Romance of Dragons and Snakes

Chapter 168: The Bottleneck of the Most Sincere Way

Crack!

In a fierce delivery, Wang Chao had rammed the longstaff into the man’s shoulder and nailed him straight into the ground. There had been blood, but because of the abnormal strength of the man, he was able to use his other hand to grab hold of the staff. With a violent pull, the staff was pulled out and snapped in half from the gripping strength.

This was not an example of the herculean strength of the man however. With Wang Chao’s initial strike at the chassis of the car, the long staff had been put under a tremendous amount of stress. The inner grains of the staff had begun to crack, and the external body of the pole was already on the verge of snapping. With this violent pull, the staff could handle the stress no more.

And so the staff was now broken!

Tossing away the part of the staff in his hand, the man flew back like a viper slithering through the grass. His good hand had already reached his calf, and with a swish, a swab of black could be seen. From the shadow, a very sharp military knife could be seen streaking towards Wang Chao.

This had been a very skillful and agile opponent. Even with an injury, he was able to react in a snap and deliver a killing strike under the same conditions. Originally planning on escaping after seeing that his assassination had failed, the soldier had nearly made a clean getaway.

It had been beyond his expectation to see Wang Chao let out of burst of energy and speed that was comparable to a cheetah after its prey. In a single moment, he had chased up to the card and managed to overturn the car. Now that the soldier was without a getaway car, he was stuck in a pitfall where the only option was to fight.

Tossing aside the broken staff, Wang Chao dodged the knife slashing at him with ease and lashed out with a hand of his hand to grab hold of his opponent’s wrist. The muscles of the wrist led all the way back to the elbow and even the entire shoulder, and with a little twist, the dagger was dropped down to the ground.

To capture and disarm a single blade was something that was entirely too easy for someone like Wang Chao.

“Who hired you?” Still grabbing hold of his opponent’s joint, Wang Chao’s other hand followed suit and clenched onto the man’s throat and slowly lifted him off the ground.

And while the man’s face had gone red from the pressure, his eyes revealed a determined front to say nothing.

“I might as well knock him out and send him to Cao Yi to interrogate. It was only a matter of time before someone from the underground tried to assassinate me. But now that it’s happened, I may as well squeeze water from the stone and see what group he is from.”

With one hand still on the man’s throat, the other hand came up and struck the man on the head violently.

As if his spirit had been knocked out from him, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and fainted.

This had been the Pounding Fist in practice. Using a malleable amount of Jin, he was able to refrain himself from giving the man a concussion with just enough force to knock him out. Not only was his ability to control his strength sensitive enough to not allow for a millimeter of difference, he was also very knowledgeable about the human body.

“I’ve stopped our assassin.” Wang Chao called out afterwards. Huo Ling’er then came running out from the ditch she was using as a bunker with her clothes in a mess; but that could not be helped. Her reaction back then had been very quick and had made the judgement to lose the staff in favor of grabbing Han Xiaoqing and Cao Jingjing with her hands to find shelter. Wang Chao himself had been rather pleased at that.

“You reacted correctly and without panic. Have you come across a situation like this before?”

“I haven’t! But when I was studying in America, there was a class on self defense that taught us what to do in the case a person with a gun appeared.”

“No wonder.” Wang Chao nodded his head. He had no idea that there would be such a class overseas. It was rather different than what was taught here in China.While Cao Jingjing was also a student of a reputable university, her reaction was rather lacking in comparison to Huo Ling’er in this situation. The gap in education was simply too large between the two.

But Cao Jingjing was currently making a rapid phone call to Cao Yi as well at this moment.

It was not even light out yet. With all of the dense morning mist, there were very few cars or civilians around the area. That meant no one around had seen what had happened.

Throwing the unconscious man to the side, Wang Chao walked up to where the car wreck.

The driver of the car had been pressed into a tight and compact area. With all that blood leaking out from him and the weakening pulse of his body, there was no point in trying to rescue him. And so Wang Chao had ignored him to go to the back to retrieve a long sniping rifle and a single password protected suitcase.

