Martial Arts Prodigy

While everyone else was focused on Ran, Lin Xinyi was focused on Ishikawa.

More precisely, Lin Xinyi was focused on Ishikawa's chest injuries and the dented wall behind him.

"Th-those injuries..."

"I'd believe it if you told me he'd been hit by a car!"

"How did this happen? Is that really strength a human can possess?"

At that moment, Lin Xinyi's worldview suffered an unprecedented shock.

After all, he understood the human body's structure all too well.

And strength, ultimately, was the tension or contractile force produced when muscles contracted.

For humans, the more muscle one had, the heavier one was, and the greater one's muscle cross-sectional area, the stronger one would be.

Although Lin Xinyi had been highly skilled in martial arts and exceptionally adept at fighting in his previous life, when it came to pure strength, he only dared claim to be among the best against opponents in the same weight class.

After transmigrating into the body of a Security Director with a build similar to his own but even greater strength, Lin Xinyi had been faintly surprised.

So he had not trained to the limit in his previous life. The human body could be tempered even further.

But he had never expected to be shocked so soon.

Just look at this Miss Mouri...

She was fair and slender, delicate as a twig, and looked like nothing more than a strawweight fighting enthusiast.

Yet this strawweight fighter had somehow unleashed strength that even a sumo wrestler could not possess.

A human could cause injuries comparable to a traffic accident with her bare hands? Were the books I read before all fake?

Lin Xinyi's expression was focused, but inwardly, he was screaming complaints.

"Um, Mr. Lin Xinyi?"

Lin Xinyi's prolonged contemplation caught Kudo Shinichi's attention.

Whenever Lin Xinyi wore that expression before, he had always discovered clues Kudo had failed to notice.

So Kudo Shinichi immediately asked impatiently:

"Is there another problem?"

"Hm?" Hearing that, Mouri Ran also looked over curiously.

"There is."

Still unable to recover from his shock, Lin Xinyi blurted out a rather impolite question:

"Kudo, is your girlfriend really human?"

"..."

A brief silence followed.

Then Kudo Shinichi and Mouri Ran both blushed.

They spoke in unison:

"She isn't my girlfriend!"

"I'm not his girlfriend!"

"..."

Another silence, and then:

"Hmph!"

They exchanged a glance, then tacitly turned their heads away at the same time.

"..."

Lin Xinyi was speechless.

They were so lovey-dovey and inseparable, yet they were not dating?

Why were they both acting so reserved? Even someone who had only known them for half a day could tell they were showing off their affection, okay?

Wait, no...

He had gotten sidetracked.

Was that really the point here?!

Explain that unscientific monstrous strength of yours!

Lin Xinyi's mind was filled with question marks and exclamation points.

His eyes, brimming with thirst for knowledge, stared fixedly at Miss Mouri's calves.

"Smooth skin, streamlined curves, no prominent gastrocnemius or soleus muscles."

"No matter how I look at them, they look like a female celebrity's legs..."

"How could she kick with such tremendous force? That's completely unscientific!"

Staring at those slender legs that had utterly shattered his understanding, Lin Xinyi sank into deep thought.

The atmosphere grew somewhat strange as he pondered.

Miss Mouri's cheeks heated under his stare. She looked uncomfortable, as though she wanted to speak but hesitated.

Kudo Shinichi was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, his gaze at Lin Xinyi instantly filled with deep wariness.

Even Miss Miyano, who usually paid no attention to worldly affairs, leaned her face closer on her own initiative.

In a calm tone carrying a hint of mischievous provocation, she softly whispered into Lin Xinyi's ear while he was absorbed in observation:

"You want to touch Miss Mouri's legs, don't you?"

"Of course."

Lin Xinyi answered instinctively:

"The most direct way to assess muscle density is through pressure and physical contact."

"Though it would be even better if I could dissect them. If I could directly observe the muscle bundle structure, then extract muscle fibers and study them under a microscope, I might discover something."

Mouri Ran: "..."

Kudo Shinichi: "..."

Miyano Shiho: "..."

She now felt that Lin Xinyi was more like an evil scientist than she was.

"Ahem..."

Lin Xinyi realized he had lost his composure.

He barely calmed himself after the collapse of his worldview, then asked tentatively:

"Miss Mouri, were you born this strong?"

"No." Mouri Ran finally understood what Lin Xinyi had been looking at. "This is all the result of training."

"Karate can reach this level?"

Lin Xinyi found that hard to believe.

He had studied all kinds of combat techniques in his previous life, and karate was no exception.

There was no martial art in the world that could train someone into a superhuman. Anyone who claimed otherwise had to be a fraud.

That group of frauds even included Lin Xinyi's ancestors.

The inherited family manuals left by his forebears had praised their martial arts to the heavens, claiming that once mastered, one could move as lightly as a swallow, scale walls and leap over roofs, shrink one's skin and bones to change one's face and form, wrestle lions and tigers, or lift mountains and cauldrons...

In short, if one mastered that martial art, fighting Captain America to a draw should not have been a problem.

But Lin Xinyi had begun training in that martial art as a child.

Aside from becoming better at fighting, he had gained none of those effects.

Later, after studying forensic medicine and learning about human science, he believed in such unscientific things even less.

Yet now, Lin Xinyi had truly encountered an unscientific female superhero.

"Of course karate can reach this level."

