Sen gave her a nod and put some distance between them. He thought for a moment before he looked at her.
Ma Caihong gestured to him. Sen never would have considered attacking her unprovoked. He knew full well that she could crush him like an insect. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to take a shot at her when she invited it. He started slow, cycling qi to activate the weakest qi affinity he had. His hand lashed forward and a compressed blade of wind shot across the distance. She broke the technique with a casual flick of her sword. She opened her mouth to say something, but he’d switched by then and used his earth qi to rip up a stone from the courtyard and drive it toward her head. He dropped the earth qi while the stone was still in the air and switched his cycling to shadow qi. He blanked the courtyard in darkness and started running toward her. He heard the stone shatter, but with his shadow touching everything he could feel her dodge it.
Sen adjusted his angle and prepared to switch his cycling again. He expected this would be the last big attack he could manage. His qi stores were strong. Those channels that ran through his body were another matter. The fast switch between cycling techniques put a tremendous amount of strain on them. They were already sending aching protests up and down his limbs. Yes, he thought, one last big move, then I have to slow down. He made the switch from shadow to fire and sent the qi into the sword. It wasn’t the best fit. There was a natural resistance that cut down on the efficiency. Plus, while metal could hold fire qi for a while, the fire qi would erode the integrity of the metal before too long. Master Feng had had Sen test the process on cheap pieces of metal just to prove the point.
Of course, Sen didn’t need the sword in his hand to hold up for a long time. He didn’t even need to hold up to two minutes. He only needed it to hold up for the next few seconds. He brought the sword down in an overhead arc and a lash of pale orange fire that looked almost white around the edges leapt out from the end of it. The moment he’d let go of the shadow qi, the darkness in the courtyard had begun to recede back toward him. He’d managed to time it right, though. From Ma Caihong’s perspective, it ought to look like that whip of flame exploded out of the shadow on a lethal arc to connect with her skull. The lash connected with a dome of something, something he couldn’t even identify, and sputtered out. In his last few moments of clear thought, it occurred to him that he should have expected it. He’d just been so angry, so ready to lash out at someone who hurt his master, that he didn’t think it all the way through.
Then, the pain hit. It wasn’t entirely new. Master Feng had made sure that Sen knew what a broken technique felt like. His master had told him that it was an absolute certainty that people would break his techniques, so he had to prepare for the backlash that came with it. Sadly, that preparation had been a bit too lenient. The pain in those exercises had seemed severe to Sen, but that pain was nothing but a brief moment of discomfort compared to the torment that stabbed into Sen when Ma Caihong broke the fire technique. Sen’s body convulsed and pure white flashed across his eyes as the agony set his nerves alight. When something like conscious thought returned, he became vaguely aware that he’d collapsed to the ground. A coppery taste let him know that he’d either spit up or vomited blood. He just lay there like that for a while before his body started talking to him again. Although, that was a mixed blessing.
While it was good that his body was on speaking terms with him in some way, it was bad because his body only wanted to let him know it hurt. He decided that he must not have been down for too long, because Ma Caihong was kneeling next to him a moment later. She tilted his head up and checked his eyes. It seemed like a lot of effort, but he figured he ought to say something.
“Foolish. Very foolish,” muttered Ma Caihong. “It won’t kill you. Although, I expect you wish it did.”
With the more experienced cultivator assuring him that he wasn’t about to die, Sen opted to be wildly uncomfortable on his feet instead of wildly uncomfortable on the ground. The stone of the courtyard was an unforgiving surface at the best of times. He slowly pushed himself up until he was swaying on his feet. There was an awful pounding in his head. His muscles felt like they wanted to twitch out of his control at any moment. Even breathing felt like something he had to make himself do. Still, he managed to get upright. He considered that a minor victory in a day that seemed filled with failure.
Ma Caihong gave him a stern look. “Ming must have taught you about what happens when a technique breaks.”
Sen nodded. “He did.”
“Then why do something that you must have known would fail?”
To his credit, Sen did try to keep his expression neutral. In the end, though, he was simply too tired and in too much pain to mask his still simmering anger. At least a little of it bled through onto his face. Ma Caihong regarded him in silence before she looked over at the bathhouse. She sighed a little.
“Of course,” she muttered. “Well, I’ve certainly seen enough to get a picture of your capabilities. You should go clean up and rest now.”
She started to walk away, but Sen called after her.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“There’s one more thing I’m supposed to show you.”
She frowned, but said, “If you must.”
Sen steadied himself. His body was slowly coming back under his control, but it still felt like it was ready to go into a full revolt at the drop of a hat. He took three deep breaths and thought back to all of those moments as a child when he’d really needed to not be found. He recalled the way it felt. Then, he hid. Ma Caihong’s eyes went so wide that he could see white all the way around the edges. Her mouth opened and closed a few times without any sound coming out. Then, she walked right up to him. Then, as if she didn’t trust the evidence of her own eyes, she slowly reached out a finger and poked his chest. Her head tilted to one side, and then the other. Then, she poked him again.
“Well,” she said. “I certainly didn’t see that coming.”
Sen stopped hiding. Ma Caihong seemed to relax once he did. At least, he assumed that she relaxed. She did stop poking him in the chest, which he found a relief. Then, a look of deepest frustration rolled across her face.
“And Ming just found you, living on the streets, down there in that tiny town?”
“Yeah,” said Sen, not able to muster much more than that.
“Unbelievable. Really, though, you should go rest. You look like you’re going to collapse.”
Sen took her advice that time.