Romance of Dragons and Snakes

Chapter 149: Iron Fist Hwarang (First)

Neither of Wang Chao’s legs had moved. One was in front while the other remained behind and slowly circulated Jin.

When the fist came out, the elbow followed the hand, the shoulder followed the elbow, and the body followed the shoulder. But there was no movement in this movement.

The steam lingered in the air around his face as his pores continued to expel out even more. His entire body was steaming with this mist and was like a giant kettle that was boiling water. But there was no sweat to be seen on his skin.

Towards the end, his posture grew slower and slower before finally coming to a complete stop in the standing position of the Assault of Dragon and Snake style.

In a split second, Wang Chao had felt that the coarse and soft Jin he had in his body had been united. The muscles and his veins had a strange sensation to them, that each breath he made, his pores would open and close in unison.

Closing his eyes, Wang Chao began to feel what was going on with his body using his spirit. He could clearly hear the sound of his blood flowing through his veins like the running of spring water.

At the same time, his heart, lungs, kidney, intestines, and other internal organs could all be clearly heard and seen within his mind.

Drumming up his lower abdomen, his intestines immediately squirmed and let loose the deep sound of a bullfrog.

Directing his own intestines had unexpectedly been as easy as directing his own arm.

Wang Chao could also feel that his own heart was storing his spirit and Qi. And in a split second, his heart had begun to slow down similar to how a sports car going 120 kilometers per hour slowed down to roughly 30 kilometers per hour.

His control over each and every internal organ had been incredibly flexible.

“When Jin reaches transformation, then every part of the body, whether internal or external, can be controlled at will.” Wang Chao in this moment knew that he had finally broken through that paper thin margin and stepped onto the highest layer of martial arts that any practitioner would study.

This was also the highest state to the path of cultivation.

If there were no other accidents, then if he continued his days without impulse eating, no drugs, no overly lecherous desires, and had a quiet life, then living to be a hundred years old would be no problem, barring any disease or disaster.

In the ancient past, many Buddhist monks and Daoist priests would spend the day swallowing the sun’s energy and strengthening their internal organs for the sake of longevity or extending their lifespan. In the end they would practice several martial art disciplines to strengthen their muscles and bones in order to attain this stage. But the amount of people that could do so were far and few.

Ever since the start of his life as a martial artists five years ago, Wang Chao practiced day in and night out relentlessly. His muscles and pores could move as he willed, he had shocked his bone marrow, coupled his internal and external parts together, and hugged the mercury-filled ball to him while he was underwater for many months. With this exhale and inhale method, he had finally broken through the many impediments and linked together his internal organs with his Qi to finally understand the mystery of the Inner Sight. He no knew the secrets to his body, and drew close to the borderline of Transforming Jin.

When Wang Chao had learned the “Flying Horse Treading on Sparrow” back in SIngapore, Wang Chao had managed to bring the Clear and Hidden Jin all over his body sans the genitals and his face.

After his return and a series of diligent practicing underwater, he had managed to have his body cleansed with the underwater currents, but he had not been able to make that last step to ascending to the Transforming Jin. Because he had not yet matured enough, he was stuck at that bottleneck.

It was like looking at the blurry mountain range from behind the paper screens to the window. One could see it, but not clearly, and not vividly.

When it came to his battle with Yong Bao, Yong He, and the two special agents, Wang Chao had exhausted all of his strength to capture and kill them. In truth, he had meditated afterwards and managed to make a slight breakthrough, but he was not yet able to pierce through that paper screen.

After that, Wang Chao had fought with Duan Guochao. Although he had killed his opponent, Wang Chao had nothing but the deepest of admiration for Duan Guochao’s skill and the martial arts of Shaolin. With its hundreds of years of accumulated experience and secrets, it was truly original in its strength and allowed for Wang Chao to gain yet another deeper layer of understanding.

Wang Chao had a very nice habit that whenever he went through a battle, he would think back to his opponent’s experiences, skill, and fighting techniques before carefully committing it to memory. Afterwards, he would extrapolate the training methods from the fighting methods and compare them endlessly to his own methods. In the end, the experiences he gained were all firmly memorized.

It was for this reason that Wang Chao was able to grow with each life or death battle.

