Chapter 59: Lu's Pictographic Boxing

"Holy shit, a monster!" Meng Jingzhou shrieked, swinging his arm in a wide arc, poising to strike.

It was no wonder he reacted this way; the backyard was supposed to be Lu Yang's training ground. With Lu Yang gone and a tiger suddenly appearing in his place, it was easy to imagine that the tiger demon had come back to life and devoured him.

The tiger opened its maw and spoke in human tongue, releasing Lu Yang's exact voice: "Monster my ass, it's me!"

"You actually have Lu Yang's voice!" Meng Jingzhou gasped in surprise.

Man and beast leapt into the air. Stunned by the tiger demon's voice, Meng Jingzhou failed to react in time and was swatted straight down to the ground by Lu Yang's paw.

Lu Yang snorted coldly. There wasn't a single trace of a fight in the yard; how could the tiger demon have eaten him? This grandson Meng Jingzhou clearly knew it was him and was just playing dumb.

Meng Jingzhou clicked his tongue. Lu Yang hadn't actually put any real weight behind the blow, so for someone as thick-skinned as him, it was neither painful nor itchy.

He stood up and brushed the dust from his clothes, eyeing Lu Yang with deep suspicion. "What on earth is going on with you? Weren't you comprehending Pictographic Boxing? How did you switch to learning transformation arts?"

"Give me a moment, I'm figuring out how to change back." Tiger-demon Lu Yang scratched at the back of his head in distress, only to realize his front paws couldn't reach. He would have to sit on the ground and use a hind paw... Forget it, he wouldn't scratch; it ruined his image too much.

Tiger-demon Lu Yang bared his teeth and grimaced. He hadn't expected that practicing boxing could cause so many ridiculous complications.

Looking back now, it seemed only his swordsmanship was somewhat normal.

Should he say it was exactly as expected of a Sword Spiritual Root?

Meng Jingzhou clattered up the stairs and called Mangu down.

"What is it? I'm currently keeping watch on Qin Yuanhao."

"There's something fun for you to see."

Mangu was pulled into the backyard by Meng Jingzhou, entirely bewildered, until he saw the familiar tiger demon.

"Monster, give me back Brother Lu's life!"

Mangu roared and struck out immediately; his mind hadn't made the connection, so this was a real attack.

Seeing this, Meng Jingzhou hastily grabbed Mangu by the waist, pleading for the barbarian brother to calm down. "Don't hit, don't hit! That's Lu Yang."

The two ghost thralls, who were currently skewering meat in the main hall, heard the commotion in the backyard. Creeping over out of curiosity to take a peek, their souls were nearly frightened out of their wits.

This time, the tiger demon had truly come back to life!

Tiger-demon Lu Yang rolled his eyes, having no desire to deal with this bunch as he focused all his energy on figuring out how to dispel his tiger-demon state.

He closed his eyes, silently reciting "return to normal" three times in his mind.

When Lu Yang opened his eyes, he had already restored his original appearance.

After a series of frantic antics, the three of them could finally sit down and properly ponder what had just happened, while the two ghost thralls also breathed a sigh of relief and went back to skewering meat.

Tonight's business would definitely be better than yesterday's, so they needed to prepare more skewers.

"It went like this: I was practicing Pictographic Boxing just now..." Lu Yang slowly explained the sequence of events.

Hearing Lu Yang say he was practicing Pictographic Boxing just now, Mangu felt his worldview shatter, and he blurted out: "Is this Pictographic Boxing or Metamorphic Boxing?"

The sages were right; reading ten thousand books was no substitute for traveling ten thousand miles. Where in books would such things ever be written? He really needed to travel more with Brother Lu and Brother Meng.

His horizons were truly broadened.

Meng Jingzhou's reaction wasn't much better than Mangu's, and the look he gave Lu Yang was exceedingly bizarre.

I thought you were practicing spells, but you're telling me you were just boxing?

Whose martial arts practice yields this kind of effect?

Originally, Meng Jingzhou felt that Lu Yang's cultivation of ghost-taming techniques a few days ago—which resulted in his Yang Spirit leaving his body—was eccentric enough, but he hadn't expected something even more bizarre.

Lu Yang spoke righteously, voicing his exclusive insights into Pictographic Boxing: "Think about it. Isn't the essence of Pictographic Boxing just the imitation of animals? Tiger Boxing, Monkey Boxing, Crane Boxing, and the like—it's imitating tigers, monkeys, and cranes, right?"

