After kicking out the troublesome duo from my room so that I could sleep peacefully for the night, I applied some of the 'training medicine' given to me by Master Shikai Bun and quickly faded off into sleep.
I woke up feeling very tired and out of energy, something wholly unfamiliar to me beforehand. Regardless, I ran out of my room to start Master Ryuu's week of torture—I mean training.
I saw him sitting cross-legged in the middle of the arena, meditating. As I got closer, my ears finally picked up the faint whispers of what he was saying to himself.
"...Amitābha, forgive me for the pain that I am going to cause to a fellow student of the Temple..."
To reciprocate my Master's kind words, I rushed up to him and performed a roundhouse kick directly to his face. Expectedly, Master Ryuu caught my leg in the middle of the attack and used his grip to smash my body into the sand below.
'Damn,' was the only thought I could muster before I felt the familiar taste of iron in my mouth. I swallowed the blood filling my mouth and got ready for the next thrashing as Master Ryuu still hadn't let go of my leg.
However, he must have been feeling surprisingly kind as instead of continuing to trash my body to the ground like a towel at the beach, he threw me away.
I did a spin in the air and landed on my feet, facing the giant, ready for his next attack.
"What the hell's wrong with you, boy?!" screamed the monk. This was the first time I had ever seen Master Ryuu this mad.
"Poison," the old man said slowly and with great emphasis, "explain."
'Ah,' I thought at my mistake, 'I forgot to tell him. I was able to talk with Master Kaku when traveling up the mountain with Xiao Li, but not Master Ryuu last night.'
"Don't worry, Master Ryuu. I'm just receiving instruction in another discipline that involves these techniques. I'm not gonna do something crazy to my body like trying to master the poison hand technique or anything. I'm just learning..." What followed was a long explanation that drove to convince the old man that I wasn't the one who was going senile.
Thankfully, from my talk with Master Kaku, I had some experience on how to convince the old man.
"Who's the teacher, boy?" was all the old man said after my ten-minute rant explaining myself.
"Master Shikai Bun. He's a master of Iai Kenpo."
"HAHAHAHA!" A fit of laughter was the only response I got before Master Ryuu started to beat the living daylight out of me. Of course, I was able to dish out some decent blows of my own, but the mountain of a man tanked them still.
[1 Week Later]
After a week of this hellish training routine, I had completely understood Master Ryuu's move set and skills and was able to replicate and dodge each of his attacks. This was the result of the countless injuries I had sustained in my effort to devour the man's skills.
Don't get me wrong, I hadn't completely devoured all of the skillsets of the almost 4000 years of Chinese Kenpo history that was available to me, but I had devoured the man utilizing them.
"That's enough, boy, you can stop," was the only response I got after stopping the man's punch with my own.
"You've trained well. You will start your training under Master Kaku starting tomorrow." It seemed the man was pleased with my battle today as he was even bestowing some of his infrequent words of encouragement.
"But..." continued the old man, "you are still a beginner who hasn't found his path."
I looked at the old man with even more seriousness than I had shown in the recent battle. I had a faint feeling that his next statements concerned my martial path; it was perhaps going to be the most important lesson I had received at Balin Temple to date.
"Please, Master, instruct me," I asked the man while bowing my head and performing a Bàoquánlǐ salute to show my respect to the old man's words.
"From the speed of your progress, I can see that you're on the right path. I know that you plan to continue learning other martial arts in the future, and I'm not gonna stop you, but you have to remember, boy..." the old man spoke, creating enough tension that it could be cut with a knife, "your martial path is your own."
Despite his vague words, I kind of understood what the old man was driving at. Every fighter had their own individual styles and skills. Even two different practitioners of the same martial art did not fight in the same manner in battle. Doppo Orochi's Shinshinkai Karate was different from Katsumi Orochi's 501st year of Karate.
Even Baki, the chosen one of this world's fighting style, was called "Total Fighting," as it included techniques from many different martial arts.
'I had been following in his footsteps, learning as many different martial arts as I could. I know I'm not wrong in my training until now, but how do I travel moving forward?' I had a faint idea that I was missing something until now.
"Do you have any advice for your disciple, master?" I asked the old man for more direction, hoping for an answer.
