087 Wudang Golden Needle Finger Art

The medical folder contained more than sixty documents, most of them compiled for sprains and bruises left behind by training and sparring. They were neatly classified as well: some dealt with the limbs and torso, while others focused on internal injuries.

This one, the method for penetrating the five viscera with hidden force, described using a gentle, covert application of power to slowly work a specially prepared ointment beneath the skin, hastening the healing and recovery of the internal organs.

It also mentioned the so-called gentle hidden-force attack, which was related to the four-force theory cited by the late Qing martial arts master Li Cunyi: force is divided into four kinds, overt hardness, overt softness, hidden hardness, and hidden softness. When these four are united, that is the state known as transformed force.

Unfortunately, although Chen Jue had trained his hidden force through his entire body since he began practicing, the hidden force he could unleash still remained at the level of hidden hardness; he had not yet reached hidden softness.

His hidden force could burst forth to scour iron and leave marks, split stone and break tablets, shatter bones and crush men, but it could not be used in a gentle attack to drive internal medicine into the pores. It was an exquisitely subtle technique, and if he rashly tried to use it on himself, he would only hurt himself.

What a pity. He had not yet trained to that level.

If he had not been injured, and had gone back to the sea to train for a while, he probably would have been able to grasp the gentle hidden-force attack once his Tai Chi stance reached the next level.

Chen Jue felt somewhat frustrated.

By training in the submarine currents during the typhoon, the proficiency of his Tai Chi stance had risen astonishingly fast, almost by more than four hundred points with each dive.

With a maximum proficiency cap of five thousand points, if he practiced morning and evening every day, he could break through another level in only a week.

If he had not acted impulsively before, if he had not let his head heat up in a moment of recklessness, he would not have suffered such severe internal injuries and delayed his cultivation.

Besides, the typhoon had already passed, and Chen Jue could no longer rely on the same violent waves and undercurrents as before. Unless he could keep chasing the typhoon’s trail, perhaps he would only then be able to maintain that earlier, almost absurd training speed, as if using a tenfold experience scroll.

In ordinary times, even if Chen Jue fully recovered, going back down to the sea to train would at most be like opening a double experience scroll; if he could accumulate one or two hundred proficiency points in a day, that would already be cause for gratitude.

Could it be that in the future he would have to pit himself against typhoons?

Chen Jue thought this absurd thought to himself.

Fortunately, this internal-injury treatment also included the formula for that special ointment, which said that even if one could not use gentle hidden-force attack to drive it into the skin and pores to reach the organs, one could still try rubbing it on externally every day, and it would likewise help treat internal injuries to the five viscera.

However, the effect of externally applied ointment would be far inferior to the effect of using gentle hidden-force attack, though it was still better than nothing.

He downloaded and copied the prescription onto his phone. Since the emergency doctor’s medicine seemed a bit slow to take effect, Chen Jue closed the chat group and did not rush to learn any new martial arts. Instead, he planned to go out first and make a trip to Ye Tongren Hall in the county seat.

Because his strength had recovered quite a bit, and moving around was no longer much of an obstacle, he did not trouble Uncle Yu and the others. He went out on foot to the main road and hailed a taxi himself.

By then the typhoon had passed, the county seat had resumed normal operation, and even the weather had turned from overcast to clear in an instant.

As the taxi passed some commercial districts, Chen Jue noticed many branches of roadside trees that had been snapped and toppled by the fierce wind. Sanitation workers and firefighters were busy clearing them away; this kind of scene was common in typhoon weather.

When he arrived at Ye Tongren Hall, Chen Jue showed the clerk the formula for the nameless ointment and said he wanted them to mix up a batch according to it.

“Handsome, where did you get this prescription? It includes ginseng, musk, and bezoar. If you want the ordinary stuff, we have it here, but if you want wild, aged ginseng, we can’t prepare that for you,” the staff member said.

“Then make the ordinary version first.”

“Help me calculate the price.”

Before coming, Chen Jue already knew that although the ointment formula called for old, premium medicinal ingredients if possible, ordinary herbs would reduce its efficacy.

But this Ye Tongren Hall in Dong Island County clearly was not the kind of place where one could find high-aged wild herbs.

