The Downpour, Canvas, Frontier Territory, Early Winter, 1596 PTS
Yuenan danced across the training room’s floor, each stride moving him further and faster than should have been possible. In addition, such speed certainly should have created far more momentum than Jin was witnessing. He could barely even tell what he was seeing, and that fact filled his eyes with awe and admiration for his master’s power. Was this how Master Yuenan and those disciples had been walking so easily above the mud? A technique not only for battles, but also for navigating the Downpour itself.
“You’re going to teach this to me?” Jin asked, almost surprised by the fact. It had been about three weeks since he had arrived to the sect, and in that time he had been kept constantly busy with chores and practice. Only once per day would his master stop by to teach him, every morning after dawn. It was the highlight of his day, and the moment Jin had learned what techniques were, he could not wait until he was finally taught one. Today, it seemed, was that day.
Yuenan nodded, smiling down at his youthful disciple.
“This is a movement technique created by our sect’s first leader. It is called the Water-Striding Steps. Personally, I think it is the most vital technique you could learn, so I will be teaching it to you first.”
Jin frowned, his mind making a connection.
“Do they have something to do with that fiend I saw?”
Yuenan smiled at him approvingly.
“The founder once spent several weeks watching the movements of the waterstriders, analyzing the ways that they could move so swiftly, their agility and the lightness of their steps. In the end, this technique was the summation of what he learned.”
Jin listened intently, his eyes wide. He recalled the great fiend’s movements, the grace with which it had moved. The experience of witnessing the waterstrider had indelibly imprinted itself upon his mind as the most amazing thing the boy had ever experienced. He wondered if he would ever get the chance to see one again.
Master Yuenan went on to explain the process of the technique, every small movement of both body and miasma that was necessary to perform it. From his few weeks of practice, Jin already felt that he was relatively proficient with his use of miasma, perhaps due to the talent that his master had mentioned. He was progressing rapidly, and felt confident in his ability to perform the technique.
Jin stretched out his leg to take his first step, but the closer he got to the right pattern the energies grew more and more difficult to control, and Jin faltered unsteadily, before toppling ungracefully to the ground. His cheeks slightly reddened, embarrassed by the mistake.
“You’ll need to do a bit more practice,” laughed Yuenan. “An immortal technique will not be so easy to learn.”
Face still red, Jin rose to his feet and attempted the technique a second time. This time, he lost even more of his control over the miasma, and rocketed forward, slamming face first into the stone of the sect’s walls. He cursed, holding his bleeding nose as he glanced back towards his master, who was still smirking. Yuenan walked towards him, offering a handkerchief, and Jin grudgingly accepted.
“Be methodical about your movements. Every move must be thought about well in advance, until you build up your muscle memory,” explained Yuenan.
Jin tried again, but this time, nothing seemed to have happened at all, and he fell over once more. He glanced at his master once more.
“You stretched your leg out too quickly, and your miasma is too fast. Too choppy. The essence of formlessness is fluidity, Jin. Try again, but be smooth, graceful.”
He demonstrated the motion again, and once more Jin could barely comprehend what he was seeing. Master Yuenan’s steps were beautiful, as if he were dancing across the stone tiles. He tried to pay close attention to the exactness of the man’s movements, to the contortion of his shroud.
Feeling more confident, Jin took another step forward, and this time his legs lost all strength, and he collapsed face first onto the ground, creating further pain in his injured nose. He groaned, and accepted an offered hand from his master, who pulled him back up to his feet.
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“This is too difficult,” he complained. Before this point, progression had been so simple. The basic forms had been simple, and so had absorbing miasma and circulating it throughout his meridians. Hadn't he been a great talent? Shouldn't this come easy to him?
Yuenan simply smiled calmly down at his young charge.
“The martial path is a long and hard one, Jin. But it is also a rewarding one. We are unorthodox practitioners, which means we must work hard and always progress further along the path.”
Jin scowled once more in annoyance, but he tried once more, and promptly toppled back down onto the ground.
