No Technique, Just Smash!

Seeing Wu Fang's half-joking reply, Chen Jue was taken aback for a moment, then felt somewhat relieved.

His [Hidden Weapon Throwing], which he had raised to Lv. 5, included master-level dart-throwing skills.

It wasn't powerful enough to sweep the martial world, but it was certainly a formidable martial art.

Within twenty meters, he could hit whatever he aimed at. That was every bit as good as an ordinary person firing a pistol.

If it hit someone, wouldn't it leave a gaping hole?

What did it mean to have real martial arts skills?

It meant having genuine skills that could be trained and used in a fight.

Not flashy routines that looked slick but fell apart as soon as a fight began.

However, when Chen Jue asked Wu Fang about real martial arts, he wasn't referring only to hidden weapons like darts. He wanted to find a practice like Tai Chi that could improve his health and fitness.

"Preferably some kind of mysterious qigong or internal energy that ordinary people can't understand."

"If you know an expert like that, please introduce me! I'll definitely show my gratitude after I become his disciple. (Grinning)" Chen Jue typed back.

Wu Fang replied almost instantly with a (sweating) emoji.

"I think you've watched too many martial arts movies! Where would you find skills like that in real life? (Knocks on head)"

"Even if they ever existed, they've mostly been lost."

"Anyway, I've trained under my grandpa since I was little, and I've never met an expert who could use qigong. Even at the sports school I graduated from, I never heard of anyone who could. At most, people practiced internal martial arts. They weren't as miraculous as the internet makes them sound."

"It's late, so let's talk another time. If you're interested, come chat with my grandpa tomorrow morning where he plays chess in the park. He knows more than I do."

"I can't show my face around lately. There are too many creepy stalkers. (Covers face)"

Wu Fang was probably getting ready to sleep. She sent a few quick replies, then went quiet.

Chen Jue saw that it was already past ten. With his arms aching, he turned off the lights and went to bed early.

Still, he couldn't stop thinking about what Wu Fang had said about the state of traditional martial arts.

Had anyone in real life actually trained qigong, internal energy, or internal martial arts—the abilities that movies and books had mythologized?

If someone really had mastered them, why had he never seen anything about it in society or the mainstream media?

Chen Jue was nearly thirty and had developed his own way of distinguishing truth from falsehood.

All he had ever seen were stories debunking traditional martial arts: the infamous "Lightning Five-Whip," "Young people don't know martial ethics," and other moments that had become internet jokes.

Yet not a single master who'd used traditional martial arts to fight his way across the world had ever appeared.

If traditional martial arts really were as powerful as those online commenters claimed, why had no expert stepped forward to bring glory to the country and dominate the global fighting and martial arts scenes?

The so-called restrictions of the rules, or claims that boxing gloves limited a fighter's ability, were pure nonsense. There was still MMA, the unrestricted mixed martial art pioneered by Bruce Lee, and the UFC, which was all the rage now.

An Olympic gold medalist could make tens of millions, even hundreds of millions.

If someone could achieve success in those two competitions through traditional martial arts, wouldn't the whole country pay attention? Wouldn't they become famous overnight?

It would be a wonderful chance to gain both fame and fortune!

So why had no one from the traditional martial arts world stepped forward?

Maybe it really was as Wu Fang had said: those genuine skills had long since been lost. What remained was ordinary people's wishful thinking and the Chinese people's nostalgia.

With a head full of questions, Chen Jue fell asleep.

When he got up the next morning, the soreness in his hands had eased a little. The hot-and-cold compresses he'd used the night before had clearly helped.

He went up to the rooftop and faced the rising sun as he did the [Eye Health Exercises]. After thirty minutes, his constitution had increased by 0.01, and his eyesight had improved a little more.

Chen Jue estimated that after a few more days of practice, his eyesight should be back to what it had been two years ago, when he'd first gotten his new glasses.

"I just don't know if my eyesight will keep improving."

"If I can ditch my glasses and lose weight, I should look a little better." Chen Jue felt a glimmer of hope.

He packed his bag, brought the props he used to film videos, and headed to the lakeside park.

As soon as he reached the entrance, he saw the same group of old men gathered around the chess tables, playing and chatting.

In the open space nearby, the white-haired Old Master Wu was practicing spear forms with a Red Tassel Spear over three meters long.

He turned the spear, thrust it forward, swept it across, then followed with a backward thrust. His movements were crisp and carried an unusual elegance.

