Sharpening the Blade in the Snow
The old year passed amid the crackle of firecrackers.
From Starfall Town, his father had entrusted someone with a letter for him. Written in a bold, forceful hand, it spoke of ordinary family matters-the old hen at home had laid another egg, Scholar Wang's son on the east side of town had married, and before the new year, his mother had made him a pair of cotton-padded shoes for him to pick up when he came home on a day off. The writing on the last line suddenly grew a little fainter, as though his father had hesitated before putting brush to paper:
"Tian'er, have a good new year. It's cold, so put on more clothes."
Long Tian read the letter three times, then folded it and put it away with the Iron Guard token. He didn't write back. Some things couldn't be made clear with brush and paper; he would ask in person when he turned fourteen.
After the fifth day of the new year, the academy opened its doors again. Zhao Xiaopang was the first to come running back, bundled up like a round cotton ball. He dropped a stack of books from under his coat onto Long Tian's desk and panted, "I borrowed these from my older male cousin! He said they're all cultivation insights written by high-level Soul Masters. We might not understand much of them, but we can use the breathing techniques inside!"
Long Tian flipped through the books. Their pages had yellowed and their corners had curled and frayed; they were indeed quite old. The first page of one book bore a diagram of the human meridians, surrounded by densely packed, fly-head-sized annotations describing the physical sensations of various meditations. The handwriting was aged but precise. He thanked Zhao Xiaopang, copied the meridian diagram that very day, and pasted it beside his bed, where he looked at it every night before sleep.
Snow fell on and off for nearly half a month at the beginning of the year. Long Tian swept a patch clear in the training ground so he could practice. When Zhao Xiaopang wasn't training, he swept snow nearby, clearing a round circle in which he squatted and read. Every now and then, he would look up and shout, "Long Tian, you broke another stone! The groundskeeper's going to scold you tomorrow!"
Long Tian trained even harder than he had before the new year. Every morning, he got up before dawn and warmed up by running ten laps through the snow, stopping only when he was sweating all over to sit cross-legged and meditate. In the mornings, he practiced controlling his Soul Power; in the afternoons, he practiced variations of his Soul Skills; and at night, he added two hours of quiet meditation to nourish his meridians. At first, Zhao Xiaopang ran with him, but by the third lap he collapsed in the snow, waved a hand, and said, "Spare me," before going back to squat in his snow circle and read.
Mr. Wang watched it all, occasionally tossing down a few words of guidance from a second-floor window, but otherwise leaving him alone. He knew that at a time like this, fewer words were better than more; what Long Tian honed for himself would be the most solidly grounded.
On the day the last snow before spring fell, Long Tian was practicing activating Yin-Yang Rotation faster.
He tried to cut the time from activating his Soul Ring to releasing the light projectile from two breaths to one and a half. After practicing more than a hundred times, his arms ached so badly he couldn't lift them. During a break, he sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and regulated his breathing. As Soul Power flowed through his dantian, he suddenly felt the fluctuation deep within his Soul Ring pulse violently!
Long Tian opened his eyes and looked down at his dantian. Of course, he couldn't see anything, but the fluctuation was clearer than it had ever been. It was as though something had forced open a crack inside the Soul Ring, and a wisp of a new presence seeped through it. It was neither pure light nor pure darkness, but something... between the two.
He focused all his attention and sent his consciousness into the crack. There, he discovered an extra layer of fine, intricate patterns on the Soul Ring's inner wall. They resembled both talismans and natural markings, spreading in circles around the inside of the ring. The patterns were transparent and invisible unless he activated his Soul Power. Once Soul Power flowed into them, they lit up with a faint, chaotic-colored glow, binding the two forces inside the Soul Ring more closely together.
"Another layer... a bridge?" Long Tian murmured. Before Lin Mo left, he had said that every new Soul Ring added another bridge, and the more bridges there were, the more stable light and darkness would become. Long Tian had thought he would have to wait until his second Soul Ring for that bridge to appear, but now his first Soul Ring had grown a new bridge of its own.
He tested the results. After he activated the Soul Ring, switching between light and darkness was nearly twenty percent smoother than before, and the gap between his golden light projectile and Shadow Stealth had noticeably shortened. He could now almost activate Shadow Stealth the instant he launched the projectile. He also tried using the new "bridge" on the Soul Ring's inner layer to activate both forces at once. This time, the mass of chaotic light between his palms was much more stable, no longer teetering on the brink of exploding at any moment as it had before.
