Blossoming Path

I closed my eyes and let my breathing guide me. Slowly, I raised my arms and let them fall into the rhythm I’d felt atop the Soaring Swallow. The sequence Ren Zhi had narrated like a story, but that my body had remembered like truth.

Light on my feet.

Flow into the first sweep; step, twist, dip the shoulder, drive forward. I spun, weight rolling from heel to toe, and pivoted into a low sweep. My fingers brushed the dirt.

The next step came fluidly: a rise, a cross-kick, and a spiral. A jab, followed by a feint. The motion danced with the fire of the Heavenly Flame Mantra. Fast, deliberate, and unpredictable.

And then, the finale.

I leapt high, legs loose, air slicing past my skin. My body folded at the apex. The axe-kick came down hard, crashing into the dirt with enough force to send up a spray of dust.

I landed in a low crouch, hand braced against the earth.

Ren Zhi, whoever he was, had been guiding me. Quietly. Sharply.

And I still hadn’t confronted him.

I’d tried poking at the topic with Elder Ming during our morning drills. Casual questions. Hypotheticals. But he shut them down with the ease of a man who’d seen too much and knew how to deflect even more. Every time I veered close, he’d tilt his head, stroke his chin, and pivot to correcting my posture or recounting some old fairytale.

Secrets, I realized, weren’t so rare in this world.

And I had a few of my own, didn’t I?

Still, if Ren Zhi wanted to hide his strength, I wouldn’t drag it out of him. Not yet.

Instead, I turned my focus back to the form, replaying the sequence. But this time, my mind sparked with an idea.

What if I… combined it?

The axe-kick was strong , but what if I added weight?

I took a breath, walked through the motion, then tried again.

Step. Leap. Pivot in the air. And as my foot came down—

ROOTED BANYAN STANCE!

I flooded my entire body with qi, grounding it mid-fall.

The effect was immediate.

My body dropped like an anchor, faster than I’d ever moved before. My heel smashed into the dirt with a thunderous crack. My leg nearly buckled from the force, but I braced, sliding into a half-kneel.

It was like dropping my pill furnace on someone’s head.

I grinned, panting slightly.

And repeated the move again.

And again.

With every practiced movement, the transition between my activation of the Heavenly Mantra Flame and the Rooted Banyan Stance got smoother and smoother.

But not seamless.

It was harder than learning how to reinforce objects with my qi. It was an entirely different concept. There was still a lag; barely a blink, but it was there. A hiccup in my control. One moment, my qi surged like wildfire, licking at my limbs, explosive and quick. The next, I had to force it to condense, to sink, to root itself like a thousand-year-old tree. Two opposing flows. Two opposing intentions.

Fire and earth.

Speed and weight.

Every time I switched, I felt the recoil: a stutter in my balance, a hesitation in the air. I had to account for it manually, shifting my weight, aligning my spine, recalibrating the angle of my descent mid-jump. There was no room for error. If there was a single misalignment I’d either lose all momentum or crash down at the wrong angle and injure myself.

So I focused. Sharpened my intent like a blade. I listened to the internal flow of energy within my body. Felt its rhythm inside me.

Step. Leap. Mantra. Twist.

Flame. Apex. Shift—

ROOTED.

This time, I didn’t just fall. I dropped.

And just before impact, I aligned my body and flow of energy so it struck together. A unified whole.

BOOM!

The earth buckled.

A crater bloomed underfoot, almost a full pace wide. Shattered dirt and stone burst outward in jagged ridges.

I stood at its center, heel embedded in compacted earth, steam rising faintly off my shoulders.

Then it came.