Everyone's eyes were on me. My head burned under the attention! But it was fine. I would show them all. I would show them all that they had no right to disrespect me with such ease!

"Can't pay?" I cackled as I stepped up to the stage. "Who said I can't pay?"

I climbed onto the stage, so I was eye-to-eye with the auctioneer, who looked back at me with some mixture of confusion and loathing in her expression. Everyone else in the auction house had their eyes on me from behind. In that case—

I pulled one gold bar out of my robes with my left hand and dropped it to my left side, in full view of everyone. It landed on the wooden stage with a cracking thud.

The auctioneer leaned down and picked it up. "This— this is..." Her voice trembled.

"Gold?" cried out a voice from the audience. "A bar of solid gold?"

"That's worth like two hundred to two fifty spirit stones, right?"

"It would be, if it were real. But it's obviously fake. Why would trash like Bai Chunxue have real gold?"

"Yeah, there's no way it's real."

The auctioneer shuddered. She could tell it was real.

"Oh, sorry, this must not be enough, right?" I continued with a hearty laugh. "Will this cover it, then?" I took the other two bars of gold, and this time, I tossed them across the stage, in different directions.

As the auctioneer dashed across the stage to collect them, the murmurings of the crowd only grew louder.

"Actually, looking with Qi Sight, I think those might be real..."

"I mean, even if they are real, there's no reason for Bai Chunxue to be so disrespectful about it..."

"But the auction house offended Bai Chunxue first, by saying that he couldn't pay. If someone slaps your cheek, you have to slap them back, otherwise you'll lose face."

"Yeah, if the auction house made fun of me like that, I think I'd do the same thing."

"Dumbass, you don't have enough money to pull a stunt like that."

"Wait, so they're not fake?"

"I don't think anyone is shameless enough to do that with fake gold."

The auctioneer placed the three bars of gold down on a little table on the stage, and then put a hand to her forehead. She was utterly lost for words. I didn't know what was so difficult— all she had to do was apologize for insulting me. That was it. If she apologized, I would forgive her. I did not have the willpower to hate someone who apologized. If they acknowledged me, if they acknowledged the validity of my existence, that would be enough. That would be enough! That would be all I could ask for! Even Canyue— if only she acknowledged me, I would bury all my resentment towards her!

—The butler stepped in from behind the curtains at the sides of the stage, holding the gold bar Natsuki had given him as well as a sizeable bag. Recognizing me, he quickly shuffled over.

"Dear customer, we examined the gold bar you presented us. We can take it off your hands for two hundred twenty spirit stones, if you so like."

"I'll take the spirit stones," I said, and I took the bag from his outstretched hands.

I looked to the auctioneer. If she apologized...

—She turned her gaze away.

So I scattered half the bag of spirit stones over the stage the way you would throw feed to geese. Some of them rolled to her feet, some rolled behind the curtain at the back, and some rolled off the stage to the seating level below.

"Here's the payment. Keep the change."

With a fragment of Natsuki's qi, I pulled the painting as well as the three gold bars on the table into my hands, and then, seeing that Natsuki had already disappeared from her seat, I walked out of the hall, leaving the shouting crowd behind, with something like tears welling up in my eyes.

They were not tears of joy.

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Natsuki was waiting for me outside the hall.

"Natsuki," I called out, quickly wiping my eyes clear.

"You did well," she said as I offered her all the spoils from the auction, all of which she simply dropped into her sleeves, somehow without weighing them down. "Just do not let it get to your head. You should be harsh with those who disrespect you, but kind to those who treat you kindly."

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Then shall we return? I can take you back anytime."

"Ah— actually, Professor Jibeidi gave me a talisman to call Xiaolan. I should use it."

She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, is that what that talisman does? Interesting. In that case, I shall return to the veil. Call me when you have need."

I blinked, and she was gone.

I wandered down the roads towards where Xiaolan had gone to sleep. He was a lazy bird, so I did not want to make him come and pick me up from the middle of the city.

—"Ai, is that Bai Chunxue over there?"

I turned to see who had spoken. It was Gu Lianying, who had been at the auction! I winced. She was one of Wujiu's people, and I did not want to get in a fist-fight in the middle of the city.

"Good afternoon, Senior Gu. Are you also returning from the auction?"

"Yes, yes." She smiled widely. "Bai Chunxue, you know, I am very curious about your antics at the auction house today. Since when did you carry bars of gold around? I'd have assumed that Jiang Hanfeng would have taken them all already and given them to Long Guoqiang." She made an expression of mock surprise. "Oh, that's right. You killed Jiang Hanfeng, so maybe that's why."

