With my body hale and healthy, I was ready to storm the world. I left the cell summarily and headed to the mine to put in some work. I picked up a pick-axe from the pile and entered the cave-mouth, walking past two guards, trying not to throttle either of them. They stood by while I was brutalized, after all.

Aside from earning food tokens, I was also looking for a specific person.

Yo Lan had to die.

There really was no other way to put it. She tried to have me killed. To keep her living for any longer would be a disservice to myself, and I had to reclaim the face I lost when she set her goons on me. If I let this slight go, my death would be imminent.

I didn’t meet her in the cave network. I traveled to the end and found a recently discovered iron vein. Fist sized chunks of impure brassy metal was embedded in the hard granite. It would take hours for three women to mine out ten kilograms.

It took me minutes, so fast, in fact, that it surprised me.

Soon enough, I fell into a trance, hacking the hard rock, retrieving the valuable ore, still yet to be purified and made into usable iron.

When two hours were up, my cart was filled. I took it out of the cave and to the depository, where it was weighed. I ignored the prison guard’s disbelief as I demanded my tokens. Without much hassle, they parted with them, and I was on my way.

I was supposed to be on my way, but before I could get too far, a wall of women blocked me, headed by Yo Lan, staring at me with utter hatred. “…You!”

“Me,” I replied sardonically.

“You’re supposed to be dead!”

“That makes two of us,” I said, my knuckles itching to cave her skull in. “Yo Lan, I want to fight you, one on one.” I turned to the rest of her delegation of bitches. “Won’t that be the best way to see which one would be the best leader?”

Yo Lan turned her back to me, facing the crowd. “Don’t listen to her. She’s just an immature little bitch. She wouldn’t know the first thing about leadership! She makes enemies wherever she goes! She’ll get all of you killed!”

Once again, the crowd was on her side. I couldn’t exactly blame her. The prisoner gangs continued to exist because of their understanding with the head warden. He made money from our labor, and if the gangs could ensure steady labour and no riots, he owed them the leeway to brutalize whoever they wanted.

Yo Lan turned back to me, sneering. “You’re a danger to us prisoners, Yilan. You don’t know when to give face, when to defer, even for your own good. You’re too bullheaded and stubborn. I can’t allow you to continue existing in here.”

“That’s the thing about me,” I said. “I never give face.”

I turned surreptitiously to the guards, whose gazes were averted from the scene. Fuck.

They were thirty in number, all armed with batons, pick-axes and shovels.

And with the way I survived our last encounter, I was almost certain that Yo Lan would not be satisfied until my head was completely separated from my body. This was going to be my death.

And for some reason… it didn’t appeal to me anymore. I always wanted to die unbroken in spirit, but dying so ignobly, having squandered my natural gifts so? Could I possibly be destined for more? It felt childish, fanciful, aspiring to become a Martial Warrior, when I had barely believed they existed a day ago.

The Old Woman’s offer to train me was… it tempted me, but at the same time it disgusted me to give her my agency, to trust my future into her hands when she had lied to me for over a year.

I had two choices right now. Die knowing that I had never submitted my spirit to anyone, or live with the fact that I was now someone’s disciple.

…Was the last one really so bad, though?

“Alright, fine!” I yelled. “I’ll do it! Just…” I stared at Yo Lan, licking my dried lips. “Save Yo Lan for me.”

Immediately, five women dropped completely dead, holes materialized in the middle of their foreheads. The Old Woman was next to me, her palm filled with pebbles. She dropped the rest of the pebbles and gave me a grandmotherly smile and a nod.

Yo Lan and her thugs still had no idea what to do. Not until I dashed towards her, preparing to punch her as hard as I could.

The moment of fear that I saw on her face was worth it all. When my fist finally reached her cheek, I heard a harsh snap as she flew back, her neck shattered. She was dead long before she hit the ground.

The rest of the women scattered. The few that didn’t tried to attack me with their weapons. The first one came at me with a shovel. I grabbed it from her hand, hard enough to break her wrist. I used my newfound weapon to slam her head. She fell down near-instantly, possibly unconscious. The second woman stopped in her tracks, dropped her pickaxe, and fucked off. Smart woman.

The guards began to file in, batons still strapped to their sides. No, they were wielding their spears, pointing them at me.

I wouldn’t die, though. I couldn’t. Before they could close in and skewer me, I picked a random direction, used my shovel to knock the spear out of my way and planted a punch to their chin. Before they could fall, I grabbed the spear and turned it towards the nearest guard, thrusting it awkwardly towards their neck. It struck true. Instead of pulling it out, I grabbed the dying man’s spear and turned it to someone else.