The Eagle Claw of the Iron Body, Eight Arts of the Snake and Crane, Hidden Arhat Boxing, the dragon, tiger, leopard, crane and snake stances of Imitation Boxing, Tantui, and Iron Bridge. Each had their own original mystery, and while Wang Chao would manage to deduce a superficial training method from their origins, he would manage to verify more and more before mastering a subject through a comprehension of its surrounding areas.

Today’s battle in particular had many men and experts with their own schools and secrets. The quintessence of their martial arts was deep, and Wang Chao’s martial art had already reached an unbelievable height as well. His body was robust, and within ten minutes, he had already seen through the essence of their martial arts to some degree.

Song Anran’s “Dual Form of Bear and Eagle” was an especially exquisite unison move of Xingyiquan. It inherited the essence of the words of Zhuangzi, “Bear by the Bird by extension” and had a relatively huge influence on Wang Chao.

In the past, Wang Chao had knew of some of the movements to the “Dual Form of Bear and Eagle”. He was after all a master of Xingyiquan as well. He only needed to know the name of the stance to get the general meaning.

But as a combination technique, there was an original and unique secret within the fighting and practicing methods of it. It was impossible for any single person to find the genuine steps of it through practice.

But when Wang Chao personally saw the master Song Anran demonstrate it, he had finally felt the creativity behind the “Bear by the Bird by extension.”

Verily as like Mi Fu who practiced writing characters for three years, he never achieved the true essence of it. But when one day, he saw Wang Xizhi’s words, he immediately advanced by leaps and bounds to become a great expert of calligraphy.

When in the higher echelons of martial arts, the important thing wasn’t the movements, but rather the mysterious intent that was embodied in the movements.

Practicing for even a thousand times without the right intent meant there would be no growth.

From the “Assault of Dragon and Snake”, “Flying Horse Treading on Sparrow”, and “Dual Form of Bear and Eagle”, the first two killing moves of Xingyiquan were derived from the ancient techniques of war where they had been improved on to the utmost limits.

But only the “Dual Form of Bear and Eagle” was a way of cultivating and maintaining good health.

Wang Chao’s studies had been wrought with life or death battles, so his creativity had been focused on fighting. Because he was late on attaining the Transforming Jin, all he needed was a minute understanding. So when today he had suddenly understood the true meaning of cultivation, success had came naturally to him.

“Bear by the bird by extension” wasn’t a set of movements, but rather a frame of mind.

Wang Chao hadn’t taken a single glance of the “Dual Form of Bear and Eagle” before he came to understand it. He had understood the creativity behind it, where the bear was heavy and the eagle was nimble before being blended together into martial arts.

To obtain the form did not mean to obtain the meaning.

The people of the past observed animals in order to create Chinese boxing. They didn’t blindly imitate any random animal’s movements, but rather, they imitated the meaning behind the movements like the graceful moment before a monkey’s leap, or the ferocious and powerful pounce of a tiger towards its prey, or the steady traveling of a bear.

“I’ve finally made it over the final pivotal step and arrived at the highest level of Chinese boxing.”

After understanding everything, Wang Chao let out a long sigh in his mind.

Wang Chao was in his twenties. If three or five years passed and he wasn’t able to reach the Transforming Jin stage, then his future path would have gotten harder and harder. The older a person was, the more prone their organs were to exhaustion. It was not at all like how the stories of Wuxia portrayed them as getting stronger and stronger.

Even the sun and moon had a process of brightest to darkest, man was no exclusion.

The older a person was, the harder it was to advance in martial arts.

As with age, it was harder to preserve one’s skill in martial arts, let alone improving. Keeping that peak state of achievement was already incredibly hard to do.

The golden age for a person to learn martial arts was between the ages 15 to 25. Practically every expert had already an achievement in that period before later getting on track to becoming someone famous.

Right now, Wang Chao felt that the skin of his face and lower body were unbelievably sensitive like the rest of his body. The hearing ability of his ears had managed to increase by a huge margin as well.

This type of upgrade was like a near-sighted person wearing glasses for the first time, or the elderly putting on a set of hearing aids.

“In the past, I found it hard to deal with two or three special agents with guns. But right now, I may be able to withstand double that amount without a problem. Yet, there is still no chance of victory against a man like Cheng Shanming.”

Wang Chao’s first line of thought had been on how to defend himself against gunfire. He had reached a realm of transformation with his martial arts and could avoid the majority of damage from any expert with his young and robust physique. His only threat now were guns.

Today he had fought with many experts and military instructors that were the leaders of their schools, but they were beneath Duan Guochao in skill. Chen Tianlei for example, had a profound level of martial arts, but in a fight, he would most certainly lose to Duan Guochao.

