Epiphany

Pain.

Searing through his legs, white hot. Pain, a deafening drum, throbbing in time with the surges of molten steel in his limbs.

He laid there in that pool, afraid to move and invite more pain. Like a river of lightning, it surged through him, the rush of adrenaline no longer enough to stave it off. Sometimes he laughed, the pain too absurd to be real. Sometimes he cried, unable to cope. But most of the time, he stared up at the falls, white hot rage gripping his chest so tightly that he shook as he drew breath.

As the sky overhead bled to blue then to black and the light failed, Zhuding fought. Though he laid immobile, his entire effort was focused on resisting the pain that threatened to swallow him. There were no thoughts; only the feral, vicious fight of a man who knew that he was going to die. The river of molten steel inside him had a tide that rushed up, threatened to consume him, then retreated, reserved as it waited to go in again. Each time it engulfed him, trying to take his mind, he resisted. Staying afloat, not letting himself be consumed by the pain, he held on to control.

There was no way to tell for certain how long Zhuding laid there. The pain was so acute and his focus so intense that he couldn't think, much less pay attention to anything else. It could have been the few hours till nightfall, or it could have been days. The only evidence of his time spent in the pool was the pruning of his waterlogged skin and the hunger that gnawed at his stomach.

After some time, though, he found that it got easier. The pain hadn't dulled, and the tide hadn't lessened, but he found it took a little less effort to hold on. He moved his arms, sat up slightly in the pool. His head ached. His clothes were soaked. He was freezing. He realized that he was shivering violently, his teeth chattering. He needed to get out of the water – looking around, he saw that the lip of the pool wasn't far. Drawing in a sharp breath through his clenched jaw, he braced himself and flipped onto his stomach.

The lightning that filled his vision, the fire that shot through him from head to toe, nearly knocked him out where he laid. But holding on had gotten easier with the practice, and his grip didn't fail. He braced, took a breath, and drug himself by his arms to the edge of the pool. Slowly he moved towards it, and eventually gripped the damp stone, heaving himself up.

Sweet warmth seeped into him from the damp stone, the contrast accenting his bone-deep cold. He shook, hugging himself.

In that moment, he reflexively retreated from the world, withdrawing into his mind. The tides of pain were still there, rushing in, trying to drag him down. He stayed afloat without thinking, now, riding the pain, allowing it to carry him. He rested in it, the oppressive heat almost a friend, now. He couldn't think, but at least he could feel. He sensed again his dantian, that reservoir of spirit Hedao had revealed to him. He couldn't sense the spirit, not exactly – it was unclear, formless, as though he was on a riverbank, peering down at the waters through thick fog. But like the water in the river, he could tell it was there – could tell it was churning, frothing, vying to escape.

The tides of molten steel seemed to intensify as he focused, its attempts to consume him redoubling. He felt he was about to go under – and he didn't like his chances of coming back up. Panic gripped him. Clinging to consciousness, he pushed his mind against the pain, groaning under the effort. Slowly, he forced a small space for his mind to rest– a sanctuary from the pain, a place where he could think again. While expending this effort, carving out this space inch by inch, a small stream of spirit left his dantian. It was pleasant, warm and refreshing instead of searing and bitter like torrent during his fall. He felt it suffuse his body, circulating slowly, erasing pain in its wake like ocean waves smoothing the beach.

He let out an involuntary gasp of intense relief as the searing and stabbing pain of molten steel in his broken legs began to ebb. The stream of spirit wasn't clear to Zhuding's senses, but he could tell that it wasn't a tenth as intense as his fall had been. Despite that, it was still taking all of his concentration and focus to continue the flow, to keep the pain away, to maintain his concentration. A dull ache in his temple began to form as he held.

He took stock of his surroundings, looking around the dim cavern. It was night, and the only light came from the shaft of moonlight far above. Hedao's furniture behind him still stood, damp from the constant mist. He felt a bit silly – it wasn't as though he'd expected it to change. Looking down at his legs, he cringed. They were mangled, broken in multiple places. He might have thrown up if he had anything in his stomach. Luckily the skin hadn't broken, or he might have bled out – who knows how many hours he'd been laying there. Blessing the wall he had made against the pain, he dragged himself backwards to the cavern wall and leaned back, closing his eyes, still shivering uncontrollably.

