The Jade Shadows Must Die [Cultivation LitRPG]

Something about that wax seal had stuck out to him. While he wasn't familiar with many corporate logos specifically, he knew the style of them. And now he'd proven his hunch right.

They were called Wellspring Antiquities, and he'd never heard of them before.

They had an innocuous entry in the book, half a page where almost every other corp had at least double that. The book said they specialised in antiques and esoteric artefacts. Items from bygone ages. That didn't sound dissimilar to what Rix's parents had done.

In the days since receiving the letter, he'd sometimes found himself wondering if he'd imagined the whole thing. But seeing the insignia there in the corporate records — a real, legitimate organisation within the city — reaffirmed the truth of the situation.

Somebody was paying attention to him.

Rendered on paper, the insignia had significantly more detail than the first time he'd seen it. The tree had a thick, angular trunk and sparse, jagged branches reaching upward, but its roots were a mesmerising clockwise spiral that seemed to draw the eye inward, as though the tree grew from an infinite well.

If his instincts were right, Wellspring Antiquities knew something about qi. That made their letter another avenue to help tip the scales against Han.

"Grow strong," the letter had said. He already felt like he was doing that. He didn't know what secret threshold he'd need to cross to truly catch their attention, but all he could do was continue as he was.

***

The next day was heartstone day. Rix woke feeling noticeably better. The extra stargrass he'd bought had worked wonders, and he took a moment to sit and reflect on that. It would be so easy to begin taking the stuff for granted. A lot of Martial Souls had grown up in privilege. They didn't know what it was like to have nothing, just scrape and scrabble and fight every day. Rix didn't want to forget where he came from. To forget his past life was to forget his family, and that was something he'd sworn never to do.

Unlike the previous day, he felt up to training. Over the past few weeks, some of the new prisoners had actually started following his lead and skipping breakfast to train. While many of those others had, at one point or another, mocked him for his hand-to-hand training, he nonetheless felt a sort of grim camaraderie. They were a group of people making the most of bad circumstances.

This morning, several of the Farm-side training cells were occupied. In one, a couple of fellow divers he recognised were engaged in a vicious duel, axe against sabre. In another, a young woman with a long spear was working with the Weaponmaster. She must have raced down from her cell to get her training hour in first thing. Rix hoped to work with Master Zhen himself today, but he didn't mind waiting. Heartstone day was more leisurely than dive day, and besides, he had drills to run.

At first, he'd planned to be done with unarmed training once his style set. But the more he thought on it, the more he realised that would be doing himself a disservice. The value of a strong foundation had been impressed upon him several times, and that had been borne out in the way his work had eventually paid off. Yes, he'd achieved his immediate goal of setting his style, but that didn't mean his foundation was everything it could be. His punches were still not consistent, and his movement was still clumsy and imprecise, to put it lightly. If his work so far had helped, there was no reason to doubt that continuing to get better would pay further dividends.

So, as he had every morning, he ran through his exercises. First the thousand blows, then the movement drills. He shouldn't have been surprised, but he discovered it was all much more enjoyable now that he no longer had the weight of a null style on his mind. With no external pressure, he could simply enjoy the exercises for what they were: a honing of his mind and body. While he'd always striven to improve, his life prior to Spiritlock had been governed by necessity. There wasn't time to train, nor guidance on how to. But in here, that changed. It was a luxury, which sounded funny when talking about a prison, but in these very specific terms that's how it felt to him. Sure, there were rivals potentially hunting him, and he risked his life daily in a place that everybody said would inevitably claim it, but he was also free to become better, and that was valuable.

After finishing his drills, Master Zhen was still occupied, so Rix went and got a training staff. He hadn't yet had an opportunity to test his style under more controlled circumstances. Even when not engaged in combat, the staff now felt different in his hands. There was a certain sense of completeness that hadn't been there before. It was strange. He'd used a staff most of his life, and it had always felt comfortable, but gaining the System style had been like flipping a switch in his brain, showing him how much he hadn't known.

Facing down the training dummy, he dropped into a combat stance and turned his mind inward, focusing on the bundle of foreign movements nestled in the back of his mind. This time when he tried to channel his style, there was no blankness, no fuzz, just crisp, clear techniques that he could pull to the forefront of his consciousness. He lashed out with his weapon, a simple side strike, and felt a burst of satisfaction as the wooden dummy shuddered at his blow. The exact sensation of learning from the style was strange. There were no verbal instructions or visual images; rather the attack came to him almost like an instinct, an external intuition about the correct way to move his body.

