Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
At the noon, Lou Cheng turned on his computer, logged on to his email, and downloaded the data on “Fearless Squad” sent by his master.
Earlier, he had just participated in the lunch meeting with every martial arts special training member. It was to celebrate their victory against Hongluo Martial Arts School, and a personal ‘apology’ by himself for kidnapping their ‘team’s treasure.’ Since the majority of these people had an astounding appetite, they forcibly ate a total of six hundred or so Chinese yuan even though the cafeteria cooked in small portions. This was without counting the wine he bought to show filial respect to Geezer Shi too.
After the meal was done, Sun Jian, Li Mao and the others found him and said that the treat was just a joke. The primary objective of the lunch meeting was to have everyone to share the cost and meal together. They wanted to return some money to him since they were all students without a steady income and relied on their family’s allowance to survive. It.’wasn’t a good idea to rack up half a month’s food expenses in one meal.
Since Lou Cheng had the reward money from the Little Warrior Sage Challenge Tournament and the money from his red envelope, not to mention that his mum had increased his allowance to two thousand on purpose, he appreciated their good will inside his heart and replied that he must do what he had already promised.
Li Mao and Sun Jian had sought out their junior schoolmate’s data before while they were free, and they knew that Lou Cheng had earned quite a lot of Challenge Tournament income during his winter break. Therefore, they did not force the issue after seeing his insistence in the matter.
After this meal, Lou Cheng could be considered to have completely familiarized himself with the high-grade senior brothers and senior sisters. Under their rowdy influence, Yan Zheke’s skin slowly grew thicker as she no longer felt embarrassed at the slightest teasing. She was able to warm up to the others and throw a tease of her own right back at them.
This allowed Lou Cheng to get intimate with her from time to time, no longer needing to worry about her fear of other’s attentions.
—When the party involved no longer felt anything in regards to a certain matter, the spectators would also lose their interests to tease further.
Lou Cheng wore a mysterious smile on his face as he recalled Yan Zheke’s little tsundere act just now. When the data had been downloaded completely, he opened Wei Shengtian’s introduction first.
“Wei Shengtian, 25 years old, broke through to Danqi State and was graded as an expert of Professional Eighth Pin a year ago. He mainly cultivates the ‘Bright Stone Style’ and is well versed in ‘Giant Spirit Pounding.’”
“Bright Stone Style is a physical body type hard martial art. Its cultivation begins once the fighter has entered meditation, and it’s cultivated through continuous Spirit visualization, external beating and consumption of medicinal soup and ointment. It’s incomparable to other top-grade physical body martial arts such as Golden Bell Cover, Immortal Flesh, Forging Jade Spell, etc. and supernatural abilities that transform a part of the body into metal. However, it’s not to be underestimated and is much stronger than Iron Cloth that doesn’t require visualization. It makes the fighter’s body as hard as a stone to effectively decrease the damage from sharp weapons, stick beatings and so on...”
When he read up to this point, Lou Cheng nodded with a pensive look on his face. So it would seem that ‘Bright Stone Style’ was comparable to the police academy’s master technique, ‘Mental-like Refined Body.’
After swiftly browsing through the introduction, he clicked open one of Wei Shengtian’s most recent demonstration video. He saw that every punch thrown by this Dan stage expert was brutal, and he had forcibly shattered a piece of limestone into pieces with his bare hand. Moreover, when his eyes were closed and he was met with an ambush, he quite literally reacted the second the enemy attempted to attack and accurately counterattacked the blow.
“The force all over his body is as if unified as one like a human body big dan that reacts absolutely...” Lou Cheng quietly repeated this phrase and gained a better understanding of its meaning.
When a fighter had delved deep into the cultivation of ‘Danqi State’, not only would their martial arts be trained into their very bones and five viscera and six bowels, it would literally reach every minuscule spot of the human body and enable a fighter’s control over his skin and pores to enter a new level of precision. Their body would truly become a whole entity, and their senses would become so acute that it was inhuman. Fighters at this level would be able to perform all kinds of seemingly miraculous feats such as ‘not allowing a feather of strength to become applied to one’s body or flicking a fly’s weight of strength from one’s body’.
Wei Shengtian had just entered Dan stage, and it was obvious that he had not reached that level of skill yet. However, even without the big picture, Lou Cheng could see that he had attained a trace of that level of skill already.
At his level, his strength had become extremely scary due to the outer to the inner evolution of his physical body. Moreover, he would truly be able to go ‘all out’ to output 100% of his strength with every punch and kick he threw unlike Lou Cheng and Lin Que. Although it was said that one must use his back as the axis to control his body and exert every force from within, there was absolutely no way his outputted strength could go up to 99%. Among body refining state fighters, those who could output 60% or 70% of their strength could be considered outstanding already. Even then, Lou Cheng could only do it because he had achieved great attainment in meditation and his skills were practiced, whereas Lin Que was close to Dan stage to begin with. It would be tough for anyone else to do what they could.
