Chapter 17
The rest of the day, and the night that followed, passed with surprising calm.
After making Father's signature noodles and receiving a generous share of compliments, I caught myself thinking, almost in passing, that I was slowly beginning to grow accustomed to this place. It didn't feel like a second home yet, but it no longer felt foreign either. Before long everyone had gone to bed.
I tactfully chose not to ask Viper and Tigress why they had been peeping. Monkey had been working up to the same question, but one look from Tigress's eyes dissolved his enthusiasm instantly, yielding immediately to the instinct of self-preservation. And so the incident was closed.
That night, mercifully, I slept without nightmarish visions. And I woke — very early — with the sensation of having been plugged into some kind of generator. My body wasn't merely rested — it was brimming with energy, literally straining from the inside. There was an indecently excessive amount of it. It rang in my fingers, demanded release in my muscles, pushed me out of bed. Staying still was simply not an option.
*Is this the effect of the hot bath? Or did yesterday's training shake loose some internal reserve?* The thought moved through me as I was already close to running out the door.
This strange surplus of force needed to be channeled into familiar territory immediately. I searched the surroundings for something I could get my hands around — something substantial, something I could genuinely feel in the muscles, something I could pour all this churning energy into. After wandering for a bit, I found exactly what I was looking for: a massive boulder, roughly the same weight as the rock Shifu had reduced to gravel with a single touch.
*Perfect,* I thought with something close to animal satisfaction, circling the stone. The energy flooding through me demanded a physical outlet, and I knew how to use it.
For a warm-up I simply pressed my paws against the rough surface. One pull — and the boulder obediently came off the ground. The muscles, charged with that excess force, responded not with pain but with a jubilant hum. I held the position for a moment, feeling every fiber tighten as it accepted and mastered the weight. *This is it. Real work.*
Then I pulled the stone against my chest, flinching slightly at its cool roughness, and lay on my back. Pressing it upward from my chest, I felt my shoulders and triceps ignite.
Then I stood, hoisting the boulder onto my shoulders like a barbell. My legs bent slightly under the unexpected weight, then straightened. Going into deep squats, I could hear the small stones beneath my feet crunch and shift.
And that was when it hit me. In the middle of this monotonous, almost meditative rhythm of lifting and lowering, in the measured tension and release of the muscles, a powerful sense of déjà vu arose. Not in the movements themselves — I had done these constantly. In the sensations.
Trying to catch this elusive feeling, I suddenly realized: since the very beginning of the training session, I had not given my body a single command. I hadn't thought about how to lift the load, how to bend my knees, when to breathe. My body was acting on its own — by reflex, precisely, with perfect technique and perfect balance, while managing a boulder that weighed dozens of times more than me.
My brain, like a computer encountering a fatal error, locked up on a blue screen.
*Wait. Why can I even hold this? Fine — maybe the physiology of this body allows for extraordinary lifting. But what about the laws of physics? Why isn't this thing overbalancing me? Why am I not face-down in the dirt under its weight?*
On autopilot, without resuming conscious control, I extended my arms with the boulder held at arm's length from my chest, freezing in a standing press. And I simply watched. Analyzed. My body, without waiting for instructions, had found the perfect point of balance on its own. My back had automatically arched to create a powerful brace. The core had locked into a column of steel, transmitting the force from the shoulder girdle straight down into my heels. The weight of the stone wasn't tipping me over — it was pressing me into the earth, becoming part of my own center of gravity.
*So that's the secret.* The thought moved slowly through my mind as I studied the motionless boulder in my hands. *I'm not just holding the stone. We're a single system. Balance.*
That was the moment I understood. All this time I had been breaking my head over how the others performed their impossibilities, hopelessly trying to make sense of their cryptic explanations and their apparent violations of physics. And it turned out I had been doing something similar myself — for a very long time, since childhood. I had simply never paid it any attention.
In this state of quiet revelation, the rest of the training session passed. Afterward I stopped by the bathhouse, washed the last traces of tension away under the hot shower, and returned to the barracks refreshed and hungry, ready to start breakfast.
I made the noodles, as the day before, poured myself an enormous portion, and set it on the table. I turned away for a moment to find the chopsticks — and felt a draft on my back. When I turned back, the bowl was gone.
"Very funny," I muttered with irritation, spreading my paws and staring with dismay at the empty place on the table where my steaming portion had been a minute ago. "Hilarious. Now — who's the comedian?"
At that moment the door to the dining room opened with a soft creak, and the entire Five filed in, as though on cue, forming a tidy line.
"Po, what are you talking about?" Viper asked, gliding toward me with mild curiosity, her narrow head tilted to one side, her attentive gaze moving between my face and the empty table.
"Then who—" I said, studying the Five with a suspicious look. But their bewilderment was so plainly genuine that I gave up. "Never mind. There's noodles, by the way. Anyone want some?"
