The days before the Tournament settled into a rhythm: practice, mission, sleep, temper, repeat. Li Wei moved through them as if through water. The Stele's purpose had been met for now; the top hundred achieved. What remained was sharpening what had been born in the chamber, the pool of liquid qi, the newly opened thread of divine sense, until they were a tool that could be put to good use.
He began mornings in the small courtyard behind his abode. He stood facing the rising sun and ran the Azure Wind Scripture through steady cycles. At Foundation Establishment, the scripture's earth-rank forms resonated differently, not louder but deeper. Each posture poured denser qi into his limbs, and where before a strike had been wind, now it had the weight of a gale.
Mei Yun and Liang Fei stopped by most mornings. Mei Yun's eyes always read him first — worry tempered into resolve. Liang Fei, for his part, had become the kind of friend who traded barbed jokes for useful sparring. They gave him lives and pulses of the outside world: merchants' lists, training rumors, the occasional petty slander about his speed of rise.
None of it mattered much though; what mattered were the small, precise improvements he made each day. He shortened the recovery in his cycles. He tightened the angles of the Tempest Fang Slash so less qi leaked on the follow-through. He braided his Whirlwind Slash into subtler rotations, experimenting with weight distribution and the timing of his hip.
The first week was foundation-tempering: he stayed inside his chamber more than out, binding the liquid qi into steady eddies that would not spill when stressed. Twice he emerged to test the flow on real bodies, beasts from the foothills, hired by the Mission Hall and brought in for training. They were not point-gathering missions; the steward's ledger recorded nothing remarkable. The aim was combat fidelity.
Li Wei treated each trial like a clockwork exercise. He tested parries, measured angles, and pushed the limits of response. When the creature lunged, he used Flowing Cloud Steps to redirect momentum; when it rolled, he practiced Whirlwind Slash's arc to see how the liquid qi sustained the cut. Something changed after the third fight, not a breakthrough, not a flash, but a clarity of connection. The blade no longer fought with him; it answered. Where he had once shoved energy into technique, the technique began to finish the motion for him. It felt like it was about to reach a new height.
---
Word of his return and those quiet tests reached the training grounds. Outer sect disciples glanced in his direction with a new edge of curiosity. He noticed a few of the same faces he'd seen when he first ascended: young men and women taking notes, not of gossip but of stance and breath.
Between the practice trials he took missions that demanded improvisation: escorting a small merchant light-guard through a twisting mountain pass, investigating a ruin where bandits had been seen trailing. In the pass, thieves tried to use darkness as an ally. Li Wei moved like a knife through fabric; his newfound strength let his strikes land with unexpected weight, collapsing braces and snapping ropes with fewer motions.
He did not burn healing tonic; he timed his rest cycles carefully, and the Spirit Convergence Chamber had left his core steady. The missions uncovered small evidence, a crude tally with merchant names and a place-name scribbled repeatedly, enough to confirm that the slaver net was widening. Each scrap of proof tightened his jaw. There would be time to deal with it later; first, he must become a blade that did not dull.
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Midway through the third week, during a late-night drill beneath hollow lantern light, the change finally bit into his technique. He had spent days bending Whirlwind Slash into shorter, tighter loops, seeking the point where rotational force met the straight line of his intent. It happened quietly: the rotation folded into the strike and did not scatter as it had before. The air around the blade held, not the gusting scatter of previous practice, but a coherent current, a thin sheet of moving pressure that did not flinch as it met resistance. For half a heartbeat, the slash felt like a single, living thing.
He felt it in the marrow of his forearm: the technique had "stepped forward", transcending it's previous limits. The strike now carried a resonance beyond simple qi infusion, and in that resonance, Li Wei brushed against something larger, intent.
There were two paths to intent, as the elders taught: weapon intent: born from endless familiarity with blade, spear, or staff, and the greater forces of heaven and earth: wind, fire, lightning, water.
Masters could step into either. True mastery was divided into stages: entry, small completion, great completion, perfection. Most disciples never reached the threshold at all.
Li Wei had not entered even the first stage. But in transcending Whirlwind Slash, he felt the barest thread of wind intent stir. It was not his to command fully, not a law he could bend at will, but he could mobilize it — a fleeting brush of heaven and earth amplifying his strike. When he drew that echo into the blade, his arcs cut sharper, air itself bending for a breath to follow his will. The increase was slight, but decisive. In battle, it would tip the edge.
He tested it on a straw dummy, nothing more. The blade descended, and instead of scattering, the air compressed around the strike, shearing clean through. The cut was faster, heavier, deeper. A faint shiver in the currents told him the strike had borrowed something from wind's own pattern. The dummy split as though a true gale had ripped it.
He did not test it again. The realization was enough. This hint, not even entry level, but the shadow of intent, was a trump card for the Tournament.
The rest of the third week he spent practicing that economy: drawing the echo of intent swiftly, releasing it before it drained him, blending it with liquid qi until it felt natural. His divine sense caught the faint knot that formed when the echo came, and with discipline he learned to call it and let it go at will. Each time the strain on his body lessened, each time the blade's arc grew more precise.
---
Outside preparations, rumors of slaver activity continued to reach him: a wagon north of the west pass missing, a merchant with his throat cut at dawn. The Mission Hall collected such reports and filed them like leaves in a stream. Li Wei took two small, careful missions during those last days specifically to maintain the edge, and on one of them he intercepted a slaver scout. The scout had fallen into his hands clumsily; under questioning, the man spat directions and names, enough to expand Li Wei's map of the network. The slaver network had footholds deeper than he liked, and the man's fear left a taste of metal on Li Wei's tongue.
He reported nothing grand. He stored the information in a hidden strip of parchment folded inside his clothing. The sect's response would be formal and slow; he would act in time, later, when the scope and his strength both allowed it. For now, his task was simple and singular: to master the hint of intent and hone his body until every strike used less thought and more muscle memory.
On the eve before the Tournament, Li Wei sat alone under the eaves, the courtyard lanterns breath-soft. Mei Yun found him and sat down without a word. Moonlight pooled around them, the quiet heavy with things unsaid.
Li Wei turned his face faintly toward the road where the slaver networks threaded. "When this is done, if I can get inside the inner sect, then I'll be in a better position to cut the root."
She nodded once, and her hand found his arm briefly, a small anchor. He felt steadied rather than shaken.
He closed his eyes and extended the slender tendril of divine sense outward, not to reach the sky but to touch the movement of the courtyard stones, the whisper of the outer array. The hint of wind intent answered like a shy bird, it brushed his awareness and then fluttered away. He did not chase it. He let it rest there, a tool waiting to be drawn.
When he rose, his movements were calm and economical. Three weeks had not transformed him into a god. It had given him a new instrument and a small, dangerous edge. That would have to be enough.
The Tournament would begin in the morning. He had his storm in hand and the ability to call the wind's hint for a strike or two. He would not flaunt it in the days before. He would use it like a whisper in a crowded hall — barely heard, but decisive when it landed.
Outside, the night was still. Li Wei's breath matched the pulse of his new foundation, slow, deliberate, and ready.