Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion

[Winged_One]

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---

Qian Shanyi poked her head around the edge of the unfinished fence surrounding the soon-to-be rabbit coop. It was only about four feet tall, and she could have simply hopped over it - but she wanted Linghui Mei to see her from a distance, in case she was still too mad to talk. She gave her fifteen minutes to calm down, but it was hard to judge how deep that fury went.

As it turned out, it was still a little deep. Angry, wet eyes greeted her, glaring over the top of Linghui Mei's plush crow. She was sitting down with her back to the fence, the crow clasped tightly in her arms.

"Are you hungry?" Qian Shanyi said, pulling a plate from behind her back. "I made snacks."

Linghui Mei didn't acknowledge the gesture, but neither did she tell Qian Shanyi to go away, so she decided to risk an approach. She sat down on the grass a meter away, setting the plate down in between them.

"Rabbit, on shards of heavenly horse bone," Qian Shanyi explained, presenting the plate. It was filled with a dozen little meat spits. "You seemed to like these two the best, so I wanted to try a combination."

"This is stupid," Linghui Mei grumbled, picking up one of the spits with one hand. "One animal on another? Stupid."

Qian Shanyi raised one eyebrow at her. Linghui Mei bit into the spit, crunching through the bone. "And the meat is too cold," she grumbled more.

"Thank you," Qian Shanyi said.

Linghui Mei squinted at her suspiciously, then sniffled, ruining the image. "Why are you thanking me? I'm insulting your food."

"Because then I can make it better in the future," Qian Shanyi said calmly. "I also came to apologize for laughing at you. I didn't think it would strike you quite this deeply."

Linghui Mei snorted haughtily, and bit into the meat again. She ate one spit, and then picked up another in silence. "I guess it's nice that I don't have to clean my fingers," she mumbled quietly, defiance slowly leaking out of her shoulders like water out of a cracked jug. "I can hold it by the spit. It's convenient."

"That was the intention."

Linghui Mei continued eating in silence. Qian Shanyi observed her much the same, making mental notes about how the bone shards cracked and the meat shifted around. Next time, she would nick the spits - it should make the meat stay in one place a bit better, and would make the breaks a bit more controlled.

"It's my eldest," Linghui Mei said once she finished, her voice a little distant. Qian Shanyi listened patiently. "He reads these novels of yours, talks about them every time when I visit. I tried to read them as well, but… I can't. Even a little taste of them was too much."

"I get it," Qian Shanyi said after a brief moment. "Reading about your own hunters being happy and funny, that must have tasted like bile."

Linghui mei shook her head furiously. Not denying, despondent. "I just can't…" She sniffled again. "I can't. I love him, but there are some things that are beyond me, as a mother."

So that is where she learned it. Qian Shanyi did wonder how she could recall such a minor quote, yet be furious at being accused of liking the books.

A minor question, all things considered. But it also made another thing more likely.

"He's human?"

Linghui Mei snorted sadly. "Of course you'd put it together," she said, wiping her eyes with the tail of her plush crow. "Yes. I love him, I love all of them, but with humans, it is not the same. He'd never have to fear the chase, never have to look behind his shoulder, imagine the pain of an arrow through his chest. And I am glad for that, knowing that he will always be safe, I would give anything to keep the others as well, but it's not the same. It's just not the same."

"I see," Qian Shanyi said. There was clearly an old wound there - distance between the two of them that Linghui Mei couldn't cross, and her child perhaps couldn't be bothered to, if he even recognized it. Time must have played into it as well - if she had to travel around, she could hardly spend that much with each individual child.

They sat together in silence for a minute. "I do also apologize for accidentally misleading you about how grueling the process of cultivation is," Qian Shanyi said finally, deciding to move the discussion towards a lighter topic. "Normally, when an inner disciple joins a sect, they learn these things slowly. They can see others cultivating every day, so the misconceptions they have dissolve pretty quickly. With us, you are getting a very skewed picture. I'll work harder to help you through it."

Linghui Mei smiled ruefully. "No training so grueling that only one out of a dozen dozens will see the dawn, then?"

Qian Shanyi smiled back. "No. At least, not in general - I am sure some elders still abuse their own disciples. It's just training, you push yourself as far as your own soul takes you."

Qian Shanyi rose, dusting off her robes from sitting down on the grass. "It's not an uncommon misconception, for what it's worth," she continued casually. "Many ordinary people think that we have to pass tests that are so difficult that only a small fraction can even survive them, but what sense would that make? Any sect has far more use out of a weakly trained cultivator than out of a dead one. The only deadly tests come from the Heavens."

Linghui Mei closed her eyes and sighed. "So I am a common fool, then."

Qian Shanyi laughed, and turned around to leave. "I have to get going, meet with Jian Wei. See you in the evening."

"Wait."

Qian Shanyi turned back, and saw Linghui Mei staring up at her, biting her lip, an agonized expression on her face. "Once again I have cracked an egg on my face due to my own foolishness," Linghui Mei said.

Qian Shanyi shrugged. "It's just growing pains, Mei -"

"Nonsense," Linghui Mei cut her off. "You've put your faith in me as your student, and yet I've failed it once again. Got so tangled up in my own secrets I didn't think to ask." She shook her head sadly. "Did not even speak a good word about the victory of my own master. I'd like to make it up, somehow."

"How?" Qian Shanyi asked, raising one eyebrow. "You are already helping us with everything."

Linghui Mei bit her lip harder, and Qian Shanyi patiently waited for her answer. She was heading over with time to spare, and the Northern Scarlet Stream sect compound was only five minutes away, if she hurried.

She didn't really have it in her heart to blame the jiuweihu. This whole thing must have been a lot of stress for her, and she couldn't even really leave, not without putting herself at danger of the spirit hunters once again. A bit of snapping in response was completely understandable.

"No, I can't continue like this," Linghui Mei finally said, shaking her head. "I have to share something. You've said before that you've wanted to hear our songs. Perhaps that? Ones we sing to our children. Few enough secrets there."

"A celebration, then." Qian Shanyi grinned. "A marvelous idea. I'll buy some spirit wine on the way back."

Linghui Mei nodded. "I would also need to sew some implements," she said, "but they are easy to make."

Qian Shanyi turned around, heading back into the warehouse. "But now I really must leave," she said, "I do not want to keep Jian Wei waiting."

All the better that she had something to look forward to in the evening. Meeting Jian Shizhe again was going to be a tense affair.

---

The main compound of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect was built in the shape of a symmetrical cross encased in a square - four courtyards at the corners, framed by the walls of the main building. At the center of this cross was a large garden, where disciples grew herbs and fruits for the sect's own cooking. It was filled with nooks and crannies for private conversations or meditation, and at the exact center of that garden stood four large gazebos, where Jian Wei had summoned Qian Shanyi.

Qian Shanyi arrived a bit early, and found a secluded bench with a small table beneath a lychee tree, deciding to spend her free time on some writing. She could watch the center of the garden through a gap in the greenery, and Jian Wei could sense her easily whenever he arrived: there was no real need to announce her presence.

The gazebos were built to be private enough for a conversation, but still very open - anyone who passed through the gardens would see who sat in them. That Jian Wei planned his talk with the disciples to take place here meant he wanted the rest of the sect to know exactly what happened. A good sign, if it went well, and a bad one, if it went poorly.

Jian Wei's direct disciples began to arrive soon after. There were four of them, all dressed in prim and perfectly ironed robes, carrying identical folders - likely with their reports about the activities of the sect. To Qian Shanyi's mild surprise, one of them was a woman - tall, her hair pinned up into a bun that turned into a ponytail, hanging down to about her lower back.

Though perhaps she shouldn't have been that surprised. If Jian Wei really participated in the last imperial succession, his views might be a bit more meritocratic than those of his peers.

Belatedly, she even recognised her. She had been directed to her shortly when asking around about Jian Shizhe this very morning. Obviously, Qian Shanyi didn't tell her about any of her big plans. At the time, Liu Yufei said she was very busy, told her nothing, and sent her off to bother someone else.

Jian Shizhe was the last to arrive. Swordless, his face steeled into an emotionless mask. The other three disciples averted their eyes when he sat down, and one shifted a fraction away - no doubt wanting nothing to do with the inevitable chastisement that would come from Jian Wei.

The Elder himself appeared ten minutes later, fashionably late. Qian Shanyi sensed him coming from the direction opposite to the gazebos, perhaps seeking to avoid the senses of his own disciples, or perhaps simply by accident. Qian Shanyi raised her eyes from her work exactly as he rounded the corner of a long, sculpted bush, and rose from her seat, giving him a curt bow in greeting.

Jian Wei looked about the same as when she last saw him - so calm that it seemed as if he would sooner make the world bend around him than step aside. His eyes, looking her over, were filled with calculation - and just the barest hint of regret.

"Fellow cultivator Qian," Jian Wei said quietly, before she had a chance to greet him verbally - as would have been the norm. "How fortunate that I could meet you before we begin."

He looked out through the same gap in the greenery, and nodded decisively. "If you would not mind, please suppress your spiritual energy," he said, turning back to her. "I would prefer Jian Shizhe to remain unaware of your presence until it is required. I will ring a bell to summon you."

"Of course," she said after a momentary pause, lowering her own voice to match his.

The request was a little worrying. With the shrubs and the trees in the way, their talk would not be heard over at the gazebo, and they should have been too far away for the disciples' spiritual senses - or else Jian Shizhe would have already reacted to her presence - but perhaps Jian Wei simply wanted to be extra careful.

There was a second possibility, of course - that this was a trap. Certainly Jian Wei had agreed on her plan, and it should have been in his best interests - but he could have reconsidered it, for whatever reason. Until he spoke his part aloud in front of others, gave it the weight of his honor as a sect elder, it was only words in the wind.

But she was committed now. She could no more turn back than make the sands of time fall upwards.

Keeping her concerns to herself, she picked up the sheet of paper she wrote out and handed it to Jian Wei. "The first draft of my instruction plan for Jian Shizhe," she explained. "I could start as early as this evening."

"Prideful death or death to pride?" Jian Wei read out the title at the top of her notes, raising a curious eyebrow at her.

"I thought it was appropriate," Qian Shanyi said dryly.

"Some would say this to be a bad omen."

Qian Shanyi matched Jian Wei's expression with a questioning eyebrow of her own. Was he leading her on? "Some would say that having four disciples meet among the four gazebos at the center of a four-pointed cross is a bad omen."

Jian Wei smiled slightly. "Ah, but it is," he said, looking back down on her notes. "One must only ask: who is the target of this omen?"

Qian Shanyi thought his words over in silence. Four was an omen of death, one of those that did not survive careful scientific scrutiny during the reformation, yet still persisted in the minds of many. If Jian Wei built his sect compound to evoke it deliberately - and he must have, no blueprint could be agreed upon without passing through his desk - then presumably he did not want to bring death upon his own disciples. That left many other meanings - death to weakness, to falsity, or the reverse - resistance in the face of death.

Death to enemies. Another subtle threat, if she stepped too far out of line.

Perhaps Jian Wei intended to put her on edge, but it made her relax instead. If he was choosing to threaten her, it meant he had no trap planned.

"You are not a superstitious woman, fellow cultivator Qian?" Jian Wei asked, not looking up. Perhaps he spotted a change in her body language out of the corner of his eye. "It seems your new robes gave me a false impression."

Qian Shanyi looked down on herself. White robes, the color of mourning, but also metal, her own constitution. She didn't pick the robes for the auspicious match - they were simply the second-best fitting among the ones Wang Yonghao already had - but she could see how someone might think otherwise.

"I am not," she said dryly, "Sometimes white robes are simply white robes."

Jian Wei chuckled slightly, nodding along as he read. She didn't have enough time to write much - only key points, goals, objectives, steps to take to achieve each one - but she still did her best to make it comprehensive. "It's acceptable," he finally said, handing the paper back to her. "If quite ambitious."

Qian Shanyi took the paper, and folded it up, hiding it within her robes. "To cultivate is to rebel against the heavens, so how could I not be ambitious? A cultivator that accepts their station is hardly different from a salted fish."

Jian Wei chuckled again, and waved a hand over the table. Jian Shizhe's sword appeared out of thin air a millimeter above the wood, dropping down with a slight thunk.

Qian Shanyi's greedy eyes snapped to the plain steel ring - a cosmos ring - on Jian Wei's finger. It only took her a fraction of a second to pull her gaze away, but Jian Wei still noticed it, giving her a knowing look.

Show-off, Qian Shanyi thought, knowing she would have done the exact same thing if she could. She did wonder where his own sword was and why he did not carry it, but assumed he simply elected not to do so within the walls of his own sect. It seems she was mistaken.

"Ambition is only to be rewarded," Jian Wei said, folding his hands behind his back. Out of sight. "Remember the bell, and present the sword to me when I ring it."

Qian Shanyi nodded in understanding, and settled back down to wait, while Jian Wei headed over towards the gazebo.

Even with the greenery in the way, she could still hear him speak, though she had to guess at some words that were a bit hard to make out. After the customary greetings, Jian Wei made the disciples give their reports one after the other, concerning the last few weeks - their progress in cultivation, the problems they were having, their sect duties, and what happened while Jian Wei was gone on his trip.

None of them mentioned the duel, until Jian Shizhe. He was last. In fairness, he went straight to it.

"Uncle, this here cultivator must humbly bow my head and ask for forgiveness," Jian Shizhe said. "While you have been away, I have lost a duel, and with it, lost my sword."

Even from this far away she could hear the raw anguish in his voice. Served him right.

"That would explain why you have arrived without it," Jian Wei said neutrally. "Please continue."

Jian Shizhe did. He talked about the kitsune hunt, about his taming of the glass shambler, and about the duel. He stuck to the facts, answering curt questions throughout, and mostly avoided any embarrassing parts. Qian Shanyi felt he was robbing her of quite a bit of credit by not describing her insult in detail, but such was life.

"I swear," Jian Shizhe concluded with fierceness that could rival a lion, "I will get it back!"

"Hm," Jian Wei said coldly, and finally rang his bell. "That won't be necessary."

Qian Shanyi breathed out, picked up Jian Shizhe's sword, hefted it onto her shoulder, and headed to the gazebo, humming a little tune. Perhaps she was overdoing it, but she just couldn't help herself, and it helped to steady her nerves.

It was time to play her part.

---

It won't be necessary?

Jian Shizhe kept quiet, thinking over what his uncle said. He wasn't about to question his Elder, and yet, it made no sense.

That witch Qian Shanyi had insulted him, insulted their entire sect by taking his sword. They had to get it back, even a weakling like Jian Wei should have understood that. So what did he mean?

Jian Shizhe would have paid in blood for the opportunity to see a building foundation cultivator destroy Qian Shanyi, but Jian Wei would never dare to go through with it. What did this leave? Surely he wasn't going to suggest buying the sword back, like a ransom from a kidnapper -

He heard steps approaching the gazebo, a slight creak of gravel beneath wooden sandals. Idly, he looked over, and his blood froze in his veins.

No!

Qian Shanyi, strolling towards the gazebo, his sword gripped in her disgusting hands.

Why is she here?!

She was grinning. Laughing at him!

His blood turned from ice to boiling fury.

How dare she so much as step into my sect!

---

Qian Shanyi walked into the gazebo, quickly glancing over the five occupants one last time. There was Jian Wei, sitting with his back to her, on top of a thick pillow. He had some notes laid out on top of a small tea table in front of him. His disciples were sitting in a neat little row opposite him, each on their own - smaller - pillow. The two men among them seemed confused at her appearance - she had not met them before, and so perhaps they simply didn't recognise her. The woman, at least, had an inkling of some realization, and bit her lip, as if bracing for a crystal bomb explosion. Her worried eyes snapped to the side, towards the third man in their row - towards Jian Shizhe.

Oh, Jian Shizhe was deliciously furious, teeth grinding, face blood red, eyes sparkling. It was a wonder that he managed to remain seated.

Qian Shanyi smugly winked at him, and he finally snapped. He rose up from his knees, snarling at her, hands already balling up into fists -

"Disciple Jian," Jian Wei said coldly, and for a brief moment, Qian Shanyi felt his terrifying pressure brush up against her.

Just the edge. Aimed at someone else. Her heart still skipped a beat.

Jian Shizhe slammed back onto his knees with a crack of the wooden floorboards beneath, his back buckling under the pressure. And then it was gone, just as soon as it appeared.

"Have I given you permission to leave?" Jian Wei continued calmly.

Jian Shizhe grimaced, shut his eyes, but shook his head. "I apologize, Elder Jian," he muttered, voice dead, emotionless.

"Very well," Jian Wei said, and motioned to Qian Shanyi.

Qian Shanyi breathed out some tension she was holding. There were many ways this first moment could have gone, and this was one of the best.

There was a sixth pillow at Jian Wei's side, a half step behind him. Intended for her, no doubt. She knelt on it, and offered Jian Wei Jian Shizhe's sword, both hands outstretched, head bowed deferentially. He took it, and put it at his other side, before turning back to his disciples.

It was all theater, of course, for appearances. The sect disciples had to see this exchange to know who really was in control here. Subtly glancing around, Qian Shanyi saw a couple of outer disciples watching the gazebo from where they were doing work on the garden. An audience would tell tales - and rumors will do the rest.

"This is fellow cultivator Qian from the Sky Void Island sect," Jian Wei continued. Also committed now. No turning back. "Before I left, I asked her to serve as a test for you four - and I am afraid all of you have failed it."

"A test?" Jian Shizhe croaked. His lips trembled, as if he was hit with a stick and had just barely held himself back from pleading for mercy. He glanced at Jian Wei, the other disciples, and even out into the gardens. Little kitten stuck in a trap.

When his eyes briefly passed over Qian Shanyi, she winked at him again. His face flushed with renewed fury, before he shut his eyes.

"Yes, a test," Jian Wei said, giving his disciples a very severe look. His eyes softened a fraction when they passed over Jian Shizhe, before hardening again. "I have long held to the principle that an education must be based on true challenges, not merely direct instruction. Fellow cultivator Qian's goal was simple: to find a weakness that could pull our sect into a war. I am saddened to know that it only took her a couple days to do so."

Jian Wei's cold eyes focused back on Jian Shizhe. "Jian Shizhe," he said, pointing to the sword at his side. "This sword will be returned to you when you prove you are once again deserving of it. To that end, I have requested fellow cultivator Qian to tutor you personally -"

"Uncle -" Jian Shzihe protested, face screwed up in indignation.

Jian Wei's pressure slammed down again, and Qian Shanyi flinched. In the back of her mind, she was pleased to see she wasn't the only one: the other three disciples edged a bit further away from Jian Shizhe as well. The man himself was forced down, into a deep bow.

"Elder," Jian Shizhe ground out, his voice catching, "I do not believe -"

"The decision is final," Jian Wei cut him off. "If you require an explanation, address it to your new tutor." His pressure cut off, and he glanced around at his other disciples, before stopping on the one woman among them. "Shizhe's failure may be the greatest of you four, but I am afraid none of you have passed the test. Liu Yufei. You are responsible for my mail. Why was I not informed of the identity of the duelist as soon as I returned?"

Liu Yufei did not answer right away, her throat working through a nervous swallow. Qian Shanyi felt a bit of kinship with her. Same job, different sects. Same bullshit dripping down from the Elders. "Most honorable elder, this here humble cultivator begs forgiveness," she finally said with a slight bow. "But you yourself have requested the report about the duel to be postponed until the evening."

"I did not ask about the duel, I asked about the identity of the duelist," Jian Wei explained patiently. "Mail had been left for me from the fellow cultivator Qian. Had you informed me of her relation to the duel, I would not have postponed the report. If this was not merely a test - you would have put me in a very awkward position."

"I did not want to make the fellow cultivator Jian Shizhe lose face," Liu Yufei said evasively. "I felt it was best for him to be the one to break the news."

It really was a confluence of circumstances. If Qian Shanyi didn't plan to meet with Jian Wei right after her duel, almost as soon as he returned - there would have been more time for this gap of knowledge to resolve itself.

"And had this been an ordinary duel, you would have been correct," Jian Wei said, "But it was not. It was a duel with an ambassador of a fellow sect. Was this fact known to you?"

"I am - I am afraid not, Elder," Liu Yufei said. She swallowed again. "If I may speak freely -"

"You may."

"I did not believe the duel would occur at all," Liu Yufei spoke quickly. "Fellow cultivator Jian had vanished just before it, with no notice, and it had never even been registered - I thought it was simply another rumor."

Jian Shizhe looked about ready to cry, hearing his word obliquely questioned. Qian Shanyi felt a small spike of pity for the man - he really was starting to remind her of a kitten that had been beaten half to death with sticks.

A very small spike. About the size of a fingertip.

"And once it was over, it was too late to gather information, and the rumors had only increased," Liu Yufei continued. She raised her eyes slightly, and glanced at Qian Shanyi. "More people spoke of the… unorthodox techniques allegedly used by fellow cultivator Qian, than that she was from any sect. There simply was not enough time."

"I see," Jian Wei said neutrally, in the same way that a bolt of natural lightning was neutral on the question of your life or death, "and you believe this to be an excuse?"

"N-not as such, Elder -"

"Enough," Jian Wei cut her off with a sharp gesture. His face was flat like that of a man watching his own house disintegrate before his very eyes because he was too lazy to replace a couple nails just last night - though Qian Shanyi was the only one with the context to know why. "I do not seek to find a scapegoat, seeing as how I have organized this test in the first place. I want to know what you should do in the future, to avoid a tragic repeat."

Qian Shanyi tuned out the rest of the meeting, turning her thoughts inwards. Hearing Jian Wei lecture the other three was of little interest to her - she had heard similar lectures many times, and even though Jian Wei seemed better than average, the subject tended to get repetitive. Instead, she thought more about Jian Shizhe, and what she had to teach him.

How did one turn a prideful cockroach into an actual human being? It really was quite a challenge.

---

Two hours of discussion passed quickly - for Jian Wei and his disciples - or slowly - for Qian Shanyi. Just as they seemed about ready to wrap up, an outer disciple hurried into the gazebo, bowing deeply. The interruption snapped Qian Shanyi out of her half-meditation, which was really for the best - she was already growing bored.

"Elder, if this here humble disciple may disturb you," the outer disciple said, "there is a loose building foundation stage cultivator that is asking to be introduced."

This brought pause to everyone present. A building foundation cultivator without an institution to fall back on was about as rare as a fish that could walk on land.

"From the empire?" Jian Wei asked.

"He did not mention any affiliation," the disciple said, "the honorable immortal introduced himself as simply Fang Jiugui." The disciple paused, clearly hesitating whether to say more. "His dress is also… somewhat unconventional, as is his aroma."

Qian Shanyi's eyes sparkled, and she leaned towards Jian Wei. What an opportunity to find out more about their mysterious visitor. "Elder," she whispered close to his ear, "just before a duel, a cultivator wearing a strange leather cloak flew into the central square on top of a flying sword from the direction of Reflection Ridge. As far as I have seen, he simply headed into one of the restaurants."

Jian Wei didn't give any sign he heard her, and simply nodded to the outer disciple. "Please tell the honorable cultivator Fang I would be glad to take his introductions now."

Qian Shanyi leaned back, her eyes following the outer disciple as he hurried away. This Fang Jiugui was quite a mystery: another complication thrown in by the Heavens, or a coincidence with no real meaning? In either case, it would be a piece of the puzzle around Wang Yonghao's mysterious luck.

"Please bring us some more tea while we wait," Jian Wei said, gesturing to Liu Yufei, and the cultivator rose, bowed, and left in a hurry. With another gesture, he summoned another pillow out of his cosmos ring - for this Fang Jiugui - and made the other disciples shift around, forming a triangle. Jian Wei and Qian Shanyi on one side, his disciples on another, and the petitioner on the third.

Building foundation cultivators were not like those of the refinement stage, free to roam around with only their sword for company. Their powers were greater, yet also more restricted. A building foundation cultivator could not duel a refinement stage one, and so had to find other ways to resolve conflict - such as by introducing themselves directly to all the major sects in the area as soon as they arrived.

This wasn't Qian Shanyi's first time seeing it play out. Luminous Lotus Pavilion was far from a major sect, but it still saw its fair share of traffic. Having the direct disciples present was likewise common - it was a good teaching moment, and let them meet well-connected cultivators in a controlled manner.

The sect compound was only so large, and yet it took Fang Jiugui three times as long as it should have to get over to the gardens. Qian Shanyi saw him following after the same outer disciple along one of the wide pathways, strolling casually as if passing through a park - and not heading to a meeting with a fellow building foundation cultivator.

He stopped next to a flowerbed and crouched, looking at the flowers, before getting up and following, only to stop again and poke at a tree. Even from a good distance away she could see the outer disciple growing exasperated.

