Reaction training

Five months slipped by in a flash. Early one morning on Qixia Mountain in the eastern outskirts of White Cloud City, an elderly couple sat resting in a pavilion halfway up the mountain.

"Dear, look!"

Hearing her startled cry, the gray-haired old man looked in the direction his wife was pointing. A figure was racing along the winding mountain path, carrying an enormous hiking pack and wearing bulky gear.

While the old man was still staring in astonishment, the figure dashed past the pavilion. Only when a gust of wind brushed his face did he come back to his senses.

"What did I always tell you?" the old man said excitedly, his beard trembling. "White Cloud City is full of hidden talents! There are peerless masters living among us!"

The figure the elderly couple had seen was none other than Jiang Nan, who had been training hard for five months. Over a month earlier, his battle power had reached 65, but no matter how hard he worked after that, there had been no sign of him breaking through his physical limits again. It seemed he had hit a plateau.

Jiang Nan thought he might simply not have trained enough yet. As the saying went, quantitative changes led to qualitative changes. Perhaps if he kept at it, he would eventually break through.

The weights he carried now totaled over a hundred kilograms, yet he could still run fast with that load. But the sight of him running with so much weight was so incredible that ordinary passersby always made a fuss and pointed at him. To keep a low profile, Jiang Nan now went to Qixia Mountain on the outskirts every day to train.

But after more than a month of continuous effort without any gains, Jiang Nan finally realized that weighted training might no longer suit his current level.

Then next up should be reaction training!

But how should I train? When Master Roshi trained Kid Goku and Kid Krillin, he had used sharks and bees. White Cloud City was on the coast, but unfortunately, there were no sharks in the shallow waters. Qixia Mountain did have hornets, but the mountain was so large that finding a hornets' nest would be no easy task.

After climbing up and down Qixia Mountain several times, Jiang Nan saw that today's weighted training had yielded no progress either, so he took a small trail down the mountain and headed back.

"Nan, the usual today?" The noodle shop owner had gotten to know Jiang Nan well. After all, someone with an appetite like his was hard to forget.

"The usual!" Jiang Nan replied with a smile.

Before long, the owner brought over a porcelain basin filled to the brim with beef noodles, with a generous layer of sliced beef on top.

This was an extra-large serving of beef noodles made especially for Jiang Nan. At normal serving sizes, even ten bowls might not have been enough to fill him up. Rather than have Jiang Nan order one serving after another and carry out each bowl separately, the owner had simply found a porcelain basin used for kneading dough and made him one enormous bowl.

The noodle shop owner was an honest man. He charged for ten servings of beef noodles, but the actual quantity was never less than that and usually more.

There were few customers in the shop at the moment. The owner's daughter, who was around ten, leaned over a table, her pencil scratching across her homework. Every so often, she sneaked a glance at Jiang Nan as he noisily slurped his noodles.

"Xiao Mei, stop staring at your big brother Nan and do your homework." Having finished his work in the kitchen, the owner scolded his daughter while wiping his hands on a cloth.

"Nan, been out exercising again today?" The noodle shop owner's surname was Li. He was warmhearted and talkative, and there wasn't a piece of neighborhood gossip he didn't know.

Jiang Nan took a sip of broth and paused for breath. "Yeah, I just got back from my workout. It's really hot today. Spring's barely started, so why is the temperature already so high?"

"That's White Cloud City's lousy weather for you. Let me turn the fan on." Boss Li plugged in the wall-mounted fan, pointed it toward Jiang Nan, and switched it on. Then he sat on a stool across from him and continued chatting.

"I really envy you. You're young, and you only have yourself to feed. You can do whatever you want. Not like me, stuck in this little restaurant every day, barely making any money and dealing with one thing after another!" Boss Li grumbled.

Jiang Nan smiled. "You're joking again, boss. You've got a wife, a kid, and a cozy home. How could a bachelor like me compare? Besides, business looks pretty good here. For a small business, making a little profit on plenty of sales isn't bad."

"It's not as easy as you make it sound," Mr. Li said. "My wife and I work from dawn till late at night, and all we earn is a bit of hard-earned money. Once we pay the rent, there's barely anything left. And now we have to pay protection money too!"

"Someone collects protection money here?" Jiang Nan asked in surprise.

"You bet!"

Boss Li took out a cigarette and was about to light it when he looked up and saw his daughter watching him with her big eyes. Sheepishly, he put it away again.

"Some asshole calling himself Brother Fei showed up on this street recently and set up something called the Flying Dragon Gang. They come around collecting protection money every week. I work my ass off running this noodle shop, and the bastard demands five hundred. Five hundred a week, two thousand a month! How much does he think I make?"

"Don't the Federal Police do anything?" Jiang Nan asked.

Boss Li looked scornful. "Those Federal Police bastards are even worse. Ask them to handle it, and they turn around and demand a little 'tea money.' Five hundred won't cover that! Besides, A-Fei and his bunch are crafty. They insist it's a sanitation fee, not protection money, so the Federal Police can't arrest them. There's nothing we can do."

"What can they do if you don't pay? Surely they wouldn't dare beat someone up in broad daylight?" Jiang Nan asked.

"I wish they would. If they dared hit someone, the Federal Police would have grounds to arrest them," Mr. Li said helplessly.

"If you don't pay, they camp out in your shop and won't leave. Each one takes a table, and when other people come to eat, they say the table's taken. What am I supposed to do? I have a wife and a kid. I can't go picking fights with them!"

"How come I've never seen them?" Jiang Nan came here to eat almost every day, but he had never encountered anyone from the Flying Dragon Gang.

