Lanke Chess Edge
Chapter 37: Practice Martial Arts First

“Cooo, coo-coo, cooo!”

The crowing of roosters sounded before dawn.

In the courtyard of Ju’an Pavilion, Ji Yuan, who was still reading books, realized that almost an entire night had passed.

In the time between the third and fourth watches,¹ Ji Yuan had been practicing the Transformation of Heaven and Earth of from the “Qi Guiding Art,” which allowed his body to be comprehensively nourished with spiritual energy.

In the process, Ji Yuan also tried using the chess piece to gather energy, but this time, he chose to disperse all the gathered spiritual energy, before using the Qi Guiding Art to absorb it.

In this way, a higher concentration of energy gathered in the small courtyard. While the efficiency of the Qi Guiding Art was greatly improved, Ji Yuan himself did not feel any corresponding pain or burden.

But, in the end, this method still had a limit, and Ji Yuan believed that limit was his current body.

When he reached the time of the fourth watch, Ji Yuan could feel that the spiritual energy that his body could hold had reached its limit. Spiritual energy was beginning to accumulate in various parts of his body, slowly tempering it with declining efficiency.

Ji Yuan was helpless at this point. He only had the one Qi Guiding Art, and no Qi Training Arts whatsoever. There was only so much he can do. This was already much better than gathering Qi on his own.

So he continued to pick up the bamboo slips to read another book related to cultivation.

This bamboo slip was about some spell techniques.² Most of the text talked about common categories of spell techniques, such as the five elements, yin and yang, thunder spells, illusions, as well as some special, uncategorized techniques, such as how to enter dreams, attract souls, and restrain spirits, among other things. The book also mentioned aspects related to Shinto, such as the gods of incense, or gods of mountains and rivers.³

But because the book itself is was only two volumes of bamboo slips, no matter how small the characters were, the content was actually fairly limited, so it was just a superficial overview of the various concepts.

Some minor spells had been recorded at the end of the book. There were two stealth⁴ techniques, a minor fire control technique categorized under the fire element, and a minor water control technique under the water element.⁵

Even if Ji Yuan hadn’t practiced the Qi Guiding Art, unrefined spiritual energy was enough to perform these basic techniques. However, that was only when considering actually performing them; Ji Yuan still needed to learn and master them, so there was no way for him to immediately try them out.

These bamboo slips were just the basics, they opened the door to a truly new world for Ji Yuan, bringing him an unprecedented sense of excitement and anticipation.

At this moment, Ji Yuan felt like a child pestering his uncle and grandfather to tell him stories of when they were children, full of longing for this world where all kinds of magic existed.

Tired? Sorry, that kind of feeling didn’t exist right now!

“Cooo, coo-coooo!”

This time, the sound of the rooster crowing was very close to Ju’an Pavilion. Most likely the roosters in the nearby chicken coops had also begun to crow.

“Hoooh… Before I knew, it I read all night!”

The breeze blew, bringing Ji Yuan the coolness of early spring. He knew that he was still far away in his practice from gaining an invulnerability to cold and heat.

The branches of the jujube tree in the courtyard rustled and danced gently with the breeze.

Ji Yuan looked up at this old jujube tree. It should bear lots of fruits during the harvest season!

In this world, unless you really reached the level of immortals, you couldn’t even think about eating out-of-season vegetables and fruits, so Ji Yuan was also looking forward to eating these fresh and sweet jujubes.

“It’s just you and me reading the book together all night. It’s not bad, I’m not too lonely!”

Ji Yuan comforted himself, smiled, gently put down the bamboo slips in his hand, and stretched his body in the courtyard.

He had read the two most important books overnight. In order to balance work and rest, Ji Yuan rummaged through the remaining bookcases to find other interesting books.

The chess books and chess records were put aside first, and he directly went to the couple volumes of martial arts books. In the remaining 10 volumes of bamboo slips, aside from one chess book and two chess records, there were only two martial arts books within the other 7 volumes.

One was the “Iron Punishment Battle Guide” which covered inner strength, mental methods, moves, and combat skills, and covered 6 volumes of bamboo slips; the other was “Eagle Claw Hand,” which only covered breathing techniques and fighting moves.

From the name, there was little left to guesswork, and the rest was all answered in the book description.

These two martial arts secrets are all martial arts similar to those practiced by people in positions like that of public police officers and bailiffs.⁶ Judging from his brief glance at the text, these exercises shouldn’t be top-secret martial arts, but they were by no means something commonly found on the street. They belonged to the intermediate and upper-class of martial arts.

Both martial arts were created by masters in the Yamen⁷ who were known at that time as the Iron Captors of Six Provinces,⁸ and who spent their whole lives creating those martial arts. The exercises were characterized as being easy to learn, fast to practice, and having powerful moves. All public servants learned them.

Additionally, martial arts that were classified as intermediate or superior grade were naturally not simple. They were easy to learn but difficult to master, and it was difficult for them to produce a true master.

Ji Yuan couldn’t help but laugh and cry when he read it.

These two books of martial arts secrets contained a lot of lengthy content, the amount of which far exceeded that of the two books on Qi cultivation. However, in Ji Yuan’s eyes right now, they just felt very complicated.

“Martial arts!”

Ji Yuan tossed the bamboo slips in hands up and down. Since there was currently no better cultivation method, it would be good to practice martial arts at least as a means for self-defense.

. . .

The sun rose and set, and more than half a month passed. and sets, and more than half a month has passed. Ji Yuan lived a selfless and leisurely life, immersed in an experience that reminded him of the first time he had encountered computer games in his previous life.

