Fifty laps is roughly thirteen miles.
It took me one minute and thirty seconds to complete the first lap.
That was all due to my [Running: Lv.
14] skill, which I had been gradually improving since the age of five.
By the twenty fifth lap, my lungs felt like they were on fire.
By the thirty fifth lap, my legs had turned to lead, and the edges of my vision were starting to blur into a hazy, trembling gray.
But I continued my pace without slowing.
I only started to slow my pace around the fortieth lap to take control of my breathing, which hadn’t been disturbed since my [Meditation] reached Level 20.
It took me one hour and forty two minutes to cover fifty laps.
Then, I collapsed on the ground, looking up at the bright blue sky of Bo City, which was completely blurry.
Fifty laps around that massive property would be a biological execution if any normal eight year old child tried it.
But I had trained, and with the System skill [Physical Fitness Theory], I had developed my body all around.
The only reason I wasn’t losing consciousness was because of my [Spiritual Strength: Lv.
3], which was stuck no matter how much I meditated.
I thought to myself, Spiritual Strength Level 3 is the maximum I can reach without magic.
I ran around my neighborhood for a few minutes daily at full speed, but I had never tried to run continuously for this much distance.
After a few minutes of rest in which I meditated, my breathing came under control.
I got up from my collapsed position and started walking slowly toward Lao Chen, who hadn’t moved from his previous spot since I started the run.
“I never thought you would complete it, kid.
I am surprised.
I started to think about stopping you when you were on the thirtieth lap, but my curiosity got the better of me.
You have the best endurance in your age group, and to be frank, better than a lot of adults,” Lao Chen stated when I approached him.
“Thank…
you…
sir,” I replied raspily.
I guessed I needed to rest for a while for my vocal cords to cooperate.
“Go home, kid,” Lao Chen said, standing up and stretching his lower back with a dull pop.
“And come back tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM sharp.
If you’re one minute late, the gates stay locked, and this arrangement is over.
Are we clear?”
I managed a weak, trembling nod.
I wanted to talk more, but I was physically unable to do so.
My dad, who had been nervously waiting by the car this entire time, quickly rushed over.
He didn’t say a word as he helped me into the passenger seat and buckled me in.
I fell asleep before he even started the engine.
My holiday had been completely disrupted, but at least I had gotten an instructor.
That night was a blur of aching muscles and heavy, dreamless sleep.
I woke up at 4:00 AM to a body that felt like it had been repeatedly run over by a train.
‘I’ve never been run over by a train, why do I even think like that?’ I mused internally.
I washed up and readied myself in half an hour, then I started jogging toward Lao Chen’s house.
When I arrived at his house, it was exactly 4:53 AM.
Lao Chen was already waiting in the backyard.
He wasn’t wearing his usual casual civilian clothes.
He wore a tight, sleeveless combat shirt and dark tactical trousers.
I had thought he would be covered in a crisscross of pale, jagged scars, burn marks, claw tears, but healing magic really worked wonders in this world.
“Good.
You are faster than I thought,” Chen said as I walked onto the damp grass, the dew soaking through my sneakers.
He tossed a dull, wooden training knife into the dirt between us.
“Pick it up.”
I stepped forward and picked up the wooden blade.
The familiar weight settled into my grip, bringing a small measure of comfort.
“Your posture yesterday when you bowed was perfect.
Too perfect,” Chen said, rolling his shoulders to loosen up.
He didn’t take a stance.
He just stood there, completely relaxed, his hands resting loosely at his sides, his chin slightly lowered.
“Attack me.”
I didn’t hesitate.
With my [Martial Arts: Lv.
5], I instantly recalled the optimal angles, the precise footwork, and the textbook weight distribution I had drilled into my body for the past year.
Every movement was calculated.
Every step was measured.
I dashed forward, keeping my center of gravity exceptionally low to compensate for my height disadvantage.
I feinted high with my left hand, aiming for his eyes to draw his guard up, and then seamlessly dropped my weight, driving the wooden knife straight toward his floating ribs with my right hand.
I pivoted my hips perfectly to generate maximum kinetic force, translating my forward momentum directly into the tip of the blade.
Chen didn’t block.
He barely even moved.