“Wei Shengtian himself is a strength type fighter and not like the more technique and agile-based Jiang Lan I met on the Warrior Sage Challenge Tournament. The sheer amount of strength that might be contained in one punch is just terrifying when you thinking about it...” Lou Cheng grimaced a little when he began checking out combat videos instead.
The only advantage they had was that his body was far from reaching the profound state where the invulnerable Qi was formed, and his body was transformed at the micro level. He was still ‘human.’ If he were to attack using the entire force of his body every time, he would not be able to bear the load for long. He would definitely run into problems if he sent out three or four blows like this and become ‘overloaded.’ Therefore, Wei Shengtian would not fight this way unless it was at a critical moment. He would normally mix the occasional eruptive blows amidst normal attacks.
Meanwhile, his normal attacks almost had the same power as Jiang Guosheng’s seventh or eighth eruption. It was the kind of attack that Lou Cheng could defend only if he threw his entire strength behind it.
“Master lied to me... there isn’t much hope that Lin Que and I can take him down in an attrition warfare... this isn’t a small goal at all!” Lou Cheng shook his head in ‘grief’ and ‘indignation’. Then, he looked through the two of Professional Ninth Pin, Dong Yi and Qiu Yang’s data.
The former was passed down his family’s martial arts, ‘Rolling Thunder Palm’. The latter had the title ‘Mad Dog’. His own master had even added a personal comment saying that his fighting style was somewhat similar to the Unique Skills of Death Sect.
After roughly browsing through the data, Lou Cheng sent a ‘frightened to tears’ emoji to Yan Zheke and said,
“Have you seen the data? Dan stage is so terrifying. This adorable newbie is shaking like a leaf!”
Yan Zheke replied with a ‘floor pounding laugh’ emoji, “Come on, cry for your coach!”
“Will there be a reward if I cry?” Lou Cheng asked shamelessly.
“Sure there is. The reward is one slap to the face~” Yan Zheke cracked a joke before propping both hands beneath her chin and wore a pondering look on her face. “Let me tell you a piece of good news and a piece of bad news.”
“What’s the good news?” Lou Cheng asked in doubt.
Yan Zheke laughed sneakily. “It’s rumored that Qiu Yang of Fearless Squad had suffered a bit of injury during the last preliminaries.”
“He’s hurt? Why isn’t this mentioned in Coach Shi’s data?” Lou Cheng shot back a question in astonishment.
Yan Zheke replied with a ‘spread hands and shaking head’ emoji and said, “Maybe it’s because Coach Shi found them unworthy of his attention and could not be bothered to gather the data actively. I’ve only noticed this after looking through their last match. Quickly, tell your Coach Yan that she’s awesome!”
“Coach Yan is so awesome!” Lou Cheng immediately replied before asking pensively, “What’s the bad news?”
They only have one fighter of Professional Ninth Pin left?
“His injuries may not be severe, so it’s hard to say if he’ll meet us on the field.” Yan Zheke replied with ‘tears through her laughter,’ “There’s no need to worry about this anyway. If you guys can win a match or two between the fighters of Professional Ninth Pin, and then this trip could be considered a success already. After all, they do have a Dan stage expert.”
Lou Cheng replied with an ‘I’m so squared (scared)’ emoji, “But Coach Shi gave me a small goal.”
“What small goal?” Lou Cheng asked with ‘bright eyes.’
“He said that if your cousin and I could meet Wei Shengtian in our best condition, and then we should take him down in a battle of attrition...” Lou Cheng ‘gripped his fist and let his tears flow.’
“What a small goal that is...” Yan Zheke was dumbstruck by the news, and it was only at the end of her reaction that she replied with a crooked grin and said, “It’s not a big hope, but it isn’t completely unattainable either. Cheng, I have high expectations for you~”
“I’ll work hard!” Lou Cheng replied with a ‘determined to do better’ emoji, “No one will be surprised if I lost anyway, but he’ll lose face if he loses the match. I’m not scared of anything!”
For the next few days, he worked especially hard in his training, but neither Ice Mirror nor Thunder Roar Zen were martial arts that he could get results overnight nor master just because he entered ‘SEED’ mode. He could only say that he still needed some time to get the former martial art, but he understood the latter martial art more and more.
As for his association with his Yan Zheke, they did not have much time to stay together alone because they were both busy with martial arts training and study courses. However, they had a lot of opportunities to meet each other’s eyes, chat over the phone, dine together during lunch and dinner, hold each other’s hands and take the occasional walk. He was already delighted and happy with this outcome.
The days passed by, and in the blink of an eye, it was Friday afternoon. Lou Cheng sat inside the lecture hall and waited for the politic related basic course to start.
A basic course like this did not involve specialized content, and the stuff during the end of the term was usually open-book. This course was pretty simple too, so the majority of people were able to pass it easily. Since this course did not affect the transcript used to seek jobs in the future, there were absentees everywhere.
Lou Cheng was going to come to class with Cai Zongming, but the latter had worn himself out for a week and felt like taking a moment of relaxation for himself. After letting out the shout that ‘a university life without truancy is not a complete university life’, he chose to stay in his bedroom.
