Chapter 452: You Call This Tying a Lion Head? That’s a Chokehold |
“Request a lion?”
The old man’s voice was sharp and raspy.
“Yes.” Jiang Ci extended the liquor forward. “Aged brew, strong kick, wards off the chill.”
The old man didn’t take it.
His single eye scanned Jiang Ci from head to toe,
pausing for a moment on his torn vest and the oil-stained flip-flops.
“Which opera troupe are you from?”
The old man turned to shut the door. “Go back. All I’ve got here is coffin wood, not lion heads for monkey tricks.”
“Uncle Seven.” Jiang Ci wedged one foot into the door crack.
“An opera troupe can still put on a grand show, and a monkey can still storm the Heavenly Palace.”
Jiang Ci looked at the old man’s back, his tone flat. “Director Jiang Wen sent me. He said in all of Flower City, only your lions here have tasted blood.”
“Jiang Wen?”
The old man known as Uncle Seven stopped, turned around, his face folding into a cold sneer. “That movie-making madman? Hah, what does he know.”
“Tell him, lions these days are all pet cats—no spine, can’t handle blood. If he wants something nice for the camera, hit up the Yiwu wholesale market. Their lions come with sequins and even blink. A hundred times prettier than mine.”
With that, Uncle Seven shoved the door with sudden force.
But he couldn’t budge it.
Jiang Ci’s foot seemed welded to the threshold.
“Uncle Seven, since I’m already here, how about a drink of water?” Jiang Ci’s face wore that signature cheeky grin. “I’ve walked over ten miles in the dead of night; the soles of my shoes are nearly worn through.”
Uncle Seven stared at him for three seconds.
“Come in if you’re not afraid of dying.”
He let go of the door and turned into the pitch-black room.
“Place is a mess. Don’t step on my bamboo.”
It was indeed a mess inside.
Dozens of unfinished lion head skeletons hung from the rafters.
Jiang Ci didn’t stand on ceremony. He found a small folding stool, sat down, and placed the Erguotou on the table covered in wood shavings.
Uncle Seven ignored him, settling himself under a dim, yellowed incandescent lamp.
In his hands was a strip of bamboo, weaving the lower jaw skeleton of a lion head.
Jiang Ci said nothing, watching quietly.
Soon, he noticed something was off.
Uncle Seven’s hands were trembling.
Those hands, covered in age spots and scars, could still grip the bamboo, but during the crucial “knotting” step,
his knuckles were badly deformed, unable to muster that precise force.
Bamboo strips have resilience. To make a lion head skeleton sturdy and durable,
every connection where the paper ties bite into the bamboo’s flesh had to be tight.
*Crack.*
A sharp sound.
Because of the shaking, the force was uneven, and the fine nanmu bamboo strip snapped.
The broken end even whipped back into Uncle Seven’s face, leaving a bloody scratch.
Expressionless, Uncle Seven set down the ruined bamboo, picked up the big tobacco pipe beside him,
shaking as he tried to light it, but the old-fashioned lighter just wouldn’t spark.
*Sigh…*
A long sigh, full of the helplessness of a hero past his prime.
Jiang Ci stood up.
He walked to the corner where a pile of un-split bamboo lay.
Reaching out, he grabbed a cleaver.
Uncle Seven shot him a glance but said nothing, continuing to wrestle with the lighter.
*Crack!*
A flash of the blade.
A wrist-thick bamboo pole split clean open, the cut surface smooth as a mirror.
Jiang Ci’s hand was steady.
He had spent the whole day on set deboning pork—that feel of “separating flesh from bone” now perfectly transferred to splitting bamboo.
One stroke. Two strokes.
Jiang Ci split the bamboo into strips of even width, then used the back of the knife to scrape off the splinters.
Uncle Seven finally got the lighter lit. Through the blue smoke, he watched the young man’s movements, the scorn in his eyes fading a little.
“You’re using too much brute force.”
Uncle Seven exhaled a puff of smoke. “Bamboo has a grain. Follow the grain, and you won’t waste effort.”
