The Way of Restraint

Chapter 202: What the Elders Know

Su Jie’s inner state had settled into something like a fixed sky — stars unmoving, sun and moon tracking their courses, the whole landscape of mountains and rivers shifting beneath while he himself remained untouched. Whatever came at him, nothing stirred his mind, his temper, or the old hungers — greed, anger, delusion. The person he was now bore little resemblance to the person he had been.

Before, he had been genuinely humble. Anyone who had real skill — even someone below his own level — he would meet with courtesy and a sincere willingness to learn.

That quality hadn’t disappeared. But layered over it now was something else: independence of thought, independence of judgment, the capacity to generate his own understanding rather than draw it from others. He had found his own footing.

The effect on his manner was something he wasn’t fully conscious of. In conversation, without trying, he carried the bearing of someone who looks down from a height — not with contempt, but with perspective. Only a real practitioner could detect it.

The old Zhang family elder sitting across from him had detected it.

Before he’d even opened his mouth to Su Jie, he had felt it — an oppressive weight to the young man’s presence, like standing before a mountain range. The age gap offered him no leverage. He couldn’t use seniority to press down on something that simply didn’t yield.

“I had thought this was impossible,” the old man said at last. “It seems the times really have changed.” He paused. “My name is Zhang Shiyi. I’m of the Shi generation — Zhang Hongqing’s grand-uncle. Our family hasn’t produced anyone of this level in a very long time. Currently there are only two — the patriarch, Zhang Nianquan, and Zhang Hongqing himself. The reason all of us elders defer to Hongqing, the reason he became Dragon Head — it’s precisely because of his state. Divine Enlightenment. At that level, even without martial arts, the intelligence alone is extraordinary — beyond any ordinary genius. It’s the territory of sages.”

Su Jie already knew there was a family patriarch — Zhang generation, the Nian rank — somewhere past a hundred and fifteen years old now, with a depth of cultivation that was difficult to measure. But at that age, no matter how high the level, the body had its limits. Physical capacity had declined drastically. The years were merciless. Teaching students, handling ordinary people — still possible. Facing a serious professional fighter — already difficult. He wasn’t a force to be reckoned with in that sense anymore.

Zhang Hongqing was another matter. In his prime, with an exceptional level of attainment, real authority, and the full backing of the Honey Badger Training Camp — that mysterious organization with its formidable research capacity — his body could be maintained and developed through methods most people never had access to. The accumulated physical conditioning from that kind of support was genuinely fearsome.

“Elder Zhang,” Su Jie said. “I don’t think you came all this way just to take a look at me.”

“I’m asking you not to get involved in the Zhang family’s internal affairs.” Zhang Shiyi’s tone was level. “If you leave here and go back to China, I can offer you compensation you wouldn’t expect. You’ve entered the state of Divine Enlightenment, yes — but reaching it is one thing. Advancing from it requires care, not recklessness. What you should be doing now is regulating your body — letting it fully express the potential of your current level. Spending your energy on fights and confrontations is a waste of time you can’t get back. After entering this state, the right path is seclusion for three years: stillness, careful cultivation, letting the level deepen on its own. You cannot spend it carelessly. I offer this as honest advice. Whether you take it is your choice.”

“There’s something to that.” Su Jie sounded mildly interested, or possibly mildly amused — it was hard to say which. “What sort of compensation did you have in mind?”

“Young man, you’re new to this state,” Zhang Shiyi said. “Our family has been studying it for decades. Hongqing entered it over ten years ago. Every physical metric he produces has been fed into the Honey Badger Training Camp’s research program — ten-plus years of work on nutrition, training methodology, and physical optimization at this level. The data we’ve accumulated could save you years of wrong turns. Beyond that — and this you should know — the dietary needs of someone at your level are no longer the same as an ordinary person’s. You can eat normal food without harm, but you won’t advance on it. And you need resources. Money. All of that, the Zhang family can provide.” He paused. “We’re prepared to treat you as a friend. The only condition is that you stop supporting Zhang Manman’s ambitions.”

“That’s a fair point,” Su Jie said, nodding. “It’s not just people at my level — even professional athletes eat nothing like ordinary people. Put an Olympic-level competitor on a normal diet and their performance collapses. You can’t break records on rice and vegetables. Ten-plus years of research data — that’s significant.”

He had actually been working on something similar himself. He’d shared his own physical metrics with Uncle Mang, and they’d been digging into the findings together, turning up interesting things — but they were still early in the process, and much remained uncharted. He knew, from his own background in the life sciences, that the mental state was only one side of it. Eventually, everything had to express itself through the body.

The question that really mattered was the mechanism: how does a cultivated mental state actually generate physical strength? The medical and biological answer to that — that was the foundation underneath everything else.

He had always understood that psychological attainment needed a matching physical substrate. The best AI software in the world still needs hardware. Run a transcendent intelligence on an antique machine and it accomplishes nothing.

The same principle held here. The deepest psychological state — even something like the classical ideal of Heaven-and-Human unity — manifested in the body of a deteriorating old man would produce almost nothing in practical terms.

Ancient practitioners might have reached extraordinary levels of cultivation, but without modern scientific support, their bodies were chronically depleted. Whatever exceptional strength they possessed, it was constrained by the limits of their era. Now things were different.

