

I tiptoed down the corridor, greeting the paper figures and paper horses with spiritual resonance stationed there, then went downstairs, crossed the kitchen, and stepped onto the cement yard behind the building.

It was time to practice!

Ever since I had learned something of Master’s past nearly half a year ago, I had trained far harder than before.

Every morning at five thirty sharp, I got up to practice internal martial arts.

When it came to magical arts, talent and a sudden flash of enlightenment mattered even more than diligent study and arduous training. The more impatient I became, the more likely I was to achieve the opposite of what I wanted.

But with martial arts and boxing, extra practice could never hurt. It strengthened muscle memory and improved proficiency!

As the saying went: throw a punch ten thousand times, and its meaning will reveal itself.

For almost half a year now, I had risen half an hour earlier every morning and trained for thirty minutes in the cement yard behind the coffin shop. I could clearly feel my martial arts improving faster…

Behind the coffin shop stretched vast fields. At their far end flowed one of the Chuan River tributaries that curved around Lianghe Town: the Xiaofu River. Fields lay to the left and mountains to the right.

All of it was hidden in the drifting morning fog and dim light of dawn.

Most of the townsfolk were not awake yet. Old Cao was still asleep too; I could even hear him snoring.

Wang Hu, however, had already floated outside and hovered by the door to watch me practice.

According to him, although he was now a ghost and could no longer truly practice martial arts, he could still learn the individual moves. If he ever had to fight another ghost of similar cultivation, they might give him an edge…

“Young Mr. Wu, you’re the most diligent person I’ve ever met!”

Wang Hu sighed in admiration.

I smiled faintly.

“Uncle Hu, you’d better move a little farther away so you don’t get hurt by accident. I’m starting today’s practice!”

With that, I began.

I started with the style I knew best, Bagua Palm. Its most fundamental opening movements were lift, press, push, embrace, cleave, raise, flick, and spiral!

When it came down to it, Bagua Palm consisted of these eight palm forms. Combined with breathing and footwork, they evolved into endlessly changing, intricate techniques.

There were “Azure Dragon Extends Its Claws”; “Flower Hidden beneath the Leaves”; “Galloping Horse, Nimble Carry”; “Point to Heaven, Pierce the Earth”; “Remove the Helmet from behind the Head”; “White Snake Flicks Its Tongue”; “Overlord Invites a Guest”… and many more.

By the time I completed the entire sequence, my body had begun to warm slightly, but I was not sweating.

I had sealed all the pores in my body!

The foundation of every internal martial art was to contain the blood and qi and seal the pores, keeping the heat produced through movement inside the body.

I drew the form to a close and stood still. After a single breath, I immediately shifted my posture and began practicing Xingyi Boxing.

Cleaving, Crushing, Drilling, Pounding, and Crossing!

These were Xingyi Boxing’s Five Element Fists, corresponding to the underlying principles of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

Then came the Twelve Animals: dragon, tiger, monkey, horse, rooster, swallow, sparrowhawk, snake, eagle, bear, alligator, and tai bird!

They imitated the forms of twelve animals in nature, taking their individual traits and symbolic meanings and blending them into the boxing art. Offense and defense became one, making the style exquisitely ingenious.

By the time I completed the entire Xingyi Boxing sequence, steam was rising from my whole body!

Great quantities of white vapor were plainly visible around me. To put it in a common expression, even every strand of my hair seemed to be smoking!

Wang Hu hurriedly retreated several more meters. He instinctively raised a hand as if to shield himself and said in surprise,

“Young Mr. Wu, your martial arts… have gotten stronger again, haven’t they? Your surging blood and qi feel much more vigorous than before! To a ghost like me, you’re like a blazing furnace. No ghost would dare come near you.”

I smiled.

“You could call that an added benefit of being an internal martial artist. We seal our pores and contain our blood and qi, making our yang energy fierce and blazing. To an ordinary person, it only looks like we’re steaming without sweating. But to an incorporeal spirit such as a ghost, we’re as scorching as a ball of fire.”

