Hey all. So, I should have said last chapter – and I saw people worried by it – but this will NOT be Xianxia. This will be Wuxia.
And for those unfamiliar with the terms, that basically means this won't be cultivation, inner cauldrons and "Chinese wizards". Xianxia is about immortals and people pulling off martial arts that are super weird and obscure like "debating Confucian philosophy so hard a person dies" or "waving a paper fan and destroying a mountain". It's the kind of thing where two people fight and an area the size of France is destroyed. In a way, Xianxia is like Dragon Ball Z with constant evolutions of new Saiyan levels being "cultivation levels" and every new enemy being a planet-destroying threat.
Wuxia is much more grounded. It often has qi (which is basically aura in this) but it's much more like the fantasy you're familiar with in the west, where a skilled protagonist can take on a small group of people and is very skilled (even having weird martial arts skills), but they typically aren't going to start pulling out godlike magic. So, here, Jaune may learn martial arts and some ways to use aura that mimic the effects already in RWBY canon from auras and Semblances, but he isn't going to learn to fly, throw out qi/ki blasts or single-handedly force armies to kneel.
Chapter 2
Master Ren was a slavedriver.
Jaune splashed into the water on all fours, his clothes becoming soaked through despite his best efforts to roll them up his legs and sleeves. It was only just after sunrise and the water was bitterly cold. To make matters worse, silvery fish splashed water in his face, taunting him by brushing up against his arms.
When he lashed out to try and catch one, it slipped through his fingers like oil.
"Damn it all!" he shouted, splashing his hand in the water. "Come back here and get eaten! I've had nothing but rice and vegetables for weeks!"
The variety at the temple was nothing short of criminal. No meat, no dairy, no spices. He couldn't so much as make cereal, and Master Ren kept telling him that if he wanted something to eat badly enough, he'd have to go out and catch it.
As if he wasn't trying!
"Give me a break! I don't have a fishing rod or a net. How am I meant to catch fish with my bare hands?"
And fish were the easiest to catch. He'd seen plenty of rabbits, deer and even the odd wild boar in the forest but the latter two would probably gore him, and the rabbits were quick to dart away whenever they saw him. It was amazing just how much he'd taken the convenience of supermarkets and grocery stores for granted back home. And he hadn't even been the one to go shopping. His mom did, and food just magically appeared on the table fully cooked.
Grumbling, Jaune rose to his feet and tried again. The fish weren't going to swim onto land and offer themselves up, and he'd be damned if it was another day of vegetable stir fry. Master Ren had told him he would be trusted to travel to the neighbouring village and back once he could protect himself, but that journey was five miles and there were still Grimm about.
Every now and then, one of them would happen upon the temple and be quickly dispatched by Master Ren. He had a knack for sensing them, though he often said it was just that the Grimm had a knack for making too much noise. The old man's ears were so good that even the most quiet of whispered insults or complaints landed Jaune with extra chores.
Sweep the temple, dust the temple, prepare the food, draw water for the bath, clean their robes, air out the bedrolls. It was a never-ending litany of things to do, more chores than he'd ever had back home, and yet Jaune did them without complaint.
It kept him busy. Gave him something to do that wasn't dwell on the past.
Standing, he shivered in the water and spread his feet among the pebbles. The river was shallow enough that being swept away wasn't really a problem, at least at the shallowest part he'd chosen to fish at. Less room for the fish to slip by had been the theory. Not that it helped him much.
Jaune bent over and dipped his fingers into the water between his legs, trying to corral a fish into swimming between so he could close his hand on it. The cold water and colder morning breeze made his muscles lock up, and he was shivering badly already. The temple didn't have heating beyond what logs he burned in a fire – which, of course, he had to collect and chop himself – and Master Ren's penchant for bedrolls over actual beds didn't help.
A silvery fish swam between his hands.
"AH!"
Jaune clapped them shut and felt a surge if victory as his fingers closed over scales, only for it to change to absolute dismay when the fish wriggled out and away. Not only was it too slippery, but his fingers had become stiff and unresponsive. He had claw-hands, and they creaked as he closed them, lacking any decent grip or power.
Howling, he picked up a rock and hurled it down into the water.