And then Fang Jiugui turned his head and looked straight at Qian Shanyi, and his lips split in a wide grin.

A shiver ran down Qian Shanyi's back, though she didn't let it show on her face. What was that supposed to mean?

Fang Jiugui headed straight for the gazebo after that. Up close, she could better make out his garment: a long, dark brown leather robe with many pockets, coming up to about his mid thigh, that was probably intended to be buttoned up at the front - if half the buttons weren't already missing. Beneath it, he wore a pair of pants, and some kind of dark shirt, his sword hanging loosely off his belt. His hair was still unkempt - not simply due to the wind, then, if he hadn't fixed it in the many hours since.

Overall, he looked like a man chewed out by life and spit out like a bit of tobacco. And yet he was a building foundation cultivator that rode a flying sword. These pieces were not fitting together well.

When Fang Jiugui entered the gazebo, Jian Wei inclined his head in greeting. "Honorable cultivator Fang, I presume?" he said, gesturing to Liu Yufei, who started to pour them both some tea. "The Northern Scarlet Stream sect welcomes you. What brings you to our small and insignificant town?"

"A wind of change and wind of chase," Fang Jiugui said cryptically, lips split in a bright grin. He glanced at the pillow presented to him, but remained standing. "Tailing a bird that fell out of her nest, nothing more."

Jian Wei raised a silent eyebrow at that. Fang Jiugui stopped, breathing in deeply. He grimaced, as if fighting with himself. "I am a hunter, tailing a fugitive," he finally said with great difficulty. "I won't be long."

"And what fugitive would that be?" Jian Wei asked curiously.

"How could one talk of a bird that is not yet caught?" Fang Jiugui laughed. "A secret to be kept, for a better time, once everything could fit together like lines of a poem."

He glanced at Qian Shanyi again when he said "bird". It was subtle, as if he was merely looking around. Entirely innocuous, if one didn't already know who she truly was.

"A cultivator's secrets are their own," Jian Wei said lightly. "But of course I would expect to be briefed on it, before you make any arrests."

"How could I do anything less?" Fang Jiugui said. Another glance at Qian Shanyi, this time at her gloved hands - and then the slightest hint of a frown.

What?

"Perhaps we should talk of something lighter?" Jian Wei offered, gesturing to a cup of tea already prepared. "I always seek to learn the stories of cultivators who pass through my town."

"Impossible. The rains of tragedy whip me ever onwards," Fang Jiugui said, shaking his head. "And the grief I drink is for me alone."

Fang Jiugui pulled out a steel flask from one of his many pockets, and took a sip - and even from a few meters away, Qian Shanyi was struck by the powerful stench of hard liquor. What was in that flask?

"Meeting you had been like a lonely ray of sunshine through the dark clouds of destiny, Elder Jian," Fang Jiugui said, bowing deeply. "Yet my work waits not. The birds one chases… they may always take wing."

Qian Shanyi's eyes followed Fang Jiugui as he left, a feeling of doom slowly squeezing her heart.

Was he really here for her? It seemed impossible - and yet…

And if he was here for her…

How much did he know?

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: Want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon.
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 65 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.​

---

Qian Shanyi left the meeting with the disciples soon after, thoughts boiling in her mind and spilling over the edge like noodles out of an overheated pot.

The mysterious spirit hunter had been a crystal bomb planted at the base of a tower of lies, one she had been building ever since she arrived in this town. She had been counting on being a mystery, an untraceable unknown - but if he could prove who she was…

If he had any evidence, he would have shown it to Jian Wei already.

Not necessarily. He might be simply waiting for a better moment.

He had to be dealt with before he would ruin everything.

How did he even find me?

This was the core question at the heart of this whole mystery. If he found her, others could do so as well. She needed to know what mistake she made, what trace she left behind, or else she would always remain on the run.

She had been spinning this problem in her mind when she reached the entrance to the Northern Scarlet Stream sect and felt him again. Fang Jiugui, hiding behind the gate, away from the sight of her eyes but not of her spirit. Waiting for her.

She didn't slow down her step. That he was here made it all but certain he really was here for her, but she already expected the possibility. This was the closest gate to the warehouse and to her tavern - an obvious place to wait for her to leave, if he already knew her rough movements.

Concealing her intentions, she casually glanced around the square in front of the gates. It was only just past the sunset, and she saw six different disciples all around her, and more people still on the street beyond. Even if the spirit hunter already knew who she was - she still had to appear completely unaffected by his presence. The last thing she needed was rumors getting back to Jian Wei before she even had an inkling of a solid plan.

Very well. You want a confrontation? I can do a confrontation.

Focusing on her chest, she felt her own heartbeat resonate all through her body, the bright flows of recirculating spiritual energy pulsing alongside it. With great care, she wove a dense lattice of spiritual energy around her heart, suffusing every last fiber of the muscle, and synchronizing it to the same rhythm.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Powerful, alive.

Then, she stopped it.

Her heart stuttered, before the lattice took over the work. Still beating, but only as long as she kept the spiritual energy flowing. The flesh inert, relaxed, if still living.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. A clock of her own making.

This was the most dangerous gambling technique she had ever experimented with, one she had only used twice before. Even with her control over spiritual energy just on the cusp of the high refinement stage, it still took up some of her concentration, and if it slipped… she would probably fall unconscious faster than she could restart her own heart.

Then she might die. But there was no other choice.

She could school her face, control her breathing, and prepare herself mentally, but an unexpected surprise could still spike her heartbeat before she could control it. In most cases, this was for the best - not reacting could be just as much of a tell. Covering up surprise with another emotion - anger, disappointment, lust - was far simpler, but in exceptional cases…

Few people could even hear the change. But a building foundation cultivator just might. She had originally came up with this trick when playing against one. She won, and put it away for a darker day.

It seemed that day had come. If she was going to speak to Fang Jiugui, she needed every advantage she could get.

The stench hit her nostrils just before she reached the gates. Alcoholic, but unnatural, sharp and burrowing down into the base of your skull, as if distilled from the ashes of an entire burnt-down alchemical laboratory. Qian Shanyi let her lips freely curl in disgust as she rounded the corner, and gave a single passing glance to Fang Jiugui, where he leaned against one of the gate pillars.

He seemed… asleep. Head rolled back, a bit of drool dripping out of the corner of his mouth and staining the edge of his collar. He held his flask loosely in his right hand, the lid unscrewed and hanging by a crimson thread, just barely kept from dropping down onto the ground by the crook of his other elbow. Yet when Qian Shanyi passed a step away from him, he snapped awake, a wide grin stretching across his stubbled face.

"Ah, fellow cultivator Qian, was it?" Fang Jiugui said, pausing for a hacked cough, and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "Would you grace this old hunter with a minute of your time?"

Qian Shanyi slowed down, turning her head slowly towards Fang Jiugui. Her lips curled further, into a disgusted grimace. "What possible business would I have," she said slowly, dropping one word after another like stones down a mountain. "with a drooling alcoholic?"

She expected anger. She tossed the insult directly into his face, and for all that he couldn't duel her himself, such blatant disrespect must have been rare for a building foundation cultivator.

She'd have settled for annoyance. Instead Fang Jiugui laughed as if she had just played into some long-forgotten private joke. Joyful, unbothered.

Tch.

So much for trying to provoke him in public. She hoped he would make a scene right at the sect gates over the insult, and she'd find a way to get him thrown out of town for his trouble.

Even as he laughed, his eyes were focused, attentive, scanning her like she was but a bird seen over the tip of a notched arrow. Surprising, for someone who seemed to be fast asleep just a minute ago.

Without a drop of lust, at least - small mercies. She had more than enough experience to tell right away.

His gaze flickered to her gloved hands, and that same hint of a frown passed over his face, before vanishing. Just like in that gazebo. Definitely not a coincidence. What Qian Shanyi wouldn't have given for a way to hide them entirely, to keep whatever it was he tried to see far away from his eyes, but instead she kept her hands still at her sides, one resting comfortably on the pommel of her sword.

Her heart beat in an even rhythm, cut off from all of her emotions.

"Oh, jade beauty, but it's barely even a trifle. I only have a few questions," Fang Jiugui chuckled, coming down from his laughter. With his free hand, he ruffled through his pockets, and pulled out a small metal clip of papers, together with the stub of a coal pencil. There was something written on the top page, though in such horrible handwriting that Qian Shanyi had no chance of parsing it. "I was just establishing a… timeline, as Fates would have it. Standard procedure."

Qian Shanyi turned to face Fang Jiugui fully. If she couldn't get rid of him easily, then she at least needed information. She very much doubted he would volunteer something she could use directly - but she needed something to work with, a foundation to build on. "A timeline?" she said. "A timeline of what?"

"Oh, but of this town, the comings and goings," Fang Jiugui said. As he got talking, he really seemed to come alive, the last signs of weariness leaving him. "A drunk artist leaves a sketch on a napkin, but I must put one together from rumors and gossip. But the full picture can only be seen from the outside - and you are an out of towner, just like me."

Qian Shanyi's eyes narrowed slightly. If she could only get him talking of what he did between the duel and now… "I do not believe I mentioned my origins, fellow cultivator Fang. To what do I owe this impression?"

"Is it a false one?"

"That is not what I asked."

"It's simplicity itself," Fang Jiugui said, gesturing with his flask. He took a sip, and then finally screwed the cap back on, and put it into his pocket. The wind was light, but it already made standing next to the man more bearable. "I have seen your duel. It was as if the humble mantis brought down an entire oriole. Very, very impressive. How could I resist asking about the duelists? Nothing untoward, you understand."

Nothing beyond the bare minimum. She couldn't even tell if he was lying or not, even if it was all entirely plausible.

"I saw you land," she said, relaxing her face a fraction. "I hope the town has been to your satisfaction so far? If you wish, I could suggest a good place to spend the night. With a bath, perhaps."

If she could only put him into a place she could control, she could find a way to sneak into his rooms -

"How could I accept such generosity when I have nothing to give in return?" Fang Jiugui denied her with a light grin. He knew exactly what she was doing. He glanced down on the small clip of papers in his hand. "But perhaps there is one thing that had been spinning in my mind. The air is thick with tales of the honorable Jian Shizhe, of course, but of you, there is scarcely a drop. Even where you call home - it is all shrouded in mystery."

She hated dealing with competent people. But that last question - it was something she could use.

"I come from the north," she said, mirroring his manner. "But now I am afraid you have me at a disadvantage."

"A fellow northerner!" Fang Jiugui said, flashing his teeth. "I come from the great city of the Golden Rabbit Bay myself. Have you ever been?"

"Once or twice."

Tick-tock went her heart, but in her mind, Qian Shanyi felt something relax. If he was from her city, then at the very least, he was almost certainly sent by her sect. Not a case of mistaken identity, brought about by Wang Yonghao's luck.

"There is one other mystery that I just can't seem to place," Fang Jiugui continued casually, "The crystal bombs. Where did you get them? Just as a professional curiosity."

Qian Shanyi arched an eyebrow at him. A trap, but one she prepared for. "Why, I made them myself," she said calmly. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Ah, so it was that way," Fang Jiugui said, marking down something on his papers. "Their sale is prohibited, you see, so I was wondering…" He made a dismissive gesture.

Qian Shanyi arched her eyebrow further. "I would have expected a full test from a spirit hunter. Is it not… standard procedure?"

Fang Jiugui waved her off. "The duel took place before my very eyes. There is no point in testing if a fish can swim."

Bullshit. If he could have called her on basic details of assembling a crystal bomb he would, just on the off chance she'd fail, which meant he couldn't, which meant he wasn't a real spirit hunter. So what then?

He introduced himself as simply a hunter. Perhaps a retired one? It might explain his realm, at least. Her adventure novels were full of such characters, taking on one last job for a wealth of spirit stones. And if he was, then he wouldn't be allowed to test her. At least, not legally.

This one realization was worth this entire discussion. If he was not a true spirit hunter, there would be a wealth of other things he wouldn't be allowed to do.

"Still, there are more mysteries that grace my notes," Fang Jiugui continued just a bit too quickly, perhaps already realizing what he let slip. "Is it not a little strange to get into a duel so quickly after arriving in town?"

"It was an internal matter between me, Jian Shizhe and his sect," Qian Shanyi said tersely. Time to make her retreat, before she made a mistake herself. "Was the duel all you wanted to talk about? I am afraid I am a busy woman, and do not have time for idle chit-chat."

"Well… There was just one more thing," Fang Jiugui said casually just as she was turning away. "It's the strangest thing, but… this fugitive, the bird fleeing on the winds of fortune?" He leaned forwards, lowering his voice. "Her name is also Qian Shanyi. Now isn't that a coincidence?"

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Her heart was calm, even as Qian Shanyi lifted her lip in disdain. "Are you accusing me, Fang Jiugui?" she said, voice dripping with quiet poison. "I have been known to have quite a temper."

Fang Jiugui raised his hands defensively, stepping back. "Oh but of course I wouldn't accuse a fellow cultivator with no evidence. But it's interesting, don't you think? The blood and sweat it takes to find this bird can never be unspent. And those of her family - why, the sights I've seen at their house, the nightmares of demonic cultivators…"

And there it was. A stab straight at her soul, that would have made her crack.

Are they safe? Did you threaten them, you demon?

But her heart could not be made to waver. Tick-tock, tick-tock it went. And so she held his stare unflinching.

"Are you implying they are my parents?" She calmly answered, raising one eyebrow curiously. "In Golden Rabbit Bay? That would be quite the trick. I recommend staying off the drink, fellow cultivator Fang. Good day."

She turned around and left, feeling Fang Jiugui's eyes boring into the back of her head all the way down the street.

And still her heart kept beating.

---

Qian Shanyi slipped inside the warehouse, quiet like a dormouse. Fang Jiugui did not follow her - or at least, she didn't see him, which meant little. With his senses of a building foundation cultivator, he could have easily kept track of her from the next street over.

Wang Yonghao was there, stacking the crates back up, and smiled at her as she came in. "How did the meeting go?" he said.

Qian Shanyi kept her face impassive, and motioned to their sound muffling formation. Wang Yonghao quirked an eyebrow, but followed after.

Once inside, Qian Shanyi took a deep breath, calmly sat down on the ground next to the entrance portal, calmly closed her eyes, buried her face in her hair, and finally let herself scream in terror.

They are fine they have to be fine they have to be that bastard what did he DO how DARE he -

Wang Yonghao was shouting something, but she wasn't listening, her thoughts spinning in place. Her mind's eye was filled with the faces of her father and mother, and a thousand thousand brutal images of their deaths, helpfully supplied by her imagination.

He had to be lying. He didn't say it explicitly. He didn't. Just a misdirection, it had to be -

She screamed again. It helped a little bit.

Slowly, she pulled her face out of her hair, her breathing panicked and choppy. Wang Yonghao was sitting in front of her, one hand on her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Wang Yonghao asked. His face was white, terrified.

"I'll - I'll explain," she stuttered in between ragged breaths. She was shivering now, all the built up emotions coursing through her body at once. "But first I need - do you know how to restart a heart, in case of a dantian failure?"

"What?" Wang Yonghao said, his eyes growing to the size of saucers. "Your heart dantian -"

"No," Qian Shanyi cut him off. "I had to stop my own heart. I can restart it -"

"Why would you -"

"Do you know or not?!" she snapped.

Wang Yonghao swallowed. "I - yes. I know how to do it."

Qian Shanyi breathed out, clenching her teeth tightly to stop them from chattering. "Good," she said, laying flat on the ground, just in case. "I'll restart it. If I pass out and stop breathing, you know what to do."

She closed her eyes, and focused on her heart. Stopping it was far easier than restarting - the muscles wanted to beat together, and had to all be brought into motion all at once, while she pulled the spiritual energy lattice out at the exact same time. The first time she did this, she made a mistake. Fortunately she never experimented alone, and a fellow disciple saved her life with an appropriate talisman.

She did this twice before already. That her emotions were flying off the handle had to be partly down to the flow of spiritual energy through her heart meridian being affected by what she did.

Last time I kept it going for almost half an hour and it was fine -

She pushed the errant thoughts off to the side, and got to work. With six out of seven of her dantians open, her control over spiritual energy was far better than before. She got it done within a minute, and soon, her heart started to beat the same as always. Given her continuing panic, it meant a mile a minute.

It still hurt as if she was punched in the chest, and she hissed through her clenched teeth. These muscles weren't meant to ever fully relax.

She'd need a better plan if - when - she met Fang Jiugui again. She couldn't just walk around town like this.

Qian Shanyi opened her eyes and sat up, massaging her chest. She gave a brief nod to Wang Yonghao, whose services were thankfully not required. "The man we saw fly into the square is a rat-fucking spirit hunter, and he's after me," she spat out, trying to get her breathing and natural heartbeat to slow again. "We had a conversation. Had to stop my heart so my heartbeat wouldn't give my lies away, keep it beating with pure spiritual energy."

"What?!"

"Calm down," she said to him as much as herself. She looked over the warehouse room. "How many crates are left?"

"Maybe - maybe about a third? We were just finishing up -"

"Good," Qian Shanyi said decisively, finally feeling her usual calm start to come back to her, an outline of a plan forming in her mind. "Let's get this over with. I want us out of this fucking warehouse as soon as possible. As it is, we are like a dozen demon beasts all lined up for a flying sword out here."

Yep, definitely the meridian at fault. If Fang Jiugui so much as touched a hair on her parent's heads, she'd skin him alive and use his ligaments for shoelaces.

"But -"

"The crates, Yonghao," she snapped, getting up off the ground. "Get to it. I'll explain as we work. Only talk in the formation, that fucker might be lurking right by our door."

She stopped just at the edge, smoothing out her hair, wiping an errant tear out of the corner of her eye. Breathe in, breathe out. Mask back on.

She stepped through.

---

They worked quickly. All the crates have already been packed and nailed shut, they simply had to pull them back out. They didn't even need to stack them neatly - the warehouse workers could figure it all out later.

"If he is after you," Wang Yonghao asked, "why are we still taking the glass?"

"I am not going to fold completely just because some hunter joined the table with a hand he claims is good," Qian Shanyi blanched. "We worked hard to get this glassware. Even if we have to cut and run, we take it with us."

"But if he could check the warehouse, look in the crates, see the stones - isn't it leaving a loophole for him to find?"

"What a stupid question," Qian Shanyi snapped. "Everything is leaving some kind of loophole. It's a question of which one is larger. For now, he has no reason to even consider wasting his time on these crates. But if he is nearby now, which is likely, and right after I return, he senses us go through all the crates a second time, what will he think? That there is something worth looking into. I think our current deception can pass a casual examination - but can you vouch that an intense look could not find a single sign the crates were put into your inner world, that the glass wasn't laid out on the grass, or touched by a jiuweihu? I cannot."

Two crates were pulled out in silence.

"I am sorry for calling you stupid, it was actually a good question," Qian Shanyi said. "I am not thinking straight."

Wang Yonghao gave her a careful look. "And why not?"

Qian Shanyi stayed quiet for a bit. "He mentioned my parents," she finally said, pausing again to recall Fang Jiugui's exact words. "'The blood and sweat it takes to find this bird can never be unspent. And those of her family - why, the sights I've seen at their house, the nightmares of demonic cultivators…'"

"Oh."

"Yeah," she said grimly, "he speaks in a strange manner. It feels familiar somehow, but I can't quite place it. It's hard to tell what he means literally and what is just a fanciful saying. And yet."

Another crate came out, and both of them stayed quiet.

"Even if you aren't thinking completely straight, I still think you are mostly right. Let's take the glass."

"Thanks."

---

Good, simple work quickly calmed down Qian Shanyi, and by the time they were done with the warehouse, sheets of canvas torn off the windows and the tools put back where they belonged, double-checked against the inventory lists to make sure they did not forget anything, the last traces of her panic were gone.

They quickly headed back to the tavern, to plan and prepare for the future. Their room was much more secure than the one in a warehouse. If nothing else, nobody else had the key to it.

Which brought Qian Shanyi, Linghui Mei and Wang Yonghao together, huddled around a single itemized sheet of paper.

"This doesn't make any sense."

Qian Shanyi looked over the list she made a second time. They needed to know how Fang Jiugui could have found them, and went through every tracking method they could think of.

And none of them fit.

Fang Jiugui mentioned he was chasing after a fugitive. He said he was from Golden Rabbit Bay himself. Her sect had the means, motive and opportunity to hire a retired spirit hunter to chase her down. So take this as a given. How did he find them?

First, the obvious. On the date of her kidnapping, Wang Yonghao fell into a teleportation formation. This should have cut off any conventional methods of tracking - following footprints, scent trails, and so on.

The next thing to check for were tracking talismans. They were rare, and tended to be highly limited in range, but hypothetically, if one was hidden in Qian Shanyi's robes… But no. Qian Shanyi wore all new clothes now, and her old ones were torn to scraps. Wang Yonghao meticulously checked over his, and also found nothing. And of course as cultivators, if one was to be somehow implanted in their bodies, they would have known right away.

Qian Shanyi even considered that her sword might have had a talisman built into it, but a careful examination discarded that possibility too.

Long-range techniques were even more of a dead-end. There were some that could detect human beings from far away, with various limitations - but without a talisman to anchor the technique to, they lost their power extremely quickly. Even in the best of circumstances, someone managing to detect her from more than ten kilometers away would beggar belief - and she had never come closer than five hundred kilometers to the Golden Rabbit Bay.

If she was on the run from the imperial palace - perhaps she could imagine some rare artifact or technique that could manage it. But her sect had no such resources.

Next: rumors. Could her sect have simply known of her tribulation, heard her name mentioned by some traveler, perhaps with a bit of helping hand from the Heavens?

All but impossible. From Glass Ridge, Golden Rabbit Bay was a good twelve days of travel away by ship, and her tribulation was less than a week ago. The rumors couldn't have possibly reached them, not unless someone decided to pay for a voidbird. The only reason for such an expense would be to, perhaps, discuss her tribulation with an expert - but in such a case, they would have obviously included her report, signed as Lan Yishan, not Qian Shanyi.

This brought her to her next idea. Traitors. Her sect should have had no way of knowing where she was. So who did?

Wu Lanhua did, as did Liu Fakuang - she told them where she was heading. If either of them sent a message to her sect - either after she left their ship, or just before - it was possible for it to reach Golden Rabbit Bay in time, and for Fang Jiugui to speed over here on top of a flying sword. Just barely.

It fit the facts, but it still made no sense. What reason would Wu Lanhua have to betray her? They parted on very friendly terms, and her fiance was too oblivious to plan this. She felt, in her heart of hearts, that she had a good read on the pair.

So what was left? Confusing betrayal, or were they missing something?

Qian Shanyi sighed, leaning away from the list they wrote. Idly, she took one of her gloves off, to take a look at her hand. Fang Jiugui was trying to see something, after all… Or was he?

Clean, smooth skin, neither blemish nor hair sticking out. Very conventional style, for a female cultivator, but she never saw the point in going against the fashion on this particular question. Long fingers, nails kept short. Nothing that would have made her hand stand out all that much from the hands of a thousand other women, really.

She turned it over, and the lines on her palm caught her eye. Was that it? There was an old superstition that they could foretell your future, so perhaps they were unique enough to be a hint to her identity. But how could this help Fang Jiugui? It's not like she had left any palm prints around her sect. No, it must have been something else.

"Mei, tell me," Qian Shanyi said, still looking her hand over with suspicion she usually reserved for junior disciples caught stealing snacks from the kitchens. "Could you smell the difference between the sweat from my hands and…my neck, let's say?"

The jiuweihu nodded. "Yes, from up close. Why?"

"The spirit hunter wanted to take a look at my hands, I think," Qian Shanyi said, pursing her lips. Nothing conclusive. She pulled her glove back on. "I sent a letter to my sect some time ago. I was wondering if he could… track it back, somehow, by scent, and then prove I was myself."

"If he could," Linghui Mei said reasonably, "he wouldn't have needed you to take your gloves off. I could tell it from a step away, at least. But I couldn't follow the scent of a letter through… boats and dozens of couriers. There is nothing for the scent to catch on. I don't think anyone could."

Qian Shanyi sighed in frustration. "Yeah, I expected as much," she said, then shook her head. "Perhaps I simply made a mistake, and there is nothing there."

"Why do you even need to know?" Linghui Mei grumbled. "Let's just flee. He can't stop us."

"No," Qian Shanyi said immediately. "Fleeing is exactly what he wants."

She ruffled her hair, meeting the confused looks of the others head on. "Think through it carefully," she said, "why confront me at all, tell me he is looking for me, why mention my parents? I think he was trying to scare me. It makes sense, too - Jian Wei told him off from arresting me in his town, but his jurisdiction only extends so far. If I flee outside of it, Fang Jiugui could just grab me by the throat and drag me right back to Golden Rabbit Bay. No evidence necessary. On foot, we'd never outrun him."

