Unparalleled Double Harmony

Chapter 596 Extraordinary Talent (Part 2)

Murong Xiao was an exceptionally intelligent man, a fact even his two half-brothers, who didn't particularly like him, acknowledged.

And he himself was naturally well aware of this.

Perhaps in terms of "wisdom," Murong Xiao did not reach the level of being able to judge people with keen insight or make perfect plans, but in terms of "intelligence" alone, he is probably the highest among all the characters who have appeared in the book so far.

What does it mean to have a photographic memory? Which one means to learn something instantly?
For Murong Xiao, this was no big deal; it was just the way things were supposed to be.

So sometimes he tries to convince himself: God is actually fair to me. Although my body is weak, my mind is far superior to that of most people in the world.

However, this is clearly just self-comfort—who would want to have both but only one?
Moreover, it's not that he's "particularly strong in one area and slightly weaker in another," but rather that he's "particularly strong in one area and unable to even take care of himself in another."

Conversely, even if you made him as physically strong as Wu Song, but his intelligence remained at the level of an eight-year-old child, he wouldn't be willing.

Therefore, over the years, Murong Xiao never stopped searching for a way to "cure" his body.

In the ancient and vast library of the Murong family, he learned everything he felt might be of help to him.

For him, the Four Books and Five Classics, which were also familiar to intellectuals of his time, were like childhood reading material, an appetizer.

Of course, he didn't study the eight-legged essay in depth, because he realized at the age of eight that he had no chance of passing the imperial examinations due to his physical condition, so there was no need to waste time on it.

As for mathematics, Ah-Xiao's interest was the main reason. After finishing the "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art," he went on to study books like "Sea Mirror of Circle Measurement" and "Tongwen Suanzhi" and then continued to expand his knowledge from mathematics to astronomy and engineering.

Needless to say, medicine is a must-learn subject, and it involves a lot of biological knowledge, such as human anatomy, the pharmacology and toxicology of various medicinal materials, etc. They all seem useful, so let's learn them all.

And finally, there is "martial arts".

Here we should mention that, in terms of sheer quantity, the martial arts manuals in the Murong family's library are at least several times more numerous than those in the Shaolin Temple's library.

After all, the manuals in the Sutra Repository, whether they are top-level techniques or basic skills, are all Zen martial arts, which limits their categories; moreover, what they have the most of are not manuals, but Buddhist scriptures.

The area in the Murong family library where martial arts manuals are stored is truly filled with them, without any restrictions on the categories. Regardless of how they were obtained, their ancestors have unknowingly stored so many manuals there generation after generation.

Although very few of these martial arts classics can be called "superior" and none can be called "peerless," they have the advantage of being "abundant and plentiful." You can learn as many ordinary and miscellaneous martial arts techniques as you want.

For a "learning machine" like Murong Xiao, there's no harm in watching.

However, he could only "see" and at most imagine the moves in his mind. He couldn't do anything else, not even just gather his breath.

Because of his physical condition, he couldn't even complete the most basic "breathing" exercise.

Just as Ah-Hsiao himself said, he is not "crippled," but if he tries to stand up, the bones in his two legs will break because they cannot support his weight.

Similarly, if he forces himself to perform a breathing exercise at the intensity level of "internal energy practice," his lungs will be injured.

This... was naturally something he personally tested and discovered.

Take the phrase "Qi sinks to the dantian, spirit condenses in the purple palace" for example. Many internal cultivation techniques begin with this phrase. Murong Xiao tried it once and almost suffocated himself, which subsequently led to months of aseptic lung inflammation.

The medical standards of those days were such that everyone knows the mortality rate for pneumonia. It was only because he was born into a wealthy family that he survived this wave of infections.

This is why Murong Xiao couldn't practice skills like "date pit nails" like Qiu Qianchi in Jin Yong's novels; frankly, he didn't even have the ability to lay a foundation.

but.

There is undoubtedly a "but" here.

Poor practical skills don't mean he can't continue studying theory.

Even though he couldn't practice those martial arts, Murong Xiao still insisted on reading all the martial arts manuals in the library.

Furthermore, he practiced those mental techniques and moves countless times in his mind.

Don't think this is outrageous. For someone who can only "use their brain" and whose brain works much faster than the average person, this is only at the level of light aerobic exercise. When asked, the answer is "I can do this all day."

As Murong Xiao accumulated knowledge, he gradually realized that the way of martial arts is a path of "simplifying complexity" and "different paths leading to the same goal." No matter what kind of martial arts it is, the higher the level, the more it tends to the same answer. In the end, all the thousands of moves in his memory moved towards this "answer" and verified and merged with each other, transforming into his own set of theories.

