Upon seeing that it was Ye Baiyi, Wen Kexing's expression grew foul. Upon seeing that Ye Baiyi was staring unblinkingly at Zhou Zishu's face, Wen Kexing's expression grew even more foul.
Zhou Zishu, on the other hand, was rather surprised. From a distance away, he bowed and said, "Senior Ye."
Ye Baiyi looked at him for another long while, before he remarked, "It's you? Why do you always have to make yourself look so ghastly--do you not look quite like a proper human like this? Moreover, the ancients have the saying 'Wherever you go and no matter the situation, one should not change his name', much less the looks naturally bestowed on you by your parents. Do you not know what is meant by 'to live as plain as day'?"
Zhou Zishu raised his head to look at the sky, as if this action could suppress his quiet desire to smack Ye Baiyi flat. Half a beat later, he finally lowered his head, put on an apologetic, humble smile, and said graciously, "As Senior chides."
Indifferent, Ye Baiyi nodded, and told them, "Follow me."
Wen Kexing felt that it was impossible to make sense of this old fart's stubbornness through logical means, and humphed coldly. "Who are you? Do I know you?"
Ye Baiyi looked back at him. It was impossible to discern any particular happy or unhappy expression from his face. He remained silent for a while, before he asked, "Do you all not want to know what happened to Rong Xuan and his wife Yue Feng'er thirty years ago, as well as what the truth behind that whole Lapis Armour mess is?"
Wen Kexing, who had already turned away and was about to walk off, abruptly halted in his tracks. With his face turned to the ground, it was impossible for anyone to tell what expression he had on.
The few of them were at such an impasse for a half-beat, before Wen Kexing finally turned around and asked in a very incredulous tone of voice, "Why would we…want to know what happened to Rong Xuan and his wife?"
Suddenly, Ye Baiyi sighed, and said, "When you live to be the age I am now, you will understand that sometimes, being able to tell what a person wants is not as difficult as you think."
Wen Kexing immediately disliked his tone of voice that was flaunting his seniority.
Zhou Zishu exchanged glances with him, and asked, "Does Senior have some information?"
Ye Baiyi smiled briefly--because of that stiff face of his, it was always impossible for others to tell if he had sincerely intended a smile, or if it was a sarcastic, fake one. Soon afterwards, they heard him say, "What do I know? I am no more than an old fool who has lived for many years as a hermit on Changming Mountain, what can I know?"
He turned and walked on, with his back towards them. "Although I do know one person who might be clear about what happened all those years ago."
Zhou Zishu instructed Zhang Chengling, "Keep up", and caught up to Ye Baiyi. Wen Kexing found it a little odd as well, so he asked, "What person has such omnipotent knowledge?"
Ye Baiyi did not even look back as a few words drifted from his mouth. "Long Que of the Puppet Manor."
Zhou Zishu's brow furrowed as he could not help but point out, "Legend has it that there is indeed such a Puppet Manor within Shuzhong, but it is concealed deep within the mountains. The lord of the Puppet Manor, Long Que, is a master of traps and of the art of the vanishing door; that manor appears to be migratory. I have repeatedly ordered men to create a map, and each time, the one who edited the map would swear that there was nothing wrong with the map, but when one visited the place again, there would be no trace of the manor that appears and vanishes mysteriously…"
Ye Baiyi said, "You're useless."
--Indeed, a dog's mouth could not utter anything as precious as ivory.
Zhou Zishu closed his eyes, took a deep breath, unclenched his fist to clench it once more, and silently regarded Ye Baiyi's head, which he found increasingly suitable for clobbering. To one side, Zhang Chengling was tugging at the corner of his shirt, opening his mouth to ask a question, but was viciously glared at by Zhou Zishu. Irritably whisking the corner of his shirt back, Zhou Zishu scolded, "You're a rascal of more than a decade old, if you have something to say, say it. What are you doing, being a shrinking violet of a young wife?"
He was clearly enraged; Zhang Chengling retracted his head, and did not dare to speak.
Zhou Zishu casted a glance at him. "Hurry up and say what you have to say!"
"Shi, shifu, are we going to keep heading to Shuzhong?"
Zhou Zishu startled, realising that he was right, it was a rather long journey. Thus, Zhang Chengling brought trouble upon himself: because he had asked a question that he should not have asked, he was tortured in a multitude of ways by his evil shifu Zhou Zishu for the rest of the journey. Sometimes, he was made to reverse his flow of qi and walk on his hands; other times, Zhou Zishu pressed a hand down onto his shoulder, ordering that teenager to strenuously hurry his way forth with all the energy he had, almost as if he were bearing a load as heavy as that of a enormous mountain…it was worse than death.
