A veil of silence and darkness yet laid over the peaceful meadows and woods of the mountains that were home to the Lunar Peaks Sect. The sun was not yet gracing their peaks with its rays, though the moon had already left for other horizons, no longer shining its mysterious glow upon them. The first birds were crooning their melodies into the darkness, calling to a world that had yet to wake up to a new day.

Through an open window that led to an equally dark room, these melodic calls reached a youngling who, despite his previously deep sleep, noticed their touch. Slowly convincing himself to open his eyes, the youngling stared at the ceiling for a moment, his mind not yet awake enough to have him do anything else.

As it slowly returned to him who he was and what he was to do, Zixin rolled himself out of the comfortable sanctuary that was his bed and drowsily made his way across the room.

Plunging his head in the bucket of cold water that he had brought here yesterday helped him in coming to his senses quite quickly. His day was going to be busy, as all of his days had been lately, and he couldn’t let himself dally any longer. Heaving the bucket over his shoulder, he left the room.

Turning to the left, he didn’t need to walk far before reaching his first stop. Chonglin’s room was in the same dorm as his, just three doors away. Opening the door without even trying to knock, Zixin went straight in. His friend never woke up this early without Zixin lending his assistance.

Standing above the sleeping Chonglin, Zixin opened his mouth to speak, only to stop himself and close it again. An idea had bloomed in his mind, one that made him adorn his face with a wide, slightly sinister smile. Without further ceremony, he emptied his entire bucket of water on his unsuspecting victim.

The satisfying splashing sound drowned out the startled cry of his friend, and Zixin broke into loud laughter.

“What…” Chonglin made an attempt at speaking before stopping himself and loudly breathing instead. It took quite a while for him to steady himself, all the while Zixin simply couldn’t stop laughing. It wasn’t even that funny of an action, but something about his completely soaked friends face of terror and shock was just too much for him.

Several moments later, Chonglin spoke up again.

“What the hell was that for?”

“I…” Zixin broke into laughter again at his friends offended face.

“I told you not to sleep in so much.”

“As if I could help it. Look at this, everything is wet!”

There was honest despair in his voice, as if someone had just told him that a family member had died.

“Relax and get up. We have stuff to do.”

“Ugh… can’t you give me a little time?”

“We don’t have time to slack off. The competition is in less than a week. If you want to laze around, do it afterwards.”

“Okay, okay. Just give me a minute, will you?”

“I’m going to wait outside and start warming up. If you take too long, I’ll come back with a second bucket.”

With those words, Zixin turned on his heels and left his friend behind.

As soon as he was out of the dorm, Zixin broke into a light jog. Like this, he headed towards the well, where he refilled his bucket with fresh water. After making his way back, bringing the bucket to his room and meeting up with Chonglin, the two of them, jogging side by side, made their way through the still empty streets and out of the Training Hall’s premises.

While the first few sessions of the elder’s training had taken place inside the Training Hall, he had decided after a few days to relocate it to his personal residence. There, they had more space and were largely undisturbed by outsiders. The only downside was having to travel back and forth every morning and evening, something that Elder Wei had decided to treat as additional endurance training.

The residence was located on the base of the eastern mountain, while the Training Hall was located on the south-western one, similarly on the base. This meant that the way took about an hour in the morning, when they were rested and about two in the evening, when they were completely exhausted from the day of training.

…

The disciples started arriving just in time for the first rays of light to shine down on them as they gathered in front of his pagoda. Today’s first arriver was a girl by the name of Jinghua. She was amongst the oldest of the bunch, together with Zixin and Chonglin, belonging to the same generation of disciples as the two, though she was in the other class.

The reason none of the older disciples had been chosen was that Liu Wei was focusing his efforts on the categories for disciples younger that eighteen years.

Eighteen years was when most inner disciples finished the first part of the Body Reformation Realm and thus started making the physical changes to their body. It was possible to reach this point earlier than that, but it generally didn’t make sense as the bodies natural development and the manual changes induced through the usage of qi would interfere with each other.

