Though he’d noticed, Gen didn’t disturb Yang, merely sizing him up with great interest.
So he saw a near-death space different from mine, huh…
Unaware of Gen’s thoughts, Yang simply looked toward Sagat and said: “Aside from being born with it, a power like this can only come either from cultivating to a certain realm and comprehending it on your own, or from being so closely aligned with the nature of some force that, upon encountering it, you naturally merge into one.” “So what about yours?” Sagat asked.
Hearing Sagat’s question, Chun-Li, who stood to the side, hurriedly reached out to stop him, then glared at Sagat with a face full of displeasure: “No matter how you look at it, there’s no need to tell you something like that, is there?” At those words, Sagat too fell silent, then nodded without speaking, acknowledging Chun-Li’s point.
He didn’t think there was anything wrong with what Chun-Li had done.
If anything, in Sagat’s view, he had indeed let his impatience get the better of him, casually prying into the very secret another person relied on to make their living.
Perhaps to modern martial artists this was perfectly normal—especially in professional fighting, where absorbing as much of others’ techniques as the rules allowed was quite common.
But Sagat, who hailed from the ancient Chiang Mai Fist Sect, knew all too well how strict the rules of such ancient cultivation could be.
Take, for instance, the punishment Sagat now faced—being struck from the rolls of the Chiang Mai Fist Sect.
As the Chiang Mai Fist Sect’s most severe penalty, ordinary minor offenses—like throwing one’s weight around in the village—certainly wouldn’t warrant something so harsh.
But if it involved certain secrets never meant to be passed on—such as the meridian pathways for circulating qi—then beyond being struck from the rolls, one might also have their cultivation stripped away and their four limbs crippled.
And as for Yang’s…
“It’s actually no big deal.” Yang seemed quite nonchalant.
“What do you mean, no big deal!” Chun-Li raised her hand in displeasure, as though she wanted to give Yang’s forehead a hard poke.
But then, realizing that Yang was still a patient right now, she let out a cold huff, folded her arms, and said: “This is a secret that belongs to you alone.
Even if you’re willing to tell it, you mustn’t give it away so easily.” With that, Chun-Li turned her gaze to Sagat and said: “If not for Yang’s ability bringing him back from the dead, the Yang here now would truly be dead.
Yang may not care about this, but I won’t pretend it never happened.” Hearing Chun-Li’s words, Sagat pressed his lips together, then nodded in understanding: “…You’re right.” After saying this, he paused, and then Sagat said: “If that’s the case…
let me teach you Muay Thai.” “…Eh?” At those words, not just Chun-Li—even Yang beside him, and Dorai too, couldn’t help raising their eyebrows.
“Muay Thai?” Yang asked.
“Mm.” Sagat nodded, rose from the floor, folded his arms, and said: “Ancient Muay Thai won’t do, because it involves a certain circulation of qi and the flow through the meridians.
“But I overheard while I was outside the door—your Sen lines are damaged, and for the time being you can’t mobilize your Lumpran, so you’re preparing to take up modern martial arts.
And if it’s professional Muay Thai…
no problem, I’ve competed in both circuits.” Hearing Sagat’s words, a faint stir of interest surfaced on Yang’s face.
The so-called ‘Sen lines’ could roughly be understood as Thai-style meridians, while Lumpran was the Chiang Mai Fist Sect’s way of interpreting qi.
Of course, similarity didn’t mean they shared the same origin.
Muay Thai’s understanding of bodily energy was closer to the system of Indian yoga: Lumpran was considered a breath-driven “wind breath,” whereas qi was a life substrate combining the innate and the acquired…
And for the Chiang Mai Fist Sect, the Sen line lineage and the Lumpran heart-method were its core inheritance.
“Although professional Muay Thai has cast aside part of ancient Muay Thai’s profound mysteries, it has also given birth to many new things as the times have progressed,” Sagat said.
“If you want…” Saying this, Sagat paused, then shook his head and sighed: “Never mind.
I won’t ask for anything.
As long as you need it, I’ll teach you—consider it my compensation and my thanks to you.” “Learn—of course I’ll learn!” Yang agreed at once.
Muay Thai used four limbs as eight points of contact, covering long, mid, and close range completely; its inside clinch-and-strangle game was extremely strong, and its toughness and endurance were top-tier—it could be called one of the most combat-efficient professional striking arts.
With that, Yang turned his gaze to Gen beside him and said, “Old man~ you don’t mind, do you?” “What could I possibly mind~” Gen gave a wry chuckle, then put on a face of melodramatic melancholy: “It’s just that a grown child can’t be kept at home—seems you’ve come to look down on my old, outdated skills and won’t even learn from me anymore~” “You make it sound like you’d actually teach me…” Yang rolled his eyes, not taking it to heart at all.
Because back when Yang first sensed his own meridians, Gen had frankly admitted that the Sou and Ki he practiced was an Ansatsuken he had specialized for himself, ill-suited to Yang’s temperament and physique.
Take the Sou-ryū, for example: though both pursued defeating an enemy with a single concise, powerful blow, in Yang’s hands it was often a punch of overwhelming force and weight.
In Gen’s hands, however, it was more a destructive strike that, in a single instant, targeted numerous tendons, meridians, and pressure points.
Whether it was the Zan’ei—which had head-on countered the Shun Goku Satsu—or the rarely used “Death Point Strike,” the finishing techniques of his Sou-ryū all compressed numerous lethal blows into a single instant.
Though both aimed to defeat the enemy at the fastest possible speed, this differed markedly from Yang’s way of compressing all his strength into a single strike.
Thinking this, Gen felt a pang of wistfulness: “Your life energy, if used in the Sou-ryū, would work far better than mine ever did…
but what can you do—your temperament just doesn’t suit my Sou and Ki.” In Gen’s eyes, Yang’s life energy, as a heaven-sent gift, was outrageously powerful.
He needed only to channel a sliver of it into another’s body, then guide it to detonate at a lethal pressure point, and he could directly leave an enemy gravely wounded or even drop them dead on the spot.
Especially since Yang also had such a fine physique—in the thick of a fierce brawl he could perfectly feint in the open while striking in secret, channeling a great deal of life energy into the foe and then detonating it internally.
This was far more useful than things like spiritual power.
But there was no helping it—the martial way was a cultivation of both spirit and flesh; martial artists had their temperaments, and so did martial arts.
A melon wrenched off the vine by force is never sweet; to make a fighter who relished head-on combat practice poison arts or soft arts would be to truly lead a student astray.
On that basis, the Sou and Ki that Yang comprehended on his own was, in fact, the one best suited to him.
And while Gen was still sighing helplessly, Yang looked toward Sagat and said: “Although you call it compensation and thanks, my awakening of life energy doesn’t really involve anything secret.
Simply put, I was buried under the rubble for a month, and after both my body and spirit reached their limits, it was a power I awakened out of the desire to live and to escape starvation.” ____ 👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻 🔥 New history: Path of Elation in Warhammer 40K Let’s achieve our community goals: