You TanZhi’s Frost Silkworm Transformation

You TanZhi’s Frost Silkworm Transformation is the chain of theft, near-death, and self-directed cultivation through which You TanZhi absorbs a frost silkworm’s deadly cold poison and develops powerful Yin-strength. The change begins as an attempt to serve AhZi, but it ends with him abandoning her and continuing alone: the creature she meant to use for her own poison palm instead becomes part of his martial power through his partial practice of the Tendon-Changing Sutra.

Theft and captivity in service

At MinZhong Temple, You TanZhi waits until a monk has left the garden, then slips through a bamboo fence to reach the silkworm. He has heard the monk identified as a Shaolin monk and is wary of the danger of stealing from someone trained in martial arts. Rather than catch the creature directly, he uses the remaining wine in a gourd: after drinking some and pouring out the rest, he moves the gourd’s rim toward the silkworm, which enters it. The stolen creature’s cold soon becomes difficult to endure even through the container. You TanZhi finds that a belt lets him carry the gourd without holding it directly, and leaves with the prize.

He returns quickly to Nanjing and reports the capture to AhZi. She orders him to keep the silkworm in a clay urn. Although it is midsummer, the Palace becomes progressively colder, until even the teapots, cups, and tea water freeze. AhZi tests the creature against poisonous snakes and insects; over ten days, the silkworm survives and feeds on them while the other creatures die. She then orders You TanZhi, whom she calls Iron Clown, to put his hand into the urn and let it feed on his blood. He understands that she is willing to risk his life in pursuit of a more potent poison palm.

The urn and the apparent death

Before reaching into the urn, You TanZhi pleads that AhZi remember his name and loyalty if he dies. She agrees to call him You TanZhi, but still praises him as a devoted lackey. He responds with gratitude, yet tries to survive: turning himself upside down, he reaches into the urn while concentrating on the small arrowheads in the diagrams of the Tendon-Changing Sutra. As the frost silkworm bites his index finger, cold energy travels from his arm through his chest and onward along the meridians he directs with his thoughts.

AhZi watches as blood circulates into the transparent silkworm and returns to You TanZhi’s finger. Frost forms on his mask, clothes, and limbs, and she concludes that he is dead. When the creature falls from his finger, AhZi crushes it with a stick, then absorbs its blood and fluids through her palms, hoping to acquire its power. The attempt is ineffective: the silkworm’s poison has already been absorbed by You TanZhi, and its blood returns to him rather than remaining available to her.

The attendant AhZi sends to dispose of You TanZhi does not dig a grave. He puts the apparently lifeless man on a carriage, takes him outside the city, and throws him into a small brook. That careless disposal saves You TanZhi from burial, though the cold has frozen his body solid. The brook carries him about ten li before reeds catch him. Ice forms around him like a crystal coffin; only gradually does water moving over his body reduce the cold enough for the ice to melt. His iron mask, which transfers heat and cold quickly, melts free first. You TanZhi coughs, regains consciousness, and climbs from the water still carrying pieces of ice on his body.

Survival and cultivation

While trapped in the ice, You TanZhi remains conscious at first but cannot move; later he loses consciousness. On recovering, he feels as though he has awakened from a long dream. He recalls AhZi’s lack of pity: believing him dead, she had focused on using the silkworm’s remains to train her palm. His loyalty has brought him close to death without earning concern, and he realizes that returning would place him in further danger. If AhZi has mastered her poison palm, he expects her to kill him; if not, he fears she will continue using him to obtain poisonous creatures until she can. He no longer dares to seek revenge on Qiao Feng and instead wanders through the wilderness, living on wild berries, birds, and small beasts.

On the second night, he takes out the Sanskrit Tendon-Changing Sutra. The book is soaked, and he carefully turns its pages, discovering that the monk drawings appear on every page when the paper is wet. He understands that his survival was not a supernatural rescue. He copies the postures and concentrates on the small red arrowheads beside the unfamiliar writing. A faint thread of cold moves through his limbs and bones; when he stops concentrating, it vanishes, and when he resumes, it returns. By trying different postures and following the changing arrowheads, he learns to activate this movement repeatedly. The cold becomes something he can set in motion rather than only endure.

The practice continues over several months. As he catches animals, his hands and feet grow lighter and more nimble, and he can jump farther and run faster than before. This gradual improvement sets up the episode’s decisive test: one evening, a hungry wolf pounces on him. You TanZhi flees, but when it reaches him he panics and throws out a palm without deliberation. The wolf falls and does not move. After checking it from a distance by throwing a stone, he approaches and confirms that it is dead. Surprised by the power of his unplanned strike, he attributes the result to the silkworm’s spirit living within him.

Cause and significance

The narrative distinguishes You TanZhi’s explanation from the actual cause of his strength. He thinks the dead silkworm’s spirit accounts for his new ability, but his power comes from the combination of the Sutra’s internal-energy cultivation and the creature’s absorbed Yin-poison. The poison has not been expelled: You TanZhi has learned only one method from the manual, not its complete circulation practice. Its cold therefore remains within him even as his cultivated internal energy gives it force. Had he mastered the method, he could gradually have neutralized the poison and increased his internal energy further.

The episode also presents why the Sutra is so difficult to use. Its practice requires the practitioner to dissolve the distinction between self and others and to have no desire to learn martial arts from it. Shaolin’s eminent monks are described as diligent, ambitious practitioners who want to master the manual and gain its benefits; across generations, their efforts yield little, and they come to regard it as ineffective. You TanZhi, by contrast, begins to follow its diagrams while trying to endure the silkworm’s bite, not as a deliberate campaign to master a treasured manual. His incomplete, accidental practice does not make him a master, but it gives him a capacity the more accomplished monks have failed to realize. The transformation thus joins an unintended encounter with a secret text to a reversal in which the man treated as expendable acquires formidable power, while the intended beneficiary, AhZi, receives none of the silkworm’s poison.