Lanke Chess Edge
Chapter 44: The Soaring Dragon Accompanies the Flowers

The red fox had fallen asleep on the stone table at some point. The gentle breeze blew through his hair from time to time. A big tail covered his body, sweeping in front of him every so often.

Ji Yuan changed out of the green robe that had been stained with the fox’s blood, and put on a wide-sleeved long gown that was bluer in color, but similar in style. He saw this scene when he walked out of his room.

The image of the red fox lying under the jujube tree was very peaceful.

Seeing Ji Yuan come out of the house, the fox who had been sleeping soundly opened his eyes and looked at him.

“You rest at home, I’ll go to the market to buy some food for you…”

As he spoke, Ji Yuan walked past the red fox. He stopped before opening the courtyard door, then turned to look down at the fox, who had been staring at him.

“While you are living here in Ju’an Pavilion, I don’t want to find that one of the restaurants in the market is inexplicably short of chickens and ducks. Do you understand?”

Obviously, Ji Yuan’s tone was very kind, but under those eyes that resembled ancient, still wells, Red Fox felt guilty.

“Wuuuu…”

After finishing his words, Ji Yuan went out to the market.

Today he still went back to Sun Ji Noodle Stall. From afar, he could hear diners at the noodle stall chatting about this morning’s street gossip.

“Hey, Mr. Ji is here!!”

It was Old Man Sun who first noticed Ji Yuan. The chatter at the noodle stall suddenly fell silent. Many faces turned to look at him. When Ji Yuan’s eyes turned back to them, they immediately spun around and continued eating their noodles.

“Hello, Mr. Ji!”

Two regular customers who had known Ji Yuan before greeted him.

“Hello!”

By the time Ji Yuan responded, he had already walked under the noodle stall’s canopy. Old Man Sun purposefully came out of the stall to wipe clean the only free table another time.

“Mr. Ji, please take a seat. There is haggis¹ today, I’ve reserved it for you!”

“Okay, as usual, a bowl of braised noodles and a bowl of haggis!”

Ji Yuan rolled up his sleeves and sat down in his seat. Old Man Sun did not leave, but asked in a low voice.

“Mr. Ji, I heard someone say that this noon, you saved a fox?”

Those who were familiar with him knew that Mr. Ji from Tian Niu Square was humble, courteous, and generous. Old Man Sun, who considered himself quite familiar with Ji Yuan, did not feel any pressure to restrain himself, so he naturally asked what he was curious about.

The other diners also listened attentively, and even the sound of people slurping noodles had vanished.

Ji Yuan thought it was a little funny. Even in a different era, people’s desire to pursue gossip stayed unchanged. There was no pressure, so he simply spoke up.

“It’s true. I was walking down the street at that time. The fox had been bitten by one of the yellow dogs and chased and beaten by idle men. It fled all the way to my feet. When I saw its miserable appearance, I felt sorry for it, and rescued it.”

This kind of story was similar to those of rich old men marrying concubines: they were all topics that would fade away after a while. Although it was rare for a fox to worship someone, in the end it wouldn’t affect ordinary people. People would just be left with a bit of a special impression of Mr. Ji from Tian Niu Square.

Ji Yuan spoke in understatements, and did not mention anything mysterious in the story of the fox kneeling to him, or the yellow dogs retreating.

“Mr. Ji is really a kind person!”

Old man Sun had to do business, so he could not stay any longer to chat. He simply praised Ji Yuan and went back to work. However, he became more and more convinced that Ji Yuan was indeed a strange person, and wondered whether he might be able to ask him to interpret his dreams in the future, or something like that.

Today, Ji Yuan changed his habit of eating slowly. He ate his bowl of noodles quickly, then went straight to the market to buy two chickens, one live one, and the other killed by the stall owner.

When he returned home, the old hen that he was carrying in his arms was still struggling and clucking. He pushed open the courtyard door of Ju’an Pavilion.

The chicken and the fox instantly locked eyes on each other.

“Cuckoo!! Cluck cluck!!! Cluck cluck cluck!!”

The old hen suddenly became lively and jumped in instinctual terror, flapping her wings vigorously. On the other side, the fox stood up from his spot on the stone table and grinned, revealing teeth and claws in a fierce expression. “Ziii… Ziii…”²

Ji Yuan was a little nervous, so he closed the courtyard door and raised the dead chicken in his other hand towards the red fox.

“You can eat this today, and I’ll give you the live chicken when you recover.”

After finishing his words, Ji Yuan walked directly to the side of the kitchen, locked the hen in the dusty chicken coop, and went into the kitchen to get a pot to boil water.

Although he didn’t know how to cook, Ji Yuan was skilled with knives thanks to his martial arts. With a few strokes, he was able to remove all the chicken bones and prepared the steps to make simple boiled chicken.

Although he seemed to be recovering well, Ji Yuan had seen what the fox looked like in the morning, after all, so it would be better for him to eat a cooked meal for now.

……

As dusk gradually fell, Ji Yuan brought the boiled chicken in a casserole out to the stone table, and began to carefully study the copybook.

In his last life, there was a saying that calligraphy was like swordsmanship.³ He didn’t believe it before, but now he had no other choice but to change his mind.

