Nanhai, Guangzhou City
The Lion Dance Competition is in full swing, and more than two hundred lion dance teams from Guangzhou City have gathered on Haizhu Island.
This year's lion awakening competition is unprecedentedly grand.
Not only nearly a thousand lion dancing teams from Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Foshan and other old lion dancing places participated, but also teams from Ganzhou, Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and other places participated.
Therefore, the qualifiers in just one place are already very intense.
And the final prize of this Awakening Master Competition is also rare and precious in history.
A gold-colored phoenix lion's head is only one of the rewards for the champion of this Awakening Master Competition.
In addition, the governor of Guangdong, the governor of Nangan, and the governor of Fujian will jointly take action. The winner of the championship will receive generous rewards from the governments of these three places.
It is said that you can even get rewards from top skills.
Or it could be a top-notch imperial-level weapon.
The Guangdong Governor's Awakening Competition is actually an alternative martial arts competition among the people.
Lion awakening not only pays attention to skills, but also has extremely high requirements on personal cultivation.
Bifeng Mansion, the top power in the world of Nanhai, is determined to win the lion awakening competition this time.
Originally, Bifeng Mansion had never been absent from this annual lion awakening competition.
But in previous years, it was just a small fight between the outer disciples of Bifeng Mansion.
Therefore, in previous years' lion awakening competitions, although Bifeng Mansion has always been among the best, it has only won the championship a few times.
Because the Awakening Master Competition is mainly aimed at the people.
There are countless similar events in the world.
It's just that there are probably only a few events like the lion awakening competition that have such a wide range of participants.
Almost all the people in the eleven cities of Guangdong will pay attention to the results of the lion awakening competition.
In Ganzhou, Feng Ziling, an ordinary school captain, was practicing lion awakening skills with his brothers.
This time the Awakening Master Competition not only attracted people from the world, but also ordinary people.
The soldiers at the bottom were also attracted and started practicing all night long.
The technique of lion awakening is actually no different from the training method.
Practitioners like them can basically achieve a certain level in a short period of time with a little practice.
The rewards for this time's lion awakening conference are extremely generous, far exceeding those of previous years. Not only the final winner, but also all teams entering the finals will receive rewards from the three major provincial governments.
And people in the military like them can get opportunities for promotion!
In the entire Nanhai region, the status of soldiers is very low. They are basically born in military households.
Although the court allocated land, these lands belonged to military officers.
And someone like Feng Ziling, to put it nicely, is a school captain.
But in fact, he is just the most senior military leader among senior officers.
Although there is no need to farm, cultivate, or do menial work. But no matter what, they are just military households. Feng Ziling was not from Ganzhou. He was sent to his adoptive father's home since he was a child. He heard from his adoptive father that his biological parents were once military families, but they couldn't bear the hardships of this military family, so they escaped.
Before leaving, he was handed over to his adoptive father to raise.
It wasn't that his parents didn't want him, but the situation at that time made it even more dangerous to take one more person with him.
His biological father has two sons who are twins. He is the younger brother, and his older brother is two years older than him.
Before his biological parents left, they drew lots to decide who to take.
And for this decision, the person who is taken away is likely to suffer a lot.
After all, he followed his adoptive father, who had no children, and he was not one of the military households who needed to do hard work, but a man who had studied and joined the army.
He can barely be regarded as a low-level official, at least in terms of status and status, he is enough to support a child.
This was indeed the case later on. His adoptive father protected Feng Ziling as he grew up. Compared with many of his peers among the common people, Feng Ziling's childhood life was relatively happy.
This also led to Feng Ziling never hating his parents.
Because he had seen with his own eyes how those at the bottom of the military household here were ruthlessly tortured by life, and eventually their families were destroyed.
And it may not have been the butcher's knife that destroyed their family, but hunger, cold and oppression!
In this land in the south, although it is known as the granary of the entire imperial court, countless people still starve to death here every year.
The so-called land of plenty, for people like Feng Ziling, is not much different from hell on earth.
Without household registration, you are nothing in this land.
Even if you have a household registration, you have to depend on the weather in this land, and everything depends on luck to survive!
How sad!
And I heard that if this lion awakening competition can win a good ranking for the army, maybe he can get rid of his status as a military household.
It is the dream of every military household to have a civilian household registration.
Feng Ziling also has such a dream.
At that time, he can bring his eldest brother back.
Feng Ziling has infinite longing in his heart, even though he is already the one with the highest rank among the military households.
He was also highly valued by the generals above. After all, he had been practicing martial arts with the support of his adoptive father since he was a child. He was even more valued and became an outer disciple of Emperor Wu City.
Moreover, among the disciples of the same level, his cultivation level is also extremely outstanding.
Usually because he has a pure white mount, he is called General White Horse by the people in the army here.
In fact, there are not many warriors in the entire South China Sea area.
The main role of the military households in the field is to cultivate the land. Some soldiers have been cultivating the land their entire lives and have never taken out their swords once.
