The healer had an idea of his own. "Feed him spirit blood—lots of it, enough to drown him! Every dose raises his constitution a little. If he drinks enough, he may never awaken a Spirit Body, but his flesh will grow stronger than any Spirit Body could dream!"
"Strong enough to kill a dragon with one punch," the Chief laughed. "That will frighten the life out of the scum beyond the Great Ruin."
The two men grinned at each other. The healer left the room, closing the door behind him.
The next day the villagers brought in more iron-boned tigers, green flood-snakes, thunder-birds, and golden tortoises. Now that the old folk had a purpose, they worked with fierce energy—so much so that the healer grew angry. "Feed him too much spirit blood at once, and you'll burst him!"
The Mute, who had dragged in two thunder-birds, laughed silently through his toothless, tongueless mouth.
"Mu'er can take it!" Grandma Si was full of faith in Qin Mu.
The healer glared at them and said no more, taking out his eggs to refine more blood. But still, trouble came. This time there was too much spirit blood. When Qin Mu drank it, his body swelled as if being pumped full of air, and every one of the old folk grew frantic, terrified that he would go off with a bang.
The healer took out several hollow silver needles and thrust them into Qin Mu's back and the crown of his head. Fine jets of red, blue, and violet vapor hissed out through the needle holes.
After a moment the needles stopped spitting vapor. The healer removed them and glared at the old folk once more. "Go step by step, climb it inch by inch. Try to feed him into a fat man at one sitting and you'll kill him! He's still stuffed now, and you'll all be busy. In a while the butcher will practice his blades with him, Old Ma will practice his fists, and you, Cripple, will drill his legs—all to help him digest."
"Mu'er, come practice the blade!"
The butcher sprang up on his two hands and landed on a single wooden stump. Half a man, he stood atop the stump at nearly the same height as Qin Mu.
He gripped two cleavers—but they were nothing like ordinary cleavers. A common cleaver is not a foot long, with a round wooden handle and a curved edge. The butcher's cleavers were of the same shape but far larger, each three feet two inches long, thick-backed and thin-edged, polished to a blinding gleam. Set side by side, the two blades looked like a pair of arching doors, immense enough to frighten.
Qin Mu's cleaver was the same size, but there was only one of them, heavy as lead—some twenty catties. Before, the boy could barely lift a single blade. But since taking the spirit blood his strength had grown, and he could heft the cleaver in one hand without effort.
"Grandpa Butcher, be careful!"
Qin Mu charged at the butcher on the stump, blade in one hand. The butcher roared with laughter, half a body yet brimming with heroism.
Night-fight: a city in wind and rain!
Qin Mu's cleaver flashed up and down as his feet carried him at the butcher. The blade spun ever faster, the air screaming, one seamless storm of steel.
"Slow, slow, far too slow!"
The butcher bellowed, his two cleavers tumbling like rain. The clang of the blows drummed like a pelting storm. "Faster! Faster! Your cleaver can go faster yet! Night-fight: a city in wind and rain is all about speed—your cleaver must move like wind and rain in the dark, drenching a whole city! Faster!"
The blade-light raced, like three silver dragons coiling and darting around the stump. The wind howled louder, and streaks of blade-qi hissed within it, so that when it passed, deep grooves suddenly gouged themselves across the ground.
Blade-marks.
"Good! This is the speed you want! The faster your blade, the sharper your blade-qi. But you are not fast enough. You must be so fast that your blade-intent burns like fire—burn, and burn again!"
The butcher went mad, both cleavers wheeling so fast that Qin Mu's eyes blurred. "Burn! Burn! Let your blade burn, let your qi burn, let your spirit burn! When you have burned, that is divine skill!"
Whoosh—
The butcher's blade sliced through the air, and the friction against it set it alight. Two cleavers blazed like two fire-dragons, searing back and forth, their fury mounting with every pass.
The fire-dragons lunged straight at Qin Mu, and he could not stand before them. Then suddenly both dragons shot up into the sky, ripping apart the night above the village—a sight of sheer terror.
