The wooden puppet was not particularly fast, so Tom was able to narrowly dodge its fist strike. In doing so, he got entangled in his own feet and careened to the side.
The puppet followed up by stomping at his head, but Tom rolled out of the way a split second before impact. He got to his feet and ran into the distance, having given up on any notion of fighting back.
He was much faster than his opponent, but tired quickly. When he reached the edge of one side of the pocket realm he stopped to catch his breath.
Looking back, Tom realized that he was no longer being pursued.
Ah Wei floated towards him and settled in the still air, like an immortal transfixed in a painting.
The old man stroked the nape of his beard for a moment and said, "It seems I was foolish to presume that you would willingly engage in battle. You give me no choice then... I shall raise the stakes."
The puppet appeared on the ground beneath Ah Wei's feet. It raised its hands and clutched its face. Tom could sense its soundless cry of agony as it trembled for a long moment. The wooden figurine made a loud popping sound as it magically split itself in two. The process repeated itself twice, such that eight puppets had come to life.
The chase began anew with seven puppets coordinating their movements while just one remained in a seated position with its legs crossed, as if it were steeped in meditation.
Tom was agile compared to the puppets that dogged him, but was still relatively inflexible and could no longer evade the onslaught of fist and foot strikes that beset him on all quarters.
He took a blow to the abdomen that winded him. He was then smacked on the back of his head and resisted a sudden bout of dizziness. Tom tumbled forward and felt a blunt fist smash into his chest, cracking a rib. He reflexively shielded a kick with his forearm but the sheer force dislocated his shoulder.
Tom howled and spun away, clutching his chest with his good arm and dragging his feet. He had no energy to retreat, let alone fight back. So he bundled himself into a ball and prepared for the worst. Memories of the brawl with his former schoolmates flooded his mind, drowning him in misery.
The half-minute became an eternity as the puppets pounded fear into his bones.
Then it was over.
He opened his eyes and wiped the blood from his face. His legs were mangled and his arms were numb. All he could do was twist his neck around to see several puppets lying limp on the grass. Smears of red paint gave them bloody smiles, as if the terror and agony they had unleashed on him had been deeply gratifying. The puppet that had initially set itself apart from the rest, went to each of its comrades and invariably touched their foreheads with his palm, absorbing their existence into his own, like a spiritual vacuum.
Tom struggled to drag himself away, thinking that the remaining puppet may use this opportunity to vanquish him. In just a few meters, he was forced to cough up a mouthful of blood along with a big tooth: a molar from the back of his mouth. Not long after this futile exertion, he lost consciousness.
When his consciousness returned, the pain was gone.
He straightened himself and examined his now limber body. His tank top was ripped apart and his skin was decked in thick vines and dozens of red lotus flowers. They grew from wherever a wound had been opened and acted as a natural suture. They seemed to have sprung to life from spilt blood and were rooted in his scars. Fortunately, his torn ligaments had been mended and his joints, reordered.
Tom found the whole experience incredibly bizarre. In spite of the recent horror he had endured, he was remarkably calm, and attributed the effect to the drug-like qualities of the flowers that had planted themselves in his veins.
He could move freely, and was inclined to ensure his own safety. He searched for a full hour but was only able to locate a single puppet. It lay cross-legged at the center of his pocket realm and, surprisingly, its crudely drawn eyes had turned into a pair of horizontal slashes, as if it were somehow asleep.
Tom was wary of disturbing the puppet's supposed coma and made sure to keep his distance whilst continuing his exploration.
He came upon a few more changes. In addition to a host of diverse flowers that had appeared in the areas where his blood had splashed about, amidst the scuffle, there was, shockingly, another sapling. While Tom was pondering this strange occurrence, he realized that the tooth that had been knocked out earlier had regrown itself. After lulling his tongue for a bit, he stuck his finger in his mouth to confirm that, while his gums had indeed been healed, the tooth was raw and sensitive to touch. More time was needed to complete its recovery.
Tom surmised that the missing tooth had miraculously germinated into a young tree. It wasn't of the willow variety and Tom wasn't an expert on trees, so he could only guess at what it might look like in its burgeoning form.
This strange outcome pleased him. While he was loathe to repeat the process that ended in the loss of a tooth, he was still excited by the prospects of nurturing a forest of trees.
Having ensured that there were no other puppets besides the one that sat at the center of the realm, Tom returned to the modest shade of the young willow tree and began to gather his thoughts.
His attention was neatly divided between his new goal of planting trees throughout and avoiding any further conflict with the lone combat puppet. He clung to the idea of monitoring its movements for awhile, since what he feared most was a sneak attack. Although he doubted the puppet's intent to kill, he didn't rule out the possibility of receiving a glancing blow to the head and dying as a result of his own carelessness.
He moved to where the puppet was reposed and seated himself a stone's throw away, paying keen attention in the hopes of catching the slightest movement.
His efforts proved fruitless as the seconds turned into minutes, and the hours turned into days.
