Aimless Ascension

"Today is the day you'll learn real spirit art," Gale told his disciple, walking in a circle around Xiaolin who was sitting in the middle of the field. "Of course, you have learned a thing or two, but they were the basics of cycling arts. Now, I'll teach you how to put those arts into action.

"There are two main things I'll teach you to defeat Han Xiao and you'll practise them the whole year."

In other words, Gale would make her a two-trick pony. Well, considering how both of the two tricks work in a single attack, it would be better to say a one-trick pony.

"Sadly, your condition left you unable to practise one of the other art efficiently, so we'll leave that until you advance.

Xiaolin nodded her head in understanding. She was full with Qi. She was a bit disappointed, knowing all of it would empty her system within a quarter of an hour of practice. But she was excited nonetheless.

For the past week, she barely done any work, other than going back to her routine. She also had to amuse her master as he came up with different kinds of problems for her to solve, sometimes, he implied them into her training, while most of the other time it was puzzles or mathematics, that he would ask her to do as she cycles.

She had done pretty well with the puzzles, but not so with the maths. Well, considering how she was never even introduced to any of that before, it was simply an unasked quality of hers.

In her master's words, she was worse than a middle schooler. She guessed it was a criticism, but Xialin was fine with it as long as her master didn't imprison her like those middle schoolers. They had to do maths in school all day.

Although, she thought all of that to be a metaphor, her Master seemed to hold no love for the place called "School", comparing it to a prison was already a red flag.

Well, considering how tough those mathematics were, School did seem no worse than imprisonment.

"You have learned imbuing Qi to arrow and other weapons," Gale continued, "but today we will carry it to the next level. Today you'll learn to attack with simple qi."

Saying that, Gale brought a few target practises out of his void lock. Basically, painted round wood target tied with thin ropes on a long strand. There were over a dozen of targets swinging on the stand, intertwined together.

Gale put it at a respectful distance from her, considering her level and let the wind sway the wooden targets.

"These were made out of ironwood, so if you can make a hole in them that means you'll be able to do the same to any normal iron ranker."

"But master," Xiaolin asked, evident anxiety in her voice, "I'm not even a copper ranker, how can you expect me to do something like that to an iron ranker?"

"People are more fragile than you think," Gale answered. "Even a normal human can skill a standard iron ranker with a good strike to the heart. Of course, he'll be dead a dozen times over on most occasions, but you got my point. Today, you'll start learning a trick that wouldn't lose out to a clear strike to the heart. And the best part is you can do it from a distance."

Most people had this wrong impression about spirit arts that they would only grow stronger as you rank up, but that wasn't entirely the story. There was just too much stuff out there that a practitioner could learn and grow.

It was simply impossible to learn everything, but what a man could do best it mastered a few of them to a tremendous level. Most people didn't even stop to consider that, they simply felt ranking up was that way.

One simply didn't practice reaching the peak of the spirit arts of that realm before advancing to the next realm. Which, in retrospect, makes everything difficult for the practitioner. It narrowed their path of ranking up. After they hit Gold, there was no room for ranking up.

"Concentrating Qi is a trick we learn all our lives," Gale continued. "No matter the rank of the practitioner, he had to learn Concentration of Qi, simply because, normal Qi could barely harm anyone. Think of it like an arrow, concentration is like pulling a string. The more you pull, the faster your attack will be. Concentrated Qi is like that too."

Actually, there were two basic things to offensive arts, Concentration and Stacking. Both of them needed to be put in harmony to make the offensive art more violent. One simply can make an attack a hundred times fiercer, using the same amount of Qi.

Gale started with Concentration, as Linlin didn't have much Qi to work with stacking currently.

Gale explained for a few more minutes what he was about to teach her and then went on to the theory.

He was about to start, but instead, he cursed inwardly, forgetting to warn her about the harm of this spirit art.

"As you know Qi application works through visualisation," Gale said, slower than usual, so that his disciple could listen to it fully. "In Concentrating, we simply divide parts of our mind to visualise the same exact image. Are you getting it?"

A cute frown had formed on Xiaolin's brows as she considered everything. "I understood that, but how do we divide part of our mind?"

"That's the tricky part of it. Beware, Disciple, you can break your mind overestimating yourself. At your current mental strength, anything over 6 splits would be tempting fate, so you aren't allowed to go further than that."

"But Master, I don't even know how to divide my mind." Xiaolin had an incredulous look on her face, unsure if it was even possible.

Gale grinned mischievously. "Good news for you, my dear disciple, you already know how to divide your mind into two parts."

Xiaolin arched her eyebrows.

"Why do you think I kept you doing all these multitasking exercises?" Gale asked, smirking as if he had played a great role as her master. "Even though most of them don't involve Qi, it is the initial training splitting your mind to multitask stuff."