Now, the copper coins in his possession added up to twenty-four thousand, which amounted to twenty-four guan.
There was a pawnshop in Sanchazi Town that also handled money exchanges, allowing people to trade copper coins for silver taels.
Normally, one guan of copper coins traded for one tael of silver.
Yet the pawnshop owner was hardly willing to work for nothing, tacking on a fire wastage fee for every single exchange.
When Ergouzi exchanged ten taels of silver, he was docked five hundred wen. Such a business actually made more money than farming!
Afterward, he bought an old hen, ten jin of pork, incense, candles, and two jars of fine wine.
Because the wine was brewed from grain, it cost even more than polished white rice. A single ten-liter jar sold for six hundred wen, meaning the two jars cost another twelve hundred wen.
The cost of paying respects to a master and learning an art truly was exorbitant, swallowing up more than ten guan in one go.
Moreover, he would have to bring gifts to show filial piety during every festival and holiday from then on; scarcely anyone could shoulder such a burden.
Once Ergouzi had prepared all the items, Li Banxian led him toward a small courtyard in the town.
The courtyard was modest in size, featuring a jujube tree planted right in the middle, its branches laden with finger-sized dates that were not yet fully ripe.
“Come in.”
In the main hall facing the courtyard, several memorial tablets sat upon an altar table.
Ergouzi shouldered the pork and other goods, carrying them straight into the hall to arrange them properly upon the altar.
At that moment, Li Banxian washed his face in a basin, scrubbed his hands clean, and only then lit the incense and candles, performing a profound bow before the ancestral tablets.
Then, he recited a lengthy speech before the tablets, declaring himself unfilial and guilty of breaking ancestral rules.
Standing to the side, Ergouzi listened and was deeply moved.
Guided by Li Banxian, he proceeded through a series of complex rituals, ultimately presenting a cup of tea to his new master.
From that day onward, Ergouzi was officially Li Banxian’s disciple.
“Starting today, this master shall pass down to you a peerless martial art. However, I care nothing for empty fame, and you must never reveal to outsiders that you are learning martial arts from me!”
“Understood, I will certainly obey Master!”
Ergouzi replied respectfully.
“How many characters do you know?”
Ergouzi scratched his head and calculated in his mind.
“I probably know a few hundred characters.”
“Literacy is the foundation of all learning, so we can only take it slow.”
Li Banxian tapped his knuckles lightly against the tabletop, pondered for a moment, and then stood up to rummage through a chest, eventually pulling out a tattered, dog-eared book.
The book had turned entirely yellow with age, missing portions here and there, and even the cover bearing its title had fallen off.
“Today, I will teach you fifty characters first. Once you have thoroughly mastered them, come back to learn another fifty.”
“When you have learned every character in this book, you can use it to guide your cultivation—killing two birds with one stone.”
After gazing at the nameless, broken book for a moment, Li Banxian arranged his brush, ink, paper, and inkstone, then began writing and reciting aloud.
“The human body, internally housing the five viscera and six bowels, externally containing the four limbs and bones; internally holding essence, qi, and spirit, externally possessing sinews, bones, and flesh…”
After writing a lengthy passage and counting the results, there were a few extra characters, totaling fifty-eight in all.
Li Banxian instructed Ergouzi to take the sheet away and memorize it thoroughly, sending him home to practice on his own.
Clutching the paper and terrified of forgetting its contents, Ergouzi muttered the characters nonstop all the way home.
Back at Snake Mouth Mountain, he began using a tree branch as a brush to practice writing on the ground.
Within two days, he had completely mastered those fifty-eight characters—able to write, recognize, and read them—and returned to Li Banxian for his next lesson.
Noticing how quickly the boy learned, Li Banxian taught him eighty-five characters this time.
In the days that followed, Ergouzi managed to pick up dozens of new characters every few days.
He had spent over ten guan just to buy this opportunity to learn.