From this point onward though, disciples could use as many resources as they had available to speed up their cultivation without any major drawbacks, which was why the differences between outer and inner disciples would quickly grow from this point onwards. Liu Wei could not yet try to compete with that, as much as he would have liked to.

Over the next couple of minutes, the other disciples arrived one after the other. Once the group was complete, Liu Wei stepped out of his Pagoda.

“Good morning, everyone.”

“Greetings, Elder Wei”, they replied, perfectly synchronized. Over the last weeks, he had managed to get them to reduce the formalities they used to a minimum. Surprisingly, it had been much more difficult than it had been with the older members.

“We will start with the training immediately. As per usual, you will begin by sparring with each other and I will offer commentary.”

They started almost every training session this way, since it allowed him to check the level that each of them was at and thus decide how they should individually progress.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Losing no time, the disciples paired up, picked up training weapons from the stash that was already prepared beside the building and started fighting.

…

Zixin let loose a flurry of slashes from all directions, increasing the pressure on his opponent, but she remained calm and concentrated while taking multiple steps backwards. A month ago, Zixin would have been delighted to see that he was pushing her back. Now he knew better.

‘There is no shame in giving up space and no gain in making an opponent do so. If your moves can be countered simply by moving backwards, you are the one loosing energy on them.’

Those were the words of Elder Wei. As he had examined his fights, he had found them to be true. As long as the opponent didn’t panic at being pushed back, it wasn’t a disadvantage to them, at least when there was no limit to space in which the fight took place.

Zixin hadn’t blindly gone for an obsolete gain though, his heavy push was part of a larger strategy he had thought out. Slowly, he slowed down his attacks, feigning exhaustion. Jinghua, who he was fighting, took the bait. Changing from her defensive stance, she moved in to attack.

This was what Zixin had waited for. Instead of stepping back to defend, he stepped forward, closing the distance between them even more. Throughout the training sessions, Zixin had worked out his strengths and weaknesses with Elder Wei’s help. Knowing them was important, since he could use that knowledge to use his strengths to their fullest potential while trying to mitigate his weaknesses.

Zixin’s main strength were his quick instincts. They were a step above all of the other disciples and aided him greatly when it came to quick exchanges, even more so in a close distance.

This was exactly the kind of situation he had just managed to enforce. Ramping up his speed again, Zixin began to mercilessly rain attacks on Jinghua, while simultaneously blocking her attacks with ease. Realizing her mistake, she tried to step out of his range. Zixin held pace with her, not letting her escape.

After thirty more seconds of brutal exchange, he finally found an opening, striking down on her hand with the handle of his sword, sending hers flying. Before she could even realize what. Had happened, he had put his wooden blade against her neck, signifying his victory.

“I yield, I yield… Ah man, I thought I had you for sure already. Good fight though, good fight.”

“Same to you. You shouldn’t have stepped in; you had the advantage while being defensive.”

“I thought I could end the fight right then and there, but you are right.”

“Well done, both of you. Especially you, Zixin, that’s why I told you controlling the fight’s flow is important.”

Elder Wei had approached the two of them while they were focused on the fight without either of them noticing.

“Jinghua, fight Chonglin. The boy needs to work on his offense a little more and you seem to not yet have learned your lesson about feints and diversions. Also eat this.”

He tossed a healing pill her way. Both she and Zixin looked confused for a while until realizing that his hit to her hand had actually drawn some blood. Elder Wei wanted them to be in perfect physical condition whenever they fought freely.

They had also done training on how to fight on when they were hurt, but since they would be able to heal themselves between battles in the competition and the fights were unlikely to go on for long if one side was already hurt, they didn’t spend much time on it.

“Zixin, you come with me. We are going to have a little spar so you can show me what you are capable of.”

Chonglin had developed his analytical thinking to an incredible degree over the training with the elder. Having switched to a spear as his main weapon, he was at all times in control of the battle-flow, able to use it both to keep his opponents at a distance and, using it like a staff, fight them in close range. He had also gotten scarily good at putting his opponents in situations they didn’t want to be in and using it to his maximal advantage.

