Chương 5: "The difficulty is the point!"

Ch 5: "The difficulty is the point!"

Gang was already at the anvil when Zhen entered, the ring of his hammer filling the forge. As was typical for him, he didn't look up or ask where Zhen had been. The wheel rims were all that mattered.

"Seven more to finish by sundown," Gang grunted between strikes.

"Customer needs them before his caravan leaves tomorrow." Zhen nodded and moved to his station, pulling his apron off his peg and tying it around him. The familiar rhythm of work provided a welcome respite to the morning's strangeness. He grabbed his tongs and pulled a glowing ingot from the coals. As he positioned the metal on his anvil, the tiny imperfections within the red-hot iron were clear to him. This was one of the ingots he hadn't gotten around to fixing before Shuo had taken him away.

Usually, if there were still flaws in the metal at this stage, he would hammer around them, but now that he had more qi, he could try it the other way. Zhen focused, guiding a thread of qi through his fingers into the metal. The metal yielded and another tiny bubble of air pushed free even as the surrounding iron sealed itself seamlessly. He blinked. That was easy. This morning, that same maneuver had taken far longer and cost him far more effort.

"Something the matter?" Gang didn't look up but his hammer paused mid-swing. Zhen quickly began hammering.

"No. It's all good." Throughout the day, Zhen tested his ability on most of the pieces he worked on. Sometimes he pushed too hard or lost focus at a critical moment, but his success rate steadily improved. More importantly, each use took less effort each time. During a brief respite while Gang stoked the furnace, Zhen sat on his stool and closed his eyes. Breathing in the pattern Shuo had shown him, he slipped into the Elementary Pulse meditation technique. The qi flowed in, replenishing what he had used.

At the same time, the fatigue that had begun to settle in his shoulders eased a little.

"Nice work today," Gang said as they resumed, eyeing the perfect curve of Zhen's latest rim.

"Clean. Efficient. Keep it up." By late afternoon, they had completed all eight wheel rims, each one flawless. Zhen ran his fingers along the smooth metal. Even if Shuo taught him nothing more, this changed everything. The ability to spot flaws was a gift he had always had. However, now he could reliably fix those flaws from within. That, combined with the ability to energize himself when he got tired, transformed his capabilities as a blacksmith.

"Delicious. Thank you, Madam Tie." Shuo said with a smile as Zhen scraped the last grains of rice from his dinner bowl. Zhen and his father had finished up in the forge an hour or so earlier and had come in to find Shuo and Mei-Bao working together to prepare the evening meal. Gang had raised an eyebrow with an amused look on his face but said nothing.

"You are too kind about our humble fare," Mei-Bao said with a small bow. As Tie Gang cleared the table she turned to Zhen.

"You should get to bed early tonight. Your father says you've been pushing yourself at the forge." Zhen nodded absently. His muscles weren't tired thanks to Elementary Pulse, but his mind was still racing. As his parents busied themselves with the evening chores, Shuo walked next to him in the courtyard. The old man's movements were smooth, nothing like the decrepit shuffle he adopted in front of Zhen's parents.

"Forge. Two hours before dawn," Shuo muttered.

"Don't be late." Before Zhen could respond, Shuo had already transformed back into a hobbling old man, complaining loudly about his aching joints. Sleep came fitfully that night. When it was time, Zhen rose in the darkness, dressed silently, and made his way to the forge. Shuo stepped out from the shadows.

"Good. You're punctual." Without further commentary, he produced his flying sword and moments later, they were soaring through the pre-dawn sky. At the clearing, mist rose from the lake in ghostly tendrils. Shuo frowned as Zhen settled into the meditation posture.

"Your shoulders are too tense. Your breath catches here." He tapped Zhen's solar plexus.

"And your mind is wandering like an untethered goat." As he had done yesterday, Shuo corrected minute details of Zhen's technique, each adjustment producing noticeable improvements in how the qi responded. Frustrating though it was, Zhen had to admit that Shuo was a good teacher. He identified mistakes Zhen didn't even know he was making and precisely showed him how to correct them"Better," Shuo finally said, though his tone suggested this was faint praise.

