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

Chen Hongwu left the Foshan Chamber of Commerce and headed straight north without stopping.

The official road from Foshan to Guangzhou is over forty li long.

At midnight in late autumn, the moonlight was pale and dim, and apart from a few scattered lanterns hanging from the backs of mule carts, there was no other light on the official road. The evening wind swept across the ground, stirring up withered leaves and dust, which slapped against the signs of the roadside tea stalls with a crackling sound.

Chen Hongwu did not take the official road.

He went down to the shoulder of the road and slanted southeast along a dry irrigation canal.

The irrigation canal was three feet wide and two feet deep, its bottom cracked like a tortoise shell, making a crisp crunching sound when stepped on, leaving no footprints. The banks were overgrown with waist-high wild wormwood, a dark expanse where a person crawling through felt like a drop of water falling into a river.

Chen Hongwu's figure darted swiftly through the wild grass.

He wasn't using a running posture, but rather the "Dragon Form" of Xingyi Quan. His back was arched, and when alternating between his feet, his knees didn't go past his waist, and the soles of his feet didn't leave the ground by more than three inches, almost gliding along the ground. His two hands were placed loosely on his sides, one in front of the other, with his fingers slightly spread, ready to switch from the Dragon Form to the starting stance of Tiger Pounce or Beng Quan at any time.

The Dragon Form trains the spine, pushing each vertebra from the coccyx to the cervical vertebrae like surging waves. The power is transmitted from the waist and hips to the soles of the feet, and then the soles of the feet push against the ground, causing the whole person to leap forward close to the ground.

The boxing manual says, "The dragon's form is like a wave." A wave is not about jumping, but about surging. Walking while surging is 30% less strenuous and 20% faster than running.

In his book "The True Meaning of Boxing", Sun Lutang devoted a chapter to the footwork of the Dragon Form. He said that when he was nineteen years old, he went to Baoding with Guo Yunshen to attend a banquet. On the way, they encountered a rainstorm, and the river swelled and washed away the bridge. The two of them used the Dragon Form footwork to wade across the river, which was sixty feet wide. When they got ashore, their legs below the knees were covered in mud, but their legs above the knees were not wet at all.

Guo Yunshen once said, "When you practice the Dragon Form to the bone, the soles of your feet become boats; you won't even get wet, let alone the ground."

Chen Hongwu had already mastered the dragon form to the level of "dragon bending body," where his body moved like an arrow with each arch and contraction of his spine.

After the thunderous sound entered his body, his internal organs were repeatedly shaken by the tiger and leopard thunderous sound, his blood circulation was almost twice as fast as that of an ordinary person, and his muscle endurance and explosive power increased exponentially.

The core principle of Thunder Sound Body Refinement is to use the resonant frequency of sound vibration to penetrate bones and internal organs, loosen fascia adhesions, and unblock blood circulation.

When Li Shuwen had practiced Leiyin for six years, he could run from Cangzhou to Tianjin in one go, a distance of 120 li (approximately 60 kilometers). Upon arrival, he could fight three matches in a row without changing his expression.

The speed of blood circulation and muscle endurance have exceeded the physiological limits of humans.

Chen Hongwu's current speed is no slower than that of tigers and leopards.

A tiger can pounce on its prey at a speed of ten zhang in a single breath. Chen Hongwu, in a single leap, can cover more than twelve zhang.

The force of the soles of their feet pushing off the ground was transmitted into the dry ditch, crushing the soil into powder. Before the dust could even rise, the person was already more than ten feet away.

His breathing rhythm was perfectly synchronized with his steps, inhaling every two steps and exhaling every two steps. His breath entered through his nose, went straight to his dantian, and then rose up his spine to his throat before being exhaled.

The entire process perfectly matched the surging rhythm of the dragon-shaped spine.

Sun Lutang called this "breath and spine in harmony." When inhaling, the spine arches upward, drawing energy from the Yongquan acupoint to the Baihui acupoint; when exhaling, the spine sinks downward, channeling energy back from the Baihui acupoint to the soles of the feet. The expansion and contraction of the spine drives the forward and backward movement of the legs. The longer and more sustained the breath, the farther one can run without getting tired.

The wild wormwood on both sides of the canal grew denser and denser, its stalks brushing against his sleeves and making a rustling sound.

Chen Hongwu walked through the tall grass for the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, and then an abandoned waterwheel shed appeared ahead. He stopped in front of the shed, took a deep breath, adjusted his direction, and then, with a swift movement, launched himself from the side of the shed into the cornfield opposite.

The corn stalks were withered and yellow, the straw as hard as dried bamboo. Chen Hongwu's figure crashed into them, and the sound of the straw breaking in the middle echoed all the way.

He didn't slow down. The distance between the two sides of the cornfield was no more than three feet, and the gaps between the stalks were narrow. Ordinary people could only pass sideways here, but Chen Hongwu's body swayed like an eel in the gaps.

With a curved spine and narrowed shoulders, the person moves with ease in a very small space.

