The moonlight was bright and clear. Its soft, hazy glow cascaded down, creating a serene and tranquil atmosphere.
Midway down the cliff, Lin Huang slid along the vines all the way to the bottom. The moonlight shone into the chasm like a focused beam, illuminating the mist from the waterfall and giving the scene an exceptionally ethereal feel.
SPLASH!
Lin Huang plunged into the deep pool at the bottom of the cliff. The freezing water made him shiver uncontrollably.
As he climbed out of the pool, he carefully surveyed his surroundings. A bright moon hung high above. Beside him, a torrential waterfall cascaded down the Thousand Feet Cliff. Plumes of mist swirled in the air, creating the illusion of a White Dragon crossing a river.
Not far behind Lin Huang stood an inconspicuous thatched cottage. Under the bright moonlight, a few wisps of cooking smoke curled upwards into the sky.
Next to the cottage were two fenced-off plots of land. One was a vegetable garden, while the other held a flock of chickens, ducks, and geese, which were honking and quacking away in the middle of the night.
An old, pitch-black ox was tethered to a pillar in front of the cottage door, quietly grazing.
Lin Huang frowned slightly. Moonlight, a thatched cottage, a vegetable garden, an old ox, a waterfall... To think there was such a leisurely place hidden within the perilous Qinglong Mountain Range!
Following the candlelight from the cottage, Lin Huang slowly approached and pushed open the dilapidated wooden door.
The room was filled with swirling steam. He was immediately greeted by an intoxicating aroma of wine, accompanied by the bubbling sound of a thick soup boiling in a pot.
"A rare guest. Have a seat and eat whatever you want!"
The man’s voice from behind the steam was somewhat hoarse and gruff, sounding as if he had no interest in entertaining a stranger.
Looking perplexed, Lin Huang peered through the steam to get a clear view of the man’s figure. He was unkempt, his hair disheveled and his temples as white as frost. His trouser legs were rolled up, and his body was stained with dirt.
Holding a pair of chopsticks in his right hand, the man gave the boiling pot a few stirs, while his left hand held a wine cup that he would take a sip from every now and then. He looked rather exhausted, yet his eyes shone with an obsessive vigor because he was reading a book.
"Sir, you’re in quite high spirits!"
Lin Huang glanced at the book the middle-aged man was reading, and his expression instantly turned odd. The illustrations in the book were exceptionally provocative, featuring women with seductive gazes and voluptuous bodies...
It startled Lin Huang so much that he couldn’t help but take a few extra peeks!
"What does a greenhorn like you know?" the middle-aged man snorted. "I’m exploring the anatomical structure of a Martial Artist. Back in the day, I, Xiao Yishan, also practiced Martial Arts. I know very well how important it is for a Martial Artist to understand the human body’s anatomy!"
Lin Huang opened his mouth, completely speechless. He thought, "How could this man make such a vulgar thing sound so refined and noble? Shameless!"
"Look at this, there’s too much meat on her chest. No, no, it ruins the aesthetic. I’m afraid it would explode with a single squeeze." Xiao Yishan put down his wine jug and reached out to squeeze the empty air a couple of times, an expression of endless aftertaste on his face. "These legs are quite nice, though. You can tell at a glance that they could squeeze a man to death!"
Lin Huang was dumbfounded. This man, who looked every bit a proper farmer, was an old pervert!
"Senior, have you always lived at the bottom of the Thousand Feet Cliff?" Lin Huang asked. He had a feeling that anyone who could live in the Qinglong Mountain Range must be quite extraordinary.
"What else? Are you going to keep me company?" Xiao Yishan curled his lips and snatched the piece of meat right from under Lin Huang’s chopsticks.
"I think I’ll pass. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be safe to live at Senior’s place." Lin Huang smiled awkwardly.
"What’s not safe about it? I’ve lived at the bottom of this cliff for over a decade and nothing has happened." Xiao Yishan smiled nonchalantly. However, upon noticing Lin Huang’s weird gaze, he scratched his head and burst into curses. "You brat, what are you thinking? I already told you, reading these books is for research! Strictly research! Even if I were to get horny for that old black ox at the door, I wouldn’t have any interest in you."
Xiao Yishan huffed angrily, his voice surprisingly loud. "I am a man of refined tastes! Look around this room. What here isn’t an object of high elegance?"
Lin Huang turned his head, scanned the room, and nodded in profound agreement.
This thatched cottage was pitifully shabby. It contained merely a bed and a pot. There was also a dust-covered, blank memorial tablet. The only things that could possibly be considered elegant were the two paintings hanging on the wall.
For one of them, Lin Huang had to scrutinize it for a long time before finally recognizing that it depicted a woman.
The other was much easier to decipher. It showed a young man in coarse linen clothes flying in the sky while stepping on a bald, oversized bird. Well... he also had a large, rusty iron saber hanging from his waist.
"Impressive, right? I painted these myself. If I hadn’t gone astray and taken up Cultivation in Martial Arts back then, I reckon I could have become a generation’s Painting Saint." Xiao Yishan boasted smugly, taking two satisfying sips of his wine.
"Senior is indeed no ordinary man!" Lin Huang praised shamelessly.
"It’s just a little hobby. Ever since I stopped my Cultivation in Martial Arts, I spend my days reading, painting, and composing poetry. You could say I live with the greatest freedom and romance in the Human World... If you don’t believe me, I’ll compose a poem for you right now!"
"I’m all ears!" Lin Huang was happy to humor him, seeing Xiao Yishan’s expectant look.
"Then listen well. I’ll compose a poem based on this very moment and setting." Xiao Yishan cleared his throat, glanced at the dim candlelight and the stone pot in the room, and began. "A streak of setting sun spreads across the water, half the river shivering green, half the river red."
Xiao Yishan paused for a moment. Upon seeing Lin Huang’s anticipating expression, he smiled in satisfaction. He picked up his chopsticks, plucked an earthworm from the stone pot, and continued. "If the day comes when I ascend as an immortal, I shall boil the seas by hand and cook a Jiao Dragon!"
"Excellent!" Lin Huang shouted loudly, his eyes practically gleaming with worship. To think that Xiao Yishan could recite such a mismatched, cobbled-together piece of trash poetry with such immense pride.
"Thinking about it this way, Senior’s Martial Arts Realm must also be incredibly high!" Lin Huang probed.
"Of course. It pierced the heavens!" Xiao Yishan said with a face full of bravado. "Back in the day, before I retired, with a single raise of my hand, thousands of troops and horses cowered like dogs. With a second raise, famous masters and great generals fled across the mountains. With a third raise, hmm..."
Unable to keep up the rhyming fabrication, Xiao Yishan changed his tune. "I remember that before my retirement, someone once said that I, Xiao Yishan, single-handedly held a Three-Part Dominance over the world. I wonder, after so many years, how many parts I still retain?
"Hey, kid, don’t fall asleep on me! Let me tell you more. Think back to the battle of my retirement. Man, that scale! Over thirty thousand people were chasing after me, but in the end, I grabbed my massive saber and hacked through them back and forth dozens of times!
"Hey, you brat, are you even listening? How dare you fall asleep! You don’t worship me at all! You actually..."
The next morning brought a slight chill. Xiao Yishan groggily opened his eyes. He had drunk too much wine the night before, and his head throbbed with a mild ache.
Stumbling as he pushed open the door, the cool morning breeze hit his face, sobering him up significantly. He faintly heard a continuous SPLASH, SPLASH in his ears.
Turning his head, he saw Lin Huang climbing out of the Cold Pool and clambering onto a large stone pillar beneath the waterfall. The impact from the thousand-foot cascade pinned him down, rendering him unable to move.
He was sprawled out on all fours like a giant turtle!
In less than ten breaths, Lin Huang was swept off the pillar. Then, he would struggle to climb back up, only to repeat the process... He had been maintaining this grueling cycle for an hour.
When Lin Huang fell into the Cold Pool the night before, he had sensed that this thousand-foot waterfall might be of great use in tempering his physical body and Cultivating his Great Vajra Technique.
Sure enough, it was.
The waterfall plunged from the towering cliff, its water pressure as heavy as a mountain. It carried the chilling intent from the depths of the Qinglong Mountain Range, bone-piercingly cold as it seeped into his very marrow.
The roaring, thunderous cascade acted like a giant sledgehammer of ice, continuously tempering Lin Huang’s flesh.
"Changsheng..."
Watching Lin Huang struggle in the water like an ant under the waterfall, stubbornly climbing back onto the stone pillar time and time again, Xiao Yishan was suddenly stunned. An unparalleled resolve radiated from the boy’s ordinary actions, causing Xiao Yishan to murmur absentmindedly.
The sight of Lin Huang beneath the cliff today seemed to inadvertently awaken memories long sealed away in Xiao Yishan’s mind...
Memories of a similar scene beneath a cliff all those years ago.
He thought of his disciple, Qin Changsheng. The disciple who had knelt in a raging blizzard for three months just to become his apprentice, and who later practiced his saber techniques under a waterfall day after day, year after year.
"Senior, I, Changsheng, have yet to avenge my father’s murder and clear the humiliation suffered by my mother. No matter how terrible my aptitude is, I swear upon my life to enter the path of Martial Arts. Even if vengeance takes ten years, a hundred years, or a thousand years... I beg Senior to take me as your disciple!"
Xiao Yishan turned his head to look at Lin Huang under the waterfall, then looked back at the wall inside the room, his gaze landing on the portrait of the young man.
Back then, that disciple had faced a cliff for ten years and practiced the saber for ten years, all for the sake of revenge.
Yet his aptitude had been surprisingly atrocious.
So atrocious that he had failed to form a Profound Sea in ten years!
So atrocious that every time Qin Changsheng saw him, the boy would lower his head deeply in utter shame, not even daring to look up at him. He hadn’t even dared to call him "Master" in front of outsiders.
"Master, my breakthrough... failed again."
"Mas—Uncle Xiao, Uncle Wang, your tea is ready."
"Master, I won’t seek revenge anymore. Please expel me from the sect. Master’s reputation shines like the bright moon covering the sky. You cannot be burdened with such a disgraceful disciple like me!"
Looking at Lin Huang under the waterfall, a melancholy expression washed over Xiao Yishan’s face. The way Lin Huang looked now was so incredibly similar to how Qin Changsheng had looked back then.
The same unyielding spirit! The same stubbornness!
"Lin the kid, sprawling out like that is all wrong! You look like a thousand-year-old bastard turtle!" Xiao Yishan walked over and mocked.
Lin Huang looked over toward Xiao Yishan’s voice. In a moment of carelessness, he fell into the water with a SPLASH, provoking roaring laughter from Xiao Yishan.
"Lin the kid, remember the Moonlit Spring Palace Painting we stayed up all night studying together? Remember that pose called ’Old Tree Coiling Its Roots’? Try that!" Xiao Yishan instructed.
Lin Huang stared at Xiao Yishan, his face darkening with annoyance as he thought, "Who stayed up all night with you?! Who studied that with you?! And what the hell is ’Old Tree Coiling Its Roots’?!"
Nevertheless, Lin Huang seated himself steadily on the large stone pillar. Letting the thousand-foot cascade pound down on him, he was no longer washed away. His posture was at least seventy percent similar to the ’Old Tree Coiling Its Roots’.
"Not bad, kid! I’ll find another book for you to read tonight so you can learn a bit more," Xiao Yishan praised.
Lin Huang’s face was full of helplessness.
"Lin the kid, you’re doing it wrong. You need to relax your body and enjoy it, feel the baptism of the waterfall!" Xiao Yishan lectured again. "With your current position, it’s very difficult to draw the Primordial Qi from the waterfall into your Profound Sea!"
Lin Huang frowned. After pondering for a moment, he tried to do as Xiao Yishan said...
"Lin the kid, are you a pig? Don’t you know that propping your palms up toward the sky can accelerate the circulation of Primordial Qi within your body?
"How are you so stupid? Your Profound Sea hasn’t even started boiling yet! How can the Primordial Qi flowing into your meridians have any concussive force? Don’t you know what ’a raging sea churning’ or ’ten thousand rivers surging’ means?"
Under the waterfall, Lin Huang closed his eyes and concentrated, Cultivating quietly. Meanwhile, Xiao Yishan chattered incessantly from the sidelines, belittling Lin Huang as if he were utterly worthless.
After making a racket for a long time, Xiao Yishan finally quieted down, presumably because his mouth had gone dry.
However, only a moment later, Lin Huang saw the older man bring out a battered Guqin from the thatched cottage. As the lingering notes of the zither rang out, it was practically...
Killing every bird across a thousand mountains.
Erasing every human trace along ten thousand paths.
Leaving no survivors within a ten-mile radius!
By the end of the day, Lin Huang already had the urge to murder Xiao Yishan.
"Lin the kid, your roasting skills are truly not bad. You didn’t waste my two big, fat geese." In the middle of the night, Xiao Yishan and Lin Huang set up a bonfire outside the thatched cottage. "From now on, I bestow upon you the right to cook our meals."
Xiao Yishan spoke with a magnanimous tone, acting as if he were letting Lin Huang take advantage of a massive bargain.
Lin Huang shook his head helplessly, not knowing what to make of Xiao Yishan. This man looked like the most ordinary farmer imaginable, even if he did possess the strength of the Celestial Element Realm.
He thought, "But what gives him the right to be so narcissistic? Aren’t recluses normally peerless experts? Shouldn’t they be as ethereal as immortals? Why the hell are you an old pervert?!"