In comparison, Feng Ziling's experience was actually quite good.
"Brothers, work harder, we must get a good place in the lion awakening competition this time!
Although it is not possible to get the top spot, we must show our abilities!
At least it will allow adults to reduce some of our farmland quotas.
As long as I get good results, I will talk to the adults in person later! "
"Thank you, boss!"
"Boss is mighty!"
When the brothers below heard Feng Ziling's promise, they all thanked him and trained even harder.
The time has come for the lion awakening competition.
More than two hundred teams in the entire city of Guangzhou appeared in the streets of Guangzhou at the same moment.
The Guangzhou City Awakening Competition is an annual event. On this day, countless people will put aside their work and come to the streets and alleys to cheer and cheer for their favorite teams!
In fact, the more than two hundred teams are not from different forces. Many forces will even dispatch two or more lion awakening teams.
Feng Ziling's brothers also gathered two awakening lions.
It's not that they don't have the manpower.
In fact, people like Feng Ziling's men are all good players, and lion dancing is not too difficult for them.
The most basic thing in the military is pile work.
If ordinary people want to develop a good physique and become a mainstay on the battlefield, they can only rely on practicing Zhuang Kung Fu.
When martial artists practice martial arts, they actually need to practice pile skills when they are young.
However, they have better basic skills to temper their bodies, and when combined with pile skills, they can get twice the result with half the effort.
Naturally, it is impossible for the military to provide exercises to everyone.
After all, practicing exercises requires matching the corresponding resources.
Without resources, even if you have top skills, you will not be able to practice.
Qigong is like a strong dose of medicine. Without good physical fitness and without the right symptoms, it may turn into poison.
However, even if the military only practices Zhuang Kung Fu, months of practice this year can greatly improve a person's physical fitness.
However, the food in the army is not good, and the sequelae of Zhuang Gong are not small.
After all, without adequate supplements, practicing Zhuang Gong means using your own physical strength to make up for the shortfall.
Therefore, those in the military usually survive until they are discharged. Not many veterans still have enough combat effectiveness.
It is precisely because of this characteristic that the imperial court popularized Zhuang Gong.
The set age for retirement from the military is around the time when the damage caused by Zhuang Kung Fu to the human body begins to show.
For those in power, this is simply the best limiting tool.
However, after Emperor Xu Yang came to power, he had already begun to study new training methods.
At least some legions on the northern border have begun to use other methods to beat the body.
It was Qin Guogong who promoted this work.
Although the north has begun to improve, the south still uses the previous rules.
Therefore, some of Feng Ziling's top soldiers have been practicing Zhuang Kung Fu for more than ten years and their physical fitness is even comparable to that of some low-level warriors.
In addition, their real combat effectiveness is not much worse than that of Xiaocheng realm warriors who have practiced for many years.
If it is a group battle, the combat effectiveness of these elite soldiers may be even higher.
Under such conditions, Feng Ziling's soldiers were actually able to organize more teams.
The reason why they failed to do this was that they did not have any extra money to buy the lion head.
There is no way to participate in the lion awakening contest without a lion head.
The two existing ones were bought with money that Feng Ziling borrowed based on his own reputation.
Feng Ziling had been in debt for several years because of these two lion heads.
And he also wants to take this opportunity to try, if he can get a good name in this Awakening Master Competition, get official rewards, and if he can get out of the military household registration.
All the hard work has been rewarded enough.
In fact, Feng Ziling could borrow money from his brother who had just recognized him.
Although the brother's career is not very good, he has plenty of money.
At least it's much richer than him.
Unexpectedly, her parents separated the two and sent Feng Ziling to the hands of her adoptive father, who had a higher status.
More than twenty years later, the situation has become reversed.
Feng Ziling took his brothers onto the street, surrounded by people cheering for them.
There are also some little kids running around their awakening lion.
Seeing this scene, Feng Ziling felt a little warm in his heart.
Such a scene is extremely rare in the entire city of Guangzhou, Nanhai.
Guangzhou City is the capital of the governor of Guangdong.
This is already the best place.
But Feng Ziling could still see the ordinary people who were starving to death and starving to death on the streets.
And those poor people who even in the dead of winter still have to use their own hands to carve out pieces of land that can be planted in the hard soil.
Those longshoremen who load and unload cargo on the docks wearing only a short jacket no matter whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter, whether it is hot or cold.
Feng Ziling had seen too many of these poor people.
Military households suffer, but they are still not as miserable as the common people.
Obviously the entire South China Sea is known as a land of plenty.
But why is it that so much land, so much food, and so much output are still unable to feed the vast majority of the people on this land?
Feng Ziling couldn't figure it out. Although he had gone to a private school and studied, he still couldn't figure it out.
Although natural disasters have continued in recent years, after all, they are concentrated in the north, or the Central Plains region, and there are no major events in the entire South China Sea region.
