Chapter 10: Passing Down Skills, Six Harmonies and Eight Extremes

The news of the New Concept competition hadn't arrived yet, but the new year came rumbling in.

After exchanging Happy New Year greetings with the senior brothers who had lasted until the end, Fang Xinghe felt a little dazed at heart.

Has this era already accepted me?

It wasn't until Yu Xiaoduo hugged him, laughing and jumping, that he suddenly realized — actually, the era doesn't care about anyone at all; it's me who has finally accepted the era right before my eyes.

The moment this thought arose, his mind's horizon suddenly broadened.

Just at this moment, Senior Brother Chen, horsetail whisk in hand, swept it toward him: "Junior Brother Fang, come come come, wave the whisk to sweep away all your troubles to the west; embrace the Grand Ultimate to welcome Mr.'s boundless purple qi from the east. In the new year, may everything you wish come true."

Fang Xinghe smiled so hard his eyes curved: "Many thanks, Senior Brother. Happy New Year!"

"Senior Brother Chen, what about me, what about me?" Yu Xiaoduo pressed forward hopefully, unable to wait a moment longer. "Where's my blessing?"

"Everyone gets one, everyone gets one, hahahaha!"

After getting her auspicious words, Yu Xiaoduo scurried all over the room begging for big money — old copper coins wrapped in red paper, wrapped full of Mystic Gate blessings.

Fang Xinghe didn't reach out, but the senior brothers forcibly stuffed a few into his hands; he smiled and played with them between his fingers.

The first New Year's Eve since his rebirth, Fang Xinghe spent it full and at peace.

……

Starting from the first day of the new year, Elder Zhong personally demonstrated and passed down two sets of real stuff.

The first was a skill Fang Xinghe had never anticipated at all — the Six Harmonies Great Spear.

Elder Zhong, holding a sour jujube wood pole that looked to be no less than 7 meters long, explained in a few sentences why he was teaching this skill.

"If you want to practice weapons, you must first understand weapons.

Martial arts have a long history, but only a few things can really fight.

Bows, crossbows, armor; spears, halberds, sabers, shields; armor-breaking hammers and maces; hidden weapons and flying darts.

Among them, the spear is the king of all weapons, the first in actual combat aside from bow and crossbow.

But I'm teaching you the Six Harmonies Great Spear not to make you brave and combative, but because the great spear is the easiest to grasp the concept of jin during practice.

Shake the big pole, feel the rebound force, neutralize and balance it — only then can real stuff come out.

Once you have jin, when you go back to gripping a sword, it'll be easy and effortless.

Besides, you're in your growth period; practicing the great spear now should greatly help your coordination development."

"Elder Zhong, you've gone to such trouble. I'm deeply grateful."

Fang Xinghe bowed respectfully and studied with full concentration.

The fundamental skills of the Six Harmonies Great Spear were very simple.

Flick, shake, block, seize, thrust — plus basic footwork — and in not too long it was all transmitted.

But this thing is easy to learn and hard to practice; relying on time alone to grind it out, you'd probably really have to practice it for a lifetime.

Fang Xinghe wasn't worried — bro's got a cheat.

After learning the fundamental skills and forms, having practiced for only one day, a new entry appeared in the 【Personal Skill Panel】: Six Harmonies Great Spear 2.

The second skill Elder Zhong taught was still not Wudang's core art, but Bajiquan — Eight Extremes Fist.

"What I'm teaching you today is the Mengcun Wu-style New Frame within Bajiquan.

The three major branches of Bajiquan all share the same foundation, but the New Frame has the most forms, looks the best when fought, and recently the National Sports Commission has been compiling standardized martial arts performance routines — the Bajiquan section was extracted from the Mengcun New Frame, so it suits you very well."

The New Frame looks beautiful when performed, vigorous and forceful, forming a stark contrast with Taiji.