He swung again, this time chaining multiple attacks — the side, the chest and the head in rapid succession. It seemed that there was a sort of symbiosis between his mind and the style. While he was channelling, it read his intentions and when he went to summon a movement it presented something to achieve that result. It was an elegant approach, one that synthesised the style's martial prowess with his own ability to read the fight and react to the challenges it presented.

From just a few attacks, it was already obvious how much scope for improvement he had. Every time he struck, there was a latency between his mind and body while he processed the style's intentions. It was measured in milliseconds, but in a fight between Martial Souls, that was significant. From what the Quartermaster had said, this would diminish as he became more familiar with the style and everything became more instinctive.

The movements themselves had similar issues. While more efficient and powerful than anything he could deploy on his own, he was a long way from using them to their best effect. His body had not even begun to internalise them. Even these simple attacks currently felt foreign to his muscles. All in all, it was exciting. He already felt more powerful, and he couldn't wait to see what he could do with a little training under his belt.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"That almost looks like a proper blow." The elder's voice came from behind him as he continued to experiment.

"That almost sounded like a compliment," Rix fired back, turning to face him.

The elder raised one bushy eyebrow. "Did it? My mistake. My standards must have been worn so low by this place that even mediocrity starts to shine." Though his face remained neutral, Rix thought he could see the barest hint of amusement in his eyes.

Perhaps it was a little extra confidence from finally setting his style, or maybe he was just sick of showing subservience at every juncture, but Rix found himself unable to muster much in the way of respect today. "Is this you initiating one of my training hours? Or are these insults free?"

Thankfully, the man took that little bit of insolence in stride. "I charge by the insight, not by the insult. Otherwise, you'd have bankrupted yourself by now, boy. As for training, I wouldn't dare presume your needs. Mostly because once I started, I'd buckle under the weight of them."

Rix snickered. Despite the man's words, at this point he was certain Master Zhen actually wanted to help. He wouldn't have commented at all otherwise. But, of course, he wouldn't say that.

"Elder, could we please use one of my training hours?" Rix asked, intentionally sounding as insincere as possible.

Master Zhen took his time considering this before giving a dramatic sigh. "It's as my master used to say: 'Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is lighter than a feather'." He stepped into the cage and came to stand by Rix. "Tell me about your progress."

Rix decided to go for complete honesty, though he cringed a little at admitting the situation he'd been in. "I was fighting three fades in the Fractured Realm. I was wounded, and honestly I think I was about to fall. Then at the last moment, my style clicked into place."

The elder nodded, impassive. "A true Martial Soul is forged in the crucible of life and death. Which is good news for you. With skills like that, I imagine you find yourself in desperate situations with alarming frequency."

Rix didn't argue, mostly because it was true. His short time in Spiritlock had been punctuated by several near-death moments. On more than one of those occasions, he'd questioned whether he was pushing too hard, but the Weaponmaster's words confirmed the perspective he'd already arrived at: that tightrope was exactly where he needed to be.

"I saw you still conducting your unarmed training this morning," Master Zhen said.

Rix nodded.

"That's good. The situation was one part of your success, but it's your dedication to building your foundation that was the critical factor. Without that, no amount of danger would have been enough."

No barb with that one, and it filled Rix with unexpected pride. He didn't want to call it out, but it meant something to hear his hard work acknowledged.

"Getting my style to set has been my only focus over the last few weeks," he said. "Now that I've done it though, I guess I don't understand what it means. Why was it so difficult? And what has actually happened to me?"

The man considered him for a moment, and Rix could almost see him weighing whether to fob him off. But then his face softened. Perhaps he'd decided Rix really was worth teaching. Or perhaps he'd simply tired of the game of belittling him. "Exactly how little do you know about the Martial Path?"

Rix frowned. "In truth, almost nothing, elder."

"Not surprising." The man let out a sigh, as if agreeing to something extremely onerous, then gestured towards Rix with one hand. "Your Path is divided into three pillars: mind, body and soul. They're the categories your attributes are filed under in your System display. When you start out, your Path is heavily body focused because that's how you exist now, as a physical entity. Conversely, your soul is flimsy and weak. The mind, meanwhile, acts as a bridge between the two, helping to bring your body and soul into harmony."

