Jingyi Bo stood at the edge of the Saoka pitch, stunned. She had intended to arrive early to clean up the field, but someone had beaten her there. That someone was Elder Ienaga Yumi, who stood dramatically in centre-field like she was awaiting the start of a life-or-death duel.

Why is she here? Did I do something wrong? Did she find out I’m not supposed to be here? The thoughts raced through Bo’s mind like lightning, swirling into a storm of anxiety. It might have been the warm morning, but she was certain the thin layer of sweat beading down her forehead was due to panic. With a shaky breath, Bo decided to make her way over and find out what was going on - or, failing that, receive her inevitable destruction.

“Jingyi Bo.” Elder Ienaga’s voice stopped her dead in her tracks the moment she stepped foot onto the pitch.

“E-Elder!” Unsure of what to do, Bo threw herself to her knees and grovelled. “I apologise for everything! Whatever it is, I offer an eternity of apologies!”

Ienaga’s mouth opened and closed for a moment in confusion. “I have come to measure your progress, nothing more. Where are the others? And would you stop grovelling? You’re embarrassing me.”

With the idea that she might even mildly be bringing dishonour, discomfort or anything of the sort to her honoured elder, Bo leapt to her feet and stood at an awkward attention. As stiff as a board, it took her a few moments to realise she needed to reply.

“Th-the others will be here very shortly, elder! I’ve just come early to--”

“You needn’t explain your eagerness for training, Jingyi. Come, show me how your martial arts have progressed.” Ienaga gently pushed the tip of her wooden training sword into the soft dirt beside her and stepped onto a reasonably dry patch of grass. She gestured for Bo to approach. Attempting to speak, Bo made only a kind of incomprehensible squeaking. How in the world am I meant to even begin to spar with Elder Ienaga?

Still, the martial arts instructor stood perfectly still. She hadn’t so much as taken up a fighting stance. After a few moments of Bo’s fumbling, inaudible speech, the woman grew impatient.

“Just come over here and try to hit me, Jingyi. I won’t hurt you.”

It took a few more platitudes, and possibly a bit of growling before Jingyi Bo was willing to even attempt striking an elder. Considering how much she had been focusing on her spiritual technique, Bo’s martial arts were extremely basic. In fact, apart from some minor changes to make it more suitable for Saoka, and some other here-and-there modifications, she really only knew Elder Ienaga’s bujutsu martial arts.

Bo threw a stock-standard punch and found herself tumbling to the ground. Ienaga hadn’t even touched her, or even moved from her spot - she had simply leaned slightly out of the way, and Bo had tripped herself over the woman’s boot. From the ground she whipped out with a low sweeping kick, a popular trick in the Saoka games, only for Ienaga to casually step over it. A flurry of punches hit nothing but air, a quartet of high-speed kicks only threw Bo off balance, and a clumsy dash saw her fall into yet another puddle of mud. A loud sigh escaped Ienaga’s lips.

“Jingyi, it is clear to me now that it was a mistake to leave you to your own devices. Your attempts at modifying the basic techniques I gave you has only made them less effective - any opponent could see you rely on your feet too much. Not to mention you are slow enough that even an unawakened mortal might duck your punches! I can only hope the rest of the group is not so clearly lacking!”

As Bo pulled herself to her feet and shifted the mud from her uniform, the rest of the group began to filter in. Izumi and Hizashi were the first, arriving together - both gave a deep bow to Ienaga, who returned a small nod. As the instructor finished explaining why she was here, the rest of the boys arrived and necessitated another explanation from the start. It was clear to all that Elder Ienaga was not used to being kept waiting, nor did she particularly appreciate having to chase up students. Regardless, she went on.

“I want each of you now to attempt to land a single blow on me, using your martial arts training. I will not retaliate. Come!”

