My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 58: Sword Sheath

Bai Xiaoman pressed one end of the rope against the stone step in front of the mountain gate, pulled it outward, drew it taut, then crouched down and pressed a mark into the dirt with her fingernail.

"Three zhang." She looked up. "From this mark to that one. You stand in the middle."

Shi Po walked to the exact center between the two marks and brought his feet together.

A He carried half a sack of lime over his shoulder. The mouth wasn't tied shut, and white powder leaking out had dusted half his shoe. A Sui took a bamboo strip and tried to follow Bai Xiaoman's marks, scattering lime along the ground. She went crooked. Bai Xiaoman took the bamboo strip from her, knelt down, and did it herself—sprinkling a stretch, glancing back at the rope, sprinkling another.

Nie Bo swept his way out from the mountain gate. When his broom reached the lime line he lifted it, stepped around, gathered the few fallen leaves inside the circle into a small pile, and then walked out of the ring without crossing it. The white line remained unbroken, not a single gap.

The sun had just cleared the ridge; the blue stone of the front courtyard was still damp.

Jiang Wan came from the East Courtyard. She stopped outside the circle, drew the sword from its sheath, and drove the tip down into the earth. The sword stood upright. The sheath stayed in her hand, gripped below its midpoint.

She walked a slow circle around the ring, her eyes never leaving Shi Po's feet.

"Feet together?"

"Together."

"And your qi?"

Shi Po didn't answer. She raised the sheath.

The first blow landed on his left shoulder—a dull thud, not especially loud. Shi Po's feet scraped half an inch in the dirt. He didn't move.

The second hit his back. The third, the side of his waist.

The sheath was rigid, and when it came down sideways it carried an edge. After four strikes, a crease had collapsed along the cloth of Shi Po's left shoulder, looking far heavier than the sound suggested.

"Qi," Jiang Wan said.

Shi Po sank his shoulders slightly. The fifth blow came down and he grunted, his feet scraping another half inch.

Shao Ming stood outside the ring, hands clasped behind his back. "Don't let the qi bunch up in your chest. Sink it down, down to your heels."

"It's sunk."

"Only halfway." Shao Ming said. "When you're holding it in, your feet are dead."

Jiang Wan didn't stop. One strike, then another, unhurried, pausing between each to let him steady himself before the next. The point of contact climbed steadily—shoulder, back, ribs, then back to the shoulder.

Qi Qi crouched on the stone steps with a thin bamboo stick, scratching a mark in the dirt with every blow. A He squatted beside him counting, lost track at twenty, and A Sui took over. The two of them crowded together, shoving each other back and forth.

Incense was planted in the soil outside the ring. Bai Xiaoman sat beside it, watching the burning stick with one eye and the Formation Manual open on her lap with the other.

By the halfway point, Shi Po's heels were only a foot from the lime line behind him. Jiang Wan snapped the sheath across his left shoulder and he stumbled backward—his heel dropped past the line, kicking up a streak of white.

"Out." Shi Po looked down at his own feet.

Jiang Wan lowered the sheath.

"Get back in."

Shi Po walked back to the center of the ring and brought his feet together.

"Relight the incense," Jiang Wan said.

Bai Xiaoman pulled out the half-burned stick, planted a fresh one, then went back to the line and repaired the section where Shi Po's heel had smeared it. This time she laid it down thin, and when she finished she used her finger to flick away the loose clumps along the line.

Shao Ming walked up to the edge of the ring but didn't step inside. "Holding one breath won't last. You're locking the pillar in place."

Shi Po looked at him.

"The pillar has to stay alive," Shao Ming said. "It has to be able to move."

Shi Po said nothing. He shifted his heels, tried a stance, then shifted back.

By the time that stick of incense burned out, he'd gone out once more. This time a blow to the ribs buckled one leg and drove him back two steps, his heel crossing the line.

"Out." He said it himself again.

Jiang Wan rested the sheath on her shoulder. "Midday."

Qi Qi put away the bamboo stick and stood up, hands on his knees. "First stick: seventy-one."

"Zhou Kui took about sixty," Shao Ming said.

"So she hit him eleven extra," Qi Qi said.

