“Actually I do have a question. I broke through to the Qi Distillation stage yesterday and a mortal said I seemed different. The system told me there was a way to make people not notice it. I was wondering what it is and how to hide it.”

Bruce nods his head and says, “That will be no issue for you, that is just your cultivator aura. Everyone who cultivates will have it from the Qi Distillation stage and up. It can change over time, depending on how you live your life. People who tend to fight and kill, will get a more blood thirsty aura. People who spend more time on alchemy or formations will get a scholarly aura. It all just depends on your actions. Now for other people, this might be harder, but all you have to do is use your spirit sense. Find your aura you are currently projecting and pull it back into yourself. It should be close to the edge of your spirit sense, they tend to grow at the same rate.”

Zhi closed his eyes as began to search for his aura within his spirit sense. It didn’t take him long to find it, and once he did it was pretty easy to pull it back in. Bruce spoke, once he felt the aura disappear. “No issue like I said. Now also keep in mind, since you have spirit sense you can control your aura now like someone at later stages of cultivation. So if you want to focus your aura on someone, it’s possible. Anything else you wish to know?”

“How you taught me to fight, will I retain that?”

Bruce chuckles and says, “That was a good question, you will retain the knowledge. But you will still need to practice it, muscle memory doesn’t grow overnight. Also you should always learn more styles and types of fighting, it will help you to better refine your style and perfect your technique. Here, stand up and I will show you a full set of practice moves.”

Zhi stands up and copies the same stance that Bruce has.

“Good now I will go through a full set of movements, I want you to copy them. Then I will correct your form till I am satisfied.” Bruce slowly moved his right arm forward in a thrusting motion. Then twisted his hips and his left arm slowly came forward into a palm strike. Zhi began to copy each and every move through the set. It started with punches, palm strikes, elbows, grabs and then moved into different types of kicks. It took a while, but once they finished, Bruce says, “Good work, now start again and I will correct your form.”

Zhi began to move through all the move sets again. Each time he was incorrect or off, Bruce would lightly tap his body wherever he was off and force him to correct. He went through the whole move set over 20 times before Bruce was satisfied with his progress. Nodding his head, Bruce says, “Good, that will help you out when you practice. Real sparring will be best for you though, as you will learn the limits of your body better.”

“Would it be okay to teach someone else these move sets?”

“I have no issue with that, this is just a basic set of fighting stances.”

Zhi bows to Bruce and says, “Thank you for allowing me to share this, Shifu*.”

Bruce smiles in return and says, “Good, now anything else?”

“Yes, you said the last thing you taught me wasn’t for beginners. What is the main purpose of it? For me it just seems to replenish lost Qi quickly.”

Bruce laughs and says, “That is exactly the purpose. Most people will learn it in the later stages of cultivation, as a way to keep using Qi. The drawback is normally two fold. The first being you have to let the Qi you take in settle into your body before it is usable. You don’t have that issue. But you will have the second issue, and it might be worse for you. As you pull in the Qi around you, the area loses Qi until the point that there is no more Qi in the immediate area. If you are moving around a lot it isn’t an issue. But if you aren’t, or you are in an area with little Qi you will run into this issue a lot.”

“It will be an issue because there is no delay in me using the Qi so I will deplete the Qi around me faster?”

“That is correct, so always be mindful when using the technique. One more question and then we will part.”

“Do you think we might meet again?”

Bruce looks away slightly, after a while he says, “We are not in the same realm of existence, so the chance is slim. Unless I decide to explore other realms, or you choose too. If you are lucky, you might be able to get another of my training books from the system. Normally you can’t buy them in the system store.”

Zhi bows again and says, “Thank you for all your guidance Shifu, I will treasure this experience. I would also like to say that it was a real honor to meet you.”

Bruce bows slightly to Zhi and says, “The pleasure was mine Ming Zhi. If fate wills it, we will meet again.”

Zhi’s vision blurs and he is back in his room, his alarm is blaring at him and the room is starting to become bright from the sun rising.

Alarm off and time?

The alarm goes off and Buddha says [The time is twenty minutes past sunrise.]

Weird, I felt like weeks passed as I was learning.

[Time is relative in training sessions. One minute here is one hour there. You were training for over twelve hours, or over thirty days for you.]

Wow, never thought I would get my ass beat for over two weeks straight. I wonder if Zhao is up yet?

