The four plots of land Tang Tian-Long selected were cheaper the further they got from the city. Xia Lei ended up choosing a plot of land about 70 to 80 kilometres out from Jingdu City. It was at the bottom of a mountain and next to a little village. The road connections were quite okay and the workers could go grocery shopping or have some tea or something in the village after work. Of course, the most important factor in choosing it was the price. It was only 50,000,000 for 10 hectares.

Xia Lei also liked it because there was empty space in its surroundings. It would be convenient if he needed to expand the site in the future and he need not worry about troublesome things like demolition. The distance from the city was not something he was worried about either since things the military produced were not normal products to be sold in supermarkets or on the market. The military would just transport the finished goods straight from the warehouse. Why would he need to get an expensive piece of land close to the city in that case?

It was already early evening by the time they got back to the city. Tang Yu-Yan treated Xia Lei to a meal of roast duck, a dish famous throughout China, then brought Xia Lei to her home.

Tang Yu-Yan lived alone. Her home was in a high-class area in the city centre and the place was 200 square metres; it was worth 10,000,000. There was no way Tang Yu-Yan could afford this with her salary but this seemed to be a piece of cake for her other identity. The Tang sect was the biggest clan in Sichuan and highly-regarded hundreds of years ago. They had expanded since then and nobody knew how much wealth the Tang clan had now.

“Nice place.” Xia Lei said some polite praise after walking through the door. He liked the modern decor Tang Yu-Yan had picked; it was simple, yet elegant and stylish.

“Don’t you have a place in Jingdu?” said Tang Yu-Yan, “I heard you’re staying at Long Bing’s place.”

“Nn, I’m there temporarily,” said Xia Lei. He walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window in the living room to look at the Jingdu cityscape.

“I’ll give you a set of keys,” said Tang Yu-Yan.

Xia Lei was stunned. “What for?”

Tang Yu-Yan laughed and said, “You want to learn Tang techniques and I want to learn Wing Chun. I’ll give you a set of keys so you can come over anytime. You can stay here too. It’ll be easier for us to exchange martial arts techniques - isn’t that great?”

“Um...” Tang Yu-Yan’s suggestion was quite good and conducive for their learning but Xia Lei was still uncomfortable with the idea.

“Oh, I know, you probably have to ask Long Bing and get her approval, right?”

“I don’t have to get her approval for where I stay, do I?” said Xia Lei a little awkwardly.

“You don’t?”

Xia Lei couldn’t help laughing. “Are we filming some sort of drama? Give me the keys; I’ll come when I have time.”

Tang Yu-Yan gave him a set of spare keys. “I’ll go change and we can begin.”

“Nn,” said Xia Lei, “I’ll also prepare what I want to teach you.”

Tang Yu-Yan entered her room. Xia Lei sat on the sofa for two minutes, then moved the sofa away to open up an empty space.

Tang Yu-Yan walked out of the room a few minutes later. She was in a black exercise bikini and the skin-tight fabric held her chest high. The fabric also bunched in the crotch and showed bumps and faint dents, outlining everything. The buttocks area was better. Her full, round buttocks filled the exercise shorts out nicely and the thin material was like a second skin on her - very tempting.

Tang Yu-Yan had made an attempt to cover herself up a little and had put on her bra and underwear, but this was not enough.

XIa Lei pretended like all was normal and smiled as he said, “I’ve moved your sofa out of the way. I’ll put it back when I’m going off.”

“There’s no need to do this trivial thing.” Tang Yu-Yan smiled. “I’m ready. Teach me Wing Chun first.”

Xia Lei had wanted to get Tang Yu-Yan to teach him Tang martial arts first but he hadn’t expected her to be so sly as to get him to teach her first. It looked like Tang Yu-Yan had the same idea as he did - if he did not teach her real Wing Chun, she probably wouldn’t teach him real Tang martial arts.

Ancestral martial arts were not passed down to the public - this was a bad practice of martial artists in China. However, this was not the case for Xia Lei and Tang Yu-Yan. What Xia Lei had to take into consideration for Tang Yu-Yan was trust. He did not want Tang Yu-Yan to lose trust in him and the grace of her imparting skills to him. Tang Yu-Yan was simply taking the difficulty of imparting Tang martial arts to outsiders into consideration.

‘Looks like I have to gain her trust first. I’ll teach her some basics first, then see how she handles it.’ Xia Lei made a decision and went to stand in front of Tang Yu-Yan. “I’ll teach you hand techniques first. Copy my movements. First is Wing Chun’s most famous move, Seeking Hand...”

Xia Lei made the moves as he talked about them and sometimes stopped to correct Tang Yu-Yan’s movements.

After teaching Seeking Hand, Xia Lei taught her Palm Up Hand.

Xia Lei went to stand behind Tang Yu-Yan and placed his leg close to the bend of her legs, saying, “Wing Chun’s moves pay close attention to having the fist arrive at the target when the leg reaches the ground, combining three points. The tip of the nose, tip of the hands and feet must line up for one to do attack and defence. Your legs are spaced too far apart and will affect your speed; place them closer.”

Tang Yu-Yan closed her fists and repositioned her legs. She did the move again.

In one hour, Xia Lei had gone from Seeking Hand to Throat Cutting Hand. He had even showed her an example and used his Knife Hand to cut at Tang Yu-Yan’s snow-white neck. It was just a move, of course, and had no strength behind it. Even so, his hand seemed electrified when it touched her soft skin and he did not dare linger on her skin; he quickly moved his hand away.

Tang Yu-Yan felt the same way as Xia Lei did - shy and nervous. There was no avoiding it, however.