The words on this copybook were linked together, as if it were a sharp, wandering dragon. There was no intuitive description of the sword moves, but in Ji Yuan’s eyes, he could make out the feeling of the natural momentum of a sword.

With a wave of his hand, a twig under his feet flew up and landed in Ji Yuan’s hand. He didn’t know whether there was an equivalent cultivation technique, but the high-level internal skill supposedly called called “retrieving objects from air” was really quite impressive when used with spiritual energy. It gave off an elegant feeling without excessively showing off.⁴

“Whoosh … .whoosh … whoo…”

Using a thin branch as a sword, without any specific sword skills, the free and unrestrained sword force was temporarily integrated with the skills of the Iron Punishment Battle Guide. He relied on his senses to remove any places that felt jerky. Hooks, hanging pauses, dots, flicking upwards, stabbing, lifting,⁵ he casually traced the characters with his fingertips.

Gradually, the influence of the sword technique disappeared, and even any indication of the specific moves vanished. Ji Yuan felt as if he were practicing calligraphy with his brush. The sword force was like the tip of a pen, and the afterimage of the sword seemed as if it were only one blow and one long move, but still natural and coherent as a dragon.

In this life, Ji Yuan’s body possessed of exquisite calligraphy, but at this moment, the Sword Intent Inscription felt more like a sword dance.

The wind in the courtyard of Ju’an Pavilion moved along with his will. When the blade swayed gently, the breeze slowly surrounded it. When the sword intent grew sharp, the breeze rose and fell fiercely. It was unpredictable and magical!

Ji Yuan became more and more free with his movements until he was doing as he pleased. The movement of the thin branch in his hand seemed as if it were pulled by sticky threads. Finally, as he waved his sleeves and swung his sword, the breeze in the courtyard picked up the fallen jujube flowers and rushed diagonally upwards out of the small courtyard, turning into a faint blue and yellow dragon. It flew above Tian Niu Square and eventually dissipated.

Some people smelled the fragrance and looked up, only to see the breeze bringing flowers that fell like rain…

After a long while, the wind finally stopped in the small pavilion, and the sky was already full of stars!

Ji Yuan slowly calmed down his breath. This feeling of contentment was really refreshing. More importantly, even no one could see him at the moment, he knew he must look really handsome and dashing right now!

“That’s right, regardless of the origin of this Sword Intent copybook that doesn’t contain sword moves, I’ll just call it Soaring Dragon!”

Perhaps, decades ago, it would never have occurred to the peerless master Mad Disciple Zuo that the precious treasures in his tomb held no interest for Ji Yuan, but that his Sword Intent Inscription, which he had written with the emotion of his lifetime’s devotion to the sword before he passed away, was regarded as a treasure.

The fox had already finished eating the chicken, and stared blankly at Ji Yuan’s dragon circling the courtyard. The sight of the fallen flowers flying about the yard and flying away like a dragon in the wind strongly shocked the red fox!

T/n: The calligraphy/swordsmanship was a flipping PAIN to translate holy guacamole. TT_TT *sobs in corner*

1. In case you were inclined (as I was) to look this up, be aware that you’ll mostly get results from the traditional Scottish dish. As you could probably tell, this story is not set in Scotland. The haggis we’re looking at here is Shaanxi’s haggis soup; naturally, it can’t be called that in the story because Shaanxi Province is a real-world province, and probably doesn’t exist in-story, so we just get “haggis soup”. The reason the Scottish dish and the Chinese dish use the same word is because both are made with sheep offal. ↩︎
2. 呲… 呲… onomatopoeia in the raws ↩︎
3. I couldn’t find the exact saying, but this is a VERY commonly held sentiment, for many reasons: it was common for samurai to learn arts and philosophy, and calligraphy/handwriting was a sign of the well-educated, as well as a way to determine personality; in calligraphy and swordsmanship you cannot rectify mistakes; the strokes of calligraphy are said to be imbued (if done well) with vital energy… and so on. There are a LOT of parallels and a ton of stuff has been written about it. In this story, the author is using this collective metaphor and making it literal — the brushstrokes in the Sword Intent Inscription are literally sword strokes, or very close to it. ↩︎
4. Lit: without the smell of fireworks ↩︎
5. The basic strokes of Chinese calligraphy are (simplified character / traditional character): 点 / 點 diǎn (dot), 横 / 橫 hèng (horizontal line), 竖 / 豎 shù (vertical line), 提 / 挑 tí/Tiāo (tick mark), 撇 piě (sweep left), 捺 nà (sweep right), 折 zhé (turn), 钩 / 鈎 gōu (hook). Together, those make up the 8 key Chinese strokes (there are 2 more that aren’t relevant here, just designating turns). In this sentence, we clearly have the hook (1st item in list), the dot (3rd), the tick mark (4th), so we can assume that JY’s sword is following those movements (stabs & flourishes). The 2nd, 5th, and 6th characters aren’t exact matches to the stroke characters, so we’ll translate them by meaning. 挂 (guà): hang/suspend, in terms of pausing between brushstrokes and in between sword movements; 剌 (lá): Slash, pretty self-evident there, both for swordsmanship and calligraphy; 撩 (liāo): lift, again both lifting/flicking the brush and drawing back/raising the sword. ↩︎