Off to one side, Wen Kexing didn't speak. He kept loudly cracking his walnuts open and snacking on them, disgusting Zhou Zishu while appearing to be thoughtfully contemplating an issue at the same time. Seeing that Zhou Zishu was ignoring the old mule Ye Baiyi, he made rare conversation with Ye Baiyi. "How are you...related to Rong Xuan? Why do you want to know what happened thirty years ago?"
Ye Baiyi looked at him, and remained silent for a long while. Just when Wen Kexing thought that he was about to say something, he heard that bird's beak of Zhou Zishu peck its nonsense, "Why do you want to ask about everyone's business, like those old maids who love to gossip? What does that have to do with you?"
Wen Kexing exerted force on his fingers, and a walnut shell splintered in his hand. Like a hidden weapon, the pieces shot out about a zhang out, bringing with them a strong gust of wind. Zhang Chengling instantly ducked away as far as he could to save himself from getting embroiled in danger.
Wen Kexing was about to snipe at him for a few lines more, but a glimmer caught his eye. Focusing his gaze, he discovered a surprising strand of silver among Ye Baiyi's long hair, and he noted incredulously, "Hm? Ye, you're greying."
He did not know if it was just his imagination, but in that instant, Ye Baiyi's wooden pupils seemed to flash, so fleetingly that it was imperceptible. Subconsciously, he raised a hand to touch his own hair, but halfway to his head, he put it down again, and only said indifferently, "Have you not even seen white hair before? An ignorant person would find everything strange."
Wen Kexing thought about it. True, this old freak was ancient; if this was any other person, their remains would have grown cold by now. What was a strand of white?
After that, he could no longer find a topic of conversation, as Ye Baiyi had the ability of steering people away from irritating him. On the road from Dongting to Shuzhong, Ye Baiyi was like a mannequin that could walk--it was only when he ate, where that great force of nature which could sweep away an armada as effortlessly as rolling up a mat made people realise that he was a living being.
Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing were bored to tears. With nothing to do, they could only bicker and make digs at each other, endlessly raucous. At first, Ye Baiyi still listened to them expressionlessly and calmly--until later on, when he felt that the both of them were being ridiculous, upon which he snarked, "If the two of you are capable enough, scram and go tussle in bed. Stop jabbering, you're like two huge crickets. Is it that you can't get it up, or that you're maidens disguised as men? What are you pretending to be restrained for? Taking your mushy touchy-feely as entertainment, both of you, shut up!"
Zhang Chengling was currently walking on his hands according to how Zhou Zishu had taught him. Reversing his flow of qi was supremely tough in the first place, and upon hearing this, he first froze, before something vaguely clicked in the half-grown child's mind. His face turned red, his qi hit a snag, and he tumbled over instantly, clutching his neck as he cried "Aiyo, aiyo", blushing.
If Ye Baiyi had not claimed that he could locate the "Puppet Manor", Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing were almost planning to team up and teach this old fart a lesson. The two of them exchanged looks with unspoken coordination, but for some unknown reason, when Wen Kexing glanced at that person's handsome expression of barely-suppressed ire, his gaze unconsciously drifted downwards, as if he could see past his robes to look at the flesh and bones within. He imagined it for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbing once, and suddenly felt like there was indeed some reason to Ye Baiyi's words.
With their last mode of entertainment gone, the two of them spontaenously teamed up to torture Zhang Chengling.
If Zhou Zishu told him to "gather your true qi, and let it surge into your qihai, guide it through your meridians, to turn it onto its head as it circulates as it pleases, freely", Wen Kexing would secretly inform him that "your internal qi is unstable, and your martial power is too weak, which is why your internal qi scatters easily and does not gather as readily", that he should "steadily progress in proper sequence, feel the true qi in you, and let nature take its course."
What both of them said sounded very reasonable, and poor Zhang Chengling did not know which one to listen to. As he boggled, the true qi on him gathered for a second just to scatter the next, or flowed in the proper direction for a moment just to reverse its direction the next. Occasionally, he still had to undergo that special training method of Zhou Zishu's--Zhou Zishu did not look like he had put in much strength, but that hand weighing on Zhang Chengling's shoulder felt like a million catties.
