The crowd gasped.
Arthur did not block. Blocking a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man moving at full speed would have shattered his forearm. Instead, he simply wasn't there.
Using the intricate, circular footwork of Baguazhang, Arthur pivoted on his left heel and glided smoothly to the right. He didn't jump or dodge; he flowed. The movement was so small, so perfectly timed, that Chad’s fist missed Arthur’s chin by less than an inch.
The momentum of the missed punch carried Chad forward, throwing him slightly off balance. Arthur, as he slid past Chad’s outside shoulder, casually reached out and tapped the back of Chad’s lead knee with his foot. It was not a kick, merely a nudge applied at the exact moment Chad’s weight shifted.
Chad stumbled violently, his leg buckling inward. He almost went down, waving his arms frantically to maintain his balance, stumbling into the chain-link fence on the opposite side of the cage.
The gym erupted in a mixture of gasps and nervous laughter. The undisputed champion had just been made to look like a drunken sailor by a man holding a mop ten minutes ago.
Chad spun around, his face burning with humiliation. "Lucky move, old man!" he roared, spitting out his mouthpiece. He abandoned technique and charged again, throwing a wild flurry of punches—lefts, rights, uppercuts—a barrage of leather meant to overwhelm Arthur through sheer volume.
This was where the mastery of Lin Jian truly revealed itself. Arthur stood his ground in the center of the cage. He employed the principles of Wing Chun and Tai Chi. He kept his hands open and relaxed. As Chad’s punches rained down, Arthur didn't retreat. He met force with emptiness.
When Chad threw a straight right, Arthur would softly slap the outside of Chad’s wrist, parrying the strike just enough to let it slide past his ear, while simultaneously shifting his torso a fraction of an inch. When Chad threw a hook, Arthur would duck underneath it, his movements fluid and continuous, like water flowing around a jagged rock. He was operating in the micro-seconds between Chad’s strikes, reading the slight twitches in Chad’s shoulders and hips before the punches were even thrown.
To the untrained eyes outside the cage, it looked like magic. Chad was swinging furiously, screaming with frustration, but he was hitting nothing but air. Every time a punch seemed destined to land, the old man simply melted out of the way. Arthur’s hands moved in tight, mesmerizing circles, constantly redirecting Chad’s kinetic energy away from its intended target.
"Stand still and fight me!" Chad screamed, his lungs burning. One minute had passed. He had thrown over fifty full-power strikes and had not landed a single one. His shoulders felt heavy. Panic, cold and unfamiliar, began to creep into his chest.
"Fighting is not about standing still, Mr. Sterling," Arthur replied calmly, not even breathing heavily. "It is about geometry. You are fighting the space where I was, not where I am."
Chapter 6: The Strike
At the two-minute mark, Chad was exhausted, not just physically, but mentally. His paradigm was shattering. His entire worldview, built on the supremacy of modern athletic power, was being systematically dismantled by an old man in rubber boots.
Desperation took over. Chad realized he couldn't win a striking exchange. He decided to rely on his grappling. He would shoot in, grab the old man, lift him into the air, and slam him through the canvas.
Chad faked a high jab, ducked low, and shot in for a double-leg takedown. He drove off his back foot, propelling his massive body forward like a missile, his arms outstretched to wrap around Arthur’s waist. It was a textbook wrestling maneuver, fast and brutal.
This was the moment Arthur had been waiting for. The moment the aggressor overcommitted, abandoning all defense in pursuit of total destruction.
As Chad shot in, Arthur did not sprawl backwards as a modern fighter would. Instead, he stepped forward, directly into the path of the oncoming giant. It was a move that defied all logic.
As Chad’s head came level with Arthur’s chest, Arthur rotated his hips, generating power from the ground up, transferring it through his spine, down his arm, and into his right hand. He formed his hand into a shape known in traditional arts as the "Phoenix Eye Fist"—the index finger extended slightly forward, supported by the thumb, creating a singular, hardened point of impact.
Arthur didn't wind up. He didn't swing. He drove his hand forward with a sharp, explosive burst of internal energy—Fa Jin.
The strike traveled less than six inches. It was silent. It was not aimed at Chad’s jaw or his temple. It was aimed at a highly specific nexus of nerves and blood vessels located just below the collarbone, nestled deep in the hollow of the shoulder—the Brachial Plexus.
Thwip.
The sound of the impact was dull, like a heavy stone dropping into deep mud.
Arthur’s single, hardened knuckle struck the nerve cluster with pinpoint accuracy. The kinetic energy did not dissipate on the surface; it penetrated deeply, sending a massive, catastrophic electrical shockwave directly into Chad’s nervous system.