Chương 101: The Training Plan

I was slightly out of breath when I pushed through the dining hall doors, which I decided was better than being late and also winded enough to show it, so I slowed down in the entrance and let my breathing settle before anyone could use it against me. The hall was full at this hour. It always was.

Disciples finished their evening meals here or simply used the space as an excuse to be around other people, and the smell of steamed buns and rice had soaked into the walls over however many years this building had been standing. Wei Lin spotted me before I spotted him. He called out from our usual table near the windows. He and Lin Mei were already most of the way through their meals. Several empty plates had been stacked to one side.

"Sorry, I'm late," I said, sitting down across from them. Wei Lin slid a plate of dumplings toward me without being asked.

"We ordered extra. Figured you'd turn up eventually." I picked up my chopsticks and started eating. My stomach had been making its opinion known since around midday and I had been ignoring it for hours. I tried to focus on the food, but I was already aware of them watching me. Lin Mei lasted about as long as I expected her to.

"Where have you been?" I looked around the table.

"Where's Liu Chen?"

"Nice try," Wei Lin said.

"He's settling into his new quarters," Lin Mei said.

"We'll go after dinner. And you're not changing the subject." I exhaled. There were situations where evasion had a good return on investment and situations where it didn't, and sitting across from two people who had already decided they were going to get an answer fell firmly into the second category.

"I was learning formations," I said.

"From an elder." Wei Lin set down his tea.

"Which elder?"

"Chen Yong." There was a pause that had weight to it.

"I don't think I've heard of him," Lin Mei said carefully.

"Most people haven't." Wei Lin's voice had gone several registers more alert.

"He keeps to himself. There are rumours he's just entered the Life Realm." He turned to look at me with an expression that was working very hard to stay composed.

"You became an elder's disciple."

"I wouldn't go that far." I remembered Chen Yong's very specific complaints about taking on disciples.

"He's giving me some guidance on formations. That's it."

"And how did an elder in the Life Realm decide to give you guidance on formations," Lin Mei's eyes narrowed. I looked down at my bowl as I answered.

"There might have been a fight."

"Ke Yin!" Lin Mei's exasperation was clear in her voice.

"I tried to walk away," I said.

"But he wasn't interested in letting me, he wanted to 'teach a first-year disciple a lesson.'" I made air quotes with my chopsticks.

"But you taught him one instead," Lin Mei said dryly. I didn't answer that directly, which was its own kind of answer. Lin Mei pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.

"Boys," she said to no one in particular, "and their need to show off."

"It worked out," Wei Lin cut in. He caught her expression and raised both hands.

"Hear me out. I've been talking to older disciples about the tournament. The pattern in the group stage is that strong teams avoid each other and go after the weaker ones instead. Having a reputation helps."

"That actually makes sense," I agreed.

"By the way, did you hear what I registered our team as?" Wei Lin straightened slightly.

"Please tell me it's not embarrassing."

"Three Paths." He considered this.

"That's kind of basic."

"Would you have preferred The Dual Cultivators Plus One?" The chopsticks hit me in the shoulder before I finished the sentence. The second pair hit me in the ear. The third I dodged, which felt like a moral victory. Lin Mei's face had gone red, so I decided the hits had been worth it.

"Speaking of the tournament," I said when things calmed down, "I checked out our competition when I was signing us up." Stolen novel; please report. I told them about the teams we had to keep an eye on. Chen Feng's Shadow Wraith Squad, with their tracking techniques and coordinated pressure. Ming Yue's team and the combination of poison and sound that made approaching them a different problem than most.

Earth Fist Liu, who had the kind of physical cultivation that made most strategic thinking temporarily irrelevant. And Yuan Zhen, whose team sat in a category that the others simply weren't in.

"There really is an eighth stage cultivator in the first-year cohort," Lin Mei looked down at her hands.

"There is," I nodded.

"How do we compete with that?" she asked.

"We don't," I said.

"We get through the group stage and into the one-on-one bracket. After that, Yuan Zhen is only our problem if we reach the finals or draw him in the bracket, and neither of those is likely."

"I'm planning to lose the moment I'm matched against someone above the fifth stage," Wei Lin said.

"I want that on record. I'm not dying for glory." Our conversation was interrupted by a sudden hush falling over the dining hall. I turned to see what was going on. Earth Fist Liu had walked in, he was alone, his massive frame made him stand out more than usual, but what drew everyone's attention was that he was moving towards our table. My eyes narrowed at that. I didn't want to get into my second fight of the day. And this one, I likely wouldn't be winning.

But what made me relax was that Liu's expression wasn't hostile, if anything, he looked amused? He stopped at our table. He nodded to Wei Lin and Lin Mei, then looked at me.

