Chapter 50 – New Function of the [Imaginary Enemy]

“No changes?”

Lu Yuan scrutinized the [Martial Artist] professional panel carefully, but found no new skills.

No information prompts either.

“But I clearly felt like I grasped something with that punch.”

As Lu Yuan pondered, a taxi screeched to a halt in front of him.

The window rolled down, and the taxi driver inside poked his head out halfway.

“Need a ride?”

“Yes.”

Lu Yuan opened the door and got in.

The Mosa Combat Sports Club was too far from his home. Driving normally would take twenty minutes; walking would take at least an hour.

Tonight’s match ended late, and it was nearly ten o’clock. The buses had already stopped running.

The car started.

The air conditioning was off, but with the windows down and the night breeze blowing in, it wasn’t too hot.

Lu Yuan was still thinking about that punch.

Instinctively, he threw a punch, trying to recapture the feeling he had when he landed that punch in the arena.

“Whoosh—whoosh—”

With 12 strength points, 250 kilograms of boxing power swung in the small cabin.

Lu Yuan carefully controlled the punch distance.

Even though each punch was aimed at the back of the front seat, he made sure not to actually hit it.

But even so, the sound of his fist tearing through the air made the taxi driver frequently glance at the rearview mirror.

“Hey!”

After five or six minutes, the taxi driver couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Be careful, my seat back isn’t very sturdy. It might break if you hit it.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t touch it.”

“The noise is still pretty loud. How about you wait until you get out to practice?”

“Alright.”

Lu Yuan reluctantly put his fists down.

In fact, despite throwing so many punches, he had gained nothing.

Not giving up, Lu Yuan told the taxi driver, “Driver, wake me up when we get there. I’m going to take a nap.”

He then closed his eyes and entered his consciousness space.

“[Imaginary Enemy], activate!”

The empty arena.

On the huge platform, a tall young man wearing a tanuki mask stood silently.

The large screens around the arena were pitch black, and there was not a single spectator, making it extremely quiet.

Lu Yuan looked around, then bent down to touch the arena floor.

The scene seemed a bit more realistic now.

But other than that, there wasn’t much change.

This was far from the Level 2 [Imaginary Enemy] effect he had expected, which was somewhat disappointing.

However, Lu Yuan wasn’t concerned about that at the moment.

He just wanted to recapture the feeling of that punch he had thrown in the arena earlier and see if he could reproduce it a second time.

“Whoosh—”

Lu Yuan took off the mask on his face and casually threw it on the ground with a “plop.”

Taking a deep breath, he looked at the tanuki man in front of him and lightly twisted his neck.

“Come on, you waste of space.”

As usual, he taunted his opponent to provoke them into showing their full strength.

The tanuki man reacted to Lu Yuan’s words.

The calm eyes behind the mask flickered.

Then, with a bang, the ground under his feet cracked, and he charged at Lu Yuan with a speed far beyond reality.

“Whoosh—”

A thick leg cut through the air, aiming straight for Lu Yuan’s face.

In Lu Yuan’s eyes, the leg rapidly grew larger. His right foot instinctively moved.

But then he quickly pulled it back.

“This time, I’ll use only my fists.”

“Bam!”

Five minutes later.

Lu Yuan slowly retracted his right fist, his face expressionless.

In front of him, the blond man knelt, the tanuki mask on his face shattered.

A fragment was deeply embedded in the center of his forehead.

The light in his eyes quickly faded, his upper body swayed slightly, and then he collapsed heavily at Lu Yuan’s feet with a thud.

“No, it wasn’t that punch. Is it the way I’m generating force?”

Lu Yuan pondered as he slowly exited the consciousness space.

The taxi was still moving. The taxi driver had started a phone call at some point, speaking in a dialect from the rural areas around Jiaoyan, which Lu Yuan couldn’t understand.

“Let’s try again.”

Lu Yuan closed his eyes once more.

The same consciousness space, the same opponent.

This time, Lu Yuan switched back to using leg techniques and defeated the tanuki man with even greater speed.

He tried to fully replicate the battle.

But he still couldn’t capture that flash of inspiration.

