Chapter 12: Lifting Heavy Like Light, Lifting Light Like Heavy
This water vat can’t be less than two hundred pounds! No matter how much I enjoyed playing in the mountains since I was a kid, from climbing trees and swimming in rivers to catching birds and fish, I still can’t lift such a heavy vat.
Yun Zhi drew a talisman on the water vat, causing the weight to suddenly decrease to one manageable for Lu Yang to lift with one hand.
Then, she took out a puppet to supervise Lu Yang.
“Try lifting it for a day and we’ll see the results.” Leaving this offhand comment, Yun Zhi had already vanished into the clouds.
Lu Yang’s eyes met with the puppets. Letting out a sigh, he tied his shirt around his waist and began his grueling life of lifting vats. Every time Lu Yang took a rest for too long, the puppet would immediately urge him to resume lifting, squeezing every bit of strength out of him.
When Lu Yang’s arms had no strength, the puppet would feed him two strong restorative pills.
When Lu Yang’s arms were too sore to move, the puppet would feed him two strong restorative pills.
When Lu Yang was so tired he wanted to sleep, the puppet would feed him two strong restorative pills…
By the end of the day, Lu Yang’s legs were wobbly, and his arms hung limp, completely numb. When he swayed his body to the left, his left arm would swing like a pendulum. When he swayed his body to the right, his right arm also swung, and then he collapsed to the ground with a thud.
The puppet fed him two strong restorative pills as usual. Seeing no reaction from Lu Yang, the puppet could only end the day’s training. It found a small cart to push Lu Yang back, even covering him with a straw mat like one would for a corpse.
With the aroma of food wafting into Lu Yang’s nose, he began to drool and slowly regain his consciousness.
I can finally eat. Lu Yang heaved a sigh of relief. If I still didn’t get to eat, I would think that I didn’t join a cultivation sect but rather serving my time in a water prison for committing a heinous crime.
As the sect leader’s disciple, food was not a concern. He didn’t have to take Fasting Pills everyday, and delicacies made from unknown and rare ingredients silently improved his body.
But Lu Yang still couldn’t lift his arms at all and had to be fed by the puppet.
Yun Zhi brewed an enormous pot of body-fortifying liquid medicine and had Lu Yang bathe in it. The spirit medicinal smell in the air almost knocked him out.
“Hold this.” Yun Zhi passed a hollow reed straw.
“This is…?”
“When you soak in the body-fortifying liquid medicine, you need to submerge your entire body. But when you bathe, your head will definitely be out of the water. Later on, you can bite the reed straw and breathe when you submerge your head inside.”
As expected of Big Senior Sister; she is truly attentive. Even if it’s torture, it’s still for my own good.
After Yun Zhi left, Lu Yang stripped himself of his clothes, bit the reed straw, and jumped into the wooden bucket. Following that, a blood-curdling scream filled the air, as if a pig had been slaughtered.
“Big Senior Sister, you use boiling water to bathe?!”
~~~
Yun Zhi arrived at a small courtyard. A gentle breeze blew away the lingering medicinal bath scent on her.
She began to ponder whether she had overlooked anything. Having grown up in a family of cultivators, everyone she met was a cultivator. After joining the Dao-Seeking Sect, she concentrated on cultivating and hardly interacted with the mundane world, so her understanding of mortals was limited.
In order to teach Lu Yang, she had specially sourced for numerous books depicting mortals. While Lu Yang was studying basic cultivation knowledge, she was studying basic mortal knowledge.
However, it was clear that these books did not mention the temperature of mortals’ bathwater.
Hearing Lu Yang’s hoarse scream, Yun Zhi contemplated for a bit. It’s too late to reduce the water’s temperature now. In that case, I can only…
Yun Zhi took a bottle of burn ointment from her sleeve. She placed it outside the door and knocked. “Little Junior Brother, I have left burn ointment outside the door; remember to use it.”
~~~
Time passed, and through the forced relentless training, spirit beast meat, and specially crafted medicinal bath, Lu Yang finally transformed from an ordinary mortal to an excellent street performer with burned and peeling skin and adept at handling vats.
