"What's there to look at? It's a mess now. Who could even tell where it starts and where it ends?"
The Wedding Garment Divine Skill was a masterpiece—each word a gem. Even if Jiang Biehe hadn't tampered with it, the text in its current state could only be read, not practiced.
Hu Tiehua fumed inwardly but had nowhere to vent. Li Chaofeng hadn't even looked at a single page before scattering them, so asking him to piece it back together was hopeless.
But knowing the damage was done, Hu Tiehua, catching the gleam of triumph in Li Chaofeng's eyes, simply shook his head and let it go.
"Fine. I'll help you take a look. See if there's still any martial insight left worth learning."
A smile tugged at his lips. Deep down, he knew Li Chaofeng had made the right call.
Jiang Qin was a man of sinister cunning. Any Wedding Garment Divine Skill he wrote was never meant to be trusted. Yet Jiang also couldn't craft a fake good enough to fool someone like Hu Tiehua. That meant the core martial principles he embedded had to come from the real thing.
To a martial artist, encountering an unfamiliar yet profound martial insight was like an itch in the bones—irresistible. One would feel compelled to test it out.
And the fastest way to test such principles? Follow the internal energy pathways written in the manual.
Had the manual remained intact, Hu Tiehua would have surely been tempted to try it. And once tempted, there would be no turning back. But now that Li Chaofeng had scattered it into chaos, it was impossible to follow even half of the internal flow pathways. Practice was out of the question.
Within the human body lie the Eight Extraordinary Meridians. To reverse or misstep along those routes could lead to death or permanent disablement.
All Jiang Biehe needed was to alter a few lines of flow instructions, and a peerless martial art would become a deadly trap. In tearing apart the manual, Li Chaofeng had also dismantled the trap.
Now, all that remained was to study the refined insights in the scattered text—those rare jewels of martial truth—and use Hu Tiehua's own cultivation methods to slowly comprehend them.
It would be hard. As hard as deducing the Tai Xuan Sutra of Mystic Island just by reading Li Bai's "The Swordsman's Song." But it was far safer.
Hu Tiehua held no grudge against Li Chaofeng. Quite the opposite. He admired his choice.
A divine martial manual had now become a loose anthology of poetic fragments. Yet perhaps its only saving grace was that the "poetry" it now contained had already been verified by the martial greats of the past.
Seeing Li Chaofeng step aside, Hu Tiehua walked back into the cave and casually picked up a page. He read aloud:
"To wield its edge, one must first dull its point…"
Just a few lines, and already Hu Tiehua's eyes lit up. Enthralled, he began to move his arms, letting his energy flow along the described meridians.
"First Baihui, then…"
"Ah—where's the next page!?"
Alas, a single page held barely a hundred words. Just when the insight was flowing, the instructions were cut short.
He looked up, only to see Li Chaofeng tossing a page into the fire.
That page, unfortunately, was full of flow routes—utterly meaningless to someone who knew no martial arts.
For Hu Tiehua, a master of his craft, martial insight was irresistible. But to Li Chaofeng, the words were nonsense—less interesting than a Tang poem.
So he simply burned the useless ones.
"You—!" Hu Tiehua clenched his fists, then sighed deeply.
"Forget it."
And so the manual was now well and truly a collection of poetic fragments.
One by one, Li Chaofeng sorted the pages, burning all those that detailed flow paths and formations. Meanwhile, Hu Tiehua once again lost himself in the wisdom of the ancients.
He began reconstructing the internal routes by combining the fragments with his own techniques. If anything felt off, he'd immediately stop, ensuring his safety.
The Wedding Garment Divine Skill had now become the Shattered Scroll of the Wedding Garment.
For the next several days, Hu Tiehua remained in the tiger's den, absorbed in study and practice, striving to comprehend the martial essence within the shattered text.
At the same time, he began teaching Li Chaofeng—this clueless newcomer to the martial world—the basic structure of the human body's meridians and acupoints.
In the jianghu, true martial inheritance was not given lightly. But general knowledge and accepted techniques? Those Hu Tiehua could share freely, especially with someone like Li Chaofeng.
After all, this man had resisted temptation. Not only had he thrown the divine manual into disorder, but he'd also burned nearly half of it.
Hu Tiehua's heart ached to see it, but he deeply respected Li Chaofeng's willpower.
So, unless it involved his sect's secrets, he taught him without reservation.
Meanwhile, Li Chaofeng busied himself tanning tiger hides and roasting tiger meat to feed Hu Tiehua. Occasionally, he'd ride into town to buy him fine wine—ensuring that this "retreat" was as comfortable as it was focused.
As for Jiang Qin's written confession, Hu Tiehua accompanied Li Chaofeng to a quiet wilderness, where they lit incense and offered it in tribute—to honor Yannan Tian, the world's number one hero, who though not truly dead, was presumed lost by all.
