Chapter 56: Mountain Practice (2)

“No, I go home on Sundays. I don’t want to spend all day in the mountains. Besides, only Jiang and I know the way to the bamboo forest. If my family comes, we have to pick them up. Luckily, the mountains are so empty that we can hear each other’s voices.

“Going home? Sanwa, have you completed the task your master gave you this week? Can you go home?” Su Rou looked unwilling. Damn, what kind of brother are you? I’d rather suffer for food!

But when Su Rou mentioned this, I was depressed again. I really didn’t complete my task this week, so I couldn’t go home. I had to wait for my family to come visit me.

Old man Jiang, the old liar, used to say that I could go home on weekends, but now he has come up with a task that I can’t complete, so I can’t go home…

While we were talking, the crispy meat was almost home. I said goodbye to him and started walking up the mountain with a heavy heart.

To be honest, the place where Old Man Jiang lives is not far from the village, and I am familiar with the route. In about half an hour, I returned to the cottage on the mountain, and I walked the whole way without getting out of breath or turning red in the face.

“Back already?” Old Jiang smiled, holding his purple clay teapot and sipping tea. He looked so carefree.

“I’m back.” In response, I was weak and tired.

“That’s good, I’m hungry. I’ve been waiting for you to light a fire and cook. Right now, the bamboo shoots in the bamboo forest are just right. Go get some and we’ll stir-fry them for dinner. Also, there was a piece of wild rabbit meat left over from yesterday. I put it in…” Old Master Jiang kept giving me orders.

“Master, I still have homework to do.” Actually, protesting is useless, but I just want to protest.

“You have to cook while doing your homework. Remember to use the breathing method I taught you when lighting the fire, and the wrist movement method I taught you when cooking. If you dare to be lazy, you will have to practice the monkey form tonight. No, it’s the ape form.” Old Master Jiang huffed and puffed, as if he had just suffered a great injustice.

That night, a cold moonlight shone on the empty lot in front of the bamboo house. The surroundings were extremely quiet, except for the occasional cry of an animal.

Winter nights are always windy and especially cold, but I was still sweating in my single shirt and pants.

Bang! Another apple core landed on me. I panted heavily and grumbled, “Master, you’ve thrown me eight times tonight.”

“It’s no use throwing you eighty times. I’ve told you many times. The correct breathing method is not just about practicing the form of the Five Animal Play, but also about combining the breath in one flow without dispersing it, so as to achieve the effect of health and fitness. Just like martial arts, it also emphasizes the internal energy, which should be contained without being exposed. If the energy is dispersed, the strength will also be dispersed. Are you breathing heavily like a monkey? Or are you tired from chasing chickens?” Old Jiang was originally sitting on the veranda in front of the bamboo house watching me practice boxing. When I retorted, he became angry and jumped in front of me.

“You have to do the movements and the strange breathing exercises, what three long and one short, what breathing in and out, and what breathing through the nose and mouth. Master, isn’t this all one breath?” I wiped the sweat off my face and squatted on the ground.

I was really tired. I had to cook, do my homework, copy the Tao Te Ching that I hadn’t finished in the morning, and then practice this again and again. Even a body made of iron couldn’t take it.

Old Jiang wanted to say something else, but when he saw me yawn, he didn’t say anything after all.

After a moment of silence, the old man took out a dirty handkerchief from somewhere and threw it to me. “Wipe your sweat, come in and have some soup and a bath.”

“There’s still soup to drink?” I never thought I would be treated like this.

“Huh, if you don’t practice martial arts when you’re poor, even if you’re a martial artist, if you don’t replenish your body, you won’t live past fifty, let alone a cultivator! Cultivators pay more attention to the way of health preservation. If you only practice without replenishing, your body won’t absorb the nutrients, so what’s the point of practicing qi and body cultivation? Unless you reach a higher level, but that’s a legend.” Old man Jiang said a few serious words, then he pulled me up and took me to the kitchen.

The so-called kitchen was just a part of the back porch of the small bamboo house, with a shed on top and a few simple stoves underneath.

At this time, a small pot was placed on one of the stoves, and the pot was steaming and making a ‘gurgling’ sound inside. An inexplicable aroma was drifting in the air.

It was a light meaty aroma mixed with a medicinal aroma, making me, who had been tired for half the night and was already hungry, salivate.

“Look at you,” said the old man, laughing. He couldn’t help but say a sentence in the Beijing dialect, which he had been teaching me since we had come to the mountains.

He said to me, “You will have to travel around the country in the future, so it is always good to speak Mandarin. In the future, you will have to learn a little bit of the local dialects.”

Old Jiang is rarely affectionate, and I am happy to enjoy it. I just smile foolishly at the fragrant clay pot.

“I’m letting you off lightly, because you’re my apprentice. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken out these treasures. You’re only 15, so I have to think of a way to get you to eat a little bit, and not too much.” Old Master Jiang opened the clay pot, and a stronger aroma came over me.

I was so hungry that my stomach was growling, so I didn’t listen to what the old man was saying. I just asked, “Master, aren’t you going to drink it?”

“It’s useless for me to drink it, it’s a waste! Some things are predetermined by fate…” The tone of the old man suddenly became sad, and I inexplicably felt sad too.

I can’t say why, but when the old man said this, my heart felt heavy.

