The first live broadcast that dazzled to the heavens!

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Lately, immersed in exercise and study, Chen Jue hadn’t spent much time browsing the internet or watching short videos, so he was a bit out of the loop. When Wu Fang sent over a few links showing finger strikes breaking bricks or marble slabs, Chen Jue nearly spat out his dinner.

“This is way too damn fake!” he couldn’t help but scoff.

Back in high school physics class, he had once witnessed the teacher demonstrate breaking a brick barehanded. Later, Physics Teacher Ding explained with formulas that if a brick was propped up at a certain angle or had small stones placed underneath, an ordinary person could break it with a single strike without any special training.

This wasn’t traditional martial arts; it was more like street performers’ acrobatics. Chest-breaking stones, swallowing swords, fishing coins out of boiling oil, or crushing two small glass vials with fingers—these, along with palm strikes breaking bricks, were all illusions, tricks, and sleight of hand.

To the untrained eye, they seemed impressive, but experts immediately recognized the gimmicks. As for the finger strike brick-breaking videos Wu Fang sent, Chen Jue could tell they were fake at a glance.

Aside from the bricks looking dry and brittle with suspicious material, the number of bricks broken barehanded was also off. Chen Jue had once been obsessed with firearm culture and had seen foreign gun enthusiasts shoot at bricks on video.

Handguns and submachine guns, firing in bursts, could break two bricks stacked together but couldn’t break the third one. Only if you mounted a Barrett M82A1, a heavy large-caliber anti-material sniper rifle, could you break three bricks stacked at once.

This comparison helped explain why Bruce Lee demonstrated Jeet Kune Do by breaking wooden boards instead of bricks. The power of a human fist simply couldn’t surpass a bullet fired from a gun.

As for those finger strike masters in the videos who effortlessly broke three or more bricks, that wasn’t just trickery—it was a challenge to the audience’s intelligence.

What’s worse, these finger strike masters attracted a lot of attention with their acts, easily amassing hundreds of thousands of followers.

This drew the attention of debunkers who put up a 500,000 yuan cash bounty, inviting these finger strike masters to come and break real bricks.

Sure enough, some foolhardy fake masters, confident from practicing with prop bricks, accepted the challenge. They tried their finger strikes on three real bricks tied together with a rope.

The result? They couldn’t even chip the surface of the bricks; instead, their fists bled.

The event was live-streamed, and for the sake of that elusive prize money, these so-called finger strike masters revealed their true colors, dying socially as clowns on the spot.

Watching those brick-breaking videos, Chen Jue felt secondhand embarrassment and wished he could make an entire apartment appear on the spot to hide them.

...

After dinner in the cafeteria, strolling on campus to aid digestion, Chen Jue chatted with Wu Fang on WeChat for a while.

The anti-fake finger strike movement had swept the entire internet, even spilling over to other traditional martial arts.

Chen Jue’s “Master of Skills” account didn’t claim any traditional martial arts identity, but since he posted a few videos demonstrating throwing darts—concealed weapons—many debunkers lumped him in with traditional martial arts.

Some small internet celebrities, riding the trend, even dissected Chen Jue’s videos frame by frame, aiming to expose the "fake master" behind Master of Skills.

It was as if trouble fell on him while sitting at home, absurdly caught in the crossfire.

“Breaking real bricks with bare fists?” Chen Jue muttered, scrolling through the trending topic.

“I don’t know what these idiots are thinking. Even with the hardest darts, I can’t be sure I could break three real stacked bricks.”

He browsed Taobao and found the frequently mentioned “prop bricks” and “kung fu bricks,” all selling over 999 units. Clearly, these finger strike masters contributed heavily to sales.

Nowadays, fake internet celebrities abound, staging acrobatics on small screens and boasting themselves as real masters.

All for grabbing eyeballs and tricking ordinary people into paying for lessons or courses to make a quick buck.

It was just like the anti-fake Tai Chi masters or the “Lightning Five-Whip” clowns that popped up every few years as flashy scams.

Chen Jue personally believed traditional martial arts had value, like his own Tai Chi practice, which cultivated health and longevity.

But when it came to whether traditional martial arts could be used in real combat, Chen Jue took a dialectical view.

To him, traditional martial arts were mostly just fitness techniques, similar to the exercises he learned—methods for strengthening the body.

Right now, all these fake masters online were just talk—Chen Jue dared say not one of them could really fight.

Even many martial arts movie stars who trained in forms clarified that traditional routines were for performance, not combat.

