Chương 8: Sect Training

The seventh disciple to ask Zero a question was named Lao Min. He was older than the first three, perhaps eighteen, and had the careful posture of someone who had been chastised enough times that correct posture had become automatic. He waited until the others had gone before approaching, which Zero had observed was a pattern among the older junior disciples; they watched the younger ones ask questions first, then came when the answers had proven safe.

"You modified your hands," Lao Min said, "Into a mantis configuration."

"Approximately." Lao Min considered this.

"Can you show me again?" Lao Min watched with the same focused attention Yukito did taking mental notes before speaking.

"The angle on the secondary strike is different from the standard form," he said after Zero had finished.

"The standard form accounts for blade weight. Since I do not have a blade, I adjusted the angle to compensate for the difference." Lao Min processed that for a moment before asking another question.

"You said you have never trained before?"

"Not in sword forms."

"What have you trained in?" Zero gave him an answer he did not expect.

"Observation, adaptation, and surviving tests." Lao Min did not ask what kind of tests. He seemed to decide that the full answer to that question was not something he should ask for.

"Would you be willing to watch our morning session tomorrow?" he asked instead.

"The instructor has been working on a correction with me for two weeks. I want to know if you see it too." Zero agreed, partly because refusing would have been wasteful, and partly because he was curious about what kind of person asked to be observed rather than praised.

The instructor Lao mentioned was Elder Jianyu. On the eighth morning, he arrived at the main training yard midway through the junior disciples' forms session and stood at the perimeter for approximately three minutes watching them. He was older than most of the instructors Zero had observed, with silver-streaked hair tied back and the particular quality of stillness that came not from discipline but from something that had long since stopped needing to be disciplined.

His aura was not as heavy as the two senior elders from the ceremony, but it was not nothing. He watched the disciples for two minutes before his attention moved to Zero, who was watching Lao Min's left shoulder.

"Outsider," Jianyu said. Zero looked at him.

"You have been here for eight days. And in that time, you have watched my disciples train every morning."

"Yes." Jianyu's expression was neutral.

"What do you see?" Zero glanced at Lao, who gave a small nod.

"Lao Min's left shoulder drops too far on the second strike," he said.

"He corrects for it in the third, which means the correction costs him half a step of momentum. If his shoulder were slightly higher in the second strike, he would not need to compensate, and the third strike would arrive faster." Jianyu was quiet for a moment.

"I have been telling him that for two weeks," he said.

"I know. He told me. I watched to see if I could identify the cause." Elder Jianyu was silent in the same way Miho was when she wanted Zero to continue speaking.

"His grip tightens before the second strike, which travels up the arm into the shoulder. The grip is the source of the drop." Another silence, but this time, Jianyu was processing what he had said instead of silently asking for more information.

"What is your name?" Jianyu asked.

"Zero."

"Zero." He repeated, with the neutral repetition of someone committing it to memory.

"And you are not a sword practitioner."

"No."

"Have you told Lao Min about the grip?"

"I told him just now, while you were listening." Jianyu looked at Lao, who had gone the shade of pink of one who would have preferred not to be part of this conversation. Then Jianyu looked back at Zero.

"Come to the yard tomorrow morning," he said.

"Stand where I can see you." He walked away without waiting for a response. Zero looked at Lao, who was still slightly pink.

"Was that good?" Zero asked. He let out a slow breath.

"I think so, but I'm not entirely certain. With Elder Jianyu, those two things sometimes look the same."

Viria's connection to Elder Jianyu began differently. She had seen Jianyu perform the space-severing cut on the ninth morning while crossing the main yard on the way to breakfast. Jianyu had been demonstrating the technique for three senior disciples, and Viria had stopped walking. Zero had also stopped, because Viria had, and because he was curious what had stopped her. The technique was what its name suggested: a cut that sliced through the space itself, making distance and physical barriers seem meaningless.

Zero's Identify registered it instinctively. OBSERVATION: Space-Severing Cut (Partial) Classification: Advanced Qi Technique Principle: Qi compression along spatial interface; blade movement acts as anchor, spatial line as locational guidance. Full analysis unavailable. Identify skill level Insufficient. Right on cue, another notification appeared: SKILL LEVEL UP: Identify Lv. 1 > Lv. 2 Identify results improved. EXP Awarded. Level Up! Unexpectedly, Zero reached level 3, and his Identify skill also reached level 2.