Before I could, three spears headed towards me. I barely managed to dodge them, turning debilitating attacks into grazes and scrapes that drew thin lines across my otherwise pristine skin.

I grabbed hold of the spear with a white-knuckled grip and prepared to strike horizontally across a man’s throat.

In one, fateful moment, everything became clear. The color that I saw was sharp, eye-searingly bright, and I could hear almost too sharply. Every single muscle in my body worked at full efficiency in that one maneuver.

The spear cut straight through one man’s neck, beheading him, and slit another’s throat, spraying me with blood.

Suddenly, I fell to my knee, almost completely exhausted. I waited patiently for a spear to strike me, but before it could, a robed woman stood before me, picked me up, and brought me somewhere else.

Then, she jumped.

We had to be on top of the watch-tower, a perfected view of the prison, and the mountain it was located against. Outside its walls were miles and miles of verdant, pale orange grass and mountains.

The view invigorated me once more. “We’re escaping!”

“More than just that,” she smiled, turning to the overcast skies. All the while, her face continued to lose excess wrinkles, becoming younger and younger. “We head North-East, to the Mountains of Kunlun. Welcome to the Wulin, young one. Do try to keep your sanity.”

Then, she jumped into the sky and leapt at the clouds. I would never forget this experience, even after a hundred lifetimes.

000

We dropped down dozens of miles from the prison. The Old Woman had descended from the clouds as light as a feather in a grassy field just as dusk was upon us.

She stood tall, with a bearing that betrayed a youth that had no place on her once-frail exterior. Now, she looked to be in her forties at the latest, truly something only a Martial Warrior could do.

I was just happy to be down on the ground. While the experience was exhilarating, it was still terrifying.

“Are you ready to learn, young one?” She asked.

I furrowed my eyebrows. “You’re not going to ask me to kowtow?” It was a well-known thing, after all, to kowtow to your mentor before they took you in. I was still extremely leery on that, since I hated the idea of bowing to anyone.

She just shrugged. “Would you want to?”

“No,” I replied honestly.

She just nodded, a little disappointed. “Then we just continue,” she said with a shrug. “I need something from you, your strength, so I will overlook your refusal to vow your future mentorship to me for as long as you agree to learn from me,” she said. “Do you agree to those terms?”

Not finding them disagreeable, I nodded. “Fine.”

“Stand up,” She said. “We train right here. The air is virgin, the nature untouched. It may not be completely ideal, but it is a beginning.”

I got up shakily, still drained from that tiny moment of bodily omniscience. “Something happened,” I said to her. “While I fought, I suddenly,” I gesticulated weakly. “Everything became so clear.”

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She nodded. “The State of Wu – The martial mentality. You think like a true warrior, a prerequisite to all Martial Warriors. You tapped into it. Very good. You will need it for battle.”

I nodded. “So, you teach me how to fight, now?”

She shook her head. “You already know how to fight. You fight wildly inefficiently, but you can fight. Our prime issue with you is your inefficiency. Your foundation is great, your body abnormally strong for a mere non-Martial Warrior.”

“Inefficiently?” I asked. It had worked well for me so far.

“Punch me,” she said. She didn’t have to ask me twice. I walked towards her, cocked my arm back, and threw my fist forward. She avoided it, predictably, utterly unimpressed at that.

“Pathetic,” she sneered. “You telegraph your movements, you don’t even punch straight, and you rely all too much on your brute strength. You are like a child, flailing about without a single idea on how to move properly.”

That was… uncalled for. “Okay,” I said, pushing down my aggression. “So you will teach me how?”

“Economy of motion,” she said. “That is all. I will not teach you how to move. Only you can do that, and because we are on a time limit, we will be utilizing less orthodox methods.”

“Like wha-?” Before I could even finish my question, she appeared behind me in the blink of an eye and struck the nape of my neck with a single finger.

It felt like my entire body was burning up from the inside. Even moving a single muscle inspired agony, and the more I moved, the more agony followed. I was too focused not moving to even think about screaming. Instead, I whispered, because I did not want to agitate my throat. “What… are you… doing?”

“Economy of motion,” she repeated. “Using as little motion as possible to perform an action. It is a basic tenet of martial arts. I have put you in a state where every movement causes pain, so to feel less pain, you should move less. You will punch the air one hundred times. If the strikes are too weak, I will have you walk ten steps. I will give you one attempt to trace out a path of your punch, but the next one hundred punches have to be genuine. Can you do that, Kang Yilan?”

I was locked completely still, still leery on moving. This was not what I expected. Saying that was an understatement. This was so far away from what I expected, I wondered if escaping prison was even the smart course of action.

