12: Chapter 12 Quantum Hearing Skill: When Martial Arts Break Down the Wall of Science

At 3 AM in a Tokyo rental house, Lin Xiaochuan’s phone screen was blindingly bright. As a somewhat famous "tactical analysis uploader" in the MMA circle, his Twitter homepage had been flooded with the hashtag #ChenWuHoax# for seventy-two hours—NASA's geothermal anomaly report had been turned into a meme (captioned "Chen Wu’s Internal Energy = Earth’s Fever"), the Tyson team’s 132-frame image tampering analysis had over a hundred million retweets, and even the pet blogger he followed posted: "So 'Internal Energy' is just a new filter for photo editing software?"

"Ding-dong—" A WeChat notification sounded; it was a voice message from Xu Hao, with the crisp sound of glass shattering in the background: "Xiaochuan, help me check the movements of Rex's team! They bought a private jet to the Antarctic and brought nano-bombs!"

Lin Xiaochuan’s fingers paused. He had met Xu Hao three times, all backstage at Chen Wu’s livestreams—the manager who was always frowning and constantly talking about "Brother Wu" now had a sob in his voice: "The sponsors have all withdrawn, the tips from the Kepler Council of Elders have been frozen, and even Brother Wu’s Public Welfare Foundation is being questioned for money laundering!"

The phone suddenly vibrated as Chen Wu’s Moments updated—a photo of a bronze tripod with the caption: "It's a windy day, perfect for brewing tea."

Lin Xiaochuan stared at the taotie pattern on the tripod in the photo, suddenly recalling Chen Wu’s Antarctic livestream from three months ago: a faint glow from the bronze tripod enveloped his palm, and schools of fish beneath the ice suddenly leaped out of the water. When Chen Wu said, "Listening Energy is not sensing muscles, but hearing the vibration of all things," there were stars twinkling in his eyes.

"Maybe... he wasn't lying?" Lin Xiaochuan whispered to the screen, but the next second, a Twitter notification popped up: [Iron Fist Adam: $12 million crowdfunded, cracking Chen Wu’s livestream signal source tomorrow!]

He turned off his phone and looked out at the Tokyo Tower, suddenly feeling that in this hurricane of public opinion, everyone was an ant—including Chen Wu.

The virtual meeting room on the dark web had no windows, and the dome was a flow of binary code. Rex’s prosthetic eye flickered with a ghostly blue light as his mechanical arm tapped on the obsidian tabletop, and twelve holographic screens lit up simultaneously:

• Coordinates of the Chen Wu clone cryo-pod (Antarctic ice field, error ±500 meters);

• Molecular formula of the body tempering pill: C₇H₁₀N₄O₂S₂ (Note: Long-term consumption induces brain necrosis);

• 3D map of the Antarctic base (red arrow pointing to the "Anti-Gravity Engine Power Room").

"Everyone's implants received the 'gift,' right?" Rex’s voice sounded like sandpaper scraping against a steel plate. "This is the pledge of loyalty from 'Grey Shadow'—as long as we kill Chen Wu, the say in the Fighting League belongs to us."

UFC Heavyweight Champion Kane crushed his titanium alloy wine glass, the liquid freezing into ice shards between his mechanical fingers: "That fraud is using nuclear waste to fake Internal Energy? I’m going to smash his bronze tripod into scrap metal!"

K-1 champion Yana’s mechanical legs crushed the floor tiles, and the holographic screen showed nano-bombs implanted in her spine: "Tomorrow at 4 AM, before the Antarctic polar day ends, we storm the base. Let the global audience see his clones and see that his 'Internal Energy' is just nuclear radiation pollution!"

Rex’s prosthetic eye turned toward the star map on the virtual dome—Orion’s Belt was directly aligned with the Antarctic: "Use science to defeat science. His 'Listening Energy' is photoshopped, his bronze tripod is 3D printed, his 'Internal Energy' is nuclear waste... We want the whole world to know that martial arts is a scam, and only mechanical modification is the future!"

The meeting room door suddenly opened, and a virtual wind carrying a metallic scent rushed in. Rex’s prosthetic eye captured the figure at the door—it was his private doctor, holding Chen Wu’s blood test report: "Boss, there are muon decay products in Chen Wu’s blood! These are traces of a nuclear reactor!"

