Su Ming almost ran out of the small courtyard.

The morning mist had not yet cleared, but the streets of Qingshi Town already carried the bustle of daily life. Breakfast vendors blew on their hands, tending steaming pots and pans.

He did not stop for a moment, cutting across most of the town until he reached the familiar old locust tree at the western corner.

Xu Qing was already there. He was squatting in front of a straw mat, carefully wiping a yellowed copy of the County Records of Qingzhou with a half-worn piece of burlap. He treated it with such seriousness, as if it were a priceless treasure.

“Brother Xu.” Su Ming stepped forward, his footsteps deliberately light.

Xu Qing looked up, saw Su Ming, rose, and brushed the dust from his sleeve. “Come for the policy discussion notes I promised last time?”

“Not entirely.” Su Ming shook his head, a trace of embarrassment on his face. “I came to ask for Brother Xu’s help. I want to find some medical books… about the human meridians and acupuncture points. Do you happen to have any?”

Xu Qing froze in place.

He looked at Su Ming with a hint of surprise, as if he could not understand why a top scorer would take an interest in medicine. He did not press the matter, however. He squatted back down and began searching through his pile of treasured old books.

“I do have some medical books,” Xu Qing said as he rifled through them, “but most are elementary rhymes like Soup Formulas and Materia Medica songs, meant to teach how to identify herbs or memorize prescriptions.”

His hand wandered among the stacks and soon produced several thin booklets, which he handed to Su Ming.

Su Ming accepted them and flipped through quickly. As Xu Qing had said, they were full of catchy verses, focusing far more on the properties and effects of herbs than on the structure of the human body.

“As for meridians and acupuncture points…” Xu Qing frowned slightly, seeming to strain his memory, “those are precious. True copies of the Ling Shu or Zhen Jing are treasures locked away in major medical houses, passed down internally but not shared with outsiders. You won’t see them in ordinary markets.”

He continued searching the far corner of his stall inside a wooden box for a long while, then carefully withdrew a piece of square-folded coarse yellow hemp paper.

“This is all I have.” He unfolded it. “I copied it years ago from a damaged ancient book. It’s called the Diagram of the Correct Human Hall.”

Su Ming’s gaze was immediately drawn to it.

It was a hand-drawn figure of the human body, rough lines and smeared ink. Several lines running through the body were marked in cinnabar, and tiny regular script annotated names like Hand-Taiyin Lung Meridian and Foot-Yangming Stomach Meridian.

A few acupuncture points were labeled — Zhongfu, Tianfu, Chize — but each was only indicated by a rough dot, with no notes on depth or specific functions.

The diagram was better than nothing.

“Su Ming.” Xu Qing looked at him earnestly. “This drawing is crude and many parts are blurred. It only shows general directions. If you truly want to learn medicine, this alone won’t do.”

Su Ming folded the drawing carefully and tucked it into his chest.

“Thank you, Brother Xu.” He looked at Xu Qing and said sincerely, “This will be very useful to me.”

He did not overexplain. Xu Qing did not ask further.

That was their unspoken understanding.

After saying goodbye to Xu Qing, Su Ming did not return to his courtyard. Instead, he turned and headed deeper into the County School.

Second stop, the library.

The library was an old three-story wooden building, perennially filled with a unique scent of paper and timber.

When Su Ming entered, Manager Sun was dozing behind the counter, his graying beard rising and falling with each breath.

“Manager Sun.” Su Ming lowered his voice and respectfully bowed.

Manager Sun lifted his eyelids, his cloudy eyes rolling as he recognized Su Ming, then slowly sat up a bit more.

“Ah, Top Scorer Su.” His voice was hoarse, laced with sleepy laziness. “Not here for county records chatter today? What else do you want to look at?”

“This student hopes to find books… concerning human meridians, or guides to health-preserving exercises.” Su Ming asked cautiously. “Do you have any in the stacks?”

A flicker of clarity and surprise crossed Manager Sun’s murky eyes.

He sized Su Ming up from head to toe, then slowly shook his head.

“Top Scorer Su, you’re young, newly titled, and should be pursuing classics and histories with vigor.” His tone carried the admonishment of an elder. “Why are you studying the amusements of old men who are soon to be buried? You mustn’t place the cart before the horse.”

The same old lecture.

Su Ming felt helpless but kept his expression composed, answering humbly.

“You misunderstand, sir. I only had some thoughts while reading lately and wish to broaden my knowledge. I would never neglect my main studies.”

