Chapter 21#

The young man was stunned, then threw his head back and laughed loudly: “I don’t care. Anyway, no one in this Jianghu knows the name of Hua Jinian yet. Even if my identity as the only son of the Fortress Master of Futu Fortress is leaked, and others laugh at me for serving tea and water in an escort agency for three years, they are laughing at Futu Fortress, laughing at you, losing your face. What do I count as—”

Hua Qianjue looked at him with an uncertain expression. With a wave of his hand, a palm wind surged through the window. Only a suppressed scream was heard from outside the window; the eavesdropper had already been killed by Hua Qianjue’s palm. The young man saw the man kill instantly, his face turning slightly pale with fright. Just as he wanted to move backward, the man suddenly grabbed Hua Jinian’s wrist with a backhand, roaring in a suppressed voice: “Watch, I will make everyone in this Jianghu know your name! I’ll see who dares to laugh at you for losing my face!”

Hua Jinian looked at the bit of bloodthirsty red light in the man’s eyes, his face changing again and again. Before he could react, his body was forcefully turned around by the man. Immediately, a pair of warm hands pressed against his back, followed by a surging stream of true qi, unceremoniously inputted into the young man’s meridians.

Hua Jinian screamed, his body almost immediately falling forward, hugging his shoulders with both hands and rolling in pain. That extremely domineering true qi rampaged through his eight extraordinary meridians. His whole body felt like ten thousand insects were biting his bones and gnawing his heart. The pain was unspeakable, wishing he could die immediately. Hua Qianjue straightened him up and shouted loudly in his ear: “You still remember the mental cultivation method of the Flower Heart Mantra, right? Sit obediently in meditation for me and try to dissolve this true qi.”

The young man was in agony, screaming: “No, no, I haven’t read it, I don’t know, it hurts, it hurts to death! I can’t stand it!” Hua Qianjue was slightly stunned, seeing the young man sweating profusely all over, his lips already purple from pain. Presumably, he hadn’t expected that the young man hadn’t meditated and circulated qi even once in three years, making his meridians so fragile. The man thought for a moment, frowned, and said ruthlessly: “I will recite the mental cultivation method to you now. You realize the way to dissolve it yourself. I will only recite it once. If you can’t remember, can’t practice well, can’t use it, then just die of pain like this.”

The young man tore the bed sheet in pain, cursing incessantly, but heard Hua Qianjue already starting to recite in a low voice. The tone was low and slow, word by word, like chanting Sanskrit scriptures in a dim room with yellow scrolls and green lamps, sending a chill from the bottom of one’s heart. He heard him recite: “The Way begins in the realm of Bodhi. The capable one, the Way connects heaven and earth, thoughts enter the wind and clouds. The realm of Bodhi, the sun, moon and stars, rivers and seas, are all illusions…”

In his pain, the young man desperately grasped every word slowly read out by the man, but couldn’t make heads or tails of this scripture-like mental cultivation method. While he was struggling, the man continued to recite without hesitation: “The Pagoda (Futu), riding the wind among thousands, nothing can be bitter. Those who practice my Way must always remember…”

Gradually, a roaring sound appeared in the young man’s ears. In his mind, “nothing can be bitter, everything is illusion” came and went. His heart gradually felt like dead ashes. The force originally binding the true qi tightly to prevent it from wandering also loosened, allowing that domineering true qi to scurry around. The stabbing pain in the meridians actually gradually eased.

The man continued to recite in his ear: “My Way originates from the Niwan, returns to the Qihai, wanders in the Dantian. Returning is unfavorable, advancing has surplus. The ribs are relaxed and harmonious without knowing, floating like wandering in the Great Void, preserving the whole and guarding the one, not knowing the seven precepts and forgetting emotions…”

Hua Jinian was wandering in pain, finally hearing these few sentences about controlling qi mixed in between, like a ray of light in the darkness. He couldn’t help but brace himself, originating that true qi from the Niwan acupoint, slowly completing a small circulation, then forcing it into the Qihai. After three or two circulations like this, he barely collected all that true qi, but it was only accumulated in one place. How could he talk about “turning it for his own use”? At that moment, he shouted angrily, and the man happened to recite: “Only feel a noble spirit in the throat, unhappy if not released, look up and make a whistling sound…”

Hua Jinian panted uncertainly on the bed. His five senses actually became sharper. For a moment, his ears were sharp and his eyes were bright, seeing the scenes in the darkness clearly. The man stopped reciting, looked him up and down for a long time, and then said indifferently: “I didn’t harm you, right.”

