The next few days, Alistair’s training was focused almost entirely on technique and mastery of fundmentals. He still participated in half of the physical training, but he was allowed more breaks than the other yellow headbands. Alistair had the feeling that they weren’t thrilled about that. And he himself hated that he was getting easy treatment. But there were bodily limits. If he went too hard, he wouldn’t be able to maximize his progress.
Part of the reason Alistair had to take it easy physically was that he could only tolerate a lower dose of the herbal tea, due to the massive treatment they gave him after his intensive training with Pike.
That didn’t mean he didn’t train hard in other ways. He took part in the technique lessons and sparring, and attacked Pike every day without fail. He was finally getting Pike to dodge and defend his blows, though the young master only needed the slightest adjustments of his feet and a single carefree hand to defend Alistair’s all-out attacks that in a real fight would have left him open to innumerable counters.
Even his body was improving. After that minor blip of overtraining where he physically shrunk, he was gaining muscle mass at an inhuman pace. Pike told him that it was a combination of his body reacclimating to its previous state as well as the secret foods and techniques of the Silver Comet Sect that had been passed down for a hundred generations.
Oliver adjusted nicely. He had no inherent talent for martial arts and was far behind even the lowest white belts, but he was learning faster than Alistair would have thought. The Silver Comet Sect were excellent teachers. The Necromancer would easily have beaten everyone except trained fighters in the old world.
After two weeks, Alistair was thankfully back into the normal yellow headband routine, though he wasn’t allowed to do the sledgehammer part of the toughness instruction, only the barehanded part.
As strength returned to his limbs, Alistair’s training with Pike grew more fierce. In his thirteenth day of training, he gave the tall man his first nose bleed with a disguised spinning backfist. Of course, at any time, he could have blocked any and all of Alistair’s attacks; he only let a certain number of attacks through. Even so, Alistair rejoiced.
The more he practiced with Pike, the more he realized that the entire time, the strongest youth of the Silver Comet Sect had been guiding him to make the correct moves. Alistair’s discovery of the fundamentals underlying martial arts was not merely his own talent. Through tiny movements, minuscule intentional “mistakes,” and subtle baits, Pike had been continuously leading Alistair to make optimal moves without him even realizing.
It honestly terrified him. That idea seemed so impossible that Alistair wanted to reject it at face value. But there was no other explanation. The kind of skill and technical execution required for such a feat was a miracle beyond Alistair’s comprehension. He had seen something like that just once before, now that he remembered—Red, the Cabal recruit he had met when Nenna Spindoller escaped, had also taught Alistair through dodging.
Far from discouraging him, the feat spurned Alistair to work even harder. He couldn’t let Red or Pike remain ahead of him forever.
After exactly three weeks spent at the Silver Comet Sect, Alistair was allowed a rematch with Apol-Xin, for testing into the orange headband group.
Alistair walked barefoot on the cool stone ground of the temple, his eyes closed. After he bloodied Pike’s nose, in all subsequent sessions, he had to wear a blindfold. “A true martial artist is not impeded by the absence of sight,” Pike told him.
The heated sweat chamber that Alistair had his first match was not the traditional dueling room. Rather, there was a large courtyard at the center of the temple. Pentagonal in shape, it led to all five main wings of the building and could seat almost two hundred, though there weren’t that many apostles of the sect in total.
The seating consisted of long stone benches that filled each side of the pentagon in ascending rows, with a person-sized drop into the dueling floor itself. The terrain for their battle was smooth gray stone, the same as what made up the rest of the temple. They had a vast area for their duel, larger than any MMA arena from the before, maybe the size of a baseball infield.
Duels traditionally took place on weekends. However, because of the urgency of Alistair’s position, Ko Pao had permitted a late-night weekday event. As such, the stands were not even close to capacity. Master Ko Pao himself, along with Pike, Oliver, and several of the yellow and orange headbands counted themselves among the observers.
Alistair finally took his blindfold off upon arriving at the antechamber to the courtyard. Apol-Xin, as the senior, came from the north end into the courtyard, while Alistair came from one of the two wings opposite to Apol-Xin’s.
Pike waited for him in the antechamber.
