He Was Mistaken for the Sword Saint's Heir, So His Strictest Senior Trained the Fake novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Forms Before Lunch

Shouyi coaches Mian through the public test by voice and passes the third form off as reinterpretation; the Inspector rules the guard must sleep within arm's reach.

By noon the courtyard held six hundred disciples, one Inspector, and a wooden table with a scroll on it.

Mian stood in the middle of the flagstones in clean blue robes that someone had ironed while he slept.

Shouyi stood one step behind his right shoulder, as the sect's new guard of the heir.

"Do not look at the crowd," Shouyi said.

Mian jumped.

The voice had come from inside his ear, low and flat and entirely private.

"What was that?" he said aloud.

"Voice transmission," said the voice in his head. "It is a Foundation technique. Do not speak aloud."

"You can put a voice in my head?"

A few rows of disciples leaned forward.

"Song Mian," said the voice, very patiently. "Do not speak aloud."

"Sorry," said Mian aloud.

At the table, the Inspector unrolled his scroll with trembling hands.

"The Test of Three Forms," he announced. "Opening the Gate. Rain on Bamboo. And, if the heir is willing, the Snow-Parting Palm."

"Is that last one hard?" Mian said.

"It is the Saint's own technique," said the Inspector. "No living person has seen it done."

Mian turned his head slightly.

"That sounds hard," he said, to Shouyi.

"Form one," said the voice. "Now."

Mian lifted his wooden sword and did Opening the Gate.

He did it exactly as he had done it at dawn, up, across and thrust, with the same drop of the heel.

He did not do the shoulder.

A hush went around the yard, the satisfied hush of six hundred people who have been told something wonderful and now see it.

"Beautiful," breathed the Inspector, writing. "Almost no strength in it. The Saint says strength is a bad habit."

"Does he," said Mian.

"Form two," said the voice in his ear, with an odd note in it. "I have not taught you form two."

"I noticed."

"Say nothing aloud."

"I noticed," Mian said, aloud, again.

Shouyi stepped forward.

He did it smoothly, hand on the hilt of his plain steel sword, and bowed to the Inspector.

"With the Inspector's leave," he said. "A guard of the Saint's line stands at the heir's right hand."

"I will keep the pace."

The Inspector stared at him.

Then his face cleared.

"The accompanied form," he whispered. "Page eleven. The Saint's own guard walked beside him! I had forgotten!"

He had not forgotten it, because it was not in the scroll, but he was delighted to have remembered it.

Shouyi drew his sword and began Rain on Bamboo.

Mian had never seen it before.

He watched the first movement, a sweep low and left, and then his body did what it did.

He stepped into the same sweep, a half-beat behind.

Down, turn, rise, flick of the wrist.

They moved around each other across the stones, the tall rigid senior and the kitchen boy in borrowed robes.

From the crowd it looked exactly like a practiced duet.

Someone sighed.

Someone else began to cry.

"Your elbow is high," said the voice in Mian's ear, in time with the sweep.

"My elbow's fine."

"Lower it."

"You're bossy in my head, too."

"Lower it," said the voice.

If Mian had been asked to bet, he would have called that a laugh swallowed whole.

Mian lowered it.

They finished side by side, swords down, six inches apart.

Shouyi's breath was held.

Mian saw it, in the stillness of the ribs and the set of the throat.

Then he let it out through his nose, quickly, and the moment was gone.

"Form three," said the Inspector, and his voice shook.

"Snow-Parting."

The yard went silent.

"Senior Yan," Mian said, under his breath this time, because he had learned something. "Do you know it?"

"No," said the voice in his head.

"At all?"

"It requires a Core." A pause. "It requires more than I can show with a crowd looking."

"You just did Rain on Bamboo with a crowd looking."

"I did something other than what you think," said Shouyi's voice.

Mian did not know what that meant.

There was a smell of plum blossom on the wind from the terraces, and he took a long breath of it.

"Do anything slow," said the voice.

"Anything?"

"If it is slow enough, they will see only what they want."

Mian stepped to the center of the yard.

He lifted his empty left hand, palm out.

He did Rain on Bamboo in the slowest way a person could, sleeves trailing.

On the last turn he pushed his palm out into the air.

Just then the wind brought the plum blossoms off the terrace wall in one pale sheet.

They parted around his hand and fell to either side.

It was the wind.

Everyone saw something different.

The Inspector put down his brush and wept openly into his scroll.

"Reinterpretation," he said. "The Saint always said that forms are only shoes! The heir does not copy the Snow-Parting. He walks past it!"

The courtyard roared.

In the third row, Wei Xiaoman rubbed out a number on a board and wrote a smaller one underneath.

The new odds read two to one.

Mian bowed to the crowd, because bowing was the only thing left to do, and Shouyi bowed half a beat after him.

"That was unforgivable," said the voice in his head.

"Was it bad?"

"It was an enormous fraud. They will talk about it for years."

"You sound like you liked it."

There was no reply.

The Inspector rose from the table, smoothing his robes, with the face of a man who has made a decision.

"I will remain at Bluebrook until the Assembly," he announced. "The Council rule on the Saint's line is clear. An heir must never sleep unguarded."

He turned his shining eyes on Shouyi.

"The guard will therefore sleep within arm's reach of the heir. Every night."

Shouyi's face, which had been grey with discipline, went the white of a bleached bone.

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