"Alright," Linghui Mei said after a moment. "How about -" she made a cutting gesture across her throat. "One cultivator less and the world is better off."

"No. Building foundation? He'll kill you faster than you could even get your tails out," Qian Shanyi said, then turned to Wang Yonghao with a questioning look.

Wang Yonghao got a pained look on his face. "I mean - If I caught him sleeping, maybe?" he said, laughing slightly, looking back at Qian Shanyi. "But we aren't going to just kill people, right?"

Qian Shanyi chewed on her lip, brows furrowed in concentration.

"Shanyi?" Wang Yonghao asked uncertainly. "Shanyi, please -"

"I wasn't going to suggest it," Qian Shanyi snapped. "I was just - considering it." She shook her head. "It's a bad idea, in any case. It would be a mess to hide, I think. No, I only see one solution, in the short term."

She pointed one finger upwards, where the entrance to their world fragment laid closed. "Right now, Fang Jiugui won't dare touch me because I am under Jian Wei's protection," she said, "he will try to gather evidence about me, and then put together a case proving I am his runaway. Before he can manage that - we need a case of our own. Something that would cast doubt on all his assertions."

She turned to Linghui Mei. "If you can - please find where he stopped for the night. He stonewalled me about it, which means there might be some leverage there. He reeks of some truly disgusting alcohol - his trail won't be a hard one to follow." Turning to Wang Yonghao, she continued, "Yonghao. Could you visit that restaurant he landed at, ask the waitresses about the man? Feel free to tell them he seemed to be disturbingly focused on me, and you are a bit worried. In fact, tell them I sent you, but ask to keep my name out of it. It's always best to get ahead of the rumor mill."

"I can do that, yeah," Wang Yonghao said, frowning. "But Mei - it's too dangerous for her to go out, right? If he spots a third person with us -"

"He won't," Qian Shanyi said, shaking her head. "Because I will be heading to the library in Reflection Ridge. Fang Jiugui can't afford to let me out of his sight for long, lest I slip through the forest and flee, and so he will surely follow. Glaze Ridge should be safe from him in the meantime."

"And if he comes to talk to me?" Wang Yonghao grumbled. "I can't lie like you do. I still can't believe you stopped your own heart."

"Then vomit on his shoes," Qian Shanyi suggested casually.

Linghui Mei snorted down a laugh, and Wang Yonghao covered his face in his hands. Qian Shanyi frowned at both of them. "What?" She asked defensively. "It will end the conversation permanently. You can't talk to him because of his smell, questions over."

"Nothing, Shanyi. It's nothing."

Qian Shanyi snorted. Typical. "And don't forget to buy some spirit wine for our little late night celebration, while you are at it," she added.

Wang Yonghao gave her a strange look. "Is now really the time?"

"Now is exactly the perfect time," she countered, "We do not even know what we are dealing with, so we need a bit of relaxation to get new ideas flowing." She pursed her lips. "In the meantime, I will head to the library, work on the research for my Jian Shizhe education plan. I can no longer afford to slack off on it. I need some results I could show Jian Wei, and I need them fast. By morning, if I can manage it - or else he'd throw me to the wolves."

She shared a look with the other two. They both nodded. Wang Yonghao was right, way back then - she didn't have to do this alone. Even the heaviest boulder could be carried easily by a thousand hands working together.

Qian Shanyi turned away from the table, heading to where her rope harness was laying out on the grass. It was time to get to work.

"There's just one question," she muttered to herself, "With only a single night to work with, how do I transform a cockroach into a human being?"

 

[Winged_One]

In other news, nominations for the User Choice Awards are going on right now! Feng Shui Engineering can be nominated for Best Ongoing Fic and Best Original Work. You can nominate it by posting it's name into a corresponding thread, like so:

[X] Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: If you still haven't nominated any works for User Choice Awards, you still have about ~40 minutes to do so! Feng Shui Engineering can be nominated for Best Ongoing Fic and Best Original Work, and it seems like it's going to get the nomination for both. You can nominate it by posting it's name into a corresponding thread, like so:

[X] Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion

Other fics can (and should) be nominated as well, of course - this is a community event after all. My other rarely updated fic, The Summoned Hero Is A Historical Materialist??, could be nominated for Best Ongoing Fic.

Otherwise, if you want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon.
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I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.​

---

Gravel crunched softly under her feet. Moon shone above, framed by the branches of a neatly trimmed peach tree. The air smelled of earth, wet after a short rain, of flowers and fruits, and just a hint of smoke.

Qian Shanyi breathed in the relaxing, fresh garden air, smiling as she followed an outer disciple from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect. It was a good night to be out and about, or perhaps to relax with a book and a cup of warm tea - but she wasn't here to read.

She was here to educate Jian Shizhe, and that her planning and research took all the way until midnight was his problem, not hers. Jian Wei gave her free range of the sect, and no mention was made of it being restricted to the daylight hours.

She could even argue that it would spare Jian Shizhe some face, to not school him when there were too many other disciples snooping around through the hallways. She didn't actually care about his face, but she could certainly argue it.

As they were passing through the center of the gardens, she thought back to the appearance of Fang Jiugui, and stopped for a moment next to the same tree he studied so closely. It appeared to be… a ginkgo tree. An ordinary one, at least as far as Qian Shanyi could tell.

What in the Netherworld's name was he looking at here?

She met him briefly for the second time this evening, when she was leaving the library. She wisely requested a private room to study the books, and stuffed her ears with small balls of silk when heading out, to avoid any chance of conversation. He was talking to the postmaster when she left - though what about, she couldn't guess, as she could barely hear anything. Her own precaution working against her.

There shouldn't have been much that the postmaster could tell him about her, but that was just her guess. As long as she didn't know how he tracked her, she couldn't even begin to imagine what might or might not be important. But getting involved would have been a definite mistake - she had no time to spare for distractions.

"Honorable immortal?" the disciple called after her. He was giving her what just barely passed for a respectful stare, even with all the deep suspicion bubbling forth.

When she arrived, the sect gates were already locked - but this very disciple was on guard. He recognized her, and let her in, but such was his distrust that he did not even tell her his name. Jian Wei may have given her a dispensation - but that didn't make his whole sect trust her.

Seeing as how the feeling was mutual, she had little to complain about.

She decided to call this disciple Scar. He had one, running across his eye, though thankfully leaving it unharmed. She wondered why he didn't have it removed - not being a cultivator, the treatment would have certainly cost him, but as an outer disciple in a prestigious sect, he could surely afford it. Perhaps he thought it looked dashing, as some people did, even if Qian Shanyi didn't really agree.

Scar also informed her that Liu Yufei wanted to see her as soon as she arrived, and offered - or really, insisted - on accompanying her towards her office. Which brought them to the gardens.

Qian Shanyi turned away from the tree, shaking her head. "Nothing, Scar," she said, "Just lost in my own thoughts. Lead the way."

They reached the chambers of Liu Yufei, Jian Wei's disciple responsible for his post, only a couple minutes later. They were situated at the end of a short corridor branching off one of the main paths through the sect compound, with five beautiful doors - two on each side, and one at the very end. Each of the side doors carried a small silver name plate, one for each of Jian Wei's disciples. The one at the end seemed to belong to Jian Wei himself.

Unfortunately for them, Liu Yufei's door was locked shut, and Qian Shanyi did not feel Yufei's spiritual energy inside.

"Honorable immortal Liu asked me to bring you to her as soon as you arrived," Scar said uncertainly. He was clearly split between needing to return to his post at the gates, and feeling like he still had to keep an eye on her. Qian Shanyi just barely managed to keep herself from making a joke that perhaps she was the one who planned for Liu Yufei to be absent. "If she is not here…"

"Perhaps we should check the kitchens?" Qian Shanyi said neutrally.

"The kitchens? Why?"

"I presume the honorable cultivator Liu still requires earthly sustenance?"

It was the obvious choice, really. When she worked late, she always got a little peckish.

Fortunately for both of them, the kitchens were in the same quadrant of the sect compound, so it was a short walk. Qian Shanyi led the way this time - she already knew where they were, having asked well in advance, and Scar seemed to want to keep her in his sight at all times. Her shadow, illuminated by the light cast from his small lamp, danced across the walls of the sect, but she had more than enough to see by.

Sect kitchens were far from a single room, but rather took up an entire section of the building. Fit to cook for all the disciples at the same time, they could easily fit twenty cooks all working side by side, and had specialized rooms for baking and roasting, drying and fermenting, and extensive pantries to boot. There were hundreds of places to hide, intentionally or not - but fortunately, she heard Liu Yufei's voice as soon as they entered the outermost room.

"Dumpling, please," her quiet voice pleaded with someone, just on the edge of Qian Shanyi's hearing, "please get out of there? You'll break something."

Without the cultivator's senses, Scar had no chance of hearing it at all, and so Qian Shanyi once again led the way, headed straight for the voice. It seemed to be coming from one of the pantry rooms, way in the back.

She gave an enormous baking oven a greedy glance as she passed. What she wouldn't give to steal some of this equipment for their world fragment. Making dumplings for the two spirit hunters took her so many hours of futzing around with a fire node of the chiclotron, because it wasn't built to task.

"Fellow cultivator Liu," Qian Shanyi called out loudly just before entering the pantry, to announce her presence. "I have been informed you wanted to see me?"

She just barely caught sight of Liu Yufei swiftly rising up from her knees, before the disciple turned towards the doors, looking as if she was merely inspecting this pantry for cleanliness. Her face was a carefully sculpted mask as she looked Qian Shanyi over, with coldness in her eyes.

The pantry was, in all fairness, pristine. It was a long room, with closed cupboards covering all four walls, and nothing left out in the open except for a short ladder in one corner, and the bottom cupboard behind Liu Yufei, which was slightly ajar.

"Thank you, disciple Zhe," Liu Yufei said to Scar, who entered the room just behind Qian Shanyi. "I'll take it from here."

Scar bowed, and finally left, throwing one last suspicious glance at Qian Shanyi. Qian Shanyi returned it with a light smile and a wink. Give him something to think about during his long shift.

Returning her gaze to Liu Yufei, she was met with those cold eyes again. Not suspicious, nor outright hostile, but with a definite antipathy. Eyes of a woman crossed.

She could empathize. When she last spoke with Liu Yufei, it was only very briefly, while asking around about Jian Shizhe - and Qian Shanyi said nothing about her plans. Liu Yufei told her little, and probably put this strange loose cultivator out of her mind entirely.

And then it turned out this loose cultivator was not loose at all, and she ended up getting a talking to from Jian Wei over it. Qian Shanyi would have also been bitter, if it were to happen to her.

"Let's go to my office," Liu Yufei said, ignorant of Qian Shanyi's thoughts, and headed towards the doors.

"Are you not forgetting your dumplings?" Qian Shanyi asked, angling her head curiously. The corners of her lips twitched upwards. She noticed Liu Yufei sneak a glance at the cupboard behind her when Scar left.

Liu Yufei stopped, and narrowed her eyes at Qian Shanyi. Her lips turned into a thin line.

So much suspicion in the air these days. What happened to the trust shared between fellow cultivators?

"You heard me," Liu Yufei finally concluded, her voice flat.

Qian Shanyi nodded lightly. "I did not want to mention it in front of our junior," she said, "Perhaps I could offer my help?"

Liu Yufei sighed in exasperation, and made a vague gesture towards the back of the room. "Can you speak to cats?"

Qian Shanyi shook her head. "Not anymore than anyone else," she chuckled, heading to the cupboard. "But I may still have a trick or two up my sleeve."

Qian Shanyi kneeled in front of the cupboard, helped by Liu Yufei shining her own small lantern inside. The cupboard was completely filled with preserves in sealed clay pots, resting on top of a wide wooden slate with a handle that was meant to roll out of the cupboard on rails. Way in the back, she could see the glint of a cat's eyes, staring back at them.

Circulating her rope control technique, she slowly unspooled her rope from her waist, linked it to her glove, and made it quietly slither into the cupboard.

"Would you kindly come out?" she addressed the cat, keeping it distracted as her rope sneaked past all the pots, coming in from the side. "It's awfully late, and I doubt you'd make a good cook. How could you even hold a pan with your paws?"

The cat stayed put, up until her rope sprung at him. He tried to flee, but a mere animal was no match for spiritual energy guided by the skill of a cultivator, and the only exit out of the cupboard was blocked. In seconds, Qian Shanyi had it hogtied like a sausage, and slowly pulled it out, to the cat's muffled protests.

"Your cat," she said, handing the animal over to Liu Yufei. She kept the rope control technique going, lest it decide to flee at an opportune moment.

"It's not my cat," Liu Yufei said automatically, taking the cat from her, and turning it around to stare it in the face from up close. "The sect bought this beast to catch mice, but he instead spends more of his time sneaking into the pantries, hoping to find an open pot."

Qian Shanyi smiled. "Of course."

Liu Yufei frowned, turning back to Qian Shanyi. "You do not believe me," she stated.

"No," Qian Shanyi admitted after a momentary hesitation. "If it was merely a sect cat, I doubt you would have known his name, or been trying to get him to come out on your own. This isn't a job for an inner disciple, let alone a direct disciple of an Elder."

Liu Yufei's lips twitched downwards slightly. "I was the one who proposed we get the cats for the mice," she said haughtily. "Of course it falls to me to control them."

"Of course."

Liu Yufei pursed her lips, looking back at her cat. "You are here for Jian Shizhe?" She said, "Elder Jian asked me to observe the lesson."

Qian Shanyi nodded. She expected as much, once she heard that the woman wanted to talk. "I see," she said, "That would not be a problem, but may I ask you to do so in secret? I would prefer it if Jian Shizhe thought we were alone."

"There is a study room where I could remain behind a screen, with my spiritual energy suppressed. Is that acceptable?"

"Certainly."

"Very well." Liu Yufei said, then decisively put the hogtied cat under her arm, and headed for the doors. "But first, let me put this beast back in his den."

---

The room Liu Yufei led her to was one of the lecture rooms for the sect. It was square, about ten meters long, and something of a dais, a quarter of a meter tall going all the way across the room in the back, where the teacher was supposed to sit, elevated above the students. There was a short table as well, and two dozen pillows, arranged in rough rows.

The dais was framed by two paper screens, hiding entrances to a pair of side rooms. They were painted with murals of birds flying through a peach grove, which was just about the only spot of decoration in the entire room. Everything else was plain wood. Utilitarian, but boring.

It's good to keep the students focused, I suppose.

Qian Shanyi strolled right in, put the tea tray she brought from the kitchens down on the ground, and headed for the small table, lifting it up. Annoyingly, its legs were asymmetric - shorter on one side, built to fit the dais the teacher was supposed to sit at. She pulled it into the middle of the room, and stuffed a pair of pillows under the legs until it seemed just about even to her. Fortunately, the pillows seemed fairly tough, and so the table did not wobble too much.

Jian Shizhe was proud to a fault, and would never truly respect her no matter what she did. Sitting physically above him on top of it would just annoy him all the more. Better to put them on an even level, at least to start with.

Kicking the rest of the pillows towards the walls, she dropped one on each side of the table, and turned back to Liu Yufei, who was watching her from the doorway. "This will do," Qian Shanyi said. "I am ready for the lesson."

"Should we head back to Jian Shizhe's quarters?"

Quarters. What a word. I only had a small room.

"Please."

The woman stayed cold, distant and perfectly professional throughout, even if Qian Shanyi could tell she appreciated her help with extracting the cat. No smalltalk, with curt responses to her questions - only as much information as she requested, and no more. Any other time, Qian Shanyi couldn't have held herself back from poking a bit of fun - but today, she had other things on her mind.

Jian Shizhe. Fang Jiugui. Stuck between a demon beast and a demonic cultivator, truly.

Whether Liu Yufei picked this room deliberately because of its closeness, Qian Shanyi couldn't say - but the quarters of Jian Wei's disciples were only a short walk away. Liu Yufei went into her own "quarters" briefly to drop off the "sect" cat, just before showing Qian Shanyi the study room. Now they stopped in front of the door just opposite hers - that of Jian Shizhe. Instead of knocking, Liu Yufei reached for one of a few red tassels hanging next to the door, and Qian Shanyi heard a bell ring somewhere inside.

A minute passed in silence, before Qian Shanyi heard quiet shuffling, the click of the lock, and saw an unfamiliar face open the door. A man in his fifties, squinting at them in the light of a small oil lantern. He was dressed in the robes of an outer sect disciple, though the ornamental pattern on them was subtly different.

"Disciple Lai, this is fellow cultivator Qian Shanyi," Liu Yufei said, motioning to her. "She is here at elder Jian's orders, as an instructor for Jian Shizhe."

The little prick even has live-in servants…

Liu Yufei surely had some servants as well. Part and parcel of being a direct disciple to a sect Elder, Qian Shanyi supposed.

The servant's name, at least, was familiar. Wang Yonghao spoke to him before the duel, though he said little about the man himself.

"The young master had already retired for the night," Lai said uncertainly, looking between the two of them. "I am not sure -"

"I am afraid this training cannot wait," Qian Shanyi cut him off. "Please wake junior Shizhe up."

She savored the words as she said them. Junior Shizhe. Unquestionably correct, since she was to be the teacher, yet also subtly deprecating to him, because her realm was lower. Just perfect.

Lai bowed after a short pause. "Of course, honorable immortals. I will do so right away."

"And I will take my leave," Liu Yufei said, bowing to Qian Shanyi. "I am sure honorable cultivator Qian could find her way back."

She handed Qian Shanyi her lantern and left, without waiting for a reply. Heading to their lecture room, to hide and observe their lesson.

At least this one trusts me enough to leave me alone.

Qian Shanyi hung the small oil lantern off her belt. "May I come in?" she asked Lai. "I would prefer not to wait in the corridors."

Lai nodded, opening the door wider, and stepped aside.

The room beyond was a small guest room. There were two other doors - one for Jian Shizhe's bedroom, where Lai headed right away, and the other perhaps for his own. A collection of taxidermied demon beast heads hung on one of the walls, an impressive head of a river dragon at the top framing the set like a crown of a king. Just below it was a tea table, different teas sitting in a disgustingly beautiful redwood box, surrounded by expensive china. The floor was covered in a carpet so thick that the pillows next to the table sunk fully into it.

Why do you even need pillows? This is excessive.

Qian Shanyi stepped around the room, looking it over. She pulled the curtain on one of the windows aside - it led into the gardens. The view was like something out of a fable.

Of course.

If she was being frank, she simply felt jealous. Her entire room, back at her sect, was half the size of just this guestroom.

A small surprise came from a small shelf next to the tea table. Among the various trinkets, there was a row of books, about two dozen altogether.

I wouldn't have taken Jian Shizhe for a reader.

Out of curiosity, she stepped over to it, and glanced over the titles. Imperial History, a shortened volume - a common enough sight. Demon Beast Index, of course. Dueling Codex, even more obviously.

It all seemed very conventional, but one of the tomes caught her eye, and she pulled it out. It had a few scuff marks, and creases on the spine - and wasn't standing in the row of other books, but rather was simply placed on top.

"Immortal Cultivation And The Collapse Of Imperial Virtue". Some daoist text? It doesn't look like a cultivation manual.

It was a little improper to be snooping around, but she doubted Jian Wei would mind, so… Qian Shanyi opened it, took a seat, and started to skim. It seemed to be a collection of articles, probably compiled together from a letter journal, talking about the reign of emperor Li. Each one was a rambly mixture of references to various scholars, citations from the late emperor, and strange hypotheticals.

Reading between the lines, the author claimed that cultivation in general and Empire specifically had been declining ever since, due to something having to do with the Shui Gui, reformation, and sword-carrying women turning all cultivators into wimps.

What utter schlock.

Qian Shanyi slipped the book into her bag. Shlock it might be, but it was useful schlock. Just another piece to the frustrating puzzle that was Jian Shizhe.

The man himself did not leave her to wait much longer. Soon, the door to his bedroom flew open, and he stepped through. He looked better than the last time she saw him - fresh set of robes, clean hair, hands no longer twitching randomly from a stimulant overdose. Rested enough, after his sleep.

His eyes immediately snapped to her, and his face, already set into a perpetual scowl, started to grow red. She heard his teeth grind together, right hand clutching tightly into a fist, fingers going white. The rest of his body even shook slightly. All the fury he showed in the duel, all the rage that got temporarily slapped out of him by Jian Wei was right back.

But there was more. At this point, Jian Shizhe was like an open book to her. The fury was partly a mask, worn over his wounded pride and disappointment. Sharp thorns of humiliation grew straight through it, competing for space with the choking vines of betrayal and the false flowers of self-righteousness.

And self-hatred, bubbling deep within, like sap within a demonic pitcher.

But was it there all along, or is it new? This is the real question.

She could guess at the lines of thought his mind had taken. After the duel, once he awoke, he would have tried to find excuses for his clear failure. He would have thought of Jian Wei, who took her side. And then he would have turned inwards.
It was a common enough pattern, after a traumatic loss. Within a week, his thoughts would have begun to settle, to crystallize into a jaded picture. She caught him at a perfect moment - still early on to change the way they settled. With any hope, into a more productive pattern.

Jian Shizhe said nothing, even if etiquette called for him to greet her. Jian Wei ordered him to take instruction, and he knew better than to disobey directly, but that was all she'd get. If she tried to teach him like this - it would be no use.

Qian Shanyi rose, and greeted him first, with a short formal bow. The student was supposed to greet the teacher - but if she had to wait for him to do so, they'd be here all night. "Junior Shizhe," she said. He returned the bow, pain written all across his face.

"Please follow," Qian Shanyi said, and headed for the doors, not looking back.

She heard footsteps, which was the important part.

It's time to get my tools and weed out this little mental garden.

 

[Winged_One]

In case you haven't already seen the giant banner at the top of the entire website, the voting round had opened for the user choice awards. Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion had been nominated for Best Ongoing Fic and Best Original Work. Thanks to everyone who voted for it in the nomination round!

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: In case you haven't already seen the giant banner at the top of the entire website, the voting round had opened for the user choice awards. Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion had been nominated for Best Ongoing Fic and Best Original Work. Thanks to everyone who voted for it in the nomination round!

Otherwise, if you want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon. Now is the perfect time to sign up - this volume is finished on patreon, so you can buy yourself a little christmas present ​

Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 63 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.

I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.​

---

The lecture room was exactly as she had left it. A table in the middle, two cushions, a simple tea set, and everything else kicked off to the wayside, where it belonged.

Qian Shanyi glanced at the paper screens - but if Liu Yufei was here, she couldn't feel her. As expected, if she suppressed her spiritual energy. She couldn't check, not without tipping off Jian Shizhe - she simply had to trust her.

"Sit", she ordered, gesturing to the pillow on one side of the table. Without looking back, she sat down herself, put her bag at her side, unclipped her sword and placed it on her right. She set the small lantern down on the table, took out her writing set, and started to quietly grind up ink.

Jian Shizhe stopped at the doors instead of entering. She couldn't look up, not without undermining her confident image - but she saw his reflection in the edge of her ink plate, warped by the curved surface. One of his hands was gripping the doorframe, and she heard the wood groan slightly.

But he knew she was acting with Jian Wei's full authority. He couldn't defy it, not this openly. And so, dragging his feet like they were made of lead, he did just as he was ordered.

"You may read, write, listen or talk," she said neutrally, not raising her eyes from grinding up ink, once he sat down across from her. "That is all."

"Talk?" Jian Shizhe spat out. "Talk about what, you witch?"

"Whatever you like, or nothing at all." she replied indifferently, still not looking up.

Jian Shizhe glared at her, but resorted to simply sitting in silence. She did not mind this - this was, in fact, her true goal all along.

She couldn't teach the man while he was this furious. Anything she said would simply bounce right off his broad forehead, no matter how true it was. But the brighter the fury, the faster it burned out, the mind itself growing tired from the tension. She would give him an hour to cool off, before proceeding further.

Having finished with the ink, she placed the ink plate so that she could observe Jian Shizhe's expression without looking up, if she needed to - and reached into her bag, pulling out the same novel she was reading in the morning. She still had a good two thirds to get through.

The minutes passed quickly - for her - but must have felt agonizingly slow for Jian Shizhe. He fumed much like an old, rusted furnace, his flame sputtering out before he forced the scowl back on his face through sheer force of will. He stayed silent all throughout, but for an occasional quiet groan.

And then he closed his eyes, and Qian Shanyi felt a subtle change in the recirculation of spiritual energy around his body.

Well, that just won't do.

She needed Jian Shizhe to be bored and a little bit frustrated, not calm and self-assured. A bored person would talk with just about anyone, if only to have something to do. Having him enjoy his meditation was simply not an option.

