Li Xiuwen fell silent for a while. The master of the Four Seas Hall raised an eyebrow. "You don't even have a hundred more?"
"No."
"So you'd sell off everything you own just to learn boxing, would you? Here I thought you had some savings."
"..."
"Let me say this up front: if you can't keep up with the monthly payments later, I'll throw you out on the spot."
At that, Li Xiuwen's face lit up. "I understand. Thank you, Master."
"Off we go, then. Time to train." Huang Sihai turned and walked off.
"Isn't there supposed to be a ceremony for taking a master?" Li Xiuwen asked offhandedly.
"Where did you hear that?" Huang Sihai frowned.
"I read it in the newspaper."
"Red tape. The dregs of the old days... These days everything is about efficiency. You pay, I deliver. No money, get lost."
"Understood."
"Kid, don't go thinking I'm being crude. This is Xianghai!"
In the training yard, Huang Sihai beckoned to Li Xiuwen. "Come and meet your senior brothers and sisters."
Li Xiuwen looked them over. "I'm Li Xiuwen. I joined the hall today. I hope you'll all teach me a thing or two."
"Li Xiuwen? Shouldn't a name like that mean you ought to be studying hard? What are you doing here throwing punches?" The short-haired female student who had just been scolded by Huang Sihai giggled.
"Studying? Study my ass! Studying's got nothing on boxing." Li Xiuwen laughed.
"Young friend, that's where you're wrong. How could study be useless? From ancient times to now, which grandmaster wasn't a man with five cartloads of learning in him?"
The old man in a training uniform covered in patches chuckled and stroked his beard, speaking in a bookish tone.
Li Xiuwen hurried to bow. "Thank you for the instruction, sir. Might I ask who you are?"
The man had white hair and a child's complexion, brisk and glowing with spirit.
With an air like that, he was most likely one of the hall's "masters" — an instructor, or something of the kind.
The female student snickered. "New kid, don't let him fool you. He's a student here too, not a teacher."
"As the saying goes, walk with any three men and one of them must be my teacher..." Exposed, the old man tucked his hands into his sleeves and muttered at the ground.
"I've introduced myself. Might I ask what I should call this senior brother?" Li Xiuwen asked.
The old man opened his mouth, but the short-haired student, who had no trace of shyness in her, laughed, "His name is 'As the Saying Goes'!"
The old man flushed. "I am Chen Xun. I'm a few decades your senior — Brother Chen will do."
"Right you are, 'As the Saying Goes.'" The short-haired student chimed in.
"Good to meet you, Brother Chen." Li Xiuwen smiled.
"Li Shuzhen. I only got here a month before you." The short-haired student put out her hand with a grin. "You can call me Senior Sister Ah Zhen."
"I'm Cheng Kuiqiang. I came with Ah Zhen." The tallest of the students scratched the back of his head. "Everyone calls me Stupid Strong."
He looked a little simple and honest, square-jawed, one meter ninety tall, in a short training jacket with a sweat towel slung around his neck.
"I'm Liu Da. Got here a few days ahead of you." A rather skinny youth came over, grinning. "I'll study two months. If it don't work out, I'll go on home."
"You're from Shengbei?" Li Xiuwen, who found the accent a little familiar, smiled.
"Fled famine all the way here. I'm going to make something of myself in this place, I swear it!"
Li Xiuwen greeted each of them in turn, shaking hands and bowing.
At last he came to a youth with faint eyebrows and thin lips, dressed with a touch of wealth, standing out from the rest. "And this senior brother is?"
"Liu Chun." The youth didn't offer his hand, only spoke flatly.
Li Xiuwen smiled, withdrew his hand, and bowed respectfully. "Senior Brother."
"Senior Brother Chun is amazing, you know. It only took him three days to get his start and become a trained fighter." Stupid Strong said enviously.
"Master, I'm going to train." Liu Chun said, and left.
Huang Sihai looked at Li Xiuwen. "What Old Chen said isn't wrong either. To learn boxing you at least have to be literate — otherwise you can't even read a martial arts manual. There are over a hundred martial arts halls in the Walled City, and my Four Seas Hall is one of the few that teaches its students to read and write. Even if you never make it in the martial path, being literate alone puts you a head above ordinary folk in the Walled City."
