Black Dragon, Black Cat Read online

  The walk back down reminded Mao of her poor physical condition, and her mood again turned somber at the thoughts of the long afternoon. Her master and Chung Jun were as silent as stones, but walked side by side the entire length of the pathway. They returned to the small house shortly after dark, and Mao went directly to her mat and fell instantly to sleep.

  The next morning Mao awoke at sunrise and pried her eyes open, but had much trouble keeping them from shutting. She sat up carefully on her mat, feeling every joint and muscle in her body complain from the effort. She tried to stand up, but fell back down on her mat before managing it the second time. She dressed herself, and then went to the corner shrine to join Jai-tien and Chung Jun in their morning meditation.

  Mao performed the morning chores, very carefully trying to avoid making sudden movements or overextending her reach to avoid the sharp pains from various locations in her body. The noon meal was served, and even the process of raising the chopsticks to her mouth turned out to produce twangs of regret traveling the length of her upper arm.

  Jai-tien and Chung Jun stood up from the table and walked out toward the training area while Mao cleared the table and cleaned the dishes. When she joined them, they had already begun the basic series of stretching and warming exercises. After an hour of relatively light training, Jai-tien called a halt to the proceedings.

  “Hei Mao, today you will merely watch while Chung Jun and I compete against each other,” he declared. “Take a seat to the side and pay close attention.”

  Mao walked away to the side and sat cross-legged on the ground at a spot from which she would have a good view. She felt strangely anxious, as if she were the one who would fight today. Perhaps she was nervous about the outcome of the competition. Or was she afraid that Jai-tien would not be able to withstand Chung Jun’s attacks, and that the style of kung fu that she had spent her life practicing was inferior to the Zhaojin style? Whatever the reason, her stomach churned madly in anticipation, and she leaned far back from her crossed legs to make herself more comfortable.

  The two men removed their shirts and met in the middle of the training ground, with several feet between them. Jai-tien looked rather weak and feeble standing in front of the heavier and more powerful looking Zhaojin master. Both men bowed deeply to each other. Then each assumed a defensive stance, and they slowly began to circle one another.

  After several feinted movements and counter reactions from the other, Chung Jun burst forward with a blistering series of attacks which Jai-tien seemed to deflect effortlessly as he carefully stepped backwards before the barrage. After a seemingly endless series of fist strikes and kicks, all of which were blocked, parried, or simply sidestepped, Jai-tien found an opening to begin his own attacks and launched his own flurry of strikes and kicks. Chung Jun was forced to move backward against this advance, but he too seemed to avoid easily the flurry of Jai-tien’s attacks.

  For thirty minutes these events replayed themselves, with each opponent advancing with a series of blows until the other would find an opening to press his own attack. With each passing series, the intensity of the match seemed to grow dramatically until both Jai-tien and Chung Jun began to breathe heavily and sweat profusely. The series of attacks were becoming increasingly intense and more sophisticated, and each fighter was having a more difficult time deflecting and avoiding the attacks of the other. Several cuts eventually appeared on both fighters, as more strikes were landing as the battle wore on.

  Still the match carried on after the better part of an hour had elapsed. Mao sat on the ground watching intently the entire time, hoping fervently that her master would finish the match with each of his advances, and praying that he would not succumb to each attack of the Zhaojin master.

  Chung Jun began another sweltering series of fist strikes and kicks that forced Jai-tien to cede ground as he stepped backwards, blocking and parrying the attacks of Chung Jun. With each strike, Chung Jun seemed to gain a slight advantage in position and range, and Mao feared that this time her master would be overpowered by the force of Chung Jun’s advance. The Zhaojin master continued his motion with a backhanded strike to Jai-tien’s head, but the target was no longer there. Jai-tien dropped himself to the ground on his side, grabbing the outstretched hand of his opponent in his own as he did so. Chung Jun was pulled sideways toward Jai-tien, and the old master delivered a sidekick from the ground straight into the abdomen of Chung Jun. With his opponent momentarily stunned, Jai-tien placed one of his legs inside Chung Jun’s forward leg, and the other one on the outside of the same leg. He then rolled over on the ground, which brought Chung Jun crashing to the ground on his chest. Jai-tien continued the roll, trapping his opponent’s leg over his own, and then pushing downward with his chest.

  This was a move that Jai-tien had taught Mao, but she had never thought of using it during their sparring matches. Jai-tien had managed to pin his opponent to the ground, using his leg to apply pressure to the back of Chung Jun’s knee. After a few brief moments of excruciating pain, Chung Jun slammed his fist on the ground, signaling his wish to stop the fight. Jai-tien released Chung Jun’s leg, and rolled to his feet. Chung Jun stood up slowly, lifting his right leg up and down several times to work out the kinks he had just sustained.

  The two men bowed to each other and then walked away to opposite sides of the training area. There they began to move their limbs around slowly in what appeared to be an effort to regain some degree of flexibility after the long match.

  Mao watched the end of the match with a great sense of relief. She was not sure how Jai-tien had managed to win it, as toward the end he seemed to be fading quickly. Was this merely a fluke of chance that he had won?

  She started to stand up from the ground, but returned to her seat as the two masters walked back to face each other in the center of the training area. Again they bowed to each other, and assumed fighting stances. After briefly circling each other, Chung Jun launched into another series of furious attacks, which Jai-tien was forced to block and dodge while carefully moving backward.

  Mao watched for hours that afternoon as Jai-tien and Chung Jun faced off against each other a total of five times. The contests sometimes lasted as long as an hour, each fast-paced and filled with much furious activity. The fighters battled with feints and counter-feints, rapid strikes and counterstrikes, protracted periods of grappling on the ground, and all with an explosive energy that defied belief. Nevertheless, her master always managed to win the match, and Chung Jun appeared to grow weaker as the afternoon wore on, while Jai-tien appeared to become stronger.

  With each of Jai-tien’s victories, Mao became more assured that her master was winning the matches based on his own abilities, and not merely by chance. She recalled his teaching, “You make your own luck!”, which she sincerely doubted to be possible at the time he first stated it. Yet every time, Jai-tien would appear to be losing the battle and then turn the tables on end and perform some seemingly miraculous technique to win the fight. Each time, Mao would recognize the technique as something that her master had previously taught to her.

  By the fifth contest, Mao began to notice that her master often appeared to be tiring, and would concede more ground to his opponent with each successive flurry of strikes. Thus emboldened, Chung Jun would press his attack, striking with more powerful and rapid blows, which forced Jai-tien backward even faster. However, Chung Jun’s techniques were not performed as crisply during these periods, and this was when Jai-tien would strike out with some unanticipated maneuver to end the fight.

  Mao could not help but wonder after each fight if Jai-tien were truly fading toward the end of the matches, or if he were possibly only trying to give that appearance to induce his opponent into making a critical mistake. Nevertheless, she became increasingly convinced as the afternoon wore on that the style of kung fu that she practiced was just as good, if not superior, to that of the Zhaojin.

  The fifth and final match ended in much the same way as the previous four, with C
hung Jun face down in the dirt of the training ground. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, and the supper hour was approaching. Chung Jun picked himself up off the ground and dusted off his clothes. He wiped the blood from his mouth with his forearm, and walked over to Jai-tien and put his hand on his shoulder. “Your skill has not diminished with age, old friend. I could never best you in battle.”

  “Come now, my friend,” Jai-tien replied. “You have beaten me many times during our years of training together.”

  “Please, dear Jai-tien,” Chung Jun responded with a wry smile. “Do you think that I am so naïve that I could not recognize that you allowed me to win occasionally? You were always too humble.” Chung Jun wrapped his arm around his friend’s shoulder, and Jai-tien put his arm around Chung Jun’s waist as the two walked toward the well together to wash themselves.

