The moment he saw the hidden door, Sun Yixie understood at once: his father had not brought him here to administer some family punishment. He meant to pass on a family secret.
With that figured out, Master Sun's behavior and words a moment ago no longer seemed strange.
The passage behind the hidden door was not long. After a few turns, father and son emerged into a stone chamber underground.
Master Sun casually produced the tinder stick he had prepared in advance and lit the several oil lamps on the walls. The flames lit the chamber, which was not especially large.
Sun Yixie swept his gaze over the surroundings with those small eyes of his that always looked half-closed, and saw that apart from a few bronze lamp brackets set into the walls, the chamber held only three things.
A weapon, thrust into an old weapon rack.
A suit of soft armor, laid out on a stone platform.
A stone coffin, quite large, taking up nearly a quarter of the chamber.
"Yixie." After a moment, Master Sun spoke, hands clasped behind his back, his voice deep. "Do you know whose descendants our Sun family are?"
At that, Sun Yixie's eyes flicked about as he thought, and he answered promptly, "Our Sun family has lived in Jiangdong for generations, eminent and of long lineage... Could we be descendants of Sun Jian, courtesy name Wentai, from the time of the Three Kingdoms?"
"Mm... correct." Master Sun nodded, satisfied. "I've long heard that although you can barely read and your scholarship is poor, your knowledge of the world is not narrow... You evidently have no gift for the eight-legged essay, but you've made some achievements in miscellaneous studies." He paused, then went on, "You're quite right. Our Sun Clan are indeed descendants of the Martial Emperor of Eastern Wu. Unfortunately... so much time has passed, the Sun bloodline has branched and scattered, and risen and fallen several times. The family records from before fifteen generations ago truly cannot be found, so even I don't know whether our branch is legitimate or collateral."
"No problem. Back in the day Liu Bei's origins were murky too, and he still managed to wangle the title of Imperial Uncle, didn't he?" Sun Yixie said. "From now on I'll just tell people I'm the direct great-great-grandson of the Little Overlord Sun Ce. Who's going to prove I'm faking?"
"Heh heh..." Master Sun was amused by his son. "Fine... In any case, our Sun ancestors produced talents in every generation—some who reached the highest offices of state with plans to stabilize the realm, and naturally some who roamed the jianghu with peerless martial skill..." He gestured at the three objects. "And these three are the 'secret treasures' the ancestors left for any descendant who wished to take up the martial path. Today I pass them all on to you, so that when you walk the jianghu in the future, you'll have something to rely on."
"Oh?" Sun Yixie's first reaction was, "So the scholarly ancestors were that stingy? They didn't leave a single treasure?"
Smack—
Before he finished speaking, Master Sun swatted him on the head again. "Nonsense. The 'scholarly' things are all in the Four Books and Five Classics. If you were willing to study, would I be showing you this?"
"Yes, yes, I was wrong." Sun Yixie clutched his head. "Go on, Father."
Master Sun pursed his lips and went first to the weapon. "This is a rare marvel of the world, forged from a meteorite that fell from beyond the sky. Seven chi two cun long (Ming measurements, about 240 centimeters in the units we're used to), weighing only twenty jin (also Ming measurements, a bit heavier than twenty jin today). Light, hard, sharp, and tough... Its prongs pierce steel like paper and cut iron like mud; the shaft is light and supple, and will not break though bent a hundred times."
Sun Yixie looked at the trident before him, and the corner of his mouth twitched twice. "Father... why, when the ancestors got hold of a precious material like a meteorite, did they have to make a trident out of it? Saber, spear, staff, sword... any of them would be easier to use than this, wouldn't it?"
"How would I know? It was made several hundred years ago. Who am I supposed to ask?" Master Sun's answer was entirely reasonable. With that, he shifted two steps over and arrived at the second treasure. "Now this armor. Legend says it was forged from qilin scales and woven together with heavenly silkworm silk. No blade or spear can pierce it, neither water nor fire can harm it, it's light as satin, warm in winter and cool in summer, and it can stretch or tighten to fit the wearer's build."
"Holy crap!" At this, Sun Yixie's eyes went wide. "Then if I wear it, won't I be invincible?"
Smack—
That got him another blow to the head.
"The jianghu is a vicious place. Don't think a treasure armor makes everything fine. If a true expert wants you dead, ten suits of armor won't save you," Master Sun warned sternly.
"Heh... I was just saying..." Sun Yixie laughed sheepishly.
Master Sun looked at his son, sighed, then walked to the stone coffin and signaled with his eyes. "Yixie, push the lid off the coffin. Careful—don't chip the floor."
