Zhang Yang, the son of a high-ranking official who grew up in a military compound in Beijing, became fascinated with traditional Chinese martial arts from a young age. His grandfather’s bodyguard, Wang Zhong, a master of Baguazhang, was his first teacher. Unwilling to follow his family’s insistence that he go into politics or business, Zhang Yang broke with them and left China, spending twenty-seven years overseas.
The tumultuous world abroad was full of hidden masters. It was home both to survivors of the Republic-era martial arts traditions who had fled war and unrest, and to experts in foreign fighting styles such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai. Zhang Yang studied under a successor of the Green Gang’s Xingyiquan tradition and a master of Hongmen Taijiquan, while also training in jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai. Through life-and-death battles defending a martial arts school in Chinatown and fighting for property in Bangkok, he reached the pinnacle of the Transforming Jin stage. Yet he also became entangled in the machinations of the “Foundation,” a biotech organization researching immortality for the wealthy.
In 2020, at forty-five, Zhang Yang returned to China to break through the bottleneck on his path to the Baodan stage. But when he sought to test his martial arts, the Chinese martial arts world took it as a challenge to their schools. From being turned away by the Xishan Boxing Club to defeating one formidable opponent after another at a Tianjin exchange tournament, he came to understand “Baodan” through the Tao Te Ching and “Gang Qi” through the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon. As he crossed hands with masters from different schools, he gradually verified legendary realms such as “seeing the spirit within” and “sensing the cicada before the autumn wind stirs,” while using a scientific perspective to uncover the true essence of traditional martial arts.
After his family’s misunderstandings were cleared up, he received martial arts manuals from the Republic era and an ancient Wudang sword left behind by his ancestors. Meanwhile, the Foundation bared its fangs, sending genetically modified fighters and nanotech-enhanced masters one after another. When Zhang Yang finally stood before “God,” the white man pulling the strings, who was obsessed with traditional Chinese martial arts, he learned that he was the key pawn in his adversary’s attempt to prove that these arts could transcend the limits of humanity.
The ultimate showdown between technology and traditional martial arts reveals not only the secret of immortality, but also the future path toward a fusion of Chinese martial arts and fighting styles from around the world.
Not bad, worthy of praise