Chương 34: "Why don't we spice this up a little bit?"

Ch 34: "Why don't we spice this up a little bit?"

Zhen gasped as his eyes snapped open. There was grass beneath him and a familiar blue sky overhead. The plain stretched out around him as before. He touched his hand to his shoulder where the stone spike had just impaled him. It was completely fine. There was no blood or shattered bone, and even his tunic wasn't ripped. Yet it had definitely happened. He hadn't made it up. His mind kept replaying the wet crunch of his thigh as the spike had gone through it. He wasn't imagining things.

The spikes had taken him down and then Gaarch had finished it. He had died. A shadow fell over him, and a furred hand appeared in front of him, extended in a silent offer to help him to stand. He slapped the hand away, then scrambled backward and up to his feet. As Gaarch withdrew his hand, behind him, Hagra was doubled over with laughter, his whole body shaking.

"I love that first time." The old langren straightened, wiping his eyes.

"None of those innocent cubs expect it. Welcome back, little human." His grin got wide.

"How was your first death?" Zhen's breath came in short bursts. He stared at his hands, then back up at Hagra.

"What are you doing?" Hagra let out another loud guffaw.

"What did you think would happen in something called an Ordeal?" The ancient langren spread his arms wide, his tail swishing with amusement.

"Plum wine and honey cakes?"

"Let me put this in terms that a blacksmith like you will understand."

"Your soul is a piece of raw metal. This is the place where it will be forged. I am the hammer, death is the anvil. I'm going to hit you until either you learn the techniques or your mind explodes into a thousand shards." He tilted his head, considering.

"Honestly, I don't mind which one, but a breaking mind is far more entertaining to watch." Hagra dropped back into his wide stance, palms pressing together.

"Right. Time to go again."

"Wait!" Hagra paused and let out an exaggerated groan.

"What now?" Zhen's hands clenched into fists.

"You can't just keep killing me. If all you're doing is using the technique against me, it doesn't teach me a thing." Hagra stood and looked skyward with a sigh.

"This is the problem with young people today. It's not like my day. They expect to be spoon-fed. None of you are prepared to put in the effort." He fixed Zhen with an amber stare.

"Tie Zhen, I am teaching you. A few thousand more deaths and you'll have it down. That or dying that many times will have driven you insane. Why do you think so few make it through this thing?" With that, Hagra dropped into the stance again. Zhen's stomach lurched. He activated the Eye of Xiezhi and focused on what Hagra was doing. Earth-attuned qi flowed around Hagra's meridians and the Eye tracked the movement, but the pattern moved too fast for Zhen to remember. Then Hagra's fists drove down once more.

A stone wall emerged from the ground. As soon as it was ten feet tall it stopped growing. The qi flow within it changed to create and then fire spikes toward Zhen. As the spikes punched into him, Zhen's last thought before he died was that training like this was going to hurt. Death became routine. Over the next few dozen times his life ended, Zhen used the Eye to learn both the shifts in the flows of qi that preceded the spikes appearing and the changes to the flows to make them shoot out at him.

But the real goal was to work out what Hagra was doing to create the wall with Earthen Citadel in the first place. That was harder. The speed with which the wall rose meant he had hardly any time to use the Eye to examine it before dying. There were no shortcuts. If he retreated far enough to avoid being impaled, the details of the pattern that the qi took were too indistinct to allow him to learn anything. Despite the number of times he died, the pain never lessened.

Worse, his mind began to anticipate each impact and blow, even though it was different every time. And after each death, he woke on the grass beneath that unchanging sky. It didn't take Zhen long to realize that the sun wasn't moving at all, time had no meaning here. His body carried no scars, but his mind accumulated them, and their sheer volume started to change him. He could see why this was a race to learn the techniques before the pain and the deaths drove him insane.

After one resurrection, Zhen pushed himself upright and stared at the horizon. Why was he even engaging with this? He turned away from Gaarch and Hagra and ran. Neither of them followed. His boots pounded across the plain, and he looked back to see them disappearing behind him. A dark spot appeared on the horizon. Zhen adjusted his course toward it, his desperation overriding any sense of caution. Anything would be better than this. The spot grew larger as he approached, and then resolved into familiar shapes.

