Chương 32: Chapter 31 — Rematch

The training hall was not far from where Lin Che had met with Elder Mao, just slightly past the main residential building and down a covered walkway. Zichen led the way without hesitation, having lived in the compound and practically resided in this exact training hall ever since stepping foot in the Shen Clan. The hall itself looked almost identical to the ones Lin Che had seen in the training videos for cultivation methods, only there was a bit less calligraphy on the walls.

The floor was sprung wood to prevent serious injuries, and the ceiling was much higher than expected, which he'd assumed was to allow more freely for the use of Qinggong or some other martial techniques. Zichen closed the door behind them and moved to the centre of the floor.

"Time to unseal," he said, pressing two fingers to a point below his collarbone, before exhaling in relief, as though he'd finally had a chance to use the toilet after holding it in for far too long. The atmosphere around Zichen changed with this exhale, with Qi now becoming dense enough that Lin Che did not need to channel his own Qi into his eyes to see the shift he could already feel. He looked at Lin Che.

"Ready?" he asked.

"No," said Lin Che honestly, as he raised his hands.

Zichen came forward in a way that was different to the tournament, which Lin Che had not been expecting. When fighting Guo Mingzhe, Zichen had circled and been cautious of his opponent's strength and techniques, but also moved rather awkwardly — albeit only slightly awkwardly. This time, he was moving with a technique that had been honed for a long period of time — a technique which had been completed by a master many moons ago instead of being made up by an inspired Yang Zichen.

He threw a testing strike at Lin Che to read how he received it. Lin Che dodged before the jab could arrive. Zichen switched angles, but the result was the same: Lin Che would dodge at the last possible moment before the strike could land. Zichen's eyes sharpened in recognition. He adjusted. The next exchange was faster, but mostly the same, as though Zichen was trying to confirm a hypothesis. He smiled when it was proven true.

He threw another combination of jabs and kicks, where five out of six ended up being narrowly dodged by Lin Che, and the sixth ended up grazing his shoulder. Lin Che pivoted his body at an angle upon contact, swinging in towards Zichen in an attempt to counter. However, in the split second of the fight, Lin Che had been unable to clench his fists before striking, and instead pushed Yang Zichen away with significantly more strength than he had intended. Zichen flew backwards and hit the wall. They reset.

"A reflex method," said Zichen, now circling.

"Swallow Returns?"

"Not sure what you're talking about," said Lin Che.

"You don't have to pretend you're not a cultivator. I figured it out when we first fought."

"It's a similar technique," said Lin Che, continuing with the lie. Zichen nodded slowly, not taking Lin Che at his word, but not pushing any further. All that mattered right now was testing Lin Che's limits to report back to Shen Bowen, and pushing too much would cause him to just hide more. And besides, Zichen knew the counter to the Swallow Returns to the Nest method. Lin Che kept his guard up as Yang Zichen suddenly charged forwards, breaking away from the circle he had been drawing earlier.

This time, he projected his Qi outward, not quite unlike Lin Che had previously done so against the wolf-like creature, only for Yang Zichen this manifested more as a set of Qi boxing gloves. It extended his reach slightly further, meaning the blow of the Qi hit Lin Che before his body would have been able to. The Swallow Returns to the Nest technique only manifested itself in response to physical attacks from the body; so the counter was really quite simple.

Hit the practitioner before your body touches them, and they will dodge at the wrong point in time. And if you know the practitioner well, you can predict exactly where they'll land— Lin Che ended up with a bruise on one shoulder before dodging right, which ended up with him moving his own stomach into a knee. Lin Che jumped backwards, but the combo continued. Had his body not been reinforced, many bones would have by now been shattered.

Lin Che circulated the Liuhe method up to the sixth harmony, channeling the Qi throughout his entire body for further reinforcement. He flared his Qi externally just slightly, breaking the combo before retreating. The next exchange lasted longer. They found a rhythm that was neither of them holding back too much, with both still learning the other's patterns. Zichen was faster with the Qi channelling and much more fluent in the martial transitions, but Lin Che was stronger than Zichen had accounted for.

Stolen story; please report. Lin Che took two clean hits to the shin and thigh and gave one back in a kick to Zichen's ankle. The one he gave back made Zichen take a step and a half to manage, which produced a brief pause in which both of them breathed and looked at each other from across the training floor.

"You're much stronger than you should be," said Zichen.

"I've been working on some things," said Lin Che.

"You should use the purification technique. The Hollow Bell." Lin Che looked at him.

"I could feel it when you bit me," said Zichen, with a straightforwardness Lin Che had not expected.