I sighed. "Senior, please don't joke around about such heavy topics. How could I kill Jiang Hanfeng? I have no cultivation whatsoever, and Jiang Hanfeng was only a step away from Foundation Establishment."

"How could you, indeed? Why don't we find out?" She cracked her knuckles and stepped towards me. "While we're at it, I can take some of that gold off you. They must be weighing you down."

I grimaced. I did not want to fight her, not here in the middle of a street, where any display of power would be known to half the province by midnight. It was also a bad idea to have Natsuki intervene here in full view of the public. I had nothing of value on me anyways— perhaps it would be best to take a few punches and leave things at that. Yes. It was better if nobody held any expectations of me. If everyone simply continued to think that I was powerless trash... that would put far less of a weight on my shoulders.

—One of the two people standing behind Lianying stepped up and slapped her arm.

"Lianying, did you forget? Sister Wujiu said that we shouldn't touch Bai Chunxue for the time being."

Lianying shrugged. "Sister Wujiu is my friend, not my boss. So I'm taking that as a recommendation and not as an order."

"What do you mean, friend?" The other person punched her shoulder and laughed. "Lianying, you are in Foundation Establishment, you cannot be friends with someone in Core Formation. She is our boss, and what is wrong with that? Next time you go into secluded cultivation, I will offer you some annotated tomes on Confucius, so you do not get so arrogant."

Lianying snorted. "Then once I breakthrough to Core Formation, I will call her my friend."

"By that time? Lianying, by that time Sister Wujiu will be the lord over all the west, and even calling her our boss would be too disrespectful!"

"Whatever," Lianying groaned, waving her hand dismissively. "If you have a problem, just back off. I'm itching to try out this new Water Curtain technique, and this opportunity is too good to pass up."

The other two shrugged and stepped away.

I stepped gingerly to the side. In this case, as long as I made sure that I didn't go flying off into the road or into a wall, I would be fine. I aligned myself with her so that if she hit me, I would probably go tumbling down the raised sidewalk, which would be least painful.

She approached. I took a defensive stance.

She reached into the bag at her hip, and from it scattered a glistening teal mist in an arc above her head. Like wisps of water on a winter's windowpane they ran together and congealed, before freezing together in great spears of ice, hanging over her hair like a halo.

—I had been hit by those ice spears enough times to understand how they worked. They would either shatter or pierce depending on their speed at the moment of impact. As long as I stepped back right when they were about to hit me, I could probably ensure they would shatter, which— at the least— would only cause me some flesh wounds.

She raised her right hand and dropped it in front of her, and one spear slid towards me, at a speed sufficiently slow that it would surely only shatter when it struck me. I raised my fists. I could intercept it.

The spear approached, and approached, and when it was finally close enough that I could reach out and grab it in my hands, I—

"Now."

Lianying clasped her hands together in the mudra of the tiger, and the spear disappeared.

Just to make sure it was not a mere trick of the light, I followed through with my hands, stretching them towards where the spear had hung in the air. But my hands touched nothing. The spear had actually disappeared!

—Suddenly, I lost my balance and toppled forward, and I realized that I had been struck in the back by one of her spears, which shattered against my back like stinging hail!

Choking on my own breath, I fell forward. What was behind me? Was there a fourth person? Had I been set up? I spun around as I staggered, but— there was nothing behind me! Had the spear teleported behind me?! Or had it been an illusion all along?!

"Oh, this Water Curtain technique really does work," Lianying laughed. "But, Bai Chunxue, you should never show your back in a fight."

—Shit! I had turned my back to Lianying! I needed to—

Lianying took three quick steps forward, and then delivered a side kick straight to my lower back, this with far more power than the spear had carried. I went flying five meters down the sidewalk before I tumbled to the ground, landing on my forearms and scraping holes into my robes as they skidded along the rock.

As I turned and stood, I coughed up blood. But it was fine. I was fine. I wiped the blood from my mouth and took a defensive stance.

Other people on the street were beginning to stop and talk. They were watching. They were watching, and so I was betting that Lianying would have the shame to stop after one or two more attacks. But, then again, if she did not have the shame, then nobody would step out from the crowd to stop her. That was the kind of place the jianghu was.

"Alright, I think I get it," she muttered slowly. "This time I'll make it fast."

She stepped forward, white flames billowing off her right arm entire! She raised her right hand once more, and two spears chambered themselves by her side. The mirth on her face calmed, and her breath regularized. She was serious.

Her hand fell with the force of a lightning-bolt, and the two spears flashed forward—