The path of martial arts was like rowing upstream: if you didn't advance, you fell back.
Zhao Rui wasn't some peerless genius, nor did he have a heaven-defying cultivation method that could keep his Internal Energy growing without end even if he stopped practicing.
So even during the holidays, he still had to keep meditating and cultivating.
The martial path had no end!
The night passed without incident.
Early the next morning, Zhao Rui got up as usual and hurried to the grove to practice his basic skills.
He gathered his breath, guided his energy, harmonized with the innate forces of nature, and nurtured the cycle of the heavens within him.
Zhao Rui exhaled a breath of true energy. It transformed into an invisible force and shot more than three meters.
Its power was feeble, but being able to project his inner energy outside his body was already an impressive feat.
He had Cloud Hand Plucks Stars to thank for that. It naturally carried an affinity for cloud energy, making it easier for him to circulate his inner energy.
Zhao Rui trained for a little over an hour before he saw plenty of young people arrive.
Like him, they were all Martial Arts Students. Some were only thirteen or fourteen and had just started middle school.
Martial arts weren't a secret. Some basic martial arts methods for cultivating energy had long since been made public.
After training for a little longer, Zhao Rui headed home. He washed up quickly, then rode his bike into the city.
As a second-tier city, Lin City had a bustling downtown, with high-rises everywhere and shops lining the streets.
Zhao Rui arrived in front of a building, glanced at the eye-catching sign by the entrance, and walked inside.
Before long, he reached the corridor on the tenth floor. Several conspicuous signs hung outside the entrance.
"Wende Martial Way: Your essential path to the peak."
"Wende Martial Way: A century of tradition, forging an extraordinary present."
Zhao Rui paused briefly, then stepped inside.
A young woman at the front desk, around seventeen or eighteen, stood up to greet him. "Sir, are you here to sign up?"
"I'm here to see your manager," Zhao Rui said.
"See our manager? Please wait a moment."
The young woman picked up her phone and made a call. Before long, a burly, thickset man came over.
"You wanted to see me?" The man looked Zhao Rui up and down and asked.
"Hello. I'm here to apply for a job as a sparring partner," Zhao Rui said directly.
"A sparring partner?" The man paused, his gaze growing more scrutinizing as he looked at Zhao Rui.
"I just graduated from high school, and I'm looking for a summer job to earn some money. I heard sparring partners make good wages," Zhao Rui said with a smile.
"Oh!" The man nodded at his explanation, then raised his chin slightly. "What's your rank, and what do you specialize in?"
"Level 4. Palm techniques."
"Palm techniques, huh?"
The man hesitated, pulled out his phone, and made another call.
Zhao Rui wasn't in a hurry. He waited quietly. After a while, the man came to his senses, nodded at him, and said, "You're eighteen, right? We have to sign an agreement for sparring work."
"I am. I know," Zhao Rui replied readily. Martial arts bouts were risky, and sparring was no different.
Sometimes, someone would lose control and beat a sparring partner to death or leave them crippled.
"All right, come with me. We've been short on palm-technique sparring partners lately," the man said, heading inside.
"Our shop has ten branches in total. This is the Huaiyin Road branch. We've currently got ten sparring partners, and usually get seven or eight jobs a day. The price depends on the number of people and the time. It's three hundred an hour! After that, we charge by the minute..."
As Zhao Rui listened to the man's explanation, his face twitched. This sounded just like a foot massage parlor.
He'd known about sparring as a line of work and had some idea what it involved, but he hadn't known how they charged.
"No problem!"
So what if he was a "technician"? Sparring partners were there to spar, too!
Eating, drinking, and dancing with clients were all part of the service industry. There was no reason sparring couldn't be, too!
No wonder talented martial artists didn't want to work as sparring partners. It was a job serving people—how could it be any good?
Once they entered the office, the burly man introduced himself as Liu Han.
He was the manager of this branch. Zhao Rui could contact him directly if anything came up.
After briefly explaining how the shop worked, the man began asking Zhao Rui about his background in detail.
After a round of discussion, the man skipped the trial and signed a martial arts sparring agreement with Zhao Rui.
The agreement mainly covered safety rules and precautions, such as buying insurance and providing professional coaches to supervise and protect them.
Once the agreement was signed, Liu Han called over Hou Longfei, the head of the coaching group, and introduced Zhao Rui to him.
Hou Longfei was used to seeing summer workers like Zhao Rui. After hearing the manager's account, he took Zhao Rui to the Training Ground.
The Training Ground was at the very back of the building. The space was quite large, with a vast practice area and several competition rings of different sizes.
Protective equipment surrounded the entire area.
In one corner were various pieces of training equipment and all kinds of blunted weapons.
"Perfect. We've got a few students coming to train today. You can take one job. He's pretty weak—only Level 3—so make sure you hold back," Hou Longfei said as he picked out a locker for Zhao Rui. After showing him around the grounds and changing rooms, he assigned him a job.
"Got it, Coach!" Zhao Rui nodded, then sat in the rest area beside the floor and watched the training.
More than fifty people were practicing martial arts there. Most were teenagers, following their coaches through each move.
Some of the others were around Zhao Rui's age or older, and most of them trained on their own.
A few other young men were sitting beside Zhao Rui, taking a break. Some were in their thirties, while others were in their early twenties.
They were all taciturn, as if Zhao Rui's arrival had nothing to do with them.
Zhao Rui couldn't be bothered to strike up a conversation either. He sat upright, quietly meditated, and adjusted his inner breath.
About half an hour later, Hou Longfei came over, called Zhao Rui up, and led him onto the Training Ground.
"This is Zhao Rui, our new sparring partner. He specializes in palm techniques. Shao Jie, he'll be your sparring partner today. Try a new partner and see how he handles himself."
"Handles himself..." Zhao Rui felt like slapping him. These were palm techniques, not hand techniques!
Forget it. For the money, for the advancement points, he'd endure it!
They put on their Martial Arts Uniforms and protective gear, then climbed into the ring. It looked much like a combat ring from Zhao Rui's previous life, but the level of protection was completely different.
Even the glass—not just the pillars around them—was reinforced explosion-proof glass. The entire martial arts ring was extremely expensive.
"Taiyi Light Splitting Sword!"
His sparring partner was still a half-grown boy, but every move he made carried a certain presence. At his age, he was already a Level 3 Martial Artist, which clearly showed he had excellent talent.
"Taihang Thirteen Palms!"
Before sparring, it was polite to announce your techniques, since this wasn't a fight to the death.
The purpose of sparring was to help the person being tested improve their competitive skills.
As for his opponent using a sword, that was no problem. Weapons and bare-handed techniques were two sides of the same coin.
Zhao Rui had a weapon he often used, too: a spear. As the saying went, an inch longer meant an inch stronger.
But he didn't use it. For one thing, the ring was too small. For another, fighting unarmed against a blade was a skill martial artists often needed to train.
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