Tian let the dart slide from his sleeve. It still felt utterly amazing to use, but there were people around so he controlled his reaction. He let it hang just off the ground, then gave it a light kick. The heavy head swung forward and up, and Tian flowed with it. The moves weren’t explosive, and lacked the spearlike, thrusting quality of his usual moves. Instead, each swing moved like a reaching hand, or a waving branch. Not trying to pierce, but wrap. The moves looked slow, because on Tian’s end of the rope, they were slow. They were a lot more dramatic at the dart end.
Snapping like a viper, wrapping like a vine, softly yielding to any touch but never letting go. He didn’t rush forward; he seeped, like water silently spilling from an over-full tub and soaking the carpet. His movements felt inexorable, that he was inescapable, that by being near him, you were trapped by him, wrapped by him, drowning in him.
Liren stormed onto the practice ground. Her snake head spear stabbed out with blinding speed, retracted, then she shifted position on light feet and struck again. Never still, always on the attack. Pure attack, with every step a move for advantage. No tricks, only subtlety within simplicity. Each attack came at a fatal angle, each chosen to make defense or counterattack nearly impossible.
The essence of the spear was in the thrust; Liren had told him that often enough. She was surely proving it now. It was yang made manifest- rigid, piercing, moving with explosive speed. Tian leaned into the yin, accepting everything that came, but never letting it leave. When the spear came too close, his rope wrapped around it. Liren tugged once, then reversed direction and charged in. Tian drifted back, while the rope twisted around them like a living creature. A fierce punch shot out, right for the point of his chin.
“I win.” Tian smiled. He was bent almost in half, as though the punch had landed and knocked his head off. But his foot had whipped up and around, stopping just on the point of Liren’s chin. He looked alarmingly boneless, standing on one leg, back bent almost ninety degrees backwards as the other leg came up into a near-vertical split.
There was a slow, horrified clap from the edge of the ring. “You guys threw the tournament. You fought above your level, won the whole damn thing, and still threw the tournament.” Wang looked like he was questioning his life.
“No, not really.” Tian murmured.
“Yes, absolutely.” Liren nodded.
“Liren. Sister Subtlety. I was trying to do the polite lying thing.”
“Why? They are good brothers and sisters.” Hong shrugged.
“Point.” Tian had to admit she was right. It was just that standing out too much felt a bit uncomfortable. Which, when he properly thought about it, was ridiculous to worry about now.
Wang and Su shared a look, then Su minutely shook her head. “You are stronger now. Sister Hong especially, but you too, Brother Tian. It seems you are fully recovered.”
Tian and Hong shared a look. “I’m really not. Neither is Liren.”
“No, really, you two look like death on four legs.” Brother Wang spread his palms, then slowly closed his fists. “You seem to have completely grasped your martial arts, including the esoteric meaning within them.”
Tian considered that carefully, and decided such a profound statement merited a sophisticated answer. “Eh?”
Liren gave him a disgusted look. He gave her a dark look right back.
“Oh, and can you explain what ‘esoteric meaning’ means?”
“No, but that’s no reason to throw our face by not lying about it. Shameful. Do not speak to me in public, I do not know the uneducated.” Liren sniffed and turned away.
Tian looked over to Sister Su for support. “Sister Su, wouldn’t you agree that ignorance of the ignorant is ignorance three times over? Surely she would be the uneducated person here?”
“An interesting question- is ignorance additive or exponential? In any case, what Husband Wang was referring to was what might be considered the main difference in Earthly Realm arts. At least in differentiating the good from the bad.”
Tian perked up. He had definitely noticed a difference in quality between arts like Light Body Heavy Hands and Imperial Heavenly Swallows. One might have been written by a thug, while the other was written by a sage. The difference in results was equally wide. Light Body had been an adequate if ordinary light body art. It was perfect for him at the time- he picked it up very quickly, a vital quality since he was heading for the battlefield.
Heavenly Swallows, on the other hand, gave him darts he could control with his mind, sending them out and calling them back as though they were extensions of himself. There was the minor issue of cost, complexity, a basic cultivation period that stretched for several years before even initial mastery could be reached and the sheer danger of the cultivation method itself, but other than that, it really was a staggeringly powerful art. He tended to end fights with his Heavenly Swallows before the enemy knew the battle had begun.
“Please, Sister, say more.”
“Our daoist arts are made by careful study of the world and ourselves, leveraging the flow of vital energy through our bodies, and particularly our meridians and acupoints, to achieve specific results. However, it is extremely difficult to record in writing what one has learned and experienced with their bodies. So good arts are written in such a way that they communicate that feeling.”
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Sister Su stopped there. It was apparently all that needed to be said. Tian felt like there should probably be more, but judging from his Senior Sister’s expression, he was wrong. He therefore nodded appreciatively, then looked over at Brother Wang. Brother Wang smiled awkwardly and rubbed the back of his head.
“Sis’ Su explained the gist of it, honestly. Mmm. Let’s see. Are you still firmly against analogies?”
“Is it a common one?”
“Not really.”
“Then they are not to be trusted. I only tolerate the common analogies because I have memorized what people are actually saying when they talk nonsense.” Tian folded his arms. He was unshakable in his belief that people should just say what they meant.
Brother Wang spread his hands and looked heavenward. “You know the core skill of learning is understanding by analogy, right?”
