The sturdy young man explained for quite a while before the old man finally understood what Tieba was.
So it was a place where martial arts enthusiasts went online to exchange ideas!
But with such an impressive video of Hidden Strength being released posted online just like that, did the expert behind it have no objections?
The old man kept feeling that the real person behind "Little Expert at Training," who had posted the video on Tieba, was actually a young troublemaker much like his eldest grandson.
He had no filter, leaking a video his school kept strictly secret to the outside world. If his family found out, he would surely earn himself a sound thrashing.
"Good!"
"It's not every day you find a fool like this!"
"If everyone keeps hiding things, martial arts this advanced will die out." The old man studied the video on the phone for a long time, then asked his grandson to help download it onto his own phone.
Old though he was, he still knew how to use features like WeChat.
"Send this video to your dad later, and let your uncles see it too! All they ever think about is expanding that little family business. Every last one of them is practically buried in money, neglecting the martial arts our ancestors passed down."
After lecturing his grandson, the old man reached out and rested his hand on the young man's. A flush flashed across his face, and force burst from his palm. The sharp sting made the sturdy young man hastily pull his hand back.
"Grandpa!"
"You can still release Hidden Strength at your age?" The sturdy young man jumped, astonished.
"Of course! After nurturing it for all these years, I've still got a little left in me! But I can only release it once at most, with nothing left afterward. Still, teaching my dear grandson is no problem."
"Sleep here tonight. Don't go back to the city. Starting tomorrow, I'll teach you a few things properly, so this art of our ancestors doesn't die out after I'm gone." The old man patted the sturdy young man on the head, his eyes full of affection.
Meanwhile, after confirming with his grandfather that the Tieba video was genuine, the young man named Xiao Jun hurried to send a friend request to Chen Jue's Tieba account.
"Master! Please, have mercy and accept my request!"
What he did not know was that enthusiastic forum users had already flooded Chen Jue's Tieba account with friend requests.
Every message counter read 99+. How could he possibly find time to add Xiao Jun?
Much the same scene played out in martial arts circles large and small across China, and even overseas.
Some envied the force-release video, some admired it, some doubted it, and some dismissed it. In short, it drew every kind of response.
Most people thought the video was fake. Only those with genuine skills, or who had even seen Hidden Strength shoot out like needles underwater, could recognize its true significance.
But this was an age of information overload. Everything circulating online was a mixture of truth and falsehood. People filmed aliens and UFOs every day. A video of martial arts force release was not enough to make the trending lists, and people would forget it within a few days.
Back with Chen Jue, after finishing his video call with Li Xiangning, he washed up and went to bed.
Two days of underwater training and exploring Hidden Strength had consumed considerable physical and mental energy, leaving even him a little tired.
He slept until eight the next morning and woke brimming with energy. His 100% health index was enough to show that Chen Jue could now live straight through to ninety-nine without unexpectedly falling ill.
That morning, he did not go to the reservoir to train. Instead, he made himself some breakfast at home, then began searching online for Taoist martial arts, intending to broaden his range of fist arts and raise the ceiling of his abilities.
After all, Boat Boxing and the Eight Immortals Stance could only train Hidden Strength into his hands and feet.
The Tieba Expert had said that above Hidden Strength lay Transforming Strength.
So-called Transforming Strength was actually an upgraded combination of Hidden Strength and Bright Force: training Hidden Strength throughout the entire body, allowing every inch of skin to burst with force, leaving no blind spots anywhere.
Once he reached that realm, he could do what the Tieba Expert had described-kill a mosquito landing on his forehead by pinching it with his pores.
This was the profound martial arts realm described as "not even a feather can settle, nor a fly alight."
Unfortunately, Boat Boxing and the Eight Immortals Stance had too low a ceiling. After bringing the Eight Immortals Stance to perfection yesterday, Chen Jue had known it was time to learn a new fist art and stance practice.
Ideally, it would be an authentic Taoist art, allowing him to benefit from the [Pure Yang Lüzu, Enlightened Quanzhen] status bonuses and achieve twice the results for half the training effort.
At the mention of Taoism, Chen Jue's first thought was Wudang, which rivaled Shaolin in fame. Wudang had a long and rich lineage, and the tradition of the Quanzhen Teaching remained there to this day, making Wudang martial arts his natural first choice.
But the number of arts passed down by Wudang was staggering. A single search brought up a whole pile, leaving Chen Jue overwhelmed by the choices.
In the end, with no better option, he decided to start with the best-known among them: Supreme Ultimate Fist.
While browsing Tieba earlier, he had seen Supreme Ultimate Fist described as the mother of many Internal Fist arts. It had numerous schools, including Sun-Style Tai Chi, Chen-Style Tai Chi, Yang-Style Tai Chi, and all manner of others. Chen Jue spent over an hour just researching before finally deciding to begin with the Wudang Thirteen Forms of Tai Chi.
This was the earliest generation of Supreme Ultimate Fist forms passed down from Wudang, said to have been created by Patriarch Sanfeng. Most of the later thirty-three-form and one-hundred-and-eight-form routines had evolved from these thirteen forms.
Thinking that if he was going to learn, he should start at the source, Chen Jue settled on these thirteen forms of Supreme Ultimate Fist. Their accompanying stance practice was the Tai Chi Thirteen Stances.
They included the widely known Wuji Stance, Tai Chi Stance (Hunyuan Stance), Two Principles Stance, Three-Body Stance, and others. Chen Jue did not have the energy to research them all in depth, so he found an instructional video demonstrated by a Wudang Taoist priest and began following along at home.
Sure enough, with the buffs from [Pure Yang Lüzu, Enlightened Quanzhen], Chen Jue learned Supreme Ultimate Fist and its accompanying stance practice extremely quickly.
Within minutes, two new skills appeared on his attribute panel: [Supreme Ultimate Fist Level 0 (1/100)] and [Tai Chi Thirteen Stances Level 0 (1/100)].
Their proficiency rose very quickly too, visibly ticking up by +1 after +1 as he practiced.
In just over an hour, both skills broke through to level 1, marking his formal entry into them. His progress was several times faster than it had been with the Shaolin Child Prodigy Skill!
It was practically like cheating!
To cope with the siphoning effect triggered by the two skill breakthroughs, Chen Jue even unwrapped a Shaolin Mighty Pill and swallowed it with yellow rice wine.
There was no time to brew the Ten-Ingredient Tonic Decoction, so he could only take a tonic he could swallow straight away.
Fortunately, the two level 1 skills did not cause much of a disturbance. Only after watching his constitution, strength, and agility each rise by 0.01 did Chen Jue breathe a sigh of relief.
But all that was secondary. While practicing Supreme Ultimate Fist and its stances, Chen Jue could clearly feel warm currents traveling throughout his body.
That showed this authentic Wudang art could indeed train Hidden Strength throughout his entire body, giving Chen Jue plenty to look forward to.
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