More and more unfamiliar faces from other towns were appearing in the small town, and the business of inns and taverns was booming.

At the same time, in Fortune Street and Peach Leaf Lane, many young disciples from prominent families were quietly leaving the town. Most were intelligent and talented young men who matured early, but there were also unknown illegitimate sons of concubines, or loyal family servants. Zhao Yao, a scion of a prominent family, was among them. As for Gu Can, a child from Mud Bottle Lane, he was an exception, having been chosen at a glance by the Interception True Lord Liu Zhimao.

Chen Ping An went to Liu Xianyang’s house to retrieve a bamboo basket and a creel, then left the town for the stream. When there were many people around, Chen Ping An naturally wouldn’t practice the walking stances from the *Mountain Shaking Manual*. Once he was outside the town, in the absence of witnesses, Chen Ping An began to recite the incantation in his mind, recalling Miss Ning’s posture, movements, and aura when she performed the stances. He didn’t want to miss a single detail, and he repeatedly practiced those six steps.

Back in the house in Mud Bottle Lane, when Chen Ping An first imitated Ning Yao, he was so clumsy and ridiculous that he was worse than ordinary people. In truth, the young boy and girl had unknowingly formed a misunderstanding. Chen Ping An had always known that he had a flaw. He had discovered it when he started working as a kiln worker: his eyes were sharp, but his hands were slow. To be precise, it was because the boy’s eyes and eyesight were so outstanding that his hands and feet simply couldn’t keep up. This meant that if someone else were to imitate Ning Yao’s walking stances, they might achieve three or four points of similarity on the first try, crude and awkward though it might be. But they wouldn’t be as poor as Chen Ping An, who could only manage one or two points of similarity. This was precisely because Chen Ping An saw things too clearly and was too critical of every detail, resulting in him overdoing it. When his hands and feet couldn’t keep up, it seemed particularly laughable. Yet within that nine-tenths of dissimilarity, there lay hidden one-tenth of rare resemblance.

Ning Yao was unaware of all this. Imitating her, a heavenly sword embryo’s, walking stances, even if it was nine-tenths similar in form, couldn’t compare to one-tenth of similarity in spirit.

Of course, even if he possessed seven or eight points of her spirit, Ning Yao wouldn’t consider it particularly amazing.

What Ning Yao saw, what she desired, was the distant path of martial arts, rarely traveled by others, and the peak of swordsmanship, where only a few could stand shoulder to shoulder.

Chen Ping An sat on the steps beneath the plaque of the covered bridge, resting. The boy roughly calculated that, with twelve hours a day, even if he persisted for five to six hours each day, repeating the walking stances, he would only be able to perform them about three hundred times. That would be ten thousand a year, and it would take ten years to complete the task of one million repetitions. The straw-sandaled boy turned his head to look at the crystal-clear stream and murmured, “If I persist for ten years, I should be able to do it, right?”

Although Chen Ping An hadn’t shown any unusual emotions lately, the leaking of secrets by Daoist Lu before his departure, which revealed Cai Jinjian of Cloudglow Mountain’s insidious methods one by one, still made the boy feel heavily burdened. There was one thing that Chen Ping An hadn’t mentioned to Daoist Lu or Miss Ning, and that was that after Cai Jinjian had poked his brow and patted his chest, the boy had vaguely felt something was wrong with his body while he was in Mud Bottle Lane. That was why he had lingered for so long in front of his courtyard door, to steel his resolve to fight Cai Jinjian to the death if necessary.

After all, according to the young Daoist Lu Chen, Chen Ping An at that time was too lifeless and dull, not at all like a boy who should be full of vigor. Chen Ping An took matters of life and death lighter than most people did.

Cai Jinjian’s “guidance” through martial means had forcibly opened Chen Ping An’s mind, making the boy’s body like a house without a gate or doors. It could indeed take in more things, but whenever there was wind, snow, or rain, the house would collapse even more severely and quickly. That was why Lu Chen had predicted that, unless something extraordinary happened, Chen Ping An would only live to his thirties or forties, if he avoided major illnesses or disasters.

Afterward, he patted Chen Ping An’s chest, damaging the foundation of his cultivation. The heart was a crucial stronghold for cultivators. After the city gates were breached, Cai Jinjian had almost completely sealed off the normal operation of this pass. This not only cut off Chen Ping An’s path to cultivation, but also accelerated the decay of Chen Ping An’s body.

The truly terrifying aspect of Cai Jinjian’s two moves was that, after the gates were thrown open, Chen Ping An was unable to cultivate methods of longevity, which meant he couldn’t use spells and supernatural powers to repair the gates or strengthen his foundation. On the other hand, even if the boy was lucky enough to master martial arts, he could rely on physical tempering to strengthen his body. However, for Chen Ping An, great risks would always accompany opportunities. One wrong step, and he would fall into the “practicing external martial arts easily attracts evil” trap, resulting in the pitiful fate of failing to prolong his life and dying young instead.

Chen Ping An urgently needed a martial art that could nourish his vitality gradually and steadily. Whether this martial art was fierce, domineering, or allowed him to advance his martial arts realm rapidly was not important.

Chen Ping An’s hope lay entirely in the *Mountain Shaking Manual* that Ning Yao looked down upon, such as the “Sword Furnace” standing stances and “Thousand Autumns” sleeping stances she had mentioned after the walking stances.

But Chen Ping An didn’t dare to practice them rashly. He had only glanced at them briefly and then restrained himself from looking further. He felt that he should have Miss Ning evaluate them first and confirm that they were safe before he started practicing them.

As long as you are on the right path, no matter how poor your comprehension, as long as you are diligent and persistent, you will improve every day. If you are going in the wrong direction, the smarter and more effort you put in, the more mistakes you will make.

These were Liu Xianyang’s words, but his point was in the last sentence: “You, Chen Ping An, are the first type of person. Scholar Song is the second type, a clever devil. Only I, Liu Xianyang, am the true genius who is both smart and on the right path.”

At the time, when Liu Xianyang was boasting about himself, Old Man Yao, who happened to be passing by, heard him. The old man, who had always favored Liu Xianyang and considered him his prized disciple, didn’t know which of the boy’s words had struck a nerve. Old Man Yao, uncharacteristically, flew into a rage and chased after Liu Xianyang, giving him a sound beating. In any case, after that, Liu Xianyang never uttered the word “genius” again.