After the unexpected migration event, my uncle's Dojo exploded in popularity. It would only be temporary, but to help keep up with the demand he enlisted my mother as an assistant. In truth, my mother was not that capable of a fighter, and to make matters worse she had begun practicing late so she had very little ki. Still, she was capable enough to help assist in the low level children's classes, and I think he knew we'd need the money.

In addition to the regular pay and emergency bonus my mother was given, the village headman also gave a special gift to the nine families who had lost loved ones.  Thus, we were flush with cash for now, but father had been the primary provider for our household.  We needed new sources of income.

There was also a curious problem with how to conduct the funerals.  My father had been the carpenter, who normally supplied caskets for the deceased.  For those who wished to be cremated it wasn't as much of an issue, although, he'd still have supplied protective boxes to put the urn into.  There was even a proposal by a particularly angry family to dig up the graves of some of the adventurers and hunters who'd died nearby, throw out their bodies and use their caskets.  I found out my uncle knew a tiny bit of carpentry and at the Headman's urging he spent several nights working with some volunteers until he'd completed a set of caskets.  When my mother saw the casket he brought out for my father, she broke out into tears.  Indeed, it would have been a shame for a carpenter to have been buried in a cloth bag.  I hugged her and, in that moment, I regretted that I had never and could never ask my father to teach me his art. 

As for our money situation, I had an idea.  I had earned a bit of minor fame for brewing the poison that was used, albeit it came with some uncomfortable looks from families of the six who had been hurt by it.  I decided to help support my mother and my sister by leveraging that reputation and my moderate alchemy skills. They needed to be brushed up first, though.  In my previous life I'd never been more than an amateur cultivating it out of curiosity and without commitment.

Thus, I found out soon enough that having been an amateur dilettante in my last life made me a poor ad libber in this life. When I tried to mix potions or draughts without all the ingredients my substitutes invariably backfired.  It was embarassing and at times volatile.  It occured to me after the fourth melted bowl that I'd done just this during the battle when I hadn't had each and every optimal ingredient.  I felt belated gratitude to the Headman, who had steered me away from making stimulants or medicine, and instead into making an aerosolized poison.

Long story short, I'd need some starting capital to allow me to buy herbs I needed.  For every practical recipe I could think of there were at least several ingredients that just weren't available nearby. Fortunately, my family had just come into a windfall and were struggling to figure out how to transform that into a regular stream of income.  I also stopped loaning money to Meifen, since her own mother had received a rather large payment herself for work rendered.  Instead, I hired her on as my assistant in the Ping Family Potions and Elixirs business.

Not everyone was happy about that.  For my mother I was proposing using my father's blood money to start a small business. Even worse, it would force me and my mom to work with the very traders, and by extension the hunters, who'd screwed us over and caused my father's death.  Convincing my mother I could make it a financial success was the easy part.  Getting her to agree to work with them was a sisyphean feat. Pretty much the only large merchant group she liked was the Bai Trading company that had come to help us.

She wasn't wrong. They were selfish opportunitists willing to make a buck over a pit of corpses, and I had no intention of forgiving or forgetting. Still, I couldn't help but feel it wasn't all their fault.  Wasn't part of it his fault too far being so weak?  When I see my two-year old sister, I imagine her dying in that fashion as well and it keeps me up at night.  Did he overestimate himself?  Would she overestimate herself if I trained her more?  It bothered me, but I had at least a few more years to think about it.  In the meantime I had a business to build, and I'd even join hands with an Akuma to make it possible.

In order to cement my reputation for not just brewing poison but also practical potions, I first sought to make a pesticide that was harmless to humans. It was called “Varigone” and had been very popular up until 40 years ago when many insects began developing an immunity to it. That said, I was able to get around some of the immunity by supercharging it with more ki in the middle brewing phase. It still was probably too unreliable and not profitable enough for a licensed alchemist to waste their time on, but as an unlicensed practitioner it would be my bread and butter.

Meifen wanted to learn it too, but I judged it to be not worth the time it would take to teach her. Besides, I wasn't really an expert in this to begin with and she might think less of her master if she realized how much her teacher was making it up as he went along.

Instead, I gave her a comprehensive herbology education as we combed through nearby fields, and shrubbery until I felt she could help handle harvesting some of the safer and more common ingredients. I still went with her to reduce the danger of these trips, but with her help we could finish this drudgery in half the time and still have plenty of time to train afterwards.

