The wooden saber fell. Shi Lei merely shifted half a step outward, and Chen Xiuyuan's saber tip brushed past the front of his clothes.
By the time he tried to pull it back, another wooden saber had already touched Chen Xiuyuan's ribs.
"Dead again." Shi Lei withdrew his saber. "Once you pick a spot, do you have to cut all the way through?"
Chen Xiuyuan looked down at his feet. His front foot had stepped too deep, and his back heel had already risen. To retreat, he would first have to haul his body back, leaving an opening with his saber as well.
He tried shortening his step by half, then struck again. This time, Shi Lei did not dodge. He laid his wooden saber against Chen Xiuyuan's wrist and still broke through with ease.
That night's corrections ended there. Shi Lei still had patrol duty. Before leaving, he left the wooden saber with him and told him to find Elder Shi the next morning and first get a clear look at which plane the saber traveled along.
The next day, Elder Shi spread an old beast hide over a frame.
Chen Xiuyuan thought he would be cutting medicinal roots again, but the old man told him to take the wooden saber and run through the Bloodstone Saber Technique from the beginning. Downward chop, diagonal slash, horizontal cut, rising slash, straight thrust, hooking return-the six main blade paths revolved around the same set of steps. Practicing them separately was usually easy, but once he linked them together, yesterday's slight imbalance reappeared.
Elder Shi pressed the head of his staff against his front knee.
"By this point, you're already tipping outward. And you still expect to drag the saber back with your hand?"
"I'm afraid I won't put enough strength into it."
"Leave room for the next strike first."
The old man had him draw his waist back half an inch and keep his rear foot planted, bringing the wooden saber around from the outside into a hooking return. Chen Xiuyuan did as instructed. The blade seemed shorter: it could no longer reach far away, but it could block the staff head right in front of him.
Elder Shi deliberately pushed it forward another length. Chen Xiuyuan followed with his feet, and the wooden saber pressed up along its original path without him needing to pull his entire arm back first.
"That's what that step is for."
Once the red marks on his palm faded, Elder Shi took his own short saber down from the wall and handed it to him, sheath and all. The small nick in the blade had been ground smooth, leaving only a slightly shallower curve.
"I'm lending you this to practice with a real edge. Use it outside, and put it away when you return. Shi Lei will watch you today."
Chen Xiuyuan agreed and tightened the wrapping around the hilt again. As he gripped it, he unconsciously felt for the old nick, then turned the edge toward an empty space.
Shi Lei brought a scrap hide that had not yet been used up from the meat shed. He picked out the back of the neck, the belly side, and the folds, marking several spots on the same hide. The hide was already damaged and could no longer be made into a whole garment, but small pieces could still be saved for patching boots.
"Keep whatever you ruin yourself. Don't act as though skinning it took no effort."
Chen Xiuyuan cut the belly side first, and the blade went in smoothly. Then he cut into the back of the neck at the same angle, only for the edge to bite in and refuse to move. He tugged harder. The frame shook, and the edges of the cut grew ragged.
Shi Lei took the saber and made another cut beside it. He did not cut all the way through the thick hide, but he drew the saber back cleanly.
"In a fight, are you going to wait for it to make way?"
Chen Xiuyuan studied that shallow cut. Just now, he had been intent on cutting through, letting his wrist sag a fraction, and the thick hide had trapped the blade. Shi Lei had adjusted his elbow once the blade reached a certain depth, withdrawing it along the path it had entered.
He first checked the angle with his finger, then tried with the saber. The first time, he pulled back too soon and left only a white mark on the hide. The second time, the edge settled firmly, but the added force from his shoulder pulled it crooked again. Shi Lei told him to stop and switch back to the wooden saber to run through the whole set, forbidding him from staring only at that little patch of hide before him.
"You're training for what to do when you face a person. Hide won't swing a saber at you. Don't train yourself into someone who can only wrestle with hide."
