The Bde Garden was also located in a cave.

  Not as damp and muffled as the Water Garden, and certainly not as extravagant as the Finger Garden. The lighting, though artificial, was steady. It was as bright as daylight on the surface, bright enough that the garden could’ve been built above ground.

  There were probably advantages that weren’t obvious at first gnce. A comfortable, stable, and controlled atmosphere was likely one of them, though in my opinion, that was a minor benefit. Half the cadets wore armour anyway.

  I didn’t realise why at first, then it hit me. Every garden had its share of unstable qi detonations. I wasn’t sure what that looked like here, but I didn’t care to find out.

  That realisation made me want to head straight back to the Armour Hall and gear up. But that would’ve been a waste of time, so I decided to take the risk and walk through the grass, keeping clear of any active techniques.

  This Garden was dry and retively sterile. The temperature was kept at a comfortable level for someone in a jumpsuit. The air was partially filtered, partially renewed by the native grasses.

  There were several types of pnts here, but all of them, without exception, had tall, silver, fluffy seed-tufts and long, metre-length leaves. Depending on the variety, or more likely, the cultivar, the leaf edges glinted yellow, blue, or red, but all of them were sharp.

  Still, it wasn’t the grass that drew the most attention. It was the sound — a delicate ringing, like a ceramic bell.

  At first, I thought the sound was coming from the grass itself, but no. It was the primary method of saturation, they used here.

  Cadets, as in the Fist Garden, stood on ptforms that lifted them above the grass. They unched paper discs into solid steel columns pced between the pnting zones. The paper, infused with Bde Qi, gave off a ringing tone on impact.

  I felt an immediate urge to see whether that was all there was to it. Was it just sound, or could the paper, when properly prepared and executed with precision, actually damage steel?

  I scanned the area for an unused column, one no one was currently targeting, and headed for it.

  Beneath it, an armoured drone, shaped like a long-limbed beetle, was busy collecting used discs into an automated cart.

  The sight of the drone made me pause. My mind fshed to the fire fountain in the Fire Garden and the countless detonations in the Fist Garden.

  It was always the drones. They were the trigger.

  I wasn’t sure how the steel would hold up, but if a stray paper tornado hit me, I might not survive. I’d seen enough already to easily imagine a disc slicing open my stomach and my guts spilling out.

  Sure, I had a shield amulet, but it wouldn’t help if I were at the epicentre of a detonation.

  Better to leave this test for ter, once I was in full armour.

  Right now, I needed to focus on sensation. That was the whole reason I’d come here in the first pce.

  What worked best for me?

  Watching someone else perform the technique.

  But not the paper discs. Anything but the discs. They were the primary method of infusion, but not the only one. Some cadets here were training with steel. What I needed was a proper bde dance.

  I looked around, searching for a ptform where no discs were flying.

  Well… maybe not a dance.

  The cadet who caught my eye was drilling a single motion, a diagonal ssh with a sabre. He struck from right to left, downwards, then twisted his wrist and brought the strike back up. Not exactly a dance, but he had the focus! That was something.

  I approached slowly, not hiding, but not interrupting either.

  The ptform he stood on was closer to the cave wall, well away from the columns. The cadet himself was in armour.

  At first, he didn’t notice me, fully immersed in repetition.

  Downward diagonal ssh. Twist. Upward diagonal return. Pause.

  Each motion precise. Each exhale timed. No flourishes, just the rhythm.

  I liked it.

  I stopped at a safe distance, folded my hands, and opened up my senses. For maybe a minute, maybe two, I tried to feel the qi he channelled into each strike.

  Eventually, he noticed me. He stopped and turned.

  “What d’you want, mate?” he asked curtly.

  “Just observing,” I replied calmly. “For my own development.”

  “Yeah? Go develop somewhere else,” he decided.

  “Alright,” I nodded. “But what if I offered an essence ampoule? Full spectrum, from Bck Lotus. M1. But you have to keep swinging for at least an hour.”

  He slung the sabre over his shoulder and tilted his head, sizing me up from head to toe.

  “An hour more for M1? My arm’ll fall off!”

  “We can split it into two sessions,” I offered.

  “Add another ampoule,” he said. “Two Wind types.”

  “Deal. Sending you my contact, you’ll get it this evening.”

  The cadet pointed his sabre at me. “Right after the Garden would be better.”

  “So be it,” I agreed.

  The sabre resumed its familiar arc.

  He didn’t expin anything, didn’t demonstrate. He simply returned to what he was doing. And I watched, listened, with every sense I had.

  The sharpness came first. It was the clearest sensation, already familiar one. But this wasn’t the burning sharpness of Point. This was colder...

  Hard to expin. But the feeling was known to me, and I wasn’t here for the familiar. I was looking for something new. A deeper understanding. And preferably sometime soon, not after weeks of waiting like with the Wood.

  It took me nearly an hour.

  My new acquaintance swung his sabre like his arm was made of steel, hinged on well-oiled joints. Both he and I were completely absorbed in the process. The whole world narrowed down to a handful of precise, determined movements. Determined like the Fist Qi.

  No, not quite… There was a difference. The sharpness was different, the determination was different and yet, somehow familiar.

  Sharpness and determination, determination and sharpness... the two qualities intertwined and overpped.

  Point had no determination. It had more of an irritating arrogance as it infuriated me with how easily it used to pierce through my shield.

