Disgraceful Downfall of Dragon Kid Chapter 2

Once he reached home, he right away entered a dim room where his grandpa rested. Then he lifted the pencil-thin body of his grandpa and placed him in a rickety wheelchair. He pushed the wheelchair to the dining table, then he heated the simple meal he prepared in the morning before leaving for school.

He would have a short chat with him over lunch, the grandpa was cheerful as usual and the pallid countenance reflected the handsome face he had in his youth. Since the death of his parents, Bien was single-handedly raised by his grandpa, he was not only his grandpa but a mentor, a philosopher and a martial art master as well.

 

At the age of three, he was too young to have any recollection of how his parents died, for his whole life, he knew that the only person who was always around to take care of him, to protect him was his grandpa. He was ignorant about his grandpa’s profession, he could only recall that he followed him to a place where people learnt to punch and kick. He would obediently sit in a corner looking at his grandpa conducting classes day and night, he would listen to his grandpa’s   feral voice of yelling and commanding, and when the last person left the room, he was amazed looking at the stoic build of his grandpa’s physique from behind. Not until the age of seven, he was aware that his grandpa was a martial art instructor, and he earned a living by imparting martial art skills to the students.

 

Bien spent his childhood almost every day in that room with his grandpa, when he was five he started to pick up martial art from him, it seemed like a natural choice and unavoidable path for Bien to learn martial art at such a tender age. As he grew older, he couldn’t help but sense the serious commitment shown by his grandpa, he knew that his grandpa occasionally went overboard to protect him, but the stringent attitude and demanding regiment he imposed on him exposed the certain hidden intention he schemed for Bien. Sometimes, he couldn’t comprehend why his grandpa would go a distance to teach him all the martial arts skills and techniques but sternly warned him to be tolerant when confronted by troublemakers or bullies. His grandpa taught him all the fundamentals of martial arts for two years when he was five, even at such a young age, grandpa had never been lenient to him, every posture, and every action must be precise and steady, intermittently he instructed Bien to jog, hop and brisk walk when the classes were on; sometimes he had to perform a few sets of simple workouts, like pumping, squats, rope skipping, etc. Over two-years time, Grandpa supervised closely his progress and ensured he mastered all the basic skills to perfection, like stance, turning, etc.

 Once in a while, he would ask his grandpa why he had to learn all these exercises, grandpa just told him that he would be stronger by doing all these exercises because he was short. Bien inherited his dad’s stature, he inherently had a short skeletal frame, at the height of only 5 feet 5 inches, and he was just slightly higher than his dad. With the solitary lifestyle of being accompanied by just the grandpa, he developed precocious maturity more than his age, he realized the deficiency of his physical status compared to his peers, and it instilled the driving force for him to comply with every instruction commanded by his grandpa. When he was seven, Grandpa began to expose him to various kinds of martial arts, karate, taekwondo, boxing and even oriental Kungfu.

 

Since then, martial art had become a part of his life, and daily training was not to be skipped, indoor and outdoor training were mandatory disregarding rain or shine, Bien’s petit physique was an odd fit among the adults during the classes, but he was treated the same by his grandpa as how others were treated, he had to go through same kind of gruelling practices like others, despite his young age, he still had to practice one-to-one combat after each session of practice, and he suffered the most in those fights as the grandpa always picked the most boastful students to fight with him. Confronting a seven-year-old kid,  they launched their most ferocious assaults just to bring him down, but fighting Bien was not a walk in the park, he was small no doubt but his agility to dodge and escape was second to none, he could leap, hop, squeeze and even retaliate, his only natural weakness is lack of power in his fist and kick. Usually, after the one-to-one combat, Bien was left with some reddish bruises on his small body, especially the rather flat but tight abs. Strangely enough, the grandpa seemed not over-concerned with the “injuries” Bien sustained, he appeared callous and unperturbed, he just applied some ointment on the bruises and tapped his shoulder and said, “You do good boy, keep it up.” Then he would continue with physical training, he had to run around the area for miles, then more workouts at the gym, something a seven-year-old kid normally wouldn’t be able to do, but Bien just completed it with flying colours.

 

As Bien was growing older, the training and practices became more strenuous and tedious, the workout intensity increased, and at the age of 10, Bien already learnt Karate, Taekwondo and Boxing skills. The grandpa even began to put him through some muscle endurance regimes, like gut punching and belt slapping. Due to long-term grilling and gruesome training, Bien’s body was transformed into a perfect specimen of musculature where every group of his muscles was ground to be as hard as a nail, the abdominal muscles were deeply carved into 6 squarish slabs and as hard as iron armour, every bundle of his muscular fibres was cast into metallic strands. But his grandpa continued to whip him into shape, the gut-punching session got longer and the tools used to solidify the muscles varied from wooden sticks to iron rods. When Bien was 15, after every martial art class, he would be tied up and became a human punching bag for other students to practice fist-throwing techniques, the grandpa would teach the students the proper way to throw a hook, straight punch, curved punch etc. For hours, Bien not only had to endure the relentless assaults from the students, but the grandpa would also continue with weaponry beating on his muscles. Bien just clenched his jaws and withstood all the pain and throe inflicted by his own grandpa, he sometimes thought that his grandpa must have gone mad, but he never protested, deep down in his heart, he could sense the grandpa did it for some reasons that he would understand one day.

 

And that day came on his 17^th birthday, the grandpa eventually told him a secret that would change his life forever.