Chapter 8: Congratulatory Feast!

"Now this, is the 32nd form of defensive stance! If you change your step just a little bit to the left, and twist your body to the right, you can immediately counter any attacks from the front and back!" explained Meng Yue as she demonstrated the feasibility of stances combination.

Duan Li, whom have followed the lesson for about three hours by now, were getting the hang of it.

"With this one, I should have already memorized exactly 89 stances now..." said Duan Li, his face flushed, feeling somewhat tired.

Mother... I know that you are excited to impart all your stances technique to me, but I am hungry now and tired...

In the end, after another one round of rigorous stances impartation, Duan Li had finally learnt a total of 14 attack stances, 44 defensive stances and 31 supportive stances.

Not to mention, with a total of 416 possible stances combination!

"Haa..." Duan Li exhaled.

Reviewing all the stances in his head, it seems like his mother is very adapt in defensive and countering techniques judging from all the stances that he had learned. Duan Li could also better understood what these stances could do now.

Firstly, as the name suggest, attacking stances are used to properly adjust one's own body to prepare for doing an attack. Defensive stances on the other hand, are both a neutral stance and for guarding against attacks. Meanwhile, supportive stances are used to chain in between attack and defensive stances, while also for counter-attacking as well.

"It is impressive for you to be able to memorize and practice about 70 percent of my total stances so quickly... how cheating..." sighed his mother helplessly. She knew that with the help of the quick memorization ability, her son would definitely be able to soar through greater heights. But at the same time, she felt a little bit jealous as well.

"Did you know that mother had to spend perhaps seven years to master all those stances to the adept level? And another three years for most of them to the master level..." she continued while shaking her head. To think that almost ten years of her life was wasted into training diligently. Yet here, her own son had just achieved almost the same thing within just ten hours.

Truly cheating.

"What about the pinnacle level? Did mother perhaps have any martial arts trained to the pinnacle?" asked Duan Li curiously.

"Naturally! Your mother here had spent another three years to practice some of them to their pinnacle level!" his mother said proudly as she puffed her chest out.

"You had to be careful though Duan Li. Although you seemed to have reached the adept level on those stances that I have taught you, as someone who is experienced in it, I could see that they are actually quite brittle and have no power to them." she warned.

"It should be fine though if you were to duel between fellow juniors, but for seniors and teachers, especially the elders at the academy, they would be able to see right through the flaw of your stances!" she added.

"Is that so... no wonder my body felt it to be quite awkward even if I had mimicked the movements perfectly..." replied Duan Li seeming to understood.

"Exactly! This is because of the natural phenomena called 'muscle memory'! Your muscle takes time to integrate these movements along with the appropriate force to be distributed into it. For you today, you have only just learnt of their movements and had not yet experienced using it in battles. Thus, they are extremely weak and is just the proper form of it." she nodded.

"However, since we don't have time for some proper training session, I think that what you have learnt so far should already be enough for now. Some people might call you a genius starting tomorrow, but considering your age... I doubt they would feel any different than looking at their seniors from you... hehe." she said, giggling.

Hearing this, Duan Li suddenly felt a little bit demotivated.

"Haa... that's right... all my classmate should be way younger than me..." Duan Li sighed as his shoulders dropped down weakly.

Right now, Duan Li is already 21 years old, compared to his future classmates, they should be well around 16 years old!

Duan Li face palmed himself as he imagined what a scene he will have to undergo tomorrow...

...

The next day...

- Swish!

The lithe and gentle flow of the translucent white curtain of Duan Li's bedroom danced around ever so gracefully as cool air entered through his window.

"Yawnnnn~"

Duan Li woke up with a gentle morning stretch as always. He patted his bed after he fixed the blankets and pillows nicely and thought, "From today onwards, I wouldn't be able to sleep on this bed as frequently as I did before..." he sighed.

Students of the Jixue Knights Academy had to live in their own respective room at the dormitories. They could only go back home twice a week during the weekend.

The reason for this was because, the Jixue Knights Academy was quite far, more than 1000 km away from the Xuan village. The only method of transportation that was fast and viable enough would be through the air, using the public transport called the 'Airtrain'.

These Airtrains would go around in a predetermined routes in a constant loop, using floating rails up in the air as its tracks. They are unmanned and operated entirely by magic inscriptions to arrive at their destination within fixed set intervals.

For villages, their routes are located in between the other villages where the stops are shared by many people. These routes then travelled through the centre of many towns along the way. Finally, it will reach the capital city of the Jiu Empire, Nine Lotuses City, where the Jixue Knights Academy was located.

Thinking up to here, Duan Li then remembered about the haughty young man called Li Feng whom he had crippled the other day.

"That Li Feng fellow came here in the Xuan village two days ago... isn't that during the final days of the weekend? What did he meant when he said he fell asleep the day before that and getting scolded..." thought Duan Li in contemplation as he fixed his uniform.

"Ahh... he must be on detention during the first day of the weekend then!" he said, after coming to the conclusion that it should be the case for that troublemaker.

- Knock! Knock!

"Young man, are you ready yet? Come and have breakfast with your mother here first before you go!" called out his mother outside the door of his room.

"Okay mother, just a minute!" replied Duan Li as he hastened himself.

...

- Burrpp!

"Mother... I wouldn't be able to finish them all…" burped Duan Li as he touched his ballooning stomach. His mother had somehow decided to overcook today.

"Hehe! This will be my congratulatory feast for your successful enrolment to the academy starting today!" said his mother with a big smile along with her adorable baby face.

Looking at that smile and the effort his mother had put into the breakfast, Duan Li's heart was filled with warmth. He then looked at the remaining dishes and a determined glint shone in his eyes.

"Just three more portion to finish!" he said in his mind as he steeled himself.

After a long battle of wits between barfing them out and eating more, Duan Li had finally managed to stuff himself with all the food that his mother prepared. He was so full to the point that if he tried to move just for a bit, he would barfed out everything to the floor.

"This is bad..." he said to himself, feeling worried. His mother had put a lot of love into that dishes, if he were to puke them out, he would never forgive himself!

He closed his eyes to think for a solution as his view turned into that of the see-through state.

"Hmm... maybe..."

Duan Li then focused his gaze onto his stomach and found out that it was really filled to the brim. Subconsciously, he thought in his mind for his stomach to 'digest faster!'.

To his astonishment, his stomach started to churn rapidly as if its contents was being sucked into the void by vacuum. It then formed into a clump of blue-ish mist, as it flowed slowly downwards about four inches to an empty region and swirled around before slowly disappearing.

Realizing how bizarre this phenomena is, he opened his eyes and turned towards his mother.

"Mother, all the food that I just ate transformed into a blue-ish mist before being sucked down and disappeared around here..." he explained while pointing out to the part where it dissipated.

"Oh? That area? Isn't that the Dantian?" answered his mother.

"Dantian? What is that?" asked Duan Li seeming unaware of the term used.

"Seriously? You don't even know what a Dantian is?" his mother replied as she rolled her eyes.

...