[He came in a little while ago. But after you didn’t respond he left, he wasn’t in his work clothes though. So he should still be here.]

Good kid, I should get up and take him to work.

Zhi stands up and changes into his work clothes and then walks out of his room and finds Zhao just coming out of his room dressed for work. Zhi smiles and says, “Sorry for earlier, I was in the middle of training and couldn’t respond. Let's head out to work.”

“It’s fine, I just did the normal morning routine alone.”

“Good, tonight I will teach you something new after we work out. Have you eaten yet?”

Zhao shakes his head no and says, “Something new? A new exercise?”

Zhi smiles as he walks toward the front door and says, “You will see. Come on, let's hurry up and grab something on the way to work.”

Zhao follows Zhi’s, they stop to get some steamed buns and eat them on the way to The Blue Jewel. Zhi and Zhao both greet Zang as he is picking up his cart in the morning. Then Zhi spends the morning watching over Zhao as he chops vegetables. When the time for the staff meal arrives, Zhi pulls out a plate of fresh food and hands it to Yongzheng. Who head off alone to eat. Zhi eats with Zhao and the rest of the staff and then goes into Yongzheng’s office to change. Once changed into his monk outfit, Zhi heads out to the open air market.

It doesn’t take Zhi long to find what he wants. A thick piece of soft fabric, it is about two inches wide and three feet long. He looks around for a new hat while he is out. He doesn’t find exactly what he is looking for, but he does find a new hat that goes a lot lower than his old one. It blocks most people around the same height as him from seeing his eyes. He walks out of the market area and to a side alley where he begins to wrap the cloth around his eyes. After making it tight and testing his vision to make sure it is fully blocked. He tucks the extra cloth under his hat as he puts it on.

He lowers the brim of the hat a bit more than normal and then uses his spirit sense to see around himself. It takes a while as it is slightly different then training. But once he has a decent picture of the alley around him and everything in it, he moves towards the entrance and just stands there for a while as he lets his spirit sense adjust to the movement of people around him. He focuses more on the ground first since it isn’t really changing. Then after he focuses on the people moving in and out of his sphere of influence. After a while, he begins to slowly walk into the market area again.

What he spends the next couple hours doing is going to an area of the market and standing out of the way of traffic. Then he uses his spirit sense to check out every single thing around him. It’s a pretty fruitful endeavor, he still can’t see through closed boxes or crates. But fabric is no issue for him now. His alarm goes off and he heads over to his divining square to make some money and do more testing, afterwards he actually heads to The Blue Jewel and picks up Zhao from work. He would have gotten Zang also, but the young man was still out with his cart.

When Zhi gets closer to the Hai’s home, he actually finds two people in his sphere of influence hiding up on a roof and watching him and Zhi as they walk into the house. He loses them as soon as he closes the door though. But he makes a mental note to check on these two men at another time. After cooking dinner for the Hai family and eating. Zhi takes Zhao outback and goes through his full set of training. Afterwards he says, “Alright, I said I was going to teach you something new. Follow me and I will show you a fighting method. This is the first stance.”

Zhi moves his legs apart slightly and then bends his knees a bit. He then moved his right arm forward in a thrusting motion slowly. Afterwards twisting his hips and his left arm slowly coming forward into a palm strike. He slowly and methodically went through every move and corrected Zhao’s form as he did. Afterwards he had Zhao repeat the entire set, as he went through and corrected his form at each step. They practiced this a few more times until Zhao was dead on his feet. Zhi helped Zhao to bed, then went to his own room and began to practice his spirit sense.

Zhi wasn’t really sure what did it, but he was finally able to see past his door with spirit sense. But only his door, the wall next to it, was still too thick for him to see through. He spent most of the night trying to refine his spirit sense to see through walls, but he was only able to see through the door all night long. He stood up when his alarm went off and changed into his work out clothes but left his blindfold on. He woke up Zhao and met him outback to train, Zhao was still partly asleep and the darkness of the predawn light didn’t help him notice Zhi’s blind fold. After training Zhi changed into his work clothes, but wore his rice hat to help cover the blind fold over his eyes.

Zhi found the same two people, watching him and Zhao as they left for work that morning. They didn’t seem to want to follow them, but they were talking to each other. Zhi now had a training goal to focus on for the day. Getting his spirit sense practice up so he could hear people in his sphere of influence if he wanted to.