Pengfei was holding a wooden sword when the first snowflake of the season fell. He saw the insubstantial speck of white dissolve on the stone tile by his feet, then looked up to the sky. Another one landed on his cheek and melted against the warmth of his skin.

  “Snow…”

  “Don’t get used to it. It doesn’t snow often.” Neng held his hand to catch a few snowflakes of his own.

  “Why not? It’s cold enough for it nine months out of the year.”

  “We’re between the Tibetan steppe and the Taklamakan Desert. It’s fucking dry. Now, come on.”

  Neng raised his own practice weapon and held it in front of himself. Pengfei mirrored his stance and shuffled slowly around his opponent. Dozens of other pairs faced off in their own bouts.

  Pengfei made a shallow step accompanied by a clumsy chop to his opponent’s wrist but only hit air. Neng had not even bothered to dodge the attack. Instead, he lazily raised his sword and tapped Pengfei on top of the head.

  “Shit.”

  “Your sense of distance is – “

  “I just said it. Shit.”

  “Yeah. So, I’m going to – “

  “Go ahead.” Pengfei gave his friend permission to move on to more capable sparring partners.

  Neng readily found an eager opponent, once again making something abundantly clear. It was a phenomenon Pengfei had noticed again and again since joining the other disciples for weapon training. While Neng was a very good fist fighter, he was even a step beyond that when it came to the sword. The disciples who took their training seriously would clamor over each other to be paired with him.

  Pengfei was even more grateful than before for his friend’s condescension but it was also a little disheartening. Sparring with one of the most skilled opponents of his generation only battered his self-esteem even more.

  Any sense of progress that he had accumulated during bare-handed training was washed away the moment he awkwardly held a wooden practice weapon. And though his neigong practice had borne some fruit and he was now a 3rd Rate, that advancement hadn’t effected the ‘Swift Dragon Lightning Sword’.

  He looked for a new partner but the other disciples were either occupied by ongoing matches or avoided the gaze of the hapless beginner. Before he could approach one of them and force the issue, an adult voice called out from across the yard.

  “Pengfei, go practice on the ropes.”

  “Yes, Elder Weidao.”

  He bowed slightly to the head of the Scripture Hall, who now presided over the sword training in the afternoons. The man stood at his usual place, side by side with Chen Rulan, and critiquing everyone within his view.

  Elder Weidao seemed to pay special attention to his subordinate, Neng, during the exercise. While most of the Kunlun disciples were berated for the little mistakes, for Neng it was helpful suggestions on patterns of attack or a begrudging approval of one tactic or another.

  Pengfei’s recent training had been more rudimentary. It usually involved being sent to practice at the ropes, several small wooden balls suspended by cords from the eaves of a nearby building. A beginner’s exercise that had been seen little use until Pengfei started to practice the jian.

  --Distance, distance, distance.-- Pengfei recited to himself, taking his stance in front of dangling objects. The wooden balls swayed gently in the breeze.

  A breath. A swing. A miss.

  “Shit.”

  Again and again. Half the time it was the wind, and half the time it was his misjudged range, but Pengfei did nothing but miss.

  The aim was to hit the wooden ball with just the tip of the sword. According to Chen Weidao, all the lethal work should be done with the last few finger-widths of the blade. But even making contact with the most basic strike, a straight up-and-down swing, was still beyond Pengfei’s abilities.

  His feet, the angle of his body, his grip on the sword, it all felt alien and uncomfortable. Swordsmanship was worlds apart from the bare-handed techniques he had learned thus far. Except for a few very general commonalities, it was all new material. And where he had some sort of instinct for fist-fighting, there was no such intuition for swordplay.

  The rest of the practice session passed slowly. Chen Weidao eventually grew frustrated at watching the disciples’ fumbling attempts at sparring and called a halt to it. Elder Rulan ordered the boys to line up again. The old men walked up and down the rows as the pupils thrust and slashed their weapons through the air, displaying the first form of the ‘Swift Dragon Lighting Sword’.

  Chen Rulan used his scabbard to slap arms and legs into position. Pengfei now knew that the elder’s sheath didn’t hold a sword at all, but a bar mace. A solid iron rod meant to break and bludgeon, not to cut.

  Elder Weidao’s corrections were more nuanced. A devoted practitioner of the blade, he was overflowing with adjustments and condemnations, a departure from his usually taciturn nature.

  Unfortunately, Rulan reached Pengfei first. The mace clacked against the inside of the elder’s scabbard as the man beat Pengfei’s thighs and slapped the underside of his sword arm.

  “Ah, damn it!”

  When Weidao passed a moment later, he reached out and lowered the tip of Pengfei’s weapon ever so slightly, then moved on.

