Murim's Weakest Princess-Chapter 84: Rolling Panda

A week after Anji started her cultivation classes with her father, she was told she no longer needed to practice the Mudskipper Breathing Technique.

In just seven days, Anji’s channels broadened enough to process the fast flow of qi she breathed from the environment. Originally, the little girl had to inhale once to her golden core and five times to her lungs to process all the energy she harnessed. After practising non-stop all day and night, she could finally process all the life energy she inhaled in the span of one breath. Of course, the level of processing fluctuates, and she would occasionally let excess energy escape. However, Mingfeng deemed it a mastery of the aura concealment arts. It was time to teach his talented daughter something else.

"Before we train in martial arts forms, you must first learn to fall without hurting yourself or minimising injuries. This is a book called the Rolling Panda Art of Falling. Although the Rolling Panda Arts appear simple because it was founded by a lazy cultivator, understanding how to manipulate the natural force of gravity with minimal physical movement can be difficult."

A lazy cultivator? How was that possible? Anji thought all cultivators were hardworking and dedicated to their discipline. After all, cultivation was a talent not everyone was born with. Those with golden cores often strive to reach the apex in the murim world, even if many fail. Being able to harness energy alone is a gift that puts cultivators above mortals. Why would there be a cultivator who was lazy and unambitious? Her shifu said there were many different kinds of people in this world. The founder of this Rolling Panda Arts must also be quite the unique personality.

"Father, just out of curiosity, who is the founder of this Rolling Panda Arts?"

Checking the book cover, Zhao Mingfeng tried to find the author’s name or any mention of the unique martial arts creator. However, it was rather elusive. All he knew was the records the librarian gave him when recommending beginner to intermediate martial arts that their sect had. It was also one of those books made available to loan to the outer disciples without charge as long as they returned it. Judging from the number of records in the borrowing log, it was not a popular book.

"There is no mention of the author," Mingfeng apologised. "I can get someone to find out more if you really want to know. However, I can attest that this is actually an intermediate martial art when mastered right. Although it sounds simple, it actually requires an innate understanding of shifting one’s weight according to gravity without resistance. This martial art style was born with the same principles that founded the Gentle Fist. Except, it was created to prevent or minimise injury upon impact instead of blocking and attacking."

Hearing her father’s explanation, Anji agreed with his observation. The Gentle Fist style emphasises heavily about borrowing the opponent’s strength to counterattack. It was never a martial art to throw the first strike. Due to its literal gentle nature and pacifist style, many female senior sisters chose to practise it instead of the Eight Trigram Palms. Anji also personally preferred the Gentle Fist over the other forms of martial arts, even if her older brother, Yihao, preferred the Eight Explosive Fists martial arts as his basic form.

Thinking about this, Anji realised just how different her family members were when it came to their preferred martial arts foundation. Her father’s basic martial arts form was actually a sword style known as the Illuminating Sword, which uses different light angles to create a blind spot for an attack. On the other hand, her mother practises her family’s martial arts, focusing on flexibility and agility. Her siblings have all chosen different martial paths according to their personalities.

Her oldest sister practises a straightforward martial arts style that many other sect disciples learned. It was called the Five Elements Arts. It was not a sword or fist style. In fact, it was taught in the Celestial Dragon Sect in the general admission course to all students because it covered the fist form and the four general weapons forms. Although the martial arts appeared rigid and had a generic pattern of only advancing in a linear line forward, it provided beginners with solid footwork that could be adapted to other martial arts at a later stage. Not to mention, students of this martial arts style can select their path of specialisation afterwards. Her sister chose to use a sword to follow in their father’s footsteps. However, she combined his Illuminating Sword style with their mother’s willowy family arts, creating her own Illuminating Whip Sword style.

Unlike her outstanding older sister, her second older brother did not think the family’s style of the school’s style suited him. Anji did not blame him. Mingshen was scholarly and preferred to tackle everything logically with grace and accuracy. She heard from her older sister how Mingshen spent many months in the family library testing different martial arts styles and rating them to his physical compatibility. There was even a section in their private library where their father kept all of Mingshen’s analytical records of every martial arts style. Her brilliant brother appraised all the test martial arts, recording their strengths and weaknesses and proposing methods to improve them meticulously. To date, the elder in charge of the archives still praises Mingshen for his groundbreaking thesis. The only martial arts style that Mingshen found suitable for himself was a modified version of the White Crane style. Mingshen used a specially crafted metal fan as part of his martial arts. He also used hidden weapons more than anyone else in the family, often tinkering with daily objects to hide his weapons. Anji thinks the modified style of his White Crane kungfu was better than the original, which employs a mix of advanced medical knowledge and traditional finger striking arts to disable the opponent. Many practitioners of the White Crane style often combined it with a strengthened finger technique. However, her brother overcame his weak cultivation base with precise weapon control. The metal fan he carried around as his main weapon served two functions. Anji remembered him explaining to her how he used it. The most common function of the fan was to replace a short baton. However, it could also turn into a dagger that could slice and stab when opened, much like the wings and beak of a crane. freёnovelkiss.com

In other words, her oldest brother was a dangerous assassin when he wanted to be. Hence, he named his martial arts style the Gentleman Crane. According to their father, Mingshen’s martial arts style was one of a kind. If he had a more powerful cultivation base, he could have founded a clan of his own with this new martial art. Unfortunately, her older brother was set on becoming the shadow of the Celestial Dragon Sect. It was also why he accompanied his newfound best friend, Zhang Mou, down the mountain to do investigative groundwork while helping Chen Tao expand the Black Tortoise Sect’s logistic lines.

Compared to them, Anji did not have any personal preference for martial arts styles. She only absorbed whatever people recommended because everything was new to her. However, maybe she should think about what would suit her best in the future. For now, she held onto the Rolling Panda book and studied hard. As there would be a lot of falling, her father suggested that Anji practise this martial arts in the training hall instead. The servants had already prepared padded straw mattresses to cushion Anji’s fall while she learned.

"You will only graduate this lesson if you can fall from the second floor without sustaining damage after removing the straw mattresses. You only need to fall on flat, solid surfaces for the beginner stage. There are mentions in the book about falling on different surfaces, but you don’t have to do that."

True enough, as Anji flipped the book, the author of the Rolling Panda Arts described in detail how to fall from nearly every imaginable scenario. A detailed description of how to fall on a bed of nails, a booby trap, a thirty-foot well, into a whirlpool from a ship or even from the cliff of a mountain was included. Anji had no idea how anybody could be so lazy and hardworking in contradictory ways. It made her think the creator of this strange martial art might actually be a clumsy person more than a lazy one.