Zixin’s little feint might have been able to fool Jinghua, but it would never have worked on Chonglin. It was so impressive that Zixin was only slightly mad at the fact that his friend had started consistently beating him in their latest spars, despite Zixin still being at a physical advantage.

“As per usual, I am going to limit myself to a level of strength and speed that is lower than yours. I want you to try beating me with all you have.”

Zixin readied himself. For a few more moments, he measured his opponent before exploding forward with an overhead slash.

Elder Wei gently took half a step to the side and angled his blade in a way that made Zixin’s slide right off to the side. Before his training with the elder, this would already have been the end. Zixin would have lost his balance and been right open to a counterattack.

Luckily, he had learned to anticipate something like this and instead turned his leftover momentum into a spin that he used to deliver a sidewards slash. Unsurprisingly, this missed the elder, who had already stepped out of the way. At least Zixin had driven him out of the range he would have needed for a counterattack.

Zixin attacked again. And then again. And again. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t land a hit on the elder, even though he was moving noticeably faster. He wasn’t frustrated at this though. He had learned early on that trying to measure himself with the elder was a foolish idea. Even without their physical difference, the man had hundreds of years of experience of fighting in actual life-or-dead battles. Instead, he needed to use this as a learning experience.

The elder wasn’t trying to defeat him. If he wanted that, he could undoubtedly do so in a matter of seconds, even while continuing to limit his strength. Instead, he was fighting Zixin to teach him.

Once he had started looking, he had found that every block, every strike, every step of the elder contained a message specifically directed at Zixin. Whether it was pointing out a mistake, informing him about a shortcoming or encouraging him to try out some new move, everything the elder did was a direct response to what Zixin had done immediately prior.

Not only was it astonishing to think just how quickly the elder must actually be thinking to tailor not only an efficient counter to Zixin’s attack but also do so in a way that specifically told him something, it also made for an incredibly efficient training method. Each and every spar that Zixin had with the elder would result in a noticeable improvement of his swordsmanship and also help him grow further in the following spars with other disciples.

As Zixin immersed himself in these messages and the fight went on, he could literally feel himself improve. The spar must have gone on for ten minutes or more until Zixin felt like he couldn’t absorb any more knowledge for now. Panting heavily, he lowered his sword.

“You have stopped. Why?”

“I felt like I couldn’t learn any more from the fight for now.”

“That is all well and good, but I also gave you an assignment, didn’t I? I told you to try your best to defeat me.”

“I… I did though. I thought that it was clear that going on for longer wouldn’t have changed anything about the outcome.”

“Interesting. Why is that?”

“I couldn’t hit you, no matter how hard I tried. I also couldn’t tire you out, because even though you limited yourself to an inferior physique, your movements were much more efficient than mine. As such, the logical conclusion to this fight was my defeat.”

“Your logic is sound and you are also correct about how this fight would have ended. There is still a lesson I want to teach you here though. Giving up is a natural part of life. If there is a task that you feel you can’t complete despite all effort or that the effort it would take to complete the task wouldn’t be worth it, giving up is usually the right course of action, given that your calculations are correct.

This doesn’t apply to a fight though. A fight is a situation where you can either win or lose, there is no in between. Losing usually means death. While this doesn’t apply to mock fights, we take those to prepare ourselves for actual combat so the logic should stay the same.

Death is the ultimate equalizer. No matter what you had in life, death means that you will lose it all. Thus, giving up in combat is never an option. No matter how small your chance of winning might be, you have only lost once you are either dead or have given up. Fleeing or negotiating a surrender are different things, but giving up is never an option you should give yourself in combat. Never.

In this training environment it is acceptable, since it could equally be characterized as a surrender, but if you ever find yourself in an actual combat situation, which is very likely to happen eventually, remember to never give up as long as you are still breathing.”

“… I understand, elder. Thank you for your lesson.”

“It is my pleasure. Once you are recovered, you should go fight Chonglin. As you are now, I would wager my guess that you can beat him. Once that has happened, send him to me, I’m going to spar with him.”