The fish weren't convinced by it.
/-/
Jaune staggered back into the temple's grounds with the sun only just beginning to creep over the treetops. He was in a sour mood, and soaked through, streaked with grime and mud and with dirt clinging to his fingernails.
"Vegetable rice again today, is it?" Master Ren asked shamelessly. He was already up and looking obnoxiously alert for such an early hour. In all his weeks here, Jaune had never seen the man look tired, uncomfortable, or in pain. He was as steady as an oak and as unmovable as a mountain. "Well, greens are good for a young man, or so I'm told. Did you at least manage to find mushrooms?"
Jaune pulled the wicker basket off his back and presented them. "Yes master."
"Hmm. Hm. Good. And you even managed not to bring any poisonous ones back this time."
Of course he had. The first time he'd brought them back, Master Ren had forced him to sit on his knees for two hours while he went over the properties and names of each of them, and as he explained the agonising ways they would have made them sick, maybe even killed them. It was a valuable lesson, but then again most of Master Ren's lessons were.
That didn't make them interesting.
It was Jaune's duty to prepare and cook meals for the both of them, and he got to it without complaint. Master Ren did, in fact, have a kitchen, but it was a small section of one of the buildings which still relied on wood to fuel a rock plate over an open fire. He did have cast iron pots and pans, to Jaune's immense relief. It had only been a few weeks but he'd already become a dab hand at rice.
No great achievement for most people, but it wasn't half bad for a thirteen-year-old boy to be able to cook some meals. Sprinkling the vegetables, roots, and mushrooms into it, he fried them all up and served them into two small bowls, saving half the rice to be cooked again later in the day.
They only ever ate two meals, and the portions were small compared to what he was used to. That was another thing he'd been forced to get used to, and there wasn't much point complaining when the reason they were small was that he couldn't catch any meat for them. Master Ren was sitting cross-legged in the pavilion, and Jaune came over, knelt, and set a bowl and wooden mug of warmed wine down next to him. Only when Master Ren picked up his bowl and nodded did Jaune sit across from him.
They ate in silence.
Until Jaune broke it.
"Am I doing something wrong, master?"
"No."
"But I've failed to bring back any fish or meat."
"You have endeavoured to. Have you not?"
"Every day."
"Then you are doing exactly as I wish you to. There is more to be learned from failure than success." Once they had eaten, Master Ren set his bowl down and Jaune slid his own into it. He would wash both sets later, after their afternoon meal, and leave them to dry for the morning to start all over again. Master Ren shook out his sleeves and said, "We shall meditate for the morning. You are to attempt to reach out and connect with your aura."
Jaune bit back his dismay and sat cross-legged. Master Ren called it the lotus position, but then Master Ren could bend his feet back over his knees. Jaune wasn't yet that flexible but he'd been assured it would come, and that it ultimately wouldn't make unlocking his aura either quicker or easier.
Closing his eyes, he set his hands together in his lap, fingers loose and curled. He took a deep breath, seeking to find that rhythmic calm that Master Ren so often spoke of. More than once he'd come close to falling asleep, finding "a little too much relaxation" as Master Ren jokingly put it. The goal was to be free of mind, but not empty.
"Do not seek to empty your mind. That is not the purpose. Instead, seek to drive out all external distractions. Your thoughts are a part of you and should be embraced. This includes your worldly worries, doubts, and fears. Meditation is not about dismissing those, but about creating purity of thought. Only then can you address them wholly. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breath out."
He had seen Master Ren do incredible things with his aura, and cracking his eye open he could see the pale blue light dancing around him even now. When Master Ren meditated, his aura seemed to flicker and dance as if the old man himself was a bonfire.
Jaune could have watched it for hours.
"Eyes closed," Master Ren said, despite not having his own open to see Jaune watching. "You're distracted enough with your own thoughts without adding all the visual noise."
"Sorry."
"How many times must I tell you to stop apologising?"
"Sorry," Jaune said, this time with a sly smile.
