Chapter 6
*Po's perspective.*
When I first found myself in that training hall, I was deeply disappointed. I had hoped to see something at least remotely connected to physical development, and instead I ended up in a genuine paradise for masochists: sharp spikes jutting out at every angle, mechanisms swinging and spinning without pause, columns of flame shooting straight up from the floor. Even watching the extraordinary speed and reflexes of the Five as they worked through it all, the disappointment drowned out any wonder I might have felt.
Tigress gave me a warm welcome by hurling a spiked club at my head with considerable velocity. My surprise was genuine when my body reacted faster than my mind and I caught the thing. I barely felt the impact itself, but the spikes drove deep into my palm and produced a sharp, thoroughly unpleasant sensation.
I did my best to hide my irritation and play it off as indifference to such a charming reception. I could only hope Tigress wouldn't try to kill me again in future. Her stare alone was enough to make my fur stand on end.
When Shifu explained that progress in kung fu was tied to constant pain and suffering, I wasn't surprised in the slightest. Extraordinary results always demand extraordinary effort. And any serious lifter knows what pain feels like.
I remembered the early days of training in this world — my body pushed through intense pain constantly. At first it was unbearable, but in time I stopped noticing. There were sessions where I overdid it and tore muscles or snapped ligaments, producing agony that was occasionally hard to endure even by my standards.
Everything healed with remarkable speed, though. The annoying part was that during recovery I had to stop training. And I had to put on a convincing show for my father that I was perfectly fine, even when my head was splitting like something was being screwed into it from the inside.
Shifu also offered me an out — told me calmly and pleasantly that I could simply walk away. For some reason that immediately felt like a trap. Could it really be that easy? Part of me wanted to agree on the spot, even at the cost of my dignity, if it meant keeping my health and sanity intact. The restaurant's regulars weren't going anywhere, and my father would support whatever decision I made.
But a vague feeling, like a persistent throbbing ache at the back of my skull, kept me from accepting. Something told me there was considerably more beneath the surface of that offer. Or maybe that was just the alcohol talking.
In any case, running was always an option I could come back to. And what if it turned out I actually was born for kung fu? Maybe it was worth a real attempt. I thought this with an inward smirk.
The first mechanisms Shifu sent me onto I broke on purpose, in revenge for him shoving me headfirst into them like the rat he was being. The hardest part was pretending to feel genuinely bad about it — but imagining that the repair bill might get charged to me helped me put on a very convincing performance.
Then, following my public humiliation, I walked with all the mechanical stiffness of a wooden puppet toward the mechanical wooden mechanisms made of wood, typical of the kind used in the construction of wooden mechanisms, from which I received an unexpectedly powerful and excruciating blow to an extremely delicate location.
Doubled over and gasping, I cursed the infernal contraption in terms I rarely used, this hellish machine that had apparently violated the laws of physics by returning my strike amplified several times over.
I had to hand it to the Five — they were true masters of the craft to have learned how to work those things with any kind of skill.
In that moment, trying to distract myself from the pain, I was turning over what Shifu was actually trying to accomplish with his insults and his decision to throw me onto dangerous equipment. Was he getting back at me for what I'd said earlier? Was he simply trying to drive me out? If he had wanted me gone from the Jade Palace, he could have just said so directly rather than explaining kung fu principles — which, in his own words, were rooted in pain and suffering.
And then, right at that moment, Master Shifu said something that actually mattered: that a fighter must be ready to stop an unexpected blow and strike back at the right instant. His voice was measured and composed. It wasn't another jab — it was a genuine lesson, and a valuable one.
That was when something clicked. I understood what Shifu was actually saying, and what he had been after with everything he had done. Behind his words lay a simple truth: only people with real will, capable of bearing hardship, can meet a blow from fate with dignity and answer it correctly.
Because fate had its fist raised over my head right now. This was not the first time, and it would not be the last. The choice in front of me was clear: take the blow and hold, or let it destroy everything I cared about. Receiving the title of Dragon Warrior had instantly made me and everyone close to me a target of extraordinary scale.
I hadn't even thought about that until this moment. I'd assumed the worst outcome was public embarrassment.
