Chen Xiuyuan pressed the thickest armor plate onto the paper and traced its outline. He was about to turn it over when Elder Shi pinned the box lid down with the tip of his staff.
"How long have you been looking at that today?"
"A little while."
"Your food's gone cold."
He turned back. Sure enough, the soup in his bowl had stopped steaming. During these days when his right arm could not practice the saber, he had meant to work out the thickness of each plate first. Once he started drawing, however, he forgot the old man's instructions again.
Chen Xiuyuan put down his brush. Only after eating did he arrange the old test materials alongside the new armor plates. His successful cuts before had all been on relatively flat surfaces: the saber entered shallowly, then pushed forward. But the armor plate Elder Shi had brought this time had a ridge. Before the saber even reached its intended point, the blade had already tipped sideways.
After checking several times with a bamboo strip, he finally understood what he had overlooked.
Armor plates would not always lie flat and wait for him.
Early on the eightieth day since his return, he completed the last of the accumulation for his second heavenly meridian.
These days, he had done only the breathing exercises and slow circulation of strength that Elder Shi permitted. With his right arm bearing no weight, his practice fell to the pathways he had already been taught. The blood and Qi passing through his first meridian gradually grew abundant. Once he smoothed out the final stretch, the previous ninety-eight reached its end.
[Second heavenly meridian accumulation: 100%.]
Elder Shi watched beside him. Chen Xiuyuan linked his breaths and followed the circulation sequence he already knew well, truly opening that stretch all the way through. The warmth was easier to distinguish than the first time, and as he gathered it back, it still returned steadily to its original route.
[Cultivation: Meridian Opening Realm, newly entered.] [Heavenly meridians opened: 2/108.] [Third heavenly meridian accumulation: 0%.]
Coming out of his seated posture, he first reached for the cloth on his arm. The injury was still there, still pulling when he tensed it. Opening another meridian had not made it disappear.
Seeing his movement, Elder Shi asked, "Still want to try the saber?"
"Yes, but I'll wait until you've checked it."
"At least you've learned to say that."
On the eighty-third day since his return, Elder Shi removed the outer wrapping and confirmed that the wound had closed. Then he had him bend and extend the arm empty-handed, grip the hilt, and move through slow forms. Only after none of these showed any sign of reopening the wound did he permit him to try small saber movements.
Chen Xiuyuan did not immediately touch the hardest armor.
First, he drew his old short saber and went through a section of the Bloodstone Saber Technique. The sequence of cuts and the placement of the returning hook were all there. These days without practice had not erased that line reading Great Perfection. But after several idle days, his arm grew sore with prolonged exertion. He stopped once he had practiced as much as he could control steadily, then switched to softer hide to find the point of contact on a slanted ridge.
The moment the saber touched it, the hide flipped outward.
Sitting to one side, Elder Shi watched him secure it again. "If you clamp it flat, is it still the same as that armor plate you saw?"
Chen Xiuyuan loosened the cord on one side, allowing the curved wood beneath the hide to raise its convex surface. When he cut again, the edge indeed slid away along the slope, leaving not even the shallow groove he had managed before.
This time, he did not wrench his wrist. He waited until the saber stopped, then felt along the convex surface with his left hand until he found its highest point.
The point he had initially chosen was on this side, but by the time he truly exerted force, the edge had already crossed the crest. The armor's surface had turned in another direction while his saber still followed a flat plane. Of course it would be pushed aside.
Chen Xiuyuan added a mark before the ridge and tried turning his forearm along with the point of contact. On the first attempt, he turned too far, and the saber scraped straight across the back of the hide. On the second, he used only his wrist, and halfway through the turn, his own joint stopped him.
The old man did not position the saber for him. He merely laid his wooden staff across his legs.
"If the saber tip needs to turn, what's still twisted tight?"
Chen Xiuyuan looked at his elbow. It was still tucked in its original position, while his forearm had already twisted taut. The harder he tried to hold the edge steady, the more his wrist had to bear that sideways force alone.
He drew the saber back and took half a step, letting his waist and hips carry his elbow around with them. When the edge passed over the crest again, the previously abrupt jolt was much lighter. At last, he left a continuous shallow cut on the other side.
"Stop," Elder Shi said.
Chen Xiuyuan thought he had made another mistake, but the old man pointed at his hand.
The muscles near the injury had already tightened. He had just been thinking of trying a few more times while it was going smoothly, but when he lowered his head and saw the sweat seeping out along the edge of the cloth, he returned the saber to its sheath.
That night, he drew the old and new cuts side by side, marking where the change occurred.
[Original technique Limit Breaking accumulation: 24%.]
The number had increased, but he still had not cut through the thickest armor plate. He closed the sketchbook and set it beside the saber sheath. Tomorrow, he would try something harder. Only then would he know whether this small adjustment would hold.
The next day, when Shi Lei saw the new drawings on the table, he first turned the armor plate around.
"You entered from this side yesterday. Turn it around-can you still recognize it?"
Chen Xiuyuan crouched and studied it for a while, then removed the small wooden shim underneath and replaced it with a lower one. With the armor facing a different direction, the points that could support it securely also had to change. If he fixed it as he had yesterday, it would wobble as soon as the saber touched it.
"Don't cut yet." Shi Lei asked another question. "You have two heavenly meridians now. If you cut deeper, that might just mean you've grown stronger."
"I'll use the blood and Qi from the same circulation cycle. One cut with the old method, one with the new attempt, both starting from the same position. If I use extra force on either, I'll compare them again."