"Wonderful!" Li Xiuwen clapped. "In my eyes, Master, you're a hero of the highest kind — a model of serving the nation and the people!"
"I wouldn't call myself a hero. I just don't want our young people growing up unable to read Great Sheng script, chanting that coarse foreign talk all day." Huang Sihai said.
"Master, when do I start learning boxing?"
"What's the hurry? Before you learn boxing, you assess the bones. If you don't even know how the human body is put together, how are you going to fight?"
He led Li Xiuwen over to an anatomical model. An anatomical chart was pasted on the wall as well.
"The human body has 206 bones, 360 acupoints of the celestial cycle, the twelve principal meridians and the eight extraordinary meridians... All of it is bound up with the martial path. Can you read?"
"A little."
"The structure of the human body is vast and deep. You can't learn it all in a short time. What I teach you today — remember it, and it will be enough to get you past the Three Gates."
"Master, what exactly are the Three Gates?"
"Skin and Membranes, Flood Dragon Muscle, Tiger and Elephant... Pass those three gates and you've graduated. There won't be many in the Walled City who'd dare cross you." Old Chen couldn't help cutting in.
"Yes." Huang Sihai nodded and let it stand. Old Chen liked to show off, but he did know a good deal, and he took some of the teaching work off the master's hands.
"Which gate is Mr. Ming at?" Li Xiuwen asked curiously.
"Don't bother asking. In martial training, above all, don't reach too high. If you just master any one gate, that's enough to hold your own in the Walled City."
"Oh." Li Xiuwen seemed to understand something.
Skin and Membranes, Flood Dragon Muscle, Tiger and Elephant... So these were the goals he'd strive for from now on.
"By the way, Master, once I've learned our style, will I be able to pinch a bullet between my fingers like Inspector Lei?"
Li Xiuwen asked with an air of innocence, hoping to sound out the hall's limits in advance.
Huang Sihai couldn't help but snort. "Brats like you who don't know the height of the sky or the depth of the earth — I've seen far too many in my years of running this hall. Mr. Ming this, the Four Great Inspectors that, it's all that ever comes out of your mouth. The gap between one person and the next is wider than you can imagine. Same master, same resources: one man breaks three gates in a year, and another trains at the first gate till he's old and never breaks through at all."
Li Xiuwen gave a sheepish laugh. "So how do you rate my innate physique?"
Huang Sihai shook his head. "How good your physique is, you only find out by training. I'm not one for turning a man away at the door on nothing but his physique and his age. Judging purely by outward bone structure, your frame is nicely proportioned, your arms reach past your knees, your hands are big, your feet wide — not bad. Barely... middling aptitude. But what affects martial cultivation also includes what's called inner constitution, and comprehension besides. So I can't say how your physique really is."
Li Xiuwen was secretly relieved. Middling aptitude — that would do. He wasn't at the bottom.
He didn't know that at Huang Sihai's hall, everyone was "middling aptitude."
It was simple enough. If people heard they were of "inferior aptitude," most of them would give up on boxing at once. What couldn't you do with the little money you had?
Huang Sihai wasn't about to let a fat piece of meat slip from his lips.
Physique had never had any strict standard in the first place. It was all experience passed down, generation to generation — like the art of judging horses at the racetrack.
"Your student has taken the lesson to heart — I'll keep my feet on the ground." Having grasped how hard the martial path was, Li Xiuwen wasn't disheartened — if anything, he was burning with drive.
Seeing him so high-spirited and naive, Huang Sihai felt a twinge of guilt, and comforted himself: I'm only telling a white lie.
And he hadn't entirely lied to the boy. Inward bone structure and comprehension did exist, and there had been martial artists rated of inferior aptitude who went on to soar.
It was just that, across the whole crowd of martial artists... they were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.
If Li Xiuwen one day truly reached a high level and could assess his own bones, then he'd tell him the truth.
"Child, the moment I saw how the bones lie hidden in your frame, the light in your eyes, I knew you for a sharp one — that's why I bent the truth to keep you here."
The boy ought to be thanking him!"
Chapter 5