Chen Xiuyuan shifted the wooden saber from a downward chop into a horizontal cut. When he reached the hooking return, the spot that had been awkward before caught him again. Only then did he realize the trouble lay in drawing the preceding diagonal slash back too far. By the time he reached the hooking return, his wrist had already twisted to its limit.
He broke that move down and asked Elder Shi where he should turn back. The old man did not swing the saber for him. He merely drew the direction his toes should land on the ground and had him step into a position from which he could take the next step.
Even by mealtime that day, his saber had not grown any faster.
The panel, however, had gone from Initiation thirty-eight to forty-four.
Chen Xiuyuan sat beside the stove, resting his aching arms on his knees, and gazed at that line of text for a while. When Elder Shi called him to drink his soup, he dismissed the panel and took the bowl. Tomorrow, he would still practice linking the diagonal slash into the hooking return. He would not have to puzzle out the parts he had already corrected from scratch.
Over the next few days, Chen Xiuyuan scheduled his meat-shed chores before noon. In the mornings, he practiced the Savage Elephant Great Strength Art according to the force-circulation diagram Elder Shi had passed down, only taking up the saber in the afternoon. After dinner, he would run through the most awkward part of that day a few more times, stopping once his wrists trembled with exhaustion.
Shi Lei was not there every day. Du Huai had escaped along the nearby paths. The patrols investigated the places the caravan had visited, coming up empty several times and bringing back only news of where he had stayed. The impounded cart with the repaired shaft remained inside the gate. Ownership of its goods had been sorted out, while the ledger and leaf-wrapped packets were stored separately. No one could move them at will.
Chen Xiuyuan had seen that porter by the gate. The man had originally wanted to leave, but after hearing that Du Huai was still out there, he finally decided to stay and help with whatever work he could in the meat shed. When the two met, their conversations gradually stopped being entirely about carts and medicine. They also talked about which door could pinch your fingers and which bag of salt should be kept away from the damp wall.
One evening, it was Chen Xiuyuan's turn to help record the goods, and it was very late by the time he returned to his room. He went two days in a row without touching a real saber. When he returned to the hide frame on the third afternoon, he first tried a run with the wooden saber. The diagonal slash into the hooking return still landed where it should.
The Bloodstone Saber Technique had already reached Initiation eighty-one. The time spent away from practice had not made it slip backward.
He switched to the short saber, neither rushing to make up for the two days of missed practice nor striking harder to make up the numbers. First, he tested the thick and thin parts of the hide once each. At the thin part, he let the edge enter a little farther; at the thick part, he pulled back in time. That way, the following hooking return did not require a last-minute rescue of his wrist.
Elder Shi sat nearby drying medicinal herbs. Hearing only a soft sound from the frame, he looked up.
"That strike just now. Again."
Chen Xiuyuan chose an undamaged patch of hide and repeated it. This time, the edge of the hide curled slightly. As the saber was about to cut in, he drew his elbow back a little along the curl, and the edge still landed on the marked spot.
"The whole set."
From the first step to the last, the old man never once extended his staff to stop him. Chen Xiuyuan withdrew his saber, and the words before his eyes changed clearly.
[Bloodstone Saber Technique: Minor Accomplishment, 0%.]
Someone at the gate was calling Elder Shi to see an injured person. The old man rose, tapping his staff against the ground.
"Remember why you managed to draw it back just now. When Shi Lei presses you again tomorrow, we'll see whether you still remember."
In his first sparring session after reaching Minor Accomplishment, Chen Xiuyuan took three hits.
Shi Lei first forced him to raise his saber with a horizontal cut, immediately pressed down on the outside, then crowded forward. Afraid of being driven back, Chen Xiuyuan braced his feet rigidly. His hooking return could only circle outside his body, naturally leaving his ribs exposed.
"See? You gave me this side yourself." Shi Lei tapped the spot with his wooden saber without actually striking hard.
Chen Xiuyuan asked whether he could try receiving the same attack again.