"Hmph. That shall be an extra three laps of the temple tonight." Master Ren continued only after Jaune had closed his eyes again. "Your aura dwells within you. It is the soul, a well of internal energy that sustains your body. Just because you cannot feel it does not mean it isn't there. It is as a subconscious thought, coming and going without notice. To reach out to it is to embrace the subconscious, but you must not snatch and grab at it. Do not twist and pull. Draw. Imagine a pool within yourself. A well. A bowl. A lake. You do not need to fill it as it is already full. What you must do is peel back the reeds and discover it."
Jaune could recite much of the words by now and he did his best, he really did, but even after an hour of near-silent meditation, he felt no close to it. A small sigh of frustration escaped him before he could stop it. Master Ren heard it, of course.
"Frustration will only make this harder on you."
"I know that, master. But I can't help feeling it."
"Hm. Do you think I unlocked my own in the space of a few weeks? I am almost a hundred years old. If you could find your aura so quickly, I'd despair of you being some chosen one and having a destiny to fulfil, and I'm much too old to be a mentor to someone like that." He said it with no small amount of humour. "Patience is a virtue. One that is difficult for the young, I know, but one you will learn here."
"May I ask why you don't just unlock my aura, master?"
Master Ren nodded. "You may."
Jaune waited, and then sighed. "Why don't you just unlock my aura, master?"
"A good question to ask. Let me reply with one. Do you know how electricity works? Not the basic idea, but the application. Could you wire the temple to run on dust?"
"Uh. No. I mean, I guess you feed dust to a generator and that—"
"And how does a generator work?"
"Combustion?"
"Indeed. But what is the mechanism by which the machine that is a generator converts dust to electricity? And how does the circuit board route it to the house? How does the switch on the wall signify that only this room shall be lit and no other?"
Jaune didn't know, and he said so.
"Neither do I," Master Ren admitted. "And that is why you should not trust me to be an electrician. That is also why, if I were to unlock your aura, I could not trust you with any of the techniques you have seen me use. Not because you are untrustworthy or because you would abuse them, but because you could not understand them. You might hurt yourself. Your father was – or may yet still be – a huntsman, correct?"
"Yes."
"Huntsmen unlock the aura of other huntsmen. This is a convenient way of doing things. Convenience is human nature." Master Ren didn't sound bothered by that, nor disappointed in it. It was nothing more or less than a statement of fact. "Once upon a time, there were no grand cities as there are now. Cities existed but they were smaller, and many were spread across Remnant. Each city had the arduous task of protecting its people against the Grimm. That was a time where many small schools known as Sects existed."
"Like the Lotus Sect?"
"Indeed. These Sects were… I suppose you would equate them to huntsman academies, though they were smaller and more insular. Private. They each had their own goals and methods, their own ways of fighting. Defending against the Grimm was not necessarily their goals, but they all protected the towns and villages and cities close to them, and those places paid tribute to the Sects. It was a system that worked. Members of the sects would often travel to others, both to challenge them and to learn from them. A member of the Lotus Sect would seem nothing alike when compared to a member of the Nine Daggers Sect, and likewise for the Mountain Dragon Sect. But everything changed a few hundred years ago..."
"What happened?" asked Jaune. "Some disaster? A war? The Grimm?"
"No, my student. Centralisation happened. Industrialisation."
That wasn't nearly as dramatic as Jaune expected. "What…?"
"Cities and the people within them asked whether defending themselves might be easier if there were fewer places to defend. If cities and towns consolidated into one, then surely the limited pool of warriors could defend them easier. And people could pool resources and talents. It was a king who suggested it. King Ozma, I believe. Hundreds of years ago. And so, the cities consolidated their people into but four major cities – Vale, Mistral, Atlas, and Vacuo."
"The Kingdoms of today. What happened to the other cities and sects? Did they fall?"
"Some, perhaps, but I am sure many simply became towns by virtue of being so much smaller compared to the new and monstrously sized cities, and the sects lost potential students who left to find better lives away from them. Life in those cities was good. Life elsewhere was much worse, but most people lived in those four cities now – and they found that pooling resources made things very convenient indeed. However, it also made things complicated in other ways. More people meant more Grimm, and while they had more warriors they also needed to train and organise then, and the sects were much too individualistic for that."
