2: Chapter 2: A Family Heirloom Technique, Defeating the Enemy in One Strike

Chen Wu's knuckles rapped against the iron table in the interrogation room, creating a hollow echo. The scratches on the tabletop were embedded with years of coffee stains, showing a dark brown under the cold white light, looking exactly like the scorched decoction in his grandfather's medicine pot. He stared at the bruise on his wrist; that pale gold was slightly fluctuating with his heartbeat, as if something living was moving under his skin. The effects of the sedative injected three hours ago were wearing off, and a slight stinging pain came from the birthmark on the back of his neck, as if someone was gently poking it with a red-hot silver needle.

"Click."

The sound of a lighter opening and closing came from behind the one-way glass. Chen Wu didn't need to look up to know it was that old criminal police officer named Zhang Jianjun smoking. Two figures were faintly reflected on the frosted glass, and the shoulder straps of the young officer shimmered under the light, making one's eyes ache. He heard the other person say in a trembling voice, "Captain Lin, this isn't human physical capability at all! The forensic doctor said Yellow Hair's fourth rib has a spiral fracture, like it was... like it was twisted by a hydraulic press."

"Shh—" Zhang Jianjun's cigarette tip flickered, and Mars traced a half-arc on the glass. "The provincial department experts will arrive in ten minutes; keep a close eye on that tattoo on his right shoulder—"

"That's not a tattoo," Chen Wu suddenly spoke, his voice so low it was unfamiliar even to himself. He looked up and saw the young officer subconsciously take half a step back, his hand pressing on the sidearm at his waist. The gold pattern on his right shoulder was moving like a living thing now, casting complex patterns on the wall. That was the force circulation chart of the Surging Wave Hands, with every node marking the path of the human body's Meridians, like a dynamic martial arts secret scroll.

[System Prompt: Family Legacy martial art Surging Wave Hands analysis complete; 15 points required for completion]

Chen Wu blinked, and a data stream flashed across the edge of his retina, like the scratches on an old movie film. He remembered the yellowed paper his grandfather had stuffed into his hand before he died. Back then, the old man's coughed-up blood had dripped onto the four characters for "Waves Split in Three," the ink blurring into a dark red spiderweb. Looking at it now, it actually overlapped perfectly with the trajectory of the gold pattern before his eyes.

"Clang!"

The interrogation room's iron door was burst open, and a man in a white lab coat rushed in holding a tablet, followed by five SWAT officers armed with live ammunition. A pair of gold-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of the man's nose, behind which was a pair of bloodshot eyes. The ID badge on his chest read "Zhao Qiming, National Supernatural Phenomenon Research Institute," with three asterisks following the end of the ID number.

"Mr. Chen, I am Zhao Qiming." He spoke extremely fast, his fingertips sliding across the tablet as the convenience store surveillance footage lit up. "We have been tracking your abnormal energy reactions for seventy-two hours. Please cooperate—"

The footage suddenly switched to 0.25x slow motion. Chen Wu saw the moment he twisted his body and swung his palm, the air around his right hand actually rippled like water. Zhao Qiming switched to infrared imaging mode; the temperature curve of Chen Wu's palm soared to 127°C within 0.03 seconds, yet plummeted to 36.5°C the moment it touched the butterfly knife, as if a pause button had been pressed.

"This doesn't comply with the laws of thermodynamics," Zhao Qiming's voice carried an uncontrollable excitement. "Your skin tissue has no signs of burns, yet the muscle fibers produced high-frequency vibrations, as if... as if your palm turned into a high-frequency oscillating blade in an instant."

A piercing alarm suddenly sounded, and all electronic devices went black simultaneously. Chen Wu felt the sound of mechanical gears turning inside his skull, and a blood-red prompt box exploded on his retina, every pixel trembling violently:

[Forced Live Stream Trigger: Unveiling the Martial Dao Legacy]

[Live Stream Countdown: 03:00:00]

[Failure Penalty: Meridian Reversal]

Six spherical cameras suddenly descended from the interrogation room ceiling, their lenses flashing red like six crimson eyes. Chen Wu was horrified to find that even the SWAT officers' pupils were glowing with a faint blue light, and the data stream flowing on their irises showed the transmission frequency of the live stream signal—their eyeballs had actually been modified into living cameras.

"No... stop!" Chen Wu wanted to stand up, but found his limbs fixed to the chair by some invisible force. He could see his right hand rising uncontrollably, his fingers forming a strange posture with his palm facing the one-way glass. The gold pattern spread from his shoulder blade down his arm, gathering into a brilliant point of light at his fingertips.

Zhao Qiming suddenly held up the tablet, where the comment area was refreshing at a speed of a hundred thousand messages per second:

[NASA Engineer]: Look at the change in the air refractive index! Mach rings have appeared!

[Martial Arts Association Certification]: This is the lost Jianghuai Short-range Combat! A secret Legacy of the Green Gang during the Republican era!