"Again, my boy, your martial path is your own. All I can recommend is to continue down your training, learn more martial arts, and fight more diverse fighters." It was surprising the lengths the old man was going too to instruct me, even recommending me to learn from other disciplines despite the pride he had in the Temple's martial arts.
"I can't guide you further."
I walked back to my room to apply the necessary medicine to my body. For the past week, I had been technically training under Master Shikai Bun, despite having seen him only a few times since our first encounter. Every night, I would apply a liquid made up of a variety of different natural and synthetic poisons to my body, a formula that was specially taught to me by Master Shikai Bun under great care.
Then, after my training session with Master Ryuu, I would apply the corresponding medicine needed to 'help' my body cure the self-inflicted poisons. I was taking the long approach to get my body acclimated to handle different kinds of poisons, similar to what Baki had done in the Raitai tournament after being poisoned by Yanagi.
Unfortunately, even Master Shikai Bun didn't have access to the dark art of the Poison Hand, neither possessing the seven volumes for the Yin or the five volumes for Yang that were brought over during the Ming dynasty to China from Japan in 1540. The art had always been passed on through generations behind closed doors, making them difficult to learn by outsiders.
Although the training I was currently conducting wouldn't make me impervious to poisons as deadly as the Poison Hand, it would provide some protection against any other poisons I might face.
'It's no extracting thousands of toxins to temper an unsullied body, but it'll do for now.'
'Plus, with a little bit of luck, and a lot of money, I'm sure that I can convince Kunimatsu to train me in the Way of the Void. The real struggle would be convincing Kaiou Ri to hand the five Yang volumes over.'
"He did have a pretty cool-headed brother in the manga, Kaiou Han. Maybe he can help me convince him too?" I said out loud, thinking I was safe in the privacy of my room.
"Must be lucky," interjected a young voice from behind me filled with sarcasm.
"Melissa, what did I tell you about sneaking up to me in my room?" I turned around with a tired face to question the little brat, in an effort to teach her some manners.
"I know, Kuzan. I just wanted to try the new things Xiao Xiao has taught me," replied the girl, defending herself.
"Sure, sure..."
As if finding pleasure in my misery, Melissa and Xiao Li's friendship only continued to deepen as the days passed. Their relationship was symbiotic, Xiao Li teaching Melissa some basics of 'being a ninja' as she called it, and Melissa reciprocating, teaching what she was best at, stealing candies from the old geezers in the temple.
I had initially assumed that the old martial masters would be way more strict with the terrible duo for disrupting the peace and sanctity of Balin Temple, but I was proved wrong yet again. Master Ryuu, for one, was more than happy now that he had another little miscreant to give candies to.
Remembering his smile when Melissa first motivated Xiao Li to ask him for candies still shocks me to this day. He was even teasing Master Shikai Bun about his granddaughter's behavior, whose only response was to blame me for the situation.
'Ok, I might have been silently snickering during the exchange between the martial masters, but it was my sister's fault, not mine!' I pleaded in my head after Master Shikai Bun was long gone, only leaving me with the words:
"Very funny huh younge myan, don't very little one, I'll make sure you'll have even mwore fun with me next week."
"...so is that all you're gonna do for the rest of the three weeks, training with Xiao Li?" I asked my sister.
"Yeah!" replied my sister enthusiastically while pumping her small fist in the air.
Considering that Aunt and Uncle were happy with the arrangement of Melissa learning some self-defense techniques to protect herself from Xiao Li, and that Melissa also seemed to be having a blast spending time with Xiao Li, despite my better judgment, I couldn't force myself to separate the duo by force.
"Fine, just don't go too far and start doing something dangerous," I advised my sister like a caring older brother, seemingly unaware of how hypocritical I was being.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be careful," the little munchkin responded while sneaking back out of my room on her tiptoes, going back to her training with Xiao Li.
I then spent the rest of the afternoon meditating and clearing my thoughts, while at the same time thinking critically about the future.
It was my form of escape, my happy place, thinking about how I will continue to improve in the coming future. I felt my eyelids become heavy, as I slowly drifted off into sleep, choosing not to worry about the future torture I was about to receive from Master Kaku and Master Shikai Bun.