"A master of the Lotus Sect is very different to a master from the Nine Daggers Sect and vice versa," he continued. "And such differing methodologies and personalities is troublesome when you are trying to organise forces numbering in the hundreds or thousands, and to have them work together on the battlefield. They needed an organised system with a standardised method of training where they could know that every warrior knew exactly what they needed them to know, hence the birth of the huntsmen academies."
"These academies are no doubt fine places that train many thousands of fine huntsmen and huntresses every few years," said Master Ren. "But that is also their weakness. When a teacher must split their attention between so many, their lessons are sure to falter. Not every student benefits in the same way, either, and some require or flourish with alternative methods. In the cities, they are forced to adapt or simply left to flounder, their potential wasted. And when you must crank out fresh forces within no more than a few years, shortcuts must be taken. A master trains for twenty or thirty years under the master that came before them, but cities can't afford to wait thirty years for a single capable warrior."
"So they cut corners," Jaune realised.
They'd almost have to in order to train enough people up to defend the cities and having more people would mean the individuals would be safer as well. If you were on your own then you needed to be skilled in every aspect of combat, but if you had a lot of people to cover for your weaknesses.
"Yes. It might take months or years for someone to unlock their aura on their own, if they even do, and the harshest training can't be safely undertaken until it is. You could try and take that time, but when ten teachers must look over a hundred students then they really don't have the time. Easier to forcefully unlock the aura of their students."
"But that is no different than having someone else install electricity in your home," said Master Ren. "It is convenient, true, but you are trusting another to know the details for you. You do not know how it works and you cannot be called a master of it. Were your life ever to depend upon your ability to fix your home's electricity, you would surely perish. There are always trade-offs, my student. Bad that comes with the good."
And while the metaphor with electricity might have been an exaggeration, there was very likely to come a time when his life would depend upon his aura. Huntsmen could get away with a little weakness because they had teams and backup and support infrastructure. Jaune wouldn't have any of that.
"Were they wrong to do that? To centralise? Did it make Remnant weaker?"
"Right and wrong are not so easily defined. There's no denying the average citizen in one of those cities feels safer, more comfortable, and that they have amenities far beyond what they once had. That is good, is it not? And Remnant still stands, so one can't really say they were wrong to do as they did. Humanity thrives. As for the training in combat, having allies who can watch your back means you can afford to specialise your skills in certain ways. That is good so long as it is utilised."
"Isn't it?"
"That depends on the individual, and people can be lazy. At first, I'm sure it was taken more seriously, but humans are always looking for the easiest path. All animals are, in fact. It's to be expected. The fight for survival requires that people do their best to get by, and not always to excel. If you do not need to be capable in every art because there are others who will take care of it for you, then many are those content to settle and not try."
"Why should I bother to learn how electricity works when I can simply hire an electrician to do it for me? It is the same here. Long distance communication means people think less, as they can always rely on someone far away with full knowledge of the situation to tell them what to do. Online shopping makes people less self-reliant, because they can simply order what they want. Even simple things like dust stoves and dust-powered camping equipment, tents, and supplies, mean that travelling huntsmen are less able to fend for themselves if they are bereft of them. Some may spend time to learn poisonous from safe mushrooms and herbs, but why bother? They can bring ration packs with them that last for months or years and take up little room. It's easier for them to rely on that than it is to learn things they might never need. That is why I teach you to be self-sufficient in all things. To not rely on anything being handed out to you."
There wasn't much Jaune could do other than nod along. He had quickly come to realise he was no better, especially after his whining this morning about the fish. While he was sure there would be some exceptional huntsmen who used the leeway granted by the academies to study their craft and excel, there was no arguing that most wouldn't take the easy way out. They wouldn't even see it as that, as it'd just be the established way of doing things. Four years at an academy, a couple of spars a week, and as much technologically advanced equipment as you could fit on a person.
It wasn't even a bad idea since it made sense to want to equip and help your huntsmen do their jobs better, but he knew that if he could just order in whatever food to the temple he wanted, he wouldn't bother learning to forage and hunt it. And if he couldn't be bothered to put in the effort to learn how to procure his own meals, who was to say he'd be any more motivated to learn how to unlock his aura on his own as opposed to having someone do it for him.
