Madman!

Chapter 14: What a Fine Prospect

After finishing his meal, Chen Wujun headed to the martial arts school. Huang Meizhen carried the lunch box out of the dental clinic, and when she spotted a blood donation station at the entrance to the Walled City, her steps faltered with hesitation.

Especially when she noticed the sign plastered across the station's window: "80 per visit, 550 for five, 980 for eight."

Huang Meizhen wavered for a moment, then walked inside.

Although the money would be a mere drop in the bucket against over thirty thousand in debt, she still wanted to save up a little for her eldest son.

After all, he was the child she had brought into this world. He used to be so sensible, always saying that when he grew up, he'd earn big money and buy her a grand house.

Even though he'd been led astray, she still believed deep down that one day, her eldest would come to his senses.

A short while later, Huang Meizhen emerged from the blood station, her complexion noticeably paler, her legs feeling weak beneath her.

She felt they had drawn too much blood; she'd even argued with the staff about it.

She bought groceries and headed home. In the narrow alley, a figure suddenly appeared before her — filthy from head to toe, looking no different from a beggar.

"Mom!"Chen Wuhong was caked in grime, reeking of stench, his entire frame so emaciated that his skin clung to bone. There was no telling how long it had been since he'd last bathed or eaten a proper meal.

The moment Huang Meizhen recognized his face, tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Wuhong, how did you end up like this?"

"Are you hungry? Come home — Mom will cook you something to eat."

"Those loan sharks came to the house, and your father paid the debt. They won't come looking for you anymore. Come home with Mom!"

At the news that the loan shark debt had been settled, a flash of delight crossed Chen Wuhong's face.

He called out again, his voice thick with emotion, "Mom!"

"Where's the second one?"

"To pay off your loan shark debt, your father borrowed a huge sum of money, and your second brother has to work at the martial arts school to help pay it back! He's at the school right now! Are you looking for him?" Huang Meizhen found it odd that her eldest didn't ask about anyone else first — only whether his second brother was home.

"I'm not looking for him. He's my little brother — of course I'd ask!" Chen Wuhong felt a wave of relief wash through him.

Then he followed Huang Meizhen home.

Huang Meizhen noticed Chen Wuhong limping as he walked and asked with concern, "What happened to your leg? Are you hurt?"

Chen Wuhong fell silent for a moment. His leg ached with every step, and he desperately wanted to tell his mother that it was his second brother who had broken it.

No one could imagine how he'd survived this past month.

He'd truly been like a sewer rat — no, worse than a sewer rat.

But thinking of his second brother's ruthlessness, he didn't dare say it. He was genuinely afraid that if he spoke up, the kid would find an opportunity to finish him off.

"I fell..." Chen Wuhong finally muttered after a pause.

Back at the house, Chen Wuhong asked casually, "Where's the little one?"

"Gone to a classmate's house to play."

Chen Wuhong took a bath, changed his clothes, and while shoveling rice into his mouth from a bowl, asked, "Mom, do you have any money?"

"Wuhong, you want to gamble again? Look at yourself!" The words struck Huang Meizhen like a bolt of lightning, and she cried out in anguish.

"It's not gambling. Someone got me a job over in Red Incense Burner Bay — three thousand a month. But I need to pay six hundred for a uniform deposit," Chen Wuhong replied quickly.

"You're really not gambling?"

"If you can settle down and hold a job, that would be wonderful!"

"But why is the uniform fee so much? All the money at home went to paying your debts. I've only got a little over a hundred on me!" Huang Meizhen's brow furrowed with worry.

Of that hundred-odd dollars, eighty had come from selling blood just moments ago, and the rest was meant for groceries over the next few days.

"Mom, please figure something out. If I don't pay the uniform fee, I can't start the job. It's not even hard work, and after a while, there'll be raises too." Chen Wuhong pleaded.

"I... let me think of something. Wait here for me." After agonizing over it, Huang Meizhen finally gritted her teeth, changed her clothes, and went out.

She returned a short while later with borrowed money. Combined with what she'd gotten from selling blood, she'd scraped together exactly six hundred.

"When do you start? Don't leave tonight — your father will be happy to hear you've given up gambling! He was just angry before, those were just words spoken in rage. Don't hold it against your father."

