Chapter 49: Body and Spirit
For all the time they spent on him, Sen never wholly lost sight of the fact that Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong were practicing cultivators in their own right. From time to time, he’d see Master Feng practicing qinggong techniques, flying horizontally through the air and using the courtyard walls as stationary platforms. He’d occasionally find Auntie Caihong scowling down at some pill that hadn’t come out the way wanted or, sometimes, just not the way she expected. So, he wasn’t entirely surprised when he found Uncle Kho practicing with his spear in the courtyard one morning. What did surprise Sen was the way that the old cultivator was practicing. He had been very clear with Sen that the spear was a weapon you wield with two hands. Two hands gave the weapon stability. They provided strength. They made it much harder to remove the weapon from your grasp.
He had lived up to that credo of weapon handling in Sen’s training. Every thrust, parry, blow, sweep, cut, slash, and chop didn’t just use two hands, they depended on it. In its own way, Sen found that the spear was an even more demanding weapon than the jian because there were simply more things he could do with it. Yet, always he was to use both hands.
“The utmost reason you use both hands is one you can likely guess by now,” said Uncle Kho when Sen asked about it.
Sen didn’t let the groan show through on his face. “Balance. Using two hands helps you maintain and achieve balance with the weapon.”
“Precisely.”
Uncle Kho had even offered the opinion that only an exceedingly rare emergency truly justified wielding a spear one-handed. Given the man’s strong opinions, Sen was stunned to see the cultivator wielding a spear with one hand. Although, he supposed that he was diminishing what he truly saw before him. Uncle Kho was only using one hand to hold the spear, but he was manipulating it in other ways. At times, he felt the older cultivator use air qi to drive the spear while slashing or using a lightning-fast kick to drive the base of the spear shaft up in a fast counterstrike. Sen even felt Uncle Kho use a brief burst of earth qi to bind himself to the ground for a second so he could use his own body as a pivot to deliver a sweeping blow so fast it seemed nothing short of miraculous that the air itself wasn’t split in two. Sen wasn’t sure how long he stood there simply watching the display of supreme qi and spear control. He was almost in a trance state when Uncle Kho addressed him.
“You have questions?” The old cultivator asked.
Sen twitched at the words before he shook off the mental stupor. “I do.”
“Then, by all means, proceed,” said Uncle Kho with an amused smile.
“You have been, I think, very clear that the spear should be wielded using both hands at all times. Have I misunderstood?”
“You have not. I stand by that position.”
Sen waited, certain that Uncle Kho knew exactly what he planned to ask, but the older man simply waited. He seemed prepared to wait until time itself ran dry for Sen to simply ask the question.
“Very well. If that is the case and you feel so strongly about it, why would you practice a one-handed style with the spear?”
Uncle Kho nodded as his face took on a faraway look. “All of the reasons I gave you for using two hands stand as true. For you and for other cultivators, the odds of you losing an arm but not losing your life are very low. If you lose a limb in a fight, you aren’t simply sparring. You’re in a life-or-death fight. Any enemy worth the name will immediately take advantage of that kind of crippling blow. Simply put, it’s not worth the time and effort you’d have to put in to learn a one-handed style. Beyond that, it suffers from the countless weaknesses I’ve already described.”
“Yet, there you were, practicing one anyway,” said Sen.
It wasn’t an objection. Sen truly didn’t understand why Uncle Kho had bothered with it if such styles were of no use to cultivators.
“You forget, Sen. I am very old. That has afforded me certain luxuries. For you, for most cultivators, everything you learn must serve a purpose. And, for most cultivators, the spear is just a weapon. It’s a useful tool. You learn about your tools. You take care of them. At the end of the day, though, that’s all they are. Something useful you carry with you. If that’s all they are, then your best choice is to learn the most useful, most efficient method of wielding it. That is what I am teaching you.
“For me, though, the spear isn’t simply a useful tool. It’s part of my cultivation. The way of the spear has been responsible for much of the enlightenment I have enjoyed over my long life. For me, everything related to the spear is a potential source of understanding, of enlightenment, and of advancement. For me, a one-handed style may not prove particularly useful in a duel, but it has the potential for far greater benefits.”
Sen had more questions, but he didn’t want to veer the conversation in a drastically different direction. “Did that style provide you with any enlightenment?”
Uncle Kho considered the question. “No, but the man I learned it from certainly did. He was a very interesting man, especially for a mortal. He was a soldier. I don’t remember where he came from. I’m not sure the place even exists anymore. I suppose it doesn’t matter that much fifteen hundred years later. The point is that he was a regular mortal soldier. He’d lost an arm in a battle. For most soldiers, if they survived, that would mean they got to return home. Except, he didn’t have a home to return to, or another trade for that matter. He’d been a soldier his whole life. It was all he knew and all he wanted to know. Yet, what good was a spearman with only one arm?”
“Not much good, I would think.”
“No, not much good at all. Yet, this man was determined. He trained, night and day, day and night, for years. He taught himself a whole new way to do what he’d taken for granted for so long. Oh, how I wished that he were a cultivator. The things he might have done with centuries. It wasn’t to be. Fate, I suppose.”
“Did he rejoin the army?”
Uncle Kho shook his head. “No. They told him that the army didn’t have a place for spear geniuses like him. Instead, he was sent to the capital. He spent the rest of his life training others in the spear.”
Sen pondered the story. On the surface, it sounded like the man had a fortunate encounter that ensured his safety and life. Yet…
“Uncle Kho, it sounds to me as if that man suffered a tragedy. At least, he did if the life of a soldier was all he truly wanted.”
“It was a tragedy and a triumph. Like so many, that man saw the spear as something his body wielded. So, when he set out on his path to reclaim the life he lost, he tried to train with his body. Of course, he failed because he could no longer do what others did. In order to reclaim the spear, he had to find a new way. He had to approach the spear with an open spirit, with an open heart. He had to be willing to hear what it had to teach him. He did that. In doing so, he achieved something in his life that few will ever experience. At the same time, he reforged himself into something new, something that could no longer fit into the life he craved. Tragedy and triumph. Acquisition and loss. Body and spirit.
“All too often, we treat these things as opposing forces in life. Yet, the wrong acquisition can seed future loss. A triumph on one side can create a tragedy on the other. For all that cultivators focus on qi, the mystical essence of life and creation, we spend a great deal of time focused on our bodies. We all too often treat spirit as though it is a hindrance to cultivation, rather than a pathway. I saw in that soldier’s triumph and his tragedy the possibilities of a different kind of path. If the spear could take him so very far in so very short a time, how far could the spear carry me, if I were but to approach it with an open spirit?”
The answer was all too obvious. It had carried Uncle Kho very nearly to immortality. It might yet carry him across that bridge. Of course, Sen also understood that the lesson wasn’t about wielding the spear. It was about forging a path, the right path, that could carry him just as far. What that path would look like, Sen couldn’t even guess. Perhaps it would be the spear, or the jian, or perhaps it would be the intricacies of medicine. Or, perhaps, it would be something he hadn’t even glimpsed yet. Some miracle hidden in plain sight, waiting for him to find it.
“So, it’s a reminder? Practicing that style, I mean.”
Uncle Kho nodded in agreement. “It is. It’s a reminder of what that man accomplished. It’s a reminder of what he helped me accomplish. Most of all, it’s a reminder that we can seed our own tragedies in our accomplishments. I never take for granted that I will succeed on the path of cultivation.”
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