Gan-In in the old days was a wonderful shooter. As soon as he draws the bow, the animals lie down and the birds fall. Swift Wei studied with Gan-In and surpassed his mentor in skill. It was to Swift Wei that Ji-Chan came to study.
“First, learn not to blink,” Swift Wei told him, “and then we’ll talk about shooting.”
Ji-Chan returned home, lay down under his wife's loom and began to watch the shuttle scurry. Two years later he did not blink, even if he was stabbed in the corner of his eye with the tip of an awl.
Ji-Chan reported this to Swift Wei, who said:
- This is not enough yet. Now learn to look, and then you can shoot. Learn to see the small as if it were big, the foggy as if it were clear, and then report back.
Chan hung a louse on a horsehair from the window and began to look at it, turning his face to the south. After ten days, the louse began to grow in his eyes, and after three years it became like a cart wheel, but all other objects seemed to him the size of a hill or mountain. He took a bow from the Yan horn, an arrow from the Jing bamboo, shot and pierced the heart of the louse without tearing the hair.
I reported this to Swift Wei. Swift Wei hit his chest, stamped his feet and exclaimed:
- You have mastered the art!
Then Ji-Chan realized that in the entire Celestial Empire there was only one rival left for him, and he planned to kill Swift Wei.
They met in a vacant lot and began shooting at each other. Their arrows collided with their tips halfway and fell to the ground without raising dust. But Swift Wei ran out of arrows, and Ji-Chan had one more left. He lowered it, but Swift Wei accurately deflected the arrow with a thorny bush.
And then both masters began to cry, threw away their bows, bowed to each other to the ground and asked each other to be considered father and son. Each one bit his own hand and swore with blood not to pass on his skills to anyone else.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru