A Heart as Still as Water (Please Recommend)

"Training number two." Mr. Popo pointed to the other end of the plaza. A whole row of stone pillars stood there, each as thick as a bowl and polished smooth, their surfaces reflecting a faint grayish-white sheen in the light. "Use your ki to carve words into them."

"Carve words?" Son Goku blinked. He looked at the pillars, then at his fingers. The first thing that came to mind was poking holes in the stone.

"Carve the character for 'martial.'" Mr. Popo pulled a yellowed sheet of paper from his sleeve and unfolded it. One character was written on it: 武. The strokes were forceful, as if cut by a blade or axe, and each one carried a sense of pressure.

"Use your ki as your brush and the pillars as your paper. Keep the depth consistent and the strokes smooth. There mustn't be the slightest deviation." Mr. Popo folded the paper and tucked it back into his sleeve. "Begin."

Son Goku had still underestimated how difficult carving could be.

He walked up to the first pillar, took a deep breath, and focused his ki on the tip of his right index finger. A white glow flared at his fingertip, bright enough to hurt the eyes, much like when he'd thrown a punch at Master Roshi. Carefully, he touched his glowing finger to the pillar's surface. "Sss—"

Stone chips flew everywhere. A crooked mark appeared on the pillar, uneven in depth. The starting point looked as if it had been bitten off, while the ending point hadn't even scraped away the dust.

Stone powder covered his face, making him cough. The character—if it could even be called one—looked more like two earthworms writhing in agony across the stone.

He stepped back and examined his "masterpiece," his expression complicated.

What the heck is this? Have I even forgotten how to write?

Mr. Popo glanced at it. Just once. Then, without expression, he pointed to a fresh pillar beside it. "Again."

"...Yes."

By the second month, Son Goku had ruined two thousand eight hundred and sixty pillars.

The pile of broken stone in the corner of the plaza grew higher and higher. Whenever Goku pushed a cart of rubble over to the corner, Mr. Popo would stand there, motionless, watching him. He didn't say "Keep it up" or "You're too slow." He just watched. For a while, Goku seriously suspected he was making him do extra physical labor on purpose.

The first problem was force. Carving words into stone with ki was different from smashing stone with a fist. With a punch, all you had to do was pour in your strength, and the stone would break however it broke—but you couldn't control the direction of the cracks. Carving was different. Every bit of ki had to be precise down to the tiniest detail. He had to ease off at turns in the strokes and maintain even output along the long ones. Horizontal strokes had to be level, vertical strokes straight, and both the left-falling and right-falling strokes had to stay steady. It took Goku an entire month to realize he'd never known how poor his fine control over his fingers was.

The second problem was breathing. While carving the first character, he held his breath until he'd finished one horizontal stroke. By the start of the second, he'd run out of air, leaving a visible break in the middle of the stroke. Mr. Popo stood in front of that pillar for a second, said, "Your ki broke," then walked to the next one.

In the third month, the first pillar that didn't crack appeared. The character for "martial" was crooked, but Goku held it up beside Mr. Popo's copy and compared them. At least, he could tell they were the same character now. He stood before the pillar, staring at his work, stunned for a long while.

This one character had taken three months. But...it looked pretty good. No—not "good." It just looked...right.

In the fourth month, Mr. Popo looked at the six hundred and first pillar Goku had just finished. The character for "martial" had smooth strokes and consistent depth, with sharp beginnings and endings. Then he said something that nearly brought Goku to his knees on the spot. "Passable. Switch to 'the Way.'"

"...Yes."

Son Goku walked to the next blank pillar, raised his hand, and watched a gentle light glow at his fingertip. He went over the order of the strokes from this new copy in his mind, then steadily began the first one. This time, it took him only half a month to finish an entire pillar. And he ruined only three.

One day in the fifth month, Mr. Popo slowly walked past the row of pillars Goku had finished. Twenty pillars, each bearing one character for "the Way," every stroke neatly carved. He stopped in front of the last one.

"'Martial' is strength. 'The Way' is direction. Strength with direction begins with a seed. It grows slowly, but once its roots take hold, the wind can no longer bend it. You've learned how to speak with stone. Next..."

Mr. Popo raised his hand and pointed at the sky.

"Catch that bird."

Son Goku looked up.

Above the sea of clouds, a white Divine Eagle circled overhead. It wheeled lazily, and with a casual beat of its wings, it appeared hundreds of meters away, vanishing and reappearing among the clouds.

"That's the Divine Eagle of the Heavenly Realm," Mr. Popo said from behind him. "It's ten times faster than an ordinary eagle. Your task is to catch its tail feathers without releasing a burst of ki."

