Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
The pedestrian lamps were lit, and the shops were still open for business. The passersby were all brimming with the air of youth and full of energy.
Lou Cheng slowly and leisurely walked as he carried the paper bag with shoes in it. With a settled mind, he stared rather interestedly at his surroundings with the point of view of a spectator. “Mm, did that boy forget to eat breakfast? He’s gorging down those baked sausages like a wolf… That pair of lovers are most likely disciples of the same master; the kind dares to kiss each other to oblivion the second they find a secluded corner…”
From time to time, he would take out his cell phone and reply to Yan Zheke’s messages. He listened to the girl’s complaints about just knowing that there was a specialized class she was taking which required homework to be submitted in advance.
When Lou Cheng returned to his dorm in this leisurely state, Cai Zongming, Qiu Zhigao, and the others hadn’t returned just yet. The small bedroom was quiet and suffused with some peacefulness.
He took out the shoe box and stared at it gently for a while. Before he knew it, his mouth had drawn itself into an obvious curve.
Yan Zheke’s present… Yan Zheke’s present!
He searched for the receipt after laughing foolishly for a moment, afraid that the girl had spent too much money on the present. However, he could not find anything but the shoes inside the plastic bag or the shoe box. It was obvious that Yan Zheke had attentively taken it away.
“This can’t stump me, however!” Lou Cheng chuckled and turned on the computer. He searched for the shoes’ brand and series, discovering its official website and the corresponding web page.
“This is so expensive… even with a discount, this had to be seven or eight hundred at least, right?” he muttered inside his stomach as he stared at the monitor.
Martial arts shoes were purely expendables to a professional fighter. No matter how good the material might be, it would wear down after a few intense battles as long as it wasn’t made through some fantastical technology. Therefore, the price of regular use martial arts shoes was on the cheap side, and two or three hundred yuan a pair would be a pretty fair price already. Most fighters would at best equip themselves with a pair of shoes made of better and more comfortable materials for daily training. That way, the shoes could be worn for a very long time.
Lou Cheng watched and fondled the pair of martial arts shoes admiringly while holding in the tiny bit of warmth and happiness inside his heart. Suddenly, a thought entered his mind:
I should give her a present too!
As her boyfriend, I should give her first present!
Once the thought was born, it repeated itself again and again and was pretty much impossible to suppress. He fell into deep thought while staring at the monitor, wondering what kind of present he should give to Yan Zheke.
She doesn’t look like she lacks anything…
I can’t ask Talker about this. My first present has to have my thoughts and feelings in them…
While thinking like a youngster of the Information Age, he subconsciously opened a search page and typed in the phrase, “gift for girlfriend” and the like. He studied the information he found very seriously in search for inspiration.
It was at this moment the sounds of key turning came from outside. The door was opened as a series of noisy footsteps closed in from afar.
Lou Cheng withdrew his gaze and looked towards the entrance. He saw Zhao Qiang pushing open the door and coming in while Cai Zongming and Qiu Zhigao carried Zhang Jingye on one side each, following right behind him. All four faces were as red as cooked crabs, and the stench of alcohol assailed everyone’s nostrils.
“It looks like you guys drank a lot, didn’t you?” Lou Cheng let out a laugh.
Zhao Qiang shook his head. “We’re okay. You have no idea that how good of a drinker those girls are! If they hadn’t restrained themselves, I would be sleeping under the table today!”
“It’s not that they have restrained. They’re just smart. If they were all drunk after drinking with a couple of boys they aren’t too familiar with, who’ll be responsible for sending them back home? They would’ve been the ones in trouble in the end.” Cai Zongming sneered. His face might be red, but he wasn’t really drunk. His mind was quite clear.
Lou Cheng chuckled and said, “So that’s why Model Worker was focus fired?”
“You don’t say! He’s the main character of the day, you know!” After Cai Zongming and Qiu Zhigao carried Zhang Jingye to his seat, one of them went away to bring over a footbath. They were worried that he might lose control and vomit in the room. Another person wetted a towel and helped spread it across his face.