Seeing him like this, Chen Jue figured Wu Fang's devoted fans had influenced him. Afraid that practicing the Rope Dart would expose his identity, he had switched to spear techniques instead.

Chen Jue looked around.

He didn't see the young fans who had come to wait for Wu Fang in person yesterday, so he took the opportunity to approach Old Master Wu while the latter rested and drank some water after finishing a set of spear forms.

"Good morning, sir! Sorry to bother you. I'm a friend of your granddaughter, Wu Fang." Chen Jue explained why he'd come, then pulled up his WeChat conversation with Wu Fang.

Old Master Wu had probably been told Chen Jue was coming that morning. When the unfamiliar young man approached, he didn't seem annoyed.

Instead, he examined Chen Jue with interest from head to toe.

He knew his granddaughter's situation. In all the years she'd been around, she'd never once brought a young man home.

Chen Jue was the first young man she'd introduced to him.

Although Chen Jue had come under the pretext of seeking martial arts instruction, giving his visit a perfectly reasonable excuse, Old Master Wu had already filed him away as a potential grandson-in-law.

After just a few glances, however, Old Master Wu was a little dissatisfied.

The bespectacled young man in front of him wasn't short, but his looks were rather ordinary.

He wore glasses and looked bookish. He was a little chubby, and his hair was somewhat thin. He didn't look like someone who practiced martial arts. He looked more like an IT programmer or an office worker—the kind of person you could see anywhere on the street.

The only thing that stood out was Chen Jue's bright, alert eyes. He didn't look like one of those young people who spent all day staring at their phones until they were drained of energy.

"Young man, Fangfang told me you're good with darts and hidden weapons. That dog was killed by one of your darts, right? You hit it in the throat!"

"I wasn't there that afternoon, so I missed it. Could you show me a couple of moves now and broaden this old man's horizons?" Old Master Wu had first sized Chen Jue up, then remembered his granddaughter's request and struck up a conversation.

"Show you a couple of moves?"

"No problem! If you're interested, just point out a target nearby. As long as it's within twenty meters, I can hit it." Chen Jue agreed without a second thought.

Showing off in front of an old man wouldn't cost him anything. He could treat it as a friendly exchange through dart throwing.

"Twenty meters?"

"You said it!" Old Master Wu perked up at once.

That was far beyond the striking range of the Rope Dart their family had passed down.

Old Master Wu searched around the small woods nearby, then raised his Red Tassel Spear and pointed toward a white spot on the trunk of a distant tree.

Chen Jue took a look. The white spot seemed to be a mark left by a chain hammer or some similar weapon, its head dusted with magnesium powder. It was about the size of a fist, with a slight dent in the middle.

He estimated the distance at around fifteen meters.

He pulled a Short Sword Dart from its storage bag. With a flick of his right hand, he put force into his arm, wrist, and all five fingers. The bright silver stainless-steel dart left his hand and traced a blurred arc through the air.

A moment later, there came a thunk as it struck the tree. The Short Sword Dart hit the center of the white spot, and its tip sank deep into the trunk.

Old Master Wu's eyes went wide. First, he called out, "What a throw!" Then he came back to his senses and studied Chen Jue.

He realized that the seemingly ordinary, bookish young man had become a completely different person the moment he picked up the dart.

The little presence he'd had before vanished in an instant. At the moment Chen Jue released the dart, a hard-to-describe aura of murderous intent surged from him.

That was the nature of hidden weapons.

He did nothing until he struck—and when he did, he could take a life.

That was truly impressive!

"No wonder Fangfang said he was so good with darts. I've seen it for myself today!"

"He's so young. Could he have started training as a child?"

Old Master Wu wondered to himself, but nodded with satisfaction. "Young man, your dart skills are already second nature. There's no need for you to go looking for some fanciful qigong or internal energy, is there?"

"Martial arts are for self-defense and fitness. With a skill like that, as long as you don't break the law, no one in this country will be able to mess with you."

Hearing Old Master Wu's words, Chen Jue couldn't help feeling doubtful. "Sir, is there really no one in the world who can use qigong or internal energy?"

Seeing that Chen Jue wouldn't give up, Old Master Wu turned the Red Tassel Spear around and planted it upright in the ground.

Then he picked up the thermos beside him, unscrewed the lid, and took a few sips. Chen Jue couldn't tell whether he was wetting his throat or thinking things over.

After several minutes of silence, he glanced at the dart stuck in the white spot a few times before finally speaking. "I don't know about qigong. Most likely, no one can do it. Maybe it was lost long ago."

