A Beijing socialite stole my boyfriend; she went crazy after I got married.

After a period of tender intimacy, Jiang Chu rolled to the side with a whimper, hugged a cushion, and leaned against the sofa.

Xie Jing tilted his head to look at her, his eyes gentle. "How was the reading?"

Jiang Chu looked at the warm-colored chandelier on the ceiling. "I've finished reading Chapter Two, although I spent a lot of time looking up technical terms."

She raised one hand, spread her fingers in front of the light, and watched the outline of her fingers cast a translucent shadow in the light:

"However, I suddenly realized something: some actions are very simple and have no storyline, but the audience is still moved when they see them."

She turned her head away.

"Dr. O'Dr. said that's because humans have developed a motion perception system independent of language during the evolutionary process. The moment our brain sees an action, it will simulate the muscle sensations and emotional state of that action in advance—this is the underlying logic of mirror neurons."

Xie Jing nodded, "From a neuroscience perspective, part of artistic expression is the dancer's clear pre-coding of their physical movement intentions—before you make a movement, you are very clear about the direction, intensity, and emotional direction that the movement will reach. This sense of anticipation will be captured by the audience's eyes through extremely subtle muscle preparation signals, and then simulated by their brains."

Jiang Chu nodded. "Yes, this theory is very interesting, and it explains a lot of things."

"Yes." Xie Jing also relaxed and leaned back on the sofa. "However, this theory is not universally accepted in various fields, especially in the art world."

Jiang Chu blinked: "Why?"

"Because some people feel that breaking down the art experience into chemical reactions of neuronal firing and muscle signals is a kind of demystification of beauty."

He pondered, "I've seen my mentors have similar conversations with people who believe that if the emotions evoked by a poem, a dance, or a piece of music can be attributed to an activation pattern in a certain area of ​​the brain, then it loses its mystery and sacredness. Art should be ineffable, not confined by formulas and experimental data."

Jiang Chu looked up at the sky, "...Who decided what should and shouldn't be? Anyway, I like it no matter what, whether it's been dismantled or not."

Xie Jing didn't speak, he just looked at her.

Jiang Chu felt a little uncomfortable under his gaze and puffed out her cheeks. "What?"

"It's nothing." He looked away, a slight smile playing on his lips. "I enjoy talking about these things with you too."

He stood up, walked over to the girl, bent down, and scooped the person off the sofa.

"It's 11:30," he said. "Don't I have class tomorrow morning?"

"...Okay."

Jiang Chu grabbed the book, and just as she was about to leave, she tiptoed and quickly kissed Xie Jing on the chin.

Good night, Professor Xie.

After saying that, she ran upstairs in her slippers.

Xie Jing stood still, raising his hand to touch the chin she had kissed.

-

In the following days, Jiang Chu became extremely busy.

During the day, I attend classes, train, and complete exams and assignments as usual, and spend almost all the rest of my time preparing for the competition.

She absorbed a lot of knowledge from new fields.

...the activation threshold of mirror neurons, the universal hypothesis of cross-cultural emotion recognition, the linkage mechanism between the motor cortex and the somatosensory cortex...

But the deeper she read, the more blind spots she discovered.

In Chapter Six of "Emergence of Motion," Dr. Ode raises a very interesting sub-argument.

In the course of human evolution, early combat movements and dance movements shared the same set of neuromotor coding foundations.

In other words, before culture separated combat and dance into two distinct functional domains—

At the neural level, certain physical movement patterns do not distinguish between "for hunting" and "for expression".

This argument has a very direct theoretical intersection with the competition's proposition of "the original grammar of movement".

The problem is that Dr. Ode's arguments in this chapter are primarily based on secondary data from anthropological fieldwork and brain imaging studies.

In the article, he also frankly admitted that he lacked firsthand observation experience of the specific kinetic chains of traditional martial arts/combat fighting movements.

After repeatedly reading this chapter, Jiang Chu keenly sensed something.

If she wanted her research article to be truly meaningful, she couldn't just restate Dr. Ode's points; she needed to find a different approach.

Go and observe or experience firsthand that state of movement where "fighting and dance have not yet differentiated."

But she is a dancer who has only received professional dance training since childhood.

Her entire understanding of martial arts was limited to the military boxing and Tai Chi she practiced in high school physical education class.

And various film and television works.

This doesn't work.

On the afternoon before the weekend, she sneaked to the entrance of the gymnasium.

The School of Physical Education and the School of Arts at Kyoto University are not far apart, separated by an athletics field.

The first floor of the complex is always bustling, and you can hear faint sounds of impacts and target practice from outside.

Jiang Chu hesitated at the door for a while. Through the half-open side door, she saw several students wearing shorts and sleeveless vests practicing wrestling techniques in pairs.

She felt she shouldn't bother them.

Jiang Chu continued upstairs, passing some offices, hoping to find a teacher who was available and willing to be consulted.

She turned around for a long time.

Until I ran into a few people in the stairwell.

"...Senior?"

One of the girls, wearing a white sports jacket, winked. "You're the one from last time..."

She was slightly shorter than Jiang Chu, with a round, youthful-looking baby face and big, bright eyes that made her look very approachable.

The girl's gaze fell on Jiang Chu's earring. "Wow!"

She took a half step forward, tilted her head slightly, and examined it carefully for a moment.

"Is this from Cartier's Antique Collection line? I've seen their Art Deco archives from the 1920s. This Colombian emerald with its cut and paired with an old European-cut diamond is almost impossible to find on the market."

She paused, "Moreover, the main stone in these earrings has a very high clarity and color grade, and the platinum engraving on the band is also a traditional handcrafted technique..."

The students next to her were stunned, and their eyes all turned to Jiang Chu's earlobe.

Jiang Chu was also somewhat surprised, "...Yes?"

seems like it.

She didn't really pay much attention to this because her boyfriend had given her so many nice pieces of jewelry.

"Oh, by the way," the girl extended her hand, "I'm Yu Wanzhou. We met in the cafeteria before. Your ex-boyfriend... he's your ex-boyfriend, right? He and his lackeys were brazenly talking about buying you things!"

"I remember you," Jiang Chu shook hands with her. "I'm Jiang Chu. Thank you for speaking up for me last time. Yes, we talked, but we broke up a long time ago."

—At the time, Wei Jing's friend said that Wei Jing had spent hundreds of thousands of yuan on her, while this junior complained that any one of her belongings was worth more than hundreds of thousands of yuan.

Later, Wei Jing glared at her, but was instead frightened by her challenge to a duel.

"Oh dear," Yu Wanzhou said a little embarrassedly, "Senior, you're so beautiful, that scoundrel is clearly not good enough for you, and he's just spouting nonsense!"