Some time later, Zhang Jingye recovered slightly and wore a bitter smile. “I’ve always thought that my capacity for liquor as a man of northwest would hold against four little girls. As it turns out, I was just slightly better than Wu Qian.”
“Your girl is also drunk? Why didn’t they just send you into your bridal room straight away then?” Lou Cheng joked.
Qiu Zhigao said helplessly, “That’s because we’re a little dizzy from the drinks too…”
After some teasing and laughing later, Zhao Qiang suddenly looked at Lou Cheng and asked curiously, “Cheng, with your current skill your salary should be around ten thousand a month, right?”
Lou Cheng thought for a moment before saying, “It’s around that.”
According to the relevant posts he saw while he was undercover in the Longhu Club’s forum, he learned that the monthly salary of most Professional Ninth Pin fighters began at ten thousand. Adding that to the award money bonuses they got from participating in Challenge Tournaments and all sorts of other tournaments, the lucky ones could earn up to three or four hundred thousand per year. Even unlucky ones could get a hundred thousand or so Chinese yuan, and that was discounting the entanglements of other profiting organizations such as martial arts school properties and the underworld. But even the legitimate earnings were quite a lot of money already; it was at least much better than those working as white collars.
Of course, people like Jiang Guosheng and Fang Tong would earn a lot fewer salaries because they were working in their own master’s martial arts school. However, all of their martial arts expenses were basically sustained by the martial arts school too.
Meanwhile, the fighters who stepped into Dan stage and surpassed the threshold of being a Professional Ninth Pin would enjoy vastly increased income. However, since this particular stage was comprised of Professional Eighth Pin to Professional Fourth Pin, the gap in strength between fighters of different Pins was quite huge. The same went with their salaries. A professional fighter who had just entered Eighth Pin might earn at best five to six hundred Chinese yuan a year, but a veteran of Fourth Pin could easily earn six to seven million Chinese yuan a year and not surprise anyone. This was not to mention that this amount of earnings was just considering their publicly announced income, and not the various bonuses they might earn due to affiliations with various industries brought about by their strength.
As for physically invulnerable Might Ones, they could no longer be measured simply by money. The yearly salary they enjoyed from the forces they belonged to was at best pocket money to them, and even then this pocket money started at a minimum of tens of millions.
This was exactly how the reward money set up by the Little Warrior Sage Challenge Tournament had effectively kept Mighty Ones from participating. This was because the amount of reward money offered was the kind that only nearby Professional Ninth Pins or fighters with a desperate need for money would participate for.
For a kid who had once had a taste of poverty like Lou Cheng, the thoughts of these incomes were always capable of adding to his motivation to practice martial arts.
When Zhao Qiang heard a definite answer from Lou Cheng, he could not help but sigh. “I can’t shake the feeling that you and I aren’t in the same world already. I can only say, don’t…”
“Ah?” Lou Cheng was confused by his pause.
Zhao Qiang turned back to the conversation and chuckled.
“Don’t forget your friends when you become rich!”
“Of course, who do you think we are? If you’ve mastered the right technology, successfully established your business and became a big boss, you mustn’t forget about the rest of us either!” Lou Cheng followed suit and cracked a joke too.
After teasing each other for a while, the lot then ‘delivered’ Zhang Jingye onto his bed and went away to wash their faces and sober up.
When Lou Cheng paced his way to the living room, he saw Cai Zongming standing beside the glass door of the balcony and staring blankly towards outside.
“Why did you talk so little just now, Talker? It’s not like you!” he asked in concern.
Cai Zongming smiled at him and said, “What you guys said made me sigh a little.”
“And what on earth are you sighing about?” Lou Cheng broke into a puzzled smile.
Cai Zongming let out a sigh and said, “I told you before that I enjoy martial arts, and I wish to see if I’m capable of walking this path. To tell the truth, my father has always wanted me to return to that little rundown city of ours and help him manage his company. But that’s not what I wanted.”
“Wow, I see now. You’re a Saudi Arabian!” Lou Cheng ridiculed him for a moment before continuing, “but why don’t you want to succeed your father? This’s something many people wish for!”
Cai Zongming broke into a laugh as he shook his head.
