The air inside the western hall supply closet smelled of old cedar and dust.
Ren pulled the crisp, folded white gi from the second shelf.
It was heavy cotton, pristine and completely devoid of any faction insignias or corporate logos.
It was the uniform of a true martial artist.
He stripped off his sweaty black undershirt and slipped his arms through the sleeves.
He tied the thick black fabric belt firmly around his waist, ensuring his brown tail was completely bound and flattened against his lower back, completely obscured by the loose cut of the gi top.
Ren looked at himself in the small, cracked mirror hanging on the closet door.
He didn’t look like a C-Class bottom-feeder anymore.
He looked like a disciple.
Ren took a deep breath, centered the spark of Ki in his stomach, and walked out of the hall, returning to the sunlit courtyard.
Bang was waiting for him in the center of the white gravel.
The old master had not changed his posture.
He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his expression serene but carrying the heavy, ancient weight of a predator at rest.
“The uniform fits,” Bang noted mildly.
“Good.
Let us begin.”
Ren stepped onto the gravel, keeping his feet shoulder-width apart, waiting for the grueling physical conditioning to commence.
He expected to be told to punch a wooden post ten thousand times or do push-ups until his arms snapped.
“Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist is not a style of aggression,” Bang began, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet courtyard.
“It is a style of absolute defense that naturally becomes the perfect offense.
Water does not seek to break the rock by hitting it harder.
Water flows around the rock, finds the cracks, and erodes it from the inside out.”
Bang slowly raised his hands, bringing them up to his chest level.
His fingers were slightly curved, his palms open and relaxed.
“If an opponent strikes you with a hundred pounds of force, you do not meet them with a hundred and one pounds of force.
That is a brawler’s logic.
That is the logic of a beast,” Bang explained, his piercing blue eyes locking onto Ren.
“You meet them with nothing.
You absorb their hundred pounds, combine it with your own momentum, and return two hundred pounds directly to their center of gravity.”
“Like what you did to me,” Ren stated, remembering the effortless way Bang had flipped him during his initial test.
“Precisely,” Bang nodded.
“Now, observe the first kata.
The breathing is the foundation.
If you cannot breathe with the flow, your body will fight itself.”
Bang shifted his weight.
To Ren’s enhanced eyes, the transformation was staggering.
One second, Bang was a frail old man.
The next, he was a localized typhoon.
Bang’s hands moved through the air in a series of sweeping, circular motions.
Pale blue trails of kinetic energy seemed to linger in the air behind his fingertips.
He stepped forward, pivoting his hips, striking the empty air with his palms, elbows, and shoulders in a continuous, unbroken chain of movement.
There was no pause between defense and attack.
Every single block naturally transformed into a devastating counter-strike.
It was beautiful.
It was terrifying.
“Your turn,” Bang said, stopping his motion perfectly and dropping his hands back to his sides, not a single breath out of place.
Ren nodded.
With a Power Level of 62, his cognitive processing and kinetic vision were far beyond a normal human’s.
He had recorded every micro-movement Bang had made.
He knew exactly where his feet needed to go.
He knew exactly the angle of the wrist.
Ren dropped into the starting stance.
He took a breath, ignited the Ki in his stomach to stabilize his core, and moved his hands.
Push, circle, strike.
He executed the physical movements perfectly.
His footwork mirrored Bang’s down to the millimeter.
His hands cut through the air with terrifying speed.
“Stop,” Bang commanded sharply.
Ren froze mid-sweep, lowering his arms in confusion.
“Master?
Was the footing incorrect?”
Bang walked over, shaking his head.
He reached out and tapped two fingers against Ren’s right bicep.
It felt like tapping a block of solid granite.
“Your memory is excellent, and your physical mimicking is flawless,” Bang said strictly.
“But you are entirely missing the soul of the technique.
You are acting.
You are moving your arms through the correct spaces, but your muscles are screaming with tension.
You are preparing for an impact.”
Ren frowned, looking down at his arms.
“If I don’t brace my muscles, I won’t have the torque to redirect the force.”
“Wrong,” Bang countered, his voice snapping like a whip.
“Rigidity is death.
Your biology is fascinating, Ren.
You possess muscle fibers that coil like steel springs the moment you perceive conflict.
It is a powerful survival trait.
But it is blinding you.
You are trying to force the water through a pipe.
You must uncoil the spring.
Relax completely.”
Ren swallowed hard.
Relaxing completely in the middle of a combat stance went against every single instinct his Saiyan DNA possessed.
The bloodline was built to tense up, to push through pain, to dominate through sheer structural density.
“I will try again,” Ren said softly.
He reset his stance.
He took a deep breath.
He forced his shoulders to drop.
He forced the feral, coiled tension in his legs to dissipate.
He moved his hands again.
This time, because his muscles were loose, his explosive speed vanished.
His hands moved slowly, almost clumsily.
He felt unbalanced.
The flowing heat of his Ki wobbled, struggling to maintain its circuit without the rigid tension of his muscles to guide it.
“Better,” Bang observed closely.
“Your speed has dropped to a fraction of what you showed me earlier, but your joints are finally breathing.
Again.”
Ren spent the next six hours repeating the exact same thirty-second kata.
It was absolute psychological agony.
Every time he tried to speed up the movement, his Saiyan instincts would hijack his nervous system, tensing his muscles for an explosive strike.
Bang would immediately spot the rigidity and force him to start over.
By the time the sun began to set behind the mountains, casting long shadows across the white gravel, Ren was drenched in sweat.
He hadn’t fought a monster, he hadn’t broken a sweat lifting heavy weights, yet his mind was completely exhausted.
He dropped his arms, panting softly.
“We stop here for today,” Bang announced, walking up the steps to the veranda.
“You have unlearned the first layer of your bad habits.
That is more progress than I expected.”
Ren bowed deeply.
“Thank you, Master Bang.”
“Do not thank me yet,” Bang warned, looking out over the dojo walls toward the distant, smog-covered city below.
“The true test of the Water Stream is not performing it in an empty courtyard.
The true test is performing it when a beast is trying to tear your throat out.
Until you can relax in the face of death, you are still just a brawler in a clean white suit.”
Ren looked out toward the city as well.
He knew Bang was right.
The Ghost Town was still out there.
The Demon-level threats were still lurking in the deep.
Ren pulled up his digital overlay, checking his biological ledger.
[Ren]
[Power Level: 62]
His Power Level had not increased by a single decimal point.
Practicing forms did not break the physical limitations of the Saiyan body; it did not trigger Zenkai boosts.
But as Ren clenched and unclenched his fists, he felt a profound difference.
The raw power was still there, sitting at 62, but the delivery system was fundamentally changing.
He was no longer a shotgun firing blindly into the dark.
He was slowly, painstakingly becoming a sniper rifle.
“Master,” Ren called out before the old man disappeared into the main hall.
“How long did it take your top student to master the flow?”
Bang paused at the sliding paper door.
The old man’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly.
“Garou mastered the fundamental flow in less than six months,” Bang replied, his voice heavy with a dark nostalgia.
“He possessed a genius that the martial arts world had not seen in a century.
He absorbed technique like a sponge absorbs water.”
Six months.
Ren did not have six months to learn the basics.
The timeline was ticking.
The Dominator of the Universe was inching closer to Earth with every passing day.
“I will do it in three,” Ren stated quietly, yet with absolute conviction.
Bang glanced back over his shoulder, a sad, faint smile touching his wrinkled face.
“Confidence is good, Ren.
But the Water Stream cannot be rushed.
It must be lived.
Rest now.
Tomorrow, you will carry the water again.”
The door slid shut.
Ren stood alone in the dark courtyard.
He raised his hands, dropping back into the starting stance of the kata.
He didn’t return to the barracks.
He didn’t eat.
He stood under the moonlight, closing his eyes and forcing his rigid, warlike biology to submit to the gentle, flowing rhythm of the water.
He practiced the kata one hundred more times before the moon reached its zenith.