Since he had agreed to a friendly match, Ma Liangdong naturally arranged a suitable venue right away.
They had Xiao Zhou drive all five of them straight to the Municipal National Security Bureau compound, where they found a sufficiently spacious spot in the parking lot. There was even an old banyan tree nearby with a trunk too thick for several people to encircle together, so the spectators could sit beneath it and enjoy a little shade.
Seeing Ma Liangdong noisily arranging for people to get ready to fight, Slit-Mouthed Woman asked curiously, "Don't you need to set up a barrier or something to keep ordinary people from wandering in?"
Ma waved a hand. "Different countries, different circumstances. People generally don't come to the National Security Bureau without a reason. Even if they want to report something, dedicated staff receive them. They won't come all the way back to this parking lot."
For the first bout, Ma arranged an exhibition match between two new recruits as a warm-up.
One of them seemed to have a military or police background, while the other apparently had ties to the Shaolin Temple.
The one from the military or police handled grappling techniques expertly, flowing smoothly through hooks, grabs, locks, holds, twists, pressure-point strikes, entanglements, and chops. At times he was fierce as a tiger, at others sly as a snake, and at others supple as water. His moves were endlessly varied.
He also seemed to possess some kind of supernatural ability, because Kano saw blue-green energy burst out whenever his fists struck his opponent, accompanied by a rush of wind.
The one with a Shaolin Temple background used hard qigong. Whenever his opponent's fists or feet landed on him, faint golden light flashed at the point of contact, blocking the blue-green energy.
He didn't move much, and his techniques weren't as intricate. His specialty was simply planting his feet and bringing his palms together, causing a phantom golden Buddha palm roughly two meters tall to appear behind him and envelop him.
His opponent's blows struck the phantom Buddha palm with the ringing clash of metal, but the man inside remained completely unharmed.
His opponent had to break through the Buddha palm before he could attack the man within.
"One does nothing but attack, and the other does nothing but defend..." Shoichi Kano muttered.
Ma Liangdong even had a thermos in his hand. He occasionally sipped his tea, then spat out the tea fragments clinging to his lips. "Well, they're just rookies. It's only natural that they wouldn't impress you two."
Once the exhibition match ended, both men cupped their fists in salute to the spectators, then returned to their respective seats to rest.
"Cheng," Ma Liangdong said, glancing at the cold-faced, short-haired woman standing beside him, Cheng Shan. "Show our two guests what you can do."
"All right." Without wasting another word, Cheng Shan began stretching and warming up, then landed a backflip squarely on the spot where the two men had fought.
"Kano." Slit-Mouthed Woman leaned against the banyan tree, too lazy to move.
"Okay!" Shoichi Kano genuinely wanted to see what China's supernatural powers were like, since the original story hadn't explored them in detail.
He scratched the back of his head and stepped out from among the spectators with a smile.
Cheng Shan asked him, "No going too far?"
"No going too far."
She began muttering, swaying her head, and even unconsciously slapping her thighs with both hands.
What Cheng Shan recited didn't sound like human language. It was a strange growling mixed with cat cries, and as she moved, black mist began churning around her, resembling cursed energy without quite being the same.
Having watched plenty of tokusatsu shows, Kano guessed that she possessed some kind of transformation cursed technique. His solution was simple: interrupt her windup!
He quickly wrapped his right leg in a mass of cursed energy threads, forming a sharp structure like an ice skate blade. Then he imitated Suguru Geto's triple flying kick at the Tombs of the Star Corridor, kicking straight at Cheng Shan's chest.
But Cheng Shan twisted her waist and retreated with an agility beyond an ordinary person's reach, circling behind Shoichi Kano like a nimble cat.
Before Kano could turn, he felt a fierce gust coming from behind. He simply pulled his leg back and ran forward, simultaneously dividing his attention to create a mass of cursed energy threads behind him to obstruct her movements. The feedback from his cursed technique told him that, unsurprisingly, those haphazard thread constructs hadn't hindered Cheng Shan at all.
Only then did Shoichi Kano turn to face her, once again assuming an awkward imitation of a fighting stance.
Cheng Shan now looked completely different, although the way she reached out to pluck the threads off herself looked rather comical, like a cat tangled in spiderwebs.
Snow-white fur covered her entire body, and her frame had lengthened, becoming slender and lithe. A pair of cat ears sprouted among her hair, while her face took on delicate half-human, half-feline features with a distinctive furry aesthetic.