With a pair of fingers, she reached into a small pocket she sewed on the inside of her sleeve, and drew out a small stone. Flicking her fingers, she sent it flying at Jian Shizhe's forehead.

The stone bounced off his spiritual shield, and Jian Shizhe's eyes snapped open in confusion, tracing its path down to the table, where it bounced twice with a quiet tink-tink before coming to a stop. The eyes turned back to her, his face once again flushed red, teeth bared.

She calmly turned over a page. Halfway through, and the novel had finally reached the city of eels. This author really liked to take things slow.

"How dare -"

"I don't recall ordering you to meditate," Qian Shanyi cut him off, not looking up from her book.

"You have not ordered me anything!"

"No," Qian Shanyi said patiently. "I said that you may read, write, listen or talk." She looked up, meeting Jian Shizhe's eyes. "Is meditation talking?"

He glared at her, lips twitching. She kept her gaze level, simply waiting for an answer. Jian Shizhe was stuck with her, with no way to get out of his obligations. He couldn't even challenge her to a duel, now that his sword was taken away. She could sit here all night.

"No," he finally spat out the word as if it was a poisoned pill.

"Well there you go," she said, going back to her reading. "Please continue with your assignment."

Another half an hour passed in relative silence. Qian Shanyi kept eyeing Jian Shizhe through her ink plate, just in case he started to meditate again - and it was a good thing that she did. This time, the change in the circulation of his spiritual energy was so slight it would have escaped her notice, but his eyes had closed all the same.

Quite talented, are we?

Another stone sailed directly into his forehead. This time, he didn't flinch, and simply let it bounce off. Didn't even react, kept his eyes closed. Challenging her.

Qian Shanyi sighed. Oh well, she tried to be kind. There was only one response to a cultivator's challenge.

She reached over to her sword, and unsheathed it in a single motion, slashing at Jian Shizhe's neck, spiritual energy pouring freely off its surface.

Jian Shizhe's eyes flew open and he rolled backwards, leaping up onto his feet and backing up against the wall. His hands were raised in a guarded stance in front of him, feet planted securely, eyes darting around the room.

Ready for the fight that would never come.

"Did I order you to get up?" Qian Shanyi asked lazily, sheathing her sword back at her side. She didn't even move from where she sat.

"You -" Jian Shizhe blanched at her words. "You tried to kill me!"

"I do not try to kill, I succeed," she noted lazily, picking her book back up, and gesturing with it towards him. "Unlike you, junior Shizhe. No, I merely woke you up, since you seem to have dozed off again. Now once more - what did I order you to do?"

Jian Shizhe glared at her, but slowly lowered his hands. Perhaps he finally realized that if she wanted to kill him, she wouldn't have made her sword shine like the sun to his spiritual energy senses. "To read, write, listen or talk," he admitted grudgingly.

"He remembers," Qian Shanyi said, lowering her eyes to the page. "Now please continue with your assignment without any more distractions."

"Will you prohibit me from breathing too?"

"You may breathe. But I will not force you, if you would prefer to stop."

"This - this is nonsense!" Jian Shizhe burst out. "What assignment is this?!"

"One even a child can manage, and yet you are failing. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Jian Wei had to ask for my help, if the problem is this advanced."

"You are just trying to humiliate me again!" Jian Shizhe said, stalking back over to the table. He didn't sit down, glaring at her from up high. "Read what? Talk about what? I will not waste my time sitting in a dark room for hours!"

This wasn't quite what she was aiming for, but she'd take it. He was asking questions now, which meant he already accepted her implicit framing, if subconsciously. That was the first and most crucial step. If he wanted to know what the assignment was, he could no longer argue that it had to be completed at all.

"Aaaah, so you merely want me to pick a topic?" she said, and put down her book, looking up at him with faked interest. "Very well. Answer me this: why did you lose our duel?"

Jian Shizhe's scowl faltered at the reminder, his defiant posture sagging. His breathing deepened, as he fought with himself - but then he stood up straight and lifted his head up high.

Qian Shanyi would have had to crane her neck to look into his face. Instead, she busied herself with pouring herself a cup of tea.

"To cultivate is to ascend into Heavens through our strength and tenacity," Jian Shizhe said, "You won because -" his voice faltered for a moment, before he forged on ahead, "because you were stronger than me, and -"

Surprising, that he would state it openly, but also encouraging, in some sense. If his belief truly was deep, it gave her something to work with.

Even if it was all nonsense.

Qian Shanyi sighed in exasperation, giving him her most disappointed look. Like a mother whose fully-grown son had just shat himself in public. "Childish nonsense of the highest caliber," she said coldly. "In terms of overall capability, you are obviously stronger than me. Try again."

Jian Shizhe stepped back in shock. "What?!"

"Sit down if you want to ask me questions," Qian Shanyi snapped. The last thing she needed was for the idiot to start walking around and see Liu Yufei hidden behind one of the paper screens. "Did you not hear me, or are you deaf as well as childish? I said I am weaker than you. You are in the peak refinement stage, while I am just barely in the high refinement stage, if that, with an unstable foundation. I had severe injuries, less resources, and I won't even speak about your impressive skill with that demon beast. It is idiotic to look at the two of us and conclude I was actually stronger than you. So try. Again."

She went back to her book. He tried glaring at her, to get his rage back up, but as soon as he engaged with her question, he was already caught in her trap. For someone who worshiped strength, having her admit her weakness so openly and without hesitation must have been incomprehensible.

Confusion. A poisoned needle stuck in his mind, one that would scratch and scratch until he got it out. Stuck there by his own hand, in response to his own question, it would be even more effective.

He sat down. A small confession, to get his answers, surely. Yet in doing so, he was ceding yet more control to her.

"Fine," Jian Shizhe said bitterly after a couple of minutes. "You only won because you cheated. Is this what you wanted to hear? That I am forced to swallow this injustice because of my uncle?"

Qian Shanyi put her book down again, boggling at him. "Cheated? Sweet mercy, this is even more idiotic than thinking I am stronger than you."

"You dare deny it? You planted that rope in advance."

"Of course I did. Just the evening before, in fact."

Jian Shizhe's hands curled into fists again. "So you do admit it? If not for it, I would have won!"

"Admit what?" Qian Shanyi asked, shrugging performatively.

To his credit, it seems that after getting infuriated by her for two dozen times in a row, Jian Shizhe had finally learned how to manage a fraction of his anger. "That you cheated by planting the rope!" he said, definitely not screaming, even if his voice was high.

"Cheated?" Qian Shanyi snorted dismissively. "Preposterous. The very sentiment is nonsensical. Junior Shizhe, you have fought in well over sixty duels - how could you possibly claim such a thing?"

Perhaps she was too quick in giving him credit for finally learning control. His face was getting red again.

"Oh very well, I will explain," she said, relenting. "To say that I cheated would mean that I have violated some rule, or at least an informal agreement between the two of us. So what rule did I violate?"

Jian Shizhe breathed in deeply, his red receding to a mere pink. "It was a dishonorable trap -" he began.

"Nonsense," Qian Shanyi cut him off sharply. "There is no rule against preparing the grounds of the duel, nor could there be, because there are no standard grounds. It is completely acceptable for the challenged duelist to pick a spot that is better suited to their abilities. This is, indeed, intentional, as you are well aware - after all, they are generally the weaker party. You will not find a word against it - not in that pathetic Dueling Codex, nor anywhere else." She ran a hand through her hair, to let her words hang a bit. "Of course, there are limits, and both duelists can inspect the field before the duel starts, adjust it how they'd like, perhaps change location entirely, or at least plan around the problems. Or do I speak falsely?"

Qian Shanyi stared Jian Shizhe down until he was forced to shake his head. "No, but -"

"But nothing," she cut him off again. Another skill he lacked - how to keep talking even as the other person did, until they would shut up. "You could have done so and found my rope - but you rejected the offer. This is not 'cheating' - this is your own foolishness. By rejecting it you have clearly stated that whatever was in the square at the start of the duel was completely fine with you. You, of course, had no way of knowing the rope was there. Nor was it there by accident, or due to bad weather. I put it there deliberately in order to, yes, trap you. But so what? You have nobody to blame but yourself."

She was bending the truth a bit. Even if there were no strict rules, there was still an unstated understanding, and what she did was well in the gray zone. If they were normal cultivators, then it would have made the others look askance at her. But as it was, he'd have to swallow it.

Qian Shanyi lowered her eyes, going back to her book. Bad answers deserved none of her attention. "Of course, the same goes in reverse," she continued in a bored tone, as if discussing the weather. "It was entirely possible that you had planted a hundred crystal bombs all over the square, but I decided to be gracious and to give you some face, and did not inspect it either. But it seems you were too cocky to plant any traps. Which brings me back to my question. Why did you lose the duel?"

"Then what do you want me to say?" Jian Shizhe burst out again, but she could see that his tone had changed. For all that he was quick to anger, he wasn't truly stupid. Once she grabbed him by the neck and rubbed him in his own failures, he mostly didn't deny reality - and she just shattered a pillar beneath the house of lies, justifications, rationalizations and self-deceptions he had doubtlessly been building in his mind ever since he woke up. "That I should have seen through your lies? That I should have known you were sent by my uncle?"

"What do I want you to say?" Qian Shanyi said, raising her eyes and mirroring his confusion back at him. "My, my, junior, that is a different question entirely." She scratched her head, pretending to be in deep thought, even if she had already planned this all well in advance. "Well, thanking me for saving your life would be a good start."

"What?!"

More confusion. A second needle in his mind, this one primed to explode.

Qian Shanyi gave him a flat, emotionless stare. "I see that you still do not truly comprehend your situation," she said, pursing her lips. "Perhaps this will help clear things up."

Qian Shanyi reached into her bag, and brought out a large tome, one and a half fists thick and as long as her entire forearm. Its cover was wooden, with thick metal bands going around the outside rim. A grim book, with an aura of blood to those who knew of it.

Some said the metal was there to resist some punishment, should the book be brought out in the grimmest weather. But Qian Shanyi thought it was just there to remind any hand that held it of the sheer weight of what it represented.

Most cultivators hoped to never see this book in their entire life. Large metal letters on the cover glinted slightly in the lamplight, blunt and unquestionable, like the sword of an executioner that tended to accompany it.

It was the Demonic Cultivator Act.

She tossed it lightly onto the table, making sure the title faced Jian Shizhe, and in the silence of the room it landed like a clap of thunder, spilling some of her ink. For all of Jian Shizhe's bluster, for all his rage at her, he still pulled back, eyeing the book as if it was a snake with vilest venom.

"I left several bookmarks for you," Qian Shanyi said casually, going back to her book. "Make sure to study them carefully."

"Is that your plan?" Jian Shizhe said warily, "To try and scare me?"

"I was hired to educate you and that is exactly what I am planning to do," Qian Shanyi responded patiently, finally flipping onto the next page. With all the distractions Jian Shizhe kept giving her, she had to re-read each paragraph twice.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jian Shizhe pick up the tome, and open it, slowly flipping to her first bookmark. He read it slowly, and for the briefest of moments, she held some faint hope.

Then he scowled. "What does this -" he said, pushing the book back towards her. "I had it under control!"

"Really now," she said, not looking up.

"Of course I did!"

"It didn't seem controlled when I blew out half its carapace."

"Oh what would you know about glass shamblers?" he sneered. "This is my legacy, the manual of my sect, written by my father -"

Father, huh. Should have expected as much.

Qian Shanyi raised her eyes to the heavens. "Alright," she interrupted him. "I believe you."

Confusion, again, plain in his eyes. It was important to keep this dance, keep him just frustrated enough that he would keep thinking, keep biting more of her bait, but not so frustrated he would blow her off completely.

"What?" she said, raising an eyebrow at him. "I do believe you. As far as people in your sect have told me, it was the largest glass shambler your sect had ever captured. Clearly you possess great talent at rearing demon beasts. I have already admitted you were stronger than me, have I not? Why should I doubt your words when you say it was under control?"

"Then why -"

"Why bring the DCA? Because you didn't finish reading my bookmark." She pushed the tome back towards him with one finger. "Tell me -," she said, speaking slowly and clearly, "if an untrained demon beast escapes from your control due to the actions of another cultivator, and this leads to the deaths of ordinary people, which of you is at fault?"

"It was -"

Qian Shanyi nodded quickly. Stop him before he gets going. "Controlled, yes. But not trained. It couldn't be, not in three days, and you know this as well as anyone else. Your control, as far as I understand, rested on those talismans stapled to the demon beast's body. It stands to reason that if I were to remove those talismans, the control would vanish no matter your talent. Is this correct?"

Jian Shizhe scoffed at her. "This is semantics."

Qian Shanyi responded with one of her gravest stares. "Answer the question, junior."

"Yes. But -"

"But nothing, again," she cut him off, leaning across the table. "If I were to remove those talismans through any means, and the beast were to go on a rampage, who would be at fault, according to the law, junior Shizhe?"

She tapped the open tome with a pair of fingers. She would have slapped the table, but with the pillows under it, it would have looked a bit pathetic.

More scowling, more denial. "I had spares -"

"How many?"

He leaned forward too, still defiant. Their faces came quite close. "Enough."

Deny, deny, deny…

Qian Shanyi exhaled in exasperation. Still he didn't see what she was pointing at. Perhaps she was wrong, and he really was just plain old stupid.

She leaned back, picked up her tea cup, and took a quiet sip, to clear her throat. "Junior Shizhe," she began quietly, her voice cold, twinkling like clear ice on a sunny day. "Let me be clear. That you are still alive at all is frankly a minor miracle, and is down to your immense, Heaven-defying luck, and Jian Wei's incredible influence."

She briefly wondered what Liu Yufei would think of her after this speech. She planned it before she knew the woman would be listening, and she wasn't about to change her point, but still, she wondered. When she blew her off - was it because she didn't see the problems with Jian Shizhe, or because she didn't want to speak of them to an outsider?

"Your humiliating loss in this duel was not a coincidence," Qian Shanyi continued. "It was not an accident. It was not due to me cheating, or you having a bad day. It was a statistical inevitability caused by your behavior, just as inevitable as the fact that a man who keeps bashing his head into a wall will get a concussion. However, because of sheer bloody luck, you happened to insult me, instead of a particularly cranky spirit hunter. And because of my immense respect for Jian Wei, I chose not to kill you even if I had a dozen different opportunities to do so."

Jian Shizhe folded his hands on his chest, but she could see that her words shook him, if only a fraction.

"I'll drop the pretense and speak clearly," Qian Shanyi continued, "As your senior sister, I think that when you say you had 'enough' spares, you are lying. I think that when you went into the glass fields, you brought enough talismans to train a normal glass shambler, but couldn't resist your greed - and as a result, you almost ran out. And I think that you are fully aware that had I targeted your talismans, it would not have been enough."

This was a guess, but one she felt confident in making. The talismans had to be expensive, and would have been rationed carefully - and of course, the shambler breaking out was just the sort of thing Wang Yonghao's luck would orchestrate.

Qian Shanyi put down her tea cup, and leaned forwards, poking Jian Shizhe in his chest from across the table. "You brought an untrained spirit beast to a duel," she hissed. "I would have been well within my rights to do whatever it took to win - and if that resulted in you being declared a demonic cultivator, then neither the empire nor your sect could have said a word crosswise! I could have set you up, Jian Shizhe. I chose not to."

"Of course a dishonorable wretch like you would -"

"And if I did," Qian Shanyi cut him off, continuing her point, "then at best Jian Wei would have executed you himself. At worst, you would have been slaughtered like a mongrel, a rabid dog, and exiled from your sect - if only in spirit. Your body would have been burned, bones packed up into a crate like so much pottery and shipped off to an imperial catacomb, where a hole would be your final resting spot. Not even a grave, nothing to remember you by. Just a number in a rarely consulted catalog, no different from a pot of pickles."

She brought her hands together in a begging gesture, putting them up against her nose. "I need you to understand this, junior Shizhe," she pleaded. "I am not here to humiliate you, even if you may feel humiliated. You are dangling over the very edge of the abyss by a single bloody finger, and I am the last person in this entire town who is still willing to offer you a hand to pull you back up. You can take my hand and survive, or you can slap it away and fall right in. It's your choice."

That was, of course, a lie. Humiliating the prick was the highlight of her day, but the point stood.

Yet Jian Shizhe did not believe her. She could see it even before she finished speaking - he had nothing to argue with, but he still didn't believe her.

He felt safe, after all. He always felt safe, comfortable, cared for. Sure, she painted dreadful images of slaughter - but what did that matter to him? Young masters didn't get declared demonic cultivators. It wasn't real, it couldn't be.

"Are you done congratulating yourself?" he said, echoing her thoughts. "Last person in the city? You humiliated me, and you dare try to pretend to be my friend?"

Friend? Ha! You wish.

She had to show him how exposed he truly was.

Qian Shanyi nodded, pursing her lips. "Very well," she said, "Name one other person who would willingly help you."

"Rui Bao."

Qian Shanyi couldn't help but laugh. She didn't expect that. "Honorable cultivator Rui Bao was the one who told me how to kill your glass shambler as soon as we saw it," she said, shaking her head sadly. "He told me to target the brain, and without his advice, I do not think I would have won."

Jian Shizhe reeled back as if she slapped him. "You - you lie."

This, too, she didn't expect. This much of a reaction - was he his only lasting friend?

Qian Shanyi shrugged again. "You can ask him yourself if you do not believe my word. Wang Yonghao was there as well. He saw the danger immediately, and tried to plead with me to abort the duel entirely, or at least stall, to let the people evacuate."

"This is impossible," Jian Shizhe said, disbelief flooding his voice. "He was my second. He asked to be my second."

"Did he tell you that your glass shambler was a danger to civilians, or that I had a plan for how to kill it?"

Jian Shizhe's stared off into space. "He - he asked if I could contain it."

"Junior Shizhe," Qian Shanyi said, each word a stamp, a verdict. "That is not what I asked, so let me rephrase it. Did or did not honorable cultivator Rui Bao warn you that you were a hair's breadth away from violating the Demonic Cultivator Act?"

"No."

"Perhaps honorable cultivator Rui Bao simply didn't know the exactitude of the law, yet the danger was still obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes to see. It was certainly obvious to him. Did he explicitly warn you of the danger to the crowds, of the possibility of me sabotaging your talismans?"

Jian Shizhe looked away, not answering. He seemed to be slowly folding in on himself, like a punctured paper balloon leaking air, all his previous defiance simply vanishing.

Qian Shanyi gave him a moment, then cleared her throat. "Junior Shizhe -"

"No," he replied, glaring at her again, but with only a fraction of his previous anger. Step by step, she guided him to the inevitable conclusion.

"Then it seems Rui Bao doesn't really care if you live or die," Qian Shanyi concluded. "Who else?"

This one sentence cracked something in Jian Shizhe. He took a shaky breath, and started to pour a cup of tea of his own. His face was graying, eyes hollow. Finally, he started to see.

"Is it truly nobody?" Qian Shanyi said after a couple minutes of sullen silence, "How sad."

"What does that matter?" Jian Shizhe suddenly burst out, all his previous fury coming back with a vengeance. "I do not need Rui Bao! I do not need the help of weaklings and worthless degenerates. The road of cultivation is a lonely one! The others are jealous of my position, and they are scared of my skills - as they should be! How could you expect a pack of pathetic hyenas to help a human being?"

It was to be expected. Any animal, finding itself in a corner, would try to find some way out - and for a human, that often meant fooling themselves, grasping at the last vestiges of self-assurance.

"In fact," Jian Shizhe grinned madly. "You are much the same. You are afraid of my uncle, aren't you? That is all that respect of yours amounts to, in the end. Fear. You wouldn't have dared kill me, or you would have been killed yourself!"

Qian Shanyi raised an eyebrow in surprise. She didn't expect Jian Shizhe to bring up Jian Wei, for he clearly did not respect the building foundation cultivator. Admitting that he relied on someone else's strength - it would be a crack in his previous beliefs. Even the very thing he said was already contradictory - if the others were really scared of Jian Wei, then they weren't scared of Jian Shizhe.

But it was only a small crack. She had to widen it.

"I admit that your uncle also cares about your life," she said, reaching into her bag again.

"So you admit it!"

"- but it doesn't matter," she continued, drawing a second book, and sliding it across the table. A plainer tome - dark brown cover, with a bright red title. Imperial History, tome thirty-one. "You said that respect is simply fear? Junior Shizhe, in that case, you have forgotten to respect the Empire."

His arrogant smile faltered slightly.

"In the tenth year of Zhang," she explained, gesturing to the book, even if she doubted he would open it. "There was a similar incident with the Black Still Pools Divination sect. If you would have read my bookmarks in the Demonic Cultivator Act until the end, you would have found the case reference - but Imperial History has a fuller story, as usual. Young Master of a sect had been playing with his new demon beast, a three-headed lion, when he had been asked for a spar by a fellow disciple. While they were busy, the demon beast broke out, and killed twenty six ordinary people, wounding another five dozen."

She saw him realize where she was going. But he did not speak up, and so she simply forged ahead.

"In the investigation afterwards," she continued, "the young master was found culpable, and not only culpable, but so incredibly negligent that he was declared a demonic cultivator on the spot. Even if he did not order the demon beast to slaughter innocents, he still brought it into the sect compound, into the middle of a populated town, and left it without supervision - this is no different to leaving a primed crystal bomb in the city square. Unfortunately, his Elder refused to execute him. What do you suppose happened next?"

She was giving the driest possible retelling, a summary of a summary. Perhaps she should have read some passages from the history book out loud, descriptions of the victims. It was an important case, though rarely known - she herself didn't recall it without the reference.

Jian Shizhe didn't answer her, and after giving him a moment, she shrugged lightly. "The sect was declared to be a demonic sect, of course," she said, "and slaughtered, as it should have been. One quarter of the disciples foolishly stood together with the Elder and died, while three quarters have scattered to the winds, forswearing any association with it. At the time, the Black Still Pools Divination sect had well over two hundred inner disciples - three times what your sect has. Now tell me this, Junior Shizhe: if Jian Wei had to choose between you and the life of his entire sect, what would he choose?"

Jian Shizhe swallowed. He didn't speak, but his answer was clear, even if he wouldn't admit it out loud. His own disrespect of the man would dictate the answer.

Another pillar in his mind, shattered to pieces.

"But it is curious to me that you say respect is nothing but fear," Qian Shanyi said, deciding to move to a different topic. Let those thoughts of his stew for a while. She reached into her bag one final time, and drew out the Immortal Cultivation And The Collapse Of Imperial Virtue she had taken from his room. "I happened to peruse your books while you were getting dressed," she explained. "This is based on the philosophy of the Li era, is it not?"

Some of the fury returned. Like waves, coming and going, pushed around by the winds of her rhetoric - but this time, it was different. Too fast to come, too shallow in its depth, but at least familiar. Covering him like a child hiding under an old, comfortable blanket, scared of the nightmares in the dark.

Only this time, the nightmares were here to stay.

"So you are a thief as well as a cheat?" he said, his scowl already fading. It came out as more of a question than an accusation.

Qian Shanyi snorted. If only he knew. "I will take it as an agreement," she said instead. "I suppose I should apologize for the intrusion, but this one caught my eye. It seems to me that you've read it quite a lot."

Jian Shizhe jerked his nose upwards. "What of it?"

She gestured towards his false armor, worn over his robes. "And that -" Qian Shanyi paused, sorting through half a dozen insults that immediately floated to mind in search of something neutral. "That, mmm, costume of yours. I admit I had to look up the style, but it is cut to resemble the armor of the forces of, once again, late emperor Li - unless I am mistaken?"

"What are you leading to?"

"Leading to?" Qian Shanyi flapped her eyelashes innocently. "I am simply making conversation. I figured you would find talking about your views less stressful than further discussing the duel."

Jian Shizhe stayed silent for a moment, shocked she would lie so blatantly. "Yes," he finally said. "I respect his philosophy."

"Why?"

"What?"

"It's a simple question, I should think. Why do you respect it?"

"Because it makes sense."

Qian Shanyi angled her head curiously. "Does it? Very few people follow it these days. I do not, myself."

"Of course I wouldn't expect a rube like you to understand," Jian Shizhe scoffed at her, crossing his arms on his chest.

Qian Shanyi rolled her eyes. "A coward's answer."

Another shallow spike of fury. "You dare -"

"To cultivate is to dare," she cut him off sharply. "Are you a daoist or a mongrel dog? Speak of your beliefs, or admit you stand for nothing."

He fumed for a while, grasping for an answer. She simply waited. He had already taken so many of her baits his mouth had more fishing hooks than teeth.