  Well… not so easily anymore. And with the new breakthrough material Novak gave me, it might not break through at all once I hit Stage Three.

  Point wasn’t about resolve. It was about precision and lightness. Precision, lightness, and sharpness — that was the bance of Point Qi.

  Bde cked that precision, but it made up for it in the sheer determination behind each strike.

  And there was something else. Something I couldn’t quite grasp.

  Strike after strike. Cold, dangerous awareness clouded the insight I was chasing.

  Diagonal strike downward. Twist. Diagonal strike upward. Hold.

  Diagonal down. Twist. Up. Hold. Cycle after cycle. A never-ending loop…

  Actually, the strike never truly ended.

  The sabre followed a circur path, like the discs wielded by Bde cultivators. At a certain point in the motion, in a certain moment of the strike, the cultivator would invest more determination into it.

  Sharpness, determination, cycle!

  The insight hit me.

  WARNING!

  Viotion of Bde Garden regutions detected!

  Remain in pce until authorised personnel arrive!

  What now? I wasn’t even moving!

  Oh. This again.

  I pulled up my stats, and yes, there it was. Bde – 16. I clearly remembered only boosting it to 15 with essence.

  +1 to the root.

  I’d had better enlightenments before, but hey, free point.

  Now I just had to sort things out with the Garden officials to get the fine waived...

  “Demons?! Seriously?!” hissed an angry female voice into my ear.

  I nearly Monkey-leaped out of my skin. What saved me was that I’d just been thinking about fines, so I somehow avoided another one by sheer luck. I leapt away from her without using any techniques that were forbidden in the Garden.

  “Zhang! Bloody hell!” I cursed loudly, shaking my new friend's perfect rhythm.

  His sabre twitched, and the return stroke upward lost some of its crisp resolve. It was like snapping him out of a trance.

  “Have you had enough watching?” the cadet asked me.

  I looked at Zhang and immediately understood.

  “Yes! Just need to sort things out with administration, then we’ll head to my pce.”

  “New friend?” Zhang asked suspiciously, eyeing him like he was dangerous.

  “Met him about an hour ago,” I confirmed.

  She tensed even more. Like me, she’d come to the Garden without armour, but now her hands instinctively formed the shape of pistols, index fingers and thumbs cocked and ready.

  “Easy,” I told her. “Easy. He just showed me some Bde work.”

  From the side, the whine of miniature jet engines roared, and under the high cave ceiling, lit by dozens of mps, a cultivator swooped in, casting a massive shadow over the fields of grass. His board dropped down near us, and I had to grab Zhang’s arm before she did something reckless.

  She was well-rested, energized, and unfortunately, in all the wrong ways.

  “Sir,” I raised my free hand, the one not holding Zhang back. “That’s me.”

  “Viotion?”

  “Actually, no. Enlightenment. +1 to Bde. Thanks to this gentleman’s excellent technique,” I nodded at my new acquaintance.

  “Then you owe me three Wind ampoules,” the cadet said.

  “Keep dreaming. We never agreed on bonuses,” I shot back. “To the matter at hand, sir, can I count on the fine being waived?”

  “Let me check your logs.”

  It was sorted out fairly quickly. They cleared the fine, then we swung by the Armour Hall to wait while our accidental friend got changed, and finally headed to my pce.

  The whole way there, Zhang scanned everyone we passed like a hawk, as if she could spot demons by eye.

  Actually, scratch that. She was trying to. She was in full paranoid bloom.

  She scanned our new companion ten times from head to toe. By the end of the ride, he was actively avoiding her. And the moment he got his ampoules, he vanished like he’d never been there.

  That left Zhang and me alone.

  I switched the window view to a sunny beach, to contrast her mood, pulled some steaks from the fridge and set a pan on the stove. While it heated, I poured us gin with juice.

  One-to-five for me. Four-to-two for Zhang.

  Maybe it would help her rex a little. Nothing really beat Evening Sun for that, but it wasn’t the right fit for a serious conversation. So I went for the old-school approach.

  Zhang didn’t like the gin. She refused alcohol altogether and asked for pin green tea with no special effects.

  “Tell me everything!” she demanded.

  “Everything. Short version: after the st raid, the demons left behind spies in human bodies. Human body – demon soul. Soul transfer has a cultivation limit. Stage Three, max. So they’re stuck body-hopping.”

  “Why haven’t they been caught yet?!”

  That wasn’t a question, it was a cry from the soul.

  “Ask something easier,” I said. “Try to focus on something specific. What worries you the most?”

  I was hoping for something that might ease her paranoia.

  “Did the demons kill Soro?”

  “Yes. She uncovered them somehow. Whether it was one of them or a group, I don’t know. But I suspect I’ll find out soon enough,” I added. Novak knows how to ask the right questions.

  I took a sip and id the first steak on the pan.

  The meat sizzled. Zhang, in contrast, fell silent.

  I understood. She didn’t have the experience Novak had. She didn’t know how to ask the right questions. And now, with a real chance to finally learn the truth, she couldn’t zero in on what mattered most.

  “Alright,” I said. “Specific questions aren’t working. Just ask the first thing that comes to mind.”

  “How did you get involved in all this? It feels like Soro listened to you, so does Patel, and maybe even Mendoza. You are younger than me, and you are already the Third Cross Knight already!”

  I gave her a look.

  “That was a joke.”

  “I know. But you are important.”

  MaksymPachesiuk