Chapter 23
While I sat lost in thought, Oogway waited in silence. The moment my final decision had fully formed in my mind, he said, without even looking at me:
"I see you understand."
His calm voice carried no question, no surprise. Simply a statement of fact, delivered with the same unchanging, wise plainness with which one might note that the sun had risen in the east.
His words made me flinch. Interesting — how did he know? I hope he doesn't read minds. Right, the main thing right now is not to think about what I did to the Wolverine. Under no circumstances think about what— I was furiously reminding myself.
"Today you have defined your path," he said, and the words hung in the air, carrying the weight not of prophecy but of acknowledgment. Of my own conscious choice.
I nodded silently, the irritation still present.
Yes, a choice I was pushed toward by circumstances you created, the thought moved through me. But what good does anger do me now? A tantrum? Nothing.
"But do you know what matters most on a long journey?" Oogway's voice became, without warning, remarkably ordinary and quiet — almost conspiratorial. He made a theatrical pause, his eyes narrowing with sly amusement, and continued: "What matters most… is to eat well before you set out."
I went still, trying to process what he had just said. My brain, which had been calibrated for lofty matters, rebooted with a crash, unable to reconcile the elevated with the deeply, comfortably mundane.
I snorted. A suppressed laugh burst from my chest and immediately grew into loud, rolling laughter. This old tortoise truly had a gift for the unexpected.
"Understood," I grinned, feeling the tension and irritation of the past hour leave my shoulders.
"Wonderful," he replied at once, mischievous sparks dancing in his eyes. "Because what they serve in the palace kitchen can barely be called food. Bland porridges, boiled vegetables — my old bones require at least a little flavor and spice. So I will be visiting your dining hall this evening."
He leaned slightly closer and continued:
"Just say nothing to the palace cook—" his voice dropped to a murmur, even more conspiratorial than before — "he has his own ideas about my diet. Let this remain our little secret."
I laughed louder, pressing my palms together in an exaggerated gesture of solemn agreement.
"Dinner is on me, Master Oogway. I promise you will not be disappointed. And now, if you'll permit it, I'm going to go train."
He only smiled in return and nodded. I was already heading toward the garden exit, muttering under my breath: "For while Tai Lung sits in his cage, I must lift."
***
Leaving the garden, I was no longer simply wandering and taking things in — I was surveying my surroundings with the eyes of a treasure hunter. The only difference being that my treasures needed to be not shiny, but heavy. In my mind's eye I was already picturing the ideal implement: something monumental, substantial, something that would present a worthy challenge to both muscle and will.
My search was quickly rewarded. In the shadow of a half-ruined arch, almost entirely concealed by wild grape vines, lay a massive chunk of dark jade column. From the worn edges and traces of carving, it had once been part of something grand.
I approached and assessed its scale and weight. Difficult to estimate by eye — seven tons? Ten? But one thing I knew with certainty: this block promised exactly the kind of load that could take my training to a new level.
Without further deliberation I drove my fingers into the rough surface of the stone. Muscles tensed, back arched. With a low, resonant groan I tore the column out of the grip of the earth and hoisted it onto my shoulder, giving a satisfied grunt as the weight pressed my feet into the ground.
Seems I underestimated the weight a little, the thought moved through me. The column had turned out considerably heavier than anticipated — not that I was at my limit, but something this size wasn't something you worked with for hours.
What surprised me, though, was that my body responded to the intense load not with gradual exhaustion but with a strange surge of force. My heart beat faster, driving heated blood through my veins, and the monstrous weight began gradually to recede, yielding to an increasing sensation of ease.
Wait. How? By all logic I should be slowly running out of strength right now, not feeling a rush of energy.
A similar sensation had come over me just a couple of hours ago in the fight with the Wolverine — instead of tiring, my strength had only grown. I had put it down to the berserker mode, but apparently that wasn't the explanation. More than that — after that fight I had recovered with remarkable speed. Within an hour I had felt neither muscle pain nor exhaustion — only a slight leanness, as though my body had been drawing energy directly from fat reserves.
And it hit me: when I actually thought about it, I hadn't truly trained in a long time. I hadn't pushed myself to that limit where every muscle burns and screams from overload. All my "lifting" had reduced to maintaining form — a routine in a homemade gym where the maximum weight barely reached five tons.
