You Tanzhi Uses the Yijin Jing Diagrams to Overcome Poisoning is the episode in which You Tanzhi endures a centipede’s poison at AhZi’s direction and, without understanding the manual he carries, follows a diagram that teaches him how to neutralize it. The turn depends on a chain of accidents: the poison makes the diagram’s hidden image visible, his instinctive posture happens to match it, and repeating the illustrated method eases his symptoms. What he experiences as rescue by a holy figure is, unbeknownst to him, a martial technique encoded in the Sanskrit manual.

The Trial AhZi Sets

AhZi has spent seven days feeding a centipede the blood of a large rooster each day. On the eighth day, she summons You Tanzhi and asks him to help her practise a martial art. She invokes his promise to obey and risk his life for her, and he agrees to assist without asking for a reward. Her instruction is specific: he must put his hand into the urn, allow the centipede to bite him and suck his blood, and remain still.

You Tanzhi has seen the centipede kill healthy roosters after taking only a little blood. He hesitates, recognizing that its poison may be fatal. AhZi challenges his fear by contrasting him with the roosters and reminding him of his pledge. Captivated by her, he finally shuts his eyes, clenches his teeth, and puts his right hand into the urn. When the centipede bites his middle finger, he starts to withdraw it, but AhZi orders him not to move. He obeys, enduring the bite while she watches the creature closely.

Poison and the Hidden Page

As the centipede feeds, its body swells and a dark discoloration spreads from You Tanzhi’s finger across his hand and arm. He remains still until AhZi tells him to move the centipede into the wooden tripod. After she closes its cover, black blood begins dripping through an opening. AhZi leaves, and the poison’s effects grow worse: the discoloration reaches his armpit, his arm becomes numb and unbearably itchy, and he jumps and scratches in distress.

In the turmoil, an oilcloth-wrapped yellow book falls from You Tanzhi’s clothes and opens. It is the Sanskrit manual he had picked up earlier. His tears and saliva wet a page, revealing an image that had not previously been visible: a monk shown in an unusual posture, with his head between his legs and his hands holding his feet. Too overwhelmed by the itching to study the text, You Tanzhi first encounters the drawing while struggling to breathe and relieve his symptoms.

An Accidental Method

You Tanzhi’s movements bring him into a posture resembling the one in the drawing. When his head is trapped between his legs and his right hand holds his foot, he finds the itching more bearable and his breathing easier. He completes the position by holding his other foot as well and touching his chin to the ground. Whenever he stands, the symptoms become intolerable again, so he returns to the posture.

Looking at the image and the small arrows beside the monk, he begins to follow their directions instinctively. The itching in his arm seems to change into a line of warmth that passes through his throat and chest and fades. Repeating the process, he completes thirty cycles and finds the itching greatly reduced; after another ten, his fingers, palm, and arm are free of it. When he examines his palm, the dark discoloration has disappeared. The sequence turns a posture he stumbled into under duress into a repeatable method for countering the poison.

What the Manual Contains

The narration explains the mechanism that You Tanzhi cannot recognize. The drawing is made with a special Indian herbal solution that appears only when the page is wet and vanishes again as it dries. Neither Ah Zhu nor Xiao Feng had seen it. The pictured posture shows how to channel energy, while the Sanskrit writing supplies instructions that Shaolin monks who knew Sanskrit could use to practise the Yijin Jing, even without understanding the drawing’s secret.

The image is part of an ancient Indian master’s secret Yoga techniques, designed to neutralize external poison while practising the skill. The coincidence is therefore precise but not wholly arbitrary: You Tanzhi’s instinctive effort to lower his head brings him toward the posture, while his tears and saliva accidentally reveal the image that explains it. The book does not present his recovery as the result of deliberate study or understanding. It comes from a convergence of bodily instinct, hidden instruction, and chance.

Misrecognition and Aftermath

You Tanzhi does not understand that he has moved the centipede’s poison out of his arm by following the diagram. Instead, he fears that he has transferred it into his brain and interprets the monk as a Buddha who appeared to save him. He kneels and bows to the image; the iron mask he wears knocks against the floor as he does so. His gratitude is sincere, but it rests on a mistaken account of what happened.

Exhausted, he falls asleep on the floor. The next morning AhZi returns, sees that he is still alive, and tells him to dress and accompany her to catch poisonous insects. You Tanzhi obeys. His survival has not ended his service to her, but the episode has revealed a new possibility: the Sanskrit manual in his possession contains a method he can enact even before he understands its written meaning. The discovery thus links his continued vulnerability to AhZi with an unintended step in his martial training.