Chapter 178: The Great Sage Stance and the Exemplary Celebration of a Criminal Ringleader (2/2)

“The great sage stance moves the ears and eyes. With this stance, the muscles in the ears will affect the tendons in the neck to become even more pliable and strong. Furthermore, your head movement will increase along with the movement of your eyes.”

Shifting back to his normal stance, Wang Chao sighed. “It would have been better if you practiced this stance when you were young. The great sage stance considered amongst the basics of the basics that a four or five year old would start off with. It isn’t like the Three Integrals where you practice as your bones are still growing. Of all the stances, the great sage stance is the easiest to learn and understand. To learn the Three Integrals and then the great sage stance would be akin to putting the cart before the horse; a mistake that I already made.”

This regret of Wang Chao’s was not without reason.

The whole point behind stance training was that the person shouldn’t be moving his body and only his muscles and joints. It was a process that would help one learn by making the most minimalistic of movements. This rudimentary training method was also one of the hardest to understand. Without learning to move the muscles and joints, one would not be able to cross over the threshold to learning martial arts.

However, learning to control the muscles to leap like so was very hard and using the mind to control the tempo at which the muscles leapt at was prohibited.

For example the stance for the eagle claw was to move the hand down slowly while flexing the sinews in the tiger den part of the hand. Just how many people could pull off something like that?

The eyes and ears were amongst the most sensitive parts of a human. Compared to the muscles, they were easier to control. This great sage stance was to stand without moving any part of the body but the eyes and ears to improve the quick-witted nature of the Jin.

Slowly practicing with moving the eyes and ears would help one comprehend the benefits to minimalistic movements and the reasoning behind the palpitations of the muscles.

In the past, the baby boy that played a militaristic part in Chinese opera would have to practice this stance in hopes that they would become quick-witted beyond belief. But the baby boy would not be able to learn the Three Integrals since it required moving the vertebra. The vertebrae was the main pillar to the human body and involved the Conception meridian and the Governing meridian. If one did not wait for the vertebrae to develop to a sufficient amount before attempting the Three Integrals, then a problem would be more than likely to happen.

Wang Chao and Huo Ling’er had both studied martial arts when they were just becoming adults and learned the stances to understand the concepts behind the palpitations of the muscles forcibly. This was without a doubt a sign of their brilliance. No ordinary person would be able to learn in such a manner.

To put this into context; learning the Three Integrals and then learning the great sage stance was the same as learning how to build an atomic bomb before learning general physics.

“We’ll end things here today. I’ll be going back first to take a shower and for a change of clothes before I go look for Tan Wendong. Who knows, perhaps Tan Wendong will become your junior? His martial arts isn’t bad at all. If the two of you were to be compared, then your chances of winning would be fifty-fifty. If you lose, would you not lose face as the senior sister? As your master, I have taught you nothing but the truth, there is nothing I would hide from you in martial arts.”

Teaching Huo Ling’er the “Flying Eagle Striking Ape” killing move and then the “Great Sage Stance” was indeed the fastest route for her to learn martial arts. In the future when he accepted even more disciples, she would still be the senior sister.

“Master, I know that you can see the potential Tang Wendong has. A master will usually only have a few dozen disciples to impart his legacy with and over a hundred students on the outside. As the headmaster of the Laoshan School of Internal Martial Arts, only I and Han Xiaoqing are your genuine disciples. That much, I know as well. But master, are you sure about taking Tan Wendong into our school? I feel that he’s somewhat arrogant, and as the boss of a gang, he’s definitely a big power.”

A small smile escaped Wang Chao’s lips, “There is no future for the boss of a criminal gang. Was it not you that said that? It is only a matter of time before the public safety bureau sends out the order for his arrest. Tan Wendong is a hard to come by genius. It would be a shame for him to be assigned to the firing squad and be force fed lead.”

The Information Institute was considered to be a third-rate university in this city.

Even when the time for class came, the students of the university could be seen wandering in two or threes around the campus. On the university lawn, several couples could be seen engaged in romantic talk or other actions while some other students would be involved in smoking, drinking, or perhaps gambling with cards or mahjong. Seeing a student read a book would be a very rare sight in this school.

This school had also a very noisy business district, so without any proper doors, students could go in and out as they pleased at any point in the day. There were classrooms, and there were the dorms. These dorms were split into two; the bright and gaudy side was filled with women clothing while the other half had the male clothes. As things turned out, the women’s dormitory was directly above the men’s dormitory.

From the information given to Wang Chao, he knew that Tan Wendong was studying at this school. So with a change of his clothes, he sought to find him to see the background of this martial artist gang leader.

But the very moment he stepped onto the university grounds, Wang Chao had the sudden notion that this was not a third-rate university at all. If there was a better word to describe it, it would be that this was a university that was running illegally. With a university like this, it was no wonder that so many criminals would come out from here.

He had asked people on the way of the whereabouts of Tan Wendong. But whenever his name was mentioned, everyone’s faces would scrunch up as if they had heard something dangerous.

“Do you know where Tan Wendong is?” He would ask, but to no avail. At last, he had finally reached the group of eight that were drinking while playing cards. From their appearances, they were the closer to the gangster side of the student spectrum.

“What business do you have with brother Dong? Who are you?” One of the more beefy men had immediately asked. His muscles looked like they were on the verge of bulging out from his shirt.

“I am a friend of Tan Wendong.”

“A friend?” The student gave Wang Chao a baleful eye, “Today’s the birthday of brother Dong’s girl today so he’s over at the Golden Emperor KTV. You’re brother Dong’s friend and you didn’t know that?”

“I see.” Wang Chao murmured before turning around with a lack of interest for the student. Seeing him walk away, the student’s face darkened. Just as he was about to speak out to him, his friends had urged him to hurry up with his turn. Not wishing to lose his money, the student had decided not to chase after Wang Chao.

Hailing a taxi, Wang Chao arrived at the Golden Emperor KTV after a short ride. Stepping out from the taxi, Wang Chao walked to the entrance of the building and was about to walk in when he was stopped by the security guards standing at the entrance. As things turned out, Tan Wendong had reserved the entire building so that even the employees that weren’t inherently necessary to running the building were unable to go in.

At a second glance of his surrounding, Wang Chao had noticed that in the parking lot, there were plenty of cars–police motorbikes included.

“For as young as he is, he’s willing to put up such a celebration for the sake of his girlfriend’s birthday? People always say that the youth of today will overcome the youth of yesterday in the future, but even this is a little too much….”