167 – You could be…

“Little Yun, you look too comfortable fighting,” Lui Dashui.

“I have watched a lot of competitive matches,” Li Yun replied.

Lui Dashui scratched his head. Although it explained some things, he thought Li Yun had probably practiced on his own. “You have a very serious weakness, are you here to resolve it?”

Li Yun nodded. He wasn’t sure if the coach had noticed it, but there was something Li Yun was struggling with. He could train himself to attack, and even defend using Zuowang, but the one thing he couldn’t get over was fighting against an opponent with all his strength.

Most fighters’ mentality was very different from Li Yun. They gave it their all to win against their opponents. They didn’t care that their opponent may suffer in the future with chronic headaches or if they were hitting too hard. They knew that once they stepped into the ring, the only thing that mattered was the fight. Be it their bodies or their opponents' bodies, everything would be damaged eventually.

The only time he fought with all his strength was when the drunken hoodlums attacked him, and when he was in the woods.

During his matchup with Fatty Fang and Guhan, he was more concerned about their farewell. He didn’t want to injure them, but it was also hindering him from advancing. In a real fight, Li Yun needed to understand how much strength to exert and how much to hold back.

His subconscious made it difficult for him to attack Fatty Fang and Guhan. He had no conflicts with them, and there was really no reason to fight other than to improve and win. 

That was probably the reason why so many characters in wuxia novels often fought with each other. There was an understanding that if there wasn’t some sort of blood feud, there would be no conflict. If there was no conflict, there would be no way to improve their martial arts. It was an odd sort of scenario, but it was ultimately about improving oneself using others as a stepping stone.

If there was no conflict, make one up.

It was the same type of tactics used in war. Two neighboring countries were at relative peace, and then an unknown attack triggered country A to attack country B for revenge. The likelihood that Country A had faked the attack was high, because how else was it possible for them to organize a counterattack so quickly?

These sort of tactics Li Yun understood, but he wasn’t going to make up random conflicts with others just to improve himself. He simply wanted to protect himself in case he triggered an array like the ones in Panda City.

As Lui Daishi had pointed out, Li Yun had a major weakness, it was his subconscious fear of his own ability. To overcome his fear, he needed more sparring experience and the ability to control his own strength.

Every other day, Li Yun trained in the gym and sparred with whoever came in. There were other situations where learning combat was useful, like dealing with seedy underground gangs.

Shudi’s underground gang was appearing in Qinbei, taking over night clubs. The sequence of events was surprisingly quick. Qi Sho was updating Li Yun on the situation, and although everything appeared fine on the surface, it was only a matter of time before violence escalated in Qinbei.

It was time for Li Yun to visit Bu Tao in the police station.

“Their business seemed legitimate at first, but it is possible that they are fielding out cops and officials,” said Bu Tao in his private office. Qinbei was not his jurisdiction, so he didn’t want his department’s involvement.  “Their business registrations are all handled, quite professionally I might add.”

Li Yun looked over a floor plan of a nightclub that was rumored to be where Shudi liked to have business meetings.

“How trustworthy is your informat?” asked Li Yun.

“I  wouldn’t say he’s too trustworthy, but he knows a lot of people. He used to be a sanda fighter in high school, but got caught up with some bad crowds,” Bu Tao explained. “Now, he works in a pawn shop, and is a known scavenger around the area. He got the floor plans from the trash bin.”

Typically confidential files were shredded, but some people often get lazy with drawings files because the rolls were typically too large. A lot of cleaners just dump them away.

“I don’t know how accurate it is, but that’s pretty much the layout of the nightclub,” said Bu Tao. “What are you planning?”

“Just checking for an exit plan,” said Li Yun.

Bu Tao raised his eyebrow. An exit plan meant doing something dangerous beforehand.

“I’m just going there for a drink, I’m not stupid enough to cause any problem,” Li Yun reassured Bu Tao. “If it’s a legitimate business, there shouldn’t be any danger?”

Bu Tao grimaced, he wasn’t buying it.

“You know me, I’m not stupid…”

“You could be...” Bu Tao could recall plenty of occasions.

“What do you mean?”

“The first time you landed in the police station, I had to bail you out.”

“It’s Fatty’s fault.”

“That’s not what everyone else says…”

****

During freshman year, Fatty Fang and Li Yun joined the sanda club in college.

The initial meetings had a lot of casual members who were there to learn self-defense. Generally, people who were serious about sanda, and most martial arts, were people who had been bullied or outsiders. They wanted to learn and grow. But being motivated enough was difficult because there was very little money involved.

Most people who learned martial arts for money knew that the best way was to learn wing chun or aikido, styles that would look good on TV. They were following the footsteps of big-name action stars, but in general, martial arts did not make any form of money.