"To cultivate is to rebel against the Heavens, and rebellion is based on strength," he finally pronounced. Words stilted, without feeling - a quote. "Without it, what good are cultivators?"

"Strength to do what?"

Jian Shizhe stopped, brought out of the recitation. "To slaughter the demon beasts, the celestials, the real demonic cultivators," he finally answered, growing more frustrated. "Without cultivators to defend the ordinary people, what would we have? Gu Lingtian had slaughtered the Heavens, and got his way. If a cultivator does not strive to do likewise, are they not trash? If they cannot even help transcend a tribulation, repel an errant Zhuque, or slash apart a comet, what good was all the time they've wasted? A weakling can only build a sect of weaklings, and teach them to be weaker still."

He said Zhuque a bit too quickly. If she did not already know what she did - she might have missed it. It seemed his father's death was still somewhere in the back of his mind - buried deep, perhaps, yet still present. A hundred layers of beliefs all built on top, until it was obscured, hidden within the emotional core of his entire soul.

"You are saying that a cultivator that does not seek strength with all their means, with all their time, through blood and sweat, is nothing more than trash."

"Of course."

Qian Shanyi nodded lightly. "And what of the refiners, alchemists? Your own sect spends most of its time producing glassware."

Jian Shizhe scoffed dismissively. "A hand that forges the sword is nothing without the one to wield it."

"Yet what sword will there be to wield, with nobody to forge it?" Qian Shanyi asked, projecting a curiosity she did not truly feel.

"A hand without a sword is still a fist," Jian Shizhe said, still scoffing. As if she was merely making a joke that wasn't worth his time. "A refiner without their head can refine nothing."

"I see."

Spiritual cultivation, refining, and alchemy. Three pillars of cultivation, a triangle, where each vertex supported each other. But what Jian Shizhe saw instead was a pyramid, with a singular peak. A common enough view, in ages past.

But also one that was full of holes.

"It does seem to make some sense," Qian Shanyi said slowly, scratching her head. "There's just one thing that doesn't quite fit for me. Would you remind me, what happened to the late emperor Li?"

Jian Shizhe gave her a strange stare. "He died. What of it?"

"And how did he die?" Qian Shanyi said, inclining her head curiously once again.

"What does it matter?" Jian Shizhe scoffed again, crossing his arms on his chest. "This is a waste of time."

"Hm. A waste of time, huh." Qian Shanyi paused, taking a sip of her tea. "No, I think this is rather important," she continued with a light shake of her head. "See, I seem to recall him being slaughtered like a pathetic pig above his very palace, his forces scattered to all four cardinal directions. A group of six golden core powerhouses and two nascent soul cultivators joining hands, if my memory still serves me well." She put her cup down on the table, and leaned forwards, looking into his eyes. "So tell me, junior Shizhe: what good is a philosophy of strength from a weakling who lost the only fight that ever matters?"

"You truly have nothing more than insults."

"A coward's words. Again."

"This isn't about him," Jian Shizhe said, raising his nose. "It's about the principle."

"I see. Very well, let's think this through. Your constitution is that of wood, correct?"

Jian Shizhe froze. Did he really never think this through, for her to surprise him that easily?

Perhaps he truly hadn't. If nobody dared challenge him on his beliefs, then what would move him to do so?

"I will once again take that as an agreement," Qian Shanyi continued. "Yet you practice the same sword art as the rest of your sect - one made for those of metal. Is this not a glaring weakness?"

Jian Shizhe's slammed his fist down onto the table, cracking it. Qian Shanyi had to snap her own hands out, to catch the tea kettle and her cup out of the air, before they spilled all across the books. She caught them just in time.

She couldn't catch the ink plate, but it flew in the other direction entirely. A black blotch, all across the floor. But the books were safe.

"You pathetic streetwhore, you dare speak of my legacy this way?!" Jian Shizhe screamed. This was a much, much deeper fury than before - but she had to provoke him here, for the point to stick.

"I speak the truth," Qian Shanyi said calmly, putting the tea kettle far away from this emotional lunatic. "Your art is incomplete - it was never intended to be used in isolation. Your talent with it is great, yes. Perhaps the best in generations. But it matters not. I saw your fellow disciples practice - the longer sword is meant to strike from behind a cloud of flowing glass, one you cannot control with a wooden constitution. You might as well attempt to dance with one leg tied to the other! So tell me: why are you a weakling that practices an art unsuited to your constitution?"

Would he strike her? He was still not recovered from his spiritual energy exhaustion, and without his sword, she could beat him easily, especially since Liu Yufei would interfere. But it would slow the lesson down.

"You -," Jian Shizhe hissed, pure hatred coming out instead of mere air. His hands were clenched into fists again. "Oh, if only I had my sword -"

"Silence," Qian Shanyi cut him off, raising her tone to match his. "Insults I can tolerate. I will not tolerate my student speaking nonsense. You claimed a cultivator that does not strive for strength in all their actions is nothing more than trash. Yet you do not do so yourself. So which is it? Are you trash, or are you a human being?"

Now that she dismantled the excuses in his mind - the fury didn't matter. She just had to push him over the edge of realization, and he'd be done.

Jian Shizhe had stayed silent, his whole body tense. His eyes bored into hers.

"What? Nothing more to say?" She mocked him. "I asked you: why did you lose the duel? A simple question, yet you could not even answer that. So here is one answer: you lost it because you practice a bad law, and refuse to change. If you had any techniques at all to build on, you would not have lost."

If he had any techniques to build on, she wouldn't have challenged him in the first place.

"Bad law?" Jian Shizhe screamed again. "You -"

Even still he could surprise her. "Are you a child?" She boggled up at him. "I mean it's bad for you."

Some fury had receded. A tenth, no more. "A true cultivator does not need techniques," he said, "A sword, a shield, it has to be enough -"

Qian Shanyi's lips curled in disgust again. "You say that a cultivator must strive for strength, yet abhor techniques?" she said. "Admit it - your belief is simply false. Whatever it is you cultivate, it is not the rule of strength."

Their gazes crossed once again. She pushed him to the very limit - any more, and he would snap. It was time to offer him a way out.

"I do not share your so-called philosophy," she said, backing off. "To me, and many others, to practice a sword art passed down within your sect is admirable loyalty, even if - especially if - it does not suit you. But if you wish to do so, then pick your beliefs to match. And if you do wish to be loyal to your sect, then you have harmed it greatly."

Massage his pride a bit. He needs it.

"You are a cultivator with enormous talent, much greater than mine," Qian Shanyi continued with false admiration. "Your realm is high. But so what? You are a laughingstock, so much so that I heard about you within minutes of my arrival. How many young loose cultivators chose to seek another sect, simply because they were afraid of you? How many of them could have advanced your sect's techniques further? Even the Heavens may never know."

She saw his fury fade, bit by little bit. Without her stoking the flames, it was inevitable. And just like metal solidifies once it cools, so would his mindset - into a mold of her choosing, if she had done this right.

"I said that blaming your cultivation for your loss was one answer to my question," Qian Shanyi said, picking up the books, and packing them back into her bag. Just in case this outburst repeated. "It is not my answer. My answer is that you lost because you fought alone, where I had a dozen helpers. Wang Yonghao helped me train, taught me how to fight a crippled enemy. Rui Bao told me how to kill your shambler. A dozen disciples in your sect told me how you think. Junming had given me the cultivator almanac, and it had told me how you fight. There were others, too. A dozen swords will always slaughter one - but you chose to stand alone. And so you lost, and only through my mercy had you kept your life."

She pushed at the table, testing the crack. It held, if a bit unsteadily. The pillows she put under the legs had absorbed much of the impact.

"Why do you think the Empire stands?" Qian Shanyi continued. "It's not because the strongest lead it. It is because we work together. If you had even a single person to confide in, they would have talked you out of your insane, bizarre plan, even before you walked off to seek a glass shambler. But you did not."

She glanced up at Jian Shizhe. He still had his teeth bared, defensive, just on the edge of fury - but she could see the gears clicking in his mind.

He'd never admit she was right, of course. Nor would he thank her for the advice. He'd hate her for the many years to come, even as he accepted her conclusions, even as he invented his own reasons to believe them.

There was a reason why Jian Wei agreed to let her do this - a loose cultivator, or one from another sect, would leave the town, and take the fury with them. A sacrificial goat, unlike disciples from his own sect.

"But that is merely my answer," Qian Shanyi concluded. "Seek your own, Junior Shizhe."

She sighed, motioning to where the ink plate had rolled away. "I spoke my part," she said, "Pick up the ink plate, brush and paper. To help you think, we will go over the entire duel - from start to finish, beginning with the challenge - and you will write out everything you did wrong, and what you should have done instead to win. Then you will hammer this list above your bed and stare at it as you sleep. And then, you might, just might, see something of your future."

He stood up slowly, and went to pick up the scattered items. Perhaps she mollified him enough - or perhaps he simply wanted to get it over with.

"Or stick to your nonsense about strength," Qian Shanyi said, giving him one last disgusted glare. "But then you might as well just die, for you quite clearly have none to speak of."

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion is currently second in Best Original Work! Your vote can swing the results! Thanks to everyone who already voted for it, and enjoy the chapter

Otherwise, if you want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon. Now is the perfect time to sign up - this volume is finished on patreon, so you can buy yourself a little christmas present ​

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---

"- and then I told him I was practically his last friend in this entire city -" Qian Shanyi giggled, gesturing with a beaker of spirit wine in her hand. The crimson liquid inside swirled into a vortex, a glittering carousel of fun.

Wang Yonghao groaned, covering his eyes with one hand. Even the normally taciturn Linghui Mei couldn't help but giggle a little.

"How do you even get up in the morning without being weighed down by all these lies?" Wang Yonghao said, lowering his hand. He took a sip out of his own beaker of wine. "And he just took it?"

"Of course not," Qian Shanyi snorted. "But what could he do? Challenge me to a second duel? Please. No, he just started whining."

They sat on the grass in Wang Yonghao's world fragment, lounging around the fire node in their kitchen. Wang Yonghao bought the wine, while Linghui Mei said she would cook for them - rabbit cut into long strips, with spices, eaten straight from the pan. Convenient, since she could snack on her own ingredients.

They were finally celebrating, if in a smaller company than Qian Shanyi would have liked - and there was much to celebrate. The duel, getting rid of the spirit hunters, even the theft of the glassware. Qian Shanyi shared the story of her instructing Shizhe - though her tale quickly became disjointed and out of order, from all the questions, the jokes, and a little bit from the wine.

"I have to say, you are a pretty good cook," Qian Shanyi noted, swallowing another strip. "Especially for someone who never tastes her own cooking."

"I had to learn for my children," Linghui Mei said, smiling into the distance. "And it helps to draw attention away from me. It's not too uncommon among the jiuweihu, though some traditionalists refuse to learn on principle."

"But who did you experiment on until you learned?"

Linghui Mei threw a dirty look at Qian Shanyi. Qian Shanyi held it for a moment, but couldn't resist, and started to laugh.

"I can taste," Linghui Mei grumbled, her gaze softening. "I just get sick if it is too much. But really, it's not that difficult to follow a recipe."

"That doesn't answer my question," Qian Shanyi said, her laugh slowly petering out. "It's well known that the palate of every species is different, especially when it comes to foods that are toxic to one or the other. You could hardly learn to cook for humans by relying on your own taste."

Linghui Mei bit her lip, then sighed. "One of my human husbands," she admitted. "He is a farmer, and a decent cook, I've been told."

"One of?" Wang Yonghao asked curiously.

"He knows you are a jiuweihu?" Qian Shanyi asked at the same time.

Linghui Mei looked between the two, her eyebrows furrowed. "Yes," she finally said, picking up four strips of rabbit off the pan and setting them aside on a plate, handing it off to Qian Shanyi, before putting new ones on the pan. "One of. And yes, he knows. How could he not? I still had to feast every week, when I lived with him."

"But you left," Qian Shanyi said, "because you can't stay in one place, to avoid suspicion."

Linghui Mei looked away. A corner of her lips trembled slightly.

Pain. Because of what she had to do, or what she couldn't?

In her mind's eye, Qian Shanyi could trace out implications, a shadow around what Linghui Mei had said. If the man was human, and knew Linghui Mei was a jiuweihu, he was obligated to report her, by the sapient life incompatibility act. Somehow, she had convinced him not to, at least for long enough to raise a child - but she would have had to leave eventually, to spread out her hunts. Once she did, others around the husband would begin to question what happened to his wife. That thread had to be tied off - perhaps by staging her own death, and never turning back. Only scant visits, from then on, if that.

Qian Shanyi did wonder how Linghui Mei could raise her children, while always on the move. Perhaps she simply didn't.

And in the back of Qian Shanyi's mind, another question stirred. Linghui Mei said she never harmed an ordinary person - and she believed her. But how many other jiuweihu did, if their spouse decided to tell the spirit hunters?

Best not to ask, for now.

The ways she spoke - she said husbands, not spouses. Jiuweihu could take the shape of men as well as women - perhaps it was nothing, but to Qian Shanyi's ear the distinction seemed important, if perhaps subconscious.

It was well-known that children of cultivators were more likely to be cultivators themselves. Not by that much - the chances were still well below one in a hundred - but enough that back in the days of the cultivator clans, the richest of cultivators would take dozens of wives, all to have a chance of producing a direct disciple who was their own offspring. A tradition thankfully relegated to history - but the fact remained.

Many, many possibilities. Linghui Mei had said some of her children were human - perhaps that was a part of it, or perhaps it had to do with how she raised them. She would have to interrogate Linghui Mei about it later, once she could visit a proper library, and consult medical texts - if they knew how the jiuweihu's unique meridian network developed in the womb, they might find something to help their quest for a better spiritual energy recirculation law.

But for now, if Linghui Mei didn't want to talk about it -

"I didn't know you could, um," Wang Yonghao began, inadvertently stumbling into Qian Shanyi's exact line of reasoning, much like an elephant stumbling through the wall of a building. He stopped himself, blushing deeply, and tried to cover a cough with a sip from his beaker. "Nevermind."

"Nevermind what?" Linghui Mei asked sharply. Her voice was tinged with concealed anger, at a fool who poked something he shouldn't, and just a bit of embarrassment.

Oh sweet mercy.

Wang Yonghao and Linghui Mei seemed to be getting along a bit better after Qian Shanyi poked Wang Yonghao into making an effort - but the jiuweihu was still quick to anger, and knowing Wang Yonghao's loose tongue… He could drive a fissure so deep they'd never reconcile in a single blink.

This called for emergency measures.

"He meant 'Have hot, passionate sex with humans'," Qian Shanyi said, grinning at Wang Yonghao. "And have children, presumably."

Wang Yonghao grew beetroot-red and reached out, flicking Qian Shanyi on her forehead. She didn't even try to dodge. Her spiritual shield sparked slightly, and she started to laugh again.

"Never in my life would I have phrased it that way!" Wang Yonghao said, scandalized, glaring at her.

"Right, that's what you have me for!" Qian Shanyi said, only laughing harder. The spirit wine was getting to her head, just a bit. "Why, Yonghao, are you angling for some kind of demonstration?"

Now it was Linghui Mei's turn to blush. She coughed politely into her fist, and looked away, her anger at the fool forgotten entirely.

"I am not!" Wang Yonghao shouted, before closing his eyes, breathing out, and turning back to Linghui Mei. "I am sorry, I shouldn't have spoken," he said, "especially not with Shanyi here."

"What did I do?"

"You decided to be born perverted."

"That's hardly on me," Qian Shanyi snorted. "If you have complaints, address them to my parents."

Wang Yonghao glared at her harder. "You -" he said, helplessly gesturing to Linghui Mei, who was still looking away in embarrassment, trying to find a place for her hands. "How could you embarrass her like this? It's bad enough that I misspoke, but why do you have to push her?"

Ah, so he can think!

"I sincerely apologize for embarrassing you, Mei," Qian Shanyi said, putting her beaker of wine up against her chest. "However, as Wang Yonghao had just established, I have been cursed to be beautiful and fabulous and always correct from birth -"

"That's not what I said!"

"- and so there is nothing whatsoever that I could have done about it," Qian Shanyi concluded, covering her eyes tragically with one hand. "Ah, if only I was born different! Truly, the suffering of my existence knows no end!"

Twin glares met her eyes, embarrassment transforming into hatred of a common enemy at the speed of alchemy. Then they turned to each other, and both nodded, as if reaching some silent accord.

"Yonghao," Linghui Mei said coldly, getting up and circling around Qian Shanyi, her arms spread wide. "Would you kindly help me with my master?"

"With pleasure," Wang Yonghao said grimly, setting his beaker of wine down on the grass, and getting up as well. He rubbed his hands together in preparation, unclipped his sword, and tossed it aside.

Qian Shanyi leapt up onto her feet, quickly backing out of the encirclement. "Woah, woah, woah," she giggled, gesturing with her own beaker, trying to keep both of the others in her sight at the same time. With her free hand, she tossed her own sword away as well. "Is it not said that peace is built through conversation?"

"Peace? Every other word of yours brings ruin."

"Yonghao is right. Your tongue is no different from a demon beast on a rampage."

"Oh, come now, that's really uncalled for -" Qian Shanyi said, and then the other two sprung at her, and she had to scramble to try and run away.

The fight ended just as quickly as it began. Neither of them wanted to hurt the others, and it was two against one. Even if Linghui Mei was largely untrained, without using her flying sword, Qian Shanyi was never going to win the fight.

But winning wasn't the goal. The more those two worked together, the better it would be in the end.

"This is dishonorable!" Qian Shanyi shouted, struggling to free herself. She was being held up in the air by Linghui Mei's twin tails, her hands pulled behind her back and feet held together, while Wang Yonghao left to get some ropes. "Unjust! Demonic! Free me at once!"

"This is for your own good," Linghui Mei said patronizingly, patting Qian Shanyi on the head. Qian Shanyi snarled, trying to twist her neck around to bite Linghui Mei's fingers, but missed. "Children should not drink wine before bedtime."

"Mei, if you wanted to tie me up all you had to do was ask -" Qian Shanyi began, before wincing at her arms being pulled further behind her back, twisted painfully at her shoulders. "Ow ow ow ow, please stop, these are the only two arms I have!"

"I got the ropes!" Wang Yonghao called, coming over.

"What are you even planning to do?" Qian Shanyi said, still struggling against her bonds. She just wanted to have a bit of fun, not deal with - whatever this was. Linghui Mei's tails were frustratingly strong.

"What I must," Linghui Mei said tersely, spinning Qian Shanyi upside down. Her long hair swept across the grass. "Without punishment, how will the children ever learn?"

Qian Shanyi froze, and then slowly turned her head to look Linghui Mei in the eyes. Her hair got in the way, and she had to crane her neck around, but she managed it. "Mei," she said slowly, "you realize I will have my revenge in the end? For me, some embarrassment is but a temporary trifle - but for you? Do you not fear the depths I might sink to in my retaliation?"

Linghui Mei bowed slightly to Qian Shanyi, unintentionally making her bob up and down in the air. "If a disciple is not willing to risk drowning to save their master," Linghui Mei pronounced, almost managing to hide a nervous movement of her throat, "then how do they dare to call themselves a good disciple?"

Qian Shanyi held Linghui Mei's gaze for another moment, and then redoubled her struggles against Linghui Mei's tails. But by then, it was already too late.

"Now you can relax and think about your jokes," Wang Yonghao smugly pronounced once she was tied up and gagged, left to lie on her stomach. He sat down right in front of her, picked up his plate of rabbit strips, and deliberately wafted the delicious smell into her face. "And maybe reconsider the worst ones."

"But before we free you," Linghui Mei said, equally smugly, "your hairstyle is not appropriate for your childish jokes. I will fix it for you."

Linghui Mei sat down next to her, pulled Qian Shanyi's hair back, and started to do something to it. By the feel of it, she was braiding it, and Qian Shanyi could just about see her pull out some ribbons out of a pocket of her robes.

These two had to have planned this in advance. Otherwise, why would Linghui Mei have made the ribbons?

Qian Shanyi arched one eyebrow at the two - or tried to, because she couldn't look at both of them at the same time. If this was supposed to truly embarrass her, they'd have to try much harder.

She was still not going to go along with it, of course. That much was a question of principles. She achieved her goal - now it was time for her to have some fun.

She foresaw where the events were headed, and just before she got gagged, she bit down on a couple of her own hairs. Now she slowly twisted her tongue around, drawing them fully into her mouth. The other two did not really beat her up - and so her spiritual energy shield was still intact, and was a perfect cover for her rope control technique.

Linking the hair in her mouth to the rope around her hands without seeing the latter was difficult, but by no means impossible. She just had to imagine its position based on feel, make some educated guesses - neither Wang Yonghao nor Linghui Mei were all that good at knots - and keep trying different shapes until the technique snapped into place. Her hands might have been tied, but she could manipulate the hair in her mouth directly with her spiritual energy, and by linking it to the rope around her hands, untie herself whenever she pleased.

Even if she wasted a bit of spiritual energy - so what? The world fragment was full of it.

"So did you find out where that spirit hunter is staying?" Wang Yonghao asked Linghui Mei while Qian Shanyi was busy trying to free herself from unjust imprisonment.

"I did," Linghui Mei nodded. "About eighty meters north of your tavern. He is staying with a small family - two parents, and I think three children, though two are young and do not leave their mother, so it was hard to pick out their scents. Or rather, he is staying in their stables. I saw the third boy looking in through the window when I passed by."

Their tavern room would be well within the range of Fang Jiugui's spiritual energy senses. As expected, really.

"Huh," Wang Yonghao said, taking another sip of his wine, "so what do you think we should do next? Interrogate that kid for more information?"

Linghui Mei glared at Wang Yonghao. "We will not torture an innocent child."

"Shanyi would absolutely torture a kid."

I would not!

Qian Shanyi could only mutely glare at Wang Yonghao.

"My master would do no such thing," her trustworthy disciple huffed in outrage. "And I would not help you find him, if you insist on making such inappropriate jokes."

Tie him up next, will you?

Qian Shanyi quietly bided her time while Wang Yonghao and Linghui Mei traded venomless barbs. Linghui Mei seemed to be enjoying herself, all things considered - even humming a tune while working on whatever travesty she was making out of Qian Shanyi's hair.

Soon, Linghui Mei stood up, and headed for their hut - perhaps to bring more of those ridiculous ribbons. At about the same time, Wang Yonghao turned away from Qian Shanyi to pour himself more wine, safe in the false knowledge that she could not escape.

Now.

It was time to turn the tables.

Silent as a whisper, Qian Shanyi unwound the hair in her mouth, the rope knots around her arms quickly coming apart, and then did the same to her feet. Grabbing one of the two ropes, she sprung at Wang Yonghao from the back, and bowled him over into the grass, the rope encircling his hands and feet before he could even realize what happened.

"Mei - she is mmmm!" Wang Yonghao tried to call out, but another loop of rope around his mouth put a stop to that.

"I thought up some new jokes," Qian Shanyi smiled dryly, tightening the rope so he could not escape. "You know, this tying up idea is hilarious. Maybe I should deliver you like this to Chu Lin? What kind of… poetry reading do you think she could take from all this?"

Wang Yonghao's eyes pleaded with her where his voice could not, but she would have no mercy.

"What did you say -" Linghui Mei said, coming out of the hut. She stopped in her tracks, and her eyes widened from shock at seeing newly freed Qian Shanyi.

"Mei, Mei, Mei…" Qian Shanyi mused, grabbing the other rope, and quickly shaping it into a lasso, starting to spin it above her head. Now that it was one on one, their fight would go much differently. "Have I not warned you? Remind me, what was it you said about drowning?"

"Master, there is really no need," Linghui Mei said quickly, raising her hands defensively. "It was merely a little joke."

"A joke, hm," Qian Shanyi smirked, slowly stepping closer. "Care to go for a swim in an ocean of embarrassing jokes?"

"A fox has no business being in an ocean!" Linghui Mei said, quickly sprinting out of the hut, and hiding behind a corner, leaving only her head to peak out. "It is a place for fish and squid," she finished, furrowing her nose in disgust.

"Is that so?" Qian Shanyi laughed, reeling her lasso back in, and tying the rope around her waist. "Very well. I suppose it was a good prank you two pulled on me, so let's call us even, for now. But next time you won't get away so easily."

She turned around and headed over to untie Wang Yonghao. "Bring those ribbons over, will you?" she called back to Linghui Mei, gesturing to her hair. Now that she could pull it in front of her eyes, she could tell that it was braided, but only partly and on one side of her head, with two dozen ribbons sticking out. "You might as well finish what you started."

"You… want me to braid your hair?" Linghui Mei asked strangely, coming over.

