Xia Lan: From Meeting a Martial Arts Girl

Chapter 32 Wind and Snow on the Cold River

On his way back to the hotel from the gym, Lu Siye kept having one thought on his mind.

Zero's damage to zero is too limited.

Breaking the barrier is fine, but a direct attack is practically like tickling.

They are resistant to zero force; it's something they are born with.

The power he borrowed struck them, but it was like pouring a cup of water into the ocean—it didn't even cause a ripple.

All he can use is Moon Chaser.

The physical explosive force provided by Moon Chase allowed him to shatter the frozen Tyrant Zero in the illusion.

But that was after Xiaoman and Baozi had restricted its movements, and the recoil from that punch had also seriously injured itself.

If Zero hadn't been frozen, if it had been alive, moving, and capable of retaliating, then when he threw that punch, it probably wouldn't have shattered Zero, but rather his own bones.

He needs a truly effective fighting move.

A move powered by the primordial energy of the stars that can effectively damage zero.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was completely dark.

The lights in the corridor were on.

Lu Siye stood in the corridor and hesitated for a moment.

Should we go directly to the older man, or go back to our room to change first?

Looking out the window at the end of the corridor, white mist rises from the direction of the hot spring area, standing out prominently in the night.

People have already started going in one after another.

My phone vibrated.

He took it out and saw that it was a message from Xiaoman.

"Come quick, come quick, the water temperature is just right, and there aren't many people."

The text was followed by an image. He tapped on it, and his finger hovered over the top of the screen for a second.

The photo was taken in the changing area of ​​the hot spring, with wooden cabinets and bamboo baskets in the background.

Xiaoman was wearing a light blue swimsuit and standing in front of the mirror. Her hair was tied up in a bun, revealing a small section of her fair skin on the back of her neck.

The swimsuit was a one-piece, very simple, without any fancy decorations, but it fit perfectly.

Her face was a little red, probably from the heat of the hot spring.

The photo was taken from a selfie angle, with the phone held high. She looked down slightly at the camera, a small smile on her lips.

Below the text was a smaller line of text, followed by an emoji: "Is it pretty?"

Lu Siye stared at the screen for three seconds.

The tips of his ears were a little hot.

He flipped his phone over, screen down, and held it in his palm, taking a deep breath.

The corridor was quiet; no one passed by, only the pounding of his own heartbeat echoed in his ears.

He flipped his phone back and typed two words: "Beautiful."

After sending it out, I felt it was too short, so I added a period.

Then I thought adding a period might seem too cold.

He stared at the two words and a period for two seconds, then gave up, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and strode toward the locker room.

There weren't many people in the locker room.

He found a cabinet in the corner, took off his clothes, folded them neatly, put them in, and changed into his swimming trunks.

A white mist rushed towards us.

The pool was much larger than the one behind the gym, and several wooden trays with sake and side dishes floated on the surface.

There were seven or eight people in the pool, scattered in twos and threes.

Some leaned against the rocks with their eyes closed, some chatted quietly, and some soaked in water while drinking.

The fog was so thick that I couldn't see anyone's face clearly; I could only see blurry outlines and shoulders peeking out from the water.

He stood by the pool, his gaze sweeping around, but he didn't see Xiaoman or Baozi.

But I did see someone who shouldn't be here at this time.

The middle-aged man leaned against the innermost corner of the pool, his shoulders submerged in the water, a folded towel covering his head, and a small wine glass in his hand, slowly sipping his drink.

When he saw Lu Siye, his eyes lit up. He placed his wine glass on the wooden tray next to him and waved to him.

Lu Siye hesitated for a moment, then walked over and sat down next to him.

The water was so hot that it gave him goosebumps.

"I knew you were ambitious," the older man patted him on the shoulder with considerable force. "You're here to learn a skill from me, right? Come on."

Lu Siye opened his mouth, as if to say something, but the uncle had already stood up.

Water cascaded down his body. He picked up a towel to dry his hands, then looked down at Lu Siye, who was still soaking in the pool.

"Your monthly income is quite good."

Lu Siye raised his head and glanced at the uncle.

"Let's go," the middle-aged man stood up, "Don't waste any more time."

"Your friends are going to go on a date tomorrow, and so are you. The sooner you learn, the sooner you'll feel at ease."

Lu Siye looked at the other side of the pool.

The fog is so thick, I can't see anything.

I probably won't be able to wait that long.

He stood up and followed the uncle out of the hot spring area.

The small room behind the gym is not big, about ten square meters, with a tatami mat, a low table, and a floor lamp.

