Iron Fist and Loyal Heart

Chapter 9 Dialogue between Master and Disciple

On the fifth day of his tendon-strengthening exercises, Su Xinpei could barely lift his arms.

It's not an injury. It's muscle remodeling. Old Tie Tou calls this "muscle strain"—the muscle fibers are reshaped by the force exerted during the healing process after micro-tears. The soreness isn't on the surface, but deep within the muscle belly, like someone slowly stirring between the muscle and bone with a blunt needle. When Su Xinpei was washing his face in the morning, he raised his right arm to reach the towel rack, but his arm stopped halfway. It wasn't pain; it was that his forearm flexor muscles were completely unresponsive, like someone had unplugged the power cord.

He switched the towel to his left hand and wiped his face in front of the mirror. The person in the mirror had their right arm hanging at their side, fingers trembling slightly—not a pathological tremor, but rather the forearm muscles hadn't recovered after punching two hundred times the night before. He cursed inwardly, draped the towel over the rack, put on his coat, and went to work.

When he arrived at the neighborhood office, he handed the documents to Aunt He with his left hand. Aunt He took the documents, glanced at him, said nothing, turned around, and took a bottle of liniment from her drawer, placing it on his desk. Su Xinpei thanked her, put the liniment back in the drawer, and continued typing with his left hand. Near lunch break, he went to the restroom, rolled up his sleeve to his elbow, and examined it closely in the light. There was a faint bluish-yellow mark on the outside of his forearm; it wasn't a bruise, but rather hemosiderin remaining in the fascia layer after muscle congestion subsided—it had appeared before when he haphazardly trained at the gym, but this time it was closer to the interosseous membrane. He rolled down his sleeve and turned on the tap to wash his face.

After get off work in the afternoon, he went to Tiegutang as usual. As he reached the alley entrance, an old man selling roasted sweet potatoes pushed his stove past him, the sweet aroma of the roasted sweet potatoes wafting in the cold air. Su Xinpei sniffed and turned into North First Alley.

In the courtyard, Wu Xiong was squatting in the corner repairing the cracked sandbag. He used a thick needle and nylon thread to sew a crooked patch onto the tear, the stitches a jumbled mess like fighting earthworms. Old Tie Tou sat in a wicker chair, the radio on, playing an old-fashioned storytelling program; the storyteller was recounting "The Knight-Errant's Nighttime Investigation of the Sutra Repository." When Su Xinpei pushed open the door, Old Tie Tou glanced at him: "Can't you lift your right arm?"

"I can lift it." Su Xinpei put down his backpack, moved his right shoulder, and felt a slight friction between his humerus and the glenoid fossa. "It's just slow."

"Normal. Stretching tendons takes time." Old Tie turned down the radio volume, stood up, and walked over to Su Xinpei. He pinched Su's forearm with two fingers, from the wrist to the elbow, and then from the elbow to the shoulder. Those two fingers were like two vises; with each pinch, Su Xinpei felt as if a layer of skin was being torn open, but he gritted his teeth and didn't pull away. After Old Tie finished, he said, "No injury. Tonight, throw a hundred fewer punches and add two quarters of an hour to your standing meditation. Make up for the less punching with standing meditation. After the muscles are stretched, they need to rest sufficiently to set their shape, otherwise they will shrink back." He put the wine jug he was holding on the bench and rinsed his hands at the tap.

"Standing in the meditation posture for an hour?" Su Xinpei asked.

"Stand until you don't want to ask how long you'll stand." Old Tie Tou sat back in his rattan chair, picked up his enamel mug, and took a sip. The radio was just emitting the crisp sound of a gavel hitting the table.

Su Xinpei didn't ask any more questions. He began to prepare the simple things he needed to do before standing in the stance—kicking off his shoes, rolling up his trouser legs, and tightening the sandbags on his legs. Wu Xiong was still struggling with the sandbags; the needle was stuck in the canvas and he couldn't pull it out, so he was so anxious that he bit it with his teeth. Old Tie Tou cursed at him, and Wu Xiong muttered, "Repairing a sandbag is more tiring than delivering water," and took the needle out of his mouth to poke it again.

