Chapter 5
Chapter 5
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 5
Chapter Title: Flame Emperor Divine Art
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Click-clack. Click-clack...
The stone steps laid along the mountainside slope clacked rhythmically against the wooden clogs.
A man with a short beard and stiff hair tied up in a topknot—fierce-faced and ferocious, Mountain Root Great Auspicious.
And walking beside him, Jade Stream Sword Hyeon-gong.
About two months prior, Wudang's foremost Dao warrior and the sect's next sect leader had ventured out to aid the Shaolin warrior monks in dealing with the Demon Moon that had appeared in Henan Province. Now, they had returned.
"The journey was long. Would you like to rest first, Martial Uncle?"
Mountain Root shook his head at Hyeon-gong's question.
"Lose the edge."
His slurred speech and curt words nonetheless conveyed his meaning clearly.
He meant he couldn't afford to let slip the sharpened senses honed from battling yokai—he'd head straight to training.
"In that case, I'll handle the report to the sect leader. I'll take my leave."
Hyeon-gong offered a respectful clasped-hands salute toward his martial uncle.
But Mountain Root didn't even glance back as he strode onward. His footwork glided like skimming over water, infused with the signature lightness of Wudang's Cloud Stepping Steps.
A voice called out to Hyeon-gong as he headed toward the Mysterious Mystery Palace.
"Eldest Senior Brother! Eldest Senior Brother!"
"What's this about, Hyeon-jung? You look a mess. Aren't you afraid of the second- and third-gen disciples seeing you like this?"
Hyeon-jung, a disciple from the Scripture Pavilion, had come running in a panic. He pounded his chest in frustration, as if such things were the least of his concerns right now.
Hyeon-gong listened silently to Hyeon-jung's spit-flying, gesticulating rant—which lacked all decorum—and surprise flickered in his eyes.
"Hah, that kid Hyeonseong...?"
"I'm telling you, it's true! What if some yokai ate Hyeonseong and is wearing his skin?!"
"Nonsense."
"Ow!"
Hyeon-gong smacked the back of Hyeon-jung's head cleanly before looking up at the sky.
"So, Hyeonseong, huh..."
It wasn't all that unusual for Hyeonseong—the genius and troublemaker born to Wudang after two hundred years since Founder Jang Sam-bong—to have nearly beaten his senior brother to death.
But to hear that he'd meekly apologized to Martial Uncle Mugeon and somehow gotten the bedridden Hyeon-gyu back on his feet? That was intriguing news.
The great disciple of the Hyeon generation, Hyeon-gong, smiled faintly and murmured slowly.
"Guess I need to meet him."
Time flowed on, and before long, the month had changed.
"Hyeonseong. Your martial granduncle and I are heading down to the village. You stay here."
His master spoke after fitting a veiled bamboo hat on his martial granduncle and handing him a staff.
The old me would've nodded and thrown myself into solo martial arts training.
After all, trips to the lower village just involved showing our faces to the common folk and exchanging pleasantries.
But since returning to the past, an anxiety gnawed deep in my heart—that my master and martial granduncle might meet harm in some place beyond my sight.
Having lived through it once, the dread was all the more intense.
"No, I'll come with you, Master."
"Hm? Something up? Well, no harm in it. Get ready quick."
No elaborate preparations needed. I just threw a robe over my training clothes and hit the road.
We passed the commercial district clustered around Wudang Sect's secular branch at the mountain's base—inns, cloth shops, and the like—until endless fields and paddies stretched out before us.
Farmers bustled about their work, coming and going.
Master handled the people who recognized the Wudang emblem, bowed deeply, and chattered away with practiced ease.
Something I could never pull off. Catering to every one of them would've given me a fit of apoplexy—or worse, tangled my qi flow and sent me into qi deviation.
I stuck close to my staff-thumping martial granduncle, eyes scanning for anyone suspiciously rolling their gaze our way.
Then, out of nowhere.
"Aiyo, True Man!"
Some old fellow suddenly prostrated himself before me.
His form was textbook five-point prostration.
Utterly baffled, I first glanced at Master.
"True Man" was a title for esteemed Daoists—typically reserved for elders of the Nine Great Sects and Eight Great Schools.
A mere first-gen disciple without even a Daoist topknot demanding such reverence from commoners would get dragged before the sect elders, beaten, and thrown in the penance chamber. That was the iron rule across all Daoist sects.
Of course, I'd never demanded such a title, and Master wouldn't toss me in the penance chamber on a whim—but I couldn't help feeling self-conscious under the scrutiny.
Master read the bewilderment on my face, approached the elder, knelt, and helped him up by the shoulders.
"This disciple's cultivation is still lacking for Daoist duties. What brings you to my student, elder?"
"Aiyo! Such undeserved words, True Man! It's all thanks to this young immortal here that we'll have a bumper crop this year!"
I hadn't cast any spells to control the weather—so how could I have brought a good harvest? As I puzzled over it,
the teary-eyed elder pulled a tattered book from his bosom.
Its yellowed cover was so grimed with handling that the title was barely legible.