Kane slapped the table and laughed: "He really is a fraud! Using nuclear waste as 'Internal Energy,' isn't he afraid of radiating himself to death?"

A cruel smile tugged at the corner of Rex’s mouth: "Tomorrow, we’ll 'disinfect' him."

On the third underground floor of the Beijing National Security Bureau, Lin Xue’s fingertips danced across the brain-computer interface as Chen Wu’s physiological data flowed across her retina like a waterfall:

• Heart rate frequency: 50Hz (resonating with the global power grid);

• Blood composition: Muon decay products (concentration equivalent to the soil surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant);

• Dantian temperature curve: T(t)=T₀e^(-λt) cos(ωt) (Quantum damped vibration model, 99.9% fit).

"Sister Xue, news from the Fighting League—Rex’s team will surround the Antarctic base at four tomorrow." The intern, Xiao Zhou, came in carrying hot coffee; seeing the formula on the screen, he almost dropped his cup. "This Dantian temperature... is it a quantum harmonic oscillator?"

Lin Xue disconnected the brain-computer interface and rubbed her aching temples: "More than that. 39% of his livestream signal source is on non-terrestrial frequency bands. After the Antarctic incident, there have been 1,423 new cases of 'Internal Energy Awakening' worldwide—these people can all perceive the vibration of objects, exactly the same as Chen Wu’s 'Listening Energy.'"

"Then he’s... an esper?" Xiao Zhou’s voice trembled.

Lin Xue opened a replay of Chen Wu’s livestream—in front of the bronze tripod, Chen Wu’s palm was pressed against the ice, and the fish beneath the ice suddenly swam toward him, the ripples in the footage looking as if they were being smoothed by an invisible hand: "It's not a superpower. It's Quantum Listening Force—he can perceive the quantum state fluctuations of objects and use Internal Energy to change them."

"Quantum state fluctuations?" Xiao Zhou scratched his head. "Then his 'Listening Energy' is... the observer effect?"

Lin Xue suddenly stood up, knocking over the coffee on the table. The coffee liquid splashed onto the data screen but didn't short-circuit—because the screen was displaying quantum state data: "If his quantum state collapses, the entire Antarctic will be blown into a crater ten kilometers in diameter. He's not a fraud... he's a walking nuclear bomb."

"Then should we notify him?" Xiao Zhou asked anxiously. "Rex’s team brought nano-bombs!"

Lin Xue grabbed the chip from the table and plugged it into the brain-computer interface. Chen Wu’s real-time location was jumping on the Antarctic ice field, and the resonance frequency of the bronze tripod suddenly spiked—matching the ω value she had detected earlier!

"It's too late." Lin Xue cut the power, and the screen plunged into darkness. "He already knew."

In the final hour of the Antarctic polar day, the sunlight sliced across the ice field at an angle, casting long shadows of Rex’s team.

Kane’s titanium alloy gloves scraped against the ice, making a piercing sound: "This fraud’s base doesn't even have a door? Just a broken bronze tripod?"

Yana’s mechanical eye scanned the bronze tripod—the body was carved with taotie pattern from the era of Qin Shi Huang, and the lid shimmered with a bronze-colored glow: "A broken bronze tripod is the entrance? I'll kick it to pieces!"

She raised her mechanical leg, just about to kick out, when suddenly—

The temperature of the entire Antarctic ice field plummeted! The lid of the bronze tripod slowly rose, Chen Wu’s livestream room was forcibly opened, and every social media screen across the globe was taken over—from the giant screens in Times Square, New York, to the advertisement screens in Tokyo subways, to the smartphones in African villages, all showed Chen Wu’s face.

The camera looked down at the twelve cyborgs; thermal imaging showed the red light of nano-bombs in their skeletons pulsing like beating hearts.

"Welcome to my teaching demonstration," Chen Wu’s voice came from the livestream, carrying a metallic quality. "Today, I will teach you the quantized application of Listening Energy."

Rex’s prosthetic eye suddenly overloaded—the moment Chen Wu stepped out of the bronze tripod, a bronze-colored glow enveloped his body like a flowing quantum cloud.

"No—" Rex shouted, but it was already too late.

