The island that my training took place on was quite small. A ten foot diameter circle of stone dominated the eastern half of the island, with the western twenty feet covered with brush and a single small tree. I stood in the stone circle and turned to face Professor Long.
"How will my training present itself today?"
"You handled the Arbiter news fairly quickly," he responded.
"It doesn't change who I am, and I still have much to learn." I bent into a crouch and then slid into the forward stance, presenting my right hand in the proper position.
Prof. Long smiled and a chuckle escaped his lips.
"That sounds like my favorite student. But we won't be sparring today."
I stood erect, slightly puzzled.
"Today you are going to begin learning about the second part of Death Fist. The pressure points."
"Pressure points? Like acupuncture?"
Long chuckled again. "Even more powerful, but much simpler. There are 1637 pressure points in the human body that can be manipulated, but only 700 or so of those are suitable for battle."
"And how does someone manipulate these points?"
Long smiled one of his more mischievous smiles.
"Before you learn to touch, you must learn to see."
And so for the rest of the day Long and I did a number of chi exercises designed to allow me to access and see chi both in myself and others. I made progress, but it was frustratingly difficult to see chi in other beings than myself.
"Belerophon, this is the most difficult part of the training," explained Long after a few hours of struggling," as a flesh mage, controlling your own body comes as second nature. But that makes seeing how others control their bodies that much more difficult. It can take months for someone to master this phase of the Death Fist."
And so I practiced until the sun began to set. But still no luck. I slept well, and so I woke up long before the sun rose. I swam back out to the island, and was meditating in the predawn calm when a couple paddled by in a canoe. They didn't see me, and so their conversation went on interrupted. The woman was rattling off a long list of fishing gadgets she wanted to bring. The man shook his head and replied quietly, "Honey, you can't make a fish believe that your lure is real. But what you can do is make your lure act like it's real."
Realization hit me like a tidal wave. I was going about trying to see chi completely the wrong way. Rather than trying to make someone else's chi visible to my eyes, I should try to make my eyes attuned to seeing other people's already present chi. I sat down in the center of the stone circle, focusing my chi to once again begin practicing. I could tell the difference between my two attempts immediately. My eyes began to tingle, as though I could feel my chi flowing to them. A blink seemed to last for an eternity, and then my eyes opened.
And I saw.
Bushes flickered, trees danced, the water swirled with strange patterns.
But the sky, the shifting, twisting, breathing, living sky held my attention.