leonardwarren Chapter 106 Tang Dynasty
Chapter 106 Tang Dynasty
The moon rises over the western tower, at the Zou family's residence.
Auntie was showing Zou Wanruo around the library, with Liu Ming following behind in his guard's uniform.
The library was filled with the rich scent of ink, and the bookshelves were piled high with thread-bound volumes. Candles burned quietly behind gauze covers.
As her second aunt led Wanru inside, she chattered on about which volume her cousin had used and which volume had been annotated by the old man himself.
As if listening intently, Liu Ming followed quietly, his boots making a very slight creaking sound on the wooden floor.
A servant rushed in and whispered a few words in his aunt's ear.
My aunt frowned, then quickly relaxed, and when her brows unfurrowed again, her eyes brightened.
She turned around, her tone casual, as if she were chatting.
"Wanruo, what industry does Lin Mu's family work in?"
"He started out as a handyman at the martial arts school."
Second Aunt asked again, "What is his relationship with the sect?"
As if answering decisively: "There is no connection whatsoever."
"Does he know Wen Haoran?"
Clearly, the servant had already found out Lin Mu's whereabouts, and even knew exactly how he entered the secluded sect.
As if they knew each other, Lin Mu had studied literature with Wen Haoran for a few days in Heyuan.
Second Aunt's eyes lit up again, and she gently patted Wanruo's hand, her tone becoming even softer.
Why didn't you say so sooner?
"Invite him over for a visit when you have time."
"You were well taken care of by him in Heyuan, so you should be treated well when you return to Qingzhou."
Lin Mu knew nothing about the Zou family.
Nights without meat are really hard to endure.
He is considering whether or not to take matters into his own hands and become self-sufficient.
In the end, he couldn't resist. He left the Xian Sect, went to the butcher shop to buy some beef, and then had the butcher kill a seven-colored golden pheasant on the spot.
I smelled the fragrance of lotus leaves as I passed by a vegetable stall, so I asked for a few.
As I walked back, I caught a glimpse of a figure in a gray robe pausing briefly at the base of a wall at the alley entrance.
He turned a corner, and the man disappeared. There was a three-lined claw mark embroidered on the corner of his robe, exactly the same as the one Meng Changqing had drawn in Heyuan.
He dug a shallow pit in the bamboo grove behind the inn, wrapped the chicken, which had been marinated with salt and seasonings, tightly in lotus leaves, covered it with mud, buried it in the pit, and then lit a fire on top of it.
At three quarters past Xu hour, the aroma of beggar's chicken filled the Xianzong neighborhood.
The little girl ran down from the bamboo house, the copper bells on her ankles ringing crisply and urgently.
She followed the scent all the way to the edge of the bamboo forest, squatted down by the fire, and her two crooked ponytails swayed in the moonlight.
Lin Mu cracked open the mud shell, lifted the lotus leaf, and the rising steam, carrying the fragrance of chicken and lotus leaves, soared upwards.
The little girl sniffed, her eyes widened, and her mouth opened wide enough to fit an egg.
"Big brother, this smells so good!"
She still had half a piece of osmanthus cake in her mouth, which she had taken from the kitchen. When she spoke, her cheeks bulged out like a frog's, and her voice was muffled, as if her nose was stuffed with two wads of cotton.
"This is beggar's chicken."
Lin Mu scratched her nose, mimicked her accent, replied, and then tore off a piece of chicken leg and handed it to her.
The little girl took the chicken leg and took a big bite. Her eyes brightened even more. She hadn't even finished swallowing the osmanthus cake in her mouth before she was eager to chew the chicken. Her cheeks bulged out even more than before.
"Call Wow Chicken is delicious. Big brother, how do you make Call Wow Chicken?"
Lin Mu threw the chicken bones into the fire and said that the chicken should be wrapped in lotus leaves, covered with mud, buried in the ground and burned.
She nodded as she ate, it was hard to tell whether she truly understood or not.
"What's your name?"
"Yu Xiaoxiao. Yan Niang's daughter. Yan Niang is my mother, and Yu Shanhai is my father."
After she finished chewing the chicken leg, she threw the bone into the fire and licked the oil off her fingers.
"You can call me Wo Xiaoxiao."
She stared at the remaining half chicken in the lotus leaf, tapping her little finger on her knee as if making a very important decision.
