Bang!
Hyuga Kamon felt a numbness in his waist, and the strength in his lower body immediately dissipated by more than half. He staggered, nearly falling to the ground.
He forced himself to steady his stance. The look he gave Aokawa had shifted from anger to sheer terror.
Impossible!
Why was his attack neutralized so easily?
He hadn't even managed to touch the other man in the slightest!
"Do you wish to continue?"
Aokawa withdrew his hand, placing it behind his back as he looked at him indifferently.
"In your Eight Trigrams Palms, starting from the opening stance, you wasted a total of thirty-seven percent of your Chakra."
"In the first palm, your wrist exerted too much force, causing your subsequent transition to be slow by point-one seconds."
"In the second palm, your footwork was disconnected from your palm technique; your center of gravity was unstable, leaving your vitals wide open."
With every sentence Aokawa spoke, Hyuga Kamon's face grew a shade paler.
This was because everything Aokawa described were the exact points of friction he himself hadn't even noticed during his attack!
How... how could he see it so clearly?!
"What you call 'orthodoxy' is a golden rule in your eyes."
Aokawa walked toward him step by step. His voice wasn't loud, yet it struck Hyuga Kamon's heart like a heavy hammer.
"In my eyes, it is merely a rigid, empty shell."
"What you are practicing is not the Gentle Fist."
Aokawa stopped and met his gaze.
"It is a Dead Fist."
"You don't understand at all. The essence of the Gentle Fist is not the Moves, nor is it the form."
"It is absolute control over Chakra!"
After speaking, Aokawa turned his gaze toward Ryosuke, who had long since been standing there dumbfounded.
"Ryosuke, watch closely."
"This is how the Gentle Fist is used."
The moment his voice fell, Aokawa's figure suddenly vanished.
Hyuga Kamon felt his vision blur as an irresistible, massive sense of crisis enveloped him!
He instinctively wanted to retreat, only to find that his body felt as if it had sunk into a swamp; every movement became incredibly difficult.
Aokawa's palm, like a phantom, pressed against his chest.
There was no wind from the palm, no grand display of power.
Yet Hyuga Kamon felt as if all the Chakra in his body was instantly suppressed and frozen solid under that single palm strike!
Every cell in his body was screaming in agony!
"This..."
Hyuga Kamon opened his mouth wide but couldn't make a sound. His eyes held nothing but endless shock and confusion.
Aokawa slowly withdrew his palm and looked at him calmly.
"Now, do you understand?"
Hyuga Kamon froze in place.
That phrase, "Now, do you understand?" was like a brand, seared deep into his mind.
He lowered his head and looked at his own hands.
These hands had been practicing the Gentle Fist since he was old enough to remember.
Every Move, every technique for exerting force, strictly followed the records in the Main House's Teaching Manuals without the slightest deviation.
He had once felt immense pride in this.
But now, that pride had been shattered effortlessly by Aokawa.
"You..."
Hyuga Kamon struggled to raise his head. His throat was dry as he squeezed out a single word.
In his eyes, the anger had faded, leaving only chaos and an incomprehensible confusion.
"Why..."
"There is no 'why'."
Aokawa looked away, his tone flat.
"Your fist is dead."
"You are merely imitating a fixed shape and then using Chakra to fill it."
"But you've never thought about why you are doing it."
Aokawa's voice wasn't loud, but it reached the ears of everyone on the Training Ground clearly.
"You treat the Main House's dogmas as sacred decrees and the Moves as the entirety of the Gentle Fist."
"Therefore, you will never understand that the essence of the Gentle Fist is not about specific Moves."
"It is about absolute control over your own Chakra—precision, accuracy, and stability."
Aokawa turned his gaze to Ryosuke, who was looking at him with a face full of admiration.
"Ryosuke was able to grasp the prototype of the Sixty-Four Palms not because of how well he imitated the form."
"But because during combat, he instinctively pursued a more efficient way to utilize Chakra."
"This is the correct path."
Having said that, he no longer looked at the despondent Hyuga Kamon and turned to walk out of the Training Ground.
"The force and angle of the Teaching Elder's strikes are only suited to his own physical frame. If you don't let go of your so-called standards, you will never escape those shackles."
"Rules are dead."
"People are alive."
As the ethereal voice drifted back, Aokawa's figure had already disappeared around the corner.
Ryosuke looked in the direction Aokawa had left, then at the dazed Hyuga Kamon. His mouth worked for a moment before he finally hurried to follow.
In the vast Training Ground, only Hyuga Kamon remained.
The wind blew, kicking up dust from the ground.
He seemed to have become a statue, motionless.
Dead Fist... rules are dead, people are alive... Aokawa's words echoed in his mind like a curse, over and over.
An unknown amount of time passed.
He slowly raised his right hand and took the opening stance of the Gentle Fist.
Once upon a time, he had performed this movement thousands of times, as standard as a textbook.
But today, when he assumed the posture again, he felt an unprecedented awkwardness.
He tried to mobilize the Chakra within his body.
Following the method taught by the Main House in his memory, he let the Chakra flow through his meridians and gather in his palm.
Buzz.
Chakra gathered in his palm.
However, this time, he clearly'saw' it.
He saw things he had never noticed before.
When the Chakra surged up from the Dantian, thirty-seven percent of it dissipated due to overly violent stimulation, wasted for nothing.
When the Chakra flowed through the meridians of his arm, the flow speed was point-one seconds slower because of the stiffness in his wrist muscles.
When the Chakra finally gathered in his palm, an uncontrollable deviation in the output force appeared because his center of gravity was unstable.
Everything was correct!
Everything Aokawa had said was absolutely precise!
Hyuga Kamon's body trembled, and the Chakra in his palm instantly collapsed.
The color drained from his face in a flash.
How could this be?
Why?
Why had he never discovered these problems before?
Why had none of the Main House elders ever pointed them out?
The 'orthodoxy' he was so proud of suddenly became full of holes and utterly ridiculous in his own eyes.
He felt as if he had been stripped naked and thrown into a frozen wasteland, every inch of his skin exposed to the piercing cold wind.
The faith he had held onto for over a decade collapsed in an instant.
"No..."
"Impossible..."
Hyuga Kamon retreated two steps in a daze and slumped onto the ground.
He clutched his head with both hands, his expression pained.
In his mind, the battle from earlier replayed over and over again.
Aokawa hadn't used any flashy Moves.
He hadn't even assumed a Gentle Fist stance.
He had simply extended a finger and tapped the exact right spot at the most opportune moment.
Every strike was like a precision scalpel, easily severing the flow of his Chakra and dismantling all his offensives.
That wasn't a Move.
That was a... Realm.
A Realm where Chakra control reached the extreme, turning the mundane into the miraculous.
Before him, his own proud Eight Trigrams Palms was like a child waving a wooden stick—clumsy and comical.
So... this is the true Gentle Fist?
So... what he had been practicing all along really was just a 'Dead Fist'?
Hyuga Kamon looked up blankly at the empty Training Ground.
The afterglow of the setting sun stretched his shadow very long.
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