"But if you want to meditate at the giddy heights of a lazy twelve-year-old rather than a precocious eight-year-old, you need to learn to move qi through your meridians." Zhen frowned.

"My what?"

"Meridians. Channels through which qi flows." Shuo traced an invisible line along Zhen's arm.

"They're like your arteries, but instead of blood, qi flows through them." Zhen closed his eyes, trying to feel the pathways Shuo described. He pushed his qi as he had in the forge, expecting it to respond similarly, but nothing moved. He tried again, concentrating harder. The qi vibrated within him but refused to shift. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"You're forcing it," Shuo said, tapping Zhen's forehead.

"Stop thinking like a blacksmith. The meridians aren't iron to be hammered according to your will. You have to work with them, not force them." Zhen's frustration mounted. For the first time since beginning his training, his blacksmith's instincts failed him. He still hadn't managed it when they had to return, but neither of them wanted to delay and have a repeat of yesterday's encounter with Mei-Bao. This pattern repeated in the days that followed.

Meet before dawn, fly to the clearing for intensive instruction, then back before his parents woke. Despite having less sleep, Zhen had more energy than ever. Cycling Elementary Pulse refreshed him and washed away the aches from his limbs. As he became more proficient at absorbing qi, his work at the forge improved dramatically. Gang noticed but didn't say anything, merely nodding with approval at the final pieces that would have once taken them many more hours to perfect.

"Focus on the sensation," Shuo told Zhen on their fifth morning.

"Not where you think the meridians should be, but concentrate on where the qi wants to flow itself." Zhen closed his eyes, breathing in the rhythm Shuo had taught him. The qi moved through his body, and once he relaxed he could see that it was trying to take a specific path. Then something shifted. Qi surged down a channel running up his arm, followed by a trickle spiraling down his spine.

"I feel it." He kept his eyes closed, not wanting to lose the feeling.

"Good," Shuo said.

"Now encourage it, don't insist it does your will." By the seventh day, Zhen had mapped most of his major meridians and was guiding qi through them with increasing confidence. The energy moved more freely through his body each time. But something puzzled him. The meridians naturally led his qi to the same point in the center of his body at what must be his dantian, the energy center mentioned in all the cultivation stories.

But instead of accumulating there and building up as the tales described, it simply drifted away.

"Master Shuo," Zhen said during their morning session after a week of training.

"Am I doing something wrong? The qi reaches my dantian but I can't hold it there. Shouldn't it be stored there?" Shuo rolled his eyes.

"The impatience of youth. One week and you think you know everything. You're not a true cultivator yet. Even spirit beasts like the langren know that without mastery of your meridians, the rest doesn't matter. If fact they do everything with just meridians. Get the basics right and then we will talk." The more Zhen practiced guiding qi through his meridians, the more attuned he became to its flow. Between his sessions with Shuo and his time at the forge, he grew increasingly sensitive to the energy's movement.

The sensation was intoxicating, like discovering an entirely new sense. Even without Shuo's encouragement, he found himself trying to find time to meditate whenever he could. But that exhilaration soon gave way to frustration. After nearly two weeks of daily practice, the amount of qi he could actually move felt pathetically small compared to what he had glimpsed in Shuo's casual demonstrations.

"This is pointless," Zhen said one morning as they returned from the clearing.

"I'm moving the same amount of qi around my meridians as I was days ago. Nothing's changing."

"Patience is the foundation of cultivation," Shuo replied. His voice was irritatingly serene.

"I am being patient." Zhen knew he was whining, but couldn't help himself.

"I'm practicing exactly like you told me to. But it just leaks away." Two days later, when Zhen's frustration peaked, he confronted Shuo.

"There must be something you're not telling me," he said as they sat by the lake.