  The bell for dinner rang and the orderly ranks of disciples collapsed into a mob, jockeying to reach the weapon racks, replace their instruments, and rush to the Dining Hall.

  Pengfei held back as the others rushed about. Nanxi spotted him and paused on the way to the evening meal.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I’ll be there in a little while.”

  Nanxi shrugged and moved along with the rest of the Jin generation.

  Pengfei took his practice sword and walked back to the ropes.

  --Distance, distance, distance.--

  It was a concept that Chen Rulan had stressed the importance of recently, and Chen Weidao had reiterated. Knowing your range. Your opponent’s range. The exact step needed to reach your opponent.

  Swing after swing. His success rate was low. Frustration reached a tipping point.

  “Screw this!”

  He stomped off to place his wooden sword on the weapon rack with the rest and then walked towards the Dining Hall. As he passed the hanging balls again, he took an angry swing at one with his bare fist.

  His blow made a precise and satisfying clack against the little wooden object. Good contact, with the correct knuckles, at the very last reach of his strike. Just as it should be.

  --Ooh.--

  Pengfei’s previous consternation disappeared immediately. He forgot the evening meal and stood in front of the crude apparatus in his proper fighting stance.

  Another strike, and it landed again. But not to his satisfaction.

  --A little bit too close.--

  He moved back a hair and tried again. Took a step to the right and tried again. Lunged backward and forwards and tried again.

  The sun set as Pengfei threw the same punch over and over. And more often than not, the wooden ball went flying with a small crack.

  ******************************************************************************

  The new schedule for the disciples had affected their free time as well. Now they had a half day each week instead of a full day every two weeks. Pengfei preferred it this way. A leisurely breakfast, a couple hours of lessons, another hour of reading Taoist scriptures, then lunch.

  From there, the afternoon was usually wide open, but today Pengfei had appointments to attend.

  Once again, he found himself in the Medicine Hall. Chen Lei had become his de facto neigong tutor, the position solidified when he had rushed to Pengfei’s aid recently. Elder Lei had made light of the incident, saying it had not been threatening at all, but the disciple still shuddered at the memory of the fire burning uncontrollably in his body the day he collapsed outside the sect grounds.

  The elder was lecturing to his handful of medical students but cut his words short when he turned and saw Pengfei enter the room. He waved his hands and the other disciples dispersed to carry out whatever duties they had been assigned.

  “Come this way, Pengfei.”

  Chen Lei led the way to his small private room, bare except for an unlit lamp and some cushions on the floor. The room where all their Neigong lessons took place. It provided the necessary quiet and seclusion.

  “Where did we leave off last time?”

  “The Five Major Organs, sir.”

  “Yes, yes. Let’s begin.”

  Teacher sat behind student, placed a palm upon the boy’s back. But the man just observed as Pengfei circulated his own internal energy.

  Things were going more smoothly now. He moved his qi along the Great Circuit formed by the Governing and Conception meridians, through the Heart Meridian and then to the Small Intestine meridian, and finally back into his dantian.

  “Again.”

  Chen Lei’s voice sounded distant as Pengfei focused on his internal world, but the instruction still reached the boy’s consciousness. He obeyed, moving the energy through dozens of cycles under the supervision of the elder.

  “Now the Liver Meridian.”

  Pengfei searched the channels within himself.

  --It’s … there.--

  He guided his qi to the appropriate vessel and felt it move along the new pathway, corresponding to another of the major organs. Like all the other vessels he had studied so far, the Liver Meridian had a far-reaching path, running up and down both legs. As the qi moved, Pengfei could feel the muscles on the front of his thigh tingle and burn, enervated and strengthened slightly with each revolution.

  “Good. Now follow the Liver with the Gall Bladder.”

  The effects were even more expansive now, running along the sides of his body from head to toe.

  “That’s enough for today.”

  Chen Lei’s voice called an end to the cultivation. Pengfei centered himself, breathing slowly and letting the qi return to a natural and stable rhythm in his core. The internal world slowly faded away and he opened his eyes to the material plane.

  “Elder, why are the meridians paired up the way they are? Heart with small intestine, live to gall-bladder.”

  “The organs exist in pairs of Yin and Yang. You practice them this way in order to maintain balance.”

  Pengfei stood from his meditative position and offered a helping hand to the elder, but it was brushed away.

  “Shouldn’t I focus more on Yang for martial arts?”

  “Maybe. Yang is aggression, strength, fire. Some styles focus almost exclusively on the Yang. But most of Kunlun’s arts, especially the fundamental ones, are more balanced.”

  “I see.”

  After the peace and quiet of the small meditative chamber, the larger clinic seemed a bustle of activity, even with the scant few disciples present.

  “Now, for your end of the bargain.” Chen Lei said, the called out to the other boys. “Gather around everyone!”

