Chapter 73: That White Shadow (Patreon)

The days flew past, one training session stacked on the next.

Every morning at six, smoke rose from Pan Yinhu's kitchen right on schedule.

Six thirty, breakfast on the table.

Seven, assembly at the training ground.

Miguel ran combat drills in the morning, Yixuan taught the arts in the afternoon.

One hour for lunch in between, then straight back to practice.

They ran that schedule for a month. Nobody complained about being tired - not because they weren't, but because they were too tired to complain.

Wise had changed the most. The Ether energy in his body had always carried one flaw: his own Authority pushed against it, so his output wavered now and then when he drew on it. Two streams of water at different pressures running through the same pipe, shoving at each other every so often.

The qi-guiding pathway Yixuan taught him straightened that out.

"Ether runs from the dantian along the Conception Vessel, splits in two at the Shanzhong point - left into the arm, right along the ribs. The Authority stays in the Governing Vessel. Don't try to force it down. Let it settle on its own."

Yixuan had said it almost in passing. Wise went back and worked at it for three days, and it opened up.

The energy that had been twisted together found its own separate channels.

Ether ran where Ether was supposed to run. The Authority sank where it was supposed to sink.

Neither one got in the other's way. The clearest proof of it was Dimensional Detachment.

Before, he could hold less than five seconds inside the gray-white space, and cover no more than ten meters.

Now he could hold ten seconds, with an effective range stretched out to thirty.

Ten seconds doesn't sound like much, but in a real fight it was plenty.

It was also enough to bring him around an opponent's flank, or even behind them, for a second wave.

Miguel noticed the difference one morning while sparring with him, and asked about it.

"That's a lot more distance."

"Yeah. Once I adjusted the qi-guiding pathway, the Ether output got a lot steadier. It's a huge improvement, honestly."

Miguel nodded and said nothing more. But he pushed his attack rate up a notch.

Wise knew what that meant - Big Bro Miguel thought he'd earned the right to take more punishment.

Belle's progress went down a different road.

Her Ether adaptability still hadn't awakened, and neither Miguel nor Wise brought up unsealing anything.

But Yixuan handed her a set of finished talismans and told her to learn to channel them.

"The Ether energy inside you is still sealed, but your senses are open," Yixuan said as she passed her the talisman papers. "You can feel the free Ether drifting through the world. Just use that sense to guide the flow of Ether across the paper."

Belle tried, over and over. She burned through seventeen talismans in the first three days.

On the fourth day she could light one reliably. On the seventh she activated a low-grade warding talisman.

By the end of the month she could handle three basic talismans with confidence - warding, path-finding, and a small-radius blasting talisman.

The blasting talisman didn't hit hard, but it was enough to take out a rank-and-file Ethereal.

That was enough to make Belle happy.

"At least now I'll get to feel like I'm part of it," she said to Wise, biting into a steamed bun.

Wise only smiled.

If he had any say in it, he wanted his little sister as far from danger as she could get.

Ideally the day Belle actually had to step onto a battlefield would never come.

But that clearly wasn't going to happen. Her perception was better than he'd expected.

She could pick up free Ether at concentrations far below what an ordinary person could register, which meant that once her constitution awakened, her foundation would be much deeper than it looked now. None of this groundwork was wasted.

The others were improving too.

Ye Shiyuan had added a late change of direction to his sword - rigid at first, but by now it flowed naturally out of the strike.

The rhythm of his draw had changed. No more relentless straight thrusts. Sometimes he shifted the point two or three degrees just before it landed, turning a heavy, driving cut into something whose path was much harder to read.

Pan Yinhu had pared his hand forms down, and Miguel had given him pointers on his footwork.

On top of that, his casting speed with the arts had come up considerably.

In a live drill, those few seconds were enough for him to block one extra charge.

Ju Fufu's change was the most... distinctive. She was genuinely hard-headed.

Every single day, without ever getting tired of it, she launched a frontal assault.

And every next day, she was the first one charging in again.

Then one day she came up with something new.

That morning's combat drill, Ju Fufu charged Miguel first, as usual.

Three linked strikes from the Tiger Claw. Miguel turned his body and let all three slide past.

By the old script, this was the part where she kept pressing forward and Miguel swatted her back with one palm.

This time was different.

The instant her third claw came up empty, the Tiger Might Engine slammed into reverse.

The popcorn machine's output chute swung around to face Miguel, and with a loud pop a huge mass of popcorn came blasting out of it.

Not a handful. An entire machine's worth. Golden popcorn burst apart in midair, blotting out everything, packing the three meters between Ju Fufu and Miguel solid.

Miguel stood where he was, looking at the wall of popcorn in front of him, and said nothing for three full seconds.

Ju Fufu had already used the cover to sprint back to her own side.

"And what exactly was that?" Miguel asked.

"Seven Forms of the Fierce Tiger - Quit While You're Ahead!"

Ju Fufu's voice carried out from behind the popcorn drift, full-throated and utterly unashamed.

At the edge of the ground, Ye Shiyuan had already covered his face with one hand.

Pan Yinhu wore the expression of a man swallowing a laugh.

The corner of Wise's mouth twitched.

Clearly all three of them had already been treated to their Senior Sister's "new technique" in advance.

As for Yixuan, sitting off to the side with her tea, watching her senior disciple pull a stunt like this - she was already drafting, in her head, exactly how she intended to have a long talk with the girl about it.

Miguel brushed the popcorn away from his face and looked at Ju Fufu preening on the other side, his expression beyond describing.

"How long did you spend working this out?"

"Three days!"

"..."

"Works great, right?"