A smidgen of worry involuntarily rose in Zhang Chengling's heart as he thought, what if he could not grow taller because of how his shifu kept pressing down on him over a long period of time? Feng Xiaofeng's savage and feral mien surfaced in his mind, and he involuntarily shivered.
Zhou Zishu did not know about his internal worries, and felt that while this child was indeed hardworking, he simply could not grasp the essence of the teachings. Back when he had taught Liang Jiuxiao, Zhou Zishu had always grumbled that he was too stupid--many times, he had only just managed to suppress his agitation to teach him. Yet, who knew, that compared to Zhang Chengling, Liang Jiuxiao was a top-tier genius.
If it weren't for these years he spent in court, which had since ground him down to patience a long time ago, Zhou Zishu felt that he could even have had the urge to kill this child who gave him much grief with a single palm strike.
In truth, Zhang Chengling was also wronged. In the first place, Wen Kexing's gongfu and Zhou Zishu's gongfu did not share the same approach; if it had been one person teaching him, he still could have made some progress. However, between these two, neither of them knew how to teach a disciple. If one of them said something, the other had to say their own piece, and they did not care if others could understand them. Sometimes, as they yammered on, they would even start quarrelling between themselves, and if they could not settle their quarrels, they would leave to explosively fight their mutual discontent out, before returning. In the end, it would always result in the flushed faces of both parties, and one Ye Baiyi explaining as a narrator would off to one side that they were "using the excuse of exchanging techniques to partake in improper affairs". All his words served to do was to inspire an unending wave of thoughts in a perpetually embarrassed Zhang Chengling, while he, simultaneously, understood nothing.
As the days went by, he felt that not only was his martial ability not improving, it showed signs of regression. The hand his shifu weighed on his shoulder only seemed to grow heavier by the day, and was about to crush the breath out of him.
In truth, this method of learning gongfu that Zhang Chengling had adopted was extremely risky. If it were anyone else suffering the torment inflicted by these two, without Zhou Zishu's burdensome hand on his shoulder inconspicuously helping him to regulate his internal qi, he would have undergone qi deviation a long time ago.
They travelled extremely swiftly on foot. Not many days later, they had already left Dongting, that place of trouble, far behind and reached Shuzhong.
On this day, Zhang Chengling genuinely could not keep walking any further; clenching his teeth, he forced himself to walk for more than ten li. Temple throbbing continuously, he panted heavily with his mouth open, and his heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. For every step he took, he had to exert all the energy that he had.
Zhou Zishu's voice rang frostily by his ear. "Why, it's only this, and you can't take it anymore? Keep going!"
Wen Kexing turned his head over to glance at him and raised his eyebrow, like he too felt that Zhang Chengling was pitiable, and could not help but interrupt, "A-Xu…"
"Shut up." Zhou Zishu's eyebrow did not even so much as twitch a little, lacking even the slightest bit of humanity as he was. He ordered, "Little tyke, I told you to keep walking."
It was already growing blurry and dark before Zhang Chengling's eyes. He wanted to speak, but he could not; once he opened his mouth, his internal qi would start to leak out, and when that happened, Zhou Zishu's hand, which only looked as thin as firewood, would drive him into the ground like he was replanting a carrot.
Shuzhong was mountainous. All around them, the ground rose and fell in seemingly boundless undulations, and a sense of despair, one of never being able to reach the end of this endless journey, suddenly rose within Zhang Chengling. The trembling of his legs was growing more vigorous, and he raised his head with great effort to look at his shifu's face. That handsome side profile was still frosty and did not even glance at him. It was like a stone statue with no sentiments and no desires.
"Breaths continuous and unending, passing through the rendu; like hundreds of rivers flowing into the sea, without leaving a trace--"
"There is form to internal qi, as agile as a snake; never extinguished, never broken, it ebbs and flows freely--"
In that split-second, faced with the mountain range of Shuzhong, when it felt like Zhang Chengling had been forced into despair, a line swiftly flashed through his mind--with form, yet no bounds; scatters, but never extinguished!
He felt, all of a sudden, his chest brimming with energy and his vision growing increasingly blurry, but he was able to feel the changes within his body more intimately. In truth, the internal qi that was diffused throughout his whole body had always been there; it was merely that he had not the correct way to engage it. Once he understood the concept, he suddenly felt a great wave of energy surge out of him, which even forcefully dislodged the hand Zhou Zishu had on his shoulder.
The last thing he saw was Zhou Zishu's stunned expression, then everything went black before his eyes and he fainted headfirst.