I Was Possessed By An Unknown Manga

After mastering True Stance perfectly in the city park, I went home and had lunch.

I left home around 4 am, so excluding travel time, it took roughly 7 to 8 hours.

My mother was surprised to see me drenched in sweat, but she looked convinced when I said I had been exercising with Mei Ling.

Well, she heard last night that Mei Ling was a world-famous fighter, so it seemed she didn’t find it strange that an exercise addict like me would learn from her.

And since I sweated a lot, for lunch, I made Korean-style jjamppong, rich in sodium.

Mei Ling enjoyed the Korean jjamppong for the first time, mentioning she usually enjoyed spicy foods like mapo tofu or malatang.

After we both swiftly finished a bowl of jjamppong, I went home and took a cold shower.

“Ughhhhh…”

My muscles, literally wrung out to the limit during True Stance training, were feeling warm for the first time in a while.

After lightly wiping off the sweat, I brought some barley tea from the kitchen to the living room.

Even as a top-tier martial artist, Mei Ling seemed unable to escape the midsummer heat, sitting in front of a fan and fanning her t-shirt.

This revealed her fair, bare skin, with well-defined abs, possibly due to a low body fat percentage.

“Oh? You’re done showering?”

“Yes.”

I nodded and handed her a glass filled with barley tea.

“Thanks. I’ll enjoy it.”

At first, she seemed to use a more formal tone, but as we became closer, she became more casual.

She quickly drank the barley tea with floating ice, then put the empty glass on her forehead with a satisfied “Ahh”, like in a beer commercial.

I glanced at her and gulped down my share of the barley tea.

Barley tea tastes exceptionally good on a hot summer day, especially right after a shower.

It was akin to how Japanese people drink coffee milk or fruit milk after coming out of a bathhouse.

After quenching my thirst, I closed all the open windows in the house and turned on the air conditioner.

After a while, as the cold air took over the living room, Mei Ling stretched and leaned back on the sofa behind the table.

“It feels like I’m at my own home.”

“That’s quite an honor.”

I said that and poured more barley tea into her empty glass, then asked,

“So, what’s the next step after True Stance?”

Hearing my question, she tilted her head and replied, “Hmm?”

“Didn’t I say earlier? In the end, these secret techniques and finishing moves are just slight modifications of existing techniques.”

“I want to know more precisely.”

Basically, I was someone who valued theory over just physically trying things out.

“Well, if that’s the case…”

Seeming to find my reasoning plausible, Mei Ling nodded and began to speak.

“Firstly, the eight great techniques in the Eight Trigram Palms, known as secret techniques, are quite well-known to the public due to the spread of internet technology.”

“But these secret techniques are mostly deadly arts. They are techniques that must be used to kill the observer. There are various reasons for this, but commonly, if the existence of a deadly art becomes widely known, countermeasures are inevitably discovered. That’s why most schools transmit these secret techniques only to a trusted few, under the pretext of not revealing them to the public.”

“In modern times, the meaning of the term ‘deadly art’ has been diluted. With the development of visual media, as soon as it becomes known that someone is using a technique, all sorts of people latch on to find a way to counter it.”

“So, our master thought, let’s create a technique that can truly be called a deadly art, one that cannot be anticipated or blocked even if known.”

After saying this, perhaps because the explanation was quite long, Mei Ling paused for a moment and took a sip of the freshly poured barley tea.

Then, with a serious face, she said,

“The result of that effort is the Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear, a modified version of one of the existing secret techniques, Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain.”

When I asked about the next step after True Stance, the answer seemed to go off on quite a tangent.

Was this what they called a ‘chatterbox’?

“So, how is it used?”

When I asked again, Mei Ling, who had been going off-topic, finally returned to the main subject.

“First, you need to master Direct Thrust, the basic technique. The Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear is based on the Direct Thrust of the Diamond Eight Forms.”

“Ah.”

So, not just True Stance but Direct Thrust was also part of the set from the beginning.

“I mentioned earlier, didn’t I? That it typically takes an average person three years to learn True Stance and Direct Thrust. Among the Eight Trigram Palms practitioners, there’s a saying, ‘It takes three years to use Eight Trigram Palms in actual combat.’ In other words, just mastering True Stance and Direct Thrust perfectly can elevate one to a level where they can use the Eight Trigram Palms in real fights.”

“So, the only answer from the beginning was to repeatedly practice and master the techniques.”

Mei Ling nodded as she listened to my words.

“Right. Only after perfecting those two techniques can you finally learn the Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear. That’s how important the basics are.”

Hearing her explanation, I realized that learning martial arts was no easy task.

Of course, there were aspects that were somewhat parallel to working out in a gym.

After all, if you don’t dig deep into one well, you can’t really get anything out of it.

Fortunately, I had a fair amount of confidence in this kind of endurance battle.

This was all thanks to the patience I developed during my graduate school days in the lab.

Thinking back, I learned many life lessons there.

The biggest lesson, though, was never to go to graduate school.

Anyway, this has decided what I will do next.

I needed to master Direct Thrust before Mei Ling left our house.

The morning of the second day of training dawned.

Yesterday, I focused on recovering from fatigue in anticipation of muscle soreness, so I didn’t do any intense strength training.

Seeing me like that, Master Nakayama asked if the sun rose from the west today, but since I couldn’t tell the truth, I just gave a wry smile.

Perhaps because I had been acting strangely for two days in a row, Senior Fuma and Kazu asked me if something was wrong, but I responded that I had been doing some secret training during the day.

“Ah, so that’s why I didn’t see you during the early morning jogging!”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Senior Fuma pried about what kind of special training it was, but I evaded by saying that I felt I had been neglecting my lower body workout recently and was personally training for it.

When I showed my shaky legs from unusual muscle soreness, Senior Fuma finally believed me.

Anyway, even though it was the second day of training, there wasn’t much difference from yesterday.

Yesterday, I focused on mastering True Stance, but today, I concentrated on mastering Direct Thrust.

Bang!!

Now that I knew how to use True Stance, the unique sound of wind bursting out was well produced.

However, using Direct Thrust while performing True Stance was a completely different issue.

It felt like drawing a triangle with one hand while drawing a square with the other.

Even though I knew in my head that they needed to be done together, my hands and feet acted independently.

When I asked about this phenomenon, Mei Ling, who was observing from the side, said it was because I was using True Stance ‘consciously.’

She explained that True Stance, being the basis of all weight-shifting techniques used in the Eight Trigram Palms, should be used as naturally as breathing.

In other words, the start of mastering Direct Thrust begins with treating something unnatural as natural, but this was not easily achieved.

According to her, I had to use True Stance instinctively, as she described.

As a result, the second day of training passed without much progress.

On the third day of training.

I finally got the hang of using True Stance and Direct Thrust together.

Until now, I had thought of True Stance and Direct Thrust as separate techniques and tried to use them individually, but thinking of them as one single movement from the start made it much easier to use.

Explaining this method, Mei Ling seemed incredulous but must have thought it made sense, as she encouraged me to continue training in my own way.

I gladly accepted her suggestion and, before nightfall, fully grasped the method of using True Stance and Direct Thrust simultaneously.

Mei Ling, who had been watching all this, clicked her tongue, calling me an absurd guy, but then said seriously,

“If you’ve come this far, there’s no helping it. Tomorrow, I’ll teach you how to use the Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear, the final goal.”

Hearing her confirmation, I let out a cry of joy.

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