We sat outside the clearing behind my shop. Tianyi and Windy were nowhere to be found.
His robes hung loose around him, sleeves tucked up just enough to show the wiry muscles beneath. No weapon. No cane. Just him, standing still as the evening mist curled around his legs.
“I was thinking,” he said as I approached, “these last few days have been good.”
He didn’t turn to face , but I could feel his attention sharpen.
“I’ve been thinking about how best to help you.”
I nodded. “And?”
Ren Zhi exhaled slowly, tilting his chin toward the sky. “And this rain is doing us no favors.”
There was a beat of silence.
“It’s got sothing to do with those cultists, doesn’t it?”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
His expression twisted to one of resignation.
“It’s almost identical to the symptoms of the Athyst Plague,” I continued, “from centuries ago. ridians begin to wither. Even cultivators get sick. If I’m right, in three weeks’ ti, people will start collapsing.”
Ren Zhi was quiet for a mont. Then he nodded, slow and firm. “I figured it was sothing like that. Even I can feel sothing, and I didn’t stand in the rain. I’ve barely eaten or drunk anything in the last two days. But there’s still… sothing wrong.”
“I’m working on a cure.”
He grunted. “Then that’s even more reason for to train you properly. You’ll need to survive long enough to finish it. How long do we have?”
"Three weeks."
The blind man clicked his tongue. "Very well. I suppose that'll work."
I cracked a faint smile. “You’re going to help advance the Heavenly Fla Mantra?”
He snorted. “No.”
I blinked. “No?”
“That dance I showed you yesterday wasn’t so secret transmission. It was just a thought I had. Based on what I’ve seen from you. And from your master.”
“You an Elder Ming?”
He inclined his head. “He’s got good fundantals. And you picked up his structure well. But structure’s just the skeleton. Movent is the blood.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So you don’t even know the Heavenly Fla Mantra?”
“Nope.”
He said it like it ant nothing. Then moved.
A blur of motion, palms slicing through the air in sweeping arcs, feet sliding with unerring grace. Each motion light, but grounded. The kind of steps I’d only seen when Elder Ming was trying to demonstrate the Mantra’s highest forms. But Ren Zhi did it with ease. No qi. No fla. Just the ghost of the technique, recreated through rhythm and breath and form.
It was eerie.
Like watching a reflection of my own path, but from a mirror I hadn’t realized was there.
“You’re... copying it,” I said slowly. “From watching ?”
“Not copying. Just cleaning up the inefficiencies. Any martial style, properly studied, reveals its truth. The truths are the sa across all good forms; control, tempo, angles, centerline discipline. Your style’s good. But it’s not perfect.”
“And you can see that?” I asked, voice quieter now. “When you’re blind?”
Ren Zhi’s smile was faint. “Sight is one way to learn. Not the only way.”
I felt the hairs along my arms rise.
This man was more monstrous than I’d realized. To analyze a style he couldn’t see. To improve it in real ti. While carrying himself like a half-retired beggar sipping tea by a fire.
"Your body is what's lacking now. Between your qi reserves and mind, it's the weakest link."
I didn’t ask how he knew. I just nodded.
Ren Zhi stepped toward , then circled once, as if mapping my presence in the air. “Your problem isn’t strength. It’s not speed. You’re agile enough. Durable enough. But your body hasn’t awakened. Not truly.”
“What does that an?”
“It ans your body reacts like a trained tool. Not an extension of your spirit. And if we want to fix that...” He extended a hand and tapped a finger lightly against the center of my forehead. I recognized exactly what he was pointing at.
The third eye acupoint.
“...we start here.”
The world went black.
I didn’t blink. My eyes were open. But light vanished. I stumbled but didn’t fall.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Then I heard his voice again.
“This is where your training begins.”
Panic clawed at the edges of my breath.
The sensation of being blind, truly blind, wasn’t sothing I’d prepared for. It was imdiate. Drowning. A sudden stripping away of certainty. No horizon. No ground. No sky.
Just black.
I staggered a step forward, heartbeat thudding louder than it should’ve. My body tensed, every muscle bracing for impact that hadn’t yet co. My ears strained, stretching toward any hint of motion.
“Try to dodge,” Ren Zhi said calmly. “Or parry. Whichever cos first.” The most update n0vels are published on novel·fire
Sothing shifted to my right. A foot grinding against damp soil, too deliberate to be anything but an attack.
I turned and ducked, barely missing the oncoming motion, only to crash headlong into an outstretched palm that caught clean across the chest. I reeled back, stumbling as air fled from my lungs.
“Again,” Ren Zhi said.
I tried to breathe. Focus. My mind flared outward, desperate to calculate everything from the sound of the wind brushing through his robes to the angle of his breath. I couldn’t afford to guess.