In other words, Murong Xiao, who was supposedly a "useless person" who couldn't even muster a breath or unleash a single move, actually possessed considerable martial arts skills, and he might have even surpassed his father in this area long ago.

Do you all remember when the "Six Kings Contend for Supremacy" took place, and Wu Mingzi had just revealed his true form in the tent, it was Murong Xiao who immediately reminded Murong Shu: "Father, let's protect this half of the tent and not go forward..." (Volume 8, Chapter 59)

Now, when we look at it again, when Murong Xiao said those words, he not only saw the "situation" inside the tent before his father, but he also very accurately saw how big the gap was between Wu Mingzi's martial arts and the others... especially with his father.

At this point, some people might ask: So, how far could the incredibly powerful Murong Xiao possibly comprehend when faced with a martial art of the "Heavenly Silkworm Divine Skill" level?

Let me put it this way: four steps – question, understand, become, and transcend.

At first glance, Murong Xiao questioned both the martial arts and himself, because he had never seen a manual for "peerless martial arts" before.

We all know that when a person suddenly encounters "dimensional reduction-style knowledge" that is completely different from what they have learned and accumulated in the past, suicide is a possibility.

But Murong Xiao's resilience is also beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Even if someone were to tell him that "all the knowledge you've gained through countless hours and effort is fake," he could quickly recover from the blow and immediately begin to devote himself to learning the correct, entirely new system from scratch, genuinely believing that he would eventually catch up with and surpass those who were far ahead of him.

Therefore, Ah-Xiao quickly entered the "understanding" stage.

The basic breathing techniques of others are "sinking the qi to the dantian and concentrating the spirit in the purple palace," but your Heavenly Silkworm Technique makes people imagine themselves breathing like a silkworm (silkworms breathe through the spiracles on both sides of their chest and abdomen, but humans obviously don't have that organ). Fine, I'll give it a try. Anyway, my dad is right next to me, and he can save me if I die.

And guess what?

Even Ah-Hsiao himself was surprised that his body could not only withstand this breathing method, but could even use it to completely replace normal breathing.

It was as if... parts of his skin naturally possessed the ability to breathe, but because he commonly believed that humans could only breathe through their mouths and noses, he did not discover this ability until he practiced this martial art.

And this is just the beginning...

As his cultivation progressed, Murong Xiao discovered a startling truth: he wasn't "congenitally weak," but rather he had simply never understood "how to use this body."

In fact, like Bu Dongzi, Murong Xiao was born with an extraordinary physique. However, the abnormality brought about by his physique was not as simple and easy to understand as that of Bu Dongzi. Moreover, there were huge side effects when he did not know how to use it, which led him to believe that he was a "useless person".

The unique cultivation logic of the Heavenly Silkworm Technique became the key for him to discover the truth about his body.

In short, after Murong Xiao's infancy, his body began to differ from that of ordinary people in three aspects: "breathing," "metabolism," and "nerve conduction." At this point, he had to use methods different from ordinary people to operate his body in order to enter a relatively comfortable mode.

But nobody knows this, and nobody will teach him. Besides, he already had the same physiological instincts as everyone else when he was an infant. Who knows what pattern he would have to change?

And so began his painful life...

Because he didn't know how to "breathe" correctly, his body was in a state of "extreme hypoxia" for many years. The abnormal metabolism and nerve conduction problems made his body increasingly fragile and weak, and the three factors formed a vicious cycle.

This is the truth behind his "congenital disability".

However, after mastering the secret of "breathing" through the Heavenly Silkworm Technique, this cycle was broken. Once he broadened his thinking and completed the transformation "from nothing to something", with Ah-Xiao's intelligence, it would not be difficult for him to apply what he learned to other situations and discover and solve the problems of "metabolism" and "nerve conduction". Of course, these two terms had not been invented yet at that time, but everyone just needs to understand the meaning.

A month passed quickly. At this time, Ah Xiao deliberately suppressed his Heavenly Silkworm Skill to the level "before breaking through the first level".

He focused more of his energy on "how to fully master the characteristics of his own body".

His progress was undoubtedly successful. At this point, in terms of physical fitness alone, he already possessed athletic ability twice that of an average person.

It could even be said that even if he gave up cultivating the Heavenly Silkworm Divine Skill from now on and instead practiced other martial arts without any side effects, he could still become a top-tier master within ten years.

However, Ah-Xiao is someone who really wants to improve, so of course he won't be satisfied with just that.

Since he has made up his mind to practice the divine skill without paying the price, he will do it and make it happen.

So at this point he took the very dangerous third step – “to become”.