But dwelling on things was never my style. A plan crystallized in my head almost like a flash of light. I turned and walked with purpose toward the Lotus Pond. The logic was simple: if Shifu really was preparing some "special" training for me, why not get ahead of it?
After all, as he had said himself, I had already developed something like the Flow through familiar actions. The same pattern applied: first, wring static balance from the body. Then, through movement, learn dynamic balance. And then, with both understood, I could extend this Flow to everything else I did.
With each step that made the earth shudder beneath me, the eagerness mounted. This wasn't just training. This was a challenge to myself.
***
The training pond — third person.
Five figures moved across the water's surface with lightning speed, threading between wooden platforms of varying sizes.
The Furious Five were training. From the moment Po and Shifu had left the palace, they had refined their skills without pause, and now their sparring had taken on the quality of a practiced and ferocious dance.
Crane glided from platform to platform, his wings cutting through the air with a whistle. Every strike was precise and deliberate, every movement aimed at joints and points of balance. When Monkey lunged into the attack, Crane pivoted sharply, covering himself with one wing, and in the same instant transitioned into a counterattack.
Monkey, escaping the blow, leaped onto a neighboring tiny lotus that immediately began to sink under his weight. But he was already in motion — tucking through the air, he landed behind Viper, who was engaged with Mantis, and attempted to shove her from behind. The wooden platform beneath them lurched sharply.
Viper, sensing movement at her back, spun around. She slipped away from Mantis's strike and shot toward Monkey, evading an attack from above. Her tail coiled around his support leg, and a sharp pull disrupted his stability. Monkey, scrambling to keep his balance, was forced to retreat with a jump onto a sturdier platform.
Without losing a moment, Viper turned her attention back to Mantis, who immediately launched into an attack. She parried his strikes with her flexible tail, creating a mobile shield — when suddenly Tigress dropped onto their platform with a heavy thud.
The platform lurched dangerously under the sudden additional weight. Mantis, seizing the moment of instability, made a sudden explosive move. His small body hung in the air for an instant, and in that airborne phase he managed to deliver a rapid series of precise jabs aimed at Tigress.
Tigress accepted the attack, raising her front paws into a defensive position. Her movements were sharp and economical — she parried Mantis's lightning strikes with barely enough time to track the arc of his jump. But in the same instant her support leg, almost on its own, drove a short, powerful block to the side, deflecting a low, sliding strike from Viper's tail, who had been attempting to exploit her divided attention.
Nearby, Crane and Monkey came together again in a rapid exchange — and then the entire Five went still at once, breaking off the sparring. Their eyes moved toward the entrance to the courtyard, from which came approaching sounds: heavy, measured, resonant steps.
Moments later, around the bend appeared the massive figure of Po. His body was tensed, his muscles bunched into thick ridges, distorting the familiar outline. Beneath the pale fur ran pink lines of healing wounds — some already covered with fresh skin, others still sealed by dry crusts.
But what struck everyone most was what rested across his spread shoulders: an enormous chunk of jade column, five meters long. As the panda passed, he gave the Five a brief nod as though to say carry on, circled the bank, and without hesitation approached one of the largest wooden platforms.
Crane watched the scene without looking away. His beak fell slightly open.
"Where did those wounds come from?" he murmured first — then immediately waved a wing at his own question. "Never mind the wounds. But how is he even carrying that? And is he seriously planning to get on the equipment with it? How is he going to distribute the weight? He only started learning balance yesterday! Will any of the platforms even hold him?" He paused for a moment, then answered himself: "Well, the larger ones… should. They're made of floating wood — capable of supporting three elephants."
Beside him, Monkey snorted, rubbing a bruised shoulder:
"Three elephants I don't know about, but one panda — apparently yes. Look!"
Meanwhile the panda, barely managing to climb onto the platform, caused it to emit a deafening groan of protest. The wood sank sharply, tilting at a dangerous angle the moment his feet touched the surface. Water rushed noisily onto the planking, soaking his legs. For a moment he stood with feet wide apart, slowly and methodically shifting his weight, trying to adjust to the rocking.
"He's going to fall," Viper said grimly, watching the dangerous tilt.
