In the days that followed,
Chen Jichuan stayed on Taiqing Mountain to cultivate.
He practiced martial arts daily without pause, focusing particularly on the Wave Wrapping Skill, Lying Tiger Skill, and Eagle Claw Skill, to experience and comprehend the changes in power flows. At the same time, he would step to the front and guide the Chen Sect disciples in their training.
The Chen Sect had wealth and connections.
Both affluent families and impoverished households around Taiqing Mountain were eager to come, seeking apprenticeship and learning martial arts.
The former aimed to build ties with the Lul Family and the Chen Sect, solidifying relationships and adding a layer of protection to preserve their family businesses amidst the chaos of the era.
The latter, however, simply wished to acquire some skills.
With martial arts at their disposal, the Chen Sect could recommend them for positions—whether as private guards for prominent families or as recruits in White Jade City. These were stable occupations that guaranteed a means of livelihood.
Within the Chen Sect,
most disciples joined with one of these two goals in mind.
Disciples from impoverished families had no significant financial means to offer.
Lul Changshou didn't mind this. As long as someone could be brought in, then tested to evaluate their temperament, they would be admitted. Consequently, the Chen Sect had amassed a considerable number of disciples—upwards of eighty-two individuals in total.
This did not even include those who had already completed their training and left the mountain.
It could be said that their sect had grown large and influential.
The arrival of Chen Jichuan caused significant ripples within the Chen Sect.
The disciples only knew that he lived alone in the secluded backroom on the mountain, and that the Sect Leader treated him with great respect. His martial arts were exemplary—he had once exchanged blows with the Sect Leader, "Little Nanchen," engaging in close combat with fists and kicks, and had firmly taken the upper hand.
Being taught by him,
the disciples of the Chen Sect were thrilled.
In interacting with these disciples, Chen Jichuan noticed that out of more than eighty of them, only a handful were genuinely passionate about martial arts.
Even among the "Three Heroes and Five Tigers," who had gained modest fame in the Lingnan Martial Arts world, most were only mediocre practitioners. Only two possessed decent martial skills, and among them, just one, "Downhill Tiger" Wang Mingzhang, truly had fervor and dedication toward the martial arts path.
Chen Jichuan kept Wang Mingzhang close by, offering frequent instruction.
Additionally, out of the seventy or eighty Chen Sect disciples, he selected three impoverished eighteen- to nineteen-year-olds and trained them with care and diligence.
...
Time flowed like water,
relentlessly pressing forward.
In the blink of an eye, winter passed, spring arrived, and it was now the third lunar month of spring.
Lul Changshou was meticulous in his work.
Through the channels of White Jade City, he managed to acquire a wealth of martial arts knowledge.
In truth, it was rare for martial arts from any sect or school to remain thoroughly secret.
Even the Ten Road Tan Leg, the prime technique of the Tan Sect, the largest martial arts school in the north, was practiced by many outsiders. Yet outsiders who weren't part of the school would ultimately find it hard to grasp the True Intent of Tan Leg.
Firstly, they didn't have access to the corresponding secret practice recipes, which were vital for sustained training. Secondly, martial arts were full of nuances, and the subtle intricacies could only be passed down directly, requiring face-to-face guidance to truly understand.
Out of every ten martial artists in the north, nine practiced Tan Leg.
But those who grasped its True Intent and reached the rank of Grandmaster could only come from Tan Leg's True Sect—the Tan Sect itself.
To master authentic skills, one must formally apprentice with the true school.
As a result, when foundational aspects of these techniques spread beyond the sect, it didn't only fail to harm the sect's reputation but instead enhanced its standing in the martial arts community. This in turn attracted skilled practitioners to join, or motivated outsiders to purchase practice-specific medicinal recipes at their own expense.
It was truly a winning combination of fame and fortune.
Chen Jichuan, however, was unrestrained by such limitations.
He could purchase cultivation techniques and secret medicinal recipes—yet with just a glance at the latter, he could gain insight into their formulas. As for the techniques, with his profound martial arts mastery, he could discern the essence and understand the fundamentals through repeated practice, ultimately grasping their True Intent.
In this way,
he could absorb and master martial arts from countless schools.
Once mastered and thoroughly ingrained, he could move further and melt the martial arts of a hundred schools into one unified system, even transforming and renaming them into the absolute skills of the Chen Sect.
Chen Jichuan was in the midst of accumulation.
Various martial arts gathered and converged within him—
Iron Head Skill, Iron Arm Skill, Iron Knee Skill, Door Groin Skill, and Overlord Elbow—all techniques focusing on cross-training to strengthen the head, arms, knees, groin, and elbows.
Each of these skills, while not exceedingly profound, was far from average.
The lesser ones were comparable to the Iron Bull Skill.
As for the more formidable ones, like the Door Groin Skill, they could train the groin area to such resilience that it could withstand punches as swift as storms without causing any pain.
Similarly, alchemy secret recipes were highly proprietary
and never publicly disclosed.
Take, for example, the Overlord Elbow, a secret technique of the Overlord Sect in Lingnan Puning Prefecture. The medicinal formula specifically created to disinfect and reduce swelling for this skill included over 56 herbal ingredients, such as frankincense, herb musk, eleutherococcus, saffron, chicken gallbladders, glauber's salt, green salt, Bashan tiger, Chinese rhubarb, south star, borax, hook vine, tiger bone, raw aconitum, and ephedra.
The quantities for each varied.
The Overlord Sect processed these materials into patches of medicinal plasters.
When practicing,
the plaster was combined with twenty pounds each of aged wine, vinegar, and water, boiled into a concentrated solution, and stored in a ceramic jar. Before training, one would immerse their arms in the solution briefly, then withdraw and shake them dry before beginning practice. Afterward, they would wash again using the same method, effectively removing toxins and reducing swelling.
No carelessness was permitted.
Even with only a few practitioners sticking with long-term training and consistently purchasing the medicinal plasters, the Overlord Sect could cover a respectable amount of expenses.
Such secret formulas,
would be nearly impossible for even the most adept Divine Doctor, no matter how versed in pharmacology, to deduce through reverse engineering.
Only Chen Jichuan.
Could break them down with a single glance, needing no external validation.
In addition to hard external training, Chen Jichuan welcomed all forms and schools of martial arts.
For example, in the category of light-body techniques—
Land Flying Skill, Flying Eave Wall Walking Skill, Running Board Skill, Light Body Skill, Window Penetration Skill, Gecko Wall-Climbing Skill, Flipping Technique, Jumping Skill, One-Line Pass, and transversal technique—
some shared similarities with his earlier Land Flying Skill, while others excelled in different specialized areas.
Take Running Board Skill, for instance.
It was a technique specifically for climbing vertical walls.
Or Flipping Technique.
A light-body skill that, when mastered, could allow one to navigate dangerous cliffs and bare walls. With even the slightest foothold, practitioners could scale vines and branches effortlessly, ascending and descending at will—even flimsy twigs and leaves could serve as support. Movement through mountain woodlands became especially suited to this skill.
Then there was the Jumping Skill.
Once mastered, practitioners could leap two or three fathoms with a single step, needing no forceful buildup. When combined with the Land Flying Skill, they could effortlessly vault over ravines while maintaining their speed uninterrupted.