Sitting on the lowest bleacher in one of four long sets of stone bleachers in an area known as the Martial Field, Lan Jin has his elbows on his knees and his jaw is resting on his palms as he idly watches young men wearing different variations of brown or white robes play slow-motion ninja paddy cake on various raised-stone arenas in front of him. The people are absolutely ridiculous— the things they are doing look fancy and they have cool names, like Tiger Subduing Palm, Rampaging Elephant Fist, or Swooping Falcon Talons, but to Lan Jin, everyone who goes on stage to fight looks like they are just waiting for a long period of time and then giving each other a bunch of high fives.
Sure, the people all look like they have strong bodies and a great deal of control over their movements, but everything they are doing is so boring. There was no grappling, no punches ever land on someone else’s body, and, for whatever reason, people seem to give up randomly. Lan Jin thinks that the people giving up are doing so because they run out of Qi— which was something he noticed when he realized that some of the people had relatively large amounts of Qi in different stages of purity escaping their palms and fists every time they attacked— but even still, compared to watching some events online, fights in the Octagon, or even ‘professional wrestling’, these guys, who tried their best to keep their clothes clean even while fighting, were just boring to watch.
Unfortunately for Lan Jin, this was the only thing he could do to pass the time while waiting for the Martial Testing Pavilion to open up again.
After Lan Jin gave Moxian some purple mist, she immediately started ghosting him again and, even now, several hours later, she had not contacted him to tell him what it might be. That was all fine seeing as the purple mist wasn’t harming him and it wasn’t exactly a limited resource— it just took a bit of effort to gather— but problems began to bother Lan Jin after he arrived in the Inner City.
First, he and Hu Shentian came to the Martial Testing Pavilion to get him tested and registered as a cultivator while Hu Gongniu and Hu Qiuping went to record and sell all of their natural treasures. Unfortunately, when they arrived, the Pavilion Master had apparently been called away by some emergency and it was unknown when he would return. Consequently, Lan Jin had no choice but to wait nearby and periodically check in on the Martial Testing Pavilion to see if it was open again.
This was the reason why Lan Jin was in the Martial Field in the first place— it was the closest place to the Martial Testing Pavilion and Hu Shentian thought it would be a bad idea for him to go anywhere else until he managed to register. So, for the first hour after arriving, Hu Shentian stayed with him and they watched several boring matches together while sometimes chatting about random things. But, since neither of them had much sleep over the last two days, they didn’t really have much interest in talking. Eventually, Hu Shentian got a little worried about how long it was taking Hu Gongniu and Hu Qiuping to sell the natural treasures, so after reminding Lan Jin not to leave the Martial Field, he left to check on them leaving Lan Jin alone to watch the fights.
Being alone was fine for Lan Jin. In fact, he even preferred it since he was too tired to hold a real conversation. But a recurring problem came about after Hu Shentian left, and that was the numerous people who, when they saw his appearance and the fact that he was sitting alone, came up to him to interrogate him about who he was, why he was in the city, and what reason he had for being in the Martial Field.
He gave each of them the same answer— the name ‘Lan Jin’ and the fact that he was waiting for the Martial Testing Pavilion to open.
Without fail, each time someone heard he was waiting for the Martial Testing Pavilion to open, they told him that it was never closed and that someone was always there to perform tests— day or night. Consequently, Lan Jin had to tell each person who chose to interrogate him that there was some kind of emergency and the Pavilion Master had to leave. Inevitably, he would get strange looks from the people interrogating him and they would then leave the Martial Field for a few minutes before returning and ignoring him.
Lan Jin assumed they were all going to the Martial Testing Pavilion to see if he was actually telling the truth, and watching their reactions allowed him to see whether the Martial Testing Pavilion had opened yet without ever having to stand up.
Sadly, even after Hu Shentian had been gone for nearly two hours, it seemed as though the Martial Testing Pavilion would remain closed for some time. Even worse, despite being only five feet from the edge of the arena nearest him, Lan Jin could not feel any enthusiasm about the fights going on in front of him.
While he waits, Lan Jin wonders how long it will be before he is actually able to get any sleep. He still doesn’t have a house, and for that matter, he barely has an idea of how he would need to go about getting a house in the city. He assumes he will have enough money based on how enthusiastic Hu Qiuping was toward everything they’d collected, but seeing as he is currently alone and none of the three men surnamed Hu have any guarantee of showing up again, he has no clue if he will actually be able to afford to purchase anything, let alone a house.
