Chapter 151: East Zen, Bone-Breaking Height Increase

The daytime is misty with fine rain, and the clear green water flows slowly.

A small boat floats on the emerald green water surface.

In this Jiangnan misty rain, amidst ripples everywhere, it is impossible to tell whether the boat is going downstream, upstream, or not moving at all.

There are fish in the water, which also seem to love this misty rain, occasionally floating to the surface, opening their mouths to touch a circle of ripples, and then swimming back under the water.

But no fish approaches within three zhang of that boat.

At the bow and stern of the boat, there sits a person in a bamboo hat and coir raincoat; they appear to be an old man and a youth.

Inside the boat canopy, Seeing Chu Tianshu sits cross-legged, holding his origin and guarding the one, forgetting both things and himself.

Suddenly, his hands leave his knees, forming sword fingers, and he stabs himself in more than a dozen acupoints between his thighs and chest.

The "Hanging Heaven Divine Art" inherits the artistic conception of "the vast ocean, the circulation of water Qi, the transformation of the Kunpeng, and the wind and rain hanging from the sky."

The Kun hides in the deep sea, its body is enormous, and before it wants to emerge, there must first be surging waves and rising floods on the sea surface.

Therefore, before practicing the artistic rhyme of the Kunpeng transformation, one must first practice one's internal energy until it is like surging waves, rushing and surging.

At this stage, in addition to sitting in meditation and practicing Qi, one must also coordinate with a set of exquisite acupoint-striking techniques.

When practicing, one strikes one's own acupoints and releases them oneself; the order of striking and releasing is not the same, secretly matching a certain law.

It allows the newly born internal energy to be like encountering a dam, suddenly obstructed and piled up in a certain place, and at the right moment, it suddenly becomes unobstructed and rushes down.

But the path it rushes down is not necessarily the previous meridian path; it may also be guided to another meridian route.

Seeing Chu Tianshu's hands change constantly; finally, his left sword finger is like a hanging needle, pointing downward, barely touching his left knee.

His right sword finger wipes horizontally from his left waist to his dantian, rises from the dantian, and stops at his heart.

Subsequently, this right hand is like pulling a heavy object of a thousand jin, extremely slowly, returning from the heart to the dantian.

The slowness of this final movement makes it difficult for the human eye to perceive that he is continuously moving.

It takes a good while to discover that his right sword finger has indeed changed places.

Xu Zhicheng on the bow of the boat breathed a sigh of relief, perceiving that the feeling of threat like a thorn in his back was slowly fading.

When Seeing Chu Tianshu practices internal energy, it is not as violent as the circulation of Qi and blood when practicing strength, but it still affects Qi and blood to some extent, emitting a slight oppressive aura.

As long as someone is within three zhang, they will still feel a distinct strangeness.

"Are we almost at South Shaolin?"

Seeing Chu Tianshu asked.

Xu Ben replied: "We can already see the outline of the temple on the mountain."

The green mountains on the shore are continuous, with tender green fields and lush trees.

Looking into the distance, one can indeed see the bell tower on the mountain peak and the flying eaves of the main hall on the adjacent peak.

Legend has it that at the end of the Sui and beginning of the Tang, Wang Shichong held troops in the Eastern Capital and declared himself emperor, with the country name Zheng, ordering his nephew Wang Renze to be a general and deploy heavy troops in Bogu Village to block Li Shimin's eastward advance.

Thirteen martial monks from Shaolin Temple, including Tanzong, entered the Zheng army camp at night, captured Wang Renze alive, and presented him to Li Shimin.

Li Shimin therefore praised the Shaolin martial monks greatly, granted them forty qing of land, and allowed Shaolin monks to build ten other temples across the country.

However, most of these ten temples were submerged in the tides of history.

By the time of the Song and Yuan dynasties, only the ancestral court of Shaolin on Mount Song and the "Zhenguo East Zen Shaolin Temple" in Quanzhou remained.

Because Quanzhou is in the south, people often do not call it East Zen Shaolin, but are accustomed to calling it South Shaolin.

This is quite different from the development of the Republic of China world.