A several months after the incident me and Meifen were in the woods not far from the road when we were accosted by a man with a gnarled old staff.

“What are you kids doing out here alone? It's not safe.”

At first I couldn't place him, and then it clicked. This old man was Sum, the retired adventurer who had helped out in the siege. He tried to get us to come with him back to his cabin where we could stay while he sought our parents to give them a stern talking to.

“There's no need. Our parents aren't out here too. We've come this far on our own and we've gone farther before.” Meifen held up our herb basket and showed him what we'd been doing.

“Don't worry, uncle. Ju is unbeatable.” She said with unshakable confidence that definitely didn't cause me to puff up my chest.

Stolen novel; please report.

He turned to me and raised an eyebrow as I grinned back. “How about a match, old geezer? If I win you'll acknowledge we have what it takes to run a simple herb gathering mission. If I lose then you get to skip the lecture and know you've taught me my lesson.”

He sniffed and threw aside his staff. Then I felt the aura around him change as he began cycling his ki faster and faster. “Fine boy. Don't be whining about your whipping.” His blood was boiling just like my own and in the space of a blink he was a mere two steps from me. I adjusted my guard and concentrated a layer of ki onto my arms with a thinner layer around the rest of my body.

I sat back and blocked kicks and punches while I tried to read his style. It was heavily mobile and he often threw punches and kicks while in the air using his internal ki to form a base in mid-air to increase his leverage.

I found the power behind his blows was impressive and I recalled that this was a man who heaved watermelon sized projectiles at the Rocs with enough precision to drive it away. Then he got even faster.

One punch slipped around my guard by doing an abrupt angle change in mid-air that turned a low hook into an upper cut. I rushed into the blow to throw off the angle and minimize the power he'd get when it landed. It still knocked me off my feet and for the first time in the fight I was airborne. Exactly where he wanted me.

It was time to take the gloves off and see if I could pull off the flying kick I'd been practicing for the last three months. After my father died I realized I may not have as much time as I'd expected to sculpt the ultimate physique and core. I should focus on practicality a bit more to ensure I survive in the immediate future. Me and Meifen began working less on meditation and basic moves. In its place was a new form of study that was older than all the rest—drilling. I ran drills in every conceivable scenario I could think of to perfect the most useful and powerful kick I could pull off with my currently underdeveloped dantian.

I called it the “flying birdchick kick.” Something simplified from my “Flying Phoenix Kick” didn't deserve a better name.

As soon as my feet left the ground in my battle with Sum I began adding a forceful counterclockwise rotation. I spun and extended my leg out to its full length and let a shrinking ball of ki form in my right big-toe. When it was the size of a walnut. I snapped my leg out and caught him in the thigh. Sum had a brief instant to realize what had happened before his hands aimed to pin me in place were pinwheeling in the air as he slammed into a tree thrunk three meters behind him.

I frowned. I had been aiming a little higher up to hit him in the belly. I just hadn't anticipated him speeding up at the end.

Regardless, after Sum picked himself up he conceded the match. He wasn't seriously injured and I could tell he could continue if he wanted to, but he'd been proven wrong and knew it. I could take care of myself and probably Meifen too. Not to mention I'd trained her in a push-throw combination that could be executed as a perfect setup for my “birdchick kick.”

“Damn right.” I laughed as I offered him my hand to shake. After trading blows I knew this man was a true warrior. “Why did you retire anyway, Mr. Sum?”

“Ah, that's a long story. Suffice to say that people were unhappy with the job I did on my last job.” He said with a mile wide smile that never reached his eyes.

“Alright, then do you have a dream? I'd tell you mine, but I'm not sure yet if you're worthy to hear it.”

I got a laugh out of him with that, and then he proclaimed that if my dream was more manly than his he'd buy me a better knapsack for my herbs. His dream it turned out was to try the five legendary wines of the four continents and Anchor Island. The wines were Redfield Wine from Lorraine, Sadie Columella Red from Sahelia, Azure Punch from Anchor, Shiraz from Cathay and Billionaire's Vinegar from Araucania.

He had tried four of them, and the last remaining legendary wine was “Billionaire's Vinegar.”

“Well then what are you doing bumming around here for then.” I wanted to ask. Meifan put it a bit more diplomatically by proposing, “Then go on a trip and find your dream. You're plenty strong enough if you can fight my master on an even level.”

