“Qinggong has many different styles, focused on several different purposes.  Speed, stealth, acrobatics, and so on.  But they all have the same fundamentals to varying degrees.  Balance, strength, and internal energy.” 

Chen Ji lectured as Pengfei stood on one foot atop a post jutting from the ground, one of a cluster of plum blossom poles that stood at various heights, used for practicing footwork.  Jin Shutian and Jin Xiaotong had their own perches as well.  At the elder’s direction, the disciples hopped from one foot to the other, one pole to the next.  

“Excellent work boys.”  Elder Ji smiled as they moved through the exercise.  This morning, the head of the Discipline Hall was all smiles and compliments but it was only a matter of time before one of his abrupt personality shifts would occur.  Pengfei had endured the mood swings for several days now.  He and the other two disciples followed every instruction with the utmost effort, trying desperately to avoid a sudden burst of ire from the elder.

“Good.  Continue for another few minutes.  Then consult the manual for the proper meridians and steps.  I’ll be back shortly to appraise your understanding.”

Chen Ji left them to their practice.  They watched as the elder disappeared down the path, back towards the Discipline Hall where he spent his daylight hours.  Shutian hopped down from the plum blossom poles as soon as the man had rounded the corner of a building.

“This is bullshit.  Why are we stuck doing baby training just to keep you company?”

Pengfei hopped down and responded sarcastically to his friend, “I guess Elder Ji was under the misapprehension that you would set a good example for me.”

“You talk so fancy Pengfei!  You must miss talking with the young lords and ladies of the Central Plains.”

Shutian skipped right over Xiaotong’s teasing and continued his own complaints.  “You need to figure this out quick so you can go back to your job in the library.”

“Could be a while.  Elder Weidao told me not to come back until I could keep my clothes clean.  The guy is terrified a speck of dirt will land on some Taoist sutra no one has ever read.”

Pengfei was bitter but couldn’t blame the head of the Scirpture Hall.  The morning exercise was different ever since the heavier snows had begun.  The temperatures had fallen low enough that the precipitation no longer melted off between falls.  The daily runs had turned into muddy slogs that left Pengfei’s robes mired in filth. 

The elders had finally given permission to use qinggong on the treacherous mountain paths and as a consequence, the rest of the Jin disciples were able to stay dry and clean while Pengfei came back sodden by the brown slurry of dirt and snow.  That was when Chen Weidao had banished Pengfei from the library, sent him off to the Discipline Hall to learn qinggong from Elder Ji.  

“What’s the difference between circulating qi for neigong and circulating qi for qinggong?” Pengfei asked as he picked up the manual for ‘Three Twists of the Dragon in the Clouds’. 

Shutian said nothing at first, but when prodded by Xiaotong’s elbow grudgingly responded.  “One is for increasing your qi, the other is for using your qi.”

“That’s great, thanks.  Clears everything up.”

Luckily, Xiaotong was more forthcoming.  The boy stepped forward, took the manual from Pengfei, and opened to a diagram of the lower body’s meridians.

“When you are sitting and meditating, you can use a larger portion of your internal energy, cleanse and strengthen your body, increase your reserves.  But if you tried to use the same amounts of energy while moving, you’d probably give yourself qi deviation.”

“So, the only difference is the amount of energy used?”

“The meridians too.  In the ‘Mystical Heaven Infinite Skill’, we circulate through the channels of all the major organs but for our qinggong, we really only use the Stomach and Liver meridians.  And if you look here, you’ll see you need to manipulate the qi remaining in your dantian as well.”  

Xiaotong pointed out the relevant sections.  

Pengfei nodded in appreciation and turned to Shutian again.  “Would that have been so hard?”

The gaunt disciple shrugged ambivalently then waved Xiaotong to follow him.

“Let’s leave the young master to his training.  I’m sure we can find something better to do before that old psycho Chen Ji gets back.”

