And so, Krun was voluntarily kidnapped and was forced to go on a journey. Despite things looking quite grim for Krun, he was taking this easily. A careful analysis of the situation told him he had at least a month of relative safety, and as long as he was useful to his kidnappers, he would not be killed.

Krun detailed out a rough plan. In this month of travelling, he would get on his kidnappers’ good side, while displaying enough personality to cheat their sympathy. Especially Mew. She seemed dumb enough.

Secondly, he would try to get as much information on what their plans were, and who the Prills were. He could decide what to do when they reached Trec. Flexibility was key.

Surprisingly, Krun did not feel afraid but rather… excited. He was thrilled. Noticing that the two girls were looking at him weirdly, Krun immediate hid his grin.

“Are we sleeping here? I don’t like sleeping in the temple,” Krun said.

“Shut up. We’re leaving now,” Opal said.

“Cold-faced bitch. What a waste of a pretty face,” Krun thought, but he put on an innocent face nonetheless. “Why are we leaving?”

“Don’t ask. Mew, pack our stuff and give it to Krun.”

“Understood.” Mew headed back to the temple to gather their baggage. “Here, Krun, take these.” Mew gave two white cloth bags to Krun.

“Pure white again… Are you two kid-torturing ghosts or something?”

“What did you say?” Opal gave Krun a piercing gaze.

“N-nothing. I just said they were lighter that I thought.”

This time Mew interjected. “That’s because there’s only clothes, money, and water inside. Anything else we need we can just buy.”

“Mew! Don’t tell him unnecessary things.”

“My apologies, Opal.”

“Oh, and also…” Opal started walking away from the two.

Krun thought he should follow but Mew placed her hand on his shoulder, telling him to stay in place.

“What the hell are they up to again?” Krun thought, as the white figure slowly drifted away from him.

When Opal was about thirty or so metres away from Krun, Krun heard an earth-shattering sound. Opal had disappeared, leaving behind a cloud of dust and a thin layer of white mist. Before Krun could even process what happened, a sword was laid beside his neck. Krun haltingly turned his head toward the blade. It belonged to none other than Opal.

Krun gulped. “W-what does this mean?”

The white mist carried Opal’s voice into Krun’s ears. “It means that you shouldn’t even think of escaping.” Opal used the blunt ridge of the sword to tap on Krun’s cheek. “Understood?”

Krun nodded repeatedly while staring at the tip of the sword, which barely missed his eyebrows.

Opal unsheathed her sword. “Let’s move then.” Mew followed Opal and the two of them started walking away, leaving behind a disoriented Krun.

Krun’s legs gave out and he kneeled on the ground. He thought back to what happened and started panting. If Opal had pressed her sword against him for a few more inches, it would have no doubt reached his brain.

After Mew shouted at Krun to stick to them, he wiped away his cold sweat, picked up their baggage frantically and ran after them. Maybe he should not treat this situation so lightly after all.

Unfortunately for Krun, Opal picked the most difficult roads to go, if they could even be called road. They traversed almost exclusively in the mountains, away from civilisation. Along the way, Krun did not see a single person besides his two kidnappers, though he saw a lot of different insects and rodents.

Now, Krun was not averse to wildlife. In fact, he was quite familiar being in the wild. One of his hobbies was to explore the mountains and jungles on his own. Despite his dad’s repeated reprimands, he continued doing so, and that was how he found that cave he told Opal earlier.

“But how can they move so damn quickly!? I’m panting over here!” Obviously, Krun knew the answer to that question. He was made to carry two people’s worth of baggage and the two people in front of him had practiced martial arts for most of their life. Of course he would fall behind. Still, Krun wanted to complain.

“Those bastards…” Krun let out a sneer and ran to catch up with his kidnappers.

Whenever Krun fell behind, Opal would scold him, telling him to catch up. There were times where Krun wanted to retaliate. “Lady. I physically can’t. Stop being so unreasonable!” But he swallowed his words every time.

Every so often, they would take a small break, and Krun was told to grab some water from the white bags. For the first one to two times, he didn’t notice anything, but later, something in the bag caught his eyes. A thin, worn-out book. If he remembered correctly, this bag belonged to Mew. Since Opal had her eyes on Krun every time he was grabbing water from their bags, he couldn’t get a good look at the book.

“There are no books in Opal’s bag. Is this a novel Mew reads to past time? It looked too crumpy to be a novel though…” Keeping this strange-looking book in mind, he closed their bags.