Another sound. A soft step ahead of , maybe three paces ahead.
I stepped to the side only for my shin to smash against sothing solid. My leg caught mid-motion and I fell sideways, arms windmilling.
Ren Zhi had extended his foot where I was about to go.
I caught myself falling with one hand, flipping back onto my feet.
“This is how you plan to survive?” His voice wasn’t mocking. Just flat. Sharp as truth. “You’ll never grow like this.”
My instincts—sharp in battle, in alchemy, in strategy—ant nothing here. No visualization. No simulation. The most I could use was my Manifold mory Palace; but overusing it would be dangerous.
Just . My body.
And the black.
Again.
Another step, too soft to place. I turned left.
Pain exploded in my ribs. A short palm-strike, fast and clean, sent reeling back a step.
Again.
A shift behind . I pivoted, too fast.
My foot caught nothing. A hand swept my ankle.
I hit the dirt again.
Again.
I lunged forward at the first breath of movent and walked directly into a shoulder. The contact jarred up my spine. I gasped. My teeth clenched. For a man of his size and stature, he was surprisingly solid. It felt like I was running into a tree rooted deep into the earth.
Frustration built like steam beneath my skin. Each failure layered over the last until I could barely think. Until every nerve scread for an answer. Sothing, anything to hold onto.
I dragged in a breath through grit and sweat and clenched my fists. What was I missing?
Then, it hit .
Not like a realization; like a reaction. Like sothing I had always known but never used.
I was relying on one sense. Hearing. Treating it like sight. But hearing wasn't ant to give shape. It gave rhythm. Clues. Flashes. It wasn't enough.
The next step landed. A whisper of soil, sowhere near.
I didn’t move.
I stretched my senses and listened.
Not to sound.
But to the air. The subtle shift in pressure as it moved. The heat bleeding off another body. The tension in the ground under my bare feet, like the tautness of a stretched string before it snapped.
There! Just a hair’s breadth off to my left. My body wanted to dodge right. It scread to. Which ant—
I spun left instead and brought up my forearm—
Clack.
Flesh t flesh. I caught his wrist mid-strike, redirecting it with a hard deflection.
A low whistle.
“Well,” Ren Zhi murmured, “looks like you finally caught it.”
I panted, heart hamring. Still blind. Still unbalanced. But my breath had steadied.
“You weren’t just listening anymore,” he said. “You used it all. Breath. Heat. Pressure. And…”
He cocked his head faintly.
“You used yourself. You realized your instinct was always wrong. So you treated it like a tell. Like a liar who could still tell you sothing useful.”
I blinked. “You knew that?”
He snorted. “Boy, I stepped wrong deliberately, and you still flinched the wrong way. Every ti. You kept reacting like the world made sense. But now you’re feeling instead of reacting.”
I shook my head slowly. “You deduced all that—from one parry?”
“You call it one,” he said. “I see the whole pattern behind it. You’re good with structure. Strategy. Better than most.”
He stepped back.
“And that’s why I’m going to break all your patterns. Because strategy’s useless if your instincts can’t carry it.”
Before I could answer, I heard the grass stir behind . A soft voice.
“Kai?”
Tianyi.
I turned slightly, but the black still covered everything. Windy’s low hiss followed behind her, suspicious and protective.
“I’m okay,” I said, letting the tension bleed from my voice. “Just trai—”
The contract.
The First Party shall not seek, inquire, investigate, or otherwise attempt, whether directly or indirectly, to uncover the true identity, history, or affiliations of the Second Party, nor permit, instruct, or enable others to do so on his behalf.
The terms carved in intent and Heaven’s Will. If I said too much, if they understood too much, I could be punished.
“I an,” I started again, hastily, “maybe it’s better if you two—”
“No need,” Ren Zhi cut in, his tone dry. “It won't be a violation of the contract.”
I paused.
“You sure?”
“Unpursued. Unspoken. Accidental discovery. Well, I let them. Could hear them coming a few li away.” He folded his arms. “Seeing how they follow your every step, they’d find out eventually."
He was right. As always. And part of hated how relieved I was to hear it.
I turned toward the sound of Tianyi’s voice. “Listen carefully, if either of you repeats what you see here… if you even hint at it... I might die. Get struck by celestial lightning. Incinerated on the spot. So don't do it. Okay?”
Tianyi’s voice ca through, laced with confusion but firm. “We won’t say anything. But we will stop him if he tries to kill you. Lightning hurts. It almost caught when I was flying last week.”
“No—he's not—” I sighed. “Sure. Thank you, Tianyi. I appreciate it.”
“Can we join?” she asked, curious now. “We want to help.”
Ren Zhi humd, almost amused. “Not a bad idea. But I’m not training your pets.”
I turned toward him instinctively. “They’re not pets,” I said. “They’re companions.”