Mouri Ran thought Lin Xinyi was questioning karate's practical combat ability, and she immediately replied somewhat seriously:

"As long as you practice consistently for years, your strength will definitely surpass that of ordinary people by a noticeable margin."

"Karate practitioners at my level may not be common, but there are definitely more than just one or two."

"Oh, right, Mr. Lin Xinyi."

As if suddenly recalling something, Ran smiled enthusiastically again.

"I saw you make a move earlier too..."

"You must know a lot about fighting, right?"

"Tomorrow is the day I compete in the Tokyo Metropolitan Karate Tournament. Young experts from all over Tokyo will be there."

"If you're interested, Mr. Lin, you can come watch with us."

Then Ran added modestly:

"With my current ability, I still don't know what ranking I'll achieve at the Tokyo Metropolitan Karate Tournament."

"I see..."

Lin Xinyi fell silent.

So superhumans like you could actually gather in groups!

And this was only a karate competition within Tokyo...

If experts from all the world's fighting styles were added together, then wouldn't this planet be full of little superhumans who could shatter walls with a single kick?

Lin Xinyi had been considered a peak-level fighter in his previous life, yet now a female high school student who practiced karate could display strength far beyond his own.

Sure enough, something about this world was wrong.

At that moment, Lin Xinyi finally understood reality clearly.

At first, he had only thought he had transmigrated to Japan in the past, but now it seemed this was not his original world at all.

The original Earth followed science. Sir Newton would not be angered to death every other day.

But this Earth was clearly a Low-Martial World where supernatural powers existed.

In an instant, he had switched from the "urban life" channel to the "Urban Supernatural" channel.

"Another world where 'superhumans' exist..."

Lin Xinyi suddenly developed a strong interest in this world whose style had changed so abruptly.

Like every young man, he had once fantasized about the kind of martial arts life where one came and went from lofty heights.

And though it sounded a little boastful, he truly was a once-in-a-century Martial Arts Prodigy.

Lin Xinyi had been born into a martial arts family.

Influenced by his family environment, he began conditioning his body at five, learned boxing at six, and read through his family's inherited martial arts at seven.

When he was eight, he performed martial arts before his elders during the New Year. An elder of his clan praised him:

"Had you been born three or four hundred years earlier, you could have become the founding master of a generation."

Worried that such a Martial Arts Prodigy would be delayed by the restless, glittering world, that elder encouraged him to train quietly, restrain himself, and use that as an excuse to give him one hundred yuan less in New Year's money.

His original New Year's money had only totaled one hundred yuan.

At nine, Lin Xinyi joined a karate hobby class.

After one month of study, the coach refunded him triple the tuition and tearfully sent him away:

"Don't come back. Even wrecking a place doesn't mean wrecking it like this."

After learning of this, Father Lin repeatedly took Lin Xinyi to all kinds of fighting classes, never tiring of it.

Back then, whenever the name of the Lin father and son was mentioned, coaches at martial arts gyms across the city would turn pale.

At ten, Lin Xinyi fought one against two, exchanging martial arts with two Tibetan mastiffs that had broken free of their leashes.

In the end, at the cost of four hundred yuan for rabies vaccines and seven stitches in his leg, he beat the two mastiffs until they lowered their heads and behaved like dogs.

At eleven, Lin Xinyi neglected food and sleep while diligently practicing fighting techniques from every school, and his martial arts advanced another step.

Seeing how absorbed and selfless he was, his mother could not help sighing:

"You're still spending your time on this?"

"You'll be taking the middle school entrance exam in two years. Do you know what score you're getting now?"

At twelve, he studied seriously.

At thirteen, he studied seriously, but unexpectedly clashed with some delinquents outside school.

Lin Xinyi fought one against ten, injured six, scared away three, and frightened one into wetting himself.

That same year, the local public security bureau successfully solved a group brawl case with severe social impact and, in accordance with criminal law, gave serious criticism and education to the thirteen-year-old Lin involved in the case.

Thus ended Lin Xinyi's martial arts career.

And he truly understood that in the real world, being a chivalrous hero did not work.

Martial artists broke prohibitions through force. If he wanted to uphold justice, he needed to learn truly righteous skills.

So Lin Xinyi chose to become a police officer.

But his mother feared that a fighting expert like him would be assigned dangerous duties after becoming a police officer, so she firmly opposed it.

In the end, after a compromise, Lin Xinyi chose to become a forensic doctor.

Forensic doctors were also Criminal Investigators, except they performed technical work, which was very safe.

However, even amid demanding study and work, Lin Xinyi did not abandon his martial arts.

He continued training, and his skills did not weaken.

In fact, because he had studied forensic knowledge and memorized the "Human Injury Identification Standards"...

He had already reached the terrifying realm where he could beat someone until they wished they were dead, while fellow professionals could only classify the injuries as minor.

An expert was still an expert, but he no longer possessed the same obsession with martial arts he had as a youth.

And now, Lin Xinyi had rediscovered that passion of a martial artist.

"Since a female high school student can become this powerful through karate practice..."

"Then if I train diligently in this world, I can definitely break through humanity's limits too."

Lin Xinyi could not help feeling stirred.

At the same time, he had a bold idea.

"And if this world is fundamentally unscientific..."

"Then could those unscientific inherited secret manuals of my family actually be useful too?"