Who Let Him Cultivate？

Chapter 59: Lu-Style Mimicry Fist

“Fuck! A monster!” Meng Jingzhou roared. He wound his arm back in a wide arc, spiritual energy surging as he prepared to deliver a skull-crushing blow.

It wasn’t entirely his fault for jumping to conclusions. The backyard was designated as Lu Yang’s training ground. Now, Lu Yang was nowhere to be seen, and a massive, heavily muscled tiger stood in his place. The most logical assumption was that the tiger demon had somehow resurrected and swallowed their friend whole.

The beast opened its maw, and a distinctly human voice—sounding exactly like Lu Yang—barked out, “Monster your ass! It’s me!”

“It actually sounds just like Lu Yang!” Meng Jingzhou exclaimed, his eyes widening in mock surprise.

Man and beast clashed in mid-air. Meng Jingzhou, supposedly stunned by the tiger demon’s uncanny vocal mimicry, conveniently failed to react in time. Lu Yang didn’t hesitate, swatting him out of the sky with a massive, heavy paw and slamming him into the dirt.

Lu Yang let out a cold, feline snort. There wasn’t a single trace of a struggle in the courtyard. How could a tiger demon have possibly eaten him without a fight? Meng Jingzhou, that scheming bastard, had clearly recognized him and was just playing dumb to get a free punch in.

Meng Jingzhou clicked his tongue. Lu Yang had pulled his punch, and for someone with Meng’s thick-skinned, tank-like constitution, the blow hadn’t even left a bruise.

He pushed himself off the ground, casually dusting the dirt from his robes, and shot Lu Yang a highly suspicious glare. “What the hell is going on with you? Weren’t you supposed to be comprehending the Mimicry Fist? When did you pivot to learning transformation magic?”

“Hold on, let me figure out how to change back.” Tiger-demon Lu Yang felt a sudden, irritating itch on the back of his head. He raised a front paw to scratch it, only to realize his new anatomy wouldn’t allow it. He would have to sit on his haunches and use a hind leg like a common stray dog.

Forget it, he thought wearily. That would ruin my image.

He bared his fangs in a grimace. He never expected that practicing a basic martial arts routine would spawn so many absurd complications. Looking back, only his sword techniques seemed to follow any sort of logical progression.

Ah. As expected of a Sword Spirit Root, he mused, finding a shred of comfort in the thought.

Meng Jingzhou clattered up the wooden stairs and banged on a door. “Man Gu! Get down here!”

“What is it?” Man Gu’s muffled voice called back. “I am currently monitoring Qin Yuanhao.”

“I’ve got something fun for you to see.”

Baffled, Man Gu allowed himself to be dragged down to the backyard, where his eyes locked onto the terrifyingly familiar form of the tiger demon.

“Foul beast! Return Brother Lu’s life!”

Man Gu’s roar rattled the roof tiles. Unlike Meng Jingzhou, his brain hadn’t made the leap in logic. He lunged with genuine, murderous intent, a terrifying, scholarly grace masking the sheer, skull-crushing kinetic force he was about to unleash.

Seeing the incoming lethal strike, Meng Jingzhou panicked. He threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around Man Gu’s waist and digging his heels into the dirt to halt the barbarian powerhouse. “Whoa, calm down! Don’t hit him! It’s Lu Yang!”

Meanwhile, the two Changui, who had been diligently threading marinated meat onto bamboo skewers in the main hall to prepare for the night market rush, heard the commotion. They peeked around the corner, took one look at the massive beast, and nearly lost their spectral minds.

The tiger demon was back!

Lu Yang rolled his golden eyes, utterly exhausted by the chaos around him. He ignored the screaming ghosts and his wrestling friends, focusing entirely on how to exit this feline state.

He closed his eyes. Return to original form, he chanted silently three times.

Flesh rippled. Bones popped and ground together in a sickening symphony, shifting back into their human proportions. When Lu Yang opened his eyes, he was standing on two legs, completely restored to his original appearance.

After the dust settled, the trio finally sat down around a wooden table to dissect the madness. In the background, the two Changui breathed a collective sigh of relief and went back to their prep work. Business at the Once More BBQ stall was projected to double tonight; they needed to maximize their inventory.

“It’s like this. I was just practicing the Mimicry Fist…” Lu Yang began, his tone perfectly level as he recounted the events.

Hearing that this was the result of a standard martial art, Man Gu felt his entire worldview fracture. “Is this the Mimicry Fist or the Transformation Fist?” he blurted out.

The ancient sages were right. Read ten thousand books, travel ten thousand miles. No scroll in the academy had ever documented a phenomenon like this. He really needed to stick close to Brother Lu and Brother Meng to broaden his horizons.

Meng Jingzhou’s reaction was far less philosophical. He stared at Lu Yang as if looking at a lunatic.

I thought you were practicing high-tier magic, and you’re telling me you were just throwing punches? Whose martial arts practice mutates into a full-body species swap?

A few days ago, Lu Yang had practiced a ghost-driving technique and accidentally forced his Yang Spirit out of his body. Meng Jingzhou had thought that was the peak of absurdity. He had been wrong.

