Chapter 8
*Po's perspective.*
Shifu waved me off with irritation and told me to go eat breakfast. My offer to share Father's dumplings was declined without a second thought. Maybe he'd already eaten earlier. Or maybe he was accustomed to some kind of refined, particular cuisine — not everyone had the palate to appreciate the beauty of a simple dumpling.
Looking toward the horizon, I could see the sun would be rising soon, and with it my reluctant companions.
*Hopefully some fragrant dumplings, pan-fried until the bottoms are crisp and golden, will soften their attitude toward me — or at least make the atmosphere slightly less hostile.*
Just yesterday Viper had mentioned in passing that they cooked for themselves, rotating the duty among them. I had serious doubts that their cooking was even half as good as mine or my father's.
*I'll just have to hope they have oil.* That was the extent of my strategic planning.
As far as I understood, supplies came in two ways: either through the servants who delivered necessities, or through the Five themselves going down the mountain periodically to buy things at the market — sometimes on the way back from a mission.
*If the Five follow Shifu's lead and refuse as well, so be it. More for me.*
I walked quickly back to the barracks, stepped into the kitchen, found everything I needed, lit the stove, and set a large pan on it with a splash of oil. When the pan began to sizzle pleasantly, I added a generous portion of dumplings. They crackled in the oil and filled the room with the irresistible smell of fried dough and vegetables.
At that point the door swung open and the Five walked in, apparently caught entirely off guard by the sight of a panda at the stove.
"What are you staring at — never seen a panda before? Did you wash your hands? It's my turn to cook today, so I warmed up some dumplings for you. Thank my father for hauling a pot this size up the mountain at this hour." I pointed with the spatula at the pot in question, making it clear through every aspect of my bearing that the kitchen was mine this morning.
They all gave a slightly delayed nod and settled around the table. I quickly divided the hot food among the plates, then sent each plate sliding smoothly down the table with a practiced flick, every one coming to a stop neatly in front of its recipient.
I went back to the stove to fry another portion for myself. I couldn't help glancing over at the others, who were almost certainly eating something this good for the first time in their lives. And judging by the expressions on their faces, the dumplings were very much welcome — by almost everyone.
Tigress maintained her composure, but the fact that she kept eating said everything. The others made no effort to conceal how much they were enjoying it.
The most entertaining spectacle was Mantis, who was somehow managing the dumplings — each one half the size of his entire body — with complete competence. Impossibly large pieces of food were disappearing into an impossibly small creature with no apparent difficulty.
*Someone is going to have to explain to me how that works,* I thought.
Crane was the first to break the silence.
"I've never eaten anything better in my life," he said, and he sounded genuinely awed.
"It's wonderful. Your father is a true master in the kitchen," Viper confirmed, practically glowing with good mood.
The others added their agreement, and even Tigress produced a small, reluctant nod.
"You haven't even tried them fresh — straight from the pot, dumplings taste completely different. But the distance from the village to the Jade Palace is no joke, a thousand steps after all."
"I still can't figure out how he managed to get that enormous pot all the way up here, past all the guards and servants, while looking for me." I said it with genuine puzzlement, and kept going:
"Good thing Master Shifu and I were on the training ground and a servant came to warn us. Otherwise, who knows what kind of chaos would have unfolded if Father hadn't found me in time."
"Your father, he's—" Mantis began awkwardly, then trailed off, reaching for words.
"You want to ask why he's not built like me?" I offered, and saw his nod. "No, it's a different situation. My father — my adoptive father — is a goose. He owns the best-known noodle shop in the village. He found me about twenty years ago, right next to his kitchen, asleep in a box of radishes. He pulled me out, felt sorry for me, and raised me as his own. That's the whole story, short version."
When I finished, the silence that had settled back over the room was noticeably different from before. They were visibly uncomfortable making conversation with me, but it was a different kind of uncomfortable.
"You said earlier that you and Master Shifu were on the training ground this morning. What exactly were you doing out there that early, without us?" Monkey asked, finally breaking the quiet.
"Nothing much. He gave me a personal evaluation before officially taking me on as a student of the Jade Palace," I answered, making a face at the memory.
Hearing my words and noticing my expression, everyone at the table exchanged glances with silent bewilderment.
"Don't take it too hard. Almost no one gets through Shifu's tests without preparation," Monkey offered, in what was clearly meant to be encouraging.
"No, you misunderstand. I passed. Master Shifu officially enrolled me as a student of the Jade Palace," I said calmly, and watched the words hit the room like a stone dropped into still water.
Everyone froze. The kind of frozen that happens when something so improbable has been said that the mind refuses to process it.
"I genuinely don't understand how any of you survived it. That was the most brutal, excruciating, and humiliating test I've ever endured. I don't think I've ever been in that much agony. It explains why the Jade Palace has so few students." I said this in a deliberately grim tone, while simultaneously studying each of the Five, mentally trying to work out where exactly Shifu had attached the chains to Viper, Mantis, and Crane respectively.
