Year 658 of the Stable Era,

  Twentieth day of the tenth month

  Five minutes before the stroke of the 3rd Inner Hour

  It had taken the better part of an hour, but at long last Chang Hui had tracked down the base of the Sword Intent Club. Yao Minzhe’s map crudely drawn map had ended up being helpful only in the last leg of the journey, his recollection of the Club District far too dated to be of much help. Most of the groups he had used as references were long gone, dispersed over the 260 odd years it had been since he had last visited the ever-shifting district.

  In some ways the Club District was reflection of the true form of cultivators’ baser natures, naked ambition in constant clash against rigid tradition and routine. It was not uncommon for new groups to rise up, uniting enough disillusioned disciples to form a counter organization solely to crush a large group that had gotten too complacent.

  Other conflicts took place over a far longer scale, with subordinate clubs struggling to gain advantage in the constant push and pull of their parent organizations. And then there were all the small clubs that were always popping up like fungus, each pursuing their own little niche interests until they either became a part of the landscape or fell apart just as suddenly as they emerged.

  On the surface the Sword Intent Club appeared to be one of these groups. It was located at the end of a narrow alleyway at the back of the district, between a pair of other clubs of equal note. To its left was a group calling itself the Great Mountain Appreciation Society. The lurid illustrations of well-endowed maidens on the doors beneath its elaborate sign were certainly a touch, helping to ensure that whatever poor passerby got lost in this area wouldn’t confuse it for a place to contemplate natural earth qi. The building on its right bore only a plain wooden sign with the word CRAB painted on it in simple, blocky strokes, its single window boarded up with dusty planks.

  The Sword Intent Club’s sign was old and faded with age, legible only through the fact that its name had been cut into the stone. Any paint it might have had had long since faded, not even the barest specks standing out against the dull gray of its time polished walls. Unlike its elaborate neighbor it bore no adornments save a statue of a cultivator pointing his sword at the sky, its clean polish a sharp contrast to the dust clinging to the sides of its rough walls.

  It was a relic of a bygone age, Hui realized. The architecture of the stone was that of a building built in the early days of the Teal Mountain Sect, when durability took priority over decoration. Judging by its size she estimated that it was a second or third generation club building, as those of the first generation were little more than glorified storage rooms. Early clubs had typically held their meetings outside, as the sect had been far richer in space than stone back in those days.

  She didn’t know how long the Sword Intent Club had been occupying the building, but their ability to retain control of it was truly commendable. Space was a premium in the Club District, and a building of this size could house at least five of the newer clubhouses that could be found crammed along the outer fringe.

  But building aside, she had yet to be impressed with the organization. They might have the spirit stones to spend them like water, but if the state of their headquarters was any indication, they were terrible at truly using them. They were likely a group of lackadaisical heirs, wasting their clan’s coffers while they made pretenses about studying the great mysteries of cultivation. Paying far too much for artifacts on a whim, letting such a valuable piece of land languish… It was infuriating.

  Even the name of their club felt like a bad joke.

  Sword Intent Club. As if intent were something so simple, so easily studied. As if it wasn’t one of the pinnacle arts of cultivation, the tempered form of a cultivator’s will.

  Emotional intents, such as the ever-common murderous intent, were the lowest form of the technique. More often the result of poor qi control than a true refinement of one’s self, they required no great understanding to wield, simply fierce desire.

  Conceptual intent was infinitely more complex. It took far more than simply practicing a technique or reciting a spell; to use conceptual intent a cultivator had to grasp a fundamental truth of the true nature of art they sought to master. It was the work of millennia, such was the time that it took to properly cultivate one’s understanding.

  Hui had seen it only a few times in her life. She could still remember the game of Go she had witnessed, that cold spring afternoon, between two cultivators of the Mind Materializing stage. The very landscape had warped with each move they made, the profound meaning behind the placement of each stone carrying the enormous weight of the stars themselves. She had just achieved the third stage of qi cultivation herself, but all that that had meant was that she could endure observing four moves more than the other disciples that gotten caught up in their game before she had passed out.

  They had used no qi, no secret arts, no special techniques. Simply their pure, complete understanding of the game.

  Still, her distain for the audacious title of the club didn’t mean that she would take them lightly. They were clearly cultivators of means, and it would be a mistake to step on a tail without determining whether it was a dragon or a snake first.

  At her signal, Li Gho knocked on the door as Guan Tie stood behind her. There was a short silence as they waited for an answer, followed by an even longer silence as none came. With a nod, Hui had Li Gho knock on the door again, and her secretary obliged, striking the door with three sharp strikes like the beginning of an avalanche. This too, was met with a long silence, and Hui slowly counted to fifty before stepping forwards to try and push the door open.

  The door seemed to be unlocked at first, giving her an inch before it began to resist her. It didn’t seem to be the work of a bar or a defensive formation, and Hui gave it another hard shove before giving it her full attention, eyes narrowing as she focused her qi sense to see what sort of protection was at work. She spent a minute and a half carefully examining it, trying to determine what sort of enchantment was at work, until Guan Tie casually kicked the door open with a faint burst of qi.