“I wonder if there are hostels or something,” Lan Jin mumbles under his breath.
“What’s a… what was that word?” A cute voice asks from his left.
Surprised, Lan Jin jerks a little, but he’s too tired to do anything else before he slowly turns his head to look at a cute girl with shoulder-length black hair wearing a pink cheongsam with flowers switched into it.
Looking at her, Lan Jin’s first thought is that she’s very short. In fact, she seems to be just south of five-foot-tall. She’s also a little on the thin side and her overall appearance is very girlish, but her dark brown eyes seem more mature than what her height would suggest about her age, and her face, though pale and cute, lacks any sense of childlike naivety. In the end, Lan Jin decides that she’s younger than him, but whether it is one year younger or five years younger, he can’t be sure.
Eventually, he answers her question. “It’s like a hotel, but for broke people.”
Then he turns his head back to the arena and continues watching. However, before he can do much more than turn his head, the girl in pink kicks his foot.
When he looks at her again, she has a clear scowl on her face.
“What?” He asks while wondering if she’s about to ask him the same three questions so many others had been asking him.
In the end, she does just that.
“Who are you?”
“Lan Jin.”
“That tells me nothing. Why are you in Qiang City?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Lan Jin changes his answer a bit and says, “Because I have shit luck and this is where I ended up.”
Scowling at him, she then asks, “But why are you here? You’re clearly weak. What purpose do you have for being in the Martial Field?”
Bored, Lan Jin says, “Waiting for the Martial Testing Pavilion to open up again. And before you say anything, yes, I know it’s always open, day or night. But it’s not open right now because of some emergency the Pavilion Master had to attend to, so I’m waiting here so I don’t get in trouble.”
Narrowing her eyes at him, the girl asks, “If the Martial Testing Pavilion is closed, then shouldn’t you come back later? Why wait here?”
Shrugging, Lan Jin answers, “Because a big ass dude smoking a pipe told me to do this first, and since he seemed pretty important, I’m doing this first.” Sighing, Lan Jin continues, “If I had a choice, I’d be sleeping in a hotel or bugging the guys who brought me here to help me buy a house, but I don’t have a choice. So I’m waiting. And I’ve been waiting for a while now, and it seems like I will continue to wait for a while yet. So, if you don’t mind, can I go back to my waiting?”
However, even though Lan Jin wants the conversation to end, she keeps questioning him.
“How do you expect to buy a house or even stay in a hotel if you are broke?”
“With money that I don’t have yet,” Lan Jin says bluntly.
The girl scowls at him and, before he can shift out of the way, kicks him right in the shin.
Hissing in pain, Lan Jin barks at her, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
With a sniff, the girl turns up her nose and walks away from him with a haughty saunter in her step. Lan Jin glares at her back, but she clearly doesn’t notice or doesn’t care as she approaches another girl with long, curly brown hair wearing a light-green cheongsam.
This girl is a few inches taller than the girl in pink, but her lightly-tanned face seems younger and less mature than the shorter girl’s so it throws Lan Jin off a bit as he compares them. However, despite her face appearing younger, she seems to have shaped out a little more than the shorter girl. And though she seems very pretty, Lan Jin’s irritation toward the girl in pink next to her bleeds off onto her and he quickly develops a bad impression of her as well.
Turning his head away from the two of them, Lan Jin scowls as he rubs his shin. For being so small, the girl in pink was able to kick him pretty hard, and as he rolls up the leg of his jeans, Lan Jin can see a dark bruise already forming on his leg.
Rubbing his leg, he hisses again and finds himself wanting to smack the girl in pink upside the head. But, given how she could kick him faster than he could move, he feels that he’d be inviting her to kick his ass if he actually tried to smack her.
Grumbling under his breath, Lan Jin curses the little girl and hopes someone else kicks her in her shin, but as he looks at the other people in the arena gazing at the two girls, some with open admiration and others out of the corners of their eyes, Lan Jin realizes that there probably isn’t a person in the Martial Field willing to harm either of them.
