Li Hanyi was a tragedy. A cautionary tale of why each peak specialized as they did and meddled not in the affairs of dissimilar peaks. Qing Jing and Qian Cao would remain the scholarly bastions while Bai Zhan could keep on specializing in physical cultivation and combat. They did not need to mix their studies, lest one more disciple ended up like Li Hanyi.

Wang Huo sewed up her face with catgut and a wickedly curved needle that glinted in the lantern light. He didn’t numb her face, not after the first careful touch of his qi to hers gave him an answer he didn’t expect. What he found there made him frown, but his duty of care kept him silent.

“Pay attention, young man. If you’re going to around sparring with live steel, you should learn how to sew up your mistakes.” He busied himself with needles and gauze, a neat spool of pale brown catgut that he unwound as he went. “Ah, my poor Han’er. They’ll never call you pretty again,” Wang Huo murmured sadly.

She glanced up as her shizun finished the first layer of stitches, saw the frown on his face through her lashes, and bit back the urge to wince. Her shizun knew, had probably figured out the reasonable reason why she had done it, and pitied her for it. The only consolation was that Liu Feng hadn’t, and probably would never, figure out that she had used him to become ugly.

Liu Feng made a sad little broken sigh somewhere beyond her shoulder. “Will it scar?”

“Young man, this master is a cultivating doctor, not an immortal god of medicine,” Wang Huo said grumpily as he knotted another suture. “Of course, this will scar. The blood loss alone might have killed our Han’er if it hadn’t happened in this master’s own courtyard.”

Oh, she hadn’t thought of that. Then again, she hadn’t thought that Liu Feng would manage anything more than a glancing blow on her cheek or chin. If she had? Maybe she would have tried to restrict her blood flow more than she had. An artistic flow was all she needed to sell it, not a geyser as if this was a slaughterhouse film.

A half-chi-long wound took Wang Huo not even a quarter of a shichen to suture, his hands steady as he pressed her flesh into place and sewed it up taut with dozens of little knots. He sighed heavily, tied off the last suture, and sat back on his heels. “That that back to this master’s study and then return to your peak. This master… does not expect to see you again for quite some time, young man.”

Liu Feng opened his mouth to argue, once then twice like a fish, then something clearly made him think better of it as he snapped his mouth shut in a grim line. She watched him bow respectfully to her shizun out of the corner of her eye before he scooped up the tray of blood-soaked gauze and leftover catgut from the stone courtyard. His shoes slipped only once in the blood before he quietly made his escape from Wang Huo’s building rage.

She wanted to apologize, truly she did, but her numb lips struggled to shape the words. Li Hanyi had succeeded in removing herself from any kind of candidacy, harem or otherwise. And all she needed to do was abuse the trust and friendship Liu Feng had given her.

Maybe, just maybe, she had gone too far in order to defy the System.

***

Her new scar did not bring the peace she craved. No, instead she walked the halls of her sect and heard whispers on her heels everywhere she went. Wang Huo, her beloved shizun, had pitied her when he saw what she had so arrogantly done to herself. But now? Now she understood why.

Bandages hid the worst parts of her scar from the world for a time, but she could only bear the itching cotton for so long. The bandages limited her vision and gave her a new weakness that she could ill afford. She had a protagonist to worry about still, after all, who would come to her peak and slaughter them all (save Mu Qingfang). No, she would have to come up with something other than the bandages to hide her damage.

Liu Feng tried to help. The poor boy clearly felt responsible for her mistake and tried his best to make up for his part in it. He brought her monster parts and rare herbs to help her scar heal faster, increase her vitality, and speed along her cultivation. Li Hanyi couldn’t bear the wounded puppy look he had about him and capitulated every time. She tossed the gifts into storage without looking, but she took them all the same.

After all, she set her qi to Wang Huo’s salves, against the healing energies of wood and water, let metal and earth destroy it, and tried not to be proud of waking up each morning to the gnarled scar across her face. And each time she did it, Li Hanyi knew it was cruel of her to string him along. She should have told him to stop, that she didn’t want her scar gone so much as she just wanted people to stop talking about it like it was the moral failure of her martial generation.

Li Hanyi did not have many friends. She had her shizun, her annoying little shidi, Airplane, and… Liu Feng. Losing what little reason Liu Feng had to even acknowledge her existence? Unacceptable. The thought alone made her sick to her stomach and want to tear her hair out. Liu Feng had gotten her into this mess with his stupid muscles and his stupid pretty face, and he could damn well see her out of it.

