Chapter 4 – The First Fight

Chapter 4 – The First Fight

Back in his courtyard, Ye Chen was sitting silently. Seemingly lost, he pondered on Xu Jing’s fist art as he began to try the King Kong Fist.

He threw punches slowly and quickly, before stopping as he realized something was not quite right.

If I am correct, Xu Jing was training the ‘Monster Executing Fist’, a top mortal class martial art of unlimited power. And although the King Kong Fist is not as good as the Monster Executing Fist, it should be based on the same principle. However Xu Jing’s fist seems so much more powerful and frightening compared to my fist, what did I do wrong?

Standing silently in the middle of the yard, with his eyebrows twisted together, Ye Chen couldn’t stop thinking about Xu Jing practicing her fist skills, again and again.

Right! Xu Jing’s grunting was heard more than five hundred meters away, such a noise must come from her strengthened body. While I have strong comprehension, my physical body still is too weak to master that powerful fist skill.

After realizing the key to the problem, Ye Chen sighed. He was not afraid of not being able to master it, he was afraid of not knowing why he could not master it.

The first thing he needed to do was to practice his horse stance, a strong punch can only be performed when you have a firm base, otherwise you might lose your life when you go head on with the enemy.

The horse stance required that you place your feet a little wider than your shoulder and take a half squat. Because the posture looked like riding a horse and was stable as a stilt in the ground, it was called the horse stance. A strong horse stance could strengthen your kidneys, your back, and your muscles which in turn would improve your Qi. A stable lower body provided an unwavering balance, plus improved reflexes as well. A firm horse stance was one of the basics that everyone must learn before learning martial arts. It was like the saying: “You would never reach your destination without learning how to walk first”. To copy the moves from the manual without actually training your whole body to endure the gravity and pressure would just end up being a bunch of fancy moves with no real power behind it.

With both his legs spread wide and bent at a ninety degree angle, Ye Chen looked straight ahead as he breathed in and breathed out while throwing punches at a controlled rapid pace.

Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! ...

His punches were like bullets, fiercely stirring up the air around them. After about fifteen minutes of punching, he focused on his tensed lower abdomen for another fifteen minutes.

Then, in the evening, he repeated it all over again, but this time his speed was slowly increasing as he tried to have a break his previous pace each time he threw a punch.

After another two weeks had passed, Ye Chen was longer seen practicing throwing punches, instead he started to practice the low horse stance. He would stand there still in his low horse stance position quietly for half an hour at a time.

Soon, he realized it was way too easy, so he tightened his hands into fists facing forward, then with straight elbows and he placed them as parallel as he could to the ground as much as he could while doing the horse stance, with his back relaxed and his chest forward he began to lower his upper body as far as he could without falling over. After every hour, he would tense his lower abdomen and swing his upper body the other direction for another fifteen minutes.

After a whole month of training, Ye Chen’s body had changed noticeably, he could almost lift half a ton and run so fast that it looked like he was flying. Also, his Qi could be seen emanating around the back of his body, full of energy. And the most noticeable change was the increase of his appetite, during each meal he could eat three huge bowls of rice plus a whole barbequed chicken and still he sleep like a baby. By the end of the month, his Qi could even float around his whole body freely without any restrains, it was almost like he had endless energy to spend.

But the most important thing of all was that Ye Chen finally managed to reach the state of heart and palm unity so he could keep himself at his peak the whole time during his fight with others. The heart and palm unity was a state was simply the state where a martial artist was able to accurately move his arms and legs in a fluid manner effortlessly and without much thought.

Today, after practicing his horse stance, Ye Chen frowned and said, “My body strength did improve, but the strength is still not enough, Sister Xu Jing’s power is at least a few times stronger than mine, especially when practicing the Fist of Monster Killer! She’s so powerful, so strong, almost invincible …”

Looking around the yard, his eyes suddenly lit up when he saw the huge hundred-pound rock in the corner.

Without a doubt, lifting could increase one’s upper body strength, but could easily injure one’s muscles and tendons, therefore was not very wise to do so. However, running while carrying such a weight was a completely different case, with the constant changing of the center of gravity and the shifting pressure, one could train every bone and muscle of one’s body and endurance.