He tried identifying the elder's technique again, but it seemed Identify was still too low of a level. Viria watched the cut land and the air close after it with wide eyes. Without thinking, she ran up to Elder Jianyu. Miho had arrived by that point, franticly thinking of a way to do damage control. But by that point, it was too late to stop Viria. Zero noted, factually, that no one in the courtyard breathed for approximately four seconds. Jianyu turned to look at her.

His expression was the same neutral-assessor expression he had given Zero, except that his right eyebrow had risen by perhaps two degrees.

"Elder," Viria said.

"Can you teach me that technique?" The courtyard was extremely quiet.

"That's such a cool technique! Using the sword to make the movements while channeling them to a different point in space, I've never seen that before! Do you make the cut before or after warping space? I couldn't te—" Viria suddenly noticed the extremely wide eyes of the disciples around her. She closed her mouth, cheeks flushing in embarrasment, but her pride wouldn't let her back down now. Jianyu looked at her for a long time.

"You are not a sword practitioner."

"Not yet."

"You have never held a sword."

"I've held a few. I was bad at it." Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Jianyu's eyebrow did not lower. He looked at her with the particular attention of someone who had not been surprised in a very long time and was now deciding whether the sensation was welcome. Zero had the impression that for Jianyu, it was.

"One thousand sword swings," Jianyu said.

"If you complete them before sunset, I will consider making you a temporary disciple." Viria looked at him.

"That's it?" Jianyu gave her a slightly amused look and nodded. She picked up a practice sword from the nearest rack, settled into something approximating a starting stance, and began. Zero looked at Miho. Miho was looking at Viria with an expression Zero had not seen on her before; something between exasperation and respect, held in check behind a careful face.

"Don't waste this," Miho said, low enough that only Zero heard it.

"She cannot hear you," Zero said.

"I know." Miho turned away.

"I'm telling it to the air."

The thousand swings took Viria most of the day. She reached the 400 mark by mid-morning, when her form had already deteriorated past anything a sword instructor would have recognized as technique. She reached 700 by early afternoon, at which point her grip had gone tight in the same way Lao Min's had and her left arm was doing most of the work because the right had decided to register formal complaints. Zero watched from the edge of the yard for parts of it. Yukito sat nearby for a while, not speaking.

Miho passed through twice, each time making no comment, which Zero had learned was the specific silence she used when she thought someone was going to make it without needing to be told. At the 900 mark, Viria had stopped counting out loud, which she had been doing since 200. At 970, she sat down on the ground, still holding the practice sword, and breathed for two entire minutes. Then she stood up, finished the last 30, and set the sword down. Jianyu was waiting at the edge of the yard.

He had apparently returned at some point in the afternoon. He looked at the sword, then at Viria, then at the position of the sun.

"Seventeen minutes before sunset," he said. Viria was covered in sweat and her voice was scraped raw.

"I'm… aware…"

"Your form broke down at approximately 400."

"I… know…"

"The last 300 were essentially just lifting a stick in a consistent direction."

"That's… fair…" Jianyu looked at the sword she had set down.

"Tomorrow morning. First light. You will begin from the beginning, and I will correct your grip." Viria stared at him.

"Fine…" Jianyu left. Miho arrived within seconds, which Zero suspected meant she had been close enough to hear the exchange.

"You did it," Miho said. Viria smiled weakly, "I… did… it…"

"Do not waste this." Viria looked at her. In the light of late afternoon, with her hair loose and her arms shaking slightly and her expression stripped of most of its performance by sheer exhaustion, she looked, for a moment, like someone who had just done something that meant more than she was planning to admit.

"I… know…" she said. Miho looked at her for a moment. Then she nodded once, turned, and walked away, which was the closest she came to expressing approval in public. Zero noted that Viria watched her go.

