by Jeremy Bai
Sunan strode in, pulling Sun Mai along with him. They were led past the facade to a staircase lit by oil lamps, which they began to descend.
“Fan Sunan!” Sun Mai growled as they proceeded down. “Enough with the lies!”
“Lies?”
“I had too much to drink? I never drink until the day is over and I’m finished with all scholarly pursuits. Drinking clouds the mind. It confuses the soul. If I drank, how could I ever keep my thoughts straight?”
Sunan clenched his teeth and declined to respond. He and Sun Mai followed the staircase downward until they reached a short corridor. After another locked door that required the same password, they reached their destination.
It was a large room filled with people, a crowd that included merchants and farmers, soldiers and beggars. The din of conversation filled the air, as well as a melange of sawdust, sweat, alcohol, and dried blood. In the center of the room was a raised circular stone platform roughly five meters wide and a meter tall. Most of the people in the room milled around the platform itself, although there were others clustered in the balconies that ringed the room, plus some small private booths interspersed along the balconies.
Before Sunan and Sun Mai could even take in the whole scene, a skinny, shifty-eyed man limped over. “You’re Fan Sunan?”
Sunan gulped and nodded. “That’s me.”
“Don’t you have something flashier to go by? Fan Sunan sounds like the name of a farmer.”
“Just call me Sunan. Leave out the Fan part.”
The man examined him suspiciously for a moment before nodding. Looking at Sun Mai, he said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Scholar Sun Mai, student of the erudite, ponderer of truth, friend to the—”
“He’s my agent,” interrupted Sunan.
The man frowned. “Very well. Fan Sunan, you come with me. ‘Agent,’ you can stand in the managers’ section over there. Tell them you’re with a fighter and that I sent you. I’m Rat-Hearted Li.”
Without waiting for a response, the man began to limp off toward the raised platform.
“This is it, Sunan,” Sun Mai said. “May Xian Nu Shen guide you.”
Sunan glanced over. “You believe in the Enlightened Goddess?”
“Not really, but you’ll surely need some divine help up there tonight.”
“What? You were the one who said I should do this! Fast reflexes, you said. Instincts!”
Sun Mai cleared his throat. “I see someone over in the managers’ section waving to me. Good luck!”
Shaking his head, Sunan followed Rat-Hearted Li over to the platform. They came to a stop on the north side, where a set of benches were lined up. The benches were about half full; eight men were seated there, all of them rough-looking characters.
Rat-Hearted Li spat onto the sawdust floor. “Since you’re new, you’ll be the first fight of the night. Do you know the rules?”
“No killing?” Sunan said with a shrug.
Rat-Hearted Li rolled his eyes and then proceeded to recite a long explanation of various rules, including which types of strikes were allowed or not, how points were awarded, grounds for disqualification, and other complicated topics.
During the several minutes it took him to explain everything, the crowd slowly grew larger, and more tough-looking men showed up and sat down on the nearby benches.
Sunan’s heart was starting to pound. The previous day, Sun Mai had somehow convinced him that they could both make a lot of money by fighting in underground martial arts matches. Sunan was now unsure of why he possibly believed Sun Mai’s rambling explanation of why it would be safe and how there was nothing to worry about.
This is foolish, he thought to himself. I learned a few silly fighting moves from a soldier, and almost got killed using them. What happened with those street thugs was just blind luck. This is ridiculous. I’m going to get myself killed here. Look at these guys. That one has only one eye. That other one has more scars than I have fingers and toes. I have to get out of here!
He took a deep breath and was just about to turn and leave when he realized that at some point Rat-Hearted Li had left his side and was now standing on the fighting platform.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome!” he cried out. “This week’s fighting platform tournament will begin now!” His words were met with a few cheers and a spattering of applause. “The first fight will feature a returning champion from last week, Chen Zhisheng, the, er… Bloodstained Murderous Bear!”
More applause could be heard as a man shouldered his way past Sunan and then leapt up onto the platform. He was stocky, with a patchy beard and glaring eyes. He beat his chest a few times and roared as he stalked back and forth on the platform.
