Horse stance
He Tianshu brought Zhang Xiaohua to a s.p.a.cious area and asked, “Xiaohua, I have heard that you have no experience in martial arts.”
Zhang Xiaohua nodded his head and replied, “Yes, I have not learnt any before.”
He Tianshu asked again, “You strength is quite good right.”
Zhang Xiaohua nodded again and said, “Yes, I did not realize it before but ever since the New Year, my strength have grown larger and larger. I even lift a stone weight in the Lotus escort which people said as five hundred jin heavy.”
He Tianshu said, “Good, now try and throw a punch towards me.”
Zhang Xiaohua pondered and asked, “With all my strength?”
He Tianshu said, “Yes, it is alright. Use your full power and don’t be afraid of hurting me.”
Zhang Xiaohua replied, “Understood, please be careful.”
After he replied, Zhang Xiaohua took a deep breath, summoned all the energy in his body, raised his right fist and threw it toards He Tianshu’s body. He Tianshu saw the oncoming fist and lifted his right palm to face the punch, but he only used twenty percent of his strength thinking that it was more than sufficient.
When the two people’s hands collided, He Tianshu realized his mistake and immediately increased his defense by thirty percent of his full strength before deflecting this punch of Zhang Xiaohua. His body shook a little and his right wrist trembled in numbness while he thought inside, “This Xiaohua truly contains five hundred jin of strength, he is a genius in strength after all.”
Zhang Xiaohua was even more surprised as he thought, “Oh wow, squad leader He is truly awesome. I threw all my power into that fist but his body only shook a little, the difference in knowing and not knowing martial arts is really vast. This cannot do, I must put in my best effort to learn martial arts as well.”
H Tianshu’ right arm was still sore and numb so he could not lift it up easily. He used his left arm to ma.s.sage it gently and when he saw Zhang Xiaohua’s blatant expression of worship, he was too awkward to continue tending to the pain. Thus, he wrinkled his brow and praised, “Not bad, Xiaohua, your strength is really not small.”
He then patted Zhang Xiaohua’s shoulders, stretched his own shoulders and said, “Now I will begin to teach you martial arts.”
Zhang Xiaohua nodded his head excitedly and said, “Thank you, squad leader He.’”
He Tianshu smiled and then adopted the horse stance, he said, “Watch my position and learn from it. This is called the horse stance. Come, you try it as well.”
Zhang Xiaohua observed He Tianshu’s posture and followed his actions. He Tianshu stood up and corrected Zhang Xiaohua’s errors before saying, “Good, just do it like this. From today onwards, you will do this for two hours. Continue in this posture and I will come back later.”
After saying his sentence, he left without looking back.
Zhang Xiaohua;s head was a ma.s.s of fog, his heart was screaming out non-stop, martial arts, I want to learn martial arts, and I want to learn to punch, why did you make me do this posture and leave?
He Tianshu walked past the outer door and turned back to look at Zhang Xiaohua who was performing the horse stance. With a step, he jumped above and to the other side of the wall and into the darkness, pressed on his arm while breathing cold air through his mouth. He muttered under his breath, “This little brat, where did he get so much strength from? Seems that it is not just five hundred jin, sigh. Carelessness, carelessness, I almost made a fool of myself. The saying goes: a boat can topple even in a sewer. I definitely cannot give him another chance and beat this kid up well. i will first let him stand like that and kill his esteem until his legs are sore and pain.”
A slight fear pervaded his head as he looked at Zhang Xiaohua before he regained his senses and returned to his room.
Under the light of the oil lamp, he could see that the area below his palm was starting to bruise. He Tianshu could not help but be surprised, he took some medicated oil and rolled on the affected area while he pondered. Honestly, when he first received instructions from young lady Ou, he was reluctant to follow them. He has seen Zhang Xiaohua since the latter’s first day, and his opinion was that he was a simple and honest boy who was inexperienced with the world and hence bullied by the other servants. Even though he felt some pity, it was a normal human emotion and the boy had no relations to him so he was willing to leave it at there. About the matter of teaching a servant martial arts, even though Huanxi mountain villa had no precedence, the villa master had already instructed him so he could do it casually, who couldn’t do some superficial martial arts movement? However, Ou Yan seemed to have saw through his insincerity and had let him know that Zhang Xiaohua could summon five hundred jin of strength in a single arm. Now that he has experienced it firsthand, he felt guilty for not believing the villa owner, and realized that he was actually a frog in its well.
Hence, after some consideration, He Tianshu extinguished the idea of teaching Zhang Xiaohua some superficial martial arts. Instead, he would build a firm foundation by making him do the horse stance, which was also probably the intention of the villa master. Otherwise, she could have just gotten any of his subordinates to teach the boy martial arts, why asked him personally instead?