"How long did this take you to learn, Master?" he asked as he unsteadily rose back to his feet for what felt like the umpteenth time.
The old man stroked his beard, considering the question.
"I suppose I must have spent at least three months on it. But if you can't do it in two or less, I would be disappointed."
Hearing this, Jin felt a bit better. Multiple months... It seemed like a long time, but for a technique so magical, he supposed that it only made sense for it not to be easy. Jin would simply have to continue working until he had succeeded. He was an unorthodox practitioner now, after all. As his master always said, perseverance was the core of all martial masters.
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Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
I danced my way beneath the rain, moving with the swift steps that had essentially become a part of me. The Water-Striding Steps were still, I believed, my most vital and important technique, and were the only reason I remained alive to this day. It was difficult to even recall how they had once been a difficulty, something that I had needed to work hard to successfully utilize. At the same time, I merged my soul with the currents of the spirit world, becoming one with the ocean.
I felt my grasp on my soul falter, at risk of dissolving into the waters of ashata. I sighed, stalling my movements and shutting off the rainfall in the meditation room as my soul reemerged. It seemed I had reached my limits for the moment. At times such as this, it was for the best that I took a break for a few days. A change of pace might be in order for myself.
As my master had once said, one needed to know when to pause in order to move forward. Banging my head against the wall with endless attempts would do nothing but delay my progression even further.
Despite the delay, I would not stall in my practice. I would simply work on something other than my refinement method for the time being. The biggest problem facing myself at the moment was not in fact my continued progression, anyway. It was the fact that I needed to alter my techniques to suit myself. The first one that I had chosen to focus on was the Water-Striding Steps.
The Water-Striding Steps had always been, in my estimation, my most important technique, the foundation of my martial prowess. But they were also holding me back. The time had come to step forward onto my own path, away from that which my master had set me on, and redesign the technique. I would need to alter it, to change it to better suit myself. The best way to do that would be to return to Canvas, to enter the Downpour, and spend some time witnessing the movements of the final waterstrider for myself, if it even still lived. That was not an option, however.
I performed some more exercises, pushups, handstands, leaps, pivots, all manner of ways to test my body’s capabilities. I had been working on this consistently ever since my advancement, trying to better comprehend how it could be utilized most efficiently. To know what was wrong with the technique, I would need to know myself.
I had learned that I was now extremely capable of managing my momentum and of bouncing. I could reflect kinetic energy, limit my friction, and move far more fluidly than I ever could before. Perhaps, I thought, if I slowed the flow of miasma near my feet, and then brought it upwards in a cascading force…
I attempted the motion, and felt a great pain in my foot, before finding my upper body toppling forward. I caught myself with my other leg, rapidly ceasing to use the technique. Such a slight alteration of the technique had thrown the balance off by so much that it was unusable. I sighed. The Downpour Sect’s founder must have been a genius, I thought, to be able to create such a technique from scratch. Even merely altering it was such difficult work.
I needed inspiration, I realized. One could not create a technique merely by iterating, and the same should be true for altering one, I believed. There needed to be an understanding behind it, an ethos. My mind went back to the image of a towering insect, the largest organism I had ever witnessed. How had it moved? The image belonged far too many years in the past, but I could still recall the towering figure. Working based on memory would be far more difficult, but I was confident that I would succeed. If anyone alive could claim to know the waterstriders the best, it would be me.
Scientific Explanations for Martial Techniques: [In traditional Seiyal culture, the ‘techniques’ of martial artists are believed to emerge not only from the use of miasma and the motions of the body, but from the understandings of nature they are founded upon. But why does the exact shape and circulation pattern of miasma matter, rather than merely fueling the muscles with the substance? Recent findings have indicated that the oddities of martial techniques could be explainable if they are in some manner comparable to warpings, a phenomenon that was previously extremely difficult to analyze due to its inaccessibility to mortal races. If this is the case, then the study of Seiyal martial artists might be the gateway to new understandings and development of miasmic technology.]