"I'll go drop off the money now and start work right away. I'll come back once I get my first paycheck," Chen Wuhong said.

After finishing his meal, he went to his room and packed some clothes into a bag.

...

That evening, Chen Wujun left the martial arts school. As he walked, his spine undulated with each step, and he carefully savored the spring-like recoil of the body bow.

'The spine is the body's bow — snap and release to generate force... channeling the whole body's power into a single unified strike.'

As he walked and contemplated, a sudden flash of insight struck him. He arched forward into a lunging step, driving his elbow out. Though the force wasn't tremendous, a faint whoosh cut through the air.

He hadn't struck a training post, but Chen Wujun was certain that elbow carried far more power than anything he'd thrown before.

'The body is the bow, the elbow is the arrow...'

Chen Wujun felt he was beginning to grasp something profound.

When he got home and slipped into the bedroom, he immediately noticed someone had been inside.

His heart lurched. He yanked open the wardrobe and saw signs of tampering within — and several of his eldest brother's clothes were missing.

He immediately checked his money, hidden in a corner beneath the wardrobe. Finding it still there, he exhaled with relief.

Fortunately, he'd anticipated his eldest brother sneaking back and had stashed the money somewhere inconspicuous, which was the only reason it hadn't been discovered.

Though he'd split the money across three different hiding spots, and had just paid two months of school fees, there was still six thousand here.

If his eldest brother had stolen this money, he would have killed him.

That degenerate gambler — alive, all he did was drag the family down.

After putting the money back, Chen Wujun asked nonchalantly over dinner, "Big brother came back?"

"What's that deadbeat doing back here?" The mere mention of Chen Wuhong sent Chen Hanliang's temper flaring.

"No matter what, he's still your son! Wuhong says he's quit gambling. He found a job over in Red Incense Burner Bay — three thousand a month! He went to start today and said he'll come back once he gets his paycheck."

"Him, quit gambling? I'd sooner believe a dog would stop eating filth!" Chen Hanliang fumed.

Despite the fury on his face, deep down, Chen Hanliang also hoped the deadbeat had truly given it up.

"He didn't ask you for money?" Chen Wujun asked suddenly.

"He needed to pay a uniform deposit for the job — six hundred," Huang Meizhen said.

"What kind of job makes you pay before you even earn anything?" Chen Hanliang's anger surged higher. "He's obviously swindling money to gamble with."

"You're his father. You have to give him a chance — believe in him one more time, alright?" Huang Meizhen pleaded.

Chen Hanliang let out a heavy sigh and said nothing more.

Chen Wujun ate in silence, head down. He didn't believe for a second that the degenerate gambler had actually gone to work.

But seeing the look on his mother's face, he couldn't be bothered to say more.

Still, the fact that the bastard hadn't mentioned the beating from last time — at least he had that much sense.

Chen Wujun's mind turned over the idea of hunting him down and breaking both his legs properly, then dumping him back home. As long as he couldn't go out to gamble or rack up debts, supporting a cripple at home would still be better than the alternative.

After dinner, Chen Wujun went out again — not to the rooftop this time, but to the Walled City's gambling dens.

He'd barely reached the entrance of the first one when he saw a degenerate gambler being thrown out bodily.

Chen Wujun pushed aside the curtain and stepped inside. The air was thick with smoke and stale breath.

Every face was etched with greed, euphoria, resentment — every shade of desire imaginable.

Chen Wujun's gaze swept the room. No sign of Chen Wuhong. He turned and left.

He checked over a dozen places. Chen Wuhong was nowhere to be found.

'Did that bastard actually turn over a new leaf?'

After searching more than twenty establishments without finding Chen Wuhong, Chen Wujun gave up the hunt.

Walking home, he reached the ground floor and spotted the little girl Shu Fen sitting outside her house, chin propped in both hands, staring blankly into space.

"Customers this late?" Chen Wujun remarked offhandedly.

The words had barely left his mouth when a man's voice erupted from inside the room: "You're turning tricks every single day — where's the money? Where does it all go? Are you keeping some pretty boy behind my back?"