And Wang Hu already possessed a certain degree of cultivation.

If an ordinary wandering ghost came too close to me, the churning blood and qi inside my body would be enough to scatter it.

Master said that a martial arts grandmaster whose skill had reached the transformative level, someone like Wong Fei-hung, Huo Yuanjia, or Ip Man, could unleash a roar from a standstill and reduce every evil spirit within roughly half a kilometer to a kilometer in all directions to ashes!

Ordinary living people, on the other hand, would hardly be affected.

After all, measured purely in decibels, a martial arts grandmaster’s roar would not really be that loud. At most, perhaps it could deafen someone at close range.

What mattered was the true essence of martial arts and the powerful yang blood and qi contained in the roar. Those things were devastating to spiritual entities.

It was just like my ritual blade. The blade was actually very blunt and did not even have a sharpened edge… Forget killing a person; it probably could not slaughter a chicken! Yet it could easily pierce the stone-hard body of a corpse-fiend and cut a vicious ghost cleanly in half.

All things in the world generated and restrained one another. The different paths of cultivation worked the same way!

After exchanging a few words with Wang Hu, I did not stop. I continued with Taijiquan…

I completed the entire Taijiquan sequence as well.

By then, I was panting, and my heart was beating like a drum.

If someone had been standing beside me, they would have clearly heard its thump-thump-thump.

The training methods of martial arts sometimes consumed even more stamina than the fighting methods used in actual combat.

My entire body had become a great furnace, pouring out waves of heat. If an ordinary person passed by and saw me now, they would probably be astonished.

I could feel the sweat and heat inside my body battering wildly from side to side, struggling to burst out through every pore. But I kept every pore tightly sealed!

Vast amounts of heat pressed outward while my pores remained closed.

With the heat surging outward against my tightly sealed pores, I had the illusion that my body was swelling like an inflated ball!

Of course, it was only an illusion. Practicing martial arts could not actually inflate a person like a balloon, though magic could.

At last, I felt as though I were about to burst. I turned both palms upward, raised them to the level of my brow, and then pressed down with force through empty air.

I tried to drive all the energy in my body into my lower abdomen.

In the wuxia films and television dramas I had watched, powerful masters often raised both hands and pressed them down after finishing their practice.

In fact, that showed that someone on the production crew, one of the martial arts directors, truly understood the craft!

They might not have known the precise mysteries behind the movement, but they must have seen real internal martial arts being practiced. Otherwise, they could not have depicted it in films and television shows.

As I pressed my hands down to my abdomen, it felt… as though I were forcing more air into an already full tire. No matter how hard I pressed, it would not go down.

My lower abdomen felt painfully swollen, then began to rumble. A wave of heat abruptly surged upward and burst through my windpipe.

My mouth was forced open. Breath and sound erupted together, and a long howl rushed from my throat.

The howl sounded exactly like steam shrieking through the spout of a boiling kettle!

Shrill and piercing.

It even blasted a small opening through the dense white fog in front of me.

Wang Hu recoiled again and again in alarm, no longer daring to come within five meters of me.

At the same time, I abruptly crouched. My right palm had already come to rest lightly on the cement ground.

With my hand flat against the surface, my muscles suddenly contracted and released their strength. It looked as if I merely gave the ground a gentle press…

Crack!

The cement shattered beneath my hand, sending chips and fragments flying.

With a single palm, I had broken the hard cement ground!

A handprint roughly two-thirds of an inch deep had appeared in it.

My right hand, whose skin had been dry only a moment ago, was suddenly slick and drenched with sweat. My entire palm looked as though it had been soaked in water. Droplets fell from it and spread into small wet patches on the ground.

At that same instant, I felt completely emptied out. My whole body went limp, without an ounce of strength remaining, and I nearly lost my footing.

But I was not worried. Instead, wild joy swept over me, and I burst out laughing.

“Hahaha! A breakthrough! I finally broke through. I’ve reached the hidden-force level of internal martial arts!”