I stood up straight, ignoring the agony that screamed into my ears, and raised my fists. I cocked back my right fist, and heard the Old Woman clicking her tongue. Fuck. No cocking, then.

I slowly eased my arm forward, keeping this ‘economy of motion’ in mind as I did so. Finally, I pulled back, and punched in earnest

I knew that only more pain would follow if I screamed, so I did not.

Before I continued, the Old Woman spoke. “With every punch, you will have something to learn. If you can impress me after one hundred punches, we will move on with different types of punches, different kicks, footwork, and when that is all over, we spar.”

It wasn’t the anguish that forced the tear out from my right eye, but the sheer agony.

I punched again. It did not get any easier.

000

I had an inkling that this whole Martial Arts business would be easy. I don’t know what gave me that illusion. Perhaps it was the Old Woman telling me that my body was strong, and that I had natural talent? Either way, it was indeed crushing to be proven completely wrong.

I passed out after a hundred punches. With every iteration, I learned a new thing about my body, and how I could utilize my long arms to strike as effectively as possible. I still felt like I had something to learn with the last punch, but my mind could not handle any more agony, even as I shaved off as much as possible.

My standing theory was that if I got the technique completely right, with pure economy of motion in mind, then the pain would only reduce to a short-lived sting, which was acceptable.

When I woke up, I was in the same grassy field. The Old Woman was burning a bon-fire, two sticks with rabbit meat burning above the open flame. I sat unnaturally still until I realized that the movement-pain technique the Old Woman had applied had worn off.

Without even looking at me, she spoke. “You need to eat, faux-disciple. Stand up. We will train at daybreak.”

I slowly stood up and approached the bonfire. I had never been more wary of any one person than the woman sitting in front of it. It wasn’t like I was particularly smaller than her. I was at least three inches taller, and had to weigh perhaps thirty pounds more than she did, yet she could defeat me so soundly, without a single speck of effort. Truly, this was what it meant to be a Martial Warrior.

I sat down and accepted the food she gave me, digging in with gusto. It tasted better than prison gruel, still very fresh and well-grilled.

The rabbit was large, about twenty pounds of pure meat. When I first began to eat, I initially misjudged the depths of my hunger, thinking that we would unfortunately have to throw away the majority of the remains and leave them to the buzzards.

That didn’t happen. I bit into it ravenously, swallowing whole mouthfuls on every heart-beat. It took minutes before I ate at least fifteen pounds. Meat still remained, but far less than what I had anticipated. I drank my fill of water from the skin she provided me, too. It was almost too refreshing.

“Wow,” I muttered. I turned to the Old Woman, the flickering bonfire painting her face in a dark-orange wash. She was smiling.

“You eat like a warrior. Good. Go to sleep, now. A new day awaits you yet.”

The soft grass was inviting. Before I knew it, exhaustion took over, and I was on the ground, snoring.

000

I woke up with the predawn light slowly bearing over me. The memories of recent events rushed to me, and it took several heartbeats before I finished processing it completely. Right. This was my life now; the sorta-disciple of some insane Martial Warrior.

The Old Woman stood above me. “You’re awake. Good. It is time for you to train. Worry not about breakfast, lunch or dinner. Your… mentor will take care of that. Can I trust that my training methods have not scared you away?”

I frowned, getting up slowly, still used to feeling pain at every movement that I was beginning to subconsciously limit my motion to the bare minimum. “As long as I can become strong enough to break your nose.”

“Ai,” she chided, sounding disappointed. “What a blood-thirsty disciple, to bite the hand that feeds you so. Have you not learned under my tutelage?”

I couldn’t deny that, but still. “Your ‘unorthodox’ techniques are going to give me white hair, you know.” I mean, seriously. If this wasn’t how normal people did it, then why not just do it the normal way?

“It is effective. You have a good bodily foundation, but your ability to execute attacks leave much to be desired,” she shook her head. “Long days are yet ahead of us, faux-disciple. We have barely even begun to scratch the surface of what Martial Arts entails. Do not slack.”

Slowly, I got up. The hit to the nape of my neck was fast, but expected. The initial agony wore off much faster.

“Now, kicks,” she said.

I wanted to shake my head, but instead opted to whisper. “No.”

“I can’t hear you,” she smiled devilishly.

“No,” I said, louder. “I. Want. To. Punch.” I was still far from mastering the punch, and I needed to practice with both arms, and that wasn’t even getting started with all the different ranges that necessitated different punching techniques.

So many things went into punching, it was honestly a wonder how anyone could call themselves a fighter without decades of practice. I certainly used to put great stock in my inability to lose a fight in a one-on-one, but being introduced to this new world of Martial Arts was really beginning to expand my horizons.

