"What a pity, what a pity... At Ah Wen's age, his ceiling probably isn't high." Uncle Chen said it with regret. "If only he'd started martial arts sooner."
"Not necessarily. We don't understand it, but I've read some newspapers—there are still people who bloom late." Aunt Li Ying was already lost in fantasy.
A big house. A big swimming pool. Servants from the southern lands... cosmetics she could never use up.
Uncle Chen took out a stack of bills. "Take this thousand. Once Ah Wen has trained to mastery, he'll have to help out... too bad I'm out of money—money's hard to earn these days."
Aunt Li Ying smiled. "I'll pass it to Ah Wen. It should cover next month's fee. He needs to eat well now—after this I'll do my best to put some proper hearty dishes on the table in the evenings."
"Learning martial arts really does burn money. The food alone feels like it'll eat me broke." Uncle Chen ached at the expense and was delighted all the same.
"Just count yourself lucky. Plenty of rich families spend fortunes hoping their kids will master it, and without the talent, it simply won't happen... Admit it! Ah Wen is a born martial-arts prodigy!"
...
The eleventh day since he had entered the Four Seas Martial Arts Hall.
Li Xiuwen had asked Brother Jun for leave and came to the hall early.
Today he would be learning fighting techniques, and his heart stirred a little.
Stake training was the foundation, the root—but in the end it was only a training method, good for nothing more than building up the body.
How to use strength well; how to kill with the least effort, greatest efficiency, and greatest safety... that was fighting techniques!
Both mattered.
Train fighting techniques well, and even the weak could hope to beat the strong and turn a battle around.
In the very center of the first floor stood a shrine, housing the statue of the Sea Sand style's Patriarch.
It showed a pointy-headed old Daoist in dark robes, broad-backed and long-bodied, treading on a shark, a wine gourd in his hand.
The old Daoist's mouth was huge, his wide grin rather odd, his whole bearing uncannily like a shark's.
A far cry from the immortal-spirited master Li Xiuwen had pictured in his head.
Huang Sihai lit three sticks of incense in the burner, while Li Xiuwen watched in silence.
"Ah Wen, come kowtow!"
"Okay!"
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Three resounding kowtows; the floor trembled.
"Master, what was the Patriarch's name?"
"No one knows. We only know he was a master of the Great Ying dynasty more than five hundred years ago, born in Wu Prefecture in Jiangnan, and that he styled himself the Nine Dragons Daoist."
"Could a grandmaster like that still be alive?"
"Naturally."
"What realm does it take to live five hundred years?"
"I meant he lives on in our hearts."
"..."
Only after the full rites were done did Huang Sihai speak at his leisure:
"What I pass on to you now is the simplest and most practical fighting technique the Patriarch ever created. Every profound technique to come is an extension built upon it. Its name is... the Flipping Sand Palm!"
The name left Li Xiuwen feeling faintly helpless.
Truly plain and unadorned.
"Palm techniques?" Li Xiuwen asked.
Huang Sihai said, "Exactly. Palm techniques are the easiest to start with and the most all-around fighting art. Fist techniques hit harder, but you get hurt easily. Finger techniques strike one point to break through the whole—their lethal ceiling is higher, but the threshold is extreme, and only the very top masters can train them. Palm techniques join attack and defense and shift in a thousand ways: they can push, press, chop, slap, pierce, and flick upward. The most balanced of them all. Learn palm techniques first, and fist techniques, finger techniques, and in time the methods of weapon fighting will all come easier."
Huang Sihai took out a booklet. "This is a transcription of the Flipping Sand Palm manual. It must not leave the Four Seas Martial Arts Hall—best to burn it into your memory."
"Okay!" Li Xiuwen opened it and found the verses amounted to only a few lines of general principles on the first page:
Great waves sift the sand—whole and round, without a flaw.
Tides surge beneath—ten thousand jun of force held in reserve.
A startled shark skims past—what it touches explodes.
A giant whale swallows the sea—overturning without pattern.
The rest were intricate-looking charts of the movement routines, diagrams of acupoints, and other detailed illustrated practice methods.