"Nice work," he said, his voice a low rumble.

"That arrogant disciple needed someone to show him that cultivation stage isn't everything."

"Thank you," I replied, surprised by the praise. Something moved across his features that might have been a smile on a face more accustomed to producing them.

"I hope to see you in the one-to-one rounds. It's been a while since I've had an opponent worth thinking about." With that, he turned and walked away. The whispers started before he reached the next table. Wei Lin stared at the space Liu had occupied.

"Earth Fist Liu just complimented you."

"Yeah, he did."

"Great," Lin Mei muttered.

"Now you'll be even more impossible to keep out of trouble."

We went to Liu Chen's new quarters after we finished eating. On the way, Wei Lin and Lin Mei filled me in on what I had missed.

"Guess who picked him up as a disciple," Wei Lin said.

"Elder Song," Lin Mei said, which rendered the guessing exercise redundant.

"She's one of the sect's foremost earth element specialists. When you have a stone guardian, you tend to attract a certain kind of attention." That made sense.

"How is he handling it?"

"Better than you'd expect," Lin Mei said.

"Rocky helps. It's difficult to feel overwhelmed by anything when you have a fifteen-foot stone guardian behind you." Wei Lin nudged me.

"We each got two thousand contribution points for recruiting them. The sect takes talent acquisition seriously." I filed that away. The points had uses I was already beginning to map out. The core disciple area was different from the outer sect in ways that accumulated as you walked through it. The paths were wider and paved with spirit stones that gave off a low ambient light. The buildings were larger, their walls carrying formation arrays you could see if you knew what to look for.

The air itself had a different quality to it, denser and more charged in a way that made the outer sect feel, by comparison, like it had been slightly muted. Liu Chen's new quarters were a compound rather than a room. The main building had been constructed with high ceilings and reinforced floors, which was not a standard architectural decision and had obviously been made with Rocky in mind. A training yard occupied most of the space. It showed signs of being used recently.

There were impact craters in the ground that had the dimensions and depth of something very large landing with significant force. We found Liu Chen in the yard, working through practice forms with the training sword I had given him. He was wearing purple disciple robes that hadn't been fully adjusted to fit yet, but someone had made the attempt. Rocky stood nearby watching his friend with a look of pride. The stone guardian noticed us first. The sound it made might have been a greeting.

Liu Chen turned and his face lit up when he saw us.

"Brother Ke!" he said, running over.

"Elder Song said I have talent for earth element techniques." He held out his arms slightly so the robes were visible.

"Look at my new robes."

"They suit you," I said, and ruffled his hair because I could.

"Roll up the sleeves before you trip over them."

"Elder Song is going to teach Rocky how to compress his form," he said.

"So he stops breaking things. And she's going to teach me how to form my inner world." The energy dipped slightly.

"But I have to learn to read and write first."

"Knowledge is just as important as power," Lin Mei said gently.

"I know," Liu Chen sighed with all the drama of a pre-teen being forced to study.

"But Rocky gets to start training now." Rocky made a sound that arrived as smugness even through stone. We spent the next hour being shown around the compound, and when the light started to go, we said our goodbyes and walked back toward the outer sect. My mind was already moving to what came next and had been since about halfway through dinner. The tournament was eight weeks out.

The shape of how those weeks needed to go was taking form: formation lessons with Elder Chen Yong on a weekly basis, team practice with Wei Lin and Lin Mei, and whatever time was left over spent on formation theory and plant manipulation. But the real variable was the Two Suns World. I had been working on the assumption that I could enter and return at will, that death was not the mechanism it had seemed like on my first arrival.

I hadn't had the chance to test that properly, largely because the circumstances of that first loop had not ended in a way that allowed for testing much of anything. The time differential between the worlds made the question important. If I could move between them freely, the eight weeks here became substantially more than eight weeks in terms of what I could accomplish. More battle experience and more rune study. The possibility of combining runes with formations in ways I hadn't had time to work through.

My thoughts drifted to the vine I'd left behind, and my smile turned slightly sad. There might be something I could do with the contribution points, some way to research soul bonds, some means of bringing it across. It was a question worth asking when I had the resources to ask it properly.

"You're quieter than usual," Lin Mei said, falling into step beside me.

"I'm thinking about training."

"Eight weeks is more than enough," Wei Lin called from ahead of us.

"Don't worry too much." That was easier said than done. If my goal was to just pass the first round, then yeah, I probably wouldn't have to be worried. But what I wanted was to at least get into the top ten. That should be enough to catch an elder's eye. So yeah, I didn't feel like eight weeks was actually that much time, but with access to a different world along with the time dilation effect, it might just be enough to compete with disciples who had been in the sect for years.