The young man was furious, but happened to be exhausted to death, unable to say a word for a moment. Hua Qianjue’s hand had already landed on his face, stroking over his eyes, whispering: “Do you feel your eyes are brighter?” Stroking over his nose, “Do you feel your nose is sharper?” Finally stroking over his ears, “Do you feel your ears are more sensitive?”

The young man was stunned, then reached out to touch the man’s ears too, smiling lazily: “Jinian has just glimpsed the doorway and already has such effects. Father has reached the realm of perfection, presumably even more sharp-eared and bright-eyed, right?”

Hua Qianjue seemed to have thought of something, smiled wickedly and said: “That is natural. As long as I want, falling leaves and flying flowers within a hundred feet cannot escape my ears…”

He looked at the young man, covered the hand Hua Jinian used to touch his ear with his own hand. His palm was warm, and the man whispered: “So I often hear things others don’t want to tell me. My son, if you have anything hiding from me, maybe I already know.”

Hua Jinian was stunned, seeming to feel that he had forgotten something important, or there was some loophole, but couldn’t remember for a moment, so he let it go, just smiling faintly: “What do you already know? Did you hear me speaking ill of you?”

The man didn’t seem to intend to say much either, just mentioning faintly: “Don’t you feel that I treat you… much better compared to when we first met?”

Hua Jinian was stunned and asked softly: “What… what do you mean?”

Hua Qianjue’s eyes were somewhat deep and hard to understand. When he frowned, his sharp and deep eyes appeared even more narrow and long, slightly slanted upwards, carrying a bit of killing aura. The man repeated in a low voice: “You really don’t feel it?”

Being looked at by him, the young man almost couldn’t breathe, so he had to force himself to try hard to recall. It seemed… when he first saw the man, the ice-sealed eyes contained nothing but killing intent and blood, almost like the nothingness of the god of death. The smile was fake, the words were fake, he didn’t even have the patience to watch him finish practicing martial arts. Later, seeing him again after that wedding banquet, this person gradually had joy and anger. To this day, the man was no longer high above in front of him, but like a living person with flesh and blood.

Thinking like this, the young man had to smile awkwardly: “It seems to be better.” After finishing, he thought for a moment and whispered: “Was that the Flower Heart Mantra just now? I feel it has some meaning of Buddhist scriptures. After practicing, hands and feet are cold.”

Hua Qianjue said nonchalantly: “That is natural. After all, it is the most authentic mental cultivation method of Futu Fortress. Why don’t you think about what Futu is? Futu, isn’t it Buddha… This kind of kung fu is originally meant to train people to be like the clay Bodhisattvas in the temple, without hate or love.”

The young man was greatly shocked, sitting half up from the bed. The palm injury and fatigue on his body couldn’t compare to the shock of this sentence. He said tremblingly: “You said this thing, practicing it—practicing it will make one without hate or love? …Then you, then you still let me practice?”

The man looked at him steadily, his pitch-black eyes like whirlpools. His perfect features were even more shocking in the dim room, his eyes deep and hard to understand. He laughed low: “So what? Didn’t you want to be a master?”

The young man stumbled off the bed and whispered: “I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it. Right, you practiced it, you practiced it. You used to… used to be described by them as an iceberg, presumably because you practiced this. But shouldn’t your martial arts be more advanced now? But why have you become a romantic figure flirting with flowers and grass again? Married a wife, gave birth to a son, often drink excessively, bloodthirsty and fond of killing. That’s right, Buddha wouldn’t be fond of killing…”

Speaking of this, the young man suddenly remembered a sentence the man said three years ago: When you achieve great success in divine skills, you find morning bells and evening drums in your ears, and ten thousand feet of green lamps and yellow scrolls before your eyes. You pick up a flower or leaf to kill someone a thousand miles away, but at this time your heart is like dead wood, why kill anymore—

The young man was stunned on the spot, frozen there.

The man looked at the young man rambling incoherently with incomprehensible eyes, then suddenly fell silent, and couldn’t help laughing low: “Indeed, approaching women with a heart that doesn’t approach women, being fond of killing with a heart that isn’t fond of killing… This is really a ridiculous thing. But why not forget? Wouldn’t it be easier to forget?”

Hua Jinian looked at him in disbelief, almost crying, suddenly thought of something again, held back and murmured: “I don’t believe it. Didn’t you just say you… you worry about me. If without emotion or love, why, why worry about me?”

“That is because…” The man looked at him and mumbled something indistinctly. Even though Hua Jinian’s hearing had improved greatly, his mind was dizzy at this time, so he still didn’t hear clearly and missed it like this. Seeing the expression on the young man’s face as if he was about to cry, the man frowned and hardened his heart: “Anyway, I am determined to force you to practice this kung fu!”