Sunan’s heart sank down into his chest. What am I doing?
“His adversary will be… the, er… new guy… Sunan.” Rat-Hearted Li’s somewhat anticlimactic conclusion was met with the sound of one person applauding. Sunan looked over to see Sun Mai clapping his hands and nodding enthusiastically.
Swallowing again, Sunan shook his head, walked over, and vaulted up onto the platform.
Rat-Hearted Li climbed off of the platform, walking over to stand behind a wide desk located off to the side. Perched on the desk was an incense burner and a candle, and stacked next to that was a large pile of incense, each stick carefully cut in half. He took out one of the incense sticks and placed it carefully into the incense burner.
“Begin!” he shouted, and at the same time, he lit the incense stick with the candle.
Before Sunan even knew what was happening, Chen Zhisheng let out a bellowing roar and rushed toward him. The fighting platform was only five meters wide, so in the blink of an eye, the man’s fist was flying through the air directly toward Sunan’s face.
He instinctively ducked back and could almost feel the hairs on the man’s knuckles brushing against his chin.
As he stepped back, Chen Zhisheng staggered a few steps to the left, thrown off balance by his wild swing.
Sunan clenched his jaw and thought back to the very few things he had learned about fighting. Chen Zhisheng settled back into a fighting stance, clenching his fists and roaring again.
I need to focus, thought Sunan. Clear my mind. Observe his movements.
For some reason, he thought to utilize the mind-clearing techniques that he had practiced so often while meditating. Chen Zhisheng began to charge him again, and he flushed his mind of all extraneous thought.
Everything became clearer. He saw Chen Zhisheng’s right shoulder twisting back and knew that the man was going to swing just as wildly as before, and with his right hand.
At first, Sunan’s hands began to curl into fists, but then he remembered something his master had taught him. Oftentimes, the best way to end a fight wasn’t to use your own power to defeat the opponent, it was to use the opponent’s power against them. Although that advice had proved useless against the soldiers of the Demon Emperor, for some reason, Sunan couldn’t help but feel that there was some truth to it. His hands opened, exposing his palms.
As Chen Zhisheng closed in, something else happened.
Sunan was so used to manipulating that spark of energy inside of him that it happened again, without him even intending to do so. The energy flared to life deep within him, and then, because his thoughts were focused on his left palm, it surged through the passageways in his body in that direction.
As Chen Zhisheng’s fist approached, Sunan leaned slightly to the side and then reached out with his left palm. Bolstered by the energy, his palm moved faster than he expected, and with even more force than he had intended.
He originally meant to simply use Chen Zhisheng’s momentum to knock him to the ground. Instead, what happened was that as the wild fist swung through the air past Sunan, an explosive slap landed on the man’s shoulder. A miserable shriek could be heard as he was knocked violently off his feet. He flew off the platform, spinning through the air to land in the benches next to the platform.
A crash could be heard, as well as several bellows of rage as a handful of the rough-looking characters were all sent into a heap of arms and legs by the spinning Chen Zhisheng.
The entire underground warehouse chamber filled with silence for the span of about four seconds. Then it erupted into a huge commotion.
Rat-Hearted Li leapt up onto the platform, which Sunan would have found surprising considering the man’s previous limp. However, he was so stunned that he could do nothing more than look down at his own open palm.
“A stunning knockout by Sunan!” yelled Rat-Hearted Li. “He’s a powerhouse! A warrior! A… a dragon among men! Sunan the Dragon! SUNAN THE DRAGON!”
The following minutes were a blur.
Sunan was hustled off the platform and led through a series of formalities that he forgot. He barely noticed what was happening around them. Instead, he was reviewing what had happened during the fight. He thought about the mental state he had been in and how he had directed the energy to his hand. He remembered the movement, the weight of his feet, the angle of his arms and legs.
Before he realized it, he and Sun Mai were back out on the street, and Sun Mai was pulling him along by the arm at a virtual run.
“What’s going on?” Sunan asked. “Where are we going?”
Sun Mai looked over his shoulder and smiled. “We’re going to a feast!”
