Chương 45: Veil of the Immutable Will

It was the next morning. Jianyi had prepared breakfast while Minghao had left to have messages sent to the kitchen and tailor, where Jianyi earned additional contribution points to let them know that Jianyi was unable to work his scheduled shifts as he needed to attend to duties for the elder. For the first time, all three of them had breakfast together and agreed on a plan for the upcoming period. According to Elder Sun, they should allow at least two weeks for Jianyi to master the technique.

As it was not realistic for a young cultivator like Jianyi to spend his time on nothing but training a will-based technique, Minghao would make time for extensive spear training sessions as well. That was a great relief. Even though he wasn't the largest fan of Ruolan and her training approach, it had certainly helped him. He was sure, though, that any moment spent with Minghao was many times as effective as the same time with group Lapis.

After breakfast, Jianyi followed the elder with a pot of tea to the courtyard, where they settled down at the elder's favorite table in the sun.

"I have given it some thought and come to the conclusion that we should proceed with the Veil of the Immutable Will Art. While there are far, far fewer arts for will-based techniques than for cultivation, there are still a few. This one is usually not recommended for beginners as it does not provide a lot of guidance, but given how strong your soul and will are, I think you should benefit from its flexibility," Elder Sun said as he produced a scroll from one of his storage devices.

"You should read this carefully on your own time, but I will explain the cornerstones now, and we will start right away.

"The principle is very simple: you need to use your will, which is empowered by your soul, to defend your spirit against other people's attempts to spy on you. Whether that is via remote scrying or a casual assessment of your strength.

"Unfortunately, it is very hard to build these defenses in the abstract. Therefore, I will provide the pressure against which you defend. In your dream, you have proven that you can access your soul space without help, but we will use a formation to accelerate the process. Once you are in your soul space, you will need to visualize a defense against the pressure I assert.

The final step, sometimes the hardest, will then be to make that defense permanent, something that you will be able to maintain continuously without conscious thought." Jianyi remembered the 'Cultivator's Resolve' challenge he had faced during the acceptance test just a few weeks before—this sounded very similar. Pitting his will against pressure was something that he actually enjoyed. He nodded.

"Very good. What do we do next?"

"Let me see…" A few seconds later, the elder had extracted a small set of formation plates from a storage ring and handed them to Jianyi.

"I would suggest you settle down in the bamboo cultivation grove. Place those around you and settle down to meditate. The rest," he grinned dangerously, "will be quite obvious." Despite knowing that the elder had nothing but his best interest in mind, Jianyi swallowed; he was not going to make this easy for him. Jianyi took the few steps into the triangle that was a small bamboo forest and carefully placed the palm-sized formation plates around the central piece that must hold a card that empowered it.

Unfortunately, it was integrated into the plate and therefore invisible. He wondered for a moment whether it was the Will-infused Soul-Spirit Bridge card that had enabled the Heavenly trial. Settling down, he took a couple of deep breaths and closed his eyes to meditate. As he opened them, he found himself in the familiar space above the lake that was his spirit, surrounded by the dense mist that was his soul.

He had barely found his bearings when in the sky above him, two eyes appeared, each larger than a grown man—but closed. Then, centered between them and set slightly higher, another eye formed, many times larger than the others. It burned into Jianyi's spirit. Its golden iris radiated an inescapable clarity, seeing all. Jianyi squinted at the eyes above him. He understood the challenge and accepted it. Now the question was what his defense was going to be? A fortress was the obvious answer.

Thick walls, high ramparts, windowless. Depressing. Passive. He did not want this beautiful lake to be hidden behind walls. This was his space, and he could defend it in any way he liked. Absentmindedly, he twirled his spear, which had somehow appeared with him in his soul space. A shield maybe? That felt closer, more active, but he had never tried fighting with a shield – so that would be something he would have to learn. He also never wanted to hide under a bed again—he wanted to defeat demons, not cower in fear.

It needed something active. Something aggressive. Something he knew. The answer was obvious: his father's spear. His spear. But not just one. A lot of them. All of them. Three hours. That's how long it took Jianyi to form the first spear that did not look like a limp noodle from the soul mist that surrounded him and his lake. He was drenched in sweat and exhausted. The eyes above him vanished, and he took that as the signal to end this session. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval.

Report any appearances on Amazon. Progress had been limited, but having a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve and a first example was something. He opened his eyes. The elder had already left the courtyard, but Minghao waited for him. It was time for the real-world application of the spear.

"Elder Sun and I have discussed how to take your training to the next level. You have made decent progress on the movements and forms. The truth is, you are still not where somebody with many years of dedicated tutoring is, but you have closed the gap with your talent and dedication.

"A true follower of the Fivefold Spear Art continues to practice the forms as long as they live, and so should you. But for now, we want to bring a bit of spice into your training; after all, just sitting and meditating can be quite boring, right?" What was it with his teachers trying to tease him? The way Minghao had savored the word 'spice' did promise a lot of sore muscles.

"Today, we are going to start with something very simple. Take your spear and balance the end on your outstretched palm." That was something that they had done as kids in school quite a lot. It was fun. The spear reached into the sky as Jianyi balanced it effortlessly.