"Money, money, money — you gambled it all away!" A woman's voice answered, shrill and seething with fury. "School's about to start, and I haven't even scraped together our daughter's tuition, and you still have the nerve to ask me for money!"

Shu Fen turned her head toward the doorway, her eyes brimming with sorrow and helplessness.

She glanced at Chen Wujun, then went back to staring at nothing.

Chen Wujun said nothing more. He headed up the stairs, his thoughts churning: 'Every last one of these gamblers deserves to die!'

'They never change. All they do is bleed everyone around them dry!'

'If I find out the eldest is gambling again, I might as well just put him down. Mom and Dad will grieve, but a quick cut heals faster than a slow bleed.'

Dark thoughts swirled through Chen Wujun's mind, a murderous glint burning in his eyes.

He reached the rooftop and made his way to his usual training corner, kicking aside several empty soda bottles.

He steadied his breathing, then began practicing the Wolf Fist Twenty-Four Forms he'd learned that day.

At first his movements were slow and deliberate, but after running through it several times, the pace gradually quickened. Every punch and elbow strike landed with steady, sinking power.

With each burst of force, his foot stomped heavily against the rooftop, sending small puffs of dust billowing into the air.

...

Several days later, Chen Wuqi's school reopened, and he returned to campus, only coming home on weekends.

After Lin Zetao quit, only one other disciple remained at the school, still practicing his stance work. Within two days, he too stopped showing up.

That left just the four sparring disciples at the school, and they didn't come every day either. More often than not, from dawn to dusk, it was just Chen Wujun and Senior Brother Li.

Senior Brother Li didn't seem bothered in the slightest.

Chen Wujun was increasingly convinced the school wasn't meant to turn a profit.

He couldn't figure out why the Master had opened a martial arts school here at all.

Meanwhile, the curriculum kept expanding. Beyond stance training and the Wolf Fist Twenty-Four Forms, Chen Wujun now drilled knee strikes and elbow techniques daily.

Nearly every day his elbows were a raw, bloody mess.

The hemp rope originally wound around the wooden stakes had been shredded by his strikes, requiring fresh wrapping.

This continued for half a month.

Chen Wujun stood at the edge of the rooftop, his hand resting against the parapet wall before him, his expression shifting between resolve and hesitation.

He could feel his Wolf Fist had reached a level of competency. Even his understanding of the Five Bows had progressed considerably — Senior Brother Li himself had expressed satisfaction with his advancement.

The next step was to train atop the parapet wall. Only then would his progress truly accelerate.

But the wall was only thirty centimeters wide. Standing in a horse stance on it was already precarious enough, let alone practicing punches up there — pivoting, turning, throwing strikes and kicks.

One misstep, one foot placed wrong, and the fall would shatter him to pieces.

...

On the rooftop of another building in the distance, Shark Jiu stood in tailored dress pants and a button-up shirt, a can of beer in hand, watching the hesitating figure of Chen Wujun with keen interest.

Chen Wujun couldn't see her, but she could see him with perfect clarity.

She often came up to the rooftop for fresh air, and she'd frequently spotted Chen Wujun practicing his stances on the parapet wall. She'd even witnessed him nearly fall off once.

She'd also watched him drilling the Wolf Fist Twenty-Four Forms these past days.

Now she could guess exactly what he was deliberating over, and what amused her was wondering what he would actually do.

After more than ten minutes, Chen Wujun planted both hands on the wall and vaulted up onto the parapet.

He stood motionless for several minutes, steadying his nerves. Then he slowly assumed the opening salute stance, and his body began to move — carefully, deliberately.

Every fiber of Chen Wujun's awareness was honed to its absolute peak. His mind was void of all distraction.

Watching this unfold, Shark Jiu broke into a wide grin, baring a full set of teeth as sharp as a shark's.

"Truly fearless, this one! What a fine prospect — what a fine prospect indeed!"

She knew all too well what it felt like to stand on that ledge — the sensation of a bottomless abyss yawning before you, where a single wrong step meant annihilation.

Because... that was exactly how she had once trained her fists.

"A bit young, perhaps, but prospects this good don't come around often!" Shark Jiu's interest in this boy was growing by the minute.