When Suiri saw her son come home, her chest felt tight. She knew that it was his own decision, but seeing him come home so battered hurt her heart. For the first few days she managed to keep a strained smile on her face and allow him to do as he pleased, but on the fourth day that came to an end.
While watching him put ointment on his knee, she started.
"Shui, why are you trying so hard?"
"Because it's interesting."
"It's interesting?"
Shui nodded while looking at his mother's confused expression.
"Martial arts isn't something I can understand without experiencing it for myself. I know I can't cultivate but that doesn't matter to me. I just want to find out what 'martial arts' is. I just want to find an answer to that question."
While looking at his bright expression as he spoke, Suiri couldn't help but be affected by his reckless passion, one of the few child-like features he had. Though she didn't want to see him getting hurt, she also didn't want to see him sad or lonely.
'I couldn't give him normal body so I at least want to give him as much freedom as possible.'
"Okay, but...promise Mommy you won't push yourself too hard."
"Okay."
After that talk, Shui had to change his approach to training. Now that his mother had expressed her concern for him, he couldn't be as reckless as before, but how else was he supposed to do his training? Unsure of this, Shui looked over some books about the human body before coming up with an idea.
"I need to do it more efficiently..."
Doing the training wasn't enough, he had to be smarter about is approach. He had to use as little of his strength and stamina as possible to complete each motion. However, knowing what to do and executing it were two different things. Even though he knew that he had to do his training more efficiently, how to do this was eluding him.
In order to find some clues, he watched the children as they were training, but this time he was paying much more attention to their movements, especially the instructor.
Compared to the children who were around the same age as him, it would be more likely for the instructor to know how to move more efficiently. And so, he focused on the instructor's body. How he moved his arms, how fast was his pace, how did he breathe?
Shui was trying to get all of this information by relying solely on his sight. Even Shui didn't understand how he could see it all in such detail, but it wasn't strange to him.
In just two days, Shui memorized the instructor's movements and was ready to start imitating them before he realized a problem. Though the instructor may have been using his body efficiently, that would be suited for his own body. Even if there were minor differences between two men, there would definitely be major differences between a man and a child.
Once he realized this, Shui was a bit miffed but he quickly came up with an alternative. He could only use the instructor's movements as a reference while researching the right way to move his own body. This made him even more excited since doing research was something that he always enjoyed, but he had few opportunities to do any practical research so this was a great chance to have fun.
Starting with his daily course, instead of jogging he walked as slowly as he could to walking as quickly as possible before finding the optimal walking speed. This was the speed at which he had the lowest decrease in stamina over time along with the highest distance covered.
After finding his optimal walking speed and finishing the course, he was sure that he was less tired than usual. Next was the pushups. At first, he wasn't sure how to change his movement so he just did ten pushups while paying close attention to the performance of his own body.
Once the tenth pushup was done, Shui confirmed what would need to change for his pushups to become easier to do.
It was his breathing. Though he knew from the books that breathing was an important part of how humans use their energy, he was unsure of how something as simple as breathing could be changed. Luckily, he had already memorized the instructor's movement and though he couldn't look inside his body to see how he breathed, he could guess based off of the movements of his diaphragm.
It wasn't something that could be understood and implemented instantly, but Shui came up with ten breathing methods based off the instructor's breathing and his own ideas. After trying them out while jogging and doing pushups, he settled on three that worked for him. Once he could finally finish his jogging course and pushups before lunch, he also added sit-ups and staying in horse stance to the menu.
A few months later, it was getting closer to winter. Shui was already used to his own training and was planning on moving to the next stage. At this point, Suiri was surprised that he held on for so long but was fine with him training as long as he didn't get too hurt.
When Shui made his way into the library, he went straight to Carlos.
"Grandpa Carlos, do you have any book with martial arts moves."
"I have a few martial arts texts for normal people."
"Can I see them?"
"Well no one's using them but, are you sure? You still won't be able to-"
"I know. I just want to read them."
By now, everyone knew that the bastard of the clan had been training for some reason but they all saw it as worthless effort. Even so, Kate had tried to get him accepted into the same class as her but he refused. The pain and fatigue wasn't enough to deter his passion but he didn't want to be a burden.
After seeing Shui's determination, Carlos nodded and handed him three tattered scrolls.
"You can keep them."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
With no reason to reject him, Shui took the three scrolls and went back home. The three scrolls denoted 'Myriad Beasts Style', 'Simple Buddha Method' and 'One with Sword'. After reading the three scrolls, Shui was somehow able to fuse the three texts into one using just what he saw when the children and adults were sparring as the basis. He didn't question this, but even though they were merely the methods of mortals, this was a feat many low-level cultivators couldn't accomplish.
However, he didn't know where would be a fitting place to test these moves so he asked his mother if she knew a place. Though there were places for clansmen to train, they weren't places that would welcome him.
"Hmm, I do know a place nearby. I'll bring you there tomorrow."
"No, you can just tell me where it is Mom."
Recently, Shui's mother's originally frail condition was worsening. Though it was seen as a miracle that she could give birth safely and was fine for a few years afterwards, from she was little, Suiri had a weak body inherited from her mother and low talent that couldn't get her out of the Mortal Realm. And so, Shui didn't want to burden his mother but she insisted.
The shack in which the mother and son lived was near the edge of the plateau. From their house, they went through the neighbouring forest at a careful pace. Eventually, Shui heard the sound of flowing water and saw a waterfall for the first time.
"Woah!"
"I used to come here a lot when I was a girl. It's where I met your father."
Suiri rarely talked to Shui about his father and he didn't plan on pursuing the topic either. To him, a missing father wasn't anyone to be curious about.
Instead of a topic like that, he was more interested in how a waterfall could be pouring out from inside the hill that the plateau was on.
"You can practice here. I should be the only one that knows this place."
"Thanks Mom!"
"It's fine. Anything for my little baby."
"Mom, I'm not a baby anymore."
"You are to me."