Romance of Dragons and Snakes

Chapter 150: Iron Fist Hwarang (Second)

“Jingjing?”

When Cao Yi mentioned her name, Wang Chao had then remembered the his class president during his high school time.

When Wang Chao had been in high school, he hadn’t any close friends due to his introverted personality, poor lifestyle, and silentness. After graduation, everyone had gone their own separate ways, some continuing into university, the others straight into work. They had cut all communications with each other there, and Wang Chao wouldn’t even be able to remember any one of his classmate’s names.

But the only name he would be able to remember would be the class president Cao Jingjing. But he had not been in touch with her either.

A bubbling sensation had suddenly risen up within Wang Chao’s body when Cao Yi had reminded him of her name.

Three years had gone by since his high school graduation.

In these three years, he had experienced a plethora of events. From a green horned youth, he had quickly transformed into a master of martial arts with the blood of many on his hands.

This had been a joyous growth, but at the same time, he had lost his youthfulness.

He had been trained by these years of dangerous bloodshed. Wang Chao had no longer the young state of mind of a 20 year old and was like an elderly man stuck in the body of a youth.

This was no deep delusions of a youngster, but rather the result of being tempered and baptized with life-risking and bloody combat.

“When Zhang Tong had asked whether I would continue my education or not, I said that I wouldn’t. That it was a waste of my youth. In response, she had said that the time of youth was meant to be wasted by playing around. Otherwise, when my youth was gone and I had money, I would no longer be able to reflect upon the impetuous times I had as a youth. That youth would be thrown away, to be never returned. I laughed then at her words, but now that I look back. I really did lose that youthful mind from long ago.”

The young, hot-blooded, impulsive signs of being a youth would never be reflected on Wang Chao. He wouldn’t even be able to pretend to be.

“Jingjing is learning Taekwondo?” Wang Chao thought back to his high school memories with a bit of sorrow before giving a tsking sound to Cao Yi. “What good is Taekwondo? Don’t you remember when you and I would help Li Wanji protect her dojo from any challengers? You might as well have Jingjing come to my Shandong School of Internal Martial Arts to learn. I guarantee that in just two years, she’ll surpass you.”

“That’s fine!” Cao Yi had laughed. “Your fist can kill a person with a single punch, what use is that for the future? Taekwondo is an Olympic event, it has a bigger future than your own Chinese boxing.”

“That much is true.” Wang Chao had admitted. “As long as Jingjing practices well and enters the Olympics, she could get the gold medal and gain both fame and fortune.”

“She’s already a black belt, you’d do well to not underestimate her.” Cao Yi couldn’t help but feel pleased.

“I’ll take note of that. Then, I’ll go and drop off the records. When I have time, I’ll go look for Jingjing.” After that, Wang Chao had asked Cao Yi for Cao Jingjing’s cellphone number.

“I have full confidence that even amongst the millions of people within the People’s Liberation Army, you are the number one expert. But teaching Jingjing, that’s not an easy task.” Cao Yi chuckled before hanging up.

With the line cut loose, Wang Chao grew calm once more.

“Party School? Major general? A rank like that is already an extremely high ranking in some countries. That is to say, there is nowhere to go but down from there.”

Wang Chao had known that much about the military ranking aspect. When a person’s contributions were high enough, the highest ranking they would generally be awarded would be the title of major general. Yang Liwei for example, was the first Chinese citizen to be in space. After his return, he had been conferred the title of major general.

But that was the ceiling to it. The higher ranks of lieutenant general and general belonged to people with actual power. No one outside the military would be given those ranks.

As for the Central Party School, it was a good commission. For the general official that wished to be promoted, they would have to first study at this institute. The Central Party School was no campus. One wouldn’t be able to get here through test scores alone. Those who were able to get in was because of their elder official relatives who all were major individuals. Those who studied here would also be able to become people of power. For them to be influential and had open futures, that went without saying here.

Cao Jingjing was at Beijing University while Wang Chao was at Central Party School. Both were schools, but the differences between both was like the earth’s soil and the heaven’s clouds. It could not be compared.

“Ai!” Although he had been promoted to an unbelievable height that very few people could get, Wang Chao did not feel even the smallest bit of joy in his heart. This was not what he wanted. On the contrary, he was now embroiled in between the quarrels of many that would be hard to escape from.

With each promotion was yet another shackle to his body.

But Wang Chao had no other choice at this point. He could only blindly stumble along this road.

After some thought, Wang Chao had been unexpectedly able to calm down. Immediately washing his face and changing his clothes, he tidied up his things before exiting the room and hailed a taxi to get to the Central Party School.

The Central Party School wasn’t in a spectacular place, and neither did it have the youthful flavor to it. The people that came and went around this place were officials with magnificent and steady auras to them. For a young person like Wang Chao to come walking in, it was unusually eye-catching in the sense that he did not belong.

Wang Chao hadn’t come across any problems, and after asking several people in succession, he had found the registration area for the Central Party School. With his records all in order, he was immediately guided through the process for registering. With some new papers, he was then arranged to go to the dormitories.

The dormitories to this school was far different from those of an ordinary school. The conditions were better and everyone had their own bedding. Each day, a person would come in to help clean and clothe them as well.

Author note: I have never been to the Central Party School, only in my YYs. If one of my readers has attended before, then please submit your complaints.

After his living quarters were arranged, Wang Chao had asked several questions more on his classes, the subjects he would be learning and the time. He had also obtained the roster of his class and the timetables before he walked out from the gates to the school.

Wang Chao had gone to Beijing twice now. The first time had been with Zhu Jia to see elder Li before leaving equally fast as he had come. This time, he would be learning here for two months, so Wang Chao was naturally ready to go sightseeing around the capital.

“I wonder if Zhu Jia is here in Beijing? She’s at CCTV international, is she still running around all year long? Forget it then, in this two months worth of time, I should go see Cao Jingjing. I haven’t seen any of my old classmates in forever.”

When Wang Chao thought back to his high school days, there was another bubbling sensation in his mind.

Fishing out his phone, Wang Chao punched in a single digit before his hand came to a stop, “I should go to Beijing University before anything. Now that I’m in university, I don’t know what will be going on.”

His taxi had finally arrived at the gates to Beijing Unversity. Upon seeing the red pillars and rustic feel to the gates, Wang Chao noticed the throng of young exuberant youths walking in and out from between the gates. With the sunshine raining down on them, Wang Chao had felt the strong youthful nature of university.

The atmosphere between here and the Central Party School was completely different.

When Wang Chao stepped past the gates, he had been stopped by the keen-eyed security guard. Because of Wang Chao’s personality, he was clearly not a university student here. But after showing his papers of being a student of the Central Party School, the guard had let him pass after giving him an unfathomable stare.

Tsinghua University and Beijing University were the two most well known universities in China. So when Wang Chao took a step onto campus, he had been able to see the pleased faces of all the students there.

“A university has so many clubs, how youthful it is.”

As Wang Chao walked across the campus, he had felt the atmosphere of the place and absorbed it in to feel completely at ease as if his spirit was ready to be set free and fly away.

He had never gone to university before, and all of his impressions of it had been from the stories he had heard while in high school. “Taekwondo is now an Olympic event, so it should be very popular in university. With Li Wanji doing a good job with all of the universities in S province, I wonder how Beijing University is doing.”

Wang Chao had been pretty engrossed in this thought.

He had worked at the Taekwondo dojo for wages before, but as traditional practitioner of martial arts, he had a bias against it, believing Taekwondo to be a performance type of martial arts with no substance.

But on the other hand, he had seen the business model of Taekwondo, and how it was a prosperous type of business.

In the end, no matter how well he was able to fight or how decent his skill was, he still had to go to the Taekwondo dojo to earn his meal.

Whatever the case, if food could not be earned from it, then it was not worth doing.

Eating and having clothes were the most essential factors to life.

Whatever school or sect that could keep up with the modern times would be entrenched the hearts of many and would be passed on. There was no such thing as a school or sect that could resist that tide of change.

