Uma Musume: From Being Knocked Ten Meters Away

Chapter 118 Challenging the Limit
The familiar feeling brought by Kita no Genju's enthusiasm, coupled with the fact that Kitajima Saburo personally came to invite him after they had performed enka on stage, quickly made Yasui Makoto's inexplicable strange feeling disappear, and he went to the banquet hall as he did last time.

As if he had seen it before, the old man expressed his gratitude repeatedly and then eagerly asked if he needed any help with the upcoming training and competition.

He was not polite last time, and Yasui Zhen was no exception this time.

It just so happened that in his plan, there were some instruments that needed to be tailor-made for Northern Xuanju, and these could be entrusted to Kitajima Saburo.

Those instruments are necessary for "extreme stunts".

Utilizing the training methods of this unique sport, combined with the needs of various competitions and the characteristics of the horse racing girls being coached, special training is designed specifically.

This was the idea he had before he met the Northern Black Horse.

After actually starting to coach this horse girl, he found that it was far from as easy as he had imagined.

On the one hand, there are not many precedents for this kind of thinking in the world; it can only be said that there are some similarities.

On the other hand, although Uma Musume's body structure looks the same as that of humans, the actual differences are quite significant.

This makes many actions that are extremely difficult for the latter much easier for the former.

For example, free climbing.

Climbing a rock wall without any tools and with the most basic protection measures is absolutely impossible for humans without extremely high physical fitness, judgment and psychological quality.

Uma girls naturally meet the first requirement. As long as they spend enough time in the process of becoming a master, their physical fitness will far exceed that of the best human athletes. The rest of the conditions only require basic training to complete this action.

Given this gap, many exercises that only remember the upper limit of human ability are meaningless.

If you want to design new and useful moves with a higher upper limit, you can only do so through practical guidance and understanding of Uma Musume's physical condition.

After spending several months with Northern Black Horse, the guidance experience is definitely enough.

Judging from the recent training data and Gaoyue Shang's performance, all aspects of the data of this horse girl have reached the ideal state.

Then we can carry out a brand new special training method that has never existed in this world.

……

"...So, what exactly is this special grade thing the trainer mentioned?"

As they asked this question, Kitagata Genju and Yasui Shin were strolling along the path in the backyard of the Kitajima family's house, which was paved with white gravel.

"It's an extreme stunt."

He rarely corrected her seriously with a more serious tone, and a hint of eagerness unconsciously flashed across An Jing Zhen's heart.

Looking around, he saw a pavilion not far ahead and his eyes lit up.

Walking straight towards the pavilion, he unbuttoned the collar and sleeves of his shirt and rolled up the cuffs to his elbows.

Blinking curiously, Northern Black Horse hurried to catch up.

"Simply put, it's a sport that challenges one's limits... Of course, I'm talking about challenging human limits, not horse racing."

He walked to the front of the pavilion, raised his head to look at a stone pillar supporting the pavilion, tapped the pillar with his fingers, rubbed it with his palm, then An Jingzhen turned around and nodded to Kita no Xuanju.

"For example..."

Before he finished speaking, he suddenly took more than ten steps back, stared at the place where he had just struck, and exerted force suddenly.

As if twisting his entire body into a fully drawn bow, after a very brief preparation, he rushed towards the stone pillar.

Beibu Xuanju was completely unaware of An Jingzhen's actions. When she came to her senses, An Jingzhen was already very close to the stone pillar.

"Trainer! Be careful...Ah?!" She screamed in the middle of it when her eyes suddenly widened.

He stepped on the pre-selected fulcrum, with his foot and calf forming a sharp angle that seemed to be about to fold up. In the blink of an eye, Yasui jumped nearly three meters high like a rocket taking off.

He changed his foot and stepped on the second main point again, and his body climbed vertically by more than two meters again.

Then came the third and fourth kicks, and these two consecutive kicks also made him rise about one meter again.

The fifth leg didn't continue to rise. The moment it slammed into the stone pillar, the forefoot spun with force, causing the rough surface of the pillar and the edge of the pavilion's tiled roof to ripple up, sending a cloud of dust raining down.

While climbing, his back curled up like a bow rebounding, and An Jingzhen drew a parabola of several meters in the air.

As he landed in the opposite direction towards the stone pillar, he spun in the air with the force of his last kick.

1...2...2.5...

He silently counted the rotation cycles, and the moment his toes felt the hardness, he turned his body backwards and squatted down with his knees bent as if he was going to lie down.

As his knees went from contracted to extended, he raised his arms backwards, just enough to press against the ground.

He took advantage of the situation again, completed a flip, and after removing all the impact of falling caused by gravity, he stood up straight.

Standing exactly where he started.

Looking down at the two sets of footprints that almost overlapped, he nodded and then shook his head.

"My sense of distance is pretty accurate, but I only do two and a half turns... I'm probably rusty from not practicing for so long."

After a self-evaluation with a hint of regret, he looked at Northern Xuanju and said with a smile:
"Well, now you understand, right?"

His neck turned as slowly as if it were rusty, and Kita no Xuanju felt his heart pounding like when he crossed the finish line of the Gaoyue Sho.

When she first saw An Jingzhen rushing up the stone pillar, she was filled with surprise.

The next second, she felt unbelievable.

If it was just about rushing up the stone pillar, she had seen it in some song and dance performances.

However, unlike those performances, this trainer did not use his hands at all. He just relied on sprinting and the strength of his legs and feet to rush up six or seven meters as if running on a pillar.

There are two or three twists when falling from a high altitude. She has also seen this kind of movement in dance, but she has never seen anyone do it before the previous movement.

At this moment, she realized that after the previous action, An Jing's landing point was exactly the same as when he started.

This made her feel that the other party had thought of all this in advance and had done it countless times.

At the same time, when she met those familiar eyes, she saw colors that were both familiar and unfamiliar.

She remembered that her grandfather had this look in his eyes when he looked at himself in the mirror before performing on stage or before a competition.

But she had never seen it in An Jingzhen's eyes.

There are also arms with bulging veins, eyebrows raised high, and the corners of the mouth stretched apart...

These were things she had never seen before.

Just like the chief priest at a festival, at this moment Yasui Shin was filled with unusual piety and enthusiasm.

But soon, the demeanor that was completely different from his usual one disappeared, replaced by the familiar calmness and rationality.

"It's okay if you don't understand. It was just a simple set of movements."

Glancing at the stone pillar, An Jingzhen said with his habitual smile:
"For a vertical surface this rough, the limit for humans is probably 7 or 8 meters on foot.

“The record for the wall that’s professionally specified is probably over 4 meters, but that wall is so smooth.

“The follow-up movements like twists are triple axels.

“If the pre-action is more difficult, the number of rotations can be increased, and other movements can be combined.

"But none of this matters. What matters is that I will arrange special training for you based on the ideas from extreme stunts.

"Uma girls' physiques are superior to humans to begin with, and yours is even more exceptional. You're ready now.

"Remember what I told you that day?

"At a speed no one else can match, we can now take our first real steps."

(End of this chapter)