"You seemed to be having fun, and I don't care that much, so why not?" Qian Shanyi said easily, pulling the gag out of Wang Yonghao's mouth. "And while you do that - tell me more about this kid, and the stables Fang Jiugui is staying at."

"I told you she'd torture a kid!" Wang Yonghao immediately blurted out.

"Please," Qian Shanyi grimaced. "I am not a barbarian. I don't want to torture him, I want to bribe him."

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade And Tax Evasion had won the title of Best Original Work for 2024! Thanks to everyone who voted for it, and enjoy the chapter

Otherwise, if you want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon. Now is the perfect time to sign up - this volume is finished on patreon, so you can buy yourself a little christmas present
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous and 61 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.​

---

There was an absolutely ridiculous amount of ribbons. Qian Shanyi had never seen that many. It was, frankly, obscene.

"This is jiuweihu fashion?" she said, running her hand over the outcome of Linghui Mei's work. Her long hair, one she took more than a little pride in, was now entirely woven into a hundred thin braids, with a decorative ribbon every five centimeters, cut from all sorts of fabric scraps and bits of canvas they had lying around. Mostly the canvas, the same one they used to cover the windows, rough and thick. There were so many that she actually felt their weight, pulling gently on her hair. "I don't want to be insensitive, but…"

"You look great," Wang Yonghao said with a grin. "Like one of the trees they decorate for the ghost festivals."

Qian Shanyi made a rude gesture in his direction, even if he was absolutely correct. At least it made him laugh.

"Her hair is too long," Linghui Mei grumbled. Her own was braided as well, but only extended down to her mid-back. "Of course it looks silly when it's this long, and without the dress, and this canvas is too rough and thick…" She sighed. "Ribbons are for children, but that's all I have to work with right now."

With some prodding, Linghui Mei admitted that the ribbons she braided into Qian Shanyi's hair were a part of traditional jiuweihu attire - and apparently, the dress was supposed to have even more ribbons on it. Qian Shanyi really wasn't sure if that would make it any better. Linghui Mei didn't have time to sew the dress - but she did tie some to the sleeves of both of their robes.

"Then what do the adults wear, if not ribbons?" Qian Shanyi asked curiously.

"Namestones," Linghui Mei said curtly. "I don't carry any of mine and you weren't granted any. Stop moving around, I have to tie all the braids together."

"With another ribbon?"

"No, a living snake."
"I think I would prefer the snake."

"Then catch it yourself." Linghui Mei flicked Qian Shanyi on the forehead. "Now stop moving."

Qian Shanyi did as instructed. Linghui Mei had promised them she would dance and sing some traditional jiuweihu songs - and Qian Shanyi let herself be convinced to try dressing the part. She was more than grateful for the offer, and for the openness it signified, even if the fashion itself was definitely not her style.

Linghui Mei tied the braids together into one ponytail with a complex bow, and stepped away, giving Qian Shanyi a critical look. "This is as good as it's going to get," she said, pursing her lips.

"How do I look?" Qian Shanyi said, twirling around. The speed of it made all the long braids spread out in an enormous cone, and Wang Yonghao burst out laughing again. She'd definitely have to unbraid her hair before she went out, or the whole town would be laughing like that.

"If you were my child, I'd sooner eat my own heart than show you to the others," Linghui Mei said. "These ribbons are terrible. But since you are not jiuweihu, it would do." She sighed, rubbing her face in exhaustion. Simply braiding the hair took her a good hour of work. "It's not like you would be dancing, either."

"You sound worried," Qian Shanyi said, picking up her beaker of spirit wine again, now that she was free to move.

"I've never danced for an audience before," Linghui Mei said tersely. "With children, I hold them in my hands. With adults, we all dance together. This is new."

"You could hold me up with your tails, if you'd like?" Qian Shanyi suggested. "You are clearly strong enough."

Linghui Mei blushed slightly. "I would unbalance and fall on my face," she said after a brief pause.

Qian Shanyi arched an eyebrow at that curious reaction. "Perhaps a bit of wine, to help with your courage?" she said, coming closer, and gesturing with her beaker. Wang Yonghao bought three bottles, and they were already on their second. "You can drink wine, right?"

Linghui Mei gave the beaker a wary look. "I can drink normal wine. Not whatever you cultivators drink."

"Oh," Wang Yonghao said, looking a bit guilty. "I should have asked…"

"Mhhm," Qian Shanyi hummed. "It should be safe enough. Most of the ingredients are very similar, and it's generally made to bypass species barriers. Here, take a sip."

Qian Shanyi stepped over to Linghui Mei and put a hand on her shoulder, bringing the beaker to Linghui Mei's lips. The jiuweihu made a strangled, surprised noise, but didn't back away, only grasping the beaker with one hand for stability. When the wine touched her lips, her eyes widened, and she gulped it greedily, like water from the freshest spring after a week out in a desert.

"That's enough for today." Qian Shanyi smirked, suddenly pulling the beaker away.

For a moment, Linghui Mei tried to lean after it, but stopped herself, and jerked back. "It's -" She coughed, wiping her lips. Her cheeks flushed brightly, and she closed her eyes for a moment, steadying herself. "Oh Heavens, that's very strong. But - the taste -"

"That's the infused spiritual energy," Qian Shanyi said, taking a sip herself. "At least partly. Seeing as how you already feed on it, I figured you would have liked it. Best not overdo it, while you are new to it."

Qian Shanyi frankly suspected that Linghui Mei was malnutritioned, at least in terms of her soul. Unsurprising, really, if she had to stretch every feeding as far as she could manage. The signs of it were subtle enough, but Qian Shanyi felt she was slowly improving, just from being in Wang Yonghao's inner world and eating much more regularly.

Qian Shanyi sat down, leaning against the small hill of raised earth around their bath. Wang Yonghao sat down next to her. "Are you good to dance?" she asked Linghui Mei. "Or did I already give you too much?"

"No - it's fine." Linghui Mei coughed again. Her blush wasn't fading, and she grimaced slightly. "How do you two drink this straight?"

"Ample experience," Qian Shanyi and Wang Yonghao said at the same time.

Linghui Mei rolled her eyes at them, smiled, and started to stretch her arms and legs, humming a little tune. "Do cultivators ever dance?" she asked suddenly with casual mirth, "or are you truly barbarians with no culture, unlike us great jiuweihu?"

"I know the Seven Flowers Bloom, of course," Qian Shanyi said, with just a hint of frustration in her voice. "It's the dance my first cultivation law was named after. But dancing has never been my forte."

"Oh, I know that one!" Wang Yonghao said in surprise. "Or at least, I heard of it several times," he clarified, when Qian Shanyi gave him an incredulous look at his admission of knowing a dance made for women. "It's pretty popular among the women, isn't it? But if you don't like dancing - why didn't you just choose another law?"

"What other law?" Qian Shanyi sighed. "You think everyone has a choice of what law to pick, like you? You heard of it because it is simply one of the most widespread. It was developed by the empire back in the day, and is licensed to the sects, for a hefty price." Qian Shanyi gestured with her beaker dismissively. "The only reason most of them pay at all is that now, a sect is required to have some law for all their disciples - and so if they want to recruit women, they have to pay. Some other sects have their own, more advanced laws, and the imperial institutions do as well - but for most women in the empire, it's either that, or Fundamental Recirculation, which is even worse."

"Oh," Wang Yonghao trailed off awkwardly. "Sorry."

"It is what it is," Qian Shanyi said neutrally. "Not much I could do about it on my own."

Quick movement pulled Qian Shanyi's attention back to Linghui Mei. She honestly couldn't tell when the jiuweihu stopped stretching and started dancing - there was no transition, no warning, she simply kept moving faster and faster, twirling her tails around, until she was dancing in full. Her tune transformed as well, words of an unknown language slipping into it, the tempo growing, changing, evolving, and soon it was a true song that spread all across the whole world fragment.

Even if Qian Shanyi could not understand the words, she could still feel the raw emotion in them. Tragic, at first, with Linghui Mei just on the edge of crying - but then it changed, the sun coming out after a long storm, the glint of teeth like rays of sunshine. A song of triumph, or restoration.

The words of it were sharp, guttural - yet in the song, they flowed together like a mountain river, powerful and unstoppable. Qian Shanyi felt herself drawn into their vortex, dragged under the waves and carried along, as Linghui Mei spun and spun and the ribbons twisted through the air. Their flow was so hypnotic she simply couldn't tear her eyes away.

But then, they were past it - and Linghui Mei started to slow down, her song petering out, and vanishing into nothing, leaving behind only an aching silence.

"That was beautiful," Qian Shanyi admitted, giving a little applause. Wang Yonghao joined her as well, though his eyes looked distant.

Even the ribbons looked much better with the spinning style of dance. Perhaps she judged them too harshly.

"Thank you," Linghui Mei preened, giving the two of them a short bow. Her blush from the wine started to fade after the exertion of the dance, and she still seemed to be solid on her feet, despite all that spinning.

"What was the song about?" Qian Shanyi asked.

"It's the tale of how the goddess Nuwa created the first jiuweihu to help her repair the Heavens after the despi - um." Linghui Mei stopped herself, and coughed guiltily. "After the cultivators broke them and caused all manners of catastrophe. The jiuweihu helped her find and smelt the five-colored stones to fix the world."

"Despicable cultivators, you mean?" Qian Shanyi snorted. "You don't need to be shy. We have similar legends as well - the catastrophe you refer to was likely Gu Lingtian's rebellion, though we tell them differently. Nuwa may be a fairly peaceful celestial, but she is still, ultimately, a celestial."

"It's a karmist legend, isn't it?" Wang Yonghao said, frowning slightly, then made a gesture in the air. "Not the jiuweihu part, the repair. Or at least, I think they have a very similar one. I heard it before, and - hm." He scratched his head. "I think I've also heard this song before?"

"You liar!" Linghui Mei blanched. "This - you couldn't have."

"I mean, I can't be sure," he said uncertainly. "But yeah, I think I have. It was - uh. Not far from the Five Sealed Hills region. I think it was… Crimson Cliff Catacombs? They had a small celebration I got invited to, and there was some dancing."

Qian Shanyi raised an eyebrow at Wang Yonghao. "I don't recall you mentioning that sect."

Wang Yonghao sighed. "I forgot, okay? But the song reminded me."

Of course you did.

"A cultivator sect?" Linghui Mei's tone rose again. She clutched the side of her robes, fingers growing white. Her voice cracked a bit. "You liar! How could they know our songs?"

Qian Shanyi gave Linghui Mei a long look. She seemed so vulnerable. If the last of her culture - carefully preserved through the centuries - would be taken, what else would she even have left? "Mei, I know this is painful, but please think this through carefully," Qian Shanyi said patiently. "The jiuweihu lords lived a long time ago, but it's not ancient history. It would be completely natural for some sect to come into possession of their books, or other records. Perhaps they simply learned the dance from there."

Linghui Mei looked away. Her lips trembled a bit. "Thieves and graverobbers. Of course."

"Yes, thieves, but that doesn't make Yonghao a liar."

Linghui Mei was silent for a while. Finally, she sniffed, and wiped a small tear from the corner of her eye. "Fine. I am sorry."

"It's not a big deal," Wang Yonghao said, waving her off. He looked more shocked at Linghui Mei's reaction than at the accusation, really.

Still, this revelation worried Qian Shanyi a bit. Did it mean that there was more to the link between Wang Yonghao and the jiuweihu, or was it simply down to him having been all over the empire, and having seen almost everything there was to see? Was this a sneaky trap built just for them, or was it a statistical inevitability that Wang Yonghao would happen to know at least some obscure fact relevant to pretty much any species?

"We could visit them, see if they have something we can learn," Qian Shanyi continued, deciding to give a bit of a positive spin to the topic. She'd think of wherever it was a true trap later. "Play at being scholars of the jiuweihu ourselves. Stolen or not, if I am right, they would have some information that you lack, Mei."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wang Yonghao grimace as if she just made him swallow an entire lemon. "I'd rather we didn't," he said, "I didn't - uh. We didn't part on good terms."

Oh sweet mercy, what now?

Qian Shanyi met his eyes calmly. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Wang Yonghao burst out, guilt written plain on his face.

Qian Shanyi just kept her gaze steady, slowly arching one eyebrow, higher and higher, until finally Wang Yonghao just couldn't take it anymore. "Look," he began, "I think they tried to get me to join, and one thing led to another, I thought they were too creepy and decided to leave. On the way out I must have taken the wrong turn and ended up in this underground complex - lots of tunnels - ran through it, and I guess they thought I was a thief. We got into a fight, I won, and then fled for my life - but when I checked my pockets later, there was this really creepy black book, black-red fog coming off it and everything. Must have slipped in during all the fighting in their library, so maybe they weren't completely wrong in the end."

Qian Shanyi stared at Wang Yonghao incredulously. She wasn't even sure where to begin. He squirmed under her gaze, but stayed silent.

She decided to start simple. "There was no such book in your inner world," she said, "What happened to it?"

"I threw it in a lake, I think."

Nevermind, nothing that involved this man could ever be simple. "A lake."

Wang Yonghao shrugged guiltily. "Yes? I wasn't going to keep it around."

"Which lake?"

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember." Qian Shanyi rubbed her nose in frustration. "You threw a no doubt priceless manual. Into a lake. And you don't even remember which?"

"Look, I guess you just had to be there," Wang Yonghao said, and turned away. "It was probably full of demonic techniques in the first place."

"Faultless logic," Qian Shanyi deadpanned.

Though perhaps he wasn't entirely wrong. Qian Shanyi was still puzzled by the fact that despite some of Wang Yonghao's escapades, he remained largely unknown throughout the empire. If the manual was legitimate, the theft would have been a serious matter - the sect should have reported it to the spirit hunters, at the very least. But if the "stolen" manual itself was illegal - well, that was a different matter entirely.

"Whatever the case may be, it seems we really can't have you showing up in their city," Qian Shanyi finally admitted. "Perhaps me and Mei could still take a short detour there - Five Sealed Hills should be close enough to where we would be heading, as soon as we leave this town."

"And where is that?" Linghui Mei asked curiously. Wang Yonghao's explanation gave her some time to calm down, especially since she didn't have the context to truly feel the absurdity of what he just said.

"Right, we never told you," Qian Shanyi said, snapping her fingers. "Jade Heavenly Peak, out in the lands of the Solar Whirligig. Unless you would mind? We planned this before you really entered the picture."

"No, it's fine," Linghui Mei said, coming over to sit next to them. "I don't… have to be anywhere in particular for a good while."

"Excellent." Qian Shanyi grinned. "Then Jade Heavenly Peak it is." She turned to Wang Yonghao. "Remind me, how do you know the name? You said the entire compound was in ruins."

"I called it that because it's in ruins," Wang Yonghao responded. "All the ancient mountaintop ruins are called that in the empire, followed by a number. If it's in the plains, it's Lush Valley, forests are Gardens, and so on."

"Interesting." Qian Shanyi said. "I didn't know this."

She had read a fair share of history, but applied archaeology always felt a bit too… backwards-looking for her tastes.

Wang Yonghao shrugged. "It's not really relevant to anyone except the archaeologists working on those ruins. I run into them a fair amount, so the names come up, and I guess the idea got stuck in my head, even if this one is outside the empire."

"Solar Whirligig used to be outside the empire," Qian Shanyi corrected Wang Yonghao automatically. "They joined… A couple years ago, I think. I remember hearing about it - another decade, and they'd be a full province."

Wang Yonghao shrugged, completely indifferent to all the weight of what that represented. Perhaps she'd talk his ears off later, if she ever found the time. "In any case," he continued, "it's this ancient sect compound up in the mountains, with all sorts of Heavenly iconography. I was there only briefly because of another teleportation mishap, but I remember seeing a lot of lu symbols, and a fair amount of bats."

Qian Shanyi nodded. "Symbol of divination and luck," she explained to Linghui Mei, "Bats are also associated with it. And even if the compound itself does not hold a lot of secrets, the towns around it might. Old books, secrets passed down from father to son. As good a place to start as any, if we are to find the source of Wang Yonghao's luck. That they have only recently joined the empire should even give us a bit of cover - all sorts of other scholars and builders would be flocking to the region."

She took another sip of the wine, and offered the beaker to Linghui Mei, who refused it. Jiuweihu's forehead was creased with a puzzled frown. "I don't…" Linghui Mei sighed. "I don't understand. Why do the two of you even want cover from the empire?"

Qian Shanyi raised her eyebrows in surprise. "I wouldn't have expected you of all people to ask this."

Frankly, even just a short while ago, she wouldn't have expected Linghui Mei to ask anything at all. Encouraging, that she was finally starting to do so more regularly.

Linghui Mei scowled at her, ignorant of the compliments Qian Shanyi was making within the safety of her own mind. "I want nothing to do with that gang of butchers!" she growled, before sighing, her expression relaxing. "But you are not me. I know you still trust your empire… So why don't you go to them for help?"

Wang Yonghao laughed. "Because I don't want to be cut up, like a frog in anatomy class?"

Qian Shanyi rolled her eyes at him. "You are exaggerating, Yonghao," she said, "The empire would want to study you, yes, but forcing you is plain inefficient. No, I'd expect them to offer you a handsome salary instead, keep you on their side through gifts."

"Yeah right." Wang Yonghao laughed. "As if I'd believe they would be that gracious. Plenty of horrors in their coffers."

"That's just conjecture. Unless you have been to an imperial research facility?"

Wang Yonghao shook his head. "Not a running one. A half-collapsed one though, yeah, I've seen that. Gruesome stuff."

"From which era?" Qian Shanyi asked, growing more and more irritated by the second.

"How should I know from which era? And what does it matter, anyways?"

"Because the empire changes, you idiot," Qian Shanyi snapped. "Back at the start of Zhang's reign, a Shui Gui couldn't even walk into town without being slaughtered. What matters is what the empire would do to you today, not what it would have done two centuries ago."

"And how do you even know it changed in this respect?" Wang Yonghao said, crossing his arms on his chest. "Been to those secret facilities yourself?"

Qian Shanyi pursed her lips. "There'd be signs, if it didn't." she said, but even she herself didn't feel that that argument was all that convincing.

"Alright, sure, say it changed," Wang Yonghao continued, nodding along. "Is the empire just going to forget all the shit I've been involved in for the past two decades?"

Qian Shanyi opened her mouth to respond, then immediately closed it, running over what she knew of Wang Yonghao's life, with big error margins for his terrible memory. "You would probably get amnesty for… most of it?" she said slowly. "At least, as long as they get to look at your luck and figure out how it ticks."

"And what if it doesn't tick?" Wang Yonghao immediately asked. "It's not like I can snap my fingers and call it to action. It just happens. What if it stops happening, because the Heavens turn the luck faucet off as soon as I go to the empire? Do I just lie down and quietly accept my death then?" He shook his head. "You are hiding from a spirit hunter yourself, but you still trust them to be good?"

"My sect sent him, not the empire."

"Sure. But the empire will still let him drag you away, won't it?"

Qian Shanyi's thoughts turned back to Lan Yu, the postmaster of Xiaohongshan, and the help she got in the end. "The empire and the sects are not as friendly as you imagine," Qian Shanyi said tersely, "and this is a complex situation."

Wang Yonghao shook his head. "Yeah, I'd rather stick it out on our own."

Qian Shanyi sighed. Best to drop this line of argument. "I agree that you should, even if our reasons for it are different."

Wang Yonghao gave her an incredulous look. "You sounded so sure that I should do it a minute ago. What changed?"

"Nothing." Qian Shanyi snorted, finding her footing again. "I am just saying the empire isn't necessarily the one you should be concerned about." She paused, thinking over how to phrase her vague instincts. "I am worried you might be bait."

"Bait?" Another, equally incredulous look. "For who?"

"The empire." Qian Shanyi said, "Look, take those research facilities again, reinforced against all manner of threats. Suppose you were the Heavens, and you wanted to blow such a facility up. How would you go about it?"

Wang Yonghao swallowed. He looked down on his chest, and patted around with one hand, making sure that everything was still in place. "You are saying I am… A bomb, or something?" he said cautiously, "As soon as I am inside, my soul will detonate, or even worse?"

Qian Shanyi shrugged. "I am saying I don't know, but it's possible. The empire is built to do the obvious thing first and foremost, without deviation. It's consistent, but also rigid, predictable." She sipped her wine again. "Think of it like this: if you knew that your opponent in shatranj would always choose a move that captured your piece when given the chance, could you set a trap for them?"

Wang Yonghao nodded immediately. "Yeah. Pretty easily, actually."

"That's what I mean," Qian Shanyi said, gesturing towards him. "Your luck, your inner world - either of those are perfect, irresistible bait. This doesn't mean they are - but it means there is a chance, and I would advise you not to risk it, at least until we know better."

Wang Yonghao nodded, though she could tell that the possibility he was some kind of weapon unnerved him greatly. Not so much that he couldn't get over it, with any hope.

"I see," Linghui Mei said neutrally, once no further clarifications seemed to be coming. But her frown did not go away.

"You look like you have another question."

Linghui Mei nodded again. "You said we would be leaving. How soon?"

"Within a week at most. Staying here any longer is too dangerous, with the spirit hunter on my trail."

Linghui Mei nodded grimly. Perhaps that was what she wanted to ask all along. "So why not leave now?"

"Because he'd catch us," Qian Shanyi explained. "We first need to create an opportunity - some distance between us, a distraction, something I could use to slip through his grip. But we are on the clock. For now, he can't accuse me directly, because I am under Jian Wei's protection. He needs evidence - and ultimately, there is one form of evidence I could not argue against."

Qian Shanyi considered going to get her map of the region, but she felt too lazy. Instead, she waved her hand in the air, and circulated the Crushing Glance of the Netherworld Eyes, making a crude approximation of the map appear in mid air.

"We are about twelve days away from Golden Rabbit Bay by ship," she said, gesturing to it. "If he sent a letter to my sect, informing them of where I am, then in perhaps fifteen days or so one of my Elders might fly over here, and could personally testify that I am indeed their disciple. Before they arrive, I need to be already gone. That's our hard limit. To be on the safe side, we have at most a week to guarantee we can get away, even with Fang Jiugui and Wang Yonghao's luck working against us."

Linghui Mei nodded in understanding. She didn't seem to relax so much as settle in a different state of worry - one of background concentration instead of acute anxiety. A familiar transformation to Qian Shanyi, to be sure.

Qian Shanyi slid further down on the grass, laying down instead of sitting, and raised her beaker upwards, letting the light pass through the wine. She stared at it with mute curiosity, as if this bit of glass with her greasy fingerprints could grant her some revelation, into Fang Jiugui, how to escape from him, or at least into how he found her.

"It's ironic, you know?" Qian Shanyi continued, some thought stirring in the back of her mind, but still too vague to really parse it. "That which keeps me safe for now is the very thing Fang Jiugui can use to prove my identity, if only he dared."

"What is it?" Wang Yonghao asked, disrupting her thoughts. Probably nothing important.

"I wrote a letter to Jian Wei, to ask him for a meeting," Qian Shanyi said. "It's no doubt still stored somewhere in their archives, and a careful look would reveal that it's in the same handwriting as my letter back to my sect. But Fang Jiugui cannot be certain that such a letter even exists - at most, he can suspect it. If he were to ask to see the sect records - it might as well be an accusation, one that would put him into a very aggressive - and thus vulnerable - position. I think he is too careful of a pursuer to take that gamble, at least until he runs out of other options. That was probably why he was in the postal office - but thankfully my report about the tribulation had already been sent out."

Determination appeared in Linghui Mei's eyes, displacing some of her earlier worry. "So we'd have to destroy that letter?" she said.

Qian Shanyi shrugged lazily. "Perhaps," she said, "But I cannot simply go sneaking through the sect like a thief, I would get caught. Nor can you, for that matter. I need an excuse to talk to Liu Yufei again, to sound her out. I still don't have a good read on that woman, but ideally, I could just bribe her, make that letter vanish. If not that - then at least I might catch a glimpse of where they keep such low-importance documents, and perhaps swipe it myself. And I think I have just such an excuse."

Qian Shanyi turned over onto her side, facing the other two. "Jian Wei wanted me to make a bank account," she said, a slight grin playing on her lips. "Once it is established - it would be completely natural for me to bring the confirmation to them in person, no?"

---

The office of the Thrifty Bat Bank was a squat building, only two stories tall. Its twin doors were made out of redwood, with the eponymous bat painted on them in thin lines of gold, framed by bright red lanterns hanging off the walls, and windows blocked by decorative grates. A short staircase led up to it from the street, welcoming all incomers - though by the time Qian Shanyi arrived, it was so early in the morning that it was still closed, and she had to wait.