Li Yun was in the club briefly before becoming overwhelmed with classes and reading books. Many people also dropped out, but Fatty Fang remained one of the core members.

However, near the middle of the freshman year, Fatty Fang was growing frustrated with the club.

It seemed more like a body-building club. He often clashed with the senior captain who didn’t want to enter competitions or practice more sparring.

The captain was easily vexed whenever someone questioned his authority. He also disliked Fatty Fang because his ability was noticeably better. Jealousy got the most of him, and he made everyone else in the club alienate Fatty.

“Just start a club,” Li Yun advised during their usual Friday night outing. “I don’t think we have a mma club yet, with your ability, you can easily start one club.”

“But it’s not like it’s a bad club, but the captain is an ass,” Fatty Fang replied. “He keeps ganging up on the other club, it’s like they are a bunch of hoodlums.”

“Sort of like us?” asked Bufu.

“Hey, we stood up for the little guy. We don’t go around criticizing all the wushu and taishi clubs,” said Fatty Fang. He disliked the mentality of attacking other forms of martial arts. Fatty Fang naturally felt that as sanda fighters, they have a natural advantage over most single styles of martial arts. Unfortunately, that sense of superiority made a lot of the members arrogant. It stemmed from how underappreciated they felt, and they were compensating for it by bullying the other clubs.

“Do you want me to pretend I’m in the wushu club and beat them up?” asked Li Yun.

Fatty Fang frowned and swallowed down his liquor. Most of the guys had forgotten about Li Yun, but he didn’t want to get into a fight.

During the next club meet, Li Yun attended the club with Fatty Fang. At the beginning of every meeting, the captain demonstrated the basic stances and moves to the other club members. As usual, he didn’t call Fatty Fang to assist, but called up someone who looked like a newbie.

“Oh hey, you’re a newbie?” asked the captain. “Why don’t I show you the basics?”

“Uh? You want me to help? ” Li Yun acted dumb and pointed to himself. “Sure.”

Fatty Fang wasn’t aware what Li Yun was up to, but he prepared himself for the worst. The captain gave Li Yun a pair of mitt gloves.

“We are going to practice jabs, and your task is to catch as many of my punches as possible,” the captain instructed. “I’ll perform a few forward steps and then forward jabs.”

As the captain was demonstrating, he was showing a room of over a dozen people how to perform a proper stance. Li Yun thought it was amateurish. The captain’s feet weren't evenly balanced, which made his forward step look slow and awkward in his eyes. 

“Ready?” asked the captain. “Let’s do an easy one, a left jab.”

However, instead of doing the left jab, he did a right jab. To his surprised, Li Yun blocked off it off easily.

“Ah, you caught it,” the captain wasn’t prepared for that. He wanted to make a fool out of Li Yun since it looked like he was a friend of Fatty. “I meant your left, but it looked like you have good reflex.”

“I also thought you meant my left,” Li Yun responded with a smile. 

“Okay,” the captain replied, but internally he was cursing. Shaking off his previous failure, he looked at the other members. “All right, we will try another left jab.”

Captain turned to Li Yun and prepared for a left jab. However, instead of hitting straight to the face as he had demonstrated, he lowered his body and targeted Li Yun’s stomach. As the captain reached for Li Yun’s stomach, he exposed his head in Li Yun’s striking distance. Li Yun would be a fool not to take the easy hit after he evaded the attack to his abdomen.

“Grasp!” The spectators reacted as they saw the captain’s bloody nose.

“F***!!” The captain roared out.

“I just did the left jab?” Li Yun asked innocently.

“You f***** idiot! That was intentional!” The captain roared out and began to charge at Li Yun.

Li Yun didn’t evade, but as the captain grabbed his waist, Li Yun grappled the guy into a chokehold, blocking off the carotid arteries. He kept his knees balanced and dragged the captain down as he continued to tighten his arms in a figure-four position.

“Ah! Ya! Help!” The captain cried out to his lackeys.

The three of the captain’s closest allies prepared to jump in, but Fatty Fang attacked quickly and kneed them in the gut. They were all knocked down by the sheer force of a single blow. The college administrators and police got involved. 

****

“It wasn’t that bad,” Li Yun responded after quickly reminiscing about college. “You only got us out of jail for the day.”

“Yeah, but you used up your trump card pretty easily,” said Bu Tao.

Bufu had acquired videos of the college administrators at an illegal drug party. They were planning to use it just in case one of them got into trouble, but they didn’t expect to use it during their freshman year. It wasn’t difficult to convince the captain either, who was also afraid of expulsion. In the end, they released a notice in the university forum that everything was just a publicity stunt to get more members.