Humbled, Jaune bowed his head. "I understand, master. Thank you for teaching me. May I ask one more question?"
"Of course."
"What is the difference between aura mastered on your own and the way huntsmen do it?"
"The difference is in the word: mastery. Huntsmen learn how to use aura like electricity. They can turn it on and they can turn it off. Little more. Huntsmen are designed to be churned out as quickly as they can be, with more reliance placed on their combat skills, advanced weaponry, and Semblances. Convenience over function. Standardised education over what is best for the individual student." He let out a sigh. "Some of them may develop talent and understanding beyond that in time, but most only know how to use aura to protect themselves. A valuable skill, but it is but a drop in the vast ocean of what aura can do. Learned the way I would teach you, aura can be used to heal yourself and others, to strengthen your muscles, to sustain your body if you are hungry, to refresh yourself when you are tired, and, with extreme practice, used externally, as you saw me do in your home village against the Grimm."
Memories of Master Ren cutting into the Grimm with his bare hands flashed through Jaune's mind, but also of him igniting wood with a palm strike and running through the forests as an old man without a hint of difficulty. It was subtle, but it was there. The proof of this concept.
And it made Jaune think.
Perhaps he had been going about this wrong.
/-/
It was four in the morning and Jaune was not in bed.
He had stayed out in the forest since midnight, meditating on the shores of the river where he normally failed to catch fish. There were fish in the water, flashes of silver visible beneath the gently running water. They had always seemed to taunt him so, dancing just out of reach, but now they were peaceful and calm. As was he.
Jaune watched them instead of challenging them. He sat with them and watched as they went about their day, learning the life of a fish from the early hours of the morning until the sun began to rise. He imagined himself in the water as he did, and what he might be able to see and react to. His morning ritual. His life. His thoughts, dreams, and desires. His ambition. What he'd seen as taunts from them were just the fish going about their day, living their lives, and it was only him forcing his own frustrations on them that led to such foolish thoughts.
They were fish.
He was human.
It had been silly to attribute humanlike emotion to them, and silly to not see things from their point of view. He'd been trying to catch fish with his bare hands, standing in the water, never putting thought to what the fish must have felt and seen when someone ten times their size came bulldozing into their domain.
When the sun rose fully, Jaune did as well.
It was obvious.
The Way of the Fish.
"I've been going about this the wrong way."
Returning to the temple, Jaune made his way into the kitchen and left with a wicker basket, under the keen eyes of Master Ren. He returned to the river and gently stepped into the water, not worrying when the fish understandably darted away from the large predator. Jaune sloshed into the shallows and found a small nook between a rock and the shore, and wedged the basket down into the water, using a few rocks to weigh it down. He positioned it so that the open mouth of the basket pointed upstream, and the closed end down, the water flowing into the basket and then out through the narrow slits between reeds in the back.
Then, he returned to the shore, crossed his legs, and considered his aura.
After an hour, he had not yet found it.
But the basket bounced and wriggled with fish that had swum or been washed into it by the current, and who were now too shocked to turn around and swim back out. Walking into the water once more, Jaune picked up the basket and smiled down at the three wriggling fish inside. They would eat well today.
He frowned.
Did they need to eat this well?
Jaune had dined like a king in Ansel, and that was something he only really understood now he lived at the temple on mor frugal meals. Frugality, he had quickly learned, that he was more than capable of living off of. The body didn't need all the processed junk he'd been eating. Nor did it need quite so many fish. Instead, Jaune selected the largest and set it on the grass, and then released the smaller two back into the river.
"I may catch and eat you tomorrow," he told them, "but that does not mean you cannot live good lives today."
"If you drain the pond then catching the fish is easy," said Master Ren, perched upon a nearby rock. "But what fish will there be left for you to catch tomorrow?"
"None," Jaune said. "For I would have destroyed the source of them."
"Indeed. There is a delicate balance in all things that we must preserve, lest we rob ourselves of it forever. You are learning."
"It was so simple when I thought about it," Jaune said. "I just had to think like a fish."
