Meeting at Panjiayuan

Qin Fen found a small restaurant and ordered some food. Little Bean wandered around, bored and uninterested in any of it. Whoosh—two figures came in after them.

Chef Qin glanced helplessly at the foreigner and Wei Qiang. Somehow, he had acquired two little shadows.

"What do you want?" The pair across from him left him at a loss.

"I want you to teach me kung fu," the foreigner said bluntly.

Qin Fen said nothing. Instead, he stared at Wei Qiang. "What's wushu? What's traditional martial arts?"

Is this a test? Wei Qiang was thrilled. Little Bean yawned. You're overthinking it. You don't know this guy.

"Wushu only came about after the founding of New China. Traditional martial arts are older. They're very different," Wei Qiang said after some thought.

Too sensitive a subject? Qin Fen understood. The real stuff had probably been driven underground. There might still be masters among ordinary people, but they could only hide in plain sight. This was no longer an age of war, when lives were worth less than grass. Settling grudges by force wasn't the done thing now, and no matter how skilled someone was, they couldn't stand up to armored vehicles.

"Wushu focuses on performance. Traditional martial arts are different. And with so many fighting styles disappearing, they're getting harder to find." As Wei Qiang spoke, his eyes shone at Qin Fen. Here was a genuine martial artist.

Qin Fen understood, but he wanted to tell him he wasn't one. He was just a cook!

"You want to learn?" Big Chef gave him a strange smile.

Wei Qiang nodded at once. The foreigner caught on and nodded too.

"Then you've got the wrong person!" Qin Fen wanted to promote the culture, and wushu would be a better starting point than traditional martial arts.