After some time, Krun’s legs finally gave out. Each step was excruciating. It felt as if his legs were being torn apart.

“I… I… can’t…”

As the exhausted Krun dropped to the ground, a faint yellow light appeared in the corner of his eyes. It was already dusk. The warm sunlight shone through the leaves and reflected off the white robes of the two girls. In this moment, they looked like angels who descended from heaven. One of the angels even had a tiny halo on their head. Nope, that was just Mew’s hairstick, Krun told himself.

“Hey, where… where are… are… we?” Krun struggled to even ask a basic question.

“Fairen.” Opal answered.  

“Fairen!?” Krun couldn’t believe it. Fairen was the city next to Kemm, Krun’s home city. “We walked an entire city’s worth of distance? In one night?”

“Shush, brat. You’re being noisy.” Opal clicked her tongue. “The temple we were in last night was in the outskirt of Kemm. A few hours of walking are more than enough. We could’ve arrived at Fairen even sooner if it weren’t for you.”

Krun knew he lived in the outskirt of Kemm, but still! It would’ve taken at least half a day to get to Fairen. At least for any normal person…

“What kind of monsters have I gotten myself tangled up with…” Krun thought.

“We’re going to stay here for a few days to replenish some of our supplies and meet some people,” Mew told Krun. “There’s a market nearby. We’ll head there first.”

Opal nodded and started walking yet again. Krun sighed as he gritted his teeth and followed them. Finally, after another hour of walking, the trio arrived at the market.

Although it was still early in the morning, there were already many stalls set up in the main street. Occasionally, some horse carriages belonging to perhaps wealthy merchants in this city could be seen roaming on the street.

Krun was, by all definitions, a country bumpkin. He had always lived in the countryside. Hell, this was his first time being outside of his home city! He gawked in awe the market which was growing busier. This unfamiliar sight made him temporarily forget his leg pains.

The mixture of grass, food, and cloth fabric smell permeated the air, and the unintelligible bargaining noises told Krun that yes, it wasn’t a dream, and that yes, he was now in Fairen, the city of trades. It was a brand-new sensation.

“I’m definitely telling Pesh and others about this when I return!” Krun thought, as he opened his eyes wide to feast upon this unfamiliar scenery. “Mum and dad are not going to believe this!”

Krun followed his kidnappers to the main street excitedly.

*

“Fuck this.”

Originally, Krun thought something along the lines of, “Supply-gathering. Water, clothes, maybe some bread. They are women so they might need hygiene stuff as well. There’s no way we’re spending more than an hour in the shops.” But he was proven wrong. Very wrong.

It only took no more than half an hour to get all the essential supplies, but what followed was a nightmare. This time it wasn’t Opal making Krun’s life worse, but surprisingly, Mew. Even Opal seemed to be slightly irritated.

“H-hey, Opal…”

“Ms Opal.”

“Ms Opal… How long do we have to be here?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“Please… I know you two are undefeated, unbeatable, invincible, omnipotent martial artists. But look at me! I’m just a fourteen-year-old kid! Please! Just let me rest!” Krun never thought he needed to beg for rest.

“Y-you’re right.” Opal uncharacteristically agreed with Krun. “Mew, hurry up. The kid is throwing a tantrum about needing to rest. It’s annoying the hell out of me.”

“Thanks, Ms Opal,” Krun said, but he thought, “You pale-faced ghost! Trying to use me as an excuse… It’s obvious that you want her to stop too!”

“Opal… Please… Just one more shop! I promise!” Mew begged Opal, giving her the teary-eye treatment.

“Fine. One last shop. No more.”

“I love you Opal!” Mew smiled brightly, as she entered another cosmetics shop.

Krun sighed as he looked at Mew’s bag, now filled to the brim with cosmetics. There were lotions, more lotions, makeup, more makeup… Krun’s lack of vocabulary to describe female cosmetics was shown clearly.

“She’s obsessed with being pretty!” Krun shook his head as he stole a glance at Opal’s bag. Nothing but essentials. A bag of coins, a bar of soap, a loaf of hard bread, some water, white clothes, and a small porcelain vile. Krun smiled to himself and nodded. “Compact. Brief. Light. This is how it should be.”

It was already afternoon when Mew was done, and the three of them found an inn to stay in. Opal decided that the three of them would stay in the same room. After all, Krun was nothing but a boy in Opal’s eyes. She wanted Krun to stay close to them on the off chance he wanted to escape.

