Liu Feng looked blankly at the Brothers Pang and gave a slow blink. “Who… are these children? Are you on some new punishment from your shizun?” With the number of times that Li Hanyi had been put on punishment details and grounded, it was an extremely likely option.

“No,” she snapped out. “These are going to be my new shidi.” For once, Li Hanyi hadn’t made some colossal error in judgment that made her shizun frown at her in disappointment before giving her some moral lesson. “I just have to train them up first.”

To his credit, Liu Feng did not immediately leave the courtyard. “Did— Li Hanyi, did you steal someone’s children?” He didn’t even have the grace to sound scandalized, just resigned himself to the inevitable fallout. “You are aware that’s a crime, yes?”

She rolled her eyes back at him. “They’re proper outer disciple hopefuls of Qian Cao. Mu Xiang told them I could help them study for their exam.” Li Hanyi sniffed indignantly at him. She had more sense than to just walk off with someone’s children.

“So you decided they would make for good shidis?” He was decidedly unamused but for the sake of their fragile friendship? Liu Feng was clearly making an effort to understand. “You do know that isn’t how it works, right? Send them back to their masters before someone notices.”

“I do. Every day. They just come back every morning.” If she thought about it, the Brothers Pang weren’t unlike stray cats she kept feeding. “Besides, Yang Jin wants to watch us ‘train’.”

Liu Feng grunted before giving the fat little dumplings a quick once over. “He’s too fat to fight like you. They all are. They’re better suited for the Iron Body style than Li Zhen style.” His frank assessment was that of a master looking objectively, so she could give him some grace for calling her new shidis fat.

“Liu Feng. Did you name how I fight?” She wouldn’t be surprised if he had. Ancient fantasy China was inexplicably fond of slapping fancy yet brain-dead names on everything. It was just odd that he thought her particular habit of flinging needles at people was something worthy of being named. After her, no less.

He blinked almost serenely back at her, the cat that got the cream and the mouse beside. “You are the one who both created and still uses it. It should be named after you,” Liu Feng grunted. “If I left it up to you, you’d name it something weird.”

The thought had crossed her mind. Then again, what was the point of naming something as a style when it was only used by one person? How pretentious did he think she was? No, she didn’t want to think about it. The point was that her random flailing about while chucking fistfuls of needles at him hardly counted as a style. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Liu Feng shrugged. “Doesn’t change the fact that your ‘borrowed’ new shidis don’t suit your usual methods.” His ever-perfect nose wrinkled just a touch as he appeared to think about it. “I’m not training them, before you even ask.”

Damn, he knew her too well. So much for that plan to put the baby War God to work. Li Hanyi rolled her eyes. “Obviously not. They’re my shidis, not yours. Get your own,” she said waspishly. “Did you want to spar today or not?”

“Go get Huanxing Gu. I want to see if we can determine what it does.” Most serious physical cultivators figured out what their spiritual swords did through vigorous combat. So far, that method had yet to work, and, still, nobody knew what Li Hanyi’s sword was supposed to do. She’d meditated on it, stared at the characters that made up its name, and Li Hanyi had all but given up.

Her sword still did normal sword things like let her fly and move it clunkyly along with half-remembered sword seals. What did it matter that it didn’t do any fancy tricks? She wasn’t an aspiring war god, just his doctor. And even then, she wasn’t going to be staying as his doctor once he had his nickname and took his place as a peak lord.

It mattered to Liu Feng.

It mattered a great deal to Liu Feng.

He wanted her to fight at her best, and her best meant with every legitimate skill at her disposal. Perhaps, if she had more tricks up her sleeves that were decent and honorable, then maybe Li Hanyi would resort to her needles less and less. His hope for an epic sword-against-sword battle was plain as day, and Li Hanyi didn’t have the capacity to deny him. Not when he had all of those letters and a pile of the worst blackmail possible at his disposal.

So, she’d suck up her pride and pull her sword out of the pouch in her sleeve, let him pummel her into the ground, and lick her wounds in peace somewhere he couldn’t see. It was a system, terrible yes, but a system nonetheless. It had worked for them for years and there was no reason to change it.

The moment she pulled out her sword, Yang Jin’s eyes lit up. His little fists balled up close to his chest as if he could hold his emotions in by willpower alone. “Li-langzhong, is that your sword?” his sheer childish enthusiasm was going to give her a migraine.

