Year 658 of the stable Era

Twelfth day of the eighth month

Chao Ren threw his copy of the Teal Jade Qi Gathering Technique manual across the room in frustration. It hit the wall with a thump, sliding down behind his jade slab.

With a sigh, he crossed the room and reached to fish it out. As ever, he hated that the sect had chosen to put it so close to the wall. His fingers had a hard time fitting behind it, especially if it landed too close to the center.

Which it had.

Ancestors take him now.

Sighing again, he fetched his copy of the Teal Jade Body Tempering Technique, and after a few minutes of poking, body managed to overcome spirit, pushing it within his grasp. Returning to his cushion, he crossed his legs as he flipped back to his most recently dogeared source of frustration.

‘As you focus on your spirit jade, focus not on the qi flowing through it, but on the qi’s flow through it. While it is earth qi, it is also qi of the earth. As the qi that flows through all things flows, so too does it flow through this jade, and it is through the moments it does you may observe a fragment of this truth.’

It was vague, full of repetition that belabored every point, and yet at the same time it was exceptionally brief on details. Wasn’t earth qi always of the earth? And what sort of fragment of truth was he supposed to be learning? Thinking back to the previous parts of the manual, he tried to retrace the steps.

First, he took in a breath, qi filling his lungs. Then, he sifted it through his dantian, the qi filtering into its component elements.

Wood, earth, water. They swirled around each other, mixing into his inner cycle. It created an imbalance at first, as the excess of water sought to drown fire. To combat this Ren forced his excess of wood to drink more deeply of it, growing it into an overabundance that soon fed fire’s rapid resurgence.

The elements once more in balance, he released his qi through his meridians, slowly guiding its flow. It was hard work, like trying to scoop water with a sieve. For every bit that he managed to keep control of, another slipped between his fingers. By the end of the cycle through his body, less than half of it remained. Frustrated, he turned his senses towards the jade slab once more.

His ability to sense qi was one of the few things that had improved in the last four months. The earlier sections of the manual been quite succinct in explaining how to extend his awareness of it past the limits of his body, and with only the slightest squint of his eyes he beheld the rich veins of earth qi in the translucent stone. The manual explained that with more opaque materials and living things he would have to rely on a sense of feel to detect their qi, but spirit jade’s natural transparency would make it easier for a beginner to get started.

He stared at the patterns, memorizing them as well as he could. After burning them into his mind, he attempted to circulate his qi again, this time trying to get it to follow a path closer to the stone’s. Again, he drew in breath, cycled it through his dantian, and drew it through his meridians. And again, half the qi slipped out of his body.

He tried it again.

Then again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again, and again and again, until he hit the ground in frustration.

It should be working. It felt like at least part of his circulation was firmer now, but he couldn’t tell why. Or how. And since he couldn’t tell either of those things, he definitely couldn’t figure out how to apply that stability to the rest of his circulation.

He was at a bottleneck, and he needed some sign from the heavens to help him overcome it.

As he pondered if looking at the jade from a different angle would help him better gain new perspective, a faint sound interrupted his thoughts. He frowned, before realizing that he was still dampening his sense of hearing. There had been a lot more screaming lately, and he’d been isolating it so that he would be interrupted less.

As he did, the faint echo of the room returned, and he realized that the source of the sound was someone knocking on his door. He quickly got up to get it, straightening his gi as he did.

He slid the door open, and found Xia Tao waiting for him, bowl of shrimp fried rice in hand.

“Hey, how’s it goin?” Xia Tao asked.

“Fine,” Chao Ren replied curtly, “I was just finishing a series of qi circulations.”

“Ah, good,” Xia Tao replied, “so you were just about to take a rest.”

“I suppose,” Ren replied questioningly, “I was just about to take a break for a stick or two before I started my next one.”

“A stick or two?!” Tao exclaimed in shock, “So only a ten-minute break between sets? Or are you from one of those areas that uses Bailong sticks.”

“No, my family uses proper sticks,” Ren clarified. “I have another nine minutes before I resume.”

“Well, if you’re interested, some of us wanted to try and get a game of mahjong together, and we need a fourth player to play a real game.”

