Chapter 7
Pao was nervous. Not because of anything he could control, and that was the worst part. If it was something he could control then he wouldn’t be so nervous, he’d just do whatever he thought would have the best outcome and be done with it.
Like cultivation. Pao’s spirit was, according to Master Tren Shen, only of middling strength. He was physically stronger than the other cultivator children and probably would have been even if he hadn’t put so much effort into drawing in the Qi of the Earth and pondering the wisdom of the Dao that Master Shen had imparted to him.
But the few times that they’d sparred recently, Tan had mopped the floor with him.
Tan was simply too fast, and he could see everything like it was happening in slow motion if he wanted to. Pao could tell whenever Tan was in the Sublime State of Clarity because the boy always got a certain look on his face. Like he was really really focused. Or maybe a little constipated? It was an easy tell to spot, but unfortunately even when Pao knew that Tan was being Sublime, there wasn’t anything he could do about it.
At least, not that he’d figured out how to do yet.
But he could kick the snot out of Won, which he’d proved finally to shut the boy up about how much better fire was than earth. Yeah so Won could conjure a few flames. All he’d managed to do in their fight, which neither of them were going to admit to the adults was more serious than it should have been, was ruin a set of Pao’s clothes. Yeah it was a little embarrassing to walk home with a big hole in the seat of his pants that he couldn’t do anything about, but the younger boy had barely singed Pao’s hairs.
Pao had knocked Won unconscious. Without meaning to. Once he’d realized that Won’s fire wasn’t actually all that hot, he’d simply gone in for the punch and hit the boy right in the jaw, and that was it. Won had ruined Pao’s clothing, but Pao had definitively settled the question of who was stronger.
And then Tren had shown them both that they were still children by hiding them both for fighting without his supervision. That had shown Pao that no matter how thick his skin had become, it still felt the sting of a switch just fine. At least when it was in the hands of Master Shen.
Eventually he’d have to fight Ko as well. And that was what had him nervous.
Pao liked Ko. He really liked Ko. He thought maybe he wanted to marry her when they got older.
That was part of the rivalry between Won and Pao as well. Pao had embarrassed himself when they were all younger by kissing Won while thinking that Won was Ko. The next day Won had shaved his hair, and he’d kept it short ever since while encouraging his sister to wear hers in a more feminine hairdo.
Pao liked Ko even more than he had when they were younger. They were training partners. Her spring in the hill that they cultivated on did nothing for him on its own, but when she drew in the spring’s power, he felt that much more earth Qi soaring up towards the surface for him to claim.
But they were also rivals.
And today they were supposed to spar.
He didn’t really want to fight her. Not just because she was a girl, but because he liked her and he didn’t want to embarrass her. Because he was going to win. Easily.
He’d been cultivating for almost four years now, and she had just started. He was in the fourth stage of the initiate’s realm, while she was barely into the first stage.
It was a training spar. He wasn’t allowed to use his full strength. In fact, before they started, Mistress Shen had painted a magic circle on Pao’s bare chest which would break if he used more strength than a cultivator in the second stage of the initiate’s realm would have. It would tingle if he drew in too much power to warn him to settle down, and it would sluff off of his skin if he ignored that.
If the circle sluffed off, then he lost the match, even if he won.
And if he lost to a girl, then everyone on the farm would tease him. Maybe.
The children gathered after the chores for the sparing matches. The siblings went first.
Ko won that match easily because she could enhance her muscles with her water magic. Won was a bit stronger than a normal child his age should be, but most of the power of his cultivation was focused on the magical aspect of fire rather than any practical aspect that came up in a fistfight. There were body enhancement techniques for fire cultivators, but the adult cultivators both said quite frankly that Won wasn’t nearly ready to begin working with them.
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Not until he could start a fire that could burn everything, but wouldn’t burn anything.
Pao didn’t really understand what they meant by that, and he didn’t have to. He wasn’t a fire cultivator, he followed the Dao of the Bountiful Harvest.
Just like Master Shen.
He could have picked a different Earth Dao. His spirit would have been compatible with the Dao of the Lonely Mountain or the Dao of the Deep Places, or a few others which Master Shen had said he could have guided Pao down at least the first leg of the journey. But Pao had insisted upon following the same path as Master Shen, even before the lessons began and Pao had realized what a perfect fit Bountiful Harvest was for him.
