Chapter 35 - A Greater Treasure?
Yang Xiu sank into a lotus position, immediately beginning to cultivate as soon as her master gave her and her brother leave to do so. Though she wasn’t an expert at cultivating yet, she was getting used to spending a lot of her time cycling, and the qi in the area around the special spirit wood felt different. More intense. Her cycling was more efficient. More effective.
She wanted to spend her day doing nothing but cultivating, but she also had to meditate on the fights she’d just completed. So, she limited herself to just two complete cycles.
Another three or four cycles wouldn’t hurt, though, right? Her master taught that, when an opportunity presented itself, you had to seize it. And what was the intense qi in the wood except for an opportunity?
Yang Xiu sighed. That excuse had merit, but it was nothing but an excuse. In truth, she didn’t want to meditate. Her master had pointed out that she had passed on loosing an arrow at a bear because it wouldn’t have been a kill shot. Because of her choice, Ru’er got injured. Because of her mistake.
She hated facing her mistakes. She hated even more that her master had to call her attention to it. Even though he told her that it was okay for her to err as long as she learned from it, she wanted him to be proud of her, not to have to correct her.
Compounding her mistake by not learning from it would be the true betrayal of her master, though. She would not sink that low. If he wanted her to learn from it, she would.
With that determination in mind, she sank into a meditative trance. Each and every use of her archery technique that day played and replayed in her mind. Each arrow loosed. Each hit. Each kill.
And each mistake. Times when she hadn’t moved perfectly. Times when she hadn’t stilled completely. Times when her arrow had been just a hair off, like her first shot against one of the salamanders.
Most of all, though, the one her master had drawn to her attention stood out. Clearly, Ru’er had no chance of stopping that bear. He was already engaged. If she would have shot it in the leg, it would have delayed the beast long enough for her brother to finish off the other one and strike the bear first, avoiding the injury.
Subsequently, she discovered two other opportunities where a shot she considered bad—one that didn’t result in a kill—would have resulted in either her brother or her master having an easier time.
Yang Xiu resolved to pay more attention to those situations in the future, and as that resolve solidified into the essence of her being, the figure representing her in her mind’s eye underwent a transformation. Her draws became smoother, her aiming more accurate, her stillness absolute, her power stronger. More importantly, the figure in her mind’s eye developed discernment, the ability to determine which shot was the most impactful.
Her eyes shot open. “Senior Brother Chao, is that…”