The world shrank to a brutal, repetitive geometry: the stone courtyard, the straw-stuffed training dummies, the endless line of the barrack's sleeping pallets. I was no longer Yu Hui. I was "Ling," the quiet, skinny recruit from the hinterlands who kept his head down and his eyes open.
The training master, Sergeant Kang, was a mountain of a man with a voice that could chip stone. He saw us not as soldiers, but as raw, disappointing ore to be beaten into something vaguely useful.
"You are not men!" he roared on that first morning, his breath fogging in the dawn chill. "You are clumsy children holding sticks! The Sky-Fire barbarians will carve you into festival ribbons before you blink! Your only hope is to become harder. Harder than the ground, harder than their blades!"
Our "sticks" were heavy, blunt training swords. Mine felt like it was carved from a solid tree trunk. The first time I swung it, the momentum nearly spun me into the dirt. A boy next to me, no older than seventeen, snickered. Sergeant Kang's whip-thin bamboo cane cracked across the boy's shoulders. The snicker died in a gasp.
"Focus, maggot! Or you'll be dead, and your village will get another useless box!"
The words were a physical blow, sharper than the cane. I locked my jaw, the image of that rain-soaked wagon flashing behind my eyes. I will not end up in a box.
I focused. I watched Sergeant Kang's demonstrations with an intensity that made my eyes ache. I studied the way the older veterans moved in the yard, their economy of motion, the way they used their legs, not just their arms. My body, strong from a lifetime of hauling water and chopping wood, found a different kind of strength now—a tensile, enduring strength. It was the strength not to lift a log, but to hold a guard position until my muscles screamed and trembled. It was the strength to take a blow from a practice sword on my forearms (we were given only thin leather guards) and not cry out.
I became a shadow, a mimic. I copied footwork until my boots wore through at the soles. I practiced the basic thrust, parry, and block sequences long after the others had stumbled, groaning, to the mess hall. The other recruits thought I was simple, or desperate. They were half right. My desperation was a cold, private furnace.
At night, in the rank darkness of the barracks, I was the most vigilant. I slept with Jingming's dagger under my thin pillow, my hand curled around its hilt. I learned the rhythms of the men—who snored, who cried in his sleep, who talked of desertion. I said little, my voice a carefully modulated low murmur. I kept my head down in the bathhouse, using the steam and hurried chaos to hide the body that would betray me. The pendant stayed hidden, a secret warmth against my skin, a silent reminder of why.
My first real test came not in the yard, but in the mess line. A hulking recruit named Bo, whose ambition outweighed his skill, decided I was an easy target for his frustration. He shoved me from behind, sending my bowl of watery gruel clattering across the flagstones.
"Clumsy rat," he growled. "You're in my way."
A hot spike of anger, pure Yu Hui anger, flashed through me. I wanted to turn and drive my knee into his gut. But I saw Sergeant Kang watching from across the hall, his expression unreadable. I saw the cold calculus of survival. A fight would mean attention, scrutiny, possible exposure.
I bent down, slowly, and picked up the empty bowl. I looked at Bo, not with fury, but with a flat, empty stare I had learned from my grief. "My mistake," I said, my voice devoid of inflection.
The non-response disarmed him more than a shout would have. He grunted and moved on. I went to the back of the line, my heart thundering, but my face a placid mask. I had learned another lesson: sometimes, the strongest move was not to strike, but to endure. To conceal.
Sergeant Kang began to notice the shadow. During a punishing drill where we had to hold a weighted shield aloft, my arms were on fire, my vision spotting. Just as I was about to drop, his cane tapped my elbow, not to strike, but to adjust.
"Not from the shoulder, maggot. From the back. Like you're pushing a boulder up a hill. Now, hold."
He moved on, but the correction was a spark. He saw I was listening. The next day, he paired us for sparring. My opponent was the boy who had snickered, now pale with nerves. We were to practice a basic attack and counter sequence.
The boy came at me, all wild energy and wide swings. My body, drilled to exhaustion, reacted. I didn't think. I parried, slipped past his guard, and tapped his ribs with the blunted point of my sword. It was simple, clean, and effective.
"Hold!"
Sergeant Kang strode over. He looked from the boy, who was rubbing his side, to me. "You. Ling. Where did you learn that?"
I froze. "I… watched, Sergeant. From the veterans at the wall drill yesterday."
He stared at me for a long, terrifying moment, his eyes like chips of flint. Then he gave a single, sharp nod. "Observation. The first skill of a soldier who wants to live. Do it again. Slower."
He began to single me out, not with kindness, but with a grinding, increased expectation. The drills became harder for me. The weight I carried increased. He criticized my stance, my grip, my breathing, with a focus that was brutal but precise. The other recruits saw it as punishment. I began to see it as a strange, harsh form of education. He was trying to forge something in the heat of his disdain.
One afternoon, after a session where he had made me repeat a complex disarming maneuver twenty times until my hands bled, he dismissed the others but gestured for me to stay.
He stood before me, his massive arms crossed. "You are not like the other village chaff, Ling. You have no fire in your belly for glory. No fear in your eyes at the thought of battle. What you have is colder." He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping. "You have a purpose. A sharp, pointed purpose. It makes you watchful. It makes you learn. But listen to me now: a blade with only one purpose is brittle. It will shatter on the first hard strike. To survive what is coming, you must become more than a single thrust. You must become the whole sword."
He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked away, leaving me standing alone in the dusty yard, the truth of his words settling into me heavier than any training sword.
That night, I lay on my pallet, the sounds of the barracks a familiar symphony of misery around me. I fingered the silver pendant beneath my undershirt. Become the whole sword. My mother's story whispered back: the four dragons, separate but part of a greater whole. Water, fire, earth, wind. Not just one purpose, but balance.
I was not here just for vengeance. That was the sharp, brittle point. I was here to survive. To understand. To see the Emperor's greed firsthand. To maybe, in some impossible way, protect the "quiet things" my mother had spoken of—the remnants of a peace that had been stolen.
The next morning, when training began, I did not just watch Sergeant Kang. I watched the palace itself. The comings and goings of officials on the terraces above. The patterns of the real guards, the Palace Sentinels in their polished silver armor. I listened to the gossip about the war, about the court, about the reclusive Crown Princess who was rumored to despise the conflict as much as the common people did.
My training was no longer just about mastering the sword. It was about mastering the battlefield I had willingly entered. I was being forged, yes. Not just into a soldier of the empire, but into a weapon of my own design. A weapon with a memory of dragons, a brother's face, and a father's final touch, hidden beneath the dull, anonymous armor of Ling Jingming.
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