Joseph was panting hard.
Well, you finally managed to kill these few monkeys, huh?
The teenager didn't even know how to reply to the First Martial Saint. His Qi was basically exhausted. His energy tank was so low he thought he would faint any moment now.
So, let's get going. You are in the perfect state for another training session!
Joseph shivered, hoping that his master was joking.
Not joking! Come on! Chop-chop!
"I can barely… breathe…" Joseph was winded. Fighting all those Orange-Eared Demonic Gorillas together had left him drained.
Well, don't worry! I'm going easy on you this time! If this were a proper training session, I would make you jump among another group of monkeys. But, alas, I'm conscious you are still too soft for that. Your current state, though, is perfect for practicing stances. We want you exhausted to refine the Martial Style training because it will make you sharper when you are not exhausted.
Joseph didn't have enough energy to argue. He simply got up while hoping that no Demonic Beast would come and catch him in his current state.
Now, show me the 1st stance!
Joseph tried raising his hands, but he could barely feel his arms. Now that the adrenaline was being washed away from his body, he could barely keep his eyes open.
The stances maximize energy efficiency! Use the Foolish Dodge and go into it while simply letting yourself fall, but use gravity to put all your limbs where they should be!
Even in his semi-comatose state, Joseph somehow nodded and threw his body forward in order to—fall to the ground face-first.
The teen grunted and slowly picked himself up. His arms were burning and his head felt so heavy that he wanted nothing more than just sleeping for a little while.
But he knew that he needed to master at least the first stances in a reliable way. He had managed to use them in the fight only by chance. And that meath he could have died at every twist and turn. Joseph wasn't completely sure, but it felt like his body had moved on his own on more than one occasion to avoid a deathly blow; whether that had been the First Martial Saint or not, Joseph wasn't sure. But one thing he knew: he couldn't slack off if he wanted to look for his parents.
So, he threw himself forward again and, once again, he fell face-first.
He repeated the process at least ten times without a single word by his master.
Is he expecting me to fail?
Joseph was getting extremely frustrated. The Foolish Dodge was an insanely powerful move that had hit even Jacob right on his face. So, if it was that powerful, he definitely needed it as a foundation for his growth.
But why wasn't it working? He was pretty sure a couple of times he had had all the limbs in the right position, but he hadn't managed to convert the kinetic energy in the great rebound for an uppercut – or any other blow for what mattered.
He was getting something wrong.
But what?
Joseph looked at one of the corpses of the gorillas and realized something. Without an enemy, his blow's trajectory had been all over the place. He wasn't able to start the stance at the right place if he didn't know what to hit.
So, he went in front of a low-hanging branch and tried examining the distance between that and himself, picturing in his mind how he would strike the branch.
It was hard. It was insanely hard because his brain was muddled and tired. But that forced him to focus on the branch and himself as if nothing else existed in the entire world.
And, for all Joseph wanted to punch the First Martial Saint, he suddenly felt a tingle of excitement.
After looking for a straight minute at the branch like a zombie would look at a wall, his brain had finally made some calculation that made sense to him. And even before testing it, Joseph would have sworn that he had just felt his Meridians create some Qi out of nowhere and refresh his entire body.
He felt he could now think with a clearer mind and the branch became a huge Orange-Eared Demonic Gorilla while Joseph's body started tripping forward.
…
The First Martial Saint was observing his disciple's pathetic attempts at mastering his 1st stance, one of the most profound ones. It was a simple concept, dodge in a weird way and use an elastic movement to whip your opponent. The greatness behind that stance, however, was that one could not just decline it in a myriad of ways, but that one could chain the moves and make incredible combos out of it.
But Joseph was still struggling to grasp its most important feature.
You must evaluate the perfect distance and execute the stance in your mind as perfectly as you would do in real life. The reason you didn't manage to use it consistently, disciple, is because you were after distracted by me or the fighting, instead of focusing on the individual moments of the battle.
The First Martial Saint didn't transmit his thoughts to Joseph this time. The little guy had to figure out this one of his own if he wanted to make any progress in his cultivation.
Right when Tommy thought that Joseph was too cooked to continue, he felt the boy's Meridians have a sudden energy surge.
Ha! My disciple's first insight!