"Like a fish, or like a fisherman. You could have fashioned twine from your clothing and sticks to form a rod, or you could have dammed the river and caught them. Or used a spear. Every problem has many solutions if you but think on the matter. But you learned to do this on your own. I gave you nothing, and you learned more than just how to catch fish, didn't you?"
"Yes. I learned how to solve a problem. I learned how to put my mind to something and think up a solution on my own, rather than rely on someone else to give it to me."
"A valuable and often underappreciated skill. To think, and not just to be told. To adapt and to succeed. To be independent, and to achieve with your own merit." Master Ren smiled and stood. "Come, let me teach you how to gut and clean a fish, and then we shall have a fine breakfast. Your training continues after."
The walk home was more serene than it had been any of the days before.
/-/
Jaune's aura flickered to life in the early winter, well over six months into his training. It was on a cold evening when the snow was falling around them that he felt the warm flame within himself, and he trampled down his excitement, afraid to startle it and blow it out.
"I feel it, master," he said, mist pooling out his mouth as he spoke into the frosty air.
They were knee to knee, face to face, and yet neither shivered in the extreme cold. He'd grown used to it as the weather turned, and Jaune had been surprised to realise just how much his body could take. Gone were the days of hiding under a heated blanket and having that torn away had strengthened him in ways he had never realised he was weak.
"I see that." Master Ren sounded pleased but not surprised, because he'd always trusted Jaune would find it in time. "Do not touch it. You cannot lose your aura, but you can certainly lose your concentration and lose sight of it, and then you will be frustrated once more. Inspect it, instead. Consider it. Remember this feeling and the sensation. How does it feel to you?"
"Warm, master. Like a gentle flame."
"Interesting. You may subconsciously be using it to warm yourself."
"That's possible?"
"Of course. One with heightened control of aura can use it to warm themselves in the cold or cool themselves in intense heat. The regulation of internal body temperature is but one of many arts a practitioner can learn if they are willing to put in the time. It all consumes aura, of course. Nothing is truly infinite. But aura, like blood, can replenish."
"It feels wasted that huntsmen don't know all this."
They had thick coats, dust-powered heating, vehicles, and powerful stoves to keep them warm. They had all the amenities and equipment needed to simply banish the cold, and as such they saw no point in learning how to endure it.
"Do not think to become arrogant," Master Ren chastised, accurately reading his thoughts and cutting Jaune's pride off at the knees. "You are receiving one-to-one tuition from a master of the art, and we train from sunrise to sunset. Even then, it has taken you half a year to get this far. From the perspective of those schools, which have only a few short years to make children capable of fighting the Grimm, such progress is far too slow. Complete failure, in fact. And their teachers must split their time between so many. It is not comparable."
He was right, and Jaune accepted the quiet reproach. He'd allowed pride to take him in this moment of triumph, and that was wrong. Schooling for huntsmen was, he imagined, closer to six hours a day, as it had been back in Ansel for normal school. You didn't want to take it much further and strain the kids and their muscles, and they certainly didn't meditate for hours like Jaune did. They also had lives outside school, families, and hobbies and the like.
He trained under Master Ren for almost three times that number, so what he had achieved in six months was arguably closer to a year and a half for a normal person. Not to mention his training continued on weekends. Given that a student in an academy would have their aura unlocked within the space of fifteen seconds, this was no great achievement. Merely one more step on his path.
But Jaune felt pleased with it all the same. Fourteen now, Jaune was not much taller but looked it for how lean he had become. While he'd learnt to catch fish and hunt meat with no small amount of success, the lean protein only enhanced his hard regime. There wasn't an ounce of fat on him.
His hair had grown out as well, and though Master Ren had offered to cut it, Jaune did not trust the man's skills when he wore his own hair so long. His mother had once said you should never trust a skinny cook, an honest lawyer, or a hairy barber. He'd taken to sweeping his hair back into the beginnings of a ponytail instead and trimming his bangs only when they reached down past his eyes. Master Ren had once warned him that some sects shaved the heads of their disciples, saying that the act of removing any and all distraction, even one as simple as maintenance of your hair, helped focus. Some had gone so far as to castrate themselves as well in pursuit of their art, deciding that even vows of celibacy wouldn't free you of all distraction when you could still feel lust.