This sniper rifle could be dismantled and disassembled into the suitcase to avoid any suspicious machinery that would scan it.

“Master, the staff’s broken.”

“When I overturned the car, the force on the staff was far too much. It’s made of wood after all. As flexible as it is, it can’t handle that strain. It’s fortunate that this car was a small one; if it was any bigger, then I’d need an iron rod in order to overturn it.”

This wooden staff had been gifted to him by Tang Zichen. But now that it broken into pieces, Wang Chao had felt a little pained and sorrow at the loss of another bond he had with her.

“An iron staff? Of pure iron? Are rods even made of iron? That’d be several kilograms I bet, what point is that?” Huo Ling’er had been reduced to a mode of adoration after seeing Wang Chao overturn a car. For a battle-hungry and violent woman like her, she wanted nothing more than to learn even more of the miracles Wang Chao was capable of.

“A wood staff is for beginners and those at the halfway. When one becomes strong enough, they use an iron staff to make their mark. Turning hard into soft, that is what it means to reach the peak. The great generals of the past would use iron staffs in battle as well.” Wang Chao took this opportunity to explain the way of the staff. Even after what just happened, there was still many things he could explain and illustrate even more.

A good master could teach their student at any given point or time. Not only that, but they could grab hold of an opportunity to make sure that it would leave such a deep impression that the student would never forget it.

A person who spoke only instead of training was a false teacher. A person who trained only without speaking was a foolish one. To train and speak was the mark of a man who mastered a comprehensive area of his art.

“But, firmness cannot be kept up forever, and softness cannot defend. Even if my hands were the hands of a god, a fight at close quarters is different from a match of martial arts. I can carry the iron staff for some time, but it’ll take away a lot of my energy and make my arms numb.” Huo Ling’er said in confusion.

“Who said anything about always carrying it?” Wang Chao gestured with his hand, “When an expert rides on horseback, whether it is a giant clever or iron staff, they drag it on the ground. It is only when they are about to kill that they bring it up. To not drag a staff would be the same as fighting another person with our legs not even touching the ground; both are very dangerous. The earth is where we borrow our strength from.”

“When will I be able to learn to dodge a bullet?” Huo Ling’er had seen Wang Chao dodge a bullet before, but it had been a demonstration only. This time however, he had used it in a very practical manner to escape with his life.

“That is a specialized skill to learn. In truth, it is quite hard to master. It is born from the instincts tempered from fighting in multiple life or death battles. If you fight in those long enough and feel the threat of death, you’ll become aware of it instantly. Without experiencing the line between life and death, it will be hard to master it. If we take me for example, I’m capable of dodging a single bullet or so at a time. But if there were plenty of people with AKs, then even if I was able to sense it, my body would not be able to dodge them all. Death would be inevitable.”

A mouse could sense when a snake was about to bite into it while in the pitch dark, but its body wasn’t nearly fast enough to dodge and would only end up as a meal for the snake.

A soldier on the battlefield might be able to sense when a sniper was honed in on him, but if his body wasn’t fast enough to react, then he would be shot.

Wang Chao was an expert whose body was finely honed to react to danger, even if that danger was sniper fire. But even the human body has limits, and the range of a sniper rifle was massive. Dodging would only last for so long within it. One would have to concentrate solely upon it; that way they would know when the sniper would fire, but even that wasn’t enough to help at times.

Unless Wang Chao became like the animals who could detect an earthquake before it happened and evade danger, he would never be able to turn danger into safety. He would always be in danger without a guaranteed good ending.

For example if before Wang Chao felt that there was danger before a single step was taken outside the house, he would evade danger in its entirety by staying within the house. Even if the enemy had brought a giant cannon instead and was waiting to fire at him, it would be no use.

“The most sincere Way, that is when foreknowledge becomes possible. But what does it need to reach such sincerity? What is required for one’s martial arts to reach the utmost limits?”

While Wang Chao had managed to protect himself from this ambush this time, he was still quite surprised and concerned. Having angered plenty of people, this would for sure be the first of many attempts on his life. If he was not careful, his life would be forfeit.