  That night Mao lay awake for several hours before falling asleep. Her mind raced over the events of the day, time and time again. In her mind she recounted to herself all of the attacks, parries, strikes, dodges, rolls, and leaps that she had watched her master perform that afternoon, and how unfailingly he managed to defeat Master Chung Jun each time. She recalled Jai-tien’s words from several nights ago, when he said that Chung Jun had done very well in the Grand Tournament on several occasions. But Chung Jun had claimed that he could never beat her master! Surely, without a doubt, her master must be Black Dragon! Everything Master Chung Jun had said in their few encounters over the years now fit into place. She finally fell to sleep with a warm feeling of satisfaction.

  The sun broke over the valley to the east and filtered in through the thin draperies that covered the windows. Mao yawned and rolled off her mat, noticing that her aches and pains from her previous sparring with Master Chung Jun had largely dissipated. She felt refreshed, and brimmed with confidence at the thought of the events to come later that afternoon. She cheerfully set about her morning chores, after joining her two elders for the morning meditation before the corner shrine.

  An hour of light exercise followed the noon meal, until Jai-tien declared another round of matches between Chung Jun and Hei Mao. This time she approached the first match with anticipation, hoping to prove that she could hold her own with the Zhaojin master. The two opponents bowed deeply to each other, and then assumed defensive stances.

  Mao’s initial efforts at battling Chung Jun were rather clumsy and ineffective. Her strikes were not crisp and lacked force, and her defensive moves invariably left her open to many hand and foot techniques that should not have passed her guard. Several times she was knocked down, and sustained small cuts to her forehead and cheekbones. She lost four matches within the first two hours of sparring, but as the hours passed that afternoon, her clumsy efforts gradually became more refined and more sophisticated. Still, though, she could not defeat the Zhaojin master.

  After a total of three hours of constant fighting had elapsed, Mao was rapidly becoming exhausted and panting heavily to keep her breath. Chung Jun was beginning to press his advantage in the fifth match, and Mao was continuously peddling backward to avoid his fierce series of attacks. During a particularly intense series, Mao noticed that Chung Jun would slightly open his center more than he should to completely protect himself from a counterstrike. She began to understand the signs that her master had used to defeat the Zhaojin warrior.

  Over the course of the next several series of attacks, Mao began to evidence a greater degree of weariness than she actually experienced, hoping to lure Chung Jun into a state of overconfidence in which he would let down his guard sufficiently to allow her to counterstrike. After another five series of attacks from Chung Jun, she tried to give the appearance of being on the verge of collapsing.

  Chung Jun noticed her apparent weakened condition, and pressed even harder his attack. In his haste to end the fight, he left the center of his body open, and Mao noticed an opportunity for a counterstrike. She fell backward onto the ground after Chung Jun launched a spinning kick aimed directly at her head, and then drove her left foot upward into his ribs as he completed his spin. Chung Jun was propelled backward before regaining his footing, but the shock of the blow left him momentarily stunned.

  Mao knew she had only a slight window of opportunity to defeat her adversary, and she leapt to her feet and subconsciously launched herself over in the form of a cartwheel as Jai-tien had taught her. Her hands flashed toward Chung Jun’s face, forcing him to bend backward slightly and raise his chin. As her head rotated toward the ground, she pulled her arms to her chest while she twisted her body and thrust her left foot at the center of Chung Jun’s body, catching his guarding hands and pulling them downward. This left the Zhaojin master defenseless, and Mao continued her movement striking out with the right foot toward Chung Jun’s chin. During this motion, however, she looked up into the master’s face, and this caused her rotation to turn slightly off-center, and her trailing foot missed its target and glanced harmlessly off of Chung Jun’s shoulder.

  Mao fell to the ground on her head and right shoulder with a hard impact. The concussion jarred her senses, and before she could think to move again, Chung Jun had her pinned to the ground in a position from which she could not hope to escape. She slammed her fist onto the ground, thus ending the match.

  Jai-tien then announced the end of the day’s training, and Chung Jun stood up to wipe himself off. He bowed to Mao, who was still supine in the dirt, and strode off toward the well to clean his sweaty face and to dab off the dried trickles of blood from his forehead.

