Madman!

Chapter 56: On Edge

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Chen Wujun's family went to visit his aunt's home to pay their respects.

After all, as the eldest sibling, his aunt held seniority. Every year on the second day, Chen Wujun's family and his uncles' families would gather at her place for New Year celebrations.

Chen Wujun's transformed physique and bearing gave his aunt's household quite a shock.

He also unexpectedly learned an interesting piece of news — his cousin, Ma Andi, was currently interning at a psychological counseling institution affiliated with the Federal Police in East District 9.

This piqued Chen Wujun's interest considerably.

After all, he had no intention of staying in the Walled City forever.

The Walled City reeked at all hours. Once he'd secured his footing, he would absolutely expand outward.

He probed the topic in a roundabout way, and his cousin immediately caught on.

"You seem awfully interested in the police department?"

"Of course! I've wanted to be a cop since I was little!" Chen Wujun replied without batting an eye.After all, he did watch the police bulletins every single day.

However, his cousin had only been interning for three months and didn't know much yet.

...

After returning from his aunt's house, Chen Wujun told his parents about an arrangement — his senior brother had agreed to let Shu Fen clean the martial arts school.

Chen Wujun had really only mentioned it in passing, but for Shu Fen, this was a godsend.

The school was spacious, with several rooms in the back and even a kitchen. Chen Wujun himself had toyed with the idea of moving in.

Shu Fen would clean the school, live there, cook her own meals, and earn 1,500 dollars a month.

Currently the school only had two students, so there wasn't much to do on a daily basis. Sweeping and tidying the main areas took two or three hours at most.

When Huang Meizhen heard the news, she personally accompanied Chen Wujun to deliver Shu Fen to the school.

"From now on, this is where you'll stay. There are rooms in the back — pick an empty one. There's a kitchen too. You know how to cook, right?"

Shu Fen nodded repeatedly.

Her father was a Degenerate Gambler. Her mother was a prostitute. She'd learned to cook for herself when she was barely old enough to reach the stove.

Huang Meizhen thanked Senior Brother Li profusely.

Only after his mother had left did Chen Wujun turn to Shu Fen and say, "Whatever happens at the school — you don't talk about it to anyone outside."

Shu Fen nodded vigorously again.

With Shu Fen settled in, Chen Wujun threw himself back into the Warehouse, practicing Swimming Dragon Palm there every day.

That day at Shark Jiu's home, seeing those ring after ring of footprints pressed into the cement floor had driven home the enormous gap between their abilities.

If the cement had cracks in it, Chen Wujun could stomp out a crater at full force, sending chunks flying.

But those footprints were each perfectly defined, all five toes splayed distinctly apart.

Clearly they hadn't been stamped deliberately — they were simply left behind during training.

What kind of skill could do that?

And beyond that, Chen Wujun still had a duel ahead of him — one with a signed death waiver.

It was already January 30th. The fight was just over two months away.

After two more days of practice in the Warehouse, before the New Year festivities had even ended, Chen Wujun had drilled the Swimming Dragon Palm to proficiency. He then walked over to the wooden stakes nearby and sized them up.

The standard progression for Swimming Dragon Palm was to first walk on flat ground, then on bricks, and only after that on wooden stakes.

But Zhou Qing had never mentioned the brick stage, and Chen Wujun hadn't thought about it either.

If the rooftop parapet hadn't been unsuitable, he would have practiced up there.

The stakes stood one meter tall, each about the width of a rice bowl. The gap between any two stakes was 0.96 meters. Sixty-four stakes in total, each fitted with hooks on top for hanging sandbags.

Chen Wujun only needed nine.

After studying them for a moment, he stripped off his shirt and shoes, loosened up his body, then launched himself upward. He sprang more than a meter into the air and landed on a single stake with one leg, his body barely swaying at all.

Then he stepped forward and landed on the center stake of the nine he'd selected.

From there he began moving continuously across the stakes, each step gliding out flat and even — still the Mud-Wading Step.

His lower-body skill had already been honed to an exceptionally high level.