Still, two young women staying in the same room with a teenage boy might lead to unwanted rumours, so Opal lied about Krun being their brother. In normal circumstance (by “normal circumstance”, it was still very abnormal), Krun would have used this opportunity to call Mew his sister to raise her level of sympathy toward him, but the exhausted Krun collapsed onto his bed immediately and started snoring. He had never snored this loudly before.

“He must be very tired,” Mew thought, as he stared at the boy who was indulging in his sweet, sweet slumber.

*

It was dark when Krun woke up. He didn’t know what time it was, but he felt like he got a solid ten, maybe eleven hours of sleep, so he estimated it was still midnight, several hours before sunrise. He looked at the two girls who were sleeping in a separate bed.

“Isn’t this the perfect chance of escaping? No need for the month-long preparation, grinding for their sympathy. I’ll just leave now!” All drowsiness was expelled from his body. As he was ready to get up, he felt his right wrist being held back by something. A thick rope tied to the bed frame. No matter how much he struggled to untie it, the rope didn’t come off, in fact, it made the knot even tighter.

“Knew it wasn’t that easy.” Krun sighed. But he was not about to give up. “If I can’t untie it, I’ll just cut it!”

Opal and Mew shared a single bed, and their bed was perpendicular to Krun’s, with their headboards touching. “I might be able to reach their sword,” Krun thought as he got off the bed, with his wrist still attached to the bed frame.

“Good! Opal’s sword is just within reach!” Krun grinned. But just as he was about to extend his arm to grab her sword, something felt wrong.

“What is this feeling? I felt like it would be a terrible mistake to do this…” Krun searched his memory for an answer. Krun had brilliant memory, but it still took a few minutes before he remembered an off-hand comment from his dad.

A few years ago, his dad told him that martial artists were trained to listen to disturbances even in their sleep, especially when their own weapon was involved. His dad even said that some people were killed because they tried to steal a weapon from a very skilled martial artist when he was asleep. It happened in the blink of an eye. The martial artist killed them reflexively just because he felt disturbance in his sleep.

Like a sensible person, Krun disregarded his comment then and thought it was simply his dad’s dementia talking, but one thing always bothered him about it. His mum.

His mum was very smart. Krun thought of himself as the smartest among his peers and possibly among all other children in his age range, but he never once thought he was smarter than his mum. It was no exaggeration to say that Krun would never doubt his mum, but despite that, his mum always claimed that his dad didn’t lie about that story.

“Maybe… just maybe dad was right…” Krun gulped as he hovered his hand over Opal’s sword.

A few minutes of dreaded silence passed.

Krun sighed and pulled his hand back. “I’ve got a lot of chances. No need to gamble everything right now.” He stared at the two girls in slight resignation.

“They really are beautiful… My mum was pretty but not even she can compare to them…”

Opal’s short strands of hair form a translucent curtain, covering the windows to the soul. Every so often, the wind gently ruffled her hair, and under it revealed a pair of dark eyelashes, fluttering. The contrast between her androgynous face and long eyelashes was gripping to say the least.

Next to that cool face was one of a mixture between maturity and childish. Mew was only sixteen, but her frequent use of cosmetics left an indescribable air of maturity on her face. Just before sleeping, Mew put on a thin layer of lip gloss, which although most had already dispersed, still left behind a pair of glistening lips. Her moist red lips made Krun gulp.

Looking at the two beauties, he felt very hot. Even after wiping away his sweat, there was still an intoxicating heat in his chest. He did not realise he was panting.

“What’s happening to me? I’ve never felt something like this before… Am I sick?”

Krun had a sudden urge to touch those two beauties. He slowly moved his hands toward them, but he forgot that his right wrist was still tied to the bed frame and jolted when his hand was pulled back.

“What am I doing…” Krun cleared his mind and looked away from the two girls. He landed his sight onto their bag. The image of the worn-out book in Mew’s bag appeared in his mind. “I wonder what that was…”

Luckily, Mew’s bag was within arm’s length of Krun. He took out the book from her bag without any problem.

“The Scripture of the… the… Shaving? No… Scatting? Definitely no. Scathing? The Scripture of the Scathing Haze. What does scathing mean?”

At that time, only the wealthy could afford teachers. Usually, education was the parents’ responsibility, and Krun was no exception. His father taught him how to read and write but Krun never paid much attention to his classes and his father never forced him to learn. This made him literately worse than children his age.