Lu Yang, however, spoke with absolute conviction, eager to share his groundbreaking martial insights. “Think about it. The core essence of the Mimicry Fist is the imitation of animals, right? Tiger Fist, Monkey Fist, Crane Fist—you imitate the beast.”

Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu nodded slowly.

“Right,” Lu Yang continued. “So, logically, the more accurate the imitation, the better the effect and the greater the power output. Correct?”

They nodded again.

“I just fought a tiger demon. I know the scent of its fur, the weight of its paws, the exact way its muscles coil before a strike. So, I’m most familiar with the Tiger Fist. It’s the easiest for me to pick up and the one I can imitate flawlessly.”

Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu kept nodding, drawn in by the airtight reasoning.

“So,” Lu Yang concluded, spreading his hands, “I practiced with that exact feeling in mind. And as I punched, I just turned into a tiger. Perfectly logical, right?”

Meng Jingzhou was halfway through a nod before his brain caught up. He forcefully snapped his neck back. “Logical my ass! The gap between punching like a tiger and physically becoming one is a massive chasm!”

Beside him, Man Gu was still nodding earnestly.

Lu Yang sighed, looking like the most aggrieved person in the courtyard. He had followed the manual to the letter. He had merely added a tiny drop of personal insight. “Why don’t you two try it? Maybe you can learn transformation magic this way.”

Excitement flared in his friends’ eyes. Transformation magic was typically the domain of sneaky, underhanded cultivators, but a free skill was a free skill. In the cultivation world, you never knew when turning into a beast might save your life.

Under Master Lu Yang’s strict guidance, the two quickly picked up the Tiger Fist. They moved with explosive power, their punches generating roaring winds that swept through the courtyard. It was an impressive display of martial prowess.

However, no matter how hard they visualized, their bones remained stubbornly human. The crucial transformation eluded them entirely.

While they trained, Lu Yang watched from the sidelines. As he observed their shifting footwork, a new, terrifying idea sprouted in his mind.

The Mimicry Fist is an imitative art. Why limit it to animals? Wouldn’t imitating a human work just as well?

The thought was a runaway carriage, impossible to rein in. The only prerequisite for the Mimicry Fist was an intimate familiarity with the subject. Lu Yang stared at his two sweating friends, his eyes gleaming. Weren’t they the perfect test subjects?

He had already mastered the core principles. It was time to innovate.

“Discard the old to bring forth the new! That is the path of progress!” Lu Yang declared.

He didn’t hesitate. Closing his eyes, he mapped out Man Gu’s exact posture, the specific cadence of his breathing, and the heavy, grounded way he carried his weight. Lu Yang’s body began to move.

Man Gu paused his routine, wiping sweat from his brow. He watched Lu Yang’s forms, a frown creasing his face. The movements were incredibly familiar, yet he couldn’t quite place them.

Wait… isn’t that me? Man Gu realized, utterly bewildered.

Lu Yang sank deeper into that profound state of martial comprehension. Then, the body horror began.

His spine popped and elongated. His shoulders broadened as muscle mass shifted beneath his skin like a restless tide. His jaw unhinged slightly, grinding into the heavy, square-set structure of Man Gu’s features.

“Haha! Success! I knew my hypothesis was sound,” Lu Yang laughed heartily.

Hearing his own voice come out of his own face—worn by someone else—sent a profound chill down Man Gu’s spine. The dissonance was staggering.

Man Gu stood frozen. What just happened? I blinked, and now there’s a clone of me? Since when could the Mimicry Fist copy humans?

“Brother Man Gu, since when do you laugh like… Holy shit. Real or fake Man Gu?” Meng Jingzhou stopped mid-punch. Hearing the unfamiliar, slightly unhinged laugh, his survival instincts flared. He whipped his head around and stared at the two identical barbarians.

“Wait. The new Man Gu is Lu Yang!”

Meng Jingzhou circled the imposter, scrutinizing him from head to toe. The physical dimensions were a flawless replica, but the aura was entirely wrong. The real Man Gu radiated the aura of an honest, simple scholar who just happened to be built like a siege engine. Lu Yang’s version looked like a man whose head was overflowing with cunning, villainous schemes.

Meng Jingzhou immediately abandoned all hope of learning the Mimicry Fist. If he had harbored any lingering desires to master transformation through martial arts, seeing Lu Yang wear their friend’s face killed it instantly.

This had absolutely nothing to do with martial arts anymore.

Having mastered the technique, Lu Yang’s flesh rippled once more. His bones shrank, his features softening and shifting until he seamlessly transformed from Man Gu into Meng Jingzhou.

“This is definitely just transformation magic, isn’t it?” Meng Jingzhou asked, his voice flat.

“This,” Lu Yang said, clasping his hands behind his back and tilting his chin up to gaze at the sky at a perfect forty-five-degree angle, “is the Lu-Style Mimicry Fist.”

(Don’t ask why Lu Yang still had clothes after transforming from a tiger demon back into human form. This is a proper novel.)