But now I understood that news of a panda becoming the Dragon Warrior had already spread to every corner of the Valley of Peace, and would soon reach the farthest edges of China. Before long, everyone would know exactly where to find me — and running home to disclaim the title would only make my position worse, not better.
The thought that my father's life could be in danger — the possibility of losing the only family I had — produced something inside me that I couldn't name: a compound of despair and fury in equal measure. I pulled myself together through sheer force of will and decided to pour all of that into the mechanism in front of me. The strike would be a statement. A declaration of intent.
"I understand, Master. Thank you for the lesson," I growled, and I meant it sincerely — and added in the privacy of my own mind: *I will tear apart everything in my path. The world, fate, whoever it might be — let them try to take what I care about.*
The strike was spectacular. My supposed opponent simply ceased to exist as a coherent object, and the larger fragments — mostly metal components — continued outward, demolishing the remaining mechanisms in their path.
Yes, I would probably never become a true Dragon Warrior. I had no particular calling for kung fu, and I had no intention of becoming a masochist. But I would at least make the attempt rather than hiding from the world in fear of everything, the way I had lived out my previous life. Those were my final thoughts on the matter, and they closed the question.
***
Now I was following the Furious Five up a stairway cut into the rock face, heading back toward the Jade Palace. We were probably going somewhere that served as a dormitory. I could only hope they had separate rooms.
The whole way I was picking up the muffled conversation of the Five walking ahead of me. They clearly believed I couldn't hear them.
"He's some kind of monster! A walking disaster! Better if he'd stayed as fat and helpless as he looks. First the gates, now half the training ground gone to pieces!" Monkey was saying indignantly.
"Did anyone notice how quickly his mood shifted? He's probably unhinged on top of everything else," Crane added.
"I still can't understand what Oogway was thinking, naming him Dragon Warrior. Physical strength is far from the most important thing. Otherwise Master Elephant would have held the title years ago." Tigress put her piece in.
"Still — give credit where it's due. He can hit," Mantis said with a dry sound.
"Do you think he can hear us?" Viper asked, casting the suspicious glances my way she'd been sending the whole walk.
They all went quiet at once, throwing furtive looks in my direction, apparently under the impression I hadn't noticed.
*Right, you lot. I'll show you exactly what I think of that.* I let my expression make it plain that I had heard every word and had drawn my conclusions accordingly.
We soon arrived at a large two-story building constructed in the same traditional Chinese style as the Jade Palace, topped with bright emerald tiles that the darkness mostly obscured.
Most of the Furious Five exchanged a few words and went inside. Only Viper stayed, apparently having appointed herself tour guide.
"Here we are. This building is called the training barracks. It's where we rest, eat, and spend our free time outside of training," she said, with a touch of awkwardness.
"Barracks sounds awfully military. Why not just call it a dormitory?" I asked with genuine curiosity.
"It's called that because the original intention was for students to be devoted entirely to kung fu and to live simple, ascetic lives, without personal possessions or worldly comforts," she answered with a note of pride.
*Of course. What exactly did I expect from masochistic monks?* I thought, registering that comfortable living arrangements were not going to be part of the picture.
She walked me through the building — showed me a modest kitchen, an empty storage room, a spacious but bare common area, and led me down a corridor of rooms, pointing out one of the vacant ones. There was a staircase to the upper floor as well, but it was empty and held no particular interest.
*Right. These people clearly have no concept of personal space.* I looked at the thin rice-paper partitions between rooms, which could not have blocked a single sound. Not that I was surprised. Such was the way.
"Thank you. At least someone in this place is a normal person," I said sincerely, and Viper gave an awkward smile that was as close to a smile as a snake could manage.
Then a problem arose immediately: the floorboards were far too thin. The moment I took a step, my foot went through one with a crack. Irritated, I began picking my way carefully across the floor, trying to reach my room without further incident, but managed to break several more boards before I got there. Passing the room opposite mine, I heard a distinctly displeased hiss from within.
I opened the rice-paper door and went in to find an interior stripped of everything except necessity, with no personal touches whatsoever. The spacious room contained a bed and a lamp-candle holder beside it.