Crane swept an elegant wing toward the duty roster hanging on the wall. "Po, let others contribute," he said, gently but with conviction. "According to the schedule, it isn't your turn today."
*They actually have a roster?* I thought, scanning the wall with surprise. And yes — there it was. And the name listed next was Tigress.
"Doesn't matter," I shrugged. "It's easy and I'm used to it. And, no offense intended, but my cooking is going to be better than anyone else's here. I've been practicing at home since I was small, helping my father."
Tigress snorted as she passed, lifting her chin, but no actual objection was raised. Everyone settled at the table and the meal began. The noodles were as good as always, and the conversation gave way to concentration on food. When every bowl was empty, the dining room door slid silently open and Shifu entered.
*Interesting — is this a coincidence, or was he watching somewhere and waiting for exactly this moment?*
We all stood up at once and formed a tidy line. Shifu let his perceptive gaze move across each of us, resting on each person a little longer than usual.
"Good morning, Master!" came the collective greeting.
I bowed my head along with everyone else, and the motion still felt slightly unfamiliar. *Well, etiquette demands it. Though it could be worse,* I consoled myself. *Yes, I live in something like ancient China, but at least the degree of deference here is nothing like what it would have been in the actual ancient version. And if I had ended up in one of those cultivation stories, it would be far worse — you couldn't breathe without making a deep bow and saying 'revered master.'*
Shifu swept his evaluating gaze along our line and gave a short nod, indicating that the formalities were concluded. His eyes — sharp and precise — found Crane immediately.
"Crane. You have an assignment. Fly to the nearby villages and find out what you can about a person by the name of Tao-Tai."
"Master Shifu," I inserted carefully, "I know him. We've — crossed paths. Back when I was helping at the forge."
Every set of eyes turned to me at once. Shifu, without changing his expression, gave a slow nod — indicating I should continue.
"He came to us to repair the hammer mechanism," I explained. "He also bought pure iron. I helped my teacher deliver a shipment to him once. Odd sort of person — always deep in his blueprints, muttering under his breath. But his hands are genuinely gifted."
"And what does he look like now? Where does he live, what does he do?" Shifu's voice carried an unusual inflection.
"Short warthog. Taller than you, but not by much. Lives about an hour's walk from the village, in an old workshop built into the cliff face. What he's currently working on I don't know, but it's obviously mechanical work. Lives alone, I think — just has a son. Twelve or thirteen, seems like."
"I see." Shifu went still, his gaze becoming distant, as though working through a complex sequence. The pause stretched. "Panda. No — we change the plan. You and I will go to him ourselves."
*Of course. What else did I expect?* I thought inwardly. *Initiative punishes the person who shows it.*
But almost immediately, irritation gave way to a more interesting thought.
*Then again, why not go for a walk? Maybe it's a chance to warm things up a little between me and Shifu. The way he treats me now is already nowhere near as awful as that first day. But one should always strive for the ideal.*
"The training hall is closed, but that is no reason to take it easy," Shifu said, distributing instructions to the Five. "Continue refining your balance on the lotuses. Today we add sparring with each other. No excessive force — the priority is control and feeling your partner."
While the kung fu masters exchanged glances of obvious interest, Shifu and I made our way to the secondary exit. We descended the steps cut into the rock face at a slow, almost leisurely pace. I braced myself mentally for Shifu to give me a push, send me rolling downward like a wheel while he sailed ahead in his usual fashion. Nothing of the sort happened.
On the contrary, he seemed in no hurry at all. His pace was surprisingly slow, almost reluctant. He walked like a man heading toward something unpleasant but unavoidable, finding every possible reason to delay arrival. This uncharacteristic slowness spoke more clearly than words: this visit to the mechanic was not merely important to Shifu — it was deeply, thoroughly uncomfortable.
The silence was becoming oppressive. To break it, I asked carefully:
"So, Master. I gather that Tao-Tai is the one who built the training hall's mechanisms. But why are we going together? I could have explained to Crane where to fly."
Shifu was quiet so long that I had decided there would be no answer.
"We go together," he finally said, his voice carrying an unusual flatness, "because I doubt he will agree to restore the hall if the request comes from anyone but me."
"And what exactly do you need me for?" I couldn't help it — I had the clear sense that more lay behind this visit than had been said.
"You recently had contact with him," Shifu said, as though stating a fact.
"Master, two years isn't 'recently had contact.' That's 'ran into him once,'" I tried.
Shifu walked with his gaze turned somewhere toward the mist-covered peaks. His silence stretched, growing thick and resonant.
"And I…" He paused. "I last spoke with him… forty years ago."
"Forty?" The word escaped me with the kind of genuine surprise one produces at hearing "a hundred." "So you two are on bad terms?"
Shifu didn't answer right away, and his silence was more eloquent than any admission.
