In the hidden chamber at the forest farm, dancing firelight reflected in Lian Youming's bright eyes.
He sat cross-legged on the ground with an oil lamp beside him. His gaze darted back and forth, shifting from the stone bed not far away to the rock wall illuminated by the flames, scanning character after character engraved upon it.
"I possess a hut of three rafters, dwelling at the spirit source.
With bare walls open to the desolate wind, the myriad phenomena serve as bracket sets, the azure sky my roof tiles.
Free of leaks for many a year, an affinity thus bound.
With three thousand merits accomplished, subduing the fire dragon and taming the tiger, an immortal walking the mortal earth..."
Outside, deep into the night, everyone at the forest farm had already fallen asleep.
In his arms, Lian Youming cradled a wooden box containing the Solomon's seal that Yan Lingyun had asked Qin Yuhu to deliver before her departure.
Having finished reading the poem, he stared in silence for a dozen minutes at the three distinct fist prints on the rock wall. Finally, his eyes flicked across the rock flakes scattered over the stone bed, and his gaze grew clouded with thought.
Such ferocious punching power had in all likelihood been left behind by Xue Hen.
"Could there really be some secret hidden in this poem?"
Lian Youming took out a piece of Solomon's seal and slipped it into his mouth. His eyes drifted toward a most inconspicuous corner of the stone wall.
"Mount Lu?"
"What on earth are these people searching for?"
As for the secret the Old Man Who Guards the Mountain protected, although Lian Youming had pieced together a few guesses from Yang Shuang's scattered remarks, the full truth remained elusive.
Moreover, this secret had drawn in factions from all sides: whether operatives of the White Lotus Sect, or martial sect masters like Gong Wu'er and Xue Hen, and perhaps even Li Da had very likely come for the exact same reason.
Savoring the sweet taste spreading across his tongue and down his throat, Lian Youming continually sorted through everything he had experienced lately, even forming a rough idea of where the Old Man Who Guards the Mountain might have gone.
Times had changed. The realm was neither vast nor small; if the old man was set on shunning the world, his destination was not hard to guess.
In all of the sprawling Northeast, what place was better suited than the virgin forests deep within the Greater Khingan Range?
"Enough thinking. Time to train!"
The more he pondered, the more restless he became. As the vital essence welled up from his gut, he planted one arm against the floor and vaulted to his feet.
As long as his strength was sufficient, heaven and earth would surely open wide.
If the mountain did not come to him, he would go to the mountain.
As breath drew deep into his abdomen, cords of muscle across his body engaged, trembling and stretching under the interplay of movement and internal breath to form exaggerated arcs. One moment he braced himself on a single arm like an inverted lotus; the next, he clenched his fist like a mallet, striking down like a diamond pestle; then he lunged with outstretched arms like a pouncing tiger, or stomped the earth like a galloping steed...
Twelve postures, each activating different muscles and bones throughout the human body. Coupled with that peculiar internal force, ripples stirred across the surface of his flesh, his musculature coiling like sinuous dragons.
Under the lamplight, Lian Youming's skin took on an unusual flush, giving off faint wisps of heat.
Though his frame was burly, he appeared far from bulky—more like a leopard stretching its sinews and bones, an invisible reservoir of terrifying power pooling within him. Resonant hums and strange tremors could even be heard emanating from inside his body.
Hard external conditioning, such as the Iron Shirt school, relied on external blows striking the body, aided by medicinal broths. Through relentless tempering day after day, as the intensity and depth of the strikes deepened, the practitioner's resistance steadily increased. Paired with distinct familial breathing methods, the sinews and bones would eventually brace outward like iron, marking the craft's completion.
Yet this Golden Bell Shield of his required no external blows. Instead, it relied on internal force to constantly stimulate the muscles, each breath drawn and expelled serving as an invisible strike of the hammer.
Furthermore, as time passed in his practice of the Golden Bell Shield, Lian Youming had noticed an odd phenomenon: his body weight was behaving rather strangely.
In the mere two weeks since returning to the mountain, his physique had scarcely changed, yet his weight grew heavier by the day.
The reason he knew this was that his wooden bed had gone from sturdy and solid to creaking and rickety in under ten days.
What was more, the mules and horses seemed to strain far harder when carrying him than before.
And this bizarre transformation showed no sign of stopping.
Lian Youming felt a prickle of worry, uncertain whether this development was a blessing or a curse.
Unfortunately, Yan Lingyun had already left. Without the young woman around, he had no one to consult.
And so his practice stretched through the better part of the night.
