Chapter 8: The Secret of the Lotus Pond (1)
Physical arts, as the name suggests, are summarized as the art of physical training with the goal of developing the potential of the human body.
The martial arts that can strengthen the body inside and match the outside to resist the enemy are the courses that every person in the Earth Federation must learn in the new era, of course, not only limited to the Earth Federation, there are also a number of interstellar alliances in the vast universe outside the Federation, and various body training techniques are also prevalent.
When the development of science and technology reaches a certain limit, interstellar civilization begins to explore the mysteries of the human body itself, whether it is genetic enhancement liquid, spiritual power training, or the development of the physical body through physical arts, in the final analysis, it is the pursuit of individual strength.
The term "physical arts" can not only be used in interstellar civilizations, because some high-level jobs such as piloting starships require physical strength and mental strength, and the level of physical skills has even become the goal pursued by some people and a symbol of social status to a certain extent.
The physical skills of the Earth Federation, born from the ancient Chinese martial arts and military fighting techniques before the new era, combine the strengths of the two families and cultivate both inside and outside, and have their own lineage in many interstellar alliances.
When Liu Ci was eighteen years old, he passed the sixth level of physical arts, and he just stepped on the passing line to be able to drive a starship.
At her age, she was a very outstanding talent, of course, she never broke through in her physical skills since then, and was ridiculed by others for "hurting Zhongyong". It is said that after passing the ninth level of physical skills, no matter how rubbish the martial arts routines, you can practice internal strength, and the meridians in your body are full of qi, and you have entered the ranks of real masters. Liu Ci wasted her time before she crossed over, but at this time, she was counting on breaking through the ninth level as soon as possible and practicing the legendary internal skills, but she wanted to see if the demonic beasts of the other world were powerful, or the ancient Chinese martial arts that could hurt people by picking flowers and flying leaves were better.
The unknown civilization beyond the mountain range is tempting, and the sense of crisis that there is a chance of dying under the mouth of the demonic beast every day in the mountain range is driven, and Liu Ci practices physical skills extremely hard.
Although the ten-year-old body is weak, the muscles and bones are not shaped, and it is the best time to practice physical arts.
The European medieval-style lace skirt was more gorgeous than the action dragged down, Liu Ci removed the lace and the beautiful ribbon with beautiful cuffs, and cut the skirt from the waist down. Without needle and thread, she wrapped the wide skirt cut around her legs layer by layer, and then tightly wound it with the lace and ribbon that had been removed.
The skirt was ruined, but Liu Ci had a set of "practice clothes" that were easy to move and designed by her herself.
When practicing tirelessly for the sequelae, Liu Ci sweated profusely every day in the late autumn season, and she found that the smell on her body quickly smelled like she had just been fished out of a salted fish pile.
She thought she needed a shower.
With lotus pond water? No, that's too extravagant!
Before Liu Ci could no longer stand the smell and run away, she found that the sky had changed. The cumulonimbus clouds rolling overhead, she didn't need to watch "Qi Min's Technique" to know that it was a precursor to rain.
In addition, the wound in Liu Ci's palm was almost healed under the diligent application of dandelion juice, Miss Ci repeatedly struggled with her thoughts and decided to solve the problem of bathing water by herself, and she chose to dig a soil pit in the ground.
In order to solve the problem of soil water seepage, she actively found wide banana leaves and spread them all over the bottom of the pit.
The heavy rain finally fell, and when Liu Ci triumphantly listened to the sound of the raindrops hitting the banana leaves, the heavens might not be used to seeing her so depressed and arrogant, and immediately made her happy and sad.
The autumn rain in the other world is bigger than Liu Ci's inherent impression, and the branches of the big trees she accommodates are luxuriant, and there is no way to block all the rain, and the terrain of the tree hole where Liu Ci sleeps is more than the ground, and the rain that has not had time to seep into the surface is all poured into Liu Ci's comfort nest - when the rain stops, the tree hole is also a wet mud, and she can't sleep!
