"My master and your mother were only inner-door disciples of the grandmaster," Dong Xin said.
Personally transmitted disciples? Inner-door disciples? Fang Yu noted it silently.
Because of his mother, guided by his father, he had looked into the old martial inheritances of the age before the Great Sky-Burning Era. In those days, followers were generally divided into registered disciples, inner-door disciples and personally transmitted disciples.
A registered disciple often had his name on a list and nothing more; he might never be taught in person.
An inner-door disciple was taught as a matter of course, with a formal ceremony of acceptance; the gifts at the three festivals and two birthdays were not to be neglected, and if the disciple erred the master carried some of the responsibility.
A personally transmitted disciple was a true inheritor: master and disciple lived together for years, teaching by day and night, the master feeling out his bones and correcting his frame, seeking herbs for his training, preparing what he needed for his marriage — scarcely different from a son, with benefits and duties matched. If the master grew old and frail and an enemy came to the door, it was the personally transmitted disciple who had to meet him.
Because a personally transmitted disciple mattered so much, and cost the master so much, a martial teacher could generally take only two or three in a lifetime, five at the most.
Natural gifts, temperament, family background — all of it came under examination.
In the age of starry-sky martial arts the whole civilization taught the martial path on a vast scale, and nothing was as strict as in ancient times; but the titles of inner-door and personally transmitted disciple were still hard to come by.
"For strength, Martial Uncle Jiang Wei should be at Level 39 by now, with extremely high skill — Great Completion of Inner Vista, most likely."
"A High-Rank Warrior like me at Level 31 is a mere child among High-Rank Warriors. Facing Martial Uncle Jiang Wei, I'd probably be finished in one move," Senior Brother Dong said cheerfully. "And Martial Uncle Jiang Wei isn't sixty yet. He has hopes of becoming an Earth Warrior."
Fang Yu grew more startled the more he heard.
Great Completion of Inner Vista? That level of martial skill was genuinely terrifying; a great many High-Rank Warriors had not even reached Great Completion in Subtlety... Between two High-Rank Warriors the difference in strength could be a world apart.
"The grandmaster has a great many followers."
"By our third generation they've long since scattered — some to the New Moon, some to other provinces or other countries," Dong Xin said. "So there isn't much contact between us."
Fang Yu nodded.
Much as with relatives, where one generation is close and the next are cousins... a school's line was the same, especially in this age, when a disciple had no bond of personal dependence on his master.
The further down it ran, the more distant it naturally became.
That he and Senior Brother Dong were close was because his mother Bai Qing had been on good terms with Martial Uncle Pang Hong, and both families lived in Wuling City... so the two of them had known each other from childhood.
"Still."
"Now that you've stepped back into a warrior's circles, junior brother, as you grow stronger and become a High-Rank Warrior in time, those martial uncles and the brothers and sisters of your own generation will get in touch of their own accord," Dong Xin said, smiling. "Take me — in the two years since I graduated early, several dozen of the school have contacted me."
"You have to be strong before those connections are connections."
Fang Yu nodded.
Before this, Senior Brother Dong had never mentioned the school to him... not because he did not care, but because mentioning it would have served no purpose.
Without strength, forcing a connection is meaningless.
Yourself — that is the root.
"Xiao Long and Siyue awakening Upper Aspects at the same time, two Upper Aspects in one house, I've heard about that too. It caused quite a stir in Wuling City's martial circles," Dong Xin said, smiling. "In fact I feel your talent for skill is more outrageous than an Upper Aspect. This branch of yours is bound to rise."
"It may not be long before even the grandmaster hears of it," Dong Xin said.
"The grandmaster?" Fang Yu started.
Grandmaster Pei Fan.
A strong man even among Earth Warriors.
"Is my talent for skill really that strong?" Fang Yu said, a little hesitantly.
"An Upper Aspect absorbs Star Force with enormous efficiency and makes a High-Rank Warrior easily. Even with poor talent for skill, given a few drugs and treasures, a man can be a Level 39 warrior by around thirty," Dong Xin said, turning instead to Upper Aspects. "That's beyond me. By my own reckoning I'd need another ten years to reach Level 39."