The pair wandered off, Shutian talking comfortably to his friend.  Xiaotong still seemed to be the only one that could make the other smile or laugh consistently.  

“I wanted some peace and quiet anyway!”  Pengfei called after them, receiving dismissive waves for his troubles.  Left alone, he turned his attention back to the manual.  

‘I guess I should give this a shot.’

The text was fairly straightforward since the qinggong method itself was simple.  The circulation of qi in the dantian made the body lighter, while moving the energy through the lower meridians lent strength to the muscles, tendons, and ligaments.  When it was all taken together, an unnaturally light body could be propelled through powerful, nimble, movements.

Pengfei began with the qi in his dantian.  It was hard to locate it at first.  He was only now beginning to use qi in his martial arts.  Finding it when not in the calm seated position of his cultivation practice was still difficult.   But he latched on to his small reserve of internal energy after a moment and guided it around his invisible sea as dictated by the book.

Alien at first, it quickly became second nature.  The circulation was naturally coordinated by breathing.  It felt like the air coming in through his nostrils blew his internal energy in the correct direction.

He took a few steps, trying to feel the difference.

‘Maybe a little lighter.’

Pengfei moved back to the plum blossom poles, hopped from the lower posts to the taller ones.  He balanced, targeted another distant perch, and jumped, just as he had done under Chen Ji’s supervision.  

‘Just a little.’

The difference was slight, like he had lost a very small bit of weight.  Not really enough to make a difference in his leaps between the posts.  Pengfei returned to the manual and looked over the pages detailing the circulation of qi through the legs’ meridians.  

The process was considerably more difficult than moving the energy inside his dantian.  It required coordination on a number of levels.  While qi swirled within the lower dantian, Pengfei needed to crouch while drawing energy down through the yang meridians in his legs.  These vessels supplied the explosive power required to make the acrobatic movements he had seen from other martial artists.    

‘I understand why qinggong is taught separately now, why there are so many styles of it.  It’s not just ‘use qi as you move’.  Depending on the type of movement, I have to send qi to different meridians, different muscles…’

The theory was simple, but the execution difficult.

Pengfei performed more of the empowered movements.  He slowly crouched and jumped straight up, tried forward, backward, and lateral movements.  Each variation with its own corresponding meridians.

He had not practiced for very long before Chen Ji returned.

“Where are the others?”, the small man asked, announcing his presence to Pengfei.

“Oh, elder!  They… are practicing their qinggong by running around the sect.”

“Nonsense.  They’re slacking off somewhere no doubt.”  Chen Ji’s spoke warmly, not seeming to mind the disciples’ dereliction of duty.  But his eyes suddenly glinted with the telltale sign of a change in demeanor.  “And you… you didn’t even try to stop them, did you?”

“Elder, I –“

“None of your excuses!  Go!  Run the mountain again.”

***************************************************************************************

Pengfei’s sect robes had gone from a slate grey to dirty brown, caked as they were with mud.  The other disciples gave him pitying looks but apart from Chen Weidao, no one chastised him.  He was allowed to go through the remainder of his day in his sorry state.  He had left clumps of dirt behind on the bench in the Dining Hall, and his clothes were still damp as he walked with his friends to the Veneration Hall.

“When did you guys learn qinggong anyway?  It seems I’m the only one practicing it.”  

“Don’t forget about me and Xiaotong.”  Shutian objected.  

Neng ignored Shutian and addressed Pengfei’s question. “We learned years ago.  Qinggong is the first thing they teach after you learn to use qi.  It improves coordination, makes you less likely to accidentally blow someone’s head off when you punch using internal energy for the first time.”

“Ah.  Well, I don’t think I have enough qi for that anyway.  Might be worth a shot though.  It could improve Nanxi’s looks.” 

“Screw you.”

Neng chuckled as he broke off from the others.  “I’ll see you guys later.  I need to go see Elder Weidao.”  

Neng waved, headed back to the Scripture Hall for more training from his master.  He had been more upfront with them about it in the days since revealing his discipleship to Pengfei.

Pengfei huffed, still mildly jealous of his friend.  The Veneration Hall, used for group neigong practice, was becoming less and less crowded as weeks passed.  Elder Weidao was not the only one who had taken a direct disciple.  The new training regimen that had been instituted recently also involved more one-on-one interaction with the Chen generation.  The old men had begun selecting the promising talents and taking them as students, their default meeting time apparently when the rest of the Jin disciples gathered for cultivation.

It looked like about a third of the boys had been snatched up so far.

“It feels pretty crappy not being chosen.” Pengfei voiced his inner thoughts as he looked around the sparsely populated Veneration Hall.

“At least you have an excuse.  You just got here, and you don’t know shit.  Think how us poor bastards feel.”  Xiaotong stepped deeper into the quiet to find a place where he could meditate.

Nanxi waved off the concern. “It’s not a big deal.  Most of the elders just won’t bother to recruit disciples.  If there is someone you want to train under, you can try to ask.”

“I’m going to just stick to the basic training.  Anything else sounds like a pain in the ass.”  Shutian followed his friend and sat beside him.

Pengfei was about to follow the others into the hall, but Nanxi stopped him.  The twins looked at their leader expectantly.  

“I don’t feel like meditating today.  Do you guys want to skip?”

Tianwei and Tianxun pushed past with a scolding sigh to take their place among the other disciples but Pengfei was more open to the idea.  

“Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

***************************************************************************************

“This isn’t what I had in mind.”  Nanxi spoke boredly, lazing on a wooden bench under the small, remote, pavilion.  It was on the southern edge of the sect, with a view of the Tibetan plateau and the distant lake of Kotra Tso.

Pengfei ignored his companion, instead focusing on the qi coursing through his arm as he slowly executed the ‘Thundering Sky Strike’.  He extended his arm and twisted with the last bit of the strike, attempting to let the energy explode outward as Elder Rulan had shown him, but the awkward blow was even weaker than a normal punch.

“Ugh… there’s too much to learn.  How can I learn the ‘Swift Dragon Lightning Sword’ when I can’t even figure out the ‘Heaven Shaking Fist’?  And I still need to master the neigong and the qinggong.  There are palm styles and saber styles, and more jian and fist styles… how are we supposed to find the time for all of this?”

“We’re not.”

“What?”

Nanxi sat up and stared at Pengfei sternly.  “No one learns all that.  You know that, right?  Not to the point of mastery anyway.”

“Really?  But they’re the styles of our sect.”

“Back in the day, our sect had more than a thousand members.  They didn’t all fight the exact same way.  Some used the straight sword, some the saber, some the spear.  You learn some basics across a wide range of styles, then you specialize.”

Pengfei considered Nanxi’s words and a weight suddenly lifted. “That’s a relief!  I thought I was always going to be struggling to catch up, learning a dozen styles at the same time.  But how do you decide what to specialize in?”

Nanxi laid down again. “Whatever your master tells you to.”

“And if I don’t have a master?”

“Whatever you want.  Then try to find a master to teach you.  Or do it on your own.  But you’re thinking about it too much.  You don’t have to do any of that.  Just do the group trainings that are required and enjoy your life.  No need to make extra work for yourself.”  

Pengfei mulled over Nanxi’s relaxed philosophy, but paradoxically he did it while practicing the forms of the Heaven Shaking Fist.  The snow surrounding the pavilion crunched beneath his feet as he moved.

When he finished practicing the fist, he picked up a wooden sword snagged from the training grounds.  He did not bother with forms, only practiced the basic cuts.  He held the handle tightly with the bottom fingers, looser with the pointer finger, as he had been taught.  Extended outward with each slash to push the tip of the sword into the correct position.

Occasionally, the sword made satisfying whistles as the wooden edge sliced through the air at the perfect angle.