Gaarch stood with his hammer resting against his shoulder. Hagra grinned beside him. Zhen slowed to a jog, then a walk. His chest heaved as he covered the final distance. Hagra's laughter rolled across the plain to greet him.

"You tried that sooner than most, little human, but it was always going to end the same way." Zhen stopped a dozen paces from them. His father's voice echoed in his mind. Once you've committed to the forging, you have to keep going. The only way forward is through. Zhen died hundreds more times before the pattern finally clicked into place. Each resurrection brought him back with the map of Hagra's qi flows a tiny bit clearer in his mind.

The Eye tracked every movement of qi through the old langren's body, but something didn't feel right about it. Then the realization struck him just as he was dying from a spike driven through his ribcage: Langren had no dantian. All their qi resided in their meridians instead. Zhen had been thinking in terms of adapting Elementary Pulse to make Earthen Citadel work, but it required a completely different approach. Zhen woke on the grass and pushed himself upright.

"Again." Seeing the look on Zhen's face, Hagra smiled and dropped into his stance immediately, palms coming together. Zhen focused the Eye, watching the now familiar pattern unfold. Earth-attuned qi gathered in Hagra's meridians, spiraling through channels in a pattern that Zhen had mapped through countless deaths. The wall erupted from the ground. Qi shifted within the stone barrier, preparing to form spikes. Zhen slammed his fists into the earth." Earthen Citadel!"

He forced his qi to follow the route he had memorized from Hagra, abandoning Elementary Pulse's pattern entirely. The energy surged through his meridians in that new configuration, then punched downward through his palms into the ground. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. A thin sheet of stone burst up in front of him. It barely reached his chin, and was rather pitiful when compared to Hagra's massive barrier. But it was a wall.

The spikes from Hagra's wall punched it through and into Zhen's chest and legs. He collapsed backward, blood soaking into the grass, but triumph flared in his chest as Hagra's shadow fell across him. Zhen looked up to find the old langren standing over him, and for the first time since the Ordeal began, Hagra wasn't grinning. His amber eyes blazed with anger and his tail swished in agitation.

"How did you do that?" Zhen coughed, and blood poured from his mouth.

"Ah. Right." Hagra's war hammer came down. Zhen gasped as he came back to consciousness. Hagra loomed over him, still scowling.

"Well?" Zhen climbed to his feet, brushing grass from his tunic.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play stupid with me, human."

"Isn't the whole point of the Ordeal to learn the techniques?" Zhen spread out his hands.

"That's what I was doing." Hagra threw his arms up in exasperation.

"Yes, of course you're meant to learn the techniques! You shouldn't be able to do it that fast!" He paced up and down, gesturing wildly.

"It should take twenty times that number of deaths before you get even an inkling of what the technique involves. You should still be flailing around trying to figure out the basic principles, not already creating a wall!" Zhen shrugged.

"Just lucky, I guess."

"Lucky." Hagra spat out the word like a curse.

"Lucky." He jabbed a clawed finger at Zhen.

"Do you have any idea how many deaths langren youths endured in here to achieve even a fraction of what you've just done?"

"No."

"Well, neither do I, but it's a lot!" Hagra threw his hands up again.

"And here you come, a few hundred deaths in, pulling stone from the ground like it's nothing." Zhen said nothing as the old langren stood and glared at him. Hagra stalked away, grumbling about young people having no respect for tradition, how everything was too easy these days, and, most grievously, about how the Ordeal used to mean something before humans started showing up with their lack of tails and their complete disregard for proper suffering.

Gaarch watched his ancestor's retreat with what might have been amusement hidden beneath his otherwise stoic exterior. He looked at Zhen.

"Again?" More deaths followed as Zhen refined his understanding. His walls improved as he learned to gather the ambient earth-attuned qi and weave it together with the energy from his meridians. The Eye showed him not only Hagra's qi flows but also the structural faults in his own barriers. Each death exposed another defect that he knew he had to fix. The langren technique demanded a constant flow through his meridians, and Zhen had to compress his qi into a dense, churning mist to match their output.