An oppressive aura flattened any good mood the group might have held - a xiantian-level martial artist had stepped onto the pitch, and it was anyone’s guess as to how they were going to get her to leave! Amai and Hoshikawa both readied themselves by hardening their bodies - while they prepared, Chao Da swung in. His grasp of the fundamentals was decent but very similar to Bo’s, his low sweep being stepped over with almost contemptuous ease. Wang Wei followed up with an identical attack, which earned a slightly bemused expression from Ienaga as she gave an identically effortless defense. Youni De began to drip grease as he ran forward - everyone cringed as Ienaga’s wooden sword cracked him over the back of the head.

“Martial arts only! No spiritual techniques! Show me your training!” Her words fell on deaf ears - Youni had been knocked out.

Izumi began to step up, but Ienaga gestured for her to move aside. There was a moment before she realised why her master didn’t want her to attempt this challenge - she wasn’t worried about someone who was already a regular of one of her classes. Amai stepped forward instead, his Earth-enhanced martial arts leading him to perform a slow but intimidating series of strikes as he advanced. It was too slow, however - Ienaga barely needed to walk away from him to avoid the assault. Hoshikawa seemed to figure that out before he made his attempt, dispersing his Metal ki in an unusual burst that flung him forward. Unfortunately, the arc of his leap made him utterly predictable - by the time he landed, Ienaga was well out of reach.

Hizashi set off a blinding flare of sunlight and charged in. Her martial arts were far better than Bo’s, but still not sufficient - Bo watched with horror as Ienaga had merely closed her eyes and begun to duck and weave entirely blind without negative effect. Bo knew they weren’t anywhere near her level, but she may as well have belonged to a different world. Tatsumaki didn’t even get to finish shouting the name of his move before Ienaga had moved out of the way of it.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Master Ienaga, I deeply apologise for this,” Izumi gave an extremely deep bow, “But everyone - she never said you couldn’t attack together!”

The master made a show of looking bothered, but there was a slight smirk on her lips that Bo interpreted as ‘At least someone here has their wits about them!’

Realisation bloomed on everyone’s faces and without a plan, they all charged forward. Everyone, that was, but Jingyi Bo. She watched as Ienaga moved like a leaf on the wind, the group’s attempts merely leading her further out of their reach. Bo knew this team, and knew how useless they were individually. However, as a team … Well, they weren’t much better. It can’t hurt though, can it?

“Guys! The ball! Elder Ienaga is the goal - let’s show her our Saoka skills!”

There was an immediate change. Bo threw the ball in, and everyone suddenly shifted into a kind of loose formation. The Chao gang played a mean passing game - not that it terribly meant anything here - with all three of them trying to make it unclear who was going to attempt to kick a ‘goal’. At the same time, the rest of the team kept up their pressure, forcing Ienaga to continue ducking and weaving. The ease with which she did that while also keeping her eye on the ball was starting to frighten Bo, so she decided to step up her own game.

Recalling Youni’s blow to the head,which he had recovered from with relative ease it seemed, Bo was reluctant to use the Endless Steps of Transformation. There was something she knew how to make, however - more Saoka balls. Patching the thing up was a daily occurrence - a new one was not much bigger of a deal. Converting nearby Mud into the requisite materials, she saw Ienaga’s gaze turn towards her. The group knew what this meant - Bo was their own goal, a target to be defended! They couldn’t do much about Ienaga if she wanted to go somewhere, but it seemed she was willing to respect their defensive pressure. Amai and Hoshikawa made for walls blocking her path, while Tatsumaki’s growing Heat made it simple for him to body-block Ienaga if she attempted to leap over them.

The party was still losing ground at a considerable pace, and Bo was starting to panic - every second she spent making a new Saoka ball, Ienaga got slightly closer. For some reason, panicking only made Bo work faster. She would shift a lump of mud out of the ground, tear it into constituent elements, reassemble it into something approximating a Saoka ball, and move on - all while she ran comically terrified circles around the pitch. Recalling her encounter with Tatsumaki, Bo stepped out of her shoes and began using her bare feet to perform some auto-pilot Transformation - this time, causing tangling vines to spring up wherever she stepped.

