Burial Martial Cavern, Martial Arts Legacy and the Eternal Saint Core (Part Two)

The twins' martial arts enlightenment began under the careful tutelage of Mr. Tang, all thanks to his wisdom and guidance.

But Jack Young’s first real spark for martial arts—his eyes opening to what kung fu was all about—came from watching Li Xuelian perform the Bagua Stealth Step. That quick spar at the Jingwu Athletic Association lit the fire in him to train hard and become strong. For Jack, Bagua Stealth Step was the first step on his thousand-mile journey, and it’s always carried special meaning.

The basic fist techniques taught by Mr. Tang were the starting point for all future martial arts—the master blueprint for every style. With Mr. Tang’s foundational moves and his Tang Family Internal Martial Arts, Jack Young could later face every new challenge and keep his center.

No matter how flashy or chaotic the moves got, Jack Young could always bring them back to those basics. That’s why he could keep teaching himself and never lose his way. Every wild technique he saw, he’d cut through the show and spot its strengths and weaknesses. That’s the secret to why he could always fight his own way, right from the start.

It’s like this—if you want to stand tall in life, you need a backbone. Straight bones, straight person. Grow your bones, and you grow up strong. Even if you get a weird lump, you can cut it out and heal up. But if your bones are crooked or stunted, you’ll never get to the heart of things. Mr. Tang’s basic fist techniques and internal martial arts? That’s Jack Young’s martial backbone.

And just like that, as part of his martial backbone, Bagua Stealth Step became the foundation for all his footwork—the secret sauce behind Jack Young’s solid stance.

Mr. Samuel Lee organized the essentials of Bagua Palm and gifted them to the Jingwu Athletic Association, putting them right in Jack Young’s hands. When Jack practiced his horse stance on the edge of a big round vat, circling it over and over, he never forgot the principles behind Bagua Stealth Step. To put it another way, the bones in his feet grew strong thanks to all that Bagua calcium.

As he kept growing and seeing more of the world, his footwork kept evolving too—never standing still, always getting sharper.

By the time he reached the martial arts world and started training internal skills, his whole fighting style had flipped upside down. Bagua Stealth Step? By then, it was pure muscle memory. He’d seen all sorts of fancy footwork, but every step he took was still built on Bagua. He’d trimmed the fat, kept the good stuff, and boiled all the twists and turns down to one simple move: just one step.

That one step didn’t have any set form—you couldn’t write it down in some secret manual. It was Jack Young’s own take on lightness and footwork, mysterious and impossible to pin down. One step could turn into a thousand, and a thousand steps always circled back to that one. When he finally mastered it, he’d be a true grandmaster, ready to start his own school. He wasn’t quite there yet, but it was already part of him. He didn’t even have to think about it—his feet just moved on their own.

Just as Jill Young was zoning out in a trance, it finally hit her—enlightenment!

She didn’t know squat about formations, but she sure knew her footwork. The Eight Trigrams Maze changed up every which way—so many variations you could camp out here for ten years and never see the same pattern twice. But no matter how it shifted, it was always based on one core principle. And that principle? It was the same as Bagua Stealth Step.

If that 'one step' was the ultimate, stripped-down version of Flowing Step, then this giant formation was Flowing Step stretched out to infinity. Like how Taiji gives birth to Yin and Yang, then to Four Symbols, then to Eight Trigrams, and finally to everything in the universe—this footwork was as endless as the stars.

Complex and simple—two sides of the same coin. Neither one is better or worse.

Keep it simple in your heart, see the complexity with your eyes. Jill’s spirit was surging like the tide, and she just started striding through the Eight Trigrams Maze. She didn’t float around like some lightness-skill show-off—every step she took was solid, clear. One step after another, easy and relaxed like a fairy on vacation. But man, was she fast—darting through this pocket-sized world like a dragon swimming in the sea.

The Eight Trigrams Maze flashed by, like all the hustle and bustle of the mortal world sweeping past your eyes. What a wild, satisfying ride!

After all that, I’m still me... but I’m also not quite the same me anymore.

Jill glanced all around, feeling a bit sentimental. "If Big Log were here, he’d probably have figured this out ages ago. I gotta admit, he’s got me beat in this department."

Still, I gotta trust my gut. Not tearing down this big formation was definitely the right call.

All up to fate—yeah, it’s all up to fate. Lingbo Weibu didn’t get passed down in any manual, but it’s preserved here in the form of this giant formation. It’s a real test of anyone who comes poking around the cavern—your mind, your insight, your style. If you’re a total idiot or an impatient brute, you’re not getting past the first step. Even if some warlord sent in an army to smash the walls and dig for treasure, the most they’d get is the Eight Wives’ martial arts. The real treasures—Lingbo Weibu and Beiming Divine Skill—are out of reach.

Jill Young had it all figured out—only Dennis Duan could’ve set up a formation that fused two legendary skills like this.

Dennis Duan wasn’t exactly a martial arts prodigy, but when it came to offbeat trivia and Eight Trigrams calculations, he was a total genius. I always thought he was just a cheat code, but man, I really underestimated him.

Maggie Monroe was all smiles as she looked at Jill, not a hint of jealousy—just pure joy. "Looks like the Burial Martial Cavern doesn’t have any secrets left for you."

"Pretty much, but the best stuff here isn’t just something you can take home because you ‘know’ about it. Come on, while my brain’s still buzzing, let’s all take another spin inside!" Jill slung her arm around Maggie, hyped to keep moving.