"Another ten years?" Fang Yu was taken aback.
Senior Brother Dong was already Level 31.
"In the grading of the martial path, every ten levels is a great threshold," Dong Xin said, smiling. "Take this past month of yours: from Level 15 to Level 20, your punch force went up by nearly a thousand kilograms."
"That wasn't skill alone — the drugs and treasures must have cost a good deal too."
Fang Yu nodded.
"But from Level 20 to Level 30, each single level is a gap of 800 kilograms of basic punch force — comparable to the whole distance from Level 16 to Level 20," Dong Xin said.
"At Level 30, basic punch force is 10,000 kilograms."
"And at Level 39 the standard is 55,000 kilograms — so in the civilization's grading, from Level 30 to Level 39, each level is a gap of 5,000 kilograms."
"You think that in training to Level 31 I've covered well over half the road to Level 39," Dong Xin said, smiling. "In fact my basic punch force is a little over seventeen thousand kilograms."
"I haven't covered a third of the way to Level 39."
Fang Yu was stunned.
The school textbooks only set out the differences below Level 20 in detail, and he had known the divisions among Mid-Rank Warriors only roughly... So from Level 30 to Level 39, each level was a gap of 5,000 kilograms of punch force.
And that was basic punch force.
A Level 39 warrior with skill as superb as Martial Uncle Jiang Wei's... at maximum output his punch force must run to hundreds of thousands of kilograms. A human-shaped monster, near enough.
Was that still a human being?
And someone who awakened an Upper Aspect could reach that Life Tier before thirty?
"Now do you understand the gap between an Upper Aspect and a Middle Aspect like mine?" Dong Xin said, smiling. "Let alone a Lower Aspect."
"Before Earth Warrior, an Aspect's greatest advantage is saving time."
"And for a warrior, time is precious."
"But on an Aspect alone, even an Upper Aspect, you will never become an Earth Warrior."
"Plenty of High-Rank Warriors have poor Aspects and yet, grinding for decades, still have hope of reaching Level 39 — my master Pang Hong, for instance. And none of them can become Earth Warriors," Dong Xin went on. "Because an Earth Warrior demands an extremely high level of martial skill... To become one, your skill must reach Inner Vista Perfection."
Inner Vista Perfection? One of the necessary conditions of an Earth Warrior?
Fang Yu understood at once.
Why Senior Brother Dong said Martial Uncle Jiang Wei had hopes: the man's skill was at Great Completion of Inner Vista, one step short of Earth Warrior — though that step was hard to cross.
Otherwise Earth Warriors would not be so rare.
Take Wuling City.
High-Rank Warriors were numerous: the teachers at every key secondary school, the senior instructors at the martial societies, the martial teachers at the junior college, the people in charge at each of the great warrior conglomerates... all of them High-Rank Warriors.
But Earth Warriors?
So far, the only one Fang Yu had actually met was Associate Professor Tang... Even at Wuling Martial Arts Junior College, where he had heard the principal was an Earth Warrior, he had never once seen the man in three years.
School business was handled by the vice-principals.
"Raising the Life Tier is hard, but even without an Aspect, with enough drugs and treasures there's always hope of stacking it up."
"Training skill is different."
"The further it goes the more mysterious it gets. Spirit-nurturing treasures and the instruments at the starry-sky bases are only aids. I haven't so much as touched the edge of Inner Vista yet, and my hopes of becoming an Earth Warrior aren't high." Senior Brother Dong looked at Fang Yu. "But you're different, junior brother."
"Your Life Tier isn't high."
"Your spirit can't be very strong."
"You were at a junior college, you had no very good instruction, you've never even been to the Primordial Star... and you've only just turned twenty-one, and your blade work is at Subtlety."
"Set you beside the students at the New Moon's ten key martial arts universities — their physical standard is higher and their external conditions better, and their level of skill still may not match yours."
"What does that tell you?"
"That you have an astonishing talent for martial skill." Senior Brother Dong's eyes brightened. "You have every hope of becoming an Earth Warrior."