Chapter 108: The Little Cross at the Circle's Heart

On the twentieth day of the Second Month, at the hour of the Snake, the ring judge for Ring Four held out his hand. "The lists."

Xu Yan drew the sealed slip from inside his robe and passed it over. On the outside of the fold was written "Qingya," characters he had written the night of the nineteenth under the lamp in the guest quarters. The steward from the Ink Pool Gate sect, diagonally across, handed in a slip as well. The two slips rested on the judge's knee. He opened Qingya's first, smoothed it flat, and read:

"First round, Shi Po. Second round, Bai Xiaoman. Third round, Qi Qi. Fourth round, Huo Qing. Fifth round, Jiang Wan."

He then opened Ink Pool Gate's and read off the five names in one breath. He folded both slips back up, set them under a stone at the edge of the mat, and looked up at the two sides. "Rules, so no one asks later. One stick of incense, two quarter-hours. Out of the circle, down and unable to rise, or conceding—each counts as a loss. If the incense burns out with no result, I rule in favor of the defending circle. First round. Both sides enter."

The steward did not walk away. He stood in front of his own line of people, looking first at Shi Po's feet, then at Shi Po himself, and finally let his eyes settle on the second name on the list—Bai Xiaoman. Xu Yan caught that glance and filed it away.

Ring Four sat at the southeast corner of the martial arena, against the compound wall. Beyond the wall was the rear corridor of the guest quarters. The circle had been drawn with white lime by a clerk on the nineteenth—a line not wide, a little over a finger's breadth, the dew soaking it overnight so the color had dulled, and a foot set on it no longer kicked up powder. The ground inside the circle was hard; within a few feet, a layer of old, packed-down footprints was still faintly visible.

Not many people stood outside the ring. Qingya had six. Ink Pool Gate had five people plus the steward. Two clerks with paper folders stood to the east. Farther off, a scattering of rogue cultivators and merchants from the town had gathered to watch. Near Ink Pool Gate, one man squatted by the wall, a saber hugged to his chest, constantly wiping the scabbard with his sleeve. Every few wipes he looked up at the circle.

Fighting had already broken out over at Ring One, with cheers rising in wave after wave. The sound of weapons came from Ring Three.

The judge took out a fire starter and set it on his knee. "First round. Body inspection."

Shi Po walked to the edge of the circle, then looked back at Xu Yan.

"Don't strike before the incense burns out," Xu Yan said.

"Mhm."

"Stand there. That's not a loss."

Shi Po extended both wrists, palms up. The judge pressed two fingers to his left wrist and held them there, switched to the right, then looked at his face, at one side of his neck, and withdrew his hand. "Pass."

Ink Pool Gate's man came up to be inspected. He pushed his sleeves to his elbows; there were a few old scars on his forearms. The judge pressed the wrist, looked at the face, looked at the neck, and said the same.

Xu Yan stood two paces outside the line, taking in both inspections. In the rules folded inside his robe, the page with the corner turned down was this very section—body inspection. He counted the three procedures through in his mind, missing none: press the wrist, look at the face, look at the neck. All three done, and a single word: "Pass."

That man crossed the gray line first. He was half a head shorter than Shi Po, with a layer of calloused skin on the backs of his hands, knuckles larger than most men's. His steps landed light, springing off the ground. Once inside, he gauged the space for a moment, then stopped one pace from the line and pushed his sleeves up to his shoulders.

Shi Po walked to the center of the circle and crouched. With his index finger, he scratched a small cross into the hard-packed dirt—one stroke horizontal, one vertical, cut shallow, the soil pressing into the creases. He stood up, planted both feet on it, his heel resting where the strokes crossed.

One of Ink Pool Gate's disciples muttered, "He drew a bullseye for himself, a foot wide. He thinks he's going to stand there for a whole stick of incense."

The judge blew the fire starter to life and lit the incense in the bronze holder. "Begin."

