An Unexpected Supporter

Thud, thud. Muffled sounds came from the bottom of the slope, mingled with heavy panting.

Lu Yuan stopped and glanced over.

In a shallow pit, a tall, skinny young man was swinging a wood cleaver at a tree. The cleaver was his Martial Soul, and soul light flickered unevenly along its dull gray blade. Each swing went a little askew, leaving nothing but shallow marks on the ironwood's dark brown bark.

His efficiency was frighteningly low.

Lu Yuan watched three swings. As the young man raised his cleaver for the fourth, he spoke. "Lower your wrist half an inch."

The young man jumped, nearly dropping the cleaver. He spun around and saw Lu Yuan standing at the edge of the pit. His face flushed red.

"Who are you?" His tone was a little sharp.

"Just passing by." Lu Yuan hopped into the shallow pit, the fallen leaves soft beneath his feet. "Chop like that, and you won't get through it by nightfall."

The young man opened his mouth to argue, but when he looked down at what he had accomplished after all that chopping, his spirits sank.

Lu Yuan walked over to the ironwood and felt its bark.

"The ironwood's grain grows at a slant, and its growth rings are off-center." He turned his head. "You're striking straight down, and your Soul Power comes in pulses-you cut an inch in, then get bounced back half an inch. Only half your work is effective."

The young man's eyes widened.

He had never heard any of this before. The academy taught "infuse Soul Power and strike with full force." What grain, off-center rings or effective work?

"Then... how should I chop it?" he asked instinctively.

Lu Yuan pointed at the hand holding the cleaver. "A wood cleaver Martial Soul, with a seven-inch blade and the center of gravity toward the front. You're gripping it too far back. By the time your Soul Power reaches the tip, thirty percent has already scattered."

He paused.

"Lower your wrist half an inch and press the web between your thumb and forefinger against the end of the handle. Don't pour your Soul Power out all at once; let it follow your swing. Gather thirty percent as you start, raise it to seventy when the blade is half a foot away, then unleash it all the instant it hits the wood."

The young man was lost in a fog, but he understood "lower your wrist." He tried adjusting his grip, and the soul light on his cleaver grew a little steadier.

Then he swung.

It was the same ironwood.

The instant the blade fell, it felt different. With his wrist lowered, his forearm and the blade felt like a single rod. His Soul Power surged forward along his arm instead of churning in a mess. When the blade touched the bark, he instinctively pushed out all the Soul Power he had left.

Crack!

The sound was different, with a crisp tearing note to it.

The cleaver sank two fingers deep into the trunk.

The young man froze. He pulled out the blade, looked at the fresh gash, then at Lu Yuan, his mouth hanging open.

"Try again," Lu Yuan said.

A second swing, then a third.

Each stroke flowed more smoothly than the last. He was using less Soul Power, and his arm wasn't as sore. On the fifth stroke, a soft crack rang out, and the ironwood was nearly a third severed.

The young man stopped, panting, but his eyes were startlingly bright.

"You... those things you just said..." His voice trembled. "Where did you learn them?"

Lu Yuan didn't answer, asking instead, "Are you from the academy?"

"A teaching assistant. In the logistics office, Li Wangye." The young man looked a little embarrassed. "My Soul Power's been stuck at level two for three years."

As he spoke, the wood cleaver Martial Soul in his hand hadn't yet dispersed, its blade wrapped in a docile glow of soul light.

Lu Yuan nodded, took a small cloth bag from his rattan basket, and tipped out two dark red wild thorn berries.

"Eat these. Your Soul Power output was erratic just now, and your Qi and blood are a little stagnant."

Li Wangye took the berries and stuffed them into his mouth. The flesh was sour and astringent, but after he swallowed, the tightness in his chest eased somewhat.

"You still haven't told me," he pressed as he chewed. "Where did you hear those principles?"

"I worked them out myself," Lu Yuan said.

Li Wangye choked.

He stared at Lu Yuan as though he were looking at a monster. The boy before him looked twelve or thirteen at most. His clothes were the coarse hemp worn by work-study students, and his Soul Power fluctuations were pitifully weak-yet those few sentences had been more illuminating than every lesson Li Wangye had heard in three years.

"You... worked them out yourself?" he repeated.

"Mm." Lu Yuan walked over to another ironwood and pressed a hand against its bark. "A Martial Soul is a tool, and Soul Power is the power that drives it. There's an optimal solution for how to use the tool and how to transmit that power. Most people just haven't thought to look for it."

He spoke casually, but Li Wangye felt as though a hammer had struck his heart.

Tool. Power. Optimal solution.

Together, those three terms suddenly strung together everything that had puzzled him over the years. Why could other people chop trees faster with the same wood cleaver Martial Soul? Why did his Soul Power fall to pieces whenever he used it, even though it clearly wasn't weak?