Such things, once they appeared, were generally bought up by the wealthy.

Take the ginseng mentioned in the formula, for example. Ordinary cultivated ginseng and transplanted mountain ginseng were sold by weight. Even those aged thirty years, twenty years, or ten years were only worth a few hundred or a few thousand, and their medicinal properties were far inferior to wild mountain ginseng.

True wild mountain ginseng was sold by the gram. If it had even a little age to it, its price could reach hundreds of thousands, millions, even more than ten million.

At present Chen Jue had martial skill to spare, but not the means. He could only have a batch made in the ordinary way first and make do with it in an emergency.

It so happened that the typhoon had just passed that day, and the shop had only just opened, with no business to speak of. After taking Chen Jue’s order, several employees at Ye Tongren Hall busied themselves.

But the ointment would not be ready so quickly. The clerk asked Chen Jue to pay, go back, wait half a day, and return after five in the afternoon to collect it.

So Chen Jue scanned the code and spent a little over eight thousand in total. Musk and bezoar were extremely expensive medicinal materials; even a few grams mixed in was no small matter.

He planned to make a small jar first and see how effective it was. If it did not work, he would have to try the other external remedies for bruises and internal injuries from the group files.

...

He took a taxi back to the guesthouse and had lunch at noon with Uncle Yu’s family.

Because Chen Jue was injured, the guesthouse aunt specially simmered a light seafood congee, saying it would be easier to digest.

Chen Jue was deeply moved. He drank the whole clay pot of congee before going back to sleep for a noon nap.

Because of the internal injuries, Chen Jue felt exhausted after moving his body only a few times. He slept until three in the afternoon. When he got up and looked at the time, he still had some time left.

So he went into the newly added group files and found a Daoist hard-qigong method for training the fingers.

With his internal injuries still unhealed, he could not practice any broad, sweeping martial arts. He could only move his fingers a little to pass the time.

This Finger of the Golden Needle was also a secret transmission of the Wudang school, reputed to be one of the thirty-six Wudang arts. It was said that after mastery, one could pierce through green stone with a finger and stand upside down on one finger. Since he could not train anything else, Chen Jue immediately took a liking to this Golden Needle Finger technique.

Although the panel had not yet fully updated, Chen Jue could faintly sense that the two bonuses of Iron-Blooded Guard and Enlightenment of the Immortal Elder still remained. So he found a pebble outside to substitute for the green brick required for training and slowly began to practice in the living room.

After five in the afternoon, the staff from Ye Tongren Hall called to say the ointment was ready. Only then did Chen Jue stop his practice, go out, and take a taxi over to fetch the medicine.

The trip took only a little over ten minutes. At the shop, after receiving the nameless ointment, Chen Jue first opened the glass jar and sniffed it. The smell was pungent and powerful. He borrowed a small side room in the shop and directly applied the ointment to the places on his chest that felt oppressed and faintly painful.

After waiting for about twenty minutes, a cool and soothing sensation began to take effect slowly, seeping through the skin. The faint bloody odor he exhaled from his mouth and nose also seemed not as heavy as before, and his internal organs had a feeling of being moistened and eased.

It was a pity the attribute panel had not yet refreshed, otherwise Chen Jue would have been watching the health index to see whether it changed.

“Who would have thought it actually works?”

“And this is only external application with ordinary herbs.”

“If it were combined with the technique of gentle hidden-force attack, or mixed with higher-aged medicinal ingredients...” Chen Jue’s eyes lit up, and he was pleasantly surprised. He felt those several thousand yuan had been well spent.

But this attempt also made him realize that the newly added martial-arts group actually concealed a treasure trove of knowledge beyond what outsiders could imagine.

“Since even this bruising and internal-injury ointment formula is genuinely effective... could those unverified techniques also produce results?” Chen Jue thought, and after wrapping up the ointment, he went out to buy some fruit and brought it back.

He planned to try those unverified techniques once the panel refreshed.

After all, practicing punches and stances was, in the end, merely the work of a fighter.

If he truly could extract something from those old manuals and ancient classics, whose names alone sounded impressive, perhaps the results would be something entirely unexpected.