When Li Chu returned to Deyun Monastery, he ran into a few women from the nearby village coming out from the door, each of them smiling and looking radiant.
Usually, when he received them as guests, while those women would laugh, there was no such heartfelt joy. It was almost like they were seedlings nourished by spring rain.
'It seems like there is still a big gulf between Master and me.'
As he thought of that, Li Chu walked into the front hall with admiration in his heart.
Yu Qi'an was sitting in the front hall to stand in for Li Chu. When he saw the latter come back, he quickly stood up and said. "My child, you're back. Your master is dead tired. Come, take these things to the kitchen. We will have more dishes for lunch."
There were two baskets of eggs, a bunch of green onions, and a wild pheasant around him, which were probably given by those aunties earlier.
The village folks did not have much money at home, and it was common for them to send food as offerings. The Daoist priests would be equally grateful regardless as offerings of vegetables and rice were also merits.
Yu Qi'an walked to the back as he pounded his back while Li Chu picked up the offerings and followed closely behind.
After having a sumptuous lunch with an additional dish of green onion scrambled eggs, Li Chu returned to the front hall.
In the summer afternoon, the vegetation was swaying leisurely as a drowsy scent filled the air.
But Li Chu was in good spirits. He took out the Learning The Iron Robe in Thirty Days book and studied it carefully.
After taking a closer look, the principles behind it were very simple.
The first step was to concentrate his inner strength from his whole body into one point and tighten his muscles to resist an attack. If the strength was strong enough, it could even resist sharp objects.
Those who performed common tricks like piercing one's throat with a spear or rolling over a nail of boards were unusually trained in this.
The next level up was to turn this sort of resistance into a conditioned response. So whenever you are attacked, you can tighten your muscles instantly without needing to charge up.
And the ultimate form was to go from point defense to full-body defense.
With that, the so-called Iron Robe was done.
When this technique was trained to its extreme, it would not be just a boast for claiming it to be invulnerable to spear and sword attack.
This kind of common self-defense technique would naturally not be particularly advanced, but this was what Li Chu could get his hands on, so he did not complain.
He had not practiced martial arts before, and there was no internal energy inside him. However, he had another power that might be even stronger. Let's call that his spiritual power.
Li Chu pondered for a while and thought it would probably be the same if he trained with his spiritual power.
In any case, it was just another form of energy, and it should be no different when you think about it.
So, he immediately went on about it. He activated his spiritual power and tried to concentrate it on a specific point on the surface of his body.
It was the first time he had attempted something like this. In the past, his spiritual power would just run smoothly in his body. And even when he struck with his sword, he would not concentrate much of them into his strike. After all, a tiny bit of spiritual power was enough for him to obliterate his foes.
To play safe, he did not dare to try it out on any crucial body parts and chose a dispensable part on the lower half of his body instead.
Although it was rather long, he felt that it was useless and looked a little ugly.
A part that can be cut off at any time if something went wrong.
That's right.
He had focused his spiritual power on a single leg hair.
To his surprise, when he slowly focused fifty percent of his spiritual power onto this single leg hair, it started to glow.
A glowing leg hair.
For some reason, Li Chu felt this scene looked rather familiar.
When his spiritual power reached sixty percent, it started to get hot like a red hot iron wire!
Li Chu finally remembered why this felt familiar. When he was still a child, his home was still using those old-fashioned light bulbs.
He had a hunch that if he continued to infuse his spiritual power into it, the leg hair might explode.
To avoid getting himself hurt even before mastering the Iron Robe, he terminated the experiment for now.
It seemed like sixty percent power was the limit the leg hair could withstand. Li Chu wondered how the skin would fare.
He pondered for a moment, and then frowned.
Every inch of his skin was perfect, and he could not find a part to experiment on...
In the end, he decided on his palm.
He stretched his left hand out with his palm facing up as his spiritual power slowly gathered.
This time around, he quickly gathered fifty percent of his spiritual power, and nothing happened.
When his spiritual power convergence reached sixty percent, his palm began to glow. When it was seventy percent, his palm felt hot.
It seemed like the ability of his skin to bear the power was a little stronger than his leg hair.
To have a palm with its own self-heating function...
Life would be just so much more comfortable...
Li Chu thought of the fact that he inevitably had to eat dried food when he was outside. Cold food was bad for digestion, while heating it was inconvenient. With a hand like this, things would be much easier.
When he dismissed the spiritual power, he felt that the spot where the spiritual power had converged earlier looked a little different than its surrounding.
As it was not too obvious on the palm, he tried it out again on another spot.
And sure enough, the spot where the spiritual power had converged upon would look even fairer after they were dismissed.
Although his skin was originally fair, now it looked like the redness from the blood had faded and in its place was a porcelain-like feel to it. It looked particularly striking and felt very smooth.
This was a rather unexpected change.
He quickly transformed the entire left arm by using his spiritual power and then started the most nerve-wracking part.
He grabbed his iron sword by the blade with his left hand and let it slide on his skin.
A dull thud rang out.
There was no pain. And as he opened his palm, he only saw a faint white mark on his skin, and even that soon disappeared.
Invincible!
Li Chu smiled.
The success had come much faster than he had expected.
It seemed like spiritual power could be a deal stronger than internal energy.
The Iron Robe that was supposed to take thirty days to learn, he had actually mastered it in a moment's time!
The Iron Robe had a weakness. Not all body parts could conjure up internal energy. Hence, the areas that were not covered by the internal energy were a fatal weakness for any practitioner.
There were many tales in the martial realm where a martial artist's weakness was discovered and his techniques unraveled.
But Li Chu's spiritual power could converge to every point on his body. If he wanted to, he could provide every strand of hair on his body top-level protection.
That was to say that his Iron Robe had no weakness, and was veritably the ultimate Iron Robe!
But Li Chu reminded himself that he could not let this get into his head.
He needed to understand that his invincibility was conditional.
If that demon-slaying sword lost the support of his spiritual power, it would just be an ordinary iron sword that he could get at a nearby smithy for two silver taels.
If there was an elite martial artist wielding a legendary blade or a sword cultivator wielding a powerful artifact or a flying sword...
They would undoubtedly pierce his defenses at will.
So, this was just tiny insurance he had gotten for himself. He still needed to train harder.
Immediately, he nervously started his path of refining himself.
Each inch of his bones, flesh and skin was meticulously refined by the converging spiritual power.
In just an afternoon's time, Li Chu felt as if he had been reborn, and his entire body felt much lighter.
If he could see himself in the mirror right now, he would have noticed an even bigger difference.
As he stood still now, he looked like a perfect piece of porcelain art with his eyes letting out a bright gleam.
Even his handsomeness had increased by three whole points.
Do not underestimate these three points though.
Perhaps three additional points to Li Chu's ten thousand points worth of good looks were only a minuscule number. However, for the likes of Zhou Dafu with his five-point worth of looks, these three points would see a material increase.
"The Iron Robe sure lives up to its name as a famous technique." Li Chu was amazed.
He had originally thought that the Iron Robe was just a crappy martial art technique. He assumed that it would only allow him to withstand some damage better at most and could not have been that strong.
Nevertheless, after he had successfully mastered the technique and getting an in-depth feel of it, the boost it gave him was all-encompassing. Not only did he become invincible, but the impurities in his body also seemed to have been cleansed. He felt as if his body was given a rebirth.
'Our Iron Robe is just too awesome!'
But of course…
If the Iron Robe's creator were to hear this, he might very well jump out of his grave and shout to set things straight.
"The Iron Robe others had won't do! Only yours will!"