Chapter 99: Chi You Wufang

Hearing the commotion outside, Niu Youdao slowly came out of the house and stood beneath the eaves to watch.

Won't fight back? Won't dodge? Won't take revenge afterward? Yuan Fang would not believe that nonsense even if someone beat him to death.

He put on a serious expression. "Master Yuan, this humble monk has absolutely never thought of taking revenge on you."

He assumed Yuan Gang was testing him. Yuan Gang did not care whether he wanted revenge or not. He held out the staff.

"I'm telling you to hit me."

Yuan Fang refused to take it. Pressing his palms together, he said, "Amitabha. Good, good!"

He kept shaking his head. Yuan Gang's face darkened. The staff swept out with a howl and stopped beside Yuan Fang's ear.

"If you don't hit me, I'll hit you."

Yuan Fang was speechless. What kind of logic was that? He could only turn toward Niu Youdao for help.

"Master Dao, you have to judge this fairly!"

Standing on the steps, Niu Youdao smiled broadly.

"If he tells you to hit him, then hit him. What are you afraid of? A man should stand by his word. Since he said he won't fight back, he can't fight back. Don't worry. I'm watching right here. If he dares take revenge afterward, come to me."

"This..."

Yuan Fang hesitated badly. Wasn't this forcing a man into an impossible position? Yuan Gang planted the staff upright in front of him.

"I'll say it one last time. If you don't hit me, I'll hit you."

Yuan Fang had never encountered such an unreasonable demand in his life. Helpless, he slowly reached out and took the staff. Yuan Gang backed into the middle of the courtyard and beckoned.

"Hit me."

Yuan Fang had truly been driven into a corner. He would have loved to find a pig-killing knife and stab Yuan Gang ten thousand times, but in the end he still did not dare.

He walked over, raised the staff in front of Yuan Gang, then drew it back. He tried again and stopped again, as though he could not decide where to strike. In truth, he simply did not dare bring it down.

"Hit me!"

Yuan Gang suddenly barked. Yuan Fang saw that his patience was running out. If he still refused, he would be the one getting beaten. Since disaster awaited him either way, he gritted his teeth and swung hard.

At the last instant, however, he still pulled nearly all the force from the blow. The staff landed on Yuan Gang's shoulder with all the delicacy of embroidery.

"Harder!"

Yuan Gang barked again. Yuan Fang added a little strength and struck once more. Yuan Gang stared at him coldly, killing intent in his eyes, as though asking, Are you playing games with me?

Whoosh! Smack!

At last Yuan Fang swung hard and smashed the staff across Yuan Gang's shoulder. The moment it landed, he snatched the weapon back and watched him warily, heart pounding.

To his horror, Yuan Gang turned and walked away, looking for all the world as though he intended to find a weapon and retaliate. He headed straight toward the stone mill nearby. Was he going to pick up the millstone and smash him with it?

Terrified, Yuan Fang dropped the staff, spun around, and fled. In an instant he had darted behind Niu Youdao and hidden there.

"Master Dao, you saw everything! He told me to hit him! I was forced into it! A man has to be reasonable!"

Niu Youdao reached behind himself, dragged Yuan Fang back out, and pointed toward Yuan Gang. He motioned for the monk to look for himself. Yuan Fang froze. Yuan Gang was taking off his clothes.

One piece after another went into a basket beside the stone mill. Soon he had stripped down to nothing but a pair of shorts. Even his shoes and socks came off.

A body of tightly packed muscle was revealed beneath the sunlight, perfectly proportioned as though carved from stone. Every line and shadow seemed to contain explosive force, enough to make a woman stare and swallow hard.

"You're overthinking it. He just doesn't want his clothes damaged," Niu Youdao said with a chuckle.

Yuan Gang glanced back at the furtive Yuan Fang, then casually picked up a slab of green stone resting on the mill. He gripped both ends with his hands and abruptly drove his head forward.

Bang!

The stone slab shattered beneath his forehead. The corner of Yuan Fang's mouth twitched. As expected, Yuan Gang had gone back to doing something abnormal. Beating Yuan Fang had apparently stopped being enough. Now he would not even spare himself. Yuan Gang returned to the center of the courtyard and beckoned again.

"Again."

Yuan Fang stared at him in silence. Niu Youdao reached out and gave him a push between the shoulders.

"Go. He's asking you to help him cultivate."

Cultivate?

Yuan Fang, pushed down the steps, suddenly seemed to understand. Once he had that reassurance, he picked up the staff and walked forward.

"Master Yuan, then I won't stand on ceremony."

"Cut the nonsense."

Yuan Gang's reply was cold.

Whoosh! Smack!

Yuan Fang swung abruptly. The staff struck Yuan Gang hard enough to make his body sway slightly, leaving a vivid red welt across his back.

"Hoo..."

Yuan Gang slowly breathed out. He drew both arms back, clenched his fists at his waist, and sank into a horse stance. Then he inhaled deeply. Every muscle on his body visibly tightened.

"Too light. Harder."

Too light?

Yuan Fang gripped the staff with both hands and swung with force.

Smack!

The weapon cracked across Yuan Gang's back and snapped in two. Yuan Gang remained rooted in his horse stance, not moving an inch.

"Continue."

He glanced sideways. Only now did Yuan Fang understand why Yuan Gang had carried back such a large bundle of staffs. He said nothing more. He went over, pulled another staff from the bundle, returned, and smashed it against Yuan Gang's body.

Smack!

It broke again. Niu Youdao spoke from beneath the eaves.

"Old Bear, if you keep hitting him like that, you could chop down every tree on the mountain and still not have enough staffs. Add some spiritual power to the weapon."

Yuan Fang nodded. He picked up another staff and infused it with inner force.

Then he warned, "Master Yuan, tell me when the force feels about right."