Chapter 4: A Sissy to Fight
They truly did attend a feast, though it was not a feast of rich, delicious fare. An enterprising establishment near the docks offered never-ending food for a cheap price. Called the Heavenly Meat Palace, it was not very clean, and it was filled with sweaty sailors and drunken soldiers.
The food was simply prepared but plentiful. There were skewers of suspicious-looking meat served by the handful, boiled yellow beans, spicy prawns from the nearby river, and loads of flatbread. Most of the food was unseasoned, but Sun Mai was aware of that ahead of time and purchased a pack of peppers and spices from a nearby vendor.
The restaurant also provided endless pots of cheap yellow wine, which Sun Mai began to down with a vengeance.
At one point, Sunan thought of something and asked, “How are we paying for this?”
Sun Mai stared at him for a moment. “Seriously? Did you forget? We’re rich! You won! Do you hear me? You won!” He reached into his robe and then threw a purse down onto the table. It landed with a clunk. “That’s an entire string of cash!”
Sunan nearly choked on a mouthful of grilled meat. “A string of cash? You mean a thousand spades?”
Sun Mai grinned and drank another mouthful of yellow wine. “Like I said, we’re rich!”
“But I thought you said we would earn 250 spades?”
Sun Mai chuckled. “That was if you lost.”
Sunan’s mouth dropped open. “You expected me to lose?”
Sun Mai stuck his chin up. “Of course not. I was just prepared for the worst.” His eyes flickered, and he looked around. “Now tell me, how did you do it? Was it… magic? Black magic? Most men of learning don’t believe in such things, but I’m no ordinary man. So… was it?”
Sunan guffawed. “Magic? Magic’s not even real! No, it was… I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Don’t know how to explain it?” Sun Mai asked incredulously. “What does that mean? You knocked that buffoon a full ten meters through the air! The physician said his arm was broken, plus three or four ribs, although that could have been from the fall. If it wasn’t magic, then what was it?”
Sunan frowned and picked up a pot of yellow wine. After taking a long swig, he said, “Something happened to me out in the mountains…”
Sun Mai chuckled. “I guessed as much from your clothing, if you could even go so far as to call it clothing. More like rags, really. Dirty rags, or even—”
“Anyway,” said Sunan, “when I was out in the mountains alone, I… I felt something. Something that’s part of nature, I think, but then… it became a part of me. It felt like an energy or a wind of some sort, like air. It began to flow through my body, and then it started to grow. Somehow I pushed that wind-air energy into my hand, and… well, you saw what happened.”
“Wind energy, huh?” Sun Mai cracked open a spicy prawn and devoured it. A distracted look appeared in his eyes. “Wind. Energy. Wind and energy. Windy energy. Energetic wind? Energetic windiness? Windy energeticness? No, that’s not right. Hmmm. Qi. Classical Fei. Qi. Yes, that’s right.” His gaze turned sharp. “You know, not many people can read Classical Fei nowadays, let alone speak it. Were you aware that in ancient times, people believed that the whole world was made of only five elements?
“Sounds funny, of course, because later that was proven wrong. However, in Classical Fei, the character for ‘air’ was the same one they claimed was one of the five elements, a type of energy that kept the world in motion. In Classical Fei, the pronunciation of that character is ‘qi.’ Wind-air energy is a pretty cumbersome term, so why not just call it qi?”
“Chee?”
“Qi,” Sun Mai said, correcting his pronunciation slightly.
“Qi,” echoed Sunan. He nodded. “I like it.”
The conversation veered off in other directions after that, and the more yellow wine they consumed, the stranger the conversation got. Eventually the night transformed into one long blur, much of which Sunan was later convinced was a hallucination.
The following morning, his pounding head was filled with images of himself and Sun Mai singing songs with a group of pretty girls with too much makeup, an argument with a beggar over a melon, and something about a tiger.
It took hours to recover. When his head was finally clear and his stomach settled, he had a more serious discussion with Sun Mai about what had happened and what they would do going forward.