But then something extraordinary happened: the sharp, lurching oscillations smoothed suddenly into a gentle, almost ceremonial swaying — and then stilled completely. The platform had yielded, accepting his weight. In another moment he was standing motionless, like a stone idol.
The Five watched with undisguised interest, waiting for what would come next. But Po, drawing a deep, audible breath, simply raised his arms above his head and froze in a standing press with his monstrous load.
"Did he… do it?" Mantis finally broke the silence, scratching his cheek. "He's in static balance — but it looks as though he simply defeated the lotus. It's not even trying to throw him off."
"Not defeated," Monkey corrected, watching the completely unmoving platform with close attention. "He suppressed it. Instead of becoming part of the oscillations, he simply eliminated them."
Tigress only shook her head, arms folded across her chest. Her expression carried its habitual irritation — but now a drop of reluctant respect had worked its way into the mixture.
Before long the Five, understanding there would be no further spectacle, returned to their sparring. But now their eyes kept drifting involuntarily toward the solitary figure at the edge of the pond.
Several hours passed. The sun had moved across the sky when the motionless panda finally came back to life, drenched in sweat, his fur darkened and matted. First came a quiet, hoarse groan from his chest. Then his muscles shifted. And with a snarl he began to… squat.
Slowly at first, as though listening to his own body and to the renewed swaying of the platform. But with each successive repetition he accelerated, like a wound spring releasing. The intensity rose with alarming speed. Now every movement wrung the absolute last from his muscles, and the water around the platform was literally boiling — churned into white foam by the violent oscillations. The sight was simultaneously absurd and mesmerizing.
The Five again stopped their sparring and stared.
"I'm calling it — I'm not sparring with him," Monkey announced, taking a step back.
"What's so frightening about it?" Tigress asked coldly. "Let him squat with that column until sunset. But all his strength means nothing if he can't apply it. We established that already." She gave a contemptuous snort. "An opponent won't stand still and wait for him."
"Don't be so categorical," Crane said with weight, gesturing smoothly toward Po with a wing. "When he reaches the Flow — and I said 'when,' not 'if'—" his beak curved in something like a smile — "his speed, his reaction, all of it will multiply many times over. And if he masters techniques—" Crane paused, letting the words settle into his listeners — "sparring with him won't simply be problematic. It will be equivalent to suicide."
Tigress, who had maintained her skeptical posture, found herself involuntarily watching the way every muscle played beneath Po's sweat-soaked fur. Her own tail gave a short, involuntary twitch.
"His strength is… impressive," Viper said quietly, almost to herself. "The legends speak of masters who moved entire mountains — but those are legends."
The panda, meanwhile, showed no sign of stopping. His consciousness seemed to have shut down entirely, yielding to a blind, instinctive will. Several times he was on the edge: the column pulled him off-balance, the platform threatened to escape from beneath him. But each time his body found the point of recovery on its own — a powerful surge of force, a microscopic correction of the torso, and equilibrium returned.
The Five tried again to resume sparring, doing their best to ignore the panda — who, having finished his squats, was not content with that. After a brief pause to catch his breath, he… began to do bicep curls.
Yes, simply bicep curls. The jade column folded alternately in his powerful paws, and with each repetition the lotus beneath him groaned desperately, tilting one way then the other. The water surged in short, powerful bursts, spreading outward from the platform.
In this rhythm the day passed. The panda worked methodically through one exercise after the next, using the block as a universal implement. He interrupted himself only occasionally — setting the column on the bank, wringing out his soaked fur, and drinking hungrily from the wooden buckets that palace servants kept bringing out to him. Sometimes, losing concentration, he toppled into the water with a loud splash, throwing up fountains of spray. But each time he climbed out wordlessly, through clenched teeth, shook himself off, and hoisted the load back onto his shoulders.
By evening his pace had noticeably slowed. Falls became more frequent, his movements turned to slow and agonizing persistence, and the pauses between sets stretched longer. He was no longer growling — only breathing in hoarse rasps, and the column rose with ever greater difficulty.
The Furious Five, watching all of this, had only one thought circling in each of their heads: This panda is an absolute masochist.
It was at precisely that moment — as the sun disappeared below the horizon — that Shifu's soundless shadow appeared on the bank. The master stood perfectly still, watching the exhausted figure on its last reserves.
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