No one answered. Jiang Wan sat down at the edge of the steps, the sheath laid across her lap.

The Accounts Room window was propped open, facing south, with the front courtyard and mountain gate below. Xu Yan had moved his chair over to the window. It creaked when he shifted—loose joinery. From where he sat he could only see half the open ground beyond the gate.

At midday Qian Duoduo came through the front courtyard with a carrying pole—a pot on one end, a stack of bowls on the other. The meat on Shi Po's bowl was piled thicker than anyone else's.

A He stared at it, holding his bowl. "Why does he get meat?"

"He got beaten all morning," Qian Duoduo said.

"I scattered lime all morning too."

"You can't eat lime." Qian Duoduo paused, thought it over, then scraped another half-ladle from the bottom of the pot for him.

Shi Po picked out the thickest piece of meat from his bowl and put it in A He's. A He looked down, then put it back. Shi Po wouldn't accept it. He slid his bowl out of reach.

At the end of the Horse hour, Huo Qing came out from the West Wing carrying his own sheath, the mouth of it wrapped in a strip of cloth. He walked to Shi Po's left front and stood.

"I don't strike," he said. "I thrust."

The first thrust was very slow. The sheath tip pressed into Shi Po's left ribs—even through his clothes you could see the flesh cave in. Shi Po drew a breath.

"Reset." Huo Qing drew the sheath back and sent it out again, to the same spot.

One at a time, much slower than Jiang Wan, and far more precise. He didn't change targets. One point only. On the recovery he'd pull his wrist inward, straighten the sheath, then send out the next thrust. He was training his left hand too—one thrust, one recovery, every day without fail.

"Don't wait for the staff," Huo Qing said. "The staff comes like this." He drove the sheath into the ribs and held it. "Just now, you were waiting. When you're waiting, your feet are dead."

"Then what do I do?" Shi Po asked.

"Give ground by half a step," Huo Qing said. "Then come back."

Shi Po shifted his left foot back half a step. The sheath tip thrust forward and met empty air.

"Back," Huo Qing said.

Shi Po returned his foot to its original position and reset.

The second pass didn't go smoothly. The foot moved, the body had to follow, the pillar scattered—shoulder tilting, ribs offering themselves up.

"Scattered," Shi Po said.

"Then stand again," Huo Qing said.

Under the veranda, Du Xiaochuan had been standing the whole time, watching. He walked over and spoke from across the lime line. "His opening move is to the left."

Shi Po turned.

"Zhou Kui. When he works the staff, he strikes the left shoulder first, and the second blow always comes to the left ribs, high to low." Du Xiaochuan gestured with his hand, tracing the angle. "I passed him the staff for three months. That post of his is polished bright on the left half, still raw on the right."

"Three months," Qi Qi repeated.

Du Xiaochuan didn't look at Qi Qi. "And he never steps back. He presses forward. The moment he takes a step in, you have to give half a step back—and after you give it, you have to take it back yourself."

"Has he ever stepped back?" Shi Po asked.

"I watched for three years," Du Xiaochuan said. "Never saw him give a single step."

Shi Po stood thinking for a while, then suddenly shifted his left foot back half a step and returned it.

"Half a step," he said.

"Yeah," Du Xiaochuan said.

Jiang Wan walked over, lifting the sheath from her lap.

"A pillar isn't nailed to the ground," she said. "If you nail yourself down, they'll hit exactly where you're nailed."

Shi Po nodded.

"Tomorrow at the Dragon hour." She turned and left.

On September 4, the wind picked up before dawn. The lime line had held through the night, and the ground inside the ring had been trampled firm, its color darker than the surrounding earth.

That day Jiang Wan hit harder than the day before. Less than half a stick of incense in, Shi Po had been driven back to the edge, his heels two fingers from the white line. He didn't retreat again. Instead he pivoted, sidestepped half a pace, slipped away to the side, and moved back.

Jiang Wan paused, watched him, then kept striking.

She began to change targets—shoulder, ribs, leg, lower back, wherever she found an opening, that's where the sheath fell. Shi Po moved with each blow, feet walking inside the ring, the pillar unbroken, shoulders kept low. Left foot half an inch, right foot an inch, back to center. He counted it all in his head.