“Are you ready?” Pike asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” Alistair said.
“You should win.”
“Really?”
“Do you trust me?” Pike asked.
“Sort of?” Alistair replied.
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll win. Just use my training.” Pike patted him on the back.
“Thanks.”
Alistair jumped up and down, letting the tension leave his body. He was barred from learning the special meditation techniques of the Silver Comet Sect, but he had his own Kai’tazake Mutra. It was harder to access and less supernatural while in the Holy Ravine, but its presence was still soothing.
He assessed his opponent without emotion. He had no care in the least about revenge. His victory was only the first step in a long process of achieving his goals.
Alistair had little information on Apol-Xin’s personal style and arsenal of techniques, their brief battle not being nearly enough to go on. Physically, he looked to be 195 centimeters and 120 kilograms, though with the weird Steel Body shenanigans, he might have been far heavier. While Alistair was nowhere near complete with the program, he felt heavier than his bodily appearance suggested, owing to a peculiar density of muscle.
Apol-Xin stared at him with cold eyes. Alistair felt a certain hostility behind his gaze. It was no surprise. He hadn’t engendered the best relations with the average member of the sect, who were displeased with the speed of Alistair’s promotion and the significant resources poured into his training. He tried his best to ease any concerns, but he couldn’t be friends with everyone.
Ko Pao stood up, the rest of the apostles bowing their head. Alistair actually managed to react in time, bowing with everyone else.
“Today brings a rematch of Apol-Xin and Alistair Tan. Alistair challenges for promotion into the orange rank. May the Mother of War grant a fair and unblemished match. Begin!”
The venerable master thrust his hand down from the sky, heralding the beginning of the battle.
Alistair let his hands down to his sides and stood so very still. All of his previous battles flashed like a near-death experience. He remembered every punch, every kick, every blow. It was true that his body contained a wealth of unearned ability inherited from Zenaitsu Morogoni. A preternaturally efficient style of unarmed combat, designed for killing.
With his cultivation sealed and his Talent Tree, Dao Nodes, and Skills absent, the full motions of {Psychopomp’s Discipline} were absent. Yet Alistair felt beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was far superior now.
Would he have beaten his old self in a fight? Of course not, even if his old self had been equalized in stats to his current staff. The Fist Node and true access to the Mutra and {Psychopomp’s Discipline} added an insane amount of firepower, regardless of physical prowess.
But what he had now was a “foundation”. He was no Shaolin monk or world champion boxer in the before. He had taken a few kickboxing classes. Almost all of his martial arts skill had been acquired magically through Skills and Talents, and then lightly, lightly reinforced through practical combat. It wasn’t that he hadn’t fought enough—he had fought plenty. But he didn’t really get any better from those fights because he was already too good and they weren’t challenging him specifically within the domain of martial arts.
He had been through numerous fights where he barely survived—the orcs, Anthony, Dragonus and Admiral—but the crux of the difficulty came from their unique powers. They weren’t pugilists.
Alistair believed that the heart of the Dao was foundation. Without a strong foundation, you could add the highest quality building materials and still have your skyscraper collapse. The mysterious Sage of Eternal Mercy’s foundation of justice was unshakable. A Foundation realm equivalent in that regard was Lucius. His synchronicity with his Dao came from his true and total faith in the power of money.
That was the missing element that the Silver Comet Sect and Brother Pike gave him. There were no such things as do-overs, but the Devonic Elision Field was the closest that one could get. A training experience without any cultivation, aided only by a set of disjointed techniques baked into his muscle memory. A chance to make his foundation as solid as steel.
Alistair no longer needed to trick his body into thinking it was about to die to access his opponent’s intentions. It simply laid out before him as easy as reading a picture book.
Apol-Xin carefully circled around him, realizing that Alistair was not the same man as before. He stepped closer, bit by bit, trying to feel out his opponent. The orange headband leaped forward with blinding speed, firing off a series of jabs. The tables had turned—in their last battle, Alistair was the one to make the first move, also by throwing jabs.
As a practitioner of the Steel Body for many years, Apol-Xin was both faster, strong, and more durable than his opponent. By all rights, he should have lit up Alistair’s face with his attack.
