The afternoon wind blew stronger than the morning breeze, and the sky remained dark and gloomy. Judging by the looks of it, it was bound to rain tonight.
Cheng Yun came up to the rooftop.
Heroine Yin was already waiting for him there, and unexpectedly, Old Mage had also come along to join in the fun.
The rooftop space was still quite large, and with a little use, it would make a nice place. One could tell that the former residents of this building had also taken careful care of it, though unfortunately, it was now abandoned.
The four corners and the center of the rooftop each had a small flower bed. A withered little tree grew on the central flower bed. Its breed was unknown, and it was only a little over a meter tall, surrounded by weeds. Weeds and a type of flower that seemed to be a Chinese rose also grew in the surrounding flower beds. Obviously, neither the moisture nor the nutrients could keep up with this huge demand, causing the leaves of both the weeds and the flowers to look somewhat withered.
There was also a small fishpond near the street side, with a small rockery placed inside it.
However, the high temperatures of the past few days had evaporated most of the water in the fishpond, and it was now close to drying up. The rockery was also ridiculously dry, with a layer of a peeling, hard crust seemingly accumulated on its surface.
Cheng Yun walked over to take a look, seeing that only a layer of water remained at the very bottom of the fishpond, with a few scattered plants growing inside—whether they were artificially cultivated aquatic plants or weeds was unknown.
Naturally, there were no fish; the previous residents probably took the fish with them when they moved out. Fortunately, there were no fish, or else they would have likely all died of thirst in there.
Seeing this scene, Cheng Yun couldn't help but calculate in his heart.
If he took some time to clean up this rooftop, tidy up the five small flower beds and the small fishpond, replace all the weeds with flower bonsai, and buy some ornamental goldfish to put in the small fishpond, wouldn't it be just delightful?
He could also buy two parasols online to put on the rooftop, with two glass tables and a few rattan chairs or reclining chairs placed underneath. He and his guests could come up to catch the breeze when they had nothing to do, come up for a barbecue and late-night snack in the evening, bask in the sun and drink tea in the winter, and crack melon seeds and play mahjong during the New Year—wouldn't it be even more delightful?
Just as Cheng Yun was thinking about how to implement this plan, a face with a long, narrow knife scar appeared within his line of... lower sight.
"What are you thinking about?" Heroine Yin looked up at him.
"Uh... I was thinking about how to tidy up this place, plant some flowers and grass, raise a few small goldfish, and get some things to decorate it to make it look pretty." Cheng Yun lowered his head slightly to look at her. "If it's all set up, us coming up here to catch the breeze or zone out has got to be more comfortable than being downstairs, right?"
"Huh? That's true! Is there anything you need me to help with?"
"No, you just wait!" Cheng Yun rejected Heroine Yin's active volunteering. "Once it's fixed up, I'll bring you up to see the small goldfish."
"It's a deal!"
"Ahem, let's skip the small talk, Heroine, let's get started!" Cheng Yun said.
"Alright!"
Heroine Yin did things with brisk and resolute style. She felt she couldn't live up to the five hundred coins Cheng Yun shelled out every month, so having just agreed to teach Cheng Yun martial arts yesterday, she began the preparatory work before imparting her martial arts to Cheng Yun today—
Physical fitness testing, or fitness testing for short!
She needed to first figure out what level Cheng Yun's physical fitness was actually at and how big the gap was between him and the people of her world before she could determine how Cheng Yun should start practicing martial arts. This involved which martial art he should start with, which ones he would find relatively easier to practice, which ones he couldn't practice at all, and so on.
As for Old Mage, he had presumably run up to be a spectator eating melon seeds.
"Let's start with the first item: strength testing." Heroine Yin fished out a small notebook about half the size of a palm and a ballpoint pen from her jeans' back pocket, staring at him with a serious expression. "There are three stones on your left. I roughly know the weight of each stone—try lifting them!"
As the saying goes, a good memory is not as good as a bad pen.
Although Heroine Yin had little schooling, she had developed a very good habit, which was writing things down in a notebook.