Lan Jin continues to rub his shin to try to soothe some of the pain, but even after several minutes pass, the pain remains. All the while, Lan Jin continues grumbling. What’s worse, the girl in pink returns and, as she passes him heading in the direction of the Martial Testing Pavilion, she whispers, “I hope you’re lying.”
He jerks when he hears her voice as he hadn’t been paying attention to her, but she passes in front of him quickly and all he can do is glare at her back again as she moves further away from him.
“Fuck,” Lan Jin mutters. “Just watch it be open now.”
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He even wonders if he should leave before the girl in pink gets back, but when he considers that he has exactly one other place to go— the very same place the little girl is presumably going now— he realizes it doesn’t even matter. Even if he were to go somewhere else, he would risk missing the three men he came to the city with if they happened to come to the Martial Field. And he would still have to go to the Martial Testing Pavilion after that.
In the end, he chooses to stay seated. Though, he’d be lying if he said a big part of that reason wasn’t because his leg was hurting.
But, as Lan Jin waits for the girl in pink to return, he notices it takes quite a bit longer than it had for the other people. The Martial Testing Pavilion was only a few hundred feet away from the Martial Field, and though both locations were pretty sizable, it would only take a couple of minutes for someone to travel between the two and a couple more minutes for them to return. However, even after waiting ten minutes, the girl in pink doesn’t return and Lan Jin wonders if she went off to do something else.
In the meanwhile, people start kicking up a fuss over the girl wearing the green dress when she steps onto the arena nearest Lan Jin. Lan Jin is also curious because, from what he had seen, people normally stepped onto the arenas at the same time, but this girl chose to go up alone and everyone, regardless of whether they were standing on one of the other arenas or in the bleachers like Lan Jin, turned their heads to look at her.
Lan Jin looks at her also, but that’s only because he’s curious why everyone else is looking at her. However, after a few minutes pass, he finds that nobody is doing anything but watching her.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lan Jin mutters to himself before letting out a loud yawn.
His yawn earns him a few glances, but even worse, the girl in the green dress turns toward him and, after a minute of thought, asks, “Would you like to compete?”
Squinting his eyes, Lan Jin shakes his head. “Nope.”
The girl watches him for several seconds and says, “Then, if you don’t dare, please remain silent.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Lan Jin yawns again, earning him a scowl from the girl in green, but a loud voice fills the Martial Field before the green in girl can respond.
“He might not dare, but I am nothing if not daring.”
The speaker, a man wearing an elegant robe in a similar shade of green to the girl’s, jumps onto the arena and gives the girl a flamboyant bow. His hair is tied up on his head with a light-green bow, and his skin is too pale to be natural. That, or if it is natural, then the man probably hasn’t seen the light of day in far too long. In his hand, he is carrying a sword with an elegantly carved handle made of ivory.
“Young Miss Yu, today you look as beautiful as the stars.” The man says with a practiced smile on his face. However, despite looking the part of a kind and gentle person, Lan Jin can’t help but cringe at the sight of the man flirting with the younger girl as he’s pretty sure the man is his age or older, and the girl is probably three or four years younger than him.
Shaking his head at the situation, Lan Jin mutters “Creep” under his breath and continues watching.
“Only people close to me can use my given name,” the girl says. “As for the young master of the Feng Clan, I don’t think I know you very well at all. Please refer to me as ‘Young Lady Qiang’, as is appropriate for my status.”
Lan Jin almost laughs when he hears the young girl reprimanding the older man, but when he hears her call him someone of the Feng Clan, he decides not to as he remembers that the Feng Clan are apparently assholes and he doesn’t want to put himself in their crosshairs.
“Is there a need for such distance between us?” The young master of the Feng Clan asks. “Our parents have already discussed our marriage arrangements. Soon, everyone in the Southern Border City will know that we are betrothed.”
“Betrothed?” The girl, Qiang Yu, asks derisively. “At most, your parents have brought the matter to my parent’s attention. As for being betrothed, it is far too early to even think of such things. And, even if we were betrothed, it would still not be your place to refer to me as anything but the Young Lady of the Qiang household. Not only have I yet to reach the age of majority, but a young lady can only be close to her family and her husband— and you are neither.”
