Book 3: Chapter 25: Getting out of Hand |
Jun looked back through the closing gap of the courtyard gateway.
Shui sat on the steps of the eastern wing with her knees pulled to her chest and her chin resting on top of them. The massive hammer lay across her lap like a sleeping pet she couldn't bring herself to put down. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Her lower lip jutted out far enough to land a bird on. The perfumed scarf hung limp around her neck, forgotten, and her hair was a disaster that suggested she'd spent the entire night tossing and turning and arguing with her pillow about the fundamental injustice of the universe.
Ta Rae's branches hovered above her in a loose canopy, occasionally dropping a leaf onto her head in what the tree probably thought was comforting.
Shui didn't brush them off.
The thing had picked itself off the ground and moved to shade Shui. Jun shivered.
She shook her head and stared at the distant look upon her Junior Sisters face. That alone told Jun everything she needed to know about how thoroughly their Ancestor had dismantled the younger girl's spirit last night. Shui always brushed things off. Leaves, warnings, common sense, the laws of the universe when they disagreed with her trajectory. The fact that she sat there accepting pity from the supposedly titled Ta Rae, whatever that meant, without complaint meant the scolding had been catastrophic.
Jun raised her hand and waved.
Shui's eyes locked onto her. The lower lip trembled and her fingers tightened on the hammer's shaft. She lifted one hand in a wave so pathetic it barely qualified as movement. More of a twitch, really. The kind of wave a prisoner gave through the bars as their last visitor walked away and the guards started closing the heavy iron doors behind them. It made Jun’s heart squeeze upon itself…
Not that it needed any extra reason to do that. She had her own little… err… big problems she needed to deal with.
Jun pulled the gateway shut. The latch clicked and she heard a muffled whimper from the other side that she chose to pretend was the wind.
She turned around.
Wu Xui stood three paces from the gate with her arms crossed and her head angled toward the alleyway that connected their street to the next block over. Her eyes were narrowed, lips pressed flat, jaw working side to side in that slow grinding motion she did when something had caught her attention and she hadn't decided yet whether it warranted violence or merely intense disapproval.
"Is everything alright?" Jun asked.
Wu Xui didn't answer, instead she extended her hand and pointed.
Jun followed the gesture toward the mouth of the alley.
Five figures huddled together in a cluster so tight their shoulders overlapped. All of them wore blue robes. All of them carried spears strapped across their backs. All of them were trying very, very hard to look like they belonged in a narrow alleyway at dawn with no apparent purpose, destination, goal, or reason for existing in that specific location at that specific time.
They were failing spectacularly.
One had pressed himself flat against the wall with his spear sticking out horizontally behind him like a weathervane. Another had crouched behind a barrel that came up to his knees, leaving his entire torso, head, and the top half of his spear visible to anyone with functioning eyes. A third had simply turned around and faced the wall, apparently operating under the theory that if he couldn't see Jun, Jun couldn't see him.
The remaining two stood shoulder to shoulder and stared directly at her with the frozen expressions of deer caught in lantern light.
In front of all five, hunched and gesticulating with both hands, was a familiar old man she had seen before.
The old man's back was to her, but she could hear the sharp hiss of his whispered reprimand carrying across the morning air. His bony finger jabbed at the chest of the nearest blue-robed figure, then swept across the rest of them in an arc that encompassed the full scope of his disappointment. His other hand smacked the barrel-croucher on the back of the head.
The barrel-croucher yelped.
The old man smacked him again.
Hu Jun watched the old man she'd last seen chasing after Shui down the street now lecturing five armed cultivators like they'd tracked mud into his kitchen. His voice never rose above a whisper, but the intensity of his finger-jabbing increased with every syllable until the two who'd been staring at her dropped their gazes to the ground. That action seemed to have set of a series of actions as every person in that alleyway suddenly noticed her attention.
All five scattered in different directions.
The wall-facer sprinted deeper into the alley and tripped over his own spear. The barrel-croucher abandoned his barrel and dove behind a stack of crates that provided even less cover. The two deer-in-lantern-light figures split in opposite directions, colliding with each other, bouncing off, and then running the same direction anyway. The weathervane man simply dropped to the ground and lay flat on his stomach with his arms at his sides like a plank of wood, spear still jutting out behind him.
Long Ti spun around, saw Jun, and his face went through six expressions in two seconds. He settled on a smile so wide and so forced that it looked painful. He bowed a dozen times in rapid succession, each one deeper than the last, and then shuffled sideways into the alley after his charges.
His whispered scolding resumed before he'd fully disappeared from view.