So Wang Chao’s consecutive victory over them had not been an overly difficult task. If they were to swarm him all at once however, whether it was eight against one, three against one, or four against one, then Wang Chao would stand no chance.

A round robin battle was a round robin battle.

A group brawl was a group brawl.

If guns were involved, then it wouldn’t end well. All it would take was two guns to dispose of him. In the hands of a martial artist, guns were far too terrifying.

Duan Guochao didn’t use a gun on that day. If he had, then perhaps the one that died would have been Wang Chao. But in the Hong Kong military, Duan Guochao had been screwed either way if he did use a gun.

Slowly exhaling, Wang Chao began to sense his internal organs, blood vessels, veins, muscles, ligaments, joints, bones, skin and pres. Each part of his body, be it internal or external, Wang Chao could see it clearly with ease.

To be able to see through one’s body with ease was the true meaning of both cultivation and fighting.

If one honed his own body and was not familiar with it, no matter how strong the person was, would they be able to fight anyone?

Ring! Ring! Ring! Ring!

Suddenly, the ringtone of his phone could be heard from his bed.

Pausing in his movements, Wang Chao picked up the phone with an overjoyed heart.

A mans voice could be heard from the other end, “Kid, you’ve really kicked up a tornado this time. I’ve heard that two days ago you fought several military instructors from Beijing to the point where they couldn’t even breathe. And did you really break Ma Huajun’s arm? Also, did Yin Manchuan really get knocked out by you? One against eight, what a display. I know I underestimated you before, but I didn’t think that you would exceed my estimations by so much.”

“Ah, so it’s chief Cao. You heard what happened to me already, how fast is that!” Wang Chao had known right away that it was Cao Yi, but then there had been something strange in his words. “Two days ago? My fight with them was only earlier this morning though?”

It was then that Wang Chao realized something and rapidly looked down at the date on his phone. Sure enough, two days had past.

“Did I really stay in this position for two days?” Wang Chao’s eyebrows knitted together for a moment before he came to an understanding. Throwing open the window shutters, Wang Chao could see the ray of sunlight coming through. It seemed that when he was taking up a stance to clearly familiarize himself with his internal organs and blood vessels, he had indeed spent two nights and a day to do so.

From the night before yesterday to this afternoon. That was 40 hours–just how quickly time had gone by.

“Let me tell you, you are mighty beyond mighty, but this time you’ve made enemies with many people. You’ll need to watch your back from now on. Don’t make any mistakes. Ai, you’ve really riled up too many people. It’ll be hard to avoid being tripped in the future.”

Cao Yi’s voice continued to speak.

Wang Chao had already known that he had antagonized many military instructors. Although they were not all filled with absolute power and authority like being a high-ranking officer, they still had a wide web of personal connections.

“I had no other choice. It was them that came to me for trouble. When things come to a head, it is hard to avoid it.” Wang Chao laughed bitterly.

“That much is true. I called you today mainly to talk about your personal and public matters. Let’s talk about the public affairs first.”

Cao Yi’s tone grew serious with just a small bit of a joy to be heard, “The Hong Kong military were able to successfully interrogate that female American spy you captured and found a windfall of important information! With this information in our hands, we were able to shatter several information networks and capture even more spies.”

“You’ve pried open the mouth of Lisa?” Wang Chao nodded his head. She had lost all of her confidence in front of Wang Chao, so having all the information inside her head spilled out was only a matter of time.

“Correct, the spy that you captured. And that other one you killed, both have brought you great merits that have been rare to see even since the establishment of our nation.” Cao Yi spoke excitedly.

“The higher ups have noted your stellar work. You will stay there in Beijing for now, do not leave. Take the records you got and drop them off at the Central Party School. From there, study by yourself for two months. Ah, the higher ups have decided to confer onto you the title of Major General. That is to say, from today onwards, you are a major general, a rank higher than mine own. The title will officially go through during your study period.”

“Oh, is that right?” Wang Chao wasn’t shocked. “That was the public matter, what about the personal one?”

“Ah, that is Jingjing. She’s currently a third year on the verge of graduating at Beijing University. She’s learning some Taekwondo right now, maybe she’ll be able to attend the Olympics and get a gold medal. When you’re dropping off your records, go give her some pointers. You’re friends from high school after all.” Cao Yi said.

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