In the six-by-eight foot confines of Cave 74, space was a luxury Pei Jing didn’t possess.
To practice high-speed movement inside a stone box without smashing one’s skull against limestone walls needed an entirely different philosophy of movement.
Pei Jing stripped off his outer linen tunic. That left only his coarse trousers and a tight black cloth wrapping around his torso. His bare chest, pale and scarred only by the memory of old mortal blades, was corded with lean, functional muscle. His feet were bare against the cold limestone flags, his toes gripping the wet stone like roots.
He closed his eyes and summoned the mnemonic diagrams of the Spirit Wind Stride.
The traditional order from the Gale Cloud Sect was straightforward, but inherently flawed:
Direct spiritual energy from the dantian down the Great Yin hepatic channel. Concentrate the wind-nodes at the Yongquan acupoints on the soles of both feet. Detonate the energy downward to launch the body forward.
It was a brute-force approach. An traditional fighter treated spiritual energy as a propellant. It was like black powder exploding in the breech of an iron cannon. They launched themselves in straight, rigid lines, relying on sheer explosive force to overcome heavy rush.