"That's extraordinary. Usually the only one who passes Shifu's assignments on the first attempt is Tigress — she's lived at the Jade Palace longer than any of us," Crane said. His expression strongly suggested he had no idea what test I was actually referring to.
I looked at Tigress with open suspicion, for some reason thinking about the Dark Mistress ensemble in the palace hall. She met my gaze without flinching, and what was in her eyes was something that looked distinctly like a challenge.
"So — who wants more?" I said, and broke eye contact. Her expression had made one thing perfectly clear: she was carrying some kind of grudge against me, and it wasn't going anywhere.
Everyone except Tigress raised a hand. She simply stood and left without a word.
We finished the rest of breakfast in silence. Afterward I washed the dishes, and we filed outside together. Tigress was waiting for us, and the group made its way to the training ground together, where Master Shifu was already expecting us.
***
"Today you will demonstrate to the panda that raw strength alone is not sufficient to overcome true masters of kung fu. However, let me be absolutely clear: this is a training demonstration, nothing more. Serious injury is not acceptable." Shifu addressed his students in a firm voice.
The Five nodded and began glancing at me with evident interest. It was plain they were looking forward to teaching me something.
*Do they genuinely think I have nothing to offer them?* I thought, bristling — even as I recognized that Shifu was most likely right. But years of relentless training combined with a sharply developed sense of personal dignity drowned out the careful whisper of common sense.
"Panda. Your first opponent will be Mantis, so be ready. Warm up first if you like." Shifu smirked at the end of that sentence and folded his hands behind his back.
I gave a casual shrug in response and immediately started running through a quick warm-up. No point in risking an injury from a cold start — plenty of ways to get hurt today without adding that.
Mantis, by contrast, wasn't warming up at all. He simply waited to one side, unhurried, until I was ready. Though I did wonder — did an insect need to warm up? Possibly his physiology worked differently.
After the warm-up I stood facing my tiny opponent, mentally bracing for the starting signal.
A quiet certainty had settled in me that my odds against him were not good. Mantis had already shown what he was capable of in terms of speed and reaction — both in the training hall the night before and at the Dragon Warrior ceremony. Hitting him was going to be nearly impossible. My realistic goal was to simply absorb what he threw at me.
The moment Shifu called the start, Mantis vanished from his position like a bullet. I felt him the instant before I could process what was happening — he launched up the side of my body in a single leap, cleared my neck, and locked onto my collar from behind with a grip like iron.
My left leg moved back instinctively to brace, and I tensed everything I had to stay upright against the sudden violent yank, which still rocked me hard.
Without losing a fraction of a second, one of my hands shot backward to grab him — but Mantis was simply faster. A single instant was all he needed to slide down and seize the leg I had planted behind me. What followed was a powerful shove that put me on the ground.
I hadn't even finished processing the fall when my nimble opponent struck again. Planting his limbs into the floor, he spun with explosive force, wheeled my body around its own axis, and hurled me directly into the nearest stone wall.
The pain from the impact barely registered, but my head immediately filled with a low, resonating hum from the collision, echoing as a heavy ringing inside my skull.
The realization that a tiny insect had sent me airborne inside of a few seconds hit my pride considerably harder than the wall had hit my body. I had prepared myself for this possibility in theory — but there is a vast difference between expecting something and actually experiencing it.
I still couldn't work out how that volume of force fit inside something that small.
"Oh — Panda, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to — are you alright?" Mantis said after a brief pause, appearing directly in front of my eyes.
"I'm fine. No need to feel sorry for me — I'm built solid enough. Go on then, kung fu masters — show me everything your art is capable of," I said in a cheerful voice, getting back to my feet and doing my best to preserve some dignity in front of the others.
The entire Five was watching me with unmistakable curiosity. My words had clearly not been what they expected. But I had already understood the fundamental truth of this place: to learn kung fu, you had to be a masochist. So I gave them carte blanche.
Shifu's eyes lit up immediately, and a moment later he pointed to my next opponent — Viper.
The start signal sounded sharply, and she surged forward almost instantly, beginning to circle me in smooth, fluid arcs and rapid zigzag patterns.
"Ready, Panda?" She looked up at me with a playful glint, almost teasing.
She didn't wait for an answer. She coiled herself into a tight spring-like ball and shot forward like a bolt of lightning. I barely had time to react — I thrust out a leg to intercept the attack, but she was too fast. My leg glanced off smooth scales, and she was already airborne, directly in front of my chest. Hanging in the air for a fraction of a second, she unleashed a rapid succession of tail strikes.
The barrage rattled my chest with deeply unpleasant force, pushing me back several steps. I tried to cut back with a sharp diagonal strike, but she slipped it easily, bounding several meters away in one movement.
