Chapter 721: 3 Minute Transformation
Fortunately, Ren HongDe was only joking when he told me to repay 25% of the group’s shares. Otherwise, I don’t have to work like a horse in my next life to repay the favor, I can start working like a horse in this life.
Even if I didn’t have heart problems, I wouldn’t be able to repay that much money by working like a horse for the rest of my life. Who knows how much a quarter of the shares of Qing Zi Education Group costs?
If I really am forced to pay it back, I would have to sell my body to Xiao Qin. No matter what I look like, Xiao Qin will definitely buy it.
Two more days passed after the initial negotiations between Ren HongDe and Ai ShuQiao.
I felt I had become familiar with my body, which was suffering from a heart disease.
In one of the episodes of “Behind the Headlines with Wen Tao” that my father watched, there was an episode titled “Palliative Care, Living with Cancer”. The guest of honor was invited as a “cancer-fighting” star, but admitted that he was only living with the cancer and had reached a compromise with it to have a better quality of life than other patients.
Currently, I also reached a compromise with my heart disease and adapted to its rhythms.
I’m subconsciously becoming more “energy saving” with my body. I could say the action of simply getting a towel from the stainless steel rack after showering consumes the least amount of calories and produces the least amount of carbon dioxide. Just like how some gymnasts work out for years for a certain technical movement.
I have to do it. If I don’t follow the route of energy saving, my heart may sound an alarm.
The irony is that if it’s not life threatening, gymnasts would love to have this alarm on their bodies to point out which of their actions are not perfect and still have room for improvement.
Damn it, it’s only getting a towel, so who cares if it’s perfect or not. It’s not like there will be a bunch of judges to give me a score.
“Remove a max score, remove a min score. Ye Lin, contestant number B45897, is left with a final score is 9.7 points.”
“Back to the top of the scoreboard! Ye Lin is about to achieve a breakthrough in the ‘towel competition’ for our country. He has a chance to win a medal or even the championship!”
“As expected of Ye Lin.” A leader of the State General Administration of Sports wiped the tears of excitement from the corners of his eyes, “He just won the ‘slippers competition’ and started to aim for the gold medal in the ‘towel competition’. The next step is to win first place in the ‘drawer opening competition’…”
Damn, is this year’s Olympic Games sponsored by IKEA? Why are all the competition equipment all everyday household items? Can the audience in front of the TV watching me wear slippers, picking up towels, even feel any Olympic spirit?
I heard from my dad that the Olympic Games were first used by the Greeks to honor the gods in a festival held under Mount Olympus and dedicated to the main god Zeus.
Will Zeus be satisfied with us wearing slippers and moving towels? It would be blasphemous behavior and trigger an apocalyptic disaster like the Genesis flood.
But if I have to find a good point, I think that the heart disease is beneficial to my practice of Yin Yang Sanshou.
Hand to hand combat arts, after all, is the manipulation and use of the muscles of the entire body. Compared to gymnastics, running, shot put, and other sports, the goal might be different, but all they are doing is training their muscles to adapt to specific actions, so the essence is the same.
I wouldn’t dare mention it in front of gramps, but I think there are a lot of similarities between Yin Yang Sanshou and Taichi. I don’t know who has copied who and how much each side has borrowed from the other.
In various film and television productions of Taichi, the concept of “four hundred grams moving a thousand pounds” is mentioned frequently. It was refuted by Master Ren as pure bullshit. All martial arts in China had their own versions of Hua Jin and Fa Jin, but no one could achieve moving a thousand pounds, it would be more like moving a thousand pounds when you weight eight hundred pounds.
Similar to Asimov’s three laws of robotics, the martial arts world has a more concise, in descending order of importance, the three laws: “One courage, two strength, three skill.”
In layman’s terms, that is, the first thing you need when fighting is guts. Otherwise even if you are ten feet tall with fists as big as a bucket, but once you get terrified when you see a triad member, then there’s no way you can fight.
“The brave will win when two armies clash”, that’s the truth.
After you have the courage to fight, it would be time to compare strength and skill. Strength, in the end, will always have an advantage over skill.
Kung fu is nothing but combat skills (also known as “technical combat”). Boxing and other combat competitions are divided into weight classes to achieve a balance of strength, otherwise, even if your skills are the best in the world, would an ant be able to beat an elephant?
In terms of the three laws of martial arts, I feel that I have improved in some areas and gotten worse in others.