"They spend the daytime guarding the arcade at the west end of the street," Mr. Li explained. "They only come here at night, so naturally you haven't run into them. They know exactly when little shops like ours have cash on hand and deliberately come in the evening. Tch, they're a bunch of flies!"

Jiang Nan laughed too. "They sure are flies. They don't bite, but they disgust you!"

Suddenly, inspiration struck Jiang Nan. That's right, flies! Hornets are hard to find, but flies are everywhere! Wouldn't using flies for reaction training work even better?

Eager to test the idea, Jiang Nan hurriedly took out his money and slapped it on the table. Then he borrowed a pen and paper from the owner's daughter, wrote down his phone number, and said, "Boss, remember to call me the next time those guys come. I've got something to do, so I'm heading off!"

Jiang Nan actually knew a place with plenty of flies-the seafood market!

Three kilometers from his apartment complex was a wholesale seafood market, supposedly the largest in the entire East City region. Not only seafood vendors from White Cloud City but also those from several neighboring cities came here to buy seafood wholesale.

The market sold every kind of seafood, but it was also overrun with rats. By scavenging or stealing seafood, the rats here had grown as large as wild rabbits. And they weren't just big-they were bold, too, often parading openly through the market.

The locals had long since grown used to it. If tourists from elsewhere stopped to watch, the rats would even stand up and glare at them.

What are you looking at? Want a beating?

Besides the rat infestation, the number of flies here was enormous. The fishy smell of the wholesale seafood market carried for several kilometers, drawing flies from all the surrounding blocks.

Jiang Nan first ran to a general store to buy a few fly traps, then hurried straight to the seafood market. He set the traps in places thick with flies and quietly waited for results.

In just an hour, the traps were packed with flies. Delighted, Jiang Nan picked them up and dashed off to North Suburb Park.

It was a weekday, and North Suburb Park was almost deserted.

Jiang Nan knew there was an open concrete area deep inside the park. A few roller-skating enthusiasts used it on weekends, but on ordinary days, with the sun beating down like this, there wasn't a soul in sight.

The area also offered a clear view, so he wouldn't have to worry about flies scattering out of sight. They were pests, after all, and Jiang Nan didn't want his training to leave flies buzzing around everywhere.

On his way to the concrete area, Jiang Nan made sure to pick up a few fallen branches. These would serve as his training weapons.

Once he reached the concrete area, Jiang Nan set the traps on the ground, then took just one and walked a little farther ahead.

Holding a branch in one hand and the trap in the other, Jiang Nan listened to the buzzing inside. He took a deep breath and opened the seal at the top.

The flies that had been careening around inside now found an escape route and burst out of the trap like popcorn exploding from a popper.

Now!

Jiang Nan put down the trap and charged at the flies, swinging his branch wildly as he tried to kill every last one of them.

Unfortunately, his grand expectations met a harsh reality. Jiang Nan discovered that his aim was astonishingly poor. Apart from knocking down a few flies with his initial wild flailing, once they scattered, he had to swing several times to hit a single one.

Fortunately, the concrete area was large enough, and there were no nearby bushes or trees for them to hide in. The flies would land to rest before flying very far, giving Jiang Nan a chance to kill them one by one.

Gradually, Jiang Nan began to get the hang of it. His aim steadily improved, until he could knock down a fly with practically every strike.

When he could no longer see any flies moving nearby, Jiang Nan tossed away the branch, now covered in fly fluids, with satisfaction. Looking at the dead flies strewn across the ground, he wondered whether he should bring a broom tomorrow. Otherwise, the workers responsible for cleaning the park would probably have a headache when they saw this mess.

When he checked his battle power, it had actually risen by three points in that short time, reaching 68. Jiang Nan couldn't help feeling delighted.

Seeing that the sun was almost down, Jiang Nan prepared to head home. He had overestimated his abilities at first and brought five traps full of flies at once. Taking the remaining four home wasn't a good idea either, since they were hardly clean. He found a secluded corner of the park and hung all the traps in a tree, leaving them for tomorrow.

As soon as he returned to his place, Jiang Nan stripped off his clothes and soaked them in disinfectant, afraid he might have picked up some virus. Then he took a shower and scrubbed himself thoroughly before changing into fresh clothes and going out for dinner.

Over the next two or three days, Jiang Nan killed an entire trap's worth of flies each day. He even brought a digital watch with a stopwatch function so he could clearly track the changes in his abilities.

On the first day he used the stopwatch, Jiang Nan took nearly two hours to finish off a whole trap of flies. His battle power increased again, though this time by only one point.

On the second day, Jiang Nan drew on the previous day's experience. While striking quickly, he also made slight adjustments to how he applied force and the angles of his attacks, experimenting with different approaches. After all, combat couldn't rely on brute strength alone; technique mattered just as much. By constantly refining his strikes, Jiang Nan completed his goal in just one hour that day, and his battle power rose significantly, gaining three points.

By the third day, Jiang Nan was even faster. The moment the flies left the trap, they met a storm of blows, and nearly half were wiped out within a few breaths. Jiang Nan then chased down those that scattered, finally ending the battle in half an hour. His battle power had risen to 74.

The results of this reaction training were really encouraging. In high spirits, Jiang Nan hummed a tune as he used the broom he had brought to sweep the dead flies into a pile, then scooped them up and tossed them into the park's lake to feed the fish.

Whether the fish wanted to eat them was none of Jiang Nan's concern. All he cared about now was what he would eat next.

The fish in the lake: "Speak up for us!"