But the raging waves of Bai Guo's fighting spirit could do nothing but harmlessly crash against his master's impenetrable defense. And any time he had deigned to slow down to ponder a different approach, the woman's branch struck him where it hurt, spurring him to retaliate once more.

The mounting pain and fatigue caused Bai Guo to adopt an increasingly meeker posture until he was soon no longer attacking at all, but merely attempting to weather the storm.

"I always noticed that master's arms were pretty long," Bai Guo thought, his body ducking and weaving to avoid the blows, and yet receiving every last one of them. "But now that I'm on the receiving end of them, they just feel endless! I can't even get near her! This isn't fair!"

The Golden Witch, meanwhile, seemed to be having the time of her life swatting her angry disciple with her stick.

"You can't expect the enemy to stop for no reason!" The Golden Witch called out, the beating proceeding without pause. "Fight back! Force me to defend myself!"

But things had quickly deteriorated to the point where Bai Guo was outright running away from his master's stick.

After getting beaten black and blue, Bai Guo's first day of training had finally come to a close.

The Golden Witch smiled at his crumbled form. "Go rest. We'll go again tomorrow."

The next morning, Bai Guo was shaken awake from a dreamless sleep. His body hurt all over, and he had given up all hope of getting through the day before they even stepped foot into the cave. Nevertheless, he pressed on.

He began to take his seat on the ground, flinching and hissing all the way down as though he was getting submerged in hot water, bit by bit allowing his body to adjust to the discomfort of his shifting posture. As he had set about performing the breathing exercise, to his surprise, Bai Guo felt his pains lessening bit by bit.

...Or so it had been during the brief periods of time where his master allowed him to remain undisturbed, before once again paralyzing most of his body with a touch for mistakes he could barely comprehend.

Though his allotted time slowly grew over the successive attempts, it could still be measured in mere minutes.

By noon, the burdens of his aching flesh had been greatly relieved. Bai Guo hadn't even thought to link this development to the peculiar breathing exercise and instead ascribed it to the hours of rest borne from sitting around since morning.

The Golden Witch continued to deliver an overabundance of food for the disciple's meals, each one brought in on a new kind of tray and bowls of ever changing make.

"Master..." Bai Guo began again. "You're really stealing them, aren't you...?"

The Golden Witch rolled her eyes. "I should start timing your meals. I think you'd be less inclined to complain then."

The young man sighed. "At least let me know which establishments you're getting these from. I'll pay them back after I win."

"You have until I count to one hundred. One, two..."

Bai Guo lunged at his food as though he had witnessed it attempting a getaway. With her message received, his master stopped her count at ten and allowed him finish in peace.

Then came the tedious hours of swordplay, followed by the beatings that the Golden Witch called combat training.

His master, so irritable and unforgiving in the mornings, became a no less of a cruel taskmaster by the evenings, yet one that grinned ear to ear to the ceaseless irritation of the struggling disciple. Bai Guo was driven solely by the desire to wipe that smirk off her face.

...But it was to no avail.

Their days together continued uninterrupted. Bai Guo finally began to form something of a fighting style of his own. The Golden Witch's relentless bullying gave birth to a swordplay that was highly defensive, deliberately measured, endlessly patient, deft and agile, an in-and-out style that bordered on the outright cowardly, an approach to combat where an attack was nothing more than another form of defense, just a trick served to distract and buy the fighter a few precious moments of safety.

"That’s enough for today." The Golden Witch declared. Bai Guo yearned for those words each and every single day. He collapsed to the ground and simply breathed. Taking a brief rest in such a fashion had become something of a daily ritual. The tall woman observed his crumbled figure with a small smile.

To Bai Guo's surprise, on this particular day, his master deigned to lie down beside him. Immediately, half of his ritual had been interrupted - the young man stopped breathing, so conscious he had suddenly become of her proximity. The Golden Witch elevated her head on her hand, her golden eyes studying the young man from above.

"Do you like it?" The next words out of her mouth dumbfounded him even more.

He swallowed heavily before asking, "What do you mean, master?"

The Golden Witch seemed mystified by his confusion. "The training."

Bai Guo sighed heavily, throwing his head back. "Are you kidding me? Every day I spend hurting and exhausted. Which part of this am I supposed to enjoy?"

The young man then continued to enjoy his little rest. The Golden Witch stared at him for a while longer, her golden eyes perplexed. She stood up and set about putting out their lanterns and torches. It was a clear, cloudless night; a full moon shone brightly in the sky. Its reflection in the surface of the pond illuminated the cavern with a pale blue glow.

Their eyes were drawn to the water. As the Golden Witch approached the lake, Bai Guo found himself staring at her radiant figure of white and gold.

Bai Guo approached her. "Master, I didn't mean to sound ungrateful. It's not that I don't appreciate your efforts, but... it's just that..."

"Don't worry about it." She interrupted him.

The young man failed to discern anything from her composed expression. He sighed. "You're not offended?"

She shook her head. "No. I understand. It's just... I just love it so much. It's all I can think about."

Bai Guo was taken aback once more. "...Our training?"