In terms of guts, if I said I’m braver than before, then others will certainly say I am boasting.
But just because I avoid all unnecessary conflicts, it does not mean that I won’t fight to the death when I have no other choice.
So, when I have to fight for some reason, in terms of “courage”, not only would I not lose to others, but would also be better because I’m not afraid of death.
The next is strength and it has definitely declined for me.
Following Dr. Yu’s medical advice, I’ve almost completely suspended my physical exercise lately, and it would defy common sense if my muscles got stronger instead.
However, using this time, I vaguely felt that I had gained an unexpected insight in the area of skill.
With my heart as a guideline, I had to use the most logical and effortless way to carry a towel, put on slippers, and tie my pants…
Over time, I developed a skill to achieve my goals with minimal effort. It’s a technique that is similar to the Yin Yang Sanshou’s Hua Jin, which sounds profound, but in fact the theory is very simple. The difficulty lies in how to grasp the level and develop it into a habit.
I took advantage of the heart disease and used it as a measurement tool. I never gave up training Hua Jin in my daily life and it almost turned into a conditioned reflex.
I think that I have progressed and declined in the three laws of martial arts, but it does not necessarily mean that I cannot fight anymore. If there was a reason I had to fight, I may be even more formidable than before.
Some people may want to object: didn’t you just say it was one courage, two strength, three skill? Even if your courage hasn’t changed, your skill has also improved, but your strength has definitely declined, so how can you be stronger overall than before.
Yes, it is indeed one courage, two strength, three skill. One unit of skill is definitely not as valuable as one unit of strength.
The question is, during this period of time, how many units of strength did I lose and how many units of skill did I gain?
Although one unit of strength is not as good as one unit of skill, three or four units of skill will definitely be better than one unit of strength. Otherwise, it would mean no matter how hard you practice martial arts, light weight people can never win against heavier people. Chinese martial arts is not Japanese sumo wrestling, we can’t rely on our heavy bodies to win.
In addition, as Dr. Yu predicted some time ago, my heart attack symptoms began to alleviate after each subsequent attack.
It was as if my strong heart had gotten used to the disease. Although Dr. Yu warned me that drastic and prolonged strenuous exercise was still undesirable, I gradually stopped thinking of myself as a patient.
As long as I control my emotions, reduce my movements, and thus reduce the burden on my heart, I am still a “capable fighter”. At least for hoodlums at the level of the Five Tiger Punishment Squad, I can deal with them even faster than before.
I wouldn’t be able to do it if it wasn’t fast. If the battle lasts more than 3 minutes, I bet I would have a heart attack, instantly expose my weakness, and let the other side make a comeback.
Damn, only 3 minutes of continuous fighting. My transformation time is shorter than Ultraman’s 5 minutes!
Not only was my fighting time limited, but the Fa Jin that I figured out myself became a sealed skill.
It wasn’t because it regressed due to not practicing it for a long period of time.
Gramps Ren said a long time ago that Yin Yang Sanshou’s Hua Jin and Fa Jin are one and the same. He said if I mastered Hua Jin, I would eventually comprehend Fa Jin on my own, and it was just as he said.
As my Hua Jin improved over time, I think the power of my Fa Jin has also improved accordingly.
But it is precisely because the power has increased, so I can’t use it easily.
Because Fa Jin gathers all your power into one strike and once you use it, your eyes will be black out, your blood pressure would increase, and you wouldn’t be able to stand properly. It’s a move that hits your enemies for damage but also hurts yourself for 800 at the same time.
Whether or not it’s within the 3 minute time limit, I had a clear feeling that if I used Fa Jin, I would definitely have a heart attack immediately.
Last time, I almost killed someone with it. I better seal it up for the time being, until I’m at a point where I have no choice but to use it.
I lived in the VIP building until late August, and summer vacation was almost over.
I suggested to Dr. Yu that I was not going to continue my hospitalization and was going home to recuperate.
If I continue to live like this, Ai Mi will be happy to see me every night, but my dad will think that my sexual functionality is hopeless, and Winnie will think that my sexual desires are too high and I can’t be cured for life.
Dr. Yu agreed to my request, but instructed me to come over twice a week for medical checkups. I agreed since I came to see Ai Mi from time to time anyway.
“Dr. Yu…” I asked, a little puzzled, when I was having my final physical checkup before discharge, “Didn’t Ai ShuQiao already give up on me, so why are you still so focused on treating me?”