Ninety-nine percent of her victory over the Phoenix came down to the fact that the female Iron Fist of that age was the Phoenix's host at the time. She'd called in Shou-Lao, an outsider, to help—but at root it was still an internal struggle.
Put any other Iron Fist in her place? They'd be burned to ash in seconds.
Still, calling the Iron Fist an undeserved reputation would be unkind. Five hundred years ago the red-haired woman Fongji Wu had shattered the Phoenix's projection, and her own strength truly had reached a level that could awe both past and present. The Yu-Ti believed she was the second Fongji Wu foretold in prophecy, and Daisy had to admit it wasn't entirely absurd.
Female. Red-haired. Of mixed Chinese and Western blood. Mute. Connected to the Phoenix. Strength far beyond ordinary mortals. And so on. Setting aside the slightly mercurial personality… in the Yu-Ti's eyes, Daisy fit the conditions of the prophecy remarkably well.
The Yu-Ti caught the flicker of skepticism in Daisy's expression. He took it for the smugness of someone who'd just bested Lei Kung. His voice drifted, as though he were speaking from atop the clouds: "The divination spirit tells me you still have time to fortify yourself. But remember—K'un-Lun's aid to you is for the sake of protecting the world. We owe you nothing."
Having delivered that mild warning, the Yu-Ti began extolling the Iron Fist: a master of martial arts, indestructible, peerless in speed and strength.
To which she could only scoff. Danny's title as the weakest Iron Fist in history was no joke—and perhaps Daisy was simply blind, but she hadn't spotted much improvement the Iron Fist had made in him.
The Yu-Ti studied her for a few moments and shook his head. "You're still far from ready. Learn how to use chi from Lei Kung first."
Daisy frowned stubbornly and shook her head, signaling she had no wish to follow that path. Train chi? Three to five years of it would be useless. Defeating Shou-Lao, gaining the dragon's power, and using it to suppress the Phoenix's influence on herself—that was what mattered.
"The time hasn't come yet. Go to Lei Kung. He'll explain the matter of Shou-Lao and chi to you in detail." The Yu-Ti turned her down, and Daisy, with no recourse, could only return to the courtyard.
The disciples were cleaning up after the fight. The training ground was scarred with scorch marks, and clearing them was proving difficult.
They all looked alarmed at the sight of Daisy. Several of them, watching her approach, gripped their tools and tensed.
Daisy gave a faint snort through her nose. Frightened that easily? If you ever met the Ancient One you'd drop dead on the spot.
"You… you're not from here, are you?" Thirteen years old but already over 1.7 meters (5'7") tall, Danny Rand hurried over to block her path, his face full of hope as he asked in English.
Was there any connection between Daisy and Danny? A little, actually. The Typhon Group she'd bought into and the Rand Corporation were rivals in the pharmaceutical market. Typhon dealt mainly in medicines, while Rand had opened a sprawling chain of hospitals across the country, and each side wanted to swallow the other and take over the whole market.
But the Rand Corporation was now controlled by the Hand, and Typhon was nothing less than HYDRA's cash cow—so neither side could do much to the other.
As a shareholder in Typhon, Daisy was naturally an adversary of Danny, the heir to Rand—even if the boy knew nothing about any of it.
She kept her face blank, went on playing mute, and left a crestfallen Danny behind as she walked off toward Lei Kung.
Lei Kung led her into a quiet chamber. The furnishings inside were spare, and the room was scrupulously clean.
The first thing she saw after the door opened was a long, deep-red table that looked ancient. Atop it sat a row of memorial tablets, some edged in gold, some in silver.
Daisy didn't recognize a single one. She guessed most were past Iron Fists and Yu-Ti.
Three incense burners stood in a line before the table. Only two were lit now, their hazy smoke drifting through the room and lingering long.
There were two cushions inside. Lei Kung knelt on one, and Daisy followed his example, settling onto the other.
After trading blows, the two of them hadn't exactly forged some deep friendship—that would be nonsense—but Lei Kung had acknowledged her strength. He'd dropped the posture of an instructor lecturing a disciple and spoke to her now as something closer to an equal.
"All of us, in fact, possess chi. Chi is everywhere. The first step—I'll teach you to perceive your own chi."
"A restless heart is like flowing water, never still; a quiet heart is like a high mountain, unmoving. Sit in stillness and nurture the chi…" He rattled on for a good while, then caught himself. The philosopher asked, a little flustered, "You do understand what I'm saying, don't you?"
Daisy rolled her eyes. It'd be a miracle if you put any other foreigner in here and they followed a word. But she did understand. This wasn't the Daoist art of the Three Flowers gathering at the crown or the Five Energies returning to the source—it needed no specialized knowledge. It was simply a discipline for nurturing chi.
She nodded, indicating she'd understood.
Lei Kung glanced at her expression a couple of times, then went on teaching the knack of chi.
Daisy had glimpsed a sliver of the mystery in Madame Gao's chi before, and combined with her study of the Mandarin's Three Channels and Seven Chakras, she wasn't entirely ignorant of Eastern cultivation. Even so, trying it herself now, she had little sense of where to begin.
She told herself she'd grasped the principle, but in practice there always seemed to be a layer in the way—her body wouldn't move in step with her intent. That was exactly where she stood. Plenty of people dream of three times a night, two hours each—but in reality? Wanting to and being able to are two very different things.
The will was there; the body just couldn't keep up. The same gap had stumped countless others.
As if sensing her impatience, the philosopher said mildly, "Young one, you still need a great deal of tempering. Your powers and the Phoenix have lifted you to the sky in a single step, but in the cultivation of the heart you fall far short."
Daisy had no time to slowly temper any state of mind. Kill Shou-Lao, loot the corpse, walk away—that was the proper route. The heart could be cultivated later, at leisure.
She tried several more times and still couldn't find the chi-sense Lei Kung spoke of.
Daisy drew a deep breath. Her body swayed slightly as she adjusted her genes into an Earth-human state.
Hm? Lei Kung sensed the change in her, though he didn't know what it meant. Nothing about her appearance had shifted; he half thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Switching to a human state changed everything at once.
K'un-Lun might have been created by an alien vessel, but aliens knew nothing of chi, nor of Eastern philosophy.
The cultivation methods of the K'un-Lun lineage were thoroughly Earth-born arts—naturally better suited to a human body.
As a now "pure" human, Daisy's progress in grasping chi began to accelerate in an instant.
Yet it differed slightly from Lei Kung's account. She felt none of the balanced calm he described—only an indescribable violence in her chest, as though it wanted to vent itself through this channel called chi.
The fury brewing between her brows did not escape Lei Kung.
He closed his eyes in thought, and only after a long while did he speak. "You're very like that woman from before. Truly alike. Let me tell you something of K'un-Lun's Way of Fire."
"In the age when men ate their meat raw and drank blood, fire gave us the hope of survival. It led us out of the wastelands and made us masters of heaven and earth. Fire does not stand for destruction—it holds rebirth within it just the same…"