Romance of Dragons and Snakes

Chapter 61: A feather cannot be added; nor can a fly alight

After watching each video on Zhang Wei, Wang Chao had finally came to the conclusion: “Zhang Wei’s Hidden Jin is superior to mine. Not only can he release it through both his hands with ease, but also his back.”

There was a total of 30 videos on Zhang Wei’s fights. Out of a dozen of them, there had been an opening at Zhang Wei’s back where his enemies had capitalized on. However, when they struck at it, they had been hit with the Hidden Jin and lost the fight straight afterwards.

Out of 30 fights, not a single one lived.

However this much wasn’t too surprising. Any expert at Guoshu would generally been nimble and would arch their backs like a leopard during a fight. Wherever the enemy tried to find a weak spot, the expert would immediately flare up their Jin to counter.

Hidden Jin however was the strongest counter with its natural break out and sending the Jin through the pores. Upon contact with the enemy, it would enter their bodies and damage their muscles and organs. There were very few ways in which an injury like this could be treated.

Right now Wang Chao was very rough with his usage of Hidden Jin. A single fist was able to make an indent within a steel plate; if a fist this destructive were to be used on the frail human body, then what would the effect be?

“I’m only able to use the Hidden Jin through my hands and feet, that’s a big difference in comparison to Zhang Wei. But in a fight, this does not guarantee a victory. Hidden Jin requires the strike to land first; a battle is dependent on the footwork, stance, and Clear Jin.”

After three years of practicing, Wang Chao had his own fair share of experiences from battles.

External practitioner experts could move their bones and muscles with ease. Internal practitioner experts could move about freely and use their pores with ease.

A strike of Hidden Jin was to loosen the pores and let the power flow out in that instant.

For those that controlled the muscles with ease, controlling the pores would be challenging.

Up until now, Wang Chao had previously only been able to control all the points in his hands and palms, his legs and leg joints. From these two parts, he was freely able to manipulate his pores.

The other parts could only be controlled during battle and could not be loosened whenever needed.

In accordance to the theory of the meridian channels, Wang Chao was only able to open up the channels in his arms and legs. The rest of his body was not yet accessible.

The hands and legs were the most nimble parts of the human body and were also the most easily controlled parts. When learning martial arts, one must start practicing with the vertebrae. When practicing the Hidden Jin, once the legs and arms and learned, the next step was to bring it to the vertebrae.

Wang Chao had understood this much, meaning that he could acknowledge just how strong Zhang Wei was.

“The next thing to do is to make sure I can bring the hidden Jin to my spine. These videos of Zhang Wei are also of before he went into seclusion, it has already been years, what if he has improved far too much? If he has learned to bring the Hidden Jin to his chest and head, then he will truly be difficult to handle.”

If a man were to learn to bring the Hidden Jin throughout the entire body, then the next step was to enter the stage of Transforming Jin. From that moment, if any part of the body were to be hit out of nowhere, then the Hidden Jin would naturally respond and repel the attack.

Back when Sun Lu-Tang had disciples, he had encouraged them to attack him at any time.

One day, a disciple had took advantage of when Sun Lu-tang was sleeping and struck at him with a wooden pole to the head. However, to the surprise of the disciple, the pole had instantly splintered because of the Hidden Jin.

But after that incident, the disciple had been expelled from the sect. Although Sun Lu-tang had encouraged any spontaneous attack, this had been over the top. If he had used a knife or even a bayonet instead of a pole, then things would have ended up differently.

When the topic of Transforming Jin was approached, Wang Zongyue had spoken two phrases on his depiction of it.

“A feather cannot be added; nor can a fly alight.”

An expert of Transforming Jin could feel even a fly landing on his body with a keen acuity. In an instant, the Hidden Jin would break out, killing the fly.

“I’ve a long ways to go before I can attain such a state. However, I can bet that Zhang Wei hasn’t reached such a state either. Otherwise, when we pressed hands, I would have lost even faster.”

Wang Chao had tried to imagine what the higher levels of martial was like, and what plans had to be made until he could reach such a stage.

“I have to push the limits of my body first and ignore the issue of Zhang Wei. A clear understanding of my body has to be made.”

“I say, Wang Chao. Your body doesn’t look very muscular, so how do you have such a large amount of strength?”

Within the room, “Boulder” Sun Lei and the group of soldiers were standing by the side and watched him smack the steel plate. Each strike had a loud explosive sound as the measuring device continued to measure up over the thousands.

