Chapter 134 - 97: Showstopping Debut Livestream

Chen Jue had been so engrossed in working out and studying lately that he hadn’t spent much time online scrolling through short videos and was a bit out of the loop.

When Wu Fang sent over a few links of people using the Inch Fist to break bricks or marble slabs, Chen Jue almost spat out the dinner he had just eaten.

’This is so fucking fake!’ Chen Jue couldn’t help but think.

Back in high school, he had once seen his physics teacher perform the feat of breaking a brick with a bare hand in class.

Later, based on the analysis and physics formulas provided by Teacher Ding, he learned that as long as you propped the brick up at a certain angle or placed a small stone underneath it, even an ordinary person could break a red brick in one go without any practice.

This wasn’t some Traditional Martial Arts; it was actually just like the acrobatic tricks performed by folk artists who used to roam the Jianghu and perform for a living.

Breaking a large stone on one’s chest, swallowing a sword, fishing coins out of a wok of hot oil with a bare hand, or even using one’s fingers to shatter two stacked glass injection vials—all of it was just magic. These acts, along with palm-striking red bricks, were nothing but sleight of hand and optical illusions.

An ordinary person might watch and be amazed, not understanding the mechanics, but someone in the know could tell what was really going on with a single glance.

As for the Inch Fist brick-breaking videos Wu Fang had sent, Chen Jue knew they were fake the moment he saw them.

Besides the bricks looking dry and brittle, with the material obviously being wrong, the number of red bricks being broken by a bare hand was also incorrect.

This was because Chen Jue had been obsessed with firearm culture for a while and had seen videos by foreign gun bloggers shooting at bricks.

Pistols and submachine guns, using automatic fire, could blast through two stacked bricks, but they couldn’t break the third one.

Only a heavy, large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifle like the M82A1 developed by Barrett Firearms could break three stacked bricks at once.

When you made that comparison, it was easy to understand why Bruce Lee chose to break wooden boards instead of bricks when demonstrating Jeet Kune Do.

Because the destructive power of a normal human punch could never possibly surpass that of a bullet fired from a gun.

As for the Inch Fist masters in these videos, who could break three or more red bricks with a gentle push of their hand, that wasn’t a performance trick anymore—it was an insult to the audience’s intelligence.

The problem was that these Inch Fist masters had attracted a lot of traffic with their acrobatic performances, casually accumulating hundreds of thousands of fans.

This then prompted some debunkers to come forward and post a 500,000 cash reward, inviting these Inch Fist masters to come and break bricks.

And as it turned out, some stubborn, idiotic fake master, who had developed some bizarre confidence from breaking prop bricks he prepared, actually went and accepted the invitation. He tried to use his Inch Fist to break three red bricks tied together and suspended by a rope.

Well, that went well. Forget breaking three red bricks, he couldn’t even chip the surface of one. Instead, he just made his own fist bleed.

The whole thing was being live-streamed. For a prize he had no chance of winning, this "Inch Fist master" was completely exposed, turning into a clown and suffering a social death on the spot!

After watching these Inch Fist brick-breaking videos, Chen Jue felt so much second-hand embarrassment for them that he wanted to dig a three-bedroom apartment out of the ground to hide in.

...

After finishing dinner at the cafeteria, Chen Jue took a walk around the Jiang University campus to aid his digestion and chatted with Wu Fang on WeChat for a little while.

Right now, the trend of debunking the Inch Fist was blowing up all over the internet, and the flames were even starting to spread to other Traditional Martial Arts.

Although Chen Jue’s "Brother of Special Skills" account didn’t claim he was a Traditional Martial Arts practitioner, the few videos he had posted of his special skills with Darts had been categorized as Traditional Martial Arts by many of the debunkers.

A few minor influencers, trying to ride the trend, even took Chen Jue’s videos and did a deep-dive, frame-by-frame analysis, all for the purpose of exposing the "true face" of "Brother of Special Skills" as a "fake master."

This was a classic case of "sitting at home when disaster falls from the sky"—he’d been dragged into this mess for no reason at all.

’Breaking a real brick with your fist?’

’I have no idea what these idiots are thinking. Even with my hardest Darts, I’m not sure I could shoot through three stacked real bricks.’ Chen Jue kept complaining in his head as he clicked on the trending topic and browsed for a bit.

He then searched on Taobao for the "prop bricks" and "kung fu bricks" that netizens frequently mentioned. The sales figures were all 999+, and it was obvious that those "Inch Fist masters" had contributed significantly to the sales volume.

There were too many influencers faking things on short videos these days; people who took acrobatic tricks, put them on the small screen, and boasted about being real masters were everywhere.

It was all just to grab attention, trick some ordinary people into becoming their disciples or signing up for courses, and make a quick buck.

It was just like the debunking of the Tai Chi master a few years ago, or that "Lightning Five-Hit Combo Whip" clown. Every few years, a couple of these attention-seekers would pop up.

As for Traditional Martial Arts, Chen Jue personally believed they were definitely useful. Just like the Tai Chi he practiced himself, training in it could help maintain health and strengthen the body.

But when it came to the question of whether Traditional Martial Arts could be used in actual combat, Chen Jue took a more dialectical view.

Because in his view, Traditional Martial Arts were just like the fitness techniques he had learned—mostly training methods for strengthening the body.

Right now, all these fake masters of Traditional Martial Arts online were just keyboard warriors. Chen Jue dared to say that not a single one of them could actually fight.

Even many martial arts movie stars who came from a background of practicing forms had clarified that the forms of Traditional Martial Arts were only for performance, not for actual combat.

Why were there only Martial Arts forms competitions and no Traditional Martial Arts combat competitions at this stage? It was because everyone knew that stuff couldn’t be used for fighting at all; it was only for show.

The Huaxia fighters who had achieved success and made it into unrestricted fighting competitions like the MMA and UFC were all from Sanda or wrestling backgrounds. Not a single one of them practiced Traditional Martial Arts.

No one was stupid. If it really had that much power, why wouldn’t people learn it and use it?