"Oh, all right." Sun Yixie thought nothing of it and went over to push the coffin lid.
To his surprise... when he put his strength into it, he found the lid weighed a hundred-odd jin at the very least—or by the standard he usually used, it was heavy as hell.
If this were the Sun Yixie from before the transmigration, he probably couldn't have moved it alone. Fortunately he was now seventeen, had done a bit of martial training as a child, and in recent years had often lent a hand with heavy work at the fish market and gotten into plenty of fights, so his current strength was just barely enough to move something of that weight.
"Whoa, what's this?" Once he had shoved the coffin lid aside, Sun Yixie saw what was inside.
Neatly stacked like dominoes were slabs of sharply angled, silver-white stone, each about the size of a common gravestone, filling the whole coffin—more than twenty of them.
"Reversing Heaven and Earth." Two seconds later, that was the four-word answer Master Sun gave.
"Huh?" Sun Yixie plainly did not understand.
Master Sun explained, "These stone slabs record the supreme martial arts mastered by our Sun ancestors who trained in the martial arts through the generations. The first slab records the 'Reversing Heaven and Earth Formula'—the highest internal-energy mental art of our Sun family, never taught outside the clan, and the foundation of all these unique techniques. That is why its name is used for all the martial arts here."
"What?" Sun Yixie was instantly excited. "Father, if you had something this amazing, why didn't you bring it out sooner?"
"Who told you not to train seriously as a child?" Master Sun said. "If you'd been willing to apply yourself back then—not even that long; if you'd just stuck with it for a year... I might have brought you here. But you took on so many masters, and not one of them could keep you at it even half a month. Handing these to you would only have done you harm."
"Then... Father, why are you willing to pass them on to me now?" Sun Yixie asked.
"Because I'm afraid of you going out there and getting the worst of it, of course," Master Sun said. "Besides, you're a grown man now. These years you've run the fish market so well it's thriving; clearly you know how to conduct yourself with some sense of proportion. This is just the right time to give them to you."
"Mm..." Sun Yixie knew this was the truth. Parents always dote on their children; no matter how disappointing the child, they cannot bear to watch him suffer.
After several seconds of silence, a question that had puzzled Sun Yixie for years suddenly flashed through his mind, and he quickly asked, "Hey—by the way, is our family's reverse-order naming also connected to this 'Reversing Heaven and Earth'?"
"Correct," Master Sun said. "It was a family precept left by the ancestor who created the 'Reversing Heaven and Earth Formula.' From that generation on, all Sun descendants have had the characters in their names arranged in reverse."
"Is there any meaning to it?" Sun Yixie asked.
"Probably just for fun," Master Sun answered offhandedly.
"Huh?" That answer was beyond Sun Yixie's expectations.
"Didn't I say so? It's a matter of several hundred years. What's the use of asking me?" Master Sun had a point. Why many so-called "traditions" were passed down, what they originally looked like, and what motivated their transmission, may long since have drifted or been forgotten. That is true of things only a hundred-odd years old, let alone several hundred or a thousand.
Seeing this, Sun Yixie let it drop and asked again, "Then... why did the ancestors write the martial arts on stone slabs? Doesn't that seem terribly inconvenient?"
Master Sun seemed to have known he would ask; he answered without hesitation: "Bamboo strips, sheepskin, paper... in time all of those rot or grow mold. Water or fire can destroy them outright. And having people memorize them—that easily leads to errors..." He paused. "The ancestors were far-sighted, and chose these slabs of smelted adamant stone to record the Sun family's supreme arts, so that even after a thousand years they could be preserved perfectly."
"Naruhodo~" Sun Yixie nodded with great solemnity, having somehow unconsciously popped out a Japanese word.
This was not the first time Master Sun had heard his son say that word. He roughly knew it meant "so that's how it is," so he paid it little mind and continued, "Yixie, there's still more than two months until the Mid-Autumn Festival. Counting the travel time, you should set out in about fifty days... As the saying goes, sharpen your spear before battle—even if it isn't sharp, it'll shine. For these fifty days, don't bother with the fish market business. Train your martial arts properly, and ask young Huang about anything you don't understand. I see the two of you get along well... I hope he'll help you a lot, so you won't be bullied once you're out in the jianghu."
"Ha!" Sun Yixie laughed. "Don't worry, Father. It's always been me bullying others; when has anyone bullied me? With these three treasures on me, your son won't disgrace the Sun family in the jianghu."
"If only it were so... that would be best," Master Sun said, still a little worried, but he could only hope for the best.
Chapter 6