Shi Lei did not make Chen Xiuyuan stand any longer.
He marked out a small patch of ground with his wooden strip and had Chen Xiuyuan stand inside it, then fed him attacks from the front. Chen Xiuyuan had just started to dodge toward his usual side when his toes touched the boundary, forcing him to stop.
The wooden strip struck his waist again.
"I get hit even if I don't dodge," Chen Xiuyuan said.
"Of course. Your legs stayed put, but your saber hasn't caught up."
Shi Lei crouched and pointed at his feet, explaining that he should put only as much weight on his injured leg as it could currently bear, without deliberately pressing harder. Nor could he let his other leg carry him away first every time. He should first receive attacks within the range where he could remain steady, then open up his footwork as his body gradually recovered.
He slowed his attacks considerably.
At first, Chen Xiuyuan kept finding it awkward. He clearly saw the wooden strip coming, yet had to suppress the urge to dodge before thinking about how to receive it. Shi Lei did not rush him either. Whenever he leaned out of alignment, Shi Lei simply stopped and let him straighten himself.
By the third round, when the wooden strip came from the left, Chen Xiuyuan finally did not move his foot first. His wooden saber turned slightly, guiding it to his side, and his elbow stayed in front of him as he drew his saber back.
Shi Lei switched to the other side, keeping the same pace.
This time, another weakness showed.
Chen Xiuyuan slowed down even further, first identifying where he began to drift, then connecting the movement at that point. Only toward evening, once he could remain steady on both sides, did he notice that his footprints were no longer uneven in depth, and that he no longer had to tense his arms as hard as yesterday.
[Bloodstone Saber Technique: Awaiting Initiation, 41%]
Before leaving, Shi Lei told him to practice fewer repetitions. Chen Xiuyuan agreed, but once Shi Lei had gone out the door, he linked the parts he already knew together twice more. The smoother his movements became, the less he wanted to stop. By the time he finally put down his wooden saber, his meal was almost cold.
That night, when he practiced the Savage Elephant Art, he soon noticed something was wrong.
His seated posture remained steady, and he still remembered the length of each inhalation and exhalation, but the warmth scattered upon reaching his chest and abdomen, failing to connect to the places it had reached before. He tried again, intent on holding that warmth in place, only to hold back the latter half of his breath instead.
Elder Shi extended his wooden staff and tapped his shoulder.
"Stop first."
Chen Xiuyuan opened his eyes and described what he had just felt. Rather than checking his pulse, the old man first asked how much he had eaten that day and how long he had practiced, then told him to pick up his wooden saber.
He had barely raised the saber halfway before his wrist sagged with soreness.
Elder Shi glanced at him. "Still think you have strength left?"
"I only corrected those parts this morning. I wanted to get them more firmly down while they felt smooth."
"You only eat half a bowl at meals, yet want to do twice as much when you practice. Where is that strength supposed to come from?"
Remembering the food left on the table, Chen Xiuyuan did not argue. He set the wooden saber back beside the wall and sat down to rest for a while. Only then did the tightness in his chest and abdomen slowly recede.
His cultivation art's progress had not slipped, and the forty-one he had just reached in his saber technique was still there. Yet his body told him plainly that if he forced himself to continue tonight, he would not even be able to stand steadily.
He spread out the beast hide bearing the Savage Elephant Art, pointed to the part where breathing connected with exertion, and asked Elder Shi to explain it again.
"I treated them as two separate things. When I practiced the saber, I only thought about the saber. Then I sat down and wanted to connect this breath straightaway."
Elder Shi had him look at the opening posture in the human figure diagram first.
"After moving, settle your disordered breathing first. If you don't slow down when you should, you'll have to rush everything that follows."
The old man gave an example Chen Xiuyuan could understand: after climbing a slope with a medicine basket on his back, even if his mind remembered how to walk downhill, his legs still needed to recover first. He could not charge down in one breath.
Following his explanation, Chen Xiuyuan worked through it again and finally found where he had rushed. He did not immediately resume practicing. Instead, he warmed up his leftover food, ate, and rested, waiting until early the next morning to try again.
Warmth rose once more with the familiar rhythm of his breathing.
At the same point where he had previously needed to exert himself to make the connection, relaxing his shoulders and back this time allowed it to flow through on its own. He maintained that rhythm, and when he came out of the standing posture, he still had strength to spare. He could walk to the wall and sit down, and his limbs no longer felt weak.
After watching him, Elder Shi offered no praise, only asking, "Still going to practice extra tonight?"
"First I'll finish eating what I ought to eat for the day."
The old man chuckled and turned to check the medicine on the stove.
Chen Xiuyuan followed him. Smelling the contents of the medicine pot, he suddenly remembered the dregs he had poured away the day before. He asked Elder Shi whether those few root slices that were still dark were supposed to look that way.
Elder Shi tipped out the dregs at the bottom of the pot and turned them over with a bamboo strip.
Several pieces were clumped together, soft outside but still dry and hard inside. Chen Xiuyuan crouched beside the stove and watched for a while before remembering how he had kept running back into the courtyard to go through saber movements while tending the fire. The wood beneath the medicine pot had also gone out once.
"These pieces-did I fail to decoct them thoroughly?"
Elder Shi nodded and separated out the portion that could be processed again.
"You put in all the medicine, but this is where it went to waste."
Chen Xiuyuan told him what he had done while tending the fire. After hearing him out, Elder Shi told him to put down his saber first whenever he decocted this pot from now on.
"If you can't look after two things at once yet, do them properly one at a time."
Those words stayed with him.
Over the next few days, he reserved early mornings for the Savage Elephant Art, went to work at the meat shed after eating, and practiced his saber in the afternoon. When he needed to decoct medicine, he tended to that first, only moving on to the next task once his body had recovered. What had seemed like a little time saved had instead thrown both tasks into disorder when squeezed together. Once he separated them, he lost none of what he had practiced.
