Martial Arts Master

It was the latter half of June. At the new campus area of Songcheng University.

“Feels like ages since I have been here…” Yan Zheke stood on the long bridge, peering at the glimmering surface of the Weishui lake illuminated by street lights. She then turned her eyes to the lakeside path, the route which Lou Cheng had taken countless times, day after day. It was as though every scene and corner sparked a different memory in her.

Memories of the past pierced barriers of time, vividly appearing in her mind once again.

Lou Cheng was equally affected. He assented sentimentally, “It’s been a year or so since I went down this path too.”

But he always looked back to the days of his first love, reminiscing on the purest and sweetest days of his life. He would think about how difficult it was for them to get together, and remind himself not to take things for granted. He understood the importance of treasuring and cherishing his relationship.

“Here, let me take you on a stroll again~,” said Yan Zheke invitingly, holding out her delicate right hand. She smiled, her eyes as bright as stars.

Lou Cheng took her hand at once. He looked ahead and coughed two times, then laughed in a heh-heh manner.

“If memory serves me right, whenever you invited me to a stroll by the lake, it was the silent cue for me to take initiative…”

What about today?

The words made Yan Zheke gape and widen her eyes. Color rose to her pretty face.

“That’s not true!”

“It was all your fault for being a pervert!”

“That’s it, we are not strolling anymore!” she added petulantly, trying to reclaim her hand. But Lou Cheng held her hand tightly. When she couldn’t break free, she gnashed her teeth and followed behind Lou Cheng in feigned indignation. They walked from the long bridge to the lakeside, past memories and familiar sceneries. A journey where reality intertwined with memories.

There were the times when they held hands. The times they first kissed. The times she took out the tissues and he wiped the wooden bench clean. The times they chatted idly. The times when the innocent him rejoiced at stealing a few kisses whenever they went strolling. They all came to them, rushing. It was as though Yan Zheke and Lou Cheng had walked into the chasm between past and present.

“I’m thankful. I’m thankful that we are still together. If we aren’t, it would definitely have been very, very regrettable…” mused Yan Zheke sentimentally.

That kind of regret leaves a wound that never heals.

Discreetly moving his fingers, Lou Cheng interlocked his hands tightly with little fairy’s.

“We will be together for the rest of our lives,” he declared earnestly.

“Of course!” Yan Zheke nodded vigorously.

A few steps later, Lou Cheng pointed to a spot beside the road and chuckled.

“That’s where I found the black carp and Jindan,” he said.

“Right there, huh…” Yan Zheke murmured. Raising her eyebrows, she looked to the direction curiously.

After gazing at it for a few seconds, she suddenly turned sideways to face the lake.

Narrowing her eyes, she put her hands together and began chanting.

“What are you doing, Ke Ke?” Lou Cheng asked blankly.

Her dimpled smile appeared. She pursed her lips slightly and gave him a cute smile.

“I’m thanking the black carp! If not for it, some dummy somewhere would probably have backed down by himself. It marked the beginning of everything!”

“I doubt it’s going to appreciate your words… It would have preferred a filthy life than a worthy death,” Lou Cheng said, shaking his head in amusement. He cleared his throat. “Everything truly began, the moment I set my eyes on you standing outside the Martial Arts Dojo in your traditional Han costume. That was what made me work up the courage to talk to you. If that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t even be jogging by the lake.”

Yan Zheke’s starry eyes moved in a coquettish way. Amused, she asked, “Like the lyric? Just because I’ve taken an extra glance at you in the crowd?”

Her silvery voice rang through the air.

Lou Cheng listened with a smile.

“Ke Ke, is this your way of flirting with me?” he teased.

“Whatever you say~” Yan Zheke walked in brisk steps with her hands crossed at her back.

After a lap around the lake, the couple relived the moments where they once made out. Afterward, they calmed down their breathing and cooled out the hotness on their faces. That was when Geezer Shi finally showed up.

He looked rattled as always, but the frequency of his coughing had decreased noticeably. Though the Nine Words Formula’s effect of improving spirits and strengthening the body did not cure his old wounds completely, it did alleviate them significantly.

“Dive in. If you had not mentioned it, I would have totally forgotten about the matter,” admitted Shi Jianguo frankly.

Yan Zheke tittered with her hands on her lips. The master and disciple had a lot in common when it came to certain things!

Birds of a feather flock together!

Ugh, I’m insulting myself…

Unreliable old man… Lou Cheng mocked internally. He rid himself of his phone, wallet and other miscellaneous items and passed them to his wife.

After a moment of hesitation, Geezer Shi waved away the thought of playing tough and surrendered his phone. Step by step, he walked into the lake. A frosted air surrounded him, forming into crystal-clear ice as though he was about to encase himself in ice. Yet his movements were unrestrained

Lou Cheng mimicked him. He took a deep breath. A layer of ice glowed on every inch of his skin.

As the master and disciple walked further into the water, the exposed parts of their bodies gradually decreased. At last, they completely vanished before Yan Zheke’s eyes, maintaining their center of gravity underwater.

The waves around them shimmered. An indistinct pressure closed in on them. Lou Cheng entered a fetal state, just like back when he trained underwater attempting to mutate his root pulp.