Chen Wu’s gaze swept over Kane’s gloves. The titanium alloy suddenly began to melt, the liquid metal flowing down through the gaps in his fingers, splashing sparks onto the ice. Kane screamed as he shook his arm, only to find that the molten metal seemed alive, crawling up his mechanical arm!

[part:gemini-3.1-flash-lite]

"Nanobots?" Chen Wu watched the nanobots wriggling on Yana's body and tapped his fingertip lightly. A weak force field expanded from him as the center, instantly dismantling the nanobots into quark soup—a "soup" that couldn't even be considered particles—which evaporated into white mist on the ice.

"The weak force is a short-range force." Chen Wu's voice seemed to seep out from a quantum cloud, "But it's enough to deal with your toys."

Rex's mechanical arm swung towards Chen Wu but suddenly froze in mid-air. On his retina, the countdown for the implanted bomb was flickering: t = ℏ / E.

"This is your bomb's countdown." Chen Wu's fingertip pointed at Rex's chest, "ℏ is the Planck constant, and E is the bomb's energy. Now—"

He exhaled gently, and the countdown suddenly froze at "3".

Cold sweat rolled down Rex's mechanical mask: "You... you can manipulate quantum states?"

"Not manipulate." Chen Wu pressed his palms down in the air, and the ice beneath the twelve people suddenly became transparent—hundreds of clones lay in cryo-pods, the frost on the glass slowly melting, and their eyes opened simultaneously!

"It is Listening Energy." Chen Wu's voice echoed in the livestream, "Listening Energy isn't about sensing muscle strength; it's about hearing the quantum vibrations of all things. Your implants, your bombs, your conspiracies... to my ears, they are all clear waves."

Kane's mechanical arm suddenly shattered, metal fragments splashing onto the ice: "You knew we were coming?"

"I knew from the moment you received the gift from 'Grey Shadow'." Chen Wu pointed to the holographic screen, where the coordinates of Chen Wu's clones popped up—a red dot appeared exactly on Rex's holographic screen, "The coordinates 'Grey Shadow' gave you were leaked by me on purpose."

Rex's cybernetic eye suddenly went black. He collapsed to the ground, his mechanical arm's joints making a clicking sound: "Why?"

"Because I want the whole world to know." Chen Wu turned and walked towards the bronze tripod, sunlight passing through the quantum cloud and casting mottled light upon him, "The Dao of Martial Arts is not a scam; it is a truth that science has yet to catch up with."

The livestream's comment feed was cleared, leaving only a single line of golden announcement: [Teaching Demonstration: Quantum Application of Listening Energy]

Chen Wu stood before the bronze tripod, placing his palm against the body of the tripod. The holographic screen displayed a formula: F_Listening Energy = ∫ ψ* Ĥ ψ dτ

"This is the quantum expression for Listening Energy." Chen Wu's voice sounded like he was teaching an ordinary physics class, "ψ is the quantum state wave function of an object, Ĥ is the Hamiltonian operator, and the integral is a traversal over the entire space. Simply put—I can hear your quantum state and use Internal Energy to change it."

Rex's team suddenly became restless. Yana's mechanical leg tried to step back, but she found the ice surface stuck to her foot like glue: "You... what are you going to do?"

"Don't be impatient." Chen Wu's gaze swept across the twelve people, "I have another gift for you."

He pressed his palms down in the air, and the ice layer suddenly became transparent. The clones in the cryo-pods sat up; their faces were identical to Chen Wu's, and their eyes shimmered with a bronze-colored light.

"These are my clones." Chen Wu said, "Grey Shadow says I use clones to fake 'immortality'? That's correct. But they don't know that the clones are my 'quantum backups'—if I die, they will inherit my Listening Energy and continue the path."

Rex's cybernetic eye regained its vision. He stared at the clones in the cryo-pods and suddenly laughed, his laughter sounding like tearing metal: "You think this can scare us? I'm going to blow up this base!"

He pressed the button on his wrist, and the red light of the nanobomb suddenly flared. But the next second—

On Chen Wu's retina, the countdown turned into the reciprocal of t = ℏ / E. He shook his head gently: "Too late."

The red light of the nanobomb suddenly extinguished. Rex's mechanical arm frantically slapped his own chest: "Why? Why didn't it explode?"

"Because I changed its quantum state." Chen Wu's finger drew a circle in the air, and the weak force field expanded again, "The bomb's energy E has been converted by me into vibrational energy—now, it's just a piece of useless metal."