“It's not that easy,” he dismissed with a handwave. “I've searched everywhere for leads and have come up dry for years. The last bottle I'd heard of got scooped up by the Bai Trading Company six years ago. Anyway, it's not enough for me to drink it. I need good company to drink it with me. After that day it's in short supply.”

“Say no more. It's time for you to pay up. My dream is both grander and greater than a quest for a bottle of wine. I'm going to cement forever in people's minds that the greatest martial artist was Ju Ping and the greatest style ever conceived was the Chimera Martial Arts. People will practice it forever and ever.”

I turned to bask in the awe upon his face. Unlike the fools my own age, he would understand that I said what I meant and meant what I said. This wasn't idle boasting.

Instead painted upon his face was a trace of regret smudged by sorrow. “That is indeed a grander and greater dream, Young Ju, but great and grand dreams aren't always better. A true man knows himself and his dream reflects not just who he is but what he can be but what he yearns to become.”

“That's fine. I want to be strong. Tell him about your dream, Meifen.” After all, I'd never have accepted a student who didn't have a strong goal to aspire towards.

“No, no, I can't. It's too private.” She declined. A hint of color on her cheeks suggested how embarassing it was. Not good. She needed to be proud not ashamed of the greed that pushes us onward.

“I won't buy you that knapsack. Not yet." He concluded.  "Your dream isn't complete yet, Ju. Come back and tell me when you know for sure what your dream is.”

With that he dismissed us. Meifen thought to inquire about a few of the herbs we'd been having trouble finding and he pointed us in the direction of a likely patch before departing.

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A week later we had an unusual visitor to our town. Every two years the nearest martial school, West Xiong Academy, sent scouts throughout the lesser towns, villages and ports. They were scouting for not just talented young pupils but rare gifts that could be used to enrich their inner circle.

Last time, a scout had visited I had been 6. I had evaluated the scout and found him sadly lacking. I doubted that there was much of anything in West Xiong Academy that I didn't already know something similar to or better. My own memories were almost like having one of the most talented grandmasters as a private tutor.

This time when he came, I was mentioned by the village Headman by name as an alchemist prodigy. Tales of the poison I'd whipped up in the middle of the disaster from the trading post's shelves and a single type of monster corpse were enough to impress the Scout into coming to investigate me himself.

He was a stick thin and lanky fellow with a tough chin and soft hands. I wondered what he did on a day to day basis because it couldn't have been weapons handling or hand-to-hand combat.

He told me about the benefits. 100 pieces of silver for my mother as a signing bonus, and three years of training at which point I could either ascend to becoming an apprentice to one of the masters or be dismissed into the outer school as an associate. The latter he mentioned with distaste.

I asked him two things. “How do you determine who is talented and who is not? Secondly, how do you teach the talentless?”

He laughed and promised only the talented are invited. They scout for large ki reserves, wide ki channels, a healthy physique and a sound mind. Years of practice helps, but oftentimes those trained at home or in small dojos spend their first six months unlearning everything they were taught.

I declined then and there politely but firmly like I was dealing with a child. He told me I was making a mistake, but accepted my rejection and disappeared.

It was a rotten day. I had learned yesterday from a teacher that Meifen had been using the arts I'd taught her to bully her former bullies. Today we were not going to meet. In two days, I would decide whether to continue her instruction at all.

Meifen had talent. She was like a sponge and even if she couldn't do it as fast as others she practiced harder than any of my past disciples until she got it precisely and reliably right. She was a machine, but a machine cannot do martial arts. It is an art.  The most critical thing a machine lacks is a notion of sacredness.

I understood then a tiny bit of what Sum had meant.

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Sum took off his leather gear and massaged his thigh where a growing giant welt had blossomed.  

"Damn, kids are getting crazier every generation."  He said as he headed for his cabin's kitchen. In the dying light of the sun's ray it took him a while to find what he was looking for.

In the back of a cabinet with a spider web or two he found a recently opened keg of homemade moonshine.  He poured a glass and then headed back out to his porch.  There he sat on a rocking chair Wang Ping had built for him several seasons ago. 

"You've got a great son, Wang." Sum said as he raised a glass of his moonshine up towards the rising moon.  "Don't worry so much about him.  I'll be watching over him for you."