Chương 17: "The water closed over his head again as his muscles locked up"

Ch 17: "The water closed over his head again as his muscles locked up" Zhen was having a delightful dream about forging the perfect nail when someone yanked him from his sleep. The pre-dawn darkness still clung to the clearing as he opened his eyes and looked around wildly. Shuo was dragging him across the camp with a tight grip on his collar. Before he could speak, Shuo hurled him into the stream that ran through the clearing. Ice-cold water closed over his head.

As Zhen surfaced, coughing and spluttering, his body was shocked into full alertness.

"Get up," Shuo commanded from the bank. Zhen found his footing on the slick stones, gasping as the current pushed against his ribs. The cold stole his breath.

"Circulate your qi and attack the blockage in your spine. This is how you'll open the Mingmen spirit gate."

"What…" As Zhen scrabbled to get back to shore, Shuo kicked him back into the water.

"There must be balance in all things. Mingmen is the gate of fire. It must be opened with cold. It will anchor your assault on the gate and stabilize your breakthrough." Zhen's teeth chattered. The current battered his stance, forcing him to brace his legs wide. He drew in a shaking breath and began using Elementary Pulse to push qi through his meridians.

"No doubt," Shuo said.

"You're curious as to why I chose to throw you into the stream without warning. I suspect you think it's essential to the process, but you would be wrong. The reason is simple. My master did it to me, and I've been waiting for the opportunity to do it to a pupil of my own. Congratulations." Zhen gritted his teeth and ignored his smirking teacher to turn the Eye inward and search for the second spirit gate. As Shuo had indicated, it was at his spine, level with his navel.

The blockage appeared different from the Qihai gate. Not a solid knot but layered, compressed like scar tissue folded over itself again and again. With each layer having its own grain. He remembered what had worked with the first gate. Find the structural flaw and attack it rather than trying to grind it away. Time to do it again and get out of this freezing stream. Zhen gathered his qi and drove it toward the center of the blockage, seeking to punch through in one decisive thrust. That was the wrong choice.

The backlash sent him stumbling to his knees and under the water. Qi exploded out of control through his meridians, tearing in every direction at once. His body locked up, and his spine arched. He couldn't breathe or move. The current pushed him sideways, and he toppled into deeper water. Darkness crowded his sight as he struggled to breathe. Through his dimming vision, he saw Chul lunge toward the stream. Without looking, Shuo caught her bridle and casually held her back despite her frantic neighs.

The old man's voice carried to him as if there was no water between them.

"Get up." Zhen's lungs screamed. His limbs refused to obey. The cold pressed in from all sides, and the current rolled him downstream across the rocky bed. Each tumble drove what little air remained from his chest.

"Stop wasting time. Get. Up." Shuo's tone was flat and annoyed. The command cut through the panic. Zhen calmed himself and forced his hand to break through the paralysis to push against the streambed. His qi still writhed through his channels like broken glass, but he shoved himself upright, breaking the surface with a desperate gasp.

"Again," Shuo said.

"And this time, think before you act." Zhen dug his fingers into the streambed before the current could drag him under again. His limbs shook, but he forced himself upright, water streaming from his hair and clothes. The cold bit deeper now, seeping into his bones.

"Again." Shuo didn't hide his impatience.

"I taught you the Mountain Bear Stance for a reason. Use it." Zhen clenched his jaw to stop the chattering and drew a careful breath as he assumed the strong, wide-legged stance. Rushing at the blockage like a hammer striking an anvil had nearly killed him. He turned the Eye inward once more, studying the obstruction at his spine more closely. Three compressed layers overlapped inside the gate, but between them ran thin seams.

They weren't weaknesses exactly, but rather they were like the joins in poorly welded iron where the layers didn't quite mesh. He gathered his qi and directed it along the outermost seam, applying the pressure along the seam rather than straight through it. The blockage resisted, but he kept the pressure steady, peeling away at the edge. The current battered him despite his Mountain Bear Stance. Without it, he wouldn't have been able to stay upright, but nonetheless, his legs burned from holding the position.

