With the first cut, the rope snapped, and a white mark appeared on the wooden piece.
Shi Lei took the wood down and held it before Chen Xiuyuan's eyes.
"If this were tied beside a wound, would you be undoing someone's bindings or adding another cut?"
Chen Xiuyuan took the wood and felt the mark. He had already checked his strength when the edge touched the rope, but the tip had still gone a little too far.
"Again."
"First tell me what went wrong."
"The saber went too deep."
Shi Lei shook his head and wound the rope back around it, but set the wood at a sharper angle. "Cut it the same way again."
Chen Xiuyuan did not swing immediately. First, he checked the length of exposed rope and found that, with the wood tilted, the same blade path would no longer reach it. He had to go around the wooden corner and choose another point of entry.
He lowered the saber slightly and sent it forward at an angle. Half the rope parted, and the wood swung toward the back of his hand. He withdrew the saber and waited for it to swing back, then made a second cut, finally severing the rope completely.
"I didn't damage the wood this time," he said.
"But if there were another blade out there, would you wait for it to turn slowly back?"
Shi Lei took the short saber and demonstrated on a nearby rope knot. First, he stepped out of the wood's return path. His edge bit only into the exposed rope fibers, then withdrew through the open space after cutting them. His hand never followed the turning wood.
Chen Xiuyuan watched his feet.
Shi Lei handed the saber back. "See? Wherever the saber needs to come back through, your feet have to make room first."
By the time darkness fell, Chen Xiuyuan had left scratches on four pieces of wood. Shi Lei turned two of them over and said they could still be used. He put the others away to be shaved thinner and used as shims in the shed. He kept the rope ends too, joining the short ones to longer lengths to hang up as usual the next day.
The following morning, after practicing the Savage Elephant Art, Chen Xiuyuan went outside, saw those old ropes pieced together into longer lengths, and could not help smiling.
Yesterday, he had kept finding fault with their unevenness; the joins made the wood swing differently. Now, with their positions changed, they were just right for testing whether he was actually looking at the rope or had merely memorized yesterday's path.
He first used slow cuts to find the corners, adding a little speed only once he was steady. He avoided protruding rope ends and shifted his feet when the wood tilted, gradually ceasing to wait for it to turn back in front of him every time. He still occasionally scratched the wood, and would keep that piece to compare with the unmarked ones.
When Shi Lei came to test him that afternoon, he first lowered the hanging ropes, then replaced the wood with pieces of different thicknesses.
"No reciting yesterday's routine today."
Chen Xiuyuan acknowledged him and walked up to the rope. As the wood swung, he shifted his front foot aside and gave a short thrust with the saber outside the knot. The severed rope flew away, and the wood dropped into the empty basket Shi Lei had set out beforehand, its corners intact.
Shi Lei did not praise him immediately. He lifted another rope and pushed it diagonally aside. Chen Xiuyuan followed for half a step, then checked his feet, letting the rope swing past before cutting on its return. This one parted too.
"Why did you wait this time?"
"If I chased it, there'd be no room to withdraw on the right. I'd have to take an extra step around. Better to let it come back."
"Good. Switch to a wooden saber."
The hide rack and rope knots were moved aside. Shi Lei stood in the middle of the training ground, holding his wooden saber across his waist, and told him they would no longer stop after every move to correct mistakes today. As long as neither had lost his saber hand, they would keep going.
Chen Xiuyuan had barely settled his grip when Shi Lei slashed diagonally at him.
He retreated half a step to catch it, then raised his point, ready to hook back. But Shi Lei crowded in from the right, taking the space he had left himself to turn. Chen Xiuyuan hurriedly drew his elbow back. Its tip struck his own ribs, and his wooden saber caught for an instant.
Shi Lei's saber promptly stopped before his shoulder.
"Where's the third cut?"
Chen Xiuyuan lowered his wooden saber and rubbed the aching side of his elbow.
After several days of smoothly cutting ropes, he had become more decisive when striking. But rope knots only swung back and forth. Shi Lei would step in and take away the open ground he had just intended to use.
The second time, he retreated as soon as Shi Lei pressed in, only to be driven all the way to the hide rack. A hanging rope brushed his clothes behind him. His attention slipped, and he took another blow to the wrist.
"Retreating the whole time won't work either." Shi Lei rested his saber back on his shoulder. "Are you here to practice the saber or run laps around the grounds?"
Chen Xiuyuan did not immediately return to his starting point. He crouched and traced his last two retreating steps with a finger, then asked Shi Lei to put his feet back in their original positions on the other side. Comparing the two paths, he finally saw that every time he withdrew his saber, he locked his rear foot directly behind his front one.
His retreat looked fast, but his body had only one straight path left.
"Let me try again. Without speeding up yet."
Shi Lei raised his saber again. "Think it through yourself. Don't wait for me to knock you with the back of my saber every time."
This time, Chen Xiuyuan first moved his rear foot half a palm's width outward.
Shi Lei still pressed in diagonally. Instead of shrinking straight back, Chen Xiuyuan pivoted halfway around on his front foot, keeping his elbow outside his body as he drew the wooden saber out close before his ribs. The saber came back, but his feet lagged. Shi Lei pressed into him, sending him down on his backside.
A small stone in the dirt dug into the heel of his palm. Chen Xiuyuan drew a breath, stood, and brushed the dirt from his hands.
"Your stance was too wide," Shi Lei said.
He had felt it himself. To open up a path just now, he had stepped too far. Halfway through turning his waist, his legs had instead held his body back. He had avoided the old mistake, only to add a new one.
Over the next few days, he practiced that sequence of steps very slowly. First, he went through it with his wooden saber against empty air, then asked Shi Lei to press in. When Shi Lei was absent, he marked out a space about as wide as a doorway on the ground and tested whether his saber hilt would hit the wooden posts beside him as he advanced and retreated.
