Pengfei spent the remainder of his time in the valley looking for black-clad figures on ridgelines but never saw them again. His constant vigilance and the stories he had told managed to freak out Nanxi as well. But over the course of the next few days, they convinced each other nothing would happen that close to the sect proper.

  On his seventh day outside the walls, Pengfei corralled a dozen goats into the sect’s rickety cart, hitched it to a particularly docile yak, and gathered some food for the long trudge back up the mountain. Nanxi stood ready to leave while his companion walked over to Horse.

  “I guess this is goodbye for now. I’ll probably be back down soon though.” Pengfei patted her neck gently but the mare just whinnied and trotted off. “Yeah, yeah.”

  He had owned several horses in his time, all of them with more pleasant demeanors, but he couldn’t help but feel a connection with the ornery nag that had once belonged to his friend. He’d only managed to ride her two short times but felt a claim to her.

  He turned to join Nanxi and reached for his bag of belongings on the ground.

  “Are you serious?” Pengfei paused when he saw little spheres of goat shit placed on top of his things. He gave his companion an accusatory look.

  “Never gets old!”

  “You have a problem man. You really need to work on your sense of humor.”

  Nanxi sulked for the first part of the journey but both disciples were breathing a little easier now that they were on their way back up the trail. In an hour, Pengfei was relaxed and humming a tune he had learned from Pema so many months ago on their journey together through Tibet.

  --I wonder how the others are doing with their punishment? Two months in the cliffs, whatever that is…seems like a long time.--

  -- … --

  --Two months…--

  “Shit!” Pengfei cursed aloud.

  “What?”

  “Neng, Shutian, and Xiaotong were supposed to watch my back during sparring. But now they’re in the cliffs for two months, whatever that means. I guess they’re not going to be able to help.”

  Nanxi waved his concerns away. “Relax. I’m not going to hassle you.”

  “Yeah, but Hongyu and Daoping still might.”

  “Oh…yeah. That sucks.”

  Nanxi shrugged and let Pengfei stew in his anxiety for the rest of the journey. They passed two disciples sent to replace them around midday, and reached the sect an hour before the evening meal. They rested in the empty dormitory while the other Jin disciples finished the night’s training, then joined them for dinner.

  A warm meal was a welcome change from the grain balls and jerky that had been his fare for the past week but it was not enough to dispel the worry that had gripped Pengfei.

  --I was hoping for a few more weeks of training before I had to battle it out with those assholes.--

  Pengfei could see Daoping and Hongyu eyeing him from across the Dining Hall and speaking to each other.

  --There should still be a few days before the next sparring session. Guess I’ll just have to see what happens… fuck.--

  Dinner ended and the disciples filed back into their respective dormitories. Pengfei slipped out in another direction though. He headed to the training yard to fight his own anxiety.

  The forms of the ‘Heaven Shaking Fist’ unfolded more fluidly now. He at least remembered the correct sequence of movements, though he did not yet execute them as gracefully as the other disciples. He paid special attention to the sections that Neng had previously highlighted for him and tried to recall the applications hidden in each subtle stance.

  But what he really wanted to practice was the technique that Nanxi had struck him with during their bout in the valley below, the punch to the liver.

  In the days after Neng and the others had returned to the sect, Nanxi had given him more instruction on the attack. It was a strangely angled punch, awkward for Pengfei who was only used to straight on blows. He coiled his body and struck the air now in imitation of what he had seen before.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  The repetition helped to drive the worry from his mind. He found himself focusing on the movements, the technique.

  --No, the wrist needs to be straight.--

  He smiled as each subsequent attempt yielded some measure of improvement, cursed when the progress wasn’t as fast as he hoped.

  The chill night threated to freeze his sweaty robe to his back before Pengfei finally went to seek his bedroll.

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  ******************************************************************************

  For the next several days Pengfei kept sneaking off to train on his own whenever he spotted the opportunity. The meditation sessions in the Veneration Hall were all but pointless; he had still yet to feel a spark of internal energy. And so the physical dominated his attention.

