Chapter 14 — The Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
The jade was of excellent quality, but very strange: carved upon it was a design resembling a totem, along with characters Wei Zhao could not read — certainly not seal script. This pendant and the writing on the scroll clearly belonged to two different systems.
This struck Wei Zhao as odd. By rights, whether in the cave or on the scroll, the writing had all been of one kind; only this jade pendant was the exception.
Later, Wei Zhao also asked Old Man Wei about the pendant, but Old Man Wei did not know what it was for either — indeed, when he saw it, an expression of profound astonishment came over his face.
Far more astonishment than he had shown when he saw Wei Zhao bring a box out of the cave.
In the end, Wei Zhao could only rely on his own reasoning and guess that the pendant was meant to aid in practicing martial arts, and so he kept it on his person ever after.
Wei Zhao carefully unrolled the scroll, only to feel a faint pang of disappointment. The scroll was thin, holding nothing but a single piece of silk.
Still, Wei Zhao had read those martial arts novels and understood that a formidable manual was not measured by the number of its words; the Nine Yin White Bone Claw that Mei Chaofeng practiced could be written out on a single piece of human skin. So it was with a heart full of eager anticipation that Wei Zhao began to read the scroll.
The five large characters "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art," written in seal script, immediately leaped into Wei Zhao's eyes. The same script, identical to the characters carved on the stone tablet in the great hall of the cave.
Beneath the five-character title, however, ran a line of small text: First Stage — Heavenly Silkworm. Then came the body of the text: "Mortals are as ants; how can one alter the great Dao and hold the fate of all living things in his grasp..."
Wei Zhao swiftly scanned the main text. The first stage was further divided into three levels—early, middle, and late—but this single page of the scroll contained only the first stage of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art.
Of course, Wei Zhao was not so foolish as to think that this Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art consisted of only a first stage. If there was a first stage, there must surely be a second, and a third.
As for where the remaining scrolls were, Wei Zhao had no idea. Perhaps behind the stone door at the back of the great hall, perhaps somewhere else entirely. But before anything else, he would have to finish cultivating the first stage of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art, and only then make other plans.
Though the introduction to the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art that preceded it was obscure and hard to grasp, the cultivation process that followed was written in great detail, complete even with diagrams of the human body's acupoints for reference—no difficulty at all for Wei Zhao, who had practiced martial arts since childhood.
At that moment Wei Zhao gave it no further thought; he simply began to cultivate according to the first stage of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art, the Heavenly Silkworm scroll. And it was precisely because Wei Zhao was still young, with no misgivings in his heart, that he believed mastering a rather profound skill would let him defeat Old Man Wei. It never once crossed his mind to wonder whether cultivating such a thing might clash with his present martial arts, or whether it might even send him into a fatal deviation.
It was only many years later, when Wei Zhao looked back on it, that he realized he had cultivated the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art mostly because the name of the skill was so ferocious—a skill that could even defeat a dragon had to be formidable indeed. Though by then Wei Zhao also knew that what he had cultivated was not a martial art at all.
^^^^
Old Fish is here again to beg for recommendations. Thank you, everyone.