Zhi doesn’t know how much time has passed, but he does know one thing. If he ever tried to play dodge ball again, he would probably be the world champion. As long as he was the only cultivator of course. For the past little while, he has been dodging hundreds of ping pong balls from Bruce. The man is firing them off like he has a machine gun at this point, but is only using one nunchaku. Still, it just keeps going and Bruce just keeps increasing the speed and amount of balls flying at him.

Suddenly it all stops, the avalanche of balls ends and he hears Bruce say. “Great job, now we can move onto the next lesson. Actively using your spirit sense while you are also aware of your surroundings. Open your eyes and we will begin.”

Zhi opens his eyes and immediately takes his fighting stance at the same time.

“Great job, you learn well. Now I want you to first make your mental image of me and then I will attack you.”

Zhi begins to make a mental image of Bruce it overlays with his vision of the man, but Bruce begins to send a kick towards him. The mental image is slower to react, compared to Bruce's movement. “Your mental image should be off now that you can’t focus completely on it. Most likely slower than what is actually happening. That is normal, just focus on your surroundings as you merge the image.” Zhi blocks the attack and continues to practice, his mental image still acting as an after image to Bruce's movements.

Time passes as Zhi’s image slowly merges into Bruce's real movements. Afterwards there are still some times when Bruce moves faster than Zhi’s mental image. But after a while even that is gone. Bruce speaks up at this point and says, “Looks like you are at the proper point for the next phase.” Zhi doesn’t have a mental image of it, but he does sense something from behind him. He moves his head slightly and a ping pong ball flies past his face with incredible speed.

“Great job, it looks like this phase won’t take long at all. Prepare yourself!” Bruce starts attacking him in a blitz of moves, as this happens Zhi will get a sense something is coming from behind him also. It takes most of Zhi’s focus to defend himself and not get hit from behind, but he somehow manages it just barely. The attacks are defended fine, while the ping pong balls are narrowly missed. As Zhi fights he slowly gets better at sensing the attacks from behind and it becomes almost second nature to move out of the way of the ping pong balls. The longer this goes on the more balls come from behind, as soon as they pass Zhi they disappear. It becomes a dance for Zhi, dodging or blocking an attack from the front. But the way he does it also makes him dodge the attack from behind.

As Bruce attacks Zhi he says, “It looks like you have mastered this stage, now we move onto the next phase.” Saying that Bruce stops attacking and moves away from Zhi. Zhi keeps his stance, but says nothing and just waits for the next attack.

“Excellent, now you might not have noticed. But your spirit sense only expands so far from yourself. This should be about your limit I think based on your cultivation level and soul size, but let's find out for sure.”

Bruce is standing almost 20 yards from Zhi at this point and says, “Now close your eyes and concentrate on me, make a mental image like before and let me know when you lose that image.”

Zhi does so and it only takes a few moments before the mental image of Bruce just disappears from his mind and he says. “Now.” He opens his eyes, Bruce is now about 25 yards from Zhi at this point.

“Great, now we will work on making your spirit sense sharp and accurate. Right now you can only sense something that is coming at you. Not what it actually is. So close your eyes and let's begin the next phase.”

Zhi closes his eyes and waits. He feels something far away enter his senses and fly towards him, he dodges it with ease but can’t tell what it was. He feels another thing enter from behind, he still can’t tell what it is. But he dodges it as another thing enters, this one he thinks is a ping pong ball from the familiar feeling it gives off and tries to catch it. A moment later his hand erupts in a world of pain. A grunt of pain escapes Zhi’s mouth as he opens his eyes. There is a throwing knife stuck into the palm of his hand.

“Don’t take a guess at what you think it is. Feel the item, and let your spirit sense make the image in your mind of what it is.”

