Madman!

Chapter 7: Stance Training on the Edge of Death

It wasn't until dinnertime that Chen Wujun finally made it home.

The entire afternoon had been a wash, but he wasn't particularly disappointed. He'd never expected to find his target in a single day.

"Where have you been all afternoon?" Huang Meizhen emerged from the kitchen carrying dishes and asked the moment she spotted him.

"Went looking for my brother," Chen Wujun answered honestly.

"What'd you go looking for that good-for-nothing for?" Chen Hanliang's temper flared the instant his eldest son was mentioned.

"I wanted to find out exactly how much he owes. The loan shark debt just keeps growing," Chen Wujun replied.

Chen Hanliang let out a cold snort at that.

"Did you find him?" Huang Meizhen asked with a note of concern. It had been days since she'd last seen her eldest.

"No. Dad, which gambling dens does he usually go to? I checked several and couldn't find him anywhere!" Chen Wujun pressed.

"No idea! And stop running around those filthy dens yourself! I'll figure out the money situation," Chen Hanliang declared.But the moment money came up, a look of hesitation and conflict crossed his face.

To scrape together thirty thousand, the only option was to take out a loan against their house or the dental clinic.

The Walled City might look like a dump, but with over a hundred thousand people crammed into such a tiny area, every square inch was worth its weight in gold.

A ten-square-meter room could fit eight beds, and a single bed space rented for two hundred, even three hundred a month.

"Mom, why are you so pale?" Chen Wujun noticed his mother's complexion had turned ashen, her movements a touch slower than usual.

"It's nothing. Just feeling a bit off today. I'll be fine tomorrow," Huang Meizhen waved it off.

Chen Wujun didn't know what had happened, but since his mother wouldn't say, he quietly filed it away in the back of his mind.

The whole family was weighed down by that crushing loan shark debt, and Chen Wujun was powerless to help.

He could hardly tell his parents: 'Don't worry. Once the creditors are dead, the debt dies with them.'

After dinner, Chen Wujun sat perched on the edge of the sofa as usual, watching the police bulletin for half an hour before retreating to his room to practice the Golden Rooster Stance.

He'd wasted the entire afternoon wandering from gambling den to gambling den, burning through his training time. He needed to make up for it tonight with double the effort.

Back in his room with the door shut, the stifling heat immediately pressed down on him like a suffocating blanket.

Chen Wujun decided to head up to the rooftop to train instead.

In the Walled City, every building's rooftop connected to the next, rising and falling at different levels. Each one was piled high with clutter and draped with drying laundry.

Beyond that, some people who had nowhere else to live had cobbled together tin-roofed shacks right on the rooftops.

Chen Wujun picked his way carefully through the debris with a flashlight, skirting the rooftop shacks until he reached a corner with a view into the distance. From here, he could see a glittering skyline of towering high-rises far away.

That was the heart of East District 9, home to the wealthy and the elite.

Chen Wujun's greatest dream was to buy a mansion there, along with a luxury car.

And never return to this reeking Walled City again.

The Walled City stank around the clock, and its people carried that stench on their skin like a permanent stain no amount of scrubbing could remove.

Back in school, kids from the regular neighborhoods had called them stink bugs, crossing the street just to avoid them.

Chen Wujun had gotten into over a dozen fights because of it.

Eventually, the other students didn't dare call them stink bugs to their faces anymore. Instead, they used "Walled City Boy" and "Walled City Girl" — terms no less contemptuous.

Chen Wujun leaned against the parapet wall and gazed at the distant, glittering high-rises for a moment. Then he swept the flashlight across the nearby area, checking for stray nails or debris. Only after finding a flat spot did he remove his shoes, set them neatly to one side, and begin his stance training.

A gentle breeze swept across the rooftop now and then. Not only was it free of the stifling heat below, but even the Walled City's omnipresent stench had faded considerably.

While practicing the Golden Rooster Stance, Chen Wujun's gaze fell on the waist-high parapet wall before him, and a wild idea struck. The wall was about thirty centimeters thick — just wide enough for a person to stand on.

He'd sat on it many times before, staring off into the distance in a daze.

If he practiced his stances up there and lost his balance, he'd plummet straight down.

Wouldn't that force an entirely new level of focus? Wouldn't he improve faster?

The thought sprouted in his mind and grew like wildfire — a weed that kept pushing back up no matter how many times he stamped it down.

Moments later, a mad gleam ignited in Chen Wujun's eyes.

He'd always had a reckless streak. After weighing the risks, he figured he had a reasonable chance.

After all, these days of stance training hadn't been for nothing. As long as Senior Li didn't suddenly kick him, he could hold his ground perfectly well.

If he could stand steady on flat ground, why couldn't he do the same on the parapet wall?

Chen Wujun returned to a normal standing position and leaned against the wall to rest, running his hands along its surface to check for any loose or crumbling sections.

After a brief rest, he clenched his jaw, planted both hands on the wall, and hoisted himself up.

This was the thirteenth floor.

He looked down. The shop signs and their lights far below were as tiny as ants.

After sitting there for a moment, Chen Wujun drew one leg up, slowly rose to his feet, and stood on top of the wall with both legs.

A thread of fear wound through his chest.

'Can't even manage this, and you think you can manage anything?'

'Over a hundred thousand people in this Walled City — every last one of them is bold, every last one of them fights to survive. If you want to rise above the rest, you have to push harder than anyone else!'