[Anti-Fake Madman Xu Mang]: Trash! The police station is collaborating with scammers for a staged photo! I've already called the police!

"Mr. Chen, calm down!" Zhao Qiming lunged forward, trying to hold down Chen Wu's hand, but was repelled by an invisible air wave. The hem of his white coat fluttered, revealing a recording pen pinned inside.

"First Style, Overlapping Waves."

Chen Wu heard his own voice distorted by the System into a double-toned sound. The heat at his Dantian suddenly exploded, like lava surging up along his Ren Meridian. The intermittent mnemonics his grandfather said before dying were completed in his mind: "Qi flows through the Kidney Meridian of Foot-Shaoyin, force is released in triple Overlapping Waves. The first wave breaks the stance, the second wave destroys the form, the third wave... shatters the bones!"

The moment the palm wind struck the bulletproof glass, Chen Wu saw the air being compressed into a transparent cone, spreading outward with his palm as the apex. Three layers of tempered glass shattered in sequence, the cracks spreading in a radial pattern like a lake surface into which a stone had been thrown. The shockwave slammed into the concrete wall, producing a dull roar, leaving five clear palm prints on the wall. The indentations of each knuckle were five centimeters deep, and the exposed steel bars were still vibrating slightly.

[Surging Wave Hands completion 30%, cost 15 points]

Zhao Qiming knelt on one knee, scanning the indentations on the wall with his tablet, his voice carrying a trembling ecstasy: "The shockwave overlapped three times within 0.15 seconds, with the frequency increasing by 12 hertz each time. This is a perfect resonance model! Mr. Chen, the theoretical maximum output of this palm technique—"

"Now demonstrating the Second Style, Swirling Current."

Chen Wu's body suddenly levitated, his legs tracing arcs in mid-air. He felt a burning pain at his ankles and looked down to see faint blue electric arcs appearing on the surface of his skin. The air was ionized by high-speed friction, producing a crackling sound. This was not his own movement, but the System controlling his body, displaying a lost martial art like a marionette.

"Boom!"

The exhaust fan in the ceiling was torn down by the air vortex, its metal blades spinning and embedding into the floor, kicking up a shower of Mars. The live stream screen suddenly switched, inserting a piece of black-and-white footage: at a Shanghai dock in 1942, an old man in a gray robe performed a mid-air spinning kick, and a Japanese gunboat exploded beneath his feet. In the water spray, the same gold pattern as the one on Chen Wu's shoulder was faintly visible.

[Historical Record Unlocked: Chen Family participated in the Defense of Jinling]

[File Number: GW-0017, Recorded: December 1937]

The comment area suddenly fell into an eerie silence. Three seconds later, overwhelming question marks flooded the screen. At that moment, Chen Wu heard his grandfather's voice, clear words he had never heard in his memory: "Wu-wa, when the city of Nanjing fell, I used the Surging Wave Hands to blow the tracks off three Japanese tanks... Later, we were hunted by the Juntong, who said we were 'non-natural combat power'..."

"Xu Mang is requesting a video link!" Zhao Qiming's tablet emitted a notification sound, and the screen switched to a middle-aged man with a fleshy face standing in the center of a ring. Behind him was a banner for the "Chinese Traditional Martial Arts Anti-Fake Association." "Chen Wu! Tomorrow at noon, Nanshan Arena, do you dare to come? Don't think you can scam people with some parlor tricks. I've brought enough coffin money!"

A red warning popped up on Chen Wu's retina. In the bottom right corner of Xu Mang's live stream room, there was a hidden logo—a black gear surrounding a gold syringe, the exact same model as the one on the headset of the man in black from the rooftop last night. He wanted to open his mouth to refuse, but felt his throat locked by the System, only able to hear himself say in a mechanical voice: "Challenge accepted."

The lights in the interrogation room suddenly went out. The moment the emergency lights turned on, Chen Wu saw a dark shadow flash behind the one-way glass. It was a man in a black trench coat wearing a gas mask, the syringe in his hand sloshing with a pale gold liquid, the same model that appeared on the rooftop last night. The man held up a phone, the screen displaying the words "Era-Severing Program initiated," his lips curling into a cold arc.

"Mr. Chen!" Zhao Qiming grabbed Chen Wu's wrist. The temperature monitor showed his body temperature was dropping rapidly. "They want to erase you! Come with me, the Institute can protect—"

"Bang!"

The ceiling exploded violently, and over a dozen dark shadows descended from above, making a metallic clanging sound as they landed. Chen Wu saw those people wearing the same combat uniforms as the SWAT officers, but they wore no police badges. Printed on their left chest was not five stars, but crossed gears and scalpels. One of them raised a firearm, and what sprayed from the muzzle was not bullets, but a blue-glowing liquid like frozen lightning.

