Sichuan's Mad Dragon (Novel) - Chapter 43 - Calming the Ox

Chapter 43 – Calming the Ox

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Ju-seong smacked his lips as he ignited the Flame Crow Six Stage Art’s energy to melt the wax sealing the cylinder.

“Now, what fortune awaits inside. My, I am finding such things in my life now.”

“Really now, what good could be in something stored inside such a hideous statue.”

“Do not be jealous. If it is a good secret manual, I shall let you look at it too.”

Red Beggar looked at Ju-seong with surprised eyes. Sharing martial arts secret manuals was an unwritten law of the martial world, something not done even between close companions.

Because it could someday strangle your own neck.

‘I can never fully figure this man out.’

Ju-seong, not even sensing Red Beggar’s gaze, had unrolled the strange bamboo slip from inside the cylinder.

-Creak creak creak.

“Hmm… What is this thing? Is it like a talisman?”

Ju-seong furrowed his brow and stroked the surface of the bamboo slip.

Looking at it, it was not made of bamboo but seemed to be made from some animal’s bones.

It was tied together with something like yellowed sinew, and strange symbols and patterns were scribbled all over its surface.

“Sniff.”

Ju-seong put his nose to the slip, took a breath, then frowned and threw it away.

“What kind of garbage is this…”

“What is wrong?”

“That thing is made of human bones. Tied with human sinew. Ha, what kind of lunatics made such a thing.”

“There are all kinds in the world. Well well, a slip made of human bone, or should I say bone-slip…”

Ju-seong mercilessly stomped on the sinister object and crushed it. Whatever was drawn on it, he had no desire to examine it further.

“It does not look like the rain will stop, so let us sleep a bit here and then go. I shall start the fire.”

“Understood.”

Red Beggar went outside and gathered branches that were less wet, and Ju-seong lit a fire with a fire striker, then breathed the Flame Crow Six Stage Art’s internal energy into it to grow the flames.

The fire rippled and flickered like waves, like grass blades.

Ju-seong’s eyes gazing at the campfire sank into deep contemplation. The flames reflected in his pupils.

The movement of fire was a seductive dance. Foolish ones became entranced by it and lost their lives.

The flames danced, and his shadow stretched long across the shrine walls.

Within Ju-seong’s mind, the strange patterns he had seen earlier drifted about. They whispered ancient nonsense ominously, churning through his head.

The patterns and images on the bone-slip combined and separated, then overlapped again and spun round and round.

In that tumultuous parade of images, Ju-seong saw a figure burning red.

It was a single set of gestures. Continuous, long dance movements. It was fire itself.

But it was not the fire that warms cold bodies and cooks food. It was not the fire that crouches in the blacksmith’s forge and breathes out the power of creation.

It was purely a greedy blaze that wished to burn the entire world and reduce even the deepest roots to ashes.

The demonic path of flames.

“Ah…”

Ju-seong felt his mind growing distant. Was not this very blaze his destiny, was it not what this cursed killing intent he had been granted from heaven craved?

Then.

“Brother, Brother! What is suddenly wrong with you? Get ahold of yourself!”

He felt Red Beggar smacking his head.

“Red Beggar, that was too hard.”

“Was it? Sorry.”

It seemed like there was some emotion behind that. Or maybe not.

Anyway, thanks to that, Ju-seong barely escaped his trance. But the ordeal was just beginning.

“Ah damn it… Urk!”

“Oh no, what now. Are you all right?”

Ju-seong cursed and vomited blood. He had fallen into a mild qi deviation.

‘Ah, this is a complete mess.’

Originally, circulating internal energy was like an ox pulling a cart. The meridians were the roads the cart traveled.

Street-level third-rate cultivation methods had little in the cart and a weak ox.

If a weak ox collapsed and the cart overturned, there was not much inside to damage the meridians anyway.

The orthodox martial arts of great sects had calm, strong oxen pulling moderately loaded carts. Moving forward steadily and stably. Naturally, the ox rarely collapsed.

In the case of the Flame Crow Six Stage Art, the ox had a solid body but a rather violent temper. Moreover, the cart held at least twice as much as ordinary orthodox martial arts.

In short, output and energy gathering speed were excellent, but if one could not achieve theoretically perfect circulation, there was risk of qi deviation.

Ju-seong had exceptional energy sense and comprehension, so since learning the Flame Crow Six Stage Art, he had never failed in circulation.

Thanks to that, he had achieved stable and fast progress, but.

The Flame Crow Six Stage Art was not originally a stable martial art.

Moo…!

From Ju-seong’s inner self, he heard the displeased lowing of the ox throwing a tantrum. What a foul-tempered ox indeed.

‘Now, crazy ox. What displeases you so. Calm down.’

The ox seemed to have eaten some bad mushroom, for it was in quite a state. Naturally, his meridians were also wildly heaving.

It was fortunate that he had come to his senses in time thanks to Red Beggar. Ju-seong struggled to erase the mysterious dance movements that kept repeating in his head.

Thoughtlessness… he erased his thoughts. Ju-seong focused on emptying his mind and began reciting the Stillness-Bright Incantation.

Beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead and trickled down.

‘Damn, this is not working well.’

Ju-seong gritted his teeth. The dance movements resembling flames kept repeating in his head.

If he could push this imagination out of his head, his true energy would stop heaving and he would find peace of mind.

But it was simply not working.

Ah, damn it all…

“If you cannot avoid it, enjoy it.”

Madness glinted in Ju-seong’s eyes. Red Beggar, who had been watching anxiously, twirled his finger by his temple and asked.