This was thanks to her forgetful memory that vanished the moment she turned her head!
About two hours later—
Cheng Yun was almost exhausted to the point of collapsing on the ground, while the small notebook in Heroine Yin's hand was already filled with several pages of notes written in the script of their world, looking even worse than her handwriting when she wrote Chinese characters!
"The test is over. I have a general idea of your physical condition in my mind. Do you want me to tell you the test results directly?" Heroine Yin said with a heavy expression.
"No need. You've made it clear enough during the testing process, and the blows I've taken are already more than enough." Cheng Yun looked up at the gloomy sky. During the test just now, every time he finished an event, Heroine Yin would shake her head with utter disappointment, just like his former primary school teacher, and say—
"The fourteen or fifteen-year-olds back in our world are all stronger than you! I could pin you to the ground and pound you when I was eleven!"
Cheng Yun could only be speechless.
In fact, Cheng Yun's physical fitness was already considered quite good among Earthlings. Not to mention his peak period in the past, even now with long-lacked exercise, it was definitely far above the world average. He had also secretly felt somewhat proud of it when he was young. Yet, he never expected that this body which had allowed him to never shrink back from fights since childhood, the body that could go head-to-head with black international students playing basketball in college, couldn't even match a fourteen or fifteen-year-old child from Heroine Yin's world!
Come to think of it, a fourteen or fifteen-year-old child in Heroine Yin's world was probably only about one meter twenty or thirty tall!
Simply... not the same species!
Cheng Yun hesitated for a moment before awkwardly asking, "So, Heroine, do you have a clue about how to teach me?"
"I do, but I advise you to just give up!" Heroine Yin was also very helpless. "Even if you practice this body to death, it's impossible for you to reach my level! Anyway, you're already so strong, there's no need to insist on learning martial arts!"
"Then you mean..."
"The difficulty is simply too high!" Heroine Yin spread her hands.
"Then... how much more money would be appropriate?" Cheng Yun said with a sheepish smile.
"Adding more money won't work this time!" Heroine Yin said with the utmost seriousness. "Station Master, you must understand one thing: we are completely not of the same species!"
"Two hundred extra a month?"
"I told you, this isn't a question of whether to add money or not!"
"Two hundred and fifty?"
"It really isn't a question of adding money or not. Oh my, my Station Master, how do you want me to say it for you to listen!"
"Three hundred?"
"Uh..."
"A chicken leg with lunch every day!"
"What... what kind of chicken leg?" Heroine Yin froze for a moment. Why was someone using chicken legs as a bargaining chip!
"Braised chicken leg, salt-baked chicken leg, spicy chicken leg, cola chicken leg, fried chicken leg—I don't know if you've eaten any..."
"No problem!" Heroine Yin nodded righteously. "Although you certainly won't reach the level of people from our world, I'll do my best! I refuse to believe it—aren't we both human? With me, Yin Dan, as your master, I'll definitely make you stand out among your peers!"
"Many thanks, Heroine!" Cheng Yun cupped his fists in salute once more.
He knew that there was actually no such thing as internal energy in Heroine Yin's world. The so-called practice of martial arts was actually just continuously tempering one's body and combat skills.
There was indeed a rumor that when a person's martial arts reached the realm of harmony between heaven and man, it would derive something called 'momentum'. However, over the thousands of years, only a few grandmasters of martial arts had ever stepped into this stage, with the most recent one dying five hundred years ago. Anyway, Heroine Yin was far from reaching this realm, and no one in her era had reached it either, so she had never seen anyone possess 'momentum'.
And Earthlings' physical fitness was undoubtedly inherently much weaker than the people of the Songshi World, with their physical limits also far inferior to theirs. It wouldn't even be strange to say they were a different species.
In other words, although the people of their world weren't as tall as Earthlings, their physical fitness was much stronger. It was very likely that an honest farmer's strength would be greater than a professional boxer who stood one meter ninety tall and weighed one hundred kilograms. And their physical limits were far beyond the reach of Earthlings—rivers and lakes martial artists who had rigorously trained their bodies could completely surpass untrained people tenfold.
