Training (IV): GoodByes

"Remember to call me every day, if you can't call me everyday, then please do try to call me every week." Anya shouted at Alex from her perch on top the airship hanging over his mountain peak. Alex shook his head ruefully, but winced a bit as he unsettled the injuries he sustained from his fight with Anya yesterday. Using fire skills against a literal dragon flame goddess was not the best of ideas, and when said goddess is a fiery African belle with a taste for brutal beat downs, then you just bought yourself a one way ticket to pain Ville.

"Yes, yes! I will. Just remember to train really hard okay!" Alex called back,

"I don't know about you love birds, but I too would like to say goodbye to my baby brother. I can't believe we're saying goodbye the first time we met." A voice said from behind Anya as a girl in her late teens and early twenties poked her head over the railing of the airship and looked down at Alex with a warm yet sinister smile.

"Seriously? We met last night when you proceeded to unceremoniously interfere with me and Anya's fight. I still have bruises to show your so called sisterly love for me." Alex spat out with all the sarcasm he could muster, the small grin at the edge of his lips made it clear he was in good terms with the young lady.

"Don't worry baby brother, I'll take care of your first wife for you, I'm going to make sure no other guys set their eyes on her. But you should remember she comes first, and there can only be her, at least for now." Alex turned red at the tip of his ears.

He never thought it possible, but in just one night he was able to simultaneously love and hate this woman he now called sister. She was spunky, wild, which made her personality match well with Anya's. But she was also beautiful, with skin so pale and fair and lips so red it was as if she came out of the pages of a story book. Her eyes were larger than normal for someone of the heaven empire, it made Alex wonder about her parentage though, guess he father isn't someone from the empire of heaven. Alex felt as if his mother was on a conquest to conquer the men of the world, who knew where she would go next.

"All right disciples! It's time for us to leave." A middle aged yet strikingly beautiful woman said to both girls as she came to stand behind them.

"Young Master of the Zhang family, I respect your strength and your talent. You sister and your friend are in good hands. Also I hope to see you display much of your abilities in the inter sect friendly competition being held to commemorate the birthday of the princess of the empire. You should bring your best, because I assure these girls would too. As you were."

Alex gave her a deep bow, and watched as the airship lifted off the ground and flew swiftly away and into the sunrise in the east. His chest felt congested, his limbs heavy and his heart cold. It was in this moment that he truly felt alone, the last connection he had to his old life was gone. His breaths became sharper and it almost seemed as if he was going to cry before he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Cultivation and the journey to power is always something that's started alone. You've done good for yourself with her nephew, you guys will see each other again, and hopefully then you'll both be strong enough to fight and keep yourselves together. Now the only advice I can give right now is to train, and train and learn. Your personal teacher should be here in five days to teach you about the world you've become a part of. Plus your grandfather has decided to make you his student, that would make you the seventh, he'll be ready for you soon, so be ready. I'll see you soon."

And then with a gust of wind his uncle was gone, but it wasn't too bad. Alex now had an understanding of what his life was going to be like for the next few days. Either way his uncle was right, it was time to train, there's no harm in that, at least it would get his mind off this emptiness he was suddenly feeling.

Alex flattened his palm as he began moving it in a wave like motion. There was no form or rhyme to it, but rather it was just a method of shadow boxing. In his minds eyes, Alex envisions he was surrounded by enemies, and he was trying to evade their strikes by moving his palm about. Alex worked well with for a second before he frowned in annoyance, for some reason he couldn't feel this move as much as he wanted to.

The (Viper evades Buddha) palm art was no longer as powerful as it was when he was still in the body refining realm. He shook his head and tried the (Iron Viper Strike), the move that used to be quite hard and even very dangerous for him to perform, was executed with such ease and finesse that Alex wondered if these were the same moves that he used when he first started cultivating. It didn't make sense.

"There's nothing wrong with those moves son, you've just outgrown them. You're stronger than those moves could compensate for, and when a move doesn't improve the strengths of it's user, then that move has become redundant. I want you to watch me, learn my every form and commit it to memory. This is one of, if not the most sacred battle skill of the Wudang sect, watch and learn."

Alex would have very much preferred if he didn't have any sort of prolonged contact with his mother, but she was here now, and he couldn't very well runway and leave her here. It would have been very disrespectful, and his dad would have had his hide if he ever did something like that.

So Alex did as she asked, he sat back and watched as she moved, there was hurry with her steps, no stress and no tension. She flowed with the wind, danced through, with, beneath and above it. It got to a point that Alex felt she was moving the wind herself, her form graceful like a bird in the sky, or a fish in the sea. Sometimes she moved a bit faster, but Alex could see it was a way for her to redirect force and energy, her body seemed to glow as the grass beneath her feet grew higher in some places and became flat in others.

The sleeve of her clothes flapped in the wind, he eyes focused as her body moved and her hands seemed to play a tune provided by the strings of nature. Alex noticed that when she breathed in, all of the wind and Qi within their surroundings would flow to her, but it was not just the wind as Alex could see early morning few slowly gather around her, until there was a puddle of water at her feet.

Her moves were repeated, and Alex committed them all to memory with such an astonishing clarity that left even himself baffled. The power of this technique was being toned down for his sake, because even Alex knew that there was much power within the moves, and his mother who was already in the late realms of the earth gate, could summon enough power to divide this mountain in half if she wanted to. And then she stopped, taking a deep breath that suddenly made the air around them lighter. Alex couldn't help but ask his mother.

"What sort of Martial arts is that."

"There are many names for it. Some people call it TaijiQuan, some say Taiji Fist, and they wouldn't be wrong, those are all the names of this art. But you, you can call it...….Taichi!"

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[AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm sorry for putting this here, but webnovel doesn't allow links in the author's note, so I have to put this here. I have a WhatsApp chat group for all my stories and I believe it's a good way for me to have contact with all my readers and listen to whatever ideas and suggestions they might have regarding all of my stories. So this is the link.

https://chat.whatsapp.com/JqHBgSr88BcHWefCKzPonC

Please join and don't hesitate to ask me questions.]