"I wouldn't call it bad terms," he corrected, and went quiet for a moment, looking somewhere to the side, as though studying memories through the mountain haze. "But yes — he has a grievance. And perhaps he has the right to it," Shifu said, with the detached quality of someone acknowledging a weight that requires no further discussion.
I could see the subject was uncomfortable for him and was about to let it go. To my surprise, it was he who broke the silence that had settled between us.
"We were once the closest of friends. The only two students of Oogway at the time." Shifu spoke evenly, looking at the steps ahead of him as though reading a history written in stone.
"I had a talent for the martial arts. And Tao-Tai… had none. None at all. Nature withheld it from him completely. He couldn't even absorb the most basic stances. But in its place…" A strange, doubled note entered Shifu's voice — something between sorrow and admiration, as though speaking not merely of a friend's limitation but of a great gift that had become simultaneously a curse and a blessing. "In its place, nature gave him a genius that many would have envied. A mind capable of engineering mechanisms that defied imagination."
"And since he isn't currently a kung fu master, something… unpleasant happened?" I ventured carefully.
Shifu exhaled heavily, and his account continued — measured and sad.
"Tao-Tai… He didn't envy my talent. He simply couldn't make peace with his own limitations." The master gave a bitter sound. "And so he decided: if he couldn't learn kung fu, he would build a machine that would, as he claimed, compensate for his weaknesses."
We descended past the columns I had demolished. Shifu, absorbed in the telling, merely glanced at the damage in passing without drawing attention to it, and we followed the path that led away in the direction opposite the village.
"What he created was not simply a machine," Shifu's voice took on a sad quality. "It was a weapon. Not for defense — for assault, for a demonstration of superiority. But the real problem was not the weapon itself." The master paused, choosing words with care.
"To give it power, he took a dangerous artifact from the Palace's vault — something kept there for only the most extreme contingency. Energy capable of destroying the entire Valley of Peace in an instant in the wrong hands. Master Oogway had explained its nature to him many times, had forbidden him even to approach the vault, insisting that the time for that artifact had not yet come."
For some reason my imagination immediately produced an image: a formidable humanoid mech woven from shadow and metal, its chest pulsing with a core of saturated, poison-red light.
Shifu went quiet. Even without further words, the implication was clear — Tao-Tai had almost certainly been expelled from the Jade Palace for this. Understandably so. If I had been Oogway, I would have removed any element capable of causing catastrophe through its own actions as well.
A chill moved down my back. Because what Shifu was describing meant the Palace contained something like a superweapon — comparable in destructive potential to a nuclear bomb. And one resentful warthog had nearly set it in motion.
*What a weapons cache,* I thought, with sudden and unpleasant clarity. *I don't even want to imagine what else is in there.*
We had been walking at an easy pace, and now entered a small village. A few dozen simple homes with clay-plastered walls under dark tile roofs stood along a paved street.
At the center sat a small square with a couple of market stalls — plain wooden structures with sliding doors and colorful fabric awnings.
Between the houses lay kitchen gardens enclosed by low wicker fences. A few young fruit trees bent their branches over the woven barriers, completing the picture of simple rural life.
It was at one of those stalls, its counter heaped with apples, that I witnessed something that nearly made my jaw hit the ground.
A bull buffalo, standing a full meter and a half taller than me and twice as broad in the shoulder, was eating the fruit with an air of supreme indifference, casually crushing the wooden counter with his massive palms.
And at his feet, not reaching even to his knee, a little rabbit girl was sobbing with helpless distress. Her long ears trembled with every cry, and her tiny paws made futile attempts to pull the enormous arm away from the apples.
Evidently her parents had stepped away for a moment, leaving her to watch the stall, and this particular bully had seen his opportunity.
"Master?" I turned to Shifu uncertainly.
He merely folded his arms across his chest, making it perfectly clear that this was my problem to handle.
"Hey, friend," I said calmly, coming up alongside the bull from the side. "Aren't you a little embarrassed, taking apples from a small child?"
He turned, looked me over with contempt, and said around a mouthful of apple something that translated roughly to: *Get lost, fatso, while I'm still in a good mood.*
"So you don't want to do this the polite way," I said with exaggerated sadness. "That's a shame. And I was just about to offer you a deal."
"You asked for it, you fat lump!" the buffalo said, more distinctly this time, and his powerful arms tensed in preparation for a strike.
I was faster. Not with a blow, but with a movement — quick and precise. My paw flashed, and I delivered not so much a punch as a short, sobering slap.
The buffalo hadn't expected either the speed or the audacity. He swayed, took a couple of uncertain steps backward, and blinked as though trying to shake himself clear. When he raised his eyes again, they were filling with blood-red fury.
He swung back with a lunge, trying to drive a blow into my chest. It was perhaps foolish, but I didn't even attempt to block it. I was curious — could he actually hurt me? I wasn't especially worried about myself, and I assumed Master Shifu would step in if things went genuinely wrong.