"What the heck does it say? Flame... Emperor... Divine... Art...?"
A memory buried in the corner of my mind revived, triggered by those four characters.
Flame Emperor Divine Art.
The title of a manual tucked away in one dusty shelf of the mental library in my head.
In other words, this ridiculous book was a martial arts manual I'd written.
About fifty years before my death.
Which meant when I was around twelve.
There'd been a brutal drought across Hubei back then.
Not as apocalyptic as the eternal night wrought by that emperor's power, but bad enough that plenty starved down in the villages.
Wudang was a Daoist sect, after all. Daoists weren't meant for stabbing folks with swords—they held rituals and scarfed down rice cakes.
When imperial relief grain failed to end the drought, Sect Leader Mugwang Martial Uncle—Wudang's foremost Daoist sect—ordered disciples to aid the farmers for the people's sake.
Wudang disciples, with their pure inner energy stores and physiques toughened by external training, could accomplish five or six times the work of ordinary farmers in the same time.
Most great disciples of Wudang, harboring the spirit of wandering heroes, followed the sect leader's command gladly.
Not all, though. I was the prime example.
Time already short for martial training, now they wanted me rolling up my pants, wading in mud to transplant rice, and using my lightness skill to haul manure?
For lowly dirt-scratchers who just tilled fields for a living?
Back then, I couldn't grasp the sect leader's intent.
It was a luxury afforded by never having seen eighty percent of the Central Plains population starve to death in three years when the sun vanished.
You have to get beaten to know pain.
Anyway, my twelve-year-old self's solution was brilliantly simple.
If I had no time for training but had to help with farming, why toil myself? Just create a martial art to teach these farmers and toss it their way.
Nothing fancy required.
Draw in heaven's qi to circulate through the human body and stimulate the earth's energy.
Using the most basic principle of the Three Powers across all martial arts, I crafted a dynamic cultivation method that let you build and cycle inner energy even while moving.
Of course, it wasn't some grand art worthy of the name.
It was inefficient—you had to vent the gathered qi right back into the soil—and only useful for repetitive motions like bending to plow fields or weeding paddies.
Even someone versed only in Three Powers Swordplay doesn't just swing horizontally and vertically in sparring.
A martial art without fluid transitions was worthless in real combat.
In short, I'd birthed a half-baked third-rate farming manual.
Even if I'd whipped it up quick and dirty, I was pretty pissed that this was the best my efforts yielded.
Dubbing this unsatisfactory half-assed technique after the Flame Emperor Shennong—the mythic god of agriculture and medicine from the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors—was pretty much self-mockery.
But the elder before me clearly saw it differently.
"Look at this, True Man! Just as you taught—inhale and exhale while plowing, and the soil grows richer by the day, the crops more bountiful!"
The elder Master had just helped to his feet suddenly burst into tears and thrust a massive radish—freshly pulled from the field, caked in brown dirt—at me.
Once the elder broke the ice, others crept closer.
"Truly magnificent, True Man!"
"Please take this too, True Man!"
Soon, a cloud of people swarmed us, hurling produce and goods our way.
Like the tale of unparalleled beauty Pan An, where women flocked like clouds to pile his cart high with fruit.
"Flame Emperor Reborn!"
"Shennong Incarnate!"
A great shout erupted from the crowd like fireworks.
"A Daoist hero wading barefoot into farm work—truly a Farming Hero!"
"Farming Hero! Farming Hero!"
"He's Shennong!"
The farmers chanted some bizarre slogan—nickname or what?—fist-pumping in unison.
At the sight, a long-forgotten dizziness assaulted my senses.
Crushing waves of shame made me want to face-plant into a plate and die.
Anyone who's written so much as a diary knows how mentally scarring it is when others read your old scribbles.
Now imagine dozens mobbing you like dogs, reciting your words and singing your praises?
That's exactly what I was feeling.
My shoulders trembled; tears welled up.
Flame Emperor Divine Art, huh... The name alone makes it sound like some peerless supreme art. Truly catastrophic naming sense.
God knows.
What the hell was twelve-year-old me thinking, slapping that name on a mere farming manual?
If some entity sent me back in time, I'd grab their collar and demand why two years earlier, not right here to face this mess.
Oblivious to my turmoil, my martial granduncle chuckled and patted my head.
"Heh heh... Amazing, Hyeonseong. You've already got a nickname. And such a fine one at that."
"Indeed. Even this master has the moniker Windy Sword Knight. For a martial artist navigating the orthodox world, having 'Hero' in your title is the height of luxury."
Martial Granduncle praised me like a child, while Master grinned playfully.
As I shot them resentful glares, eyes shifted to my veiled martial granduncle.
"Wudang Fairy!"
"Hubei's Fairest!"
"Look this way, Lady Immortal!"
The villagers, spotting fresh prey, waved and cheered fervently at her.
Martial Granduncle's face flushed crimson, visible even through the translucent veil.
"Kyaaah!"
She clamped her scarlet ears and screamed.
A twinge of vindictive satisfaction hit me.