Saying this, he said no more, skillfully tapped Hua Jinian’s sleeping acupoint, easily carried the young man who was only half a head shorter than him on his shoulder, and strode out of the room door. Beside the room, a woman in palace dress kowtowed and said: “This concubine has been waiting for a long time.”

Hua Qianjue looked at her coldly and cursed in a low voice: “Didn’t I tell you to wait at the branch?”

Compared to three years ago, Cui’er was much thinner. Bright silk surrounded her pale face. She lowered her head, and those carefully drawn green long eyebrows appeared even more abrupt. She said softly: “If I didn’t come today, how would I know about this matter? —The Fortress Master began to disperse his Flower Heart Mantra kung fu during the time Jinian was recuperating and before our wedding. Cui’er was puzzled about this all the time back then, now I finally understand.”

The man lowered his eyes.

He remembered the question he asked the young man: Do you really not feel that I treat you better?

Dispersing kung fu? Indeed. Since it is a kung fu of forgetting emotions and discarding love, gradually dispersing it, wouldn’t one become a normal person with flesh and blood? Didn’t he hate that I treated him badly? Then dispersing this kung fu, wouldn’t I be able to treat him better? While thinking, Hua Qianjue sneered: “So what? This is what I owe him. I am willing to compensate him. What right do you have to interfere? I only hate that this kung fu couldn’t be dispersed urgently, which forced him away… It wasn’t until he left that I could dissolve it bit by bit over three years. Now it’s almost…”

Cui’er hissed: “Even if the Fortress Master’s martial arts are indeed unparalleled in the world, dispersing the martial arts that serve as the foundation, your internal energy is probably only half of what it was before, right?”

As she spoke, her head lowered even more, her shoulders trembling slightly: “The Fortress Master was impatient with Jinian in every way before, didn’t even have the patience to watch him finish learning kung fu. That time when Cui’er begged you to save him, the Fortress Master didn’t even want to go. Does the Fortress Master really think Cui’er would believe—believe that Geng Yong’s few words could completely enlighten the Fortress Master?”

Speaking of this, Cui’er’s tone suddenly became sharp. She raised her head abruptly, tear stains blurring her heavy makeup: “What exactly is the reason! Could it be because… that time I begged you to help him, you heard something from the side, which could make the emotionless and loveless you feel so guilty? Guilty enough to disperse your kung fu so as not to hurt him again?”

Heard what? Hua Qianjue thought—that time, the young man in green said to Hua Jinian: “If you don’t even agree to this, I will tell your father the truth. Tell him whose face borrowed that night.”

Their whispered conversation, unbeknownst to them, all fell into the man’s ears.

The man was trapped in memories, and after a long time, he whispered: “You know my hearing is amazing. Originally, no matter how dissolute that night was, to me it was just a night of romance. I was about to forget it, but they just had to bring it up at that time.”

Brought it up, heard it, then felt guilty. No matter how emotionless and loveless a person is, they cannot be as unmoved as grass and trees. Even an enlightened high monk, with a heart like a bright mirror, would still feel guilty if he knew he accidentally hurt a good person while slaying demons. Even he still couldn’t jump out of this fence.

He had always been open-minded. Life and death were not in his eyes, let alone martial arts cultivation. That guilt was like an old injury, making him feel a dull pain every day it wasn’t removed. In a fit of anger, he had the idea of dispersing his kung fu: at first, he just wanted to dissolve a bit of power. Unexpectedly, between emotion and ruthlessness, one grew as the other declined. Every bit of father-son affection recovered, he understood a bit more guilt, and couldn’t help dispersing a bit more power—until finally the divine skill was dispersed, and humanity began to open.

He looked at the woman and chuckled low: “Although I didn’t understand it at the time, Jinian’s half-month recuperation that time was enough for me to figure it out. However, you wouldn’t understand even if I said these things.”

He thought, she wouldn’t understand, and that child might not understand either, might not pay attention to think deeply—why did this man, who originally didn’t even have the patience to watch him practice martial arts, become willing to joke, scold, and play with him regardless of the precious wedding night after his serious illness? And why did he walk down step by step from the high throne, stand in front of the young man, tell him to call him, love him? Who would believe that such a change would be without cause or reason?

Cui’er smiled on her face as if crying. What Hua Qianjue didn’t know was her understanding. She looked at the unconscious Hua Jinian on the man’s shoulder, sneering in her heart. What a story of revenge, what a wicked martial art. People often say things happen by mistake, but they certainly wouldn’t expect such a mistake:

If Hua Jinian didn’t forget emotions, he could enjoy the happiness of being spoiled. It’s just that the two of them, one finally knew emotion with great difficulty, and the other was about to forget it. This chasing game is so pleasant. Thinking of the Flower Heart Mantra, she almost laughed out loud—