Lan Jin nods his head in approval at the young lady’s words. He didn’t know what the age of majority in this place was, but he did know that it was creepy for a guy older than him to be openly declaring a younger girl to be his fiancée. He even found himself hoping that she would kick his ass for it, but given how small and adorable she looks and the face that the guy from the Feng Clan is several years older than her, he changed his mind and hoped someone else would come up and kick his ass instead.
“Young Miss Yu,” the guy from the Feng Clan begins, “other than my clan, there are no other suitable families for someone of your talent and standing in the entire Southern Border City. And as the most prominent young master of the Feng Clan, I am naturally best-suited to you. Wouldn’t you agree with this argument?”
To her credit, Lan Jin finds that Qiang Yu seems to let his words fly right by her.
“That,” she says forcefully, “is not your decision to make. And from where I stand, you are only partially correct with your statement. But what you should have said is that there are no suitable families within the entire Qiang City suited to me.”
The two people, man and young girl, glare at one another from a distance of about twenty feet apart. Everyone in the Martial Field can hear their argument clearly, and Lan Jin even begins wondering if this was an arranged drama because of how oddly it all occurred.
“Is there something special about today?” He wonders while thinking about how the Immovable Legion had been doing some sort of inspection outside of the city and, suddenly, there is an emergency that stopped him from getting registered as a cultivator and, now, he is watching some sort of drama play out.
No matter how he thinks about it, the situation is just abnormal. But, not knowing much about the normal social climate within the city, he doesn’t know how unique this situation is.
However, in the time it takes him to think those things over, the situation between Qiang Yu and the young master of the Feng Clan has escalated a bit.
“Young Miss Yu, perhaps just talking things over isn’t enough for you to make up your mind.” The young master of the Feng Clan forces out, his tone a little bitter. “You seem to think that no one is worthy of you, yet I am here in front of you. Perhaps… you just haven’t had the opportunity to be convinced yet?”
Qiang Yu stares at him impassively before retrieving a sword that had been at her side. Lan Jin’s eyes widen when he sees the sword, though not because she made it appear out of nowhere like the City Lord had earlier, but because it was so plain that he had completely overlooked it.
“Man, I’ve got to pay more attention,” he mutters to himself as Qiang Yu unsheathes her sword.
As he sees the sword, the young master of the Feng Clan says, “Young Miss Yu, there’s no need for blades when palms are enough.”
Narrowing her eyes, Qiang Yu says, “I will use a blade. I don’t want my palms touching you.”
This time, Lan Jin can’t help but snort as he hears her comment. In the otherwise silent Martial Field, the sound is loud and Lan Jin even feels a little awkward having not stopped himself. However, despite his awkwardness, the situation on the arena only becomes more tense as the young master of the Feng Clan takes one step forward, an arrogant expression on his face.
“Young Miss Yu, I don’t think you have fully understood the disparity between us. I am an eighth-level Qi Condensing cultivator, whereas you have only reached the sixth level. Even if your age makes this feat outstanding, it is unwise to offend someone whose cultivation vastly outpaces your own.”
Sniffing softly, Qiang Yu says, “Your cultivation level is higher than mine, but the quality of your cultivation is worse. Now if you want to prove that you are qualified to court me, then behave as a man and let your actions speak!”
The young master of the Feng Clan’s face darkens as he hears Qiang Yu’s words, and he immediately takes several quick steps toward her with his sword still in its sheath.
However, despite him closing in on her, Qiang Yu is completely unbothered as she takes several small steps and swings her sword in his direction.
For better or worse, the sword misses. But, with the tip of her sword, Qiang Yu drew a line in the air between her and the young master of the Feng Clan as he has to stop moving forward or allow himself to be cut by the blade.
Narrowing his eyes, he steps forward again, but once more Qiang Yu wards him off in the same way as one would wave a magazine or a stack of papers to send insects flying away.
It doesn’t take long for the young master of the Feng Clan to grow irritated with Qiang Yu casually swinging her sword to separate the two of them, and as his irritation builds, he begins moving more forcefully as he approaches her. He no longer just walks forward and backward to avoid her sword, but he also begins twisting in and out of her sword’s reach as he tries to approach her with his palms.
However, when he approaches, Qiang Yu’s sword suddenly increases in speed and flashes toward his face. Lan Jin’s eyes widen as her sword seems to glow, but the glow quickly fades as she fails to cut the young master of the Feng Clan and he retreats several feet, a furious look on his pale face. However, even despite retreating, a length of light-green ribbon floats into the air and falls onto the smooth stone surface of the arena as Qiang Yu’s sword returns to her side.
