Sen stared at Master Feng’s back as the old cultivator walked a short distance away. He had heard Master Feng and Uncle Kho mention killing intent in passing more than once, but never in a way that roused Sen’s curiosity enough to ask. Now, he was regretting that lack of curiosity. On the one hand, the words seemed to have an obvious meaning. On the other hand, Sen was confident that the obvious meaning couldn’t be the answer. If it were, Master Feng wouldn’t have brought it up so specifically. Plus, he had said that they needed to do something about Sen’s own killing intent. The young man couldn’t make sense of that at all. Sure, he had some lingering anger over what the noble brats had put him through, but he was confident that it wasn’t a killing kind of anger. Yet, he couldn’t imagine what else Master Feng could mean.

When Sen realized that Master Feng was staring at him with an expectant look, he roused himself from his mental wandering and walked over to his teacher. Feng looked him over and then made two practice jians appear from his storage ring. Master Feng had instructed Sen to use his actual sword when practicing alone if only to get the right feel for the weapon. When Sen had asked why they didn’t use real blades for sparring, Master Feng had said it was a waste.

“You’ll wear the blade down to nothing by sparring with it all the time. There’s limited benefit to damaging a good blade when you can spar with wooden practice swords. After all, there are trees all over the place up here. You can replace practice blades with an axe, a knife, and a bit of time. You need a smith to make a sword. You need a talented smith to replace a good sword.”

It had been another one of the moments when Sen realized how much he still didn’t know about the world. He imagined that people who grew up around swords knew things like that almost by instinct. He had to learn it all, usually by asking questions that left him feeling stupid, embarrassed, or both. Still, he’d learned his lesson about not asking things. Initially, Master Feng grew annoyed with Sen’s barrage of questions. The man’s answers would grow curt after a time, and Sen would recognize that he needed to stop. Then, he’d overheard a conversation between Master Feng and Uncle Kho.

“You need to stop getting angry at the boy for asking so many questions,” said Uncle Kho, always a calm eye in the storm of life.

“I would if he would stop asking so many mundane questions.”

“They aren’t mundane to him.”

There was a very long pause before Feng spoke again. “I suppose they aren’t.”

“Indeed. I expect that he’s trying to catch up on a lifetime’s worth of information that everyone else takes for granted. Up on this mountain, there are only two people he can ask.”

“You forgot about the panther,” said Master Feng, amusement in his voice.

“Ha! I did, didn’t I? Then again, who knows what that beast actually understands? I can just see him asking some idle question about the weather and getting a world-shattering secret in return.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” said Feng.

He had sounded a little unsettled to Sen. After that, though, he’d become much more patient with Sen’s questions. For Sen’s part, he’d tried to limit the number of questions he asked each day to varying degrees of success.

Shaking off the memory, Sen caught the practice blade that Master Feng tossed to him. He checked the edges to make sure they weren’t damaged from their last round of sparring. When he was satisfied, Sen sent some qi into the wood to reinforce it. Hard experience had taught him that, without that reinforcement, the wood wouldn’t survive the first exchange. He dropped into a ready stance with the practice sword in a guard position. There was no preamble to it. Feng simply attacked. The complexities of swordplay had left Sen’s head whirling at first. Over time, though, he’d accepted a truth that Master Feng revealed to him on their first day with the practice blades.

Most sword fights consisted of about four basic kinds of blade movements. There were thrusts, slashes, parries, and blocks. There were variations, of course, depending on where the move came from. Yet, that was just about blade position, rather than some whole other kind of move. There were also limits imposed by the blade itself. The jian wasn’t a club. You could block with it, but it was hard on the blade. Matching strength for strength that way only made sense when you knew you were the stronger party and that you possessed the superior weapon. Whenever possible, you want to parry with the jian. It was easier on the sword and helped open up the other party to an attack. While the blade was more than sharp enough to cut, it wasn’t an ideal slashing weapon. It was really too short for that kind of work. Plus, if you were close enough to slash, you were close enough to thrust the blade into the other person’s body and deal potentially lethal damage. Although, slashes to the arms could add up over time.

Of course, all of that information was only so valuable when the other person outclassed you in both skill and strength. In fact, Master Feng’s skill left Sen awed on most days. His master always kept his strength and speed just a touch above what Sen could achieve. Sen knew that disadvantage forced him to work harder. He could never kick back and assume he knew enough. It was always about moving forward, pushing past limitations, and finding new sources of strength and speed. Well, his mind knew those things. In his heart, he wished that, every once in a while, his master would be a little less skilled. Sen thought that at the moment he parried the thrust aimed at his heart and everything from his fingers to his shoulder started to ache.

Sen repositioned the blade to slash at Master Feng’s arm, but the old cultivator spun away from the motion. Master Feng dropped as he spun and sent a slash at Sen’s ankles. Sen recognized it as a smart move. Feng accomplished two goals with one action. By dropping to a crouch, he reduced the size of Sen’s target. By itself, that would have proven inadvisable, as it left Sen with the metaphoric high ground. The slash at Sen’s ankles, though, prevented the young man from doing anything with that potential advantage. He couldn’t ignore the slash because it would likely mean losing a foot in a real fight. He could block it, probably, but that would leave his body and blade wildly out of position to deal with almost anything that followed. So, he did the only thing that he could. He moved. With a level of careful control that he hadn’t possessed even six months back, he jumped back. It only moved him about a foot, but that was far enough to put Master Feng out of easy reach.

For the next minute or two, there was a furious exchange of attacks and counterattacks, punctuated by the occasional desperate roll on Sen’s part to avoid attacks that would have struck him in the head or otherwise left him semi-injured. Then, Master Feng stepped back. He nodded at Sen.

“You’ve attended your lessons well. Your blade work is focused and controlled. You don’t let setbacks fray that control either. It’s all of the technical mastery I’d expect after a year and a half of near-daily training. Unfortunately, that’s only part of the equation. When you come up against people with experience, you aren’t just up against their skills. You’re also up against their killing intent. You can think of it as their will to kill and willingness to kill, but it goes beyond that. A powerful killing intent is almost a weapon in its own right. In the right hands, it can literally sharpen a dull blade or drive an enemy into an emotional stupor. And you don’t have it.”

Sen opened his mouth to defend himself in some way, but Feng waved him off.

“It’s not a criticism, Sen,” offered Master Feng. “It’s just a fact. Unless I’m entirely mistaken, you’ve never been put in a position where you really had to think about killing someone or actually kill someone. Am I wrong?”

Sen sighed and shook his head. “No, master.”

Master Feng nodded. “Still, it is something you need to understand and develop. As with many things, experience is the best teacher. So, this is killing intent.”

One moment, Sen was trying to muster up some kind of response to Master Feng. The next moment, a feeling washed over him that made his heart stop. It felt like the gaze of a vengeful god had just fallen on him. Worse, that god had decided that the world would just be a better place without Sen in it. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t do anything. Then, it was gone, and the point of Master Feng’s practice blade was pressing gently into the hollow at the base of Sen’s neck. Sen couldn’t even find words at first. When he finally could, he felt defeated.

“How? Where can I possibly learn something like that?”

Feng gave him a grim look and pointed toward the gate in the wall. “You’ll learn it out there, on the mountain.”