Chapter 37, Just Beyond Arm’s Reach

Translator: StarReader

 

The shadow was right before him, close enough to touch. Yet as soon as he quickened his pace, so did the shadow, and when he slowed down, it too slackened its speed.

 

No matter how Ah Chou adjusted his speed or changed angles in his strikes, this shadow seemed to have eyes all over—always staying an inch out of his fists’ reach.

 

“Why is this happening?! Why can’t I hit you?!”

 

The more Ah Chou attacked, the more astonished and alarmed he became.

 

He and Su Chen joined the martial groups for training. While Su Chen was cultivating under the Medicine King Group, Ah Chou himself was secretly learning martial arts under the Heaven Falcon Group. Their time hadn’t differed much—just a little over half a year had passed, and yet the gap in their martial skills was so stark.

 

Especially since Su Chen hadn’t even bothered to strike back once. If he chose to retaliate, Ah Chou doubted he could block a single move of his.

 

“There’s a reason you can’t hit me.”

 

Su Chen was aware of Ah Chou’s martial arts level and stopped, shaking his head. “It’s no good just learning high-powered moves while ignoring the basics. If you keep cultivating like this, all you’ll end up with is a hollow shell. You’ll get crushed by experts on the first strike.”

 

“What are the basics? In the Heaven Falcon Group’s training arena, no one uses basic techniques. What’s the point of cultivating like this?”

 

Ah Chou also stopped, looking puzzled.

 

“At the Heaven Falcon Group’s training arena, only skilled newcomers dare to spar. They all use powerful and swift advanced techniques; no one uses basic ones.”

 

“Basic martial arts are divided into fist, footwork, and leg techniques. The moves are simple and straightforward, usually not very powerful. But they’re the foundation for higher-level techniques.”

 

Su Chen knew Ah Chou had no master to teach him and only randomly learned some lower- and middle-level techniques from fellow disciples, completely neglecting the basics.

 

“If I explain it this way, you still won’t get it. Look at my footwork, and you’ll understand why you can’t catch up.”

 

Su Chen sized up the open area around City God Temple, then instructed Ah Chou to fill a large pot with water and sprinkle it all around the temple’s perimeter, soaking the muddy ground.

 

Ah Chou listened, completely lost. He had no idea what was going on. Su Chen told him what to do, so he followed orders.

 

Once the ground was soaked and slippery, Su Chen saw that it was perfect for leaving footprints. He ran quickly around the temple’s mud, circling it.

 

“Alright! Check out my footprints,” he said.

 

“Is that all?” Ah Chou asked.

 

“Exactly. If you look at the footprints I left, you’ll understand why you couldn’t hit me, even when we were just an inch apart.”

 

“Uh, okay then.”

 

Ah Chou, still filled with doubts, went over to examine Su Chen’s footprints. The muddy ground around the City God Temple was a mess, and Su Chen had left behind a series of shallow footprints that were clearly visible.

 

At first, Ah Chou couldn’t make sense of anything unusual about the prints. But as he stared at them for a moment longer, his eyes widened in surprise. He realized there was something extraordinary hidden within those marks.

 

He snatched up a dry branch and measured each footprint. What Ah Chou discovered next left him utterly speechless. Su Chen had circled the City God Temple in one hundred and fifty steps, with every one exactly three feet apart—without even a fraction of an inch of variation between them.

 

The Chinese measurement system was based on units that could be subdivided into tenth parts: a foot, an inch, a tenth of an inch, a hundredth, and a thousandth. This meant that each step Su Chen took was three feet exactly, with the spacing between them accurate to less than one-thousandth of an inch.

 

This level of precision was almost impossible to comprehend. Even if someone consciously tried to maintain perfectly consistent stride length while walking, there would inevitably be slight variations—fractions here or there, adding up as they went along. After just a hundred steps, a cumulative difference of over a foot could easily occur.

 

A person wanting to maintain consistent spacing for over a hundred and fifty steps while sprinting, with each step less than a thousandth of an inch, was practically unbelievable.

 

“Brother Chen,” Ah Chou hesitated slightly before asking, “How did you do that?”

 

Ah Chou looked up in awe at Su Chen.

 

Su Chen shrugged and replied, “There’s no real trick. It’s just about repeatedly cultivating your footwork, controlling every single movement of your feet. Since I can keep my steps precise to within a hair’s breadth, I can easily manipulate our distance. By maintaining an exact one-inch distance, your fists will never even graze my clothes.

 

“When I first joined the Medicine King Group, mastering this basic footwork technique alone took me half an hour every day,” Su Chen recalled with a sigh.

 

Later, while guarding the herb garden in the back mountain, he increased his practice to an entire hour.

 

This rigorous cultivating went on for eight months straight.

 

Once he reached the pinnacle of perception, his understanding of martial techniques underwent a revolutionary transformation overnight, revealing just how profound and intricate they truly were.

 

This was the realm of perfect technique—where one could delve into the essence of martial skills. Unranked practitioners often perceived an inch as something extremely close, almost within reach with a single stretch of their fingers. Yet, martial masters understood that this short distance of an inch was akin to crossing a gulf.

 

Su Chen realized that a solid foundation in the basics of martial arts would make studying the so-called entry, intermediate, and advanced martial texts in the Medicine King Group’s library almost effortless.

 

“Wow, really?!” Ah Chou exclaimed in disbelief, finally comprehending why his fists always seemed to fall just an inch short.

 

Ah Chou had never trained in basic footwork techniques. He couldn’t control the spacing of his steps, which fluctuated by several inches with every movement. On the other hand, Su Chen could position himself with pinpoint accuracy down to a fraction of an inch.

 

And Su Chen’s footwork could be accurate to the extent of just one centimeter.

 

With a Chinese inch being a hundred times that of a Chinese centimeter, he was a full hundred times less precise in his footwork than Su Chen.

 

Ah Chou always coveted those powerful and flashy moves, thinking that the bigger the move, the stronger it was, and didn’t care at all about the small and dull ones.

 

He finally realized that practicing these big moves only helped to bluff people. Once he met an expert with profound martial arts skills, he couldn’t even touch the other party’s clothes, with him being on the receiving end instead.

 

“What about the entry-level punches and kicks? Are they the same?”

 

Ah Chou was incomparably excited.

 

He felt he was on the cusp of grasping the mystery to empower his martial arts. In the future, perhaps he could also cultivate to be this strong.

 

“I’ve yet to delve into any second-rate techniques or above, as they involved True Qi from Middle Dantian. I’m still not clear about the mysteries within. But in the martial arts of third-rate practitioners, one technique flows into the rest, with their secrets lying bare before me. In short, an inch away is like a gulf!”

 

Su Chen thoughtfully looked up at the sky and said.

 

A fallen leaf floated down from the parasol tree in front of the City God’s ruined temple.

 

At this moment, Su Chen aimed at the leaf drifting through the air and struck it with his palm, then kicked it with his foot.

 

Ah Chou stared blankly as he witnessed this.

 

With a single palm strike, Su Chen sent the falling leaf into two halves along its main vein. The following kick sliced it into four more pieces.

 

Each strike was incredibly practical, weak in power, yet precise enough to shatter the leaf without wasting any unnecessary energy or putting up any fancy display of force.

 

The force of his fists and feet, the speed of his strikes, and his control over distance—all honed through relentless practice—were as intense as ever.