A star chart hangs on the wall, densely marked with the positions and names of constellations.

There was a pot of tea and two cups on the table. The tea had gone cold, but water droplets still condensed on the inside of the pot.

The middle-aged man pointed to the tatami mat and sat down cross-legged first, while Lu Siye sat down opposite him.

"Close your eyes," the uncle said, "relax, just like this afternoon."

Lu Siye hesitated for a moment.

"That illusion this afternoon..."

"Yes, the same goes for you. It won't harm your body, but as for your mental well-being..."

The middle-aged man glanced at him, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

"You'll have to carry it yourself."

Lu Siye closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself standing on the surface of an ice lake.

It was different from the illusion I experienced in the afternoon.

The afternoon illusion was evening, with twilight descending.

It is late at night, and the sky above is completely cloudless, with countless stars scattered across it. The surface of the frozen lake is covered with a thick layer of ice.

The middle-aged man stood opposite him, wearing the same sportswear as in real life, but barefoot, his feet were on the ice.

"The trial is simple," the uncle said. "Break the ice lake and catch a hundred fish in it."

Lu Siye looked down at the ice beneath his feet.

The ice is very thick, at least half a meter by sight.

You can see the lake water through the ice; it's black and you can't see the bottom.

Something was moving in the water, its shadow large, flashing past his feet and disappearing into the darkness in the distance.

"One hundred?" He looked up. "How are we going to catch them?"

"Use your hands to grab it," the uncle said. "You can't use magic, you can't use your vital energy, you can't use your sin seal. Use your hands, grab it one by one."

Lu Siye remained silent for three seconds.

He looked down at his hands, then at the ice beneath his feet, and then at the uncle.

The man's expression was anything but joking.

"You came here to learn a skill," the uncle said, "then prove you're worth learning first."

Lu Siye took a deep breath.

The air in the illusion was just as cold as in reality; it felt like an ice scalpel as it filled my lungs.

He didn't ask any more questions, squatted down, clenched his right fist, and slammed it down onto the ice.

A crack appeared in the ice.

It wasn't large; it extended about half a meter outward from where the fist landed.

His knuckles were broken, and blood seeped from the wound, dripping onto the ice and quickly freezing into dark red ice beads.

It hurt, but compared to the pain of being knocked into the wall by Zero in the illusion that afternoon, it was nothing.

He threw another punch.

The crack widened, from half a meter to a meter, and from a meter to a meter and a half.

He punched again, and the crack finally opened up, a large chunk of ice collapsed from beneath his feet and crashed into the lake below.

He fell into the lake along with the ice.

The water was so cold it felt like countless needles were piercing his skin at once.

His body stiffened for a moment as he entered the water.

It's not fear, it's a physiological reaction. In an extremely cold environment, the body instinctively contracts, muscles tense, and blood vessels constrict.

He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes underwater.

The lake water is black.

It's not the ordinary, dark black; it's a thick, dense black.

He couldn't see anything except a blurry blue halo not far from his hand.

That was the opening in the ice cave he had smashed open; starlight streamed in through it, spreading out in the water into a hazy, indistinct glow.

Something swam past his feet.

It wasn't a fish, at least not like any fish he knew.

That thing was huge, about half the length of his body.

Its body is slender, like a snake, but its swimming posture is not like that of a snake.

The snake sways from side to side, while this thing moves up and down, like a ribbon floating in water.

Its body surface is covered with scales, the edges of which emit a faint fluorescent light.

He reached out to grab it.

The moment his fingers touched the scales, the creature suddenly flicked its tail and slipped out of his palm.

Its tail swept across his wrist with considerable force, creating a small whirlpool in the water.

His hand was flung away; his fingers barely touched its smooth, cold scales before he grasped nothing.

He surfaced for air, then submerged again.

The second time, he learned his lesson.

Instead of grabbing it directly, I put my hand in the water and waited for the thing to swim over.

It did come, and out of curiosity, it circled its hand twice.

He exerted force instantly, his fingers digging into the gaps between the scales.

The fish struggled violently in his hand, its body twisting into a U-shape.

His finger was cut by the edge of the scales, and blood seeped from the wound.

But instead of letting go, he lifted it out of the water and threw it onto the ice.

The fish bounced a few times on the ice, the fluorescence on its scales quickly dimmed, it twitched twice, and then remained still.

One.

He lay on the ice, panting heavily.

Water dripped from his hair, face, and clothes, pooling on the ice and quickly freezing into a thin layer.

The wound on my finger was still bleeding, and at the low temperature it congealed into a dark red, gelatinous substance that covered the wound.

