Chapter 114: Finishing Move
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 114: Finishing Move
After completely mastering Jingak at the citizen's park, I returned home and had lunch.
I'd left the house around 4 AM, so excluding travel time, it must have taken about seven to eight hours.
My mother was surprised to see me return covered in sweat, but she seemed to understand when I told her I'd been training with Li Meiling.
Well, she'd heard last night that Meiling was a world-famous martial artist, so I guess she didn't find it strange that a workout addict like me would be training with her.
And since I'd sweated so much, I made and ate some Korean-style Jjamppong for lunch, packed with sodium.
Li Meiling, despite trying Korean-style Jjamppong for the first time in her life, ate it well. She said she usually enjoys spicy food like mapo tofu and mala tang.
After we both polished off a bowl of Jjamppong, I went home and took a cold shower.
"Ughhhhhh."
My muscles, which had been pushed to their absolute limit during the Jingak training, were radiating a heat I hadn't felt in a while.
I'd probably be sore tomorrow.
After quickly toweling off, I grabbed some barley tea from the kitchen and went out to the living room.
It seemed even a world-class martial artist couldn't escape the scorching midsummer heat, as Li Meiling was sitting in front of the fan, lifting her T-shirt.
This revealed her pale, bare skin, and perhaps due to her low body fat percentage, her abs were clearly defined.
"Oh? All done washing up?"
"Yes."
I nodded and handed her a glass of barley tea.
"Thanks. I'll enjoy it."
She had definitely used formal speech at first, but now that we'd gotten a bit closer, she'd dropped the formalities.
She downed the iced barley tea in one go, let out a satisfied "Kyah~," and pressed the empty glass to her forehead, striking a pose like something out of a beer commercial.
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye as I gulped down my own share of the tea.
On a hot summer day, barley tea right after a shower is something special.
It was on the same level as Japanese people drinking coffee milk or fruit milk after getting out of a public bath.
After quenching our thirst, I closed all the open windows in the house and turned on the air conditioner.
A little while later, as cool air began to fill the living room, Li Meiling stretched and leaned back against the sofa behind the coffee table.
"It feels like I'm in my own home."
"Well, I'm honored."
I said, refilling her empty glass with more barley tea.
"So, what's the next step after Jingak?"
Hearing my question, she tilted her head with a "Hmm?" and replied.
"Didn't I mention it earlier? In the end, all these grand terms like 'secret arts' or 'finishing moves' are just slight variations of existing techniques."
"I'd like to understand it more precisely."
Fundamentally, I'm the type of person who values theory over just jumping in and trying things with my body.
"If that's the case, well..."
Perhaps finding my reason plausible, Li Meiling nodded and began to speak.
"First off, the Eight Great Forms (八大招式), known as the secret arts of Baji Quan, have become quite well-known to the public thanks to the spread of the internet."
"But most of these secret arts are finishing moves (必殺技). In other words, they're techniques where you must kill anyone who sees them. There are various reasons, but it's usually because if a finishing move becomes widely known, a counter for it will inevitably be developed. That's why most schools, under the principle of only teaching the worthy, tend to pass down their secret arts to only a few trusted disciples."
"In modern times, the meaning of the term 'finishing move' has been somewhat diluted. With the development of video media, as soon as it's known that someone uses a certain technique, all sorts of people will immediately flock to find a way to counter it."
"That's why my master had an idea: to create a technique that could be called a finishing move in the truest sense—one that you can't prepare for even if you know it's coming, and can't block even if you try."
After saying that much, perhaps because the explanation had been quite long, Li Meiling paused and took a sip of the freshly poured barley tea.
Then, with a serious face, she said.
"And what he created was the Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear, an improved version of one of the existing secret arts, the Fierce Tiger Shaking Mountain."
I asked for the next step after Jingak, but it feels like we're taking a lot of detours.
Is this what they call being a "too much talker"?
"So, how do you use it?"