Now that was surprising, because the last he remembered all three of their remaining companions were currently locked in a strange triangle of grudges. This seemed destined to end in disaster. But… he had just asked the heavens for a sign, and it wouldn’t do to ignore opportunity when it knocked.

“I suppose I can extend my break a little bit,” he admitted.

“Perfect!” Tao exclaimed, and began ushering him towards the sitting room. Their temporary residence was essentially three rectangular sections and a gate arranged in a square around their small courtyard with a small roofed hall bordering the grass. To avoid an inevitable conflict over the larger room that such an arrangement created, the Teal Mountain Sect had simply divided the middle building in two and made one half a communal sitting area.

It had a pair of tables, one large and one small, five chairs and formerly five seating cushions, before the occupants had each claimed one for their rooms. The far corner of the room contained a small bookshelf that held a series of tomes detailing the sect’s history, a Go board, and apparently a set of mahjong tiles. There was also a small ink painting of mountains on the wall facing the courtyard, which was the closest thing they had to a window.

Well, aside from the courtyard, but there was hardly stiff competition between a static vista and the occasional cloud.

Lee Han and Bailong Shen were waiting for them at the table, and in astonishingly good spirits with each other’s company. They seemed to be exchanging words rather than barbs, which was perplexing. Ren could have sworn that the two of them were in a blood feud of some sort, an affliction that was typically terminal when cultivators caught it. In fact, they seemed so engrossed in their conversation that they barely noticed him as he drew closer.

“So, he really just fell for it two times in a row?” Lee Han asked.

“Yeah. After I got him with the grab the first time, he assumed that I was going for a feint the second time around,” Shen replied.

“And after that?”

“He assumed that I was intent on humiliating him in front of the entire tournament, so he actually thought that I was going for it the third time.”

“No! You can’t be serious.”

“I am. I think that by that point the pressure got to him. After I got him with my early attack-“

“Which you stole!”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I would be a poor warrior if I didn’t learn from an encounter. So, as I was saying, after I landed my early kick-”

“Which was my move!”

“You have to know that you aren’t the first person to rush a round.”

“I was the first in the tournament’s history to perform the maneuver.”

“It was the inaugural year!” Shen protested. “Look, do you want to hear the story or not?”

“Fine,” Lee Han pouted.

“So. Thanks to landing my early kick, I was up on points. After the second grapple, I was only one point away from sweeping the round. He was already worried about losing given how decisively I won my previous match-”

“I was up three points to two before you broke my leg!”

“I told you, it was an accident! And I have apologized, what, six times so far? Anyway, he was nervous well before the round started, and when confronted with the possibility of such a humiliating defeat and the face he would lose if he was unable to score even a single point-”

“Especially after the semifinalist was able to score three more hits than he had!”

Bailong Shen stopped and gave Lee Han a hard stare. “Do you even want me to tell the rest of this story? Because I can stop. If that’s what you really, truly want.”

“Fine, fine. Go on,” Lee Han apologized.

“So. As I was saying, after he realized how much face he would lose if he were to be defeated by the same move three times in a row, and how his family would react to such a disappointment, he completely took leave of his senses when I started to feint that I was going for his leg again. He just rushed at me, wildly swinging his arms as if he could just hit me with sheer determination.”

“No!” Lee Han gasped.

“Yes. He was so blinded by fear that it was painfully easy to take a step to the side and trip him. After that, it was just one solid blow to his chest,” Shen rose from his chair and demonstrated the strike, his fist twisting downwards in a finishing blow that stopped a moment before it knocked over the neatly stacked mahjong tiles. “And he was out.”

“Well, that explains why my mother refused to tell me how it ended,” Lee Han said with a chuckle. “To think that the other side of the bracket was so soft. If I’d heard how it ended, so soon after such a humiliating loss... I might have actually developed an inner demon from it. How did they seed the bracket so badly?”

“Wait, did you not hear what happened in the other semifinal round?”

“No, my family just told me to focus on my cultivation so that I would be able to beat you when we next met.”

