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3.31 - A Training Opportunity
🕑 Added 2024-06-22 22:00:02 +0000 UTCAs it turned out, the correct answer was “a bit of both.”
Although He Yu had hoped she would accept another job on his behalf, she simply told him to keep up as she set off in a seemingly random direction. Her pace was little more than a quick jog for someone of her advancement, and she didn’t use any movement techniques that He Yu could sense. It was still all he could do to keep up with her.
His qi reserves still hadn’t recovered from his failed breakthrough, so he had to fall back on the technique that had gotten him through those first few weeks at the sect. As he drew in qi from his surroundings and cycled it, he was once again thankful for the treasure of a robe he’d received from Yongnian.
It allowed him to use the Sky Dragon’s Flight, if sparingly, while mostly relying on cultivating while trying to keep pace with his mentor. Zhang Lifen seemed to have just as good a sense of his limits as Ren Huang had. Unlike the fiery core disciple, she seemed more interested in making sure he reached the very edge of his capabilities and then making him stay there. Ren Huang had always called a halt when his students were about to break. Zhang Lifen would give him no such reprieve.
For two days she kept him at the edge of collapse. He drew in as much qi as he could from his surroundings, and by the time she finally called a halt, he was surprised to find that he’d come out more or less even by the end of it. Still, he was exhausted physically, and she was at least merciful enough to tell him to cultivate through the night.
The next morning the real training began, as she put it.
She had led them to an area within the sect lands that was fairly desolate compared to what He Yu had become accustomed to over the past two years. Low rolling hills stretched past the horizon to the east, while the verdant slopes of the Shrouded Peaks rose to disappear into the clouds behind them. Boulders of all sizes littered the area, and scraggy, sparse vegetation covered the ground. Earth qi was abundant here, and not much else.
Zhang Lifen pointed to a small hollow between two hills. “There. The spirits of this area are earth-aspected. Suitably poor matches for your cultivation base and current suite of techniques. Happy hunting.”
Producing his guandao from within his storage treasure, He Yu activated the Sky Dragon’s Flight and blasted towards the hollow where a group of four Third Realm earth spirits of the early stage had gathered. The spirits looked like a collection of animated rocks arranged in a vaguely humanoid shape. Stone scraped against stone as they moved, and as one, the faceless gray rocks that served as heads turned to He Yu as he approached.
Upon reaching the group of earth spirits, He Yu activated the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering and called forth the Five Crescent Winds. He winced as his guandao struck sparks against the earth spirit’s stone body. A treasure of this quality would survive such abuse easily enough, but it still pained him.
The spirit reacted predictably. It drew back its arm—just a collection of several stones that resembled a limb—and struck. He Yu took the blow on the metal shaft of his guandao. A second stone spirit reached out to him and blasted a spray of jagged shards of stone at him. It was a predictable attack, and after his months of practice, He Yu didn’t even need the insight of the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment. He activated the Spring Rain Mirror and turned his attention to the foe in melee distance.
The failure of his defensive technique was more felt than anything else. The Spring Rain Mirror cracked, then shattered, spraying diffuse water qi at him. The technique’s failure was followed by the larger part of the stone spirit’s attack. Only by virtue of his speed and the defensive enchantments of his robe was he able to avoid the worst of it.
“Have you forgotten your lessons?” Zhang Lifen asked as she alighted on top of a nearby boulder. “Earth conquers water. I already told you these spirits were a poor match for you.”
He Yu cursed her under his breath as she stood there and gazed down at him. Her hands were folded in her sleeves, and despite her presence staying firmly restrained, the hem of her gown gently drifted around her ankles. One of the spirits turned and directed its projectile attack at her, but she simply slipped out of the way. After several more attempts, with similar results, the spirits all returned their attention to He Yu.
As he fought, he thought back to his lessons. Wood conquered earth, but he had no wood-aspected techniques. Wind and heaven didn’t have a place in the five phases, but Elder Wen had stressed that didn’t matter. Mountain qi didn’t have a place either, but it was a combination of earth and metal. Li Heng’s lunar qi and Yan Shirong’s shadow qi were both odd, in that they didn’t directly relate to any of the five elements. As Elder Wen had stressed, there were as many aspects of qi as there were concepts under heaven.
He supposed that he’d seen lightning split trees, so would that make it metal? It also cracked stone if it struck there, but surely it wasn’t wood. Heaven was in its own category, capable of overcoming both wood and earth, it seemed. But then again, so could wind. He didn’t have any purely heaven-aspected offensive techniques, however. The Five Crescent Winds had come to contain some heaven aspect, especially when he used the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering. But that wouldn’t be enough.
The lesson he was supposed to take eluded him. He tried several different approaches, all with varying success. Using the Bracing Wind was enough to usually knock the stone spirits off balance for a time. A follow-up strike with the metal cap on the bottom of his weapon could crack them, but that didn’t appear to do much real harm. He could sever their “limbs,” but they would simply reattach themselves a moment later.