I want to eat chicken drumsticks again.
Lin Mu tore off another chicken leg and handed it to her.
She took it and started eating, then stared at the chicken wings, tapping her fingers on her knees even faster.
"I'd like to eat wings too."
Lin Mu tore off another wing.
She took two more bites, then suddenly stopped, looked down at her round little belly, and her face showed a very conflicted and distressed expression.
"But if I swallow like this, I'll get fat, and Yan Niang will spank my bottom."
"What's wrong with being fat?"
Lin Mu also tore off a piece of chicken and stuffed it into his mouth.
"Yan Niang said that fat girls are not pretty."
Xiaoxiao sighed; her serious demeanor was completely out of character for someone who was seven or eight years old.
Lin Mu finished chewing the chicken in his mouth and glanced at her.
"Let me tell you a story."
"There was once a dynasty called the Tang Dynasty, and people back then loved to eat late-night snacks."
Xiaoxiao tilted her head and asked, "I'll get fat from eating late-night snacks. It's not good-looking if I get fat, and Yanniang will scold me. What should I do?"
"Yeah, what should we do?"
"The people of the Tang Dynasty were very clever. They felt that late-night snacks should not be skipped, so they came up with a solution."
"What method?"
"If everyone thinks that fat people are beautiful, then eating late-night snacks is perfectly acceptable, isn't it?"
"Therefore, the Tang Dynasty advocated that plumpness was beautiful, and the more you ate, the fatter you were, the more beautiful you were."
If you can't control your desires, you can change your aesthetic sense.
Xiaoxiao stopped eating the chicken leg and blinked her big, dark eyes.
She looked at the remaining half chicken leg in her hand, and at the steaming chicken meat still inside the lotus leaf, and suddenly laughed.
"I'm going to build a Tang Dynasty someday too."
She nodded, as if she had found a perfectly valid reason, and started devouring the chicken wings again.
With Lin Mu's indulgence, Yu Xiaoxiao ate half a chicken and eventually fell asleep on Lin Mu's lap.
Lin Mu carried her back to the bamboo house before returning to the platform.
Lin Mu stuck the Wind Thorn on the edge of the platform and put on the Shattered Mountains and Rivers.
He closed his eyes and began practicing with the Long Wind Fist.
The straight penetration of the draft, the arc of the wind swaying the willow, the borrowed force of the wind swaying the willow—each punch made the fist of the shattering mountains and rivers gleam with an extremely faint and dark golden hue under the moonlight.
Then came the Fierce Tiger Fist, powerful and explosive, the force of the punch scattering the mist from the waterfall.
The Zhenshan Fist, with its layered and progressively increasing explosive force, left a ring of extremely fine and dense cracks on the bluestone slab beneath its feet.
Raging Bull Fist, Mountain-Crushing Fist, Heart-Piercing Fist, Stele-Splitting Fist, Vajra Fist, Spirit Fox Fist—eighteen fist techniques poured out one after another from his fist. The water mist on the bluestone platform was shattered and then gathered again by the force of his fist, and the moonlight flowed like mercury on his fist.
The power of the fist slowly rose through the meridians, and that familiar resonance ignited again at the tip of the fist.
With each punch, he felt his muscles and bones resonate, and his blood and qi surged along the path of his fist.
The power of a fist cannot be achieved by a single fist technique; it is the overlap of all fist techniques.
He withdrew his fist and pulled out the Wind Thorn again.
The moves of the Soul-Severing Spear were unleashed one by one under the moonlight.
Thrust, flick, sweep, smash—each shot was precise and accurate, the dark gold patterns rising from the shaft to the tip, gleaming coldly in the night wind.
No matter how much he practiced, he could never get that "spear stance" from the tip of the spear.
He tried to apply the power generation method of fist techniques to gun techniques, but since the gun is an inanimate object, most of the resonance of the fist technique was broken when it reached the tip of the gun.
It's like a rushing river suddenly flowing into a narrow channel; the water is still the same, but the momentum has been lost.
He practiced the Wind-Riding Spear and the Soul-Severing Spear techniques alternately, each spear strike faster and more accurate than the last, but he never achieved the same sense of resonance as his fist techniques, which could ignite the blood and qi throughout his body and even move in unison with the mountains and rivers.