When I asked again, Li Meiling, who had been going off on tangents, finally returned to the main topic.
"First, you need to master the basic technique, Rushing Hammer. The Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear is a technique based on the Rushing Hammer from the Vajra Eight Forms."
"Ah."
So, it seems that not just Jingak, but also the technique called Rushing Hammer, were part of a set from the very beginning.
"Like I said earlier, right? It takes a normal person three years to learn Jingak and Rushing Hammer. And there's a saying among Baji Quan practitioners: 'It takes three years to use Baji Quan in a real fight.' In other words, just by perfectly mastering Jingak and Rushing Hammer, you can reach a level where you can use Baji Quan in a real fight."
"So you're saying repetitive practice was the only answer from the start."
Li Meiling nodded at my words.
"That's right. The Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear is a technique you can only begin to learn after you've perfectly mastered those two techniques. That's how important the fundamentals are."
Hearing her explanation, I was reminded once again that learning martial arts is no easy task.
Of course, there were some aspects that were quite similar to working out at the gym.
If you don't stick to one thing with dedication, you'll never achieve anything.
The one saving grace was that I was quite confident in this kind of endurance battle.
This was all thanks to the patience I'd cultivated in the lab during my graduate school days.
Looking back, I learned many helpful life lessons there.
The biggest lesson of all, though, was to never, ever go to grad school.
Anyway, with that, my next task was decided.
I would master Rushing Hammer before Li Meiling left my house.
*
The morning of the second day of training arrived.
Yesterday, in preparation for the muscle soreness, I'd focused on recovery and couldn't do any intense strength training.
Seeing me like that, Director Nakayama asked if the sun had risen in the west today, but since I couldn't tell him the truth, I could only give a bitter smile.
Perhaps because I'd been acting strange for two days in a row, Fuma-senpai and Kazu asked if I was sick, but I just told them it was because I was doing some secret training during the day.
"Ah~ so that's why we didn't see you during the morning jog!"
"Yeah, something like that."
Fuma-senpai pressed me, asking what kind of special training it was, but I dodged the question by saying I felt I'd been neglecting my leg workouts recently and was training them on my own.
When I showed him my legs, which were trembling from muscle soreness unlike usual, Fuma-senpai finally believed me.
Anyway, even though it was the second day of training, not much had changed from yesterday.
If yesterday was focused on mastering Jingak, today was focused on mastering Rushing Hammer.
Pang!!
Now that I knew the knack for using Jingak, I could properly produce that characteristic sound, like a burst of wind.
However, using Rushing Hammer while performing Jingak was another matter entirely.
How should I put it? It felt like trying to draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other.
My head knew they had to move together, but my hands and feet were moving separately.
When I asked about this phenomenon, Li Meiling, who was watching from the side, said it was because I was using Jingak 'consciously'.
She explained that since Jingak is the foundation for all the internal heavy-hand techniques used in Baji Quan, it had to be used as naturally as breathing.
In other words, the first step to mastering Rushing Hammer was to treat the unnatural as natural, but I just couldn't get the hang of it.
According to her, I had to be able to use Jingak even in a state of selflessness.
Thanks to that, the second day of training passed with little to show for it.
*
Day three of training.
I finally got a feel for how to use Jingak and Rushing Hammer together.
Until now, I had thought of Jingak and Rushing Hammer as separate techniques and tried to use them individually, but it became much easier once I started thinking of them as a single motion from the start.
When I explained this method, Li Meiling looked incredulous, but perhaps thinking it wasn't entirely illogical, she encouraged me to continue training my way.
I gladly accepted her suggestion, and by the time night fell, I had completely grasped how to use Jingak and Rushing Hammer simultaneously.
Li Meiling, who had watched the entire process from the side, clicked her tongue and called me an absurd guy, but soon said with a serious expression,
"If you've come this far, I have no choice. Tomorrow, I'll teach you how to use our final goal, the Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear."
After hearing her confirmation, I let out a cheer of joy.