The Way of Restraint

Chapter 204: Tangled Roots

“I assumed you didn’t know any of this old history,” Su Jie said. “Turns out you already did. Though everything you know about that generation came secondhand — hard to know what’s accurate.”

“True or not, one thing is certain: there’s no blood between us.” Zhang Manman’s tone was matter-of-fact. “I had your DNA tested. No relation whatsoever.”

“You had my DNA tested?” Su Jie was genuinely caught off guard. “Why?”

He thought about it for a moment — they’d spent enough time together that picking up a stray hair or a bloodstained trace from an injury would have been straightforward enough.

“I was worried about exactly the kind of melodrama you just described,” Zhang Manman said without embarrassment. “The results were a relief. We’re clear.” She pressed on. “So — you help me secure the senior position at Honey Badger Security and become the Zhang family heir. I help you find and rescue your sister. Whatever grudge existed between our families dissolves. Isn’t that a good outcome for everyone?”

“I hope things develop the way we’re planning.” Su Jie nodded. He had already read her well enough. “But I can see that almost none of your family’s elder generation supports you. At the family assembly, it comes down to votes — and you can’t clap with one hand. On top of that, this kind of family gathering can’t be decided by force. No one’s staging a coup.”

“Our generational sequence runs: Wan, Nian, Han, Shi, Hong, Kai, Juan, De, You, Guang,” Zhang Manman said. “The Wan generation is long gone. The Nian generation is just my great-grandfather Zhang Nianquan. The Han generation has only two left — Zhang Hanlin and Zhang Hanzuan — both elderly and in poor health, essentially in retirement. The Shi generation has more members, but they’ve all formed their own blocs and are backing my brothers. And my brothers have been making promises to every elder they can reach, trading commitments for votes.” She paused. “My main competition is my own brother Zhang Kaitai. Beyond him, there’s Zhang Kaiyu, Zhang Kaiyuan, and a few others. They all have elder backing.”

“Factional divisions in a family this size — that’s normal.” Su Jie moved on. “But the Mao family’s reach is something else. They’re entangled with the Feng family, which makes them my enemies by extension. I don’t start trouble, but since they’ve already made a move against me, I won’t hold back. Who’s the most capable figure in the Mao family right now? Have they designated a successor?”

“They have,” Zhang Manman said. “His name is Mao Xin. I have a file on him — I’ll send you everything I have. The Mao-Feng relationship as well.”

“Good. Know yourself and know your enemy.” Su Jie pulled out his AI module and received the transfer. A substantial package came through — the full Mao family network, their business interests, and notes on key individuals’ strengths.

He worked through it quickly. “The Mao and Feng families aren’t as tightly aligned as they appear on the surface. It’s mutual exploitation. Looking at this, the Mao family seems to have its own ambitions toward the Feng family — though the Feng family’s appetite is larger still.” His eyes moved through the data, pulling out threads. “One gap: there’s nothing here about which Mao family members have reached the Realm of the Living Dead.”

“That’s their highest secret — we have almost nothing on it. What we can confirm is that the Mao patriarch almost certainly has, and at a very deep level. According to Principal Liu Guanglie, his level may have passed beyond Ming — clarity — all the way to Wu — enlightenment.” Zhang Manman paused. “Beyond him, it seems no one else in the Mao family has reached that state. The current head of the family is Mao Xinyi. Mao Xin is his son. Mao Xinyi is said to have devoted himself to Maoshan qigong and various martial disciplines from childhood — but my father’s assessment is that he never reached shen er ming zhi.”

“So the level truly is what it is,” Su Jie said quietly. “Harder than climbing to the sky.”

He understood, perhaps more clearly than anyone, how fortunate he had been.

Though fortune wasn’t quite the right word. There was no luck involved in reaching the Realm of the Living Dead. It didn’t work that way.

The files on the Typhon Training Camp were almost entirely blank — a clear indication of the limits of Zhang family intelligence, and of Zhang Manman’s current clearance level. She hadn’t penetrated the family’s inner circle. In particular, the research material on the Realm of the Living Dead — the physical maintenance protocols, the cultivation data — none of that had reached her.

“It’s an extraordinary threshold,” Zhang Manman said. “Look at Master Ma and Master Luo — how deep their cultivation, how serious their study. And neither broke through. Coach Gu Yang and Uncle Mang — all that experience, all those years. Still not there.” She shook her head slowly. “To be completely honest — I still can’t fully believe you’ve reached it. It feels like a dream. If I could break through to that state — even being a woman, none of those old traditionalists in the Zhang family would dare object to anything.”

