Dario slowly turned around, letting out yet another reluctant groan. Practical lessons with JeeJee were never without suffering. But experience had taught him that there was no escaping them, either.

  “Stories are such a wonderful thing, are they not? In each of them, a valuable lesson can be found,” JeeJee said. His smile looked more cruel than innocent to Dario. “The teacher will begin a story which the disciple must finish.”

  JeeJee got up from his chair and moved to stand right next to Dario.

  “A young Talc finds himself threatened by an Amber, armed with a few artefacts and bow and dagger. The rattling chains promise a decade of imprisonment. How does the story continue?”

  “You were already watching then?”

  The old man only smiled in response. Dario shrugged.

  “Well, I was about to blind the guard, then buy myself time with a shield so that I could escape down the alley.”

  “Demonstrate,” JeeJee said. “The teacher will move at the speed of an Amber.”

  He only now noticed that his mentor was standing right next to him, at exactly the same distance as the guard before. He readied himself, already knowing what was coming. It took him a moment to get in the right state of mind, but then he gathered his Ki, pushing it together to concentrate the aspect of luminosity, then bringing it to his eyes and pores. He allowed the pressure to build, then expelled it all at the same time in a single bright flash.

  His hand was halfway towards the shield artefact when two iron fingers jabbed him violently in the kidney.

  “Gah!” he cried out, stumbling to the side as he grabbed at his lower back.

  “The Amber was blinded, but he had well-trained reflexes and knew the Talc’s position. One swift strike ended the Talc’s life, and so the story ends. Try again. Search for a better ending.”

  Dario shuffled back into position, gritting his teeth against the lingering pain and preparing for another flash. This time, he stepped aside right as he activated his technique and managed to get his finger around the artefact before the jab came. It hit him in the leg this time, hard enough for the muscle to fail, sending him down on a knee with a grunt of pain.

  “Fuck,” he hissed, “does it have to be that hard?”

  JeeJee’s eyes hardened a touch. “The Amber’s hearing is keen enough to trace such loud steps. The Talc’s artery was severed and he bled to death. Dead men cannot speak. Try again.”

  He had to repeat it three more times before he finally managed to slide quickly yet silently aside and activate the bubble shield, grinning at an unimpressed JeeJee.

  “The Talc is now protected by a weak shield, with one Amber close by and another a dozen steps out. How does the story continue?”

  “Uhh, well, I would just run down the alley-”

  “What manner of cultivator was the closest Amber?”

  “Blade Ki.”

  “Location of his Kaku?”

  Dario frowned. “I think it was his arms.”

  JeeJee lips thinned with displeasure. “What is it that sets the Talc apart from other cultivators?”

  “My eyes. I can see more than others, therefore, I should have the informational advantage.” Dario spoke monotonously, as if he was reciting something for the umpteenth time.

  “But information is only an advantage if one remembers and knows what to do with it. How might an Amber blade Ki user with a Kaku in his arms, armed with a sword, respond to an opponent hiding within a stationary shield?”

  “Let’s see… A limb Kaku means he’s likely to be good with fortification, so I guess he would… Fortify his sword with blade Ki and cut through the shield?”

  JeeJee nodded. “Would a Talc be able to outrun two Ambers?”

  “This one could! Running away is kind of my thing.”

  The words had left Dario’s mouth before he could think better of it, but once he saw JeeJee’s grin, he realized he’d made a mistake.

  “Demonstrate.”

  ***

  Two grueling hours later, Dario was lying bruised and sweaty on the floor. For the entire ‘sparring session’, the old man had moved at the speed of an Amber. After they exhausted escape scenarios, all of which were failures, the training shifted to using his eyes to look for signs in how the Ki flowed and the muscles twitched.

  The goal was to use his ‘informational advantage’ to spot his opponent’s movements right before they happened. Which would have been fine, except that the old man shamelessly made use of Ki and muscle-twitch feints, which would be extremely rare in a random cultivator and impossible for a beast.

  JeeJee made a tutting sound, twirling his moustache as he looked down at a panting Dario. “The disciple appears rusty. Out of shape. One wonders what he might have been doing in the last two weeks, if not training.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “I… completed… the puzzle…” Dario groaned as he tried to push himself up with trembling limbs. The old man’s brows lifted.

  “Completed? The latest one? Another demonstration will be required.” He paused, looking Dario over again. “But first, perhaps a healing pill is in order. Inside, in the green box.”

  He crawled into the house and towards the table on hands and feet, but then his groans turned into wails as he got his hands on an oblong pill about a third the size of his finger, with a spiraling groove etched in it. The fine print on the inside of the box left no room for error: ‘For rectal use only’.

  “Tenjin save me, not these again! Why do you always get these cursed pills?”

  He could hear JeeJee laughing from outside.

  “They work faster! No time to waste!”

  A few minutes later, after washing up, he did already feel the throbbing pain from his many bruises reducing. JeeJee was lounging on a chair with a satisfied smile, holding up the intricate Ki puzzle. Dario grabbed it and sat down with his legs crossed, putting the glass-encased miniature labyrinth on his lap before preparing his Ki.

  After a short pause, a thin tendril of light sprang from each of his index fingers, held to entrances on either side of the tiny maze. Once inside, they moved like two shiny worms, twisting through the many corridors. Dario’s breathing slowed as he moved them towards the first obstacle.

  A bead of sweat rolled down his brow as he looped the two tendrils of light up and down again through a tiny tunnel. The added difficulty here was that they disappeared from his sight. Once they were through, he let out a breath.

  “Hohoho, so the disciple has been training,” JeeJee said cheerfully. Apparently, his mentor thought that it looked too easy, since he began to distract Dario with information about the wilds.

  “There are not many Reijuu from which a Koto compatible with light Ki can be harvested, though there are a few. The most potent is a type of monkey known as the Aureate Simian. They can be found wherever there are tall trees and an abundance of stonefruit.”

  Dario tried to file the information away as he brought his focus back to pushing the tendrils through the labyrinth towards the next obstacle. There was a little glass bowl with a thread of Ki-holding material, which he would need to keep lit the entire time while continuing with the rest of the puzzle.

  “After killing one, taking its head would be sufficient for harvesting the Koto. Two Aureate Simian heads would be the recommended amount. The harvesting and integration processes require some preparation, but are not overly difficult for those with decent skill in Ki manipulation.”

  The puzzle shone with light as the glass bowls glowed. Dario let out a shaky breath as he continued to lengthen the tendrils of Ki, pushing them through an increasingly complex, twisting pattern until they reached the third and final challenge. Before the round center in the middle of the puzzle where the two tendrils would finally touch, there was a paper-thin barrier of ice on each side.

  His Ki carried the aspect of luminosity, same as it always did, which wouldn’t do anything to get rid of the ice. Here, he needed to use the aspect of heat, which could be found in light Ki, but he did not harvest it. Switching aspects was just about the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  He held his breath as he began to draw in fresh light aura from the surroundings, searching for the right feeling. Luminosity felt bright and shiny, like the pillar itself, with the ability to change into every possible color. But that’s not what he needed. He thought instead of the heat of his body, how his breath exited hotter than it had entered, how it must have changed from passing through the warm flesh of his lungs.

  “A few simple diagrams and written instructions should suffice for a clever disciple to harvest and integrate a Koto. However, before performing those steps, it would be optimal to first further expand one’s seams.”

  As soon as he opened his mouth to ask what might be wrong with his seams, he began to falter. The tendrils flickered and shortened as he failed to split his concentration at this critical point. With a sharp flash of pain in his head, he forced them back under his control, pushing at them as sweat rolled down his back. He grunted as he thought of wood burning, how the air fed the fire, how the wood turned to ash. A feeling of change, of energy being used as fuel.

  Then, finally, the tips of the tendrils slowly shifted to a reddish color and the thin sheets of ice began to melt away.

  “Yes!” Dario cried out as the two Ki tendrils met in the middle with a final flash of light. “Now, what was that about my seams?”

  “It is optimal to expand them, sooner rather than later. But that will be a lesson for another time. The mighty Dao Heart is calling for action, and it must not be denied.”

  The old man began to laugh again as Dario got up to leave, massaging his temples to try and soothe his headache. But before he left the fenced yard, JeeJee made one more comment.

  “Instead of a lesson, allow an old teacher to share some advice. No, perhaps it would be more adequate to call this a prediction. The disciple will journey to the Wilds, seek out a high-quality Koto and integrate it.”

  Dario was frowning. “A prediction? Why would I go through all that trouble if I’m staying on this floor anyway?”

  JeeJee began to chuckle again. “A disciple’s motivations are for them to understand.”

  After Dario left, shaking his head and muttering about riddles, the old man admired the puzzle with a twinkle in his aging eyes. He’d told the truth of his motivations, but not all of it. There was another reason why an old artist might find himself down in the Basement.

  After all, it was the only place in all of Tenjou where one might find a truly pure piece of clay to work with. The quality of clay was a vital component, if one wanted to create a true work of art. And this one was just brimming with potential.

  Whether it would come to fruition, only time would tell. But this clay had been well molded indeed, and now, at last, the time had come for it to be fired in the oven.

  ***

  The next day, Dario wore a deep frown as he wandered the ramshackle streets of the Belt. Making big decisions felt an awful lot like work. The old man had left him with too many damn things to think about. The real lesson here, he figured, was that he shouldn’t have left the hammock at all. None of this would have happened if he’d just stayed put.

  “Stupid nobles and their dumb tourist trips,” he muttered as he kicked a piece of trash into the bushes.

  No matter how he looked at it, there was no way for him to get out of this trip to the wilds. There was a good enough chance that they’d just leave him alone if he didn’t show, but then there was also a chance that they’d come back here and look for his mother.

  He’d sooner slit Hokori’s throat in his sleep than put his own mother in danger. Not that he’d ever killed anyone. Still, he’d given it serious thought, but it wasn’t likely to improve the situation. It was like JeeJee had said, it would just end up luring more of the bastards here.

  No, he was going to have to go on that hunting trip, though he was dreading the conversation with his mother. Why couldn’t things just be easy and fun? Still, if he had to go anyway, he might as well make the best of it. After all, weren’t the wilds supposed to be packed full of treasure?

  At least that was one decision taken care of. Now all he had to do was decide if he wanted to hunt for a Koto, prepare for the trip, and… talk to his mother. But before all that, there was one other task, though this one wouldn’t feel at all like a chore.

  When he turned the corner and spotted the Contadino boys nervously waiting for him, his frown was quickly replaced by a vicious grin.

  “I see you’ve chosen not to run. Good to know you two bastards have some decency left in you. Don’t worry, I’ve got the perfect punishment lined up. Right this way.”