Yuanwu

Located on the frontier, the city of Jinzhou has a strong martial arts culture, and there are many martial arts gyms of all sizes in the city. In a relatively peaceful era such as today, the once strict and cruel custom governing duels gradually died out, and was replaced by “friendly” consultations and exchanges between gyms.

Where there are people, there is politics, although these activities are done in the name of exchanges, there are people secretly competing, using all means to come out on top in the competition. After all, this is a rare opportunity of advertisement. As long as the winner makes some remarks on the gym they affiliate with and harvests some attention, business contracts will naturally burst.

With the event becoming more and more influential, more gyms are participating. This year, even Yuanwu, who has always been indifferent to fame and fortune, signed up. Yuanwu’s gym was already a thriving, much-envied business. His participation immediately caused disturbance among some vested interests.

The most disturbed was the previous top-ranker, Wenxi. Wenxi was a businessman. Both his gym and his participation in the event were mere popularity devices for his weapon workshop, in other words, commercial benefits. Naturally, his top rank was bought, not won.

Wenxi knew Yuanwu’s powers and knew that his gym was not very corporational. So he personally paid a visit and offered a tempting price in an attempt to buy out Yuanwu. Yuanwu refused without hesitation, but Wenxi wasn’t cast down. He paid loads of money to some of Yuanwu’s regulars to learn from them every detail of Yuanwu’s boxing moves, and then bribed the referee and staff for the finals, so they would turn a blind eye on the fact that he tampered with the suits that the fighters would be wearing.

On the day of the finals, thunder surprisingly surged and then went out in an instant. Between the flash and the extinction, both suits were struck open. The scorching thunder struck precisely on the costume and avoided unprotected skin. A little further and the fighters’ joints would be burnt.

When the hidden inside was seen through the broken surface of the suits, and all those little schemes were exposed, the whole crowd was in an uproar. The match was thus suspended. After an investigation, the horrifying thunder during the match was concluded an accident caused by the little devices hidden in the suits.

Meanwhile, Wenxi’s weapon workshop, which manufactured this kind of device, was also investigated. It wasn’t long before that workshop silently disappeared and faded into oblivion, along with the rigged fighting events.

After the tempest, Yuanwu Boxing Gym was, as usual, a small place bustling with patrons. If there was any difference, sharp-eyed customers would notice that there were a few familiar faces missing from the crowd coming in and out of the premise.