Until the most sincere Way was reached, it would be hard to reach the good ending no matter how strong a person was. In an era where firearms reigned supreme, the chances of a violent death was far too high.

“Master, what are you thinking about?” Huo Ling’er had noticed that Wang Chao had abruptly gone quiet mid speech and had been concerned about him.

“I was thinking about the Confucian ideology of the most sincere Way, the martial arts ideology of being the cicada that knows when the autumn wind comes before it blows, and the ‘dawn comes happiness and dusk leaves disaster’ ideology of Daoism.” Wang Chao spoke before thinking to himself, “Even the overseas legends say that if one is pious enough in their religion, then they gain the protection of their god and become a prophet that can see through the densest of fog. It really does seem to me that this highest state and boundary is connected to one another of everything. I wonder if sis Chen has reached this state. If she has, then no matter what the danger is, there is no need for me to worry.”

The terrorist Osama bin Laden was rumored to believe in Allah to such a degree that he was said to have premonitions whenever danger was near. It was with this ability that he was able to escape from the many assassination plots of America.

There had been many monks in history that knew no martial arts. But they were completely devoted to their practices and could even predict their own date of death.

In its most primordial form, martial arts had been a study on strengthening the body. From stance training to slowly observing movements, humans became able to control their flash, ligaments, bones and become even more detailed with their usage. Finally, their internal organs even became something to be controlled, and even each and every pore of their body.

Transforming Jin for example helped make the body incomparably sensitive. It was as if the human body gained eyes all over its body. Even if a gun was pointed at it from somewhere around the back, the person would be able to ‘see’ it.

This was what it meant to be in full control of one’s body. Aside from that, there was still the disaster, happiness, and fate. To be able to sense happiness and disaster was another step in being able to control one’s destiny. But this was the greatest example of a man becoming a supernatural being such as an arhat from Buddhist beliefs.

Knowing one’s body and being able to control it meant being able to defeat any enemy in battle. Knowing happiness and disaster while being able to control destiny was to be perfect. Consummate. Absolute. Danger would never befall them.

“Being able to accurately feel one’s body can be found by a definite path such as stance training. Knowing when danger or happiness comes has no definite method. It is a mystery within a mystery that cannot be explained. What does it mean to be sincere? There is indeed no path that dictates that.”

Back when Wang Chao was still learning to temper his body at the most preliminary of steps, he had not understood the meaning behind “the cicada that knows when the autumn wind blows before feeling it.” He had nothing more than an empty visage of it, like pretending to know what the moon is by looking at the reflection and gleaming information from that. But now that he was slowly reaching the limits of martial arts, his body was already capable of dodging the bullets of a gun. To the eyes of any regular civilian, he was already an almighty human playing at witchcraft. But as of now, he was gradually beginning to feel his way onto the path that would lead him to the highest realm.

This path was however too abstruse and filled with the theory of mind. Many grandmasters of martial arts had depicted this realm before in their notes, and even the four classics of Confucianism had it depicted on a level. Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism, and many of the other religions had traces and clues within their canonical works about this realm. They wanted to let people know, there was indeed a single path. But the concrete details behind it could not be explained in words. Wang Chao himself was at a loss on what he should do or where he should even start.

It was here that Wang Chao truly felt that his martial arts had finally reached a bottleneck. It was this bottleneck that gave him the most trouble. It was also the most important–essentially the same importance as the ‘vestibule’ as mentioned frequently in many novels. In the case he broke through, then he would join the ranks of an arhat. But if he could not, then that was it for him.

“Not only would my path end there, the boat I swam upstream with will finally begin to flow down in its natural flow.” Wang Chao sighed. But he had an advantage. Even if he didn’t understand, he didn’t need to keep thinking about it. That way, he could stave off the madness that came with the price of knowledge, or what was commonly known as Qi Deviation.

“The study of martial arts is one where if water can be made to flow, a canal is soon to follow. If I slowly accumulate my experience, then the most sincere Way will come my way soon enough. I may as well stop thinking about this for now and wait for a n actual time to ponder it. When I hone my martial arts to a high enough degree, then it will be perfect. The next realm will only be another step closer by then.”