"Sure. But if you know where I'm coming from, blocking it again doesn't mean you've learned it."
"I'll find where I went wrong first."
Shi Lei made another horizontal cut. This time, Chen Xiuyuan did not resist head-on. His front foot shifted diagonally, and the wooden saber turned back close along his outside, closing the opening beneath his ribs. But Shi Lei's second strike did not land there. Instead, it cut toward his forearm.
With a crack, Chen Xiuyuan's grip loosened a fraction, and the wooden saber nearly fell to the ground.
"If you only memorize my moves, you'll take that hit sooner or later."
He bent over to let the pain ease, then stood ready again. The movements he had managed before the hide frame changed completely when he faced a person: people moved, sabers pressed down, and his eyes still could not keep up when his opponent suddenly checked a move.
Chen Xiuyuan did not rush to seek speed. First, he asked Shi Lei to slow his attacks a little so he could see clearly where the pressure shifted from. Shi Lei agreed, but required him to remain able to strike after blocking, rather than curling into a ball around his wooden saber whenever something changed.
Their practice changed after that. In the mornings, he corrected his blade paths at the hide frame. In the afternoons, when facing the wooden saber, he watched his opponent's shoulders, elbows, and feet, trying to keep himself in a position where he could move. He remembered the mistakes he had made, while the moves he had stabilized no longer needed to be relearned from the first step day after day.
Sometimes, when Shi Lei was away, Elder Shi sat and fed him moves with his staff. The old man's legs were bad, and he could not move all over the ground with him, but the tip of his staff could pick out that greedy extra inch. Whenever Chen Xiuyuan tried to take advantage of the old man's immobility to squeeze in another strike, the staff head struck beside his wrist first.
By the forty-ninth day after his return, little remained of that scrap hide.
During his morning force circulation, the Savage Elephant Great Strength Art also crossed the final stretch of Initiation and entered Minor Accomplishment. His accumulation toward the next Heavenly Meridians had reached forty-six. He could already distinguish where his Qi and blood remained weak, putting his limited meat and blood nourishment and training time to practical use each day.
That afternoon, Shi Lei finally changed the rules for feeding him moves.
"Today, I won't let you see anything twice. Take it if you can. If you can't, don't lunge around blindly."
The wooden saber descended toward his face. Chen Xiuyuan blocked diagonally, using half a step to avoid the heaviest force. Shi Lei turned his wrist and pressed toward his right side. Rather than resisting head-on as before, he let his saber tip yield downward, turned his body aside, and immediately brought the saber back past his ribs.
Shi Lei's sleeve swept past close by.
Chen Xiuyuan could have chased the cuff with a downward cut, but his opponent's rear foot was still planted, and his other hand had not relaxed either. He checked that little bit of greed and kept his saber in the middle. Sure enough, Shi Lei cut inward through the path he had yielded. Halfway through, his saber struck the back of Chen Xiuyuan's blade, which had already turned back.
The two wooden sabers met with a crisp clack.
Chen Xiuyuan retreated half a step to shed the remaining force. Before his opponent could press down hard again, he brought his saber back and tapped toward the forearm. Shi Lei raised his hand to evade it, then stepped away.
"That one linked up."
Chen Xiuyuan lowered his saber, his chest still heaving.
[Bloodstone Saber Technique: Great Accomplishment, 7%.]
From Minor Accomplishment to this point, the corrections before the hide frame and the failed moves beneath the wooden saber had all stayed in his hands. He looked again at the scrap hide, now reduced to its edges and corners, and reached out to gather the few pieces still usable for patching boots. He did not take his saber to it again.
Shi Lei, however, fetched a length of cord from beside him, wound it around a thin piece of wood, then hung it in the center of the frame.
"Now that your saber can come back, next you learn not to cleave through things you shouldn't touch."
He shook the end of the cord, and the wooden piece spun with it.
"Cut this outer cord. Don't leave a single mark on the wood inside."