In Old Mage's words, due to the powerful energy within their physiques and their excellent self-repair capabilities, as long as they kept tempering themselves, their physical fitness in the early stages could rise almost geometrically. They could be said to be a natural martial-arts-practicing race.
Heroine Yin was a fine example. She showed Cheng Yun her physical condition. To put it in a more scientific way, the strength of her muscles and bones was alarmingly high, allowing her to become a superman almost without any technique. And what was even more scarier was that the martial artists of their world were still using bodies possessing such formidable strength to explore even higher-level combat skills.
All sorts of factors combined to create the... mini-female-Wolverine standing in front of Cheng Yun who despised him to the core!
Well, maybe not that freakish.
Old Mage had been standing nearby the whole time, only speaking occasionally and seemingly lacking any presence. Yet, the information he gathered in the process was probably even more than what Cheng Yun and Heroine Yin themselves obtained.
The martial arts system and formidable innate physical fitness of Heroine Yin's world did indeed puzzle him somewhat. His main doubt was whether the people of Heroine Yin's world evolved toward this direction during their evolution and thus gained the martial arts system, or if they only evolved such a formidable body that matched the martial arts system within a very short time after getting the martial arts system.
If it were in the past, he could quickly arrive at an answer. But now... he couldn't quite pin it down for the moment.
It was close to dinnertime by now. Cheng Yun gave Heroine Yin enough time to think about how to teach him, while he went to make dinner.
Before evening arrived, a drizzle started outside, and it quickly grew heavier.
The sky and ground were illuminated from time to time, and soul-shaking thunder resounded through the night. Even the most gorgeous neon lights could not mask the brilliance of the lightning, and a layer of water soon accumulated on the road surface.
At night, Cheng Yun was on duty.
"I can finally cool down a bit. What a ghost of weather!" Cheng Yun processed the check-in for a pair of lovers who looked like college students while complaining to Heroine Yin. Turning his head back, he found a black person standing in front of him. The black person looked even half a head taller than him, likely standing at one meter ninety.
Cheng Yun couldn't help but freeze, then chuckled dumbly. He hadn't expected this small motel to welcome foreign guests too!
"Hello?" he said.
"Hello, I'd like a room, is that okay?" The black person grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, and seemed quite polite. He carried a hint of alcohol on him, and his clothes were somewhat soaked by the rain. His Chinese could not be considered standard, but it was understandable.
"You are?" Cheng Yun hesitated.
China was quite strict about the management of hotels and inns receiving foreign guests; they had to possess foreign-guest reception qualifications. If one checked in foreign guests without such qualifications, they would face penalties if caught. Of course, there were also many small motels, especially certain small inns in scenic areas, that completely ignored this rule, but Cheng Yun had just opened for business, so even if he were to receive foreign guests, he would wait and see how the wind blew first.
"I'm from South Africa," the black person said knowingly.
"I'm afraid that won't do." Cheng Yun shook his head with a troubled look. "We don't have the qualifications to receive foreign guests."
"No way, there are many inns near this school that allow black international students to check in." The black person seemed a bit anxious, turned his head to look at the rainy weather outside, and turned back to say, "It won't get checked; the police don't care about these trivial matters. You guys have already been reforming and opening up for so long now!"
"Sorry, no." Cheng Yun still shook his head.
"No way! Old buddy, do you really have to stick to these hundreds-of-years-old broken rules?" The black person leaned closer to the front desk, thrusting his upper body toward Cheng Yun, balled one hand into a fist, placed it on the front desk's tabletop, stared straight at him, and his gaze carried a slight threatening undertone. "You also know it's raining this hard outside!"
"No." Cheng Yun still shook his head very calmly, staring calmly at this fellow putting on a bold front.
"Fine, you win." The black person instantly withdrew all his fierceness, sighed, turned around helplessly, and walked out of the motel. He didn't bring an umbrella, and obviously had to brave the rain to continue looking for the next place to stay.
Cheng Yun shrugged and lowered his head to continue doing the accounts.