"Then you’ll forgive for using them as tools.”
“Depends how you use them.”
He stepped around again, slow and deliberate. “Speed. Agility. Stealth. All traits you’ll need to react to. And they’re excellent sparring material for that. But for now—”
His hand touched the side of my head again. Sothing shifted.
Sound muffled. Like cotton had been stuffed in my ears. I could hear Tianyi say sothing, but it ca through warped, like a voice underwater.
“I’ve reduced your hearing,” Ren Zhi’s voice ca, clearer than hers, but even that felt like it was traveling through fog. “Not all the way. Just enough to challenge you. Ti to train your other senses. You'll have to learn how to maximize your sense of sll and touch.”
My heart beat louder now. Not because I was scared. But because it was louder. I could hear the blood in my own veins. The scrape of my breath against the back of my throat.
Then ca the sll.
Damp wood. Morning dew. Tianyi’s faint floral scent mixed with Windy’s sharper, muskier presence. The soil underfoot had a tinge of tallic dampness. The scent of stirred earth, sothing recently cut.
But most of all… I could feel.
Not just wind.
But tremors.
Qi.
The minute fluctuations in pressure under my feet, the subtle flex of moss shifting beneath soone’s weight, even if they barely moved. I’d tapped into this before; on the road from Pingyao, while foraging. I’d used Nature’s Attunent to trace threads of life through the dirt, find plants where none should grow.
Each pulse of the ground spoke. Each ripple of movent tickled the edge of my awareness. If I focused, I could map them. A shuffle there. A tilt of breath near the trees. Windy’s sinuous body moving in a low coil across the grass, just three paces to my left.
I didn’t see the world.
I felt it.
As though Nature’s Attunent had awakened fully under this pressure. Forced to compensate for missing senses, it filled the gaps with raw sensation.
Nature's Attunent has reached level 9.
I exhaled, long and slow.
I let the sounds blur, the slls fade.
And listened instead to the heartbeat of the ground.
Ren Zhi’s step pressed into the soil. Barely a twitch. But I caught it. Not through my ears. Not even through pressure.
Through connection.
I moved.
One step forward, one pivot to the side, hand rising.
A tap t my palm.
It wasn’t a full strike. Just a test.
I parried the tap cleanly. A flick of my wrist. No wasted movent.
A breath passed. Just one.
Whap.
A firm swat landed squarely on the back of my head.
“Don’t get cocky,” Ren Zhi said dryly. “You weren’t using your nose, were you?”
“I—no,” I admitted. “I was using Nature’s Attunent. It’s a skill I picked up as a herbalist. It’s not really like a normal sense—it’s more like a… resonance. Feeling the qi in the ground. The life in it. I can feel everything that's living around . Even plants."
“So you're cheating."
I frowned. “I wouldn't say—”
“It’s not the point of the damn exercise,” he cut in. “Of course it’s useful. But you’re treating it like a free pass.”
“But it’s not sothing I can just turn off,” I protested.
“Exactly,” he said. “That’s the problem. Your hearing, your sll, your touch... those you can refine, isolate, control. That thing? That’s a crutch. And I can’t disable it.”
“So what, I’m supposed to ignore it?”
He clucked his tongue. “No. You’re supposed to train past it. Build the rest of your senses strong enough that you don’t need to lean on your fancy little spirit-wood whispering trick.”
“Spirit-wood whispering trick?”
“I don’t know what you herbalists call it. Qi-sniffing, leaf-whispers, root gossip. Whatever it is, save it for your garden. You’re building your body.”
I almost laughed. Almost. But he kept going.
“And don’t think I’m impressed just ’cause you caught one strike,” he added, pacing around now. “Back in my day, if you didn’t catch three in a row blindfolded, you weren’t allowed to eat rice. Had to go chew bark for dinner.”
“…Was that an actual rule?”
“Damn right it was. Builds character.”
I bit back the grin this ti.
Because the Ren Zhi I’d t weeks ago; the quiet, gentle old man who sat by the fire sipping tea, telling stories like a fable-spinning monk—was nowhere to be found.
This version?
He was alive. Sharp. A little unhinged.
And probably the best teacher I’d ever had. Aside from Elder Ming, of course!
“All right, blind boy,” he said, clapping his hands once. “Do it again. And this ti? Sll coming.”
I sighed. “If you covered yourself in ginger, maybe I could. It's easier said than done to sll you coming."
“Do you want to seal your mouth too? To keep you focused on the exercise?”
Tianyi, through the haze of muffled sound, let out a giggle that felt like a chi dancing on the breeze.
And ?
I reset my stance.
Blind.
Still aching.
Still off-balance.
But smiling.
Because I knew this was what growth felt like.
Reviews
All reviews (0)