A circle of wooden dummy dummies, an old rattan chair worn smooth by countless hands, a radio playing the gavel and the sounds of female warriors, and an old man whose words could leave you speechless—this was Tiegutang. Su Xinpei closed his eyes and stood still.

Iron Bone Hall wasn't quiet at all in the evening. The shouts of vendors selling braised vegetables echoed from the alley outside the walls, a child was practicing piano on the second floor next door, and every few minutes a light rail train rumbled overhead, accompanied by the old radio playing GG in the corner. But Su Xinpei could now find his own heartbeat amidst this noise—not by ignoring the distractions, but by placing the distractions and his heartbeat together, and then choosing to focus only on the latter.

This isn't talent. It's a filtering process the body learns after over a hundred days of standing meditation—the focus during meditation has shifted from "needing to consciously suppress environmental noise" to "automatically filtering out irrelevant signals." Just like when he helps Aunt He organize files, he can pick out the most minute page number errors from thousands of pages of documents. It's not that his eyesight has improved; it's that his attention naturally sinks into the details, and the noise recedes on its own. The grounded strength developed through standing meditation translates to focus on documents; in martial arts stances, it's to responsiveness.

After standing for about forty minutes, a steady warmth rose three fingers below his navel, ascending along the Ren meridian to his chest, then back down the sides of his spine to his perineum. The microcosmic orbit was complete. He now triggered the microcosmic orbit about 60% of the time, becoming more stable with increased focus. Tonight, the microcosmic orbit circulated slowly, taking nearly twelve minutes for one cycle, but with more force than before. It no longer detoured past his left scapula, passing directly through it. The blockages left from last week's deadlift were completely cleared.

After completing a full circle, he slowly opened his eyes. The light in the courtyard had changed from the gray-white of dusk to the dim yellow of the streetlights. Wu Xiong had repaired the sandbag and was practicing his punches; his fist slammed into the canvas with a dull thud. The storytelling on the radio had finished, and now it was the weather forecast; the announcer said there would be showers tonight.

Su Xinpei finished his practice and walked to a bench, picking up his water glass to drink. He had just swallowed a sip when he suddenly asked, "Master, that mirror image of a person that was broken in the apartment building last time—does that kind of thing only appear in the Lower City?"

Old Tietou leaned back in his wicker chair, the radio forecast predicting a temperature drop tomorrow. He reached out and turned off the radio, and the entire courtyard suddenly became so quiet that only the sound of falling leaves from the old elm tree in the corner could be heard.

“Not just.” He paused. “The mirror figures are the lowest level; they burrow into the biggest cracks. The Lower City has many cracks, dense old buildings, too many people, and a high concentration of emotions, so they love to run there. But cracks aren’t just in the Lower City. They’re in the Middle City, the Upper City, the military’s quarantine zone—and even across the strait.”

"How did the cracks come about?"

"They weren't dug out." Old Ironhead placed the enamel mug on his lap. "Some were originally weak points, never closed for thousands of years; in ancient times they were called 'ghost gates.' Some were newly cracked—subspace technology developed too quickly; several large conglomerates and the military were involved, and equipment overload caused them to tear open. And some were opened intentionally. Didn't you ask about the Fa Sect last time? Some high-level sorcerers can indeed use magic to temporarily open a crack and bring out what's inside. The cost is recorded in the name of the founder, and troops pass through the crack. But this kind of opening can't last long, because the cost increases exponentially with the time the crack remains open."

Su Xinpei put down his water glass. "You said that the person in the mirror feeds on fear. I've experienced that—I was hiding in a corner when it passed in front of me and I felt a chill on the back of my neck, but I couldn't tell if it was fear or something else."

