Moon Cultivation [Sci-fi Xianxia]

[Book 2] Chapter 109: Monkey Steps and Iron Heads


By the end of the session with Rene, I'd run the route seven times. He only calmed down once I managed to complete it without falling three times in a row. And even then, he still didn't look satisfied. He kept sighing like I'd completely missed the point of the exercise.

"What's your problem with it?" I finally snapped. I was still twitchy from the runs, while he, despite following me every single time, looked fresh as ever.

"That it took you fifteen tries. The whole idea is to train you to adapt quickly. You didn't adapt, you just memorised the route. And we've only got three facilities where techniques like Monkey can be trained. Which means I've got just two more chances to give you new experiences."

"Well, there are more than two floors here," I said, gesturing around. I could see now that the concrete-junk construction actually went higher, and if needed, the route could be extended up to the third or even fourth floor. With each level, there were fewer footholds and wider gaps, but it was doable.

Rene sighed again.

"The other problem is that you've gotten too used to me catching you. You don't feel the fear anymore."

"Well," I said, "you didn't do that much catching…" I'd had my fill of falling. My cheek was scraped, my right knee was bruised, there was a dull pain in my right elbow, and my left ribs gave a worrying twinge whenever I took a deep breath.

"Then how about I leave, and you try running to the third floor?" Rene teased.

It was obvious sarcasm, and he waved it away before I could fire back.

"Anyway, we've got less than an hour left for the handwork. And we'll start with a basic forward handspring. Can you do one?"

"No."

Rene demonstrated. He turned away from the edge of the second floor, took a short run-up, raised his arms, dipped forward, gave a light push off the ground with his hands and landed upright a pathetic two metres from where he started.

I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow. Honestly, a good leg-powered leap could take me twice that far in half the time.

"That's it? Doesn't look very Mad Monkey to me. Looks lame and feels the same. Did you even use qi?"

"No, this isn't Monkey," Rene said calmly, brushing dust from his hands. "It's just a handspring — the basics. You do like basics, don't you?"

"This isn't court! Don't use my own words against me. Just show me what it looks like with technique."

He turned from the edge again and repeated the movement — this time with a sharp clap of air. His hands barely touched the ground before a soft qi explosion launched him forward. He flew nearly five metres ahead and slightly less upward — enough that, if he'd wanted, he could've touched the ceiling at the highest point of the arc.

That was Monkey, and that was something! I could see how it might be useful in a fall. More than once, while falling, I'd had my hand close enough to touch a concrete surface. I hadn't been able to grab it, but I probably could have redirected the fall.

"Got it," I said. "Do the handspring again, without qi."

He obliged, while I looked around, eyes sliding across the rough, chipped, stained concrete.

"Couldn't we do this in a training hall with padded floors?"

"That would just be a waste of time," Rene said, holding up his dusty palms. A few concrete crumbs clung to them. "When it really matters, you'll be doing this on hard surfaces. And the body bounces differently off hard ground than it does off soft mats.

"Alright, listen carefully," he continued. "With a handspring, it's not about speed, it's about coordination. You have to feel the moment your centre of gravity shifts forward. Don't fall — push. Your hands aren't for safety, they're for impulse. Your body has to want to fly forward on its own."

I nodded and took a few steps back. Short run-up. Arms up. Inhale. Jump. My hands touched the concrete, and I tried to push off just as he'd shown. My body rolled through, legs kicked into the air and… I landed on my feet. Not perfect, but standing. I didn't fall. I didn't stall, just landed.

Rene didn't speak right away.

"No scrapes, no bruises, no landing on your arse. Impressive. Can you do it again?" he asked — by which he meant you will do it again. "Now do it ten more times. In a row."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm starting to think you pull these numbers out of thin air. If I had landed on my arse, you'd have said something like 'do three in a row'. Isn't it a bit early for series training?"

"Oh, I don't mean a series. Just ten successful attempts, one after the other."

Rene always knew exactly where to set the bar so I'd just miss it. Strangely, I nailed the first five and was starting to feel pretty smug about my natural talent, but on the sixth, a small but sharp shard of concrete bit into my right palm. My arm buckled, and I landed hard on my right side.

Rene was pleased. So much so that he lowered the target to six repeats. That one I managed quickly, and he moved on to show me how to do the handspring using Mad Monkey.

I tried three times and messed up three times. Considering I wasn't wearing armour, I bruised my arse, smacked my elbow, and twisted my right ankle. All on top of my existing collection of bruises.

That was the end of our two-hour session.

"Brilliant!" Rene concluded. "From here, you can keep practising on your own. Just wear armour. It'll protect you from anything fatal. Oh, and one more thing."

