Chapter 11 - Gravity Center

Nie Gan woke up as soon as the first ray of sunlight seeped into his home. He felt rather sluggish and unfocused, so he  plunged his head in a bucket of cold water to gain some clarity. It was effective enough.


On his way to the training grounds, he did not meet any fellow clansmen, with the exception of a small party of three Clan Guards composed of one female and two males. Upon recognizing him, they chose to ignore him.


Nie Gan didn't pay them any heed. He was nervous enough due to how Constable Duan would be as a master. Uncle Xing had been a very lax, low expectations one, and he had turned out just fine. But he knew that not everyone was like that.


By the time he arrived at the training grounds, Constable Duan was already waiting there. He had his hands behind his back, and seemed to be enjoying the morning breeze with his eyes closed.


"Good morning Master." Nie Gan greeted him, bowing slightly to show respect and causing the older man to open his shut eyelids.


"There are three men, one of whom is a knight, one a knave, and one a spy. The knight always tells the truth, the knave always lies, and the spy can either lie or tell the truth. Han Jue says: "Han Li is a knave." Han Long says: "Han Jue is a knight." Han Li says: "I am the spy." Who is the knight, who the knave, and who the spy?" Posed Constable Duan, not bothering to return the greeting.


The sudden round of hypothetical scenario questioning left Nie Gan at a loss for words.



"Han Jue is the Knight, Han Li the Knave, and Han Long the spy."


"Good!" 


There was a brief moment of silence, but Constable Duan could not atand seeing Nie Gan's curious expression any longer, so he sighed and decided to tell the truth.


"Although it might seem as if I only got my post due to my cultivation base, I actually studied at the Imperial Naval Institute. Alas, I did not manage to graduate. But that's fate; it takes with one hand and gives with another."


His words managed to leave Nie Gan even more speechless than the sudden round of questioning. The Imperial Naval Institute was the number one institution in the Golden Wreath Dynasty.  The higher ups of the Imperial Navy always came from there, and rumor had it that every year, only one out of ten thousand applicants got admitted. 


Hundreds of thousands applied in total, only a hundred or so got admitted, but the actual reputation of the Imperial Navy Institute came from its ludicrous dropout rate. Only two in ten students graduated. No one who knew of this would judge Duan Gangzhi for not having graduated. Quite the contrary, they'd think it was already a tremendous accomplishment and honor for him to have even started his studies there.


"Well, now we can start the lesson. First of all, everything that I will teach you is meant for defense. And remember the first principle of fighting: the best defense is a solid offense." Said Constable Duan as he took out a xiangqi board, a table and two stools.


"We'll be playing xiangqi?" 


"But of course. Xiangqi encompasses every one of the major principles of strategy, and by consequence of fighting." 


For the rest of the morning, they played nonstop. At some point, Nie Gan lost track of how many matches they had played, but he knew that he had lost every single time, and even when he felt he had a grasp on his Master's strategy, everything turned out the same. 


"You protect your General so much that you end up giving your opponent control of the board. When fighting and waging war, your focus should be on the fight or battle itself, not your own safety. If you win, you'll be okay. If you lose, you will not. It's really just as simple as that. Come, we shall spar." Constable Duan stored the table, xiangqi board and the stools into his storage bag, before walking to the middle of the training grounds.


He signaled for Nie Gan to attack first, even though he was well aware that Nie Gan's hand to hand combat experience was close to zero. Having no other option, Nie Gan approached with caution, adopting an open stance with extended palms facing upside down. Constable Duan simply raised his eyebrow in curiosity, but said nothing.


The first attack Nie Gan launched was a frontal kick, which Constable Duan skillfully caught before pushing him back, causing him to lose balance and fall. 


"If the key to winning in xiangqi is board control, then the key to win in a fight is controlling your center of gravity. If you lose control of it, you will most likely lose the fight." Explained Constable Duan as he brought his fist an inch from Nie Gan's face with a striking motion. Once it had been there for some seconds, he withdrew it and extended his hand to help Nie Gan stand.


"The gravity center is usually located at the center of our hip bone, right here." He pointed towards the spot some inches below the place where his belly button was most likely at, before resuming.


"Sometimes when fighting, you will have to choose between defending or landing a hit. If you can destabilize your enemy and make them lose control of their center of gravity, then it is more than worth it to take a hit yourself." 


Immediately after saying the last word Constable Duan accelerated until he was half a meter from Nie Gan's body. Seeing as he was about to be harmed, Nie Gan instinctively circulated his Qi and threw a punch, hoping it would land. It did, striking his assailant on his mandible.


However, just as his desperate strike landed, Constable Duan's fist also made contact with his spleen, causing waves of pain so great that they temporarily clouded his mind. He fell on his buttocks, grabbing the section where his spleen was at as if it were being soaked in hot oil and he wanted to rip it out.


"Pain is something you must familiarize yourself with if you wish to become a decent fighter. In the midst of a fight, a simple wincing that causes delay or a second of disoroentation might cost you your life."


SPAT.


He spat out several bloodied teeth, causing Nie Gan to realize that he hadn't bothered defending from his earlier strike and had chosen to receive its full force to prove his point. 


"You could have avoided that."


"Someone at the 5th stage of Qi Condensation would have been knocked out by that blow. I can lower my strength to your level,  but my body is still that of a Foundation Establishment expert. Besides, what kind of teacher would I be if I fought with the advantage?" Clarified Constable Duan before offering his hand to help Nie Gan stand up.



