The Art of the Invisible Strike

Chapter 4

High above the sect, there was a place called the Howling Falls. It was a massive waterfall that dropped three hundred feet into a jagged stone basin. 

The water was freezing, and the pressure was so great that it could break a man's shoulders. No one went there because the mist made the rocks slippery and dangerous.

This was Han Feng’s new training ground.

He stood at the base of the falls. The roar of the water was like a constant scream. He stripped off his shirt, revealing his lean, corded muscles.

He didn't go into the water to meditate like the other disciples did. They sat in quiet ponds, trying to feel the "spirit of the water."

Han Feng walked directly under the heaviest part of the waterfall.

SLAM!

The weight of the water hit him like a falling building. His knees buckled instantly. He was pressed down into the jagged rocks at the bottom of the basin. The cold was so sharp it felt like needles stabbing every inch of his skin.

"Stand... up..." he hissed.

He used the "Internal Resonance." He made his muscles vibrate against the weight of the water. He didn't fight the waterfall with raw strength; he matched its rhythm.

This was the "First Realm of Tempering: Copper Skin."

The goal wasn't just to be strong. The goal was to pack his muscle fibers so tightly together that they became as dense as metal. He used the waterfall as a hydraulic press. Every time a ton of water slammed into his back, he used his Qi to push back, squeezing his own tissues, hardening them, refining them.

Hour after hour, he stood there. His skin turned red, then purple, then a strange, dull brown—the color of old copper.

He practiced his movements. Under the crushing weight of the falls, he practiced the "Wave Strike." He punched the falling water. At first, his arm was swept down by the current. But as the days passed, his punches began to pierce the waterfall.

By the tenth day, when he punched, the waterfall would actually split for a split second, creating a hole in the curtain of water.

He was becoming a living weapon.

During the nights, he would sneak back to the servant quarters to eat whatever scraps he could find. He remained silent. He kept his head down. 

To everyone else, he was still the "Broken Root" trash. They didn't notice that his walk was different. They didn't notice that he no longer flinched when people yelled at him.

On the fifteenth day, Han Feng decided he needed to recover Enforcer Tie’s belt. He remembered that Tie had a set of keys and a small leather pouch. If Han Feng wanted to escape the sect later, he needed money and access.

He returned to the Discard Pit under the cover of a new moon.

The smell was worse now. He climbed down into the pit, his silver eyes cutting through the darkness. He found the pile of debris where he had hidden Tie.

He pulled the body out. The lime had already started to eat away at the clothes, but the body was mostly intact due to the strange way Han Feng had killed him, the internal liquefaction had slowed the external decay.

Han Feng reached for the belt. As he pulled the leather pouch away, Tie’s shirt tore open.

Han Feng froze.

In the pale moonlight, he saw a mark on Enforcer Tie’s collarbone. It wasn't a sect tattoo. It was a brand—a jagged circle with a vertical line through the center, crossed by three horizontal slashes.

It looked like a weeping eye.

Han Feng’s breath caught in his throat. His blood turned to ice.

He remembered that mark. He had seen it ten years ago.

He remembered the night of the fire. He remembered lying under the floorboards of his family home, watching through the cracks as men in black masks moved through the house. One of those men had stopped to wipe blood off his blade. His sleeve had pulled back, revealing that exact same mark branded onto his wrist.

The men who killed his family weren't "bandits." They were here. They were part of the Azure Cloud Sect.

"Tie was one of them," Han Feng whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of horror and rage.

He looked closer at the mark. The skin around it was slightly raised. He touched it and felt something hard underneath the skin.

He took a small, sharp piece of flint from the ground and carefully slit the skin over the brand. He reached in with his fingers and pulled out a small, metallic coin.

The coin was made of a strange, black metal that didn't reflect the light. On one side was the weeping eye. On the other side was a single word written in an ancient, flowing script:

EXORDIUM.

Suddenly, the jade pendant in Han Feng’s pocket began to vibrate violently. It wasn't the soothing, healing vibration from before. It was a warning. It was a scream of pure, biological hatred.

Han Feng looked up toward the main peaks of the sect. The lights of the inner pavilions glowed like distant stars.

"They didn't just kill my family," Han Feng said, his silver eyes burning with a terrifying light. "They have been watching me this whole time. They let me live as a slave just to make sure I was never a threat."

He gripped the black coin so hard it left an indent in his copper-hardened palm.

"Thirty days until the Culling," he said. "I’m not going to wait for them to come for me. I’m going to find out who gave Tie this coin. And then, I’m going to use their own bones to bury them."

As Han Feng climbed out of the pit, he heard a soft, rhythmic clapping. He turned to see a figure sitting on a nearby rock, hidden in the shadows.

"Impressive," a girl’s voice said. It was Su Yan, the mysterious female disciple he had seen at the market. She was holding a small, glowing vial of liquid. "But if you think a little Copper Skin is enough to stop the Exordium, you're more of a fool than I thought."