Why are there only martial arts forms competitions and no traditional martial arts combat competitions? Because everyone knows these forms can’t be used to fight—they’re only for show.

Those who make it into MMA or UFC unrestricted fighting competitions from China are all trained in sanda or wrestling—none from traditional martial arts.

No one’s stupid—if it were truly powerful, why wouldn’t they learn and use it?

As for the online exaggerated claims of miraculous kung fu, they’re just fantasies satisfying people’s daydreams.

The kung fu scene in the Republican era was just like today—full of con artists and fake masters, boasting about defeating Western strongmen or Japanese warriors, copying the same fame templates without change.

Those “finger strike fake masters” in the videos, all loose and lacking muscle, wouldn’t be able to survive even if they all teamed up—they wouldn’t match up to a few darts from Chen Jue.

Perhaps long ago, there really was authentic kung fu meant only to kill, not perform.

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But with the changing times, those lethal combat skills became dragon-slaying arts, likely swept away into history’s dust—combat methods and lineages broken beyond recovery.

Now, scammers abound, profiting by defiling China’s traditional martial arts step by step.

“No wonder Teacher Wu is so worked up!”

“Old Master Wu has trained traditional martial arts all his life. Seeing these rotten apples, he’s lucky not to be furious to death,” Chen Jue sighed after chatting with Wu Fang.

He recalled how Zhao Jianguo and the Daoist Zhiqing from the Dragon Gate Sect had earnestly invited him to join, clearly attracted by his athletic learning talent.

With his powerful attribute panel’s correction function, Chen Jue could develop skills in traditional martial arts faster than ordinary people.

...

After the walk to aid digestion, Chen Jue slowly headed back to Wangyang Apartment.

He had planned to climb a streetlamp pole to practice his climbing skill, but after training with the arm strength bar that afternoon, his arm muscles were still sore.

So he stood under the lamp for a moment, then turned to enter the small supermarket at the apartment entrance.

“Boss, do you have needles and thread for sewing?” Chen Jue asked.

“Yes, on the stationery shelf at the very back,” replied the middle-aged owner, probably an internet veteran, happily bargaining in a private server game on his computer. He pointed vaguely and went back to his game without another word.

Chen Jue went deep inside, grabbed all the needle boxes and white sewing thread he could find from the shelf, then returned to the cashier.

Seeing the owner engrossed in the game, Chen Jue peeked at the screen: “Whoa! Playing ‘Attack on Shabak’? Nice, boss! Not watching the ball game tonight?”

He had bought supplies here a few times and had become familiar with the owner, often exchanging a few words when passing by.

“Attack on Shabak’s way more fun than watching football!”

“Damn, you don’t know—yesterday the men’s soccer team, those sea cucumber eaters, got kicked 0-3 by the Koreans. I got so pissed I threw 500 yuan into the private server, started a guild to have some fun!” The owner complained while handing Chen Jue a cigarette and calculating the bill.

Chen Jue didn’t refuse, took the cigarette, lit it with a lighter, scanned to pay, and joined in the rant about the men’s soccer team’s “amazing” results.

Men’s soccer was just as murky as traditional martial arts.

The fans of either sport were spread all over China’s streets and alleys.

Chen Jue wasn’t part of the traditional martial arts circle—just an ordinary person striving to get stronger via his attribute panel—and didn’t want to get involved in the traditional martial arts drama.

But since the anti-fake traditional martial arts wave had hit his Master of Skills account, he felt compelled to “clear the air.”

From the backend data of the short video app, Chen Jue noticed his follower growth had been affected recently.

Even the comment section had many trolls, debunkers, and skeptical onlookers.

If this continued, his side job earnings from videos would plummet.

Since it was affecting his livelihood and income, he bought a bunch of needles and thread at the supermarket, planning to hustle overnight to make a skill video to respond to those busybody debunkers.

...

After finishing the cigarette, Chen Jue returned to his apartment room.

He set up a tripod, rummaged through his wardrobe for last year’s black thermal underwear, cut a piece into a rectangular cloth with scissors.

Having recently lost weight, his old clothes were now oversized and loose, so he didn’t mind repurposing them.

He then used leftover nails from camping to stretch the black cloth like a banner, suspending it in midair in the hallway with the four corners nailed up.

Next, he patiently removed all the sewing needles from their boxes and threaded white sewing thread through their eyes.