COUGH. COUGH.


The pain from that fist to his spleen had subsided but not disappeared. Nie Gan estimated it would be several days before he stopped feeling the bruise that his master's attack had left.


"We shall continue our lessons tomorrow. Study all your notes on our xiangqi games. I shall not teach you anymore if you cannot reach a stalemate with me a month from now." Warned Constable Duan before tapping the xiangqi board, table and stools, to store them into his storage bag.


"I shall do as you say. Farewell, master." Nie Gan uttered, feeling rather preoccupied due to his new master's ultimatum. Throughout ten hours of playing today, he had not even come close to reaching a stalemate. Every defeat had been absolute. To reach a stalemate, his xiangqi skill would certainly need to be at the level of a master. Three years would be too little time to reach that level, let alone three months.


The older man nodded. Just as he floated upward and was about to leave the training grounds, he turned to look at Nie Gan once again.


"By the way, that strike earlier was only comparable to a 3rd stage Qi Condensation body refiner's. I didn't even use the equivalent of your current cultivation." Confessed Constable Duan, sighing inwardly upon seeing Nie Gan's expression turn slightly dispirited.


Not bothering anymore with his new student, Constable Duan soared into the clouds and left, his gray robe flapping in the air. Nie Gan was once more left alone. With nothing much to do and considerable fatigue, both mentally and physically, he went back to his home.


Once inside it, he thoroughly washed and cleansed himself, getting rid of all the sweat and dirt that had accumulated during his training. His body hurt. The spleen wasn't the only place where he had been struck with quite a bit of force. His forearm was also bruised to the point of being purple, and his upper eyebrow was somewhat swollen. He had never expected that training would be this heavy on him.


Duan Gangzhi certainly had a much more "practical" approach to teaching than Uncle Xing had had. In fact, if one compared Uncle Xing's teaching methods to a scholar who only wanted his knowledge to be passed on, then Duan Gangzhi was a tyrant whose only goal was to beat incompetence out of his subjects.


But he also felt that it was what he needed. In just one day, he already had a very basic notion of how to fight. He could not imagine just how much improvement he'd have by the time the succession contest began. 


Knowing that he also had to improve on his own and that he couldn't solely rely on Constable Duan, regardless of how good and experienced of a master he was, Nie Gan took out the jade slip where the Sixth Elder had recorded him a copy of the Beetle Imitation Technique. He did not have much faith in it, but he still decided to trust the old man's judgement and give it a chance. Thus, he started reading the introduction.


"I, Sima Xiao, have dedicated my life to body refinement. However, it pains me to see so many talented body refiners defect to spell cultivation for pure convenience. Thus, I gave myself the task to create a body refinement technique that is easy to cultivate, yet powerful enough to be useful. To this end, I have studied all of the thirteen most commonly cultivated body refinement techniques that can be found in our Xiwei Continent, and successfully understood and improved them all. This technique of mine, the Beetle Imitation Technique was born out of the insights derived from these techniques, and my observation of natural phenomena in the form of beetles."


Nie Gan raised an eyebrow. To be able to understand thirteen different cultivation techniques that were created by completely unrelated people and probably also operated under different principles was quite remarkable. From this alone, he deduced that this Sima Xiao was either a once in a century genius, or a peerless expert, if not both.


"The aim of this technique is to alter human skin and muscle structure to imitate the durability of a beetle's carapace. It is by no means the strongest, nor the fastest to cultivate. However, I am proud to say it is the one with the best strength to cultivation speed ratio out of all body refinement techniques throughout Xiwei Continent!" Upon reading this last paragraph of the introduction, be held his breath momentarily. 


'To make such a bold statement, the so-called Sima Xiao must be quite confident in his technique.' He thought. His curiosity had been piqued, so he continued reading.


The first thing he discovered was that this technique was divided into nine stages, with the 1st being equal to the 1st stage of Qi Condensation, and the 9th to the peak of Core Formation. That seemed pretty standard. What caught his attention, however, was that the cultivation required one to breed beetles and consume them as food!


'It is not possible to synthesize the compounds that make up a beetle's carapace, so it is necessary to consume them and through the use of the technique integrate them into one's own tissue.' 


This requirement was certainly off-putting, but Nie Gan actually preferred it over the inhumane pain some other body refinement techniques subjected the user to, and so far no mention of pain had been made, which was a good thing for him.


However, he would need to procure large amounts of beetles to be able to cultivate this technique. It wasn't that difficult, all he had to do was ask Nie Lan for some extra funds to buy them in bulk at an exotic market. In the long run, he'd have to breed them himself, though.


'If this body refinement technique is truly what it says it is, then why isn't it more famous?" He wondered, only to get an answer in the next few pages, where there was a section named "side effects". 


'Can potentially lower one's spirit root grade due to the foreign substances being sometimes incorrectly metabolized by the body.'


Seeing this, he sighed, more relieved than burdened. His spirit root was already mortal grade. It could not be lowered. Although it could be crippled, practicing a body refinement technique labeled as 1 star would not cripple him. Had he had an earthly or heavenly spirit root, he would have thought it twice and most likely not proceeded to cultivate the Beetle Imitation Art. For better or worse, that was not the case.