Yukito's teacher found him first. He had been running shadow exercises in the smaller yard in the late afternoon, when the sun's angle put the yard into full shade and the quality of shadow was good enough to practice in without the usual compensations for poor light. What he had not accounted for was that the smaller yard, in the late afternoon shade, was apparently also where Yuri Han came to think.

She was a tall woman who looked to be in her early thirties, with the ink-dark hair, and an aura that registered as distinctly different from anything else Zero had catalogued in the sect. When he used Identify on her one morning in passing, the result had been unusual enough that he had checked it twice. IDENTIFICATION ACTIVE: Name: Yuri Han Level: 31 Class: Shadow Cultivator Threat: Moderate Affinity: Shadow Qi Note: Shadow Qi practitioner. Rare cultivation path.

Zero had not mentioned this to Yukito, partly because it was Yukito's information to discover and partly because he suspected discovering it himself would mean something different. Yukito had been running a sequence in which he drew shadow from the yard's edges, compressed it into a column, and then dispersed it on a controlled exhale. It was a regulation exercise that Miho had approved for solo practice.

It was also, by the standards of every world Yuri Han had ever read cultivation theory in, something that should not have been possible. She had been sitting on the stone bench for three minutes before Yukito noticed her.

"Your shadow doesn't cast," she said. Yukito looked at the ground around him. He had drawn in enough ambient shadow that his own silhouette had lost definition.

"No," he said.

"Not when I'm practicing."

"Where did you study?"

"I didn't." She looked at him for a long moment.

"How did you learn?"

"It appeared when I was twelve and I spent three years teaching myself not to lose control of it. Then I spent two more learning to use it. I had no instruction, formal or informal" Yuri Han was quiet. Yukito had been assessed by a great many people in his life. He had learned to read the different registers of it: fear-assessment, threat-assessment, pity-assessment. This was not any of those. This was the particular quality of attention that someone gave to new information that could solve a problem.

"Shadow Qi," she said, "is not whatever you are using."

"I know."

"But are they compatible?"

"I've been finding out."

"What have you found?"

"That they run alongside each other without conflict. That Shadow Qi seems to deepen what Shadow Energy can do, but it requires a discipline the Energy doesn't. The Energy moves on instinct. The Qi requires intent." Yuri Han looked at him for another long moment.

"I have been a shadow cultivator for nineteen years," she said.

"There are two written records of natural shadow ability outside cultivation lineage in the sect's entire library. Neither of them describe what you just described."

"I know what mine does," Yukito said.

"I don't know why."

"Would you be willing to tell me?" Yukito paused. Zero, who had arrived in the doorway of the smaller yard midway through this exchange and had not announced himself, watched Yukito's expression with the particular attention he now reserved for Yukito's face. Yukito was deciding something. The shadow at his feet, sensing the decision, went slightly thin.

"If you teach me what I don't know," Yukito said after some deliberation, "I'll tell you what I've figured out." Yuri Han considered his offer.

"Agreed," she said. Then she stood, and inclined her head in the formal register that instructors used for disciples and did not usually use for outsiders, and left. Yukito stood in the shade for a moment after she was gone. Then, without looking, he said, "You were there for that." Zero came through the doorway.

"Yes."

"How much did you hear?"

"All of it. I arrived during the Shadow Qi discussion." Yukito was quiet for a moment.

"What do you think?" Zero considered the question. He thought about Yuri Han's attention, which had been the kind that came with history behind it. He thought about the way Yukito had used "natural shadow ability" to describe himself, which was a phrase he had not heard Yukito use before, as if Yuri Han's vocabulary had given him a new container for something he had only carried, not named.

"I think she knows something you need," Zero said.

"And that you know something she has been looking for." Yukito looked at him.

"That seems like a good arrangement."

"Yes," Zero said.

"It does."

Miho's connections with Lan Suyin started out silent. It began on the third morning, when Miho trained alone in the practice room that the outer sect left for individual use. It was a narrow space, stone-floored, with wooden beams overhead and enough room to run a full sword form without a target. She had established a routine: sword forms in the morning, qi circulation in the early afternoon, then back to teach the others.