Thanks to his perfected throwing knife skill, his hands were much more dexterous and his eyesight sharper, making threading needles a light and fast task.

After threading over a thousand needles, Chen Jue donned his mask, adjusted the phone camera to frame himself and the suspended black banner.

Then he activated the live streaming function, starting his very first livestream.

He titled it simply: “Skill Showcase: Chinese Martial Arts” and went live.

It was 8 p.m., with many bored netizens killing time online.

Unexpectedly, Master of Skills was live-streaming, and a flood of fans and onlookers rushed in.

“Front row~”

“First!”

“Whoa! Rare sight! Master of Skills actually streaming live! (Shocked)”

“What’s with this title? Planning to start a fight online? (Curious)”

“Probably got overwhelmed by the anti-fake internet army, came out to ride the trend (Laughing with tears)”

Viewers started climbing steadily, and chat messages became lively.

Chen Jue glanced at the online count: over a thousand right after starting, proving his accumulated popularity was solid, with most of his 800,000-plus fans being real, not bots.

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As the viewer count climbed to over 2,000, Chen Jue clasped his fists at the camera, said nothing, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

He flicked a white-threaded sewing needle toward the black banner suspended in the distance.

The needle zipped across the livestream frame, leaving a faint trail.

Some newcomers didn’t understand what Master of Skills was performing, peppering the chat with question marks.

“???”

“Chinese martial arts? That’s it?”

“What kind of trick is this?”

“Don’t get it (confused emoji), just see him shooting needles with thread at that black cloth.”

“But the needle throwing technique is impressive. It’s several meters away and still pierced the cloth. Way better than those finger strike brick breakers (laughing).”

“I think I could do it too (skeptical).”

Fans and onlookers came and went in waves.

Chen Jue’s live skill demonstration was less visually shocking than his edited short videos.

However, some knowledgeable wealthy viewers, impressed by his flicking needle technique, began gifting in the chat.

“Awesome! (Voice cracking)”

“Definitely possessed by the Eastern Invincible (worship).”

“Master of Skills, did you learn the Sunflower Manual or the Evil-Repelling Sword Manual? (Joking emoji)”

“Planning to show remote needle throwing? (Shocked)”

Weird and playful chat messages flooded in.

Encouraged by the gifts, the platform pushed more traffic to Chen Jue’s stream.

More and more viewers entered, and the online count jumped from 2,000-plus to over 100,000, quickly climbing the live stream popularity charts.

Chen Jue paid little attention to the scrolling chat, hearts, likes, and gifts.

He was focused, pushing his perfected throwing knife skill to the limit, transitioning from flicking one needle to firing with both hands simultaneously.

His needle throwing became increasingly skillful and rapid.

The screen filled with dense, white flying needle trails left viewers dumbfounded.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”

“What’s this firing speed? (Wide-eyed)”

“Master of Skills got a Gatling gun? Now it’s rat-a-tat-tat, blue sparks flying! (Shocked)”

“Storm of Pear Blossoms! This is the storm needle technique from hidden weapons! I only saw it in stories before, didn’t expect it to be real!”

“Amazing plus! Now this is true Chinese martial arts!”

“Forget those finger strike brick breakers! So tired of that crap! (Cheer)”

Wealthy fans, seeing this unbelievable needle skill, went wild, showering gifts.

Rainbows, meteor showers, yachts, sports cars, carnivals all appeared.

Everyone was fed up with fake masters and thrilled to see Master of Skills deliver genuine fierce skills, competing to be the top supporter.

Fueled by the frenzy, the stream’s heat soared, with viewers climbing from 100,000-plus to over 500,000, briefly ranking in the top 10 for the night.

Half an hour into the stream, Chen Jue’s hands began sweating more, and the once-high stack of needles in front of him dwindled.

Gradually, the black banner’s pattern began to emerge clearly from the blurred outline.

At that moment, the 500,000-plus online viewers finally saw the pattern on the banner.

It was a magical design composed of three Chinese characters followed by an exclamation mark, painstakingly traced by Chen Jue’s flying white needle lines from scratch.

When he finished the last stitch at the exclamation mark, the chat erupted uncontrollably.

All the viewers erupted in excitement, collectively flooding the screen with a thrilling banner phrase:

“Please Teach Us!”

“Please Teach Us!”

“Chinese Martial Arts, Please Teach Us!”

Second update~

A passionate long chapter written.

Hope everyone votes after reading~

Traditional martial arts in reality may be dead, but its spirit lives forever!

(End of chapter)