Shadow Beyond Six Breaths

Helian Yuan stripped his training routine down to a single exercise.

He did not run, practice consecutive thrusts, or try to make Tiger Shadow cover his whole body.

He stood beside the water channel, holding his short spear level. His target was a mountain badger armor plate hanging from a rope. The wind swung the plate from side to side. He only had to thrust once after Tiger Shadow appeared, then immediately withdraw his spear.

The first attempt lasted five breaths.

The spear tip struck the center of the plate, but he adjusted his aim twice more as he followed its movement, and his right arm soon began to ache.

The second attempt also lasted five breaths.

Helian Yuan did not chase the plate. Instead, he waited for it to swing back into the spear's path. With fewer movements, he struck more accurately.

On the third attempt, he did not even call out "Come." He simply tightened his shoulders and back at the lowest point of his breath. Tiger Shadow rose from beneath his feet, forming a black extension along the short spear.

The plate swung left.

Helian Yuan remained still.

When it swung back to the center, he thrust.

The spear tip should have struck in a straight line, but at the last instant, Tiger Shadow's tail swept across the shaft, turning the edge half a palm's width aside before it pierced the plate at the edge.

A straight thrust that would have glanced off the hard armor became a sharp change of direction just before impact.

At the sixth breath, Tiger Shadow had yet to dissipate.

Helian Yuan immediately withdrew the spear.

His right arm merely ached. There was none of the needle-like pain.

The sixth breath had not appeared out of nowhere. He had cut out the unnecessary pursuit and corrections from the five breaths, leaving Tiger Shadow to handle only that final change.

He recorded the move as "Shadow Follows the Spear."

It was not a complete secret technique, only a method he could currently repeat.

The training did not come without a cost. After summoning the shadow three times in succession, Helian Yuan could barely hold his wooden bowl steady at dinner. Though the old injury in his right arm had not reopened, the depths of his shoulder blade felt as if they were being scraped back and forth with a dull knife. He was forced to stop for a full day, using only his left hand to repair arrows and dry meat.

The rest showed him another problem: he could not use all six breaths every day. When he had not slept or eaten enough, or had just been through a fight, Tiger Shadow would dissipate at the fifth breath. The so-called "six breaths under control" depended on his body being in reasonably good condition.

In a blank space in the secret manual, Helian Yuan did not write down a fixed number. Instead, he noted: five normally, six when in good condition.

He also broke down Shadow Follows the Spear. The real key was not that the shadow's tail acted like a hand, turning the spear for him. Rather, once Tiger Shadow covered his shoulders and back, it allowed him to change the direction of his force at the last moment. If the wooden shaft was too soft, it would twist; if the spearhead's joint was loose, it would come off; and if his right arm was tired, he would not be able to withdraw it in time. The skill, weapon and body were all bound together. Without any one of them, it was no longer the same move.

To make sure the joint held, Helian Yuan removed the spearhead, stuffed mountain badger fascia into the seam, and wound thin iron wire tightly around it. When he was done, the spear was a little heavier than before, but it could withstand a sideways shift in force.

After each test, he turned the armor plate over to see which side the crack had spread from. If Shadow Follows the Spear only made the spear tip look strange without reliably changing where the force landed, the move was not worth risking his life to test. Only after it entered through the edge of the plate three times in a row did Helian Yuan draw a tiny check mark beside the entry in the secret manual.

He also established conditions under which he would not use it: obscured vision, a numb wrist, or a loose spearhead. If any one occurred, he would not use it. Being able to use it and knowing whether he should were two different things. A new ability was often at its most dangerous not before it had been mastered, but just after it had succeeded once.

Over the next two days, Helian Yuan tested it on a fixed target, a swinging target and a rolling block of wood. Against the fixed target, the shadow tail's change of direction served no purpose; it was most effective against the swinging target. Against the block of wood rolling suddenly toward him, Tiger Shadow could not save him if he misjudged where it would first land.