Chen Xiuyuan took two similar armor plates. First, he cut using the original technique and recorded the incision. Then he rested until his arm recovered before testing the modified section. Standing behind him to one side, Shi Lei saw his shoulder press down sharply on the second cut and immediately called a halt.
"That one doesn't count. You threw yourself forward."
Chen Xiuyuan crossed out that mark, switched back to the wooden saber, and asked Shi Lei to watch his shoulders and waist. Only after smoothing out the unloaded blade path and then trying a real edge did the shallow incision from his second cut become useful for comparison.
The old technique slid sideways upon reaching the crest. After the adjustment, the edge turned down along the convex surface, extending the fine groove onto the other side.
It had not cut through yet, but there was no abrupt break in the middle.
Shi Lei picked up the armor plate and ran his fingers along both cuts. Suddenly, he held out his hand and asked Chen Xiuyuan to pass him the old short saber.
"I'll try the original technique again."
He clearly used less force than he normally did in training, and the edge likewise veered aside at the crest. Then he turned his wrist along the route Chen Xiuyuan described. Although the saber entered deeper, it stuck halfway through, and withdrawing it took some effort.
"Just hearing you describe it really isn't enough to make that turn."
Chen Xiuyuan pointed out how his elbow and waist needed to move with it. Shi Lei did not try again, however, and instead returned the saber. "Practice the whole thing first. Even you still get stuck withdrawing your saber. Don't rush to have me learn half of it."
Those words were more useful than praise. Chen Xiuyuan set down the armor plate with the deepest cut and returned to practicing how to withdraw when he had not cut all the way through.
Entering shallow material went smoothly, but with a little more thickness, the saber met a sudden increase in resistance. Before, whenever it met resistance, he wanted to pull it forcibly back along its old path. But the blade had already turned along the curved surface on its way in. Its original path no longer aligned with the narrow gap before him.
He tried first moving his elbow back to a position where it could turn, letting the saber's spine yield a little along the narrow gap, then withdrawing with his waist leading. He could get it out now, but the recovery took longer than the original technique. Shi Lei thrust a wooden strip in from the side, touching precisely the forearm he had not yet managed to protect.
Chen Xiuyuan stared at the wooden strip for a long while before saying, "If I can cut in but can't recover, it's still unusable."
"At least you haven't forgotten."
Over the next few days, several pieces of soft hide joined the hard armor, but Shi Lei no longer accompanied him every time. When he went to patrol the roads, Chen Xiuyuan practiced the parts he could check alone. When he needed someone to disrupt the target, he would rather switch to learning the third meridian's circulation than treat one smooth attempt at cutting a target he had positioned himself as complete success.
The third meridian's route was more winding than the first two. Using a beast hide, Elder Shi pointed out two places where Qi could easily rush ahead, and Chen Xiuyuan learned slowly. When he returned to the saber rack that afternoon, the breathing exercises he had newly understood that morning had not crowded out his saber technique. The curved-surface entry he had practiced the day before remained clear as well.
At last, he could give his time to the things he truly could not do.
On the ninety-first day since his return, Elder Shi examined his right arm again. The wound had left a faint red new scar, ordinary bending and stretching no longer hurt, and the scrape on his shoulder had healed too. The old man let him resume normal training, but still instructed him to rest after prolonged exertion and not rub open the newly healed skin.
Chen Xiuyuan took the comparison drawings from between the pages and went to the practice ground to find Shi Lei.
That day, they switched among three thicknesses. The thin armored hide slipped easily; the thick material tended to trap the saber after the edge bit in. The convex ridge, initially the hardest part, now had a workable blade path instead. Chen Xiuyuan no longer stared only at a fixed slant. He first examined where the force would fall, then decided where to yield and where to push.
Shi Lei braced the armor stand with a wooden staff and suddenly moved it back a little.
Chen Xiuyuan's saber shaved off only a shallow layer before withdrawing, staying where it could meet an incoming attack. The second time, Shi Lei pressed forward. The saber met greater resistance, but Chen Xiuyuan first yielded with the spine, then drew back his elbow, freeing it smoothly as well.
On the third attempt, however, the armor stand turned sideways after the saber entered.
The edge stuck.
Chen Xiuyuan did not wrench it. He stopped feeding in force in time and pulled the saber out, but the returning hook that followed was already late. Shi Lei stopped the wooden strip in front of his chest, waiting until he saw it clearly before pulling back.
"This time, the stand won't wait for you."
Chen Xiuyuan put down the saber and examined the slanted gap from the angle he had just used. He had mastered entering and withdrawing on a fixed armor plate, but when the target changed position after taking force, his body still turned in the original direction. In actual use, his opponent would not keep letting him finish that cut.
He sat beside the stand and first wrote down this shortcoming. The panel beside him clearly displayed the new accumulation.
[Original technique Limit Breaking accumulation: 92%.]
He stared for a moment, then put away his notes. He now had somewhere to look for the remaining eight percent. It was not at some threshold where he had to wait for luck, but in the cut he had just recovered from too late.
Shi Lei straightened the armor stand and asked whether he wanted to continue.
"My arm's tired today. I'll stop here," Chen Xiuyuan replied. "Tomorrow morning, turn it more slowly. I need to see clearly which way my foot should land first after I meet resistance."
"I have to check the roads outside the gate in the morning. I'll be back at noon."
"Then noon it is."
Chen Xiuyuan wiped the saber clean, took out the intact ironback hide Elder Shi had brought, and spread it out again in a dry place. There were no saber marks on its surface yet, making it just right to keep for comparison with the old material he had failed to cleave on his first attempt.
He did not write the word "complete" on it. He merely added tomorrow's direction of testing to his notebook and slid the old short saber into its sheath.