'Ruthless to others, and just as ruthless to yourself!'

Chen Wujun kept stoking the fire in his heart.

Before him yawned what felt like a bottomless abyss. Only the lights far below and in the distance flickered, impossibly small, as if belonging to another world entirely.

Behind him lay the rooftop.

Chen Wujun shifted his feet inch by inch, then settled into a Charge Stance — if anything went wrong, all he had to do was fall backward onto the rooftop.

Training stances on the parapet wall delivered a sensation he had never experienced before.

His concentration sharpened to an unprecedented edge. It felt as though he'd entered the state of As If Facing a Great Enemy — but he knew clearly that he hadn't.

His world seemed to simplify itself, stripped down to nothing but the bottomless void ahead and the few inches of wall beneath his feet.

The cold, rough surface of the parapet under his soles, and his greatest enemy — the wind.

On flat ground, a breeze like this wouldn't have earned a second thought.

But up here, he felt his undershirt flapping against his skin with every gust, as if countless invisible hands were shoving him from every direction.

Every hair on his body stood on end — not because he had entered As If Facing a Great Enemy, but because this was the body's most primal response to mortal danger.

His hearing sharpened to a razor's edge. He could pick out the clamor of arguments drifting up from the streets below, even the distant wail of a baby crying inside one of the rooftop shacks.

Chen Wujun's toes clamped down on the parapet like ten nails driven into stone, anchoring him in place.

Every minute shift of his center of gravity sent his heartbeat slamming into overdrive.

He lasted only five minutes, yet it felt like five hours.

When the first hint of dizziness crept in, he knew he'd hit his limit and carefully hopped back onto the rooftop.

The instant his feet touched the rooftop floor, his heart thundered like a war drum. He gasped for air in great heaving gulps, his entire body on the verge of collapse.

"Ha... Hahahahaha!" Chen Wujun braced one hand against the wall and doubled over laughing, an indescribable rush of elation surging up from the depths of his soul.

He'd done it!

Even if it was only the Charge Stance.

He had experienced something utterly different from ordinary stance training.

Absolute focus. Impossibly refined awareness. Every fraction of his body laid bare — every bead of sweat sliding past his brow, even the flow of blood through his veins.

Dancing on death's razor edge, and on the other side of that terror — pure, unbridled exhilaration.

And he knew his earlier hunch had been right.

Training stances on the parapet's edge, where a single misstep meant a fatal plunge, yielded gains that flat-ground practice could never hope to match.

After resting for half an hour, Chen Wujun climbed back onto the parapet wall.

...

The next morning, Chen Wujun's mental state was remarkably sharp.

The loan shark debt had been weighing on him constantly, but after his walk along the rooftop's edge, his entire mindset had undergone a profound shift.

The debt crisis was still pressing and immediate, but somehow it no longer crushed him under its weight.

Even his vitality felt noticeably fuller than before, and his eyes burned with a brighter intensity.

"Senior Li!" Chen Wujun greeted his senior with a nod.

As he held his Charge Stance, Chen Wujun's senses were sharp and clear. Every detail of his surroundings registered with crisp precision.

"Hm?" Senior Li studied Chen Wujun's stance. Something was different about him — but he couldn't quite put his finger on what had changed.

Chen Wujun stood there with his toes gripping the ground, his body rising and falling in subtle rhythm, his upper body upright. His vitality and presence were markedly improved from just yesterday.

Senior Li circled behind Chen Wujun and gave him a shove. Chen Wujun's upper body swayed slightly, then snapped right back. His feet didn't budge an inch.

'Taking Root Under Feet — and progressing at an absurd pace!' Senior Li marveled inwardly. Chen Wujun's natural talent was enough to make even him jealous.

'How long did it take me to reach this level?'

Over dinner the previous evening, he'd mentioned the new student to their master — how rapidly the boy was advancing. Zhou Qing had simply offered a slight nod of acknowledgment.

Senior Li hadn't pressed the matter further.

He'd give it a bit more time, observe how the boy progressed with other techniques. If that freakish rate of improvement held steady, he'd bring Chen Wujun before the master for a proper evaluation.

At the Zhou Qing Martial Arts Hall, the hall's master Zhou Qing rarely made an appearance. Chen Wujun had been training there for ten days and still hadn't laid eyes on him.

Day-to-day operations were handled entirely by Senior Li.

As for students, there were barely a handful — you could count them on one hand.

After all, the penniless couldn't afford to train in martial arts when mere survival was already a struggle.

And those with money went straight to studying New Arts instead.

New Arts didn't require stance training at all. Instead, practitioners continuously tapped into their latent potential while using external materials to gradually strengthen their biological magnetic field and enhance their physical capabilities.

The results came far more quickly.

After half an hour in the Charge Stance, Chen Wujun felt no fatigue whatsoever.

So he transitioned into the Golden Rooster Stance.

One foot supporting his body, the other leg raised with the knee acting as a shield, both hands guarding his upper body.

Although he had only practiced the Charge Stance on the rooftop the night before, the experience had given him an entirely new understanding of body control and balance. It showed clearly in his Golden Rooster Stance as well.

Standing there, he looked as if he'd been nailed to the floor. His body swayed ever so slightly left and right, but his center of gravity never faltered.

External force, however, was another matter entirely.

Senior Li reached out and pushed — what was merely a light shove by his standards sent Chen Wujun stumbling sideways, forcing him to take two full steps before he caught his balance.