Chapter 5 – Teenage Sword Artist
“Senior Wang Gang. It seems like your training method is too weak. Please excuse me.” Lifting up his huge rock again, Ye Chen continued running.
After Ye Chen left, the crowd got louder.
“Unbelievable! Ye Chen won against Senior Wang Gang! Was that the King Kong Fist he was using?
“King Kong Fist and Breaking Stone Palm are both Middle Ranked Mortal martial arts, so it should not have had such a disparity. And Wang Gang’s level is definitely higher than Ye Chen! What happened?”
“It’s very simple,” a seemingly-very-calm teenager said, “Ye Chen’s King Kong Fist has already reached the Gentle Stage! His punches was strong and powerful yet still full of gentleness.”
Someone questioned how would he know about that.
The teenager smiled, “Teacher once said, powerful but gentle should be the goal for every power-based martial arts. When Ye Chen held Wang Gang’s punch, it seemed so domineering and easy, but it had actually used the gentle method of receiving the enemy attack and rebounding the power with Ye Chen’s own attack. Of course, I only realized it after a careful observation.”
The path in the mountain was steep and rugged, full of sharp rocks and large boulders making the path very hard to traverse.
With a shaking sweaty body, Ye Chen had just ran more than ten miles around the hills before he stopped in front of a wide river.
Boom!
He threw the rock on the ground, then he took off his outer clothes and jumped in the deep, deep river. All of a sudden you could see a figure under the water throwing out punches one after another in a quick manner that disturbed the river’s flow.
Practicing under the water was hundred times harder than on the ground, the extreme pressure from the depth and speed of the rushing water would squeeze one’s body from each direction and caused many people to be frightened for their lives.
Pushing his Qi into his dantian, Ye Chen firmly stood at the bottom of the river which was full of little rocks and mud as he casually threw a punch. With all the running water around him, the power of his punch could only reach about thirty percent from usual.
However, this was exactly what Ye Chen wanted, otherwise there’s no point in training under the water anymore.
The river suddenly became cloudy, and the flow of the river began to change and spin like a hurricane. It was almost as if there was a large monster hiding in the deep river, shifting its weight in preparation for the right moment to snake its head out.
In this extreme condition, Ye Chen could feel every bone and every muscle in his body shaking and fighting against the sudden turbulence as he finally managed to dig his feet into the river bed to find his balance in the high pressure and turbulence.
Losing track of time, Ye Chen ran out of his breath and finally came out of water.
Gasp! Gasp!
Ye Chen breathed in heavily, he laughed: “Training under the river is so efficient! I wonder how many people know about this method?”
…
The Town of Windy Paths was about ten miles from the Windy Mountain.
On the second floor of the Lucky Coin Restaurant …
A man was seen stuffing his mouth, grabbing meat slabs with one hand and a bowl of water in the other. Ye Chen slobbered as he tried to sate his starving stomach, going crazy on this big table of delicious dishes, leaving nothing behind.
In the previous life, he would come here once every couple of days because as an outer apprentice in the Sky Cloud Martial School, his meal was cooked and served in a huge pot which was like eating gruel, guaranteeing nutrition and nothing more. The good thing was even though the Town of Windy Paths was not large but full of delicious cuisines.
Plus, Ye Chen also enjoyed listening to the gossip outside the mountains which broadened his scope of the world, preparing him for the future when he leaves the Sky Cloud Martial School .
Nearby, there were a couple of martial artists sitting close to Ye Chen, each of them carrying a sword or a blade.
“Have you guys heard about it? Wu Wanshan, the Swiftblade lost to a teenage blade artist!”
“Yah, I heard about that, I think that teenager was called Lin Qi or something like that, he is one of the three famous disciples from Northern Snow Academy…His blade is extremely fast and sharp and beat Wu Wanshan in ten moves…”
“No way! Are you joking? Swiftblade has reached the Early Clasping Yuan Realm, extremely powerful! How could he lose to that kid?”
“Bro, you are totally out of it, everyone’s talking about that fight, how could it be fake? But, now that you mentioned it, it is quite scary that Lin Qi who only has reached the Late Condensing Reality Realm was able to defeat Wu Wanshan… I wonder what would happen if he fought against a core apprentice from the Sky Cloud Martial School?”
