The return home happened without pomp, without fanfare, and without the promised tea stop at Mendoza’s. She was definitely due for a debrief, at the very least to wrap the incident up in a pusible cover story, but without me. I was too small a pyer for that kind of conversation. And besides, I had the feeling Hou didn’t like me.

  Before that story could even be drafted, the Order and Diplomacy still had to deal with the bodies, recover the damaged train, and repair the ptform. As for me, I was just sent off. No questions. No expnations. Not even a minder.

  And I wasn’t about to argue! In fact, I was grateful. My brain was starting to shut down. I was so desperate for rest, I completely forgot to stop at the shop for some marigold tea. My old supply had been left at the Bck Lotus, and I hadn’t bought a new one since none of the earlier training sessions had drained my core like this.

  Sure, the early sessions with the Bde were energy-intensive, but I always got injured before I could burn through my reserves. So I’d been recovering like a normal person — food and sleep. Deep, dark sleep. The kind you’d expect from the depths of Tartarus.

  A depth I barely cwed my way out of, even with the annoying chime of the interface arm buzzing in my ears.

  It took me a few minutes to return to reality, then I ran a self-diagnostic.

  The body was retively fresh and ready for new loads. My muscles responded with quiet strength. But I didn’t feel like using them. Mentally, I still wasn’t back. And my core hadn’t refilled.

  The bzing iron sphere had been repced with something much lighter, more like a wooden ball. Warm, but not searing, and somehow still… wooden. The interface said I was almost 100 energy units short of full reactor charge.

  Normally that wouldn’t bother me, that was my usual state after light training.

  But not today.

  Today, instead of training, I wanted nothing more than to crawl back under the covers.

  Motivation was completely absent, but discipline remained. I spshed my face with cold water a second time and pulled the first ready meal I could reach from the fridge.

  The day promised to be long. Way too long. But I hoped it would pick up pace by evening.

  The main thing was to see if I could repeat the Chainsaw Punch. Let’s not even mention the Hook, just a few hits would drain my reserves to zero and put an end to any further experiments. Which, once again, reminded me about the marigolds.

  I was te getting to Eriksen’s hall. He called me while I was still on the metro.

  “Mate, don’t tell me you’ve given up!” he said, sounding hurt.

  “Quite the opposite,” I told him. “You could say I had a revetion yesterday. Is it alright to brew some tea in the hall?”

  “Of course. Got your hands on something good?”

  “Not really,” I said, thinking back to the demons’ tea. “Marigolds. I was working with my old techniques yesterday, and something unexpected happened.”

  “That’s not the best idea, not until you’ve properly mastered the Bde. It could set your progress back.”

  “Actually, I made some unexpected progress in a different direction. And although I burned through my reserve, I’d really like to solidify it. So today, no knives or ropes.”

  “You’ve been making real progress there too,” Eriksen reminded me. “You’re risking a regression. I strongly recommend continuing the training.”

  “You can recommend whatever you want, but yesterday I executed Air-Fist technique with the Bde added.”

  “A three-component technique at Second Stage? Sounds unlikely, mate.”

  “I think it turned out more like Bde-Fist than Air-Bde-Fist.”

  “There are plenty of those,” Eriksen said. “You can learn any of them, once you actually master the Bde.”

  “I’ve not seen anything in the library that’s remotely like what I pulled off. This technique is the perfect addition to my arsenal.”

  “Well, I’m a Bde coach. I’m here to teach you how to use the Bde, not to run wild experiments. So if you’re not sticking to the programme, then it’s without me, mate. I already compromised by splitting your sessions into two parts.”

  Clearly, my idea hadn’t thrilled him.

  “I understand… Can we just put training on hold?”

  “If you’re not training, today’s session is forfeit. You’ve got two hours — with or without me.”

  “But I can still make tea?”

  “You’re going to spend paid training time making tea?” Eriksen asked, incredulous.

  “I’m going to spend it one way or another, mate.”

  “Listen, whatever you managed yesterday, it’s still just a crude concept, and you needed marigolds, so that tells me it seriously overused your energy,” Eriksen switched to persuasive tactics, giving a detailed breakdown. “Refining a technique takes decades! Ninety-nine percent of cultivators catch this bug in their third year. Ninety-nine percent of those give it up without ever getting anywhere. The vast majority who actually finish end up with a blue-green technique with no real room for improvement.

  “Real technique development can only be done by research institutes, legacy families, and schools that can afford to experiment across multiple generations, using dozens of cultivators!”

  Well, now I understood why he didn’t believe in my idea.

  “Got it…” I said.

  But I couldn’t just drop it without even testing it properly. It was entirely possible that it wouldn’t work. Entirely possible that I’d be better off focusing on mastering the Bde. But that doubt would gnaw at me for the rest of my life if I didn’t at least try. And I wouldn’t get a better shot at it. With every day, every hour, every minute, I was forgetting a little more of that feeling: the motion, the energy flow through my channels.

