"My dear wife, we are going to Xiazhou to establish a foothold, recruit soldiers, and buy horses. We mean to accomplish great things, and a good alchemist is indispensable." Naturally, He Chunhua knew very well how to placate his wife. "Shihuan City is thick with Daoist sects and packed with talent. Finding a suitable person here is far better than trying to hire one after we reach Xiazhou. From that perspective, Chuan'er wasn't necessarily being thoughtless."
Madam Ying trusted her husband above all else, so her anger shifted into half-belief. "It's only a monkey. Can it truly refine good pills?"
"I've heard of the Qianxin Sect's reputation." He Chunhua harbored grand ambitions for the realm, so he had naturally studied the various Daoist sects. "It is famous across the realm for alchemy. Though it's a monster sect, the pills refined by its medicine apes rival and even surpass those of human apothecaries. This is what's called specialization in one's field. If we went to hire an alchemist with a sterling reputation, we might not find one even at twice the price."
Highly skilled talent was never cheap, not to mention that recruiting talent in the auxiliary capital of Shihuan to work in Xiazhou involved relocation costs and various other hidden expenses in their compensation.
Of course, He Chunhua did not know that there was another reason this medicine ape from the Qianxin Sect came so cheap.
A bargain always hid a catch.
Madam Ying had lived in Qiansong Commandery for a long time, and her impression of monsters remained fixed on fierce, crude brutes who did nothing but rob and pillage. Hearing out of nowhere that a monkey could perform such delicate work struck her as quite novel.
***
Returning to his guest room, He Lingchuan stuffed two jin of sweet, juicy melons and a batch of medicinal herbs into the monkey's hands. "Please help me refine some Soul-Hooking Incense."
As the name suggested, this incense was used to hook and draw out the souls of living people, and it was most often put to work in the hands of the ill-intentioned. Ordinary pharmacies and alchemists did not sell it; expressing an urgent desire to buy it might even get you reported.
Yet the ape demon Lingguang clearly possessed no such burden of morality. Taking the items, it simply said, "Ready in one two-hour period."
It was in no rush to light the furnace and brew medicine, either. Instead, it took the melons to a basin, washed them clean, split them open, and slowly savored them.
Leaving it to its meal, He Lingchuan took out the tofu he had bought at the market and went out to the open yard to practice his blade.
Using military merits, he had traded with the Ministry of Merits in Panlong City for a movement technique and a saber style. Though the two would ultimately have to be merged, at his current level he could only practice them separately.
Flowing saber arts like drifting clouds and water, earth-shaking stances—he couldn't even dream of such things at the start.
He could only practice on tofu.
He laid a whole block of soft tofu flat in his palm and shaved it with his long saber.
The beginner's requirement was to shave it as thin as a cicada's wing, so every slice was translucent to light.
Before obtaining the formula, He Lingchuan had never known that the prerequisite for becoming a good bladesman was to first become a good chef. But the general formula of the saber art explicitly stated that "steadiness" and "accuracy" formed the foundation of the martial path and allowed no corner-cutting, just like the foundation of a hundred-foot tower.
As for stances, techniques, divine abilities, or the adage that speed reigned supreme in the world of martial arts, those were all upper structures.
If the foundation wasn't tamped solid, the upper structure would never stand firm.
He Lingchuan shaved ten strokes, producing what were essentially slices of tofu as thick as leaves.
Maotao clapped from the side. "Young Master, impressive! To have this kind of skill on your first try!"
He Lingchuan glared at him fiercely, held a slice of tofu up to the light—
Opaque. Failure!
This wasn't his first time.
He had already practiced for five days in the dreamscape, and the first day had been an utter disaster where he shaved off a layer of skin from his own palm.
Now, under Maotao's watchful eyes, by the thirtieth slice his blade trembled right along with his hand, carving jagged edges into the tofu.
Bloody hell, this was hard.
Once he ruined an entire block of tofu, Maotao, standing nearby, promptly handed over another.
Today's task was to finish shaving fifty blocks of tofu.
Naturally, the soldiers and civilians in the Panlong dreamscape couldn't bear to waste food like this, so there was another option: shaving paper. Stacking a hundred sheets of thin paper together, one sliced through them with a saber. Each time a sheet was sheared away, the ones beneath could not budge.
That method sounded much easier than shaving tofu, and the paper could be reused. He Lingchuan had practiced that way in the dreamscape as well.
The comfortable life during his first two months after crossing into this world had indeed given rise to thoughts of coasting along and waiting to die in quiet ease. After all, striving for self-improvement was so hard—how could it compare to the comfort of lying flat?
Yet the two harrowing adventures that followed—whether being deceived into the Panlong Desert by National Preceptor Sun or fighting bitterly against the rebel army at Xianling Lake—had laid bare the chasm between himself and his opponents.
His victories and his survival had depended eighty percent on luck, with nothing to do with strength.
Even if He Chunhua considered his eldest son a lucky general, He Lingchuan understood that a man couldn't live on good luck forever.
This mortal world was far more treacherous than his past life; the teeming masses struggled and drifted in the mire. If he wanted to live long and well, he could only rely on the blade in his hand to blaze a trail to shore.
Half a year ago, he was still slacking off at work and idling away his free time, his greatest headache being that his paycheck was too small, not matters of life, death, and his future.
Looking back now, it felt like an entire lifetime ago.
...No, he truly had been born into another life.
By the time He Lingchuan finished shaving forty-nine blocks of tofu, his right hand could no longer lift the saber. In the dead cold of winter, he had actually worked up a drenching sweat.