Zhi just nods his head and rips out the knife. Tossing it to the floor, he closes his eyes and begins to focus again. Items begin to come into his spirit sense bubble one at a time, he dodges all of them and just lets his spirit sense tell him where they are. It takes a while but he slowly starts to get images for some of the items. He never opens his eyes and just lets his spirit sense do all the work. After a while five or more items are flying through his spirit sense at a time. He decides to say something after this continues for a while and he is positive that he knows all the items.

“My spirit sense is telling me that there is, two ping pong balls, one throwing knife, a shuriken and one egg.”

“Great work, I am going to up the difficulty. Open your eyes when you feel you have it.”

Around Zhi he begins to feel more and more items enter his spirit sense, some of them he can determine, but a lot of them are new and he just senses a blur as they pass by. Zhi loses himself in the deluge of items and time passes without his notice. The items get to the point where they are no longer trying to hit him, there are too many to dodge now. They just fly in and out of his sphere of influence as he calmly lets his spirit sense tell him what they are. After more time passes, he is sure of every item around him, he opens his eyes and looks around himself. All the items are paused in motion and everyone of them is where he last sensed them. Satisfied that he completed the task, he looks back towards Bruce. Bruce smiles and says, “That look on your face is all the assurance I need to know you completed the task.”

All the items disappear and Bruce walks back towards Zhi. Zhi can feel him as he enters his spirit sense again. As he gets closer, Bruce says. “You should practice this skill more when you are done here. It’s like a muscle, the more you use it the better it will become. With enough practice you can see behind walls or underground. You can also use it for other things besides vision, you could use it to spy on other people's conversation at the edge of your sphere of influence, or other rooms. It will also help you immensely if you have to fight someone stronger than you who doesn’t have spirit sense yet. But only to a certain extent, at a certain point you just can’t win against raw power.”

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He stands in front of Zhi and takes a fighting stance while saying. “You can even use it to manipulate items when you become strong enough. But like I said, it takes a lot of practice. You will have to figure out how to do that on your own. I have two more lessons left for you. Come then the next lesson is starting.” He kicks forward at Zhi with his right leg, who palms the leg away after it finishes it’s attack arc. Zhi tries to low kick Bruce's left foot while his other leg is still in the air. But Bruce just jumps back and lands in his stance.

“Good attack. Now let's teach you how to infuse your attacks with Qi. Then we will switch to infusing items with Qi. Come attack me and at the same time I want you to focus your Qi into the whole attack. If you are punching, use your Qi to improve each part of your body used in the attack and finish it on your fist. Same with a kick, make your Qi start where the motion starts and end where the attack should hit.”

His body blurs slightly as his right foot connects with Zhi’s chest before he can react. Zhi is shot backwards but doesn’t fall over. Zhi just adjusts his stance and moves forward, he tries to cycle his Qi into his next attack. But he doesn’t seem to do anything, no speed increase or power increase at all.

“You need to gather it in the area where the attack starts and move it through your body towards its end point. Then you need to force it into the end point of the attack, like this.” His fist is a slight blur to Zhi as he strikes Zhi in the chin.

Zhi shakes his head from the strike, then tries to gather Qi in his legs. He moves it up through his hips and waist as he starts to twist for a right hook. The Qi gathers more as it moves through his body and as his right arm extends out, the Qi flows through it. When his fist is blocked by Bruce the Qi in his arm doesn’t make it in time and the Qi infused attack fizzles out.

“Good try, just need to work on your timing. Again.”

Bruce is now standing in front of him holding a pair of striking pads. Zhi goes through the motion again, trying to stabilize the speed and timing of his Qi with his atack. It doesn’t work for a while, but he slowly gains the right speed and process for his punch. He continues for a while, just right punch after right punch until he can do it almost half the time. Bruce smiles at him and says, “Change it up, use your other hand and mix in kicks. I want you to be able to do it with all of your attacks at least half the time. Then we will move on to the fun part.”