Ink Pool Gate's man drove a straight palm into Shi Po's chest.

It thudded—a muffled sound from beneath the clothes, like a wooden mallet striking something solid. Shi Po's torso rocked back an inch. His feet did not move.

The second palm followed, landing on the same spot. His arms hung at his sides, not even raised.

Third palm. Fourth palm. The man switched hands, driving the heel of his palm upward into Shi Po's flank. Shi Po's waist sank.

Shi Po's hand moved once at his side, fingers spreading slightly, then closing again. No one on the platform had forbidden him to strike back—he simply wouldn't. The moment he did, this round would stop being about enduring and become a contest of weight and mass. He couldn't win that. He only needed to last the incense.

Qi Qi pushed up from where he knelt on the ground. "Hit back!"

"No," Shi Po said, his voice even.

Hearing that, the man retreated half a step and stopped pushing at his chest. He circled to the side and rammed in with his shoulder. Shi Po tipped forward a fraction of an inch; someone to the east shouted approval. He bent his knees slightly, straightened back to where he'd been—and the dirt beneath his feet hadn't even loosened.

A rogue cultivator outside the ring asked in a low voice, "This kid doesn't know how to fight, does he?"

The person beside him answered, "If he couldn't fight, he couldn't stand that steady."

Shi Po began counting. First palm, second, third, fourth. The fifth was the heel of the hand, driving upward. The sixth was the shoulder. At the seventh he stopped counting and switched to breaths—one in, one out. Counting to ten was easy to lose track of; counting breaths never got confused.

He thought of the quarry. When they lifted stone, the foreman called the work chant: one, two, heave. Where the chant went, the strength followed—a moment too early or too late and the stone would not lift steady. Same here. He didn't care where the man struck; he only minded that his own breath went in and out, unbroken.

Over at Ring One, the cheers suddenly swelled into a roar. No one at Ring Four turned their head.

The Ink Pool Gate man closed his palms into fists and started hammering at Shi Po's forearms. Only then did Shi Po raise his arms a little—up to his chest, elbows hanging low. Fists landed on bone, the sound shifting from dull to hard. Red bloomed across his forearms, spreading slowly outward from each point of impact.

"His hands hurt," Bai Xiaoman said quietly, crouched outside the line. "Listen to his punches."

Qi Qi cocked an ear. Thud. Thud. Each impact deeper than the last, and each slower.

Someone from Ink Pool Gate shouted, "Stop brawling with him! Go for his feet!"

The man changed to grabbing at Shi Po's legs. Both hands came around the crook of Shi Po's knees, gripped, braced, and lifted. Shi Po's feet did not leave the dirt; his heels pressed into that little cross, soil squeezing out around the sides of his shoes in a ring. The man heaved twice, his face going red, then let go and stepped back.

That single step back made it clear: the backs of both his hands were swollen, and a layer of skin at the knuckles had worn through, showing white underneath.

Shi Po thought of the day of the Ninth Rank trial. The staff had come down blow after blow then too, and toward the end he hadn't known how long he'd been standing. That day's incense had lasted as long as today's.

Half the incense had burned. The judge shielded the tip with the back of his hand to keep the wind off and straightened it.

The rhythm in the circle changed. Shi Po was still standing; the other man circled, striking every three steps, retreating a step after each blow. He struck at the back of Shi Po's knee—the knee only dipped. He swept at the ankle with his foot—Shi Po's toes turned inward, and the sweep caught nothing.

The shouts faded. Ink Pool Gate's side began cursing their own man: get your hands up; stay on your feet; don't stop.

The man circled behind Shi Po, brought both hands together, and drove both palms into the backs of Shi Po's shoulders.

Shi Po's upper body pitched forward. The gray line was right there—less than half a foot away. Someone from Ink Pool Gate screamed: "Out of the ring!"

Shi Po's feet slammed down in the dirt. His heels ground into that little cross, his knees folded all the way forward, his spine arched, and he hauled himself back upright. The shout died in midair.

