148 Wudang Golden Toad Skill: Swallowing both sun and moon!

Descending the mountain and leaving the Shaolin Temple scenic area when it was already past midnight, Chen Jue first found a 24-hour guesthouse in a nearby town to stay for the night.

That night, Chen Jue felt he slept exceptionally well, likely due to the sense of boundless merit gained from helping someone achieve "Buddha-hood."

When he woke up the next morning at around 10:00 AM, washed up, and had breakfast, Chen Jue shouldered his backpack and continued his walking journey southwestward.

It took him two days, covering over 400 kilometers, to travel through the flat terrains, rivers, and lakes of the Central Plains. Compared to the hilly landscape of Wenzhou, the terrain in the Central Plains was indeed much flatter. Along the way, one could see vast, level wheat fields, quite unlike Wenzhou, where hillside plots and terraced fields predominated, with very few flat, boundless expanses.

By the time he reached the foot of Mount Wuchang, it was already the evening of the fourth day, and he checked into a guesthouse hotel in the tourist town at the base of the mountain.

As a side note, perhaps to enhance the atmosphere of the scenic area, all the nearby guesthouses and hotels were named "Inns" and decorated in an antique style, evoking the romantic atmosphere of martial arts heroes wandering the ancient rivers and lakes.

……

After sleeping at the inn for a night, Chen Jue used WeChat the next morning to contact Daoist Priest Liu Shiqing.

Upon learning of Chen Jue's arrival, the other party was quite surprised, sent a location via WeChat, and exchanged a few brief words with him.

Likely due to the bonus from [Lü Zu's Enlightenment] coupled with the foundation laid by the Boat Boxing's Eight Immortals桩 (posts), Chen Jue felt an inexplicable sense of affinity toward both Taoist practitioners and Taoist culture.

Leaving the inn, he ate a bowl of the locally famous Xiangyang beef noodles in the town. The small eatery was bustling with business and filled with a lively atmosphere. A bowl of hand-rolled noodles topped with authentic braised beef and drizzled with a spoonful of cool red chili oil offered a combination of spicy, numbing, and fresh flavors. Delicious and lingering in aftertaste, one bowl wasn't enough, so Chen Jue ordered a second. Feeling a warm and deeply satisfying glow in his stomach, he leisurely paid for his meal and left the noodle shop.

After filling his stomach, Chen Jue followed the navigation to the location sent by Daoist Priest Liu Shiqing.

Along the way, he frequently saw tourists heading into the mountains, as well as Taoist priests with coiled hair buns and coarse cloth Taoist robes, among whom there were even a few foreign faces.

Presumably, because Wudang martial arts were world-renowned and Taoist culture had a long history, even foreigners had traveled from afar to apprentice and learn the arts.

Moreover, these practitioner-like Taoist figures walked with hurried steps, presumably rushing to attend morning exercises and homework.

As a side note here, "Taoist" is simply a general term; not everyone who coils their hair into a bun can be called a Taoist priest.

Taoists are divided into those who have left their families (monastics) and those who have not (lay practitioners). The latter are also known as lay disciples. Currently, the mainstream is divided into two primary sects: Quanzhen and Zhengyi (too many other minor sects to mention here).

Quanzhen Daoist priests are monastics who cannot marry, must follow a vegetarian diet, and live within Taoist temples. Males are called Qiandao, and females are called Kundao. They keep their hair long, coil it into a bun, may wear a crown, and the male priests grow beards.

Zhengyi Daoist priests are allowed to marry and eat meat. Most of them are non-monastic Taoists, also known as incense-offering lay practitioners. They do not need to grow long hair or beards, dress like ordinary people, and look indistinguishable from regular citizens when not wearing Taoist robes.

Of course, there is another distinct difference between the disciples of the two sects: Zhengyi disciples must undergo talisman-conferring rituals to become qualified Taoist priests, whereas Quanzhen disciples must receive precepts.

Most of those hurried figures Chen Jue saw rushing off to practice martial arts were actually not orthodox Taoist priests, but rather apprentices and enthusiasts who had come from afar to learn the arts. They dressed very much like Taoists, much like the secular disciples recruited by martial arts schools run by the Shaolin Temple.

……

Strolling along, Chen Jue arrived at the designated address. Looking up, he saw it was a Taoist temple, so he went inside to visit. There, he met Daoist Priest Liu Shiqing, who was leading his disciples in chanting Taoist scriptures for morning practice.