“Sometimes you think too much,” Zhang Lifen said as she dropped down from her boulder to land next to him. Her hand closed into a fist, and she punched one of the spirits in the center of its body. The stone split apart, shattering into several pieces to reveal a glowing core that radiated earth qi.
“Interactions between different aspects are all fine and good,” she said, “but sometimes what you need is simple, brute force.”
“But you’re two full realms above me!” he cried as she returned to her perch, leaving him to deal with the remaining three stone spirits. All of whom were now apparently enraged. They fell upon him as one, and it took almost everything he had just to keep things even between him and the three angry spirits.
“True, but that doesn’t change the underlying principle,” she said. “Consider what you have at your disposal. You have a heaven-aspected body art and a technique for your weapon that is designed to support other arts while integrating with any given cultivator’s qi. Or have you forgotten?
“You also have two hands, and two feet last I checked. A melee fighter like Sha Xiang certainly knows what to do once she’s inside your guard. Can you say the same?”
He had forgotten, but he’d be damned if he admitted as much. Zhang Lifen’s words didn’t seem to match up, though. Did she expect him to punch the rocks to death, or did she expect him to improve his techniques? Maybe she expected him to do both. Maybe telling him he thought too much meant that he was supposed to use his Wayborn Seed.
He cursed her again, drawing a muttered, “That was rude,” from Zhang Lifen.
One of the stone spirits got inside his weapon’s reach, and he figured he might as well give what she said a try. He made a fist and flooded it with heaven qi while maintaining the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering. The normally dull shine that his skin took on when he cycled the body art brightened, and the nascent sparks of heaven that crawled over his body all rushed to his closed fist. Lightning arced across his knuckles. He could sense the power of heaven gathering—feel the power of the storm.
He struck the center of the spirit, just the same as Zhang Lifen had. Thunder cracked as he released the heaven qi held in his fist. Although he didn’t obliterate the spirit as Zhang Lifen had, black-edged cracks spiderwebbed across its body, radiating outward from where he’d struck it. The spirits responded with three perfectly timed barrages of jagged shards of stone.
“What you just did is functionally no different than training your presence during your time with Old Guo. A body enforcement can be so much more than a simple increase in strength, speed, or durability. Cycling the enforcement technique—and by extension the qi it cultivates—into a strike like you just did allows you to add those aspects to otherwise mundane attacks. Of course, since you’re at the Body Refining stage, you can punch with a force that would obliterate a mortal. Had you punched this boulder I’m standing on, for example, you likely would have turned it to dust with that attack.”
“Wait, I never told you how I trained with Old Guo,” He Yu said, launching himself away from another barrage of attacks from the spirits.
“No, but he did. I visited him before joining you boys at King Hao’s camp. Despite how impressed he was with your progress, he was very demanding in terms of recompense. I’m still recouping the cost of his assistance, by the way.”
“I could help,” He Yu said as he gathered his qi into another heaven-infused punch.
Zhang Lifen waved him off. “At your current advancement, it would take you decades to cover even a fraction of what he wanted. Think nothing of it. Elder Cai insisted I pay the old hermit mostly as punishment for sending the three of you out there by yourselves, anyway. So it would be against the spirit of things if I accepted your help.”
He Yu let the matter drop. Not that he had much choice, as several more stone spirits had heard the commotion and joined the fight. As he fought, he focused mostly on defending with the guandao and attacking with heaven infusions of his punches. During those first few months at the sect, he had spent hours each day drilling in hand-to-hand forms under Ren Huang’s watchful eye. Although he’d largely stopped once picking up his guandao, he now realized that training had purposes beyond simply strengthening his body.
“I wonder if there’s a way to apply Old Guo’s lessons to your guandao art,” Zhang Lifen mused as he struggled against the now five stone spirits.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?” he shouted, using the Sky Dragon’s flight to dash back from a coordinated assault.
“I had hoped you would put it together on your own. I did specifically mention that the Five Crescent Winds is capable of integrating your other aspects.”
It took some doing, under duress as he was, but He Yu soon managed to push more of his heaven-aspected qi into the Five Crescent Winds. Previously, when he’d cycled large amounts of heaven qi using the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering, the winds churning around his blade had sparked with the additional aspect. Now, lightning danced along the weapon’s length.
He found it most effective to infuse blunt strikes with his heaven qi, as the blade still seemed to do little to the stone spirits. Much like with his fist, each infusion of heaven into the techniques of the Five Crescent Winds came easier than the last. After a bit longer, he’d managed to whittle the stone spirits back down to two.
“Excellent work,” Zhang Lifen said. “I’ll go gather more friends for you to train with.” With that, she leaped from her boulder to the top of a nearby hill and then vanished over the crest.
