Chapter Five Dance Steps

  Wu Xiaotian stood on the roof of the "Hū" house, wearing only his undershirt, holding a large 1.9-meter-long chopper in his hand, standing in the cold and chilly wind.

  "Hah!" A loud shout, he took a step forward with his bow, using the power of his waist to drive his arm. The blade of the large hatchet made intimate contact with the wood in front of him, and the wood snapped loudly.

  "It's still not working!" Wu Xiaotian has been practicing basic knife skills every morning for the past few days, and from noon to afternoon, he practices chopping with a large machete. After dinner, he starts playing games, of course, it's not an online game, but a very monotonous survival game, Survival Road 2. If he has time, he watches some wilderness survival videos. Then he begins physical training, including frog jumps, push-ups, sit-ups, and deep squats, all of which are compulsory evening exercises. Each exercise increases daily, from 200 on the first day, 400 on the second day, 700 on the third day, and so on.

  Even though he had evolved once, after each training session, he was exhausted like a dog.

  It was only 5 days of training, and the extra fat on his belly had also been exercised away in these few days. He lit a cigarette, and the faint smoke slowly rose up. Thinking about the results of the past few days' training, Tang Knife's basic knife techniques Wu Xiao Tian picked up quickly, and within two days, he was able to master the chopping, sweeping, hacking, and parrying moves. However, when it came to the柴刀 (chopper), he still didn't have any feeling for it.

  He trampled out his cigarette butt and said, "It's settled then, I'll practice with the Tang knife all day."

  Holding a large axe, I came to the tool room and slowly sharpened the axe's blade with a whetstone. Even if I couldn't use it myself, chopping and hacking at it until the blade was sharp, then I would be in charge of fetching things.

  After dinner, looking at the obviously decreasing rice bag, I couldn't help but feel helpless. The bigger the exercise, the greater the consumption, and most importantly, the food consumption has increased.

  Just as he was thinking about how to reduce food consumption, a loud rumbling sound came from the sky, accompanied by icy cold winds and pea-sized raindrops falling from above. Rushing to the rooftop to collect clothes, getting soaked in the rain while collecting them, a sudden clap of thunder struck the water tower next door. The massive explosion left Wu Xiaotian's ears deafened.

  It felt like something was flowing out of my ears. I touched it with my hand and saw the bright red blood on my fingertips.

  "Damn it to hell!" After flashing an internationally recognized gesture of contempt with his right hand, he went back to the bedroom with his clothes in tow. He found some tissue paper to wipe away the blood on his ears, and stood there for a while...

  Slowly recovering hearing.

  After finding the "Basic Tang Knife Method", it slowly opened up. Why not turn on the computer and play games? What if lightning strikes and burns out the motherboard, this is the only entertainment tool after all. (Little Pig, my computer was struck by lightning and the motherboard was burned once TT)

  When he saw the sentence "In knife skills, non-knife hand and footwork are extremely important" again, Wu Xiaotian suddenly became furious, threw the book to the ground, and scolded a book loudly: "You must have footwork! How can I practice without footwork?" Later, he thought about it and felt helpless. He picked up the book and thought about how to practice footwork. What Lingbo Weibu, Eight Steps to Catch the Toad, Tuiyun Zong, all ran into Wu Xiaotian's mind. But that was an illusion! Even if it were real, who would come to teach himself?

  Forget it, don't think about it for now. After lighting a cigarette, I slowly thought about the sentence "In knife skills, non-knife hand and footwork are extremely important". Is the "non-knife hand" also very important? Since I hold the knife with my right hand, just holding the shield with my left hand should be enough, right? Thinking like this, tomorrow I'll practice like that.

  Put out the cigarette, start exercising, move the tea table to one side, but find a blanket under the tea table. Take a closer look, isn't that the dance mat my mother uses every day? Right, dancing requires dance steps.

  "What if I combine dance steps with sword moves?" The idea suddenly popped up in my mind. Thinking of doing it, I immediately ran to the TV to find dance tutorials. Sure enough, I found some, such as "Waltz Beginner Steps", "Jazz Dance Steps", "Ballroom Dance for Beginners" and a whole bunch more. I opened the TV and DVD player and inserted the disc.

  Watching those little swans frolicking on TV...

  "Am I supposed to do ballet with zombies?" He quickly pulled out the disc and threw it in the trash. When he confirmed that men could dance, he finally let out a deep breath, thankfully, it wasn't some weird dance after all.

  Holding a Tang knife in his hand, clumsily imitating the gentleman on TV.

  "Ow!" Wu Xiaotian clutched his waist in pain. This dance was really tough! After resting for a bit, he started imitating again.

  Wu Xiaotian sat on the ground with a "click", painfully clutching his ankle, this time it was a sprain.

  At this time, the TV was showing a beautiful woman with a fork. Wu Xiaotian imitated her conditionally and saw Wu Xiaotian covering his crotch in pain, rolling around.

  Wu Xiaotian was doing push-ups on the ground, but his mind was thinking about the feasibility of combining dance steps with knife techniques. Dance steps seemed easy, but practicing them was quite difficult. Not only did it require coordination between the body, limbs, waist and other parts, but also the footwork in martial arts was the same. Every step required the use of all joints and muscles in the body. Take jazz dance for example, jazz dance had many rapid and instantaneous powerful movements, muscle strength was essential. Jazz dance often required repeating the same movement many times, which also had high requirements for muscle endurance, especially the endurance of lower limb muscles. Otherwise, it would be like Wu Xiaotian, either twisting his ankle or knee.

  Taking jazz dance as an example, it belongs to aerobic exercise. According to the American Council on Exercise, dancing jazz 3-5 times a week, each time for 30-50 minutes, can help you shape a perfect figure. Although most of the people who dance jazz are women. However, think about it, one of the greatest dancers in the world - Michael Jackson, his dance has influenced three generations: post-70s, post-80s and post-90s. He combined street dance and jazz dance and successfully brought it onto the stage. If you like him, you may know that his work is a classic piece that marked the beginning of the MTV era.

  But practicing dance requires coordination, agility, balance, muscle strength and endurance. It has a lot in common with martial arts, both requiring physical coordination, agility, balance, muscular endurance and strength, as well as the explosive beauty.

  After considering all these, it was found that if dance steps and knife methods are combined, they should be feasible.

  At this moment, the sweat on the ground had already fallen in a large area. Wiping off the sweat stains on his body with a towel, he moved slowly into the bedroom with unnatural steps, lit a cigarette and set his training goals for later.

  In the morning, I run a distance of about 10 kilometers around my own rooftop. Then I practice basic sword techniques. At noon, I practice dance steps. In the afternoon, I practice both dance steps and sword techniques simultaneously. After dinner, there are two hours of gaming time, during which I squat in a horse-riding stance without sitting on a stool. Then I start training my basic physical strength with exercises such as push-ups, sit-ups, deep squats, and jump squats.