"When I was young, I met plenty of people like you, going around looking for someone to teach them qigong. It was all the rage back then. The newspapers were full of ads for training classes."

"But most of those masters were frauds! They made money off the gimmick. Anyone who actually practiced fighting in the martial arts square could knock those qigong masters flat."

"As for internal energy... I do know a little about that! It was part of the martial arts passed down in our family. But when I was young, I was determined to become a professor and scholar, so I never learned it from my father. Now it's been lost."

Chen Jue's eyes lit up. "Internal energy really exists?"

"It definitely existed! I saw my father train with my own eyes, so there's no way it was fake."

"But internal energy isn't as powerful as you think. It's not even as destructive as your darts." Old Master Wu nodded as he held his thermos.

"Did your father leave behind any videos or handwritten notes?" Chen Jue pressed eagerly. He had found the genuine martial art he'd been searching for right in front of him.

As long as he could get the original instructions, whether written or on video, Chen Jue could reproduce them with his Attribute Panel!

"He didn't leave anything behind. Things weren't as convenient back then as they are now, with smartphones everywhere."

"Besides, my father said internal energy could only be understood through experience, not explained in words. Without someone to guide you and teach you step by step, it was hard to make any progress."

Old Master Wu had just poured cold water on Chen Jue's hopes.

Seeing how disappointed he looked, the old man reached into a bag he'd left farther away and pulled out a phone.

Good grief!

From the model, it looked like the latest Huawei Mate 60 Pro!

Its technology and features were well ahead of the competition, and its price was enough to make struggling wage earners like Chen Jue sigh.

Then again, Old Master Wu was a retired university professor. His family owned several apartments in Hang City that they'd received through demolition compensation, and he had a generous pension. It was only natural for him to use a high-end phone.

The old man, looking like a fashionable senior, opened Douyin and scrolled through his following list. At last, he tapped on a video blogger's profile and offered some advice. "If you want to learn internal energy, you can look this person up."

"This person probably has real skills. What he's doing in these videos is basically the same as the internal energy training practiced by my father's generation!"

As soon as the old man finished speaking, Chen Jue leaned in for a closer look.

On the screen, a middle-aged man in a retro-style martial arts outfit was smashing a piece of concrete reinforced with steel bars using the back of one hand.

After breaking the concrete, he started striking a steel wrench until he bent it out of shape.

The scene was so shocking that Chen Jue's mouth fell open. His mind could barely keep up!

Short videos had become popular in recent years, and Chen Jue had seen plenty of fake masters breaking bricks online.

Why did he call them fake?

Back in high school physics class, his teacher had demonstrated it himself. If you propped a red brick so half of it hung over the edge, or tilted it at a particular angle, an ordinary person who had never trained could break it with a single chop.

But the middle-aged man in Old Master Wu's video wasn't breaking red bricks. He was smashing slabs of concrete grabbed from a construction site.

And the concrete had steel bars embedded in it!

A few strikes, and he'd smashed it to pieces!

There was no trick or angle involved. He was simply smashing it with brute force!

And the wrench was an ordinary tool, the kind you could find in any hardware or auto repair shop. He'd bent it with his bare hand. How strong did you have to be to do that?

Most importantly, after breaking everything, the internal-energy master in the video deliberately held up both hands to the camera.

His right hand—the one he'd used to break things—was swollen like a steamed bun, pale with a tinge of red. It didn't have a single callus.

His left hand, meanwhile, looked like an ordinary person's.

The contrast between the two hands was striking.

Chen Jue dragged the progress bar back to the footage of the man before his training session. His hands had both looked the same then.

Comparing the before and after, Chen Jue finally understood why Old Master Wu thought the man had real skills.

"Old Urchin of Hunyuan Hand?"

"IP address: Su Province?"

"Follow him right away!"

The first update~

This chapter is basically two chapters combined.

P.S. Pianfeng didn't mean to disparage traditional martial arts. On the contrary, I greatly admire them. I practiced Southern Fist and Xingyi Quan when I was young. It's just that there are too many frauds these days, so I hope everyone keeps their eyes open.

Also, the Chinese fighters who've achieved success in MMA and the UFC mostly come from wrestling and Sanda backgrounds. Traditional martial arts are generally just a hobby, and few people can really fight.

As for Old Urchin of Hunyuan Hand mentioned in the story, his image is based on the video blogger Old Urchin of Thunderbolt Hand. Look him up if you're interested. He seems to have real skills.