The City of Terror

Chapter 100 – Energy at the Middle of the Branch

If the great spear was not compared to the Long Bo Leg Hair Great Spear, then it was without a doubt a precious spear among all the spears there.

Leg hair? Leg hair! Leg hair?

Two days had passed. In these two days, Wei Xiao Bei had encountered leg hair in his dreams on both days. There were ones that were thousands of feet long along with short ones. There were even ones that had grown faces.

Wei Xiao Bei felt that leg hair almost became his greatest nightmare.

Luckily, he had been training his spear techniques these few days with his master.

Cheng Bi Wu was already 45 years old. He had been training for 38 years and was now at the peak of his life. His martial arts skills were also approaching the peak.

Wei Xiao Bei remembered one time when Cheng Bi Wu got drunk. He had proudly said that when he was 26 years old, he had understood negative jing.

Everyone who knew Guo Shu were aware that a person’s energy was divided into parts. They were roughly known as positive jing, negative jing, and neutral jing. In rough terms, this was how a person used their body’s energy.

In more accurate words, this was a category of Qi usage.

Positive jing was a person’s strength, which was expressed through their fists and kicks. This was the foundation of a martial artist: using their own energy to attack, and making the amount of force they used to be the same as the force applied.

As a result, positive jing was also called the energy at the tip of the branch, which means the energy that was released.

However, a normal person could use 30 percent of their body’s potential. If they punched with their fists, they could exert 40 percent of their arm strength, while kicking would exert 50 percent of their leg strength.

On the other hand, those who have trained their bodies before like soldiers and amateur boxers could use at most 50 percent of their bodies’ potential. They were individuals who were able to exert energy on multiple parts of their bodies at the same time, such as using both forces of the waist and legs simultaneously.

Another step further would be those who could use 80 percent of their bodies. They were people who could combine three different energies on various parts of their bodies at the same time, such as combining the forces of the waist, legs, and fists simultaneously. With such a combination, their fists would be able to make whistling sounds in the air.

The highest realm of positive jing would be a person who could use their body’s full potential. They would not only combine the forces of their legs, waist, and fists but also use special techniques such as Iron Mountain Lean, which utilized the neck and the lower legs.

After positive jing was negative jing. In terms of Guo Shu, negative jing was also called lowered elbow fighting.

What did this mean?

In general, it meant that a person must hide the positive jing in the middle section of their body such as the arms and thighs. In this way, a person would be able to attack and defend during fights. It was different from positive jing which only focused on attacking and not defending.

As a result, negative jing was also called the energy at the middle section of the branch. However, negative jing did not increase a person’s strength. A person’s strength still relied on their positive jing.

If a master of negative jing fought with a master of positive jing, it would without a doubt look like a Taiji expert fighting a muscle- headed brute.

Finally, there was neutral jing. Neutral jing was called the energy at the root of the branch. It could bring out a person’s energy from the root section to the middle section and from the middle section to the tip. In order to master neutral jing, a person must store energy all over the body. It could also be counted as an advanced version of negative jing.

A person who trained in neutral jing could store energy anywhere in their body and could release the energy at anytime.

By being able to store and release energy at one’s will, birds should not even think of leaving if they landed on the individual’s  body. The energy released by the person’s body would be able to counteract the force of a bird’s upward movement.

When a person reached this level, even if the opponent hit them, they would be able to easily release energy to counter the incoming punch.

This entirety was called the great way of martial arts. In truth, when a person reached the level of neutral jing, they would be able to feel the similarities in different martial arts such as Taiji and Bajiquan.

An example of a martial art that utilizes neutral jing is Zhang Yi 18 drops.

As a result, this kind of martial arts was only a type of martial arts and could not be considered a realm of martial arts.

From this, it was easy to tell how bad it was to fight against a master of negative jing.

Wei Xiao Bei was not able to see the realm his own master was in, but by training with him, he was able to feel a certain level of oppression that prevented him from exerting energy outward.

Everytime Wei Xiao Bei thrusted his spear, Cheng Bi Wu was able to easily ward off the attack and made a counterattack, forcing Wei Xiao Bei into a tragic state. Even the parts of the body where Wei Xiao Bei focused his energy on was easily seen through by his master.

Wei Xiao Bei was not an idiot. He knew that this was not only because his master was happy in obtaining the treasure but also because he wanted to train him.

Wei Xiao Bei’s strength that was formed by his muscles and sturdiness gave him a total of 17.5 points.

This meant that he was already very strong!

If the possibility of muscle strain was ignored and Wei Xiao Bei used his full strength to the limit, the power in his fists would far surpass the power of the world heavyweight champion.

However, he was only able to use positive jing.

After training for a round, Wei Xiao Bei boldly asked his master this question.

Cheng Bi Wu spoke without any trace of politeness: “Xiao Bei, your understanding towards Bajiquan has far surpassed your third brother. Your second brother is also close to being unable to catch up. However, you are only at the middle level of positive jing. This makes you quite far apart from your big brother.”

This was the reality. Wei Xiao Bei also slightly understood this about himself. He was indeed at the level of mastery in Bajiquan, but in reality, the way he used energy was substandard.

However, sparring with his master in these few days had allowed him to understand ways to use energy more effectively.

He wouldn’t be able to immediately reach a high level in positive jing, but he was able to understand things that he did not understand before.

Apart from this, Wei Xiao Bei had also searched through the internet and found out what the Citizen of Long Bo that he encountered in the Dust World actually was!

There were adult Citizens of Long Bo whose heights reached 300 meters.

The adults of their race were giants.

The Classic of Mountain and Sea had also mentioned them. In ancient times, there was a country called the Country of Long Bo. Every single citizen of the country was an incredibly tall giant. They could walk very far in just a few steps, and their breaths created clouds. Their heads were above the clouds, and the northern seas were their bathtubs.

One day, a citizen of that country went to the sea to fish, but that person carelessly fished out a giant turtle that supported the five mountains of Immortals. As a result, two of those mountains sunk, leaving countless Immortals homeless.

The Celestial Emperor was furious after this event and shrunk the amount of land in their country. This had caused the giants to shrink. However, during the era of the legendary Chinese Emperor and the Farmer God, these giants were taller than 300 meters.

From this, it was easy to tell that a Citizen of Long Bo was a giant.

After looking at this information, Wei Xiao Bei was shocked.

It seems that the Dust World truly had a relation with myths and legends.

After this, Wei Xiao Bei searched the web everyday for an hour before going to sleep. He used this time to familiarize himself with various myths and legends of China. These works included the Classic of Mountain and Sea, Lie Zi, In Search of the Supernatural, Huai Nan Zi, and other Chinese literary works. Every one of them was read by Wei Xiao Bei once.