Chapter 55: Time Flies Like an Arrow (1)

After this incident, Zhao Jin became extremely cautious. He knew he was no smarter than the people of this era, and as a ten-year-old child, adults might take some of your words seriously, but most of the time they still thought you were just a kid.

Everything that followed was perfectly normal. Life wasn't that exciting; life was just this dull and tedious, repeating more or less the same things every day.

Training diligently for one or two months, exercising the body for a few dozen days — there was no obvious effect. But if you kept at it for six months or a year, the results would show.

Because of the increased physical exertion, his daily appetite also grew. Zhao Jin shot up in height, needing a new set of clothes after each passing year. The old clothes became too small to wear, drawing endless complaints from He Cuihua, who said that after taking up martial arts, he ate and wore out so much that the household expenses had become enormous.

Corresponding to this was the increase in his strength and speed. During training, Zhao Zhenxing was astonished more than once, saying that the results Zhao Jin achieved in one year matched what others would take a year and a half or even more to accomplish.

Although the daily training items always had some variation, they remained tedious. Simple horse stance, thrusting, and strength training evolved into thrusting and routines, and even sparring with Zhao Zhenxing.

The routines were also simple combinations of moves — combinations of thrusting, drawing, and chopping motions. Beyond these, Zhao Zhenxing often taught moves unrelated to the spear, such as how to draw a short weapon when two people closed in, or how to kill with a short weapon when the spear was out of hand. At these times, the Japanese short sword hanging on the wall came into use.

For a martial artist, mastering even one martial skill was no easy feat; being good at everything was impossible. The short-weapon techniques Zhao Zhenxing taught were very simple, but Zhao Jin could feel they were highly practical — usable for winning a contest, and usable for killing.

After using a wooden shaft for a year, Zhao Jin began training with a normal spear. He had grown taller, true, but a normal spear was still too long for him, out of proportion with his body. It wasn't until he turned fifteen that it fit him perfectly.

Besides the improvement in his physique and martial skills, Zhao Jin grew more and more familiar with this era, learning more and more about his surroundings.

The more thoroughly he understood this era, the more memories from that other life surfaced in turn. He corroborated them against each other and recorded everything that needed recording. Paper and brush were no longer so hard to come by — now that Wang Zhaojing was by his side, these things were easy. Wang Zhaojing was quite surprised that Zhao Jin needed paper and brush, though. The recorded things were still kept in that now half-abandoned shop.

Mu Shulan lived in Zhao Jin's home until the second month of the following year. Her father still hadn't come after all that time, which made everyone terribly worried.

The little girl, who had originally been carefree and laughing all day, began to secretly wipe away tears. He Cuihua, however, said bluntly that it didn't matter if she stayed a lifetime. Privately, though, Zhao Jin overheard He Cuihua and Zhao Zhentang discussing how to bring the little girl into the family as a daughter-in-law and give her a proper status.

On the fifteenth day of the second month, Mu Shulan's father came to the door to take her back. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Zhao Jin also noticed the flash of disappointment that crossed his mother's face.

From then on, however, there seemed to be a slight change in the Mu household. The person escorting Mu Shulan to and fro every day was no longer that Mr. Mu, but two men in their forties. These two men had a calm and steady bearing and clearly possessed martial skills.

From that point on, Mu Shulan came to the goods yard less and less often, appearing on average once every two days. But she would often find time to watch Zhao Jin train and to eat at the Zhao home.

The little girl had always worn plain cotton clothes, but gradually she began to wear silks and satins, and often adorned herself with gold, silver, and jade jewelry. Her family's circumstances seemed to be improving rapidly.

As Mu Shulan grew older, she changed as well. She was truly the kind of girl who grew more beautiful with each passing year, becoming increasingly charming and alluring. Moreover, she carried herself with a natural air — a very peculiar air. At times she seemed delicate and coquettish; at other times, saintly and coldly elegant.

These two states, however, only revealed themselves inadvertently. Most of the time she was still her old self, but she had already captivated the youths at the goods yard to the point of infatuation. Even Wang Zhaojing couldn't help reciting, "A gentle and graceful maiden, a gentleman's good match."

