Translator: Atlas Studios
Editor: Atlas Studios
Ye Lingyue, who was still in the martial arts tower, was not aware of what the head of the Ye family had arranged for her.
Ye Lingyue entered the martial arts tower, and it was the dazzling decoration that had attracted her the most.
The Ye family martial arts tower had stood for about four to five hundred years already. It had a quaint air to it, and upon entering, one would see a small gold cauldron with several Gathering Elemental joss sticks placed in it.
One would feel refreshed upon entering the martial arts tower.
In the Great Zhou nation, medical skill records and school-related books were written in paper, while they carved basic martial arts skill records in stone tablets.
In the Ye family martial arts tower, there were many stone tablets of different sizes sitting on the shelves. There were different kinds of materials as well.
Disciples who enter the tower cannot take the stone tablets home, and instead, they must copy it down to learn it. The copies they made were the only ones they could bring out of the tower.
The fist and foot techniques on the first level did not attract Ye Lingyue’s attention.
Ye Lingyue continued to the second level. Few martial art skills were on the second level. There were only about 20 type nine moves that the Ye family ancestors have accumulated throughout the years.
Ye Lingyue saw the stone tablet of the Broken Thunder Fist skill on the second floor. After frolicking around, she saw over ten types of skills; Blazing Whip, Stone Breaking Claw, and Qingyun Footwork.
Ye Lingyue was not interested in these martial arts skills either.
“Squeak.” Just when Ye Lingyue was in the middle of deciding, Squeaky jumped onto a shelf and stretched its paws to grab something. A martial arts skills stone tablet the size of a palm fell off the shelf.
Ye Lingyue quickly caught it with her hand and pulled Squeaky back, to not be found out by Second Uncle.
“Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade.” Ye Lingyue smiled when she read the stone tablet.
For generations, it had always been men who were warriors in the Ye family. Why was there such an elegant sounding martial arts skill in the tower?
Ye Lingyue could not help but look at it a few more times. She then found out that this refined sounding basic martial arts skill was a type eight move.
And according to the stone tablet, if one could attain the highest level of Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade, its strength would be greater than most of type eight martial arts moves.
Although type eight moves and type nine moves differed only in one level, there was still an enormous difference in it. For example, when two martial arts practitioners, who were both at the ninth level of body tempering, exchange blows, the one using a type eight martial arts skill would win over the one using a type nine martial arts skill.
Ye Lingyue heard from her mother that there were only three kinds of type eight martial arts skills in the whole Ye family. One of them was the ‘Rock Shattering Force’ Ye Gu used to force Ye Fengyu and Ye Fengcheng to step back during the competition.
The second level of the martial arts tower was all type nine moves, and they could only find the type at the third level. So why was it placed there?
“That is ‘Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade.’ It’s a type eight martial arts skill, but other than the ancestor of the Ye family who created this, for so many years, no one in the Ye family tried to learn it. In the hands of ordinary people, it is not even as good as a type nine martial arts skill, so we placed it on the second floor.” Seeing that Ye Lingyue had not come down from the second floor after a long time, Ye Huangshu came up.
When Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade was first placed in the martial arts tower, many descendants of the Ye family were eager to learn this type eight martial arts skill.
But after two months, almost all the descendants of the Ye family could not release the power of Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade. After a long time of trying to figure it out, they dropped the skill to a lower level. Some even said that it was an incomplete skill and that a Ye ancestor did not create it.
The particular ancestor of the Ye family who created the skill was a legend of the Ye family. He came to Autumn Maple town alone and started up the Ye family’s business with his bare hands. When the ancestor was still alive, the Ye family entered a period of great prosperity and even had dealings with the imperial court of Great Xia.
It was a pity that after the ancestor’s death, the Ye family gradually declined. Now in Autumn Maple town, the most powerful was the only thing they were famous for. This Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade was a famous and unique skill of the Ye family, and back then, the ancestor was invincible in Autumn Maple town with this martial arts skill.
When Ye Huangshu was younger, he had also studied this basic martial arts skill. But after six months of learning it, he did not make any progress and ultimately gave up.
“Lingyue, I think you have an excellent fist technique, but you still lack some movement techniques. It’s better to choose another skill,” Ye Huangshu reminded her.
“Second Uncle, thank you for your kindness, but I still want to learn Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade.” Ye Lingyue made up her mind. She copied down Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade and left the martial arts tower.
“This child has outstanding talent, but she is headstrong. She will suffer in the future if she doesn’t listen to her elders.” Seeing that Ye Lingyue did not listen to his advice, Ye Huangshu was a little upset. After shaking his head, he put that stone tablet back.
After Ye Lingyue had left the martial arts tower, she was in no hurry to get back to the northern estate. Seeing that there was no one around, she took out the copied martial arts skill and read it.
“It’s strange that the ancestors of the Ye family knew psyche too,” Ye Lingyue wondered.
She was very smart and felt that the cultivation technique of Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade was familiar after one look. In retrospect, it turned out that a few words in the mantra were similar to the psyche cultivation technique in Immortal Hongmeng’s letter.
Not everyone could cultivate the psyche. To make the Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade useful, one needed to have a psyche as a base and combine it with martial arts skills. The reason many descendants of the Ye family could not learn it was because they did not know their psyche.
‘Twisting Flower’ meant controlling the enemy with the psyche, while ‘Crushing Jade’ meant attacking the enemy’s weak point with elementary force. One was controlling and the other attacking, it could defeat the enemy and win easily.
Ye Lingyue read and gestured at the same time. Unknowingly, she was practicing Twisting Flower and Crushing Jade towards a tree beside her.
Ye Lingyue’s hands were like a butterfly, landing on the tree trunk and gesturing. Elementary force surrounded her dexterous fingers and her fingertips flashed with white light.
Ye Lingyue’s hands brushed past the tree trunk lightly like a horsetail whisk.
It seemed that there was a twisting force that passed through Ye Lingyue’s hands. She did not exert any force from her side, but it seemed that a different powerful force grasped the tree that was deeply planted in the soil. The soil that was then separated from the tree stuck on to Ye Lingyue’s hands.
Gathering power in her hands, she heard a few cracks, and it broke the thick waist of the tree into several sections. It was evenly broken as if an ax had cut it.
‘How powerful!’ It surprised Ye Lingyue. It was a type eight move. It was very powerful with just the first use. And when using it, there was no elementary force at all. It was like a showy and impractical martial art, but she did not expect it to have such power.
Hearing footsteps behind her, Ye Lingyue quickly hid.
“Which brat cut down the boxwood tree that Master had just planted?” Ye Lingyue heard the voice of the Ye family’s servant coming from the yard.
The boxwood on the ground had been split apart. Ye Lingyue stuck out her tongue when she heard this and sprinted away.