After teaching her the ten-plus forms of Wing Chun, Xia Lei spent another half hour with Tang Yu-Yan going through practical practice. The two of them went back and forth, using Wing Chun forms.

As expected of a woman with martial arts foundation, Tang Yu-Yan learnt Wing Chun quickly and was almost as quick as when Xia Lei had first started learning Wing Chun. This surprised Xia Lei but considering that she had been practising martial arts from a young age, he supposed that explained it.

“I’ve taught you all the Wing Chun forms. I’ll teach you how to draw internal strength when you’ve become familiar with the forms.” Xia Lei wiped the sweat from his brow and let out an internal sigh. No need to touch her body anymore!

“I would need about two weeks to digest what you taught me and I’ll have to trouble you to teach me the Wing Chun technique for drawing internal energy after that. You can’t hold back, okay?” said Tang Yu-Yan.

Xia Lei laughed. “I won’t. I was taking into consideration the fact that you’ve just learnt Wing Chun, otherwise I could teach you to draw internal energy now.”

“I believe you. Let’s talk about it again after I’m more familiar with Wing Chun. I’ll teach you Tang Qinggong now.” Tang Yu-Yan started stretching her legs.

Xia Lei’s left eye had already gone into ‘deep observation’ mode. Tang Yu-Yan had become a 3D model of muscle, ligaments, blood vessels and bones, all an open book to Xia Lei.

Xia Lei had learnt the underlying secret of Wing Chun this way and he was now prepared to use this to learn the secrets of Tang Qinggong.

“Qinggong, if one talked about it in terms of physics, is actually a breaking away from gravity. The greater the force exerted on the ground, the greater the rebound. The process of exerting this force and making use of the rebound is what you learn in Qinggong. A force of 9.8 Newtons gives you one kilogram - this is the baseline to let you know how much force you need to exert to pull away from gravity. The greater the force exerted, the higher your effectiveness in rebounding off the Earth and the higher you jump. Watch, I’ll give you a demonstration.” Tang Yu-Yan abruptly bent her legs and her body slammed into the ground. It then seemed to have overcome the restrictions of the Earth’s pull and whooshed upwards, leaping towards the ceiling.

This drop-and-bounce threw her up and she was very close to having the top of her head come into light contact with the ceiling!

With this exaggerated bouncing power, she would definitely be a world champion if she participated in high-jump competitions.

Xia Lei wasn’t able to do this on his own. He did not miss a single thing from the time Tang Yu-Yan dropped and prepared to jump. What he saw was not a simple bounce but the internal workings of her body, especially her legs, the angle at which she bent them, the movements of her muscles, the rate of blood flow in her veins...

This in-depth look at the inner workings of her body revealed the secret of Tang Qinggong to Xia Lei.

“Can you show me again?” Xia Lei needed one more look - once was not enough.

“No problem.” Tang Yu-Yan bent her legs again and drew a breath before bouncing off the floor. Her wonderfully large breasts, which were still before her jump, were lifted as she bounced. They swayed in the air as her head brushed the ceiling, coming down with her as she landed back on the floor.

Xia Lei was dumbstruck.

“Still need another demonstration?” said Tang Yu-Yan.

“Take a break first. Can you tell me how you guys normally practice Qinggong?” said Xia Lei.

“Leg strength is very important. Any practice which will increase leg strength is fine, like jumping with sandbags attached or jumping over obstacles. Of course, it’s important to grasp the best way to make use of the rebound. I’ll teach you that next time. Practice first,” said Tang Yu-Yan.

Xia Lei stood in an empty space and jumped a few times but none were successful. He could only just as high as he originally could and was not able to reach even a half of the height Tang Yu-Yan had jumped. He could actually learn and use the technique after grasping the secrets of Qinggong and jump even higher but he did not want Tang Yu-Yan to see his perversely talented side.

“You’re actually quite clumsy,” giggled Tang Yu-Yan.

“Easy for you to say. I’ve only just begun to do your Tang Qinggong.” Xia Lei had stopped jumping. He looked at Tang Yu-Yan and asked probingly, “Uh, can you teach me your clan’s hidden weapons techniques?”

Tang Yu-Yan beamed at him. “I knew you’d ask that. I can teach you Qinggong, but hidden weapons... You have to be part of the clan to learn that.”

Xia Lei shrugged. “Doesn’t this mean it won’t be passed down to outsiders? Never mind, I don’t want to learn that anyway. Just give me a demonstration and let me see it.”

“That’s no problem. Hold on.” Tang Yu-Yan went into her room and she had a leather weapons-belt on when she reappeared. Several weapons were attached to the belt; there were boomerangs, throwing knives, triangular throwing weapons, steel needles, five-point darts and so on. There were other strangely shaped weapons which Xia Lei had never seen before too and he could not name them.

His eye twitched and went into ‘deep observation’ mode again.

Tang Yu-Yan chose a one of the larger boomerangs and suddenly threw it. It hummed as it flew and reversed abruptly before it hit the wall, flying back to her from another direction. Before it got back to her, however, she snatched up the steel needles and both her hands moved in a blur as the steel needles swished through the air and hit the boomerang backwards.

Bam! The boomerang hit the wall and dropped to the floor.

Xia Lei looked at the boomerang and his jaw dropped.

On the boomerang was a row of steel needles, all perfectly, evenly spaced in one column!

After a pause, Xia Lei said, “Does your clan accept godsons?”

Tang Yu-Yan giggled and didn’t answer.

Xia Lei looked at Tang Yu-Yan, his eyes alight. “Hey, um, can you do another demonstration?”

Tang Yu-Yan was speechless.