7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡblD7ihWAu9Martial Youth
Afternoon.
Club activity period.
The art classroom was quiet.
The windows were half open, and the wind slipped in from outside, lifting the curtains in gentle sways. Pencils, erasers, and several sheets of practice paper were scattered across the desks. The evening sun had not completely set yet; its light slanted across the drawing board, making the paper look slightly pale.
Lin Hao sat in front of the board.
The figure on the paper already had a shape.
The shoulders, arms, stance, and facial lines had slowly emerged.
But his pencil stopped in midair.
For a long time, it did not fall.
He stared at the drawing.
The longer he looked, the tighter his brows became.
Too much.
He was thinking about the proportions, the lines, whether he should change the angle of the shoulders, and whether the expression looked natural enough.
The more he thought, the less his hand could move.
A senior girl walked over from the side and glanced at his drawing.
“This one was better last time.”
Lin Hao froze for a moment and looked up.
“Last time?”
She nodded.
“It was more natural then. You’re drawing more seriously now, but you’re forcing it too much.”
She reached out and pointed at the figure on the paper.
“The person is already there. You’re just still thinking.”
Lin Hao lowered his head and looked at the drawing.
His hand was still suspended in midair.
At that moment, he suddenly remembered what Lin Jing had said that morning.
You want to hit the opponent too badly, so you keep throwing yourself in.
Drawing was the same.
The more he wanted to draw well, the more he strangled the lines.
Lin Hao suddenly smiled.
“…Right.”
He slowly exhaled.
Why think so much?
The tip of the pencil touched the paper again.
This time, he did not hesitate before every line, nor did he rush to fix the parts that had been unstable earlier. The line followed the figure’s shoulder downward, passed along the arm, and then pulled out the weight of the body.
He was not pressing hard.
He was letting it move.
“However it comes…”
He murmured.
“That’s how I let it go.”
The pencil slid across the paper.
At last, the lines began to flow.
In the music room, the sound of drums came in broken bursts.
Gu Chengyuan sat in front of the drum set, drumsticks in hand, his brows slightly furrowed. He had tried several times already. He clearly remembered every beat, but when he played it, it just would not flow.
The more he tried to catch the timing, the stiffer the sound became.
The more he tried to create a rhythm, the more the rhythm seemed to be torn into pieces.
A senior student listened for a while before finally speaking.
“That sounds awful.”
Gu Chengyuan looked up at him, his eyes cooling slightly.
The senior stood beside him with his arms crossed, completely unfazed by his stare.
“If you don’t want to play, stop hitting randomly.”
The air in the music room tightened a little.
Gu Chengyuan looked at him.
After two seconds, he suddenly smiled.
“…Fair enough.”
He lowered his head and looked at the drumsticks. He did not argue.
Just now, he had been trying to make the rhythm.
He wanted to calculate every beat.
He wanted every strike to sound clean.
But music was not like him catching someone’s opening in an alley.
Rhythm was not something that would appear just because he tried to seize it by force.
Gu Chengyuan sat properly again and gently placed the drumsticks over the drumhead.
Do not make the rhythm.
Let it come out.
He raised his hand.
Then dropped it.
This strike was steady.
There was no extra movement.
The sound was not loud, but it landed exactly where it should.
The senior glanced at him.
“See? You can do it.”
Gu Chengyuan gave a quiet laugh.
“Thanks.”
In the cooking classroom, the sound of oil and voices mixed together.
Several students gathered around the cooking stations. Some were chopping vegetables, some were flipping pans, and some were looking at recipes on their phones. The air was filled with the smell of hot oil, soy sauce, and freshly rising steam from soup.
Then the door slid open.
“I’ll be substituting today.”
The classroom stirred.
Liu Yeqing stood near the back, originally looking down as she arranged the ingredients. When she heard that voice, her movements paused slightly.
She raised her head.
Aji stood at the front of the classroom, holding a bag in his hand, looking as if he had just returned from buying groceries. He did not have much of a teacher’s air. His smile was natural, making him look more like a shop owner who had just happened to pass by and been dragged in to help.
Liu Yeqing froze for a moment.
Why is he here?
Aji saw her too.
He lifted his eyes and smiled.
He said nothing.
Liu Yeqing looked at him and could not help smiling as well.
What a coincidence.
The wind blew in from the window.
Three places.
Three people.
They had not planned it, but at the same moment, they each let go of something that had been held too tightly.
Lin Hao no longer forced himself to think about how every line should win.
Gu Chengyuan no longer broke the rhythm into calculations.
And after seeing someone familiar appear, Liu Yeqing slowly released that unconscious sense of caution.
There was no need to force it.
The rhythm was slowly falling into place.
After school, the hallway grew much quieter.
Students left one after another. Classroom doors closed one by one, leaving only the faint sounds of a few clubs in the distance.
Liu Yeqing walked down the hallway, then suddenly stopped.
That gaze was still there.
She did not turn around.
But she knew someone was watching.
It was not a classmate.
