Year 658 of the Stable Era,

  Nineteenth day of the tenth month

  A bit later than noon(ish)

  Shou Chengtai’s fist descended, plunging towards Chao Ren’s face like a heron after a carp. However, as it made its approach, its course began to change. It curved to the side, barely scraping the side of Chao Ren’s cheek, deflected by some sort of invisible force.

  Shou shook his arm in confusion as he looked around, attempting to break free of the sudden force that gripped it. As abruptly as it appeared, it vanished. His hand struck his face, carried by force intended to oppose a foe that no longer existed.

  “Well now,” Lee Han declared, snapping open his fan, “that is hardly the decorum befitting a member of the Teal Mountain Sect.” He approached the combatants with a lazy stride, the crowd parting before him as Min Huan and Xia Bao encouraged them to make way. Shou Chengtai turned to face him, hand still clenched around Chao Ren’s collar as he addressed the newcomers.

  “Who do you think you are to interfere with a sacred duel between cultivators?” he spat, his face moving several shades closer to that of Lee Han’s fan.

  Inwardly, Lee Han sighed, masking any outwards sign of the emotion with a pair of quick flaps of his hand before snapping it shut, tapping it against his palm as he did.

  Normally he would be the last person to interfere with a beating like this.

  The affairs of others were for others, and it was typically a bad idea for a cultivator to go around sticking their nose into every squabble that crossed their path. That was how you ended up attracting unnecessary feuds, like the ridiculous one he was now in with that insufferable Zhao Lan. If a cultivator wasn’t careful, they could become weighed down by such things—animosity accumulating over the centuries until it became an endless array of challenges, sabotages and duels that stole far more time than they were worth.

  But this was different.

  For one thing, there was karma between him and Chao Ren. They’d been in the same exam group (which meant that they would soon share a mentor), and he would not have won his free dinner from Shen (and Bao too, he supposed) if it were not for his actions. True, none of them had been aware that he was betting on a sure thing at the time, but it was still an owed debt. And besides, he reminded him of Uncle Ming.

  The two of them had the same awkward demeanor. The same uncertainty with how to react to those around them. The same intense focus on cultivation, and even the same way of fiddling around with whatever was at hand when the conversation shifted to them. Lee Han had heard more than a few stories (mostly from his aunt) about the troubles Uncle Ming’s demeanor had attracted in his youth. They had stuck with him, and not in any way that would make for good small talk.

  They had been equal parts encouragement to stop being a little shit and a way to get a far younger, far more foolish Lee Han to understand why his uncle was the way he was. That it was something he could no more change than his own stripes. It had had a profound impact on him, and he would never be able to face himself if he just stood by and let some upstart do the same to his new junior.

  Neither his pride nor his dao heart would allow it.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize that this was still an ongoing duel,” Lee Han said, feigning confusion as he tapped his fan against his palm contemplatively. “I had assumed that it had been completed. After all, given the current state of your opponent” – he pointed his fan at Chao Ren – “as well as the six clear hits you managed to land, it seemed obvious that you were well past the point of completion for any standard duel.”

  “Standard to you, perhaps,” Shou Chengtai replied imperiously, tossing Chao Ren to the side as he turned to confront Lee Han. “I don’t know how you savages do it on the southern continent, but back in—”

  “Now, that is strange, Lee Han mused, “as last I checked, we were in Karano. I know that the Teal Mountain Sect is renowned for their flying mountains, capable of traversing great distances in a single day, but I had no idea that such travel was so inconspicuous as to slip my notice. Otherwise, why else would someone do something so odd such as making claims of local customs in a foreign land?”

  “You dare to interrupt me?!”

  “I would apologize for depriving the world of the illumination you were about to provide, but as such apology would be commensurate to the knowledge stifled, it has already been delivered.”

  He let the crowd take a moment to digest his words, chuckles spreading through it as Shou finally deciphered them, realization reddening his face further.

  “Do you know who I am?” Shou Chengtai hissed, full of fury as he strode towards Lee Han.

  “Do you know who I am?” Han countered with a grin, as the crowd laughed loudly.

  “My clan is the Shou Clan!” Shou practically shouted, “Great Clan of the Lutai continent! And I am its heir, Shou Chengtai—”

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  “Third in line to the tertiary branch of the family, eldest male heir and recent achiever of the Body Refining stage,” Lee Han said with a mock yawn. “That was meant to be a rhetorical question. We all know all our peers by now—after all, fewer than thirty of us passed the exam.”

  “And yet you still insist on interrupting me?”

  “Even a powerful dragon cannot suppress a local tiger, and your family is far from both,” Lee said with a sigh. “Whatever hubbub your bluster might matter for back home means little here. So, do you want to continue to waste your breath? Or do you want to finally use it on words worthy of your supposed lineage?”

  Shou simmered as these words finally sunk in, before straightening his robes with a sharp tug. “I suppose I can indulge the opinion of a lowly guai such as yourself.”

  Lee Han didn’t even bother to suppress his laughter at this. In his youth he might have flown into an apoplectic rage over such an insult, but he was no longer ten. And after spending six months in close quarters with Shen? Well, he was now used to a far higher standard of insult, and it would take a sharper tongue than this Shou Chengtai’s to draw his ire.

  “Aiya,” he said, snapping open his fan, “when I suggested you use words worthy of your lineage, I didn’t expect you take that as a sign to us all how cheap it truly was.” He fanned himself with slow, mocking movements as he let the crowd’s mirth fill the silence.

