38. The Dao of ‘Trust Me, Bro’

The bracket is set.

Twelve disciples. Three groups of four. I spent two evenings designing it, which Ling’er would find excessive if she knew. She’d be right. But I’d rather be excessive than careless.

I arrange the groups with the care of someone who’s been watching these people for months, who knows Wei Chen’s fire peaks at the fourth form and collapses under sustained pressure, who knows Mei Lin’s defense holds longer than her offense suggests, who knows Jun fights best when his opponent is frustrated. I put strength against strength early, not to eliminate anyone, but to force everyone to reach.

Group One: Mei Lin with two mid-tier disciples and one of the youngest.

Group Two: Wei Chen, Jun, and two more.

Group Three: Ling’er and three others.

Each group fights round robin, everyone faces everyone. The group winner advances automatically. Second place from each group goes into a tiebreaker for the fourth semi-final spot.

I announce it the morning of.

“Round robin groups,” I explain, to a yard full of disciples who have never heard that term. “The winner advances. Second place from each group fights for the last semi-final spot.”

Wei Chen raises his hand. “What does ’round robin’ mean?”

“It means everyone fights everyone.”

“Oh.” He considers this. “So I have to fight Jun?”

“Yes.”

He looks at Jun. Jun looks at him. Something passes between them that is not quite hostility and not quite friendship.

“Fine,” Wei Chen says.

The laborers pause their work. Old Chen appears at the kitchen doorway with a ladle and no apparent intention of going back inside. Li Hua settles onto a bench with her mending basket, which she will not touch for the next several hours. Old Zhao comes up from the mine, weathered face creased with something I haven’t seen on him before.

The sect is watching.

Group One begins.

Mei Lin’s first match is against a disciple named Hua, two years her junior, recently broken through to 3rd Stage, visibly terrified of fighting the senior disciple. He should be. He lasts ninety seconds. But he doesn’t yield. He fights until his legs give out, until Mei Lin has to catch him before he hits the ground, until he’s sitting in the dirt with her hand on his shoulder and she’s saying something quietly that makes him straighten up instead of staying down.

Her second match, against a disciple named Ru, is harder. Ru is 3rd Stage too, but closer in age and size. They know each other’s forms. The match turns into something methodical; feeling out the edges of each other’s control, neither willing to commit until they see an opening. It lasts four minutes. When it ends, Mei Lin’s has found the gap in Ru’s defense through patience rather than power, and Ru is sitting on the boundary line, breathing hard, looking at his hands like they’ve failed him.

“You’re better than you were last month,” Mei Lin tells him.

Her third match, against Lian, the youngest disciple, who has no business being in a tournament at all except that I included everyone because everyone needed to be here, ends in forty seconds. She doesn’t embarrass her. She disarms her, redirects her, and guides her out of the ring with the kind of gentle efficiency that takes more skill than overwhelming force.

Lian bows to her afterward. She bows back. Mei Lin advances with three wins. Ru advances to the tiebreaker with two.

Group Two.

Wei Chen enters his first match with the energy of someone who has been waiting for this specific moment for weeks. His opponent is a quiet disciple named Pei, 2nd Stage, who has improved considerably since the weight training began.

Pei lasts less than thirty seconds. Wei Chen’s fire technique has grown, not just in power but in shape, in direction, in the way it responds to his intent rather than simply erupting when he wants it to. He dismantles Pei’s defense with a combination of heat and footwork that I didn’t teach him. He developed it himself, during the extra sessions he started running when no one was watching. The disciples watching make noise. Wei Chen grins.

His second match goes badly for thirty seconds before going well. He gets hit. He stumbles. He loses ground. And then he does something I have never seen him do in forty years of training disciples. He adjusts by reading what went wrong and correcting it in real time. He shifts his weight, redirects his fire, finds a different angle. The match turns. It ends with his opponent’s arm pinned and his palm at their throat. He doesn’t gloat. He helps them up.

Wei Chen vs. Jun is the match I’ve been watching develop for weeks; the collision between enthusiasm and intelligence, between a man who leads with fire and a man who leads with patience. They’ve been circling each other since the weight training started. They know each other too well.

It shows.

Wei Chen attacks first, because he always attacks first. Jun expects this, because Jun expects everything. What Jun doesn’t expect is that Wei Chen knows he expects it, and has prepared something for the moment Jun moves to counter: a genuine feint, executed with the kind of misdirection that requires understanding your opponent’s mind, not just their technique. Jun’s counter goes to the wrong place. Wei Chen’s fire lands on his shoulder, not enough to injure but enough to score. The yard goes quiet.

Jun keeps his cool instead of being flustered. He looks like he’s just added something to an internal catalog. He wins the match. His patience outlasts Wei Chen’s momentum, and he finds the opening when Wei Chen overextends on his fourth combination. But it’s closer than anyone expected, and Wei Chen walks off the ring with his head high.

“I almost had you,” he tells Jun.

“You had me for one exchange,” Jun replies.

Wei Chen grunts and turns away, visibly frustrated at how close he was from winning. Jun advances with three wins. Wei Chen advances to the tiebreaker with two.

Group Three.

I watch this one more carefully than the others.

Ling’er’s first match is against Song Li, the quiet disciple I seeded into this group, 3rd Stage, technically proficient, someone who has improved steadily without drawing attention. He’s been watching Ling’er since her first week. I noticed him noticing her. He’s prepared something.

Ling’er enters the ring, hands at her sides, her expression the careful neutral she’s been wearing for months. Song Li settles into a defensive stance, his earth techniques already gathering, his feet planted. He’s going to make her come to him.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She does. Slowly. Carefully. Moving like a 3rd Stage disciple approaching someone she’s uncertain about, which is not what she is. Song Li waits until she’s committed, then activates his defense; an earth shield that rises from the ground, thick and solid. It’s one of the techniques I got from Cultivator’s Exchange in Greenstone. To have made this much progress speaks to his effort.

Ling’er stops in front of it.

She reaches out and touches it.

The shield cracks. Her finger finds the seam where Song Li’s qi joins imperfectly between two earth layers, the hairline weakness that only exists because he’s never had the guidance to know it was there.

Song Li stares at his collapsed shield. Then at her.

“But—how did you—”

“Your left side,” she says. “The qi doesn’t flow as smoothly there. If you start from the center and expand outward instead of building from both sides, it won’t happen.” She pauses. “I can show you later, if you want.”

He nods. “Please.”

Her second match ends in thirty seconds. Her third in twenty.

What strikes me is how she’s doing it. Every match is an examination; here’s where you’re strong, here’s where you’re weak, here’s what you’re not seeing. She wins each match and leaves her opponents with something they didn’t have before. It’s a unique interpretation of my order. She’s no longer holding back, but she’s using it to teach, rather than dominate.

Ling’er advances with three wins. Song Li advances to the tiebreaker with two.

The group stage ends as the afternoon sun begins its descent. Three tiebreaker candidates stand before me: Ru, Wei Chen, Song Li. All two wins. One semi-final spot.

I look at the three of them, then at the crowd. They’re expecting me to announce another round of matches. Another wait. More time.

I activate the Gaze briefly, running the assessment.