At least she knew why the System had slapped her with the Mystical White Hair trope: the stress alone had turned her hair snow white in the worst possible way.

The right front part of her hair had gone white. Not gently or gracefully, no, but in a stringy sort of way that made her look like a ghoul or some bad Hollywood vampire. Li Hanyi was two snaps of her fingers away from being the Chinese cultivating cousin of a family whose motto was to devour those who would subdue them, and she hated it. Mystical White Hair, your mother looked good.

Li Hanyi had never considered herself as particularly vain before dying of overwork and a rage-induced heart attack. Now she was a teenager all over again, surrounded by people with perfect skin and impossibly immaculate hair, and Li Hanyi found herself purposefully making herself ugly to save her own skin.

Liu Feng brought her his mother’s old veil and she almost broke down into tears. It didn’t work for her, the fabric clinging to her nose and the jagged upper half of her scar left exposed, but it meant the world to someone who had become the new social pariah. It meant someone still cared—

“Are you quite finished feeling sorry for yourself?” The voice at her bedroom door made her jump and stuff the silk veil guiltily into her sleeve. “My dear, come and have tea with this old master.”

Li Hanyi knew perfectly well that her shizun only phrased it like a question to politely soften the blow. The only option she had was to get to her feet, follow in his wake, pour the tea, and brace herself for whatever lecture he deemed fit to give. Wordlessly, silent as the grave, she padded her way across and down the hall to her shizun’s study. She gave the slightest bow as she entered before taking up her usual place across his desk.

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This part she knew, the dance of cups well-practiced and familiar as breathing. Pour the tea, breathe in the aromatic steam, sip slowly from hot porcelain, and keep her mouth hidden with the palm of her hand. Manners, simple and elegant, that had been drilled into her from the very first day under Wang Huo’s care. Polite small talk about the weather, the taste of the cake they shared, these were the little things that delighted.

Wang Huo set his cup down with a click of porcelain to wood. He took her hand in his long fingers, pressed the tips to her pulse, and the flow of her qi was laid bare. The poking and prodding was even normal behavior, the press of acupuncture needles and low humming guaranteed to soothe her frazzled nerves. “Ah, Han’er, our poor Han’er.”

He tutted at her from behind his mustache. ‘Why must you do these terrible things to yourself, Han’er?” Slowly, he shook his head, disappointed in his personal disciple. “Your poor face, why? Help this old master to understand why you guided that boy’s hand to do such an awful thing?”

Oh, oh no. Her shizun did know. He knew what she had done, what she had tricked Liu Feng into. “I—,” she stammered.

Wang Huo frowned. “You must have had a reason. Why else would you have taken such steps?” His robes rustled as he shifted in place. “Halce your face numbed to his blows. The flow of blood lessened. And all the while in this old master’s courtyard. Dearest Han’er, you could have been subtler.”

Her face flushed bright crimson. “I tried—.”

“Tried what, Han’er?” He cut her off with a raised hand. “You’ve disfigured yourself quite messily. And for what? You’ve destroyed whatever cultivation partnering prospects you could have had, to say little of marital prospects.” He spoke calmly, but every word was a knife in her heart.

What did she care about marital prospects? The whole point of what she had done was to keep herself from ever being considered as a potential wife candidate. Her shizun’s qi against hers was calming, kept her mind still enough for her desperate loneliness to abate.

Li Hanyi was in a hell of her own making with no signs of it stopping.

“What if I don’t want to get married?” She muttered, gaining confidence with every word. “What do I care if someone likes me for my face instead of who I am as a person? I don’t want beauty to be the main criteria for being added to some idiot man’s harem!”

Wang Huo blinked at her in surprise. Never in the almost decade had his disciple ever admitted that he was, in fact, she and only chose to dress like a man. “Ah. This master begins to understand. Our Han’er is a romantic at her heart.” He stroked his beard with his free hand and huffed grumpily. “This master takes no offense to the more reasonable methods Han’er takes to ensure her own happiness. But what of young Liu Feng? Did Han’er spare a single thought for his happiness?”

She froze. Liu Feng’s happiness? Hadn’t she given him a man’s ultimate romance? He had a rival now who could be name-dropped at a moment’s notice to color his backstory and make him seem that much more manly. Wasn’t that enough for a battle junkie like Liu Feng? Li Hanyi blinked back at her shizun uncomprehendingly.