Arriving at the gymnasium of the university, the Taekwondo poster had caught Wang Chao’s eye. With a gleam of it, he was able to learn of the exact location.

“Hai! Hai! Hai!”

A series of enthusiastic voices could be heard from across a rather wide open space. Many male and female university students could be seen donning a white uniform while kicking high up into the air with their legs again and again with power.

Needless to say, the uniforms each student wore was quite good-looking.

Several black-belt wearing men and women could be seen giving advice to a group of members.

“Not like that, your kick was too low. You’d want to kick at the chest level at the very least. Junior, you should learn to practice the fundamentals in ligament strengthening on your own time. Here, take a look at my demonstration. Hold this board above your head.”

At that moment, a voice could be heard to Wang Chao’s ear. It had not been too far away, and Wang Chao could hear a female instructor giving pointers to a male student on how to practice his kicks.

As a demonstration, this female had strode forward and rotated her body before abruptly flying into the air. Her body turned a complete 360 degree turn before her leg came flying down. With a smattering crack, the leg had split the wooden board the other student had been holding over his head. Finally, she gracefully landed back on the ground. The entire sequence had been beautiful, clean, marvelous, and wonderful.

“Since when did Cao Jingjing have a skill like that?”

It had only taken one eye for Wang Chao to see the similarities between this girl and Cao Jingjing, but with two eyes, he was able to take a closer look and realize that she was indeed the class president of his high school career, Cao Jingjing. Although it was said that a woman would undergo a drastic transformation at the age of 18, her aura was not something that would change.

Wang Chao’s intuition was very sharp and would naturally be able to recognize her.

As a former ultra-hired help of a Taekwondo dojo, Wang Chao was very familiar with the movement and style of Taekwondo. This had been the extremely difficult “Hurricane Kick”, a move that shared some similarities to the movements in gymnastics. To kick while in midair required a strong waist and an equally strong ligament in the legs to be able to dish out something of this calibre.

Needless to say, without training the waist and legs, then tearing the ligaments would only be natural.

“Our senior is amazing.”

“She is.”

“She’s awesome!”

Cao Jingjing’s kick had been marvelous beyond marvelous and had conquered the eyes of all the students there. Practically everyone in the room had a look of admiration on their faces–excluding Wang Chao of course.

“Very good, Jingjing. Your kicks are already on par with a third-degree black belt. When will you be taking your promotion tests?” A 27-28 year old looking male instructor clapped Jingjing on the shoulder.

“Jingjing, you’re already the prettiest girl in our faculty. But with that kick just now, who knows how many more people will come chasing? Every week, there’s already a dozen or so roses by our dorms for you.” One of the more beautiful looking female students spoke as she walked towards Jingjing.

“That’s enough from you, let’s eat lunch.” Cao Jingjing teased the student. “I haven’t practiced the Hurricane Kick enough.. Some of the harder kicks are still impossible for me to do. In these days, pulling a ligament is easy to do, I’d better start strengthening them.”

“Cao Jingjing!” At that moment, Wang Chao gave a shout out before walking over.

Turning her head around, when Cao Jingjing saw Wang Chao walk over, her eyebrows knitted together to scrutinize him. After a while, her eyes began to brighten in joy, “Are-aren’t you Wang Chao? What are you doing here, aren’t you working?”

“I haven’t been doing business for some time now, I’ll be studying in Beijing as well. I got a phone call from your dad recently, so I decided to come see how my old classmate was doing.”

“You’ll be studying in Beijing?” Cao Jingjing wasn’t one to have any misgivings for a classmate like Wang Chao, but when she heard that he would be here from now on, she was astonished.

Wang Chao’s academic records was practically a total mess. She knew that much.

“Jingjing, is this your classmate?” The girl next to Cao Jingjing asked.

“Yes, he’s my old highschool classmate.” Cao Jingjing replied to her before asking, “Ah, Wang Chao, which school will you be studying at?”

“The Central Party School over at Lotus Root Pond. But I’ll only be there for a short two months.”

“Central Party School?” Cao Jingjing and her friend both gasped. Even the male instructor had looked to Wang Chao after hearing those three words.