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Yet that did not come to pass. Alistair saw the fundamentals behind Apol-Xin’s fists and parried with ease, moving almost as fast as his opponent. Yes, he was inferior physically to the orange headband—but that gap had closed immensely compared to last time.
Alistair saw a flicker of annoyance pass over Apol-Xin’s face. Perfect. While he didn’t have the full embrace of the Mutra, he knew that an excess amount of emotion in his opponent was a potential key to victory.
The two warriors exchanged a series of fast-paced strikes. To the untrained eye, they were nearly invisible, far faster than the greatest fighters of Earth pre-initiation.
Alistair had superior technique and Apol-Xin superior speed and power. In their understanding of fundamentals, they seemed evenly matched.
They only used their fists—a kick would leave too big of an opening, and a throw or leg grab would be too obvious.
Apol-Xin’s first mistake was underestimating Alistair’s power. After a fifteen second high-level exchange of mostly jabs and straights, the larger fighter grew impatient with the standstill. Alistair could almost hear the thoughts in his head. “How is it possible for him to have improved this much? It must be an illusion.”
Apol-Xin had made optimal use of his Steel Body in their previous fight, and attempted to do so again. Seeing a jab coming straight for his nose bridge, the orange apostle knew what he had to do and took the blow head-on, countering with a powerful right straight with knock-out potential.
WHACK!
His straight whooshed by open air. Blood dripped down from Apol-Xin’s nose and a sharp pain arrested his movement. Apol-Xin had trained to withstand pain, but like the plucking of a hair off someone’s head, a strike to the nose bridge caused an automatic reaction.
Alistair’s jab connected, slightly rocking his opponent, which sent his straight punch veering off in the wrong direction. It was something he could not have accomplished before his physical training. His strikes had real power behind them now, something that Apol-Xin couldn’t ignore.
That was only the opening salvo—Alistair’s blow did no lasting damage. However, it did imprint itself in Apol-Xin’s psyche. How did he get that strong? Apol-Xin wondered. The orange headband wasn’t privy to Alistair’s growth as a member of the orange headbands. He clearly had underestimated Alistair’s growth.
Alistair could almost feel those thoughts seeping off the orange headband that stood opposite to him. The caution with his moves as he wiped the blood away from his mouth. That would give Alistair the advantage he needed.
It was Alistair’s turn to go on the offensive, sending out a flurry of even faster punches. Those jabs surpassed his previous speed and equaled Apol-Xin’s own. Anxiety took hold of Apol-Xin’s heart. Alistair’s speed seemed incomprehensible. Was he holding back before? Just how high had the Earthling reached in a mere three weeks?
Caution and fear slowed down Apol-Xin’s reactions, and also his better judgment.
Alistair had not been hiding his powers, or somehow broken through his limits and reached a new level of speed. He simply wasted energy, firing all of his muscles at maximum throttle in order to momentarily overwhelm his opponent. Anyone could surpass their normal jabs’ speed by pouring 100% of their effort.
Alistair saw deeper in to the fundamentals of martial arts. Apol-Xin had the capacity to figure out his opponent’s ruse, but his earlier caution led him down a mental trap. The tiniest of mistakes was all it took to lose in a close fight, Alistair knew.
Apol-Xin backpedaled, furiously working to parry Alistair’s rapid onslaught.
The onslaught disappeared without a trace, Alistair’s fist stopping mid-air.
With Apol-Xin retreating, it was time to unleash a kick. Alistair delivered a spinning heel kick, slamming the back of his foot into the apostle’s temple.
It was more than just technique; Alistair’s implementation of fundamentals was sublime. It wasn’t his intention to use psychological tactics from the start, but that was all part of the natural flow of combat. Use every advantage you can get. Have foresight beyond your opponent and outpredict them.
Apol-Xin did not fall from a single blow. Alistair had no way of gauging the apostle’s true speed other than an estimate based on his viewings of the orange headbands in combat, but Apol-Xin exceeded his measure. The man took the blow to the head and blasted forward, aiming a straight right for Alistair’s chest.