"Martial arts." Their eyes met. Her golden ones shone like two miniature suns. "Every part of it, and as it turns out, including the training we do here too. I just never expected that this would be part of it. But watching you fight, seeing you make mistakes and watching your swordplay subtly shift as you comprehend your own shortcoming and try to learn from them, that's fascinating to me. And the way I can affect those changes by varying up my own fighting style... I can mold you any way I like. It's just amazing. Teaching you the right things, making sure you don't pick up any bad habits, guiding you along the right path; it's like its own little game. And even in just this small aspect of it all, the permutations seem endless. It turns out that there is yet another part to it that I could dedicate my entire life towards and perhaps still never master completely. The more I learn, the more there is to learn. It's all just so exhilarating..."

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Her frantic speech ended with an elated sigh. The Golden Witch turned her dovelike gaze back to the lake. Her surging passions gradually cooled.

Bai Guo couldn't pry his eyes away from her. During their adventures, he would, on rare occasions, catch glimpses of her obsession, but he had never seen it as unrestrained as it was now. A whirlwind of emotions, an inexplicable fear chief among them, kept him helplessly mute. He had always been frustrated by her mysterious airs, and yet when faced with the opportunity to unravel some of the mystery, he found himself unwilling.

Suddenly, the Golden Witch spoke again.

"We just enjoy different things." She seemed to conclude the subject. Her words snapped him back to reality. "I'm not so petty as to hold that against you."

They watched the moon in silence for a time. The Golden Witch turned to her disciple and asked for his sword.

Bathed in moonlight, her white robed shape went through the motions of the first two of the Fifteen Heroic Sword Steps. But suddenly, her stance shifted; she performed a move that Bai Guo had never shown her.

The young man's eyes widened as she performed a dozen different sword strikes, concluding with the third step that Bai Guo had demonstrated previously.

"Those stances...! It's just like my father showed me back when I was a kid! Only the order is different. But how...? Where did you learn this, master?"

"I thought about the moves you showed me and improvised the rest." The Golden Witch explained. "I doubt they're completely accurate. You've perhaps simply forgotten some of the details. But I believe it should be about correct. It just makes sense to link them this way."

Bai Guo opened his mouth to offer some praise, but the words died on his tongue. His lip trembled.

The Golden Witch continued. "The first step is always the same - a quick, efficient opener. The third step, as you know it, is always the last. However, the remaining twelve all flow almost freely into one another. It's a clever, versatile set of strikes."

Bai Guo averted his gaze. "But in the end, they're all useless, as you said. Maybe if he had done as you taught me and mastered just one of them... Maybe then he wouldn't have died..."

His master offered him back his sword. "Your father may not have taught you all of them, but he had given you enough for you to figure out the rest on your own. He didn't leave you with just this sword alone..."

Gritting his teeth, Bai Guo hesitantly took back his father's sword. "Master..."

"...He also left you with a legacy."

Bai Guo listened to her words with a deep frown. "And what good is this legacy to me?" He spat. "Even though my father could wield these moves freely, he was still killed at the whim of some no name vagabond."

Bai Guo's eyes flashed with fury. His knuckles turned white as he fiercely gripped the sword.

"I set out on this journey so that I wouldn't be doomed to repeat his mistakes! So that my life and the lives of those precious to me would be firmly in my own hands! Next time, I'll slay the bastard right then and there, not weeks later, when it's too late to make any difference!"

He seemed a hair away from smashing the blade against the hard ground. But as he stared at the sword, his ire grew impotent. Tears began to well in his eyes.

Just as his expression was about to crumble completely, he bowed before the golden haired woman.

"Master...! I'm sorry!" Bai Guo pleaded with a quivering voice. Tears wetted the stone beneath his feet. "Please forgive this lowly, useless disciple! I... I will have to disobey you again! To honor my father's memory, I will have to go against your teachings and split my martial focus! Though these moves may be useless, they are all that I have left of him!"

The Golden Witch offered a little smile.

"Just what am I going to do with this disciple of mine?" She questioned with a sigh, not a single note of chastisement in her voice. "I don't resent you for our differences, Bai Guo. As long as you promise to treat me the same way, you can do as you like."

"Master..." Bai Guo choked up.

"Just do me a little favor and hold off on that until you've won, okay?" She added.

"Yes!"

From the following day, Bai Guo redoubled his efforts.

As the day of the preliminaries approached, their frantic pace became manageable. Bai Guo's cultivation could go on uninterrupted for well over an hour. No longer forced to fight on the brink of exhaustion, he began to refine his style.

But there was simply too little time.

Their final day was dedicated to rest and recuperation.

As Bai Guo prepared to leave, he bowed to his master in her room. The wooden token that identified him as a participant of the preliminary round was strapped to his shoulder.

"As we've discussed," The Golden Witch said. "We shall be keeping our distance until it's over. They can't catch on to the fact that you don't intend to join them."

"I'm sorry that I won't be able to pay proper respects to you in the battles to come." He apologized.

"You can make up for it by bringing me gold." The Golden Witch waved her sleeve.

"Yes, master!"

Their farewells complete, Bai Guo set off towards the tallest mountain to join the qualifiers.

But as the golden eyes saw him off, they glinted with mischief. Shortly after the disciple had departed, the master, too, had taken her leave.