This was to say that Wang Chao’s every strike was incredibly strong.

“I can only continue to strike this for three minutes and about 90 blows. The Hidden Jin can only be seen in 10 of those strikes before I reach my limit and start to see spots in my eyes. This is what it means to have a deficit in energy in the body.”

After this experiment, Wang Chao had a good understanding of his body.

“The limits to my body has been discovered, the next thing is to improve it. I just need to use the Tiger’s Thunder in order to slowly temper the marrow and change my body to advance even further.”

But when he had heard “Boulder” speak, Wang Chao paused for a moment. “It’s not that simple, you must treat your body as a whole before striking. When I see you punch, I can only see the muscles in your arm being used before ending it with the abdominal and waist muscles. You never once use your vertebrae’s center of gravity. Once your body is like mine, then you’ll understand the skill of issuing power and tempering the body. By then, you’ll also be able to issue more power than I can.”

Wang Chao hadn’t lied. His body wasn’t the greatest to begin with, and if these soldiers were to temper their bodies by going through the same training he had done, then they would be much stronger in terms of raw power than Wang Chao.

If one had the build of Mike Tyson, then their power would be tremendous after learning martial arts.

This was a question of natural endowments in its very essence.

The first step to martial arts was to acknowledge one’s body and its potential.

The difference in potential was different from person to person, but Wang Chao had already discovered his limit a long time ago.

But there was an ancient method on bridging the gap, it was called the “Tiger’s Thunder”.

The Tiger’s Thunder was capable of tempering the marrow and improve the basics of the human body. After tempering the body, the human body would definitely grow stronger. Even a frail person could become a strong tiger with this.

A tiger’s body was already vigorous because the tiger had already naturally discovered the Tiger’s Thunder and shaped its body.

However the amount of accuracy needed for the Tiger’s Thunder was astounding. It was a very delicate process that could allow for no errors at all. If there were any, then instead of the body growing stronger, it would instead take on damage.

From the ancient times, the Tiger’s Thunder had been an esoteric secret.

Legend had it that Shaolin martial arts’ Classics of Marrow Cleansing had been its highest and most secret record. That had held the same reasoning within it.

Wang Chao had first felt the Jin come from sis Chen who had sent it all over his body. It was only in this half year that he had learned the method of replicating and truly begin to cultivate. It was only because of the journey had taken where the thunder was heard that he had truly understood this.

“Ah, so there’s something like that?” Sun Lei spoke afterwards with a curious look, but he did not open his mouth to ask for Wang Chao to teach him. He and the others had read many Wuxia novels before and knew that martial arts was not something that could be easily imparted.

Wang Chao had no wish to teach them either since the time they would have with each other was short and he was not at all familiar with them.

Focusing his efforts on practicing for ten days, Wang Chao finally felt his body beginning to show signs of noticeable improvements. Finally, one of the lawyers from Zhao Jun had finally arrived with the contract for the Tianxing Networking.

“Take off the conditions where my arms would be put up as collateral, I have a hundred million here for the wager.”Wang Chao spoke to the lawyer and put out his own condition.

Dialing in a number to ask for Zhao Jun’s guidance, the lawyer finally nodded after a while. “Since you have a hundred million on hand, I shall amend the contract.”

Looking at the new contract, Wang Chao had looked it over once more before finally agreeing to sign it.

“Next month on the fifth, I hope that Chief Wang will be able to appear at Chaozhou, Guangdong for the designated event at the designated time.” The lawyer concluded before leaving.

“Boulder, did you prepare everything yet? We’ll be leaving to Guangdong to find that man tomorrow. Starting with him, we’ll get to know about the underworld.”

After finishing up his business, Wang Chao had let Boulder and the rest know of the plans.

At that moment, Boulder and the others were back at the military district. When Wang Chao saw them, they were currently inspecting and cleaning their weapons.

“Fucking hell, this time we really are going to fight with the underworld. I don’t believe that the army would lose to a scraggly and unorganized unit like theirs! Hammer, take a few more grenades! Right, we also need more rocket launchers! Tonight, we’ll sneak on over in the military vehicles.”

When Wang Chao saw these fierce soldiers, even he was slightly shocked.

“This is a secret mission, so you must pretend to be a part of a different organization. I’ll go by myself by train. We’ll come into contact again once I reach Guangdong.

Wang Chao had already planned it out.

With the 24 other men, Hammer and Wang Chao began to talk a little more before finally splitting ways.

By nighttime, Wang Chao was already seated on a train heading straight for Guangdong.