Su Jie’s body had benefited from things no one in antiquity could have imagined — electrical muscle stimulation, Natural Essence Ointment, Inner Strength Wine, and the Typhon Training Camp rations. Internal and external cultivation, working together. He was operating well beyond what any ancient practitioner could have achieved regardless of their level.

And even setting aside the ancient world — roll back the clock twenty years and these training conditions simply wouldn’t have existed.

The Typhon rations tasted terrible. But for solo field operations they were the best food available — scientifically engineered to supply every compound the body needed in precise ratios. Each tin was expensive, and not the kind of thing you bought with ordinary currency. Dark web, cryptocurrency only.

Each tin ran somewhere close to several hundred US dollars. Su Jie went through at least three a day.

He had been using his own money, passing it to Zhang Manman to convert into cryptocurrency and then commissioning her to make the purchases on his behalf.

He had several million yuan set aside — but it was going fast. One of the reasons he’d agreed to try for Larich’s bodyguard position in the first place was the straightforward prospect of earning some money during the winter break.

His nutritional standard already exceeded what the national team’s professional conditioning coaches provided. Liu Long had once mentioned that the daily food budget for his own peak training period was around five hundred yuan — already considered generous. Fifteen thousand a month, well above an ordinary salary.

Su Jie was spending close to ten thousand yuan a day. The money moved through his hands like water.

He knew his nutritional standard was still below Feng Hengyi’s, and further still from a world-class champion’s. But he was in the upper tier, without question.

Hearing Zhang Shiyi offer to share years of accumulated research data — Su Jie found himself genuinely tempted, in a technical sense. But it didn’t shift his core judgment.

The offer was almost certainly hollow. That data was among the Zhang family’s most valuable assets. Why would they hand it to an outsider? What incentive could there possibly be? The Zhang family was not that generous. And giving it to him would only be cultivating someone who owed them nothing.

Beyond that, Su Jie knew something Zhang Shiyi had not yet brought up: the history between his father and the Zhang family. Zhang Manman didn’t know. The younger generation of the Zhang family didn’t know. But these old men — Su Jie found it very difficult to believe they didn’t know.

The fact that Zhang Shiyi hadn’t raised it yet meant one of two things: either he hadn’t yet confirmed Su Jie’s identity, or he knew perfectly well and was staying quiet — running some calculation, not wanting to put Su Jie on guard before the right moment.

By instinct, Su Jie read Zhang Shiyi as a man with something other than good intentions operating underneath the surface.

“So — what do you say?” Zhang Shiyi was a seasoned operator. He had patience. He’d let Su Jie sit in silence for a while before asking.

“Zhang Hongqing is the current Dragon Head,” Su Jie said. “These decisions should come from him. Zhang Manman is his daughter — by any reasonable logic, he should want to see her secure a significant position. It speaks well of her. Don’t tell me he’s one of those men who values sons over daughters — I haven’t gotten that impression from anything Zhang Manman has said about him.” He paused. “Here’s what I think: I’ll go speak to Zhang Hongqing directly. You don’t think I lack the standing for that, do you? Even if, in your words, I’m still wet behind the ears.”

“You have the standing.” Zhang Shiyi felt something cool pass through him, though nothing showed on his face. He had not moved Su Jie at all. “If that’s what you want, I’ll arrange an introduction to the Dragon Head myself.” He produced a business card and held it out.

Su Jie took it.

Zhang Shiyi didn’t bother packing up his fortune-telling table. He simply turned and walked away.

Su Jie watched him go, shook his head quietly, and left in the other direction.

*****

Zhang Shiyi moved quickly once he was off the plaza — ducked into a side street, entered a building, took an elevator up, passed through several doors, and arrived at an office where several other elders were already seated in conference. They looked up when he came in.

“You’ve seen the boy?” one of them asked. “Was what Zhang Kaitai reported accurate?”

“Completely accurate.” Zhang Shiyi’s expression was grave. “He has genuinely reached the state of Divine Enlightenment.” He shook his head slowly. “Su Shilin seemed content to live quietly, in the background. None of us expected him to have quietly raised a son like this — a talent that surpasses the entire Zhang family in one generation.”

“True enough. Even Kaitai could never reach Divine Enlightenment.” The man who had spoken first was Zhang Shiju. He stood and walked a few paces across the office. “We’ve spent our whole lives — all of us in this room — in cultivation and study. We have the accumulated experience of generations behind us. We have the research power of the Honey Badger Training Camp. And none of it has been enough.”

The Zhang family, as a whole, held the state of Divine Enlightenment — the Realm of the Living Dead — in something close to fanatical reverence. A kind of blind worship, and a deep longing. Not without reason. That level of mental cultivation was genuinely extraordinary — almost incomprehensibly so.

“What do you think Zhang Manman is actually doing,” Zhang Shiyi said, “getting entangled with Su Shilin’s son?”

“Manman doesn’t know about what happened back then,” Zhang Shiju said. “From where she stands, securing a fighter of his caliber to anchor her position is simply the obvious move — any ambitious person would do the same.” He paused. “What she doesn’t know is that the Dragon Head has been preparing for a fight to the death with Su Shilin.” He was quiet for a moment. “I think the time has come to tell her.”