Ancient Martial Arts Tradition

"Old Cripple, get up there!" Urging cries rose from every side.

Old Cripple, put on the spot by the crowd, narrowed his eyes and coldly assessed Shen Qing's condition on the platform.

A veteran who had spent years scraping by on the edge of death, Old Cripple knew how to calculate his odds.

He admitted that a monster like Shen Qing, who had made the top fifty in the Gravity Exam, had higher explosive power on paper than he did.

But Shen Qing had already fought three grueling matches without holding anything back!

His stamina had to be severely depleted. Even his stance wavered, and his Blood Energy was clearly extremely unstable.

As long as I don't meet him head-on, I can wear down a rookie running on fumes. No question.

Old Cripple quickly weighed his chances, gave a cold laugh, slapped his thigh, and vaulted onto the platform with surprising agility.

Neither side wasted a word. At the Referee's sharp whistle, the fight began!

Old Cripple drove off with his spare prosthetic leg. Rather than clash head-on, he circled sideways like a slippery eel, feinting to draw a punch from Shen Qing and expose an opening.

Below the platform, Jiang Yue narrowed his eyes.

From what he could see, Shen Qing's muscles were twitching slightly from extreme fatigue. If Old Cripple stuck to a strategy of circling and wearing him down, the fight should have been even—or tilted in Old Cripple's favor.

Yet the fight took a turn no one expected.

"Die!!"

Shen Qing let out a beastlike roar. Faced with Old Cripple's circling, he did not defend. Instead, he unleashed a bizarre, savage way of generating power!

His spine snapped like a great dragon. The force did not come from his muscles alone. It rose from the soles of his feet, twisted and grew through his knees, hips, and waist, then condensed into Inch Power that exploded through his fist!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The instant the fight began, Shen Qing surged forward like a tireless tyrannosaur, covered three meters, and closed straight in on Old Cripple's centerline.

Close strikes! Interceptions! Elbows!

Shen Qing's attacks fell like a storm. Each blow came from a vicious angle, rendering Old Cripple's hard-won fighting experience useless.

In just ten exchanges!

Old Cripple's guard was torn apart. His carefully planned strategy of circling and wearing Shen Qing down became a joke. All he could do was cross his arms over his chest and take the beating.

That way of generating power...

Standing below the platform, Jiang Yue watched Shen Qing's seamless combinations, his eyes flickering. He could not help recalling the recruits' Combat Sparring from a dozen days earlier.

Back then, with his poor foundation, Jiang Yue had taken a thorough beating from that same technique.

So this is the legendary "Ancient Martial Arts"... Jiang Yue murmured inwardly.

In the current era, the Empire prized absolute practicality.

At the Body Forging stage, it mostly came down to who was stronger and tougher, perhaps with a little experience from street fights. There was nothing particularly advanced about their techniques.

For someone at the current Body Forging stage, the Ancient Martial Arts Shen Qing used were on an entirely different level.

With such precise control over muscle and bone, he could squeeze out extraordinary killing power even when exhausted.

If Ancient Martial Arts were so powerful, why had they not spread throughout the Federation military?

It was not because they lacked power, nor because their potential was limited. They were simply too difficult to learn, and the barriers to their transmission were too high!

In this Great Crusade Era, when countless races fought one another, the human Federation needed interstellar soldiers produced on an assembly line.

Ancient Martial Arts demanded talent and insight. A student had to spend years, sometimes more than a decade, practicing stances from childhood and learning to sense the so-called Qi Mechanism and channel force. The slightest mistake could damage the organs.

Moreover, the truly profound methods of generating power were tightly guarded by ancient Martial Arts Families and schools, and rarely passed on to outsiders.

Have tens of thousands, even millions, of recruits spend their youth puzzling out such obscure techniques?

The Federation could afford neither the time nor the cost.

Injecting a Gene Potion to unlock potential and build muscle density was the simplest, most direct way to strengthen an army.

Only after soldiers had piled on resources, built up their Blood Energy, passed the Skin Refining threshold, and become true [Martial Artists] would the Military grant them access to the Federation Martial Arts used to fight on the Interstellar Battlefield.

Such as the [Limit Breaking] technique Instructor One-Eye had mentioned.

Before becoming true Martial Artists, inheritors of the Ancient Martial Arts Tradition held an almost overwhelming advantage in close combat.

That was what gave a badly wounded Shen Qing the confidence to fight four matches in a row!

"Aah—!!"

On the platform, Old Cripple screamed as Shen Qing's vicious short punch blasted through his guard. A high Whip Leg followed, chopping into Old Cripple's carotid artery like a battle-axe.

Bang!

Old Cripple's huge, heavy body was dragged roughly off the platform, leaving a glaring streak of blood across the Alloy floor.

After a moment of stunned silence, the underground Black Boxing Arena erupted like a Powder Keg, the frenzied roars threatening to lift the roof.

"Fourth match! Recruit Shen Qing wins!"

A burly man serving as Referee walked onto the platform, his face cold. Plainly unwilling, he raised Shen Qing's blood-soaked, faintly twitching arm and loudly announced the result.

Then the Referee shot Shen Qing a cold look and turned to prepare the final fight to the death that night.

Below, countless recruits cheered wildly, while the veterans' faces darkened like storm clouds.

Amateurs watched the spectacle; experts saw what lay beneath it.

Amid the celebration, only Jiang Yue, standing at the back of the crowd, frowned.

He could sense that Shen Qing was in terrible shape.

His crushing victory over Old Cripple had looked effortless, but Jiang Yue saw through it at once. It had been a last, desperate burst!

No matter how refined the power-generation techniques of Ancient Martial Arts were, they still needed a body of flesh and blood to drive them.

Shen Qing's breathing had lost all rhythm. Capillaries across large areas of his skin kept bursting from the repeated, intense depletion of his Blood Energy. He was like an engine pushed far beyond its limits.

Shen Qing was naturally much stronger than Old Cripple, but fighting several matches in a row had cost him dearly.

Blood Energy and stamina had their limits.

"Jiang! Did you see that? That lunatic won again!"

Just then, Xu Bo squeezed back from the inner ring where the bookies were taking bets, sweat covering his forehead and excitement all over his face.

Jiang Yue grabbed Xu Bo's arm and pulled him into a quieter corner. "What exactly are the rules here? Even if Shen Qing were made of iron, four fights in a row would push him to his limit. What kind of fight agreement did they sign?"