"I can trace every meridian perfectly now, but the qi disperses as soon as it reaches my center. How am I supposed to become stronger if I can't store any energy?" Shuo's wrinkled face creased with irritation.

"And what makes you think you should be storing energy at all?"

"Because that's what cultivators do! They gather qi in their dantian and…"

"And you're not a cultivator," Shuo's voice was sharp.

"Not yet. Everyone has meridians, boy. Everyone has a dantian. What separates a cultivator from a mortal is that they have opened a spirit gate. When you build a suitable foundation, we'll move to that." Zhen frowned.

"Spirit gates?" Shuo sighed and stabbed a finger hard into Zhen's abdomen, just below his navel. Pain shot through his core, doubling him over.

"The junctions where your meridians meet," Shuo said.

"Think of them as literal gates. Right now, yours are rusted shut. That one is your Qihai spirit gate. The first rusted gate. Until you open it, your dantian will remain empty no matter how much qi you circulate."

"Then teach me how to open it," Zhen said, rubbing the tender spot. Shuo's eyes narrowed.

"You're determined to rush headlong into things beyond your understanding, aren't you? Very well. Since you refuse to be patient and wait for your betters to guide you properly, we'll go to the clearing tonight."

"Tonight? Why not in the morning as usual?"

"Oh, and now you're complaining that we are going too fast? Opening a spirit gate isn't like hammering iron. It will be slow and it will hurt. But perhaps that lesson will finally teach you why cultivation follows careful progression." Zhen swallowed hard but nodded.

"I'll be ready."

"No," Shuo said as he turned away.

"You won't." The moon hung over the lake, and its surface mirrored the stars when they landed in the clearing.

"Sit," Shuo commanded, pointing to a flat boulder near the edge of the water.

"Begin Elementary Pulse, then direct your qi to your Qihai spirit gate." Zhen settled into position and began to breathe in the technique's pattern. As he sank deeper into meditation, qi flowed into him from both the clearing around him and, unexpectedly, from the stars above. Following Shuo's instructions, Zhen guided this amplified flow toward the spirit gate below his navel. When his qi reached the Qihai gate, it met with a dense and unyielding knot of resistance.

"I've found it," he murmured.

"Good. Now grind it down. Wear away at it with your qi," Shuo replied, his voice distant through Zhen's concentration. Zhen directed his qi against the blockage, moving it in circular motions that slowly eroded the surface. The process was painstaking, each small victory requiring intense focus. After what felt like hours, he had only managed to wear away a fraction of the obstruction. He opened his eyes, moonlight momentarily blinding him.

"Am I doing it wrong? This will take forever at this rate." Shuo threw his hands up.

"Of course it will take forever! You think cultivation is like boiling water? The younger generation wants everything now, now, now!" He started to pace.

"When I was your age, I spent three months opening my first spirit gate. Three months. We didn't complain about how long it took!" The old man jabbed a finger into Zhen's face.

"If opening spirit gates were easy, every village idiot would be flying around on swords! The difficulty is the point!" Despite his frustration, Zhen found himself fighting back a smile at Shuo's indignation.

"Stop grinning and get back to work," Shuo snapped.

"Even the pampered young masters in the sects take weeks of focused meditation to feel even the first hints of being able to open a spirit gate. And you're no genius. You wanted to do this before you were ready, so enjoy the moonlight. You'll be staring at it every night until your hair turns as grey as mine." Zhen closed his eyes again, returning to the blockage. This time, instead of blindly grinding, he felt it out using the same perception that let him see weaknesses in metal.

He had never tried using it internally before, but the principle should be the same. Slowly, the flaw in the blockage revealed itself to him. It had fault lines spiderwebbing through it that reminded him of when a horseshoe cooled too fast. Instead of focusing on the weak points, he had been attacking the whole mass. He allowed himself a small smile. In the past he had fixed problems like this a thousand times at the anvil. He could do the same here. He would just use a different hammer.