But to Feng Ziling, the current Nanhai area is far inferior to what it was back then.
This is what Feng Ziling cannot understand the most.
Of course, he also knew that the population of the entire Nanhai region was constantly increasing. However, as far as he knew, the number of registered households in Nanhai had dropped by 20% compared to twenty years ago.
With all these messy things in his mind, his progress became a little slow.
"Boss, what's wrong with you? We are all far behind Xiaoya and the others."
Feng Ziling was reminded by his brother and immediately came to his senses. He danced the lion's head vigorously, then his feet became faster and he quickly caught up with the other awakening lion.
This time, the preliminaries of Guangzhou City’s Lion Dance Competition were held on Haizhu Island.
Haizhu Island is located at the end of the Pearl River in Guangzhou City, and further ahead is the estuary.
Haizhu Island is a dock port.
Passing here are countless ships going north and south. Some of these ships come from the small island countries further south of Zhengyang. They bring spices, pearls and other precious items mined from their countries to the north.
Zhengyang, on the other hand, transported some fabrics, porcelain and tea southward to several large cities governed by Guangdong.
Countless trade takes place in Guangzhou.
On Haizhu Island, there are densely packed ships.
The Guangzhou preliminaries of this Awakening Master Competition are set up here.
After passing through the attack alleys in Guangzhou City and leaving the city, they came all the way to the vicinity of Haizhu Island, where all the lion awakening teams stopped, waiting for the sergeant's order.
When the allotted time came, the messengers in the army began to gallop, shouting out the rules of this preliminary competition while running.
"The time limit is half an hour! Only by passing the ship bridge and arriving at the designated location on Haizhu Island within half an hour can you advance to the next round!"
The messenger shouted this three times and already rode his horse to the end.
Then from the end of the race, the drum set up somewhere started to sound. After the three-way drum, it was time for them to set off.
Boom, boom, boom!
As soldiers, Feng Ziling and others are naturally very familiar with these three-way drums.
At this time, all the lion awakening teams were ready to move. There was a group of soldiers guarding the front, which was the starting point.
And all the lion awakening teams have already started competing at this moment.
Feng Ziling could feel the lions on both sides of him starting to push forward.
And as the pushing and pushing movements became larger and larger, there seemed to be a fire burning in everyone's hearts.
Boom, boom, boom!
The second tom sounded.
At this moment, more than two hundred lion awakening teams have moved forward a large distance.
Feng Ziling made no move and was already at the end. Some lion awakening teams who did not want to compete with them slowly came closer, but there were only about twenty or thirty teams left behind.
More teams crowded into the front, and pushing and beatings began.
Many lion awakening teams stretched out their black feet and kicked the legs of the lion awakening team members nearby. These people were extremely cruel. From far away, Feng Ziling could hear the sound of bones breaking in front of him.
Feng Ziling frowned fiercely.
This was his first time participating in the Master Awakening Competition, and he was just a novice in this aspect.
Although I consulted some previous contestants of the Lion Dance Competition, I found that such people are everywhere in Guangzhou.
Feng Ziling took advantage of the time to repair the wood and consulted several elderly people. Although he also heard from their mouths that lion awakening competitions are often very fierce and there is some risk of injury.
The lion awakening competition is actually a different kind of martial arts competition, which just adds some skills and visibility to ordinary martial arts.
But Feng Ziling was fully prepared at that time, but he didn't expect that when the competition actually started, the battle would be so fierce.
Maybe it’s because the standard of this lion awakening conference is a bit high.
Boom, boom, boom!
The third tom sounded.
This means that the lion awakening competition has officially begun.
After the three-way drum was over, no team could rush out quickly, because the teams at the front started beating each other immediately after the three-way drum passed.
Of course it is not a fight between humans, but a fight between lions.
Lion heads are constantly clashing together.
There are not many restrictions on participating in the lion awakening competition, but at least there are restrictions. One of them is that you cannot use any weapons.
Even all weapons, including some wooden sticks, kitchen knives and the like are not allowed to be used. To participate in the lion awakening competition, you can only rely on your physical fitness and leg skills.
Because you cannot use your hands in the lion awakening competition, you can only grab your own lion head with your hands.
As for the second person with the body of a lion, he can only wrap his hands around the waist of the person in front.
Therefore, Feng Ziling saw the chaotic fight ahead through the gap between the lion's heads.
At first, it might just be a collision between lion heads, but as everyone's anger continued to rise, some people started to take action.
In the past, many people had secretly stepped on the legs of other lion awakening teams and broken many of them.
This little Blackfoot team is actually noticed by other participating teams, so it’s okay if you don’t provoke me. If you provoke me...
Suddenly, many of the lion-awakening teams that had committed black-footed attacks in the past were retaliated against.
Because they don't know what it means to give up when things get better.
In fact, the maximum number of participants in the Guangzhou City Formal Competition in previous years was fifty or sixty teams.
This year it has expanded nearly three times.