“I do not.”
“Right. Yes. Not sure what I thought was going to happen there.” Wang muttered. “Anyway. You create an art. Let’s use my “Mountain Stamp” technique as an example. You know the route the vital energy has to flow through, but it’s not that simple. There is a rhythm to it. A timing, a way of moving, that raises the art from usable, to powerful, to dominant. You know how to use it perfectly, because you are the one who invented it. But I, reading what you wrote hundreds or thousands of years later, might not pick any of that up if you say ‘Stand tall but balanced and hit hard while reserving control. But only do it when you should do that.’ Those words could mean a lot of things to a lot of people, right?”
“Sure.” Tian agreed. He noticed Hong minutely nodding too.
“Well, what if, instead, you wrote “Embody Mount Emi. Endure the seasons unwavering, until the thaw melts the ice and collapses upon the enemy.” That would be, from your perspective, absolute gibberish, right?”
Tian smiled. “Brother Wang understands me well.”
“Mount Emi is a tallish mountain with a wide base. It is notorious for its spring avalanches which are incredibly lethal for those traveling on or near the mountain. Yet, despite all the tumbling ice and snow, the mountain itself does not move. It remains firmly rooted in the ground. So I should be like the mountain, planted in a wide stance but with upright posture, and rather than attacking randomly, I should wait patiently for the opportunity to make a devastating strike, and it should be when the enemy is practically on top of me. As for the distribution of force, strike fast and hard, but without losing that wide stance. Maintain the balance over my feet, not in the hammer blow.”
“That… still seems likely to be misunderstood.” Tian gave Wang a searching look. He wouldn’t, in a million years, have picked up on all that.
“Right, it definitely can. Which is why people spend ages trying to understand the authors, understand the art, trying to get a feel of the images, meditate on them, all that. Digging out all the hidden meanings. Which is what ‘esoteric’ literally means, a hidden or obscure meaning, known only to a few.” Wang’s smile slid sideways into a half grin.
“Ah. We have stumbled onto a truth of our fighting arts that we had, until now, not understood.” Tian nodded, finally getting it.
“Yep. More accurately, you are finally using them the way their authors intended. The art didn’t change, you are just, for the very first time, using it to its full effect.”
Sister Su nodded and jumped back in at this point. “The scripture pavilion keeps and maintains all the arts that are submitted to it, but the ones we consider worth promoting are ones that carry the strongest traces of a particular dao path. While there isn’t necessarily a causal link between degree of daoist truth in an art and its combat effectiveness, the Chief Librarian’s seminal monograph Guarding Against Tigers on the Way, includes a remarkable statistical analysis of more than eight thousand combat arts demonstrating a high degree of correlation.”
Tian had to spend a moment working out what she meant, but eventually nodded. “My way of fighting was too yang for what the creator of Snake Head Vine Body intended. I’m not laughing, but that’s hilarious.”
“And my Fairy Maiden From a Fiery Star Spearplay is intensely yang oriented, but it seems I wasn’t going hard enough into it. Which is, equally, hilarious.” Hong’s voice sounded a bit hollow.
Tian had a different idea, but it was absurd so he kept his mouth shut. Still… Sis’ Liren had filled out nicely since she had absorbed some of his yin. What if the problem wasn’t the fire, but the fairy maiden?
They looked at each other. “Moon Crossing the Lake?” Tian asked.
Liren hummed her agreement and started following the footwork. Tian did the same. Their movements were subtly different to how they were the day before. They had already grasped the muscular control, but now they tried to grasp the concept behind it. Liren was able to gently flow, her steps becoming illusive, her posture deceptively still even as she drifted over the grass in the Wang family courtyard. Tian, however, took the art to a new level.
Tian floated over the grass, moving like a ghost without bending a single blade. Liren tried to dodge him, but for some reason she kept finding Tian wherever she turned. He gently put the back of his wrists against the inside of her wrists, his ankle to hers, and let himself flow. It was the same as yesterday, but-
“Oh. Oh heavens. How are you doing that?” Liren sounded somewhere between moved and horrified.
“The moon crossing the lake is intangible, but inescapable, never where you are looking, but always in front of you. Whether it’s running towards the moon or away, you can only drown.” Tian murmured. “And, on a more practical level, I’m relaxed, and letting you do the work. My senses are entirely focused on you. The wind of your movement, the warmth of your skin, the sunny smell of you-”
Liren jumped back. “AND THAT is quite enough of that!”
Tian blinked “Pardon?”
“You can’t just go and say those kinds of things! And you know it perfectly well!”
“I do?” Tian blinked.
“You, you… you!” Liren’s hand’s convulsed. “How long are you going to pretend that human speech is a mystery to you?”
“Pretend?” Tian tilted his head to the side and blinked his wide eyes slowly.
Liren nodded thoughtfully. “I’d start running if I were you.”
“No need. I think I just figured something out. Hey, Brother Wang?”
“Yes?” The big man was sharing some roasted sunflower seeds with Su and plainly enjoying a show.
“Is there a lake or river near?”
“There is a pond just behind the north building, why?”
Tian just smiled and drifted away from his watching siblings. He didn’t look like he was moving fast, but it took barely three breaths for him to reach the pond. When his siblings caught up, they found him drifting over the surface of the water, smiling like a duck.