“Ah. Well, according to rumors I heard, young master Ting Guo, heir to the Southern Crane Sword technique, was so overconfident that he was going to win that he decided to overindulge the night before.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“But I am! He was so hungover that he couldn’t tell his sword from his scabbard. He even tossed the wrong one to the side after he finally managed to draw it!”

Lee Han lost it at that, almost falling out of his chair from laughter. Xia Tao took that moment to clear his throat, and the two finally noticed their presence.

“Ah, Xia Bao. I see you managed to convince Junior Chao Ren to join us,” Bailong Shen said.

Ah, Xia Bao, not Xia Tao, Chao Ren realized. He silently thanked his ancestors that he hadn’t attempted to address the man by name. That would have been a truly embarrassing way to get acquainted with him.

“That’s great! I can’t stand playing three-player,” Lee Han exclaimed.

“We could always ask Zhao Lan,” Bao said, sliding out a chair for Ren. The other two groaned at this.

“Don’t joke even joke about that Bao,” Lee Han said.

“I wouldn’t mind the company, but the way he loses…” Shen added. “Why, he makes Lee Han look like a sage.”

“Well, we have a real sage with us now!” Lee Han exclaimed, patting Ren on the back. “It’s almost been a month since we last saw you around.”

“I wouldn’t dare claim such an illustrious title for myself,” Ren said, shaking his head. “I am far from the knowledge and skill it entails.”

“Are you sure, even with all that closed door-” Lee Han cut off as Shen kicked him under the table, just as Xia Bao arrived with several bowls.

“I made some extra fried rice. I thought you could all use some real food for once, and the shrimp were about to overpopulate anyways."

"Thanks!"

"Much appreciated"

"Thank you very much, Senior Xia Bao." Chao Ren said with as much of a bow as he could manage while seated,

"You can just call me Bao."

"I could hardly be so informal with a benefactor like you." Ren replied, taking in an appreciative whiff of the shrimp fried rice. His stomach rumbled. He hadn't had any true food in the last 4 months, and even though he had just eaten a food pill, his body yearned for him to devour it like a python devoured a boar.

He held himself back, focusing on slowly straightening out his chopstick position. It'd been so long since he last used a pair that his muscle memory was a bit flabby.

He deliberately deposited a small portion in his mouth, closing his eyes as he savored the taste. The delicate sesame of the oil, the gentle sweetness of the shrimp, the crunch of the rice, the slight umami of the soy sauce, the...

Well, that was actually all of the ingredients the rice seemed to have.

All said, it was very simple fried rice. The Sect had probably only allowed Xia Bao the basic ingredients necessary for his required meals to reduce the risk of contraband, but it tasted so good. He bit back a tear as he bit into the plump shrimp again. His stomach roared in frustration at this, angry to only be allowed a taste after getting so tantalizingly close to true satiation.

He took another bite, and then more, stopping himself only after his fifth bite, when he realized that the table had gone quiet. Alarmed, he quickly looked around to see if they were staring.

Thankfully, the other two also seemed to be preoccupied with eating their rice, and he stifled a sigh of relief. He hadn't looked too desperate.

"I got some water," Bao announced, suddenly reappearing at his side. Ren flinched. He hadn't even noticed that he'd left! He'd been far too distracted by the rice.

Bao set four full wooden cups down on the table before returning to his seat. "Solid foods can be a bit hard on your stomach if you've only been eating food pills. So drink up."

"Thank you, Senior Xia Bao," Ren said, taking an appreciative sip.

"Just call me Bao, I'm not that much older than you."

"With respect, Senior Xia Bao, I could hardly show you so little deference, especially after such a generous gift of your precious rice.”

As he bowed his head, Shen gave Bao an ‘I told you so’ shrug as Bao tried to work out a way to get his wayward junior to lose his formalities. “Look, if you want to want to repay me for the rice, I’ll take it in the form of you referring to me as Bao.”

“If that is your wish, Sen- Bao,” Ren replied, savoring another bite of rice. It was truly generous of Xia Bao to ask so little in return for such a gift. “I really must commend your cooking. For a dish of so few ingredients, it has quite a refined taste to it.”