Jiang Ci paused, adjusted the angle of the blade.
He split again.
Sure enough, it went much smoother.
He kept at it for two hours.
At three in the morning, it was the coldest time in Flower City.
Uncle Seven, old and unable to stay awake, leaned back in his rattan chair and started snoring.
The big tobacco pipe fell from his chest, burning a hole in his vest, but he didn’t wake.
Jiang Ci put down the cleaver and shook his sore wrists.
He walked over to the workbench.
He looked at the lion’s lower jaw that had snapped earlier.
This step was called the “chokehold,” the hardest part of making a lion head.
It required an explosive burst of finger strength to lock three interlaced bamboo strips tightly together.
Not only did it need to be tight, but also “alive,” because the lion’s mouth had to move.
Jiang Ci reached out.
His fingers were long, but after days of high-intensity training and moving bricks, a thin layer of calluses had formed on his fingertips.
[System Notification: Skill “Micro-level Motion Capture” has been triggered.]
In Jiang Ci’s field of vision, the tangled bamboo structure instantly became clear.
Red lines marked the flow of force.
But this wasn’t something you could learn just by watching.
It took strength.
Jiang Ci settled his breath.
Qi sinking to his dantian, both feet gripping the ground.
This wasn’t crafting.
This was martial arts.
Hong Fist, Iron Wire Fist—what they emphasized was the hardness of the bridge hand, the strength of the fingers.
“Open!”
Jiang Ci shouted inwardly.
His left hand firmly pressed down on the base of the bamboo strip, while his right index and middle fingers hooked the tip like iron claws.
At that moment, he poured all the raw, savage strength he had fought for in the mud these past days into his fingertips.
*Creak—*
Jiang Ci’s wrist twisted sharply, forcing that stubborn bamboo strip into a perfect, dead-tight knot.
When he finished, Jiang Ci didn’t linger.
He gently placed the repaired skeleton on the table, right by Uncle Seven’s hand.
Then he stepped back to the doorway, leaned against the doorframe, and closed his eyes to rest.
Day broke.
When the first rays of sunlight hit the attic, Uncle Seven woke up.
He groggily reached for the water glass on the table, but his fingers touched the cold bamboo frame.
His single eye snapped wide open. He grabbed the skeleton and brought it close to his face in disbelief.
That knot.
Bitten tightly into the bamboo’s flesh, seamless—a perfect fusion of “force” and “skill.”
This was something only a master craftsman in his prime, one who had also practiced martial arts, could achieve with “inch force.”
Uncle Seven turned his head.
At the doorway, Jiang Ci was leaning against the frame, head tilted, watching him.
Sunlight fell on Jiang Ci’s face—young, yet carrying a hint of weariness, but more than that, a kind of calm.
“Did you tie this?” Uncle Seven’s voice trembled.
“My hands are rusty. Took three tries to lock it.” Jiang Ci yawned. “It’s a lot easier if you think of it as locking a man’s throat.”
Uncle Seven fell silent.
He stroked the knot.
A long moment passed.
“Kid, you practice Hong Fist?”
“Learned a bit from the stunt team on set. Just messing around.”
“Just messing around?” Uncle Seven laughed, a bitter laugh. “I’ve spent my whole life tying lion heads. Now that I’m old and my hands are ruined, I’m not even as good as an actor who’s ‘just messing around.’”
“Uncle Seven, actors also put in hard work.”
Jiang Ci walked over, picked up the Erguotou from the table, twisted off the cap, tipped his head back for a swig, then handed it to Uncle Seven.
“This liquor’s just right now.”
Uncle Seven took the bottle. Without wiping the rim, he put it straight to his lips and chugged a big mouthful.
The fiery liquor hit his throat, bringing tears to his eyes.
“Damn, that’s good!”
Uncle Seven wiped his mouth, stood up shakily, and walked to the deepest part of the room, where a thick red velvet cloth lay covered in dust.
“These lions nowadays really are just pet cats.”
Uncle Seven yanked the cloth away.
