My life split into to two distinct halves.
From Monday to Friday, I went to school as a polite, soft spoken prodigy.
But on the weekends, long before the sun peeked over the horizon, I belonged to Lao Chen.
The seven months I spent in that Western District backyard completely fundamentally rewired my entire existence.
Lao Chen had promised to teach me how to survive, and his curriculum was divided into three brutal phases.
Phase One: The Art of the Void
The first two months were entirely dedicated to dismantling my ego and my textbook martial arts forms.
Lao Chen’s philosophy on combat was remarkably simple: If you get hit, you die.
First thing he taught me was dodging while using rapid knifes, rocks or any hard object throwing towards me.
Second, he started art of moving: Moving my body out of the way of a punch while striking the opponent at the exact same time.
Third, He taught me how i don’t always need to block an attack.
Instead, you step back just enough to make your opponent miss.
You use the “empty space” to your advantage, making them waste their energy.
‘Think of a swinging door.
If you push the door while it swings, it fights back.
If you step out of the way, the door swings into empty space and loses all its power.’
Then come’s third month he increased the intensity of my training.
He rigged a terrifying contraption in the backyard a series of heavy, sand filled canvas bags hanging from thick ropes suspended by the branches of the massive oak tree.
He would blindfold me, spin me around, and then aggressively push the heavy bags so they swung in chaotic, overlapping pendulums.
“Do not use your eyes.
Feel the movement of the air,” Chen ordered from the edge of the pit.
“Move!”
For the first two weeks, I was battered relentlessly.
The heavy bags knocked me into the mud, bruised my shoulders, and bruised my ribs.
Every time I instinctively raised my arms to block a swinging bag, Chen would throw a sharp pebble at my head.
“Never block!” he roared.
“Slip!
Redirect!
Fade!”
Slowly, the brutal repetition began to rewrite my muscle memory.
I realized that my [Instinct] skill wasn’t just about attacking; it was about spatial awareness.
I learned to read the minute(small) shifts in the wind before a heavy bag struck me.
Instead of stepping back which often put me in the path of another swinging bag, I learned to step diagonally forward, slipping past the apex of the swing by mere millimeters.
I learned how to drop my center of gravity so quickly it looked like I was collapsing, only to spring back up on the other side of an attack.
I learned to roll my shoulders to let glancing blows slide off me rather than absorb their kinetic energy.
Due to this i got new skill [Evasion] which leveled six times.
> [Evasion: Lv.7]
When Chen finally stepped into the mud pit to spar with me directly, the difference was staggering.
He was still faster and stronger, but I was no longer a static target.
When he thrust his wooden knife at my chest, I didn’t try to parry it.
I pivoted on my heel, letting the blade graze my shirt, and used his forward momentum to slip entirely behind his guard.
“Better,” Chen grunted, casually backhanding me into the dirt anyway.
“But you’re still breathing like a panicked rabbit.
Your body is dodging, but your mind is loud.
A monster can hear a loud mind.”
Phase Two: Stealth
By the fourth month, my physical evasion was sharp enough to evade small obstucles without much strugle.
After fourth month Lao chen finally gave green signal for stealth training.
Lao Chen turned the entire Western District neighborhood, including an abandoned warehouse down the street, into our personal training ground.
The rules were simple: I had thirty minutes to hide.
He would come looking.
If he caught me, the sparring session that followed would be twice as brutal.
“Monsters do not hunt with just their eyes,” Chen lectured before our first exercise.
“They hunt with thermal vision, with acute auditory sensors, and with scent.
If you hide behind a wall, a wolf will smell your sweat.
If you hide in a dark room, a snake will see your body heat.”
During the first few days, I failed miserably, But that changed when i unlocked [stealth] skill.
With that Knowledge i tried to blend with surroundings but Chen didn’t even use his Shadow magic to find me.
He just used his veteran instincts.
He easily found me and taught me how to hide with every failed attempt of mine.
He also taught how to hide smell and blend with surroundings and how to make minimal noise when moving.
Every failure was a harsh lesson, and every lesson forced me to adapt.
By the end of the sixth month, the hide and seek games stretched from minutes into hours.
My [stealth] skill was also leveled up.
> [Stealth Level up: Lv.
1 —> Lv.
10]
After [Stealth] reached lv.10, Lao Chen can only find me when he uses magic.
He can’t even know that i am hiding just near him without using magic.
Phase Three: The Final Fight
The seventh month arrived, bringing with it the crisp, biting chill of deep autumn.
I finished another school year, and i turned Nine last year.
It was a Sunday morning 4:00 AM, Lao Chen’s last day in Bo City.
A thick, heavy fog had rolled in from the surrounding mountains, blanketing the Western District in a dense, blinding white haze.
Visibility was reduced to less than ten feet.
I stood in the center of the wet grass in Chen’s backyard, wearing my mud stained training clothes, a wooden training knife held loosely in my right hand.
Lao Chen stepped off the porch.
He held a wooden combat knife of his own.
“Today, my team moves out,” Chen said, his voice cutting through the fog, seemingly coming from everywhere at once.
“I’ve taught you how to dodge.
I’ve taught you how to vanish.
Today is your final evaluation.”
He casually flipped his wooden blade, catching it in a reverse grip.
“You have five minutes.
You do not need to defeat me.
You do not need to disarm me.
You just need to survive without getting pinned, or land a single, solid strike anywhere on my body,” Chen instructed.
“If you fail, I leave, and you are nothing more than a talented civilian.
If you succeed…
I will acknowledge you as a true Hunter.”
I didn’t reply.
I just lowered my center of gravity, closed my eyes.
My breathing slowed.
My heartbeat faded into a quiet, rhythmic drum.
I opened my eyes; they were completely devoid of emotion or panic.
“Begin,” he commanded.
Chen vanished.
He didn’t use Shadow magic, but his mastery of physical stealth was absolute.
One second he was standing in the fog, the next, he was gone.
I didn’t panic.
I didn’t spin around wildly.
I stood perfectly still, letting my [Instinct] take over.
I felt the moisture in the air.
I listened to the distant hum of the city.
Swish.
The attack came from my blind spot, low and incredibly fast.
Chen’s wooden blade swept toward the back of my knees, aimed to cripple my mobility.
Before my conscious mind could process the threat, my body reacted.
I didn’t try to block.
I didn’t leap away.
I collapsed my right leg entirely, dropping my center of gravity to the dirt in a split second, letting the horizontal sweep slice through the empty air where my legs had just been.
As I dropped, I planted my hands in the mud and kicked backward like a mule, aiming for his shin.
Chen effortlessly side stepped the kick, but that wasn’t my true attack.
I used the backward kick to propel my upper body forward, rolling silently into the thickest patch of fog.
I engaged [Stealth: Lv.
10].
I stopped moving, holding my breath, pressing my body flat against the damp earth near the root of the great oak tree.
The yard went dead silent.
Two ghosts were hunting each other in the mist.
Three minutes passed.
The physical toll of holding my breath while surging with adrenaline was immense, but I didn’t waver.
Then, I heard it.
Squelch of mud, about eight feet to my left.
Chen was trying to bait me into moving, deliberately making a sound.
I knew if I charged that sound, he would sidestep and pin me.
I had to use the environment.
I reached out, my fingers wrapping around a heavy, jagged stone buried in the mud.
I didn’t throw it at the sound.
I tossed it underhand, high into the fog, aiming for the wooden fence directly behind where the sound had come from.
Thwack.
The stone hit the wood.
For a fraction of a millisecond, Chen’s veteran instincts forced him to shift his weight to account for a potential threat behind him.
That microsecond was all I needed.
I exploded from the mud, completely abandoning my stealth.
I sprinted low to the ground.
Chen recovered instantly, his eyes locking onto my form, his wooden knife coming up to parry my expected strike.
But I had thrown away the textbook forms months ago.
I didn’t thrust my knife.
I threw myself into a violent, sliding tackle, driving my shoulder directly into his planted knee while simultaneously throwing a handful of wet mud straight up into his face.
Chen flinched, his vision temporarily blinded by the grit, his balance severely compromised by my tackle.
He stumbled backward, his heel catching on the uneven grass.
I scrambled to my feet, leaped off a nearby tree root for elevation, and drove the blunt pommel of my wooden knife directly into his shoulder blade.
The thud of the impact echoed clearly in the foggy yard.
Time seemed to freeze.
I landed in a crouch, gasping for air, as exhaustion flooded my system.
Chen stood there, wiping the mud from his eyes with his forearm.
He looked at his shoulder, and then back down at me.
For a long, agonizing moment, neither of us said a word.
Then, the terrifying, scarred veteran let out a loud, booming laugh.
It was a genuine roar of amusement that shook the morning air.
“A decoy noise, a mud blind, and a tackle to break the stance,” Chen laughed, shaking his head.
“Ugly.
Desperate.
Entirely without honor.
And absolutely perfect.”
“You passed, kid.”
I collapsed onto the wet grass, staring up at the white fog, panting so hard my chest physically ached.
I had done it.
Chen walked over to the porch, picked up a canvas duffel bag, and slung it over his shoulder.
He walked back to where I was lying .
“Your foundation is set,” Lao Chen said, looking down at me one last time.
“You don’t need me anymore.
Keep practicing your dirty tricks, keep hiding your breathing, and whatever you do, do not let that perfectly polite facade of yours make you soft.”
Offering him a deep, respectful bow I said,”Thank you, Instructor Chen.
For everything.”
He didn’t say goodbye.
He just turned, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked out the front gate, vanishing into the Bo City fog as seamlessly as a shadow.
My seven months in hell were over.
I was a completely different person than the child who had first walked into this yard.
I learned how to really fight and how to hide.
It was late Autumn.
I was Nine years old.
My mortal body was honed to a razor’s edge, my mind was hardened, and my foundation was unbreakable.
Now, all I had to do was maintain this lethal edge in secret, wait for my tenth birthday, and finally get my hands on the laptop that would fund my future empire.
To be continued…