Shaolin Formation Striking Technique

As the saying goes, one strengthens the muscles, bones, and skin externally, and the breath internally. Over the past week, Chen Jue had truly mastered this "breath," even grasping the superior skill of closing his pores with clear force; with a single strike, he could blast a hole in a brick wall. However, his skin, bones, and fascia were still weak. Before he could learn how to fight, he was already injuring himself with each move.

Thus, Chen Jue thought of trying to learn a form of hard qigong to see if he could enhance his body's resistance to blows. Lately, he had been frequenting online forums and often heard the experts say: "Before you can fight, you must first learn to take a beating!"

So, he searched online for the hard qigong techniques those experts mentioned. Iron Palm was, of course, a popular one; a search would yield a myriad of methods, all sorts of variations, and claims that once mastered, one could split bricks with the palm or shatter glass bottles with a bare hand.

But splitting a suspended brick with the hand is largely a matter of physics. Back in high school, Chen Jue remembered seeing his physics teacher demonstrate it personally: as long as the fulcrum was set properly and enough force was applied, anyone could break a brick this way without having learned Iron Palm. It’s a trick, not real skill; with enough practice, even ordinary people could do it.

In ancient times, traveling performers also loved using this trick to dazzle the crowd, along with feats like breaking stones on the chest or lying on a bed of nails—these all relied on physical principles to fool the ignorant masses of that era.

True Iron Palm means laying the brick flat on the ground and splitting it with a single palm strike. However, most who practiced Iron Palm developed frighteningly thick calluses on their hands; Chen Jue even saw images of hands deformed by the training, with swollen knuckles and backs of the hand puffed up like loaves of bread—an alarming sight.

“That’s probably from faulty practice, a deviation into madness,” Chen Jue thought, shaking his head at such images. He promptly dismissed the idea of learning Iron Palm and searched for other forms of body conditioning.

Many schools had their own body conditioning techniques, but Chen Jue immediately gravitated toward Shaolin’s. After all, he had learned the twelve forms of the Tendon-Altering Sutra from Shaolin monk tutorial videos, and felt a certain affinity with Shaolin. So he decided to start with their body conditioning methods.

Shaolin’s body conditioning was one of their seventy-two legendary skills, also known as Slapping Skill, a practice that cultivated both internal and external strength.

Practicing this skill was time-consuming: in the first year, one would use a sturdy piece of wood or a broad bamboo plank to slap the entire body; in the second year, the wooden plank would be replaced by a standard kiln brick, and after six more months, by a metal bar made of brass or iron. After another half year, the muscles throughout the body would become extraordinarily tough, and with the breathing methods that accompanied the practice, even the internal organs and softer parts of the body would be strengthened.

“It’s not difficult to learn, just really time-consuming—progress is measured in years,” Chen Jue mused, smacking his lips. Fortunately, his attribute panel would help him out—he wasn’t too worried about the time. The only real issue was that some parts of the body, like the back, couldn’t be slapped by oneself and required assistance from others.

For now, Chen Jue trained alone, haphazardly fumbling his way through. Finding a practice partner was no easy task. Most of the residents in Chen Village were elderly; the few middle-aged people were either busy with farm work or working elsewhere, and it would be nearly impossible to convince anyone to help with such a strange training method.

“I’ll start with the parts I can reach and see if I can unlock the skill,” he thought. “If I can, I’ll just use my attribute points to improve it later.” With this in mind, Chen Jue put his worries to rest.

As for the Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt that the experts spoke of, Chen Jue had no energy to study those for now. He knew it was unwise to spread himself too thin; he decided to begin with the straightforward and accessible Shaolin body conditioning.

The next morning, he woke up early again. After breaking through with his stance training the night before, all his attributes had increased significantly, especially his constitution, which had reached 1.63. His energy and stamina were both boosted, and he awoke feeling refreshed.

Moreover, his improved constitution gave him a remarkable ability to recover. Although the skin of his right hand was injured, overnight a thin black scab had already formed on the wound. In less than three days, it would likely fall off and be replaced by new skin. In the past, such an injury would have taken at least ten days to heal.

However, there was still the issue of a slight bone fracture inside. He had sprayed some herbal medicine on it the previous night, which helped a bit, but the discomfort remained.

“Today, I’ll buy some big beef bones and make a bone broth to help heal. I’ll also eat some shrimp for calcium. For minor injuries like this, there’s no need to see a doctor,” Chen Jue decided, replacing the gauze and spraying on more medicine.

He glanced outside—the weather was gloomy and rainy. After a long, hot summer, the rain was finally here.

Since he couldn’t go to the reservoir embankment to train in the rain, Chen Jue grabbed an umbrella and his grandfather’s old hatchet, and made his way to the bamboo grove behind the village. He found a fallen bamboo stalk, chopped off a section, and whittled it into a broad bamboo plank.

“Let’s give this body conditioning a try!”

Back at home, he shut the door and pulled up the instructional video he’d watched before bed, streaming it on his new television. Emulating the Shaolin monk in the video, he began slapping all the parts of his body he could reach with the bamboo plank.

Slap after slap, rhythmic strikes echoed through the house—arms, legs, chest, abdomen, ribs, head—every part except his injured right hand and the back he couldn’t reach was covered.

As he practiced, Chen Jue incorporated the superior clear force technique he had just mastered, opening and closing his pores in rhythm, matching his breath with the monk’s in the video. Soon, he developed his own unique training rhythm.

After about half an hour of this, his attribute panel finally flickered, and a new skill appeared: [Shaolin Body Conditioning Lv0 (1/100)].

“Looks like this is just like the twelve forms of the Tendon-Altering Sutra—after half an hour, the proficiency only increases by one point,” Chen Jue sighed inwardly.

He kept at it for another half hour, and the proficiency crept up by one more point. Chen Jue found the slow progress unbearable and gave up on training the skill by himself. Instead, he jumped onto the solid wood table and began practicing the Eight Immortals Stance.

After an hour of practicing Shaolin body conditioning, he found it not only inefficient but also yielding no increase in free attribute points. For Chen Jue, it was a waste of time. With that time, he might as well keep working on his stance training and rack up more attribute points to use directly!