To be frank, if the course Yan Zheke was attending right now wasn’t a specialized course in a small classroom with only thirty or forty or so students inside and thus, not easy for him to infiltrate, he would have skipped class to accompany his girlfriend already. If he could not accompany his girlfriend, and then what’s the difference between working in the bedroom and working in class? It was easier to focus during the latter!
Just as his thoughts reached up to this point, he abruptly saw Zhao Qiang carrying a single strap bag and coming into the lecture hall. Therefore, he raised a hand and greeted him, inviting him to come over and take a seat.
“Qiang, why have you come over to this class?” Lou Cheng asked in surprise.
Courses like these were called ‘individual study courses’ for study maniacs like him. They would go to the library when they needed to!
Zhao Qiang put down his bag and chuckled. “Isn’t it the same no matter where I self-study? I won’t need to worry about attendance if I self-study here at least!”
“That’s true.” Lou Cheng laid out his homework and decided to work hard and save time.
It would be a problem if a large scale basic course that was supposed to fit in at least two hundred or so people did not even have one hundred people attending.
“I have a feeling that there may be a roll call today.” Zhao Qiang looked around with a great awareness for hardships.
Lou Cheng followed suit and looked around before nodding. “The professor should be mad seeing that there’re so little people today...”
“What can you do? Everyone’s thinking that since there’re so many people in the class, it doesn’t matter if they don’t show up, not to mention that they can ask other students to answer the roll call for them. That’s why they all skip class, not to mention today is a Friday no less...” Zhao Qiang was used to this by now, and he took out his cell phone planning to summon his roommates over for self-study.
Lou Cheng also unlocked his cell phone and got ready to call student Little Ming.
It was at this moment Professor Yu, the professor responsible for this course walked in and cast a deep glance at the empty seats.
The second the class bell rang, he immediately turned around and closed the front door. He also ordered the students to lock the back door.
Then, the professor took out a stack of test papers under many blank gazes and announced,
“There’ll be a random test today, an open-book exam. It’ll take up to 20% of the end of term total points. The questions are very simple. If you did it, you’d all get these 20 marks.”
His unspoken implication was that those who did not do this question would lose twenty points straight away at the end of term!
“Holy sh*t, I didn’t expect this...” Lou Cheng and Zhao Qiang looked at each other and felt a sense of rejoicement at their own good luck. Then, they offered a minute of silence to Talker and the others.
Once the message was sent out, and the responsibility of notification was achieved, the test papers were distributed to the students. As he said, the questions were very simple.
“Professor Yu must have planned this for a long time!” Lou Cheng sighed.
Zhao Qiang nodded repeatedly. “And he didn’t show any signs that he would do this at all! no wonder I heard from a senior brother that he was one of the famous ‘polices’ in the university... and to think that we actually didn’t believe him!”
While talking, he thought longingly back to the past and said, “Professor Zhang who taught calculus the last term is still the best. He never does a roll call, and he’s an extremely upright character too.”
“Why do you say that?” Lou Cheng asked curiously.
“Do you remember that Tang Wen failed calculus? He thought that since it was almost time for the makeup exam, he ran to the old school district last weekend and gave Professor Zhang a call. He was going to give Professor Zhang some presents and facilitate things so that the professor would leak some questions to him.” Zhao Qiang gossiped.
“Professor Zhang didn’t accept?” Lou Cheng came to a realization.
Zhao Qiang chuckled. “Not only did he not accept, he even told Tang Wen to wait for him at the old school building and lectured him an entire afternoon on the essential points of calculus. His head was spinning, and he felt like crying at the end of it.”
“Professor Zhang is a pretty good person.” Lou Cheng sighed.
It isn’t easy to meet a lecturer like this!
While speaking, he shared the ‘test as roll call’ incident with Yan Zheke.
Yan Zheke quickly replied, “Our professor is even crazier than yours. He took five roll calls during two small segments of a single class! He’s not as ruthless as your lecturer though, taking off twenty marks in one go...”
After chatting for a few lines, he put down his cell phone and began answering the questions. Since he hadn’t really listened to this course well, the speed at which he sought out the answers was very slow. However, Zhao Qiang was sweeping through the test paper like lightning.
Lou Cheng was surprised and he broke out into a question. “Qiang, you read through the book seriously before?”
The book of this course?
Zhao Qiang nodded seriously. “I’m a true fan...”
...
It was 1 p.m. Saturday in the afternoon. Songcheng University Martial Arts Club’s group had arrived at Yimo City bullet train station.
Along the way, Geezer Shi told them to sneak in an afternoon nap during this time and recover their spirits so that they wouldn’t be distracted during the afternoon later.
While carrying Yan Zheke’s luggage for her, the duo walked shoulder-to-shoulder out of the train station and looked at the slightly gray dark sky. They could smell the near indiscernible smell of coal smoke and fog.
Yimo was an old industrial city, and it was known for its combination of coal and steel industries. Its pollution rating was on the high side.
Minerals were rich here, and the folkways valiant.