So Soul Rings could grow.
The discovery kept Long Tian excited for days, and he threw himself into training with even more vigor. He spent an entire morning repeatedly unleashing Soul Skills in the snow. In the end, he was so exhausted that he lay sprawled on his back in the middle of the training ground, gasping for breath. A crack opened in the overcast sky, revealing a small patch of pale blue he hadn't seen in a long time.
Zhao Xiaopang poked his head out of his snow circle. "Long Tian, what are you lying there for?"
Long Tian gazed at the sky, his breath misting white. "I'm wondering how far I can get in my training in two and a half years."
"Two and a half years? Why two and a half?"
Long Tian turned his head to glance at Zhao Xiaopang. He hesitated, then told him anyway. "My dad arranged to meet me when I turn fourteen. Before then, I need to be capable enough to help him."
Zhao Xiaopang crawled out of his snow circle, brushed the snow off his backside, and squatted beside Long Tian. "Then I'll train with you," he said earnestly. "I can't beat you, but I can be your target."
Long Tian glanced at his plump figure. "If you're my target, I could easily send you flying with one palm strike."
Zhao Xiaopang's face reddened, and he stuck out his neck. "Then I'll just dodge faster!"
The two laughed in the snow for a while. Long Tian rolled over, sprang to his feet, and brushed the snow crumbs off himself. He held out a hand to Zhao Xiaopang. "Then starting tomorrow, you practice dodging and I'll practice my aim. We'll keep a close eye on each other."
Zhao Xiaopang took his hand and stood up. The two grinned at each other for a long while in the empty training ground.
When spring arrived, the snow melted away. The willows put out new buds, and a layer of fuzzy green appeared on the bare branches in the courtyard. At the end of February, Long Tian's cultivation quietly crossed the threshold into level twelve. The patterns on the inner side of his first Soul Ring grew increasingly clear, and the flow of light and darkness became much smoother. Zhao Xiaopang's physique improved as well. Although he still hadn't awakened his Soul Power, he ran laps and practiced dodging with Long Tian every day. He had slimmed down a size, but was more spirited than ever.
After the new year, Chen Hao came to class twice and sparred with Long Tian twice, winning one match and losing the other. Chen Hao won the second by a single move: during the holiday, he had worked out a combination of attacks that made use of the Ironback Wolf's advantage in speed, catching Long Tian off guard. Long Tian accepted his defeat. Afterward, the two sat panting beside a stone platform, and Chen Hao said, "There's an age-group tournament in Spirit City during summer vacation. I'm going."
"I'm going too," Long Tian said.
Chen Hao glanced at him, the corner of his mouth twitching as though he wanted to say something like, "You'll just get beaten up if you go." In the end, he swallowed it and said instead, "Then let's go together."
Spring passed quickly. When the summer downpours came, Long Tian stood under the covered walkway, looking through the curtain of rain at the courtyard washed clean and gleaming. He felt each of the things tucked inside his robe in turn: the token, the jade pendant, and the protective charm. Fourteen was still a long way off, but he had already covered a good stretch of the road.
The black-and-white Soul Ring turned quietly in his dantian. The patterns on its inner layer had spread halfway around the ring, and their faint, chaotic-colored glow flickered in and out of sight as Soul Power flowed through them. Long Tian could feel that he was not far from the limit for his second Soul Ring. At this rate, he should be able to break through again before autumn, and obtaining his second Soul Ring would follow as naturally as water flowing into a channel.
The downpour hammered against the eaves, streaming down the roof tiles and gathering into a bright white curtain of water before the steps. Long Tian held out a hand and caught a handful of rainwater. Coolness seeped into his palm and traveled along his meridians. The two forces in his dantian each took half of it, and it dissolved into warmth.
He withdrew his hand, turned, and went back inside. Sitting down beside the newly replaced asparagus fern on the windowsill, he spread out a sheet of paper and began writing his cultivation record for the day. As his brush touched the page, he remembered the last words of his father's letter: "It's cold, so put on more clothes." He smiled and drew a little dragon beside that line, its tail curled up all crooked.
Outside the window, the patter of rain grew denser. The summer wind swept in, carrying the damp scent of grass and trees and rustling the pages.