When I was young, I called myself Ye Zi and believed I was a martial arts prodigy.
The masters on TV plucked leaves and sent them flying, skipped across water, and made me certain that the talent ran through my blood and hid in my meridians.
Then a tough-as-nails coach with a military background threw me into a martial arts gym.
“Fighting isn’t embroidery! Want to kick hard enough to leave someone childless? Then get over there and carry sandbags!”
I held a horse stance for three hours, bladder aching, too afraid to move.
A student next door laughed at my trembling knees. “Some prodigy. Why are you shaking like a leaf?”
The coach sneered as he lit a cigarette. “Shaking? That’s your inner energy running wild. Get it?”
That night, curled up in a corner with The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, I discovered that the extraordinary meridians illustrated in the book were throbbing beneath my skin, hot to the touch.
The protagonist doesn't even know who sent him to the martial arts gym. It's set in a modern setting and can die at any time. After watching it for a long time, I didn't understand the social background, the power system, nothing.