They didn't stop at midday, only switched hands. Huo Qing thrust faster than the day before—three sheath-tips in succession, all to the same point. Shi Po no longer leaned into it. His ribs turned and the tip slipped past his clothes.

"This time it came back," Huo Qing said.

The last stick of incense was lit, and it was Jiang Wan again. The sun sank west, the ground inside the ring polished bright by the constant shifting of feet. Two of the sections Bai Xiaoman had patched were broken again. She filled them in with fresh lime.

The incense burned down to a short stub. Shi Po was driven to the edge, his heel pressing against the white—two fingers deep into the line. He didn't cross it.

The incense went out; Bai Xiaoman announced it.

Qi Qi threw his bamboo stick to the ground—there was no room left to mark new scratches. A He and A Sui were shouting in the back, though the words were hard to make out.

Jiang Wan lowered the sheath. She stood a while, then walked over and pulled from the dirt the sword that had been planted there two days. The blade was caked with soil. She wiped it with her palm and slid it home into the sheath.

"On the ninth," she said, "the incense only burns one stick. Sixty strikes."

"Mm."

"Don't watch the incense. Not until it's done."

Shi Po looked up. "Then what am I watching?"

"The staff."

Shi Po's legs were trembling. His hands, which he'd been clenching for hours, still couldn't close properly. He stood at the edge of the ring, not sitting down.

"He's waiting for it," Jiang Wan said, and then she walked toward the East Courtyard.

At the Dog hour, the lamp wick in the Medicine Hall burned bright. Cheng Banshan lifted Shi Po's shirt and spread the salve with one hand.

Ridge after ridge of welts crossed his back—horizontal, vertical, bruise-purple darkening toward black. The two spots on his shoulder had swollen, hard to the touch. The area beneath the ribs was the darkest.

Cheng Banshan spread, paused, spread.

"A sheath-strike leaves an edge. A staff-blow leaves a flat." He worked the salve into the ribs and Shi Po's torso went rigid. "Look at what she's done to you these two days—not one smooth bruise, all edges. You think she wasn't holding back?"

Shi Po said nothing.

"These two ribs here." Cheng Banshan's fingers traced along the bone. "Right now it's pain. A few more days of this and they crack. If they crack, I can bind them—but once they're bound, you'll still be standing."

"I know."

"What do you know." Cheng Banshan pulled his hand back. "You get bruised black, you don't hide it."

"I won't."

"On the ninth," Shi Po said, "if he presses forward and I give half a step—does that count as out?"

"The line's right there." Cheng Banshan said. "Retreat inside the line, it doesn't count."

"Mm."

Someone at the door. Jiang Wan stood outside the threshold of the Medicine Hall, the sheath in her hand.

Cheng Banshan didn't turn around. "He hasn't left the ring once, and you're still escalating. If he holds, you should stop. If you don't speak up, he won't fall down."

Jiang Wan walked in, stood the sheath against the doorframe, and crouched to look at Shi Po's ribs. She looked for a while, then stood.

"Put the salve on thick," she said to Shi Po.

Wind through the doorway bent the lamp flame sideways. She picked up her sheath and left.

Cheng Banshan pressed the lid back on the salve jar and pushed it into Shi Po's hands. "Take it. Twice a day. Work those two lumps on your shoulder open."

Xu Yan stood by the other door of the Medicine Hall, stepping aside to let her pass.

Back in the Accounts Room, he lit the lamp. The open page of the running ledger ended with the entry for August 30: "Balance on hand: 2,088."

September 3, September 4.

Those two days, not a single spirit stone in or out. The formation stones had been bought earlier; the salve was old stock from the Medicine Hall; the incense came from the shelves of the Accounts Room. He lifted the brush, the tip hovering at the edge of the inkstone, unable to set it down.

The ink in the stone was dry.

He put the brush back and closed the ledger.

The lantern at the mountain gate swung in the wind. Through the window, the front courtyard was empty. The gate stood half open, and beyond it he could only see the inner half of the white circle—clean, unbroken, not a single gap.

He pressed his hand down on the ledger and sat there.