“Yes.” What, was she supposed to lie and tell the brat that her sword wasn’t hers? She’d be using it in front of him often enough that the lie would fall apart in days. “This is Huanxing Gu, the Ghost Bone sword.” Ten-year-old boys liked this sort of thing, didn’t they? Wasn’t that why anime was so popular? All of those named attacks and fancy combat styles were a young man’s romance. At least if she told him the name then he wouldn’t try to make an even worse one up.

His eyes gleamed. Who knew that the little dumpling could be so very into this? “The Ghost Bone sword? Li-langzhong, that’s so cool!”

Liu Feng grunted, his arms crossed over his chest stoically. “It would be cooler if Li Hanyi would bother to figure out what it does,” he muttered, just loud enough for a trained cultivator to hear. What she did and didn’t do would forever be a point of contention until she finally did what Liu Feng wanted.

“I prefer my needles,” she replied flatly. “I’m a doctor, not a swordsman. We don’t cultivate like that on Qian Cao.” Best to set his expectations early about what their peak did and didn’t do. Never mind that every inner disciple had a sword. What did it matter to a ten-year-old when the likes of Liu Feng were around? “I know what I need to in order to defend my patients.”

Of course, Liu Feng had to ruin it. “False modesty doesn’t suit you. Li Hanyi once successfully raided Bai Zhan with nothing but his needles and a qiankun pouch of poisons,” he chimed in. “But I can still beat him.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Yang Jin nodded sagely, the fat on his neck wobbling. “Ah, of course! Our Li-langzhong is known across the peak for his martial skills!”

What— what kind of terrible rumors were going around at her peak? Then again, she didn’t think the title of “Mad Doctor of Qian Cao” had been applied for no reason. Not that she particularly liked having the title at all, but at least she understood why it was even there. Li Hanyi would be the first person to admit that what she had done had been born of desperate rage, but she wouldn’t go back and change a thing.

Not that she could. She still didn’t have enough points for a bookmark in the B-Point store. It was better to just learn to accept the things she couldn’t change than to dwell on being chronically short on points.

Li Hanyi was going to be a better person for her new shidis-to-be. She’d turn over a new leaf, a kinder one, one that changed the reputation she apparently had as a battle-junkie to something else. Anything else, so long as it kept Luo Binghe’s attention away from her. Not too smart or stupid, not violent enough to be challenged, just competent enough to keep a normal sect relationship going. But not so very attached to her sect that she’d be included in the wholesale slaughter to come.

A fine line to walk for someone like Li Hanyi, but she’d be damned if she didn’t try.

Liu Feng might have wanted her to learn her sword’s tricks to have a better rival. He might have wanted it because he thought it pathetic for an inner disciple to not know the shape and intricacies of their soul so very late into this stage of their cultivation. Who knew what went on in his mind?

Some part of her wondered, yes, she’d admit it, what Huanxing Gu did. But she shoved that part of her deep into the box of things not to think about until it was absolutely necessary. This? Wasn’t necessary. She had her needles and her various medicinal concoctions. That was enough for her. Any more and she might become something interesting in the eyes of the System’s narrative.

But Li Hanyi’s opinions on the matter meant nothing.

Liu Feng had decided she would learn it, so learn it she would. Broken bones, exhaustion, and a world of other ills be damned. Her friend was a strict taskmaster who would allow no deviation in the pursuit of perfection, no quarter given, and no rest for the weary. Worse yet, he had set the goal in front of her new little shidis so she would have no choice but to train or risk their sad little faces.

His sword rose to block the first needle and left the scabbard to knock away the next two. Liu Feng knew her too well. He lunged low against the ground to counter the needle aimed at his stomach, using the momentum to dash across the distance. Cold steel against her neck had her leaping back to avoid having her head cleaved from her body.

The scar on her face, hidden beneath its customary bandages, throbbed as if to remind her of the damage he could do.

His sword gleamed with qi, that dedicated attempt to dull his sword’s edge lest he carve her up again by accident. This wouldn’t stop broken bones, but at least broken bones could be fixed without scars. That was the idea, anyway.

Only the healers of Qian Cao could say for certain just how many bones could break before the human body was irreparable. They could fix anything if they tried hard enough. That was the best part about a peak full of nonsense fantasy doctors, after all. But all of that was neither here nor there, not even a passing thought when Liu Feng sparred with Li Hanyi.