“Ah, you’re too kind,” Bao said, waving his chopstick. “As my grandfather would say: there while the simplest things are rarely found in the profound, the profound can often be found in the simplest of things.”

“He sounds like he was a truly a wise man,” Ren replied.

“That, and after cooking the same meal for four months, I was either going to get better at it or go crazy!” Bao laughed, depositing his chopsticks into his empty bowl. “So, do you want a little more before we start?”

Chao Ren looked up from picking the last few grains of rice off the sides of his bowl. “I couldn’t possibly take any more of your precious rice.”

“Nonsense, I insist.” Before he could stop him, Xia Bao had slapped a fresh ladle of rice into his bowl, filling it near to the brim again. As Chao Ren tried to protest, he cut him off by tossing the ladle into the now-empty wok with loud clatter. “I’ve already eaten all I need for the day, and these two jokers already had a bowl while I was knocking on your door. If you don’t eat it, it’ll go to waste.”

He nodded over to their mahjong companions, who had the decency to look at least somewhat embarrassed that he’d caught on to their subterfuge.

“So, how about we start to play?” Bailong Shen said, changing the subject with the grace of a carp climbing a waterfall. “I assume that all of you are comfortable with the standard rules and no local hands?”

Three heads nodded in agreement.

Without further ado, the dice were passed around, and each of the players rolled for dealer. Chao Ren managed to open with an auspicious triple sixes, beating out Lee Han’s impressive sixteen, and was given the small bamboo plaque that marked his new station. The dice rolled again, the wall of tiles split, and their components distributed.

It wasn’t a bad start. Ren had a couple of connecting bamboo tiles, a pair of both the East and West Winds, and a motley assortment of pins and characters rounded off by a single White Dragon. After nobody revealed any flower tiles, the first move fell on him. He decided to start with a safe discard and tossed his dragon to the center of the tile.

Before it could even land, Bailong Shen’s hand shot out.

“Kong,” he announced, flipping over the other three White Dragons in his hand.

Chao Ren groaned. And then groaned again when Shen drew one of the Four Noble Professions from the wall. A fat red koi glistened on the Fisherman’s rod as Shen placed it above his dragons and drew a second tile off the wall. He tossed a 5-Pinyin tile to the center of the table, passing the turn back to Ren.

“Lucky lucky,” he said, stroking his tiles. “Looks like I’m off to a promising start.”

Ren drew another tile, and after giving it a second’s consideration, promptly tossed his unlucky draw it into the pool. Where Lee Han promptly called it.

“Pung,” he announced, revealing a pair of equally unlucky 4-Pinyin tiles. He dropped a 9-Bamboo from his hand, which Ren glared at, as it was the only tile of the suit that wouldn’t fit his hand.

Shen then proceeded to draw a tile and drop a second 9-Bamboo, forcing the turn back to Chao Ren once again. He drew another tile and found himself staring at another Dragon, this time in jade green. As he placed it atop his hand with a clack, intent on considering his next action a bit more carefully, Lee Han interrupted his thoughts.

“Ah! I just realized, we never announced the stakes, did we,” he noted, scratching his chin.

“I knew we’d forgotten something,” Bao said with a snap of his fingers. “I guess I was so used to just playing with just you two guys that I assumed everyone knew them.”

“What are the stakes,” Ren asked trepidatiously. There it was: the trap. Lure him out with food, distract him until he lowered his guard. His father had always warned him about this. Told him tales of noble scions, who could spend gold and spirit stones like water, drowning those who couldn’t afford their high stakes in debt when they inevitably lost. His muscles tensed as he prepared to flee, mind already racing as it tried to figure out an excuse to leave that would anger his would-be captors as little as possible.

“Oh, it’s nothing too serious,” Shen said with a casual wave of his hand. “We don’t really bet with money since it makes the game too serious.”

“And since the sect didn’t include any point sticks,” Lee Han added, “so it’s a pain to keep track.”

Well, that’s a relief, Ren thought to himself. That was good. He only had a few spirit stones to his name, and he doubted that he could match the stakes Lee Han and Bailong Shen were accustomed to.

“No,” Shen said, taking a sip of water, “we just play for knowledge.”