The "Break Shaolin" fist manual that Seeing Chu Tianshu obtained mentions that Yu Dayou visited both North and South Shaolin; North Shaolin is also on Mount Song, but the South Shaolin of the Ming Dynasty in that world was in Putian.

The South Shaolin of this world also had a very bumpy inheritance.

By the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the Dharma Hall was overgrown with grass, and the monks were scattered like rain; the entire South Shaolin had only a dozen monks left.

However, just at the time of the founding of the Great Ming, the abbot of South Shaolin of that generation smelled an excellent opportunity.

At that time, although Zhu Yuanzhang had one or two imperial edicts of reward for Shaolin on Mount Song according to old customs.

Compared to the generous treatment of Shaolin on Mount Song during the Yuan Dynasty, it was truly a world of difference.

The abbot of South Shaolin saw that the imperial court was not satisfied with Shaolin on Mount Song and immediately decided to vigorously advocate the theory of "farming and Zen as one" in South Shaolin, following the "Baizhang Pure Rules."

He publicized extensively that South Shaolin "does not work for one day, does not eat for one day," leading the masses to reclaim wasteland and sending monks to assist the villagers in farming.

In the tenth year of Hongwu, the provincial official submitted a memorial to the imperial court.

The Emperor was overjoyed and issued an edict to renovate the Quanzhou Shaolin Temple.

South Shaolin therefore flourished again.

It is just that Zhu Yuanzhang was extremely murderous and suspicious. Since South Shaolin had put out the name of "Baizhang Pure Rules" and said that farming and Zen were one.

Over the decades, the new disciples recruited into the temple had to be carefully taught and diligent.

Persisting like this, the reputation and prestige of South Shaolin were for a time truly louder than that of Shaolin on Mount Song.

However, that is already a thing of the past.

Today's South Shaolin, although a famous sect, is known as one of the pillars of the righteous path in the martial world.

But to say how well-behaved they are, that is not necessarily the case.

Ever since Seeing Chu Tianshu left Yongchun, he had been collecting various news along the way, analyzing and deliberating.

Finally choosing to come to South Shaolin first, one of the factors was precisely because he took a fancy to their restlessness.

After another moment, Xu Ben saw the ferry crossing and picked up the oar to row the water surface.

At the ferry, in addition to fishermen and tourists renting boats, there were also specialized ferrymen who sent people across the river.

The ferryman here, although wearing a bamboo hat, was dressed in a gray monk's robe and was clearly a monk.

The common people waiting to cross the river on the shore could board his wooden raft for just a small copper coin.

The long bamboo pole in the monk's hand propped against the shore, and the wooden raft, which carried a full ten adult men and women, including a woman holding a child, glided steadily on the water.

As the small boat and the wooden raft came and went, when they were closest, the monk smiled and nodded to Xu Ben.

Xu Ben's eyebrows twitched, and he looked closely.

He saw that the monk always nodded and smiled at the boatmen rowing the oars whenever he encountered a small boat on the water.

It seems it was just a greeting between peers, and there was no flaw in the new disguise Xu Ben had changed into.

Having been hunted for half a year, he was also a bit like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring.

Decades ago, South Shaolin had many disciples; in addition to lay disciples, even monks often walked outside.

The abbot who revived South Shaolin at that time was already old and had warned the monks under his command that, in addition to studying Buddhism, farming, and self-cultivation, they should only engage in three trades: rowing boats, blacksmithing, and making tofu.

People say that the three greatest hardships in the world are these three trades.

Boatmen toil all day and earn little money; blacksmithing is both tiring and hot; and families who make and sell tofu often have to get up early every day to push the stone mill, and having a donkey is half their family's assets.

But this is for ordinary people.

As monks in the martial world, the fact that they really did these things well once again proved the foresight of that abbot.

After the situation in the Great Ming became increasingly turbulent, the proportion of South Shaolin blacksmiths making farm tools decreased day by day, while the snowflake-patterned tempered steel ring-blades produced by the monks became a unique wonder in the southern martial world.

Making tofu also evolved from simply selling tofu to a full set of vegetarian banquet dishes, which became famous far and wide; those high officials, noble lords, and martial arts masters often spared no expense to taste the craftsmanship of the high monks of Shaolin.