The doorway's width was not a fixed standard; whenever he grew comfortable, he changed it a little. In a narrow space, he could only shorten his movements; in a wide one, he still could not thrust half his body farther out just to reach. Chen Xiuyuan began to see the position of his next step before striking, and no longer always had to bump his elbow painfully before drawing it back.
But whenever Shi Lei suddenly sped up, his old faults still showed.
When his progress toward great accomplishment reached thirty-nine, there was an entire afternoon when it advanced by only one point. Chen Xiuyuan sat beside a tree root, waiting for the aching tightness in his arms to fade, and reviewed the mistakes he had recorded. He found that every failure came after his opponent changed steps.
He knew his feet should move, but his eyes always stayed nailed to the saber's point. By the time the saber changed and he moved his feet, it was already too late.
The next day, he asked Shi Lei to put the saber aside and just walk through yesterday's steps first. Shi Lei sounded somewhat impatient. "Memorizing my steps again?"
"I'm watching when you put your weight onto your front foot. I always wait until your saber comes before I notice."
After hearing that, Shi Lei stuck his wooden saber into the edge of the ground and stepped forward empty-handed. Chen Xiuyuan saw his shoulder sink first, followed by his front knee pressing forward. Though the saber had not yet moved, the distance had already changed.
When they picked up their sabers again, they started slowly. This time, Chen Xiuyuan watched the shoulders and waist and could give ground earlier, but for a while he lost sight of the blade. Shi Lei tapped him lightly on the forehead, reminding him not to merely choose another place to stare fixedly at.
"The whole person is right here. Wherever you dodge, you have to watch your footing too."
Chen Xiuyuan wiped the sweat from his forehead and raised his saber again.
Some afternoons, he could practice until the sun slanted west; on others, he could spare only a short stretch. Security within the gates had been increased, and moving goods at the meat shed required hands too. When work fell to Chen Xiuyuan, he did it as usual. If his body was tired when he returned, he stopped practicing fast moves and saved his Qi and blood for the one thing he had yet to understand that day.
The movements he had mastered remained clear. Once, after he finished putting away the evening goods, Shi Lei suddenly called him over to exchange blows. He did not even have time to run through the whole sequence beforehand, yet when the saber pressed toward him, he still naturally sidestepped and drew his elbow out of the narrow space.
Shi Lei stopped, looked at him, then glanced at the cargo rope that had just been set down nearby.
"What were you thinking about just now?"
"Not putting that basket of dried roots beside the water jar again tomorrow."
Shi Lei laughed in exasperation. "I tell you to practice the saber, and here you are keeping track of goods for Shi Yuan."
Before he finished speaking, his wooden saber arrived again. Chen Xiuyuan shifted aside, laid the back of his saber against the incoming one, and turned his body with the motion. As his rear foot landed, his returning saber was already pointing toward the flank Shi Lei had just left open.
Shi Lei blocked it and truly added a little speed.
Chen Xiuyuan's arms sank under the force, and he retreated to the edge of the grounds. With Shi Lei's strength, no matter how familiar his movements became, he could not stay close throughout. But that shifting step and returning cut just now had indeed kept their form despite the sudden interruption.
On the sixty-second day, Shi Lei hung two ropes beside the training ground, replacing the wooden pieces inside with thin pieces of hide, and stood between them with a wooden saber.
"No real edge today. I'll force you this way. Even if you can block me, don't sweep into the ropes on either side."
Chen Xiuyuan looked over the ropes' positions and nodded.
The first horizontal cut came close across his chest. He raised his wooden saber vertically and turned aside. Shi Lei immediately stepped in after him, pushing his hilt toward Chen Xiuyuan's saber hand. If Chen Xiuyuan retreated along his former path, he would run straight into the hanging rope on the left.
Chen Xiuyuan shortened his stride and kept his returning saber close before him, first forcing Shi Lei's hand away, then turning toward the open space on the right. His wooden saber skimmed past the rope, and the hide hanging from it merely swayed lightly in the passing air.
Shi Lei immediately switched to an upward cut from below.
Chen Xiuyuan had seen this move before, but not at this distance. Rather than block horizontally through the range he had memorized, he drew his saber down and close, letting the incoming blade slide away along its outer edge. Then, with the step that accompanied his withdrawal, he moved out from directly in front of his opponent.
They exchanged positions.
Shi Lei turned first, driving his saber straight toward Chen Xiuyuan's chest. Chen Xiuyuan had already turned as well. His wooden saber rose from beneath his elbow to intercept that line, and his next cut tapped toward the back of Shi Lei's saber hand.
Shi Lei raised his wrist out of the way, then stepped back and reached out to steady the swaying rope.
"Stop."
Chen Xiuyuan stood between the two ropes, his wooden saber still positioned for the next move. His elbow had not struck anything, his legs had not tangled, and both ropes were fine.
He lowered his gaze and saw the panel change.
[Bloodstone Saber Technique: perfection, 6%.]
The days of solo practice and sparring had finally joined together. Chen Xiuyuan lowered his saber and recalled that instant when they passed each other. Where he had once been most likely to get jammed up, he could now still clearly distinguish which way he should move.
Shi Lei pointed at the back of his hand. "Any faster, and you'll still get hit. But you've understood how to follow the paths this saber technique calls for."
"Let me try a different saber tomorrow," Chen Xiuyuan said.
"Think the wooden one's too light?"
"I'm used to the old short saber too. I want to try a heavier one and see how much I can still execute the same way."
Shi Lei considered it and agreed to borrow a heavy, blunt-edged saber from the hunting shed.
"Let's be clear first. That saber is for training strength and blade paths. Don't start chasing hardwood to hack at the moment you get your hands on it."