Severing Time & Space

Picking Up Strays

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and before Wu Jian knew it, a whole half a year had passed since Hou Jingshu left.

Just like they had promised, Wu Jian and Hou Jingshu wrote to each other a lot. It took three days for a letter to be delivered, so correspondances happened within a six day interval. He now had a drawer filled with letters.

He could have thrown them away, and some of his fellow clansmen had even suggested it, but he refused. These were letters from someone he loved.

His training continued unabated. During the last strength test, his strength had risen from sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand. Wu Meiying had once again tested exactly one thousand below him, but he suspected she was doing that on purpose, though he didn't know why. That girl often did things that were incomprehensible to him.

Summer and fall had passed and winter had arrived. The landscape once again became a snow-covered wonderland. Trees without leaves had their branches covered in white powder and most of the people spent their days indoors, warming themselves up by the fire.

Wu Jian and Wu Meiying were exceptions to this rule.

"Catch me if you can!" Wu Meiying shouted with a laugh as she darted through the trees, hopping from one branch to another. Her movements were so elegant, so refined, and so gentle that she didn't even disturb the snow covering each of the trees as she passed.

By contrast, snow fell like an avalanche as Wu Jian hopped from one branch to another. While he was nowhere near as soft or graceful, he did have the advantage of speed. The only reason Wu Meiying had been able to keep ahead of him was because she could make sharper turns.

Even as he leapt onto another branch, the girl he chased after spun around and leapt to a tree parallel to hers. She did so effortlessly. Wu Jian needed to pause, turn, then leap, which allowed her to keep the distance between them from shrinking.

I'm never going to catch her like this. Rather than just chasing her, I need to think of a way to slow her down.

Called catch and release, this was a new training idea they had come up with, which involved one of them chasing after the other. However, rather than simply running along the ground, they added to the difficulty by traveling through the trees.

The goal of the chaser was to catch the runner. The goal of the runner was to keep away from the chaser. If one of them fell out of the tree tops, they would automatically lose.

This game was a great way for them to train their balance, leg strength, and coordination. It took a lot of concentration to leap from one tree to another. A person couldn't just jump and expect to land on a branch. They had to aim at where they wanted to land, and because he and Wu Meiying were traveling at high speeds, they had barely a split second to determine what branch they should leap to.

It was good for training the mind to think faster.

As he leapt to another branch, Wu Jian looked down. There was no particular reason for this. Perhaps he was starting to tire. His muscles did feel stiff.

The moment he did, however, he spotted something black standing out starkly against the snow-covered ground. Curious, he decided to stop their game and called out to Wu Meiying.

"Mei! I see something down below!"

"Oh? What is it?"

"Not sure. I'm going to check it out."

"Guess I'll join you then. Just know this is your loss since you stopped our game. That means you'll be getting a penalty later today."

"I'm aware."