Sweat mixed with the stream water splashing on his face even though the cold bit deep. However, he began to see why Shuo had placed him here. The majority of the qi he used came from the store in his dantian. Yet the additional qi he was drawing in had cold-aspected properties that weakened the gate's resistance faster. Having learned his lesson not to rush, Zhen forced himself to ignore the cold and worked the seam methodically. The outer layer came away in pieces, each one requiring minutes of careful pressure.

Then, without warning, the entire blockage ruptured. Heat and lightning shot up his spine, and his legs buckled once more. The water closed over his head again as his muscles locked up. Through the roar of the current and the agony, he heard a splash. Teeth clamped onto his collar and yanked him sideways. Chul crashed into the stream beside him, and he felt her warmth even through the freezing water. Her hooves churned against the flow as she dragged him toward the shallows. Zhen's shoulder scraped across stones.

Then grass pressed against his cheek as Chul dragged him onto the bank. He coughed, water spilling from his mouth.

"Time is critical, boy. Expand your dantian. Now." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Zhen's chest heaved, but he pulled himself to a kneeling position and forced his attention inward. Qi flooded his meridians with nowhere to go. He directed it inward, filling his dantian until its walls strained. Then he pushed outward while simultaneously feeding in qi.

The qi he was drawing in through the Mingmen gate had a blazing quality unlike the qi he had drawn in previously. The fire-aspected qi warmed his frozen body from the inside. As he worked, the pressure built gradually but he continued to push. He knew that weakness now would cripple his future growth. He refused to allow that. His hands dug into the mud and his vision blurred at the edges as the minutes crawled past.

The dantian walls resisted the expansion, pushing back against the force he applied but Zhen did not give up. He held the balance, inward and outward at once, and maintained the impossible tension. Then the dantian expanded, its boundaries shifting outward and locking into place. With a moan, Zhen collapsed face-first onto the ground.

"Interesting," Shuo said. Zhen lifted his face from the mud and blinked water from his eyes, ready to respond, but found that Shuo wasn't looking at him at all. Rather, he stood several paces away and studied Chul with an intensity that made the mare shift her weight and flick her ears back. Only after a long moment did he turn toward Zhen.

"That dantian expansion was barely sufficient." Zhen braced against the riverbank, mud squelching between his fingers as he tried to steady himself. His arms shook with the effort.

"Acceptable is rarely enough." Shuo's tone carried no comfort.

"If, you make it into the Cloudstone Peak Sect you'll be competing against elites who've had the best resources and the best instruction since birth.

'Barely sufficient' means you lose. Over the coming weeks, perfect this gate the way you perfected your Qihai gate. We won't move to the next gate until it's done." Exhausted and half-submerged in mud and stream water, Zhen pressed harder against the ground. His palm sank deeper into the soft earth, but he forced himself upright anyway. As he rose, he sensed a faint pulse of qi moving deep beneath the riverbank.

He looked toward Shuo, about to ask about it, but the old man was already walking away through the silver-barked trees.

"Change your clothes, get some breakfast, and break camp." Shuo didn't bother turning around.

"We leave in fifteen minutes." Zhen pushed himself fully upright, legs wobbling as he slogged out of the shallows. Chul waited nearby, ears pricked forward. Before anything else, Zhen stumbled over to his pack and dug through it with mud-caked fingers to pull out an apple. Despite having been feasting on spirit herbs, Chul accepted it with a pleased nicker, her warm breath condensed in the cold morning air as she crunched through the fruit.

Zhen ran his hand along her neck, feeling the solid strength beneath her coat.

"Thank you." He wrapped both arms around her neck and pressed his forehead against her mane. She huffed and bumped his shoulder with her nose, as if to say he was being ridiculous. As Zhen moved around the camp, stripping off his soaked clothes and pulling fresh ones from his pack, he noticed something remarkable. His body ached, yes, but it wasn't a bone-deep exhaustion. Instead, strength flowed through his limbs.

His hands, which had trembled moments before, now moved with sureness as he rolled his sodden clothes and secured his pack. Elementary Pulse circulated qi through his meridians washing away his tiredness, and with two gates open, he drew in qi twice as fast as he had before. The flow moved through both gates, and he could already see how he would have to adapt the pattern of Elementary Pulse around his meridians to accommodate the change.