But the next moment, the old man glared at me and shouted, “Why aren’t you getting a bowl? Do I have to pour it for you?”

I quickly went to get the bowl, and the old man carefully poured the soup and ingredients from the clay pot into a full bowl for me.

Under the oil lamp, I saw that the soup was slightly blackened, but it couldn’t hide the clear and lovely look. I recognized the meat as bird meat, but I didn’t know what kind of bird it was. There were also some medicinal herbs in the soup, which I didn’t know what they were.

“This meat is wild pigeon meat. Eat it quickly. It’s guaranteed to be so delicious that you’ll swallow your tongue. The recipe for this soup is still from my second brother…” Old man Jiang said this and then shut up, his expression becoming very strange.

I didn’t care about the heat, and I slurped up a mouthful of the soup. It was really delicious, but I heard my second brother still very curious. My master and my second brother?

“Who is the second brother?”

“What second brother? I’m still your second uncle.” Old man Jiang glared and shouted, “Drink up this pot of soup and finish the meat. I’ll go make the soup ingredients. When you’re done, come help boil the water! If you don’t dare to wash the dishes, hmm…”

After a full stomach and a soak in the fragrant soup, I thought that was the happiest thing in life. I will never forget that scene. I was soaking in the big tub, playing with the water from time to time, while the old man smoked a pipe next to me.

Old man Jiang rarely smoked, and only when I was soaking in the fragrant hot spring would he smoke a pipe. Usually, he only did so occasionally. Since I often took medicinal food before soaking in the hot spring, whenever I soaked in the fragrant hot spring, I would fall asleep nine times out of ten. As a result, I would be picked up by Old man Jiang, roughly wiped down, and then thrown into bed.

Every night, I looked forward to that moment, a warm moment after a tiring but fulfilling day.

Before I knew it, another year had passed, I had turned nine, and I was in the third grade of elementary school. I had also spent a year and a half in the mountains.

In the past year and a half, I haven’t learned the “mysterious” skills of the old man, but I have learned a lot of other things that seem to me to be miscellaneous, such as reciting the Tao Te Ching, Wu Qin Xi, Tai Chi, and so on.

It was another ordinary winter morning. I got up at 5 o’clock as usual, washed up, and came to the veranda of the bamboo house.

Facing the quiet and empty bamboo forest, I took a deep breath and began to clack my teeth, which is a morning ritual.

I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth, clench my left teeth, and then clench my right teeth. I repeat this process thirty-six times before I finish.

Then I began to move my tongue up and down my gums until my mouth was full of saliva, which I swallowed in three gulps. Each time I swallowed, there was a muffled thunder-like sound. Of course, I swallowed very hard. Old man Jiang said that I had to swallow the saliva to my lower abdomen. At first, I couldn’t do it, so I tried to imagine that it was flowing into my lower abdomen.

After doing this trivial work with my teeth and tongue, I rubbed my hands vigorously until they were hot. While my palms were still hot, I completely covered my ears, held my fingers behind my head, and then pressed my middle finger with my index finger. I then used the tip of my index finger to hit the back of my head 50 times.

Of course, the old man said that there were several acupuncture points, but most of them were on the back of the skull, and the effect was more or less the same. I could be lazy if I wanted to.

These exercises are very troublesome, but I have to do them every morning. Sometimes I think I can get away with it, but every time I do, the old man will suddenly appear behind me, and I will definitely be punished.

After I finish these tasks, I will go to the kitchen to boil water to wash the rice, and then wake up the old man. He said that as my morning “homework” becomes more and more, as long as I boil the water and wash the rice, he will make breakfast for me.

After waking up the old man, I would jog around the bamboo forest three times, then stop at the small pool and start practicing the 16-ingot gold technique. I would inhale and lift, and the qi would return to the navel. I would inhale and swallow, and the water and fire would meet. These simple 16 words are something I have not yet fully mastered after practicing them for so long.

But the old man said that the benefits of this mantra are many, especially for the body and health, and told me to persevere.

After finishing all this, it is almost 6 o’clock in the morning. Classes start at 8 o’clock, so I have to walk for an hour and a half. In the past, this time was not enough, but now I find that my pace is getting lighter and lighter. An hour and a half is just enough to walk to school.

At 6:10, it’s time to eat. Before eating, Old Master Jiang and I often practice tai chi together for ten minutes. Of course, his movements are smooth and graceful, with a natural charm, while mine, in Old Master Jiang’s words, are “an empty frame, without rhythm, let alone momentum.”

Today’s breakfast was very rich. In addition to the thick porridge I usually cook, two boiled eggs, and two side dishes, there were even steaming hot buns.

“What are you looking at? You were already asleep last night when I was making the filling for the buns. If it weren’t for your birthday, you wouldn’t be eating these buns.” Old Jiang scolded me a little, but then he stuffed the buns into my hands.

I was shocked and only then did I remember that today was my birthday and that I was already nine years old.

“Master, do you remember my birthday?” I took a bite of the steamed bun, but I couldn’t say I wasn’t moved.

“Of course I remember. All the other birthdays were fine, but your ninth birthday should be celebrated. Come back early today and I’ll give you a present. When you turn ten, I’ll have to tell you something.” Old Master Jiang said, but he didn’t explain why I should be celebrated on my ninth birthday.

I slurped the porridge and promised him, not knowing what he was going to give me.