“I remember hearing the sound of a crane cry when I threw that punch.”

“Without triggering [A Moment of Inspiration], is it impossible to reproduce that crane cry punch?”

Lu Yuan thought for a moment and entered the consciousness space for the third time.

This time, he changed the [Imaginary Enemy] to Lin Zhiqin.

“Let’s feel it again.”

The second-floor corridor of the martial arts gym.

Lu Yuan didn’t waste any words.

He directly kicked the door.

With over two hundred kilograms of force, the entire door flew off its hinges.

He strode in.

Lin Zhiqin was sitting by the coffee table, pressing out his lit cigarette bit by bit in the ashtray.

“You’re Lin Zhiqin, right?!”

Lu Yuan pointed at Lin Zhiqin and arrogantly taunted.

Before he could finish his provocative words, Lin Zhiqin’s figure suddenly disappeared from the coffee table.

“Here he comes!”

Lu Yuan’s heart tightened, and a familiar sense of dread crept up from within.

If things went as expected,

the next second,

Lin Zhiqin would punch him in the forehead, “killing” him instantly.

But this time, Lu Yuan didn’t want it to end so quickly.

When his pupils caught Lin Zhiqin’s extremely cold face and the rapidly approaching fist,

Lu Yuan tried to step back, to escape the battlefield, even if it meant living just one more second.

But no matter how hard he tried, his body seemed to be enveloped by an inexplicable force, completely unresponsive. He couldn’t even move a step.

“Damn it!”

Lu Yuan gritted his teeth, forcing himself to keep his eyes wide open, staring intently at the enlarging fist.

A voice in his mind screamed,

“Slower! Slower! I want to see it more clearly!”

And then, the rushing fist seemed to really slow down.

“Uh•”

Lu Yuan blinked in confusion.

Suddenly, he realized he could move again.

Taking two steps forward, he saw that Lin Zhiqin, maintaining his punching posture, was standing motionless.

It was as if he had been hit by some kind of acupressure technique from a martial arts novel, completely frozen in place.

“What’s going on?”

Lu Yuan was a bit puzzled.

But he quickly realized.

“I get it now. This must be the new effect of Level 2 [Imaginary Enemy]!”

In that instant, Lu Yuan felt like he had discovered a new continent.

He had thought that there was no change when [Imaginary Enemy] leveled up, but the real transformation was hidden here.

“Slow down, speed up, move forward, even reverse.”

Lu Yuan explored the new features unlocked by the upgraded [Imaginary Enemy].

Lin Zhiqin would sometimes move as slowly as a snail, sometimes as fast as lightning, sometimes retracting his punch to sit down, and sometimes raising his hand to stand up, all according to Lu Yuan’s commands.

It felt like Lu Yuan held a remote control that could manipulate another person’s life, and he couldn’t help but find it thrilling.

“Interesting!”

He repeatedly made Lin Zhiqin perform the punching motion.

To observe the muscle movements in Lin Zhiqin’s arm and body more clearly, Lu Yuan even stripped off Lin Zhiqin’s clothes, leaving him shirtless in the office.

The atmosphere in the office grew increasingly tense, filled with the anger and resentment Lin Zhiqin was accumulating.

Fortunately, Lin Zhiqin’s full momentum only exploded when he moved.

“It’s like analyzing and observing the composition of this punch under a microscope, something impossible in the real world.”

Lu Yuan’s eyes sparkled with excitement and surprise.

In a careless moment, he accidentally released the “pause” button.

Lin Zhiqin, having been toyed with for so long and with his resentment at its peak, flashed a cold glint in his eyes and landed a clean, crisp punch on Lu Yuan’s forehead.

“Ah!”

“Bang!”

Lu Yuan felt his head hit something soft with a thud.

He suddenly opened his eyes.

He found that the taxi driver had hit the brakes hard at some point and had already stopped the car.

“Damn!”

The taxi driver, with his hand on the steering wheel, looked shaken and kept muttering.

“What the hell? A huge thing just darted right in front of us. Almost hit it, scared the hell out of me!”

“Hmm?!”

Hearing this, Lu Yuan’s expression changed.