He heaved a mighty sigh and shook his head sadly. “This master has failed as a shizun. How has this master’s dear Han’er managed to become such a selfish little thing?” The old man released her wrist and took a gentle sip from his cup. “How badly this old master has failed you, for you to be so callous and cruel to those you might call friend.”

Her? Callous and cruel? Not hardly when compared to the likes of blackened protagonist Luo Binghe. Everything Li Hanyi did was out of sheer necessity, not some raging case of Main Character Syndrome. The scar on her face was necessary to ensure her safe removal from said blackened protagonist’s radar.

Not that her shizun would ever know her spectacular reasons for doing what she did. Not when the mere thought of telling him had the System blaring alarms at her about massive point deductions if she opened her mouth to say anything about her actual situation. No, she’d have to keep her perfectly sane rationale to herself until the day she died. The only one who could, would, and did know the truth was her fellow transmigrator.

Wang Huo took her silence for the defeat it was. “Dear Han’er, you know what you must do to make it right. “He gave her a stern look over his teacup, eyebrows furrowing as his beard twitched. “Apologize to Liu Feng and make amends or I shall never allow you to associate with anyone from another peak until you do so.”

***

Apologizing to Liu Feng was easier said than done.

To apologize and make amends as her shizun wanted would require Liu Feng to be on the mountain range. Or, barring that, the idiot needed to at least tell someone where he was going or where he intended to be before he left. It was bad enough that Li Hayi was ordered to thicken her skin and apologize, but the idiot wasn’t even there for her to do it.

It wasn’t like her shizun was going to sign a pass and let her go hunt him down either. No, Li Hanyi was effectively on what was probably the ancient fantasy China equivalent of being grounded. She couldn’t leave her peak, wasn’t allowed outside visitors save for exactly one, and her life had narrowed neatly down to home and work. Li Hanyi was on punishment detail: bandage rolling, herb grinding, inventory taking, restocking, and everything else that was normally left to outer disciples. After so long of being trusted enough to be Bai Zhan’s on-call doctor and Liu Feng’s current personal one, her new restrictions chafed.

Worse still was the unrelenting churn of the gossip machine, cranking out new and irritating reasons why Li Hanyi had fallen from glory.

What whispers she didn’t hear were swiftly brought to her attention by her shidi. Such a bright boy, inexorably fond of his grumpy shixiong and prone to bringing her all kinds of experimental new salves and creams (none of which she ever dared to use after the first turned her hand green for a week). The bandages on her face were there to stop the horrified stares, not because her scar still bled. There was nothing anyone could do about it, least of all some wet-behind-the-ears whelp with his curios collection of plants he shouldn’t have.

The perks of being the Peak Lord’s newest personal disciple were many and mysterious.

Her shidi was an especially sticky bit of rice that was taking shameless delight in his shixioing’s confinement. No longer did he need to compete with the likes of Liu Feng and other Bai Zhan disciples, instead his only competition for LI Hanyi’s attention was the never-ending minutiae of drudge work. At least he would fold up his sleeves and join in whenever he could manage to find time away from his own shizun’s tasks.

“Li-shixiong, have you ever thought about what you’ll do as a full cultivator? You know, after your shizun says he has nothing more to teach you and goes into seclusion?” The boy was audacious with his questions, nigh unto blasphemous, but still, she paused to consider both.

She swatted idly at his legs as he swung them from the top of the sturdy wooden apothecary table. “Mind the porcelain, brat.” Her other arm shot out to catch a falling jar filled with some kind of balm, and rolled it off her palm to safety beside him. “What do you mean?”

Wang Huo, run out of things to teach her? Next to impossible. Wang Huo, telling her it was time to make her way in the world and to make sure she visited and wrote? Extremely likely.

“I think you should take some disciples. And then when you’re done with them, become an Elder.”

There was no question that Li Hanyi would never be in the running to be the next Qian Cao Peak Lord. Not when the current one, Chang Jinfei, so clearly doted on his personal disciples and left the rest of Qian Cao’s disciples to the other masters. Nor when Li Hanyi knew for a fact that Chang Jinfei considered her a troublemaker. But an Elder? Only if the next Peak Lord became very accepting about a pile of things very quickly.

Li Hanyi snorted a laugh. “I doubt that. If anything, I’ll end up taking on a bunch of problem disciples, scaring them back to righteous ness, and then sending them on to more capable masters.” Actually, now she spared a moment to think about it, that didn’t seem like such a terrible plan. She might as well put all that training from Bai Zhan’s elite to use.

Or, well, she could whenever Liu Feng showed back up and she could finally apologize to him properly like her shizun wanted.