But his dantian was now almost double its previous size, and it needed to be filled. Despite what Shuo had said, Zhen felt proud of how far he had expanded. Nonetheless, the qi he pulled in, though doubled, would take much longer to accumulate before he could attempt the next gate. He understood now what Shuo meant. Each gate wasn't just harder because the blockages grew more complex. Each gate expanded his capacity, which meant more time and effort to reach the next threshold. And so weeks passed on the road.

As they did so, the world around them started to change. The silver-barked trees thinned, their familiar presence giving way to a species he didn't recognize but that was lower and darker. Their leaves flashed silver on the underside when the wind moved through the canopy, creating ripples of light that reminded him of hammered steel catching the firelight. At night, the insects sang in a higher register and in an entirely novel rhythm.

The wildflowers along the occasional track were unfamiliar, their petals curled inward like fists, or spread wide with centers that looked almost geometric. Knowing that Shuo was unlikely to care, Zhen filed these observations without comment, but every day he was very aware that he was further from home. Each morning they broke camp before dawn. Chul moved increasingly faster and more gracefully, her enhanced horseshoes carrying them through terrain that shifted from dense woodland to rolling hills and back again.

Yet Zhen was able to adapt to the speed as he himself got to grips with the change from his second opened spirit gate. The route they took was somewhat convoluted and Zhen was reminded that the threat from the Folded Shadows was still out there. Shuo led them along paths that doubled back, cut across streams, and avoided the wider roads entirely. But the general direction, deeper into the empire and further from home, was clear. Most days they stopped by late afternoon.

Shuo picked places to camp that were close to water, with abundant spirit herbs, both for the evening stew and for Chul's grazing. As for Chul herself, as the days passed, she started to develop opinions about the campsites. To Zhen's amusement, she would stand with one ear flat against her skull and refused to settle if she disliked a spot. Shuo, without comment, allowed her to lead them to another spot that was always more dense in qi and spirit herbs. Those spirit herbs certainly agreed with her.

At every stop, Chul ate without hesitation, her coat gleaming with health that went beyond mere grooming. Each evening brought training. Shuo drove Zhen through exercises that built on the foundation from before. Lunges that required perfect balance while circulating qi, forms and stances that demanded continuous qi circulation even as his muscles failed. The work was relentless, but Zhen noticed the difference.

His body responded faster, and his endurance stretched further That look that Shuo had directed at Chul after she had saved Zhen manifested itself in Shuo starting to include her in some of the training. The two of them started to learn how to work together without getting in each other's way. After the physical training came meditation. Shuo forbade any attempt at opening the third gate, instead forcing Zhen to clean out and perfect his Mingmen spirit gate.

As expected, his expanded dantian took longer to fill than the original. That filling process became its own test of patience and commitment as every cycle of Elementary Pulse drew in qi drop by drop. Yet Zhen found a deep satisfaction in the work. The intense focus required to regulate the fire qi through his Mingmen gate reminded him of the concentration he had needed during his most complicated forging project.

He had spent weeks drawing white-hot steel into the precise, intricate forms required for a new lock for the village temple. Cultivation demanded that same absorption and attention to detail. Manage the heat; control the pressure, and remove flaws before the structure failed. He revelled in it. Three more weeks in, the rugged frontier flattened into open lowlands as they traveled deeper into the empire proper.

While Shuo was careful to keep them well away from people, foreign farmsteads began to dot the countryside. Zhen immediately noticed the changed architecture. The barn eaves were sloped wider to shed heavier snows, and the walls between the fields were meticulously stacked river stones rather than split timber. Different weather, different soil, and a different way of working the earth. It left him with a sudden pang for the familiar dirt of his home village.

One evening when mist rolled across their campsite in thin sheets, Zhen worked his way through another series of stances and lunges. He felt good, although a little frustrated. Even after stabilizing his Mingmen gate and refilling his dantian, the old man refused to let him tackle another spirit gate. Instead, he stood watching Zhen with his arms crossed, his face revealing nothing. When Zhen finished his routine and straightened, sweat rapidly cooling against his skin, Shuo finally uncrossed his arms.

"The base is solid." Zhen held his breath at the praise and waited for the punchline.

"Tomorrow, we stop pretending those smithing hammers are only fit to hit an anvil."

"Besides," Shuo glanced toward the dark treeline, a predatory glint in his eyes, "I'm sick of dried rations. It's time for some fresh meat."