At his present level, staying a couple of minutes underwater was no big deal.

Amidst the swaying lush reed, Geezer Shi’s lips opened and parted, forming rings of ripples that rushed to Lou Cheng. It was as though the sound come from heaven.

“The bottom of this lake is huge. Back then I made a peremptory search but nothing turned up. Are you expecting me to comb the area inch by inch this time?”

Lou Cheng replied by transmitting his voice too. “Think about it, Master. The Jindan must have acted right after being swallowed by the black carp. If so, it couldn’t have swum or leaped far from that area. If we scour the region near where I found the carp, we might discover something.”

“If we find nothing, I’ll give you a good, hard slap on the face!” Geezer Shi always felt that his disciple was unreliable at many times.

They scanned around for anything strange as they walked under the gloomy glimmering waters, slow and steadily. They activated their Ice Mirror and Enemy Heart Freezing Move to detect any minuscule movements.

After a long search near the lake, Geezer Shi stopped in his tracks. Frowning, he echoed,

“You know, this place actually feels slightly different from when I last came here. It’s as if the landscape changes with the lunar phase…”

He would not have came to the realization in one search, but the singularity presented itself when he compared two searches.

With his powerful night-vision ability, Lou Cheng used the weak light to take in everything around him.

There was the cluster of gravels and rocks, the swaying reeds, and pieces of trash left by some people. Aside from those, there was nothing else, let alone any places that resembled a cave entrance.

After pondering, Lou Cheng decided to go by his initial plan. The shape of his hand seals changed rapidly as he formed them in succession; based on the visualized ancient character in his mind.

“Confrontation! Army! Fighting! Swordsman!” He opened his mouth to push out the words. The echoing sound made the waves expand outward rhythmically.

“Wholeness! Formation! Dequeuing! Forwarding! Attainment!”

The moment he cast the Attainment Formula, the Nine seal scripts appeared in the lake in his mind, forming the three-dimensional and enigmatic runes.

Rumble!

At that moment, a deep humming sounded from somewhere. Beneath the quivering waves, the lakebed formed by sand and stones split apart, revealing a flight of stone steps leading downward.

“A blind set up through the help of the moon…” Geezer Shi commented in contempt. “Hey, brat. It was a waning crescent on the night you found the Jindan, wasn’t it? And black carps aren’t exactly known for their intelligence.”

“I can’t remember…” Lou Cheng confessed.

“You never remember anything!” Geezer Shi chided, shaking his head in amusement. He followed the stone steps that led to the cave interior. It was moist but dry inside.

Holding his excitement in check, Lou Cheng walked behind his master. When they were deep in the bottom, they saw a neat and spacious stone room.

There was a traditional monk bed, on which lay a few sheets of yellowing paper and a tattered feather raiment.

“Doesn’t look like the Longhu Immortal’s abode…” Geezer Shi muttered, frowning. He had seen a fair share of cultivation ruins in his life.

Lou Cheng looked around and made a guess.

“Perhaps it’s the venue for his do-or-die breakthrough attempt?”

The feather raiment seems to have been worn by the Longhu Immortal before his death. Where then, is his body?

“Plausible.” Geezer Shi got closer and reached out to grab it, but the gentle breeze from his movement made the raiment corrode instantly, turning into dust and scattering around the room.

On the other hand, the note-like pages were still intact.

Peering, Lou Cheng read out the words on the first page.

“My time is here. A hundred and thirty years of training, all about to be gone. Alack, alack!’

“Long have my antecedents sought to separate their souls from their bodies, create a baby in a Jindan, escape the confinements of a material body, and peregrinate all over heaven and earth. Pity. None succeeded in centuries. I reject this path. I will imitate the Immortals’ way of creating Dan with the essence of heaven and earth, but the future is bleak and fraught with dangers. The end.”

Geezer Shi quickly browsed through the other pages. In the end, the master and disciple finally understood what the Longhu Immortal did and why his Jindan was preserved until the present.

According to the Longhu Immortal, once a cultivator passes away, the Jindan that loses is not long controlled by their soul would either quickly lose control and explode or barely maintain balance and slowly dissipate in the future. He used Ice and Fire to imitate Yin and Yang; forming a balanced and revolving Dan with the starry skies. By integrating nature, he hoped that the pill would be Immortal like heaven and earth.

With that in mind, he decided to make a gamble before he passed away: he used a kungfu that reverses his spirits to strengthen his material body. The disintegration of his body would kindle his spirits, merging his soul and Jindan into one through and through. By using Jindan’s undying element, he wanted to acquire an Immortal’s body. In view of the possibility of success, he rearranged the constellation order in the Jindan interior, storing the Nine Words Formula and his own kungfu into it too.

No one had ever attempted this before, and the Longhu Immortal wasn’t the least confident about it. Before his attempt, he wrote down notes as reference for fellow Daoists. In a way, he made himself the white rat.

As to what happened in between, Lou Cheng and Geezer Shi could never fathom. But they knew the ending— the Longhu Immortal didn’t live forever; the Jindan did not have an independent will, but somehow lasted until the present.