Jun stared at the now-empty alleyway for a long moment before finally coming to a final conclusion. She turned away. "Ignore them. Some people are just weird."
Wu Xui fell into step beside her without comment, though Jun caught the older woman's eyes cutting back toward the alley one more time before they rounded the corner.
A suspicious look on her face like they had missed something or someone.
The morning streets of Cultivator Row were already alive with activity. Disciples swept courtyards as masters sat on elevated platforms sipping tea and watching their students run through forms that involved far too many unnecessary rotations. A group of children no older than eight practiced what appeared to be a technique called the Soaring Crane's Triple Ascending Moonkick, which required them to jump, spin four times, kick twice, land on one foot, and then bow to an imaginary opponent.
Two of them had already crashed into each other. A third was crying.
Jun kept her eyes forward, doing her best to ignore all the looks and pointing people had started doing.
Everything had gone wrong on that fateful day… and only growing worse.
The route to the dojo had become familiar over the past few days. Left at the herbalist with the cracked sign. Straight past the three smaller dojos that shared a courtyard and spent more time arguing about whose students were blocking whose training space than actually training. Right at the intersection where someone had carved the character for "patience" into the wall, which Jun suspected had been done by a person who had none. Then through the wider section where the buildings pulled back and the road opened into the approach toward the largest compound in the district.
She could see it from two blocks away.
The compound had grown since her first visit. Or rather, it had shrunk in certain places and expanded in others. Three of the five buildings that had originally surrounded the main courtyard were gone. Not destroyed as though they had been attacked, but rather dismantled in a single day. Taken apart beam by beam and tile by tile with the careful precision of people who valued the materials and intended to repurpose them.
The rubble had been cleared and the ground beneath levelled and packed hard to create a training yard.
What remained was a clearing that dwarfed anything else in Cultivator Row.
Jun's stomach clenched as they approached the gateway.
How did this happen? I came here to challenge one dojo. One. A single building with a single patriarch and maybe forty students. That was the task. Visit dojos, test their practitioners, learn control, and learn precision. Simple and manageable to help with my… boredom. And yet… here I am.
The gateway doors swung open before she reached them.
Three old men rushed out in a line so coordinated it had to have been rehearsed. They hit the ground simultaneously, foreheads pressing into the stone with a synchronised thud that echoed off the surrounding buildings. Their robes pooled around them in puddles of white, grey, and deep brown.
"We greet the Young Mistress!"
"The Grass Blade honours us with her presence!"
"This humble servant welcomes Lady Hu Jun to her domain!"
Jun's face ignited pink and red.
The heat started at her neck and climbed with the speed and inevitability of a forest fire consuming dry brush. It reached her cheeks, her ears, the bridge of her nose, and kept going until she was fairly certain the top of her head was producing visible steam. Her jaw locked and hands balled into fists at her sides. She could feel the She-Devil stirring within the blade at her hip, radiating amusement thick enough to choke on.
Her domain.
He'd called it her domain. She didn’t know where to hide her face.
Patriarch Guo, the white-haired master of the original dojo she'd challenged. The man who'd watched her release a fraction of her Liquid Core pressure and responded by slamming his head on the ground and begging to become her disciple.
She'd said no.
She'd said no fourteen times. She'd said no while leaving, no while returning the next day because Wu Xui insisted, no during the sparring sessions, no during the tea he'd forced upon her which tasted worse than mud and filth, no during the walk home, and no through the courtyard gate as he shouted after her.
On the twenty-fifth attempt, he'd brought friends.
Patriarch Liang of the Grey Crane Dojo and Patriarch Fen of the Jutting Root School.
Both of them had shown up at Guo's compound with their entire student bodies, knelt before her in the courtyard, and declared that if Patriarch Guo was unworthy of her tutelage alone, perhaps the combined dedication of three schools would prove sufficient.
Jun had looked at Wu Xui for help.
Wu Xui had smiled. Said smile had been the beginning of the end.
"Rise," Jun managed through clenched teeth. Her voice came out steadier than she felt, which was a minor miracle. "Please. Get up. I dislike this level of subservience."
She was no direct descendant of th Hu Clan.
It felt wrong to see people kowtow to her in a change of fate.
The three patriarchs rose with the synchronised grace of men who had practiced this specific motion thousands of times. Guo's white hair caught the morning light. Liang's grey beard swayed as he straightened. Fen, the youngest of the three at what Jun estimated was somewhere north of seventy, cracked his back audibly and winced.