This whole thing involved top-tier secret skills, so Lady Simone instinctively bowed her head and took a step back—she was really getting the hang of being a lowly sidekick. But the next moment, she felt a warm arm wrap around her waist. She looked up and met a pair of bold, sincere eyes.

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"You come too! The principle behind this works in any world, so you can learn something from it."

Simone blurted out, "Can I really?"

"You’ve been doing well lately, so of course you get a reward!"

"Uh..." Simone felt a rush of warmth, then her eyes darted around, clearly scheming something.

"Look at that sneaky little face—what, you don’t want to join in? You’re always scheming, but you don’t need to overthink it. If I wanted your help, I’d just ask, or smack you if you refused." Jill Young grinned, not stingy at all about sharing the secret of Lingbo Weibu. "Didn’t you want to use your sound skill to crack the maze? Go on, let’s check it out together."

Simone’s heart skipped a beat; she blushed and ducked her head, mumbling, "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Baa ha ha, that’s the spirit!" Jill grabbed both of them and led the way back into the maze.

This time, her footwork was even smoother. Jill strolled wherever she pleased—one moment pinching Grace Kwok’s cheek, the next bonking some little brat on the head. She yanked Hannah Frost into the next zone or lured Phoebe Phoenix into a chase. Was she meditating or just goofing off? Who knows! But every moment, Wu Zhengfeng could see her getting better.

Every move, every turn was natural yet impossible to predict. No ghostly illusions—just honest, straightforward steps, but somehow nobody could read her. Like a river flowing, it looks simple at first, but if you watch closely, you’ll see—nobody can pin down what the river was, is, or will be at any moment.

It wasn’t just physics at work—there was something magical about it once she started channeling her internal energy. This was a new hybrid style: combining national martial arts and internal power, with Lingbo Weibu as the bridge. She’d just taken a huge step forward.

In no time, all eight statues in the formation had been found, and every secret manual was collected.

Jill dragged the crew to the heart of the maze, ready to tally up the loot. Grace Kwok pitched in with the Asura Blade, Luna Chung handed over her Poison Manual, and the rest of the statues dropped some pretty sweet prizes too.

The Four Blossoms statues really surprised everyone—the lost Nine Heavens Nine Divisions Manuals were finally back in play. According to the records, the Four Blossoms were Elder Tong’s close attendants, basically what Yan Laihong is now, with major clout in Spirit Eagle Palace. Even if they hadn’t mastered all the Nine Heavens Nine Divisions arts, they’d definitely nailed all the best techniques.

Since these were Freewind Sect skills, they couldn’t just hand them over to the Duan family. So the Four Blossoms poured all their life’s insights into books and sealed them up in the Burial Martial Cavern. Flipping through them now, nobody knows how deep the Nine Heavens Nine Divisions went back then, but Maggie Monroe figures these records are at least sixty percent of what was once there.

Just when everyone was mourning the loss of the Nine Heavens Nine Divisions, suddenly they’d recovered sixty or seventy percent of it. The Freewind Sect lost these skills themselves, yet here they were, found in the Duan family’s Burial Martial Cavern. Jill Young’s snark meter was off the charts.

Xuzhu, you’re one of the three bros, but look at you—just living off the family fortune until it’s all gone. Tossing manuals here, destroying secret skills there. You’re such a show-off, I don’t even know what to say. Now look at Dennis Duan—he might be a cheat code too, but at least he knows how to save! Old-money landlords love to stash gold bars in jars under the backyard tree, and Dennis is the king of that. He buried all the secret skills in one massive pit. Maybe not as flashy as you, but talk about holding value!

So yeah, only guys who know how to save are truly good guys!

Next up is Abby Mu. She’s from the Murong family in Gusu, but since she was just a maid, her martial arts weren’t much. The Murongs have history with Langhuan Jade Cavern, so Abby’s skills have a familiar vibe—maybe just scraps Master Waylon collected. Still, it’s a nice boost for the martial arts library.

Okay, finished reading the manuals from Dennis’s wives—next up, the main course. Wait, what? There’s one more? Oh right, that total mystery ‘Shirley Xiao.’ My memory’s terrible, I always forget about this random extra.

According to Maggie Monroe, Shirley Xiao was her master’s maid—the Princess Lydia of Western Xia. Another maid, but Shirley didn’t know any martial arts at all. Still, she was from the Western Xia palace, serving Lydia Li’s granddaughter, so she wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

Back in the day, the Small No-Form Skill Codex hung in the Western Xia palace for everyone to see. Of course, it was written in coded runes and woven into paintings. Outsiders might get a flash of inspiration, but they’d never get the real deal. Try to learn it without a clue, and you’re asking for trouble. (Just like in the original story.)

But Shirley Xiao was clever—after years of soaking it all in, she memorized some of it. When it came time to bury something in the cavern, she didn’t have much, but she couldn’t be the only one left out, right? So she drew a few of the most mysterious pictures from memory and tucked them into her statue.

With Maggie’s sharp eye, she confirmed that those drawings really did contain key secrets of the Small No-Form Skill—almost thirty percent, in fact. But it’s all scattered and incomplete, just a handful of tips and tricks. For the full Small No-Form Skill, they’ll have to track down the Western Xia royal family’s descendants.

Jill Young was all over this—given the nature of Small No-Form Skill, Teacher Yang would definitely want to dig deeper.