The knock came at the sixth hour.
I had been awake for two of them, sitting at the guesthouse window watching Lanyu's military district come alive in the predawn grey. I catalogued the shift changes at the garrison perimeter and tracked the supply carts moving between the armory and the eastern barracks.
I found it soothing in a way, to watch organizations run in realm time without overbearing oversight. It made me think of the training grounds and how the village itself was beginning to move away from my direct involvement. Though it was far too early for me to release the reigns if I was honest, and the time that I would let go would be a long time away.
There was a sudden knock on my door and I turned to see and told them to enter. Two servant men stepped inside my quarters garbed in the plain grey uniform of Western Reaches administrative staff, carrying between them a folded set of robes, and a basin of heated water that I could still see the steam rising out of.
"Commander Xu requests your presence at breakfast," the first one said. "We've been asked to assist you."
I looked at the robes. Deep blue, similar quality to what Lin Shae had worn the previous day. The cut was administrative rather than military, no armor accommodation, no weapon loops, very regal in style and fashion. It was a way to categorize who I was amongst the people, because of course a woman of Commander Xu's position could not be seen with a mere peasant farm boy out in the public eye.
I let them do their work.
The robes fit well, which meant either Wen's reports had included measurements or she'd made a reasonable estimate from his physical descriptions, neither of which was surprising. The fabric was better than anything I owned. One of the servants produced a comb and I submitted to having my hair arranged into a proper topknot rather than the functional knot I'd been tying since I was transmigrated into this world. The result, when the second servant held up a small polished mirror, was a person who looked like he belonged in Lanyu.
I considered what that meant for how she thought about the day ahead, and then I followed the servants out into the morning.
The breakfast room was small.
I had expected somewhere proportioned to impress, a formal hall, a table long enough to seat eight with only two chairs occupied. Instead the servant led me through a side corridor to a room with a low table and two cushions and food already laid out. Steamed buns, pickled vegetables, congee with ginger, and a clay pot of tea sending steam into the cool morning air.
Xu was already seated, cross-legged on her cushion in plain grey training clothes, her hair was down but tied at the end to keep it from swaying. She looked up when I entered and took in the robes with an expression that was almost, but not quite, neutral.
"Better," she said.
"You had me measured," I replied flatly.
"Wen's reports are thorough." She gestured at the cushion across from her. "Come eat, the congee is good when its warm."
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I sat and poured my own tea, and the distance between last night's negotiation and this morning's room was significant enough to notice.
"Tell me about the training," she while picking up a bun and breaking it in half.
I started with the zones because the zones were the structure and everything else hung from them.
Zone one on the northern flat, where students learned to feel their own qi before anything else was asked of them. The five principles were recited at every session until they became the student's foundation of thought. The beginner track wasn't about developing ability per say. It was mostly about developing awareness. A student who could not feel what their own body was doing could not be taught anything that required them to direct it.
Xu listened along with keen interest and I could only assume that she must have been translating each element of zone one into a question of military application and the length of time it took to produce a functional practitioner, as well as what the minimum viable training cycle looked like. Those were natural questions that I would come up with if I were in her position, anyways.
When she didn't stop me to ask any of those things I moved on to Zone two.
The intermediate track was where the river's ambient field made sustained channeling easier to sense and harder to fake. This was where most students spent the majority of their development time. Wei Bolin had lived in zone two for a year and a half before zone three was even built. The quality of a practitioner who had absorbed the zone two experience was different from one who had been pushed through it quickly to reach zone three, and the difference showed up in exactly the kinds of situations where you needed reliability most.
She raised a finger to ask me one question. "How do you measure the difference?"
"Under pressure," I began. "A practitioner who learned quickly forgets their foundations when they're under duress."
She nodded.
I then explained that Zone three was combat application and thus by extension, it was Hao's domain. I described the impact walls and the padded ground and the observation platform, and I described what Hao did there, which was less teach and more reveal. He put students under pressure and watched what their instincts were and then he told them what he'd seen.
When I finished she refilled her tea and looked at the table.
"Interesting. So, where where would you place me?" she asked.
I considered her. The heartbeat sense that she learned along with the qi field awareness as well as her innate instincts and estimated combat experience would put her squarely at....
"Zone two," I said.
Her face scrunched up in mild surprise. "Only zone two?"
"Zone one develops awareness. Zone two develops control. Zone three applies both under pressure." I set my cup down. "Your awareness may be more developed than anyone else I've trained, but that doesn't mean that you're ready for Zone three yet."
Her lips twitched as if she wanted to argue. "Are you implying that I don't have enough combat experience?"
I nodded my head, "That's exactly what I'm saying."
She laughed while she took a sip of her tea in order to regain her composure. "Pei Liang. I've been in combat since before you were in rags."
"Let me correct one misunderstanding that you have," I began to say as my gaze met hers. "Zone three isn't only about fighting. It's about managing your spiritual energy under extreme duress, how it flows when you're not in control of the conditions, and what your channels default to when your attention is divided. You may be able to sense my heartbeat from across a room, but can you sense how your Qi flows through your Mai during a fight?"
She heard that and didn't answer, possibly because she didn't even know what a "Mai" was.
"That's what I'll be showing you today," I said.
She looked at me with a revised expression, as her eyes glinted with a curiosity that I related to all too well.
"So you're saying that I've been fighting the 'wrong' way?" She asked. Her tone was even which proved that she wasn't offended. If anything she was beginning to come around to what I had said.
"I'm saying everyone does, and its especially true for the ones who've been fighting the same way for a long time."
She broke the second half of her bun and ate it without hurrying.
"So then, now you've definitely gotten my interest. When do we train?" She asked me.
"Before we train," I began with a raised hand, "I need to ask you something...."
She perked a brow at me.
"Where is the nearest river?"