[Lethal threat detected, activating emergency defense]

Chen Wu's body reacted before his consciousness. The gold pattern swept across his entire body like flames. The moment his right palm pushed forward, the air was compressed into a physical wall of Qi. The blue liquid struck the Qi wall, making the sound of glass shattering and corroding sizzling, smoking pits into the floor. He heard the System prompt become sharp:

[Surging Wave Hands completion degree increased to 45%]

[Warning! Enemy is using a Gene Inhibitor; immediate evacuation recommended]

Zhao Qiming suddenly tore open his white coat, revealing a tactical vest inside. He pressed a remote on his waist, and a secret door opened in the floor. "Go! This is a secret passage leading to the Institute. They want to prevent the revival of ancient martial arts!"

In the moment Chen Wu hesitated, the live stream on his retina was suddenly split, and a small window popped up in the bottom right: a girl was standing at the convenience store entrance, holding a bag of newly bought instant noodles, her eyes full of worry. That was the high school student he had saved last night; her student ID read "Lin Xiaxia, Class 7, Grade 12 of No. 3 High School."

"Protect her," Chen Wu heard himself say, the gold pattern on his back gathering into a wing-shaped design. "Tell her... to look at her error notebook first for math problems."

The next second, he leaped into the secret door, with the angry roars of the men in black coming from behind him. A faint light appeared at the end of the passage. Zhao Qiming explained as he ran, "Three years ago, we monitored fluctuations in the ancient martial arts gene. Your grandfather was the last sample, but unfortunately, he hid himself too well..."

"My grandfather... how did he die?" Chen Wu grabbed the other man's collar and saw a flash of guilt in Zhao Qiming's eyes.

"Lung cancer was just the surface." Zhao Qiming opened a combination lock, revealing the laboratory inside. "He took Gene Inhibitors for thirty years. Those Chinese medicines were full of... I'm sorry, we thought the ancient martial arts Legacy had been severed."

In the glass cabinet in the center of the lab, half a roll of the yellowed Surging Wave Hands manual was on display, the very same book Chen Wu had seen since he was a child. The difference was that the manual here was complete, with every page marked with detailed Meridian charts and mechanical formulas. On the last page was a yellowed photograph—a young grandfather standing on the Jinling city walls with the burning wall behind him, his right shoulder also glowing with gold patterns, holding half a track from a Japanese tank in his hand.

[System Prompt: Found complete martial arts manual; completion degree increased to 60%]

[Consume 30 points to exchange for Iron Cloth Shirt (Trial Version)?]

Before Chen Wu could react, the secret door behind them suddenly exploded. Men in black rushed in, the syringes in their hands spraying a golden mist. Wherever it went, metal shelves rusted and peeled away. Zhao Qiming gave Chen Wu a push: "Go! Go to Nanshan Arena! They won't dare kill you during a live stream!"

As Chen Wu turned, he saw on the laboratory's surveillance screen that Xu Mang was pacing in the center of the ring, with "Anti-Fake Victory" scrolling on the LED screen behind him. The arena was surrounded by reporters carrying cameras, and several figures in black trench coats occasionally flashed through the crowd, the gear logos on their sleeves appearing and disappearing under the sunlight.

"Chen Wu!" Zhao Qiming threw over a USB drive. "Inside are all the ancient martial arts records and your grandfather's diary... If we fail, you must survive and let the Surging Wave Hands—"

Before he could finish, the golden mist had already enveloped them. The last thing Chen Wu saw was Zhao Qiming's white coat being corroded with holes, and the skin on his chest was aging at a speed visible to the naked eye, turning into a bark-like texture. He gripped the USB drive and leaped out of the laboratory's ventilation duct. The July sunlight was so bright it was hard to keep one's eyes open. The bell from the distant Nanshan Arena faintly reached him; it was twelve o'clock noon, and the countdown had begun.

The live stream screen on his retina lit up again, and the comment area was already exploding with "anticipation" and "anti-fake." Chen Wu touched the birthmark on the back of his neck, the gold pattern spreading along his fingers to his palm. He could hear his grandfather's voice echoing in his mind: "When the waves rise, heaven and earth are shaken."

The roar of a helicopter suddenly came from the direction of the arena. Chen Wu looked up and saw a black helicopter hovering in mid-air. The cabin door opened, and the man in black from last night was leaning out, the syringe in his hand reflecting cold light in the sun. On the ground, Lin Xiaxia stood at the edge of the crowd holding her schoolbag, her eyes full of worry.

[Live stream viewers exceed fifty million; obtained passive buff: reaction speed +5%]

Chen Wu took a deep breath, his tongue pressed against his upper palate, emitting a low hum similar to ocean waves. He could feel the heat at his Dantian gathering, the gold pattern emerging from under his skin, shining in the sun like real scales. The distant clock tower struck twelve, and Xu Mang's shouting came through the loudspeakers, only to be drowned out by the sudden explosion of gasps from the crowd.

Because they saw that man in the cheap shirt walking slowly toward the arena over broken glass and steel bars, every step leaving a faint gold pattern on the ground, like the first spray of the terrifying waves about to set off a mad tide of the entire era.