“Very well,” She smiled, proudly even. “Continue to punch until you grow tired, for there is wisdom in your assessment. A wise man once said: ‘I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand different kicks once, but the man that has practiced one kick ten thousand times.’”

Too occupied to comment on the admittedly smart saying, I got to work on the punches. Through pain came strength.

I could feel myself slowly cinching the whole ‘economy of motion’ thing, but as I practiced, I allowed my mind to wander. The State of Wu. It was a beautiful state of mind, one which I wanted to revisit at all costs.

Of course, I had to trust that the Old Woman knew what she was doing. If teaching me how to tap into the State of Wu was not the first item on her agenda, it was obviously because I was lacking in other areas. Still, the eagerness I felt prompted me to work extra hard. If just anyone from the Martial Arts world could step on clouds and leap hundreds of meters into the sky, then I truly did not know the distance between heaven and earth.

After all, if the Old Woman really was a big-shot, why would she while away decades in a prison that she could escape from at any time? Even in the Martial Arts world, people could not be so stupid or bored. She was like an Aardvark playing with mole crickets and ants, drawing pleasure from seeing tiny things scurry while pretending to be one of them. She had masqueraded as the weakest person in the area, and everyone had fallen for it.

When I hit three hundred punches, the pain finally overwhelmed me, and I fell on the ground flat. Pain had become such an old companion of mine, now. If I experienced another round of the Old Woman setting my bones again, I wouldn’t scream nearly as much.

I woke up with the sun still in the sky. Venison was being grilled over a bonfire. I didn’t ask where she found it, knowing the answer would be just as absurd as it was true. Instead, I ate, drinking liberally from the water she provided me. As it stood, I was eating way more than her, yet it was only enough to sate me. I chalked it down to my developing body requiring more nutrients to solidify my form. After all, I could be considered a Martial Warrior, now, or at least one in training. The stories always spoke of how they could eat whole boars in a single night, using the animal’s body as a fuel for their sorcery and abnormal feats.

The fact that my ‘mentor’ wasn’t eating nearly as much as I did detracted from the theory, but not completely. After all, I wasn’t conscious most of the time, and she was probably using that time to stuff her fat face in, the gluttonous, geriatric whore.

Deep breaths. It was difficult to not loathe her down to the very core of my being. The dire straits she put me through could not be easily forgotten. She had repeatedly plunged me into the very depths of human agony, and while the results were evident, her methods were still all too deplorable. It took everything that I had to listen as she expounded on certain things to help me along, and not to curse her to high heavens.

000

Maybe a week passed this way. The Old Woman would never falter in providing me food, but in exchange, every day was spent in utter agony. I had graduated from punches, and even kicks. Now she told me to simply walk.

I learned quickly how to avoid the pain. She would occasionally attack me, throwing rocks at me, expecting me to dodge. I didn’t. When she realized that the pain of dodging exceeded the pain of being hit by rocks, she upped the ante and hit me harder.

To say the least, I was in much pain that day, almost completely ready to just swear off the entirety of the Martial Arts world. My desire to remain unbroken in spirit kept me going, even when I really thought that all hope was lost.

When that dreaded week finally passed, I showcased my new set of moves. My punches were sharp, balanced, swift, flying straight with zero deviations, utilizing every muscle group to their level best. I practiced several punches while I was at it, and then moved on to kicks. Air whistled as my limbs moved, my prison clothes causing some resistance against the wind.

I was at least an order of magnitude more skilled than my past self, but I attributed the rapid growth from the fact that it was not difficult to move up from the bottom.

“Passable,” the Old Woman conceded. “There is much ferocity in your movements, but I am afraid it leaves you exceedingly brittle in real combat. Alone, your execution is good, but it still leaves much to be desired.”

Once again, I wondered why I even began to follow her. “Gee, thanks,” I responded sarcastically.

Suddenly, she turned to no particular direction and began to walk. “Now, we travel to a village. We need food, clothes and a proper bed. I don’t want to live in squalor any more than strictly necessary.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been incarcerated for literal decades.”

“My point still stands,” she responded. With that, we fell into silence as we walked. No matter how much we did, I could not feel myself getting tired, and if it was fatigue that I was feeling in my legs, the pain was nothing compared to what I had already experienced.

I honestly didn’t think the Old Woman would ever tell me what her deal was. I still had so many questions, but as it stood, none of it really mattered. I was beholden to her for the next five years, and her busting me out was an extra service which I didn’t think I could ever repay, not with how strong she currently was.

After all, what could a chicken offer a phoenix?

…I could barely even recognize these thoughts as my own, me bowing my head to someone stronger. It rankled me deeply, but seeing was believing, and I didn’t know anyone else who could step on clouds.