First thing I did was step inside, drop the tea box on the table, and bark at the security AI: "Scan this crap!"

  Then I stepped right back out again.

  I wasn’t going to trust that gift, not even by a millimetre.

  I loitered in the corridor, keeping my distance from my own door, waiting for Patel to show up.

  Without Soro, he’d become Mendoza’s go-to errand boy.

  Three minutes passed. Five. Ten. By the twelfth, Patel finally appeared in the corridor: full armour, visor up. We exchanged a few half-joking lines, then I opened the door and he lowered his visor before stepping inside.

  We didn’t speak after that.

  He took the box, and then he was gone.

  Only once the door closed behind him did I feel my body begin to rex. Muscles loosened. Shoulders dropped. My brain finally stopped offering up every possible outcome, all of which ended in my death.

  At least that part of the day was over.

  The rest followed the usual routine: Rest. Lunch. More rest. This time without the usual theory dive in the archives.

  Then Armour Hall. Bde Garden. Three ampoules of essence.

  Since that first run, the one with enlightenment, I’d been on a lucky streak. Every day, without fail, I’d gained +4. I couldn’t even remember the st time things had gone this smoothly.

  That’s what made it easier to tolerate the failures in the training hall.

  Although, I had hope that things were finally starting to shift.

  This time, for some reason, I expected a setback with the root — a +3 instead of +4, which, naturally, would’ve meant a breakthrough in the hall. A kind of mental pcebo. Self-programming.

  I’d been meditating on sharpness and danger to boost the essence effect. Now I decided to switch to cyclicity. Less intense, maybe, but a fundamental quality, without which every attempt in the training hall kept falling apart.

  I got a +4.

  Which meant, by the logic of my own internal programme, I couldn’t expect a breakthrough with Bde Qi anytime soon.

  No mental buff this round.

  Still, I carried the sensation from the Garden with me into the hall. The feeling of a closed loop, energy flowing in a circle.

  My qi had sharpness now. That much I was sure of. But I couldn’t get rid of the hardness. Hardness had become a part of me. I had the sense that it was somehow connected to the Crystallised Bck Lotus I’d used when breaking through to Second Stage.

  Its property was the splitting and yering. What if that was affecting not only my shield, but my Bde Qi too? What if, instead of a single coherent flow, I was pulling along dozens of tiny, micron-wide streams, or however energy units are officially measured?

  Does energy even have thickness?

  It definitely has physical presence.

  Still, if I wasn’t working with one flow but dozens, that might expin the detonations. It’s a lot easier to loop one stream than ten.

  All this theorising and deep-diving into the nature of qi was, of course, useful for my cultivation, and could potentially lead to new moments of enlightenmebt, but from a practical point of view, I just needed to do it.

  Like Eriksen said — it’s like riding a bike.

  Training began with the standard demonstration. Eriksen, as always, gave me the model cut I was supposed to match. One strike with a paper bde, slicing through the rope like the blue fibres were made of water, not pstic.

  He had no problem with circution. Bde Qi was already radiating from his weapon during the wind-up.

  Honestly, I felt it even before he started the swing.

  For me, it only came at the moment of impact, and even then, barely.

  I picked up my knife.

  Stance. Swing. Ssh.

  Same centimetre and a half of cut.

  Same detonation.

  The bde split cleanly in two, one half caught in the rope.

  I sighed and reached for the next knife.

  Eriksen’s circution started earlier.

  I raised the bde more slowly, keeping the energetic component moving at the same pace.

  Reactor. Shoulder. Forearm. Wrist. Bde. Tip. Anchor point near the guard. Tip again...

  What the hell?

  I froze and looked at the raised bde.

  It was moving on its own. The qi inside the weapon was flowing. And it wasn’t one single loop, it was an infinity symbol bzing at the speed of light!

  But the moment I so much as twitched the bde…

  Pop!

  The bde cracked.

  "That’s something new!" Eriksen said cheerfully. "Let’s hope it turns into progress. So, what did you do different?"

  "Let’s go back to the very beginning," I said. "Remember when you told me not to saturate the bde without movement? Well, my qi was circuting without movement."

  "And then it fell apart."

  "But it was circuting!"

  "But it fell apart!" Eriksen mimicked me mockingly. "Look, maintaining circution inside the bde is one of the hardest exercises for a Bde cultivator. It’s not beginner-level stuff!"

  "Two things. One — I’m not a Bde cultivator. I’m a cultivator of Fist and Air. And in those, I’m not a beginner."

  Eriksen paused, thoughtful.

  "Ah, screw it. Why not. But this time you’re using a metal bde. I remember your reasoning against it before, but yesterday and today your detonations have been too weak to send paper flying, so I’m confident we won’t be dealing with shrapnel this time."

  He wasn’t wrong.

  I nodded.

  Eriksen gave the basket of paper gear a nudge with his foot.

  "You can still warm up with these."

  He walked off, and I figured it was worth trying again with paper before moving to steel.

  I grabbed a knife, and my hand instinctively started the motion. Damn thing had already become a reflex.

  I froze my hand in pce mid-air and attempted just the energetic part. At least, I tried to, but without the motion, I couldn’t find the tip. It was as if it no longer existed.