When the rites were done, Li Chaofeng carefully tucked the confession away. For Yannan Tian, it was something worth seeing.
Hu Tiehua didn't stop him. He figured Li Chaofeng merely wanted to keep it as a reminder—not to stray from the righteous path.
With the matter settled, and Hu Tiehua as his witness, Li Chaofeng had done all he could. Whether Yannan Tian would believe him or accept him as a student of the Wedding Garment Divine Skill, that was for fate to decide.
Time flowed like water. In the blink of an eye, two months passed.
And Hu Tiehua's understanding of his own martial arts deepened profoundly.
His signature technique, the "Seventy-Two Moves of the Butterfly Dancing Among Flowers," had made his name in the martial world. In battle, he moved like a butterfly flitting through blossoms—elusive, graceful, deadly.
Thus, the world had dubbed him "The Flower Butterfly."
But he was not a butterfly. He would never truly become one. He could only mimic its dance.
The reason Hu Tiehua moved like a butterfly in battle was simple—within his body, he could generate power from two distinct points.
It was as if two iron spheres were bound by a taut, resilient spring. Each sphere could shift independently, directing force in different directions, yet both were tethered by Hu Tiehua's own body.
The result? His movement was erratic, elegant—darting left, then right—like a butterfly dancing through the air.
The Wedding Garment Divine Skill, as its name implied, came from the old saying:
"How bitter to weave golden thread year after year, only to make a wedding dress for another."
But its true essence lay elsewhere:
"Though I gift others the wedding dress, I retain the loom. And when the day of my own wedding comes, I shall don the phoenix robes."
In this philosophy, true qi was like fabric. While others labored daily to spin silk and monthly to weave cloth—eventually crafting a single treasured garment to last a lifetime—the Wedding Garment Divine Skill specialized not in wearing the garment, but in making it.
And once the dress was made, it was meant to be cast aside—discarded like an old shoe. Better still, it had to be discarded.
Because if one hoarded these garments, they would pile up, burdening the loom until it could no longer function.
Once mastered in full, the complete Wedding Garment Divine Skill generated a continuous, inexhaustible stream of qi. Where most martial artists had but one garment of qi—torn in battle, it needed slow rebuilding—the master of this art wielded countless robes.
Of course, Hu Tiehua hadn't learned the full technique—only the fragmented Wedding Garment Scroll. What he absorbed was not the art itself, but the essence—the martial insights buried within.
The broken scroll offered no blueprints for building the loom, but Hu Tiehua came to understand one fundamental concept:
Cash flow.
Most people, when saving money, have only one account. Opening more feels unnecessary—and many wouldn't even know how to manage two.
But Hu Tiehua understood.
He had two energy centers—two "accounts" within his body that could operate independently.
The Wedding Garment Divine Skill wasn't about saving money. It was about making it—and making a lot in a short time.
But the money couldn't be stored. If hoarded, the bank would collapse.
So the flow of funds—of qi—had to be stable and continuous, able to withstand consumption and still keep coming. It was about having a vault deep enough to handle the pressure, and channels that kept it replenished.
The method of making money lay in the complete manual. But the idea of cash flow—that concept alone was preserved in the fragments.
And now, this idea had been grasped by Hu Tiehua, who—by virtue of his dual "accounts"—could understand what others could not.
His body, once a spring, had become a pipeline of qi.
The two iron spheres that once moved in tandem now moved with difference—one large, one small.
And when the larger sphere pulled, the smaller followed…
In the depths of the tiger's den, a shadowy black dragon weaved through the cave. When it encountered resistance, it twisted and recoiled, flowing back in a reverse arc.
At times, it moved like the character for "person" (人), at others like "zigzag" (之).
This was—The Dream-Awakening Dance of the Wandering Dragon.
"HA—HA—HA—HA—HA!"
The dragon came to a stop.
Hu Tiehua, now clad in ragged black, threw back his head and laughed wildly toward the sky. Then he turned to look for Li Chaofeng—only to see him walking toward the cave entrance.
Delighted by his own breakthrough, Hu Tiehua expected at least a word of congratulations. When his friend didn't even acknowledge it, he immediately voiced his protest.
"Hey! I just created a brand-new martial art! Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
"The wine and food in the cave are gone. I'm heading to town to get you a proper feast," Li Chaofeng's voice echoed from the distance, calm and matter-of-fact. "Better than tossing empty words around."
Hu Tiehua lit up with joy. Grinning ear to ear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted after him.
"Don't forget to buy plenty of wine! And I don't want tavern food—I want your cooking!"
From afar, Li Chaofeng waved his hand. His voice drifted lightly through the air.
"Got it!"