Alistair had no time to dodge, instead slightly swerving his body and throwing a palm strike. His palm strike connected with Apol-Xin’s straight and sent the muscular pugilist tumbling across the stone floor of the stadium.
Alistair didn’t come out unscathed—the rushed angle strained a tendon within his wrist, leading to a decrease in power in that limb. But his attack did more damage.
Apol-Xin, the proud orange rank apostle of the lauded Silver Comet Sect, panted as he felt wooziness from that single spinning heel kick. How was that possible? Alistair’s kick was with the full force of his 100 kilogram frame and with perfect technique, but the Steel Body was nothing to scoff at. Apol-Xin trained his body through toughness instruction and the final secret technique of the sect, yet in one blow, he wanted to throw up his lunch.
Alistair circled his prey, switching to a southpaw stance so his unharmed left arm would be the powerful one.
If he had thought seeing his opponent’s intention was easy before, now it was like floating in a lake—completely effortless.
I just needed some real practice, didn’t I?
Training with Pike was instructive, but it was only training after all. Alistair dropped his stance and walked toward his opponent, acting like he was an arrogant villain. At this point, Alistair was confident that he had surpassed Apol-Xin’s ability to see the fundamentals.
Alistair wondered since when was it so easy to read an opponent. It was so obvious that Apol-Xin would strike when Alistair got within one hand’s length of his jab range. The orange headband was confused and annoyed with his opponent’s antics. A decline in function and wits led to an off-balance hook.
That blow came faster than Alistair’s prediction. His fundamentals were nowhere near complete. It was still sufficient—despite Apol-Xin’s knuckles grazing and opening a wound on his cheek, Alistair took the advantage. He grabbed the apostle’s arm and twisted downward, hip hinging and throwing his opponent onto the ground. Alistair knew it as the incomparable judo throw—the ippon seoi nage.
The force with which Apol-Xin slammed into the ground was staggering. With Alistair’s powerful physique and the large man’s weight, a mortal would have probably instantly died. Not a Silver Comet apostle. The Steel Body was at its best when defending against strikes in one’s perception. The seoi nage was quick, but gave a small window for Apol-Xin to brace himself.
And strike back.
Apol-Xin thought quick on his feet, recognizing the matted floor would act as a spring, given the sheer force of the shoulder throw. In training, they used bouncy material to prevent serious injury, but even in a real match, the sect didn’t want people dying. The Steel Body was tough, but a full power throw directly to the back of the head by someone with superhuman strength was something else.
The tall fighter rebounded off the ground from Alistair’s throw, delivering a kick while upside down. His toes connected with Alistair’s forehead.
But Alistair wasn’t afraid. He tanked the blow with his skull, slightly slipping it so it didn’t do full damage. He grabbed Apol-Xin’s dangling legs with an aggressive hug, tumbling down to the floor with his opponent.
They landed in what was called north-south position, with Alistair on top and his head at Apol-Xin’s legs, and Apol-Xin in the same position but on the bottom. Alistair scrambled to action first, repositioning his head and chest into a reverse scarfhold. He pressed his right shoulder into Apol-Xin’s chest and hooked his opponent’s left arm with his own left arm.
Alistair exerted as much pressure as he could, guided by his muscle memory to find the optimal positions. With his bulk, it was a crushing weight, though Apol-Xin would never surrender to a mere hold.
Next came the dance. The sect member was stronger and faster than Alistair, and used that to his advantage. Alistair’s foresight on the ground was worse than Apol-Xin’s, owing to a lack of experience. Pike didn’t train ground work nearly as much as standing.
Apol-Xin was like an otter and Alistair like an orca, the former slithering away from every submission attempt and hold while the latter chased with furious intent. And then they would switch, Apol-Xin becoming the aggressor and Alistair the defender. It was a breakneck contest of strength, flexibility, endurance, and predictions.
They grappled for three minutes, morphing between a wide array of holds and positions. Alistair worked like a dog, scrambling for an advantage. His tenacity was on display for all to see. Apol-Xin didn’t give in either, countering every move he tried.
Finally, there came a breaking point. Alistair adapted. While at first he held the lower hand on the ground in terms of foresight, he quickly grew. In a mere matter of minutes, he was seeing ahead of his opponent—gazing deeper and further into the intentions of his movements.