When the rolling block came at him from an oblique angle for the last time, Helian Yuan deliberately refrained from summoning the shadow and simply stepped aside. Being able to solve a problem with the new move did not mean every problem was worth spending it on. Only by keeping ordinary methods at hand would Tiger Shadow not become his sole recourse.

The ability did not replace judgment; it only amplified a correct judgment.

Early on the fourth morning, Helian Yuan did not train. Instead, he carried his full pack on a trip up the north slope. When he actually encountered an enemy, he would not be standing empty-handed on level ground, nor would he happen to be well fed and rested. The weight of the pack made Tiger Shadow rise more slowly over his shoulders and back, and when he thrust his short spear through narrow gaps between rocks, the shadow's tail was more likely to strike the walls.

He therefore narrowed the conditions for using Shadow Follows the Spear even further: at least an arm's width of space to the side, and no tree roots ahead that could snag the butt of the spear. If the surroundings did not meet those conditions, he would rather use an ordinary thrust.

That afternoon, he tested it again with a wet spear shaft. The water made his hand slip, and the butt of the spear nearly slid from his grasp during the final change of direction. Helian Yuan wrapped coarse hemp around the grip, at the cost of making his palm more prone to abrasion. When a move went from paper to the hunting grounds, it often did not gain another advantage; instead, it kept exposing how many conditions it depended on.

The hunter with the crossbow on his back watched once from a distance, but did not approach. On his third pass, he tossed a length of new bowstring onto a rock. "Yours is about to break."

"How much?"

"Did you save me?"

"No."

"Then this isn't me repaying a favor. Trade me two jin of mountain badger meat for it."

Helian Yuan cut off two jin of meat and handed it over. There were no thanks and no debt.

As the crossbow hunter collected the meat, he glanced at the new holes in the armor plate. "What's that shadow of yours?"

"Firelight."

"There's firelight in the daytime too?"

Helian Yuan did not answer.

The crossbow hunter did not press him, only warning, "The Blue Rock Panther came down to the second water channel last night. It's been looking at your markers."

"Did you retrieve your traps?"

"Two are missing."

"The gray-robed man?"

"The panther."

Helian Yuan followed the water channel to take a look.

The level-four Blue Rock Panther had not destroyed all the markers. It had only left claw marks beside several stacks of stones he used for his circuit. The claw marks formed a semicircle with the spring, the stone shelter and the mountain badger's den.

It was marking out its patrol range.

Helian Yuan had established routes with three sets of markers, while the panther had marked over them with scent and claw marks. Neither side had met the other, but they were already contesting who would define the paths through Sunken Bone Slope.

He did not erase the panther's marks.

Instead, he moved his own markers back some distance, yielding the rocky gully on the east side. Fighting a level-four demonic beast over an inconsequential stretch of slope now would only bring conflict sooner.

Yielding was not giving up.

Helian Yuan buried iron nails and tobacco on the narrower north slope, and made sure the water channel could hinder the panther's first charge. If it continued to press outward, that was the boundary he was willing to pay a price to defend.

Helian Yuan did not immediately take the growl as a sign that the panther was going to attack. He first listened for birds taking flight in alarm, then checked whether the animals by the spring had scattered. Only two night birds had changed trees, indicating that the Blue Rock Panther was still at its usual high perch and had not actually come down the slope.

He let Tiger Shadow rise for one breath before withdrawing it, confirming that he could still stop it at will while fatigued. Being able to use the new move in full was important, but only by holding it back when he should not strike could he truly have it under his control.

The wind outside the stone shelter blew past a stacked-stone marker, making one of the stones wobble slightly. Helian Yuan reached out to steady it, without adding to its height. The more conspicuous the markers were, the more easily the panther, the gray-robed man and the other hunters could all read them. He began removing the markers that only reassured him but could not actually change his actions.

That night, the level-four Blue Rock Panther growled low on the eastern cliff.

Tiger Shadow rose behind Helian Yuan and lasted no longer than six breaths. Holding his short spear, he felt for the first time that the shadow and the spear were no longer two separate things he had to control.

And the panther's claw marks had already appeared on a tree less than thirty paces from the stone shelter.