Maotao had been watching him with burning eyes the entire time. He Lingchuan snapped irritably, "What are you staring at? You shave the last one!"
"Me?" Maotao blinked, then actually agreed. "All right."
He too laid a block of tofu on his hand, drew a short dagger from his boot shaft with his right hand, and let it flash back and forth.
"...?" Why did Maotao's movements look so fluid?
In just a few breaths, the tofu was shaved. Maotao lifted several slices on his dagger, grinning. "Please take a look, Eldest Young Master!"
Though not quite thin as a cicada's wing, every slice of tofu was uniform as a leaf.
One had to understand that he wielded the dagger with absolute ease, in a single unbroken flow without a pause. That was far more difficult, and his technique was extraordinarily practiced.
He Lingchuan grabbed him by the collar. "You practiced this in secret before?"
"Yeah. It's the skill we earn our living with—how could I not practice?" Maotao used to be a sand bandit. Knowing his strength fell short of others, he had to find ways to outdo them in technique.
In the tone of a seasoned veteran, he consoled He Lingchuan, "Don't be discouraged, Eldest Young Master. With your aptitude, you'll master it in seven or eight days."
"Discouraged? Which of your dog eyes sees me discouraged?" The young master snorted and ordered him to fetch a suspension rope to tie between two trees.
Blade training came to a pause; next was the movement technique.
The suspension rope was as thick as a little finger, tied neither too tight nor too loose according to the requirements, sagging slightly.
He Lingchuan leaped up and landed on one foot. With empty air above and below offering no leverage, he wobbled twice before hurriedly sinking his qi into his dantian, managing with great effort to steady himself.
His original body had trained on plum-blossom poles and possessed decent balance, so this did not stump him.
The next step was to clasp both hands behind his back and stand steady with his eyes closed.
Within two breaths of closing his eyes, He Lingchuan felt the world spin.
Snapping his eyes open, he found himself tumbling down, nearly landing headfirst.
The moment a person closed their eyes, their sense of balance went.
He leaped back onto the suspension rope, but before he had even steadied himself this time, a gust of strong wind blew past...
"Again!"
Maotao watched eagerly from below. "Young Master, how far do you have to train this?"
He Lingchuan gritted his teeth. "When the rope is swapped for a fine thread and I can still run freely across it with my eyes closed, that counts as minor success."
"And major success?"
"Standing on a fine thread with eyes closed, rapidly shaving tofu into unbroken slices as thin as a cicada's wing."
"..."
"Young Master," Maotao said cautiously, "take me along with you. Even if I can't master any divine abilities in the end, I can always earn a bite to eat in an acrobatic troupe."
He Lingchuan slipped out a flying locust stone and hurled it right at his face.
With a strange yell, Maotao dodged.
That exertion of force set the rope rocking violently, costing He Lingchuan immense effort to regain his balance.
"Huh, this isn't a bad method either. Kills two birds with one stone." It trained both his movement technique and his throwing accuracy.
Hu Min had said that throwing, just like archery, required practicing for accuracy and feel.
"Go fetch it back for me!" He pulled out two more flying locust stones, aiming them at Maotao's backside.
For the next hour, chaos reigned in the small courtyard.
The servants of the He residence bustled to and fro; seeing this spectacle, they either chuckled or shook their heads. The eldest young master never rested, fooling around again the moment he arrived in Shihuan.
Then the medicine ape Lingguang appeared, landing lightly and deftly on the suspension rope with a bundle of black incense sticks in hand. "Employer, the soul-... the incense you wanted is done."
It seemed as light as nothing, the suspension rope not shifting in the slightest.
He Lingchuan glanced down to see its ten toes gripping the rope firmly, steady beyond words.
How much effort would he have to expend just to catch up to someone else's innate talent?
He sighed and took the incense bundle. "Thanks! If you have time, please help me refine some Yin-Yang Powder as well. Here, this is the prescription."
***
He Lingchuan returned to his room, closed the doors and windows tight, and lit a candle.
Only when the candle flame rose straight and steady without a flicker did he light the Soul-Hooking Incense, sit cross-legged on the couch, and begin his meditation.
Once his eyes closed, the world plunged into pitch darkness. He Lingchuan could hear only his own long, rhythmic breathing, and smell the peculiar aroma of the Soul-Hooking Incense swirling around him.
Silently chanting the mental formula of the Ziwu Formula, he gradually ceased to hear even his own breathing, yet vague images began to form in his mind.
They seemed to be the furnishings of the guest room, yet devoid of color, light, and shadow, composed solely of lines and contours.
He Lingchuan understood that this was because he was not observing his surroundings with his eyes, but attempting to open what the Ziwu Formula called the "Heavenly Eye." To put it plainly, it was divine sense.
The sensation was exceedingly strange and difficult to describe in words. Perhaps it was similar to how bats "saw" objects through echolocation?
The Ziwu Formula devoted an entire chapter in its core mental manual to methods of cultivating and training divine sense.
Ancient immortals could expand their divine sense to evade danger, making it even more effective than the five physical senses. When He Lingchuan first saw that chapter, he had treated it like a priceless treasure. After all, whether in grand battles or single combat, everything was filled with uncertainty. You never knew who might be lying in ambush waiting to strike, who was loosing cold arrows from the shadows, or who was dumping a chamber pot over your head...
Expanding divine sense for the first time was extraordinarily critical and difficult. If it failed, one had to wait at least three to five months before trying again, which was why He Lingchuan had specially asked the medicine ape to refine the Soul-Hooking Incense as an aid.
In the dead silence, even the herbal aroma seemed to vanish, yet the things he "saw" in his mind grew more numerous and ever clearer.
Chapter 170