Once Ko was straddling her brother and feeding him mud, the adults called an end to the sparring match and the boy struggled to get away and reclaim his dignity. He managed to get away.
Next up was Ko versus Tan. Tan was bare chested with a magic circle that was like Pao’s magic circle but also different. It was the same in function, but it reacted to wind Qi instead of earth Qi so of course the lines were different, reaching out in all directions instead of down and the circles were more open. But the effect was the same.
Unfortunately for Ko, Tan didn’t have any problem with punching a girl, and even limiting himself down to the second stage of the initiate’s realm, he beat the snot out of her. Eventually she gave up, holding back her tears of pain and frustration as she ran away to compose herself.
Tan did look a little embarrassed then; he was used to sparring with Pao. They’d been mock-fighting for years now. He’d forgotten that when he’d first started out sparring with Pao, he’d also gotten pretty emotional about the fights that he’d lost and hadn’t expected her to react so strongly.
He was still thinking that over when it was his turn to fight Won. Tan was wearing pants that were enchanted to resist Won’s fire, so this time Won was allowed to go full out and use his magic instead of just his fists.
He didn’t do much better than before. Tan was much faster with his body than Won was with his magic, and the older boy made the mistake of thinking that he could win that way against the air cultivator. He quickly found that he was incorrect.
Won too ran away and cried when it was over. For the second time he’d been beaten, and although he still had to fight Pao, he knew how that would go.
Today had established that Won was the weakest of the Shen’s three disciples.
Or at least it would once Pao had beaten his face in. Pao tried not to admit to himself that he was looking forward to it.
To the adults, there had been no surprises so far, and that continued as Pao and Tan squared off against each other. Tan got that vacant look on his face that said that he was Sublime, and Pao tried to do the same but he just couldn’t enter that state and fight at the same time. He could become Sublime while he was cultivating. Sometimes. Those were his best and most productive sessions. But in a fight, he couldn’t quite manage it.
What followed sort of looked like a younger child picking on an older child as Tan beat the snot out of Pao until they were both exhausted. That took a while because while they were limited to the second stage of the initiate’s realm, they were still cultivators of the forth stage, in Pao’s case, and the sixth stage in Tan’s. Which meant that limiting their power output only increased their stamina.
Pao could have called an end to it at any point when it was clear that Tan wasn’t going to let him get so much as a punch in, but he stubbornly stuck it out. All the way until he realized that Tan was having trouble maintaining his Sublime state. Pao grew excited and pressed the advantage.
Tan was just a little slow at the end, and Pao grabbed him by the hair and pinned him to the ground. Tan yelled and flinched as Pao pulled his fist back and stopped it an inch away from the boy’s face.
“I win,” Pao said, grinning.
“Yeah,” Tan admitted. “Good fight.”
“Good fight.”
Pao helped his fellow disciple up and they briefly dusted each other off. Tan had fought three fights in a row, which wasn’t exactly fair to him, but it had been a while since Pao’s last win against the younger boy and he’d take whatever handicap he could get. Whoever thought that young kids couldn’t fight was an idiot, they could be mean if their fathers weren’t the sort of man to drill sportsmanship into them.
It was Pao’s turn to fight Won, and like with Tan he relied on his magic. Pao flinched to see the fire coming at him, but his pants were supposedly enchanted so they wouldn’t burn away this time. So he’d endured the fire like before, and after a minute he’d asked “Are you done?”
Won tried to increase the intensity of his flames, but barely managed to do more than give Pao a tickle. Pao ended the fight by punching him in the stomach when the younger boy wouldn’t surrender.
Then it was his turn to fight Ko. And his butterflies were a churning in his gut.
“Don’t you dare go easy on me because I’m a girl and I know you like me. If I think you went easy on me I’ll never give you a kiss,” Ko told him at the start of the fight, throwing him completely off-balance.
Then she kicked him in the balls.
He recovered, and they fought for ten minutes. His butterflies eventually settled down and it wasn’t much different from fighting Tan. She was strong, and she was fast, but he was stronger and he was more experienced at formal fighting.
So eventually, when he tripped her and pinned her to the ground, the fight came to an end.
And that’s how the first tournament of the Shen farm went.