“Whatever, let’s take a look inside.” He quickly skimped through the pages.

About one to two pages of texts were followed by a diagram of a person in an awkward position. Reading through some of the texts, he saw that on average there were several words per paragraph he did not understand.

“Hmm… Maybe I should’ve paid more attention to dad’s class…”

That being said, the first few pages were preface of some sort, so Krun understood most of its meaning.

“‘With form comes vulnerability; With deceit comes formless. No martial arts can escape from its structure, its form. Knowing its form is key to defeating any style of martial arts. Though no styles of martial arts are unbeatable, the ones that prosper all adhere to one belief: Deceit.

“‘Hence, the Scripture of the Scathing Haze was created with this in mind.’ Deceit? Like lying? Is this some kind of cult thing used to trick people? But they mentioned martial arts as well… Let’s see what the author is on about.

“‘Like haze, readers must aim to be formless. Readers must learn to deceive others. Not letting enemy know you is the key to victory. Rather than techniques like sword-handling or brawling, this scripture teaches how to manipulate Qi*.’

“What a load of bull crap! Qi it says!” Krun suppressed his laughter. “This is just used to trick children! Or ‘deceive’ so they call it!”

He tossed the book aside and went back to bed. Maybe because he already slept a lot or because of his curiosity, but he couldn’t fall asleep. Krun found himself looking at the book again.

“‘There are five levels of Scathing Haze Qi readers must progress through one by one. The first level is basic Qi usage, applicable to not only Scathing Haze Qi, but other Qis as well. The second level is about fundamental Haze Qi ideas. The third level introduces the idea of scathing, which allows your Qi to flow to the outside world. Readers should be careful before learning levels higher than three, as training becomes dangerous.’ Dangerous? How is it dangerous?”

Krun furrowed his brows and kept reading. “‘The fourth level is about the absolute control of your Qi, the perfect manipulation of your Qi. It should be noted now that although the author wrote five levels, she only attained the fourth level. The fifth level remains purely theoretical. Readers should NOT attempt it. The fifth level serves as a guideline for more blessed and talented individuals to expand upon.’” Krun desperately flipped to the next page.

“‘The fifth level: Qi-less.’ What!?” Krun let out an audible gasp. He immediately looked at the two girls to see if they were woken up. Luckily, the two girls were still sleeping.

After flipping through the page, he saw some diagrams, each depict a person in different positions. There was one diagram that looked familiar. Its caption wrote, “Scathing Haze Qi in action, third level.”

“Wait… Isn’t this the move Opal used on me back at the temple!?” Krun realised, with his mouth agape. “So it’s real… And Opal attained the third level already…”

Krun looked at the book in a mixture of astonishment and terror. He gulped.

“L-let’s learn it.” Krun grinned.

The first level consisted of only a handful pages. The number of pages increased as the level went up.

It took roughly thirty minutes for Krun to read through the first level. There were some words he didn’t know but with the help of diagrams, he understood most of the meaning.

Krun started practicing. “Feel the Qi… Oh! There it is! Allow the Qi to freely drift across different nodes of your body… What are the nodes again?” He flipped to a page with diagrams. “Okay… let it drift… Oh! It felt tinglish!”

By the time he reached the last page of the first level, the sun was already up.

“That felt good…” He looked outside the window. The morning sunlight reflected off his beads of sweat. Upon noticing the risen sun, he immediately stuffed the book back into Mew’s bag. Krun grinned as he closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep.

Krun couldn’t have known this, but usually it takes a normal person a few days to be able to perform one “circulation”, and at least half a day for talented individuals with good teachers. To be able to finish one circulation in a few hours, much less without teachers, was unheard of. How would he progress? How far would his talents take him? For now, Krun was oblivious to even the existence of these questions that anyone couldn’t help but ask if they had seen his practice.

 

*(In wuxia novels, martial arts are broadly categorised into the usual martial arts (ones where you use swords, fists, kicks etc. Basically, anything physical and requires body movement), and the idea of “inner martial arts”, or “inner kung fu”. The reason why characters have almost supernatural abilities in wuxia novels is because of their “inner martial arts.” Unfortunately, there is no direct translation of this idea to English, and it sounds, quite frankly, stupid to call it “inner martial arts” (or “inner kung fu”) every time. Since it is a vital element to this work, I have taken the liberty to call it Qi.)

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