Trouble Came Knocking
The spacious Training Ground was already riddled with bullet marks.
Spent casings lay scattered across the floor covered in elastic padding, enough to make anyone slip if they stepped on them carelessly.
After confirming that Ji Jue was ready, Lao Zhang stood twenty meters away. The wizened old man still looked utterly harmless, except for the Short Sticks tucked at the small of his back as a weapon.
Good thing this was only a simulated training session. Otherwise, with the old man going full power in the literal sense, he could have torn Ji Jue into jerky with his bare hands in under ten seconds—complete with drying, vacuum sterilization, and packaging!
"Ready?"
Lao Zhang stood with his hands behind his back and his waist bent, asking lazily like any ordinary old bastard one might see wandering about. The moment Ji Jue nodded, he began walking toward him.
The two walked toward each other.
One step, two steps. Ji Jue's breathing gradually became rapid. No matter how often he told himself that this was just simulated training, that the opponent approaching him was merely some common old man out for a stroll, he still could not deceive himself... not after an entire afternoon of frustration and trauma at the other man's hands.
"Keep your breathing steady, relax your shoulders, loosen up. Only when the body is relaxed can a person make the fastest instant rea—"
As he slowly moved forward, Lao Zhang continued muttering about the techniques and key points of training.
Next, when the two came within three steps of one another, he would attack Ji Jue—that was how their previous training had always gone. But this time, before he had even finished speaking, in an instant when not even his tone or breath had changed, the