"The preparations are complete, Young Mistress," Guo said. His eyes burned with the same intensity they'd held since the first day. The man had found purpose and he was clinging to it with both hands, legs wrapped around it, legs locked, and his teeth too. "All five hundred and twelve disciples are assembled and awaiting your instruction."
Five hundred and twelve.
Jun's stomach dropped another distance as the flames ate her inside out.
It had been four hundred and eighty-three yesterday. The number was growing and it didn’t seem like it was going to stop. Word had spread through Cultivator Row like a plague carried on the wind and every day brought new faces, new schools sending representatives, new masters showing up at dawn with clusters of wide-eyed students trailing behind them like ducklings.
She hadn't agreed to any of it.
She hadn't disagreed either, and that was the problem. A simple no had not been enough.
Wu Xui had made sure of that. Every time Jun opened her mouth to refuse, set boundaries, or explain that she was barely sixteen and had no business teaching anyone anything, the older woman would lean close and whisper something about reputation, the Hu Clan's image, her Ancestor’s honor, and about what a Young Mistress was supposed to do when presented with loyalty.
And Jun would close her mouth.
Because Wu Xui was never wrong about these things, even when Jun desperately wanted her to be.
She walked through the gateway and into the clearing.
The sight hit her like a physical force.
Five hundred and twelve cultivators stood in rows. Perfect lines stretching across the packed earth from one end of the expanded courtyard to the other. Men and women, young and old, ranging from teenagers barely older than Shui to weathered veterans with scars and missing fingers and eyes that had seen decades of combat. White robes, grey robes, brown robes, all mixed together. The three schools had merged their ranks without distinction.
Every single one of them faced her.
Every single one of them stood at attention with their hands at their sides and their chins level and their eyes locked forward.
The silence was absolute.
Jun's boots clicked against the packed earth as she walked to the front of the formation. Wu Xui peeled off to the side and took a position near the wall where she could observe without interfering. The three patriarchs hurried to their spots at the three remaining gaps in the formation's edges, filling the spaces like puzzle pieces sliding into place.
Jun stopped at the centre and turned to face them.
Five hundred and twelve pairs of eyes stared back without a single one blinking.
Her heart hammered against her ribs hard enough that she was certain the front row could hear it. Her palms were slick. The She-Devil pulsed at her hip, feeding her fragments of confidence that tasted borrowed and temporary. She could feel the weapon spirit's presence pressing against her mind, urging her to stand taller, speak louder, be more.
Jun took a breath and learned that she would rather face Shao Yating a hundred times over than deal with this.
She took another breath to steady her shaking arms behind her back.
Master's first lesson. The very first thing he ever taught us. Before the Katas, before the forms, before the sparring, before any of it. What did he say?
She remembered because it had confused her at the time. She'd expected something grand like a secret technique or a forbidden manual. The kind of earth-shattering revelation that cultivation stories promised when a master took a disciple under their wing.
Instead, he'd held up his fists and thrown two punches at the air.
A simple one, two combination.
"Everything you've learned," Jun said. Her voice carried across the clearing without effort. The Liquid Core behind her words gave them weight that pressed against the assembled cultivators like a hand on their chests. "Forget all of it."
Murmurs rippled through the back rows. A few of the younger disciples exchanged glances.
One of the veterans in the third row crossed his arms and his jaw tightened.
Jun raised her fists.
Left hand forward, right hand back. Elbows tucked. Chin down. Weight distributed across both feet, knees bent, hips square. The stance her Ancestor had drilled into her and Shui until their legs shook and their arms burned and they couldn't lift their hands above their waists without wanting to scream. Carved it into their spirits and minds with a thousand repetitions daily without pause.
"This is a punch."
She threw the left. It snapped straight. No wind-up or rotation beyond the hip, no flourish. The fist travelled from guard to full extension and back in a motion so clean it looked simple. Leaving a clap of wind that made the first lines take a step back, including all three of the old patriarchs.
It was simple. That was the entire point.
"This is a second punch."
The right followed. Same line and brutal directness. Two impacts delivered to an invisible target at centre mass.
The air roiled and rumbled at her wake.
"That was a simple one, two punch. The very basics and foundation of all your future development." She reset and made sure everyone calmed down and were focused."Your enemy does not care about your form. Your enemy does not care how many times you can spin before you strike. Your enemy does not care if your technique has a name, a lineage, a thousand-year history, or a manual bound in dragon leather. Your enemy cares about one thing–"
Jun paused and let the silence do its work.
"–whether your strike reaches them before theirs reaches you."