"The internal environment is well-established for your stage."

"How much do you know about what stage I'm at?" asked Lin Che.

"Less than I'd like," said Zichen as he came forward again.

The fight escalated gradually from then on, with each exchange revealing a ceiling that the next exchange pushed against. Zichen was good — significantly better than Lin Che in the martial sense, which meant he had a library of transitions and combinations and responses that Lin Che simply did not have, and could therefore chain them in real time in a way that Lin Che could read but not react to.

But what Zichen was best at was pushing Lin Che precisely enough to reveal more and more of his strength without realising it. Lin Che was physically stronger and his reaction threshold was low enough that he regularly responded to things before Zichen had fully committed to them. They worked through this for some fifteen minutes, by which point Lin Che stopped counting the hits he was taking and started focussing more on the ones he could give back.

He started moving with the Swallow Returns instead of letting it move him, which was a new minor breakthrough he'd come to with the technique during this spar. Underneath it all, he circulated the Hollow Bell, as it deepened his sense of his own body's interior, which in turn made the Swallow Returns more precise. And at the core, he pushed the Liuhe circulation harder and harder and felt his Qi quality shift.

Lin Che stopped thinking about what he was revealing, instead pushing his Qi fully until the halo manifested itself above his crown. He was clearly producing something that was no longer indicative of someone at the earliest stages of cultivation. Zichen raised an eyebrow, before surging his Qi in turn. Within five breaths, there was a significant impact to Lin Che's ribcage and a minor bruise on Zichen's knee. Lin Che was on one knee, with his palm on the training floor as he spluttered out oxygen and mucous.

He stayed there for a moment.

"You've broken through already," said Zichen, looking downwards. Lin Che stood up and brushed his palm on his trousers and kept quiet, which was itself an answer.

"External Qi manifestation… and you're running multiple beginner-level techniques simultaneously." He paused.

"Who taught you them?"

"You know who," said Lin Che.

"You'll be an official member eventually anyway. I trust you'll tell me by then, but for right now, this is a problem."

"I know," said Lin Che.

"If anyone—""I know," repeated Lin Che. They stood in the middle of the training hall and locked eyes.

In the courtyard beyond the eastern wall of the training hall, Elder Fang had been walking her evening circuit. It was something of a habit of fifty years, a holdover from when she'd take on night patrol missions at the Shen Clan in the days before CCTV, It was always the same route between the courtyards. She had felt the fight begin but hadn't gone to look, because practitioners always sparred and it was not her concern, especially for such beginner-level fights.

But then the levels of energy she felt suddenly increased from both parties, and she suddenly stopped walking. One breakthrough was rare enough in a fight, but two would be even rarer. Unless it was a fight in which both parties were for some reason holding back their true cultivation levels, which would just be completely nonsensical. Soon enough, she found herself at a window, staring in at two familiar faces in combat. One was someone whom she knew personally — the boy that always hung with Shen Bowen.

The other, she had only seen in a file. She watched Lin Che stand with a halo of Qi around the crown of his head and the clear signature of a completed vessel expansion beyond the level of someone who had only just recently been exposed to the cultivation world. She took out her phone. She recorded for thirty seconds to ensure what she had was clear, before opening the pinned group chat. She typed a single line beneath the video. Proof. Lin Che is the spy we've been looking for.

She sent it and put her phone away, standing at the window for a moment longer. Then, she continued her evening circuit.

Lin Che called a taxi from the main gate, standing in the evening air with his ribcage occasionally shedding tears of dull pain. He'd said his farewells to Zichen at the door of the hall, allowing him to tidy up the mess the two had created. The car arrived in two minutes, which was very fast for this part of the city at this hour. Lin Che got inside and closed the door. The driver didn't speak, which was normal, and Lin Che could see his address on the satnav. The car pulled away from the gate, which was normal.

One minute later, something entered the car through the ventilation, but Lin Che's Hollow Bell technique noticed it before his conscious mind did. It wasn't necessarily aggressive, but there was foreign intrusion coming alive along the back of his throat. It was a sedative.

He breathed it for a couple of seconds before the Hollow Bell began actively working against the substance, which gave enough time for him to feel some minor effects of the sedative such as muscle weakness, but not enough time for him to fully lose consciousness. He looked back at the driver's head, and then past it to the outside world. The car was moving at speed in a direction that was not towards his apartment, and he heard the sound of the door locks finally engaging. Lin Che did the maths.

Then, he closed his eyes and let his head fall against the window at the angle of someone who had lost consciousness. He steadied his breathing into the rhythm of sleep, and lay very still whilst the Hollow Bell continued its work.