Seeing the time, He Tianshu got ready to stand up and return to see Zhang Xiaohua’s pitiful figure. When he thought of the first time he did the horse stance, and that wolf of an instructor, he felt fear crawling through his bones. Thus, he sat back down and rubbed his hand which no longer hurt, hehe, he smiled. He would let Zhang Xiaohua suffer a bit more, who asked the boy to make him lose face? If he did not get even, how would he be qualified to be the boy’s master?
However, it never crossed his mind that he was the one who instructed the other party to use his full strength while he used only half of his.
After another bag of smoke worth of time, He Tianshi felt ashamed of himself. Forget it, he would hurry back. It was the boy’s first time learning martial arts, he should not go too far and make the boy lose interest in the lessons, otherwise he would not be able to face the vill master.
When He Tianshu walked back to where Zhang Xiaohua was, the scene that greeted him made him surprised. Zhang Xiaohua was not what he imagined the boy would end up as, rolling on the flow like a bag of mud, or shivering in pain as though he twisted his bone and was waiting pitifully to be saved from his situation.
Instead, Zhang Xiaohua’s horse stance posture was steady and firm just as how he left him.
He Tianshu also felt joy in his heart, how could this brat be just like him, trying to cheat his teacher but did not even know how to cover up his tracks properly. How can someone hold in the horse stance without feeling sore in his legs, the boy should at least give him some face and pretend to be in pain right?
However, as he thought back to his youth and then to his master, He Tianshu did not point out Zhang Xiaohua’s “attempt to cheat”.
When Zhang Xiaohua heard He Tianshu returned, he turned his head and asked in concern, “Squad leader He, why did you take so long to come back? Was there something wrong in the food tonight, did your stomach hurt?”
Then, he said while ignoring the other party, “This Huanxi mountain villa is good in every way, except that there are too few latrines. Every day one would need to queue up to go to the latrine, we will need to point out this reasonable suggestion to elder Yu one day so that our living environment will improve, and that will improve our work efficiency as well.”
Then, Zhang Xiaohua seemed to have thought of something and he said mysteriously to He Tianshu, “Oh right, squad leader He. If you have such a problem in the future, you can just go to the fields and not queue there stupidly. That is what I would do when I was at home, the sky is already so dark so n.o.body would catch you. Furthermore, wont that thing be helpful to plants’ growth? You will be doing a service to the mountain villa by doing so.”
“Dang” He Tianshu fell onto the ground. Zhang Xiaohua urgently asked, “Squad leader He, squad leader He, are you alright?”
Zhang Xiaohua seemed to want to go over to help He Tianshu up, but because the latter had not given him the permission to do so, he was still holding the horse stance posture and did not dare to relax his body.
He Tianshu flipped like a carp and stood back up. He snapped back, “Its nothing, I just stood on dog poo.”
Zhang Xiaohua replied, “Oh, so it was like this. Haha, this dog too, why did it not go to the field to do its business because that would save us some trouble as well. Oh right, squad leader He, your movement just now was really cool, when will you teach that to me?”
He Tianshu smiled and said, “No problem, that was called flipping carp, you will learn it one day.”
Zhang Xiaohua was surprised, he said, “I was referring to the way you fall, that was called flipping carp? That name is indeed quite weird.”
He Tianshu was stunned for a while.
He walked to Zhang Xiaohua’s front, back and sides returned to the front again and said, “Xiaohua, your memory is pretty good. After cheating to rest for so long, you could still return to the exact same position that I taught you earlier. Not bad at all. We will end here for today and continue this tomorrow morning.”
After finishing his sentence, he walked off without waiting for Zhang XIaohua to respond, and even yawned as he walked.
He Tianshu thought in his heart, this little brat’s answer was as cool as the answer I gave in the past, and he asked without turning his head, “Are your legs sore? Can you still walk?”
After he finished his sentence, he increased his pace and disappeared back into his room while thinking, “The feeling of having a student is quite fun after all. Wasn’t my teacher smiling like this in the past as well when he walked back to his room?” His face turned red as he got back to his room and thought of his fear of being caught by his master for cheating and being too embarra.s.sed to even lift his head to face him. Now that he thought about it, his master probably knew that he had cheated but chose to ignore it instead. Because of his master’s decision, it gave him the will to put in more effort in his training, so he was sure that Zhang Xiaohua was feeling the same and would be more hardworking the next morning.
However, he did not hear Zhang Xiaohua’s answer which vastly differed from his youth, “Sore legs? My legs are not sore at all. Squad leader He, I am not tired at all and of course I can walk. Don’t run, didn’t you say that you will teach me martial arts? Quickly teach me some fist stance, I am really not tired and can still punch.”
Unfortunately, He Tianshu did not hear any of his words, whereas Zhang Xiaohua praised under his breath, “What cool qinggong.” Thus, Zhang Xiaohua returned back to his room along to begin his next battle with the foot stench.