As he did so his langren blood helped his meridians to grow tougher and wider to be able to cope with the increased flow. Not so large as to match the langren, but far more than human. Eventually, after many more deaths, he slammed his fists down and a thick stone barrier rose to a foot above his head. Opposite him Hagra's wall fired half a dozen spikes at him at once. The stone projectiles hammered against his wall, shattering on impact and leaving holes and cracks.

But, for the first time, none of them got through. Zhen straightened, breathing hard. Pride flickered in his chest as he looked at the wall of stone. It was damaged to the point of destruction, but it still stood. Hagra and Gaarch came over and looked over the barrier carefully. as he watched Zhen allowed himself a small smile. He had done it. Gaarch turned to Hagra with a nod.

"That seems in order. Shall we?" The old langren grinned.

"Well, there has to be some reason that you're here, descendent of mine." Both langren drew their war hammers in one smooth motion. Zhen's eyes widened.

"Wait…" The two hammers struck his wall simultaneously. It exploded into a cloud of fragments and through the dust, the war hammers continued their arcs without slowing. One caved in Zhen's chest, and the other obliterated his skull. He died before he hit the ground. Zhen woke, and Gaarch's war hammer already filled his vision. His skull splintered and he fell into darkness. He woke again and Hagra's hammer was descending. The deaths came fast now.

Each resurrection blurred into the next with no time to breathe or prepare. The instant his eyes opened, death followed. Zhen stopped trying to keep count and just tried to work out how he could keep from dying immediately. He rolled before he woke and bought a second. He was about to start an Earthen Citadel when his spine was crushed. The pain had become a constant companion, a weight pressing against the inside of his skull.

Each time his body reformed perfectly, but every time he died, he could feel a scratch peeling away another sliver of his soul. Faster. He had to be faster. Zhen stripped Earthen Citadel down to its purest form. First the words vanished. Then the need for a stance. Eventually, the technique responded to his intent alone. He could raise the walls with just a thought, and that bought him precious moments.

One wall at a time wouldn't be enough, so over tens of deaths, Zhen taught himself how adapt the flows of qi to produce two. Survival stopped being measured in breaths and now lasted for minutes as he was able to get away and stop several hammer blows before he died. This latest time, Zhen felt good. He had controlled the battleground with Earthen Citadel, and he was sure that he could get in at least one good counterattack before he died.

As he was about to launch that attack, Hagra and Gaarch simultaneously stepped back and lowered their hammers. Zhen didn't relax, but he allowed his walls to crumble as the two langren slung their hammers onto their backs. Hagra rolled his shoulders and studied Zhen with an expression that might have been approval.

"Time for the next stage." Before Zhen could ask what that meant, Hagra raised one hand to shoulder height, palm facing down. The ground trembled and Zhen prepared to use Earthen Citadel to defend himself. Zhen locked the Eye onto the flow as earth-attuned qi slowly rose from the ground in a dense column. It pushed past the grass, rotating slowly as it climbed. The column of raw qi transformed as it rose. The top turned into a metal head with a spike on one end, and the lower half became a wooden haft.

When it was done there was a war hammer floating in the air below Hagra's hand. It matched the style of the weapons both the langren carried. Brutal, functional, and made to shatter bone and tear flesh. But it was smaller, sized for a six-foot human rather than an eight-foot langren warrior. Hagra grabbed the hammer by the handle as it solidified fully. He hefted it with one hand to test the weight, then wrinkled his nose.

"Puny," he said.

"But suitable for a human." He tossed it across. Zhen caught the hammer and the weight drove him back before he could plant his feet. The weapon was as heavy as it looked. He straightened slowly, adjusting his grip. The balance felt right despite the weight. Zhen looked from Hagra to Gaarch, trying to read which one would come for him first. But neither of them moved. Hagra crossed his arms, and then the old langren smiled. He pursed his lips and let out a long, piercing whistle that cut across the plain.