The powerful fist connected with my chest, and I felt my whole body rock backward. My legs automatically shuffled half a step to keep balance, and the point of impact went briefly numb, but there was no pain.
*What — why is he so weak?* the thought flew through me. *He's nearly twice my size, he ought to have far more muscle mass. But that hit was nothing compared to Tigress.*
"Friend, no offense," I said, "but you punch worse than a girl. Considerably worse."
With that I threw a return strike, putting in only a small fraction of my actual force. The buffalo went flying, but managed to stay on his feet. His eyes widened with a mixture of disbelief and fury. He clearly could not comprehend why his hit had produced no effect whatsoever.
*Here we go again — the strongman performance,* I thought. *But the fact is undeniable: something about this body of mine violates physics. Which means my theory about this world's physiology doesn't fully explain things.*
"Had enough?" I asked, watching him grow only angrier. "Or shall we continue this ridiculous farce?"
He didn't hesitate. He lowered his head and charged, horns first, going for a full ram.
I had a moment of uncertainty — would he simply bowl me over? — but something inside said I would take the impact without much trouble. At the last instant I raised my arms and grabbed his horns, stopping him. The stone paving cracked beneath my feet but held.
The buffalo planted and strained. Steam poured from his nostrils. His hooves smoked as they dug into the stone. The muscles along his neck and back swelled like boulders. And I — simply stood. I had given some ground, absorbed his weight, but my heels never left the earth.
His expression cycled through fury, then confusion, then a slow dawning awareness working its way through the dull rage. He was pressing against me with his entire mass, and I was simply smiling pleasantly.
"What happened, friend?" My voice came out remarkably even, without a trace of effort. "Did you think fat meant weak? Not even close. Fat means cushioning. And it means surprise."
Then I let him see it. Just for a second. I allowed the muscular framework hidden beneath the soft outer layer to reveal itself in its true form. The paws gripping his horns flooded with force, the padding along my sides stretched taut, revealing the contours of muscle built through years of training.
His eyes widened. I felt his pressure ease for a fraction of a second — instinct kicking in, screaming that he had engaged the wrong opponent.
"You see—" I continued, and for the first time my voice carried a steely edge as I steadily rotated his enormous body against its own momentum. "Beneath this friendly and fluffy exterior is hiding… a PANDA WHO LIFTS. And his favorite exercise is not the bench press — it's the overhead buffalo throw."
With these words I didn't push. My paws, locked at the base of his horns, worked as powerful levers. I made a sharp pull — toward myself and upward — putting in the force of the muscles concealed behind their deceptive cover.
An extraordinary image hung suspended for one moment: the giant buffalo, heavier and bulkier than me, was airborne, folded over my head in a perfect arc. His eyes, wide with speechless shock, met my calm gaze for one instant before he crashed down onto the stone paving with a tremendous impact.
The flagstones shuddered. The buffalo was clearly in poor condition. He lay there breathing heavily, groaning softly, staring at the sky with empty eyes.
I waited patiently, arms folded across my chest, until the first signs of returning awareness appeared in his expression. Time to reinforce the lesson.
"Back with us? Good," I said, and my voice came out surprisingly gentle, almost kindly. I crouched beside his face. "Then hear this once and for all, you stubborn root vegetable. If I ever — God forbid — hear that you've been troubling children again—"
I paused, giving the words time to penetrate his shaken brain. Then my paw, fingers spread, began to crawl slowly toward his face like a spider.
"—I will knock off every horn you have," I continued with theatrical, ominous seriousness. "Tear that mouth of yours clean to your ears. Pull off every arm and leg. And those eyes of yours—" I let the implication hang. "You'll spend the rest of your useless life crawling around like a blind worm. Understood? Because if not, that's exactly what's coming to you."
The improvised speech worked. His eyes went wide with pained alarm. He began backing away from me, unable to break eye contact, crawling in sheer terror.
I advanced slowly toward him, maintaining the two-fingered crawling gesture aimed at his face, and arranging my expression into the most unsettling grin I could manage. All while murmuring pleasantly: *"Boop, boop, boop…"*
"HELP!" he suddenly screamed in a voice that had gone entirely to pieces — high-pitched, frantic, projecting across the whole village. "IT'S GOING FOR MY EYES! AAAHH!"
And the poor fellow, backing away and unable to tear his horror-filled gaze from my fingers, rolled his eyes back and collapsed onto the paving, defeated entirely by his own imagination.
"Well… that happened," I said, spreading my paws awkwardly and glancing in Shifu's direction. "I honestly didn't expect him to be quite so… impressionable."
If You Like The Story Drop a Review
~Read Advanced Chapters on: p@treon/Amiii_
~Every 150 PS = Bonus Chapter!
~Push the Story forward with your [Power Stones]