Easier to Subdue the Bandit in the Mountains Than the Bandit in the Heart

"Old man, still puzzling over that beat-up chessboard of yours?" After leaving the station, Lian Youming had not headed straight home. Instead, he made his way to the King of Scraps' small courtyard. For some reason, after not seeing him for a year, Lian Youming felt there was something different about the man. Just yesterday, with a single sniff, the old man had known Lian Youming was carrying tiger bones back. That was downright uncanny. The chill wind whistled bleakly. Inside that modest little doorway, the King of Scraps was still cradling his wooden chessboard, playing against himself. The aluminum lunchbox beside him was already empty, looking as though it had been thoroughly licked clean. Lian Youming chuckled. "Quite the picky palate, aren't you? Guess you didn't think much of yesterday's leftovers after all. So, how about my mom's cooking? Unbeatable, right?" The King of Scraps did not even bother looking up. "The red sausage and cured meat were decent. Can't compare to imperial chefs, of course, but the care put into making them shone through. There's a rich warmth of human sentiment in it. That alone beats any mountain delicacy or seafood feast." "Naturally! My mom..." As Lian Youming spoke, his eyes suddenly widened. "Wait, you've actually eaten food made by an imperial chef?" The King of Scraps replied flatly, "Cut the chatter. If you're not delivering food, what did you run over here for?" "To ask you something." Lian Youming squatted down and took out the letter Yan Lingyun had sent him, which listed several medicinal herbs used to brew tiger bone liquor. He had originally intended to ask where in the city he might acquire them, but seeing the old man talk with such staggering bravado, he felt an urge to test him. "Take a look at these items. Can you make any sense of what's going on here?" The King of Scraps first scratched his messy nest of hair, then took the letter. Glancing at it, he suddenly chuckled. "Seeing the handwriting is like seeing the person. You brat have quite the romantic luck, don't you? One look at this script tells me the girl who wrote it has an unblemished nature, pure and true to the core. And there's even a faint herbal fragrance... Hmm... Solomon's seal... lily bulb... fleeceflower root..." The grin on Lian Youming's face began to stiffen, his expression turning increasingly bizarre. When the King of Scraps actually managed to smell the various herbs off the paper, Lian Youming looked as if he had seen a ghost. Dubious, he snatched the letter back and held it close to his own nose to sniff. But aside from the mildew in the room, there was only the stench rolling off the old man, choking him so badly he nearly passed out. This was way too bizarre. Yet right after, the King of Scraps dropped another bombshell: "This is a prescription, isn't it? Used for brewing tiger bone liquor?" Lian Youming was genuinely dumbfounded now. "You can really tell!" The King of Scraps curled his lip. "Look at you, acting like you've never seen the world. Years back during the 'Smash the Four Olds' campaign, I was put in charge of burning old books and ancient texts. Along with all sorts of miscellaneous junk, there were plenty of medical manuals, Daoist canons, Buddhist scriptures, and pharmacopeias—heaps of ancient works left by our predecessors. I had nothing to do, so I idly flipped through them. Read enough, and you pick up a thing or two." Lian Youming asked in astonishment, "Are there any left now?" The King of Scraps shook his head. "None. Burned to ashes, every last one." Lian Youming's breath hitched. Just as he was about to speak, the King of Scraps waved a hand. "All right, I know what you want to ask. As for those ingredients for your liquor, you won't find anything good in the city. In a couple of days, come take a walk with me on Mount Zhongnan. We should be able to gather most of them... But my legs aren't what they used to be, so you'll have to carry me up on your back." Lian Youming glanced down at the old man's lower body, remembering that he had a crippled leg. According to his father, it had been crippled by a bullet. Suddenly, the King of Scraps shifted the subject. "If you've got nothing to do, play a round of chess with me." Lian Youming shook his head. "Don't know how." The King of Scraps said, "My only worry was that you did." Lian Youming's mind was still preoccupied with that copy of Journey to the West; he had no patience to dawdle here. "Isn't there a bunch of old men playing chess over by the subdistrict office? Change into decent clothes and go join them." The King of Scraps said indifferently, "Those old fellows will argue until their heads bleed over a single piece. Shortsighted. When I play chess, I'm not fighting for the same things they are; I'm contending with myself... Ah, forget it, forget it. Go on back." Feeling he might have spoken too much, the old man returned to arranging his chess pieces. As Lian Youming was leaving, he added, "What are we having today? If possible, just heat up yesterday's leftovers. Leftover dishes have real flavor." "Well look at you, getting picky now... Remember our deal, take me to Mount Zhongnan in a couple of days!" Lian Youming took the aluminum lunchbox, turned, and left. Only when the youth was about to step out of the courtyard did the old man cast a thoughtful glance after him. His nostrils twitched, and he murmured softly, "Restless mind, body exuding turbid qi. He certainly didn't sleep well last night... Sigh. Easier to subdue the bandit in the mountains than the bandit in the heart. If he can't even break through this first barrier, he'd best live an ordinary life." Back home. Zhao Lanxiang had already left for work, and Third Aunt had returned to the village. With the New Year approaching, Lian Shuang was on winter break, skipping rubber-band jump rope in the courtyard with her girlfriends. Lian Lei sat off to the side, shelling pine nuts that Third Aunt had brought over. Returning to this home, Lian Youming felt a sense of peace settle over him, deeply reassuring. After sweeping the courtyard and leaving a few words of caution for his younger sister and brother, he ducked straight into his own room. It was that copy of Journey to the West again. Ever since he began studying the book, Lian Youming had felt all his thoughts ensnared by it, as if possessed by a demon. What