Chapter 5: Hunting a Fugitive!
With the aid of century-old divine herbs, Li Yanchu’s cultivation advanced by leaps and bounds. After all, ordinary martial artists didn’t have the luxury of consuming such potent medicine regularly.
Even if one had untold wealth, one might still never get their hands on a hundred-year-old ginseng or lingzhi[1]!
For those in the jianghu, such treasures were rare beyond belief and encountered only by great fortune.
The cultivation of Six Yang Force consumed an enormous amount of a person’s qi and blood. This martial art advanced by burning one's qi and blood to enhance the power of the Six Yang Force.
If practiced incorrectly, it could lead to severe depletion of qi and blood, resulting in irreversible long-term damage. In severe cases, the practitioner’s meridians might rupture, leading to death.
But now, with the nourishment of century-old medicinal herbs, Li Yanchu had no such worries. A century-old divine herb contained immense medicinal power that greatly nourished qi and blood. He only needed to take them and continue training.
This saber technique had a total of six stages, and the Six Yang Force it cultivated was incredibly sharp and powerful. Under normal circumstances, it would take much longer, but Li Yanchu had reached the fourth stage in just seven days!
His blood and qi surged with intense power, and his muscles and bones were brimming with strength.
At this moment, Li Yanchu already carried the imposing presence of a true saber master. His eyes gleamed with brilliance, his aura was fierce, and his sharpness was on full display.
***
Li Yanchu went out to buy the herbs he planned to elevate into a century-old divine medicine using the Decree of Bestowal. On the way, he stopped by the Taiping Inn for some tea.
In teahouses and inns, news always traveled fastest.
“Anything unusual going on in Weicheng lately?” Li Yanchu asked.
The young attendant glanced around, then leaned in and lowered his voice. “Funny you ask, there actually is.”
Li Yanchu had only asked in passing, but was a little surprised to get such a direct reply. “There is?”
That instantly piqued his interest. Ever since he transmigrated here, he’d realized this world was nothing like ordinary ancient times. It had Daoist spells, martial arts, ghosts, and monsters.
Especially after slaying that lustful ghost and gaining three hundred merit points, he realized that there was clearly something deeper at work in this world.
The attendant glanced around again. Seeing no unfamiliar faces nearby, he leaned in and said to Li Yanchu, “Daoist Master Li, a major event happened in Wei City recently. One of our head constables, Head Constable Zhao, busted a gang of murderous thieves.
“Their leader was a man named Liang Qi, a ruthless man highly skilled in martial arts. He was captured by Head Constable Zhao and is now locked up in Wei City’s prison. Honestly, with his crimes, a swift execution would be considered lenient. But for some unknown reason, there’s been no official sentence. He’s just been sitting in prison this whole time.”
“You mean that bandit Liang Qi, the one who kidnaps, murders, and commits every kind of evil?” Li Yanchu asked.
“That’s the one,” the young attendant nodded.
Li Yanchu had heard of Liang Qi. He was a vicious criminal who operated around Wei City, notorious for kidnapping wealthy young heirs and noble ladies, then extorting huge ransoms.
But he never kept his word. Even after getting paid, he often murdered the hostages in cold blood.
“Head Constable Zhao has really rid the people of a menace!” Li Yanchu sighed in admiration.
Wei City had two head constables, Zhao Wuzhu and Wang Chongshan, both skilled martial artists with iron fists.
Wei City was a bustling hub close to the docks with merchants constantly coming and going. The place was teeming with all sorts of characters, both righteous and shady. The city’s law and order rested squarely on the shoulders of Head Constable Zhao and Head Constable Wang, who kept all the riffraff in check.
However, since this matter involved imperial authorities hunting down bandits and not anything supernatural, Li Yanchu didn’t look further into it.
He had tested a few things recently, like giving alms to beggars on the roadside and offering food to the poor, yet none of it earned him any merit points. Maybe it only worked when the act wasn’t deliberate? Still, Li Yanchu was an easygoing person by nature. He didn’t stress about not getting merit and stopped trying to force it.
The mature innkeeper of the Taiping Inn had also started treating him much better lately; her gaze had softened a great deal. At least she wasn’t snapping at him with sharp words anymore.
As Li Yanchu sipped tea in the inn, the alluring innkeeper came over and sat with him for a bit, chatting casually. It made the other guests in the inn green with envy. That full, heavy bosom of the innkeeper was nearly impossible to look away from once in motion.
Only Li Yanchu had the privilege of being treated this way. Though in the past it had been about rent collection and biting sarcasm, today it was nothing more than a friendly chat.
After the voluptuous innkeeper sashayed off, Li Yanchu finally paid his bill and left the Taiping Inn. He liked the lively atmosphere of the inn, where all kinds of juicy street gossip flowed freely.