The twelve cybernetically modified humans knelt down simultaneously. Kane's mechanical mask opened, revealing a face covered in sweat: "We admit defeat... please let us go."

Chen Wu's gaze swept across the clones in the cryo-pods and he said softly: "Get out. Tell the Fighting League that the Dao of Martial Arts is not a zero-sum game."

Before the Fighting League's official website crashed, the final announcement popped up: [Announcement of Forfeit] 1. Rex's team collectively withdraws from the professional league; 2. The $10 million bounty is donated to the "Public Welfare Foundation"; 3. Attached is a handwritten note from Chen Wu: "The Dao of Martial Arts is not a scam; it is the future of science."

Late at night on the Antarctic ice sheet, Chen Wu sat before the bronze tripod, wiping the engravings on the Qin Dynasty Jade Slip. The small seal script on the Jade Slip, "Receive the Mandate from Heaven," glowed with a cyan light, and the System suddenly emitted a sharp alarm: [Detected "Grey Shadow" signal source—originating from the quantum chip within the Jade Slip's molecular bonds!]

[Information Decrypted: The activator of the bronze tripod is the destroyer of the world—Chen Wu died in 219 BC]

Chen Wu's fingers paused. He recalled the scene three months ago when he found this Jade Slip inside the bronze tripod unearthed from the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum in Xi'an—the inside of the tripod lid was engraved with: "Alchemist Chen Wu, under the order of the First Emperor to seek the elixir of life, died in the East Sea."

"219 BC... I died in the East Sea?" Chen Wu chuckled, his fingertip tapping the Jade Slip, the micro-light of the quantum chip dancing within the engravings, "But am I not perfectly fine right now?"

The System's alarm sounded again: [Clone No. XV cryo-pod opening!]

Chen Wu looked up at the space beneath the ice. The hatch of Clone No. XV slowly opened, and a person identical to him sat up, eyes shimmering with a bronze-colored light.

"Hello." Clone No. XV spoke, its voice identical to Chen Wu's, "I am your quantum backup."

Chen Wu stood up and walked towards the clone. In the cryo-pods beneath the ice, hundreds of clones opened their eyes simultaneously, the bronze-colored light merging into one, like the Antarctic aurora.

"A new era is coming." Chen Wu reached out, and Clone No. XV grasped his hand; the two quantum states underwent Fusion the moment they touched, "Grey Shadow thought they could control me... but they didn't know that the end of the Dao of Martial Arts is quantum immortality."

The sound of machinery running came from the distant ice sheet. Chen Wu gazed at the horizon, and the quantum chip inside the Jade Slip suddenly emitted a strong light—

[Information Updated: The activator of the bronze tripod is the initiator of the new era—Chen Wu, born in 259 BC, died in...]

The System's notification sound was drowned out by the wind. Chen Wu let go of the clone's hand and walked towards the bronze tripod. The lid of the tripod rose slowly, and the micro-light inside wrapped around his body like a quantum coat.

"It's time to go." He said softly.

The clones beneath the ice stood up simultaneously, following him towards the bronze tripod. The Antarctic aurora danced in the sky, and the bronze-colored light intertwined with the aurora, like a grand farewell.

In a Tokyo rental apartment, Lin Xiaochuan stared at his phone screen. In the replay of Chen Wu's livestream, the clones followed Chen Wu into the bronze tripod, and a line of text popped up at the end of the screen: [Next livestream: Teaching you how to hear the quantum sound.]

The Tokyo Tower outside the window suddenly lit up, its lights flickering like quantum fluctuations. Lin Xiaochuan touched his wrist—three days ago, he had suddenly been able to hear the vibration of his watch, not the mechanical ticking, but the waves of quantum states.

"So... am I also an Awakened one?" He whispered to the screen.

The phone suddenly vibrated; it was a message from Xu Hao: "Xiaochuan, Brother Wu said he's teaching 'Introduction to Listening Energy' in tomorrow's livestream. Do you want to come and be an assistant?"

Lin Xiaochuan's fingers moved rapidly: "I'm coming!"

He looked up out the window; in the night sky of Tokyo, a shooting star streaked across. It was Chen Wu's bronze tripod, carrying the micro-light of quantum states, flying towards the Universe.

The new era is coming.