Stepping into the martial arts club, he was just looking at the scattered crowd before his brain automatically picked out Yan Zheke's figure from them. The girl just happened to look towards his direction too, and when their eyes met they smiled warmly and sweetly at each other.
Yan Zheke bit her bottom lip softly with her teeth, and she opened the pocket button on her martial arts suit and took out her cell phone. She lowered her head, combed through her hair and typed quickly over the phone for a brief moment.
"Di..." The beep of a QQ message came from Lou Cheng's pockets, and as if realizing something he took out his phone with a smile on his face. When he unlocked his phone and took a look, he discovered that it was sent by the girl as he had expected.
"The fresh cream cake was delicious," Yan Zheke said.
"As long as you're satisfied." Lou Cheng was filled with a sense of accomplishment. "The meat floss bread you selected is perfect too!"
Yan Zheke used a "panda scratching its head" emoji and said, "The only problem is that I had to brush my teeth one more time!"
"Why do you need to brush your teeth one more time?" Lou Cheng sent her a "bewildered and confused" emoji.
"Guess~~ I'm going to put my stuff now!" Yan Zheke closed her cell phone, looked with curved eyes and a faint smile on her face before heading into the female locker room along with Guo Qing. She was going to lock her cell phone, other items she carried with her, and spare clothes into her locker.
"Guess? Could it be that she had to brush her teeth a second time because she ate too many sweets? Or did she eat some after she brushed her teeth last night because she failed to resist temptation? But she hadn't brought this up while we were chatting that time..." Lou Cheng stepped into the male's locker room while he was using his imagination.
Since they had a match later this afternoon, the level of intensity of today's special training was reduced, with a focus on maintaining their form. In fact, pair exercise was canceled in the end.
Geezer Shi gathered all members at one spot, curled his lips and said, "Songcheng University seriously is stingy, giving such a small amount of subsidy. A better martial arts school would have nurtured sparring partners of all styles so that the participants could undergo targeted training before a match. We though, hehe, could only rely on our mouths!"
If the Martial Arts Club's members were to act as sparring partners, the effects of a targeted training would be lost because the characteristics of their kungfu were similar to each other.
"If only there is a supernatural ability that could create a corresponding battle figure just through verbalization..." Cai Zongming muttered in a small voice.
Lou Cheng cast a glance at him and ridiculed him with a soft laugh. "If there is such a thing then you would be amazing. The Talker has arrived, and then who dares stand against the Talker!?"
"Unfortunately, God did not give me this chance." Cai Zongming sighed with relative regret.
Geezer Shi coughed twice and said, "The kids who aren't leading players and substitutes of the preliminaries may leave now. Those who are willing to watch the match may wait by the bus station at one thirty. Li Xiaowen, we'll not have any audience since we are fighting away, so you don't have to organize a cheerleading team. You'll help to get the logistics prepared."
After Yan Zheke had been promoted to a preliminary substitute, the cheerleading team she used to lead was passed on to her senior female schoolmate Li Xiaowen.
When the other special training members had left, Geezer Shi finally said, "You have all seen the data and videos related to Hongluo Martial Arts School, haven't you? I'll briefly explain things and analyze their fighting style so that you all have something to mull over on your own along the way."
Normally speaking, while targeted training would usually be performed based on the opponents two or three days before a match, specific fighting arrangements would only be put in order inside the locker room before the match. This was to prevent a spy inside the team from selling intel to the enemy and cause them to fall under the control of the enemy. The higher the level of competition was, the stricter security in this regard became. However, the first stage of the preliminaries and competition at this level was the equivalent of nothing in Geezer Shi's eyes at all, and he did not think that Hongluo Martial Arts School would make a big fuss over such a minor competition either. Therefore, he had made his explanation ahead of time so that these young and inexperienced kids would have sufficient time to digest his words.
After seeing that everyone's attention was focused on him, he chuckled and said,
"That is all there is to Hongluo Martial Arts School, so you lot don't have to worry too much. Follow this old man's instructions, and your chances of victory will be pretty huge. You have all watched the videos already. Hongluo Martial Arts School's fighting style is an evolution of the 'Unique Skill of Fire Sect' called 'Fire-like Invasion Move.' It emphasizes on aggressiveness and explosive power."