She dropped her stance and walked three paces to the left. Planted her lead foot at a forty-five degree angle. Pushed off her rear foot and slid into the new position without crossing her legs, without lifting her centre of gravity, without exposing her midline for even a fraction of a second.
The L-step.
"This is how you move. Forward, backward, lateral. You step. You plant. You are ready to strike the moment your foot touches the ground. There is no pause. There is no transition. There is no preparation. You move and you are already fighting."
She demonstrated it again. Step, plant, one-two. Step, plant, one-two. Each repetition identical to the last. Each one stripped of everything that didn't serve the singular purpose of putting force into a target as fast as physically possible. Perfect head movement and dodging sequence to make sure she was never touched. The same technique she had used to great effect against the surging tide of darkness and death that was Shao Yating’s Jade..
"No spinning backfists." Jun's eyes swept the formation. Several disciples in the middle rows flinched. "No triple air kicks. No dancing stabs. No Soaring Crane Ascending Moonkick or whatever it's called."
A boy in the back row went pale.
"Fights are not performances, nor are they tournaments. They are not stories you tell your grandchildren about how beautiful your technique looked as the enemy's blade was three inches from your throat because you were busy completing the fourth rotation of your Heavenly Dragon Spiral Fist."
Jun planted her feet and threw the combination one more time. The air cracked and screamed making disciples flinch and shake.
"Fights end because you do not hesitate and they end fast. You do not wait for them nor do you charge up your attacks by screaming their long titles."
She stepped back and swept her gaze across the five hundred and twelve faces staring at her. Some looked confused while others looked offended, decades of training dismissed in a handful of sentences. Some looked hungry, leaning forward on the balls of their feet, already trying to mimic her guard position without being told.
The three patriarchs had arranged themselves at the edges of the formation.
Guo's face was unreadable.
Liang stroked his grey beard with the careful deliberation of a man reconsidering every lesson he'd ever taught.
Fen had already dropped into the stance Jun demonstrated, testing it, his old joints popping as he adjusted his weight distribution.
"Raise your fists," Jun shouted, Qi from her Liquid Core leaked and her aura made them all fall silent.
Five hundred and twelve pairs of hands came up. Some too high, some too wide, others with elbows flaring, chins exposed, weight shifted too far forward or too far back. A mess of interpretation that would have made her Ancestor close his eyes and count to ten.
Jun didn't close her eyes.
She walked into the formation.
Grabbed the nearest disciple's elbow and tucked it against his ribs. Pushed another's chin down with two fingers. Kicked a third's rear foot back six inches until his weight settled where it belonged. She moved through the rows with a focus that burned away the embarrassment, the doubt, the heat in her cheeks, and the voice in the back of her head that kept screaming she had no right to be here doing this.
Because her Ancestor had done the same thing for her and it had saved her life more times than she could count.
"One!" Jun shouted from the centre of the formation.
Five hundred and twelve left fists shot forward.
The sound was a single unified crack that bounced off the surrounding walls and rolled across Cultivator Row like distant thunder.
"Two!"
Five hundred and twelve right fists followed.
Sloppy and uneven, with half of them still rotating their shoulders too far, a quarter dropping their guard hand, a dozen throwing hooks instead of straights because muscle memory from years of inferior training fought against every new instruction.
Jun didn't care.
"Again! One!"
The crack was louder this time.
"Two!"
Louder still.
"Step! One! Two!"
Five hundred and twelve bodies shifted. Feet scraped packed earth. Fists flew. The formation rippled with movement that was ugly, raw, unpracticed, imprecise, and alive in a way that spinning triple kicks had never been.
Jun stood at the front and watched them move.
Her face still burned. Her hands still trembled at her sides when she wasn't demonstrating. The She-Devil hummed approval that she didn't fully trust and Wu Xui watched from the wall with an expression that might have been pride, smugness, or might have been both wrapped together in a package Jun refused to examine too closely. She nodded toward her.
Jun nodded back while the five hundred and twelve kept punching.
And Jun kept shouting.
"One! Two! Step! One! Two!"
The sound carried past the compound walls and down the streets of Cultivator Row. It rumbled past the dojos where masters paused mid-lecture and turned their heads, tea houses where elders set down their cups and frowned, training yards where children stopped their spinning crane kicks and stared toward the source of the rhythmic thunder that shook dust from their rafters.
Five hundred and twelve voices roared back at her in unison as fists met air and the earth trembled beneath their feet.
Jun's chest swelled with something she couldn't name and didn't try to.
Yet, a single thought dominated her mind.
Master is going to kill me.