Martial Arts Secret Realm: Only I Can Know the Plot?

The old man picked up the tattered bag from the podium and walked out without looking back.

He stopped abruptly at the door: "The one who was touching the texture earlier, stay here for a moment."

Sun Fan stood up.

The others left one by one, leaving only the two of them in the classroom.

The old man turned around and sized him up: "From Class Five?"

"Yes."

"That Sun Fan from the monthly exam?"

"Yes."

The old man hummed in agreement: "You touched the stone earlier and closed your eyes."

Sun Fan remained silent.

"Others use their fingertips to feel it, but you used both your fingertips and the pads of your fingers, and you even pressed it three times," the old man said. "You're not touching the texture; you're touching what's underneath the texture."

"Did someone teach you?"

Sun Fan's heart stirred.

Yan Shisan once said that killing someone doesn't always have to be so difficult.

Everyone has weaknesses.

You have to follow his trail. Once you find him, perhaps a gentle strike will suffice.

At the time, Sun Fan seemed to understand but not quite.

But now, after listening to the old man's techniques for generating power, he seems to have gained new insights.

"Stones have textures, and so do people." The old man stared at him. "What do you want to touch?"

Sun Fan was silent for two seconds before answering truthfully: "The lines on a person's body where they exert force."

"If we can find the patterns in which someone exerts force, is it possible to prevent them from exerting force?"

The old man was stunned.

Then he laughed.

His laughter was strange, like there was sand stuck in his throat.

"Interesting," he said. "You're something else."

"Zhang Guangcheng is blind and can't see through you; your time hasn't been wasted."

Sun Fan felt a chill run down his spine.

How did he know?

The old man didn't explain; he simply took a USB drive from his pocket and tossed it over.

"The Seventy-Two Forms of Power Generation are the most basic of the basics. But they'll be enough for you for a while."

Sun Fan caught the USB drive, looked up as if to ask something, but the old man had already reached the door.

"It's not free; you still have to pay for the lessons."

The door closed.

Sun Fan stood still, looking down at the USB drive in his hand.

The USB drive was warm, as if it had just been hidden close to someone's body for a long time.

The process of gaining power is actually quite simple.

The core elements are twofold: how to unleash the power you've cultivated.

How to strike at someone's most vulnerable point.

The moment when the force is about to be released is the most vulnerable time.

How can I tell how others exert their force?

First of all, you have to master the basics of generating power!

Sun Fan found a room, plugged in the USB drive, and put on VR glasses.

This is the most popular way of teaching martial arts today.

The Seventy-Two Forms of Power Generation sounds intimidating, but it's actually just seventy-two movements—twisting the waist, shifting the hips, sinking the shoulders, dropping the elbows… all of them are the most basic skills. Each movement is accompanied by a few lines of small text explaining how to generate, move, and release the power.

It's completely different from those pretentious guides on the forum.

The old man said that developing strength is about transforming brute force into dynamic power. Dynamic power can be used to strike, and it can also nourish the body. Every bit of dynamic power you develop circulates within your body, and as it circulates, it opens up all those nooks and crannies that you couldn't train normally.

He remembered those words.

But what bothered him even more was another sentence—you're not touching the texture, you're touching what's underneath the texture.

Stones have textures, and so do people.

Sun Fan looked down at his hands. These hands had been used for sword practice for twenty years; the calluses on his fingertips were layered upon layered, as hard as old tree bark when pressed. But when he touched that stone just now, he did feel it—beneath the textured surface, there were even finer textures.

Like blood vessels. Like tendons. Like those indescribable things in the gaps between bones.

"If we could find the textures where someone else applied their power..."

He stopped and stood in the middle of the road.

Someone brushed past him and muttered something, but he didn't hear it.

My mind was filled with that thought—when a person exerts force, the energy originates from the feet, passes through the waist, rotates over the shoulders, and is delivered to the hands. Is there any pattern or texture along this path?

If so, could we cut off the force by following the texture?

Make it so he can't send it?

Sun Fan stood there for a long time.

It wasn't until it got dark that he came to his senses and quickly walked back to his residence.

In the days that followed, he immersed himself in the Seventy-Two Forms of Power Generation.

The movements are simple; the difficulty lies in the "feeling."

The first move: twisting the waist.

He stood in the courtyard with his feet shoulder-width apart and his arms hanging down, then twisted his waist to the right—he repeated this one movement three hundred times.

My lower back hurts.

The second move is to thrust your hips forward.

Still standing meditation, keep your waist still, push your hips forward—three hundred more times.

My hips hurt.

The third movement: relax your shoulders.

Standing, shoulders slumped down, as if trying to press something into the ground—three hundred times.

My shoulders are sore.

After three days, Sun Fan felt sore all over, as if he had been beaten up.

But he didn't stop.

Every day, I practice from the moment I open my eyes until dark, then I go straight to sleep. The next day, I open my eyes and continue practicing.

On the seventh day, he found that he no longer felt sore.

It's not that my body isn't tired, it's that the soreness has changed—before it was muscle soreness, now it's something deeper moving. It's like someone has implanted a thread inside my body, slowly pulling it out.

He remembered the old man's words: "The vitality flows through the body."

On the fifteenth night, he practiced the thirty-sixth move—the spine shaking.

This movement is strange; it's not twisting, sending, or sinking, but rather relaxing the whole body and then shaking like a dog shaking its fur, starting from the tailbone and going all the way to the back of the head.

When Sun Fan first tried this move, he almost cramped up from shaking.

But tonight is different.

He stood there, eyes closed, relaxing as usual, then shook.

When the tailbone moves, that force goes upwards.

Walk to the waist.

Walk to the back.

Walk to the shoulder.

Then--

Snapped.

He heard a sound coming from inside his body.

It wasn't the bones cracking; it was something else. Like a string that had been stretched taut for a long time, suddenly snapping open.

A surge of heat rose from the tailbone, rushed up the spine, all the way to the top of the head, and then fell back down, spreading into the limbs.

Sun Fan was stunned.

He stood there, his pores open, sweat pouring down like rain, but his body felt warm as if he were soaking in lukewarm water.

Is this what they call vitality?

He raised his hand, clenched his fist, released it, and then clenched his fist again.

Nothing's different.

But he knew things were different now.

Because the places that heat flowed through were places he had never felt before—those nooks and crannies, those crevices in the bones, those places that even body tempering couldn't reach—were all washed away now.

It feels empty.

Waiting to be filled.

Sun Fan stood there for a long time, waiting for the sweat to dry, before remembering the old man's words: "Once you cultivate a bit of vitality, it circulates within your body. As it circulates, all those nooks and crannies that you couldn't normally train will be opened up." And what if it's opened up? Train it again, and it will grow stronger.

He looked down at his hands.

It turned out to be the case.

Exerting force isn't about brute strength; it's about making it come alive. Once it comes alive, it will move on its own, turn on its own, and go to places it couldn't otherwise reach.

Once those areas are filled, then we can put in more effort, and things will be different.

Sun Fan let out a sigh of relief, turned around and went into the house, where he fell asleep immediately.

He opened his eyes the next day and continued practicing.

But this time, he practiced more than just the 72 forms of power generation.

After practicing a move, he would stop, close his eyes, and touch the warm current in his body—to see where it had gone, where it was located, and at what angle.

Once you've figured it out, practice the next move.

It's like drawing inside your own body.

Draw a texture image.

For a whole month, he didn't touch the sword once, but instead practiced the seventy-two moves.

A month later, when he picked up his sword again, everything was different.