Qin Mu stood stunned. The butcher's blade was too terrible by far.
Above the village, the darkness surged in and swallowed the fire-dragons, the blade-light, and the blade-qi all at once.
That darkness seemed to live. It was angry that the butcher had raised his blade against the night. An oppressive black beyond measure pressed down on the village, as if it would swallow it whole.
But the light of the idols at the four corners blazed a little brighter, and drove the darkness back.
"Curse you, heavens!"
The butcher stood on his stump, both cleavers in hand, and roared to the sky, half-mad. "One day I'll split this blackness open, one day I'll fight my way back! They cut off my waist and took my legs, but not my head! I will fight—"
"Grandpa Butcher has gone mad again. But his blade is so fast that he has turned blade-craft into divine skill. When will I be fast enough to do the same?"
Qin Mu looked at the raving butcher in admiration, set down his cleaver, and went to find one-armed Old Ma.
"The butcher's blade must cut out fire before it is divine skill," Old Ma said. "But my fists must ring with thunder before they are divine skill."
His face was stern. With his single arm he made a fist, and his bones popped and crackled. "Mu'er, when you can hold lightning itself in your hand, your fists will amount to something. The butcher's blade is fast—but my fists break past the barrier of sound and the limit of air, and strike with an unmatched force! One hand can practice boxing, one hand can be a thousand hands, and one hand can loose thunder and lightning!"
Boom—
A muffled thunderclap rolled forth—the punch Old Ma had thrown, exploding like a crack of thunder.
Boom, boom, boom!
A chain of thunder rang out. Qin Mu could barely follow the speed of Old Ma's fists; the afterimages were so many that the one-armed Old Ma seemed no longer one-armed, but split into a thousand arms.
Faster and faster struck the fists, and in each of those thousand palms crackled a fistful of lightning, every blow thunder-rolling, sparks flying in every direction!
"This is the Thousand-Hand Buddha of the Eight Thunder Moves! So long as your fists are quicker than sound, you can command the thunder—one punch, one blow, enough to shatter an enemy's soul and body, to cast him into endless doom, never to rise again!"
Old Ma lowered his fists. "Now attack me with the Eight Thunder Moves I taught you. Ring thunder, grip lightning, command the storm!"
Qin Mu steadied himself. Today's lessons from Old Ma and Grandpa Butcher were unlike any before. In the past they had taught him blade technique and fist technique plainly. But this time both had used a single word.
Divine skill.
The word was strange to him. He had never heard it before.
Qin Mu launched the Eight Thunder Moves at Old Ma. Though Old Ma had but one arm, every attack of Qin Mu's was brushed aside with effortless ease.
Unlike the butcher—who, for all his seeming madness, was always measured in their blade-work and never once wounded him—Old Ma struck without mercy. The moment Qin Mu showed a flaw, a punch came at him. The blows were not heavy, but soon Qin Mu's face was a mass of bruises.
Only when Qin Mu could fight no more did Old Ma let him rest.
"Legs are the wind, the earth, the root of all strength."
The Cripple leaned on his cane. He had but one leg, yet it was he who taught Qin Mu the leg-work. Once, Qin Mu had thought the Cripple the most ordinary man in the village—always grinning with simple honesty, a man you could rely on utterly. But ever since the Cripple had stood grinning by the river and stabbed the woman who crawled from the cowhide, Qin Mu was not so sure.
The Cripple's smile was a smile sheathed in steel. No one could say whether it was true or false.
He smiled at Qin Mu and said: "Mu'er, the butcher brags of his blade, and Old Ma of his fists, but true divine skill is in the legs. What if you can't cut your enemy down, can't beat him in a fight? Then you run. Your life is what matters! Life is not all poetry and distant roads—there is the shabby gathering too! So to live is to win! Run fast enough, and you can sprint up walls, sprint across water, even sprint through the sky! Run fast enough, and everything becomes level ground—fire and air alike are level ground! When even the sound of your own passing cannot catch up with you from behind, then you have begun to master the divine skill of the legs. Come now, Mu'er. Up on the anvil."