Oversized earrings still hung from her cat ears, weighing their tips down into gentle curves like those of a Scottish Fold. Her eyes had turned emerald green, and a red scar ran vertically across her left eye like a tear stain-or a bizarre tattoo. The fur on her extremities faded to pale blue. Her hands had become cat paws with soft pads, and a clearly defined black-and-white eye opened on the back of each, adding an eerie touch in those peculiar locations.
"Damn, you've even got catgirls!" Shoichi Kano cracked an ill-timed joke.
Cheng Shan dropped onto all fours and sprang nimbly forward, like a spirit cat hunting its prey, ready to pounce on the little mouse that was Kano.
While airborne, she even explained, "I combined my family's Cat Ghost Technique with the spirit-medium practices of Northeast China that I learned, drawing the power of the Cat Ghosts I nurture directly into my body. That lets me borrow their strength."
Shoichi Kano retreated several steps, and Cheng Shan's pounce missed, but she kept talking. "The price is... I turn into this half-human, half-cat form while using their power."
Whoosh! As soon as she finished speaking, sharp claws sprang from her feline hands, and she raked the air, sending out a bright silver claw mark.
Before the claw mark even reached Kano's face, he felt a faint stinging across his cheeks, as though the wind had cut them. What would happen if it actually hit him? Wouldn't it tear his skin open?
Threads shot from all ten of Shoichi Kano's fingertips. His hands flew, weaving them into a barrier in midair. "You've even got ranged attacks?"
Slash! The claw mark dispersed, and the thread barrier shattered with it.
But Shoichi Kano's cursed energy-coated fist had already reached Cheng Shan's cheek!
He could tell that she apparently hadn't listened to Ma Liangdong at all. Their agreement not to go too far had been nothing but empty pleasantries!
She was aiming to make him bleed!
So Shoichi Kano held nothing back with that punch. Even shortly after awakening his cursed technique, his fist had been able to break Bayer's metal shield. Now, after the Star Plasma Vessel Incident and learning a little basic theory, his control over cursed energy had only grown stronger and more precise!
Sure enough, Shoichi Kano soon felt something like punching a plush toy, except this plush toy had body heat and hard things like bones inside it, unlike a cotton-stuffed plaything.
If a high-speed camera had captured the moment in slow motion, it would have shown the wind from Kano's fist denting the fur on Cheng Shan's feline face before the fist itself, wrapped in a few cursed energy threads and raw cursed energy, even made contact.
Then came the collision of pure physics and magic-his cursed energy-enhanced fist slammed into her feline face, wrenching her expression out of control. The tremendous force drove her head sideways in the direction of the punch and shifted her lower body's center of gravity along with it. In plain terms, both her feet left the ground, and she lost her footing.
"Aaah!" "Thud! Crack!" The punch sent Cheng Shan crashing into the parking lot's perimeter wall, leaving a half-human, half-cat-shaped dent and a web of cracks spreading outward.
Since Shoichi Kano hadn't truly mastered how to deliver the force of his punches, he had inadvertently produced the same effect as Yuji Itadori's Divergent Fist. The initial physical impact slammed Cheng Shan into the wall, delivering the first hit. Then the cursed energy Kano had driven into her body erupted, delivering a second impact.
The spiderweb cracks on the wall were the distinctive marks Shoichi Kano's cursed energy had left on a physical surface.
Before Cheng Shan could speak, Shoichi Kano immediately moved to define what had happened in his own words. "Sorry. Miss Cheng's attack was so fierce that I thought she was trying to kill me. I slipped up and couldn't pull my punch in time."
Just as Cheng Shan freed herself from the dent in the wall, Kano bowed to her. "I'm terribly sorry!"
While holding his bow, Kano glanced diagonally upward out of the corner of his eye and met Slit-Mouthed Woman's approving gaze.
Cheng Shan also realized that her attempt to test him had failed. She shook her head and changed back into human form, though a large swelling remained on her cheek, making her look rather comical.
"...I lost." She silently returned to the group.
Ma Liangdong's expression was a sight to behold. "Didn't I tell you-"
"This was my own choice." Cheng Shan sighed, then accepted an ice pack someone handed her and pressed it against her swollen cheek. "I'm willing to accept disciplinary action from the organization."
"I'm sorry." Ma Liangdong also apologized to Shoichi Kano. "I didn't make things clear enough to Cheng beforehand. This match... got a little out of hand."
Shoichi Kano nodded expressionlessly. Whether he accepted that apology was another matter.
There was nothing wrong with wanting to test his abilities, but trying to injure an opponent without any prior warning was a different matter altogether.
"After all that, there's no point continuing the matches, is there?" Slit-Mouthed Woman spoke up for Kano as well.
"No more matches, no more." Ma Liangdong waved a hand. "This bout has given everyone else enough to study for a while."
Before you continue