The Tube-Shaped Apartment Building.
Inside the study.
The window was half closed. Listening to the clamor upstairs and downstairs, Lian Youming settled his mind and shut it all out, concentrating only on finishing the homework on his desk. Barely had he set down his fountain pen when the fingers of his left hand flicked upward along the wall beside him. With a metallic rasp, a flash of cold light shot upward out of its sheath, and he caught it smoothly in his palm.
The weather in Guangzhou was gradually cooling. Though it could not compare with the cold of the North, an occasional strong wind and a couple of chilly rains were enough to bring a hint of late autumn's bleakness.
Circling on his feet, Lian Youming stood before the window and wielded his sword, still using the same old Tai Chi Hammer Method.
Wielding a sword as a hammer.
It was very strange.
It was not that he wanted to do this; he simply knew nothing else and could only experiment on his own, trying to get a feel for it.
Unlike swordplay, the hammer method emphasized overwhelming force. Even the two wooden hammers he had used when he first began training had each weighed six or seven times as much as this longsword. Yet practicing the method required handling something heavy as though it were light, combining ferocity with nimbleness and directing it at will.
At first, holding the sword had always felt awkward. As he wielded it, its momentum alternated between fast and slow, its path was a complete mess, and he had nearly cut himself. With no other choice, he could only reverse his approach, imagining the longsword as a heavy hammer, treating swings and smashes as cleaving cuts, and turning straight thrusting movements into pinpoint