"Mm."

Yuan Gang gave a grunt. The staff whistled through the air.

After taking the blow, Yuan Gang said, "Too light."

Another strike.

"Harder."

Another.

"More force."

Only when every strike made Yuan Gang's body sway did he finally stop giving instructions. Yuan Fang fixed that level of force in mind and began working him over in earnest.

The staff blurred through the air in his hands as he circled Yuan Gang, smashing him again and again. Yuan Gang continually changed his posture.

At times he sank into a horse stance. At times he spread his legs into a forward bow stance. At times he curled inward and arched his back. At times he extended both arms. He even thrust his head forward to receive the blows. Every part of his body took its turn beneath Yuan Fang's staff. Yuan Fang was having the time of his life. His eyes shone with excitement.

After being beaten by Yuan Gang so many times, he had finally found a chance to vent himself and collect some interest. He circled around him, swinging without pause.

Whoosh! Smack!

The blows cracked continuously across Yuan Gang's body. Before long, vivid red welts covered him from head to foot like streaks of blood. Yet as Yuan Gang endured the uninterrupted barrage, something within him seemed to awaken. His breathing gradually grew heavier. Not merely heavy, but deep and prolonged, each breath drawing in and pouring out in great waves. Eventually, his respiration sounded like a blacksmith's bellows. Even Niu Youdao beneath the eaves could hear it clearly beneath the repeated cracking of the staff.

As that heavy breathing rose and fell, Yuan Gang's abdomen began changing as well. A rounded bulge gradually appeared beneath the skin and started moving. When he inhaled, the sphere sank toward his lower abdomen. When he exhaled, it rolled upward again. And as that sphere moved, an astonishing transformation spread across the rest of his body. The blood-red welts covering him seemed to come alive. They began moving across the surface of his skin, writhing like tiny snakes.

The red lines slithered and twisted until, one after another, they appeared to burrow into holes and vanish. Thousands upon thousands of blood-colored snakes crawled across his body and disappeared beneath the skin. The sight was extraordinarily strange. An ordinary person would probably have been terrified by the densely writhing pattern. Niu Youdao's pupils suddenly contracted. He had noticed something. Every place where those serpent-like red marks vanished was an acupoint of the human body. The welts were snakes. The acupoints were caves.

Niu Youdao had seen Yuan Gang practice hard qigong in their previous life, but he had never witnessed anything like this. Only now did he truly realize that Yuan Gang's hard qigong was far from simple. Yuan Fang was stunned as well. A demon himself, he was now staring at Yuan Gang as though Yuan Gang were the monster. And he was the one beating the monster. Fortunately, the scalp-numbing spectacle did not last long.

Once all the red welts covering Yuan Gang's body had vanished, every new welt created by Yuan Fang's staff simply wriggled away and disappeared on its own. The sight became much easier to tolerate. The beating continued for nearly two hours before Yuan Gang finally called for a stop. Yuan Fang lowered the staff, breathing a little hard. Even now, the look he gave Yuan Gang was the look one might give a monster. The man who had been beaten looked perfectly fine.

The one doing the beating was the one who had worn himself out. There was no helping it. Throughout the process, Yuan Gang had refused to let him stop and had required him to maintain a fixed rhythm and frequency. Even the force had to be controlled precisely: too light was useless, too heavy might injure him. Beating someone had become as exacting as embroidery. After keeping it up for two full hours, Yuan Fang truly found it exhausting.

For the first time in his life, he discovered that hitting someone could be hard work, scarcely easier than being beaten himself. Yuan Gang remained where he stood and began moving his body. He twisted his neck.

Crack! Crack!

His bones popped sharply. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his waist, loosened and tightened the joints of his limbs. Sharp cracking sounds came from everywhere.

Once the tightly tensed muscles across his body gradually relaxed, a faint layer of pink rose over his skin. Yuan Gang walked over, picked up his clothes, and dressed again. Yuan Fang threw his staff back onto the pile and dropped onto the steps beneath the eaves. At last he could catch his breath. When Yuan Gang came over, Niu Youdao handed him a jug of water. Yuan Gang accepted it, tilted his head back, and drank straight from the mouth.

Niu Youdao said from beside him, "Your hard qigong looks somewhat different from before."

Yuan Gang lowered the jug and fell silent for a moment.

"It wasn't different before. Today my body felt wrong. There was strength inside me with nowhere to go, like something was blocked and needed to burst out. I tried finding things to do, but it didn't help, so I practiced for a while. It feels like... like I broke through into another level."

Niu Youdao asked, "Does this hard qigong have a name?"

What he had just witnessed was so bizarre that it did not look like some nameless common method. There ought to be an origin to it. He wanted to know exactly what kind of hard qigong Yuan Gang was practicing. Yuan Gang froze.

"We just called it hard qigong. What name would it have? Uh..."

His expression turned thoughtful, as though something had come back to him. Niu Youdao did not interrupt. He waited.

After some hesitation, Yuan Gang said, "There may have been another name. I remember our chief instructor mentioning it once back then. He said it had an ancient name. Something with Chi You in it..."

"Chi You?"

Niu Youdao looked puzzled.

"The Chi You who fought the Yellow Emperor in ancient times?"

"Right!"

The reminder made Yuan Gang suddenly remember. He nodded.

"The chief instructor mentioned that too. He said the hard qigong we practiced had an ancient name: 'Chi You Wufang.' 'Chi You' is the Chi You who fought the Yellow Emperor. The 'wu' is the wu from 'lawless and unrestrained,' and the 'fang' is the fang meaning method. That's it. I remember now. The name was Chi You Wufang."

"Chi You Wufang..."

Niu Youdao murmured the strange name to himself. He searched his memory. Among the ancient texts he had read, he could not recall ever seeing such a name.

[End of Chapter 99]