"Without releasing a burst of ki?!" Son Goku's eyes widened. "How am I supposed to catch it? It's so fast—"

Before he could finish speaking, he was already flying.

The first day's chase was a one-sided slaughter—and Goku was the one being slaughtered. When the Divine Eagle flew overhead, it didn't even consider him a pursuer worth taking seriously. It was simply going about its daily flight, while Goku couldn't even touch its shadow. He accelerated to his limit several times, trying to catch up, but the Divine Eagle only had to roll sideways and veer away to leave him behind.

He couldn't touch it on the second day, either. Or the third. On the fourth, he tried predicting its flight path. On the fifth, he noticed the wind changing. The wind in the Heavenly Realm was unlike the wind in the mortal world. Its currents didn't travel in straight lines. They circled around the colonnades of the Lookout, changed direction without warning above the plaza, and pushed the Divine Eagle's wings into unpredictable drifts.

At dawn on the seventh day, as the first ray of light from who knew where turned the plaza's jade tiles pale gold, Son Goku stood in the middle of the plaza with his eyes closed.

He didn't move.

The Divine Eagle circled overhead three times, thinking that today's pursuer hadn't woken up yet.

But Goku wasn't watching it. He was watching the wind. Those transparent, invisible ribbons emerged from every corner of the Heavenly Realm. They curled around the dome of the Lookout, passed through the pine needles, and wove into a complex, three-dimensional web over the open space above the plaza.

He couldn't catch the Divine Eagle, but he could read the flow of that web.

The Divine Eagle had to fly through the wind. Wherever the wind turned, its wings would shift. The wind was its railway. If he could read the wind's course ahead of time, he could know in advance where the eagle would appear.

A gust came from the east, about to meet the wind that had curled around the pillars from the south at the northeastern corner of the plaza.

There. In the next second, the eastern current would lift the Divine Eagle's left wing by half an inch, and it would tilt involuntarily to the right. Then the wind curling around the pillars from the south would buffet it from the front, carrying it over the plaza from that angle.

Now.

He didn't release a burst of ki. He didn't build up power. Just a fraction of a second before the currents met, he made a gentle leap. The southeastern winds pushed him forward in a glide. His posture was almost as relaxed as the Divine Eagle's, and he came to a steady stop directly in front of its flight path. He reached out with his right hand, brought his fingers together, and gently pinched.

A flawless white tail feather rested between his fingertips.

The Divine Eagle gave a short cry, sounding either surprised or displeased. It tilted its wings and flew away.

Son Goku slowly descended to the plaza and looked down at the feather in his hand.

In that moment, after months of running, he finally understood what he'd accomplished. He hadn't caught the Divine Eagle with speed or strength, but with a "calm mind." Only a mind still enough could read the course of the wind's web; only steady movements could put him in the right place at the right time without making a mistake.

"Barely passing." Mr. Popo's voice came from the direction of the pine tree. Goku could sense him standing in the shade without turning around, twenty-three steps away.

Mr. Popo spoke just a fraction faster than usual, as if casually mentioning an extra class the next day. "Tomorrow...two."

Son Goku took a deep breath and plunged back into the sea of clouds.

The twelfth month. All the basic training was over.

Mr. Popo no longer had Goku haul stones, carve characters, or chase birds. Instead, he gave him an even stranger daily routine: meditation in the morning, punches in the afternoon, then more meditation in the evening.

During meditation, he wasn't allowed to think about anything. During his punches, he wasn't allowed to stop. He had to meditate until he could hear the flow of his own blood, and practice punching until he could race between the colonnades of the Lookout with his eyes closed without crashing into a wall.

Day after day.

Goku found himself growing quieter and quieter.

It wasn't the listless quiet forced out of him by training. It was a deeper stillness that seemed to come from his very bones.

Before, whenever he sat still, he'd feel itchy all over, and his tail would wag without him realizing it. Now he could sit beneath the pine tree for two or three hours straight, then open his eyes and find that his tail had somehow curled around his waist and fallen asleep.

The Gravity Suit hadn't increased much over those twelve months. He'd only just raised the gravity to fifteen times normal.

He hadn't told anyone the number—Mr. Popo didn't need him to. One look was enough. Under fifteen times gravity, he could maintain a heart-as-still-as-water state throughout all his meditation and punching drills. But he hadn't tested it in actual combat yet.

That day, Mr. Popo stood in the middle of the plaza and said two words to Goku, who had just opened his eyes after morning meditation.

"Combat training."

Son Goku's eyes lit up. The shell of stillness split with a crack, and the year's worth of pent-up battle lust surged out like magma. "Combat training?! Against who—"

"Me."