But this set of boxing is also the most complex — from basic stance work to small frame, then to the 24 major moves of the new eight great techniques of the connected chopping hands, there's a great deal of different content.

When he got to the new eight great techniques, Fang Xinghe recognized them at a glance — weren't these the viral killer moves that blew up online in later generations?

Yama Three-Point Hand, Fierce Tiger Hard Climbing, Welcome-Door Three-Don't-Care, Overlord Hard-Break-Rein, Facing-Wind Morning-Sun Palm, Left-Right Hard-Open-Door, Yellow Oriole Double-Embrace Claw, Standing-Earth Piercing-Heaven Cannon.

Later, after someone used AI to turn them into live-action animation, they were so cool that every boy's heart trembled and shook.

Learn!

This set of stuff must not only be learned well, but practiced to mastery.

Wong Kar-wai turned "The Grandmaster" into "The Gong Er Story"; Tony Leung's fight scenes were so bad they couldn't beat a Sichuan-Chongqing domestic-abuse husband. Once I get the chance, bro's gonna make a "Last Grandmaster" just to shame them.

Resolved, he began to study and practice diligently.

Both skills came from the Bajiquan lineage; the reason for spear first, then fist, was probably that Elder Zhong had realized Fang Xinghe wouldn't be staying long, so he went from easy to difficult.

Sure enough, on the afternoon of the eighth day, the starlight value, which had been growing slowly and slightly, suddenly began to jump sharply upward.

Fang Xinghe immediately realized that his essay had probably finally been seen by the judges.

Judging by the commotion, the effect should be pretty good?

That wasn't just pretty good — it was a quite intense response.

The famous writer Ye Xin and Fudan's literature doctoral supervisor Chen Sihe were reviewing manuscripts together; Chen Sihe was the first to see that piece "Dog-Day Youth, Day-Dogging the Dog."

At first he just scanned downward briefly; after about fifteen seconds and four or five paragraphs, he suddenly stopped, immediately flipped through all the manuscripts, then handed another piece, "Sex, Violence, and Lies," to Ye Xin.

"Old Ye, put your eight-legged essay aside for a moment and take a look at this kid's."

"What is it?" Ye Xin raised his head, adjusted his glasses. "Something interesting?"

"That's more than just a little interesting — anyway, mine's more than that. Hey! This kid is only 13."

"Alright then, let me see."

Ye Xin took the manuscript, and the instant he saw the title, his spirit was pricked into a sharp jolt.

Chen Sihe also began reading "Youth" again, starting to mull over it carefully.

【How do you view youth?

What I mean is, everyone who sees this line of text — have you ever truly and deeply thought about where the joy and the throes of youth actually come from?

If you don't have an answer yet, then listen to me.

I'll pin the conclusion down right here — whether it's right or not is non-negotiable, but you can argue all you want.

The happiness of adolescence comes one hundred percent from being full of bullshit, knowing nothing, being heartless and careless, and being a reckless idiot.

I have once said: the madman has the broadest mind, the idiot youth has the most joy.

Look, the sages already laid this out perfectly long ago.

Happiness is the simplest thing — don't overthink it.

And so-called adolescent growing pains…

Really, you all love to flatter yourselves too much. What do you mean growing pains? That's clearly just been hurting the whole time.

The generation before last, because the pain was too intense, their spirit went limp and couldn't rise, rose but couldn't get hard, got hard only for a moment, and so they came up with wound literature. I saw several familiar names among the judges of this competition.

And our generation — the wounds aren't deep, the pain isn't real, our cries are affected, our moans are put on. I think we just might end up producing ball-ache literature.

But no matter how big the difference, both our generations, and the '70s generation sandwiched in between shivering with no voice at all, didn't have a great time during adolescence — that much is true.

From what I've observed, the fundamental reason adolescence becomes the most miserable period for most people is that you're always trying to please certain people or certain things…

"Good! Wonderful!"

Chen Sihe had just finished reading the whole piece and hadn't had time to savor it carefully when he was interrupted by Ye Xin, who suddenly slapped the table in approval.