Three water vats, each weighing two hundred pounds, were tossed around like sandbags by Lu Yang, forming an arc in the air. Lu Yang could even step on the vats’ edges, spinning in circles and tracing the footwork of the Bagua Steps[1] as if he was on flat ground. Upon laying the vats flat on the ground, he was still steady when stepping on the rolling vats. He even had the extra capacity to juggle three other vats!
Just this technique of his would draw cheers from the crowd on the street!
“Not bad, your progress with refining the body is even faster than I expected.” Yun Zhi clapped lightly, giving Lu Yang an immense confidence boost.
Despite rarely being present, Yun Zhi had actually been observing Lu Yang’s progress all this while.
Lu Yang placed the vats down and asked in excitement, “Can I cultivate now?” He quietly waited for the answer, not even daring to breathe out.
During this period, Meng Jingzhou had looked for him but was quickly chased away by the puppet before he could say much. Lu Yang heard that Meng Jingzhou, Man Gu, and the others from his batch had already drawn qi into their bodies, becoming true cultivators. They would sit meditatively and cultivate every day, transcending the mundane world.
He was the only one still struggling to refine his body. He couldn’t help but feel anxious, worried that he would fall behind.
Yun Zhi did not answer him but took out a piece of tofu from her storage space instead. The tofu was extremely soft, jiggling on Yun Zhi’s palm as if it was a balloon filled with water.
“Face your palm down and grab it.”
Lu Yang thought that there was nothing hard about it and followed her instructions. However, as soon as his fingers twitched slightly, the tofu got crushed and fell to the ground.
Yun Zhi passed another tofu to Lu Yang, indicating for him to continue.
Lu Yang was highly skeptical. The first time was just an accident, the second time will surely be fine.
However, he still squashed the tofu, unable to hold it.
When he failed yet again the third time, Lu Yang figured out the problem. His strength was overwhelming to control, and he hadn’t realized it previously because all the items around him were designed for cultivators. Had they been normal items, he would even have to be careful while eating, lest he snap the chopsticks into half and break the bowls into smithereens.
Furthermore, his strength had grown too quickly, and his mind still couldn’t keep up with his body, resulting in the problem of his fingers twitching every now and then. Thus, it was not an easy feat for him to grab something as soft as tofu.
Yun Zhi stopped passing pieces of tofu to Lu Yang. With her palm faced down, she grabbed a tofu and shook it casually, but it just wouldn’t fall apart.
Suddenly, she let go and the tofu fell, but she grabbed hold of the tofu again at lightning speed!
Lu Yang widened his eyes. Catching a falling tofu? That’s easier said than done.
With Yun Zhi’s strength, the soft tofu was no different from a block of metal and could be manipulated as she liked.
“You have already achieved lifting heavy like light, but you still have a long road ahead to mastering lifting light like heavy.”
Lu Yang kept silent. He knew that he was still far from the completion of refining his body. I can’t be too impatient with cultivation. Meng Jingzhou had his family clan teaching him since he was a child, that’s why he can directly cultivate.
Catching up with them will certainly not be easy.
Despite having no one to guide me in my early years, I am able to receive personal guidance from Big Senior Sister and even the help of natural treasures; my growth is already astonishing. What reason do I have not to be content?
Lu Yang even recalled what Yun Zhi had mentioned before. She said that cultivation is a lifelong endeavor. A momentary advantage or disadvantage doesn’t matter; the most important thing is who has the last laugh.
Taking in two deep breaths, Lu Yang realized that his previous mindset was wrong. He quickly adjusted his attitude and told himself not to only pursue rapid progress in cultivation.
Then, he saw Yun Zhi instructing the puppet to push over a trolley of tofu.
1. Although bagua or “eight trigrams” is often used in Feng Shui, the Bagua Steps is referring to the Baguazhang footwork which belongs to a major form of fist martial arts. ☜
Rakumon's ThoughtsDIY cultivation: cultivation at home be like playing with tofu in the kitchen xD
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