Chinese martial arts: From being shot and killed by the armed police during a mountain search to bec

The sounds of shouting and commotion rose and fell around the ring.

Chen Hongwu glanced at Senior Brother Zhou and was about to speak when a sharp shout suddenly came from the judges' panel.

"Zhou Yan! Are you trying to impress me?"

Cai Rong stood up, his face ashen, and pointed at the young man, shouting, "Five years of practicing boxing, and you've only just touched the threshold of Ming Jin? Who gave you the audacity to be so smug?"

Zhou Yan's smile froze.

The surrounding disciples immediately fell silent; no one dared to utter another word. Cai Rong was of high seniority and possessed formidable martial arts skills; when he scolded a junior, no one dared to utter a single dissenting word.

Zhou Yan bowed his head and clasped his hands in a fist salute: "Master Cai is right."

He turned to leave.

"Wait a minute," Chen Hongwu said.

Zhou Yan paused, turned around to look at him, and his eyes showed a hint of wariness.

Chen Hongwu took a step forward.

The step was taken very lightly, with the sole of the foot landing silently, but the eyelids of several museum owners on the judging panel twitched at the same time.

The angle at which the feet rubbed the ground and the trajectory of the weight shift were clearly the footwork of a trained athlete.

"There's no need for a competition," Chen Hongwu said calmly to Zhou Yan. "However, I can offer you some pointers as a way of returning the favor and fulfilling your master's obligation to teach you."

Before he finished speaking, his hand was already on Zhou Yan's shoulder.

Zhou Yan instinctively tried to dodge, but his reaction was quick. He had just mastered the initial stage of Ming Jin, and his five years of training had not been in vain.

He hunched his shoulders and stepped back, trying to create distance.

But he was fast, and Chen Hongwu's hand was even faster.

The hand seemed glued to his shoulder; no matter how he tried to pull away or withdraw, it remained pressed against his Jianjing acupoint.

Immediately afterwards, Zhou Yan felt an indescribable force spreading from his shoulder throughout his body.

It wasn't brute force, but a twisting, contorting force, as if an invisible hand was manipulating his center of gravity.

His steps began to falter.

He tried to stand firm, but his feet felt like they were on ice, involuntarily sliding to the left. He quickly crouched down and adopted a stance, his Hung Kuen Iron Horse stance usually allowing him to hold a steady position for fifteen minutes. But today, for some reason, that strange force seemed to have seeped into his bones, and no matter how he crouched, he couldn't maintain his balance.

"thump!"

Zhou Yan landed on both knees, kneeling upright on the ring.

The audience erupted in uproar.

"What happened? Why is Senior Brother Zhou kneeling?"

"Young Master Chen hit him? I didn't see it."

"This is bizarre, so bizarre."

Zhou Yan knelt on the ground, his face a mixture of pale and ashen. He tried to stand up, but as soon as his knees left the ground, the force on his shoulder returned, pinning him down and preventing him from moving.

On the judging panel, several museum owners stood up almost simultaneously.

Liang Jinkun stopped stroking his beard, his eyes fixed on Chen Hongwu's palm. He Yongfu nearly spat out his tea. Master Tan's teacup cracked with a "crack".

Cai Rong sat there, his face full of astonishment.

That's not brute force, it's listening skill.

In the advanced Tai Chi school, one can discern the opponent's center of gravity the moment they make contact, and then use extremely subtle force to pull the opponent off balance.

But you can't develop listening skills without at least ten years of practice.

Chen Hongwu had only been practicing for three months.

Moreover, where did he learn Tai Chi listening energy?

Chen Hongwu withdrew his hand and turned to walk off the stage.

After taking two steps, he suddenly stopped and said without turning his head, "By carefully experiencing the power I just felt, I might be able to take another step forward in understanding the power of Ming Jin."

Zhou Yan knelt on the stage, her whole body stiff.

He still felt that sensation in his shoulder, as if someone had flicked his muscles with their fingers.

Chen Hongwu had already walked out of the crowd.

A black Ford was parked on the side of the road, and the driver opened the door. Chen Hongwu got in and picked up the newspaper he hadn't finished reading.

"I'll just drive around and wander around," he said.

---

The car drove slowly through the streets of Sanhai County.