  “Looks like it was just stuck,” he said with a chuckle, arms still dangling from the spear slung over his shoulders. “Justa whole lotta rust in the hinges.” After no alarm sounded and the occupants continued to refuse to meet them, Hui stepped inside.

  The interior of the Sword Intent Club was just as sparse as its exterior, its bare walls covered with nothing save a faint coat of lightened red paint and dust. Someone had attempted to sweep it up recently, as the floor of the entranceway was spotless, but they had clearly given up soon after as the rest of the hall still sported a heavy coat.

  “Disgusting,” Li Gho said, wrinkling her nose at the display. Guan Tie laughed, blowing a cloud of dust off a bare shelf, causing her to flail her arms around as she shooed it away from her.

  In the distance Hui could make out the sound of metallic ringing, and as Li Gho brushed off her robes, she began to make her way towards it. Her companions trailed close behind. As they drew further in, they began to encounter signs of habitation.

  Diagrams of sword forms were pinned to the wall with thin daggers, their ink drawings covered with dense clumps of overlapping notes. One wall boasted a series of thin slash marks, each perfectly horizontal, carved with varying depths and lengths. They were so numerous that it more resembled a bas-relief than a wall. Another had what seemed to be a painting of club members, all but the bottom fifth completely rotted away.

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  “Be careful,” Hui warned, letting Guan Tie take the lead as they spotted a ray of sunlight in the distance. The building bore all the hallmarks of closed-door cultivation gone wrong, and if there were any madmen lurking in these halls she would rather he be there to take the first blow.

  The hall gave way to a courtyard, its ground an even mix of sand and stone. Three square dueling areas were set along its left side, while a long training field took up most of the right. A pair of disciples turned to face them as they walked in, the younger of the two clearly more surprised than the older male cultivator in the faded robe. He wore his dark hair in a short, neat ponytail, while his young companion had a straw-colored mop tied back with length of cord clearly cut from a sword wrapping.

  The remaining cultivators paid them little mind. Hui returned the favor to the quiet cultivator practicing sword forms in the sand, instead turning her attention to the female cultivator in the far corner of the courtyard. She was trading blows with mirror image of herself, projected by an enormous jade orb almost as tall as she was.

  The Jade Drifting Cloud Eye!

  To think that they were using such a treasure for such a purpose. An artifact more valuable than Hui’s own clan, being used as a simple training device! She almost coughed up blood at the sight, catching herself before she allowed the shock to get to her.

  “Boss…” Guan Tie whispered, leaning in to her ear as he watched the disciple parry the memory of her own sword.

  “Not now,” she hissed, straightening her back as she approached the standing pair.

  “Greeting,” she began, a cordial smile on her lips as she gave then a courteous bow. “This humble cultivator is Chang Hui, Sub-Assistant Branch Head of the Clear Jade Mountain Branch of the Southern Peaks Gambling Hall.” The younger of the two bowed back, while the older cultivator simply took a step forwards, staring off to Hui’s side. Li Gho stepped forwards to meet him, each raising an arm they clasped the other by the elbow.

  “The journey of a thousand Lis,” her secretary began.

  “Begins with specifying which family they are from,” the tall cultivator replied, finishing the traditional greeting of the Li Clan.

  “Li Gho, of the northern Red Snake River Lis.”

  “Li Zhan, of the Stone Tiger Bluffs Lis.”

  Hui allowed the two to finish their greeting, well aware of the Li Clan’s peculiar practices. They were all quite normal cultivators most of the time, save when their brethren were involved. Or at least Li Gho and the rest of the Lis she had met were. It was still far too early to make such a judgement about Li Zhan.

  “I am Li Zhan,” the cultivator eventually replied, giving Hui a short nod before turning back to his companion. “So, in regards to training—”

  Hui felt her pinky clench as she coughed politely into her first.

  “Ahem.”

  Li Zhan continued on as if he hadn’t heard, though his companion looked back and forth between Hui and her senior apprehensively.

  “—the best practice is continued practice. As you—”

  “Ahem!”

  “—you will become closer to your blade, you will master it. From there, when—”

  “AHEM!!”

  “—you will begin to reach a state where—"

  “I am here on important business on the behalf of the Southern Peaks Gambling Hall, in regards to the loan of your Jade Drifting Cloud Eye for a tournament that we will be holding!” Hui kept her tone as level as she could manage, injecting just hint of qi into her words to draw his attention. A drastic action, as it was tantamount to a challenge of authority, but she couldn’t afford to let her fate be doomed by a blind adherence to social niceties.

  Li Zhan turned at her words, approaching her in a pair of steps so quick that they made Gaun Tie flinch.

  “Tournament?” he asked, his dark brown eyes staring directly into Hui’s as he leaned in intently. Hui took a step back to before she replied, catching a better look at his robe as she did. Her eyes widened in shock.