He counted, and seven of his ten fingers were injured.

He rolled over and lay on his back on the ice, looking up at the stars.

They rotate slowly in the sky, but it's not the stars that are rotating; it's the entire sky that's rotating.

He looked at the stars and suddenly remembered something.

This is an illusion.

He doesn't need to breathe, he doesn't need to rest, he won't freeze to death, he won't starve to death.

His body sat cross-legged quietly beside the hot spring in reality.

Everything here is fake: the ice is fake, the lake is fake, the fish are fake, even the wounds on his fingers are fake.

But the pain is real.

I am really tired.

He sat up and then dived back down.

One. Two. Three.

Ten hours later, he caught forty-seven.

There are countless wounds on my fingers, and the nail on my left middle finger has completely fallen off.

His lips were purple, as seen in the reflection of the ice when he surfaced to breathe.

He lay on the ice, looking at the sky.

His body was trembling, and he could no longer feel the cold.

The body automatically shuts off its sensation of cold at a certain temperature as a way of protecting itself.

This is because the muscles have lost control at their limit and are spasming uncontrollably.

He lay on the ice for a long time.

So long that his body stopped trembling, so long that the wound on his finger stopped hurting, so long that he felt his consciousness fading little by little...

Then he sat up and dived back down.

He didn't know how long he had been in the illusion.

Time has no meaning here; there is no alternation of day and night, and the sky above is always filled with stars.

The stars are always turning, neither too fast nor too slow.

He can only count fish.

From one to ten, from ten to thirty, from thirty to fifty.

He pulled each one out of the bottomless, dark lake with his bare hands; each one cut several of his fingers; each one made him lie on the ice, panting for a long time.

Article 50. Article 60. Article 70.

By the time he reached eighty, he no longer needed to surface for air.

His body was so weak that he no longer needed oxygen.

His movements became a mechanical repetition.

Dive, wait, reach out, grab, surface, throw the fish, lie panting, then move on to the next one.

Article 90. Article 95. Article 98. Article 99. Article 100.

When he threw the hundredth fish onto the ice, he was lying on the edge of the ice, half of his body still in the water, his face pressed against the ice.

His eyes were half-closed, and his eyelashes were frosted.

Then he saw the old man's feet.

"Not bad," the middle-aged man's voice came from above, "Three days. A little faster than I expected."

Lu Siye was too weak to answer.

He lay on the ice, his face pressed against it, his breathing shallow, so shallow that his chest was barely visible.

A hand reached out, grabbed him by the back of his collar, and pulled him out of the water.

He was placed on the ice, face up, with the back of his head hitting the ice.

The stars were still overhead, moving a little faster than before, so it was probably almost dawn.

You actually have two choices.

The middle-aged man squatted down next to him, looking down at him.

"One is the one who defeated me, in my beast form."

"One option was to catch a hundred fish, and you chose the latter."

Lu Siye's eyes flickered, turning towards the uncle's direction.

"You're afraid of fighting."

The uncle said it wasn't a question, it was a statement.

Lu Siye remained silent.

His lips moved, but no sound came out.

"It's not shameful."

The man stood up and patted the ice crystals off his knees.

"Only those who are afraid of death live long."

"But you need to understand one thing: the more you fear something, the more it chases after you."

"Once you're not afraid, it can't do anything to you."

He pulled something out of his pocket; in the illusion, his tracksuit pocket was like Doraemon's pocket, able to pull out anything.

It was a sphere emitting blue light, about the size of a marble.

"As agreed"

The uncle placed the blue sphere in his palm and held it up to Lu Siye.

"I will give you half of my primordial spirit."

"You seal yourself into the Sin Seal Space."

Lu Siye stared at the blue sphere without moving.

"Your primordial energy has no attributes," the uncle said. "Even if I gave you the Star Constellation Primordial Energy, you couldn't use it, so this is the only way you can use it."

"I will give you half of my primordial spirit and seal it in your sin seal space."

"When you need it, draw it out from within and use it as your own primordial energy."

Lu Siye propped himself up on the ice and sat up.

The movements were slow, and you could hear the joints cracking with each movement. He stretched out his right hand, palm up.

There was nothing in my palm; it was clean and intact.

But the uncle looked at his palm, his gaze lingering for a moment, as if he were looking at something he didn't really want to see.

"That thing of yours," the uncle said, "is really weird, but it doesn't matter, it can't devour my primordial spirit."

Lu Siye did not answer.

He sank his consciousness into the space of sin imprint, found an empty white box, and made a hole in the surface of the box.