This, perhaps, was what people meant by “the warmth and bustle of the mortal world.” Of course, that had absolutely nothing to do with the alluring and gorgeous innkeeper.
After leaving the Taiping Inn, Li Yanchu finished buying the ingredients he needed and returned to Qingyun Temple to perform another Decree of Bestowal. Though it was only a single street apart, one side belonged to the world of mortals, the other to the world beyond.
No one really knew why Li Yanchu’s master, Daoist Master Xuancheng, had chosen this exact location to establish a Daoist temple.
Could it have been for the view of the innkeeper? Li Yanchu mused silently.
Honestly, that might actually be possible. His master didn’t look the least bit like a lofty master. He lacked the bearing of a true expert and didn’t seem at all like a genuine Daoist master with real skill.
In his fifties, with a square-shaped face and an upright demeanor, he wore a Daoist robe so faded it had turned nearly white from washing, and a pair of shifang shoes in alternating blue and white[2]. He looked more like a village farmer than a Daoist.
His favorite pastime? Reading the fortunes of slim, beautiful young women. He liked holding their delicate hands and chatting for half the day.
Thinking about his master brought a wave of warmth to Li Yanchu’s heart. That man had been the first person he truly acknowledged. Though somewhat unorthodox, he had a good heart and treated Li Yanchu with profound kindness, practically giving him a second life.
Li Yanchu opened the yellowed old book in his hands. On the cover were four bold words, The Yellow Court Classic. This ancient text contained a method of breathing. Its greatest challenge lay in perceiving the spirit qi of heaven and earth, and absorbing spirit qi.
Li Yanchu sat cross-legged and began meditating, closing his eyes as he followed the Daoist breathing techniques passed down by his master.
A faint white mist, invisible to the naked eye, was drawn in through his nose and mouth. It then flowed into his chest and organs, nourishing his body and bones.
In Daoist cultivation, one absorbed innate qi, while martial artists of the jianghu trained in acquired true qi. The two could not be compared.
According to his master, he began cultivating the Dao at the age of seven. In three years, he had read through the Daoist classics, training his mind and character. He then spent two years practicing martial forms, strengthening his muscles and bones. It took another three years before he could sense the spirit qi of heaven and earth and begin guiding it into his body.
Five more years passed before he began to grasp the fundamentals. After diligently cultivating for over thirty years, he finally reached his current level. By then, his talent already ranked among the top ten in the temple’s history, and he successfully inherited the Dao lineage, becoming the head of Qingyun Temple.
Li Yanchu had mentally prepared himself for ten years of hardship, but to his surprise, he sensed the spirit qi of heaven and earth after just one round of cultivation!
The look on Daoist Master Xuancheng’s face back then was truly a sight to behold.
Yet now, a full year had passed, and Li Yanchu’s cultivation of the methods in The Yellow Court Classic still hadn’t shown any major breakthroughs. The spirit qi he absorbed each day was as thin as drifting threads, barely trickling into his dantian[3] and sea of qi.
This cultivation method cultivates in the five elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—simultaneously, creating a cycle of endless growth. Its power was five times greater than that of ordinary techniques.
But its difficulty… was also five times greater than most!
Li Yanchu gazed into his inner qi sea, where the spirit qi was still sparse and feeble, and let out a faint sigh. He then withdrew from his meditative state.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Suddenly, loud, urgent knocks pounded against the door. “Open up! Open up! The authorities are searching for a fugitive!”
Li Yanchu’s eyes sharpened at once.
1. Lingzhi (Chinese: 灵芝) is the name for one form of the mushroom Ganoderma lucidum, and its close relative Ganoderma tsugae, which grows in the northern Eastern Hemlock forests. Ganoderma lucidum enjoys special veneration in Asia, where it has been used in traditional Chinese medicine as a herbal medicine for more than 4,000 years, making it one of the oldest mushrooms known to have been used in medicine.
The word lingzhi, in Chinese, means "herb of spirit potency" and has also been described as "mushroom of immortality". Because of its presumed health benefits and apparent absence of side-effects, it has attained a reputation in the East as the ultimate herbal substance. ☜
2. Shifang shoes are a type of footwear worn in traditional Daoist attire. The ten holes on each shoe represent the ten directions: east, south, west, north, northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest, above, and below. The design symbolizes a Daoist’s journey across all corners of the world, hence the name “Shifang” (Ten Directions). ☜
3. Dantian are the "qi focus flow centers," important focal points for meditative and exercise techniques such as qigong, martial arts such as tai chi, and in traditional Chinese medicine. Dantian is also now commonly understood to refer to the diaphragm in various Qigong practices. The term dantian used by itself usually refers to the lower dantian, which is at the crossing of the horizontal line behind the Ren-6 acupoint and vertical line above the perineum. ☜
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