With a casual, almost lazy flick of his heel, he sidestepped a fraction of an inch just enough so my blade grazed the fabric of his shirt without making contact.
Because I had committed so much forward momentum to the perfect thrust, my balance was entirely locked into the attack.
Chen just casually stuck his foot out.
My leading ankle caught his heavy boot.
Physics took over.
My perfect forward momentum instantly betrayed me, transforming into a violent, uncontrolled launch.
I went flying forward, slamming face first into the mud.
“Get up,” Chen ordered, his voice flat and unimpressed.
I scrambled to my feet, wiping the mud from my eyes with the back of my sleeve.
I gritted my teeth and charged again.
This time, I adjusted my strategy.
If a single committed thrust was too risky, I needed to use a combination to overwhelm his guard.
I stepped in, launched a sharp roundhouse kick aimed at his kneecap to cripple his mobility, and immediately followed it up with a sweeping, horizontal slash toward his midsection.
Again, flawless execution.
The transition between the kick and the slash was seamless.
And again, I ended up eating dirt.
Chen didn’t use a martial arts block.
He simply stepped aggressively into my guard before my leg could fully extend, completely robbing the roundhouse kick of all its power.
With his body now completely inside my optimal striking range, he casually shoved the heel of his palm directly into the center of my chest.
The impact wasn’t magical, but it hit with the force of a battering ram.
It threw me off my feet, sending me skidding across the wet grass on my back, violently knocking the wind out of my lungs.
For the next thirty minutes, the backyard turned into a brutal, one sided massacre.
No matter what combination I used, no matter how perfectly I executed the strikes, I couldn’t touch him.
It was infuriating.
My [Martial Arts] skill was screaming at me that I was doing everything right, but the reality was that I was getting absolutely demolished.
Lao Chen didn’t use any recognizable martial arts forms.
He didn’t take a stance.
He didn’t yell.
He fought like a ghost made of jagged iron.
He tripped me.
He slapped the back of my head just as I was shifting my weight to completely destroy my balance.
He stepped heavily on my toes so I couldn’t retreat.
He used the most brutally efficient, dirty, formless movements I had ever seen.
Finally, after I was tossed into the mud for the twentieth time, my body simply gave out.
I stayed down on my hands and knees, gasping frantically for breath, my wooden knife slipping from my bruised, trembling fingers into the puddle beneath me.
Chen slowly walked over, his boots squelching in the mud, and looked down at me.
He wasn’t even breathing heavily.
“Do you know why you can’t touch me?” he asked, his tone devoid of mockery, entirely clinical.
“Because…
you’re an Advanced Mage,” I panted, clutching my aching ribs.
“Wrong.
I haven’t used a single spark of shadow magic,” Chen scoffed, crossing his arms.
He crouched down, forcing me to meet his piercing gaze.
“I can read you like a children’s book, Xiaohou.
Your form is absolutely flawless.
It’s beautiful.
If I didn’t have experience in fighting, I would have lost.”
He reached out and tapped my forehead hard with two fingers.
“You fight like you expect your opponent to follow the geometric rules of engagement.”
I sat up slowly, wiping the mud off my chin.
“I’m doing the moves perfectly.”
“That’s exactly the problem!” Chen barked, his voice finally cracking like a whip.
“Textbooks are written by dead men for people who want to look pretty in a gymnasium!
Real combat doesn’t have a form.
Monsters don’t care about your perfect footwork or your correct angles!”
He stood up, pacing back and forth in front of me, pointing a finger out toward the invisible horizon beyond the city walls.
“Do you think a One-Eyed Magic Wolf will give you the proper space to complete your beautiful roundhouse kick?
Do you think a Colossal eyed Ape Rat cares about your center of gravity?
They will rip your throat out while you’re busy making sure your hips are pivoted correctly!”
He stopped, turning to glare down at me.
“I don’t have a ‘style.’ I have experience.
I know that if I step on your foot, you mathematically cannot retreat.
I know that if I throw a handful of dirt in your eyes, your perfect form means absolutely nothing because you can’t see the blade coming.
Survival isn’t about looking good; it’s about killing the thing in front of you as fast and as efficiently as possible.”
Chen kicked the wooden knife out of the puddle, sending it sliding right back to my knees.