*Cough, cough, cough…*
Amidst the flying dust, a pitch-black camphor wood chest was revealed.
Uncle Seven undid the lock and lifted the lid.
A stale, ancient smell rushed out.
Jiang Ci’s gaze sharpened.
Inside the chest lay a lion head, perfectly still.
It was completely different from the gaudy, cheerful lion heads on the market.
This one was black.
Black base, gold patterns, blue nose.
Its forehead was unusually high, its eye sockets deep and sunken. The mane on either side was made of stiff black bristles, standing on end like steel needles.
And especially those eyes.
Though carved from wood, for an instant,
Jiang Ci felt as if he were staring at a furious guardian deity, glaring back at him across the river of time.
“Zhang Fei Lion.”
Uncle Seven’s finger gently traced the lion’s forehead. “People in the know call this a ‘war lion.’ In the old days, it was used to challenge rival gyms, fight for territory… even to kill.”
“During the War of Resistance, when Flower City fell.”
Uncle Seven’s voice grew low. “My master carried this lion, leading twenty brothers from the martial arts hall, to fight the Japs with bayonets at Sanyuanli. Short swords were hidden inside the lion head, hand grenades under the lion’s back.”
“Twenty men. Not one came back.”
“This lion head was dug out of a pile of corpses by the villagers. It was full of bullet holes and blood. It took me three whole years to repair it.”
Uncle Seven turned, his single eye glinting coldly.
“Kid, you wanted something real, didn’t you?”
“This is real.”
“But this lion is heavy with killing aura—it devours its owners. Every one who’s worn it before has ended up crippled or dead. An ordinary lion dancer can’t suppress it.”
Uncle Seven pointed at the ferocious black head. “You dare to try?”
Jiang Ci said nothing.
He set the Erguotou bottle on the floor.
Rubbed his hands together.
Then, step by step, he walked up to the chest.
He lowered his head and met the wide, furious eyes of the lion.
In that moment, Jiang Ci felt a chill at the back of his neck, as if something heavy pressed down on his spine.
It was the weight of countless souls.
The final roar of that era’s ordinary people who refused to be slaves to a fallen nation.
“Forgive the intrusion.”
Jiang Ci murmured.
He reached out both hands, steadily gripping the base of the lion head.
Lift!
So heavy!
The inside of this lion head was all old, hard wood, layered with countless coats of paint and reinforced with iron. It weighed at least twice as much as a normal lion head.
Jiang Ci tightened his waist and core, the muscles in his arms bulging, hoisting the lion head high, then firmly settling it over his own head.
His vision was immediately blocked.
He could only see the narrow world outside through the gaps in the lion’s mouth and eye sockets.
Uncle Seven’s eyes locked onto Jiang Ci’s legs.
If the kid’s legs so much as trembled, he would snatch the lion head back immediately.
But Jiang Ci’s legs were steady as bedrock.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Then, suddenly.
The black lion, dormant for seventy years, did one extremely minute thing—it blinked.
Its eyes half-closed, then snapped wide open.
Next, the lion head lowered slightly, then slowly rose.
An intangible killing aura, centered on Jiang Ci, instantly flooded the entire attic.
In that split second, every hair on Uncle Seven’s body stood on end. He instinctively stepped back half a pace, his back hitting the wall.
“It’s alive…”
Uncle Seven muttered, his single eye welling up with cloudy tears.
“Master… the lion has awakened.”
Jiang Ci took off the lion head.
He was drenched in sweat, his face slightly pale, as if he had just been through a fierce battle.
But the light in his eyes was brighter than ever.
“Uncle Seven.” Jiang Ci gasped for air. “I’m borrowing this lion.”
“No matter how this film turns out, I promise I’ll bring it back in one piece.”
Uncle Seven wiped the tears from his face.
He walked over, closed the chest lid, and tossed the key to Jiang Ci.
“Get out of here.”
Uncle Seven turned his back to Jiang Ci and waved his hand.
“Don’t embarrass me. If you mess this up, I’ll come after you with a knife.”