Ancient Martial Arts Legacy

"Old Cripple, get up there!" The urgings rose and fell in waves.

Old Cripple, roasted by the crowd's anticipation, narrowed his eyes and coldly assessed Shen Qing's condition on the stage. As a veteran who'd crawled through life and death for years, Old Cripple calculated shrewdly. He admitted that a freak like Shen Qing, who'd broken into the top fifty in the gravity exam, had burst stats on paper that absolutely surpassed his own. But Shen Qing had already fought three consecutive high-intensity arena matches without holding back! His stamina was surely severely drained—his stance was already wobbling, and his blood and qi were clearly extremely unstable. "As long as I don't clash head-on, using my experience to wear down a spent rookie is no problem at all." Old Cripple swiftly tallied his odds in his mind, sneered, slapped his thigh, and nimbly vaulted onto the stage.

Without any exchange of words, at the referee's sharp whistle, the fight began! Old Cripple's spare prosthetic leg kicked off hard. He didn't choose a direct confrontation but instead sidestepped and circled like a slippery loach, trying to bait Shen Qing into throwing a punch with a feint and exploit an opening. Below the stage, Jiang Yue narrowed his eyes slightly. From his perspective, Shen Qing's muscles were indeed twitching slightly from extreme fatigue. Logically, if Old Cripple stuck to a hit-and-run attrition tactic, the fight should be even, or Old Cripple might even have the upper hand. Yet the battle's development caught everyone off guard.

"Die!!" Shen Qing let out a beast-like roar. Facing Old Cripple's circling, he didn't defend—instead, he instantly erupted with an extremely bizarre and ferocious method of power release! His spine shook like a great dragon, the force not simply bursting from his muscles but rising from the soles of his feet, twisting and amplifying through his knees, hips, and waist, finally condensing into an inch-force that exploded from his fist. Bang! Bang! Bang! The moment the fight started, Shen Qing, like a tireless tyrannosaur, crossed three meters in an instant and closed into Old Cripple's centerline. Short strikes! Intercepts! Elbow blows! Shen Qing's offense came like a storm, each strike's angle of release extremely tricky, completely ignoring Old Cripple's vaunted combat experience. In just ten exchanges! Old Cripple's defensive structure was utterly shredded. His carefully planned hit-and-run tactic became a joke; he could only cross his arms in front of his chest, trapped in a pathetic state of passive beating.

"That release technique..." Jiang Yue stood below, his gaze shifting. Watching Shen Qing's fluid combo on stage, his mind flashed back to the rookie sparring session over ten days ago. Back then, with his own poor foundation, he'd been thoroughly dominated by this same special release technique of Shen Qing's. "So this is the legendary 'Ancient Martial Arts'..." Jiang Yue murmured to himself. In the current era's trend, the Empire championed absolute pragmatism. During the Body Forging stage, everyone essentially competed over who had more strength and thicker skin, at most adding a bit of street-fighting experience—nothing like profound martial techniques. The Ancient Martial Arts Shen Qing used, at this current Body Forging stage, was undoubtedly a dimension-reducing strike. That exquisite control over muscles and bones, even when stamina was depleted, could squeeze out killing power beyond common sense. Since Ancient Martial Arts was so strong, why hadn't it spread through the Federation's military? Not because its power was lacking, nor because its ceiling was too low, but because its learning difficulty was too high, and it suffered from severe transmission barriers! In this Great Crusade Era of interracial slaughter, the human Federation needed assembly-line mass-produced interstellar warriors. Ancient Martial Arts demanded extreme talent and insight, requiring years or even over a decade from childhood spent standing in stances, sensing so-called qi and force dispersion—a single mistake in practice could damage the internal organs. Moreover, truly profound Ancient Martial Arts release methods were all tightly controlled by ancient martial families and schools, rarely passed on. Having tens of thousands or even millions of rookies waste their youth grasping such obscure techniques? The Federation couldn't afford the time and cost. Injecting a gene serum to directly unlock potential and stack muscle density was the simplest, crudest path to a strong military. Only when soldiers, by piling up resources and tempering blood and qi, truly crossed the Skin Refining barrier and advanced to [Martial Artist] would the military open up the Federation Martial Arts meant for interstellar battlefield combat—like the [Limit Breaking] One-Eye the instructor had mentioned. In short, before becoming a true Martial Artist, Ancient Martial Arts practitioners held an almost tyrannical dominance in close-quarters combat. That was Shen Qing's confidence in opening four consecutive arena matches even with a heavily injured body!

"Ah--!!" On the stage, with Old Cripple's scream, Shen Qing's fierce inch-punch forcibly shattered his guard, then a high whip leg crashed like a battle-axe into Old Cripple's carotid artery. Thud! Old Cripple's large, heavy body was roughly dragged off the stage, leaving a glaring trail of blood on the alloy floor. The entire underground Black Boxing Arena, after a brief silence, exploded like a lit powder keg, erupting into a frenzy that nearly tore off the roof. "Fourth match! Rookie Shen Qing, wins!" A burly man acting as referee stepped onto the stage with a cold face, extremely reluctantly raised Shen Qing's arm—already soaked in blood and faintly trembling—and loudly announced the result. Then, the referee shot a cold glance at Shen Qing and turned to prepare for the final deathmatch of the night.

Below the stage, countless new recruits were cheering wildly, while the veterans' faces were so dark they looked ready to drip water.

As the saying goes, amateurs watch the spectacle, experts watch the craft.

Amid the crowd's revelry, only Jiang Yue, standing at the back, furrowed his brow slightly.

In his perception, Shen Qing's condition was utterly terrible.

That beating he'd just given the Old Cripple might have looked devastatingly decisive, but Jiang Yue saw through it in a single glance—it was nothing more than a final burst of brilliance, like a dying flame flaring up!

No matter how exquisite the techniques of Ancient Martial Arts, they still required this flesh-and-blood body as the engine.

Shen Qing's chest was now heaving in a completely broken rhythm, large patches of capillaries on his body surface rupturing from the continuous, high-intensity drain of blood and qi. He was like an engine running severely overloaded.

By his strength, he was naturally far above the Old Cripple, but the problem was the consecutive fights had drained no small amount of stamina.

Blood, qi, and physical strength—there was always a limit.

"Brother Jiang! See that! That madman won again!"

Just then, Xu Bo squeezed back from the inner circle where the bookmaker was taking bets, his forehead slick with sweat and his face brimming with excitement.

Jiang Yue grabbed Xu Bo by the arm and pulled him into a relatively quiet corner, asking in a low voice, "What exactly are the rules of this arena? Even if Shen Qing were made of iron, fighting four matches in a row would push him to his limit. What kind of duel agreement did they sign?"