Whenever fatigue crept in, he would think of that ten jin of pork and the gleaming silver taels, and a surge of energy would fill his entire body.
Every single character he mastered felt like earning back a copper coin.
Consequently, he dared not slack off in the slightest; otherwise, the money would have been wasted.
Two months slipped by in this fashion, and he finished the first chapter of the book.
Yet despite recognizing the characters, he still understood very little of the text’s actual meaning.
Having accepted his payment, Li Banxian proved quite responsible, explaining the passage in careful detail: it was, in truth, a cultivation method.
“First refine the tangible: the viscera, sinews, bones, flesh, and blood. Use the refined essence of the tangible to nourish the intangible vital energy…”
Li Banxian talked until white foam gathered at the corners of his mouth, finally allowing Ergouzi to grasp the general meaning of the cultivation technique.
In short, it used the physical body to nurture intangible vital energy, causing that vital energy to grow robust and transform within the body into martial true qi.
Ergouzi returned to Snake Mouth Mountain and practiced every single day according to Li Banxian’s instructions.
The method required assuming several bizarre postures and straining awkwardly, supposedly to guide the vital energy within the body.
After that came meditation to cultivate the vital energy.
The strange postures were easy enough, but meditation proved far more difficult.
His mind remained plagued by endless distracting thoughts; the moment one thought subsided, another instantly took its place.
The harder he tried to banish them, the more abundant they became, leaving him irritated, agitated, with a tight chest and a feeling of nausea.
Yet remembering the heavy sum he had paid, he refused to give up, forcing himself to press on.
Some matters, however, are governed by wrong methods; the harder one tries, the further astray one goes.
After a few days, he was entirely frazzled, his expression haggard.
With no other choice, he had to seek guidance from Li Banxian.
Li Banxian retrieved his nameless, tattered book, flipped through it for a long time, and then shut the cover.
“To master a peerless martial art, one must overcome every obstacle without a shred of retreat or fear. If you cannot master it in three or five days, then practice for three or five months…”
Li Banxian offered a wealth of advice, but the core message was simply to keep trying and conquer all hardships through diligence.
Having never practiced martial arts before, Ergouzi understood nothing of the matter and assumed all martial artists must endure such torment, leaving him no choice but to return and redouble his efforts.
One day, while meditating, he was locked in a fierce struggle against his own wandering thoughts with sheer tenacity.
Suddenly, he felt a violent churn within his chest.
“Gag!”
“Ptui!”
Bright red blood sprayed from his mouth as his head spun with dizziness, and he collapsed heavily onto the ground.
Ergouzi lay there flatly, blood steadily bubbling from his lips as his consciousness blurred.
Yet even then, he thought of the silver he had spent, of his unfulfilled technique, and of the distant dream of becoming a Martial Scholar.
Unable to let go of his cultivation, he continued running the technique through his dazed and muddled state.
At that moment, without realizing it himself, the very cloudiness of his mind caused all distracting thoughts to vanish entirely.
Free from interference, the technique operated smoothly, and a faint stream of qi gradually took form within his meridians.
Lying there half-dead and motionless, he sustained the circulation until his entire being slipped into a profound, mystical state.
“Gurgle…”
After lying motionless for several hours, a sharp pang of hunger finally dragged him back from that marvelous realm.
Ergouzi vaulted to his feet, discovering that his body felt remarkably light and all previous sensations of nausea and agitation had vanished.
Closing his eyes to sense his condition, he found a slender thread of warm qi meandering slowly through his meridians, bringing comfort wherever it passed.
“Haha! Master was right after all—diligence truly brings success!”
He remained entirely unaware that when beginning cultivation, trying to force away distracting thoughts through sheer effort usually produces the exact opposite result.
Only by pure fated chance had his consciousness slipped into that borderland state, unwittingly aligning with the supreme principles of martial arts.
Otherwise, lacking the guidance of a true master, he would never have crossed the threshold in this lifetime, and might well have killed himself through forced practice.