"Very good. Now raise your left leg." Jianyi briefly looked at Minghao before he complied and saw nothing but a beatific smile. With his core strength, balancing on one leg was not extremely hard. He was more worried about his outstretched arm getting heavy eventually.

"You are a natural. Well done. Now raise your heel, balance on the ball of your foot." He gritted his teeth but executed the movement. For a moment, his whole body got dangerously out of balance, but he managed to stabilize before the spear dropped to the ground. He couldn't spare the attention to look at Minghao, but it sounded as if his teacher was leaving the courtyard. Just letting him stand there. If he didn't have to spend all his focus on staying in position, he would be amused.

He was sure the retainer was having a great time. As the minutes ticked by, his calf and arm muscles started to burn. His core had to do the hard work of keeping him stable, his breath becoming shallower and shallower. Eventually, Minghao returned, sipping on a juice.

"Switch!" Sweet relief flooded through his body as he dropped his arm and legs. He had to dry his sweaty palms on his robes. He was about to take on the opposite position, left arm and left leg, when Minghao intervened.

"Same arm, different leg." His arm was already burning, but he took it as a challenge. At least those exercises were very different from the much more repetitive nature of what Ruolan had his fellow disciples do. They continued with these and similar exercises for the next two hours, until Minghao let him take a minute to catch his breath.

"There is nothing more important than knowing the basic movements and forms, but they only take you so far. Your body needs to be balanced at all times; you need to be resilient and adaptable, and able to use your brain even under stress. Those are some of the things we are going to train over the next couple of weeks. But we are always going to end a session with a spar. So, get up and let's go."

Jianyi was back under the all-seeing eyes of Elder Sun in his soul space. It had taken him more than half an hour to recreate the first spear he had formed the previous day. Now, he had to keep that spear in shape while creating another spear from his dense soul mist. It wasn't easy. The mist could not be separated; instead, you had to sort of scoop out a part of it, which would remain connected to the large mass surrounding the lake, and then get into shaping it into the desired form.

Fortunately, his father's spear was simple. Quality work, but a very basic form with a seamless border between the haft and the tip, which had a long leaf shape. While it was not easy, he did make progress. By the end of the session, he had created half a dozen spears. When he exited the meditation, Elder Sun was nodding at him.

"Good progress, Jianyi. Very good. You are faster than I would have expected. Keep it up." With that, it was Minghao's turn to challenge him—and that's what he did. It was great fun, though. Frustrating, but great fun. The older man had prepared a simple framework from bamboo shafts and tied a wooden plate at about shoulder height on one of the corners of the scaffold.

"Your task is simple," Minghao said as he handed him a cotton cloth.

"You will put on the blindfold, then I will shout out forms, and you will hit the plate, then return to the starting position. Any questions?" Jianyi looked at the plate and tried to imagine how this would go. It would require precision from him. Something that he had seen from Lu Shan in the duel. The boy had been economical and precise with every movement. He nodded, confirmed his position relative to the plate, and put on the blindfold. In the Rooted Stance, he awaited the first command.

Minghao took his time, but eventually he shouted.

"Piercing Fang." Adjusting the normally straight piercing movement slightly upward, Jianyi complied, but felt no resistance at the peak of his motion. He returned to the resting position and moved towards lifting the blindfold, but Minghao stopped him.

"Two hand-widths higher, one hand-width to the left. Again." Remembering his prior attack and visualizing the changes he needed to make in his hands to move the tip, which was almost more than one pace from his hands, to the desired position. He attacked again. Miss.

"Three hands lower. Again." With a resounding crack, his spear hit the plate on the third attempt. A wide smile spread on Jianyi's face. This was the most interesting training he had ever done.

"Again." He missed. But he knew exactly where he had gone wrong, his leading hand moving the slightest bit too far to the right. He immediately repeated the exercise, and he hit the target again.

"Good. Blazing Arc. Go."

"Two steps to the side. Piercing Fang."

"Flowing Current."

"One step back."

"Again."

"Again." It was a long afternoon, and beyond the physical exhaustion, it was also mentally draining, but never had he been so sure that he had made great progress in a relatively short time. Despite his exhaustion, Minghao insisted on a spar in which he continued to highlight all of Jianyi's openings.

On the third day of training, Jianyi received a message from Shuhua. Dear Jianyi, I have noticed that you have missed classes over the last few days, and we were told that you wouldn't make it to our group training yesterday. We all hope that you are well and will join us again soon. We have made copies of our notes from the lectures that you missed. Your friend Shushu He didn't really know what to make of this. It was almost too kind.

He sent a note thanking her and added an explanation that he was unlikely to be able to rejoin lectures or their group session soon, due to his commitments to Elder Sun. He signed it as your sect brother. He had thought about it way too long, but didn't feel comfortable calling her a friend. He was unclear about the definition.

On the fifth day, he had assembled twenty-four spears and combined them into a ring around the lake that faced outward. The spears had used up maybe a fifth of his total soul mist, and as he assembled them, he could feel them resonate with each other. As per the instructions from Elder Sun and the scroll detailing the Veil of the Immutable Will art, he now settled down over his lake and focused on imparting his will on those spears to become more than just a decoration in his soul space.

They needed to protect him, to keep him safe, to keep others outside, to keep what was his, his.