Apol-Xin’s eyes widened as he saw what was happening. He couldn’t believe it. A flicker of doubt crossed into his mind. Something that anyone who faced a prodigy would have to come to bear with. The inadequacy of one’s own talent before those blessed by Heaven.
The idea of such a thing chilled Apol-Xin to the soul. He had been training for two decades and was from a line of prized warriors. Shaking those thoughts to the side, he prepared a rear naked choke. He had taken Alistair’s back—the absolute worst position that the Magical Pugilist could be in.
Apol-Xin pressed his head against Alistair’s neck and hooked his feet over Alistair’s legs, securing the position. With his arms, he fought to get position and get his opponent’s neck deep into his elbow crease to obtain the choke.
A locked in rear naked choked was nearly impossible to escape from. The end was nigh. Alistair had fought valiantly, but this was as far as he would go.
Unless…
With the speed of a raging storm, Alistair reached back and tore out a clump of hair from Apol-Xin’s head. He wouldn’t have been able to accomplish such a feat if his opponent’s hair wasn’t slightly longer than the others.
For a moment, the apostle’s grip weakened. Not by much—he was a trained fighter who had undergone years of pain tolerance. But like the breaking of the nose bridge, it caused an involuntary reaction. Alistair took advantage of the slip up, moving his legs away and to the side and breaking Apol-Xin’s grip.
Alistair ate an uppercut to the chin. His brain rattled in its skull. If that was the price to pay for victory, Alistair thought, so be it. He headbutted the orange headband in the nose, targeting the spot he already damaged.
“Aarghh!” Apol-Xin let out a cry of pain. The intriguing thing about a match between two practitioners of the Steel Body was that they mostly canceled each other out. However, in certain locations, instead of canceling out, the effect was magnified. The top of the skull was a site of constant reinforcement, while the nose remained one of the weakest spots on a Steel Body user.
Even without completing his toughness instruction, the durability of Alistair’s skull bones won out—Apol-Xin tumbled over, this time with Alistair on top.
Alistair rained a serious of vicious elbows down on Apol-Xin’s face. The downed man did his best to raise his guard, but it couldn’t block all the damage.
Then an inkling of an idea came to mind. Alistair looked back at how Pike guided him to understand the fundamentals with his own obscenely deep foresight. He wasn’t even close to replicating that kind of feat, but what about something lesser? A feeling stirred within Alistair.
My Dao Node? Alistair’s mind furiously tried to ascertain what had happened. No, that’s still locked away. Is it the lesser presence of the Dao that these people call ‘the Mother’s Presence?’ It wasn’t nearly as powerful as his Fist Node, but it felt very similar. And it wasn’t triggered by his supremacy over martial arts, but on a whim.
Alistair wasn’t one to play with his food. He always fought with candor, never trying to purposefully belittle his opponents. However, central to his Dao was the concept of growth. The necessity of reaching the top in order to change the unjust system of the multiverse. And growth needed properly difficult moments.
He made the tiniest of errors—on purpose—letting Apol-Xin slip out of his mount and stand up. Alistair followed up with an arcing, off-balance haymaker.
Apol-Xin easily avoided it, but Alistair was expecting that. He lunged forward with all the speed his body would give him, going for a flying knee straight toward Apol-Xin’s chest.
The orange rank apostle caught the knee with both hands. Alistair smiled. He grabbed onto the left sleeve of his opponent’s robe with his own left hand and the collar with his right hand and performed what a judoka would call a harai goshi—except that was what happened in their previous fight.
No, Alistair, let things play out in the exact same way except for one. To grow. To surpass. Instead of a harai goshi, Alistair performed an ouchi gari, an inner reap, using his foot to sweep Apol-Xin’s leg from the inside at the same time as he pushed and pulled the big man to the ground.
Alistair smiled at the same time as he delivered a punch with all of his power right into Apol-Xin’s face. And then another. And then another. He knew how tough that bastard was. Alistair had immense respect for his opponent’s warrior spirit.
Finally, after more than twenty blows, Apol-Xin stopped moving. Alistair raised a hand in jubilation. Victory was his.