When his body could withstand the spiritual energy, he used the holding posture⁹ to gather the spiritual Qi, then used the Transformation of Heaven and Earth to guide and circulate the energy. After that, he practiced the exercises in the two martial arts books, and read the chess archives in his spare time.

All in all, apart from going out to eat every day, Ji Yuan lived a more sedentary life than even his previous life. Therefore, apart from his neighbors in Tian Niu Square, no one else even knew that Ji Yuan existed, apart from the people he saw on his frequent trips to the noodle stand.

On this particular day, Ji Yuan adjusted his breathing, stood up straight as a pine tree, and raised his feet slightly on tiptoe.

Swoosh~

His whole body suddenly jumped up, and stepped lightly on the jujube tree in the courtyard. In a dozen steps, he had run directly to the top of the tree, leaping three more with a graceful backflip.

The whole movement was smooth, and as his body reached the height of his leap, it did not fall like any heavy object. Instead, with a breath, like a swallow spreading its wings, he quickly and lightly stood on a branch of the jujube tree, pressing the branch down with a creaking sound, into a bent arc.

His whole body balanced firmly on the branch, and a breath of true Qi seemed to say with the branches and the center of gravity of his body. As long as the spiritual energy did not dissipate for a certain period of time, his weight would not overwhelm the branches.

‘I’m so handsome!’

Ji Yuan couldn’t help but shout in his heart!

After practicing Qi cultivation for so long, he had finally achieved his current level. Although Ji Yuan had no point of comparison, he felt that his martial arts training was definitely faster than could be imagined. After all, the length of hard training in the books of martial arts secrets was often counted in years.

In his final analysis, the reason for his high efficiency in martial arts training was likely due to his spiritual energy.

For those who practiced martial arts in the mortal world, the transition from acquired skill to innate skill was a very high barrier.¹⁰ The description of the innate realm in the books of martial arts secrets was very fantastical. It was like feeling the vastness of heaven and earth, and using the power of heaven and earth to wash away the impurities in the marrow and cleanse the internal organs.

According to Ji Yuan’s understanding, the so-called innate realm meant that one had begun to be able to purify themselves with the help of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. The increase in quality of one’s internal power at the innate stage could be said to be the result of mixing the Qi of the world with vital Qi.¹¹

Therefore, Ji Yuan, for whom internal skills were very easy to acquire, also had an easy time learning martial arts and various cultivation practices.

The moves were a little more troublesome. After all, they were martial arts that required a lot of practice. However, internal strength and external moves complemented each other. With the support of the rapidly improving internal skills, the progress of the martial arts moves would naturally also improve day by day.

There was a saying in the book, that “in the innate stage, one can make connections between all kinds of things.”¹² Ji Yuan thought that this was a bit exaggerated, but it also fully illustrated the leap-forward improvement in efficiency.

To immortal cultivators, this would be just a trivial art to be scorned, but Ji Yuan would never tire of it!

Putting away his thoughts, Ji Yuan, who was standing at the top of the tree, jumped down and stood firmly beside the stone table. He stretched out his leg and swung his foot in a wide arc. A jujube branch flew over his head, his right leg extending up towards the sky in a kick, before Ji Yuan caught it firmly.

‘Crazy! ’

This kind of action would probably have torn his balls in his last lifetime, but now it was as simple as drinking water.

Ji Yuan pondered for a while. He then replaced the broad-backed straight knife¹³ with a branch, and began to dance in the courtyard, making a series of swishing and whooshing sounds.

1. Between midnight and 3AM ↩︎
2. Again, like last chapter, this could be translated as “spells” or as “energy manipulation.” I don’t like “spells,” but it’s looking more and more like I have to use it. ↩︎
3. i.e. gods that gain power based on people’s worship in temples, like City Gods (hence the incense), versus gods that simply are, like gods of natural landscapes ↩︎
4. Lit: “smokescreen,” but I’m pretty sure it’s more in terms of misdirection ↩︎
5. The specification is to categorize each technique under its corresponding element, so even if it seems obvious, it’s important to note that this is fire control under the fire element, not fire control under the wind element or something like that; someone with a wind affinity would have trouble with the former but no trouble with the latter. ↩︎
6. 捕快 (bǔkuài): “bailiff responsible for catching criminals (in imperial China)” ↩︎
7. Once again, this is the residence of a public official, also used to signify government of Ancient China in general. I’m going to stop translating it in some contexts since it comes up a lot. ↩︎
8. 六 (liù): six (6); 州 (zhōu): prefecture/province/state; 铁 (tiě): iron, weapons, arms, strong, violent, unshakeable (lots of things it could be… I went with the first option); 捕 (bǔ) to catch/capture; 的 (de) possessive particle “of” ↩︎
9. Closest I could find was meditation posture, which is called Asana – in this particular case, it would be sitting cross-legged (or lotus-style) with his hands on his knees. ↩︎
10. You will probably have seen this in other books as the “innate realm.” Practically speaking, in the context of cultivation, reaching the “innate realm” or something similar means having internalized the practice and the energy to make it a part of yourself, harmonizing with the flow of energy in nature. You start out in the “acquired” state, where the Qi and energy you are using is external, and then slowly transition to the innate or internal state, where the Qi is now a part of you – hence the ability to do more with your energy and the significant achievement of this stage. ↩︎
11. 杂糅了灵气的特殊真气 ↩︎
12. 一达先天百类通 not a real saying. It’s the idea that, once you reach expertise in something, you can make all kinds of connections and use that understanding to help you learn other things. ↩︎
13. When did he get a knife? No clue. I’m assuming he used one to cut the jujube branch down but it never said. Oh well. ↩︎