With the seemingly vast fortune they had won, they rented a small room in an inn near the docks, not too far from the Heavenly Meat Palace, which was surely destined to become one of their favorite destinations.
Sun Mai explained more to him about the underground platform duels. Everyone got paid, even the losers. However, the winners could earn exorbitant sums. According to Sun Mai, if he could win the next fight, they would get 1,500 spades, not just 1,000. And the numbers increased from there. Rumor had it that the top fighter, who went by the flashy nickname Golden Immortal, earned fifty strings of cash per fight and never lost.
At Sun Mai’s urging, he began to spend most mornings meditating and practicing with his qi. He also began to teach Sun Mai the meditation techniques from his village.
Five days passed. On the morning of the sixth day, one day before the next underground platform tournament, Sun Mai finally made a breakthrough.
He let out a whoop of excitement and leapt to his feet.
“I did it! I felt it! The qi! This is incredible! What do I do now?”
Sunan sat down cross-legged next to him and began to instruct him in the most basic ways of manipulating the qi inside of the body.
That night, Sunan had a strange dream. He heard laughter, maniacal laughter. And then there was a black hurricane whipping across the lands, flaying trees, sending men and soldiers flying about. He woke up in a cold sweat and couldn’t go back to sleep for nearly an hour.
The following day, after a morning spent meditating and circulating qi, Sunan and Sun Mai went to the market to buy some new clothing. Sun Mai upgraded his scholar’s robes to silk, and Sunan purchased a tunic and trousers of sturdy hemp, something he felt was more befitting of a rough-and-tumble duel.
Sun Mai tried to convince him to buy a jacket with a dragon embroidered on the back, but Sunan refused.
“But you’re Sunan the Dragon!” exclaimed Sun Mai.
Sunan merely snorted and continued on through the market.
Later, as they ate an afternoon meal, Sun Mai asked, “So, who was that girl?” He raised his eyebrow suggestively.
“Girl?” Sunan replied, confused.
“Come, come, no need to b
e so shy. When I got up last night to talk to the moon, I saw a girl in your room last night. Gray robe? Pretty? Had a sword strapped to her back?”
Sunan stared for a moment. “Hold on, what did you just say? Talk to the moon?”
“Yeah, don’t you talk to the moon?”
Sunan shook his head. “Uh, no. Were you drinking again? There was no girl.”
Sun Mai gave a cold snort. “If you don’t want to admit it, fine. She was pretty, though. You have my approval.”
Sunan shook his head and continued eating.
Later that night, they found themselves once again in the underground warehouse. Last time they had come, people had paid no more attention to them than they would a pair of flies. This time, eyes turned in their direction, and the buzz of conversation rose up in the room.
Rat-Hearted Li appeared at their side. “Greetings, Young Masters. Young Dragon, are you ready for your fight?”
“Just Sunan. There’s no need for the ‘dragon’ part.”
“Er, very well, Young Master Sunan, please come with me to the fighter’s corner. Young Master Sun, a table is waiting for you in the managers’ corner.”
There were other fighters sitting on the benches, who eyed Sunan coldly as he approached.
“Your performance last week was spectacular,” Rat-Hearted Li said, the words pouring out of his mouth. “Chen Zhisheng is still bedridden! And from a single blow, at that. Because of the stunning fashion with which you achieved victory, you moved much higher in the rankings. You will fight fourth, against Wang Li, the Killer of Daolu.”
“Killer?” Sunan said. “I thought it was forbidden to kill your opponent?”
“Of course it is, but you know… accidents can happen.”
After leading Sunan to the benches, Rat-Hearted Li limped off into the crowd. Sunan looked over at the champions’ corner and saw a man wearing a golden robe. Presumably, he was the famed Golden Immortal, the reigning champion.
Before long, the fights proceeded. This was Sunan’s first time to truly watch people in organized combat. The first match was between a burly man who looked like a sailor and a shorter but even stockier man who was obviously a soldier. Seeing them exchange blows, Sunan felt lucky that his opponent last time had been Chen Zhisheng. The sailor and the soldier were clearly no strangers to a fight.