One day, Shi Lei arrived late. Seeing him sitting beside the medicine stove with his wooden saber properly set away inside, he thought Chen Xiuyuan's leg hurt again.
Chen Xiuyuan said he was waiting for the medicine to finish.
"Do you remember yesterday's section?"
"Yes."
"Which side does the opening move come from?"
Chen Xiuyuan demonstrated with his empty hand, and Shi Lei knew he had not forgotten. But after a day without practice, one always needed to find the feel again the following day. Shi Lei had suffered through that himself in his early years, so before leaving, he still told Chen Xiuyuan not to leave what he had just learned untouched for too long.
Only after the medicine was ready did Chen Xiuyuan pick up his wooden saber.
Receive and block, draw back, advance-the positions corrected yesterday remained perfectly clear. He first went through them slowly, then linked the new section he was learning onto the end. The saber caught beside his elbow. He stopped and worked from the connecting point again, rather than practicing the entire saber technique from the beginning.
By Shi Lei's next visit, Chen Xiuyuan could perform the whole section.
"You connected that move in the middle even without anyone feeding you attacks?"
"You explained it twice. I thought it through once, then tried it."
Shi Lei picked up his wooden strip but did not attack immediately. First, he had Chen Xiuyuan angle the back of his saber a little farther outward and asked whether he could still bring it back from there. Chen Xiuyuan tried, found that the returning saber had to take a wider path, and corrected the angle himself.
"This way is faster."
Shi Lei gave a grunt of assent, then sent the wooden strip forward. Chen Xiuyuan blocked along the path he had just corrected, but as he was about to follow with his next strike, Shi Lei suddenly stopped halfway.
He stopped too.
Their wooden blades remained some distance apart. Unlike the first day, one person withdrawing his attack no longer left the other unable to check his body.
Shi Lei pulled the wooden strip back, then attacked again from his side. This time, Chen Xiuyuan turned his waist with it, shifting his feet half a step within what he could bear, and finally connected the turn that had never gone smoothly.
His saber technique's progress toward Awaiting Initiation had passed sixty-three, and over the following days, it continued advancing bit by bit.
His injured leg gradually became able to bear weight as well. After examining it, Elder Shi lifted the restriction that he could only turn slowly, and Chen Xiuyuan filled in the sections he had previously only been able to watch rather than perform in full. When the new movements joined the old moves, the difficulties lay in different places, but he no longer had to repeat the same mistakes in the parts he already knew.
On the twelfth day after his return, he was still practicing his saber on that same patch of yellow earth, but his footprints could now form a complete circle around his starting position.
This time, Shi Lei did not announce his attack first.
The wooden strip pressed in from the front. After deflecting it, Chen Xiuyuan did not rush to pursue, leaving himself room to bring his saber back. When Shi Lei circled toward his injured leg, he met the attack with the turn he had long since practiced thoroughly, planting his foot firmly and returning his blade between himself and the wooden strip.
Shi Lei advanced another half step.
Chen Xiuyuan retreated, blocked, and drew back. Only when the wooden strip tapped down from above did he send his wooden blade diagonally outward in the sequence of the full saber technique. The two lengths of wood scraped past each other. He had guarded his front, and his saber returned to its original position.
[Bloodstone Saber Technique: Awaiting Initiation, 100%] [Initiation, current progress: 0%]
At that instant, no additional moves poured into his mind, nor did any strength appear from nowhere. The things he had repeatedly broken apart, practiced, and joined back together could finally be used in full against incoming attacks.
Chen Xiuyuan looked at his wooden saber, wanting to try again.
But Shi Lei smiled first. "Don't look at the saber. Look at me."
The next attack was much faster.
Chen Xiuyuan only managed to block the first half of it before the wooden strip changed direction and stopped on his shoulder. He froze for a moment, then laughed as well.
"Still a long way to go."
"You've only just learned to walk. Why compare yourself to someone running?" Shi Lei withdrew his hand. "When I learned this set as a child, I ended up covered in bruises the first time I exchanged moves with someone. You've already taken far fewer hits today."
Chen Xiuyuan rubbed the spot that had been tapped. The pain was real, but so was the complete exchange he had just managed to receive. After Shi Lei put away his wooden strip, he slowly worked through the transitions between advancing and retreating again, finding that several places he had previously needed to spare attention for now came much more naturally.
By the end of the afternoon's practice, his new progress after initiation had reached nine.
When he practiced the Savage Elephant Art that evening, the warmth in his chest and abdomen traveled farther along the familiar path. The cultivation art's own progress toward initiation reached twenty-six, while the accumulation for his first Heavenly Meridians stood at forty-eight. The two did not advance in step.
Chen Xiuyuan compared the beast-hide diagram with his own sensations, then asked Elder Shi why he still became hungry so easily after eating lately.
The old man watched his practice, then asked exactly how much he received from the meat shed before bringing over an empty bowl and setting it beside the stove.
"What you eat was enough for what you used to do. Now you practice every day and use up more. You need more food."
"Am I still short of Scarlet Whisker Root?"
"You can't use wound medicine as food. What you need now is blood food that replenishes Qi and blood, followed by nourishment suited to your body."
Elder Shi mentioned the beast blood recently allotted to the meat shed. Several youths who had begun cultivating were exchanging for it too; an extra share would not simply appear for him.
Chen Xiuyuan noted what he needed to ask about and did not reach for the old man's portion of meat.
He washed the empty bowl and set it beside the bowl he usually used. When he went to the meat shed tomorrow morning, besides the light work he already had, he would have to ask what else he could do.