This had the unfortunate side effect of mostly slowing down her own team, but it did limit the amount of spots Ienaga was willing to stand - evidently, she was either counting the vines as a ‘hit’, or simply respecting the maneuver. But with every ball that Bo created, it made one more object for Ienaga to have to keep track of. Hizashi and the Chao gang maneuvered into position to attempt ‘goal scoring’, with balls flying through the air. Some of them were quite shoddy, simply exploding into leaves and scraps when kicked, but there was enough volume that the air was slowly filling with balls.

To an onlooker like Izumi, this looked like the silliest possible battle. A xiantian master of martial arts, bane of entire armies that could crush each and every one of them in an instant if she so chose, ducking Saoka balls and clumsy kicks like they were swung by an infuriated god, refusing to trample on flowers while she chased a woman who seemed like she was about to cry. To Jingyi Bo, this was life or death.

Speaking of such things, Bo looked behind her as she dropped her newest ball, only to look directly into the cold eyes of Ienaga Yumi. Time seemed to stand still as her mind raced to come up with a solution to this. It felt like that wooden sword was moving in slow motion, but at the same time it held such an impossible speed. At once, Bo wished for two things. One, to be safe and hidden from sight, and two, to come out of this victorious.

A sudden burst of mist covered the entire pitch and obscured everything, shortly followed by a horrifying crack-pop! Everyone stood still in shock. Ienaga’s wooden blade had made contact, and it had not been kind to whatever it hit. Even Izumi was wide-eyed with horror. Had her teacher just struck Bo down? They all knew she was frail, that the master was a crashing wave to Bo’s speck of mud, but Ienaga was not a master for nothing - she couldn’t have accidentally hurt Bo, could she? Izumi couldn’t wait for the mist to subside. Concentrating her own ki, she forced the blinding fog aside and revealed the scene to all. No one could believe their eyes.

Curled into a quivering ball on the ground was Jingyi Bo, still slowly leaking fog from her hands and feet. A slightly confused Ienaga Yumi stood with an outstretched wooden sword, an impaled and entirely deflated Saoka ball dangling limply from it. Elder Ienaga wordlessly reached forward and pulled the thing off - it crumbled to dust in her hands, a shoddy replica failing to withstand even the slightest touch more. She let loose a quiet chuckle, and then a loud belly laugh - everyone looked around uneasily.

“Well! That was certainly unexpected! An amazing show of bravery at the very last moment. Turning and throwing the ball right at my face - a cunning strategy, making me think you were simply cowering for your life.” Ienaga extended a hand to Bo, who looked like she had never been more confused in her life.

“I … yes … um ...” Bo’s hands ran across her body to make sure she was still intact, and she had to forcibly stop her technique from producing more fog. “Th-thank you, Elder?!”

The field was a mess of potholes and poorly-made Saoka balls. Everyone looked exhausted, their ki expressions flickering and fading. Regardless, Ienaga Yumi was smiling - they had done it. In fact, Ienaga was so enthused by their efforts that she demanded to know what the balls and goals were all about. Chao’s exhaustion turned to enthusiasm as he explained his game, giving Bo enough time to stop quivering uncontrollably.

“I’m proud of you, Jingyi.” Izumi put a hand on Bo’s shoulder, and she felt immediately calmer. A dumb smile crossed Bo’s face. I was pretty cool, huh?

“W-We couldn’t have done it without your advice.” Bo looked up to meet Izumi’s eyes, and was met with a confused smirk.

“What, run around screaming, panic at the last second … ? Your spiritual technique is getting much better, but you really need to work on your martial arts.” As Izumi began to chuckle at Bo’s expense, Bo began to deflate slightly. Still, she had coordinated the team and - even if it was just a panic-induced reflex - had managed to score the winning goal.

“Starting immediately, I’m inducting the lot of you back into my classes properly. I don’t see any reason to leave you all to your own devices, and you all have a lot of catching up to do! I shall have your schedule sent to you - ah, Izumi. Could you organise that?” Ienaga turned to the girl in question, and Izumi bowed deeply. Without another word, their master turned and left. Chao sighed.

“ … Man. There goes our Saoka practice.”