  No detonation, but no success either. Just a swirling mess of unstable qi in the bde and my arms. Had to vent it out.

  Eriksen returned with four steel knives.

  No idea how to take that, or what had pushed him to bring four if he really thought the detonations were too weak to matter.

  I didn’t want to admit I’d already failed while he was away, so I offered an alternative.

  "How about a compromise? I’ll just slow it down as much as possible."

  "Ah. So you couldn’t do it without movement," he said, immediately seeing through me.

  I had to admit it.

  I picked up a steel knife.

  Stance.

  Not a swing — a slow, deliberate lift.

  I didn’t push the qi. I simply opened the path, and the energy rushed in a little too eagerly. No, it wasn’t a full-fledged channel, not yet, but over the past few days I’d carved out something like a rough trench for the flow: core, shoulder, forearm, wrist, bde, tip…

  I managed to find it again. The tip felt once more like an anchor point. The one near the guard was harder to lock in, but I got them linked and spun a current of qi between the two.

  Not as brightly as Eriksen. Not as confidently. But…

  One second. Two. Three…

  Microdetonation.

  Not even a sound. More like a sudden, hard internal jerk inside the bde. The knife didn’t shatter, didn’t crack, didn’t shear apart. Even the tremor in my arm was manageable.

  "Now we’re getting somewhere," Eriksen muttered. "Try it again. But switch hands this time. No need to murder the right one."

  And that’s how the rest of the session went.

  Slow movements let me hold the circution, sometimes for two seconds, sometimes even five. But every time, it ended in a microdetonation.

  By the end of the session, I did end up killing one knife. The st detonation split the cutting edge from the tip down by a few centimetres. A thin sliver of steel peeled slightly away, like a second bde tracing the main one.

  Technically, I hadn’t achieved what I wanted. The only real win was that I wouldn’t have to drag myself to the infirmary. No swelling, just that dull fatigue in the arms you get after a long, hard day of manual bour.

  As for progress with Bde Qi?

  Let’s call it… questionable. And that’s with the Bde root growing steadily, even eagerly.

  I was leaving the hall still deep in thought, when Mendoza’s call pulled me out of it.

  Master was inviting me for tea.

  Not for any urgent reason, just that I was supposed to collect a different tea. Tao’s tea.

  The scan had confirmed it was completely safe. More than that, it was a mass-market product. Not trash, technically. Purple-tier. But nothing compared to what I was used to.

  With this gift, the ritual mattered more than the contents. It wasn’t about the tea. It was about the old man hammering into Tao’s thick skull that the little bastard had no right to reignite the conflict.

  I didn’t think this would actually change him, but Mendoza was convinced Tao wouldn’t touch me again.

  Personally, that is.

  Informally? Now he had one more reason to hate me. And Mendoza didn’t say a word about ‘not targeting me through someone else.’

  So what did I get?

  A not-so-expensive tea, and a potentially brand-new headache.

  Time to wrap this up and head home. I missed my people. Even Zo the nympho.

  Mendoza had stayed out of the whole conflict, figured it had burned itself out. She didn’t want to draw more attention to my name.

  Besides, the old master had already noticed me, so if anything happened, it would be on Tao.

  Which meant I now had to worry about demons trying something and bming it on Tao.

  Nice.

  I stopped by the Armour Hall, dropped my iron, hit the metro, and headed straight for Mendoza.

  Her apartments, like Novak’s, were in the elite block. The ptform was usually empty, and the carriage practically private.

  Today there were three of us: me, and two other Second-periods. We sat at opposite ends of the carriage, and when the train started slowing down, we all got up, heading for different doors.

  The train braked. Behind my doors a familiar face appeared. Zhou Xiangyun. The girl with the sword who had forced Tao to apologise.

  "Hey!" I said.

  And immediately felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. That sharp, cold sense of incoming danger condensed in the air in front of me.

  A second before she drew that fancy elven sword of hers with a practiced arc, I Monkey-unched myself back, smming hard into the rear wall of the train.

  "What the hell?!" I shouted, gncing left, right…

  The two cadets hadn’t moved. They weren’t leaving. They were blocking both ends of the carriage.

  The girl with the drawn bde and the cold little smile stepped inside.

  I Monkey-dodged again — left, only because my right leg had better footing. I needed space between me and that bde.

  That’s how I ended up between her and the other cadet. Didn’t pn on staying there long.

  So I dove head-first into the window.

  It hurt.

  When I came to on the floor, my enemies were ughing at my idiocy. The doors closed, and the train started moving again.

  Next stop should be the depot or some kind of maintenance station.

  I gnced at my interface, and immediately noticed the bckout. No signal.

  All I could do was hope the emergency beacon still worked.

  I pushed the arm button with my hand. No point hiding it now.

  Zhou Xiangyun, or whoever the hell she really was, read my movements perfectly.

  “We’re jamming all frequencies, Jake. Surprise! No one’s coming to help.”

  I ran through the options in my head.

  There was no point stalling now. This was what the trump cards were for.

  I stood.

  I sprang.

  And pulled my armour from the spatial pocket.

  Steel soles hit the floor with a heavy click.

  “I love surprises!” I said.

  MaksymPachesiuk