The Poppy War. R.F. Kuang

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СКАЧАТЬ the House of Yin’s.

      In the course of her research Rin discovered that existing martial arts literature was hugely comprehensive and dauntingly complex. She learned that martial arts revolved largely around lineage: different forms belonged to different families, similar techniques taught and improved upon by pupils who had shared the same master. More often than not, schools became torn by rivalries or schisms, so techniques splintered and developed independently of others.

      The history was deeply enjoyable, almost more entertaining than novels. But practicing the techniques turned out to be devilishly hard. Most tomes were too dense to serve as useful manuals. A majority assumed that the student was reading the book along with a master who could demonstrate the techniques in real life. Others expounded for pages about a certain school’s breathing techniques and philosophy of fighting, but only sporadically mentioned things like kicking and punching.

      “I don’t want to read about the balance in the universe,” Rin grumbled, tossing aside what seemed like the hundredth text she’d tried. “I want to know how to beat people up.”

      She attempted asking the apprentices for help.

      “Sorry,” Kureel said without meeting her eyes. “Jun said that teaching first-years outside of the practice rooms was against the rules.”

      Rin doubted this was a real rule, but she should have known better than to ask one of Jun’s apprentices.

      Asking Arda was also not an option; she spent all her time in the infirmary with Enro and never returned to the bunks before midnight.

      Rin was going to have to teach herself.

      A month and a half in, she finally found a gold mine of information in the texts of Ha Seejin, quartermaster under the Red Emperor. Seejin’s manuals were wonderfully illustrated, filled with detailed descriptions and clearly labeled diagrams.

      Rin perused the pages gleefully. This was it. This was what she needed.

      “You can’t take this one out,” said the apprentice at the front desk.

      “Why not?”

      “It’s from the restricted shelves,” said the apprentice, as if this were obvious. “First-years don’t get access to those.”

      “Oh. Sorry. I’ll take it back.”

      Rin walked to the back end of the library. She glanced furtively about to make sure no one was watching. She stuffed the tome down her shirt. Then she turned around and walked back out.

      Alone in the courtyard, book in hand, Rin learned. She learned to shape the air with her fists, to imagine a great spinning ball in her arms to guide the shape of her movements. She learned to root her legs against the ground so she couldn’t be tipped over, not even by opponents twice her weight. She learned to form fists with her thumb on the outside, to always keep her guard up around her face, and to shift her balance quickly and smoothly.

      She became very good at punching stationary objects.

      She attended the matches at the rings regularly. She arrived in the basement early and secured a place by the railing so that she didn’t miss a single kick or throw. She hoped that by watching the apprentices fight, she could absorb their techniques.

      This actually helped—to some extent. By closely examining the apprentices’ movements, Rin learned to identify the right place and time for various techniques. When to kick, when to dodge, when to roll madly on the floor to avoid—wait, no, that was an accident, Jeeha had simply tripped. Rin didn’t have muscle memory of sparring against another person, so she had to hold these contingencies in her head. But vicarious sparring was better than nothing.

      She also attended the matches to watch Altan.

      She would have been lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she derived great aesthetic pleasure from staring at him. With his lithe, muscled form and chiseled jawline, Altan was undeniably handsome.

      But he was also the paragon of good technique. Altan did everything that the Seejin text recommended. He never let his guard down, never allowed an opening, never let his attention slip. He never telegraphed his next move, didn’t bounce erratically or go flat on his heels to advertise to his opponent when he was going to kick. He always attacked from angles, never from the front.

      Rin had initially conceived of Altan as simply a good, strong fighter. Now she could see that he was, in every sense, a genius. His fighting technique was a study in trigonometry, a beautiful composition of trajectories and rebounded forces. He won consistently because he had perfect control of distance and torque. He had the mathematics of fighting down to a science.

      He fought more often than not. Throughout the semester his challengers only grew in number—it seemed every single one of Jun’s apprentices wanted to have a go at him.

      Rin watched Altan fight twenty-three matches before the end of the fall. He never lost.

       CHAPTER 6

      Winter descended on Sinegard with a vengeance. The students enjoyed one last pleasant day of autumn sun, and woke the next morning to find that a cold sheet of snow had fallen over the Academy. The snow was lovely to observe for all of two serene minutes. Then it became nothing but a pain in the ass.

      The entire campus turned into a risk zone for broken limbs—the streams froze over; the stairways became slushy and treacherous. Outdoor classes moved indoors. The first-years were assigned to scatter salt across the stone walkways at regular intervals to melt the snow, but the slippery paths sent a regular stream of students to the infirmary regardless.

      As far as Lore went, the icy weather was the last straw for most of the class, who had been intermittently frequenting the garden in hopes that Jiang might make an appearance. But waiting around in a drug garden for a never-present teacher was one thing; waiting in freezing cold temperatures was another.

      In the months since the semester began, Jiang hadn’t shown up once to class. Students occasionally spotted him around campus doing inexcusably rude things. He had in turn flipped Nezha’s lunch tray out of his hands and walked away whistling, petted Kitay on the head while making a pigeon-like cooing noise, and tried to snip Venka’s hair off with garden shears.

      Whenever a student managed to pin him down to ask about his course, Jiang made a loud farting noise with his mouth and elbow and skirted away.

      Rin alone continued to frequent the Lore garden, but only because it was a convenient place to train. Now that first-years avoided the garden out of spite, it was the one place where she was guaranteed to be alone.

      She was grateful that no one could see her fumbling through the Seejin text. She had picked up the fundamentals with little trouble, but discovered that even just the second form was devilishly hard to put together.

      Seejin was fond of rapidly twisting footwork. Here the diagrams failed her. The models’ feet in the drawings were positioned in completely different angles from picture to picture. Seejin wrote that if a fighter could extricate himself from any awkward placement, no matter how close he was to falling, he would have achieved perfect balance and therefore the advantage in most combat positions.

      It sounded good in theory. In practice, СКАЧАТЬ