Black Mask

"Hey, what should I call you now?"

Yang Chu looked at the black figure blocking his way and casually tossed the foreigner's corpse aside.

"Black Mask."

The black-clad figure wore a black hat and a black half-mask. After hearing Yang Chu's question, he replied calmly.

"That's a pretty cool outfit! But you're really not much of a friend!"

Yang Chu smiled at the man in black who called himself Black Mask, his tone teasing. "You didn't do a thing when I was surrounded and hunted down, but the moment a beautiful woman's involved, you show up. All because I made you treat me to a plate of fried noodles?"

"I trust you."

The corner of Black Mask's mouth lifted slightly beneath his mask.

"Instructor?!"

When the man in black who called himself Black Mask spoke, the pretty woman behind him looked momentarily dazed. As if testing the waters—or unable to help herself—she called out.

Black Mask didn't answer her. His gaze remained on Yang Chu as he continued, "Every time I see you, you've changed. Your breathing, heartbeat, muscles, and footwork are different every time. You're strong—or rather, you keep getting stronger."

"You trust me that much?"

Yang Chu laughed and pointed at the silver pistol on the ground. "They had guns, you know."

Black Mask didn't answer. Instead, he flicked his leather jacket and pulled a disc from his waist. "When you threw that slipper earlier, if you'd been any slower, I would've thrown my disc. Besides, I don't think even their guns would pose much of a threat to you."

"And you threw a playing card at her."

Yang Chu pointed at the pretty woman behind Black Mask, a rare hint of mischief in his eyes.

"Can you let her go?"

Black Mask turned his head slightly, as if glancing at the woman behind him, then looked back at Yang Chu and asked.

"Something just occurred to me."

Yang Chu didn't answer directly either. Instead, he said to himself, "I remember the first time we met, you told me you read books to find a certain feeling. That feeling... was pain, wasn't it?"

This time, Black Mask didn't answer. He simply stood there in silence.

"Let's talk about it sometime. I'm curious."

Seeing Black Mask's silence, Yang Chu suddenly smiled, then turned and headed toward the shower room by the public swimming pool. "Sorry for the trouble. Please clean this up so it doesn't scare anyone."

"Instructor!"

After Yang Chu left, the pretty woman called out to Black Mask again. Her bright eyes fixed on him, as if she had confirmed his identity. Her gaze was full of admiration and affection.

"This isn't the place to talk."

Black Mask turned his head away without meeting her eyes. "Ruolan, clean this up. We'll talk once we're out of here."

"Xu Xi? Black Mask? How interesting."

After leaving the public swimming pool in Sham Shui Po, Yang Chu walked along the streets of Tonkin Street. As the busy neighborhood gradually quieted down, he pictured Xu Xi in his Black Mask persona.

"Xu Xi hid out in a library and read a huge number of books, all to find pain..."

Yang Chu felt curious about Xu Xi and the killers from that mysterious organization who couldn't feel pain.

He wasn't curious about the organization or its power, or even about Xu Xi's past. He was simply curious about how they had lost their sense of pain.

Yang Chu had read many books lately. Combining what he'd learned with his own condition and the killer without pain whom he had killed, he could make a few deductions.

If someone couldn't feel pain, they could, to some extent, ignore bodily injuries and unleash considerable fighting strength.

From that perspective, a lack of pain removed some of the body's limitations.

But pain was the body's warning system. Without it, a fatal injury or illness—something as common as acute appendicitis, for example—could go unnoticed by the brain. It might lead to a perforation, then peritonitis, making the condition even worse.

The difference between Yang Chu and them was that he could feel pain. It was just that his nervous system was under his brain's conscious control, allowing him to block those intense warning signals when necessary.

But how had they gotten rid of their pain?

Yang Chu had a new question.

But he still knew too little to draw any concrete conclusions.

He could only vaguely guess that it might have been the result of experiments by some faction or other.

After leaving Tonkin Street, Yang Chu wandered through several more streets. After walking for about an hour, he returned to Fish Head Xu's home.

Fish Head Xu had left him a key. When Yang Chu unlocked the door, he was surprised to find that it was already nearly half past eleven at night, yet Fish Head Xu still hadn't come home.

Yang Chu didn't sit idle. He found some exercise equipment on the balcony and began working out.

His physical abilities were already somewhat above average, but he was nowhere near strong yet.

The main reason was that his brain consumed a lot of energy. Even though he took in plenty of calories and nutrients, not much of it actually went to his body.

But that wasn't really a problem. Even if his physical abilities didn't improve very quickly, they were already improving far faster than an ordinary person's could through diet and exercise.

Standing on the balcony, Yang Chu's workout this time was different from his previous routine of simple muscle exercises like push-ups and sit-ups.

After reading through a large number of books at the library, witnessing Xiahou Wu's sparring match, and hearing those few "kung fu tips" from him, Yang Chu had begun to focus on strengthening the ligaments and major and minor muscle groups in specific parts of his body.

He felt that this was one of the core elements of kung fu: how to train oneself, improve one's physical abilities, and master more powerful ways to generate force.

This was probably what martial arts called "training methods."

Yang Chu naturally didn't understand any of this, but his understanding of the books he'd read about the human body had already given him quite a few ideas.

As he'd thought before, generating force didn't just require the coordinated use of muscles throughout the body; it also called for specialized training of many smaller muscle groups.

For instance, some forms of kung fu trained the fingers until they became exceptionally thick and hard, strong enough for just one or two fingers to support the weight of the entire body.

There was also training for the muscles at the base of the thumb, making the grip far stronger than an ordinary person's.

Then there was coordinating the joints of the hands and feet with the waist, abdomen, shoulders, and hips, while learning the fundamentals of combat.

Kung fu was a killing art. Put simply, it was a way of hunting down a creature like a human.

It targeted the human body's weak points to inflict the greatest possible damage.

When Yang Chu had dealt with the three foreigners who couldn't feel pain that day, he'd experienced firsthand the benefits of the force-generating techniques used in some forms of kung fu. They really could unleash far greater damage from the body's inherent strength.

He was also gradually beginning to understand what Xiahou Wu had meant when he explained how to counter wrestling.

In a real fight to the death, mastering these techniques for generating force wasn't enough. One also had to control timing, surroundings, distance, and rhythm.

Often, even a simple straight punch could have a tremendous effect if the timing was right.

Change that straight punch into a jab with the fingers, and it immediately became an eye-poke—a killing move. That was the difference between a "fighting method" and a "killing method."

"I still need to master more kung fu techniques and improve my overall abilities further."

As he trained, Yang Chu drew conclusions about his own shortcomings and what he needed to improve.

On Fish Head Xu's balcony, Yang Chu trained according to his own understanding and insights. He tried out different ways of generating force and worked his muscles, continuing until around one in the morning, when the sound of a key turning in the lock finally came from outside.