It stood not far from the center of Glaze Ridge, just a couple streets away from the compound of the Northern Scarlet Stream sect - but the building was merely the facade. The true bank was the reinforced bunker of stone and metal beneath it, going deep down into the ground, full of narrow hallways and clerks deciding hundreds of fates with a single stroke of their brush.

It was, in truth, a fortress. A sect compound was a place of work and study, and could not survive without a constant influx of goods and people - but a bank was built around its vault, and its primary purpose was to stop any and all outsiders from getting in. Only gold might flow through it - and even that, only as far as the bank allowed it.

Once Qian Shanyi presented her letter of introductions from Jian Wei, she was welcomed into a plain negotiation room, with a table, a couple chairs, a ready tea set, as well as some writing supplies, and left to wait for the head of the branch. She was also told in no uncertain terms that she should not open the door on her own, or to use any cultivation technique, even a minor one.

An understandable precaution, though she was mildly surprised they decided to leave her alone in the first place. There was probably an alarm: the walls of the room were absolutely plastered with an enormously complicated ink formation, covering every square centimeter of space. It felt inactive, but Qian Shanyi wouldn't bet on it herself.

She spent some time trying to puzzle its structure apart in the dim glint of an oil lamp, and, best as she could tell, one small part of it was intended to muffle noise, and another to block out spiritual energy - but frankly, it was far beyond her. So much so, that she didn't even have the prerequisite knowledge to understand how far beyond.

Thankfully, she wasn't given enough time to grow frustrated with her own ignorance. Fifteen minutes after she was left in the room, the door flew open, and in strolled a tall, incredibly muscular man, wearing a skin-tight suit and a long cape held up by a single clasp around his throat. A skin-tight suit that left very little to the imagination: his legs and arms were entirely bare, each as large around as Qian Shanyi's head.

"Fellow cultivator Qian!" the man boomed, spreading his arms as if he was going to give her a bear hug. Qian Shanyi dearly hoped he wouldn't, or else she might not survive to see the sunset. "Welcome!"

Qian Shanyi had heard some people describe the tanned skin of sailors as golden, but this man's skin literally glistened like the surface of a coin, and his completely bald head only further cemented the image of a metallic statue. A body fundamentalist with a great reinforcement technique, and in building foundation stage at that.

There was only one person this could be.

"Honorable manager Li, I presume?" she said, rising out of her seat with a smile, and gave him a formal bow.

"The very same! Li Zhong, at your service," Li Zhong said, bowing deeply as well. He reached behind him, and closed the door. "I am always pleased to greet another valued customer."

Qian Shanyi waited until Li Zhong was seated, and then sat down herself. "I would hardly call myself valuable before I brought your bank any value," she said deferentially, reaching over to pour both of them some tea.

A glint of amused recognition reflected back at her from Li Zhong's eyes. For all that the manager seemed simple and brash on the surface, she doubted that was the whole of it. Jian Wei would not have cooperated with someone like that.

"My disciple told me about your tribulation," Li Zhong said, accepting the cup she offered him. "A zodiac - really blood-boiling stuff! I've only seen it once before, myself. And you passed through it with barely an injury!"

"I had great allies," Qian Shanyi said politely. "Or else, I would not have survived it at all."

"Ha!" Li Zhong burst out again, slapping his leg with his free hand. "But you did survive! And was your duel against Jian Shizhe a group effort as well?"

"It was, in part."

"Hah. Humble to the end, I see," Li Zhong said, shaking his head. He leaned forwards, conspiratorially. "You know, Jian Wei is my close friend. He already told me you weren't really working for him - you don't have to pretend here. You can tell this here cultivator what really happened."

Qian Shanyi raised one eyebrow at him. It was plausible for Jian Wei to do that, of course - but just as plausible for this to be a test, or a little fishing expedition. In either case, the answer was all the same. "I would of course be happy to tell you whatever you would like to hear, honorable cultivator Li," she said neutrally, "but I am afraid that in this case, it would be merely fiction. After all, I really have been working for Jian Wei."

Li Zhong grin widened a fraction before he leaned back. "What admirable loyalty!" He laughed again, and took out a folded-up stack of papers from a pocket within his cloak. "You know, if you really are such a group worker, my disciples train every day at the central square. Why not share some pointers with them? Maybe you'd even decide to become a body fundamentalist like us!"

Qian Shanyi nodded. "I have seen them there, I believe," she said seriously, "I've considered it, if I ever get enough free time in my day."

In reality, she doubted she would get much more time for training in this town.

Li Zhong grinned again, and slapped his stack of papers on the table, smoothing out the creases. "Well, I've wasted enough of your time," he said, "let's talk business. The letter said you'd want an account for dealing with the Northern Scarlet Stream sect? If so, I am thinking a small line of credit wouldn't hurt either."

Qian Shanyi's heart skipped a beat. A line of credit would be frankly incredible, given her and Wang Yonghao's current money problems. An infusion of cash whenever they needed it, to be paid off with a windfall later? It would fit his luck perfectly. Even if it would surely be a small line of credit, it would still be invaluable.

Qian Shanyi smiled politely, keeping her true excitement off her face. "Honorable cultivator Li, I do not wish to take up your valuable time either," she said, leaning forwards. "The credit line would be appreciated, of course, but I am not here to haggle over chump change. I am here for my entire sect - we are trying to get back on our own two feet, and we cannot do so without help. But I have been told that the Thrifty Bat Bank is the best friend any sect can ask for. So let us talk about what really matters."

By the golden glint of his eyes, she could tell that he understood her meaning completely.

---

After everything had been signed, Li Zhong led Qian Shanyi to the entrance, and wished her all the best, saying to come back in the evening for the finished documents. That woman clearly had a good head on her shoulders - he was starting to regret letting Jian Wei so easily snap her up into his circle of influence.

Once the door had closed behind her, he returned to the counter, to talk to Lin Mei and Zhao, who were serving clients today. He'd need at least two people to deal with the new account - Lin Mei would be good, and someone new, to give them some experience. Books had to be amended, ledgers extended, and even the vault would need a look. If Qian Shanyi wanted the account for her entire sect, then they'd need artifact storage eventually. Best to make sure they paid the Thrifty Bat Bank, and not someone else.

A new golden cloud had come over the horizon, raining coins. Now he just had to steer it so it rained over his fields, and not his neighbors.

The bell on the door rang only a minute later, and Li Zhong raised his eyebrows in surprise, turning around to face the newcomer. He sensed him long before he came to the door - but he expected the man to pass by, and not enter without an invitation.

Tired eyes beneath a head of messy hair met Li Zhong's, the long leather coat almost getting caught in the door. "Honorable manager Li," Fang Jiugui drawled, grinning from ear to ear, just as the smell of strong, acrid alcohol hit Li Zhong's nose. "Could you spare a minute?"

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: If you want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to SEVEN more chapters, over on my patreon.
Thanks to all my patrons (FaintlySorcerous, Galestorm_Winds and 58 others)! If you are one and would like to be credited by name, please send me a message.
I also have a discord server, where I post memes I make about FSE, and occasionally discuss some plans and worldbuilding details. You can also ask personal questions to the characters, and get their answers.​

---

Lin Mei ducked behind her counter, eyeing Fang Jiugui over the top as he strolled into the bank. The strange, greasy cultivator had introduced himself to them just a day ago. But today, he seemed different - more active, grinning like a fox that snuck into a henhouse, as he approached Li Zhong at a casual speed. And Li Zhong…

Li Zhong was tense. It would have been impossible to tell if she hadn't been his disciple for years - but he was really tense.

Lin Mei learned many things in her life. She learned how to farm, and then she learned how to cultivate. She even learned how to read. But what she never learned was what Li Zhong looked like when he fought someone. He sparred with them, of course - but it was a peaceful time, he said, and nobody ever tried to attack their bank.

She felt like she might finally learn it today. There was tension in the air, just like before a thunderstorm.

"But of course!" Li Zhong laughed, but it was a different laugh, not the kind he had when he joked around - the kind he had when he tried to look a little more like a big golden goof. Lin Mei didn't get to hear it very often. "What is it you might need, fellow cultivator Fang?"

Li Zhong motioned towards the door to his office, leading the other cultivator along - and out of the foyer. There wasn't anyone else in the bank yet, aside from her and Zhao. He just wanted to get this man away from his disciples.

"Should have just stayed on the farm," Lin Mei muttered, sinking even deeper below the counter. It was reinforced with steel, but it probably wouldn't be enough, if two building foundation cultivators went at it. Zhao, at her side, did much the same. "Married a good farmer boy. Who made my parents send me to the city?"

"You are too stubborn to be a good farm woman," Zhao whispered next to her. "And the bank would have been darker without you here."

Fang Jiugui pulled out his flask, and took a long sip, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "It's really just a trifle," he said, following after, but just a hair bit slower - and then he suddenly half-stumbled, leaning against a wall, and stopped entirely. His sword was hidden behind his long, leather cloak, only the very tip of the sheath poking out. "Fate had put me on the trail of a certain personage, and the best lead comes from your bank."

"A lead?" Li Zhong said, with mock surprise, stopping in his tracks. Something subtle changed in his posture, and he stepped around, between Fang Jiugui, and the bank counter. "What kind?"

"The barest hint of a rumor," Fang Jiugui laughed a little. "Nothing serious. It's about the Sky Void Island sect."

"The Sky Void Island sect… The Sky Void Island sect…" Li Zhong said, scratching his shiny dome of a head, as if Lin Mei didn't get papers from him with that same name just a minute ago, "Ah!" he said, snapping his fingers. "Isn't that the sect of fellow cultivator Qian? The one who won that duel just yesterday? I suppose you think she is our customer, and want to look at her papers?"

Fang Jiugui nodded. "It's always a pleasure to find an understanding man."

"Oh, don't I know it!" Li Zhong laughed, his loud voice shaking the walls. "Of course, of course. The Thrifty Bat Bank always cooperates with the empire, even if it's about one of our valued customers. You can hand the warrant over to Lin Mei there, and she'll show you around."

Li Zhong motioned to the counter, but Fang Jiugui didn't move from his spot. "It's just a small lead -" he began.

"Let me rephrase that," Li Zhong cut him off, suddenly deadly serious. "Either show me the warrant, or get the fuck out of my bank before I decide to use your skull as a stress ball."

He flexed a fist for emphasis. The two building foundation cultivators stared each other down: Li Zhong with a blank, emotionless face, and Fang Jiugui with that same light grin. The tension in the air grew until you could cut it with a knife.

"My apologies," Fang Jiugui finally said, and turned around, heading for the doors.

Lin Mei exhaled the tension she held. She really didn't want to be learning any new lessons today.

Li Zhong stared after him for a good minute, before he exhaled as well, shook his head, and headed back to the counter. His face was still grim. "Didn't expect to see that one today. What was he thinking, dropping in on me without an invitation?" he grumbled surprisingly quietly. "Send a runner to Jian Wei. He'd want to know that his protege had been involved in some shady bullshit."

Lin Mei calmly nodded. Li Zhong always taught her to never be surprised at anything, even if she never managed to learn that particular lesson. "Should I abort the account creation process as well?" she asked.

"What?" Li Zhong asked, frowning in confusion. "No, of course not. Shady bullshit is how we make our best money. Make sure it has priority."

---

Qian Shanyi sipped her tea, and glanced out over the central square of Glaze Ridge. It changed with every visit: with only a day having passed after her fateful duel, the sand and dust still clung to walls and rooftops, to signs and windows. The various establishments had done their best to clean, of course, and most of the floors were already back to normal - but there was only so much you could do in a single day. It would take a good rain for the square to really start to shine again.

It was early morning, and she was waiting on Jian Shizhe, and finishing up her novel to pass the time. When she went to meet with him directly, she was told he was taking a bath. She could sense his spiritual energy through the walls, which meant he sensed her as well, and yet he still didn't come out - so instead of waiting around, she simply left a message with his servants. If he wanted to avoid her, she wouldn't waste her time.

The restaurant she decided to patronize this time was the same one that was hit by the glass shambler's jaw. It still hung above the door, now secured in place with a bit of rope. A canny decision, to capitalize on the duel - and by forcing Jian Shizhe to visit, she'd make him passively endorse it as well. Qian Shanyi hoped they could at least get a discount on the food out of it.

She was sitting on the second floor, having taken a nicely shaded table, with her back to the balcony railing, and a great view of the square. As her gaze passed over it, she spotted Fang Jiugui, entering from an alleyway on the diametrically opposite side. This was the first she had seen of him since last evening - which proved little, as the building foundation cultivator could track her from beyond the range of her senses - but it might have implied he ran out of other leads to investigate.

Even if she hadn't seen the man himself, she was sure he still kept track of her. She had spotted Scar, the outer disciple from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect, tailing her around town since this morning. If she wasn't already expecting something like this, she might have missed him - he'd changed out of his sect robes, and didn't approach too close. Either he was showing a surprising amount of foolish courage, to be poking his nose into cultivator business, or (much more likely) Fang Jiugui simply paid him to keep track of her while he was out investigating other leads.

She considered giving him the slip - but for now, decided against it. She wasn't doing anything she needed to keep particularly secret, and simply knowing the tail was there - without the Scar knowing she knew - was an advantage best kept in reserve.

But as the saying went, every tail grows out of an ass - which brought her back to Fang Jiugui. What was he scheming?

It was fairly likely he knew about her visit to the Thrifty Bat Bank. Perhaps he would have gone there as well, but she had already anticipated this, and made sure to alter her handwriting on all the documents, enough she very much doubted they could serve as conclusive evidence. But she couldn't be absolutely sure, either.

Impossible to guess. At least she could be sure of one thing - for now, he still didn't have enough on her to go for the direct accusation, but that could change at any time. They had something of a plan for how to deal with him - Wang Yonghao should be looking into his "abode" just about now, to see if he could find something they could use - but it was still too loose and full of holes. Just one step away from disaster.

What she needed most were anchors. The more people would lose face from her being found out to be a sect runaway, the more people would have a direct stake in making sure she was never found out. Her deal with Jian Wei had already secured him, and if the Thrifty Bat Bank would grant her an account, that would be a second one - but would it be enough?

Feeling Jian Shizhe finally entering her sensory range brought her out of her grim ruminations. Teaching him was still her best method of remaining in Jian Wei's good graces. From where she sat, she had a good view of the little pest as he appeared on top of the stairs.

His clothes surprised her quite a bit. He had taken off his usual, armor-like leather cuirass, and now wore fairly ordinary robes of an inner disciple from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect, together with a wide-brimmed hat - one angled such that she couldn't really see his expression. Perhaps he wanted to keep a low profile, avoid further humiliation, seeing as how he still lacked a sword. She doubted it would work - his foot was wooden, and obvious to everyone in how it clacked across the floor - but the man likely had little experience in such matters.

When he came up to her table, she finally got a glance at his face. He no longer looked furious - merely extremely pissed off, as he took the only other seat at her table.

Qian Shanyi placed it there deliberately, moving all other chairs away, so that he would end up sitting with his back to the restaurant. She wanted people to know he was here, but not so much to see his face. It wasn't a sight conducive to good digestion.

Nor hear his annoying voice. Qian Shanyi shifted her foot under the table, and moved the last sound muffling talisman into place, quieting the noise of the square around them. "You are late," she said, by means of an introduction, looking down onto her book.

"You are a bitch," Jian Shizhe immediately cut back.

"True, but also irrelevant."

He scowled at her. She was already starting to forget how his normal face looked. "The message said to be here in half an hour," he said, in the tone of a child asked to explain why his room was still not cleaned. "I am here half an hour after I got it. What is the problem?"

Qian Shanyi tapped her cheek, humming in thought. "An interesting point of view," she said. "Unfortunately, your instructor - me - does not subscribe to this theory. Your punishment for stalling on receiving the message itself will be that you won't get a choice of what to eat, since I have already ordered dumplings for both of us."

Jian Shizhe very, very slowly exhaled. "Why am I here?" he said through clenched teeth.

Qian Shanyi raised her eyebrow and looked up, closing her book and putting it aside. That was a decent question, for once, and was even phrased well. It definitely deserved her attention. "We are going to do a bit of work to repair some of your reputation," she explained. "Or perhaps I should say rebuild, since it's more akin to a building that had been leveled down to its foundations."
"My reputation is fine."

"Your reputation is that of a rabid dog who is too dangerous to be around," Qian Shanyi cut back, leaning onto the table. "Perhaps this is fine for you and your philosophy, but for a disciple of Jian Wei, for one of the likely heirs of the Northern Scarlet River sect, that is simply unacceptable."

She held his gaze for a moment, to let her words sink in, before she shrugged with one shoulder. "Fortunately, we have a unique opportunity! Everyone in town has heard about our duel. So after we eat a nice lunch," she gestured vaguely towards the table, keeping her tone neutral, but not open to objections. "You will take me by the elbow. You will smile. And then we will go around town and visit a couple dozen stores -"

"What?!" Jian Shizhe burst out.

"- we will make conversation," Qian Shanyi continued regardless. "We will be seen. And hopefully, if you have any luck at all, other people will start to think that you can behave like an actual human being, even with someone you dueled just a day ago."

"This -" Jian Shizhe stood up from the table, furious. "Are you - this is some kind of perverted courtship!"

Qian Shanyi laughed softly. "Please. You wish. Now sit back down, people are looking at you."

Jian Shizhe glared at her, but he did sit. "This is unacceptable!" he hissed at her. "I would rather eat dirt than be seen alongside the likes of you!"

"You can refuse, of course, in which case I will simply beat you with a stick for failing to follow my orders," Qian Shanyi said dryly, then blinked, as if the idea just crossed her mind. "In fact, please refuse, I would much prefer to do that. Perhaps I'll get some volunteers from your sect to join as well - we could turn this into a collective exercise."

"What is your angle in this?" Jian Shizhe said suspiciously, completely undeterred by the prospect of serving as a communal beating bag. "Will you seek marriage next? My uncle can order me to do many things, but this is beyond the pale!"

Qian Shanyi groaned, rubbing her face with one hand. "Junior, we've been over this," she said, tapping two fingers of her other hand on the table for emphasis. "I don't care what you think of me. I don't care if you feel humiliated. I don't even care that much if you live or die. All I care about is turning you into a serviceable direct disciple for Elder Jian. That is my one, singular goal in all of this."

She leaned forwards, pointing her finger in Jian Shizhe's face. "So what I need you to do is quickly figure out how to plaster a smile on your face - or, if you can't manage that, at least remove the damned grimace - and avoid making a scene for a couple heavens-damned hours."

Her actual angle in choosing this particular exercise was to publicly link herself to the Jian family as tightly as possible. Like two prisoners chained together - either we both sink, or we both swim. But she couldn't very much say that.

Jian Shizhe scowled much harder than before. He reared back, preparing to go on another tired tirade - but Qian Shanyi got ahead of him. "Ah-ah-ah!" she said, wagging her finger. "Remember the smile! People can't hear you right now, but they certainly can see."

She gestured towards the square beyond the balcony's railing. Their table was obscured by a pair of screens, so it was not entirely exposed - only mostly so.

Jian Shizhe glanced over as well, and something seemed to finally catch traction in that brain of his, because he blew out all the air out of his lungs in one powerful exhale. His face smoothed out, the grimace turning into a merely curled upper lip.

"Better," Qian Shanyi congratulated him. "But I need a smile. That's it, that's all you have to do."

Jian Shizhe glared at her, and then a spark of cunning passed through his eyes. "So, in other words," Jian Shizhe said, actually beginning to grin, "as long as I smile, I can do whatever else I want? Is that your order, oh honorable instructor?"

"Anything that will not further damage your reputation."

"Can I insult you?"

Easiest trade of her life.

"Certainly, however you want," she said casually. "But only for as long as we are within this sound muffling formation."

Some people on the street could still read his lips, of course - but in the end, it was his own choice.

"And you, as my… instructor… will not do anything about it?"

Qian Shanyi picked up her cup, distracted by an errant line of thought. How many people out there could even read lips? Qian Shanyi couldn't.

Hm. Fang Jiugui probably could. He seemed like the type who'd pick up the skill. She saw him still keeping watch over the two of them, leaning against a wall all the way across the square.

Could she be sure?

It's impolite to stare, Qian Shanyi mouthed at Fang Jiugui when their eyes crossed for a moment, concealing her mouth from Jian Shizhe with her book. What happened to cultivator courtesy?

She saw Fang Jiugui's chest move with laughter. So either he really could, or he was just bluffing, by correctly guessing she'd made a joke. More likely the former. It wasn't much, but every bit of information might be critical to their escape.

"No," Qian Shanyi finally said, tearing her eyes away and focusing back on Jian Shizhe. If Fang Jiugui was here, it meant he wasn't investigating the rest of the town, which should be to her advantage - and she didn't care what he thought about Jian Shizhe. "I'll even swear I won't say a word of it to Jian Wei."

Jian Shizhe's grin grew even wider. "In that case…" he said, and began a torrent of curses and invectives so vile he would blend in well with some of the sailors Qian Shanyi knew. She wondered where he even managed to learn so many - perhaps from some of those letter articles, or perhaps from an occasional loose cultivator.

At first, Qian Shanyi held his stare, but she quickly lost her interest, and opened her book again. It really went on for a good while.

"Are you just about done?" Qian Shanyi asked him, when his flow seemed to have petered out.

"Cheap whore," Jian Shizhe threw in at last, and then leaned back, a satisfied smirk playing on his face.

Qian Shanyi nodded, and closed her book, setting it at her side. Giving him a harmless outlet for all his emotions was going to be helpful, but she couldn't just leave it like that. "Alright," she said, "like I have promised, I won't say a word of this to anyone else. However, as your instructor, I must naturally correct any deficiencies you might have in any of your skills - and your cursing is completely unacceptable."

"Oh what?" Jian Shizhe scoffed. "Will you lecture me on propriety?"

"Propriety?" Qian Shanyi laughed. "Junior, I am saying that while your insults are certainly varied, they are pathetically weak. You are like a child who picked up his father's heavy sword and is swinging it around with no direction - more of a danger to his own fingers than anyone else."

That seemed to have put him on the back foot - but surprisingly, he seemed to be listening. Perhaps after last night, he at least learned to do that much.

Qian Shanyi snorted. "Take that last one," she continued, giving him a pitying look. "Cheap whore? Please. Junior, I am keenly aware of my own promiscuity. I do not even hide it, so how do you imagine bringing it up would hurt me?"

That was more than a bit of a lie. The only reason she was this open in this town was because she had transcended the tribulation, and now even won a duel. Without that reputational safety blanket, thick enough to let practically anything slide, she wouldn't have given people easy ammunition to dismiss her.

"If we were in public," she continued, "where my honor would need defending - it would be another matter, but here? In private, within a sound muffling formation? From you, who couldn't hope to get into my robes for all the treasures in the world? You might as well be complimenting me for all the good it would do to you."

"You -"

Qian Shanyi suddenly leaned forwards, slapping the table. "The purpose of an insult is to hurt!" she said. "It is no different from a sword strike. It may hurt reputation, or pride, or self-esteem, or even honor, but it must hurt. And in order to hurt, it must strike at some weakness, some insecurity."

Jian Shizhe crossed his arms on his chest. She wasn't sure if she was getting through to him, but this was mostly a distraction in the first place, to keep his mind away from what they'd be doing later.

"For example, if I were to insult you," she continued, gesturing to Jian Shizhe's robes. "I would have said that that 'armor' you thankfully stopped wearing looked like the shiny shell of a cockroach, crawling all over the kitchen floor, just asking to be squashed to death by the light swing of my sandal. Then, by analyzing your perspiration, breath, heartbeat, and the bright crimson color that your face is rapidly assuming at this very moment, I could have easily seen that my curse had hit its mark. Because it directly struck at your pride, which you have in over-abundance, because it related to your recent humiliating loss to me, and because it further reinforced your entirely imagined sense of disempowerment."

Out of the corner of her eye, Qian Shanyi saw a waitress coming over with their order, and waved her over, leaning back in her chair again. "Our dumplings are here," she said soberly, "So, here is a task for you while we eat: analyze what you know of me, and make a list of what you consider to be my potential weak points. Then come up with an insult that might - might - at least scratch me. You won't succeed, but it's the exercise that counts. Then we'll do the same insecurity analysis for you, and perhaps you'd at least know what you have to work on."

---

Qian Shanyi returned to her tavern after three hours of, frankly, very miserable walk-and-talk with Jian Shizhe. To some of his credit, he just about managed to keep his temper, and restrained himself from glaring at her… too much. He even managed a smile, some of the time. She still had to take up the entire burden of talking to the shopkeepers, as he was content to let her lead him around.

At least most of the town now knew she worked for Jian Wei - no way for him to toss her overboard without losing face.

Would he agree with her about the needed improvements to the reputation of Jian Shizhe? She certainly hoped so. If he didn't, then even if the effect was good… It would be rough.

