Training the Four-Legged Dragon wasn't just a matter of throwing daggers at her.

The daggers created the necessary stress state — nerves pulled taut, senses sharpened by pain and urgency. That was the opening. What came next was Shen Cong using the Third Eye to guide her perception from the outside, leading her toward the fog fungi's unusual Activity radiation frequency, teaching her to feel for it and lock onto it. That was the path to her own Third Eye.

The Third Eye's value extended well beyond fog navigation. That particular Activity radiation mimicry, once mastered, worked as an extraordinarily effective reconnaissance tool — even outside the fog zone, it could perceive through solid obstacles, past cover, around corners. A fighter who could see what was behind a wall before stepping around it held a different kind of advantage.

Half a day of training at a time.

The Four-Legged Dragon came back covered in shallow wounds — the blade was only a dagger, the cuts weren't deep, but they added up, and they hurt. When Shen Cong finally appeared in front of her after a session, she would express her displeasure in no uncertain terms, communing through the perceptual link that she wanted to go home, back to the cave under Big Pagoda Mountain, and never come out again.

He didn't relent. When he decided on a course of action, he saw it through.

Training continued.

She had the cognitive development of a four- or five-year-old child, which actually meant her capacity for learning and imitation was meaningful — the problem had never been capability, it had been that her nature was too restless, her attention too easily scattered. Pain, it turned out, was an effective focusing mechanism.

Day by day. Dagger by dagger.

After enough repetitions of concentrated evasion — moving in the fog without knowing where the next throw would come from — her attention finally held steady. And when her attention held steady, the Third Eye guidance Shen Cong was running through the perceptual link could reach her. He kept pushing her Activity radiation frequency toward the…