The Way of Restraint

Chapter 201: The Times Have Changed

After sending Mao Liqiang and his people on their way, Su Jie left Zhang Manman’s residence and drifted out into the street with no particular destination in mind.

Part of it was reconnaissance. Part of it was simple curiosity — he wanted to see what this place was actually like.

San Francisco. The city also went by Sānfān — Three Harbors — in the old Chinese name. Bruce Lee had been born here, opened a martial arts school here, refined his craft here, filmed here. He had drawn threads of Chinese gongfu philosophy into the fabric of modern combat and spread them across the entire Western world.

This city was also the first large Chinese settlement in the late Qing dynasty — a place where Eastern and Western civilization had collided and mingled with a complexity you didn’t find just anywhere.

Su Jie walked without hurry. Shop signs in a dozen languages. Faces of every kind. It had a texture entirely different from anything back home.

The city felt old. Nothing like the gleaming towers that were going up everywhere in China. San Francisco was already on its way down — still vivid, still alive, but carrying the particular quality of a sunset. Looking at it, Su Jie thought of a man who had once been powerful and still refused to admit defeat, even as the years wore him down regardless.

Then, without quite intending to, something shifted in him. He felt it — the qi of the land itself, the pulse of the city’s fortune, and through that, a narrow window onto something larger still.

He walked on. He didn’t keep track of how long. He observed the streets, the people, the architecture — and alongside that, he was reading it all through the lens of fengshui: the fates written into the angles of buildings, the flow of roads, the slow arc of a neighborhood’s rise or fall.

The faces passing him on the street — he scanned them without thinking. Color, expression, posture. Portents of fortune and misfortune, legible if you knew where to look.

This was training, though not of the body. What he was sharpening was the inner response — precision of observation, refinement of inference, both folded into a single continuous state of attention.

He reached a lively district. Lights blazed. A crowd had gathered in a plaza to watch street performers.

One foreigner was doing contact juggling — a crystal ball rolling across his hands in fluid, continuous motion, the movements transforming so smoothly it almost didn’t look real. The audience applauded in waves. His hat on the ground had accumulated a respectable scatter of coins and small bills.

“Technique’s passable.” Su Jie smiled to himself.

Contact juggling happened to be one of his stronger skills. He had learned it years ago in Master Ma’s courtyard, drilling every day as a method for developing flexibility and balance — and the results had been substantial. His level now was something else entirely. Watching the performer, he felt a faint itch to step in and show what it could actually look like.

He let the thought pass. Just a smile, nothing more.

*****

In a corner of the plaza, a Chinese elder was leading a small group of foreigners through gongfu practice. Every movement was deliberate and precise. A handful of onlookers had gathered to watch.

Seven or eight men and women — all foreigners — stood in rooted stances, worked through forms, or paired off to break down techniques. Not one of them was distracted. Sweat fell onto the stone and no one stopped. The depth of their focus exceeded what Su Jie had seen from many professional fighters back home.

He had seen dedication in Chinese professional fighters. But compared to these amateurs, what was missing was something harder to name.

Obsession. That was the word. Or better still — faith.

Su Jie turned this over quietly.

“The stages of gongfu,” he thought. “It begins as interest. It becomes focus. Then persistence. Then obsession. And at the highest level — faith. If gongfu becomes a faith, then whatever you practice, you’ll break through barrier after barrier.”

He exhaled slowly. He’d sensed it from the very beginning at Minglun Martial Arts Academy — foreigners’ passion for martial arts burned hotter than most Chinese practitioners’. 

And the strongest martial artist he had personally encountered, to this day, was still a foreigner: Odell — the God-Maker.

These people went in completely. They studied, they refined, they rebuilt from scratch. They crossed the world without worrying about money or what their future looked like, because none of that mattered next to the practice itself.

The elder leading the session was sharp-eyed and vigorous, dressed in a traditional Chinese jacket. He was demonstrating Hong Quan — authentic and unmodified, the Tiger-Crane dual form. It had presence. The movements were open and expansive, forceful without being rigid, combining long and short range in a way that carried real jing, qi, and shen. Even setting aside its combat applications, as a practice for physical cultivation — loosening the tendons, tempering the body, steadying the mind — it was an excellent choice.

“A genuine old master,” Su Jie noted, and moved on without approaching him.

He wandered further through the plaza. Breakdancers. A guitarist. Singers. Parkour. A magician. The whole thing reminded him of the old street performer culture that used to exist in China — acrobats and jugglers working the public squares, living off their craft.

That world had almost entirely disappeared back home. These days, the plazas were mostly taken over by the older generation doing their morning exercise dances.

*****

“Your son will be perfectly fine. The business troubles are just a minor setback — nothing to worry about. Lately, the White Tiger is overhead and a malevolent star is in ascendancy. The astrological configuration is causing your son to feel frustrated, as if nothing goes right. The key is calm — steady the mind, stay cool when problems arise, and the danger will pass. I have a talisman here. Take it home, burn it, dissolve the ash in water, have your son drink it — after that, you can rest easy.”

The conversation caught Su Jie’s attention.

He looked over. There, tucked into the corner of a side street not far from the plaza, was a small fortune-telling stall.

Behind the table sat an old man in a long traditional robe. The table was spread with a bagua diagram, divination sticks, a bull’s horn, a luopan compass — the full set of props, arranged neatly. His beard was long. He had the look of someone who had cultivated an air of otherworldly refinement over many years.

Across from him sat a middle-aged woman, listening with the expression of someone fully convinced.