“Do you really think this’s great? If someone were to do things always according to their parent’s wishes, they would have the feeling that they hadn’t grown up, and they definitely wouldn’t be economically independent either. They would be able to see all the money I earn, and they’d be able to control all of it too. Although I could always ask for more money from them if I didn’t have enough, don’t you think that it’s a pretty oppressive situation? If I really have differing opinions that I want to bring up about an issue, I would lose confidence to argue it the second I recall this fact. This will change only if my father retires, but he’s just around forty years old and has a very fit body. It’s a given that he’ll be able to work for another twenty years down the line.”
“Plus, I can already predict clearly what I’d become and what kind of life I’d lead a few years or tens of years down the line the moment I think about it, and every time I think about this, I’m scared that I’d ultimately accept fate and return to that run down, stagnant city of us.”
“That’s why I need to fight now while I still can, and see if I can walk out a path of my own in martial arts. If I can’t, I would then consider building my own business and not give in to reality unless I’ve exhausted my all.”
After saying this, he turned his head sideways to look at Lou Cheng. He let out a bright smile and said, “Cheng, I really do envy you so much, so you should keep pushing onwards too and keep me envious!”
Lou Cheng was rather touched by his words, and he made a fist to punch at Cai Zongming’s shoulder lightly.
“Do your best!”
Cai Zongming also returned a punch.
“Ganbatte!”
Lou Cheng’s expression immediately froze as he felt that the atmosphere had been destroyed by Talker. He said through gnashing teeth,
“Get lost!”
…
The next day in the early morning, Lou Cheng grew more and more focused on his cultivation. He combined the inward vision brought by the Jindan and slowly expanded his senses towards his surroundings. He learned the bits and pieces of the visualization of Ice Mirror, and he had completely shed away the anxiety he felt caused by the fact that he wasn’t able to step through the primer despite all his training.
He was also slowly grasping the edges of Thunder Roar Zen when he practiced that later too.
Geezer Shi clicked his tongue at admiration as he watched Lou Cheng. “Here I thought you’d lose yourself in the loveliness of women and lower your expectations for a short while, you little brat. Contrary to my expectations, you have only become more focused, however.”
“She’s my driving force.” Lou Cheng answered seriously and sincerely.
Geezer Shi nodded in satisfaction and said,
“I can let go of my worries then. How about this. Let us set a small goal for you.”
“What small goal?” Lou Cheng asked in astonishment.
Geezer Shi chuckled.
“I won’t ask for you to win the overall match against Fearless Squad tomorrow. But if Lin Que and you were to be matched up against that Wei Shengtian in your best condition, that Professional Eighth Pin fighter, and then I want you to bring him down by attrition warfare!”
There was nothing to be ashamed of to admit that he was a long way from Danqi State. Plus, Lou Cheng was boiling up in passion and expectations the second he thought that Lin Que and he would challenge Wei Shengtian in succession and combine their strengths in an attempt to bring down their opponent.
Why should he not dare to dream?
Why should he not dare to give it a try?
No one was a coward here!
He nodded strongly and answered to his own master,
“Okay!”
…
Inside Yimo Martial Arts Club, Wei Shengtian was baring his upper body and revealing many well-defined muscles. His skin’s coloring was a little green and black, looking like they were forged from stone.
“Are you alright?” he asked the big boy who looked a little upset before him.
Qiu Yang was with a refreshing appearance and gifted with fair and clear skin. It seemed that he was at most seventeen or eighteen years old. The boy said disgruntledly, “I can’t quite put strength in my left arm. But I should be able to fight somewhat if I really have to.”
Wei Shengtian let out a sigh and said, “If I knew this would happen I’ not have let you be the vanguard. Your fighting style makes you way too liable to injuries the moment you fight two battles in a row. You won’t be stepping into the arena during our next match against Songcheng University Martial Arts Club. Focus on recuperating. Brother Dong and I will handle them no problem.”
Qiu Yang did not insist on participating once he recalled that Songcheng University Martial Arts Club only had two of Professional Ninth Pin. He agreed and said,
“Alright, Brother Wei, I’ll cheer for you two!”