"Fear," Old Tie Tou said bluntly. "Not fear at the conscious level, but physiological fear—a racing heart, a drop in body temperature, a surge of adrenaline. The body itself is afraid when it smells danger; you don't need to agree." He glanced at Su Xinpei. "Last time in the apartment building, I made you keep your eyes open so you could experience this: fear itself isn't the enemy; the loss of control it brings is. You didn't lose control that day, so you can sit here and review things with me now. Someone else might have collapsed on the spot."

Su Xinpei was silent for a moment, then recalled the complaints about "talking in one's ear" in the files. "But the residents I visited last week only heard strange noises at night; they weren't directly injured. How does that thing feed?"

"Marginalized feeding." Old Ironhead put the water bottle on the ground, pointed to his temple, and said, "They don't necessarily have to pounce on you to eat—as long as the crack is big enough, they can suck directly from several walls away. Fear and anxiety are two outlets on the same pipe. It doesn't necessarily have to drive someone crazy, causing them to suffer from insomnia, palpitations, and nightmares, but that's enough for them to slowly gnaw on for a while. If two or three people in a building are anxious, they can raise a small one. If a group of small ones gather for a long time, they can summon a big one. Like a group of night insects attracted by the same street lamp."

"A ring," Su Xinpei said. "The addresses of those complainants form a ring." He drew a circle on the ground with his finger. "The farm machinery factory is right in the middle."

"So you've found your hideout." Old Tie Tou nodded. "The Beihe Agricultural Machinery Factory has been abandoned for seven years, and something has been lurking underground all this time, never cleared away. During this time, Beilian was conducting subspace synchronization tests, and the signals from the sea activated it. Its perception range expanded outward, and it began scanning the surrounding residents. It doesn't speak, it doesn't show itself, but it keeps the people nearby awake—a typical parasitic node on the periphery of a rift. This isn't an active attack; it's breathing. It exhales subspace products on the other side of the rift, and the people around it happen to be within its exhalation range."

"So the residents didn't come into direct contact with it, but rather inhaled what it expelled."

Old Tie Tou emptied the water from the enamel mug, took out a cigarette from his pocket, and put it in his mouth without lighting it. "Your report was correct—this matter requires the Special Affairs Bureau to clean up. Going alone wouldn't be of any use; you'd only get yourself killed and lose experience points." He thought for a moment, then added, "But you were able to find it because you're familiar with the terrain. You live there, you work there, and you've visited those residents. You used the experience of the neighborhood committee, not the experience of the old Wu. That's your strength."

Su Xinpei twirled the water glass in his hand. "Aunt He knows I submitted the report." This was the first time he had mentioned Aunt He tonight.

Old Tie Tou didn't answer. After a while, he asked, "Are you afraid she'll stop you if she finds out?"

Su Xinpei shook his head. "She didn't stop me. She seemed to think I should do it." He recounted how Aunt He had asked him to organize the files of unusual complaints that day. After listening, Old Tietou took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and said, "Aunt He has been a clerk for thirty years; she knows better than anyone how deep the waters are in the Lower City. She didn't stop you because she thinks you can handle things." He tucked the cigarette behind his ear. "Being able to handle things is a very high compliment. Your great-great-grandfather never received those two words until his death."

Su Xinpei suddenly remembered something. He hesitated for a moment, then took the ring out of his coat's inner pocket. It lay in his palm, the fine lines on its inner side gleaming with a faint, cold, bluish-gray light under the streetlamp. "Master, this was left by our grandmaster. You said last time that it 'recognizes people.' It and the panel—"

"Alright." Old Ironhead pressed his hand down, pushing the ring back into his palm. The push was smooth, like moving a chess piece from the center to the corner of a chessboard. "The panel doesn't need explanation. I can see the progress you've made from standing meditation every day, and I have my own plans. Everyone has their own destiny; you were chosen by him, not me. But remember one thing clearly—that old madman was an extremely complex person. He hated the Dharma Cult to the core, and in the end, what he did was not much different from what he hated most—the Dharma Cult's founder. He left this ring to you, signing a contract for you without your knowledge—not with the soldiers, but with his own legacy. He gave you the panel, and the price was for you to complete what he hadn't finished. If one day you want to get rid of it, I won't blame you. But if you want to accept it, you have to be prepared to be led far by its roots at any time."

