Leitmotif

Demystification

In 1988 Yao Zongxun rejects occult myths five times over: empty force, killing by pressure point, running up walls. The sharpest contrast in the art.

A leitmotif, not an aside

A principle runs through the lineage Wang Xiangzhai → Yao Zongxun that separates Yiquan from much of its surroundings: martial art is science, not mystery. Yao Zongxun's formulation: 拳学是科学而不是神话 — boxing knowledge is science, not myth.

This is not a modern reinterpretation by Western readers. Wang and Yao explicitly reject occult and supernatural claims and ground Yiquan physiologically, mechanically and psychologically.

What is rejected by name

空劲, “empty force” — striking at a distance without contact. It does not exist in real fighting; it is a “mystification of Yiquan”. At most a conditioned reflex between teacher and student, of no practical value.
点穴, death-touch pressure points — with real fighting power any point of impact is effective; fixed secret points with timing tables are nonsense.
Running on walls and flying swordsmen — pure fiction from the Wuxia storytellers.
Secret teachings as such — “fundamentally absurd”, arising from little knowledge.
Five-phase logic as combat doctrine — in a fight measured in seconds there is no time to calculate.
The name 大成拳 itself (“great achievement”) — 学术本无止境: scholarship has no end point. (This point comes from Wang Xiangzhai, not from Yao's book of 1988 — there it is the five points above.)

What is notable about the list: much of it points inward. What is rejected is not only what other schools claim — the 空劲, for instance, is taught by the southern lineage — but also what is told about one's own system.

Hollowing out, not throwing away

Demystification does not discard classical cosmology entirely; it hollows it out. From the Five Phases the five images of force remain, not the generating and overcoming cycles. From Taiji the Yin-Yang dialectic remains as a mechanical principle of opposing force (Zheng Li), not the metaphysical elevation.

The common denominator is simple: what works verifiably and mechanically is kept; what merely explains or mystifies is discarded.

Into the third generation

Bo Jiacong, a student of Yao Zongxun, calls scientific rigour explicitly the “watershed and touchstone” between genuine and false Yiquan — and quotes Yao's remark that without education one cannot practise Yiquan. The system demands study, not initiation.