was more, the thing was bizarre: it constantly gave the impression of being just one step away from the truth. Whether the seventy-two small illustrations or the elixir formula at the very end, everything was laid bare before his eyes, yet he simply could not fathom it. The more he dwelled on it, the more an unbearable itch clawed at his heart. The more he thought, the more frustrated he felt; the more frustrated he felt, the more he thought, tangling himself in knots and squandering his mental energy for nothing. He had hardly slept well the previous night, plagued by all kinds of bizarre dreams, even dreaming of reading Journey to the West. "Could Li Da have lied to me? Or is this purely an ordinary novel?" The moment the thought surfaced, Lian Youming dismissed it. With Li Da's caliber and pride, he would never do such a thing. "Could it all be an illusion?" He forced down his restless agitation, exhaling gently. Pacing back and forth in the room, he tried approaching the contents from different angles. Yet no matter how he looked, his gaze kept drifting involuntarily back to the monkey in the pictures. Damn monkey. Lian Youming's brows knitted tightly. As long as he failed to figure this out, he wouldn't even be able to sleep in peace. He spent the better part of the day poring over it. Not until the third child, Lian Lei, ran in complaining of hunger did Lian Youming snap out of his fixation, his head throbbing with a swelling ache as his temples pulsed. After heating yesterday's leftovers for the two younger kids, Lian Youming brought another bowl over to the King of Scraps. Only this time, he had no energy left to speak, and the old man, equally immersed in his chess, did not say a word either. Seeing the sky grow dark, Lian Youming rubbed his temples and exhaled a long breath of turbid air. "No, I can't keep looking at this. Any more, and I might suffer qi deviation." Yet if he could not penetrate its secrets, how could he ever compete with Xue Hen? Having resolved to tread the martial path, how could he abandon it halfway? Giving up would be tantamount to admitting he was inferior to others. How could he, Lian Youming, be inferior to anyone? If so, what was the damn point of practicing martial arts at all? No. At this moment, Lian Youming's breathing trembled, unsteady. Pressing the book heavily down with his hand, he suddenly stretched his frame. He did not practice punches or kicks, nor did he swallow breath or circulate internal energy. Instead, within the cramped space of the room, he began performing the Five Animal Frolics. The five animals: tiger, bear, bird, deer, ape. Compared to those bizarre muscle and sinew pathways, the movements of the Five Animals were simple and clear, presenting not the slightest difficulty for him now. As his limbs and waist extended, Lian Youming's erratic breath gradually settled into a calm rhythm, and his fierce, razor-sharp forms softened into fluid ease. Bird flight, tiger pounce, bear sway, ape pluck... The Five Animal Frolics, which originally required practicing one form after another in strict sequence, gradually flowed at Lian Youming's whim. No longer bound by order, when his spirit sank heavy, it became the Bear Frolic; when his spirit grew light, it shifted into the Ape Frolic. Until he abruptly stopped. He stood motionless for several seconds, then stared at the copy of Journey to the West tossed onto the bed and spat a single word: "Fuck." Whether he could defeat Xue Hen could hardly hinge on a single book. If that were truly the case, what would decades of grueling cultivation by martial artists amount to? Wouldn't it all be a joke? Narrowing his eyes, Lian Youming looked at the monkey tumbling and cavorting in the illustration and raised his right hand. "Damn monkey, you sure know how to hop around." He slapped his palm down. The air seemed to freeze, and the room sank into dead silence. Lian Youming sighed, feeling a pang of regret. Li Da had entrusted it to the wrong person; in the end, he still hadn't been able to... "Huh?" Suddenly, his sigh cut short. His expression froze. Bringing his fingers together, he completely covered the monkey in the illustration. Then, looking at the remaining master and disciples, his eyes gradually narrowed. The figures in the drawing were positioned strangely. It wasn't any sort of fist posture or stance training; rather, they were all looking in the same direction, as though an invisible person stood there, conversing with the master and his disciples. Even with Lian Youming covering the monkey, the picture didn't look off at all—as if the monkey was never supposed to be there in the first place. Lian Youming's mind shook. Looking at the empty space where the master and disciples' gazes converged, there was nothing there, yet the bodies of the monk, the pig demon, and Sha Wujing framed a distinct negative space. It looked like a monkey—an invisible monkey. And this silhouette seemed vaguely familiar to him. Lian Youming hurriedly flipped through the seventy-two illustrations, comparing the monkey in each picture against the silhouette one by one. Remarkably, one of them matched. "The correct sequence?" Lian Youming drew a deep breath. He looked through them again from beginning to end and discovered that in every illustration, there were actually two monkeys: one visible, one invisible. Swallowing hard, Lian Youming began matching the monkeys from the illustrations against the silhouettes on each page, piecing them together one after another. When he reached the seventy-second illustration, a sharp gleam flared in Lian Youming's eyes as he took in the scene. What this drawing depicted was the monkey paying homage to his master. The monkey danced with joy, seemingly overcome with delight. Before the monkey sat a Daoist with indistinct features, sitting cross-legged on a couch with a horsetail whisk in hand, broad robes and billowing sleeves, radiating an ethereal, transcendent aura. Lian Youming swept his gaze across it and found nothing out of the ordinary, but soon noticed a moon hanging in the drawing. In the picture, the window shutters were wide open, and outside hung the moon. Moonlight spilled inside, falling over the monkey. Lian Youming's gaze shifted subtly. He held the page up beneath the lamp, letting the light shine through. Thereupon, across the yellowed paper, six small characters faintly emerged: "Tiangang Jin! Disha Stance!"