There was a real possibility the bed would simply collapse under my weight, but it held — heroically, with tremendous protest from every joint. The moment I lay down, sleep began pulling at me immediately and without mercy. I decided I'd find somewhere to wash in the morning, rolled onto my side, and was gone.
Tomorrow would be another difficult day.
***
*Tigress's perspective.*
Tigress could not sleep. The cause was her unwanted neighbor, whose room was directly across from hers. The cause was his snoring. It wasn't especially loud — but her keen hearing caught it with full force. She tossed for an entire hour, unable to find sleep. Finally, patience exhausted, she called out sharply:
"Panda! Stop snoring!"
No response. The snoring continued, and her shout woke up everyone else in the barracks.
Rising in a fit of irritation and crossing a boundary she would normally never cross, Tigress walked into the panda's room. He was lying on his side, face toward the wall. She shoved him firmly with one hand and waited for some reaction, but the snoring went on undisturbed. Anger flaring, she drove a kick into his backside.
The snoring paused briefly — then resumed, noticeably louder. The sleeping panda raised a paw, scratched the affected area with drowsy thoroughness, and went still again.
Furious, Tigress grabbed him by the arm and hauled upward, intending to give him a proper shake. She failed to account for the difference in their sizes. She lost her balance and came down with him in a crashing heap on the floor.
The other members of the Furious Five, already awake from the noise Tigress had been making, couldn't ignore the crash and came to investigate. They arrived at the doorway to a scene that none of them were prepared for: a snoring panda stretched out on top, and a helpless Tigress pinned beneath him.
All four stood in the doorway with their mouths open.
Feeling their eyes on her, Tigress shoved the panda off with a surge of effort and snarled:
"This is not what you're thinking!"
"And what were we thinking?" Monkey asked with barely contained laughter.
"It doesn't matter what you were thinking! I simply couldn't sleep because of the panda's snoring and I was trying to shake him awake, but I accidentally dropped him on myself," Tigress said, visibly flustered.
"You couldn't wake him up?" Viper said, staring at the still-sleeping panda with surprise.
"I don't think he'd wake up if you rolled him down the mountain steps," Tigress said through her teeth.
Her words were interrupted by a short sneeze from Crane — set off by the clouds of dust that had been stirred into the air. The room had been sitting empty for a long time, and had not been cleaned with any frequency.
Then the panda stirred. He rolled onto his back and cracked open sleepy eyes. His expression was one of complete bafflement mixed with reproach — the look of someone asking, *what in the world is going on in here?*
"You were snoring," Tigress informed him in an accusatory tone.
"Could have just woken me up," he muttered in mild complaint. Without waiting for any response, he closed his eyes again and went back to sleep — this time in silence, remaining exactly where he was on the floor.
Tigress's eyebrow twitched involuntarily. The others simply shook their heads, turned around, and went back to bed. Tigress stood for a moment longer, staring down at the panda with irritation, and then followed.
***
*Shifu's perspective.*
Today had been among the worst days of his life.
Only the day before, Master Oogway had delivered a terrible prophecy: Tai Lung would soon escape from prison and return to the Valley of Peace. The news had landed like a physical blow, plunging Shifu into a state of deep shock.
Memories of the past rose before him again — memories that could not be erased. He had raised Tai Lung himself, believing him to be his heir and the living embodiment of all his hopes. But excessive pride and impossible expectations had done their work. His son had lost the ability to govern himself and had become a source of merciless destruction.
Now a terrible prospect stood before Shifu. If Tai Lung broke free, the only thing capable of preventing catastrophe was Oogway's direct intervention again. Shifu understood his own limitations in this matter clearly — opposing the son he had made would be an impossible task. It was far more likely that he would fall at his former student's hands than that he could defeat the monster he himself had created.
Then Oogway made a second pronouncement: the Dragon Warrior, whom he would choose soon, would be capable of stopping Tai Lung. This had rekindled a fragile hope in Shifu. He had spent long years preparing the finest warriors, pouring every ounce of his energy and skill into his students, and he believed that one of them could receive the Dragon Scroll and gain the power needed to meet the threat.