Without hesitation, Ye Chen ran to the corner, using both of his arms, he lifted the huge rock then turned around and started running out of the yard.

The windy mountain had ten hills and encompassed an area of ten miles. Besides the tops of the mountains which were covered by different buildings, the rest were rarely visited by anyone. But at the bottom of the mountain, there were many apprentices from the Sky Cloud School guarding the entrance, not allowing anyone from the outside to enter.

On the path of the mountain, there was a human figure lifting a rock above his head and running so fast it looked almost as if he was flying. And if you paid attention, you would notice that there were no Qi fluctuations which signified he did not even use his Qi at all, it was completely due to his true body strength.

“Look, isn’t that Ye Chen?”

“Yah! What’s the heck is he doing instead of practicing?”

The Sky Cloud School had three thousand prospective apprentices, and five hundred outer disciples, most of whom did not like to just stay in their own yard, they liked to come out here in the middle of nowhere and practice their own martial arts just like Ye Chen, and sometimes some of them would come out here with training buddies and maybe have friendly matches with each other.

Ye Chen kept focusing on the road, he didn’t care about their discussions.

But sometimes you couldn’t avoid trouble even if you wanted to.

Out of nowhere, another figure suddenly jumped out and landed in front of Ye Chen, cutting his way. It was a fourteen-year-old bulky-looking teenage boy.

Ye Chen stopped, “Wang Gang, what can I do for you?”

The bulky teenager was called Wang Gang, just like Ye Chen, he was also a outer apprentice. However, his skills were considerably higher than Ye Chen, and had already reached Early Qi Realm Level 7. He was known for his mastery of different martial arts and his extremely strong body strength. The two of them had a conflict before, in which Ye Chen was beaten up by him and had laid in bed for half a month.

Wang Gang laughed at him, “You can’t just practice like a mad person to be gain strength, it will never work. Just like last time, I could beat you into a dead dog using only a third of my strength.”

Ye Chen sneered. I wasn’t planning this, but since he came directly in front of me, obviously I will not just let him go like this. Half a year ago, I said one thing accidentally, and the next second I was being punched, and had ended up with two broken ribs. Luckily my family is rich and had many different medicines for wounds so that I could heal in less than a month.

“Is that right? So how do you think I should practice then?” Ye Chen dropped the huge rock.

“Cut the crap, let me teach you how!” Wang Gang suddenly leaned forward and after few steps, he appeared right in front of Ye Chen. Wang Gang threw out a huge palm, which suddenly swelled two times larger than a normal palm, and chopped down like a iron plate, you could clearly hear the loud sound of it cutting through the air.

Looking at the opponent’s huge palm coming at him, Ye Chen stood still, he lifted his left hand like he was holding a ball and met it head on.

Suddenly, it sounded like a rock had just hit a piece of wood. Ye Chen was still standing there without having moved an inch, while Wang Gang’s lower body began to wobble, full of weaknesses.

“How could this even be possible? His Qi skill was clearly below me, how could he take my Breaking Stone Palm and be completely fine? I’ll be damned…”

Wang Gang immediately realized something was not right and ignoring all the weaknesses in his stance, he turned his right fist into a palm and chopped straight towards Ye Chen.

He didn’t expect that Ye Chen had already saw it coming and retaliated with a awfully strong fist right on the chest before he could even make his second attack.

“King Kong Fist, fifth movement: King Kong Smash!”

Snap! Wang Gang was punched into the air while vomiting blood, his body rolled a couple of times until it finally stopped moving. He looked like he had just lost all his power, he couldn’t even push himself up.

Everyone was shocked. They couldn’t handle the fact that Wang Gang, who had always been famous for his powerful strength had just lost to a head on collision with Ye Chen, and was wounded badly just like a dead dog…

Only Ye Chen knew what had actually happened. While Wang Gang’s strength and Qi skill were both higher than his, but because Wang Gang had never paid attention to his martial arts skills he had many gaping flaws and weakness in his stances. That Breaking Stone Palm was definitely powerful but Ye Chen had chosen not to contest head on with him. Ye Chen had actually used two moves! He began with a slight pushed Wang Gang’s palm first so it lost some power and before he drew his fist back and then using all his strength to push it which made his opponent’s lower body started to wobble. All of this happened so fast that it created this whole “head-on” illusion.