Chapter 58: Prosperous Business, Kept at a Distance

In the days that followed, Hua Twelve's "Number One Martial Arts Hall under Heaven" continuously and ceaselessly welcomed challenges from various martial arts sects in Hong Kong. Sometimes there were two or three matches in a single day, and later on, there were even days when he faced multiple masters at once.

However, after the failure of several public challenges, the martial arts masters who came later basically chose to spar behind closed doors.

After all, they were all masters running their own schools. Losing a challenge was one thing, but if people saw their pathetic and disheveled state of defeat, how could they ever recruit disciples again!

Previously, Master Mo Zijiang of the Mo Family Fist had his reputation ruined because he was defeated in public, and most of his disciples scattered. As a result, all six of his older brothers came to stand up for him, and the outcome was that they simply delivered another six hundred Hong Kong dollars to Hua Twelve, not even wanting the ninety-nine percent discount. After losing, they threw down the money and left.

"Li Hongda of the Cai Family Fist, seeking instruction from Master Shen!"
"Zhang Yong of Hung Fist, seeking instruction from Master Shen!"
"Liu Family Fist..."
"Li Family Fist..."

The masters of the five great southern boxing styles—Liu, Li, Cai, Mo, and Hung—who operated schools in Hong Kong all came to the door to issue challenges.

In addition to these, the southern boxing styles that came to challenge included Wing Chun, White Crane, Wing Chun White Crane, Choy Li Fut, Drunken Eight Immortals, Cha Fist, Tiger Fist, and Liuhe Fist.

There were also northern boxing styles taught in Hong Kong, such as Tai Chi, Bagua, Xingyi, Tongbei, Baji, Chuojiao, and so on. In short, writing the names of these boxing styles on paper read like a list of future intangible cultural heritage items—just ask yourself if you would be scared.

Yet, without exception, they all quite amicably left behind one hundred Hong Kong dollars for Hua Twelve.

Shen Chongyang's twenty-plus years of martial arts cultivation combined with his peak shark-like strength swept across Hong Kong, making him invincible.

Of course, some martial artists felt that Hua Twelve's bare-handed combat was formidable and wanted to test their weapons against him.

However, Shen Chongyang's Great Sage Pi Gua was proficient in all eighteen major weapons, and under his immense strength, every single weapon erupted with unparalleled power, directly crushing his opponents into submission.

Furthermore, after hearing Liu Yubai's story about King Wu of the Great Saber, this fellow relied on his raw strength to directly commission an eighty-jin Guan Dao. Gripping it with both hands and whirling it around, even he himself was afraid of losing his grip and hurting himself, so how could anyone else possibly fight him?

Challenge after challenge, although they were later conducted behind closed doors with the results not publicly announced, the expressions on the challengers' faces as they walked out, coupled with the fact that Hua Twelve's sign reading "Number One Under Heaven, Leader of Martial Arts" remained hanging right there, allowed the onlookers outside to guess that these martial arts hall masters who came to challenge inevitably ended in failure.

Of course, not everyone who came to challenge paid money; there were also those who were poor yet fiercely arrogant.

For those who wanted a free ride and hoped to step on him to gain fame without paying a dime, Hua Twelve dealt heavy blows. Though he did not kill or permanently cripple them, he made it impossible for them to get out of bed for several months.

Hua Twelve's series of actions caused quite a sensation in Hong Kong. As the news spread, common folk whispered that he had won a hundred consecutive duels, and some people even began to believe that his sign of "Number One Under Heaven, Leader of Martial Arts" was truly well-deserved.

As for those seeking to apprentice and learn martial arts, there were so many that they almost flattened his threshold. Even though Hua Twelve set a high tuition fee of one Hong Kong dollar per month, people kept coming in an endless stream to learn martial arts.

Yet, to his surprise, Zhuo Yifei, who had failed to challenge him on the day the martial arts hall opened, brought his friend Ma Long to apprentice as well.

Speaking of Zhuo Yifei, he was a prominent figure in the Hong Kong underworld and the God of Gamblers in Central; the man directly presented a sky-high apprenticeship gift of five hundred Hong Kong dollars each.

Considering that Zhuo Yifei possessed the attribute of winning every single gamble and knowing that this little bit of money meant nothing to him, Hua Twelve unhesitatingly accepted it, having the two serve tea and kowtow to complete the apprenticeship ceremony.

