The rhythm of the bamboo forest deepened. Mornings were for meditation, the air thick with the scent of damp earth and focused will. Gen sat cross-legged, but his practice had evolved. Instead of just seeking the whisper of his **Sea Acupoint**, he was learning to *see* with it.
With his eyes closed, he held a simple bamboo broom, a mundane echo of his days with Ting. He wasn't sweeping. He was feeling. He willed a tiny thread of his new **Shidow** energy to flow down the handle, not to move it, but to sense the disturbances in the air around it. He visualized the gentle forest breezes as currents, the drifting pollen as tiny particles. It was frustrating, delicate work. His control was like trying to write with a brush ten feet long.
"Look at him," Lolly giggled from her perch on a fence post, munching on a stolen rice ball. "The great cultivator, playing with a broom. Very fearsome."
Gen ignored her, his brow furrowed in concentration. He wasn't playing. He was laying a foundation, just as Ting had taught him back in the Jade palace pens . *The most powerful currents are the ones you cannot see.*
His moment of focus was broken by Black-Green Wood's dry voice. "Gen. Come."
Lolly's eyes lit up. She hopped down. "Ooh, it's time! Time for the real beating!"
Gen stood, brushing moss from his trousers. He shot her a look. "I'm not weak anymore. I can move the air now. I'm faster." It was true. Over the past weeks, he'd mastered the most basic application of **Shidow** for movement: condensing and pushing against the air behind him to add bursts of speed to his steps. It was clumsy and drained him quickly, but it was power. Real, usable power from his own body.
The hermit led them to a wide, open training ground within the forest, a circle of hard-packed earth ringed by ancient bamboo. Liang, sweating and glowing with the faint gold of his newly solidified **Jingdao**, joined them from his own solo drills, his face curious.
Black-Green Wood did not assume a stance. He simply glanced at the jade mantis, which had been a near-permanent ornament on his shoulder. The creature tilted its head, its prismatic eyes seeming to understand.
The hermit raised a hand. A shimmer, dense and complex, enveloped his fingers—**Shidow** of a degree that made Gen's own efforts feel like a child splashing in a puddle. The hermit didn't gesture. He simply *directed* a stream of that shimmering, manipulative energy into the small insect.
What happened next was not a magical transformation. It was a grotesque, accelerated blooming of life.
The mantis trembled. Its jade-green exoskeleton darkened, thickened. Its delicate limbs swelled with terrifying speed, muscles and chitin expanding. It grew from the size of a hand to the size of a large dog, then to Gen's own height in a matter of seconds. It stood on its four rear legs, its two formidable front limbs—now thick as Gen's wrists and ending in sharp, hooked spikes—held forward like natural scythes. It let out a low, chittering hum that vibrated in their chests.
Gen's jaw dropped. His earlier confidence evaporated, replaced by pure, unadulterated awe. "You… you can *do* that?"
"Insects are simple," Black-Green Wood explained, his voice a clinical monotone. "Their cellular structure is less resistant to forced manipulation. By pouring concentrated Qi and directing it with extreme precision, I can accelerate its growth, manipulate its cellular division, and temporarily reinforce its foundational biology. It is an advanced, perilously complex application of the Wheel of Destiny, bordering on forbidden creation. It is only possible due to a deep synthesis of understanding." He looked at the now-human-sized mantis, which shifted its weight with unsettling grace. "In this state, its combat capability is roughly equivalent to an Infant-level Milky Beast of the Second Wheel. Perhaps a little stronger."
"That's… incredible," Gen breathed, his eyes alight with a covetous fire. "I want to learn how to do that!"
Liang, ever the realist, shook his head with a weary sigh. "Gen, that kind of mastery takes decades, maybe centuries, of study. It's not something you pick up because it looks impressive. It's a lifetime's work. Stop daydreaming and focus on not getting spitted by it."
Black-Green Wood gestured. "Your training partner. You will spar with it every day, after your meditation. Begin."
The mantis didn't wait for a signal. Its head swiveled, locking its compound eyes on Gen.
Gen shook off his awe and dropped into a fighting stance. He called upon his **Shidow**, feeling the silver energy flow from his **Sea Acupoint**. He condensed the air around his fists and feet, creating a faint, shimmering buffer—a basic defensive and propulsive layer he'd been drilling. *Okay. Fast. But I'm fast too now.*
The mantis moved.
It was a blur of iridescent green. Not a dash, but a sudden, teleporting lunge. One spiked fist jabbed forward in a straight line faster than a striking snake.
Gen's heightened senses, trained by weeks of "seeing" with the broom, screamed at him. He sidestepped, the condensed air around his foot helping him pivot. The mantis's fist passed through the space where his chest had been with a sharp *crack* of parted air.
"Heh," Gen grunted, a grin touching his lips. "Too slow."
The mantis didn't recalibrate. It didn't seem to care. It simply took a micro-step with its other complex set of legs, its body orientation shifting impossibly fast, and jabbed again from a completely different angle.
This time, Gen wasn't ready for the sheer, recalculated speed. He tried to twist, but the condensed air around his torso was too thin, too poorly shaped. The mantis's spike didn't cut; it *punched*. The impact, solid and precise, landed squarely on the bridge of his nose.
**CRUNCH.**
Pain, bright and shocking, exploded across his face. He staggered back, hand flying to his nose, which was already gushing a hot stream of blood down his lips and chin.
"Ah! Damn it!" he cursed, his eyes watering.
Lolly erupted into gleeful laughter, clapping her hands. "Bullseye! Right on the beak!"
"Gen, focus!" Liang called out, his own face tense. "Don't get cocky!"
Before Gen could wipe the blood from his eyes or steady his breath, the mantis was on him again. It didn't charge. It seemed to *slide* through the air around him, its limbs a blur of calculated motion. Another jab, this one to his floating ribs. The condensed air there shattered under the force. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him skidding across the hard-packed earth on his back, the wind knocked from his lungs in a pained gasp.
Black-Green Wood observed, unmoved. "This is the Mantis Hammer," he intoned. "A manipulation spell refined for single combat. Its principle is not raw power, but perceptual domination. By manipulating the minute air currents around a foe, a skilled user can 'isolate' their senses, narrowing their focus to a single, overwhelming point—the opening, the strike. It is not that you cannot evade it, Gen. It is that, to the Mantis and the spell guiding it, you are moving through syrup. You are too slow."
Liang, watching the terrifying efficiency of the creature, frowned. "But Master… where does the *force* come from? It's not a **Jingdao** strike. It shouldn't hit that hard."
"Momentum," the hermit replied. "And the manipulation of existing force. With enough practice, one learns to channel the latent kinetic energy in the air itself—the pressure differentials, the swirling eddies, the power of a real torrent—and condense it into the point of impact. It is force borrowed from the world and focused to a needle's point. Train well."
With that, he turned and walked back toward his house, leaving Gen wheezing on the ground and Liang staring at the now-still, monstrous insect with new respect and dread.
Gen pushed himself up, spitting blood onto the dirt. The pain was sharp, the humiliation from Lolly's laughter burned, but a hotter, more stubborn fire was lit in his chest. He looked at the mantis, which stood waiting, an emotionless engine of violence.
"Again," Gen rasped, swiping his sleeve across his bloody face. He shifted his stance, pouring more of his silver **Shidow** energy out, trying to shape the air around him not just as a cushion, but as a responsive field, a net to feel the Mantis Hammer's deadly currents before they struck.
Liang, seeing his friend's determination, gave a grim nod and returned to his own area. He focused on his **Jingdao**, not trying to make his skin hard, but trying to make his *presence* solid, to root himself so deeply that even a torrent of focused air would find no purchase.
The forest echoed with new sounds: the sharp *cracks* of the Mantis Hammer striking, Gen's grunts of pain and effort, the rustle of Liang's shifting stances, and Lolly's occasional cackle or surprisingly apt piece of advice shouted from the sidelines.
By the end of the first day, Gen had a broken nose, two bruised ribs, and countless other aches. Liang was pale with exhaustion, his foundation strained from constant, unyielding reinforcement. But as they limped back toward the house in the fading green light, there was no despair in their eyes. Only a hardened, weary resolve. The path was clear, brutal, and laid out before them in the form of a giant, jade-green insect. They would walk it. One painful, illuminating hammer blow at a time.