This is the "Wandering Body Step" of Baguazhang.

Legend has it that when Dong Haichuan worked at the Prince Su's mansion, he relied on his agile footwork to move swiftly among the pavilions and towers.

Baguazhang's footwork involves walking in circles, with the palms turning and turning in unison, and the movements being distinct and clear. It excels at maneuvering in narrow spaces.

Chen Hongwu combined the Bagua You Shen Bu (Eight Trigrams Swimming Body Step) with the Xingyi Long Xing (Form and Intention Dragon Form), maneuvering and dodging through the cornfield with undiminished straight-line speed and effortless evasion.

The two footwork techniques, one vertical and one horizontal, one fast and one steady, complement each other perfectly.

At the end of the cornfield was a small river, about three zhang wide, shallow enough to see the pebbles on the bottom.

Chen Hongwu didn't look for a bridge; he simply skimmed across the river. He touched three stones protruding from the water with his toes, and using the recoil from the touches, he traversed three zhang (approximately 10 meters) of the river, landing on the rocky beach on the opposite bank.

Crossing a river by tiptoeing across stones is a movement technique in Baguazhang called "Swallow Skimming Water".

One of the secrets of the Baguazhang (Eight Trigrams Palm) swinging and hooking step is called "stepping on duckweed without getting wet". When the foot lands, the five fingers are clenched together, and the sole of the foot only touches the force, not the water.

Back then, Xue Dian had a gambling match with the Green Gang at the docks in Tianjin. He jumped from one sampan's bamboo pole to another, the bamboo poles being only as thick as a bowl. He stepped on seventeen poles in one go, and the soles of his shoes were completely dry.

Chen Hongwu landed on the opposite bank, his steps never faltering, and his speed increased once more.

Forty li (approximately 20 kilometers).

In less than half an hour, he had crossed the boundary marker between Foshan and Guangzhou.

The boundary marker is a half-person-high blue stone with the words "Nanhai County Boundary" engraved on it, and the stone is covered with dried moss.

About three miles ahead of the boundary marker is a pine forest. The trees are tall and dense, and the ground beneath them is covered with a thick layer of pine needles. It is soft and yielding underfoot, absorbing sound and vibration, so your footsteps make almost no sound.

As Chen Hongwu stepped into the edge of the pine forest, a sudden chill ran down his spine.

Before his feet even touched the ground, his spine suddenly twisted to the left. Three sharp, piercing sounds shot out from the shadows of the pine trees to his right, creating delicate whistling patterns in the air.

Three darts flew in a triangular formation.

The first strike locks the throat, the second calms the mind, and the third seals the groin.

The spacing and angle of the three darts being fired simultaneously were extremely tricky, with the tips of the darts slightly rotating inward, indicating that the person throwing the darts made a small wrist rotation at the moment of release.

This is the "Mother and Child Soul-Chasing Darts" technique from the hidden weapon methods.

The core of the mother-and-child dart is "using the mother to guide the child, and using the whirlwind to break the wind".

The mother dart is fired first. The low-pressure area created by the rotation of the dart will accelerate the daughter darts. The three darts leverage each other in the air, starting slowly and then speeding up, becoming increasingly difficult to dodge as they go further in.

The key to throwing a dart is to use wrist strength combined with waist strength. At the moment of throwing, the wrist should flick and twist, while the waist and hips exert force simultaneously. The force should travel from the shoulder and arm all the way to the fingertips, and the dart should fly out with a spin.

This technique requires a very deep foundation in external martial arts skills; most martial artists cannot develop this kind of wrist strength in less than ten or eight years.

Chen Hongwu's feet hadn't even touched the ground yet, and he didn't have time to make a large-scale dodge. But his body reacted the instant he lost his balance.

Baguazhang! Escape and Shadow Change!

His spine suddenly sank down, and he shrunk a foot. Three flying bracelets grazed his scalp, left shoulder, and right waist, with the closest one less than three fingers' width away from his temple.

At the same time, his right hand shot out with lightning speed, his index and middle fingers precisely catching the tail of the second dart. The moment he touched it, he flicked his wrist, and the Bagua Palm technique of "hiding flowers under leaves" transformed into "shaking feather force".

"Snap!"

The force of his index and middle fingers penetrated the shaft of the dart. Unable to withstand the spinning force, the dart broke off between his fingers. Chen Hongwu flicked his arm, and the broken dart turned into a streak of silver light, shooting back at an even faster speed than it had come.

The broken dart flew silently through the air and embedded itself in the trunk of a pine tree twenty paces away.

"Bang!" The entire pine tree, as thick as a bowl, suddenly shook, and the pine needles fell like a rainstorm. A ring of fine cracks appeared at the piercing holes on the trunk, and the tree swayed, startling a flock of roosting birds.

"Chen Hongwu? What are you doing here? Where is my junior brother Wang Hu?" A voice came from behind the tree, and then a figure leisurely walked out of the darkness.