Years of practice at it had made their desperate fights all the more graceful. Sword met sword in a whirl of gray sleeves against white robes. Steel flashed in an impossible dance they had done a hundred times and would do a hundred more before Liu Feng was satisfied with her mastery of the steps.

Yang Jin and the Brothers Pang watched the spar with stars in their eyes. They ooh’d and ahh’d at appropriate times, clapped their little dumpling hands at particularly elaborate moves.

“Stop showing off,” Liu Feng growled, even as he locked his sword to hers and grabbed her wrist to keep her in place. “Focus on the fight.”

She kneed him in the gut and they sprang apart. “I am,” she hissed. “How are they supposed to learn something if we don’t slow down?” It’s not like Li Hanyi was going to stop and explain what was happening. She just angled the spar so that the little dumplings could see it better. “I’m not showing off, just showing an example!”

He grunted, a single sound containing multitudes of meanings. The flash of his sword was all she needed to know that he was distinctly unimpressed with her logic. It was nothing but the truth, but who dared to fathom why Liu Feng was so very annoyed by it?

Liu Feng had developed a new habit of twisting his blade every time it came close to her body. He struck her only with the flat of it, not quite pulling the blow but turning it from a cut into a smack. It wasn’t something he had done before, and she wanted to blame his time away from her and whatever training he had done for the new indignity.

Li Hanyi wasn’t a physical cultivator by choice. Qian Cao’s disciples tended more toward spiritual cultivation than that of body strengthening. But constant exposure to Liu Feng’s sword skills had forced her to at least divert some of her time to strengthening aspects of her body that she normally wouldn’t have needed to. She put her metal and earth roots to work and strengthened her bones so they wouldn’t shatter under the force of Liu Feng’s normal blows.

This new habit of his made it all worth it. Instead of bone-crushing agony, Li Hanyi was able to take the force of his strikes and flow with them. She was a kite on a string of his making, bouncing to and fro, but at least she’d endure.

At least until he got tired of it and punched her in the gut.

***

Li Hanyi was reasonably sure that Yue Yuan did not mean to be this much of a pain in her backside. But, here he was anyway, sheepishly chuckling and being a pain nonetheless.

“Do you have any sense of self-awareness? Or is that me asking the stars to stop shining?” She watched him shuffle his feet before her window, at least self-aware enough to be embarrassed by his appearance. It was early enough that she hadn’t even had breakfast yet, rising with the down for her morning meditation.

Yue Yuan blanched at her tone. “Ah, apologies. I had thought it wouldn’t be too early for you.” He held his arm to his chest and cradled it gingerly as if it would flop away from him if he didn’t. His eye had been blackened, skin showing bruised where it peeked out from beneath his robes. Someone had beaten Yue Yuan and done it thoroughly.

Meanwhile, Li Hanyi clutched her sleeping robes closed and hid her torso behind the window frame. She’d come too far to be discovered just because a patient decided to arrive with the dawn. At the same time, the code of Qian Cao made refusing to treat him unlikely. “You’re lucky I’m even awake. Go to my clinic. I’ll meet you there.” Unsaid was the part where she would be getting dressed first without him around.

He had the decency to blush. “My apologies,” he murmured. Li Hanyi decided then and there not to trust his apologies, as the ease it rolled off his tongue belied an intention to do it again.

She narrowed her eyes as she stared back at him. “Somehow, I don’t believe that,” she said flatly. He looked contrite in a school-boyish fashion, and Li Hanyi could feel her blood pressure spiking the longer he stood there. “Just… go. I’ll patch you up, and then you can explain all this to me.”

Li Hanyi watched him go with a frown before closing her window deftly against the pre-dawn chill. Never before in either life had Li Hanyi been woken up by a boy tapping on her window like a bad romance film. She wasn’t sure the whole experience was worth it, no matter how handsome the boy in question was.

[A new character plot quest has been unlocked. Successful completion will award 300 B-Points. Would you like to proceed with the quest “The Price of Power”?]

Curiosity alone had her stabbing the ‘accept’ box with her finger. “Fine. Let’s go find out what Yue Yuan’s big deal is. With my luck, he pulled something or dislocated that arm while training,” she muttered even as she angrily began wrapping her chest in now well-practiced motions. “300 B-Points and I’ve not even had breakfast yet.”