Each time his foot landed on a stake, it was as if roots had taken hold. His frame didn't waver in the slightest.

After circling the stakes twice and familiarizing himself with the distances and positions, he began to slowly practice his palm techniques.

Practicing forms was like pushing a millstone — it had to be slow, feeling the force generated by every part of the body.

Otherwise, one sloppy move and you'd injure yourself first.

But striking an opponent had to be fast. Explosive. Ferocious.

After several days on the stakes, Chen Wujun hung sandbags above them.

The difficulty immediately spiked.

Each stake was only as wide as a bowl — just enough for the sole of a foot.

Chen Wujun stepped forward and slapped a palm strike into a sandbag. With a heavy thud, the bag — thicker than a barrel and a full meter tall — swung high into the air. But the equal and opposite force rocked his body, nearly toppling him off the stake.

'Learned this back in middle school — every force has an equal and opposite reaction. When I hit the sandbag, I get pushed back just as hard. That means I need to spend even more effort stabilizing my stance.'

'Plus I have to watch which direction the bag swings. One moment of inattention and it'll knock me right off. It's like having an opponent pressing the attack.'

'Training this way... my skill will grow much faster.'

'But a sandbag's trajectory is predictable. It's no substitute for a real person — especially for the Swimming Dragon Palm's lifting palm, pressing palm, and scooping palm, which all rely on Listening Force, following and redirecting the opponent's energy. Once I've mastered the stakes and sandbags, I'll need a live partner to train with.'

Chen Wujun trained with one sandbag for two days. By the end, a full palm strike only caused a slight tremor in his stance atop the stakes.

He could read exactly which direction the bag would swing, so he added a second.

Two sandbags swaying unpredictably among the stakes — he immediately felt the difficulty multiply.

Half a month slipped by. The Lantern Festival came and went. Chen Wujun now had three sandbags hanging above the stakes. As he wove between them, his palms struck one bag after another in constant succession, all three swinging wildly through the air.

By now, Chen Wujun was beginning to grasp what his master had meant by "threading the needle."

With three sandbags swinging from repeated impacts, the gap to slip through often existed for only a split second — and he had to dive through in that exact instant.

Zhou Qing stepped into the Warehouse to find Chen Wujun weaving ceaselessly across the stakes, darting and threading between the three swaying sandbags.

Spotting his master's arrival, Chen Wujun hopped down from the stakes.

"Master!"

"Your progress is solid. Before, I taught you the training method for Swimming Dragon Palm. Today I'll teach you how it fights," Zhou Qing declared.

"Swimming Dragon Palm evolved from the old Baguazhang. Baguazhang has a reputation for being vicious. Most people assume that's because it's agile and deceptive — looks like it's striking high when it's really hitting low."

"The truth is, Baguazhang's real damage doesn't come from the hands. It comes from the elbows. And below, the feet are always hooking."

"Plenty of styles use elbow strikes. With other styles, you can see the elbow coming. With Baguazhang, you can't."

"You've seen a broadsword, right? A broadsword doesn't kill with the thrust — it kills with the draw-cut. You thrust forward, your opponent dodges, and then you slice sideways on the follow-through." As he spoke, Zhou Qing picked up a long-handled broadsword from a nearby rack, jabbed it forward, then drew it back in a sweeping slash.

That slash was the killing stroke.

Of course, if the opponent failed to dodge the initial thrust, the thrust alone could be lethal. But as long as they evaded it, the immediate follow-up slash made escape nearly impossible.

"Swimming Dragon Palm works the same way. This advancing piercing palm — you strike at the opponent's face, and they'll either dodge or block."

"If they lean back to dodge, your hand rakes downward and gouges at their eyes. If the rake misses or they block it, you pull your arm back — and your elbow crashes right into their chest."

"Or with the advancing piercing palm, as your hand comes back you grab their clothing and yank, your foot hooks their ankle, they lose their center of gravity, and you pivot into a cleaving palm."