Thus, Zhuo Yifei and Ma Long became his senior and second disciples under his tutelage for the price of five hundred dollars. Business was business—since they had recharged their accounts, VIP treatment had to be delivered.

As for the other disciples, although they arrived earlier than these two, they paid less money yet still wanted to be the class monitor... cough, I mean senior brother. Keep dreaming! Having a chance to learn was already a blessing!

Ma Long was the character played by Brother Long in the movie *Project A*, and he was currently a water police sergeant, meaning his rank in the police force was even higher than Shen Chongyang's.

So what if his rank was higher? He still had to address Hua Twelve as master!

During these days, Zhuo Yifei stopped hanging out in gambling dens, and Ma Long came to help at the martial arts hall after finishing his shift. The two of them registered the newly arrived disciples, arranged their schedules for learning martial arts, and managed the daily affairs of the hall in an orderly fashion, completely sparing Hua Twelve, the master, from having to worry about anything.

The "Number One Martial Arts Hall under Heaven" expanded rapidly on the strength of its master's undefeated record. In just one month, the number of registered disciples under Hua Twelve's banner reached over two thousand.

Although this number could not compare with the tens or hundreds of thousands of disciples boasted by martial arts masters in Hong Kong of later generations, one had to remember that in 1906, the population of Hong Kong was only about 340,000, making this a considerable proportion.

These two thousand-plus disciples were scattered across both the underworld and the respectable society, spanning every walk of life. From the children of officials down to peddlers and foot soldiers, there were even numerous Chinese police officers who served as constables by day and went to learn martial arts from him after their shifts ended at night, privately addressing him as master.

When Hua Twelve served his shifts at the police station, his fellow colleagues showed him the utmost respect. Even Smith, the Chinese affairs inspector for the Central District police station, was extremely polite upon seeing him, greeting him as "Master Shen."

It could be said that Hua Twelve's influence was spreading to every corner of Hong Kong along with the growing number of his disciples.

Among the martial arts hall's disciples were many triad members. Hua Twelve laid down rules for them: being in a gang was fine, but heinous crimes must not be committed, betrayal of the nation was forbidden, and bullying fellow disciples was not allowed.

As for gangs fighting over territory and the like, he turned a blind eye; after all, living in troubled times, simply making a living was hard enough.

More than two thousand disciples, combined with the money earned from duels, temporarily granted Hua Twelve financial freedom. Having rented the building in early June, by the end of the month he approached Uncle Wang to convert the martial arts hall from a rental to an outright purchase, turning the property directly into his own asset.

Having collected tuition fees from his disciples, Hua Twelve taught them wholeheartedly, imparting the Great Sage Pi Gua Fist and the Twelve-Road Shaolin Springy Legs that Shen Chongyang had practiced since childhood, tailoring his teaching to each individual's aptitude.

Do not think that the Great Sage Pi Gua Fist and the Twelve-Road Shaolin Springy Legs were merely two simple routines of boxing with nothing much to learn.

In reality, Great Sage Pi Gua was a martial arts style that integrated two distinct combat arts.

"Great Sage" referred to the Great Sage Equaling Heaven, Sun Wukong, which meant monkey style, while "Pi Gua" referred to Pi Gua Fist.

The three routines of Pi Gua Fist focused on fast attacks, wide and expansive movements, generating power from the waist and stance, possessing unmatched strength, and mostly targeting the upper body.

The five routines of Monkey Fist were flexible and versatile, shifting unpredictably between the real and the illusory, blending the hard and the soft, and mostly targeting the lower body. Combining the two made the style fast, agile, and attentive to both upper and lower domains, complementing each other perfectly.

Just mastering Pi Gua and Monkey Fist alone was enough to keep the disciples learning for several years.

Furthermore, the Great Sage Pi Gua school possessed seventy-two grappling techniques focused on locking major human joints, with each grappling technique having three counter-methods, totaling two hundred and sixteen techniques in all.

As for weapons, they covered all eighteen major categories, each equipped with dedicated routines and techniques.

Shen Chongyang had practiced martial arts since childhood and spent ten years mastering the entire system of the Great Sage Pi Gua school, achieving true accomplishment only after twenty years. Therefore, no matter how many disciples he had, Hua Twelve was never afraid of running out of things to teach.