Rene bent forward and dropped into a push-up position, only to activate the technique, pushing off the ground and springing back to his feet. Then he leaned backwards and fell onto his back with his arms spread wide. Again, he triggered the technique with his hands and it flung him upright, from where he tilted right, pushed off with one arm, tilted left...

A proper Monkey-fuelled weeble.

"You'll figure the rest out on your own. From here, the technique's only limited by your imagination. Just stick to this arena in case anything goes wrong and you need another private session."

"Want to keep a fresh location ready for your torture plans?"

"Something like that," Rene smiled.

After that, I skipped dinner. Rene dragged me to the infirmary, and I spent the night in a capsule. By morning, I was patched up enough to resume training with Adam. My body was fine, but mentally I wasn't quite back on my feet. My head just refused to believe I still had energy left, and I kept subconsciously looking for excuses to dodge the drills.

That's when an idea hit me.

"Hey," I said to Adam during a break between sprints. We'd just switched over to leg training. "Doesn't this whole plan feel a bit... lame to you?"

"Explain," my instructor replied with his usual economy of words.

"Well, think about it. Using banned substances is one of the few offences that guarantees expulsion. Right?"

"Absolutely."

"So why all the drama with the injury? Why not just grab the bastard by the bollocks and tell him to cooperate or he's out?"

There's no way Novak hadn't thought of that — it was way too obvious. Plus:

"Why involve me at all? Wouldn't an incident tied to me raise more suspicion than quietly handling an addict?"

Adam gave himself a few seconds to process the question.

"You're lucky the master brought me in on the details. I think he won't mind if I lift the curtain a bit to motivate you."

"I'm all ears."

Talking was definitely easier than charging around the tunnel like a rabid bull.

"You don't need to worry about the druggie's balls. They'll be well cared for: he will be taken in, examined, interrogated, questioned, and made to do all sorts of unpleasant things. But we need a legitimate excuse for that."

"He's using substances. Isn't that enough?"

"And how do we know that?" Adam countered. "If we just grab the poor bastard without a reason, the dealers will get spooked and start looking for the leak. But if it's the fallout of an incident, they'll be suspicious, just not too suspicious."

I made a face, tapping my chest with a finger.

"You're the weakest, so you're the least suspicious asset the master has," Adam added.

I raised an eyebrow. That sentence didn't feel nice. And it was probably completely true…

Well, no! There was still Zola. But she was kept at a safer distance from the core of things. And I knew why — her brain melted even faster than mine.

I'm awesome!

Yeah, right.

"Adam," I admitted. "I need a break."

"Tough luck," he replied. "You're not getting one."

"I've got cultivation in the Chamber tonight."

"And the tournament's the day after tomorrow," Adam reminded me. "So tomorrow you need to injure him, and give yourself enough time in a pod to recover if you get hurt too."

"Any chance I don't get hurt?" I asked. We'd only been learning the technique for a few days. Sure, I'd poured most of my time into it, but still, it wasn't enough. "I'm not ready."

"That's the point. The incident needs to look believable."

I sighed, stepped a little to Adam's right, leaned forward, sent qi flooding into my legs, and burst ahead.

The channels for Iron Head were different — qi escaped and moved through the body in another way. Unlike with the Monkey, I didn't need a gap between the sole and the ground to form a shield and trigger a detonation. That meant less qi spilled outward, more remained within, and it all surged out through the forehead in the final moment of the technique.

Inside, it felt like a full-body pump. Every step, though faster, took more effort than the last. From within the technique, it was like running into a wall of water that only got thicker. The shield wrapped around my body, not in a broad hemisphere, but tight and close to the skin.

Three steps, that's all I could manage, and then I slammed my head forward, releasing everything I'd built up inside. With the impact and the uncontrolled flare of Fist Qi bursting across my vision, came relief, like plunging into cold water straight from a sauna.

"Very good!" Adam praised. "Looks like you work harder when you know why you're doing it," he added with a jab.

"I'm doing it so you'll finally leave me alone and I can rest."

"That's the wrong priority. You're doing it to catch your opponent off guard at the tournament. Sure, you skipped the last one to avoid a crowd of tough opponents, I remember, but still..." He grinned.

"Yeah…" I agreed with a bitter sigh.

The rules only banned the top three from entering the next tournament. Sure, I had no desire to face Gunther, and the other two weren't exactly weaklings either, but everyone else?

They'd all signed up for this one. Even Cinar was competing.

Honestly, the list of opponents this round wasn't any easier than the last. If anything, it might've been worse.

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