It had been an interesting decade—for some more than others, but nobody had truly escaped the rapid changes that the world had been undergoing, most of which surrounding a peculiar young woman. Or, several of them, one supposed, but Xin Wei had known them back when “Yoshika” was just a cute nickname for the unusually close pair of girls who’d managed to insinuate themselves into the Grand Academy of Spiritual, Martial, and Arcane Arts through sideways means. It seemed like just yesterday Lee Jia was telling him off for using the racist pejorative ‘beastkin’ rather than the more socially acceptable ‘half-spirit.’

  She hadn’t even been able to read or write beyond her own name, but even then she didn’t hesitate to put a condescending young master in his place. He’d liked her right away, just for that, but he could never have predicted how things would end up.

  Now, Yoshika was empress of half the world, and set to marry his former fiancee. It was a little rushed, he thought, but the timing of such things often came down to politics more than anything. His own engagement with Yan Yue had lasted three years before being indefinitely postponed by the events surrounding the expedition into the Bloody Sovereign’s Tomb, then tacitly cancelled by Yue’s ascension to xiantian. Not that he minded—that had been little more than a political farce from the beginning, and he’d never really had any feelings for her, beyond a certain pity for the unenviable fate of a young noblewoman instilled in him by his mother’s tales of woe.

  His best friend and sworn brother on the other hand...

  Wei found Guan Yi in one of the Earthen Sword’s training halls near the base of the mountain. Despite the high purity of the qi at the mountain’s peak, the low ground was often better for refining his brother’s humble techniques.

  He mused, as he watched his friend practice the graceful polearm techniques, that the Earthen Sword Style had something of a strange place in the world. Though they were spiritual techniques, they drew significant inspiration from martial arts, with form following function, and a philosophy of respect for both the blade and those one turned it against. Needless to say, that made it rather unpopular within the empire, but it was also an extremely practical and effective technique.

  Thus, it had become a ubiquitous staple of training regimens throughout the empire, but quietly unacknowledged by most, who simply saw it as a basic and uninteresting sword form. A ‘boring’ technique that one used to build a foundation upon, before graduating to bigger and better things.

  Those fools had probably never seen Guan Yi cut down half a dozen training dummies in a single swing of his guandao—from over a hundred paces away. Despite the huge and heavy weapon, his equally huge and heavy friend struck quickly, his movements flowing like quicksilver from one form into another. At the peak of the third stage, those blows were heavy enough to rend qi-infused stone, and even if blocked, left behind a Miasma essence that sapped the strength of Yi’s opponents. As was often the case, Metal and Miasma were highly synergistic elements, despite being ‘opposites.’

  To be fair, Guan Yi was also a mountain of a man at over six feet tall and half as wide of pure muscle. He’d been pretty well built before taking up martial arts—and then unified cultivation—but he’d taken to the body-enhancing cultivation with a level of aplomb unmatched by most of their peers.

  As he finished his forms and began to wipe his sweat with a towel, he finally noticed Wei standing there and looked—well, the same as he always did. His infamously stoic expression had earned him the nickname ‘Stoneface’ from Lee Jia, which Wei had made great efforts to maintain, mostly on account of the fact that it embarrassed both of them.

  “Xin. You could have just greeted me, you know.”

  “I didn’t want to interrupt—I know how seriously you take your training.”

  Yi grunted noncommittally in acknowledgement.

  “Did you need something?”

  “Do I need a reason to check in on my best friend and sworn brother? You seem to be taking the news about Miss Yan quite well, though.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  Xin Wei raised an eyebrow at that. Those who didn’t know Guan Yi—or didn’t know him well enough—thought that because he kept such a stoic expression, he wasn’t very expressive. Those people simply didn’t know where to look. For every emotion the man kept off his face was, in fact, worn on his sleeve.

  It was in the way he set his shoulders and turned away, retrieving his weapon to return to practice now that he knew Xin Wei wasn’t there to make any demands on his time. How he put just the littlest bit of extra force into his swings.

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  Wei rolled his eyes.

  “Because you loved her, you absolute oaf. By the emperor, you named your personal damn artifact after her.”

  Even Guan Yi couldn’t help but redden a little at that.

  “I may have been slightly overeager. In the end, the feeling was not mutual, and I’ve made peace with that.”