It wasn't big; it was just big enough to fit the uncle's soul inside.

The uncle placed the blue sphere in his palm. The moment the sphere touched his skin, it traveled down his wrist and forearm before finally sinking into the Sin Seal Space.

"I've thought of a name for this move."

As the man spoke, he stood up, took two steps back, and distanced himself from Lu Siye by about three or four meters.

"Wood-attribute Xia Lan Techniques related to snow"

"Wind and Sun - Cold River Snow"

He raised his right hand, palm up.

A ball of blue light condensed in his palm.

Light spilled from between his fingers and fell onto the ice.

Then the temperature began to drop.

It wasn't a slow descent, but a precipitous drop.

A layer of white frost formed on the ice surface, and water vapor in the air condensed into tiny ice crystals in an instant.

The ice crystals began to spin, accelerated, and turned into a vortex.

A whistling vortex composed of countless ice crystals.

The center of the vortex is empty.

In that empty center, the temperature was incredibly low.

It's not cold, it's a kind of nothingness where even the concept of "cold" is frozen.

The uncle flipped his palm down and pressed it gently.

The vortex shattered.

The ice surface began to crack from the center, and the cracks spread in all directions.

As the ice crystals shattered, they broke into countless tiny fragments.

Each fragment is a knife.

Each blade was spinning at an extremely high speed, cutting through the air, cutting through space, cutting through the locked target at the center of the vortex.

A deep chasm appeared on the ice, stretching from the man's feet all the way to the edge of the frozen lake.

Lu Siye stared at the ravine and remained silent for a long time.

"Give it a try"

The uncle said, "Put your hands back in your pockets."

"Use your vital energy to drive it."

"It can be used just like ordinary Xia Lan techniques, with no level restrictions. It can be used with the Four Symbols and Tai Chi techniques as well."

"The more primordial energy you have, the greater the damage."

Lu Siye stood up.

My legs were shaking, and the wound on my fingers was still bleeding.

Although the wounds are fake in the illusion, the pain is real, and the body's reaction is real.

He took a deep breath, focused his consciousness into his dantian, bypassed the white primordial energy, and directly touched the blue light.

The blue light vibrated, first stretching, then flowing out along with his consciousness.

As the fluid flowed through his meridians, he could feel a very strange sensation.

Not too hot, not too cold, just right.

He raised his right hand, mimicking the older man's gesture.

Blue light seeped from his palm, though not as steadily as the older man's.

The temperature began to drop, but not by much; only the air in a small area around him became a little cooler, and a thin layer of frost appeared on the ground.

Ice crystals condensed in the air, very small, floating above his palm, slowly rotating.

Then he lost control.

The ice crystals dispersed.

It didn't shatter, it fell apart.

"Not bad for your first time."

The older man's voice came from behind, without sarcasm or comfort.

Practice more.

Lu Siye tried again.

The blue light brightened, more ice crystals appeared, and the duration of the light increased, but it still dissipated.

The third time, the fourth time, and the fifth time.

By the tenth time, he was able to condense the ice crystals into a decent vortex.

Although it was very small, only the size of a washbasin, it didn't spin very fast.

But he could feel that power sleeping peacefully beneath his palm.

He turned his palm down and pressed it gently.

The vortex shattered.

The ice crystals turned into fragments, the fragments into blades, and the blades spun forward and struck the ice surface.

A shallow groove appeared on the ice, about ten centimeters deep and twenty centimeters wide.

It's nothing compared to the meter-deep ditch that the uncle made.

He squatted down and touched the edge of the ditch.

The ice surface was very slippery, and when you put your fingers on it, you could feel a faint chill rising from the cracks.

"That's enough," the uncle said. "Go back and practice. Practice enough in the illusion before you go out."

He stayed in the illusion for a long time.

So long that he couldn't remember how many times he practiced, or how many grooves had appeared on the ice.

He couldn't remember how many times that blue light had condensed and shattered in his palm.

He only remembered one thing: eventually, he was able to carve a decent trench in the ice.

It's not deep, maybe half a meter, but it's wide, straight, and cold enough.

"That's enough," the middle-aged man said, appearing behind him without him even noticing. "Go on out, your friends must be getting impatient."

Lu Siye turned around and looked at the uncle.

The middle-aged man stood under the starlight, his expression calm.

"Thanks," Lu Siye said.

The man did not answer.

He waved his hand, turned around, and walked into the darkness.

After taking a few steps, his body began to fade, and finally he completely melted into the darkness.

The illusion shattered.