"At the max, their explosive power may very well equal the full powered strike of a seventh to eighth Pin Dan stage martial artist. However, this level of eruption wasn't something that could state of mind anytime they wanted to. They had to adjust their states bit by bit and receive feedbacks again and again so that their bodies could gradually compress and store energy like a spring."
"Therefore, the heart of this fighting style was to use small bursts of power to push even greater levels of bursts of power, accumulating power steadily until they reached their limits. Normally speaking, the ninth strike after eight pushes would pretty much sweep anyone beneath Dan stage. However, they are humans and not living immortals. Their strength would more or less be exhausted after a round of eruption. Taking the burning fire as an example, a fire would continuously ignite the things around it and grow fiercer and fiercer with each passing time. Once everything around it had been burned to ashes, the fire itself would become extinguished."
"In this regard, this is a fighting style that is very suitable for life and death fighting. The victory would normally be decided within just a few moves."
"Now that we've analyzed up to this point, some of you must be thinking: in this case then let's just stretch out the battle and delay until they've exhausted themselves. However, unless the martial artist who chooses to fight this way have the exceptional agility and is extremely well versed in hit-and-run tactics, they would quickly find their zone of activity compressed to a point where they could not escape by the time the people of Hongluo Martial Arts School had erupted a few times and displayed terrifying levels of speed and agility."
Lou Cheng nodded indiscernibly at the coach's words. He knew this very well from experience. During the fight against Ye Youting and the fight against the Dark Sect's Ninth Pin, he had attempted to stretch out the fight using mercurial balance. However, he was either quickly forced into a head on clash, or given no chance to stretch out the fight at all.
Geezer Shi coughed a few times and reached the main point of the explanation. "The best way to deal with this fighting style is to clash against them directly, disrupting their burst rhythm and suppressing their aggressiveness so that their eruptions will grow more and more dissatisfactory..."
He began talking in detail how to disrupt the enemy's rhythm and suppress their aggressiveness. Lou Cheng and the others listened with great interest, and before they knew it it was already noon.
After eating lunch and resting for a brief moment, Lou Cheng arrived on time at the bus station and got on the school bus the logistics of the club had purposely prepared.
Because Yan Zheke was shy and wasn't brave enough to sit next to him with so many familiar faces around them, she pulled Guo Qing with her and found a pair of seat for themselves. Lou Cheng had no choice but to sit together with student Little Ming at the seat behind them.
He didn't speak much along the way, and had started to adjust his form and state of mind. He had only opened his eyes only after they were about to arrive.
"Ay, Cheng, Qiang and the others had quite the luck with women..." Cai Zongming smartly decided against voicing his words and instead typed it on his phone and sent it through QQ to Lou Cheng.
Lou Cheng replied in surprise, "Why is that?"
"Model Worker was going to ask his girlfriend out only, but it was found out by the girls in his girlfriend's bedroom. They were very interested in the match and wanted to come and take a look too. They would be joining Qiang and Old Qiu and depart together later." Cai Zongming sent the message while looking at Lou Cheng with a sneaky expression.
"That's great. What a pleasant surprise!" Lou Cheng replied swiftly before stuffing his phone into his pocket, getting ready to stand up. They had already arrived at their destination!
Hongluo Martial Arts School was situated at the bottom of a large building where it was quiet amidst a noisy environment. The environment was pretty good.
Lou Cheng observed the situation carefully and waited until Guo Qing entered the corridor. Only then he abruptly stood up, pushed his way forwards and stuck close to Yan Zheke following behind her just in time.
He "casually" looked towards the front, stretched out his hand and pulled the girl's tender hand.
At first, Yan Zheke was surprised. Then, she looked at Lou Cheng and saw the faint trace of a smile vaguely tugging at the corners of his mouth. He turned around and blinked at her.
She was both annoyed and amused by this, blushing slightly in the face. Pretending that nothing had happened just now, she returned the grip before hurriedly pulling back her hand. After observing her surroundings and discovering that no one had noticed the gesture, she then experienced a wave of indescribable happiness.
Lou Cheng, who was equally happy and filled with strength followed his team and stepped through the main entrance of Hongluo Martial Arts School.
Naturally, this martial arts school was incomparable to Songcheng University Martial Arts Club's arena. It was only about the size of two classrooms, not to mention some spaces were used as locker rooms, strength training rooms and so on. It was sufficient for teaching and practicing martial arts, but it was seriously cramped for a preliminaries' match.