"So how does my style fit into that?" Rix asked.

"It's a tool. The Martial Path produces Martial Souls, and that isn't just a fancy name. Every step you take down the Path you are building your soul into something more powerful and dangerous. Bonding with a weapon is the first step in that journey. That weapon gives your soul shape and texture, but little more than that. Think of your soul now as a blank parchment awaiting the first strokes of a pen." He gave Rix an appraising look. "Or perhaps, in your case, a child's first scribbles."

Not entirely tired of the game, then. Rix ignored the insult. This was the kind of thing he needed to understand, and he wasn't about to derail the conversation.

The elder seemed almost disappointed, but he continued. "To follow that metaphor, think of the style like a well known story. The System's goal is to tell that story to you over and over so you can write it on your parchment, until you know it intrinsically. But that takes time. Many Martial Souls are taught the forms of their style well before they get their System seed to help prepare them." He gave Rix a pointed look. "For those…less fortunate who may have taught themselves conflicting styles, well, your mind is producing two stories at once. When you try to write them to the page, you get complete nonsense."

"But how did learning to throw a basic punch help with that?" Rix asked. "It seems unrelated to staff combat."

The elder let out a long-suffering sigh. "You are really going to stretch the metaphor, boy." He thought for several seconds. "Think of it this way — before you can write a story, you must first learn your letters. The fundamental movements of combat — proper footwork, weight transfer, body alignment — these are the alphabet from which all martial arts are written. Your self-taught style was like trying to write with made-up symbols. By giving you proper fundamentals, we helped your mind recognise the true language of combat. Only then could the System begin writing its story onto your soul."

"That is a lot…more than I was expecting," he said, trying to make it all make sense. "Forgive my lack of understanding, but if the style governs my physical movements, why must it be written on my soul at all?"

The elder's smile was indulgent, almost patronising. "Because ultimately the Martial Path is about bringing the mind, body, and soul together as one. Right now, your ability to exert yourself over the world is limited to your flesh, weak as it is. But by linking your physical self with your spiritual self, you begin to learn how to impose your will on the world."

Rix had a moment of feeling very small. The Chronicles talked of souls and will, but it was always in an abstract way, like another weapon wielded in a different set of hands. The way the Weaponmaster spoke of it made it sound intrinsic somehow, like he was currently somehow not a whole person in his current state. The idea that he could become more himself was difficult to wrap his head around.

He had a million questions, so he opened his mouth and said the first one that came to mind. "You say I'm writing the style onto my soul, and that writing two styles at once doesn't work, but the Quartermaster said this didn't have to be my style forever. How easy is it to learn something new in the future?"

Amusement played on the elder's face. "You've barely written your first words, and are already planning another epic. I didn't realise I was in the presence of a peerless genius." He gave a mocking bow, and Rix felt his cheeks flush.

"I'm just trying to understand. Is there shame in aspiring to something more?"

"Desire for power is natural, boy. But true strength comes from mastering what's in front of you. Daydreaming about things beyond your reach won't help you when a fade tries to gut you tomorrow."

Rix nodded slowly. "That makes sense, elder." And he meant it. He'd spent a long time looking to the future, but now he was in that future and he needed to learn to take things a day at a time.

"Good," said the elder. "And for the record, if you somehow master your style without impaling yourself on your own staff — which, let it be known, I believe is extremely unlikely — then of course you'll be able to develop more. Do you think I, the vaunted Zhen Wei, Weaponmaster of Spiritlock, am versed in but a single style?"

Rix blinked several times. "I wouldn't dare presume, elder."

"Of course you wouldn't," the older man replied, the smugness now fully returned to his voice. "In order to teach all you calves how to not trip over your own blades, I've personally had to master every basic style in the Spiritlock library."

Rix's mouth dropped open. "That is…impressive, elder."

The Weaponmaster gave a dismissive wave. "They are like nursery rhymes to a poet. Simple, repetitive, and barely scratching the surface of true artistry." The man clapped his hands. "Enough talk. You're already down ten minutes. As much as I think you and that dummy are still evenly matched, I think it's time for something a little more challenging." The man's smile grew toothy. "It's time to see how you fight against someone with real training."