Chapter 17 Sparring Lessons

The community cultivation center occupied the ground floor of a former warehouse in Block 12-East, three blocks from Shen Wei’s old apartment. The building had been a distribution hub for synthetic cultivation materials during the Expansion Era, and its bones showed the history. It had high ceilings designed for cargo stacking, reinforced floors that could bear the weight of industrial Qi containment units, loading doors wide enough for freight vehicles.

Fang Bo had converted the space into something functional and welcoming on a budget that would have made a corporate project manager weep: training mats laid over industrial flooring, basic formation arrays for Qi containment and safety drawn directly on the walls in formation ink, equipment racks built from repurposed shelving, and a hand-painted sign above the entrance that read “Iron Body Community Cultivation Center” in characters that were slightly uneven but unmistakably sincere.

He needed the specific, practical skill of fighting: how to move under pressure, how to strike effectively, how to take a hit and keep functioning, how to read an opponent’s intentions in the fraction of a second before they acted. These were skills that no textbook could teach and no amount of mental rehearsal could replace. They required a teacher and they required practice and they required the willingness to be terrible at something for a long time before being adequate.

Fang Bo was behind the center’s small reception desk, reviewing training notes with the focused intensity of someone for whom this work was not a job but a calling. He was fifty-three years old, built like a piece of construction equipment that had been designed for durability rather than aesthetics—broad shoulders, thick arms, a torso that seemed to have been carved from the same industrial concrete as the building’s walls. His face was weathered by sun and years and the particular wear that came from decades of physical training, and his eyes were sharp with the intelligence of a man who had spent twenty years reading people’s intentions as a professional survival skill.

His left leg dragged slightly when he walked—the training injury that had ended his City Guard career seven years ago. He wore the limp like a badge rather than a burden, moving with a compensatory grace that had become so natural it was its own form of expertise.

“New student?” he asked, looking up from his notes.

“Shen Wei. I’d like to join the beginner’s combat course.”

Fang Bo pulled a registration form from a drawer and slid it across the desk. “Stage?”

“Stage 4. Recently advanced.”

“Combat experience?”

“None.”

Fang Bo’s eyebrows lifted fractionally. Not surprise, exactly, but the mild interest of someone encountering an uncommon visitor. Most people who sought combat training at Stage 4 had at least some informal experience. Schoolyard fights, street altercations, the low-level violence that was background noise in the Lower District.

Unbeknownst to Fang Bo, Shen Wei had always been a scholar at heart. Even during his time at the orphanage, he avoided the playground, avoided the rough play and stuck to the bookshelves instead. The other kids had on occasion pressed him on joining them, but it never went past some harsher word sparring.

Coming to a combat class with genuinely zero experience at Stage 4 suggested either a sheltered upbringing or an unusual set of priorities. “Good,” Fang Bo said, which was not the response Shen Wei expected. “The ones with ‘experience’ are usually the ones who learned how to fight from watching tournament replays on the network. They punch wrong and complain when I correct them. Blank slates are easier.”

He tossed Shen Wei a set of padded training gloves—worn, clean, slightly too large for his hands. “Class starts in ten minutes. Stand in the back. Watch first. Try to hit things second. Don’t try to look impressive.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Good. Because you won’t.”

The class consisted of twelve students ranging from Qi Condensation Stage 1 to Stage 6. Most were young. Between late teens to mid-twenties. Most carried the lean, watchful bearing of Lower District residents who understood that combat skill was a survival tool rather than a recreational pursuit. They wore training clothes in various states of repair, and they arranged themselves on the mats with the easy familiarity of regulars who had been doing this long enough to have established positions and partnerships.

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Fang Bo began with warm-up forms—basic stances, strikes, blocks, and movements performed in sequence at half speed. The forms were fundamental. Horse Stance for stability, Forward Stance for power transfer, Crane Stance for balance. And moved on to basic punches. Straight, hook, uppercut. Next came the blocks. High, middle, low. And lastly, end with footwork. Advance, retreat, lateral shift, pivot.