  Ah, he had missed this. His constant spars with Shen (both physical and verbal) had been the perfect whetstone, and it felt good to put his freshly honed skills to use with an audience. He had to admit that Shen had been right; had they not been rivals, he would have never grown to such heights. Before Shou Chengtai could muster his wit, he pressed his advantage.

  “Seeing as you are unlearned in the ways of Karano-style duels, allow me to enlighten you,” he said, closing his fan so it could be better used to punctuate his points. “Here, the typical duel is the first to three hits. Should a referee be chosen, they will announce any hits, but in one’s absence” – he gestured around with his fan – “it is up to the participants to honorably acknowledge them. Now, did you hit Chao Ren more than three times?” The crowd proved to be more forthcoming than Shou, as a few of its members shouted out their observations before he could reply.

  “Hah! He got him far more than that many times!”

  “At least five, by my reckoning!”

  “Bah, it was eight! And he didn’t even set terms!”

  “Oh my,” Lee Han said, rounding on Shou Chengtai. “Now, that is strange indeed. Did you truly begin a duel without agreeing to the terms with your opponent?”

  “It was hardly a duel,” Shou replied dismissively, “I simply proposed that we exchange pointers, and that poor excuse of a cultivator agreed to do so, so long as I felt there was something to be gained from it.”

  “So, you are claiming is that this was not a duel?” Han asked, cocking his head to the side at the boldness of the statement.

  “That’s what I said guai,” Shou snapped.

  “And yet you were so quick to claim that this was a sacred duel between cultivators when I interrupted your savage beating of my poor junior,” Han continued. “It would seem that next you would want me to believe that white is black and black is white.”

  “He deserved it,” Shou shot back, sleeves flapping as he pointed an accusatory finger at Chao Ren, who was currently leaning on Min Huan for support. “Prancing around calling himself the Great Sage, as if he was so much better than the rest of us. He needed to learn the immensity of heaven and earth, and I was more than happy to teach him that lesson.”

  Ah, Lee Han thought to himself, so, this is how Instructor Yeung felt. It would seem that now he too owed Chao Ren an apology.

  He’d gotten so accustomed to using his nickname for Chao ren that he’d let it slip a few too many times in a few too many casual conversations. And drunkenly, at that party celebrating their acceptance into the sect. And at that banquet. And that other banquet one. And at that lunch Bao had invited him too. And perhaps a bit too proudly whenever he told that story about how much better of a roommate he had been then Zhao Lan…

  Adding it all up on his mental abacus, it would seem that he was responsible for a great deal of rumormongering.

  “If your dao heart is so weak as to tremble at the sight of another’s achievements, it is a miracle that you haven’t succumbed to an inner demon by now,” Lee Han replied, tapping his fan against his temple.

  “You dare to insult the very foundation of my cultivation?”

  “You dare this, you dare that—how about you dare to act like you have some self-respect as a cultivator!” Lee Han snapped. “If you’re unhappy with your own weakness, cultivate yourself to correct it! Don’t seek vengeance on a Qi Refining cultivator that has yet to learn his first technique, because he was too busy pushing his body to the Refining stage.”

  He snapped his fan shut a final time, levelling it at Shou Chengtai as he spat out his last words. “Or, perhaps you would dare to fight a cultivator who can match your martial prowess. If you would dare to face the thought of a proper challenge.”

  Lee Han’s eyes narrowed, focusing his anger on Shou Chengtai in the closest approximation of intent he could manage. He let out his qi seep out, his emotions tinging it a dark shade of hostility. It a far cry from true intent, that mastery of projected will, but Shou didn’t know that he had his own way of faking it.

  He unleashed his Invisible Hand technique as he narrowed his eyes, focusing extra attention to the fingers, his visualization reshaping it into long, narrow nails creeping their way along Shou’s spine.

  Shou flinched as they drew closer, his instincts warning him of an unseen threat. His breath caught in his throat, as if the force of Lee Han’s anger was constricting his windpipe. With visible effort, he flared his qi, a brief burst of earthy energy to shake off whatever Lee Han was doing to him.

  As the crowd began to murmur about whether they would get to witness a second fight, he reached into his spatial ring and produced a small wooden pill container. He tossed it at Chao Ren contemptuously, only for Bao catching it before it could get close.

  “I have better things to do than scrap with a stray like you,” Shou stated, robes billowing as he turned his back to Han. “That should be more than enough for your little friend to keep his mouth shut. Unlike you and your ilk, the Shou Clan can easily afford such alchemical trinkets.”

  And with that, he left, his cronies in tow as Lee Han stared after them. The crowd soon dispersed, realizing that they had seen all there really was to see. A few tried to start a conversation with Lee Han, but he brushed them off as he made his way over to Bao and Min Huan, who had relocated Chao Ren to a table at a nearby dumpling restaurant.

  It was a shame about Shou Chengtai.

  So young, and already the model of a pompous paper cultivator. Strong to the weak, and weak to the strong. It was a pity that Shou had been so unwilling to fight, though perhaps it was his fault.

  Faking intent might have been too strong of a move. Too much pacification, not enough provocation. Next time something like this happened, he’d have to keep that in mind. It was always so sad to leave a good fight on the tree, unpicked.

  He would have loved to get into a good brawl. It would have been the perfect way to work up an appetite for the night’s meal.