Bang! Thud! Clang!
Over the next few hours, the training room became a dull, monotonous hell filled with pain.
Jiang Yue fell into a vicious cycle he could not seem to break.
Either he dodged Shen Qing's attacks on instinct but let his stance loosen and his Stake Stance fall apart, prompting Shen Qing to stop him sharply;
Or he forced his center of gravity to stay fixed, leaving his movements stiff and slow. Shen Qing's fists, charged with Inch Power, then landed squarely on his shoulders, chest, abdomen, and even his back.
Shen Qing used only thirty percent of his strength, but hundreds of blows that drove Inch Power through Jiang Yue's body added up to terrifying damage.
After just three hours, Jiang Yue's powerful, bronze-tinged body was covered in bruises of every size.
Every breath brought the sting of ruptured capillaries, and a trickle of blood escaped his lips from the pounding his organs had taken.
Any ordinary recruit would probably have broken under this torment of body and mind, or needed ten days to half a month in a high-grade Medical Pod to recover.
But Jiang Yue did not.
There was no trace of retreat or fear in his bloodshot eyes. Instead, they burned with an almost feverish excitement!
The thunderous vibration that accompanied his breathing did not worsen the damage to his organs. Nourished by faint traces of free-floating energy, they grew tougher and better able to withstand the blows.
He had no need to worry about lasting internal injuries or running out of strength.
Thud!
Another muffled impact rang out. A punch struck Jiang Yue's left shoulder, sending him sliding half a step back. His right leg braced hard against the floor, and blood spilled from his mouth again.
"Again!" Jiang Yue spat out the bloody foam and, without pausing, took up the All-Rounder Stance once more.
Shen Qing looked at Jiang Yue, battered all over yet seemingly unable to feel pain, and the corner of his eye twitched violently again.
"You really are a complete lunatic..." Shen Qing gritted his teeth and lunged forward once more.
"If you'd lived when martial arts first emerged, your perseverance and talent might have earned you a grandmaster's reputation!"
Jiang Yue shook his head. Talent had nothing to do with it. His aptitude for martial arts was merely average, nothing that stood out.
It was the panel that made his efforts pay off and gave him clear feedback. That was what drove him to work harder.
Everything he did changed him. Eating and drinking did; training even more so. What reason was there not to work hard?
Besides...
"Even if I'm not striving for excellence, I should at least think about survival."
"The Great Crusade Era has no room for even the slightest mediocrity..."
Jiang Yue sighed and kept practicing.
Four hours... Five hours...
The intense mental strain and monotonous physical punishment finally pushed Jiang Yue to a breaking point.
It felt like the moment after staying awake for three nights straight, when his mind suddenly went completely blank.
No commands, no thoughts, no awareness of pain.
In that fleeting instant when his thoughts stopped—
Whoosh!
Shen Qing's final attack, delivered with thirty percent of his strength, shot toward Jiang Yue's face like a striking viper. The angle was vicious, cutting off almost every conventional path of retreat.
At that moment, because his mind had gone blank, Jiang Yue's brain issued no compulsory command to dodge or hold his center of gravity.
But his body moved.
Over the past few hours, Shen Qing's fists had hammered hundreds, if not thousands, of repetitions into his muscles. Freed from the restraint of the brain that commanded them, those memories took complete control of his powerful body.
Jiang Yue's eyes were vacant.
His foot slid an inch to the left across the alloy floor at an angle most people could not have imagined.
Then his spine, taut as a fully drawn bow, did not lock rigidly in place as it had before. With his lower back as its pivot, it moved in one small, fluid motion, like a dragon finally coming to life.
Whoosh—
Shen Qing's fist swept past Jiang Yue's cheek again, missing by a hair and leaving a bone-chilling gust in its wake.
But this time, everything was different!
Shen Qing's pupils contracted. To his astonishment, Jiang Yue had dodged almost perfectly, yet his heavy center of gravity remained as firmly rooted as an iron tower. It had not wavered in the slightest!
His loosely rounded arms moved with the motion, while the Blood Energy within him, far from scattering when he stepped, flowed along the movement of his spine to a new point of force!
Holding the Origin and Guarding the One, standing firm and unmoving.
Motion and stillness in harmony, the insubstantial and the substantial joined as one.
This was no deliberate imitation. It was the true essence of martial arts, emerging naturally from a body pushed to its limits!
More precisely, this was the true state of the Roaming Dragon Stance!
"He... he did it?!"
Shen Qing froze with his fist still extended, disbelief filling his eyes. It had only been a fleeting glimpse of a rudimentary form, but there was no mistaking its essence.
As for Jiang Yue...
Once that perilous dodge was over, the brief blankness in his mind vanished. His conscious awareness returned in full and instantly took control of his body again.
That feeling just now...
Joy and understanding flashed in Jiang Yue's eyes. He wanted to savor the miraculous state of the Roaming Dragon Stance he had just entered.
But the next moment, something went wrong.
As Jiang Yue's brain reflexively told him to stand straight,
He discovered, to his horror, that its ingrained habits seemed to conflict with the way his muscles had just learned to exert force through the Roaming Dragon Stance.
Put simply, his brain and his muscles had reached a complete deadlock over how he was supposed to stand.
"Huh?"
The joy on Jiang Yue's face froze.
Thud!
Under Shen Qing's dumbfounded gaze,
Jiang Yue, who had just displayed such impressive martial insight, did not even have time to cry out. He toppled flat onto the cold alloy floor in a ridiculous sprawl and twitched twice without meaning to.
A deathly silence settled over the Extra Training Room.
Shen Qing stood stunned for a full half minute before cautiously approaching and nudging Jiang Yue's thigh with his toe. "Hey... did that Inch Power give you internal injuries?"
Jiang Yue lay spread-eagled on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling of the Extra Training Room.
He tried moving his toes, but his thigh muscles responded by twisting in entirely the wrong direction.
"No, that's not it."
"I think I've... forgotten how to stand on two legs."
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