There were quite a few international students from Yida nearby, as well as many black people. Cheng Yun had often encountered black people on the basketball court in the past, so he roughly knew what kind of attitude most black people in China had. And the public security organs actually weren't as indulgent toward them as the rumors said; in fact, the consequences of them committing crimes were much more severe than those of locals.
Heroine Yin had finished all her work early, and she didn't want to go back to her room, so she sat on the sofa at the front desk. She propped her chin up to think when guests came and went, and chatted with Cheng Yun—or one could say negotiated with him—sentence by sentence when there were no guests.
"That person... was he burned black? Why is he so black!!" The black person had already left, but she still kept her big eyes wide open.
"That's an African person. They are naturally dark-skinned. It's said that people in southern Africa are even darker, shining black. That buddy is probably someone from over there," Cheng Yun replied indifferently.
"Oh." Heroine Yin pulled her head back, frowning. "Then why did he wink at me when he came in?!"
"What wink?"
"He... twitched his eyebrows?" Heroine Yin had some uncertainty in her tone. "In our world, only scoundrels would do that. In your world, is it a greeting?"
"In our world, it's... more or less similar. But out of ten black people, at least six have this virtue. When I was in college, I had a buddy who often played basketball with me who was like this—he'd whistle and twitch his eyebrows whenever he saw a girl. I heard he later got beaten up in the dead of night and finally behaved a bit," Cheng Yun couldn't help laughing. "Next time you meet someone like that, don't hold back, just beat them up!"
"Really?"
"Though it's also possible you were staring at him the whole time, and he was returning the courtesy." Cheng Yun suddenly smiled.
"Possibly!" Doubt still lingered in Heroine Yin's gaze.
The night gradually grew deeper. The rain outside had lightened but hadn't stopped yet, and there were almost no guests left. The pattering sound of rain echoed at the front desk, accompanied by the heroine's crisp voice.
"The strength of our martial arts practitioners is usually closely related to three things." Heroine Yin held up three fingers, retracting one for every sentence she said—
"First is physical fitness, which is the foundation of everything."
"Second is technique."
"Finally, it's the experience of fighting and combat. Actually, experience can also be said to be part of technique, but I'm just used to singling it out to talk about, because my experience is very rich! When I spar with an opponent of equal strength, it often allows me to achieve victory in the end."
"However, in this world of yours... let's not talk about experience. No matter how rich it is, how rich can it get!"
The heroine shook her head and said again, "Given your current physical condition, wanting to rapidly improve your physical fitness will certainly require suffering quite a bit of hardship. Old Mage also said that not only is your physical fitness not as strong as ours, but your bodies aren't as capable of withstanding torture as ours either. If you boost your physical fitness too violently, it will probably leave you with unhealable sequelae, and the losses would outweigh the gains!"
"So I've decided to let you start with technique first!" Heroine Yin looked at him with great confidence.
"For a beginner just starting to learn martial arts, the improvement technique brings to combat effectiveness is often even greater than physical fitness. In the beginning, learning technique is also usually more relaxing and faster than tempering the body. Can you understand this?"
"I can! How could I not?" Cheng Yun replied. "Isn't it the same principle as stacking health in the early game having a higher return on investment than stacking armor?"
"Huh?"
"Nothing." Cheng Yun shook his head. "I've discovered something: it seems many of the flaws you just mentioned about me can be found ways to make up for."
"How to make up for them?" Heroine Yin frowned.
"Mage probably has a way." Cheng Yun looked up toward the upstairs and blinked twice.
"Mage?" he tentatively called out.
The heroine looked at him blankly before shaking her head a moment later. "What are you shouting for? That senior is upstairs, and he's probably asleep by now. Are you afraid your brain has gotten somewhat... Oh, Old, Old Mage, why did you come down?"
"Do you want a late-night snack? I'm a bit hungry and preparing to cook some night snacks to eat," Cheng Yun said.
"Let's taste some." Old Mage smiled slightly.
"I... I want some too! Right, it's free, right?" Heroine Yin said with glowing eyes.
Before you continue