Better to get rid of that at the source and never be tempted by pleasures of the flesh.
Thankfully, Master Ren was of a more relaxed school of thought. To him, the art of overcoming your distractions and temptations created stronger mental fortitude than simply removing the sources of them. One who could rise above such things was stronger than one who never learned to do so. It was, as he so often put it, another way of cutting corners.
And Jaune learned to never do that.
Even were it something as simple as washing clothes, or repairing them – simple needle and thread work – he learned to take it slow and methodical, to consider every aspect, and to follow every step in its fullness. There was a strange fullness to it all, and it was fulfilling in a way he'd never known. There was something special about wearing clothes you had fashioned.
"Now that you have discovered your aura, I will begin to teach you meridians."
"Is it unlocked now?"
"Hmhmhm." Master Ren chuckled without opening his eyes. "There is no such thing as a locked aura, my student. That is a misconception perpetuated by those who lack the training and concentration to sense it."
"You're correct, master. Aura exists in all things. You told me that before. I should have realised it." Jaune didn't apologise, because he'd learned that it was better to just learn from a mistake and not repeat it than it was to waste time expressing apologies, especially when he knew his master was not upset with him. He changed the topic. "On meridians, is that the diagrams you've shown me before? With the dots across the human body?"
"That is correct. We refer to them as meridians. Whether they are truly that or not is up for debate, and ultimately not important. Some believe them to be real, like pores on the body, while others simply use them as guidelines on a map of the human body. What you choose to believe isn't important. The purpose they serve, and the reason you must learn them, is because they teach you in what ways you must control your aura to achieve desired effects. They serve as detailed diagrams and instructions to follow."
"It's like a guide, then?"
"Yes. Many of our techniques you will learn from manuals, as I cannot teach you every little thing personally. There will much private study and training you will need to spend months or even years on. I won't always be available to answer questions, and you must learn to read the meridians. Like sheet music," he said. "A good musician cannot rely on someone to translate the notes for them. They must learn to read sheet music on their own."
It was a good analogy, and one Jaune understood better than the odd name he was hearing these go by now. He'd dabbled with the guitar back home, but even then he'd relied on tab music that told him the chord beneath it. He had never bothered to learn to read them on his own like a musician might. Shortcuts. There were so many in life, and he hadn't known how many he took until his training began here.
"For example," Master Ren continued. "If you read that you must gather your aura in the Dantian before circulating it between the LingQiu, Du Bi, and ZuSanLi, then that would not mean much to you. You may ask why I don't translate it more simply, but all three of those points are in the area you would more commonly call the knee. Simply pushing aura to your knee won't achieve anything but learning how to let it flow between those three points – whether they be real or simply a good approximation of how to control your aura across muscles, ligaments, and tendons – will let you jump to great heights, and land from them without harming yourself."
"And it's not enough to just strengthen the legs with aura?"
"That is how the huntsmen might do it, and it will suffice, yes. But you will tear a chunk of your aura out as it takes the damage so you do not. This way, you are using your aura to strengthen the joints of your knee and the ability for your body to absorb the shock of landing. Instead of burning aura off to prevent damage, you are spending your aura to strengthen you body so that you do not take damage in the first place."
"Does that preserve aura?"
"Yes. Like how energy is lost in a fire in forms of heat and light, aura is lost when you use it in forms such as protection and healing. It is burned away to protect or heal you. Huntsmen do not worry overmuch about this because they travel in teams, and they can always retreat to a place of safety to rest and recover. They have their aircrafts to lift them out of danger if things get too bad. They are too important to leave to die to Grimm after all, so the cities will expend resources to rescue them."
More corners cut. Expend resources to save the huntsmen instead of teaching them to save themselves. Jaune felt the stirrings of disdain and pride again but pushed them down. It wasn't entirely their fault, nor was it laziness. They had less years to train and larger classes to fewer teachers. They had to make the best of what they had, and what they had was a few short years to become "good enough" to fight the Grimm. They were expected to hone and master their craft after, assuming they survived long enough.