The practice room was between the forms and the teaching, and it was the one part of the day that belonged entirely to her. On the third morning, a junior disciple entered the practice room at the same time as Miho. She was young, perhaps fourteen, with the plain-robed look of someone in their first or second year of outer discipleship. She did not look at Miho. She moved to the far side of the room, settled into a starting stance, and began her own forms. Miho completed her morning session and left.

On the fourth morning, the same disciple was there. Again, Miho ignored her, completed her session, then left. The same thing happened for the next few mornings. It wasn't until the seventh morning when Miho finally cracked. She stopped in the middle of her second form and turned. The disciple stopped as well. She met Miho's gaze with the expression of someone who had been expecting this at some point and had prepared themselves for several different versions of how it might go.

"What do you want?" Miho snapped.

"The practice room is open to all outer disciples," the girl said.

"I like training here."

"You are watching my forms."

"They are interesting. I have not seen them before." Miho looked at her for a long moment. The girl held the gaze with more steadiness than most of the outer disciples had when Miho looked at them directly.

"What is your name?" Miho asked.

"Lan Suyin."

"Year?"

"Second." Miho considered her. Lan Suyin's own forms were technically correct in the way that second-year forms were technically correct: the right shapes, held for the right duration, with the faint mechanical quality of something that had been learned without yet being understood. Her footwork was careful. Her shoulders were even.

"Don't disrupt my training," Miho said. Lan Suyin nodded. Miho returned to her forms, and Lan Suyin returned to hers. They trained in the same room for the rest of the morning without speaking. On the eighth morning, Lan Suyin had left a small stack of formation papers on Miho's side of the room: diagrams of outer-sect meridian pathways, used by junior disciples for self-study. Miho looked at them, then looked at the empty side of the room where Lan Suyin had not yet arrived.

She put the papers in her sleeve and continued her forms. Lan Suyin did not ask about them.

On the ninth evening, Miho taught the three of them a controlled breathing technique for qi consolidation, which was less interesting than the name suggested and more useful than the execution implied. By the end of it, Yukito had managed the first full circuit, Viria had managed a partial circuit that she declared a "moral victory," and Zero had done something that Miho examined for three minutes before telling him to stop.

"What happened?" Zero asked.

"You used Spiritual Shapeshifting to adjust the circuit."

"Yes. The Anima pathway and the qi circuit do not run the same direction. I attempted to realign the spiritual body's configuration to reduce the conflict."

"And did it work?"

"The circuit ran more smoothly than it had without the adjustment." Miho was quiet for a long moment. The others had gone inside; it was just the two of them in the smaller yard in the early dark, the first stars appearing over the outer wall.

"You are building something that does not have a name," she said eventually.

"Is that a problem?"

"Not necessarily." She looked at the yard, the sky, then back at Zero.

"I have been teaching what I know for nine days. What you are doing now is beyond what I know. I cannot tell you if it is correct, because I have no framework to evaluate it against."

"Is it fine if you keep guiding me?"

"For now. But at some point, what you are building will become complex enough that you will need to find your own theory for it. I cannot give you that." Zero thought about this.

"Then I will look for it."

"Where?"

"I don't know yet. That is why it will take a while." Miho looked at him. In the dark, her eyes shone gold, which they did sometimes in low light.

"You are not bothered by that," she said.

"Not knowing where to look."

"Should I be?"

"Most people are." Zero considered this.

"I spent my whole life inside a room where someone else defined every variable. Now I am outside it, and I do not know most things, and the not-knowing is—" He stopped, looking for the right word. Miho waited.

"is... the right size," he said finally.

"The not-knowing. In the lab, not-knowing was a gap in a controlled system. Here, it is just the shape of the world." Miho was sat with that statement for a moment. Then she stood, retrieved her sword from where she had set it against the wall, and started toward the building. Then she stopped.

"Zero."

"Yes?"

"Tomorrow, when you watch the junior disciples' first-form practice again, pay attention to Lao Min's leading strike this time."

"Why?"

"Because Jianyu noticed you noticed the grip, and he changed his correction. I want to know what he changed it to." She went inside. Zero remained in the yard for a while, looking at the sky, which he still could not entirely account for. It was simply too much space. Every time he looked at it directly, something happened in his chest that he had not found a category for yet. He was not in a hurry to find one.