Training Freaks

After breakfast, Blink decided he wanted to visit his adoptive father's grave. He wasn't able to come to his funeral and felt really bad about it. Anyway, it would have been pointless as the old man would have been buried long before he arrived.

The entire family came along with him. After cleaning around the area, they all stood before the old man's gravestone. Blink said a prayer then stood beside his mother.

Blink's father was named Mavr. The old man and his mother, Damre, had been married for nearly 20 years before they had Magra. So, when Blink came along, many people mistook him for their grandson from a relative.

The names of people from Kasgar were quite unique. They followed the same four-letter system for the males with two consonants at the end. For females, a letter a or e is simply added at the end.

The thing with Kasgar's names is that the last letter is pronounced before the third. So that his brother-in-law's name Jogr is actually pronounced as /dzorg/ and his elder sister's name is pronounced /marga/.

The names of the villagers of Kasgar was a national joke in Ragha. Kasgar was labelled as the village that didn't learn how to spell. People from Kasgar retorted that they were actually the ones who followed the Ragha tradition of spelling their names, which was quite true. With the passage of time, the rest of Ragha saw the sense in fixing the spelling of their names while Kasgar stuck with the old.

"I didn't expect he would die so suddenly," Blink said.

"We didn't either," his mother replied. "If it's any consolation, at least he died a very happy man."

Blink didn't really understand what the old woman meant, so he shot her a confused look.

The old woman narrated the story from the start.

"When you were promoted to a brown-robed disciple, your academy sent a black-robed disciple to our village. It was from this disciple that your father learned that you were the top disciple in the academy. Apparently, the disciple was sent to open a martial arts training center in our village because of your outstanding accomplishments.

"Your father was so proud and, for so many days, he kept telling whoever cared to listen that his son is the number one disciple in the martial arts academy.

"When the martial arts training center formally opened, everybody was trying to have a few words with your father to thank him for the wonderful opportunity that was bestowed upon the village.

"He went home full of smiles. He was sitting on the bench outside the house when he just tumbled down. When your namgun checked him out, he was already dead. The whole village declared that he died from too much happiness.

"Of course that's not really the truth. Before your Namgan Magra was born, your father had been so depressed by all the taunting from the other men because we had been childless for a very long time. Because of this, he had taken to drinking liquor, which ruined his health. By the time Magra was born, he had determined to stop getting drunk. However, it was already too late for him."

Blink gave a deep sigh upon hearing the story.

"I remember how he used to drop on all fours and let me ride his back like a horse," Blink recalled. "I was so happy back then."

"And he was so happy to play with you as well," the old woman said. "He truly did love you as a father would love a son."

Blink's eyes moistened upon recalling the memories he had with the old man. He was wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his robe when Hubr, who was already more comfortable around Blink, told him not to cry.

"A real man shouldn't shed tears," he said.

"Who taught you that?" Blink asked.

"The boys at the training center."

"That is just not true."

"But even Dammu (father) tells me that himself."

"Is that right? Did you know that your dammu was so overjoyed he cried so hard when your mother finally accepted him as her future partner?"

"He did?"

"Ah…Nimgun," Jogr wanted to interject.

"Of course he did! And you know what? He cried so hard on my shoulder that when I squeezed my shirt afterwards, a bucket came out of it."

"Ho, ho! Now that's too much of a tall tale now, don't you think?"

"Ho, ho, yourself! I was there while you cried tears of joy. But you weren't there when I squeezed the tears off my shirt."

By this time the women were smiling while Jogr had the look of someone who felt betrayed by his best friend.

"I'll remember this humiliation," he threatened.

From the graveyard, Jogr and Hubr proceeded to the martial arts training center. They asked Blink to tag along, but the latter declined their request as he wanted to continue practicing the new technique he had discovered that morning.

At the yard, Blink chopped a few more firewood. Then, he resumed his training with the curling slashes and chops.

He dropped the ax after thirty minutes and utilized the same principles with his quarter staff. Next he tried to integrate the technique into a series with other more conventional strikes. He tried creating different sets of series mixing direct and curling strikes.

In the afternoon, Blink decided to read the journal of Master Tszarek. The journal began with the earliest insights of his master on his martial arts training. Almost all his master's insights were actually already comprehended by Blink while at the academy. However, there was one that got Blink's interest.

Master Tszarek wrote that a fist strike was more powerful the closer it was to the body of the one delivering it. Blink tried to recall the thousands of sparring rounds he fought while at the academy and came to the conclusion that his master was on to something.

The only problem with Master Tszarek's insight was he didn't explain the principle behind the insight. Blink thereby concluded that Master Tszarek must have been basing from mere observation but wasn't fully aware of how it worked.

Still, it was a very valid insight as far as Blink could tell.

Pondering upon it a bit more, Blink thought that if it were true for fist techniques, then it must also be true for palm techniques.

Blink walked out of the house to try it out on some of the smaller trees at the edge of their yard. He found that Master Tszarek's insight was indeed very effective even for palm techniques but still could not ascertain why it was so.

Blink did a few more rounds of practice with his fist and palm techniques until dusk. He was so tired at the end of the day that he fell asleep on the spacious common room as soon as he laid down.

That night, he had sensed Hubr practicing his martial arts until late at night but was just too sleepy to tell the boy to go to sleep.