From the way everyone kept their distance, she wasn’t sure it mattered.
Jiang did more than make her carry the pig. In an astonishing streak of reliability, he stood waiting for her in the garden every day at class time.
“You know, animal-based martial arts weren’t developed for combat,” he said. “They were first created to promote health and longevity. The Frolics of the Five Animals”—he held up the Yinmen scroll that Rin had spent so long looking for—“is actually a system of exercises to promote blood circulation and delay the inconveniences of old age. It wasn’t until later that these forms were adapted for fighting.”
“So why am I learning them?”
“Because Jun’s curriculum skips the Frolics entirely. Jun teaches a simplified version of watered-down martial arts adapted purely to human biomechanics. But it leaves out far too much. It whittles away centuries of lineage and refinement all for the sake of military efficiency. Jun can teach you how to be a decent soldier. But I can teach you the key to the universe,” Jiang said grandly, before bumping his head on a low-hanging branch.
Training with Jiang was nothing like training with Jun. There were obvious hierarchies to Jun’s lesson plans, a clear progression from basic techniques to advanced.
But Jiang taught Rin every random thing that came to his deeply unpredictable mind. He would revisit a lesson if he found it particularly interesting; if not, he pretended like it had never happened. Occasionally he would go on long tirades without provocation.
“There are five principal elements present in the universe—get that look off your face, it’s not as absurd as it sounds. The masters of old used to believe that all things were made of fire, water, air, earth, and metal. Obviously, modern science has proven that false. Still, it’s a useful mnemonic for understanding the different types of energy.
“Fire: the heat in your blood in the midst of a fight, the kinetic energy that makes your heart beat faster.” Jiang tapped his chest. “Water: the flowing of force from your muscles to your target, from the earth up through your waist, into your arms. Air: the breath you draw that keeps you alive. Earth: how you stay rooted to the ground, how you derive energy from the way you position yourself against the floor. And metal, for the weapons you wield. A good martial artist will possess all five of these in balance. If you can control each of these with equal skill, you will be unstoppable.”
“How do I know if I’ve got control of them?”
He scratched a spot behind his ears. “Good question. I’m not actually sure.”
Asking Jiang for clarification was inevitably infuriating. His answers were always bizarrely worded and absurdly phrased. Some didn’t make sense until days later; some never did. If she asked him to explain, he changed the subject. If she let his more absurd comments slide (“Your water element is off balance!”), he poked and prodded about why she wasn’t asking more questions.
He spoke oddly, always a little too quickly or a little too slowly, with strange pauses between his words. He laughed in two ways; one laugh was off-kilter—nervous, high-pitched, and obviously forced—the other great and deep and booming. The first kind she heard constantly; the second was rare, and startling when it burst forth. He rarely met her gaze, but rather focused always at a spot on her brow between her eyes.
Jiang moved through the world like he didn’t belong there. He acted as if he came from a country of near-humans, people who acted almost exactly like Nikara but not quite, and his behavior was that of a confused visitor who had stopped bothering with trying to imitate those around him. He didn’t belong—not simply in Sinegard, but in the very idea of a physical earth. He acted like the rules of nature did not apply to him.
Perhaps they didn’t.
One day they went to the highest tier of the Academy, up past the masters’ lodges. The single building on this tier was a tall, spiraling pagoda, nine stories stacked elegantly on top of one another. Rin had never been inside.
She recalled from that tour so many months ago that Sinegard Academy had been built on the grounds of an old monastery. The pagoda on the highest tier could have still been a temple. Old stone trenches for burning incense sat outside the pagoda entrance. Guarding either side of the door were two large cylinders mounted on tall rods to let them spin. When she looked closer, Rin saw Old Nikara characters carved into the sides.
“What do these do?” she asked, idly spinning one cylinder.
“They’re prayer wheels. But we don’t have time to get into that today,” Jiang said. He gestured for her to follow him. “In here.”
Rin expected that the nine stories of the pagoda would be proper floors connected by flights of stairs, but the interior was merely a winding staircase that led to the very top, an empty cylinder of air in the middle. A solitary beam of sunlight shone in from a square opening in the ceiling, illuminating dust motes floating through the air. A series of musty paintings had been hung on the sides of the staircase. They looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in decades.
“This is where the statues to the Four Gods used to stand,” said Jiang, pointing up into the dark void.
“Where are they now?”
He shrugged. “The Red Emperor had most religious imagery stripped and looted when he took over Sinegard. Most of it’s been melted down into jewelry. But that doesn’t matter.” He beckoned for Rin to follow him up the staircase.
He lectured as they climbed. “Martial arts came to the Empire by way of a warrior named Bodhidharma from the southeastern continent. When Bodhidharma found the Empire during his travels of the world, he journeyed to a monastery and demanded entry, but the head abbot refused him entrance. So Bodhidharma sat his ass in a nearby cave and faced the wall for nine years, listening to the ants scream.”
“Listening to what?”
“The ants scream, Runin. Keep up.”
She muttered something unrepeatable. Jiang ignored her.
“Legend has it that the intensity of his gaze bored a hole into the cave wall. The monks were either so moved by his religious commitment or so seriously impressed that anyone could be so obstinate that they finally let him into their temple.” Jiang paused in front of a painting depicting a dark-skinned warrior and a group of pale men in robes. “That’s Bodhidharma there in the center.”
“That guy on the left has blood spurting out of a stump,” Rin observed.
“Yeah. Legend also has it that one monk was so impressed with his commitment that he cut off his hand in sympathy.”
Rin recalled the myth of Mai’rinnen Tearza committing suicide for the sake of Speer’s unification with the mainland. Martial arts history seemed to be riddled with people making pointless sacrifices.
“Anyhow. The monks at the temple were interested in what Bodhidharma had to say, but because of their sedentary lives and poor diets, they were weak as shit. Scrawnier than you, even. Kept falling asleep during his lectures. Bodhidharma found this somewhat annoying, so he devised three sets of exercises to improve their health. Now, these monks were in constant physical danger from outlaws and robbers, but were also forbidden by their religious code to carry weapons, so they modified many of the exercises to form a system of weaponless self-defense.”