Only the matter of rowing boats seemed not to have received very generous returns.

But in fact, most of South Shaolin's influence among the people today comes from these ferrymen distributed along the waterways.

Since they are monks, of course, in the minds of the people, they are not just for ferrying.

If a family has a funeral, inviting such a monk to walk a journey is always more respectable than rolling up a straw mat and sending it directly to the graveyard after crying for a few days.

When a child is born, inviting a monk to help take a look and chant some prayer scriptures is also very good.

The deepest impression the common people have of South Shaolin comes from these ferry monks.

They would not know what other people in South Shaolin are like.

But they know that these ferry monks don't charge much and can really get things done, so they are good monks.

"This monk is quite kind."

Xu Ben sighed in a low voice to Seeing Chu Tianshu, "Back then, a group of South Shaolin monks went to Fire God Gully to exchange metallurgy and forging techniques; most of them were rough in temperament and quite arrogant."

"Because many gangs bought ring-blades from them, they were afraid that the spearheads and short swords produced by Fire God Gully would steal their business."

Xu Zhicheng said: "I also remember that they even brought government officials with them that time; the original intention of their visit was to stake out a piece of territory, only allowing us to sell things within it and not allowing us to cross the boundary."

Seeing Chu Tianshu smiled: "Heh, you Fire God Gully people sell both spears and swords, and gunpowder; your methods are also quite wild. You just endured it like that?"

"South Shaolin is powerful after all."

Xu Ben said, "This matter was dragged out for a long time at the time, and there was no result."

"But later, the southeast became more and more chaotic, and Japanese pirate noble clans began to sell large quantities of Japanese swords to coastal gangs."

"The Liuyun Prefecture in the Central Plains also resold curved swords from outside the pass to the southeast, and South Shaolin's business suffered a significant impact, so they were busy defending against those two types of swords."

Xu Ben hesitated slightly.

"Is the benefactor preparing to share this Fire God Secret Manual with South Shaolin?"

"After all, they are a group of monks. Even if they are accustomed to manufacturing weapons, I fear they don't have the guts to manufacture firearms on a large scale, right?"

"And although they have many disputes with the Japanese pirates in business, they have yet to have any determination regarding resisting the Japanese pirates."

Fire God Gully used to research firearms, but the scale of production was not large, and it was mainly supplied to the local government.

But to deal with the Japanese pirate menace in the southeast, if the scale of improved firearms is not large, it will not have enough effect.

Xu Zhicheng said: "Even if South Shaolin has the guts, their whole temple of monks only has that many hands, right?"

"You forgot their lay disciples."

Seeing Chu Tianshu said, "South Shaolin has been reviving for a hundred years. Calling it a revival, it is actually almost creating a foundation from scratch."

"This also has its advantages. Many lay disciples who come out of there are even listening to lectures under the same master, and they often keep in touch when they reach the martial world; they are much more united than the Shaolin on Mount Song, which has a complicated lineage."

South Shaolin relies on the reputation of the farming and Zen pure rules as a signboard, and it has to maintain this signboard.

They are a Buddhist Zen sect, naturally competing with other sects; they are people in the martial world, naturally squeezed out by local gangs; they are a branch of Shaolin, and they have to be eyed covetously by Shaolin on Mount Song.

Their size is neither big nor small, they don't stand high enough, and the threats around them are close enough.

The speed at which they corrupted while growing stronger can already be considered slow.

"Picking the tall one among the short ones."

Seeing Chu Tianshu pondered, "Let's see if, with my methods, I can give them a bone-breaking height increase."

Xu Zhicheng didn't quite understand; they were just talking about Shaolin, so why did they suddenly talk about height increase.

He couldn't help but ask: "Breaking bones can increase height; what kind of martial art is that?"

"That is a medical art. It was originally to treat wounded people with broken bones in war, but it was accidentally discovered that after the broken bones healed, the legs became longer."

Seeing Chu Tianshu revealed a smile, "This is a very dangerous and challenging medical art, so naturally, it won't be used casually to increase people's height."

"Its true purpose is to treat deformities and disabilities caused by certain reasons."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 152 =====