infodatos Chapter 4 The Garden of Animals
Chapter 4 The Garden of Animals
As dawn broke, the young man at the entrance of Deyun Tea Garden yawned, carried a ladder, and hung up the water sign for the evening.
The words were written clearly in black ink on the red paper.
The grand finale: "Wu Song Fights the Tiger"
[Wu Song - Shunzi]
[Lu Cheng, the Tiger with Drooping Eyes and a White Forehead]
As soon as the sign was put up, the old men who were out early to walk their birds and the passersby who were buying breakfast almost popped their eyes out.
"Am I seeing things?"
An old man carrying a birdcage rubbed his eyes and pointed at the sign, trembling.
"The Qingyun Troupe must be out of their minds. Why not cast Lu Cheng, who's just become famous, as Wu Song, instead of letting him play a beast?"
"That's fine, but who is this Shunzi?"
……
"Have you heard? Lu Cheng, that newcomer from the Qingyun Class, has gone mad!"
Under the overpass, the words "douzhi stall, tea soup shop" spread early in the morning.
Several old men huddled together, smacking their lips.
"Why would someone who should be a great actor give up something good to do?"
"This is self-degradation."
"Is playing a tiger something a human can do? It's just physical labor, crawling on the ground in a leather suit weighing over ten kilograms. It's the lowest of the low."
"I think this kid is just a flash in the pan."
"The other day, I was just lucky to play Lin Chong. Now, I'm showing my weakness and I don't dare to play Wu Song. I'm afraid of ruining my reputation, so I'm hiding in the tiger's skin."
In a corner of the teahouse, Manager Liu of the Qinghe troupe listened to these gossips, his mouth practically twitching from ear to ear.
He took a sip of the not-so-good tea, not minding the astringent taste of the tea leaves, but feeling a sense of satisfaction.
"Master Ma, you may have taken the beating, but that kid asked for it."
Manager Liu said to Ma San, who was still wrapped in bandages beside him.
"Let's go tonight too."
"I want to see where the Qingyun Class will put their faces when Lu Cheng is crawling on the ground barking like a dog!"
……
Qingyun Class, backstage.
The atmosphere was very oppressive.
Shunzi clutched the red-lacquered whistle in his hand, his palms sweaty.
He looked at Lu Cheng, who was fiddling with the old tiger skin, and almost burst into tears.
"Brother Chengzi, this is really... really not good enough."
Shunzi is an honest kid. He usually just does a couple of somersaults and goes through the motions.
Are you going to cast him as Wu Song, the tiger-slaying hero?
They still have to fight over Lu Cheng, the current mainstay of the team?
This is worse than killing him.
"What's the panic?"
Lu Cheng didn't even look up; he was holding a needle and thread, altering the tiger skin.
In the past, when playing tigers, the emphasis was on their "form".
The sling was made bulky and looked big, but it was actually empty inside. When a person crawled inside, they would feel stuffy and unable to move freely.
Lu Cheng wanted to tighten the joints so that the skin would stick to his body.
"Shunzi, remember what I told you."
Lu Cheng bit off the end of the thread, his eyes calm.
"Once you're on stage, don't think of it as acting."
"You just think, if you don't kill this tiger, you'll die, and your old mother won't have a son to see her off in her old age."
"Use all your strength and beat them to death."
Shunzi swallowed hard, looked at Lu Cheng's somewhat frightening eyes, and nodded involuntarily.
"Alright, let's go through it one more time."
The drums and gongs begin to beat.
Lu Cheng put on the half-modified tiger skin and lay down on the ground.
Without system rewards, Lu Cheng relied entirely on his body's instincts and his understanding from his previous life to achieve "empathy mode."
Pounce, scissors, lift!
His movements were nimble, after all, he had a foundation of "ten years of external martial arts".
But Lu Cheng knew in his heart that something was wrong.
Too "human".
It's like a fight between people dressed in tiger skins, but without that pungent, unpleasant smell that would make you wet your pants just by looking at it.
This level of skill would only earn a "C-A" rating, and might even be a "C-Middle".
The newbie perks from last time are gone; this time, you'll have to rely entirely on your skills.
Lu Cheng stopped what he was doing.
"no."
He ripped off the hood and wiped the sweat from his face.
Zhou Daikui watched from the side, thinking to himself that it was already pretty good, at least much more flexible than the extras he had acted before.
"Chengzi, this is good. There are only three hours left before the show starts tonight, this..."
"Master, I'm going to the zoo."
Lu Cheng stood up, said nothing, took off his costume and put on his old cotton-padded jacket.
"The Zoo, what are we going to do there?"
"That's a place for foreigners, the entrance fee is ridiculously expensive." Zhou Daikui was taken aback.
"Let's go see the tigers."
Lu Cheng said as he walked out.
"If you've never seen a real tiger kill someone, you can't get the performance right."
"Shunzi, keep practicing at home, work on developing that fear in you."
"If I were a real tiger tonight, you'd be the meat in my mouth!"
After saying that, Lu Cheng lifted the curtain and plunged into the cold winter wind.
Only a group of people were left backstage, looking at each other in bewilderment.
"What... what's going on here?"
The old man who manages the lockers sighed, "Alas, they're bewitched."
Zhou Daikui, however, looked at the swaying curtain, a glint of light flashing in his cloudy old eyes.
Don't use the suspect, but don't use it.
"No madness, no life."
"This kid used to be a block of wood, now he's a piece of burning charcoal."
"Don't just stand there, smoke that tiger skin again and polish the baton."
"If anyone messes up Chengzi's performance tonight, I'll skin them alive!"
……
The Garden of Animals, which later became a zoo.
In those days, it was a rare place in the western suburbs.
The tickets are indeed not cheap; they cost two cents.
This amount of money is enough to have a full meal at the overpass, so most of the people who come here are students in long gowns or rich young men with foreign girls.
Lu Cheng's patched-up shorts made him stand out in the crowd.
Ignoring the strange looks around him, he headed straight for Tiger Mountain.
Tiger Mountain in those days wasn't separated by thick glass like it is in later generations.
It was a deep pit surrounded by iron railings, where people stood and looked down.
At the bottom of the pit, a large, white-browed insect with bulging eyes was sunbathing on the artificial hill.
It's winter, and even tigers get lazy.
But this tiger is different.
It has an extremely large skeleton and glossy, smooth fur.
Although his eyes were closed, his belly rose and fell with his breath in a unique rhythm.
People around were throwing stones down, trying to provoke the tiger into moving.
The tiger didn't even lift its eyelids; it only occasionally twitched its tail to sweep away the stones that fell on it.
"Tch, this is a tiger? It looks like a big cat."
Several young people who looked like students pouted in disappointment.
Lu Cheng, however, was completely absorbed in watching.
He wasn't looking at the fur or the teeth; he was looking at the tiger's spine.
The tiger lay there, seemingly relaxed, but in reality, all the major muscles in its body were taut like bowstrings.
Once prey gets close, its spine will instantly spring up like a dragon, launching its hundreds-of-pounds-weight body like a cannonball.
This is the "Tiger Embracing Head" stance in Xingyi Quan.
Relaxed yet persistent, poised to unleash its full potential.
Lu Cheng closed his eyes and began to regulate his breathing.
When inhaling, the abdomen contracts and the air adheres to the spine.
When exhaling, focus your breath on your lower abdomen (Dantian) and let out a thunderous sound.
It is said that this is called "Tiger and Leopard Thunder Sound".
Only by cultivating one's internal organs to an extremely profound level can one produce such a sound, which resonates through the bone marrow and cleanses the blood and qi.
Although Lu Cheng doesn't have that skill yet, he can imitate that breathing rhythm.