184: Chapter 181 The Slightest Movement is the First Move

The group had just walked downstairs.

Whoosh!

Bang!

Almost instantly, a sound of something cutting through the air rang out. Immediately after, one of the tall white men collapsed to the ground as if his bones and muscles had vanished. His body twitched once, then quickly went still.

"Careful!"

As Silk roared, he lunged and rolled, quickly hiding behind a load-bearing pillar. The others also scrambled to find cover; even the man carrying their unlucky boss moved with agility.

In the face of death, everyone runs as fast as they can.

Rat-tat-tat!

Gunshots rang out from time to time here. Silk glanced over and realized it was his men who had been guarding below.

He counted the heads; only ten were left. In just a short while, ten people had actually died.

Silk felt a sharp pain in his heart. These brothers had spent day and night together, and most of them were from his hometown. With so many dying in one go, he wouldn't be able to face their families when he returned.

Mmph, mmph, mmph~

At this moment, their boss, Chris Parkman, began to struggle even more violently.

"Let him speak."

Seeing this, Silk signaled.

Soon, the sanitary pad was removed. As soon as his mouth was free, Chris Parkman spat several times.

"Kill! Kill him for me! I am your boss! I don't care who that person is, I want you to kill him…"

Chris Parkman roared.

Whoosh!

Bang!

Just as his voice roared out, a sound of something cutting through the air came from who knows where. Immediately after, a cloud of cement debris exploded from the side of the load-bearing pillar, and Chris Parkman's voice was scared into an abrupt stop.

Silk glanced indifferently at his boss, who was on the verge of madness, and had his men gag him again.

Mmph, mmph, mmph, mmph~

"Find a way to escape. The projectiles are coming from roughly the same direction, which means there are very few enemies—it's very likely just one person," Silk said over the channel.

"Boss, just one person? Should we take him out?"

Someone asked. After all, everyone came here to make money. If they could take the opponent down, they might be able to recoup some of their losses.

"No. We don't gamble. We still have some money, so don't take risks. We can earn money in the war zones."

Silk's words made everyone fall silent.

This indicated that the unknown enemy opposite them was even more dangerous than the professional mercenaries and soldiers in the war zones.

At this moment, Li Changsheng was leaning against a load-bearing pillar, his whole body nearly collapsed from exhaustion, drenched in sweat for the second time already.

A puddle of sweat even remained on the ground where he stood.

Fatigue—a thick, overwhelming fatigue—swept through his entire body.

He had unleashed his Dark Qi so many times he couldn't remember—six or seven?

His consciousness was a bit blurry, but he was still gritting his teeth to hold on.

Whenever he felt like sleeping, he would fiercely pinch his own soft flesh.

To achieve such results was not just due to the constant eruption of his Dark Qi and his own decisiveness.

Most importantly, the second wave of enemies clearly hadn't figured out the situation yet, and after he struck a few times, they quickly suffered heavy casualties.

At this moment, Li Changsheng was weighing a few bullets he had removed from the captured firearms in his hand.

He didn't know how to use guns, and he wasn't sure he could shoot accurately. He was more familiar and confident with Plucking Flowers and Flying Leaves.

In the face of a life-and-death crisis, he would not gamble his life on something he wasn't familiar with.

Time ticked away, his ears carefully listening to everything around him.

Suddenly, Li Changsheng, who was pressing against the load-bearing pillar with his eyes closed, twitched his ears. The next instant, his figure leaned out slightly, and his wrist drove his arm like a whip, lashing out violently.

Whoosh!

Splat!

Bang!

Three sounds—the sound of cutting through the air, the sound of piercing flesh, and the sound of falling—almost blended into one; it was extremely swift.

The footsteps he heard suddenly paused.

"Want to leave?"

Li Changsheng retreated back behind the load-bearing pillar. Bang! A cloud of fine cement debris exploded on the side again.

Haa, haa!

He was now completely in a state of having his eyes closed. It seemed that under the continuous life-and-death crises, his long-stagnant Plucking Flowers and Flying Leaves had undergone a transformation.

Listening to sounds to determine positions, precise sniping.

The power, speed, and accuracy far exceeded what they were before, comparable to a sharpshooter holding a handgun.

There was no need to open his eyes. Listening to the movements with his eyes closed, a location map naturally formed in his mind. At the same time, by judging the weight and intensity of the footsteps, he could determine the person's physique, whether they were in a front or back stance, and even their current body movements.

In fact, Li Changsheng himself didn't know yet that this was not just a Breakthrough in Plucking Flowers and Flying Leaves.

In a sense, the Dao of martial arts was the same.

Powerful insight was one of the conditions for reaching the Grandmaster Realm.

Why did martial arts Great Masters like Cheng Yanhua, Sun Lutang, and Gong Baotian have the ability to face firearms directly and dodge gunfire back in their day?

This was: "When they do not Move, I do not Move; when they Move slightly, I have already moved." The force is like it is loose but not slack; about to unfold but not yet unfolded; the force is broken, but the intent remains continuous.

This was the true ability to anticipate the enemy, which only martial arts Great Masters could master.

The "fake" ability to anticipate the enemy actually refers to knowing the opponent's Move patterns beforehand and using guesswork or even prediction of their next Move to quickly counter.

Strictly speaking, this does not count as anticipating the enemy.

True anticipation of the enemy, as just mentioned, means quickly judging the opponent's next Move through their subtle muscle changes.

True experts have an understanding of the human body's muscles, sinews, and bones that goes deep into their marrow. They understand very well what every slight movement of every inch of muscle represents in terms of the next action.

Before, when Li Changsheng practiced martial arts, he emphasized striking first to gain the advantage and striking second to control the opponent, always striving for speed, always striving to be ahead!

This was the concept and core ideology that Elder Zhang had pointed out to Li Changsheng at the very beginning, which could be most quickly applied to real combat.

But at this moment, Li Changsheng had his own epiphany.

"If you rely on yourself, you become stagnant; if you follow the opponent, you become alive, is that it?"

The eyes-closed Li Changsheng murmured to himself in his heart.

This was no longer a Realm that those who had just started learning Traditional Martial Arts could understand.

Those who had just started practicing martial arts lacked sufficient observational power, and they certainly weren't like Li Changsheng, an expert in Dark Qi.

They were still stuck in the concepts of "striking second to arrive first" and "striking first to gain the advantage" found in Chinese Kickboxing—that is, using small movements to intercept, and large movements to counterattack.

"Perhaps the next step is the Realm of 'The cicada knows of the autumn wind before it Moves' within Hua Jin."

Li Changsheng roughly understood why Elder Zhang didn't explain Hua Jin in detail, because this kind of feeling could not be explained in practice.

When you reach it, you reach it; if you haven't, you haven't. It is a transformation on a spiritual level, and this requires a Breakthrough in insight, just like right now.

One must reach the point where "When they Move slightly, I have already moved" and "the force is broken, but the intent remains continuous."

This was just a threshold leading to Hua Jin, and Li Changsheng had already achieved it at this moment.

"Thanks to my recent accumulation and my perception of my body."

Li Changsheng sighed softly. Mastering Dark Qi had strengthened his subtle perception of his body, and this high-frequency, extreme application of Dark Qi had allowed him the fortune to glimpse even more detailed movements of his body.

Combined with the human muscle kinesiology he had read about, many things reflected upon each other.

And with the memory solidification brought by the System, Li Changsheng could quickly absorb this knowledge and understand it thoroughly. By distinguishing the approximate weight of the human body through sound, he gradually had a grasp of the body's movement structure.

After multiple tests, he had reached a level of proficiency.