  “She seemed interested enough from where I was watching.”

  His friend paused in his forms, and leaned on the shaft of his polearm, unable to maintain focus while conversing at the same time.

  “Then you were not watching closely enough. Yan Yue and I were interested in each other, yes, but what we wanted was not the same. We began drifting apart long before she left for Jiaguo. In fact, I suspect that youthful misstep was the start of it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yan Yue is kinder than she likes to let on. She could have simply taken what she wanted, and I doubt I’d have put up any resistance. Instead, upon realizing the depth of my feelings, she gently distanced herself. We remained friendly, but distant—there was a border there that hadn’t existed before.”

  Xin Wei sighed and shook his head. Guan Yi had, ironically, always been the more emotional one between the two of them.

  “That doesn’t change how you feel, though, now does it? You still love her now just as much as you did five years ago.”

  Yi shrugged and went back to his forms again. His shoulders sagged slightly, and his grip on the weapon was more loose than usual.

  “What of it? All the more reason to respectfully distance myself and take heart in her happiness.”

  “So you’re just—giving up? You? You’re the most stubborn man I know! Half the sect thinks you secretly trained under that Austere Mountain elder, Bu Dong Rushan. At the very least, you could still keep her as a friend, no?”

  “I don’t believe I could maintain a friendship with an unrequited love.”

  Wei rolled his eyes as Guan Yi sliced through a few more straw dummies.

  “Why not? Hyeong Daesung seems to have managed it just fine with Lee Jia.”

  ‘Dae’ had been infamously besotted with the girl for the better part of a decade, and as far as he knew they were still fairly close friends. Though, to be fair, Yoshika got along with almost everybody. It was sort of her thing.

  Guan Yi sighed and stabbed his weapon into the ground, crossing his arms and turning to glare impassively at Xin Wei.

  “Then he’s a better man than I. However, that is a trial of the heart I do not wish to face. I hold no ill will towards either her or Yoshika, and neither should you.”

  “But what of your happiness? Why should you be the one to give up?”

  Yi snorted and shook his head.

  “Xin, we are both scions of influential clans, but sometimes you fall into the same thinking patterns as our less scrupulous peers. It’s statements like that which have so often earned you barbs from Lee Jia.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?!”

  “Simply that Yue was never mine to give up. Perhaps I would have been happy if I could have been with her, but would she? I think she might have been content to marry you—if not happy—but not me.”

  Wei twisted his brows in confusion.

  “How does that make any sense? That miserable, loveless experience is exactly what she spent most of her life attempting to escape.”

  “Because she would not be able to return my feelings, but with you she would not be compelled to try. Just let it go, Xin—I already have. My happiness is my own to grasp—not hers or anyone else’s duty to deliver.”

  “Oh, very well. I’m not sure what I was trying to accomplish anyway. It just pains me to see you so morose.”

  Guan Yi looked like he was about to protest, but simply shook his head and put away the training gear. Xin Wei helped his friend clean up the training yard in companionable silence, and it wasn’t until they were on their way out that Guan Yi gave his thoughts a voice.

  “I am at peace with this, Wei. If I am more somber than usual, it is merely the reopening of an old wound. It will pass.”

  “Hah! As if the legendary Stoneface could ever manage to be more somber. If your mood has lifted enough to make such jokes, then I consider my work here done! Let us dwell no more on heartbreaking vixens who hide their rotten cores with polished jewels!”

  “Mm. Very good. I shall be sure to relay that to them when we next meet.”

  Xin Wei missed a step, nearly tripping before he regained his balance and bowed solemnly to Guan Yi.

  “Forgive me, brother—I spoke out of turn. This young master wishes to live long enough to see the next century.”

  “Then perhaps this young master should, for once in his short life, consider his words before speaking them. Just as well it was me and not your mother—I doubt Lin Xiulan would have left it at merely slapping you.”

  He shuddered at the thought of it. Wei had seldom ever truly upset his mother, but when she got mad, she was cold as ice and as ruthless as the heavens.

  “Y-you have the right of it, Brother Yi. Come to think of it, there’s a caravan in town, isn’t there? They’ve been making a killing off of the visiting soldiers. Perhaps we should go take a look and see if we can find suitable wedding gifts, hm?”

  “That, my friend, is the smartest thing you’ve said all day. Lead on.”

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