Su Xinpei held the ring, feeling its lukewarm texture against the lines of his palm. He didn't ask what his master had left unfinished—he knew that if Old Iron Head wanted to say, he would have already done so.

"Why are you bringing it up?" Old Tie Tou stopped himself, stood up, walked to the corner, took the sandbag off the old hook, and threw it to Wu Xiong. "The patch is too crooked, take it apart and sew it again."

Wu Xiong hugged the sandbag, looking miserable.

Su Xinpei put the ring back into the inner bag and walked to the center of the courtyard. He stood in the stance for an hour, did one round of boxing, and then stood for an extra half hour to finish. Usually, he would go back after finishing his practice, but today, after finishing and sitting down to rest, Old Iron Head suddenly spoke up again.

"Kid, you asked me last time what exactly the old martial arts were about. Let me tell you today."

Su Xinpei raised his head.

"Old martial arts isn't a single subject." Old Iron Head stretched out his hand, bending his fingers one by one. "It's four foundations: tendons, skin, bones, and qi. It's not about learning these four things in order; it's about the four layers of a person's body. Some people start with tendons, some with bones—your grandmaster started with bones, making them as hard as iron. On his first day of stance training, he could kick a wooden stake askew. That's because his bones were hard, not because he was strong. You're different. You developed qi through stance training first. As the qi sinks downwards, your tendons become passive. That's why I had you train your tendons first, then your skin once they're properly twisted, and then your bones once you have the foundation of the Water and Fire Immortal Robe. It's not that I wanted to teach you this way; it's just that this is the only path you can take."

"Do the other three families have other training methods?" Su Xinpei asked.

"Yes. The new martial arts follow the standard seven-stage process: first the tendons, then the skin, then the bones. The military research institute has drawn up the diagrams. The old martial arts don't follow this; it's passed down from person to person, and the path is determined by the master's assessment of the bones." Old Tietou carefully placed the enamel mug down. "The alchemy is even different. You can ask Master Chen later—the qi-refining method is from the same source as the old martial arts but in the opposite direction. The old martial arts focuses on attacking outwards, while the alchemy focuses on gathering inwards. The Dharma Sect simply doesn't practice it; he just signs off on it. You should keep that in mind."

Su Xinpei mentally reviewed these words. He thought about the positions of the two progress bars on the panel—the tendon-strengthening exercise had just begun, but the standing meditation progress was steadily increasing. It wasn't the path arranged by the panel, but rather determined by his own physical reaction.

"So what is my weakness right now?" Su Xinpei asked.

Old Tie Tou glanced at him. "Your biggest weakness is that you're still asking 'What's your weakness?'" He stood up, emptied the water from the enamel mug, went into the house, and waved to Su Xinpei with his back turned. "Go back to sleep. Make up for the hundred punches you missed today tomorrow."

Su Xinpei grabbed his coat from the bench and put it on; the half-used bottle of liniment was still in his backpack. When he reached the alley entrance, it hadn't rained yet, but the air already carried the earthy smell of pre-rain. In the distance, the old chimney of the Beihe Old District Agricultural Machinery Factory was just a darker shadow in the night, and scattered lights shone from the windows of the surrounding houses. In a few windows, reflected in the old chimney's shadow, warm yellow light leaked through the gaps in the curtains. At this hour, some people were cooking at home, some were helping their children with homework, and some were sitting on the edge of their beds, lost in thought.

He stood there for a moment, recalling Old Tie Tou's last words, and then he remembered that Aunt He hadn't said anything when she placed the liniment on his table that day. He lifted his backpack up and turned into the alley leading home.

He's going to throw a hundred more punches. He'll do it tomorrow. Maybe the day after.

But the light on in that window won't automatically go out just because there's a chimney next to it.