"You really are tougher than expected. Someone else in your place would probably have cracked ribs by now," she acknowledged.
And at that point I understood that everything she had done so far had been curiosity. The real attack was coming.
Viper hissed and shot at my head like lightning. Before I could process it I was in the air, sent flying by several tail strikes in quick succession. But she didn't stop there. She bent smoothly around my body from behind and drove the full length of herself into my back with a powerful whiplike motion, launching me in an entirely different direction.
That impact sent me skidding forward on my face for a good two meters, coming to a stop right at Master Shifu's feet.
The accumulated pain was barely noticeable, which struck me as interesting. *I'm basically an armored tank from a standard MMORPG — my defense rating is so high their attacks can barely leave bruises.* It was a distracting thought.
But more pressing questions were beginning to push everything else aside.
*What exactly are these creatures? Where does that kind of force come from in bodies like theirs? What's the secret?*
*Their strikes are fluid, rhythmic. Nothing is random — every blow is deliberate and precise.*
*But that still doesn't explain how they're breaking the laws of physics. How do beings who weigh a fraction of what I do send me flying like I weigh nothing?*
"Shall we continue?" Shifu asked, cutting through my thoughts, his bearing making it clear that only one answer was acceptable.
"Yes, let's continue — though I think it's fairly obvious that whoever comes next is going to be sending me across the training ground again," I said with a sour look.
The next opponent was Tigress. Everything about her said she wasn't going to handle me with the relative consideration the others had shown.
The moment the start was called, she launched herself upward, executed a clean backflip, and came down on me with a two-footed drop kick. I caught it — barely any real effort — but the force behind it was enough to drive me slightly into the ground, leaving a small crater around my feet.
*At least there's someone here I can actually hold my ground against,* I thought with some satisfaction, and allowed myself a smirk in her direction. She visibly did not appreciate it.
What followed was a furious, overwhelming barrage — heavy overhead strikes, sweeping low kicks, and dizzying aerial combinations that came faster than I could respond to.
The satisfaction that had barely formed was obliterated on the spot.
A particularly powerful kick from Tigress sent me spinning high into the air, and she followed, continuing to land strikes as I rotated helplessly, with no way to control where I was going or how I was landing.
While her blows rained down on me in rapid succession, I found myself genuinely feeling for whoever her future partner would be. On the surface she was cold and composed. But inside her was a volcano — and it was fully active.
Somehow, in the middle of all this, she found a position directly above me and drove me toward the ground with a roar and a strike that hit like a hammer.
The landing was painful in a way the previous impacts hadn't quite been. The earth shook with the impact, and a dull ache resonated through my entire body. A persistent ringing flooded my ears. The world was spinning.
And somewhere at the edge of my awareness, a distant voice observed: *That one got through.*
My vision cleared. I was lying at the bottom of a crater. Master Shifu was crouched directly in front of my face, moving a finger in small circles near my eyes. Satisfied that I was conscious, he stepped back neatly and walked toward Tigress.
I pushed myself upright carefully and stretched, savoring the pleasant sensation of the muscles along my spine lengthening. Several satisfying pops echoed along my vertebrae.
*That last one might actually have been a bit much,* I thought, taking a mental inventory of any real damage — and found myself distracted before I could finish by Shifu's firm voice, directed at Tigress.
"Tigress. I made it clear beforehand that this was to be a demonstration. Had that been anyone else, the outcome could have been catastrophic. You know the principle I've taught you — the ability to control your strength is worth more than the strength itself, especially when demonstrating. How many times have I told you that." His voice was sharp and measured.
Tigress stood still with her eyes lowered, slightly drawn in on herself. There was something in her expression — a wounded look, and underneath it something that resembled genuine fear.
I almost felt sorry for her. And besides, I had told them not to hold back on my account. So I stepped in.
"It's fine, Master Shifu. If anything, I learned more about what kung fu is actually capable of. And as you can see, I'm not hurt."
Shifu looked me over from head to foot and made a short sound. Then he asked: "And what lesson did you take from today?" He asked it in his measured, instructional tone, but he was looking directly into my eyes as he said it, as though searching for something specific.
"Yes, yes, I understand — my muscle strength means exactly nothing in a fight against genuine kung fu masters, and so on. I'll admit that freely." I paused. "Though I was hoping to see something even more impressive. The legends that circulate about you are something else entirely."
"And what sort of legends circulate about us?" Shifu asked, interest kindled — and something distinctly mischievous appearing in his eyes.
"For instance, there's one that says kung fu masters can shatter mountains with a single touch," I said, citing the most widespread folk tale I'd heard.
"Is that so. Listen, Panda — do you see that boulder?" Shifu said, pointing to a massive rock sitting beyond the edge of the training ground, weighing somewhere around three tons. "Bring it here."
"Easy enough," I said with a smirk, and headed toward it. I was genuinely curious what Shifu intended to demonstrate.
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