After the fight between Zheng-Fu and Dong-Chu finished, the rest of the young fighters asked to give in. That made Zheng-Fu the winner of his group simultaneously. The same thing happened to Tian-Qi. No one in her group wished to fight her, so this meant that Zheng-Fu and Tian-Qi would be the last two in the third test. They would meet in the fight tomorrow to see who would be the winner…
At Zheng-Fu’s room…
“I can’t believe that those sword skills would be that powerful. This means that the movement patterns that I learned from those glowing entities actually work?”
Zheng-Fu thought about the time when he was in the mind realm, he saw every movement pattern of the three sword fighting skills performed by those three glowing entities. He remembered that those patterns were different from what he saw in the clan’s manuals. They were easier. They helped him move quicker and ward off unnecessary movements too…
Take that skill from the Belt Sword technique that Zheng-Fu used in the fight, the Soft for Fencing skill as an example. The audience could hardly guess what kind of technique he used because he hardly moved and did it very quickly too. Even the martial artists who possessed a very high level of Qi energy could barely catch it…
“If that’s the case, I can write all those movement patterns down in a manual and give it to the clan. How helpful that would be for our clan?”
Zheng-Fu came up with the idea of giving knowledge to his clan because it would help alleviate the status of the clan tremendously. Both skills from the Belt Sword technique belonged to the mid-level fighting skill. The modified versions were easy to learn and understand, much better than the original versions, even. These difficult mid-level fighting skills could be approached easier…
Knock! Knock!
All of a sudden, there was a knock on Zheng-Fu’s door. It startled him out of his contemplation, so he had to put aside the manuals idea before walking to the door to check who it was in front of his room…
“Zheng-Fu, son!”
“Father!? What can I do for you?” When Zheng-Fu opened the door, he found that it was his father who knocked on his door. He would like to know why his father wanted him…
“Can I come in?”
“No, father. I’m beat!” (He was joking.)
“Please come on in, father!”
Squeak!
“How are you? Did you get hurt anywhere? Feeling fatigued?” Kong-Shi cared for his son so he asked whether his son was alright while trying to check his son’s body…
“I’m fine, father. But what’s up, father? Why do you need me at this hour?” Zheng-Fu insisted to know why Kong-Shi came to see him this late at night…
“Well…”
“Um…”
“Please go ahead, father. Don’t worry. You can say anything to me.”
*Sigh!*
“I’m feeling kind of shameful about what I’m going to say to you, but it’s something crucial because it’s about…”
“Did you come here to talk about the fighting techniques that I used in the fight?”
Kong-Shi got jumpy because he had not started saying anything, but Zheng-Fu cut him off and went straight to the subject that he had come to talk about. It made him feel astonished…
“You knew!?”
“It’s not that difficult to guess, father. Normally, people would say things after seeing the techniques that I used. Those techniques have become the mid-level fighting techniques that are very valuable and important to our clan. So, my guess is the elders want you to come to get the skills knowledge from me, right?”
“Sigh!”
Kong-Shi could only take a long exhale after hearing Zheng-Fu. He thought that as Zheng-Fu’s father, he could not do anything to protect him. It made him feel extremely uncomfortable when the elders' committee agreed to ask Zheng-Fu to disclose the details of those sword fighting techniques to the clan for the benefit of everyone…
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t do anything. I tried to object to the idea, but…”
“That’s alright, father. I’m also thinking about giving the knowledge of those fighting techniques to the clan myself. Don’t blame yourself, father. I understand perfectly well that my own versions of the fighting techniques can move up the status of our clan.”
“Zheng-Fu, son!”
Zheng-Fu only smiled back at Kong-Shi innocently. He wanted to help his father very much because he had been at the eighth level of the Foundation Building stage for a long time. No matter how much energy he put into breaking through to the next level, he could not succeed. His high-level of the beginner-leveled fighting skill could not help him get to another level. His Qinggong skill was also merely at the lower level of the mid-level skill…
“Well, father. Could you please tell me the fighting techniques that you possess?”
“My fighting techniques? Why do you want to know?”
“Just in case I can practice some of them sometimes, father.”
Kong-Shi took a look at Zheng-Fu’s tiny face. When his son spoke this way, he looked very cute and innocent. But when he thought about his son on that fighting stage, his son was a completely different person…
“The fighting techniques that I have now are the Sword of the Black Flame, other ordinary sword skills, and the last one is the Three Fists of Torment.”
