I was Thrown into an Unfamiliar Manga

After I completely mastered Jin’gak at the city park, I came home and had lunch.

Since we’d left the house around 4 AM, it had taken roughly 7 to 8 hours, even excluding transit time.
My mother was surprised to see me come home drenched in sweat, but when I said I’d been training with Li Mei Ling, she nodded in understanding.
Well, considering she’d learned last night that Mei Ling was a globally famous martial artist, she probably didn’t think it was strange that someone like me—addicted to working out—would train under her.

And since I’d sweated a ton, we made Korean-style jjamppong, loaded with sodium, for lunch.
It was Li Mei Ling’s first time ever trying Korean-style jjamppong, but she ate it well. She said she usually enjoys spicy foods like mapo tofu and mala soup.
After the two of us polished off our bowls, we headed back and took a cold shower.

"Ughhhh..."
My muscles, wrung out to their limits during the Jin’gak training, were burning with heat for the first time in a while.
I’d probably be dealing with muscle soreness tomorrow.

After wiping off the sweat, I grabbed some barley tea from the kitchen and headed to the living room.
Even for someone who’s ranked among the world’s top martial artists, Li Mei Ling couldn’t beat the brutal heat of a midsummer day—she was sitting in front of the fan with her T-shirt lifted up.
As a result, her bare white skin was visible, and thanks to her low body fat, her abs were sharply defined.

"Oh? You’re done showering?"
"Yeah."
I nodded and handed her the glass of barley tea.

"Thanks. I’ll drink it well."
She’d definitely spoken more formally at first, but now that we were more comfortable, that formality had vanished.
She downed the barley tea with ice clinking around inside, let out a satisfied "Khh~", then pressed the empty glass to her forehead like something out of a beer commercial.

Watching her out of the corner of my eye, I gulped down my own barley tea.
There’s something special about drinking barley tea right after a shower on a sweltering summer day.
It was on par with how Japanese people drink coffee milk or fruit milk after leaving a bathhouse.
After quenching our thirst, I went around and closed all the open windows in the house and turned on the air conditioner.

After a little while, as the cool breeze took over the living room, Li Mei Ling stretched and leaned her back against the couch behind the table.
"It feels like I’m just at home."
"Well, I’m honored to hear that."

Saying that, I poured more barley tea into her empty glass and asked,
"So, what’s the next step after Jin’gak?"
At my question, she tilted her head and replied with a slight "Hmm?"

"Didn’t I tell you earlier? That all those so-called ‘secret techniques’ or ‘finishing moves’ are really just modified versions of existing techniques?"
"I want to know more precisely."
By nature, I’m someone who prefers understanding the theory over just diving in with brute force.

"In that case, sure."
Maybe she found my reasoning convincing, because Li Mei Ling nodded and began to explain.
"The Eight Major Postures—what Bajiquan calls its ‘secret techniques’—are actually fairly well known to the public now thanks to the internet."

"But those secret techniques are mostly finishing moves. Meaning: if you see it, you die. There are a lot of reasons for this, but usually, once people know a finishing move exists, it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out how to counter it. That’s why most martial arts schools only pass them down to a few trusted disciples, under the rule of non-disclosure."
"In modern times, the meaning of ‘finishing move’ has kind of diluted. With the development of visual media, once someone uses a technique, people everywhere immediately start analyzing it and trying to find counters."
"So my master came up with the idea. Let’s create a finishing move that no one can prepare for—even if they know it. Something that ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) can’t be blocked, even if they try."

After saying that, she paused, maybe because the explanation was getting long, and took a sip of the barley tea I’d just poured for her.
Then she looked at me seriously and said,
"What came out of that was a modified version of one of the original secret techniques, Fierce Tiger Mountain-Splitting—what I used: Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear."

I’d just asked what came after Jin’gak, and somehow it turned into a huge tangent.
Isn’t this what people call a "too much talker"?
"So, how exactly do you use it?"

When I asked again, bringing her back on topic, Li Mei Ling finally returned to the main subject.
"First, you need to master the basic Chongchui. Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear is based on Chongchui, one of the eight Vajra-style basics."
"Ah."

So it turns out Chongchui and Jin’gak had been a pair from the beginning.
"Like I said earlier, it takes most people three years to learn both Jin’gak and Chongchui. There’s even a saying among Bajiquan fighters: ‘It takes three years to use Bajiquan in real combat.’ In other words, just mastering Jin’gak and Chongchui puts you at the level where you can use Bajiquan for real."
"So from the start, there’s no shortcut—just repetition and refinement."

Li Mei Ling nodded at my comment.
"Exactly. Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear is a technique you can only learn after perfecting those two basics. That’s how important the fundamentals are."
Hearing her explanation, I was reminded that learning martial arts really isn’t something you can take lightly.

Of course, there were parts of it that felt similar to working out at the gym.
If you don’t stay committed to one discipline, you end up gaining nothing.
The good news was—I was actually pretty good at endurance training like this.

All thanks to the patience I’d built during my grad school days in the lab.
Looking back on it, I learned a lot of valuable life lessons during that time.
The biggest of which was: never go to grad school.

Anyway, this settled what I had to do next.
Before Li Mei Ling leaves our house, I need to master Chongchui.
***

The morning of my second day of training dawned.
Yesterday, anticipating muscle soreness, I focused solely on recovery and didn’t do any serious strength training.
Seeing that, Nakayama-san at the gym asked if the sun was rising in the west today—but since I couldn’t tell him the truth, I just gave him a bitter smile.

Maybe because I’d acted weird for two days straight, Fuma-senpai and Kazu both asked if I was feeling sick, but I told them I’d been secretly doing some special training during the day.
"Ah~ so that’s why we didn’t see you during your usual morning jog!"
"Yeah, something like that."

Fuma-senpai kept grilling me about what kind of special training it was, but I just said I’d been neglecting my lower body a bit and was doing some solo leg training.
When I showed him my legs trembling from the soreness, he finally believed me.
Anyway, even though it was my second day of training, not much had changed.

Yesterday I focused on mastering Jin’gak. Today, I focused on mastering Chongchui.
PANG!!
Now that I understood the timing of Jin’gak, I could produce that signature wind-cracking sound pretty easily.

But using Chongchui while doing Jin’gak was a completely different story.
It felt like trying to draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other.
Even though my brain knew I had to do both together, my hands and feet weren’t cooperating.

When I asked about this phenomenon, Li Mei Ling, who’d been watching me, said it was because I was using Jin’gak too "consciously."
She explained that Jin’gak was the foundation of every body-weight transfer move in Bajiquan, so it had to be used as naturally as breathing.
Basically, the first step to mastering Chongchui was to start thinking of the unnatural as natural—but that was proving difficult.

By her logic, I needed to be using Jin’gak even when I was in a flow state.
Thanks to that, my second day of training passed without any real gains.
***

The third day of training.
I finally got the feel for using Jin’gak and Chongchui together.
Up until now, I’d thought of Jin’gak and Chongchui as two separate techniques and had tried using them individually—but thinking of them as a single move from the start made everything a lot easier.

When I explained this method to Li Mei Ling, she was initially dumbfounded—but after thinking it over, she admitted it wasn’t wrong and told me to keep training that way if it worked for me.
I gladly accepted her suggestion and, before night fell, had fully figured out how to use Jin’gak and Chongchui simultaneously.
Watching all of this unfold, Li Mei Ling clicked her tongue and called me ridiculous—but then, with a serious face, she said:

"If you’ve come this far, there’s no helping it. Tomorrow, I’ll teach you how to use Fierce Tiger Piercing Spear—our final goal."
And when I heard her say that, I let out a cheer of joy.