Not until he exhaled one final, scorching breath did his heaving chest gradually settle.
Wiping away the sweat covering his body, he did not head upstairs, choosing instead to lie down directly on the stone bed.
The wooden bed could not bear his weight, but surely this stone bed would not collapse.
Yet deep into the second half of the night, while turning over in his sleep, his right foot swept against something in his dazed slumber. With a sharp clack, the stone bed beneath him suddenly swung over with a loud rush.
Lian Youming felt his body drop precipitously. When he opened his dazed eyes, he found himself enveloped in utter pitch-black darkness, while strange cracking pops sounded beneath him.
"Cough, cough... What bad karma did I incur? Did it collapse again?"
Lian Youming hurriedly braced outward with his hands and feet, only to discover an enclosed, rectangular space—cramped and oppressive, just like a coffin.
Fumbling carefully in the dark for a moment, his arms encircled a roughly round object beside his head. As his fingertips grazed across it and hooked into several holes and two rows of teeth, an awful chill seized him.
This felt like a skull.
It really was a coffin.
Sniffing the air, he caught a distinct, faint stench of decay.
Worse, beneath him lay what felt like crushed bones, jabbing into him with excruciating discomfort.
Realizing this was a sealed space, Lian Youming quickly reined in his breathing. Pushing himself up onto his knees, he adopted an awkward, contorted posture and ran his hands along the coffin's four walls.
Remembering that his foot had apparently kicked something to trigger a mechanism, he felt around along the bottom in the dark.
This coffin had to be hollowed into the interior of the stone bed.
Lian Youming felt thoroughly disgusted by his awful luck. What lunatic hid a coffin inside a bed?
Yet on second thought, this hidden chamber had originally been an ancient tomb, so the presence of a coffin was hardly surprising.
Could the person who repurposed the tomb have designed it this way on purpose?
For what reason?
Hiding?
Playing dead?
Or fleeing enemies?
"Found it!"
Suddenly, Lian Youming's tension eased. His left hand discovered a disc-like protrusion in a corner. Hooking his fingers around it, he tried applying force in different directions.
Before long, two sharp clacks sounded. The stone slab above his head loosened at once, letting in a sliver of faint light.
Seeing his opening, Lian Youming thrust his hands upward and vaulted out the instant the stone slab swung open.
"Whew!"
Patting off the dust and bone fragments clinging to his clothes and catching the rot clinging to him, Lian Youming grimaced in disgust.
He looked up again at the stone bed, which appeared completely undisturbed. After a brief moment of thought, he picked up the oil lamp, which was nearly burnt out, trimmed the wick, and walked around to the foot of the bed. Scanning the carved patterns and textures, he began inspecting them one by one.
When his left hand touched a stone knob set into the center of a carved flower, Lian Youming pressed down gently. The familiar clack-clack rang out once more.
Seeing the slab flip open again, Lian Youming took a deep breath, lifted the oil lamp, and leaped back down into the stone coffin.
Bathed in the lamplight, everything inside the coffin was laid bare to his eyes.
A skeleton lay starkly inside.
Perhaps from when Lian Youming had plunged down and crushed it earlier, more than half of the skeletal frame had shattered.
His cheek twitched. The clothing on the remains was aged and ragged, making its full appearance hard to distinguish, yet the horseshoe cuffs indicated the attire of the Qing dynasty's Manchu style.
Judging by how decayed the garments were, the era could not have been excessively distant.
Lian Youming's eyes shifted. He soon located the skull again and leaned in close for a better look. Fine cracks webbed across the forehead, with several shallow depressions sunken faintly into the center.
Staring at the depressions, he pressed his dry lips together. His gaze flickered, and he raised his right hand into a fist, slowly aligning his protruding knuckles against the marks.
A single comparison was all it took: though differing in size, the impression was distinctly that of a fist. And those cracks spreading outward like spiderwebs bore an internal force concentrated without dispersing—a level of mastery far beyond his ability to fathom.
The longer Lian Youming looked, the more alarmed he felt. But seeing the oil lamp on the verge of burning out, he decided to climb out first.
This place had likely already been scouted by Gong Wu'er and Xue Hen; chances were, nothing useful remained.
He turned around to trigger the mechanism, but as his head swung round, his peripheral vision caught something. His gaze narrowed, and he hurriedly leaned closer to the stone wall at his side to inspect it.
"I possess a method, now passed on to posterity, known as the art of visual intimidation... To train in this method, one must gaze upon the sun and peer at the moon, cultivating extraordinary sight. Once mastery is achieved, one may subjugate foes with but a glance..."
Chapter 37