The chain reaction of Miss Tzu's short-sightedness did not stop at the rain flooding her dwelling, when she shivered from the cold and tried to keep warm, only to find that the wet firewood did not give her a warm flame, only the smoke that choked her tears...... As the old saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day, and Liu Ci comforted herself that sooner or later she would play with the savage life of this pit daddy.
After the disaster, Liu Ci finally learned to make long-term plans.
Curling up to sleep every day is uncomfortable and not conducive to development, so it is urgent to expand the tree hole to make it bigger and more comfortable...... At least if it rains again, you can't be flooded every time, right?
The problem of wet firewood made Liu Ci understand that even if there were dead branches and dry leaves all over the mountain, when the weather changed, God and people wrung it dry, if she had dry firewood reserves, she would not be half dead by the smoke. Besides, the temperature drops amazingly after the heavy rain, according to the twenty-four solar terms on the "Qi Min Yaoshu", this is the "beginning of winter", right? After the beginning of winter, there is "light snow", and when it is cold like this, Liu Ci is willing to press a starship, and it will definitely snow in the mountains and forests!
When the snow covers the mountains, where will she go to find firewood for heating?
The mountains of berries have long since rotted on the branches. Even if "Qi Min's Technique" is against the sky, she won't be able to find food easily at that time.
The half-thick "practice clothes" on her body obviously can't withstand the wind and snow, and she lacks cold clothes!
Food, clothing, firewood, and the three mountains overwhelmed Liu Ci. She began to become agitated and flustered, and the physical exercise plan she had made had to be put on hold first. Before the snow falls, she has to find enough dry wood and food to keep her from starving to death during the long winter months and easy to store. Of course, to be able to hunt non-lethal fur animals such as rabbits, Liu Ci's joy will definitely come from the bottom of his heart without adulteration.
In the following days, Liu Ci's ambition to break through the ninth level of physical art and compete with the otherworldly demonic beasts in a short period of time disappeared, in order to survive the winter in the mountains and forests, Liu Ci had to be like a spinning top that did not stop, running tirelessly every day, personally arranging his own food, clothing, housing and transportation.
Firewood is the easiest to collect, and as long as the mountains are full of dry branches and vines, as long as she is willing to work, Liu Ci will soon pile up several firewood piles that are taller than her under the big trees. Because the tree's ability to shelter from the rain could not be tested, she simply dragged a lot of wide banana leaves to cover the pyre.
Banana leaves are really a good thing that can be used everywhere like ten thousand essential oils, can shelter from the wind and rain, can hold food, can store water, and are evergreen and undefeated all year round, Liu Ci has collected a lot.
Food is convenient, and Liu Ci has been working day after day to collect berries a few kilometers away. In terms of how to store, the book "Qi Min Techniques" once again saved Liu Ci, who was in dire straits. The book says that in ancient China, the northern part of China had cold winters and a shortage of fruits and vegetables, so people built cellars under their houses to store fruits and vegetables.
She herself slept in a hollow in a tree, under any roof. Liu Ci dug a hole under the roots of an adjacent tree, and was busy for two days before sorting out a large hole in the earth. Working with a giant sword, she felt that her little arms were about to lose her surname "Liu". Wrap all kinds of mountain fruits in banana leaves, put the most retained mountain apples in the lowest layer, and the most perishable mountain grapes must be placed in the outermost layer, and eat them first in the stomach to be the safest.
Hiding a cellar of fruits, Liu Ci felt that he had some confidence.
But do you have to eat fruit all winter? Not to mention that the fruit is not enough in this way, as soon as he thinks of a single food, Liu Ci feels that his mouth full of small teeth begins to sour from the roots.
Nuts are not only easy to store, but also rich in oil, in fact, they are the best winter food for Liu Ci, who cannot get a source of meat. Comparing the illustrations on "Qi Min's Technique", Liu Ci began to plague the hard-shelled "fruits" in the mountains. To the southwest, she found a pine forest. The pine nuts are fragrant and nutritious, and Liu Ci thinks of the fried pine nuts he used to eat, and his saliva is dripping all over the ground.