It wasn't that he hadn't worked hard enough.

He simply hadn't found the right path.

"Then... how do I find it?" His voice tightened as he leaned half a step closer. "How do I find the optimal solution you're talking about?"

Lu Yuan withdrew his hand.

He glanced at Li Wangye. He had seen what was in the young man's eyes before-on the night before his father, Lu Qinghe, broke through, and when Shen Moxin listened to him explain the two-variable model.

It was thirst. A thirst for answers.

"Build a model," Lu Yuan said. "Break your wood cleaver Martial Soul down into several parts: blade length, blade curvature, center of gravity, and handle. Break Soul Power output down into stages: accumulation, transmission, release, and recovery. Then take measurements-Soul Power transmission efficiency with different grips, blade penetration depth at different chopping angles."

He drew several lines in the dirt with the tip of his foot.

"Once you have enough data, you can fit a curve showing the relationship. Whichever curve has the highest peak, the corresponding combination of parameters is your optimal solution."

Li Wangye crouched down and stared at the lines on the ground.

He couldn't understand them. But every word Lu Yuan said was like a nail, pinning the tangled mess in his head into a shape.

"But... but the academy doesn't teach any of this," he murmured.

"The academy teaches standard answers," Lu Yuan said. "But your Martial Soul, your body, and your Soul Power circulation habits are all nonstandard conditions. Apply a standard answer, and of course you won't get the right solution."

The wind passed through the woods, stirring a rustle of leaves.

Li Wangye crouched there without moving for a long time. His wood cleaver Martial Soul had dispersed at some point, and he braced both hands on his knees, gripping them until his knuckles turned white.

Then he raised his head.

"Can I... write it down?" he asked, his voice trembling a little. "These things you said, can I write them down and try them out slowly when I get back?"

Lu Yuan rummaged through his rattan basket and found half a charcoal pencil and a sheet of rough paper.

"Here."

Li Wangye took the paper and pencil and fumbled to spread the sheet over his knees. Biting his lip, he wrote down a few keywords in crooked strokes: grain, off-center, effective work, parameters, curve...

After two lines, he stopped.

"Um... Junior Lu." He looked up, his face reddening again. "Is it all right if I call you that? Have you... told anyone else about these ideas?"

"I've told some people," Lu Yuan said. "Some thought they were useful. Others thought they were heresy and fallacy."

"I think they're useful!" Li Wangye blurted out. "Incredibly useful! I've been stuck at level two for three years, and I've tried all kinds of meditation methods, but none of them worked. But just now, when I adjusted my grip the way you said, my Soul Power started flowing smoothly at once-even if it was only a tiny bit smoother, it felt completely different!"

He grew more excited as he spoke, and the paper nearly slid off his knees.

Lu Yuan didn't respond.

He bent down, broke a piece of heartwood from the ironwood's broken end, and tossed it into the rattan basket. Then he picked up the basket, preparing to head deeper into the rocky crevices.

"Wait!" Li Wangye sprang to his feet. "Where... where are you going? Collecting samples? I'll help! I know these hills behind the academy. I know where the Bristle Rat nests are!"

Lu Yuan stopped and looked back at him.

Li Wangye's gaze was eager, with a trace of panic, as though he feared he would never find Lu Yuan again if he left.

"Lead the way," Lu Yuan said.

On the way, Li Wangye opened the floodgates.

He talked about where he came from-a small village in the northern borderlands. At his Martial Soul Awakening, he had received a wood cleaver and level-two Soul Power, barely enough to cross the threshold into becoming a Soul Master. His family had pooled their money to send him to Nuoding City, hoping he would return after his studies and bring glory to the family and its ancestors.

"And this is how it turned out." Li Wangye gave a bitter smile. "A teaching assistant in the logistics office. They call me a Soul Master, but all I do is odd jobs. My Soul Power hasn't budged in three years. I'll probably be like this for the rest of my life."

His hands didn't stay idle while he spoke. He used his wood cleaver Martial Soul to hack through the vines blocking their path, his movements much smoother than before.

Lu Yuan responded occasionally.

The rocky crevices lay beneath a shaded cliff. Li Wangye made his way unerringly to several openings. "Here, and over there. Bristle Rats like nesting in places like these."

Lu Yuan crouched and took out thick leather gloves and small glass bottles.

The collection process was tedious. Bristle Rats were only Ten-Year Soul Beasts, but when startled, they would bristle their back spines, whose tips carried a weak paralytic toxin. Wearing gloves, Lu Yuan used specially made tweezers to pluck the hardest sections from the middles of the back spines, one by one.

Li Wangye watched from the side.