For a moment, nothing happened, then in the distance, Zhen saw the grass start to sway. Zhen turned around and he could see that grass stirring from all sides. It bent in waves that formed a tightening circle around them, and as it drew near Zhen could hear the rustling. Whatever approached moved low and fast, dozens of creatures closing in. The rustling stopped when it reached a few feet away and silence settled over the plain. Then a single rabbit hopped out from the grass.

It looked up at Hagra with round, innocent eyes, nose twitching. Then it turned those same eyes toward Zhen before looking back at Hagra. Hagra nodded toward Zhen and the grass erupted. Tens of rabbits burst out, their teeth bared in snarls that showed rows of needle-sharp fangs. They launched themselves at Zhen from every direction. With just a thought and a flex of his qi, Zhen activated Earthen Citadel.

Two stone walls shot up to protect his rear and the rabbits hit the barriers with wet thuds, some bouncing back, others scrambling over their stunned companions. Zhen had no time to spare them a thought as he faced those in front of him. He swung out at them with the war hammer and the weapon's weight threw him off-balance. The head sailed wide, missing completely. A rabbit darted past his guard and sank its teeth into his calf. As he fell to the ground he was swarmed. Darkness.

More deaths followed, but this time Zhen learned quickly. The war hammer wasn't like his smithing tools, it demanded power and commitment. He stopped trying to redirect it mid-swing and let the weight work for him instead. Eventually, he was not quite sure exactly when, the hammer started to feel familiar in his hands. The last time he cleared the circle of rabbits in a matter of minutes. He was injured and exhausted, but he was still standing. He looked around to check he hadn't missed any.

While the large war hammer wasn't the ideal weapon to use against small, fast-moving creatures like the rabbits it was good enough. If learning to use the war hammer was the next langren technique he was meant to learn he had overcome it surprisingly quickly. Zhen sighed and rolled his shoulders. That almost certainly meant learning to use the war hammer wasn't the real lesson. Hagra nodded slowly.

"Well done." There it was. Praise wasn't part of Hagra's vocabulary.

"Why don't we spice this up a little bit?" Zhen tensed and lift the hammer up into guard position. The old langren pursed his lips and let out another piercing whistle that echoed across the grass plain. More rustling came from the distant grass, and Zhen braced himself for another wave. But Hagra didn't wait for reinforcements.

"Now let's see how you do against some little rabbits when you also have to face a little thing we langren like to call Growl of the Crushing Maw." The ancient warrior let out a low qi-infused growl that rippled through Zhen's body and scattered his thoughts. The world tilted sideways, his vision blurred, and his grip on the hammer loosened. Zhen recognized the technique from his sparring match with Jatrix. But this time he could force himself not to give in.

If Jatrix's growl had been devastating, Hagra's should have been worse, but Zhen's cultivation had advanced inside the Ordeal. His meridians were far wider than before, so they were able to absorb some of the qi instead of letting Growl overwhelm him. He shook his head, threw up a wall to protect his rear and flanks, then the hammer as the first rabbit arrived and leaped at him. Its skull shattered and he pivoted into the next strike, maintaining the rhythm he had learned.

Growl continued but Zhen pushed through it, each movement was harder but he could still control the hammer well enough to keep the rabbits away. Then Hagra took another breath, and the growl turned lower and deeper. The air shimmered and rippled. The howl took a physical form, qi coalescing into a translucent wolf's head with its jaws yawning wide. It lunged forward, and before Zhen could even try to dodge, it passed through his tunic and into him.

The ghostly fangs didn't draw blood, but as soon as they tore into his flesh, numbing energy flooded into him and his muscles locked up. The war hammer slipped from his grasp, and even as it thudded to the ground his knees buckled, and he toppled onto the grass. He couldn't move, only watch with paralyzed eyes as a tide of fur and fluff closed in. Teeth tore into his flesh from every direction.

As the swarm pulled him into darkness his final thought was not one of pain or anger, but rather one of irritation: What was it with damned cultivators and their need to train using bloodthirsty rabbits?