Chapter Ninety-One: The Carp Leaps the Dragon Gate

Over the course of the next month, A Fei no longer urged him on. All day long, he was either drinking and showing off, or disappearing for two or three hours at a time.

When he returned, he still brought a ceramic jar of “restoratives” as before. He paid no heed at all to He Chang'an’s cultivation, as though his mind were elsewhere.

Sometimes he would sit atop a great stone, lift his head to the sky, and murmur to himself. No one knew what he was saying.

He Chang'an guessed that the fellow was probably cursing Heaven.

In truth, He Chang'an no longer needed anyone to urge him. So long as he had a direction to cultivate toward, no hardship or strain, no breaking of sinews and bones, counted for much.

Now, he could throw punches beneath the waterfall for about half an hour, and still have enough strength left to fight his way upstream, climbing the green rock wall behind the cascade for another dozen or so yards.

He treated himself like a small fish, hurling himself into the waterfall, then being slammed down by the immense torrent.

Then, after thirty-odd breaths, he would emerge more than a hundred yards downstream.

Again and again he tempered himself this way, until every last trace of energy and spirit was wrung from him. Only then would he climb ashore and wolf down the “great tonics” A Fei had prepared for him.

Gradually, He Chang'an also developed a habit: he drank quickly, but ate very slowly, so slowly that he could savor every nuance of the food.

For instance, the golden snake gall was bitter with a trace of astringency, with a faint sweetness in the aftertaste; the seven-colored venomous spider was sharply sour and puckering...

He Chang'an suspected that there must be a formula behind the way these poisonous things were combined.

For once all the “great tonics” entered his belly, they would rapidly dissolve into seven or eight brilliantly colored wisps of energy, rampage through his meridians and flesh and blood, and then gather in his dantian’s sea of spiritual energy...

The little black rod seemed at last to have discovered its conscience. It no longer clung to a single source and sucked it dry; instead, it would leave him a little here and there.

This was an unexpected windfall.

So, after He Chang'an opened the five mystic apertures within his body, he finally had something set aside...

...

One day, while He Chang'an was boxing within the waterfall, without warning a thread of sword intent flashed by and entered his body.

He Chang'an was startled. In the next instant, he was plunged into an agonizing struggle.

This thread of sword intent was much finer than A Jiu’s, but far more troublesome as well: elusive, seasoned, and vicious.

It was almost impossible to trace, yet it made He Chang'an feel as though sword intent lurked everywhere, as though every inch of his body hurt. In less than a dozen breaths, it taught him what it meant to be in a state of bliss and death at once, with ten thousand swords boring into the heart.

A Fei. It had to be that fool, A Fei!

He Chang'an ground his teeth in fury, but he had no time to curse. That sword qi seemed to possess a measure of intelligence, striking only at the softest and most defenseless spots, a silent sword thrust every time.

While fighting the thousand-yard waterfall crashing down upon him, he also had to withstand the sabotage of the sword intent. In fewer than twenty breaths, He Chang'an could no longer hold out.

He let out a thunderous shout and threw a punch, buying himself a single breath’s room to maneuver, intending to withdraw from the waterfall.

Unexpectedly, at that very moment, the sword intent seemed to know what He Chang'an meant to do. Ghostlike and unpredictable, it thrust fiercely into the depths of his spirit.

He Chang'an’s soul was wounded. For an instant he went dazed, and the spiritual energy circulating through his body instantly turned wild and began to run in reverse.

His vision went black. With a gush, he spat out a mouthful of blood, and his face turned deathly pale.

Hold on. I have to hold on.

He Chang'an endured the searing pain in the depths of his soul. His features twisted into a ferocious mask, as if he had become a different man entirely. He raised his head and let out a long howl, accelerating the pace of his boxing.

He roared again and again, as if driven mad.

At once, amid the thunderous roar of Longmen Waterfall, there came a series of muffled booms, the sound of fists smashing into water.

Bang, bang, bang. The noise was like war drums from antiquity.

“Come, then, all of you! Charge together if you like! I’m not afraid of pain, not afraid of injury, I only want one punch to blow your dog heads apart!”

His roar was swallowed immediately by the huge din around him.

But he did not care. He had thrown everything away.

The hardship of two or three months had finally burst forth at this moment, no longer suppressible, erupting like a flood or a beast.