For a moment Miguel had no idea how to answer that.

But the drills over the following days proved the point: against anyone other than him and Yixuan, the trick really did work.

There was enough popcorn to blind an opponent for over two seconds, and Ju Fufu's footwork was fast. Two seconds was all she needed to pull back to a safe distance.

The first time Ye Shiyuan ran into it he simply froze, and by the time the popcorn cleared she'd already circled to his flank.

Pan Yinhu had it worse - two hundred and some pounds of him spun three full circles in the popcorn without finding anyone.

"Senior Sister's really got something," Ye Shiyuan said afterward.

"She does," Pan Yinhu added.

Ju Fufu stood nearby with her tiger tail cocked high, insufferably pleased with herself.

Of course, the Tiger Might trick aside, her own footwork and tactical sense had genuinely climbed a level.

A month of high-intensity combat hadn't been endured for nothing.

Take enough hits and you learn on your own when to press and when to fall back.

Time kept moving. One month. Thirty days.

Thirty mornings of combat drills, thirty afternoons of arts lessons.

Wise's Dimensional Detachment grew steadier and steadier, and his exit points and stances started to vary.

Beyond that, he'd begun developing new Ether abilities.

Belle could reliably channel three basic talismans.

Little Guang's sword-control precision and the force behind her strikes were both climbing steadily.

Her overall command of the Azure Empyrean Sword had also come up a little over the course of her arts study.

And so the days drew closer and closer to the trial Miguel and Yixuan had agreed on at the very beginning.

One night, Wise lay in bed too hungry to sleep, turning over and over.

The day's training load had been heavy, his body was worn out, but his mind wouldn't stop.

He kept thinking about the trial.

And the longer he thought, the louder his stomach protested.

Dinner had been one of Miguel's carb feasts - that fragrant pot of mountain-harvest chicken noodle soup, and he'd put away two bowls of it. But the afternoon's training had burned through all of it, and now his stomach was filing complaints again.

Wise sat up, pulled on a jacket, and pushed the door open.

Nights on Yunkui Summit were very quiet.

Mountain wind came through the walkway, carrying pine and damp earth.

Moonlight leaked through the gaps in the eaves and laid a thin white sheet across the ground.

The back kitchen sat on the east side of the courtyard. Getting there meant crossing a long corridor.

Wise moved along the wooden floorboards, keeping his steps light.

It was a habit he'd picked up after Big Bro Miguel's special training - wherever he was, stay alert.

A night lamp burned at the corner of the corridor, casting a dull yellow glow.

He turned the corner and swept his eyes toward the kitchen.

Then he stopped.

A white figure slipped across the edge of his vision.

Fast. Silent. Left to right, past the kitchen doorway, gone behind the corner of the courtyard wall.

Wise's body reacted before his mind did.

He pulled up tight against the base of the wall, Ether energy gathering in his hand.

Hugging the wall, he leaned out for a look ahead.

Nothing.

Then he turned his head and checked behind him. Nobody there either. He stayed where he was, unmoving.

His mind ran through the possibilities.

Clothing moved by the wind?

Unlikely. That white shape had traveled in too straight a line for wind to have pushed it.

A small animal?

There were stray cats and wild birds on Yunkui Summit, sure, but none of them walk in straight lines.

Senior Brother Yinhu?

No. Senior Brother Yinhu wore a yellow vest, not white.

Senior Brother Ye?

Senior Brother Ye's white shirt...

Wise dismissed the thought.

Ye Shiyuan wouldn't be drifting around the kitchen door in the middle of the night. If he wanted food, he'd walk in openly and take it.

He waited another dozen seconds in the corridor.

Nothing stirred.

Wise took two steps forward and pushed open the kitchen door.

The stove had been wiped spotless, bowls and plates turned upside down on the drying rack, a wooden lid resting on the pot.

He crossed over and lifted the lid - half a pot of porridge, still warm.

On a small dish beside it sat a serving of osmanthus cake.

Somebody had left out a late-night snack?

Who, though?

Wise ladled out a bowl of porridge, took a steamed bun, and ate standing at the counter.

Millet porridge, cooked down thick.

The osmanthus cake still held a trace of warmth, delicate and fragrant with a sweet aftertaste.

He ate and thought about that white figure.

One: whoever that "person" was, they might already be gone. Two: "it" might come back to look for something in the kitchen.

The first was easy enough. Gone was gone. The second...

Wise took another bite of the osmanthus cake and chewed twice.

Good.

If it was the second, then he had a real problem.

He wasn't about to get cornered in the back kitchen, was he?

He finished the porridge, washed the bowl and set it face-down on the rack, dried his hands, and went back the way he'd come.

Passing the corner of the corridor, he swept a careful look around him.

Moonlight lay across an empty courtyard. Nothing.

Satisfied, he decided to head back to bed.

Wise returned to his room, shut the door, and lay down.

Belle was fast asleep next door, murmuring in her sleep now and then, none of it clear enough to make out.

He stared at the ceiling and ran the scene through his head again.

Who could it possibly have been?

Forget it. Too tired. It could wait.

He closed his eyes.

Moonlight came in through the gap in the window and drew a thin line across the floor.

He rolled over and pulled the quilt tight around himself.

Three seconds later, his breathing evened out.

And outside the window, where he couldn't see, the white figure appeared again.

It stood in the center of the courtyard, long silver-white hair falling to its waist, all but dissolving into the night under the moon.

The crimson eyes held a hint of amusement, turned toward the direction of Wise's room.

It held there for a few seconds.

Then it was gone.

Only moonlight was left in the courtyard, and the sound of wind moving through the pines.