At noon the teahouse by the front gate sent out the smell of cooking, and the boss lady called the students in to eat. Li Xiuwen stayed in the room alone, studying.
"New guy, aren't you eating?" Ah Zhen asked.
"I brought dry rations." Li Xiuwen smiled.
Daily expenses at the Four Seas Martial Arts Hall came in three parts: the monthly fee (tuition), the food fee, and the lodging fee.
He had no money to spare for the food fee, so he always brought his own dry rations.
Around the table the students chatted and laughed. Old Chen was at it again with his "wherefore" and "thereupon," holding forth at length.
Stupid Strong put away three bowls of fishball noodles in a row.
Huang Sihai patrolled with his hands clasped behind his back. Whenever he saw someone wasting food, he would walk over and give them a slap, shouting about fines.
Li Xiuwen gnawed his dry rice cake and washed it down with cold water, working hard at the martial structure of the human body. Luckily, for the next few days there would be no call for physical exertion; otherwise these rations would certainly not have kept hunger at bay.
...
In a blink it was evening.
Li Xiuwen had to be home before dark.
The Walled City was too dangerous. At night, all sorts of monsters and demons came out to roam.
"New guy, see you."
Ah Zhen pulled on an outer garment, said goodbye to everyone, and did not forget to say goodbye to Li Xiuwen.
"See you, Sister Zhen."
"You're not leaving yet?"
"My home isn't far. I'll study a little longer."
"Where do you live?"
"Longjin Road."
"I'm in Longwei Alley. Not far."
"We should train boxing together sometime."
After Ah Zhen left, Stupid Strong chewed his sesame flatbread and watched Li Xiuwen study so diligently.
"How's it going? Got it memorized?"
"Not bad. It isn't too hard."
"That's great."
Stupid Strong was envious. Throwing punches and putting out strength was easy for him, but bone assessment and acupoint location were far too hard.
Back then it had taken him a week to barely memorize the basic human anatomy needed for the Three Gates of the martial path, and that counted as a start.
Before long the hall fell quiet and deserted.
Only those who had paid the lodging fee were left, returning to their own quarters:
rows upon rows of iron cage bunks stacked layer on layer in a corner of the training yard.
Each iron cage was a dormitory room.
Old Chen, cradling a Daoist canon titled Commentary on the Supreme Clarity of the Great Mystery, opened one of the cages and moved in, swaying his head over it as he read like a schoolboy reciting a lesson.
"You live here, Brother Chen?" Li Xiuwen struck up conversation.
"I do." Old Chen lay in the cage, sipping tea and reading. "How is your studying going? If there's anything you don't understand, you can ask me."
Li Xiuwen scratched his head and laughed. "There are a few things I'm confused about, actually."
Old Chen's interest flared at once. He opened the cage and grinned. "Then you've come to the right man."
"What use is the Longevity acupoint three inches below the knee? I don't think the diagram says. What does it have to do with our martial training? Can it prolong life?"
At that, Old Chen stroked his beard, lifted his head, and said with a smile, "The Inner Canon says: 'Zusanli — the Longevity acupoint — belongs to earth; it is the joining point of the stomach.' The stomach is the sea of water and grain, the source of blood and qi. Once you begin stake training and pound it daily with the proper technique..."
After the old man's long lecture, he added, "As the saying goes: regular moxa at Zusanli beats eating an old hen. That is the reasoning!"
Clap, clap, clap!
Li Xiuwen applauded and joked, "Wonderful! Wonderful! Brother Chen is truly the wisest man in our Four Seas Martial Arts Hall!"
Old Chen's face flushed red. He coughed once. "Brother Li flatters me."
He was delighted from the bottom of his heart. In all his years at the hall, this was the first time he had felt such sincere recognition from Li Xiuwen!
A kindred spirit!
If he was Boya, then Li Xiuwen was Ziqi!
If he was Sleeping Dragon, then Li Xiuwen was Fledgling Phoenix!
Li Xiuwen was happy too, from the bottom of his heart.
Once Old Chen had cleared away the confusion in his mind, a stick of incense had appeared above the incense burner at some unknown moment.
Blue smoke curled and drifted, and the gilded characters on the burner's surface flowed and shifted.
[Li Xiuwen]
[Martial Skill: Basic General Martial Knowledge: Entry (1%)]
[Stage: None]
"General Martial Knowledge? That counts as a martial skill too?"
"Then again, an illiterate can at best practice wild tricks and peasant moves. A true martial expert must be well versed in medical theory and deeply read in the classics..."
"I can raise it just by studying all kinds of martial knowledge and theory, without regard to any so-called innate physique. This skill should have its uses."
Li Xiuwen looked at Old Chen, and the more he looked, the better the old man seemed.
Who wouldn't want a Wang Yuyan at their side?
This was the experience pack for his General Martial Knowledge skill.
"Brother Chen, how do you know so many things?" Li Xiuwen asked.
Having found his kindred spirit, Old Chen drank some tea and smiled. "Never mind that I'm a broken-down old man now, all alone and able to lodge only in a martial arts hall. My parents were true-blooded martial nobility of the former dynasty, and all this knowledge of mine I learned as a child."
"I see. If I want to study martial theory systematically, is there any book you would recommend, Brother Chen?" Li Xiuwen asked.
"There is... but these books, like boxing methods, are secrets no school passes on. Out in the wider world you generally can't get hold of them." Old Chen shook his head.
Li Xiuwen nodded. The martial knowledge of this world was another system of methodology, independent of science. Even if he found such books outside, he could not tell true from false, and would not dare study them.
"Brother Li, you're a lover of books as well. That gladdens my heart. I have an ancestral copy of the Miscellany of the Martial Tomb. While you're at the hall, you can ask me to borrow it." The old man smiled.
Li Xiuwen thanked him, took the book, and flipped through it.
It was a reproduction of a martial text that a scholar of the martial path had obtained from a thousand-year-old tomb.
There were no trainable boxing methods or martial arts inside,
only a great deal of common martial knowledge, observations on training, notes and miscellaneous talk.
The old man cautioned him: "Brother Li, the Miscellany of the Martial Tomb runs to twelve volumes in all, and much of the knowledge in it is rather advanced. For now, just read the Volume of Strange Arts and the Volume of the Three Corpses. Those two cover some basic martial theory and the theory of the human body's martial structure. But some of the reasoning in them has been overturned by later martial scholars, so you must check the old against the new and study it critically. You can't believe all of it!
As the saying goes: believing every word of a book is worse than having no book at all!"
Li Xiuwen gave the old man a thumbs-up. "I'm impressed!"
"You flatter me. I'm turning in. You'd best get going too, Brother Li."
Praised like that, Old Chen scratched his head and smiled like a child, then went back into his cage and began to read.
"See you around." Li Xiuwen turned to leave.
Old Chen sat up and said,
"Brother Li, in all my years at this hall, you're the only one willing to talk about these things with me. Young people nowadays are too restless. They all want to throw punches from the very first day and be invincible under heaven. They don't realize that boxing is never something you can master just by practicing the moves.
The principles of boxing matter just as much.
The ancients said, 'It is easy to change your innate physique' — meaning that with power and position, you can always get hold of miracle elixirs to reshape your physique.
But 'it is hard to change your comprehension.' My father said comprehension is not just some vague inner gift; it is also the long accumulation of a person's breadth of vision and depth of knowledge. It's a pity so many people don't understand this.
Even those who run martial arts halls inside the Walled City know little of it.
You're never too old to learn — but knowing it is easy, doing it is hard."
Li Xiuwen nodded and left the hall.
Chapter 6