As Hua Twelve continuously accepted challenges and swept through the Hong Kong martial arts world, his impact grew larger and larger, and even several newspapers in Hong Kong reported extensively on it.

Chinese-language newspapers such as the *South China Morning Post*, *Wah Wai New Paper*, and *Wah Tsz Yat Po* all published interview content featuring him, and the English-founded monthly magazine *Far East* even spread the story of Shen Chongyang and the "Number One Martial Arts Hall under Heaven" all the way to Shanghai and Japan.

Most of these newspapers praised Shen Chongyang to the skies, hailing him as undefeated across Hong Kong and a true grandmaster of his generation.

Hua Twelve felt that this exaggerated flattery was a bit excessive and not a good sign. Ordinarily, if he were merely making a fortune in a small place like Hong Kong, mainland martial arts grandmasters might not bother with him. However, once the matter made it into the newspapers, things were different—it concerned matters of face, and he had a lingering feeling that some grandmaster would eventually come looking for trouble.

Therefore, using the pretext of raising the bar, he increased the stakes for a challenge from one hundred Hong Kong dollars to twenty thousand silver dollars, a price that left everyone dumbfounded.

His public explanation was that the price hike was because he no longer wished to accept challenges from people with inferior martial arts skills. Having already defeated everyone in Hong Kong, countless people now harbored wishful thinking and wanted to use him to achieve fame, and he was thoroughly exhausted by the harassment.

By raising the stakes, he could separate the wheat from the chaff, blocking out those driven by wishful thinking. Only masters with extreme self-confidence would come to challenge him.

While this fellow put it nicely, what he was actually thinking was that even martial arts grandmasters like Li Shouwen or Wong Fei-hung probably couldn't scrape together that much money. That way, he would remain safe and sound and could develop his enterprise in peace.

He believed that once the newspapers spread his martial arts hall's sign and couplets to the mainland, even if those martial arts grandmasters wanted to come and teach him a lesson, upon seeing the price tag, they would likely back down.

Of course, not all newspapers offered praise; some published articles belittling him. For instance, the *Zhonghuajia Times*, edited by Chen Shaobai in the storyline of *Bodyguards and Assassins*, published an article targeting Hua Twelve's martial arts hall.

Editor-in-chief Chen Shaobai personally commented that Shen Chongyang was nothing more than a sensationalist seeking attention through gimmicks.

He further remarked that Hong Kong's martial arts circles were never well-developed to begin with, and those who opened schools in Hong Kong were mostly bottom-tier disciples and unranked boxing masters of various sects, so defeating them proved nothing.

In Chen Shaobai's view, Hua Twelve had simply seen through this dynamic and was exploiting martial artists' competitive mindset—where no martial artist acknowledges a peer—to rake in wealth and chase after fame and reputation.

After reading the newspaper, Zhuo Yifei and Ma Long both wanted to go and cause trouble for the *Zhonghuajia Daily* and have a word with Chen Shaobai, but Hua Twelve stopped them both.

For no other reason than the fact that everything Chen said was correct, and Hua Twelve himself was puzzled as to how Chen Shaobai could see things so accurately.

Suddenly, recalling how Chen Shaobai in the original storyline of *Bodyguards and Assassins* frequently concocted grand pretexts to squeeze money out of Li Yutang, although their methods differed, the underlying logic shared a wondrous similarity. It turned out they were birds of a feather.

Moreover, Chen's description of the current state of Hong Kong's martial arts world was extremely accurate. At present, the boxing masters opening schools in Hong Kong were virtually devoid of grandmasters; they were all small fry of various sects.

The development of Hong Kong's martial arts world would only truly begin later with the southward transmission of northern boxing, when grandmasters like Hung Fist's Lam Sai-wing, Wing Chun's Ip Man, and Pak Mei's Cheung Lai-chuen came to open schools in Hong Kong, giving the local martial arts scene grandmasters at the helm and forming a flourishing scene of a hundred flowers blooming.

Therefore, Chen Shaobai was not wrong at all when he said Hua Twelve had defeated unranked boxing masters.

For a revolutionary like Chen Shaobai, who harbored deep worries for his country, Hua Twelve still held a great deal of respect.

However, he dared not get involved in the man's affairs, otherwise a certain supreme administrator of the heavens surnamed He might come to trouble him, so it was best to avoid excessive contact. Let Chen say whatever he wished, while he himself would maintain a respectful distance.