She paid for the talisman. She left with hope in her face.

“Young man,” the old man called out, waving Su Jie over. “You’ve been watching for a while now. Why not let me read your fortune?”

Su Jie walked over and settled onto the small stool. He smiled. “There’s nothing much to read, actually. I’m not interested in hearing about my future. Not interested in fortune or misfortune. Not interested in wealth or rank.”

“Don’t speak so confidently, young man.” The elder studied him. “Between your brows, I see a trace of anxious searching. In the depths of your eyes, the look of someone who is looking for someone. You’ve come to find a relative. Since you’re carrying that kind of burden, there are things worth asking. Come — draw a stick.”

Su Jie smiled again. He didn’t argue. Because he had already recognized, from the moment he arrived, that this old man was no ordinary person.

He reached into the container and drew a stick at random.

The elder examined it. “This lot is neither high nor low, neither one thing nor another. It speaks of two birds separated. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve come to find someone — a blood relative, and from what the lot suggests, a woman. Either an elder sister or a younger sister.” He paused. “How close am I?”

“Accurate.” Su Jie nodded.

“Look at the verse on the stick,” the elder continued. “A thousand layers, ten thousand layers divide yin from yang — you cannot meet again until the Yellow Springs. The meaning is guarded, but what it says is this: your search will be full of peril. One wrong step, and you are separated by death itself — the only reunion left is in the underworld.” He sighed. “Difficult. Difficult. The separation of flesh and blood. One careless move and the danger becomes absolute.” He gestured at the first two lines. “The wind stirs the grass and life hangs by a thread — do not come to Gold Mountain lest the wanderer’s grief take hold. We happen to be in Gold Mountain right now. The omen of separation hangs over this place. This is the will of Heaven. It cannot easily be undone.”

“Is that so.” Su Jie’s tone didn’t change. “The talisman you just sold that woman — it contained a sedative. A mild one, probably herbal. Dissolve it in water, drink it, and her symptoms ease. That part is actually quite clever. But as for this divination method — interpreting characters, reading verses — a single word, a single phrase can be pulled in a hundred directions. Any meaning you want is available if you reach for it.” He paused. “You can see what level I’m at. Do you really think someone at this level gets steered by fate readings? Gets moved by words?” He looked steadily at the old man. “Chongyang Patriarch founded the Quanzhen school. He left a verse behind. You might recognize it.”

He recited quietly:

“The living dead — the living dead.

Wind, fire, earth, water — all you need is cause.

In the tomb, each day you take the true elixir,

And exchange a mortal body for a mote of dust.

The living dead — the living dead.

To find death within life — this is the auspicious root.

In the tomb, stillness, emptiness, true silence —

Cut off from the dust of the ordinary world.”

He shook his head gently when he finished. “You haven’t reached that state. You’re still working the small paths — scraping along in the margins, as the idiom goes. The true great way is right in front of you and you’re not looking at it. At this rate, breaking through will be very difficult. You may genuinely end up in the Yellow Springs before you get there.”

At those words, the old man’s eyes went sharp. Something crossed his face — unreadable, complicated. He started to speak, and stopped.

“You’ve been waiting here for me,” Su Jie continued, still unhurried. “Sizing me up at the same time, I assume. Your physiognomy reading is quite good — your level is genuinely deep. And if I had to guess — you’re Zhang family. Not Mao family.”

“How did you know?” The old man’s question came quickly.

“The Mao family’s physiognomy is its own school. It doesn’t carry the habits of the jianghu circuit. If the Mao family’s methods relied on slipping sedatives into talismans, Maoshan arts wouldn’t have any mystique worth speaking of. What you’re using is the older style — the techniques that old-society gang leaders used to gather followers and put on a show. Beyond that, I’ve now met a few Zhang family members. There’s a particular quality that runs through the bloodline — a family atmosphere that carries through in the qi. I’m curious which elder you are.” He paused briefly. “The Zhang family generational name sequence runs: Wan, Nian, Han, Shi, Hong, Kai, Juan, De, You, Guang. Zhang Manman belongs to the Kai generation. Above her is Hong. Which would put you, sir, in the Shi generation, if I’m not mistaken.”

Su Jie seemed to have read straight through everything.

“Young man.” The elder frowned. “You’re not yet twenty, and already this sharp-edged. Heaven tends to resent that kind of brilliance. It doesn’t end well.”

“The dragon can conceal itself or rise — it follows the mind alone.” Su Jie’s smile didn’t waver. “Elder, let’s talk plainly. I’m only Zhang Manman’s friend. I came here to help her accomplish something — something that actually benefits your Zhang family. There’s no reason for you to be watching me like this, let alone collaborating with the Mao family to have me killed. I came treating the Zhang family as friends. Let’s not do anything that makes allies grieve and enemies rejoice.”

“The Mao family sent someone to kill you?” The old man blinked. Then it settled on his face. “That has nothing to do with me. I only heard that Zhang Manman had brought in a capable fighter to anchor her position — apparently trying to put pressure on the rest of the Zhang family. I came to see for myself if it was true.” He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t expect you to have genuinely entered the state of Divine Enlightenment — the realm where insight becomes instinct. Not yet twenty?” He stared. “Have the times actually changed? Still wet behind the ears and already capable of reading the depths of human experience — of breaking through the boundary between life and death?”

“Still wet behind the ears.” Su Jie accepted the phrase without any sign of irritation. “In the old days, it took a person a lifetime to accumulate what can now be learned in a month. Without leaving the house, you can know everything under heaven. The times really have changed.”