Nor was it a teacher.
The feeling was faint, but it had never disappeared.
On the field, the sunset stretched people’s shadows long across the ground.
Lin Jing stood across from Lin Hao and Gu Chengyuan.
She did not speak right away. She simply watched the two of them for a while.
“You’re different.”
Gu Chengyuan smiled and rolled his wrist.
“Let’s do it again.”
Lin Hao said nothing. He only slowly steadied his stance.
This time, the two moved at the same time.
Lin Hao pressed in from the front. His footing was heavier than it had been that morning, and his shoulder no longer rushed forward. Instead, he kept his weight with himself first. Gu Chengyuan cut in from the side, but his steps did not steal the beat. He waited for Lin Hao’s line to press out first before trying to find his own position.
More stable than this morning.
More precise too.
Lin Jing watched the changes in their distance, then raised a hand and stopped them.
“Figured it out?”
Gu Chengyuan stepped forward and looked at her.
“If I land one hit—”
The corner of his mouth lifted.
“Can I go on a date with teacher?”
The air fell silent for a moment.
Lin Hao froze completely.
“Huh???”
Lin Jing looked at Gu Chengyuan. Her expression barely changed.
“Sure.”
Gu Chengyuan paused.
Lin Jing continued.
“On the condition that you actually know how to use force.”
The field grew quiet.
Lin Jing looked at them.
“Three days.”
Her voice was calm, but there was no joke in it.
“Same place. Draw your force out.”
After saying that, she turned and left.
Gu Chengyuan watched her back and smiled.
“Easy.”
Lin Hao glanced at him.
“You’d better actually be able to hit her.”
Gu Chengyuan shrugged.
“At least it’s more motivating than math class.”
That night, the campus had already fallen quiet.
Lin Hao searched through his schoolbag, then suddenly stopped.
“…Damn.”
He looked at the empty folder and finally remembered that he had forgotten his drawing in the art classroom.
There should have been almost no one left near the classrooms by now.
Lin Hao sighed and had no choice but to turn back toward school.
The campus under the night sky felt different from usual. The noisy corridors of the daytime had become empty. Streetlights shone over the concrete ground, cutting the shadows of the trees into broken pieces. Wind passed between the school buildings with a slight chill.
When Lin Hao passed by the side gate, his steps slowed.
Someone was there.
Not far away, a dark shape moved beside the wall.
The instant their eyes met, that shadow vanished.
In the next second, the wind exploded.
Lin Hao jerked his head aside.
But he was still half a beat too slow.
A flash of cold light scraped past the side of his face, leaving a thin sting behind.
His heart sank hard.
He could die.
In front of him, behind him, on the roof, beside the wall—four figures appeared almost at the same time.
There was no nonsense.
No probing either.
The blades came straight down.
Lin Hao moved immediately.
He first used his forearm to knock aside the blade from the front, then withdrew half a step to avoid the thrust from behind. But the figure dropping from the roof blocked his retreat perfectly, while the one beside the wall cut in from the side at the exact same moment.
Too fast.
He could block the first blade, but the second was already forcing its way toward his chest.
He shifted the second blade aside, and the third was already before his eyes.
His footwork began to fall apart.
His breathing was being pushed faster and faster.
The blade stabbed toward his eyes again.
Lin Hao’s pupils shrank.
No.
At that instant, images from the day flashed through his mind.
Gu Chengyuan sitting in front of the drums, letting the rhythm fall on its own.
Liu Yeqing standing at the cooking station, her knife falling steadily.
And the line on his own drawing paper, the one he had not forced, the one that had finally flowed out.
He still wanted to go back with them.
He still wanted to keep drawing.
He still wanted to see whether Gu Chengyuan could really hit Lin Jing.
He still wanted to hear Yeqing mock him for charging in recklessly.
This time, he did not retreat.
Lin Hao stepped forward.
Not a reckless charge.
He planted his foot into the ground.
Power rose from the sole of his foot, passed through his knee, waist, and shoulder, and finally drove his entire body forward.
Bang!
The ninja in front of him was knocked flying, crashing into the wall before falling to the ground.
The second ninja closed in from the side, the tip of his blade already cutting toward Lin Hao’s ribs. Lin Hao did not pull away. Instead, he moved straight in, pressing his forearm against the opponent’s weapon hand, then drove his elbow into the opponent’s chest from close range.
The man let out a muffled groan and folded forward.
Lin Hao followed by shoving him into the iron railing beside them.
His breathing was still chaotic.
But his feet were no longer in disorder.
That position just now had finally aligned.
In the next second, a voice fell.
“Stop.”
The world seemed to fall silent all at once.
The remaining shadows stopped at the same time.
Lin Hao raised his head.
Lin Jing stood not far away. Her teacher’s jacket swayed slightly in the night wind. There was no panic on her face, nor any surprise.
She looked at the ninjas, her voice flat.
“This is a school.”
Silence.
The black figures said nothing.
In the next moment, they withdrew into the night at the same time, disappearing as if erased by the wind.