Letting out a soft whistle, Lan Jin shakes his head at their antics. On the one hand, Lan Jin wants someone to kick the young master of the Feng Clan’s ass for perving over a young girl. But, on the other hand, he thinks Qiang Yu trying to cut his face up with a sword might be a step too far. He’s not sure how big of a step, seeing as he is clearly trying to grab her body, but it’s hard for Lan Jin to justify it even when part of him wishes it would happen.
But now, with the length of green ribbon floating about the surface of the arena on an invisible breeze, the fight gets much more serious as the young master of the Feng Clan pulls out his sword.
“It seems I will need to teach you a few things before you are officially declared my wife,” he spits out furiously. “First, I will teach you to respect your husband!”
“I would naturally respect my husband,” Qiang Yu says. “But I don’t intend to respect you.”
If not for how serious the situation is with both of them having drawn swords, Lan Jin would have laughed again. But, instead, he begins wondering if he should leave the area before one of them kills the other and he, inevitably, gets wrapped up in whatever investigation happens afterward.
Despite thinking that, Lan Jin remains firmly seated as he watches the two of them, and soon, sparks fly from their swords as the man charges forward and the younger girl walks forward with calm, measured steps.
Lan Jin finds the difference in their behaviors to be really interesting as the girl looks almost like she is out walking in a field swinging a cattail through the air whereas the man has a fierce expression on his face and seems to be trying to use his sword to cover every inch of air around him at the same time.
Eventually, the fight shifts and Lan Jin finds himself looking at Qiang Yu’s back while the young master of the Feng Clan is partially hidden to his sight. And as that happens, he grimaces as he notices the girl in pink returning from wherever she had been in the last twenty-or-so minutes.
Turning his head to glare at her, he notices she has two skewers in her hands. He’s not sure what they are, but they look like the roots of some sort of plant and they are completely covered in some kind of savory sauce. Even from where he is sitting, they smell delicious, and he adds making him hungry to the list of reasons why he doesn’t like the girl in the pink dress.
The girl notices him as well, though, and as he looks at her and the skewers she is holding, she glares at him before turning up her nose and looking toward the ring. Then, her eyes widen and she shouts.
“Sister Yu, watch out!”
Quickly turning his head, Lan Jin looks back at the arena and sees the young master of the Feng Clan striking Qiang Yu’s sword recklessly with his own. He hits her so hard that she even flies backward through the air. However, despite that, the impassive expression never leaves Qiang Yu’s face as she looks more like she is walking backward, her left leg forward and her right knee slightly bent as she prepares to catch herself on the ground.
However, as her feet near the ground, the girl in pink shouts out once more for Qiang Yu to be careful, and everyone in the Martial Field watches as a small length of green ribbon is caught between Qiang Yu’s right foot and the smooth surface of the arena.
Suddenly, Qiang Yu begins sliding back toward the edge of the arena, a mere few feet from Lan Jin, and he wonders if he should do something to help her. However, when he sees the girl in pink drop her skewers and run forward at a quick pace, he realizes he might just get in the way as she moves far faster than he could.
Inevitably, Qiang Yu slides right off the edge of the arena. But, just as she begins flying uncontrollably toward the stone bleachers, the girl in pink reaches out one of her hands, and Qiang Yu narrowly grasps it. Unfortunately, the sauce from the skewers causes their hands to separate just as quickly as they came together, and though the girl in pink tries to pull Qiang Yu toward her and away from harm, she instead only causes Qiang Yu’s flight to be disturbed and she veers off toward an unprepared Lan Jin.
To his credit, Lan Jin immediately tries to stand up and catch her. But, given how little time he has to work with and the fact that the pain of his shin causes him to stumble the second he stands up, the best he can manage is to put his face in the way of her back as she collides with him. But, for better or worse, Lan Jin becomes the cushion that prevents her from colliding with the unforgiving stone of the bleachers.
Though, as he is shoved back into the bleachers by Qiang Yu’s momentum, the crack he feels and hears as Qiang Yu’s body shoves against his face makes him wish he had chosen to step out of the way instead.