  Sure they had some kind of Hook variant anyway, I can remember two in this library, so it wouldn’t be a tragedy if I lost that one. But the Chain Punch…

  “So are we getting back to proper training that might actually produce results?” Eriksen asked.

  “No. I have to try.”

  “Shit, man,” Eriksen said, disappointed. “Then it’s without me.”

  “Alright. Just let’s have that tea first.”

  Master Wilson’s hall had a tiny kitchenette near the admin counter. Maybe there was another, better kitchen for senior instructors and Wilson himself. But the room Eriksen led me to had its own little kitchenette, an old sofa, a metal table, a big fridge, and a lot of cupboards. From one of them he pulled out a no-frills kettle, and from another, two tall lidded mugs that we used to brew the tea.

  Eriksen, by the way, declined the marigolds in favour of his own leaves.

  The fact that he hadn’t walked off immediately gave me a chance to settle a few things. Still, he clearly had pns for this time.

  “This is a dumb idea,” he said. “You might lose all the progress we’ve worked so hard for.”

  “I’d rather take the risk and put this to bed. By the way… I need some way to record the training data.”

  “That’s not really my area,” he said, trying to deflect.

  “You know more about it than I do. Save me some time, and I’ll be back to ‘proper’ training sooner.”

  Eriksen sighed, tapped a few gestures in the air, and a message with a link nded in my inbox.

  “FlowScan. Tracks qi flow through your body. It’s free, and only uses internal resources, so don’t expect surgical precision. If you want anything better, you’ll need external gear, and money.”

  “This is perfect!”

  I followed the link and installed the app before I even finished my tea. During instaltion, a warning popped up about limited body resources. The app was heavy for a Second Stage cultivator. But I could carry it if I used Thousand Sparks.

  I decided to train right here. The tea hadn’t taken more than half an hour, which meant I still had an hour and a half left, and this hall was far better equipped than any other I’d trained in.

  I picked one of the more realistic-looking training dummies in the main hall. I had to stand a bit further back, even though the dummy was designed for close-range combat, the floor markings allowed for a longer distance. Still too close for a proper Chain Punch, but tolerable.

  Thousand Sparks. FlowScan. Focus.

  The look of the dummy for some reason triggered an itch in my body — a desire to repeat the old sequence: stance, swing, ssh. Or maybe it was just Eriksen watching me when no one else was looking.

  Alright. Chain Punch.

  Exhale.

  Stance.

  Volley!

  Standard silver fist projections shot from my fists. Smooth, round, controlled. No vertical serrations. No bdes. Just the standard not so refined technique.

  Boom-boom-boom!

  They drummed against the solid dummy. An alien sound for this hall.

  The guy next to me, the one with a sword at the dummy to my right, paused and looked me up and down. Probably the first time he’d seen a Fist technique used in the Bde hall.

  I repeated it.

  Same thing — fists.

  People in the hall started slowing down. Someone paused their sword mid-swing. Someone else even stopped a spar to get a look at me. It was annoying, and distracting. And I needed total concentration.

  I stopped, turned, and walked away, catching Eriksen’s eye. He was gently shaking his head, clearly disapproving. I had the sudden feeling I was running away.

  The irritation gave me just enough motivation to crush that feeling. As I walked, I opened the school’s internal page and navigated to the room booking section. I needed something small. Could even go without gear, like that sand-floored hall back in Bck Lotus. Only that hall had been huge…

  The first thing I found was a hall for dash technique training — a long corridor made of steel.

  Perfect. No unnecessary eyes. No sideways gnces. No pressure but my own. I was there in a few minutes.

  I sat down on the floor, back to the wall, legs crossed, helmet open, running sequence in my head: breathe in, stance, exhale, wind-up, burst!

  I did it several times in my head, then repeated in real. Silver fist projections shot forward, bursting into the air before ever reaching the wall. They weren’t perfect, but more importantly, they weren’t what I was aiming for.

  Again. And again...

  Enough!

  With every ‘proper’ execution of Chain Punch, I was drifting further from my goal. Every clean repetition only locked the reflex in deeper. Maybe I really did need knife and rope training after all?

  Or maybe… Maybe I needed the thing that birthed the bdes in the first pce. That shift. That impulse. That state — adrenaline and stimunts. A bit of panic and thrill. A deadly fight in a train carriage against a superior opponent.

  Stimunts were the easy part. My bracelet was loaded with the same mix as the armour, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t recall adrenaline being sold here as a regur stim.

  I needed fear. The kind of fear you couldn’t fake in a sterile environment. The fear of death, the thrill of real battle — you couldn’t mimic those.

  But you could get close.

  Pain was also a useful tool. The fear of pain made the body produce adrenaline too. Kate had proven the effectiveness of that method more than once with her electric bolts. I used to fly across the sand like I was turbocharged. Shame Kate wasn’t here, I’d have asked her to help me out.

  But I was in Yellow Pine now. Plenty of lightning cultivators here.

  Zhang, for example — she also knew the Finger, and that kind of Qi came with… intense sensations.

  I opened my contact list and dialled her number.

  MaksymPachesiuk