Without interrupting, Chen Jue first lit a few sticks of incense in the temple and paid respects to the Three Pure Ones. Once Liu Shiqing finished his morning session, Chen Jue walked up to greet him.

"Daoist Priest Liu!"

"Master Chen Jue, welcome, welcome! For you to come to Wudang for martial arts exchanges and discussions is truly our great honor." Having been defeated by Chen Jue in a single move, Liu Shiqing held an extremely deep impression of him and thus became exceptionally enthusiastic upon meeting.

"You are too kind, Daoist Priest Liu. The thirty-six martial arts of Wudang are renowned far and wide, and I have picked up a few moves myself. Coming to visit this time is purely out of admiration to seek guidance," Chen Jue said courteously with cupped hands.

The two chatted in the main hall for a while. Additionally, because Chen Jue had formed his Golden Elixir and exuded a comforting aura, Liu Shiqing found him increasingly pleasing to the eye the longer they talked.

"Master Chen Jue, your martial arts are already peerless under heaven; even the previous chief instructor was defeated by you. I certainly wouldn't dare offer guidance with my meager cultivation."

"However, I have a martial uncle who heard you were coming and is extremely interested in meeting you in person." With that, Liu Shiqing led Chen Jue toward the foot of Mount Wudang.

As the two emerged from the Taoist temple and made their way to the front of a half-shuttered orthopedic clinic in the town, Chen Jue's sharp ears distinctly caught a low, muffled sound resembling a toad inflating its lungs coming from the large courtyard behind the clinic.

Although the tourist town was bustling with the noise of tour buses, with Chen Jue's current hearing, he could still distinguish that the master inside was practicing the Wudang secret technique—the Golden Toad Skill.

The golden toad is a sacred creature in Taoist culture. As the saying goes: "A three-legged toad is hard to find, but two-legged people are everywhere." Among these, the three-legged toad refers to the golden toad.

In Taoist legend, there is the story of Liu Hai playing with the golden toad, which says that the golden toad was transformed from a greedy relative of Liu Hai who loved the sound of clashing coins, and thus the golden toad became revered as a sacred creature for attracting wealth.

The Liu Hai in this story is Liu Haichan, one of the Five Northern Patriarchs of Quanzhen Taoism. Originally named Liu Cao, styled Zongcheng, with the art name Haichanzi, this Taoist predecessor was successively enlightened by Zhengyangzi (Zhongli Quan) and Lü Chunyang (Lü Dongbin). He retreated beneath Mount Zhongnan, completed his elixir, and attained liberation through the corpse (shijie). The transmitting disciple of Liu Haichan was Zhang Boduan, the master of the Southern Lineage who authored the *Understanding the Reality* (*Wuzhen Pian*), leaving behind a profound heritage.

The underlying concept of the Wudang Golden Toad Skill was derived from the enlightenment process of this Haichanzi. It is a breathing technique simulating frog respiration, also known as the Great Toad Breath or Toad-Hooking Strength. The notorious villain technique, the Toad Skill, written to death in martial arts novels, originated from here.

"Such profound internal organ refinement skill!"

"To breathe in and out like this, how massive must one's lung capacity be?" Chen Jue stood outside the clinic, listening entranced, and immediately followed Liu Shiqing as he pushed open the partially ajar small door of the clinic, walking into the residential courtyard behind it.

There, they saw a middle-aged Taoist priest with two fingers touching the ground, his entire body suspended half-way in the air, assuming a posture resembling a squatting toad. Leaning forward with his legs suspended against his arms, his mouth seemed to be swallowing a pearl, his cheeks puffed out, his neck bulging, and his abdomen distended. With a "gurgle" sound, a gush of hot air was expelled from his nasal cavity, stirring up a cloud of dust as it landed on the ground.

"The heart holds soaring ambitions, and both sun and moon can be swallowed!"

"What an audacious toad!"

Observing the Taoist priest practicing the Golden Toad Skill with his state of heaven-man communion, Chen Jue felt as though he were looking at a true toad swallowing the primordial essence of the sun and the moon.

From Chen Jue's experience, this middle-aged Taoist's martial arts had captured the essence of the Golden Toad Skill, carrying a heavy spiritual imprint. Moreover, amidst the inflation of breath, a faint rumbling thunder sound echoed from within his chest cavity, clearly indicating the attainment of the superior art of refining the viscera and transforming the marrow.

If everyone has been waiting too long, you can go to sleep early. My condition today is average, probably because I just recovered from a cold, so I dare not guarantee whether the next chapter can be updated.