"Learning the meridian maps is also valuable because they are related to pressure points within the body. Through these, you can stimulate yourself and others. As you know, aura heals, and this works even if a person does not have an unlocked aura." He used the term even though he didn't like it. "Most huntsmen aren't good at this, but even they know that suffusing a wounded limb with aura can help it heal faster, but it's clumsy even then. If they have a wound on their bicep, they will waste aura through the entire arm and over their shoulder and chest. It's the best they can do. Using meridian points, you can inject your own aura to temporarily seal and close points in their body, trapping their aura in a more specific location – namely around the wound. This will let them heal much faster and expend less aura as they do."
"And their aura handles the healing for them," Jaune finished for him. "Then, by that logic, isn't it also possible to use my aura to heal others?"
"It is possible, yes, but it takes great skill and knowledge. Your own aura knows how to heal your own body since it has been doing it since your birth. Using your aura on another person requires you to have the fine control to guide and use it perfectly outside your body and, beyond that, the knowledge necessary to know exactly how you should use it to close a wound, fight off an infection, or purge a poison. It normally takes great skill, and not just in aura control. Medical knowledge is just as important, or you might cause more harm than good. It is beyond you for now, though I will gladly allow you to read medical manuals if you wish."
"Maybe once I can control my own aura, master. I think I'd like to learn, if only to not lose anyone in the future."
"A wise precaution. I will gladly teach you what little I know. Using precise injections of your own aura, it is possible to disrupt someone else's, or even to seal their aura off entirely from a limb. Invaluable in combat – even if it's only temporary. None of this will be possible if you do not know precisely where to strike, however, which is why learning your meridians is so important." He chuckled, then. "But you will have to be sceptical with some of the older manuals. They are not all grounded in reality."
"Oh?" Jaune asked, curious. "In what way?"
"Once upon a time practitioners believed that aura could be used to chase dreams of immortality and godhood. This is nonsense and comes from a time of much selfishness. You will read of internal cauldrons, of life-extending elixirs and pills. Do not be tempted by such things, as a thousand years of trial and error shows them to be but the attempts of old men to prolong their lives or to trick others into parting with coin. What is real is aura, and the wonderous things you can achieve with it." He paused, and then said, "Do you still feel yours?"
"Yes." Jaune smiled, the flicker of warm flame continuing to exist in his lower body, behind and below his navel.
"Good. Your concentration is excellent."
"I have a good teacher."
"Hmm. Your pandering is exquisite as well. Draw the aura up your body if you can, slowly. Remember that the meridians and the channels between them exist already, and always have, so you are not dragging it. You are encouraging it down pathways it has travelled a thousand times before." Master Ren cupped his own hands before him, and a pale blue light balanced between his fingers. It floated like a tiny, controlled star. "Like this. Try and ask it to show in your hand."
Jaune nodded and reached out to gently stroke the fire within him. He was cautious at first, worried that it might grow out of control, but it felt so warm and comfortable that he realised such thoughts were foolish. This was his aura. This was his soul. It had always been there with him, and it would be until the day he died.
As Jaune Arc smiled, eyes still closed, Master Ren opened his and watched as a tiny white-green flame flickered in his disciple's cupped hands. It was small, frail, and fragile in the blustery wind and freshly fallen snow, but it was there, visible, and in less than a year of his training.
The boy had more potential than he knew.
Just a reminder that meridians are still a staple of Wuxia; they're just a lot more grounded in what they can do. Make stronger, yes. Enable some powerful martial arts, yes. Things that aura can already do in RWBY. I'm just equating aura to qi. Here, even Master Ren is saying the whole "mysticism" surrounding meridians and such is nonsense, but they just serve as a useful guide as to where to concentrate aura. To most people who don't even read Wuxia/Xianxia, my comments here and at the top probably come across as unneeded, but trust me - it's a big divide in fandoms to some people. There are people who absolutely love Wuxia but despise Xianxia. I'm more Wuxia focused myself, but I can read some Xianxia. But, yeah, other ones can get obnoxious with the power scaling. They even stop using numbers and start using indices in actual sentences. Like: "He threw name to the ground and fired down a qi blast, evaporating the land for 800^7 miles. Like, what...?
Next Chapter: 6th February
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