  The running and conditioning was even more difficult after neglecting it for a week in the valley. The afternoon training sessions were nearly as bad. Chen Rulan certainly pushed them but the real test came from keeping pace with the rest of the Jin disciples. Matching their tempo with each movement in a form, or every strike in a drill pushed him nearly as much as a sprint up hill.

  --More fun that staying up late to study the Thirteen Classics anyway.--

  Pengfei shook off memories of the Confucian tomes as Chen Rulan led them through their exercises. The elder moved through the ranks as the disciples shouted and struck air. When he sent the others to work with the sword, he held Pengfei back to continue barehanded practice.

  Pengfei ran through what he knew of the forms again. The elder stood nearby, occasionally glancing with nods of approval for the efforts, but more often than not he watched the sword practice. He shouted at the others from time to time.

  “Quit messing around!”

  “Don’t drop your guard! I don’t care how tired you are!”

  “Again!”

  During such a shouting fit, Pengfei finished one section and having nothing else to do, began practicing what he had learned from Nanxi. Closing the distance for a strike to the midsection. The liver.

  “You’re off balance.” Chen Rulan critiqued from the side. The disciple looked up, shocked at the powerful man’s quiet voice. Clearly not meant for the distant pairs in their fencing practice, though that was where the elder was still looking.

  Pengfei looked for the target of the elder’s correction and belatedly realized it must have been directed at him. He spoke in acknowledgement to Chen Rulan’s back.

  "Oh...yes, Elder. It’s a difficult punch. I’m not used to the angle yet.”

  “Angle doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you strike with the correct knuckles and keep the wrist straight. If you do those two things, any punch you throw will land correctly.”

  The elder unclasped the hands behind his back and demonstrated several punches from all different angles. Straight, hooking, looping, rising, falling. They cut sharply through the air.

  “Now you. Again.”

  Pengfei threw the strike to his imaginary opponent’s torso at Elder Rulan’s command. He concentrated on the alignment of the wrist as he had been instructed, aiming with the first two knuckles of his left hand. Once, twice, thrice.

  One detail improved upon, the elder placed his scabbard on the boy’s shoulder and guided his torso through the correct rotation as he practiced.

  “Twist the hips as you punch, your weight should shift from your left leg to your right. Trying to stay square is why you’re off balance.”

  A moment later, “Better. But dig in more with the punch. It’s a penetrating strike, not a snap.”

  When Pengfei made the adjustments, the man grunted and wandered off to look after the other disciples.

  --Penetrating, not snapping. Turn the hips more.--

  He tried to remember the technique with his body and felt the improvement in his subsequent strikes.

  The bell sounded for dinner but Pengfei remained behind to solidify what he had learned.

  ******************************************************************************

  Three days later Pengfei stood at the edge of the training ground once again. Preliminary warmups had been completed but instead of leading the disciples through more training, Chen Rulan ordered them to find partners.

  Sparring.

  He grabbed the nearest grey robe and surveyed the others around him as they shuffled about. Hongyu and Daoping pushed their way through the crowd and toward him. They partnered with each other close by.

  Pengfei’s bout with his first partner was unremarkable. The disciple, whose name he did not know, had not been interest in brutalizing him. They worked easily on their technique and took care not to injure each other. Pengfei’s performance was not as good as it could have been; he was distractedly keeping track of the threats around him as the pairs of disciples swirled and circled across the training ground.

  Chen Rulan bellowed the end of the first bout. “Stop! Change partners!”

  Hongyu came first with a smile on his face.

  “Where are your friends, shithead?”

  He reached out to grab Pengfei’s robe.

  --Shit…Alright, let’s do this.--

  Someone yanked him backwards, out of Hongyu’s reach.

  “I’ll be in your care, junior brother.”

  Pengfei turned at the unfamiliar voice. He looked down to see Jin Tianwei holding his wrist. One of the narrow-eyed twins who was friends with Nanxi. His brother, Jin TIanxun, had stepped forward to intercept Hongyu.

  “What are you two doing? Get out of the way!” Hongyu demanded.

