Phoenix Rise: XieRong

Chapter 36 - The Death Strike

"I’m finally finished!" XieRong exclaimed, pulling the last weed out.

"Hey, old man! I’m finished!" XieRong said, looking at the old man who sat drinking on the stool outside his hut.

"Hm. Now go chop the wood."

"Does this miss look like a servant to you?" she asked, making her way to the pile of logs that lay near the well.

"You have been weeding my lawn, haven’t you?"

XieRong harrumphed.

"There’s no axe here old man. Too bad, you’ll just have to train me now."

The old man looked relatively sober today, as he made his way to the pile of wood, picking one up and placing it on the ground.

"You can either use the wrong way you’ve been using the needle."

"How did you-"

The old man pointed to his left hand.

XieRong raised her own hand to look at it.

It was filled with scabbing scratches she’d gotten when the needle would slip off of the rocks surface and scratched her hand.

"Or this."

The old man quickly struck the log of wood with his index and middle fingers.

"Nothing happened old man."

The old man simply touched the wood with the tip of his shoe and the wood fell apart.

Two equal halves on the ground.

XieRong caught her breath.

"How did you do that old man?"

"That," the old man said, tilting his head towards the two pieces of wood on the ground,"is called the death strike. The advantage of using this technique is that it renders your enemy, a cultivator or otherwise, useless. It’s disadvantage is that it requires you to get close to your opponent and to have great speed while using it."

"How does this technique make someone useless? Won’t it just kill them?"

"This is how it makes someone useless."

Before XieRong could even blink the old man hit several spots on her body in quick succession.

XieRong tried to jump away using qinggong, but found her feet paralysed and her arms limp.

"Hey, old man! Free me this instant!"

"Why don’t you wait a while? I haven’t finished showing you the last way this technique can be used."

XieRong huffed, but watched the old man with interest.

He took another piece of wood and made it stand on the ground.

He struck it the same way he did the first time, but this time the wood was blown to smithereens.

"This is the last way to use this technique, and also why the technique is called the death strike."

"I can see old man. Now let me go!"

"I will let you go if you can figure out what was the difference in the three ways I used this technique and how to undo it."

"But you said you’d let me go!"

"No, I only told you to wait and watch until I demonstrated the third technique."

XieRong grumble curses under her breath.

"Get thinking, there’s only so much time before the boy comes to pick you up."

XieRong sighed.

-FeiHong, there’s a chance I might be very late today. Please, make up an excuse for me.-

-What happened? Are you in trouble, Jie?-

-If you call the old man training me in his own twisted way trouble, then yes, I am.-

-Okay, I’ll see what I can do.-

XieRong began to think.

The old man had hit the same spot on two different pieces of wood, and she hadn’t felt any force behind the strikes when he’d struck her pressure points.

WeiSheng soon arrived to find XieRong deep in thought.

"WeiSheng, it’ll be some time before I become free. It’s fine if you leave."

"I’ll wait here, young miss, especially if you will be returning late. It’s not safe."

XieRong gave him a grateful smile and then went back to thinking.

The old man had said she could use her wrong way of using her needle to split the wood and had used the technique in the way she had been using the needle and she was sure she had felt something bind her meridian when he hit her.

So was the difference in techniques the way he controlled his spiritual energy?

But wasn’t his spiritual energy concentrated on the tip of his fingers all the three times?

Then why had the wood split open the first time, and burst into bits the second time? And why hadn’t anything happened to her when he struck her?

XieRong’s eyes widened as realisation dawned upon her.

"Hey old man! I figured it out! I had been concentrating on the wrong thing all along! I was trying to concentrate the spiritual energy on the tip and force the needle through the rock, when what I had to do was focus on pushing the qi in a concentrated area on the rock to make a hole through it!

"The way you controlled the spiritual energy after it entered me and those logs that was what was different. When you split the wood into half, you made equal halves of your spiritual energy push the pieces apart at the center where you struck it. With me, you used your spiritual energy to bind my pressure points, and with the second piece of wood, you forced your spiritual energy in all directions which made it blow apart."

"Okay, now figure out how to unbind yourself."

XieRong pouted.

She had figured something that had been eating away at her for weeks and that was his reaction?

"Old man, I don’t know whether I should dispel your spiritual energy or absorb it, or if I can even do either of those things with the spiritual energy."

"What do you think happens to the spiritual energy when I come unbind you?"

"It’s your spiritual energy, so you might be able to take it back."

"Of course, I would take it back. The dantian is unique to every person so why not the spiritual energy it stores inside it?"

"But we absorb spiritual energy from other things, then why is the spiritual energy inside each of our dantians different?"

"You don’t even know this and you call yourself a cultivator?"

"I never called myself a cultivator and I am still learning."

"Listen little girl, the spirit roots absorb spiritual energy from their element source and send it to the dantian which cultivates the different spiritual energies into your unique spiritual energy and stores it."

"Then won’t the amount of spiritual energy inside my dantian decrease if I use this technique?"

"No, little girl, it won’t, at least not permanently. The energy cannot be lost by your dantian, nor can it be converted by someone else into their own spiritual energy, therefore it will flow back to you once it disperses from the body you have used it on. Even a bound person who does not know how to free himself will eventually become free as your spiritual energy inside them starts returning to you."

"How long does it take for the spiritual energy to return back to me?"

"The essence of this technique is to concentrate a little amount of spiritual energy in the smallest possible confined space and let it out in one go, so if you master this technique, the little amount of spiritual energy you have used will return just as quickly as it left you. If you use your spirit energy to bind someone, then the time taken by the spiritual energy to return to you will depend on how much you have used to bind them."

"So it is the same with my needle. Now tell me how to dispel your spiritual energy old man."

"If I tell you everything, then what would be the point of me binding you in the first place?"

He got up from his stool and came to stand in front of XieRong, twirling the bottle of wine in front of her face.

"The hour of the Monkey (15.00 – 17.00) will end in another Shi Chen and from the looks of it you will be staying here for a long time."

"What if I get out of these binds in a quarter Shi Chen?"

The old man chugged down the contents of his bottle.

"Then you will get to go home sooner."

He went over to his pile of woods and picked up a few logs.

"Even if you aren’t able to figure it out, the binding will fade away by the time the hour of the dog (19.00 – 21.00) comes to an end, so don’t shout and annoy me."

The old man went into his hut and closed the door.

XieRong looked at the lavender sky. She couldn’t wait for it to turn black. It would would worry her aunt and uncle if she were to stay out and wait for the hour of the dog (19.00 – 21.00) to come to an end.

After trying to remove the old man’s spiritual energy for half a quarter Shi Chen XieRong had grown frustrated.

Every time she would push the energy a little away from her pressure point, it would come back and cling to it again. She also wasn’t strong enough to completely push it out of her body.

XieRong sighed and hung her head in defeat.

If only there were something that could take away the spirit energy.

XieRong opened her eyes to see the ground beneath her feet.

If only she could give the damned old man’s energy away...

Maybe she could.

XieRong directed the old man’s energy to her other meridians and finally pushed it towards the ground and moved away. She directed the energy binding her hands to the tips of her fingers and pushed it into the surroundings.

"You can get lost now!" The old man shouted grumpily from inside his hut.

XieRong let out a small excited laugh.

She’d done it!

She had finally gotten it!

"Let’s go WeiSheng!"

WeiSheng noticed the little skip in the young miss’ step.