Zhi wasn’t sure if he liked the sound of that, but started to change up his fighting style. It took a while, but he got to the point that he could do any attack about half the time infused with Qi. At that point Bruce's striking pads disappeared and he returned a kick at Zhi which was almost a blur to his vision. But Zhi was able to infuse Qi into his block and actually defended against the attack. “Great, now focus because this is where it gets fun.”

At first Zhi would have disagreed with what could be considered “fun” to Bruce. But as time passed and he became better at infusing his Qi into his attacks and defense, it actually became fun, and Zhi found himself smiling. He had no idea how long it took, but at some point his movement of Qi was just natural and he no longer needed to think about what he was doing. Bruce didn’t stop though, he actually increased his speed. Which made Zhi have to focus and add more Qi. It became a feedback loop, Bruce would speed up slightly and hit Zhi a few times and Zhi would compensate until it stopped. Then it would start again.

Zhi wasn’t sure what was actually going on, but he noticed after a point that even though Bruce and his speed was a lot faster than normal, it looked normal to him. Bruce steps back and says, “Looks like you have mastered this as well. Now lets work on the next step, infusing a weapon with Qi. Here take this.” Bruce hands Zhi a club.

“Now this is slightly different, you need to push your Qi into the weapon and cycle it to the tip and back into yourself. It will feel weird at first, but it will help you with the last lesson. Now I want you to imagine that the club has a Qi pathway inside of it. It starts in one part of your hand, goes through the whole club and then goes back into your hand.”

Zhi looks down at the club and closes his eyes. A mental image appears in his mind of the club with a thin Qi path that loops from one part of his hand through the club, to another part of his hand. Then he begins to push Qi into the club and forces it to follow his imaginary Qi path. It takes a while, but he finally makes it to the end and as the Qi goes to move back inside him he drops the club in shock from the feeling of the now foreign Qi.

“That was faster than I thought it would take. Try again and this time don’t drop the club, the Qi is just slightly infused with the Qi from the wood. It will mix with your body's Qi and that feeling will fade. The main point of this practice is to get you used to that foreign Qi feeling and not have you automatically stop reabsorbing it.”

Zhi nod’s his head and picks back up the club. He closes his eyes and starts the process again. This time when the Qi returns, he just squeezes his hand tighter on the club and lets the Qi be absorbed into his own. It takes a while for the weird feeling to stop, but after a while it almost feels like it should be a natural thing he has always done. At that point he opens his eyes to look at Bruce. Bruce smiles and says, “Okay, same thing with this sword.”

The club disappears from his hand and Bruce hands him a sword. Zhi starts the whole process over again, but this time when he feels the weird Qi reenter him. He just lets it happen and focuses on getting used to the feeling. Once complete Bruce hands him another item to try again. This continues until it is second nature to cycle Qi through items. Once he is satisfied with Zhi’s performance, Bruce says. “Alright, onto the last lesson. This is technically not something a beginner does, but you have spirit sense. So I might as well teach you this now.”

“Sit down and close your eyes. Then focus on your spirit sense sphere and find the Qi that is all around you. Then I want you to attempt to pull in the Qi that is wrapped around your arms. It should feel worse than when you cycled your Qi through items. But just bear with it, until it feels natural.”

Zhi sits down and begins to use his spirit sense to feel the Qi around him. It takes a while, but he is able to do it. Once he finds it, he begins to draw it into himself. But instead of finding it weird like the Qi cycled through other items. This feels like his own Qi, it doesn’t even take a minute and it’s almost a natural process, just like breathing.

“How are you doing that already? I figured you would at least puke on yourself from the back lash the first time you did it.”

Zhi opens his eyes to look up at his teacher and smiles before saying. “I was told my soul and the Qi where I am is too compatible. I am not allowed to cultivate at all, and have to use the system to increase my cultivation now.”

Bruce smiles while shaking his head and says. “Unfortunate, but I could see that happening. Well that saves time with this lesson. We should be done now, do you have anything you wish to ask before we part?”