  --…Shit. I was hoping he had forgotten that part.--

  Pengfei reluctantly removed his shirt and laid face down on a bed that the doctor indicated. He could feel the students of the Medicine Hall surrounding him.

  “He has just circulated energy through the Heart, Small Intestine, Liver, and Gall Bladder Meridians, so those acupoints should be especially responsive. Does everyone have their needles?”

  Murmurmed assents from the others and Pengfei squeezed his eyes shut tight, and trying not to imagine the little slivers of metal that would soon be piercing his skin.

  --I hate needles!--

  Pengfei nervously squeezed the bedding underneath himself as Chen Lei spoke again.

  “I’ll demonstrate first, then the rest of you will replicate.”

  The physician was quiet adept but the little pinpricks could not be totally ignored. To distract himself, Pengfei considered the ‘Nine Chapters of the Mathematical Art’, the formulas for summation.

  --What if I only wanted to sum the odd numbers between one and a thousand? Even numbers, divisible by two… take out the two and we’re left with just one to five hundred… can use the base formula…--

  “FUCK!” Pengfei yelped as one of his peers attempted to place a needle in an acupoint of the lower back.

  Chen Lei gently slapped the back of the patient’s head. “Hush.”

  --…--

  --… So it would be five hundred times five hundred and one…--

  “Fuck! Watch it!”

  ******************************************************************************

  The morning run and calisthenics had depleted Pengfei’s reserves of energy, and breakfast had done little to restore them. So, the time spent with the Discipline Hall was especially difficult.

  “You’re all working so hard, my boys! Excellent!” Chen Ji said merrily. “I’m pleased you’re all acclimating so well.”

  The elder’s face was a smiling mask that was a stark contrast to the disciples. There were seven of them, stretched out over the paving stones in front of the Discipline Hall. Their shirts were cast off to the side and they propped themselves up on their hands and toes, holding at the top of a push-up. Each boy had a bowl full of incense sticks burning underneath their torso, the smoldering points threatening to burn their flesh if their posture relaxed too much.

  “Our Hall is well named. Each one of us requires discipline. And strength. But don’t worry, it’s alright if you don’t have these attributes yet my boys! They can be learned. We will get there together.”

  Chen Ji’s voice was as sweet as the look on his face.

  --This guy’s mood swings don’t seem to affect his training assignments. They’re always sadistic!--

  A drop of sweat fell from Pengfei’s brow and joined a puddle on the ground beneath his face as his entire body quivered. His belly sank, fraction by fraction toward the glowing, smoking, incense sticks.

  --No, no, no, NO!--

  He tried to throw himself to the side as he collapsed but couldn’t avoid the little spears completely. His skin brushed the lit end of the incense, and the smell of burnt flesh joined the woody aroma already in the air.

  “Fuck!” he cursed underneath his breath.

  Chen Ji made his way to Pengfei’s side, knelt beside the disciple.

  “Don’t worry, you’re doing well Pengfei. Your brothers are also struggling. It might help to distract yourself. Think of something else.”

  “Ugh… yes, sir.”

  The elder gently pushed Pengfei over on his side and guided the disciple back into position above the incense sticks. When the boy’s butt climbed too high, Chen Ji smacked the raised backside with the scabbard of the sword he wore, then circled around the other disciples and spoke to the group as a whole.

  “Don’t worry. Once you lot build up your bodies a bit, we’ll be able to move on to more fun things. Just a couple months.”

  “Ahhh!” The boys collectively screamed with the effort of exercise and anguish at the elder’s timeline.

  --Two months of this!? I can’t – no, think of something else--

  He counted the seconds in his head but found the passage of time agonizingly slow.

  --What else? Uh… the horses! The Sect Leader’s proposal… it’s impossible. The old man is delusional… too expensive.--

  Pengfei had drawn up some preliminary figures already. The Scripture Hall had been surprisingly helpful. In the selection of books, there were some that had pertained to animal husbandry. Some passages in ‘Essential Techniques for the Common People’ had given him a better picture of the supplies necessary for the upkeep and expansion of a herd.

  It would require an exorbitant sum of money.

  Another book had mentioned the legendary Bo Le, a man of the distant past who had sought the fabled Thousand-Li Horse, a mount that could travel the eponymous distance in a single day. He’d only skimmed that text, not bothering to waste his time on such flights of fancy.

  --Guess it’d be nice to be able to cross all of China in a fortnight though.--

  Pengfei’s body began to quake again, and he started to dip toward the incense once more. Before skin could touch heat, Chen Ji was there. He unsheathed his sword and held the edge up to Pengfei’s belly, threatening to cut into the boy if he dropped any lower.

  “Get. Your. Fucking. Stomach. Up.”

  --Ah, there he is.--

  Pengfei screwed his eyes against the effort and straightened his body.