The Boat Boxing maxim

"You're too kind, Master Li!"

Chen Jue smiled, finding the slightly stout Master Li rather congenial. After all, they shared the same martial lineage, so he sat and chatted with him for over half an hour.

Knowledge gained from books always fell short of firsthand experience. Through his conversation with Master Li, Chen Jue learned a great deal about the origins and history of Boat Boxing.

Boat Boxing originated during the Song and Yuan dynasties as a martial art coastal fishermen practiced to strengthen their bodies. Later, during the Ming dynasty, it caught the attention of Qi Jiguang, the renowned general who fought the Japanese pirates. He developed and promoted it, incorporating it into the famous Qi Family Army, where it spread widely and contributed considerably to suppressing the Japanese pirates in the south.

Even the Qi Family Boxing compiled by Qi Jiguang bore faint traces of Boat Boxing.

But turmoil later swept across China, dynasties changed, and the south became the vanguard of the movement to overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming. Repeated purges by Qing troops nearly wiped out Boat Boxing, leaving only a few minor branches in the remote mountain valleys of southern Zhejiang and northern Fujian.

This Master Li, Li Xiangning, was the current inheritor of Li Family Boat Boxing.

He was in his forties and worked for the Wenzhou Sports Bureau, where he was responsible for promoting and preserving the region's traditional boxing styles and martial arts forms.

His own martial skill had also reached the level of bright force, though he could not open and close the pores across his entire body at will as Chen Jue could. At most, he could control those on his arms and legs.

The more they talked, the more engrossed they became, until they began demonstrating their boxing and stance training to each other in the lounge.

After watching Chen Jue demonstrate a few moves of Boat Boxing and the Eight Immortals Stance, Master Li Xiangning could not help remarking, "Master Chen, with your level of boxing, you could have founded your own school back in the old days!"

"I only recently mastered bright force. I've still got a long way to go," Chen Jue replied modestly, shaking his head.

Li Xiangning's face twitched at that.

In Master Li's eyes, the astonishing punch Chen Jue had thrown that morning was indeed a display of fully mastered bright force. But in terms of power, even masters of hidden strength or transforming strength probably could not have come close!

Aside from elite Black boxers in Europe and America, probably only some Caucasian strongmen from Russia and a few freaks born with immense strength could produce such an effect with bright force.

"By the way, Master Li, I don't really understand the hidden strength and transforming strength people talk about online. I suppose my martial skill isn't high enough yet, and I haven't trained enough. With your family's long martial tradition, have you ever met masters at those levels?" Chen Jue asked.

He was wholly focused on training now, and he would not pass up a chance like this to exchange knowledge with someone else.

"Hidden strength?"

"That's an extremely advanced skill! Very few people know it! When I visited Mount Wudang in my younger days, I encountered hidden strength. Looking back now, it's rather funny. Back then, I thought learning a little of my family's martial arts was enough to venture out into the world. Only after meeting those Wudang Taoists did I realize how vast the world was, and that there was always someone better."

A nostalgic look crossed Li Xiangning's face before he continued, "Boat Boxing is only a minor style, and parts of its teachings have been lost. In my branch, even in my grandfather's generation, the best practitioners only reached full mastery of bright force, just like you. At most, they could freely control the pores across their bodies and unite all their strength into a single force."

"But Boat Boxing is also an Internal Fist style, and it does have a maxim for beginning to develop hidden strength."

"My father passed this maxim down to me: 'The Eight Immortals cross aboard the boat; enter the water, and strength forms on its own.' I've practiced Boat Boxing for half my life without even fully mastering bright force. I've studied that maxim for years, but I still haven't found a way to begin. I might as well teach it to you rather than risk this skill being lost someday."

Seeing how generously Li Xiangning shared his knowledge and cleared up his doubts, even privately passing on his family's secret maxim without holding anything back, Chen Jue was deeply moved. He gave Master Li a deep, formal bow. "Thank you, Master Li!"

"Not at all! We're inheritors of the same art. It's only a maxim."

"We're in the internet age now. There's no need to hide everything away like people used to. If we keep hiding our skills, they'll die out! Still, since you're also practicing Shaolin martial arts, you could visit the Shaolin Temple someday."

"There must be masters among those Shaolin monks who know hidden strength and transforming strength. Shaolin culture swept across the world back in the nineties. It could never have reached that scale without real masters backing it up," Li Xiangning said, waving a hand with an open, generous expression.

Chen Jue also remembered the worldwide popularity of Shaolin culture that he mentioned.

He recalled that when he was a child, practically every television channel aired films and series about Shaolin Temple monks, while advertisements for Shaolin martial arts schools were everywhere.

Even Western blockbusters from that era frequently featured characters modeled on eminent Shaolin monks.

It had, in fact, been a wave of cultural outreach, closely tied to the Shaolin Temple's martial arts.

Without masters supporting it and demonstrating genuine martial skill before Western audiences, Shaolin culture could never have spread so rapidly.

His conversation with Li Xiangning had truly opened Chen Jue's eyes.

Although watching documentaries online over the past few days had taught Chen Jue quite a bit about China's various martial arts schools and family traditions, his understanding remained limited.

It was still only a shallow, surface-level understanding.

After all, the people filming those documentaries were ordinary people too. How could they understand true martial skill?

Yet the things Li Xiangning revealed gave Chen Jue a glimpse of another, more authentic world of martial artists.

As Li Xiangning had said, martial artists could not simply shut themselves away and remain stuck in their own ways. These were peaceful times, and plenty of people had trained themselves into poverty.

If they could not even make a living, what the hell was the point of practicing martial arts? They would be better off keeping their feet on the ground, getting a job, and living an ordinary life.

That was also why Master Li had taken the civil service exam and become an employee of the Wenzhou Sports Bureau.

As the saying went, cultivation was easier within the Six-Gate Bureau. Drawing a government salary while promoting Wenzhou's local boxing styles and martial arts, Master Li had integrated his training into his everyday life and work. His outlook surpassed that of the fraudulent masters online by hundreds, even thousands of times.

Over a single lunch break, Chen Jue felt he had gained considerable insight. He also exchanged WeChat contacts with Li Xiangning so they could keep in touch and talk more in the future.

As for the Boat Boxing maxim for hidden strength that Li Xiangning had shared, Chen Jue kept turning it over in his mind. But with more sparring and exchange activities scheduled for the afternoon, he could only commit it to memory for now.

Once he returned home, he would try to see whether the maxim could help him grasp that elusive hidden strength.