The year she turned five, Waai Fu was taken to a study by her father. A few massive bookshelves filled the room totally full, all sorts of old books all over them, ancient records from all manner, ways and styles of martial arts. 'Choose one, learn it. In three months, show it to me.' Waai Fu—still not able to read too many words—spent a while hesitating, then selected a book from the shelves caked in dust, with 'The Classic of Hung Mei Wing Chun' written on the cover. Waai Fu had no clue what kind of technique this was, or what characterized it. She simply thought it had a very nice name. Her father hadn't given her a single pointer, so Waai Fu had to pore over the books by herself. Yes, she didn't understand the words too well, but the phrases in there—'wicked walks vengeance heady; just employs mind and soul' and the like—flew completely over her head. But she still followed the movements in the pictures, practicing punch after punch, step after step. Assiduous, not allowing an inch of slack. Three months later, before her father, Waai Fu finished demonstrating the whole set of techniques, three-hundred-and-twenty-seven moves in all, flowing like nature, not a single one missed. But once her father finished watching, he furrowed his brows and sighed a rough sigh. 'No. No good. Try again.' Waai Fu didn't know why, but had no alternative but to listen. One year later, her father began to take Waai Fu through some simple fighting exercises. He clearly didn't give it much strength, but Waai Fu still found herself caught out again and again, and every time, her father's fists would never pull back as they landed on her. Waai Fu didn't understand. Clearly she knew every move by heart, but why couldn't she make fluent use of them? She decided to look within the manual again for answers, and after several times parsing from cover to cover, she finally found, in one unremarkable corner, a phrase. 'Ways aloft may decree, but man is what makes change.' And a few more years later, Waai Fu could recite that book in her sleep, the tomes now shelved in a nook of her room, rarely flipped through anymore. In her training, too, her father came to chide her less and less, and she felt he was becoming less strict than he was before. But suddenly, her father left home. He left behind a pair of daggers, and a single phrase. 'I must go and find something.' Waai Fu was unable to comprehend just what could be worth her father abandoning her, abandoning this home, to search for. It was only a few days after that Waai Fu left home too, to live somewhere different. While tidying her room, she again saw the manual, and offhandedly, flipped through it. From start to end, page by page, it was like her past lay before her. She found, at the very end of the very last tome, clearly written: 'Martiality asks mastery, this only from thorough training. With no purpose and no self, there is no boundary and no end.' 'You're right, father. I'll catch up to you, and become stronger than you.'