The subsequent combat technique training was Instructor Thompson's exclusive domain—no one would compete with him, and no one could. He was currently the only demon king to have ever walked off the ring alive. Whether luck played a part or not, he was a miracle. His legs were known as "battle axes" in the ring. He fought a total of 179 top-level boxing matches, killed his opponents 198 times, and only the opponent in his last match survived. Not a single match lasted more than ten minutes. Underground boxing was that brutal: the rise of each new demon king usually meant the death of the old one. Instructor Thompson was able to walk off the ring alive because he realized his final opponent had actually survived. He felt his "battle axes" were no longer as sharp as before, so he chose to retire at his peak and announced his withdrawal from the boxing world. However, although his last opponent kept his life, the left leg struck by the "battle axe" suffered complete muscle atrophy and would forever require a prosthetic to walk. Of course, I didn't know any of this at the time—these were all things my roommates told me later.

Instructor Thompson always had some tool for punishing trainees in his hand. Just now it was a whip; now it was a state-of-the-art electric baton. He gripped the baton with both hands behind his back and shouted, "I won't teach you all those fancy aerial kicks—they're useless! Nor will I teach you any throws or boxing techniques—those aren't lethal! I'll only teach you two types of kicks—sweeps and side kicks. Of course, to be a top fighter, your skills must be comprehensive, but that's for the other instructors. What I will teach you is a deadly heavy weapon—your legs!" Without any visible exertion, he delivered a side kick with a loud "clang," and the thirty-inch iron pillar beside him snapped in response. The entire training ground erupted in astonishment. We were all dumbfounded, myself included—even though I had hated him to the core just a second before, I was deeply shocked by this terrifying kicking technique! For a fighter who had been a coach for so many years to still maintain such powerful legs—it was unimaginable how terrifying he must have been in his prime! Instructor Thompson looked expressionlessly at the trainees, all with their mouths agape, and unleashed a sweeping kick—"clang!"—the already halved iron pillar was shortened yet again!

He looked at us and shouted, "Did you see that? This is absolute power! Every fighter must have their own ultimate weapon. My ultimate weapon is my 'battle axe'! Yours will be chosen by yourselves!" He paused, then continued, "Alright, performance is over. Now I'll explain the key points of kicking: it's simple. First, power; second, speed!" He took off his watch and tossed it to a trainee, saying coldly, "Time me for one minute!" He walked over to a thick wooden stake and said, "Begin!" All I could see was a blur of legs surrounding the stake, with half-inch-deep footprints continuously denting its surface. After a minute, the trainee with the watch shouted, "Stop!" I finally saw Instructor Thompson's leg—his kick was only halfway out when the call came, and he instantly stopped it half a meter from the stake—complete control. A trainee went up and counted the footprints one by one: "Report! Three hundred and nine!" We were once again in an uproar—five kicks per second! Instructor Thompson shouted, "Silence!" Everyone immediately shut up, not daring to say another word. He swept his gaze over us: "That's not good enough! When I was the demon king, I could kick six times per second—if you can't reach my standard, don't even think about fighting in top-level matches, or you'll die for sure!" The training that followed could only be described as hellish. Instructor Thompson prepared a wooden stake for each of us; if you couldn't kick the bark off, you weren't allowed lunch. For the sake of lunch, the skin on my foot peeled off, blood streaming. Quite a few trainees were struck by the baton and shocked during training, myself included.