  The pale white stitching along the cuff of his robe indicated that he was a Senior Disciple, and although time had faded his robes quite a bit, it was clear that they had originally been the dark nephrite of a General Disciple rather than the light green of an Inner Disciple.

  But the thing that caught her attention wasn’t their sorry condition, which would have taken centuries of neglect to reach, but the stitching of the emblem on his left breast.

  An emblem of the Teal Mountain Sect displaying six interconnected peaks.

  This could become troublesome if she wasn’t careful.

  The sect’s emblem had changed with each peak they had acquired, and while Hui had become a disciple during the Era of Drought, it had still possessed its current seven peaks at the time. If she remembered right, Long’s Horn Peak had become part of the sect almost 1300 years ago, so if Li Zhan had been a member at the time, then it meant that he was a third-stage cultivator approaching the last few centuries of his lifespan.

  This meant that he was either a lurking dragon, sharpening his fangs as he sought to break into the fourth stage, or he was a true dreg, the sole remnant of a once-great organization, clinging to its ruined halls. She would have to be careful. Until she knew for sure which he was, it was too dangerous to make assumptions.

  “Yes,” Hui replied, indicating for Li Gho to present the poster to him. “The Southern Peaks Gambling Hall is holding a tournament, and our good friends at the Sword Division suggested that we meet with you directly to discuss the loan of your incredible artifact. For a suitable fee of course.”

  Li Zhan glanced at the poster for a second before turning back to Hui.

  “No,” he said, making to turn back to his junior.

  “Wait,” Hui said, hastily, stepping in front of him. “We are willing to double the Sword Divisions fee!”

  Which was to say that she would be paying about the usual amount. She knew Yao Minzhe well, and there was no way he wasn’t charging her at least twice what he had been paying.

  “How?” Li Zhan asked, tilting his head to the side puzzledly.

  “Immediately. The Southern Peak Gambling Hall is well known for its integrity, and we are more than willing to offer you half of the payment in advance as a gesture of good faith.”

  Li Gho produced a small chest of spirit stones from her storage ring, and Hui made a show of unlocking it before presenting its contents to Li Zhan with a flourish.

  “What is this?” Li Zhan asked, staring blankly at the pile of wealth.

  “Its…our payment,” Hui said, a bit confused by his question. Could he not sense the qi within the stones? Any capable disciple of his age should be able to assay such a sum at a glance.

  “That isn’t what the Sword Division gives us,” Li Zhan said, a firm edge in his voice.

  “What do you mean?” Hui asked.

  “When they borrow from us, they give us jade slips of the tournament,” Li Zhan said, and Hui grit her teeth as she restrained herself from cursing Yao Minzhe.

  Jade slips? You had to be joking! The Jade Drifting Cloud Eye could record events it had been used to observe on such things with the greatest of ease! It was one of the reasons why the artifact was so expensive to begin with.

  Before its existence jade slips had been a valuable resource, as they could only be produced by cultivators with a sufficiently high level of cultivation in the mental arts. They allowed a cultivator to learn a technique by observing memories of the past, which was infinitely better than the still images contained within most cultivation manuals.

  Aside from procuring jade of sufficient quality, which was a nominal expense at best, all one would need to do was insert it into the Eye before the tournament started and they could produce all the jade slips they wanted! The Sword Division even sold copies of them on the side, as a way of further lining their own pockets.

  If Minzhe had been paying them in jade slips, it meant that most of her spirit stones had been disappearing into that snake’s pockets. There was no doubt that he was lying about what he was receiving to his superiors and keeping the difference for himself. He’d practically been robbing these fools blind, and they were too stupid to even realize it!

  “We can give you some jade slips from the tournament, if that is what you would prefer,” Hui said.

  “It is not a sword tournament,” Li Zhan said flatly, turning to leave yet again. Hui attempted to intercept him a second time, but he stepped around her, evading her footwork technique as if she had been standing still. He began addressing his junior again as she watched, carrying on with his explanation of sword techniques with barely a thought, as if nothing Hui had said had mattered in the slightest.

  Snarling, Hui reached into her storage ring. It had been a long, trying day, and her patience had hit its limit after the third hour of kowtowing. How dare this waste of cultivation show the Southern Peaks Gambling Hall such disrespect? As if his pathetic club was so great? Her future depended on this, and she wasn’t going to let some fool that didn’t understand a good deal stand in her way.

  “Boss, what are you doing” Li Gho asked, glancing worriedly at bronze challenge gong clutched in her hand.

  While the Southern Peaks Gambling Hall was technically a semi-independent sect organization, each branch was still officially considered a club, as it allowed them to more readily recruit new members and to pay less taxes on their holdings. Most were unaware of this, assuming that they were something closer to a subdivision of the Martial Division, but it meant that they retained certain capabilities even if they rarely exercised them.

  A Club Challenge was one such thing, and Li Gho covered her ears as Chang Hui struck the gong with its pewter striker, a crazed glint in her eye.