Ye Chen’s eyes slightly widened as he tried to recall the memories of Wu Wanshan and Lin Qi…
Wu Wanshan didn’t belong to any of the martial school or academies, around thirty years old, self-created his extremely swift blade art that could slice a drop of water into five parts in one second, once killed more than forty skilled horse thieves all by himself, could cut a bridge in half at a distance. His reputation of being one of the fastest blade artist!
Lin Qi, one of the three core apprentices in the Northern Snow Academy, started to train his Qi since the age of nine and reached the Condensing Reality Realm at thirteen, Mid Condensing Reality Realm at fifteen, and the peak of Late Condensing Reality Realm at seventeen. With his excellent talent in blade art, his fighting skill was said to be almost equal to the top apprentice of Northern Snow Academy – Child North Snow.
Both of them were way too strong for the Ye Chen now, but incomparable to Senior Xu Jing. Once he overheard the teacher said that Xu Jing’s skills had already reached beyond some of the Inner Court Masters, her genius in martial arts was unparalleled. She was one of the most rare geniuses in the history of Yun.
How long will it be until I reach this level? Ye Chen didn’t doubt his potential at all because his only disadvantage was that he crossed over so late.
Suddenly, one of the guy said, “Who do you guys think has the most potential among the younger generation of Sky Cloud Martial School, compared to the other top apprentices from the other four schools?”
“Without a doubt, Fragrant Plum Sword’ – the top apprentice of the School of Yun is definitely on the same level of Childe North Snow…As for the rest, I personally think the rank 4 core apprentice Jing Jue could potentially make it; he’s cold, emotionless, and very experienced.”
“Jing Jue is great, but personally I think the rank 3 core apprentice Yao Xiaofeng is quite impressive as well, he can always defeat people who are way stronger than him, very smart.”
The guy who started this conversation laughed, “All you talked about were the top five core apprentices, if it was before I would probably think the same, but this time I am really excited about core apprentice rank 23 – Xu Jing.”
“How so?” The others wondered, as well as Ye Chen, he didn’t expect them to mention sister Xu Jing.
“Three days ago, I saw her fight against the famous thief ‘Iron Destroyer’…”
He hadn’t even finished, the crowd started yammering, “‘Iron Destroyer’ Li Tong is definitely a character! Fraudulent, crafty, and brutal! He has been wanted for more than half a year now, but is still out there safe and sound. I heard that he learned his special Iron Destroyer art from the Rudra1 Nation and could crumble rocks and break iron, this Xu Jing girl you mentioned shouldn’t be able to compete with this, right?”
“Wrong! Especially in that fight, Xu Jing completely beat Li Tong not leaving him even a chance to fight back. In the end, Li Tong’s arms were broken completely, and he vomited too much blood and died.”
“What? Li Tong has the top skills of Late Condensing Reality Realm and couldn’t even fight back?!”
“It’s not that shocking if you were there to see what happened. You would know how strong and powerful Xu Jing’s punches actually were. Compared to her, Li Tong seemed weak.”
Ye Chen smiled, he was quite familiar with Xu Jing’s power. Normally, in power-type martial arts, there were three stages, the first stage was the Gentle Stage, the stage where each movement began to turn from harsh and forceful into a strong flowing gentle movement. The second stage was the Opposite Stage, this was the stage where each movement embodied both the elements of hard and soft into strong and gentle movements. The highest stage was the Unity Stage, where one can no longer distinguish in a movement hard or soft, strong or gentle from one another. Xu Jing had already trained her Monster Executing Fist to the second stage! Although he had only trained for a short time but he had also managed to reach the Opposite Stage in his King Kong fist which he showcased against Wang Gang.
Obviously, the three stages were not that easy to comprehend. For people who did not have much talent, it could take years, even decades and could still fail to comprehend even the first stage. For example, that Wang Gang had not even completely understood the movements in Breaking Stone Palm, not to even mention the Gentle Stage…
[1] Rudra: A Rigvedic deity associated with storms and wind. Shares many traits with the Hindu deity Shiva.