“The Three Fists of Torment?!”
Zheng-Fu was surprised to learn that his father used a fist-fighting skill too, not just sword skills. He also felt curious about this fist skill because he had never heard of it before…
“You probably didn’t know that I also learned some of the fist skills too.”
“Not at all, father. Apart from the sword fighting skills, I’ve never seen you using any fist skills at all. But did you practice the fist-fighting skill because you want to use it when you fight up close to your opponent?”
“You’re right, son. But what more is that the Three Fists of Torment is our family’s secret fighting technique.”
“Our family’s secret fighting technique?! Does it mean that we’re the only people who know the skill?”
“That’s right. We’re the only people who know it. The only one who’s not our family who knows about this skill is the leader of the clan. The thing is, every family in the clan must possess one secret fighting skill. This is the order from the first leader of the clan. He thought that each family must come up with a secret fighting technique and use it only in a very crucial situation.” Kong-Shi brought out a manual of the Three Fists of Torment from his spatial ring and gave it to Zheng-Fu after he finished the sentence…
“Is that a spatial ring, father!?”
“What!? Yeah. This is a spatial ring to keep things that our family owns. Only the first to the fifth Elders of the clan get to own it. We got it from the leader of the clan.”
“Wow!”
Zheng-Fu looked at the spatial ring with sparkling eyes because he had been wanting to experience it for so long. There was no such thing in the previous world because according to science, this kind of ring did not actually exist…
“Do you want it?” Kong-Shi asked Zheng-Fu if he wanted the spatial ring because he could see that his son looked at the ring romantically…
“Yes, father!”
“Then, should I give it to you?”
“No, father. Please don’t! You keep it. I’ll try to find some way to get it one day.” Zheng-Fu ensured that to himself while patting his chest in a bid to show his determination…
“Great, my son! Well, it’s time for bed now. Tomorrow will be the final round. I have to tell you that you must not fool around but be determined when you fight with Tian-Qi. Even though she is a girl, I believe that she’s not going to take it easy on you…”
“Please don’t worry about it, father. I’ve made a bet with her, so I won’t let myself get beaten up. That’s for sure.”
“Excellent!”
Clank! (Door closed)
Right after Kong-Shi left, Zheng-Fu got to the manual of his family’s secret fighting skill immediately…
Pages fluttering…
“Is this the Three Fists of Torment? Our family’s secret fighting technique?”
This particular fighting technique belonged to the mid-level of the beginner-leveled fighting skill. There were two sub-skills of this fighting technique. They were the Joint Breaker skill and the Organ Crusher skill. There seemed to be another sub-skill in the manual, but its detail was not completed. It was like no one could take it further…
“Alright, I see. So, this fist-fighting skill is not completed yet. It also belonged to the mid-level of the beginner-leveled fighting skill. *Sigh* Wait!” All of a sudden, Zheng-Fu remembered something. He started to recall a memory about the first time that the glowing entity showed him fighting patterns. The whole thing happened when he lost consciousness and when he gained back his consciousness, two of his three Qi energy stones got drained out entirely. When Zheng-Fu came out of the reminiscence, he yelled, “If I win tomorrow, I’ll get more Qi energy stones. Then I can use them to check if what I suspect is right.”
Zheng-Fu intended to try something to check whether what he had in mind earlier was true. If it was, it meant that he could practice fighting techniques with the glowing entities again, as long as he owned a lot of Qi energy stones. If that was the case, he would be able to help his father improve his fighting skills…
Zheng-Fu continued to read the manual and tried to understand the first two fist-fighting skills of his family’s secret fighting technique, just in case they could be useful to him. Right now, he had already achieved the three sword skills, so he intended to spend the rest of this time learning his family’s secret fighting technique that he just received from his father. The technique was useful when he had to fight in an up-close range. If he could not use his sword in that range, he could use this secret fist-fighting technique. He had four shichens to understand it before dawn…
This was why Zheng-Fu had to recite the moves and understand them as much as he could. He thought at least he would definitely be able to achieve the first skill of this fist-fighting technique before tomorrow’s fight started. But if he could not do it, then he could still use the skill to trick his opponent instead…
The more Zheng-Fu read the manual, the more he felt like the manual was not as difficult to understand as those regular manuals out there. He could finish the whole manual within no time, so he started to re-read it the second time as soon as he finished the first round…