Her worries only grew throughout the day. She lost track of Fang Jiugui about halfway through their walk, though Scar still stuck around. The hunter was working on his own plans, out there in the darkness - and only the future could tell who among them would prevail.

As she headed towards her rooms, a familiar voice called from behind her, interrupting her thoughts. "Oh, honorable immortal - there is a letter for you!"

Qian Shanyi stopped, and turned around, coming face to face with… Linghui Mei. She blinked twice in surprise, before she realized that this had to be the original tavern maid, and not the jiuweihu.

The maid ran up to her and stopped a respectable distance away, leaning on her knees to catch her breath. She had been wearing old robes, patched up in places - her best ones having been stolen, and then torn apart by Linghui Mei.

Qian Shanyi gave her time to breathe. "A letter?" she asked curiously, "What kind?"

"It's been - it's with this strange black bird," the maid said, gesturing back through the corridor. "A runner from - from the post office brought it, said it's for you. We left it in the kitchens to wait."

Both of Qian Shanyi's eyebrows flew up in shock. "I see," she said, already heading where the maid had directed her, though slowing her step to match that of an ordinary person.

Strange black birds delivering letters meant only one thing - a voidbird. Incredibly expensive to keep and train, but all but impossible to intercept. Larger cities generally kept a few in the post offices, for emergency dispatches.

Just when she thought she at least knew what the game board looked like, an unknown factor had literally flown in through the window.

A voidbird? For me, but from who?

Qian Shanyi pursed her lips.

And is it here to help, or further trap me?

 

[Winged_One]

Author Note: If you want to read further ahead? You can find FOUR patreon-exclusive posts, as well as up to EIGHT more chapters, over on my patreon.
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---

The echoing caw of the voidbird had pierced the air as soon as they entered the kitchens. It was sitting somewhere above the stove, and dove right for Qian Shanyi as soon as she entered, coming to a stop just in front of her face. Linghui Mei - the maid, not the jiuweihu - squeaked behind her in surprise.

The bird had about the same shape as a raven, if a bit larger, but even a single glance could tell you that this was no ordinary animal. There were no feathers, or skin, or fur, or even eyes: merely an inky black gap in space in the shape of a bird, filled with bright pinpricks of light, like stars over the night sky. Its wings flapped, yet moved no air; its beak opened, yet the caw did not come from it, but from the whole bird at once. Neither living nor dead; a spirit, but a safe one.

"I am Qian Shanyi," Qian Shanyi calmly told the voidbird. Her eyes, unused to such contrast, refused to properly focus on it, so she decided to look just above the bird's head. "I have been told you have a letter for me?"

The voidbird cawed again, and put its beak under its wing, drawing a thick envelope from within its own body, like a rock pulled out of a pond. It flipped it around, and turned the front to face Qian Shanyi.

There were two lines of text, written clearly on the bright white paper.

To Lan Yishan, from the offices of Lunar Intent Trading House.

Three minutes to turn the key into a fool.

Qian Shanyi reached for the envelope, but the voidbird cawed, and sucked it back into its body. Qian Shanyi lowered her hand, and the envelope appeared again.

The voidbirds were very clever creatures. Not as much as humans, not by a long shot - but they had incredible memories. They always remembered people they'd seen before, and while they could not truly understand language, they learned enough to understand simple directions and descriptions of people. More than that, they could memorize a password, and only give up their letter once they heard it a second time. Because of this, they could be relied on to securely deliver a letter to any city in the world, traveling as fast as a cultivator on top of a flying sword.

They were also very, very expensive.

"Do you have some meat I could buy?" Qian Shanyi asked, turning away from the voidbird and towards Linghui Mei. The maid was watching it curiously, hiding behind Qian Shanyi. "I would like to feed it."

"Oh! Of course," Linghui Mei said, and hurried into the small kitchen, ducking her head to stay far away from the voidbird. She almost fell on her face, trying to twist her neck to look back, while also walking forwards, and Qian Shanyi snorted at the image. She could see some of the same mannerisms that she saw in the other Linghui Mei - inherited alongside with her appearance, it seemed.

Qian Shanyi paid Linghui Mei - the maid, not the jiuweihu - five silver yuan - mostly because she still felt a little guilty that Linghui Mei - the jiuweihu, not the maid - stole her clothes and fed on her soul, and quickly left the kitchens, voidbird on her shoulder and a plate of fresh meat in hand. She retreated to her rooms, locking the door behind her, set the plate down on the table, and let the voidbird hop off, directing it to enjoy the snack.

"Well, what are we going to do with you?" she asked the bird.

The bird angled its head at her, and cawed with what Qian Shanyi could only describe as sarcasm. Qian Shanyi snorted in amusement, and sat down to do a bit of thinking.

Lunar Intent Trading House belonged to Wu Lanhua - and if Qian Shanyi was right about what that riddle meant, it implied it was the merchant herself who sent the letter. The only question was - why? Why send a letter, and why by voidbird?

No, back up. Take this step by step. How did Wu Lanhua even know where to send the damn bird? By Qian Shanyi's count of days, it was unlikely that her own letter would have already reached the merchant.

Well… Back on the ship, Qian Shanyi asked Wu Lanhua about traveling from Lake of Peace to Reflection Ridge, and left the ship shortly thereafter. Qian Shanyi never said she would stop there - but Wu Lanhua could have simply decided to take the gamble, and send the letter blind. From there, the voidbird could have flown into the post office, presented the letter, and been led to her tavern by a runner.

It was possible. Definitely possible. But it was also possible this was a convoluted trap by Fang Jiugui. Unlikely, but she could see how he could make it happen - tie her to that sketchy sword gamble she made to get some spirit stones, perhaps.

Qian Shanyi sighed, glancing at the corner of the table. Her writing set was on the left - that meant Wang Yonghao was in the room as well, but hidden within his world fragment. She desperately wanted to know what he found out in Fang Jiugui's residence, or to at least have him available to bounce some ideas off - but who knew when he'd come out. They didn't agree on a specific time when she'd return in the morning. It could be within the next minute, or it could be hours.

It was midday, now. Three hours of walking around with Jian Shizhe, and her plan for handling Fang Jiugui had only improved incrementally, if that. It simply wasn't good enough, not when he still had cards stashed up both his sleeves - such as whatever he saw in her hands, or the way he managed to track her in the first place. It wasn't good enough, not when he was still plotting, making moves.

She was running out of time. She felt it, deep within her soul. She didn't know when she would run out - but she was already running out.

There were two elements she needed in order to escape from the man. A way to vanish from his immediate observation, and a way to prevent him from tracking her. She needed to solve both issues, or she would go nowhere.

She was stalling, and she knew it. She needed more information, and she even had a letter right in front of her that might contain some. Not opening it was insane, but she was still thinking up excuses, coming up with convoluted ways in which it could be a trap by Fang Jiugui to justify keeping it closed.

Because once she read it, she'd know what was inside. And if there was nothing - then even that vain hope she had for something, anything to grab onto would vanish like a mirage.

Get yourself together.

"Wang Niu," Qian Shanyi said the obvious answer to the riddle, and reached for the voidbird, that was beak-deep in the plate of meat. Her letter appeared out of the voidbird's back, and she snatched it, pulling it away without any resistance.

"Do you even need to eat meat?" Qian Shanyi asked rhetorically, tearing into the envelope. "Does it do anything for you?"

All she got in return was another sarcastic caw. The voidbird didn't even pretend to open its beak this time.

Inside the envelope was a letter, a small card of fine wood about the length of her finger, a metal sigil in the shape of a lotus and about as big around as a very large coin, and a second envelope. The letter was written on fine linen paper, with thin golden decorations around the edges, and the symbol of the Lunar Intent Trading House at the very top.

Qian Shanyi sighed again, and began to read.

Dear Yishan,

I hope this letter finds you well. Forgive this old woman for her worrying - it must be my heart - but if I have not seen how you have departed the city with my own two eyes, I would never have believed it. But perhaps I simply fear for the worst, as usual. You seemed to be in such a hurry to leave the meager accommodations of my yacht, and I dearly hope that your further travel had passed with no lesser comfort.

Lest I worry you in turn, we have returned to Xiaohongshan quite safely. This little excursion had really been a balm upon my nerves. The sunsets above the Golden Snake river, with the glitter of the cities tucking themselves in for the night reflected in the waters always take my breath away. But now, it is back to work.

Still, I simply must tell you of some exciting rumors! Would you believe it that just two short days after we have returned home, a spirit hunter by the name of Fang Jiugui had appeared in our humble town? My dear Fakuang told me that his realm was very impressive, and he could even ride a flying sword. He asked around about some "Qian Shanyi" - even talked to me for a while, charming old man that he is. Would you believe it, a fugitive of some sect downriver? In my very own town?! Such incredible drama.

Unfortunately I could not tell him much, and he left, no doubt despondent. I do wonder where he headed. If this "Qian Shanyi" had left us by ship - well, even if by some accident she was left out of the ship manifest, nobody could conceal where the ship itself went. I wish her the best of luck, that she realizes the danger before she is caught!

But back to the business at hand. I took the liberty of opening up an account for you with Lunar Intent, my trading house. Should you require our shipping services, you may simply come to one of our offices, and my people should assist you for a very reasonable fee - at least, as soon as they see the sigil that marks you as one of our clients, that I have placed within this envelope. I've also included a list of our offices on the other side of this page for your convenience.

Finally, as I have already informed you, I have decided to marry - even in my advanced age, love can still be found! We have finally settled on a date: it will be exactly one month after the spring ghost festival, on the 15th of the fifth month. My heart aches to see you at the celebration, but I understand the flights of youth - if you could not make it after all, for one reason or another, then I would at least expect a gift.

I have also included a letter from postmaster Lan, who asked me to forward it to you, though I have not read it.

Your eternal friend,
Wu Lanhua

The wooden card was, sure enough, a formal wedding invitation - a small, idyllic scene burned directly into the wood, with a description of time and place on the back. After admiring the picture, Qian Shanyi set it aside.

The lotus sigil was flat, and Qian Shanyi could tell that it could serve as a stamp, or be pinned to the clothes and worn on your chest. There were some small characters engraved into the leaves of the lotus - small parables of luck and fortune. Perhaps their variation simply helped to make each such sigil unique.

Qian Shanyi set the sigil down on top of the wooden card for now, and picked up the second, thinner envelope, opening it up as well.

Fellow cultivator Qian,

I apologize in advance for failing to fulfill my duty as the postmaster to keep all your mail entirely private. I believed that the information contained here would benefit you enough to justify this severe overstep.

In the course of my duties I take some effort to keep track of the relations of the cultivators within my area, and your contractual relationship with merchant Wu had been known to me. As I was not aware of any proper method of contacting you, I have asked her if she could direct this letter to you. I cannot make any guarantees regarding the honorable merchant; however, I have taken an effort to make sure that all the information within this letter was already known to her beforehand. Hopefully this letter reaches you just as safely as it would in the hands of our great postal office.

Twelve days after your departure from Xiaohongshan, a retired spirit hunter by the name of Fang Jiugui had entered my office, and requested any information I could provide regarding Qian Shanyi, a fugitive disciple of the Luminous Lotus Pavilion from the Golden Rabbit Bay. In accordance with general imperial policy regarding cultivator privacy, I have refrained from discussing our private conversations; however, I have provided him with all the records we are required to keep - specifically, the logged requests I made regarding your swords, and the access records of the library. I believe that shortly after leaving my office, fellow cultivator Fang had headed to the other imperial offices in town, and made whatever other requests he could, before leaving town by evening.

As I have mentioned in our talk, the empire is not legally required to assist any sect in locating their runaways until a concrete request is made. This assistance is often offered as a courtesy, in cases where it seems this request is inevitable; but in cases where it is not, we simply do our best to keep conflict to a minimum.

From my brief conversation with fellow cultivator Fang, you have not been accused of theft, or violating any of the core imperial laws or edicts. Perhaps your suspicions have already been proven correct. But the empire believes in the right of all cultivators to determine their fate, sect or no sect, and I felt it necessary to offer my assistance - to the extent that my duties permit me.

To that effect, on the second sheet included in this envelope, you will find the request form PIL-13. It is based on a recently passed instruction, and as of yet, it is still not well known among the civil service; I am afraid that many of my colleagues routinely fail in their duties when it comes to self-education. At a guess, I would imagine only one in five postmasters would know of it by name. Nonetheless, it is a legal and enforceable request. I have also attached an explanation of the relevant laws - you may simply copy it over, as it would make explaining the purpose and legal basis of the request itself that much easier.

If you were to give this form to a postmaster, then they would be bound to silence on the matter of your person, and would be obligated to abridge your mentions out of some of the public documents - such as the cultivator almanac, as well as communicate this request to other imperial institutions in their jurisdiction. Perhaps this would make it easier for you to evade pursuit.

However, I must sadly admit that I cannot vouch for how many of my fellow postmasters would listen. The form itself is not well known, and is controversial, as it lies at cross purposes with many of our institutions; the informal instruction is to avoid relying on it except in unusual circumstances. Many would simply not believe this to be a legal request, and would not bother to verify it with the law. Others would know it to be legal, but will violate it, out of personal conviction or simple carelessness.

I leave the decision of wherever to rely on it in your hands. And I implore you to remember: our empire was built on bloodshed, to avoid bloodshed. We do not throw honorable cultivators to the dogs.

Postmaster Lan Yu.

Qian Shanyi leaned back in her chair, considering the two letters in front of her. Sure enough, neither of them solved any of her immediate problems. The information within them was either indirect, or simply confirmed what she had already suspected.

Still. She felt a warm glow of gratitude in her chest, looking at these two simple pieces of paper.

They tried to warn me…

She sniffled, and then chuckled slightly, wiping an errant tear that formed in her eye. She barely did anything for these two women - aside from gifting two extremely expensive swords to Wu Lanhua, she supposed - yet they still took the time out of their day to give her so much advice. Even from so far away, she had allies, such as they were.

Then again, perhaps a simple confirmation of what she knew was exactly what she needed. She thought back on her theories for how Fang Jiugui had found her. That he headed to Xiaohongshan first pretty conclusively proved that he must have been tracing her letter, instead of her person. From there, he probably followed the traces of Wu Lanhua's yacht - even if, as she heavily implied, she left Qian Shanyi off the manifest.

That was good. It meant he was limited. It meant he could be beaten.

The question of how he tracked her letter remained unresolved. If there was something obvious - such as secret marks on the envelopes of the postal office - then Lan Yu would have surely mentioned it, though it wasn't a guarantee. His true limitations still remained unknown. But she could work with this.

Qian Shanyi glanced at her gloved hands. She had not taken her gloves off in public ever since she noticed Fang Jiugui watching her hands. Was there a connection there, with him tracing her letter? She couldn't really imagine how, but the mysteries between Heaven and Earth were without limit.

Well, there is always the drastic option.

She really didn't want to use it, especially without a decent plan that could be built on top of it.

At least this PIL form would surely help them with the second part of her plan, but on its own, it was more than a bit of a two-edged sword. If she were to simply give it to the postmaster in every town they visited, it would be as good as leaving a paper trail - all Fang Jiugui would have to do was ask about her, and get an answer of "I am not allowed to talk about this" more often than not. Conspicuously erased trail was still a trail.

But with a bit of work, they could find a way around this weakness.

The voidbird had long finished its meat while Qian Shanyi was busy reading, and was now staring at her expectantly. Awaiting a response, or a lack of one.

Qian Shanyi sighed, and reached over to her writing set. Best to be short and to the point.

Dear Lanhua,

My travel had passed blissfully quickly, and that is as much as I will say on the matter. Unfortunately, as I have discovered that I am thoroughly unsuited to that form of rapid travel, and other affairs occupy my time, I doubt I will make it back in time for your wedding. I will try my hardest, of course, and yet I offer my excuses all the same. I wish you and Liu Fakuang the deepest love between Heaven and Earth, and an eternal future unblemished by Heavenly machinations - or perhaps even blessed by them, in the case of fellow cultivator Liu.

I have some happy news of my own. I have found the goal of my pursuit - and have been successful beyond my wildest expectations. The details must remain private for now, but let it be said that I have a provisional deal with the Northern Scarlet Stream sect for provision of certain items. I hope the fact that they supply your competitors will not put you off our beautiful, burgeoning friendship.

The affair of this mysterious and no doubt stunningly handsome "Qian Shanyi" certainly intrigues me greatly, yet I sadly cannot dedicate any time to looking into it further. I have placed twenty five spirit stones within this envelope - if you would be so kind as to hire an investigator, and look into the origin of this "Fang Jiugui", I would be forever in your debt. If that is still not enough, then do not hesitate with your own funds - I would repay you two-fold. I will contact you once I have more free time on my hands.

And now I am afraid I must go. You may find some more detail about my fate in a letter I have sent to your offices through the post office some time ago - as I expect this voidbird will return much faster than it will reach you.

Finally, please convey my deepest gratitude to postmaster Lan. Her advice to me will prove to be invaluable. If you have not done so already, please invite her to your wedding in my stead.

Your eternal friend,
Lan Yishan

"Response," she said to the voidbird, folding up the letter into a new envelope, and writing the address on the front. "Back to Wu Lanhua. Password: Wang Niu."

The voidbird swallowed the envelope just as it did the meat, and rose into the air. Qian Shanyi opened the window, and it flew out with a final, triumphant caw, turning into no more than a blur in the air as soon as it rose above the rooftops.

Just as she was closing the window, Qian Shanyi heard the quiet whooshing sound of the world fragment's entrance being opened, and turned around to come face to face with Wang Yonghao.

"Oh, you are finally back," he said, and grinned deviously. "How did the Jian Shizhe date go?"

"Within expectations," Qian Shanyi grumbled, giving him her angriest glare. "Which is to say, miserably. How about you?"

"I talked to the kid," he said, smiling, and pulled out a folded-up scrap of paper. "You won't believe what I found."

Qian Shanyi took the paper with trepidation, and unfolded it. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she whistled at the contents. "This is pretty good," she said, looking through the list. "This is very good. He had all of this?"

"Yep," Wang Yonghao said, "I've looked through the window myself. I mean, you can't exactly tell some things apart just by looking, but…"

"But is this enough?" Qian Shanyi mused, then folded up the paper and put it into her robes, tapping her cheek in thought. Finally, finally, the picture started to come together for her. Like the last puzzle piece slotting into place - insignificant on its own, yet invaluable for the whole.

It would be a risky play, but it would be a play. It would all hinge on Jian Wei - how he would value her contributions, and his own loss of face.

She would still need to wait until the evening, once her bank account had been processed, and then somehow convince Liu Yufei to get rid of that letter - but it was a path forward. And in the meantime, they needed to secure their escape route.

She motioned to the table with the letters. "I got a message from Wu Lanhua, and I think I finally have a plan. We are going to write a lot of letters."

"Letters?"

"Yes," Qian Shanyi said. She glanced at her gloved hands again. With her plan coming together - she might as well use the drastic option too. It wouldn't do to underestimate Fang Jiugui, after all. Even if Wang Yonghao would hate doing it. "I think it's just about time for us to bring this play to a close."

---

Five hours later, Qian Shanyi finally re-emerged from Wang Yonghao's world fragment. She was carried like a princess by the man himself, her arms delicately curled up in front of her, bags of letters hanging off both her shoulders. When Wang Yonghao stepped out, she accidentally bumped one hand into his shoulder, and winced.

"Sorry!" Wang Yonghao immediately apologized.

"It's fine," Qian Shanyi stood up, letting her gloved hands rest carefully at her sides, held away from her body. "Necessary, even."

"Was it necessary?" Wang Yonghao said in a tense voice, looking at her hands.

Qian Shanyi went over to the table, and began to put the rest of the bags on her shoulders, wincing throughout. Wang Yonghao stepped close to help. "Too much risk otherwise," she hissed through her teeth. "I need the safety margin."

"You can't even touch anything."

"I can and I am getting better at it. Barely even hurts anymore," Qian Shanyi lied through her teeth. It was agonizing, but she could manage. "It'll heal quickly enough."

Not like she had to touch much for the rest of the day.

Wang Yonghao gave her an unconvinced look. She just shrugged, pulled the final bag onto her shoulder, and headed for the doors.

"Come on," she said, glaring hatefully at the door and willing it to open. She really didn't want to put more pressure on her fingers to turn the key, but the wood and steel refused to simply obey. "We only have a couple hours left until the evening."

Wang Yonghao sighed, and stepped up to the door, opening it for her. She gave him a grateful nod, and stepped out.

As they headed towards the tavern's exit, she caught a glance of Scar and an unfamiliar, lanky cultivator from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect heading for the tavern through one of the windows. She froze in her tracks.

No, no, no! Not now!

She bit her lip, whirled around, and rushed back into their rooms. <Follow,> she signed to Wang Yonghao as she ran, already suppressing her spiritual energy as she went.

<What is going on?> he signed back.

<Two disciples from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect,> she signed grimly. <One had been following me all day. I think Fang Jiugui had finally made his play.>

If she hadn't noticed the tail in the morning, she probably wouldn't have given them any mind, and walked right into their ambush. But they were careless too, walking in the open like that. Scar kept his distance the entire day, but now he walked in the open, and even changed back into his uniform. That meant it was official.

She wasn't ready.

<They probably are here to 'invite' us to a talk with Jian Wei,> she signed, heading for the window. <But we can't go yet. These letters have to be sent out, I need the bank papers, I need that damn letter gone from the sect's archives…> She paced around, keenly aware she only had perhaps a minute until they heard a knock on their door. <Distract them, please. Tell them I left half an hour ago. I can't refuse a direct invitation, let alone an order - but if I don't even know about it, I won't be in breach of etiquette.>

<If I distract them, we won't be together. It's dangerous for you to do this alone.> Wang Yonghao signed back, his face serious.

<It will be suspicious if we are both gone,> she signed back. <But it's up to you. You can try slipping away from them and meeting up with me. Do you remember our legend, how to answer questions about me?>

Wang Yonghao nodded. <Fine, I'll stay. Good luck.>

<Good luck,> Qian Shanyi signed to him, turned around, and left through the window, hopping up onto the roof along the way.

After the Linghui Mei crisis, she made sure to study every good way to leave the tavern without being noticed - those two never stood a chance of catching her here.

But in town, it would be another matter.

---

Junming stared at Qian Shanyi. Qian Shanyi stared at Junming.

"Is there a problem?" she finally asked calmly, doing her best to keep her agitation away from her face. Seconds were quickly ticking by, but she couldn't rush them.

Junming looked down at the dozen massive stacks of letters she dumped out of her bags on the postal office counter. Each was a good foot thick, and they had to get out of their chair to look over them.

"A lot of letters," Junming croaked.

"I was informed that the imperial postal office does not charge cultivators for postage," Qian Shanyi said, arching an eyebrow.

"For personal correspondence. Is this all personal? Not… by other people?"

Not letters written by other people, and sent by Qian Shanyi in their stead, to avoid postage fees. She wondered how many cultivators got caught trying to exploit their privileges like that.

"Of course," Qian Shanyi said, grinning slightly. "These are all requests PIL-13, sorted by the closest major city, for convenience. You may open them if you do not believe me."

Junming looked over the massive pile of letters, and wisely decided not to test her word.

Having a given town refuse to give out information about her was suspicious. So instead, she sent out Wang Yonghao to fetch the Geographical Index, huddled up in their world fragment with him and Linghui Mei, and spent an entire day writing requests to every single postmaster in a town above five thousand residents in the entire province. Wang Yonghao had to leave twice to fetch more paper, and it was grueling work, but they got it done.

Once these letters flooded out of the town, on their way to their destinations, it would be like a wave of fog that would cover all their movements. But only as long as this wave stayed ahead of them - that was why she rushed here, to send the letters out as soon as possible.

"It's fine," Junming croaked. "Anything else?"

"I'd also like to return this Geographical Index."

---

Scar and his hanger-on had finally caught up to her just when Qian Shanyi had been leaving the Thrifty Bat Bank, her finalized bank documents in hand. The bank had only one entrance, so there really was no way to avoid them.

"Honorable immortal Qian," the Scar said, "Elder Jian would like to see you immediately."

Qian Shanyi pursed her lips. She was this close. The letters went out. She had the bank documents. Now she just had to meet with Liu Yufei and hopefully deal with that letter…

Could she flee from them? Only one of the two was a cultivator, and of a lower realm than her at that.

No. It would only make her position worse. She needed Jian Wei on her side, and if she reneged on such a direct invitation, she would be slapping him across the face.

With that letter still in play, she'd have a glaring weak point at her side. But you played with the hand you were dealt, not the hand you wish you had.

"Very well," she said, putting her documents away into her robes. "Lead the way."