Manager Sun stared at him for a long moment, trying to discern something from his face. Su Ming’s expression remained calm and clear, showing nothing unusual.

“Fine.” Manager Sun slowly rose, his stooped silhouette stretched long in the morning light. He fumbled under the counter for a large ring of rusted keys, which clinked as he moved.

“Follow me. Books of that sort, if they exist at all, are piled in the farthest corner of the miscellaneous collection. They’ve been gathering dust for decades without being touched.”

The so-called miscellaneous collection was actually a dim room under the library.

The iron key grated in the lock, emitting a teeth-chattering creak. A thick smell of mildew and dust, mixed with damp cold, rushed out.

Manager Sun did not enter; he pointed inside with his bony finger.

“Search on your own. What you find depends on your fate. Don’t linger; the lower rooms hold a cold that’s not good for scholars.”

With that, he tucked his hands into his sleeves and shuffled back upstairs to bask in the sun, leaving Su Ming alone with the dusty chamber.

Su Ming took a deep breath and lit the oil lamp he kept in the corner.

The pinprick of light only lit the three feet before him; beyond it lay dark, silent shelves. The bookcases leaned crookedly, filled with an unclassified jumble of badly damaged volumes, like a pile of silent, forgotten corpses.

He began a grueling search.

Dust coated his clothes and cheeks; his fingers were soon nicked by the rough pages, burning with pain.

He searched the entire afternoon.

He found many strange and curious works: treatises on feng shui, face-reading and fortune-telling manuals, a large number of fantastical strange-tales, and the grumbled notes of an embittered, unsuccessful literati.

He did find some books on medicine and health preservation.

One was a retired official’s Record of Pleasant Living. Su Ming opened it with hope, only to find pages devoted to maintaining a cheerful disposition, taking walks, and using food to regulate mood. For acupuncture points, it casually said, “When headaches strike, one may massage the temple to brighten the eyes,” and nothing more.

Another was titled A Treatise on Cultivation and Guiding Techniques — a dramatic title. Its contents were mystifying, filled with methods like swallowing saliva, clicking the teeth to gather spirit, and “guarding the ancestral orifice.” But what or where the “ancestral orifice” was, how large the dantian should be, none of that was explained; everything relied on personal revelation.

Lin Yu laughed silently in Su Ming’s ring.

Well, this was the ancient version of a health column and feel-good self-help — all correct-sounding but ultimately useless.

The only illustrated book was a volume with a rotted cover, The Shaolin Trauma Remedies.

Su Ming treated it like a treasure. It did contain crude human figures, but the labels were vague — “soft cartilage on the chest,” “three inches below the ribs,” “inside of the ankle” — and the instructions explained how to treat external bruises or set bones.

These were far from the precise, hair-fine meridian maps required for cultivation practice.

By the time Su Ming dragged his exhausted, dust-covered body out of the basement, the sunset had stained half the sky red.

Manager Sun leaned in a recliner, eyes half-closed, listening to the birds outside. Seeing Su Ming return empty-handed and dejected, he seemed unsurprised.

He did not mock him, but merely shook his head and sighed.

“Young man, do not chase loftier things than you can reach. What one learns on paper remains shallow.”

The words pierced Su Ming’s heart like a needle.

A knowledge barrier loomed like an invisible mountain across his path to cultivation, impossible to scale.

Back in his small courtyard, Su Ming shut the door and flung himself onto the cold planks of his bed, not even able to move a finger.

“Master…” His voice trembled with undisguised disappointment and fatigue. “Xu Qing only had that crude Diagram of the Correct Human Hall, and the library… had nothing truly useful.”

Silence settled in the ring for a moment.

Lin Yu had already observed the entire search through Su Ming’s perceptions. The outcome did not surprise him. If such core knowledge were so easily obtained, then the “Way” of this world would be far too cheap.

“Disciple.” Lin Yu’s voice sounded, unusually calm, with a peculiar comforting undertone. “You have done very well. You have given everything you could.”

“But…”

“No buts.” Lin Yu cut him off. “That path is a dead end, as I expected. On the contrary, I should thank that old Manager Sun. One of his words enlightened me.”

Su Ming sat up from the bed, startled. “What did he say?”

“What one learns on paper remains shallow.” Lin Yu said slowly, his voice carrying a strange cadence. “Since we cannot find the path in books, we will change our method — we will verify the Way through the body itself!”

“Verify the Way… through the body?” Su Ming repeated, murmuring, not fully understanding the explosive implications behind those four words.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep