Fragment Fusion

The new route was longer than expected. It continued south from the stone steps along the ridge, the neat stairs gradually giving way to a severely weathered slope of scattered rocks. The stones varied in size and shape, and some were loose enough to shift slightly beneath his shoes when he stepped on them. As he walked, he could hear the faint scrape of gravel against gravel; the edges were sharp and unstable.

Krillin led the way, moving a little slower than before. Each time, he chose a foothold that looked more secure. It was clear he had traveled this path many times. Lin Chen followed behind him, stepping where Krillin had stepped. As he crossed the rocky slope, he found that every landing precisely matched Krillin's previous foothold. The margin of error was narrowing, and the range of motion in his ankles was becoming more natural as he adjusted. After roughly three hundred meters, the rocky slope leveled out again, revealing a stretch of relatively flat ground covered in short grass.

"This is the turnaround point." Krillin stopped and pointed at the outline of a protruding reef in the distant sea. "See that rock? That's today's target."

Lin Chen looked where he was pointing. The reef was farther away than White Reef, with even less of it above the water, like a dark fist floating at the edge of the sea. The thin mist over the water had yet to fully disperse, and the reef appeared and disappeared within it, as if wrapped in a translucent film. He roughly gauged the distance. "About half again as far as White Reef."

"More or less." Krillin said, "Run this stretch, then swim out to that reef and come back. The current will drift west today. Once you get in the water, swim toward the cape for a while before turning."

Their pace picked up slightly on the way back. He noticed that his movements across the rocky slope were becoming smoother and smoother. Whenever he landed, he could feel a more stable contact forming between the soles of his shoes and the stones. The change was subtle, but each time he stepped on the same loose rock and felt it shift by the same amount as before, he became more certain of it.

The swim to the new reef went more smoothly than expected. As he approached it, he slowed down and touched its surface. It felt rougher than White Reef, as though it had been scoured by seawater for longer. A thin layer of algae covered the reef, glinting dark green beneath the shallow water. He paused beside it for about ten seconds, then turned and swam back.

By the time he returned to Kame House, the sun had risen high. Lin Chen stood in the yard, drying himself off, feeling the muscles in his shoulders and arms continuously radiate heat. He rolled his shoulders, and his joints moved smoothly.

When he entered the Gravity Room that afternoon, he turned the dial up another notch and completed a full set of training under higher gravity. Inside the chamber, his movements felt a little slower than usual, but by the time he finished the entire routine, he felt no obvious fatigue.

When he walked out of the Gravity Room, he was facing the distant sea. The clouds on the horizon were thickening, and it looked like it would rain in the evening. Master Roshi was already sitting beneath the porch. "It'll rain tomorrow, so move the running route to the shed in the backyard. There's a stretch of flat ground under it. Just run back and forth there. No need to go too far."

Lin Chen sat down on the steps and rolled his shoulders. In one corner of the yard, he saw the shovel that had been left against the wall for several days. Its blade was still stained with dry soil from the last time they had turned the earth, and a small clump of mud along its edge had dried and cracked.

"That shovel should be cleaned up too. We might need it again in the next couple of days." Master Roshi took a sip of tea. "You sharpened the kitchen knife before, so you should know how to sharpen a shovel too, right?"

Lin Chen stood, picked up the shovel, and went to the water jar to rinse its blade. Once the dry dirt softened in the water, it fell away, revealing the color of the metal underneath. He tested the blade's sharpness with his hand, then ran a whetstone over its edge several times. The whetstone made a steady, even scraping sound against the metal.

[Ding! Picked up Life Skill Fragment ×1. Current knife-sharpening proficiency: 4%.]

A brief warmth spread from his fingertips into his palm before gradually drawing back in, as though it were guiding him along a fixed path.

He straightened and leaned the sharpened shovel back against the corner of the wall. The yard fell quiet, and the wind paused for a moment. He heard the martial arts uniform hanging from the clothesline beneath the eaves sway gently, making faint sounds. Rain clouds were slowly gathering over the distant sea, like a gray curtain closing in, stretching from the water to the underside of the low-hanging clouds. The air carried that distinctive scent before rain—like the tide had churned up sediment in the distance and carried the smell of seaweed and wet sand into the wind.

Krillin came out of the house and walked to the water jar at the other end of the yard to wash his hands. Droplets fell from the edge of his palms, leaving dark circular spots on the ground. When he finished, he flicked the water from his hands. "If the rain stops tomorrow afternoon, do you want to check out the bay to the east? There's a small bay over there. The water is calm, and there aren't any reefs. You can swim straight to the other side."

Lin Chen turned to look at him. "How far?"

"About a quarter farther than White Reef," Krillin said. "If the rain stops, anyway."

"We'll see then," Lin Chen said. He went beneath the eaves to take down the martial arts uniform he had hung up that morning, smoothing the wrinkles from the fabric. The wind picked up again, blowing through the gap left by the clothes he had removed, then through the opening exposed when he bent down, continuing toward the base of the wall across the yard.