Huang Sihai said, "Commit these thirty-two characters to heart, pair them with the essentials of the Sea Sand Stake, and you will have grasped the soul of the Sea Sand style!"
"Your disciple understands."
Then Huang Sihai drew a rather fine little cloth packet from his pocket and said flatly, "Take this. This too is the essence of my Flipping Sand Palm."
Li Xiuwen accepted it with both hands. "Master, is this a secret medicine to go with the palm training?"
"Open it and see," Huang Sihai said.
Li Xiuwen opened it: a packet of fine white sand, giving off a faint briny smell of seawater and a sharp, nose-stinging pungency.
He pinched a little and rubbed it between his fingers—nothing about it looked out of the ordinary.
Huang Sihai said, "This is the exclusive hidden weapon of my Sea Sand style—Soul-Crushing Powder."
"What's it good for?" Li Xiuwen asked, his face full of anticipation. He had never imagined old Huang possessed such a fine thing.
Huang Sihai said, "My Sea Sand style is the most combat-minded of all the schools in this Walled City. At your level, when you fight someone, you scatter it into his face without warning as your palm comes out—it blinds the enemy's eyes. In a critical moment, it can let the weak beat the strong... Of course, when you spar with fellow disciples, or test yourselves on the great ring, don't do it."
"The rules forbid it?"
"It's embarrassing."
"..."
Li Xiuwen had no reply. So you do know what shame is, old man.
Huang Sihai stood with his hands behind his back and sneered, "Don't underestimate this stuff. It's made from lime, chili powder, and dozens of other pungent, biting ingredients, blended by the secret method handed down through my Sea Sand style and refined for seven times seven, forty-nine days. This packet is a newcomer's perk. If you want more later, it's ten dollars a packet—someone once bought ten packets off me in one go."
"Thank you, Master." Li Xiuwen smiled, silently cursing the old miser for selling sea sand at gold-dust prices.
"When you use sea sand, remember to watch the wind. Don't blind your own eyes..." Huang Sihai reminded him.
"You're too thoughtful, Master."
Having trained this far, Li Xiuwen finally understood why the Nine Dragons Patriarch had named his school the "Sea Sand style."
It was "sea sand" in the plainest, most literal sense—simple and unadorned.
Next, Huang Sihai laid out a whole mountain of essentials for the Flipping Sand Palm, which all boiled down to one sentence:
"Everything is a key point! Everything will be on the test!"
...
Reading the manual while following Huang Sihai's movements, Li Xiuwen formally began his cultivation of fighting techniques.
To ordinary people, fighting techniques were clearly more complicated than training methods. The difficulty of training methods lay in the slow, grinding effort they demanded, and in innate physique—one's inborn constitution. Fighting techniques were a host of unfathomable, subtle skills that tested comprehension and understanding to the utmost.
He drilled the whole day through, and just before his strength ran out, Li Xiuwen finally got the moves and routines of the Flipping Sand Palm more or less down.
At the same time, a third stick of incense appeared atop the incense burner.
[Li Xiuwen]
[Martial Skill]
[Flipping Sand Palm: Entry (1%)]
"Entering fighting techniques isn't hard. Training methods took seven days; fighting techniques took only one."
"Entering training methods is a qualitative change in cultivation—that's why it's harder. Entering fighting techniques only means you've memorized the routines. No qualitative change at all."
"For fighting techniques to show their power, you need at least the realm of minor success."
...
The night had deepened.
At the Four Seas Martial Arts Hall, Li Xiuwen ate three big bowls of fish-ball noodles and added a duck leg.
Entering fighting techniques called for rewarding his stomach—and topping up some nourishment while he was at it.
There was another reason his boxing advanced slowly: he ate poorly. With no money, he could only force down carbohydrates for energy, and rarely having proper meat and fish held back his body's rapid growth.
Uncle Chen had given him another thousand. After next month's fee was paid, four hundred remained to improve his meals.
Of course, that was no long-term solution—he still had to find a way to make money. Now that he had entered fighting techniques, Li Xiuwen decided that in a few days he would go see Brother Jun and talk over that matter.
While everyone was eating, Liu Da arrived with his luggage on his back, head lowered.
Chapter 13