Finally, after three days of vigilance, he gave up.
Tom was already flitting in and out of sleep, so, with the mild assurance that the puppet would not move to attack him unless provoked, he cast off the vines and red lotuses that he was draped in and shed what remained of his undergarments, to settle under the baby willow tree for some much deserved rest.
When he woke up, he felt quite refreshed. His body seemed to have forgotten the trauma of earlier events; his spirits and his imaginative tendencies were at their best.
He absentmindedly picked a few leaves from the willow tree and crumpled them in his hand. A moment later, his mood was soured by an ache in his stomach. Droplets of blood dribbled past his lips onto the tufts of grass beneath him. He watched, wide-eyed, as a red lotus flower sprouted from the bloodied soil, mere inches from his feet.
He wondered why his nose had bled and though the answer was immediately apparent, he refused to believe it.
Tom stood up and tentatively reached out to the willow tree to snap off a large branch from the upper reaches of its stem. As soon as he did, the clavicle in his left shoulder snapped. The searing pain nearly drove him mad. He writhed on the ground, screaming at the top of his lungs. A minute of extreme pain was all it took to make him faint.
When he awoke once more, the pain had greatly subsided. And to his dismay, there was a blue rose small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, growing out of his left shoulder.
"The red lotuses healed my wounds... could it be that the blue roses can heal my bones?"
The branch he had removed from the willow tree had mysteriously disappeared. He tried walking the way he would normally, and, albeit for a little soreness in his left shoulder and a numbing sensation emanating from his chest, there was no actual pain.
Relieved, Tom decided to conduct yet another experiment.
He plucked the blue rose that was rooted in his shoulder. It glowed for a moment before turning into blue dust particles. What came after the fact was truly disconcerting, and could best be described as an odd feeling of loss, as if a part of himself had faded into oblivion.
The cog in Tom's mind began to spin.
Half a day later, when he had earnestly contemplated every possibility, he arrived at a set of conclusions.
First and foremost, was that he had overlooked his connection to the willow tree. Somehow, the sapling's existence had bound his soul and the pocket realm together, acting as a kind of spiritual bridge. To prove this hypothesis, he spent another half day carefully measuring the breadth of the land, triple checking just to be certain. Sure enough, it had shrank to around eight square kilometers from its previous high of ten.
He also ascertained the meaning behind the phenomena of the flowering of both the red lotus and the blue rose. The former was tied to his vitality. For whenever his physical body required supernatural healing, his lifespan would be drained in exchange. Whereas the latter was a way to physically recover from a damaged soul, and drew its power to act by dampening his cultivation base.
A small reduction in overall spiritual power would influence his mood and may even lead to short term depression. On the flipside, a big loss of spiritual power, which amounted to a decline in the essence of his soul, would affect his state of mind and could potentially push him towards insanity.
While his thoughts on the effects of each type of naturally-occurring flower were mostly conjecture, he had a strong inkling that he had stumbled upon the truth.
Tom's latest round of discovery emboldened him.
He could now freely challenge the combat puppet armed with the knowledge that it would be
easy to recover from virtually any injury so long as the willow tree was unharmed. He likened it to having unlimited lives in a video game.
Even if his vitality wasn't actually unlimited, since he had yet to attain true immortality, he could still tax his reserves without concern, because a shift towards a higher cultivation stage would, in any case, lead to an explosive increase in his lifespan. And, unlike a regular disciple, Tom didn't need enough talent to make commensurate progress.
In the absence of time constraints, his success was practically a guarantee.
"It doesn't matter how long I take to master the Five Petals Dance," he mused. "I just need the strength to defeat the combat puppet in one go."
He then considered the puppet's ability to replicate itself. It was a cheat-like skill that could make a drawn out battle intensely difficult. Tom instinctively knew that, whatever strategy he chose, the use of overwhelming power would be the deciding factor.
Having taken these thoughts to heart, he renewed his efforts in mastering the Five Petals Dance.
A month passed, and Tom's ceaseless work eventually affected the world around him.
The clouds he had indirectly conjured entered into a cycle, where they would turn into thick strata that blanketed the sky in darkness, a day or so before cloudburst. When it rained, Tom would run headlong into the downpour, utterly naked, arms flailing, completely enthused with joy.
Although his level of control was finite, the fact that he was responsible for the emergence of rain gave him a semblance of pride. His sense of accomplishment rose to new heights when the rain fed the sapling, bringing it to maturity in only half a year.
That day was the cause of celebration, as he beheld a slew of conifer cones budding in the higher branches of the former sapling, which was now a five meter tall sequoia tree.
He could tell, at a glance, that this tree would reach epic proportions. The pocket realm was also gradually expanding, so he wasn't worried about accommodating such developments.
From then on, he would spend a few minutes each day nestled under the tree's leafy canopy, looking up at the swelling cones, wondering whether it could self-pollinate, while dreading the idea of yanking out another tooth.
