Chapter 14 — The Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art

As the first ray of sunlight from the east struck the valley, the stone door before Wei Zhao suddenly, without any warning, rattled with hidden machinery and, with a rumbling boom, swung shut.

Once the stone door had closed, Wei Zhao stepped up to it again, but no matter what he tried, it stayed silent and still, showing no sign of opening.

It seemed the eight lines written on the first stele had not deceived him. Once this stone door closed, it truly could not be opened again, and to open it anew he would have to wait five years.

Though Wei Zhao felt a twinge of disappointment, at least the box with the secret manual was in his hands. All else could be decided after he returned and studied it.

"Xiao Yi, are you all right?" A familiar voice sounded behind Wei Zhao. He turned to find that, at some unknown moment, Old Man Wei had appeared at his back.

"Damn it, old man, were you trying to kick me to death? You made me do a flying man off such a high mountain. Did you really think I was Superman?" Wei Zhao thought of his fall from the mountaintop the night before, and his bones still ached faintly all over.

"You are not dead, are you?" Seeing Wei Zhao unharmed, Old Man Wei felt a true wave of relief. Although he had acted calm before, his heart had been uneasy. After all, Wei Zhao had fallen from such a height, and though his body had been soaked in Chinese medicine of his own making, Old Man Wei himself had not been sure.

"Close enough." Wei Zhao hesitated over whether to tell Old Man Wei all he had seen and heard, but after a moment he decided to tell it exactly as it happened, since the old man had seen much of the world.

"Old man, I went into this cave yesterday..." Wei Zhao said, pointing to the stone door of the cave not far behind him.

"Mm..." Old Man Wei had already seen the box in Wei Zhao's hands and knew he must have been in the cave last night. Still, hearing Wei Zhao admit it himself made him glad. At least Wei Zhao did not treat him as an outsider, and he had not raised the boy for nothing.

"And then..." Unsure what Old Man Wei meant, Wei Zhao told him everything he had seen and heard after entering the cave, and at last held the box out before him. "This is that box."

"Keep it yourself," Old Man Wei said faintly, glancing at the box.

"You will not even look?" Wei Zhao was baffled. How could Old Man Wei seem so indifferent to such a marvelous thing?

"No use looking," Old Man Wei shook his head.

Although Wei Zhao had many questions, Old Man Wei's attitude of 'do not ask me' and 'do as you like' made him swallow the words on the tip of his tongue.

Together with Old Man Wei, he struggled back home along the branching path at the bottom of the valley. Old Man Wei fell onto the bed and slept, leaving Wei Zhao alone to stare wide-eyed at the box in his arms.

Since Old Man Wei showed utter indifference to it, Wei Zhao could only study what was in the box himself. He set the box on the battered Eight Immortals table and began his research.

The little box was quaint and antique, like those wooden cases once used in the palace to hold imperial edicts or elixir pills. It was not locked, however, and once Wei Zhao undid the clasp on top, the lid opened easily.

Wei Zhao's eyes widened and his breathing grew rapid. At last the lid opened, and lying inside was a scroll of silk.

Lifting the scroll, he saw a jade pendant at the bottom of the box. He hurriedly picked it up and held it to the lamplight to examine it closely.

The jade was of excellent quality, yet very strange, carved with a totem-like pattern and with writing Wei Zhao could not read. It was certainly not seal script, and the script on this pendant was clearly of a different line from that on the scroll.

This puzzled Wei Zhao. By all reason, whether in the cave or on the scroll, the writing was uniform. Only this pendant was special.

Later Wei Zhao had taken the pendant to ask Old Man Wei, but the old man did not know what the pendant was for either, and when he saw it, a look of great surprise crossed his face.

He looked far more startled than when he had seen Wei Zhao bring a box out of the cave.

In the end Wei Zhao could only rely on his own guess that the pendant was used to aid cultivation, and so he kept wearing it on his person.

Wei Zhao carefully unrolled the scroll, only to feel slightly disappointed. The scroll was very thin, nothing but a single piece of silk.

Still, Wei Zhao had read those martial arts novels and knew a powerful manual is not judged by word count. Mei Chaofeng's Nine Yin White Bone Claw could be written on a single piece of human skin. So he still read the scroll with great longing.

Five large characters written in seal script met Wei Zhao's eyes: "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art". The script was the same as that on the stele in the great hall of the cave.

Beneath that five-character title was a line of small writing: First Stage--Heavenly Silkworm. Then came the main text: "Mortals are as ants. How can one change the Great Way and rule the common people..."

Wei Zhao quickly scanned the text. The First Stage was divided into early, middle, and late phases, yet this one sheet held only the First Stage of the "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art".

Of course Wei Zhao was not fool enough to think this "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art" had only a First Stage. Since there was a First Stage, there must surely be a Second Stage and a Third Stage.

As for where the later scrolls were, Wei Zhao did not know. Perhaps inside the stone door behind the great hall, perhaps elsewhere. Everything would wait until he had finished cultivating the First Stage of this "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art" before making other plans.

Although the introduction to the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art was obscure and hard to understand, the cultivation process that followed was written in great detail, even with charts of the body's acupoints for reference. For Wei Zhao, who had practiced martial arts since childhood, this was no difficulty at all.

Wei Zhao did not think much of it then and began to cultivate after the Heavenly Silkworm scroll of the First Stage of the "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art". Just because he was still young and had no worries, he thought mastering a profound skill would let him beat Old Man Wei. He never considered whether this practice might clash with his present martial arts, or whether he might suffer qi deviation.

Only many years later, looking back, did Wei Zhao recall that he had cultivated the "Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art" mostly because its name sounded so fierce. A skill that could defeat even dragons must be mighty indeed, though later Wei Zhao learned that what he cultivated was not martial arts at all.

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