He was drenched in blood, burning with battle intent; his clothes had long since been torn to shreds.

His internal organs, all the meridians through his body, and his dantian’s sea of spiritual energy were once again torn apart by the surging, reversed flow of spiritual power. Though not shattered grain by grain, they were nonetheless a disordered ruin, miserable beyond measure.

“Come, then, damn Great Tang! Damn demons and monsters! Today I’ll stake everything, and I’ll beat you all to death!”

He Chang'an’s mind was full of grievance, fury, and indignation.

Why should it be that while fiends and spirits ran rampant and ravaged the world, humans could only be lambs, left for those accursed things to raise as livestock and blood meat, to sit on our heads and shit and piss as they pleased, while this damned Great Tang remained so weak and helpless?

Why should those high officials and refined scholars, knowing full well that humankind was hemmed in on all sides by monsters and demons, that the nation was but one step from ruin and the rivers and mountains from shattering, still scheme against one another and slaughter each other?

Why? Why was everything like this?

He, He Chang'an, could not understand it.

Then come. Let us reason it out properly. Let us speak of how, exactly, I can make you, you damned Heaven, satisfied.

I, He Chang'an, may have no other gift, only a chest full of unjust fury.

Only a pair of fists.

...

He Chang'an began to fight his way upstream, forcing himself not to let his breath break. Using both hands and feet, he clambered up the green rock wall behind the waterfall, leaving a fist-shaped mark with every step.

His two fists had long since been battered into a bloody pulp, white bone showing through.

But he had already forgotten what pain was. All he wanted was to throw one punch after another, to blast a path through that green cliff face over a thousand yards high.

His fist intent soared as it slammed into the rock wall, leaving shallow marks.

After seven or eight consecutive blows, those marks would become small pits, just enough to give his hands and feet a place to gain leverage, as though a ladder had been forcibly hammered out of the stone.

Whenever he felt his strength begin to fail, he would snatch a handful of pills from his storage pouch and, without caring what they were, stuff them all into his mouth, chew them a few times in a reckless blur, and swallow them down with hot blood.

This time, he truly went wild. He had thrown everything away.

At worst, he would die. What had he to fear?

Damn Great Tang, damn Longmen Waterfall. If I do not climb to the summit today, I swear I will never stop!

Half an hour passed.

An hour passed.

Three hours passed.

After a full five hours, near the uppermost stretch of Longmen Waterfall, more than ten yards below the crest, the torrent burst apart like a water dragon, and He Chang'an’s lean, wiry figure appeared.

He looked utterly miserable, his entire body a blur of blood and flesh, bone exposed in many places.

Yet He Chang'an seemed not to feel pain. He threw a punch, splitting open the waterfall that hung straight down before him, and roared as he lifted his gaze.

Another ten-odd yards, and he could climb to the very top of the waterfall.

He Chang'an drew a deep breath and punched the cliff wall. His fist sank three inches into the stone.

He struck again. The same.

The green rock, once unimaginably hard, had been softened by the impact of his strange and fearsome fist force, until it was almost like a slab of tofu.

...

The sword intent remained as before, thin as threads, endlessly coiling, gnawing at heart and bone.

But what of it?

He Chang'an had his own sword intent now.

More than that, he even had a sword.

That little black rod, after devouring a vast quantity of spiritual energy, righteous energy, and demonic energy, had finally undergone its transformation. The voracious glutton had become a tiny flying sword.

A fish leaping the Dragon Gate, shedding its old form and becoming something new.

Was that what it meant?

Of course, to He Chang'an, whether it transformed or not did not matter.

So long as he believed he had leapt the Dragon Gate, then he was already a flood dragon.

With a long cry, He Chang'an became like a great bird and suddenly gathered force, stomping hard against the rock wall and springing upward more than nine yards.

He drove a fist into the rock wall, hanging himself there securely.

After a brief breath of adjustment, he struck again, pushed off with his feet, and leapt another nine yards or more.

Thus, in scarcely more than a dozen breaths, He Chang'an vaulted upward and at last reached the highest point of Longmen Waterfall.

His feet planted upon the water’s surface, he stood there steady as a rock, like a blunt, unsharpened sword thrust into the center of the torrent.

Looking back, all he saw were clouds and mist, a vast round moon hanging far away, and beneath the boundless earth, endless layered peaks winding for thousands of miles.

So this Great Tang... was quite beautiful.