Meng Jingzhou and Mangu nodded their heads.

Lu Yang continued: "Exactly. Then surely the closer the imitation, the better the effect, and the greater the power, right?"

Meng Jingzhou and Mangu nodded their heads again.

"I just came into contact with the tiger demon, so I am most familiar with Tiger Boxing. Tiger Boxing is the fastest to pick up and the one I can imitate most closely, right?"

Meng Jingzhou and Mangu kept nodding.

Lu Yang added: "So I held onto this mindset while boxing, and as I kept boxing, I turned into a tiger. Perfectly logical, right?"

Meng Jingzhou was just about to nod when he forced his head to a grinding halt. "Logical my foot! The leap is way too massive, okay?!"

Mangu was still foolishly nodding along.

Lu Yang spread his hands; he was actually the most helpless one here. He had practiced strictly by the book according to the manual, merely adding a tiny bit of his own personal insight. "Why don't you guys try it too? Who knows, maybe you can learn transformation arts this way?"

Excitement gleamed in the eyes of Meng Jingzhou and Mangu. To be able to learn transformation arts through boxing was as good as it could get.

Even though transformation arts were usually employed by underhanded cultivators, learning an extra skill wouldn't hurt; they might just need it one day.

With Lu Yang, this grandmaster of boxing, guiding them, the two of them quickly mastered Tiger Boxing, striking out with formidable, majestic power that was truly imposing.

However, they simply couldn't grasp the most crucial part—the transformation.

While the two of them practiced boxing, Lu Yang didn't idle either. Watching the movements of their forms, another idea germinated in his mind.

Since Pictographic Boxing was an art of imitation, why limit it to imitating animals? Couldn't one imitate humans?

This idea was like a runaway horse, completely unstoppable.

The prerequisite for Pictographic Boxing's imitation was a deep familiarity with the subject.

Lu Yang looked at the two men who were focused on their practice, his eyes lighting up. Weren't these the perfect examples right in front of him?

He had already mastered the core essence of Pictographic Boxing; it was time to innovate.

"Only by weeding out the old and bringing forth the new can there be progress!"

Lu Yang acted the moment the thought struck.

He closed his eyes once more, recalling Mangu's movements, and his body began to move.

Mangu, who was currently boxing, saw Lu Yang's every gesture and felt it looked incredibly familiar, though he couldn't quite remember where he had seen it before.

"Isn't that me?" Mangu quickly realized, not understanding what Lu Yang was up to.

Lu Yang immersed himself once again in that profound state of insight. His body gradually shifted, and he actually transformed into Mangu's exact likeness!

"Haha, it worked! I knew my hypothesis was correct." Lu Yang laughed aloud through Mangu's face, creating an immense sense of dissonance.

Mangu: "!!!"

What just happened? In the blink of an eye, he had turned into him?

How was this different from the Pictographic Boxing in his memory? Could Pictographic Boxing imitate people too?

"Brother Mangu, since when do you laugh like that... Holy shit, a real and a fake Mangu?" Meng Jingzhou, who was in the middle of a punch, heard the unfamiliar laughter and instinctively sensed something amiss. Turning his head to look, heavens above, there were two Mangus.

"No, the freshly spawned Mangu is Lu Yang's transformation!"

Meng Jingzhou scanned Lu Yang up and down. He certainly looked like Mangu, but his expression and demeanor were world apart.

Mangu clearly looked like a simple, honest fellow, whereas the Mangu Lu Yang had turned into looked like a rogue whose belly was full of wicked ideas.

He had already given up on learning Pictographic Boxing. If he had previously harbored thoughts of learning Pictographic Boxing to transform, seeing Lu Yang like this now assured him that he definitely wouldn't be able to learn it.

This had absolutely nothing to do with Pictographic Boxing anymore.

Once Lu Yang mastered the technique, transitioning from the form of Mangu to that of Meng Jingzhou proved remarkably effortless.

"This is indubitably a spell of transformation, is it not?"

"This is the Lu Family Pictographic Boxing."

Lu Yang clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his gaze upward at a forty-five-degree angle toward the heavens, projecting the unmistakable aura of a grandmaster of the martial arts.

(Do not inquire as to why Lu Yang still wore garments after shifting from a tiger demon back into human form; this is a respectable novel.)