But on the decisive day, everything had gone wrong again. Oogway chose the Dragon Warrior — and the choice fell on a panda who, to Shifu's eyes, was simply fat. In that moment, Shifu felt the old, corrosive pain of yet another defeat settling over him.
He had collected himself with difficulty and decided to remove the panda from the Jade Palace by whatever means necessary.
After dealing with several urgent matters that had required immediate attention and issuing his instructions to the students, Shifu made his way to the main hall of the Jade Palace — and arrived to a sight he could not have anticipated. The scene before him was surreal: the panda was pouring alcohol into the Urn of the Whispering Warriors.
It was so absurd, so entirely outside the realm of expectation, that Shifu could barely trust his own eyes. What struck him most was the behavior of the souls within the urn — souls that had maintained silence for centuries, now releasing sounds of evident contentment.
The conversation with the panda left Shifu with a strange impression. The panda appeared genuinely indifferent to the Dragon Scroll and to the title of Dragon Warrior, dismissing kung fu with open disregard. Yet if that were truly the case, Shifu's comments about the panda's physical shortcomings would not have provoked such a strong reaction.
What the panda had then demonstrated seriously unsettled Shifu and forced him to revise his initial assessment. Beneath that rounded exterior lay monstrous muscular development, speaking to years of consistent training and disciplined attention to physical conditioning.
But Shifu held to the belief that powerful muscles meant nothing without a true passion for kung fu. Without inner fire and a hunger for mastery, no physical ability carried weight in his eyes. He remained committed to his plan to remove the panda.
Nevertheless, the panda had refused to leave the Jade Palace despite every attempt to intimidate him, and left Shifu with no choice but to use more forceful means to push him out.
He had sent the panda to the most demanding training mechanism first, expecting him to sustain a serious injury within moments. But contrary to all expectation, despite his obvious clumsiness, the panda somehow dodged the swinging clubs — and then, having stumbled onto the rotating cylinders, inadvertently jammed the mechanism and broke it.
That had surprised Shifu. He had never seen anyone destroy that particular piece of equipment before. Could the panda's sheer weight have been sufficient to overpower it without any real effort on his part?
Sending the panda to the wooden fighters next, Shifu attempted to provoke him — to humiliate him publicly in front of the Five, push him into recklessness, and break his concentration.
But the panda did not cooperate. He moved cautiously, avoided striking hard before he had the feel of the mechanism's rhythm, and worked at learning its movement. Shifu lost patience and threw a stone at one of the mechanism's components.
The stone had been aimed to accelerate the wooden figure's movement and land a strike on the panda's leg, destabilizing him and driving him deeper into the apparatus. Instead, the spinning blade caught the panda in the most vulnerable possible location.
Shifu felt a wave of discomfort and silently hoped the panda had not suffered any permanent damage. However he felt about the panda, robbing him of something that significant had not been his intention. Still — one of his objectives had been at least partially served.
And in the awkward silence that followed, Shifu found himself slipping into teaching mode almost without realizing it — something to fill the quiet and push away unwanted thoughts.
But the sudden painful impact combined with Shifu's cutting remarks had clearly produced an entirely different effect than he had intended. He had hoped the panda would understand that kung fu was beyond him and leave the Jade Palace for good. Instead, the panda had ignited.
When Shifu saw those fury-filled eyes, he recognized something — something he had hoped never to see again. Tai Lung had looked at him with those same eyes, years ago, when he tore through the Valley of Peace in his drive to seize the Dragon Scroll.
That recognition planted a seed of doubt. Was he, through his own arrogance and resentment, committing a new sin — forging another monster, by a different path?
Perhaps wise Oogway had been right. Perhaps there truly was great power in this panda, and a genuine capacity to become the Dragon Warrior. Because right before Shifu's eyes, relying on nothing but raw physical force, the panda had executed a technique known as the Furious Fist That Shatters a Thousand Mountains.
Perhaps in this moment Shifu should have been what he actually was — a teacher, whose purpose was to inspire students to pursue the ancient art of kung fu.
And now, turning the day over in his mind, Shifu arrived at a decision: if the panda successfully passed the trial he intended to set him tomorrow, he would try to change his approach. To believe. To treat him as a genuine student.
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