“Throw the textbook away, kid.
Forget the forms.
Forget the perfect stances,” Lao Chen said, his eyes darkening with the terrifying, suffocating intent of a true veteran who had waded through mountains of corpses.
“The textbook assumes your opponent is a human of equal proportions.
You are an eight year old child.
You will always be smaller, weaker, and slower than the things trying to kill you.
The geometry of a fair fight is useless to you.”
He took a step back, opening his arms wide.
“The next time you swing that knife at me, I don’t want you to think about where your hips are.
I want you to think about how you’re going to put me in the ground.
Use your teeth.
Use the mud.
Kick my groin.
Use whatever you have to.
If you fight fair, you die.
Understand?”
I knelt in the mud, staring at the wooden knife.
I realized my fundamental mistake.
I had been treating my [Martial Arts] skill like a video game stat check.
I thought that by simply leveling up the skill and performing the programmed moves perfectly, I would automatically win.
I was treating combat like an academic subject.
I was trying to memorize survival like a math equation.
But combat was chaos.
Survival was a desperate, bloody scramble in the dark.
A sudden, sharp clarity washed over my mind, piercing through the exhaustion.
I reached down and closed my hand around the muddy hilt of the wooden knife.
I didn’t fall into my usual textbook stance.
I didn’t measure the distance between my feet or check the angle of my shoulders.
I just stood up, keeping my body loose and entirely relaxed.
I let the rigid constraints of the theoretical forms melt away, replacing them with a raw, predatory instinct.
I lowered my chin, my eyes locking dead onto Lao Chen’s throat.
A familiar, beautiful translucent blue screen flashed in the center of my vision, the text glowing brightly in the early morning gloom.
> [Martial Arts: Lv.
5 —> Lv.
6]
> [Subskill Unlocked: Instinct Lv.
1]
I felt a subtle, fundamental shift in my muscles.
It wasn’t a magical surge of strength, but a mental unlocking.
The hesitation of “doing it right” vanished, replaced entirely by the singular objective of “making it work.”
“Understood,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, devoid of any childish inflection.
Lao Chen saw the shift in my eyes.
The old veteran smiled a terrifying, wolfish grin that stretched his facial muscles tight.
“Good,” Chen whispered, raising his hands.
“Now come at me like you mean it.”
I didn’t charge forward with a battle cry.
I dropped to one knee, scooped up a handful of wet, gritty mud with my free hand, and sprinted at him.
Just before I entered his striking range, I violently whipped the mud directly at his face.
Chen didn’t flinch, raising his forearm to block the debris, but the split second distraction was all I needed.
I didn’t aim for his chest or his ribs.
I threw myself to the ground, sliding through the wet grass, and swung the heavy wooden knife as hard as I could directly at his kneecap.
There was a sharp thwack as the wood connected with his shin.
It wasn’t enough to break the bone of an Advanced Mage, and it wasn’t enough to make him stumble due to the lack of strength in my eight year old physique.
As I rolled back to my feet, panting heavily, Chen looked down at the muddy streak across his leg, and then back up at me.
He wiped the dirt from his cheek, the terrifying grin returning in full force.
“Much better,” the veteran laughed, the sound echoing in the empty yard.
“Now, let me show you how to properly break a kneecap.”
For the rest of the morning, I didn’t execute a single perfect form.
And for the first time in a year, I felt like I was actually learning how to fight.
I completely surrendered to my new sub skill [Instinct], which leveled up twice over the session.
[Instinct: Lv.
3]
When the morning clock reached 8:00 AM, Lao Chen watched me and said, “I don’t have anything to teach you regarding your form or stance because I can’t see anything wrong with it.
But I can spar with you daily while I stay in this city.
You are free to come on weekends.
You can leave now.”
I wanted to go home and lie on my bed immediately, but due to the pain, I slowly started walking back.
When pedestrians saw me limping and walking slowly, they approached to help me, but I assured them this was for training and I could walk on my own.
When I reached my home and saw my mom, I said, “Mom, I won’t go to school today.
Please request a leave for me.”
Seeing the state I was in, my mother went quiet for a few seconds before replying, “Okay, go wash up and sleep.”
After taking a bath, I went straight to bed and fell deeply asleep.
To be Continued…