Jiang Wan stood to Xu Yan's right, never having shifted position the whole time. "Half a stick left."

"Noted," Xu Yan said.

"The strength in his hands will fail on its own," Jiang Wan said. "Once it breaks, this round is finished."

Qi Qi asked in a whisper, "What if he won't concede?"

"Incense burns out," Xu Yan said. "No exit, no fall. Then the judge rules."

Sure enough, the man slowed. His final few punches went hollow, landing on the cloth at Shi Po's chest, the cloth dimpling in and smoothing out again. Shi Po swallowed. His jaw tightened. A red patch spread across his shoulders, his forearms red in two places, the red areas swollen, visibly thicker than before.

"He can't hit anymore," Qi Qi said.

The man knew it too. He backed to the edge of the line, chest heaving, arms hanging. The backs of his hands were swollen shiny; the white at the knuckles had seeped red.

The incense tip drooped, and the ash broke off in the bronze holder.

The judge waited until the stub had gone black, then looked up. "Qingya wins."

No sound came from Ink Pool Gate's side. The man lifted his hands in front of his face, turned them over, held them up in the air, fingers spread. He lowered them, turned, and walked out of the circle to stand by his steward.

Shi Po did not move. He looked down at his feet.

Both feet were still on the cross at the circle's heart, his soles pressing into that shallow mark. The ring of soil that had squeezed out around his shoes had collapsed, leaving the shape of two feet on the surface. He lifted one heel slightly. The cross was still there.

He walked out of the circle. Jiang Wan spoke first: "Around the thirtieth blow, your shoulder rose."

"Mhm," Shi Po said.

"Half an inch. Nothing serious," she said. "Remember it."

Xu Yan did not ask about the win or loss. "Hands."

Shi Po turned both forearms over. The red places had not broken skin. "Doesn't matter."

Bai Xiaoman was still crouched outside the line. The handkerchief lay across her knees, five pebbles arranged at the four corners and the center, set square and neat, the one nearest the line still two finger-widths short of it. In her mind, she had divided the dirt inside the circle into five parts—east, south, west, north, and center. The place where Shi Po's standing had crushed a circle of soil at the heart of the ring: that was exactly the center part.

"How much does he have left?" she asked Shi Po.

"His feet never moved."

"I know they didn't move," she said. "I asked how much he has left in his hands."

Shi Po thought about it. "Nothing left."

"Then he emptied himself out," Bai Xiaoman said, picking the pebbles up one by one and gathering them into her palm.

Xu Yan drew from his sleeve an old scrap of ledger paper, cut from beneath the lid of the cash box, one edge still raw with torn fiber. He scored a mark on it with his thumbnail and tucked it back into his sleeve.

"One to nothing," Qi Qi said, keeping his voice low, wary of the other side hearing.

The Ink Pool Gate steward pulled his own list from beneath the stone, looked it over, then walked over to the man hugging the saber. He pointed at the center of the circle, then at Shi Po's feet. The man nodded, hoisted the saber he'd been polishing onto his shoulder, walked to the edge of the circle, and stood there, shifting his feet just outside the gray line, testing the ground.

Xu Yan pressed the ledger paper back into his sleeve. The first round was recorded; the second round's man already stood at the line. What occupied his mind was whether Bai Xiaoman's half-stick could hold until the end—hold until that man stepped into her circle.

The judge pulled out Qingya's slip and tapped at the line for the second round. "Second round. Both sides enter. Body inspection."

Bai Xiaoman stood. She wiped her knees with the back of her hand—the dirt wouldn't come off, but she let it go and walked to the edge of the circle, to the front of the judge.

Someone from Ink Pool Gate laughed. "Here's the herb-grabber from Huichun Hall."

Bai Xiaoman didn't look back. She opened her clenched fist. Five pebbles settled into her palm, not one rolling off.