The wind began to move again.
Lin Hao stood where he was, his chest rising and falling heavily, but he did not move right away.
Lin Jing walked over and glanced at him.
“Still standing?”
Lin Hao did not answer immediately.
He lowered his head and looked at his own hand.
That strike from just now was still lingering in his body.
It was not about forcing power out.
It was about sending his entire body into the correct position, then letting the force travel upward from the ground.
“…So that’s it.”
Lin Hao raised his head.
“Power isn’t forced out.”
He looked at his hand.
“It’s driven in.”
Lin Jing neither denied it nor praised him.
She simply looked ahead.
Lin Hao remembered the dark figures from just now, and his brows tightened.
“Teacher, those ninjas have come after us before.”
He paused.
“I didn’t expect them to have already gotten into the school.”
Lin Jing looked into the night with little reaction.
“Mm.”
Her voice was calm.
As if she had already known.
She turned and walked away.
“Go home.”
Lin Hao froze.
After taking a few steps, Lin Jing added lightly:
“Your little girlfriend is still waiting for you.”
Lin Hao stiffened completely.
“…Huh?”
Lin Jing had already walked away.
On the other side, the light at the street corner was dim yellow.
Liu Yeqing stood quietly in place, waiting.
She was not impatient. She only glanced toward the school from time to time.
That gaze was still there.
Since after school, it had never disappeared.
Among the crowd, someone walked past.
Very ordinary.
So ordinary that he seemed like nothing more than a passing office worker.
So ordinary that he should not have attracted any attention at all.
But Liu Yeqing’s eyes changed slightly.
Too ordinary.
Something was wrong.
In the next second, several figures in the crowd closed in at the same time.
No sound.
Very fast.
There was more than one.
Liu Yeqing did not retreat.
She steadied her breathing, lowered her center of gravity slightly, and her footwork was already prepared to turn aside.
They’re here.
Just then, a familiar voice sounded from beside her.
“Huh?”
Liu Yeqing froze and turned her head.
Aji stood not far away, still holding a bag of things in his hand, as if he had just finished buying ingredients and was preparing to head back.
“Still out this late?”
His tone was natural.
As if he really had only happened to pass by.
For the first time, Liu Yeqing’s expression changed.
“Brother Aji!”
Her voice sharpened with urgency.
“Run!”
The ninjas were already closing in.
The blade light did not stop. Killing intent pressed straight down.
Aji stood where he was and looked at the approaching figures, as if he had only just noticed what was happening.
“Ah…”
He scratched his head.
“So that’s what this is.”
His tone was light.
In the next second, the shadow was already in front of him.
The blade fell.
Aji did not retreat.
His movement did not look fast. It even looked like he had only casually reached out to block.
But halfway down, the blade stopped.
The handle was already in his hand.
The ninja’s eyes clearly changed.
Aji glanced at the blade, his brows tightening slightly.
“Playing with knives in the street is dangerous.”
His tone was calm. With a casual twist, the ninja’s wrist was immediately forced open. The blade slipped from his hand and was tossed onto the ground by Aji.
The three beside him moved at the same time.
Their speed was extremely fast.
Liu Yeqing was about to step forward, but Aji spoke first.
“Don’t move.”
He did not look at her.
“Stay there.”
His voice was not heavy, but there was no room for discussion.
Aji lowered his head and picked up a fallen stick from the roadside.
It was an ordinary wooden stick.
In the next instant, his footwork had already stepped in.
The first ninja cut in from the left, his blade stabbing straight toward Aji’s waist and ribs. Aji did not swing the stick widely. He only tapped forward briefly, striking the opponent’s weapon wrist. The man’s fingers loosened, and the blade path shifted. Aji turned with the motion, pressing the end of the stick against the outside of his knee.
The man’s balance broke, and his whole body fell to the ground.
The second ninja closed in from behind, trying to stab into Aji’s back line while he was turning. But Aji seemed to have known already. His foot slid, his shoulder shifted aside slightly, and the stick turned with his body, driving directly into the area beneath the opponent’s chest.
The strike was not heavy, but it cut off the man’s breath at exactly the right point.
The second ninja gave a muffled groan and dropped to one knee.
The third man sensed something was wrong and immediately retreated.
But it was already too late.
Aji turned his steps. The stick swept in from below, first breaking the support of the man’s standing leg, then rising with the motion. The stick landed at the junction between his shoulder and neck.
The opponent was knocked sideways, crashing into the iron door nearby.
The entire street corner went silent.
Aji was still holding that ordinary wooden stick, looking as if he had only casually swung it a few times.
But the three men on the ground could no longer get up.
Wulang Bagua Staff.
Aji lowered his head and glanced at the ninjas on the ground, then sighed.
“I told you. It’s dangerous.”
He rested the wooden stick over his shoulder and added:
“And you’re getting in the way of my business.”
Liu Yeqing stood to the side without moving.
She only looked at Aji
Her eyes changed slightly.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIoHUT8nl1G
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