The pine nuts are hidden in the pine towers, if there is no ancient book comparison, even in front of her, Liu Ci will not be able to connect the pine towers with the crispy pine nuts. Liu Ci cheekily grabbed winter food with the little squirrels, and went to the nest one after another. In the end, the squirrels were angry and resentful, and they threw her with the pine tower, Liu Ci grinned and intimidated to no avail, so he had no choice but to leave some winter food for the squirrels.
She didn't find the delicious pecans again, but found a few chestnut trees near the wild dog herd.
There is a reason that the pine nuts are hidden in the pine tower, and Liu Ci has eaten chestnut stewed chicken, and now it is very delicious. But if she didn't have ancient books in hand, she wouldn't have imagined that the shell where the chestnut was hiding was covered with thorns, like a little hedgehog with teeth and claws, making it impossible to start. The ripe chestnut part will naturally "explode" open, revealing two opposing chestnuts, but most chestnuts need to be manually treated to remove the hedgehog shell. Liu Ci didn't have time to deal with it, so he swallowed the dates and transported the hairy chestnuts of several trees back to the nest.
There are also some naturally dried mushrooms and fungus in the mountains, and Liu Ci moved them back in line with the principle of preferring to kill by mistake rather than let go, but in the absence of pots, she feels that the day of eating mushrooms and fungus is far away.
Liu Ci was at a loss for how to solve the problem of cold clothes, so he had to try to use the stupid method in the hunting chapter of "Qi Min's Technique", set up a few simple sleeves with the limited animal tendons in his hand at the exit of some low bushes, and sprinkled some pine nuts on the ground, and he didn't know which stupid rabbit would be hit.
The weather was getting colder and colder, and Liu Ci had more than tripled the size of the tree hole before resting in the evening. To prevent rainwater from backing up, she dug a criss-crossing gutter in front of the tree hole.
On the day when the snow suddenly fell, Liu Ci was trying to tie up the fence door with a triangular combination of mountain vines, branches, and banana leaves.
Sleeping in a tree hollow covered with dry moss and soft dead leaves, the howling night wind was blocked by the fence door, Liu Ci thought of the mountains of firewood and the winter food that he had so hard to hoard, and slept very soundly.
On the second day, when she was about to check the trap, she noticed an anomaly in the weeds in front of the tree hole.
It had snowed all night, and the trees in the mountains and forests had been covered with white, and the grass had long since withered yellow with a thin layer of snow, and the sheepskin boots that had been torn by wild dogs were still leaking with a cloth. If she hadn't put on a rabbit, she decided to minimize the number of times she went out in winter, or to keep the tree hollow warm after rectification.
It was in such a depressed and cold situation that Liu Ci shivered and found a clump of tender green grass.
The grass in the vicinity has long since withered, and the young grass is becoming more and more conspicuous. Liu Cixian squatted down to check in boredom, feeling that something was wrong. These days, she has specialized in "Qi Min Yaoshu", like this kind of annual weeds, spring germination, summer flowering, autumn leaf yellow, winter withering, is the natural growth law year after year, why this clump of grass, actually sprouted and grew in advance in winter? And it looks so vibrant, too incongruous, too unscientific.
Liu Ci was puzzled, and he was still chattering until the place where he was set two days ago.
The animals here are so cunning that the first two sets of baits have been eaten up, but they haven't even touched the trap. Liu Ci shook his head in disappointment, and scattered a few pine nuts in place as usual.
From not reporting any hope to almost despair, Liu Ci didn't expect that the last set actually caught a fat gray-haired rabbit! Happiness came too suddenly, and Liu Ci, who was carrying the dead fat rabbit, stood in place for a while.
Thinking of having meat to eat, she suddenly remembered that she had never cooked!!
What to do with a rabbit? When he returned to the tree hole with his prey and saw the strange grass growing in reverse again, Liu Ci suddenly had a flash of inspiration.
Speaking of eating, she remembers that she had washed the wound on her left shoulder with lotus pond water there earlier? Unconsciously touched the wound on his left shoulder where the scar had fallen off, and the rabbit that Liu Ci was carrying fell to the ground - is this the secret of the lotus pond water?