Chen Hongwu leaned back in his chair, looked up from the newspaper, and gazed out the window.

Sanhai County in 1919 was more bustling than he had imagined. On the street, there were scholars in long gowns, coolies in short jackets, compradors in Western suits, and several blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners walking out of a teahouse, carrying walking sticks.

A vendor selling candied hawthorns carried a straw target and shouted his wares at the top of his lungs. Half of the shop doors along the street had been removed, revealing various goods inside—foreign cloth, kerosene, soap, matches, as well as local tea, silk, and porcelain.

This is an era where the old and the new intertwine.

Chen Hongwu watched for a while, then suddenly remembered something and said to the driver, "Have Afu come over."

Ah Fu was the attendant who was supporting us at the edge of the ring today. He was in his early twenties, quick-witted, and had a sharp tongue.

The car pulled over, and Afu jogged over and leaned against the window: "Young Master, what are your orders?"

"Investigate someone," Chen Hongwu said. "Zhou Yan from the ring today. His hostility towards me didn't seem like a spur-of-the-moment thing. Investigate why."

Afu's expression turned somewhat strange.

"Young Master, you don't know?"

"Know what?"

Afu scratched his head and carefully considered his words: "Zhou Yan was originally the young master of the Zhou family in Sanhai County. The Zhou family was a prominent family in its early years and had close ties with the Lin family. Zhou Yan had been engaged to Lin Yuqing, the eldest daughter of the Lin family, since childhood."

Lin Yuqing.

Chen Hongwu remembered; it was the female student the original owner had pursued. She was his younger sister Chen Hongxiu's classmate, beautiful, and from a good family.

"Later, the Zhou family declined, while the Lin family's business grew bigger and bigger, and the gap between the two families widened." Afu continued, "The Lin family didn't mention the marriage agreement, and the Zhou family was too embarrassed to bring it up, so it just remained unresolved. But Zhou Yan always remembered this matter and couldn't forget Lin Yuqing."

"Young Master, you went to the academy to publicly express your love, sending flowers and inviting people to dinner, causing quite a stir in the city. Zhou Yan has long disliked you, but hasn't had a chance to retaliate. Today, on the fighting stage, you've run into him."

After listening, Chen Hongwu remained silent for a moment.

He searched through the original owner's memories but couldn't find anyone named Zhou Yan. It turned out that the spoiled young master only had eyes for pretty girls; how could he possibly notice that Lin Yuqing had a fiancé?

"Understood," Chen Hongwu said. "Drive, let's drive around a bit more."

The car continued to move slowly down the street.

Chen Hongwu put Afu's words out of his mind and stopped thinking about them. Zhou Yan and Lin Yuqing were both messes left behind by the original owner of the body, and had nothing to do with him.

The car traveled from the east of the city to the west, and then from the west to the south.

Chen Hongwu saw many things along the way. Although Sanhai County was not large, it had everything it needed. There was a church, a school, a military barracks, and a Western medicine clinic with a cross sign hanging at the entrance.

At dusk, he had dinner at a restaurant.

Roast goose, poached chicken, a plate of greens, and a bowl of white rice. The taste was good, no worse than what Chen's Kitchen makes.

By the time we finished eating, it was already getting dark.

As the car turned into the alley where the Chen family lived, a person could be seen standing at the gate from afar.

Wearing a dark blue cheongsam, her hair piled up at the back of her head, and clutching a handbag, Xu Wanqing stood outside the Chen family's gate, pacing back and forth, her face full of anxiety.

Seeing the car approaching, she quickly went to meet it.

As soon as the car came to a stop, she rushed to the window and pounded on the glass: "Chen Hongwu! Where's your sister?"

Chen Hongwu rolled down the car window, looked at Xu Wanqing's face, which was slightly flushed with anxiety, and frowned slightly: "Hongxiu?"

"Who else could it be but her?" Xu Wanqing's voice tightened. "Wanting said she was going to play with Hongxiu this afternoon, but she hasn't come back yet. I went to Hongxiu's class to ask, and they said that the two of them left school early. The Chen family said that Hongxiu hasn't come back either."

She took a deep breath, her voice laced with anger: "Do you even know where they went?"