He began to fall asleep, consciousness slipping, but as soon as he began to nod off, the pain flooded back in as the stream died and his mental shelter failed, shocking him awake again. Against his best efforts to stay awake, his exhaustion kept pulling him down, and this repeated several times until daylight began to light the cavern.

The ache in his temple had become a throb by now, the hours of mental effort taking their toll. However, to his surprise, he found that the pain was slightly less intense each time he slipped and let it in. The only explanation for that would be that his legs were healing, and at a startling rate. He noted the cool warmth of the spirit flowing within him. He could only assume that it was the cause of the healing.

He sat there some hours more, fighting to stay awake, suffering the stabbing in his temple that the shield did not touch. His hunger grew, slowly, but consistently. As the sun set on that day, he started to feel a different, more dangerous exhaustion. He felt himself beginning to starve. The twilight bathed the pool below the waterfalls in a warm, golden light that filled the cavern. He let out a breathy laugh – such a beautiful place for his miserable situation

He made a decision. As fast as his legs were healing, it wasn't fast enough. He would starve down here. He had to find a way out. Summoning all of his willpower, he pushed off of the stone wall behind him and began to drag himself around the rim of the cavern. Hedao had walked behind the curtain of water – perhaps there was a way out over there.

The shelter in his mind shook at the abuse he put his legs through. Some of the more intense stabs made it through, making him grunt. But still he made his way forward, slowly but surely.

As he rounded the corner Hedao had turned, he was met with a blank stone wall intricately carved with a mess of lines and symbols. He gaped, confused, but then remembered how he had gotten here in the first place. He had been standing in their normal training spot near the cliff, then Hedao had took his shoulder, and next thing he knew, he was in this strange cavern. Hedao must not need a direct route out of the cavern.

Dread setting in, he spent a while exploring the rest of the cavern, even submitting himself to the cold pool again, combing for any exit. Fruitless hours later, though, he had to admit to himself: there was no way out. Helplessness overcame him, and his shelter shattered. He cried out at the pain that rushed into his mind, the abuse he had put his already-broken limbs through assaulting him. The stabbing in his temple mixed with it, accentuated it, deepened it, became a screech in his mind. He couldn't hear himself scream as he grabbed his head, willing the pain to stop even as his heart telling him that he could not.

Once again, there were no thoughts. There was only the pain and his senses. It suffused him, circulated in him, reminiscent of the spirit's current before. It came from his legs, but it touched every part of his being, every nerve, every bone. It became a connection between him and his body, one stronger, deeper than he had ever felt before. The pain had him suffer, but it also revealed facets of the relationship between his self and his body that he had never known. The pain was a guide, a mentor that guided him through each part of himself. The pain touched his arm, and he knew it as though he had not known it before. It touched his torso, and he understood its construction as if he hadn't ever used it before. It touched his dantian, and he knew it so intimately that he knew he had known nothing before. He writhed on the floor, legs useless before him, and he smiled for the gift of knowledge he had been given. It clicked.

He didn't reach out with his mind, squeezing his dantian for spirit as if he was husking a sheath of grain. He reached through his body, intimate, deft in his control, and drew the spirit out of his dantian like honey from a jar, graceful. It came easily, and he ran it through his body with a marvelous control and clarity. It wasn't a conscious process, but one of the body. He didn't see the spirit with his mind; he sensed it with his body. The riverbound fog had lifted, and he peered through the crystal waters.

He could feel the pain abate rapidly; not in the forced, artificial way of his shelter, but naturally through the mending of his legs. It was almost as though they knit themselves together; they soaked up the spirit like the dry desert ground lapped up water. For the final time, to Zhuding, time had no meaning. This time, however, it wasn't an eternity of suffering, but instead a rapture, an epiphany.

It was daylight when Zhuding came to his senses. He stood up, legs as good as they ever were, body feeling unusual. It was an awareness that hadn't been present before; an understanding of where and how and why every small part of him was. He felt renewed, despite the intense hunger gnawing at his stomach. He walked into the pool beneath the enormous pillar, surrounded by the curtains of water, looked up at the sun above. It was almost noon.

He'd get out of here. He knew he could. It was a fact. And then he'd have some words with Hedao.

The two of them needed to talk.