“Work at it gradually,” Su Jie said. “You’ll get there eventually.” He paused, and his tone took on something more focused. “I’ve been studying the Minglun Seven Characters, alongside various psychological methods — and working through classical texts, meditation techniques, cessation practices, absorption methods. My goal is to build a complete, systematic training framework on the foundation of the Seven Characters. I’ve made some progress. With the right approach, it’s possible to give people a genuine path to that state.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. He had genuinely been working on this.

Physical training had become extraordinarily scientific — incomparably more advanced than anything in the ancient world, as any comparison of modern athletic records made clear. But psychological cultivation still had no systematic methodology. It had always been a murky, half-mystical domain — and notoriously prone to producing mental instability rather than breakthroughs.

The deeper problem was that it resisted experimentation. You couldn’t run controlled trials on it.

“If you’re going after the Mao family, do you need my support?” Zhang Manman asked. “I do have people available.”

“No need. The Mao family’s roots go deep — especially the patriarch. His calculations run long and his positioning runs deep. He already knew I was coming. It’s entirely possible he’s had traps prepared and waiting for me to walk into them.” Su Jie’s tone was measured, not modest. “I’m not actually a superhero. I don’t fly or disappear through walls. I’m maybe three degrees sharper than a top-tier special operative — that’s all. If someone tracks my movements and puts together the right combination of serious fighters to surround me, I’m in genuine danger.”

He knew exactly what he was and what he wasn’t. The level he’d reached hadn’t made him feel invincible — and anyone who let themselves think that way, regardless of how strong they were, would find a swift end.

“Whatever you decide,” Zhang Manman said, “I’ll support it fully.”

“First let’s wait for the family assembly and see how the ground lies.” He paused. “Any word yet on the Larry bodyguard application?”

“Nothing back yet.” She shook her head.

At that moment, her phone chimed with a priority notification.

She opened it. Her expression changed immediately — a quiet brightness spreading across her face. “It’s an email from Cass. Mr. Larry wants to meet you. Tomorrow. He’s asking us to come to headquarters.”

“Is that so.” Su Jie wasn’t surprised.

Larry’s technology company was one of the most data-sophisticated operations in the world, in any category. The four assessment rounds during the application process had certainly been recorded in full — metrics captured, fed into their AI systems, and processed. At that level of analysis, there would be nothing about Su Jie’s physical capacity, movement patterns, or technical subtleties that remained hidden.

He understood immediately why Larry wanted to see him personally.

Because a man like Larry understood precisely where value resided.

“I’ll stay here tonight,” Zhang Manman said. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll go with you to meet Mr. Larry.”

“I’ll book the room next door then. If something goes wrong, we’re not both in the same place.” Su Jie suggested it simply.

*****

Early the next morning, Zhang Manman brought Su Jie to the headquarters building where the assessments had taken place. Cass was waiting at the entrance. When she saw Su Jie, a wide smile came to her face.

“Mr. Su Jie — the boss is waiting for you in his office. Please follow me.”

Zhang Manman, in her role as Su Jie’s representative, came with them.

The three of them rode up to the top floor.

The office at the summit was strikingly plain. Minimalist in the most uncompromising sense — one table, four meditation cushions. On the table, a single glass bottle of still water.

Nothing else. No artwork on the walls, which were a bare, pale yellow — raw wood tone. The floor was the same, not even a rug.

Larry — the legendary billionaire, founder of the technology company — sat on one of the cushions. He wore a minimalist athletic outfit: no patterns, no color variation, nothing extraneous.

Su Jie had already formed a picture of this man. An absolute devotee of minimalism. He had built a dislike for everything unnecessary into the products his company made — phones that had taken the world by storm precisely because they were clean, functional, and free of anything superfluous.

When Su Jie entered, Larry stood to receive him. He extended a hand. On his poker-still face, something that could be called a smile appeared.

Larry was famous for almost never smiling.

Cass noted it without surprise. She knew her boss — he was extremely sensitive to data, and the analysis had produced a very strong response to this particular individual.

“This must be Mr. Su Jie.” Larry waited for Su Jie to sit, then opened. “Mr. Su Jie is Chinese, and carries within him a force that defies easy explanation. Your speed, your strength — both surpass Olympic world records. As a matter of human physiology, this is extraordinary. I understand this to be the power of the mind. I myself am a sponsor of the Temple of Inner Light — though no one there has demonstrated anything remotely close to what you embody.”

Su Jie didn’t recognize the Temple of Inner Light by name, but the shape of it was easy enough to infer: a study group of wealthy individuals devoted to cultivating mind and body, of the kind common in the Western world. In some ways an echo of the inner cultivation traditions that had existed in China for centuries.

Both East and West, he reflected, had always reached toward the same thing — the refinement of the inner life.

Looking at Larry’s uncompromising minimalism, Su Jie could see that the man had made real progress of his own in that direction.