He noticed Lu Yuan's movements: each time he brought down the tweezers, he adjusted the angle slightly, avoiding the most fragile roots of the bristles without touching the venom glands at their tips. A thin layer of Soul Power coated the tweezer tips, just enough to steady each bristle.

His precision was frightening.

"Do you do this often?" Li Wangye couldn't help asking.

"This is my second time," Lu Yuan said. "The samples I collected last time were air-dried, so there were deviations in the data. Teacher Zhou said to collect a fresh batch and compare the decay curves."

"Teacher Zhou... the one from the Soul Beast materials laboratory?"

"Mm."

Li Wangye drew in his neck. Zhou Chun had a somewhat odd reputation at the academy. Everyone said he spent all day holed up in his laboratory, tinkering with useless data.

"Teacher Zhou is a good person," Lu Yuan said suddenly. "At least he's willing to look at the data instead of jumping to a conclusion."

Li Wangye was taken aback.

He thought of the instructors at the academy. They read straight from the books in class and used standard answers in assessments. Anyone who asked something beyond the syllabus would be reprimanded at best and have points deducted at worst. He had asked a question once, too: why could a wood cleaver Martial Soul only chop, and not thrust? The instructor had glared at him. "A wood cleaver is for chopping. Why do you have so many questions?"

After that, he stopped asking.

"Junior Lu." Li Wangye lowered his voice. "Do you think... someone like me can still be helped?"

Lu Yuan was sealing the third bottle of samples. He didn't stop, merely lifting his eyes to look at Li Wangye.

"When you were chopping the ironwood just now, how much more efficient was your fifth stroke than your first?"

"At least... thirty percent?" Li Wangye wasn't sure.

"Then you can be helped," Lu Yuan said. "Find one method, improve by thirty percent. Find ten methods, and your efficiency multiplies several times over. Cultivating Soul Power is the same-when you're stuck at a bottleneck, it's often not because you don't have enough in total, but because your circulation path is wrong."

He put the glass bottle into the rattan basket.

"Your wood cleaver Martial Soul is of ordinary quality, and your Innate Soul Power was level two. Those are objective conditions. But how you use that blade and how you circulate that bit of Soul Power are variables you can optimize."

Li Wangye stood rooted to the spot, as though nailed there.

Objective conditions. Variables. Optimization.

The words were like keys, clicking open a locked door somewhere in his heart.

By the time the sun tilted westward, Lu Yuan had collected enough samples.

There were seven or eight more glass bottles in the rattan basket. Li Wangye helped carry it as the two headed back.

As they neared the academy wall, Li Wangye slowed his steps.

"Junior Lu," he called.

Lu Yuan looked back.

Li Wangye stood there, clutching the rough paper covered in keywords. Sweat had soaked it a little soft. His lips moved, and the words rolled around in his throat several times before he managed to force them out.

"These ideas of yours... are more useful than every lesson I've ever heard."

His voice was hoarse, but every word landed solidly.

"Really." He stressed it again, as if afraid Lu Yuan wouldn't believe him. "I'll try as soon as I get back. I'll build a model and measure the data, just like you said... whether it works or not, I'll try."

Lu Yuan looked at him.

The setting sun filtered through gaps in the woods, casting alternating patches of light and shadow across Li Wangye's face. On that face, roughened by long years of toil, something was burning now-a deeper, more tenacious flame, just kindled and still carefully sheltered.

"Mm," Lu Yuan answered.

Li Wangye took two steps forward, then suddenly reached out and grabbed Lu Yuan's wrist. His grip was strong, and his palm was covered in calluses.

"In the future..." His Adam's apple bobbed. "Can I still come to you for advice? I won't ask for nothing, I... I can help you work, collect samples, organize data, anything!"

His gaze was almost pleading.

Lu Yuan was silent for a few seconds.

He thought of the darkness in Zhou Chun's laboratory, of Ning Zhishou's report, and of the words "heresy and fallacy."

Then he nodded.

"Of course."

Li Wangye's eyes reddened at once. He let go and stepped half a pace back, drawing a deep breath as though he wanted to breathe the promise into his lungs and brand it onto his heart.

"Then I... I'll head back first." His voice was a little hoarse. "The logistics office still has to inventory the materials tonight. Tomorrow, can I come find you again tomorrow?"

"All right."

Li Wangye turned and jogged toward the side gate in the wall. After a dozen or so steps, he looked back and waved, the rough paper rustling in the wind.

Lu Yuan stood where he was, watching his figure disappear into the shadow of the gateway.

The rattan basket's handle pressed into his palm, slightly warm. He looked down at the sample bottles in the basket, their glass surfaces reflecting the darkening sky.

Maybe.

He thought.

A single spark really can set the prairie ablaze. Even if, for now, it's still only a glimmer in the wind that could go out at any moment.