Right now, the limestone ground at the center of the martial arts school was present to act as the arena. Tatamis were laid out around the arena so that audiences could sit down and watch the match. Corridors were left out on all sides, and the place had a vague Japanese style to them.
"Thank goodness there aren't many audiences, or how on earth are we going to fit in such a small place..." Cai Zongming clicked his tongue and said.
He was not fated to enter the locker room, so after finding the tatamis arranged for the away team he took off his shoes and sat on his knees.
Not far away beside him, Shu Rui led the team and nervously but orderly lay out the arrangements for live broadcast.
After the preliminaries schedule had been announced on Friday, the first thing Songcheng's television station needed to confirm was which matches they should do a live broadcast, and which matches they should do recording broadcast.
This was nothing worthy of consideration for the other television stations of other cities. This was because there were only so many teams who participated in the competition, not to mention that the match times might not even clash with each other. On the other hand, as the provincial capital Songcheng attracted a lot of talents, and there were at least twenty teams who registered and participated in the preliminaries. The selection of teams alone would dazzle one's eyes.
For a television station at this level, competitions of lower professional ranking were in fact more welcomed. For the audiences, the professional martial practitioners at the bottom three ranks were relatable and not too inhuman even though they weren't strong enough. Every battle was very intense, and every blow threw in a match this level struck flesh. It could incite the passion in the audiences' heart. Naturally, the decision to do live or recorded broadcast must be deliberated carefully.
As the reporter who chased mainly the news related to martial arts, Shu Rui had participated in the meeting and voiced out her own opinions. She said that Songcheng University Martial Arts Club's Lou Cheng and Lin Que were very much great subjects of gossip and suited for live broadcast. In the end, the leader of the television station had accepted her plans.
Right now, Shu Rui very much had the impulse to interview Lin Que and Lou Cheng for a while after seeing them walking into the martial arts school. However, the rules stated that they could not come in contact with the fighters half a day before the match to avoid affecting their state of the mind. They could only be interviewed after the match.
Lou Cheng and the others entered straight into the locker room. Inside the partitioned area, they changed into their white martial arts suit with black borders and returned to Geezer Shi's side once more.
"I've said everything that needs to be said, and I have nothing else to add. Take the time to rest and recuperate your spirits." Geezer Shi coughed and made them find their respective seats and hone their strengths.
…
At two fifty, inside Hongluo Martial Arts School's locker room.
Wang Hui looked at Jiang Guosheng, Fang Tong and Pan Chengyun all with a different expression on their faces and smiled slightly, saying,
"Chengyun, you'll enter last and give them a pleasant surprise. That being said you may not need to show up, so if that's the case then we'll leave the pleasant surprise to the future."
"Fang Tong, you'll be the vanguard and fight to obtain an immediate victory."
"Guosheng, you'll enter the arena second. You bear a heavy responsibility in case anything happens. You must stabilize the situation."
"Yes, master (grandmaster)!" all three Professional Ninth Pins answered in unison.
Wang Hui nodded in satisfaction and pointed outside the locker room, declaring loudly.
"Go out there and show them your strength and bearing!"
…
At Songcheng University Martial Arts Club's side, Geezer Shi clapped his hand and awakened the crowd who were quietly practicing pranayama. With a rare, serious smile, he said,
"First battle, Lou Cheng."
"I'm the first..." Not only Lou Cheng wasn't anxious, he felt a shiver that came with excitement. He sneaked a glance at Yan Zheke and found her looking at him as well. She gave him a pumping hand gesture.
Geezer Shi continued to speak, "Lou Cheng, you'll enter the arena first and feel out their depths. Do not worry if they really have something wicked up their sleeves. You have Lin Que behind you."
"Lin Que, you'll watch the battle closely and know what's going on by heart. Sun Jian, you'll enter last. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to take advantage of their exhaustion."
"Alright, let's head out, everyone."
Lou Cheng and the others glanced at each other's eyes once. No one purposely organized it, and no one took the lead. Suddenly, they opened their mouths in mutual understanding and shouted out in unison,
"We cannot lose!"
After they were done the shouting, Lou Cheng took the lead and entered the stage.
What greeted them were the audiences seated on the tatamis, the arranged cameras, and the enemy who walked out from the opposite locker room.