“Have you really gone mad?”

Ju-seong ignored Red Beggar’s words and sank back into his inner world. The dance of flames had a strange and bewitching magical allure.

Ju-seong abruptly stood and vomited another handful of blood, then began mimicking the dance movements imprinted in his mind.

As he did so, he found similarities to the Three Yang Fist.

Ju-seong instinctively realized.

‘This is a martial art that is about a cousin once removed from the Flame Crow Six Stage Art.’

It was a martial art where movement and energy circulation happened simultaneously… what is commonly called a dynamic art, where cultivation method and external training proceed together. At first glance, training internal and external together seemed efficient, but such a martial art had already fallen out of use in the martial world. It was almost like a primordial martial art.

Ju-seong had heard an overview of martial arts history from the Divine Physician.

The beginning of martial arts was when humans first felt the natural energy of the world in ancient times and mimicked natural things to gather that energy in their bodies.

Thus, dynamic arts were the martial arts of primitivity.

Cultivating the dantian in the lower abdomen and circulating energy while sitting still were later developments.

Naturally, since the speed and efficiency of energy gathering far surpassed dynamic arts, dynamic arts naturally disappeared.

The blazing campfire flickered as if drawn along by Ju-seong’s hand and foot movements.

Fire caught on Ju-seong’s arms and legs, but there was no smell of burning flesh.

‘Ah…’

Ju-seong felt irresistible freedom. He was the flame, and the flame was him.

Fire by nature moved constantly, so sitting still to circulate energy made it hard to grasp its essence.

But at the same time, Ju-seong felt the malice within this movement.

Ju-seong could sense the origin of this martial art. Someone abandoned by the world must have created it while vowing to burn the whole world to ashes.

‘I am different from you. I must become one who embraces the abandoned. Because those who raised me did so…’

He owed the world a debt.

The troupe members had taken in and raised him, a roadside orphan with no relatives, and the Divine Physician had accepted him as a disciple despite knowing he bore the seed of a killing star.

He had been saved by goodwill many times over, so he too must do the same.

Ju-seong’s movements changed.

‘More gently, with only the heart of embracing.’

The violent fire demon lost its intensity.

Ju-seong’s flame became the fire that warms travelers’ bodies in a cold snowfield.

It became the fire that heats food in a farmer’s hut.

It became the fire that births hoes and plows, pots and sickles in the blacksmith’s forge.

‘A flame where the cold and abandoned find comfort…’

Ju-seong thought, and thought again.

Red Beggar watched Ju-seong’s actions in a daze.

At first he thought Ju-seong had really gone mad, having suffered qi deviation and then suddenly leaping up to dance.

Then the campfire rose up greatly and swayed this way and that following Ju-seong’s movements, casting all sorts of ominous shadows on the walls.

“…Does that even make sense.”

Red Beggar also had discerning eyes, so he could roughly understand what Ju-seong had just done.

He had rewritten a martial art on the spot. By the standards of today’s martial world, it was an utterly nonsensical feat.

If someone heard about this, they would snort and tell him to stop talking nonsense.

But this applied to modern martial arts with strict verses and fixed circulation paths.

Ju-seong organized his thoughts while still dancing.

‘It was possible because it was a primordial martial art.’

Primordial martial arts had no verses, loose rules, and focused on imitating natural things. Moreover, fire was one of the most free-spirited elements…

In a flash of inspiration, he could undergo a sudden transformation.

‘The fact that this martial art was about cousin to the Flame Crow Six Stage Art also helped.’

He really did not know what kind of connection it was, but this martial art was definitely a distant relative to the Flame Crow Six Stage Art.

Ju-seong had deep understanding of the Flame Crow Six Stage Art, and thanks to that, he could tear apart this bizarre demonic art and turn it into something tame.

“Sssss…”

The flames subsided, and Ju-seong let out a soft sigh as he stopped dancing. The campfire also settled down gently, burning only as much as it should, as it always had.

Steam rose from Ju-seong’s mouth.

Red Beggar asked quietly.

“…Did you break through?”

He was not asking if he had woken from sleep.

He was asking if he had broken through the wall… the wall of peak level. Had he shed the human shell and entered the path of a true transcendent being?

It was an absurd question to ask a mere twenty-one-year-old youth.

But Red Beggar and Ju-seong were both born with talents that would astonish the world, so it sounded natural.

Ju-seong shook his head and answered.

“Knowing the direction does not mean I have walked the path. Enlightenment alone cannot raise one’s level. There is no such shortcut in the world.”

It was absurd to suddenly leap to a higher level with martial enlightenment alone.

Whether it took months or years, one had to accumulate what needed accumulating before advancing to the next stage.

From third-rate to first-rate, he had broken through easily thanks to the Flame Crow Six Stage Art’s fast energy gathering speed and Ju-seong’s excellent comprehension.

But the levels beyond would require enlightenment and long cultivation in tandem.

Though Ju-seong had gained considerable enlightenment from just now, that was merely glimpsing a signpost, not actually walking the path to reach the destination.

Ju-seong sat down in a cross-legged position and began organizing the enlightenment he had gained.

The theories and ideas that had been scattered about were stacked and sorted neatly in his mental library.

The ox that had been rampaging had become tame at some point, ready to pull the cart at any time. Its formerly yellow fur had turned slightly reddish.

“Goodness, what an unpredictable man.”

Red Beggar muttered quietly, then leaned against the shrine entrance and gazed at the weakening rain. The shrine that had been damp and dim was now filled with comfortable warmth.