Not only that, Ye Xin couldn't wait to ask: "Old Chen, is there more?"

Chen Sihe casually handed over the last piece, "Growing Up," while clutching "Youth" tightly in his hand: "Read this one first, I still need to mull over mine a bit more."

Wang Meng across the way looked up curiously: "That good? Come on, let me have a look too."

Ye Xin passed "Sex" over, excited: "It's not good in the ordinary sense, you get me? Forget it, you'll know once you read it."

There were only three pieces in total, so Chen Danya couldn't get one. So she scooted toward Chen Sihe while asking: "How does it compare with that kid Han Han?"

"Not in the same league."

Chen Sihe shook his head, his eyes never leaving the manuscript for a moment.

"Han Han is a rare sharpness among the young — mature perspective, deep thinking, every laugh and curse turns into an essay. But Fang Xinghe is…"

"He's going for total annihilation of everyone else — savage, wild, domineering!"

"In short, spicier than Han Han, and wilder too."

"You're making me more and more curious — hurry up and read, stop teasing us."

The room quickly fell silent, leaving only the rustling sound of pages turning.

The literati of these years — the mercenary ones really are mercenary, the shameless ones really are shameless, and the pure ones really are pure.

The people gathered in this room, willing to take time out of their busy schedules to serve as judges for students, are naturally the passionate sort who hope to contribute to "the improvement of middle-school Chinese language" and "the fresh blood of the young literary world."

With pure intentions and only looking at the writing, Fang Xinghe was bound to catch the eye and captivate the heart.

After everyone in the circle had passed it around and read it once, Wang Meng joked: "Old Ye, you wrote 'Our Generation's Young People.' So, what's your take on the new generation of young people?"

"Can't compare, can't compare. When I was thirteen or fourteen…"

Ye Xin waved modestly, frowned in recollection for a moment, then laughed: "Mm, I was probably still vaguely daydreaming about sex — didn't dare, and didn't have the ability to put pen to paper and write it down…"

"Hahahahahaha!"

A burst of wild laughter erupted from the crowd, the ladies laughing especially uninhibitedly.

Tie Ning also joked: "Old Ye also wrote 'Years of Bumping Along,' which belongs to the wound school — the kind that goes limp the moment you poke it. He got savaged by the kids."

"Damn!" Teacher Ye said in exasperation, "Aren't you part of the generation before last too?"

Teacher Tie said matter-of-factly: "I'm a woman, I don't need to get hard."

"Hahahaha!"

Everyone burst into wild laughter again, joy exploding.

Wang Yali said self-deprecatingly: "You all have famous names at least, unlike us post-70s generation — we only deserve to shiver in silence~~~"

"This kid really is fierce and wild."

"Wild is good. Literature needs wildness most of all — can't just follow the rules."

"So, should we pass all of them?"

"Maybe don't pass 'Sex'? Putting in two pieces is enough."

Chen Danya was the first to raise an objection. Li Qigang, the chief secretary of the New Concept project, nodded along.

"Mm, when we finally put together the book, it'll be facing a broad audience of in-school teenagers. Putting 'Sex' in isn't appropriate."

"What a pity."

"Hey, what's there to pity? That kid will publish a book sooner or later and get it printed."

"True. Little Fang looks like a handful."

"Between a handful and stupid — if it were your son, which would you pick?"

"Is your brain fried?! If my son had this kind of talent, no matter how much of a handful he was, I'd take it!"

"Hahahaha!"

The editorial office was filled with laughter and joy. Being able to discover a good seedling made everyone happy, and they felt the meaning of this work.

So, on the tenth day of the month, Baofu sent a string of numeric code to Fang Xinghe's pager, asking him to call back urgently.

Fang Xinghe called his home, and what came through the receiver was Baofu's excited shriek.

"Bro! You passed! March 27th, go to Shanghai for the semifinals!"