  Nanxi was there as well, placing a hand on Daoping’s shoulder. “Please teach me brother.”

  “Begin!”

  The second bout started at Chen Rulan’s signal.

  Tianwei pulled the confused Pengfei around and led him through the next round of training. The quiet friend of Nanxi took it seriously, throwing sharp punches and kicks that forced Pengfei to actually pay attention to the match, but the attacks lacked the intention to injure. It was a hard bout, but he came out no worse for wear in the end.

  The next several rounds were the same. The twins and Nanxi passed Pengfei back and forth amongst each other or shoved him into the path of other disciples while running interference with Hongyu and Daoping. The two aggressors did not give up until the end but were ultimately unsuccessful in challenging Pengfei.

  “Enough! Grab your weapons!”

  Elder Rulan transitioned the disciples into weapons sparring but Pengfei was ordered to stand aside and continue working on his barehanded techniques, as usual. Nanxi nodded as he made his way to the sword racks and Pengfei gave a grateful salute to him and the twins as they passed.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem, shithead.”

  --… Still not loving that nickname.--

  *****************************************************************************

  The protection Nanxi and the twins had given him did not extend outside the training ground, however. Pengfei had kept to his extra practice regimen and exercised after the evening meal but Hongyu and Daoping were still waiting for him outside the dormitory when he returned. They blocked the door as he approached.

  Hongyu leaned forward and taunted, “How many more people are you going to beg to wipe your ass for you?”

  “…I can’t help it, seems like shit just sticks to me.”

  When Pengfei gestured towards Hongyu and Daoping, his aggressors bristled.

  “You’re just making things worse for yourself, you little bastard.”

  “Can I ask you two… what’s your goal here? You screw with me, you want to beat my ass, then what? You move on?”

  “Move on? No…we’re going to have so much fun together, shithead. We just need to teach you a little respect first.”

  “Thanks for the heads up. You know, if you had said it was just going to be a one-off, take a beating and move on, I would’ve just gotten it over with. But I guess I’ll just have to stick with the current plan.”

  “Oh yeah? And what is this great plan of yours?”

  Pengfei shouldered his way through the pair as they snickered and spoke to them over his shoulder, “I’m going to beat you both senseless.”

  --That… that sounded good right? Not too corny?--

  For all his bravado, he didn’t rate his chances of victory very high. Pengfei lay underneath his blanket and visualized combat with Hongyu and Daoping. It wasn’t a voluntary exercise; the images came unwanted into his mind. His head twitched and fists clenched as he pictured throwing and parrying strikes but even in his imagination he was outmatched.

  An hour later and Pengfei still had not been able to calm himself. He began doing mental arithmetic. He had always enjoyed mathematics lessons and often used it as a distraction or calming mechanism in his life before leaving home.

  --2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768…ugh. Not working.--

  All candles and lamps were extinguished now, all disciples asleep. Except Pengfei. He moved on to mentally tracing the meridians through his body as he recalled them from the ‘Mystical Heaven Infinte Skill’ manual. Then imagined each movement of the ‘Heaven Shaking Fist’ forms in sequence.

  The next unbidden thoughts to invade his mind were memories of the men in black robes. The raw emotion of Feng’s and Zihao’s deaths had subsided, especially helped by the impromptu wake he had held with Pema. He was not over the incident, would never forget it, but he would no longer burst into tears or panic either.

  Instead, he recalled the strange interactions with the men.

  --Obsessed with Kunlun but unwilling to act against the sect directly…for now anyway. I wonder if that will change when the gates are open again?--

  …list the names of every master alive in the Kunlun sect.

  What message were you supposed to deliver to the Kunlun sect…

  He still easily remembered the words he had recited every night on the journey through Sichuan and Tibet.

  --Luo Nianxin of Shaolin

  Liang Deliang of Kongtong

  Song Weixiong of Zhongnan

  Nangong Zhiqiang of the Nangong Clan

  Xiao Xingchen of Emei.--

  A few repetitions and he drifted off to sleep.