Although Mu Shulan mostly kept to her old ways when she was around Zhao Jin, he noticed that the little girl had changed. It seemed as if Mu Shulan had undergone some kind of special training — her posture, speech, and mannerisms had all changed. Though she looked charming, Zhao Jin always found it affected.

Moreover, while Zhao Jin and his group of youths were fifteen, Mu Shulan was also twelve. For a boy that was fine, but a girl at that age was already expected to stay at home and not show her face in public. Yet the little girl carried on as usual.

Occasionally, Zhao Jin would see Mr. Mu on the street. Mr. Mu, who had originally seemed a bit different, had become even more distinctive. The middle-aged man who had always come and gone alone was now surrounded by a crowd, full of grandeur. Some of the more well-to-do households in Xuzhou City would greet him with great politeness. Zhao Jin also noticed that among the people clustering around Mr. Mu, at least five were martial artists who looked like bodyguards.

Such great pomp. What exactly did the Mu family do? Tracing back to the source, Zhao Jin found that all these changes seemed to originate from the twelfth month of the thirty-eighth year of the Wanli era to the second month of the following year. Something must have happened during the time Mr. Mu had disappeared.

He Cuihua remained warm toward Mu Shulan and would often praise the little girl, saying she was as beautiful as a fairy. But she never again brought up the matter of making the little girl her daughter-in-law.

There was another strange thing. Although the Mu family seemed to have prospered, Mu Shulan still came often to the Zhao home to eat.

Because Chen Sheng had started martial training early and came from a well-off family, his build was always taller and stouter than his peers. Only Zhao Jin, through proper training, managed to nearly catch up. Sun Dalei, however, was also a peer, and he was even bigger than Chen Sheng — this was purely an exceptional case.

As they spent more time together, their mutual understanding deepened. Zhao Jin knew that the time Chen Sheng spent training daily was no less than his own. This discovery gave Zhao Jin a strong sense of urgency.

Strangely enough, despite Chen Sheng training so much every day, he hadn't shed a single bit of that fat. Yet it didn't affect his agility or speed in the slightest.

In the third year, the weapon Chen Sheng used changed to a real wooden saber, and at fourteen, it became a real blade. Only then did Zhao Jin see that the single saber was not a Japanese sword. The hilt was long, the blade was long, the spine was thick, the collar was large, and the blade was quite heavy. Zhao Jin finally understood that the single saber did not originate from the Japanese sword, but was named for its resemblance to a grain seedling.

Perhaps because of his single-minded focus on the martial path, Chen Sheng grew increasingly steady and composed, carrying himself with a natural air of distinction.

According to Wang Zhaojing, someone like Chen Sheng would stand out even in the capital. Zhao Jin also knew that the Chen family elders had originally had a plan: Chen Sheng's grandfather wanted him to take the imperial examinations — to test for the military licentiate and pass the military provincial exam. Chen Sheng's father, however, wanted him to inherit a position as a runner at the yamen. After weighing the options, they decided he would stay and work in the Xuzhou yamen, waiting to inherit the constable post.

As for Chen Sheng's younger brother Chen Hong — perhaps it was from judging matches and distributing prizes that he got his training — he was now learning the abacus and bookkeeping from the family's accountant and shopkeeper, preparing to take over the family charcoal business in the future.

The two brothers proudly told the other youths that their family had once thought their martial contests were a waste of money and not proper business. Now they said it was a blessing they had competed, for they had learned many real skills.

Over the years, Xuzhou City grew more and more familiar with the Wang family, and Zhao Jin's knowledge grew more and more. Combining the two, he finally pieced together the story of Wang Zhaojing's father returning home from the capital.

The reason was actually the most unlikely one: he had an official post but refused to take it. Wang Youshan had achieved success in the imperial examinations at a young age and had walked the official career path fairly smoothly. Wang Youshan hailed from Xuzhou, a place where the martial spirit flourished but literary culture was weak. Coming from such a place, he lacked some of the vices of the scholarly gentry and possessed a more robust and open-minded temperament.

With such a mindset and temperament, when faced with matters, he often would not form cliques for partisan gain, but instead sought truth through reason. These two words, "seek reason," simply did not work in officialdom — especially not in a court riven by factional strife among the Donglin, Zhe, and Chu parties.