Zhou Qing returned the broadsword to its rack and demonstrated with the Swimming Dragon Palm instead. A simple advancing piercing palm — the hand reaching forward, grabbing, retracting — contained layer upon layer of variations.

Chen Wujun listened with rapt fascination.

He'd already sensed something like this the one time he'd watched Shark Jiu fight.

His master had told him before: Swimming Dragon Palm used the entire body as a weapon.

During these past few days of practice, he'd begun to realize some of it himself.

Now, hearing his master spell it out, everything clicked into place. The points that had puzzled him before suddenly became crystal clear.

So many of the Swimming Dragon Palm's movements worked this way — what appeared to be a palm strike actually chained palm to elbow, with the feet always sweeping and tripping below.

...

Huang Meizhen had gone to help at the dental clinic. Chen Wuhong sat at home with nothing to do, listlessly watching television.

A knock came at the door. From inside, Chen Wuhong called out, "Who is it?"

"Ah Hong!" A familiar voice drifted in from outside.

Chen Wuhong hopped over on one leg and pulled the door open to find two friends he used to hit the gambling dens with.

"What brings you guys here?"

"Gambling Hong! Thought you'd dropped dead — you've been off the radar for ages!" One of them wore a broad grin.

Chen Wuhong had been cooped up for so long that the sight of familiar faces was a genuine relief. He swung the door wide and gestured them inside.

"You look awfully happy. Won big?"

"Sure did! Made a few tens of thousands over the New Year! Dinner's on me tonight — you coming?"

Envy flickered across Chen Wuhong's face. He hopped back to the sofa and pointed at his legs. "Where the hell am I going like this?"

"Didn't you break that other leg a while back? Now this one's busted too? How'd you get this unlucky?"

"Don't get me started!" Chen Wuhong grumbled. "Who'd have thought a guy like you would actually hit a winning streak?"

"Nobody loses forever! I was just... letting them hold my money for a while," the winner quipped. His name was Ah Chao, and right now he was practically glowing with self-satisfaction.

Chen Wuhong couldn't have agreed more — and his fingers itched all the worse for it.

"Good for you two. Meanwhile, I'm stuck in here so long I'm growing lice."

"Hey, don't say we aren't good brothers. Seeing as you haven't touched a tile in ages — want to play a couple hands?" The other young man's eyes glinted as he reached into his pocket and produced a deck of long, narrow playing cards. Paper Pai Gow.

The real game used bone tiles, but this paper version was portable enough to carry anywhere.

The moment Chen Wuhong saw the cards in the man's hand, heat surged through his chest.

But then he glanced around the apartment, and the fire died just as quickly.

Only a few days ago, Chen Wujun had threatened him. These days, just thinking about his younger brother made his stomach clench.

He didn't for one second believe Chen Wujun had been joking. But he couldn't let himself look like a coward out loud.

"What's entertaining about those? No feel to them at all."

"Better than nothing... You haven't played in so long — don't tell me you've lost the nerve? I'm telling you, this is a limited-time offer. Ah Chao here is a regular tycoon now."

Meanwhile, Ah Chao had been scanning the room with wandering eyes. He spotted a family portrait on top of the TV cabinet, picked it up, and gave it a look.

When his gaze landed on one particular face, his expression froze.

He recognized someone in the photo.

Though the build and aura were completely different from the picture, the facial features hadn't changed much.

It was on New Year's Day, at a gambling den on Longjin Street. Over a dozen Hetu members had all called him Brother Jun.

The guy hadn't looked very old. Curious, Ah Chao had asked around.

That was when he learned the man was one of Shark Jiu's favorites.

And Shark Jiu was one of Hetu's Four Heavenly Kings — the kind of person ordinary folks couldn't even get an audience with.

"Ah Hong, your family name's Chen?"

"You're only just figuring that out?" Chen Wuhong was still wrestling with temptation.

"This your little brother? What's his name?" Ah Chao held up the photo.

"Chen Wujun... Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Just never heard you mention him. Looks a lot like you, actually." Ah Chao set the family portrait down, and all at once he couldn't sit still.