  Mao rolled over into a sitting position and hung her head between her knees in a mixture of disgust and shame at her performance that afternoon.

  Jai-tien walked over and squatted down beside her. “It is good for you to spar with Master Chung Jun. You need to learn to fight against many styles of kung fu. Our style is unique; at this time, only you and I know its secrets. But the rest of the world practices other styles. Therefore, your opponent will always use a style that is different than ours. Competing against Master Chung Jun is a new experience for you, but you are quickly adapting to his Zhaojin style. This is the mark of a great warrior.” Jai-tien then turned to follow Chung Jun toward the well.

  Mao did not feel as if she were adapting to anything other than the reverberating concussion of being thrown to the ground repeatedly. It took several seconds for the final statement of Jai-tien to sink in. She sat still contemplating it for several minutes. Was that a compliment? Was he implying that she had finally attained her dream of becoming a great warrior? Whatever it implied, she knew that it was no accident, as her master never said one word without careful deliberation. She felt a giddy sensation enter into her head, which aroused a level of excitement that she had not felt for a long time. She went to bed shortly after returning to the house from the tea ceremony that evening, but it was a long time before she fell asleep.

  The next afternoon brought another round of matches between Mao and the Chung Jun. The attacks of the Zhaojin master became more intense and vicious, but she found herself more capable to defend herself, and was able to turn his advances into counterattacks more readily than the day before. Still, she suffered several eventual defeats, although the matches lasted far longer than they had the previous days.

  Mao was tiring quickly during the fourth match of the day, and she was beginning to have a more difficult time countering Chung Jun’s advances. Throughout the afternoon, and on previous days as well, Chung Jun always seemed to be slightly quicker to move than her: his attacks always seemed to strike faster than she anticipated, even though she had become quite adept at reading his body posture and recognizing which technique he was going to use. When she counterattacked, he somehow managed to react quicker than she could attack, and thus deflect or block her strike.

  The match wore on, seemingly without end, and Mao’s exhaustion grew. She began looking into Chung Jun’s face as he attacked, hoping to find there some hint that he too was tiring, but she could find no trace of this. How
ever, she began to notice the blinking of his eyes: it was completely randomly timed, and she felt it strange that his eye blinks were not in synchronization with his attacks.

  Instantly it occurred to her how Chung Jun always managed to deflect her hand strikes and kicks: she was blinking rhythmically! As she had done, he had learned to read from her body postures which strikes she would use to attack him, however, he would watch her face, knowing that she would strike immediately after she blinked her eyes. In this way, he not only anticipated her movements, but also knew the exact instant when she would launch them. During his own attacks, Chung Jun would time Mao’s eye blinks and then throw his own strike at the same instant that her eyes began to shut, thus gaining a small fraction of second in which she was unaware that the strike had begun, even though she had recognized what the attack would be.

  With this new knowledge, Mao quickly formed a strategy not only to counter it, but to take advantage of it as well. She continued to blink her eyes in rhythm, allowing Chung Jun to force her to peddle backwards under his assault. After his sixth strike of the series, however, she blinked her eyes in the usual pattern, but paused for a brief instant before leaping forward with an intended backhanded fist strike. In this fraction of a second, Chung Jun raised his guarding arm over his face, but the anticipated strike did not come. Instead, Mao used this momentary advantage to change her fist strike into a sidekick that propelled the Zhaoljin master backward. Chung Jun bent over double for an instant, then sprang back up as Mao continued her charge toward him.

  Mao again struck Chung Jun several times, blinking her eyes in rhythm at the exact instant that she launched the attack. With each step backward, however, Chung Jun was able to block her punches and kicks, although he had still not fully restored his equilibrium from the impact of the prior sidekick. After five distinct strikes on her series of attacks, Mao launched a hard forearm strike to the neck of her opponent, but this time she began the movement a fraction of a second before she normally would have blinked. Chung Jun recognized what she was going to do, but was not prepared to block the blow as he was expecting it to begin as Mao blinked her eyes.