Chapter 11: A Special Flame
A large ball of dense earth hurled toward Cha Ming at deafening speed. His eyes were closed, though that didn’t stop him from barely moving his head as he sensed the approaching projectile. In the distance, thousands of large and small, dense and light earthen balls shot at him and tried to wound him. Some, he evaded. Others, he pushed ever so slightly, altering their direction.
He used the big spheres differently; by increasing his attraction to the spheres, he pulled himself toward them instead of the other way around. The pull complemented his movements, allowing him to avoid many boulders he couldn’t have otherwise.
This tricky display of power was only possible after many months of extended practice with the earth element. The few projectiles that snuck past his gravitational defenses were struck down by his glaive. Not only could Cha Ming regulate how much power he used, but he could also extend the blade as required. Sometimes he struck with a razor-sharp edge. At other times, he struck with the dull edge, forcing away stray stones with a light tap. Either way, he conserved his power; the strongest attacks weren’t needed yet.
Cha Ming always kept a thin layer of fluid around himself. It was dense but slippery enough to allow smaller pebbles to run past him. He no longer fought the turbulent eddies like he used to; instead he chose to navigate them like a surfer on a wave. Further, he’d discovered that forcing an entire current away wasn’t necessary. Sometimes he simply needed to redirect a simple stream away from a larger wave to obtain the right effect. Context was key.
Like this, he floated around in the monkey-made deathtrap, patiently conserving his energy as the lethality of the test intensified. Smaller stones that took lone strikes to dispatch became larger ones that required dozens of lacerations to take down. Simple waves became unrelenting tsunamis he resisted with everything he had. When his environment thickened, he thinned a small layer around himself, avoiding most of the friction while he navigated his environment with gravity. It was a dance with death, and the stage was a razor’s edge.
An hour passed in this way, after which the turbulence intensified, as it had the time before. He was sucked toward the middle of the field with nowhere to escape as rocks hurtled toward him. He used everything he could, including gravity, glaive, staff, and fist strikes. He used some of the rocks for leverage as he clashed against others.
Finally, only three seconds remained. The most important three seconds. He’d failed many times before, but this time, it would be different. His staff became a blur of blades that extended as an omnipresent shield of slashing energy. As rocks collided with the shield, a thick layer of debris entered, and he used his control of flow to force it out and deflect rocks in other directions. Due to the high density of rocks, he didn’t use gravity to navigate the field. Instead he redirected rocks to crash against each other. The slightest mistake could easily cost him his life—or at least, it could have if Sun Wukong wasn’t around.
Finally, the storm of boulders ended. The last of the rocks had been demolished by Cha Ming, their remnants forming a small mountain of gravel beneath him. He heard a clapping sound from behind him.
“It took you long enough,” Sun Wukong said as he clapped. “Now wash yourself—you need to take care of the garden again before I grill you.”
Cha Ming bowed and motioned with his wrists, creating water and wind in midair. He cleansed his body and robes using an impromptu misty shower and made his way toward the lush plot of land. The field grew peacefully as he sat cross-legged in the center, feeling out the needs of the respective plants and balancing their growth. Some plants cried out for sustenance they needed while others for sustenance they wanted. He was forced to interpret these and prioritize. His qi and time were limited.
Six hours passed as he tended the garden. Though he wasn’t great at manipulating wood, he felt peace as he worked the soil and fed the growing greenery. He didn’t need Sun Wukong to prompt him when things were done. The plants knew when he would leave, so they stopped issuing requests when that time came.
“Are you ready?” Sun Wukong asked, grinning. “Heads or tails?”
“Tails,” Cha Ming said, knowing his answer was pointless. Regardless of the answer, he would end up in the cauldron and upside down. He appeared in a sea of flames, summoning his own multiple tongues of flame to counteract it. Before, he’d felt attacked. But now, especially given his experience with the other four elements, he knew how silly that mindset had been. This wasn’t a battle; it was a happy game.
The game was best played using everything he had to his advantage. He would use flames to correct heat imbalances around him, but there was no use trying to force everything to the same temperature. Instead of making things comfortable for his body, he made things tolerable. He economized where he could but also kept careful watch over nearby temperature gradients. Where the gradients were strong, he amplified flow to push heat into more desirable directions.
Sometimes Cha Ming even used gravity. Things flowed from hot to cold, but gravity also meant that denser things sank while others rose. Therefore, he manipulated the density of the hottest air, forcing it to move away. Meanwhile, he manipulated the coldest air in a similar way, increasing its density and using gravity to attract it toward him.
Heat manipulation, flow, and gravity. Sometimes he fed flames with wood qi, creating a high-temperature area that would distort the overall heat field and
