“A horse?”

Madame Jin inclined her head. “My horse escaped and has been running loose these past few weeks. I would like you to return him to me.”

Song Jiayi’s brow furrowed and she leaned back, folding her arms. “Madame Jin, I have to wonder why you need cultivators to catch a horse.”

“He is unruly. My sons have proven incapable of recapturing him.”

An uncomfortable silence fell.

Heng Xiaowen kept his expression carefully blank. Hadn’t two people in this family died?

“I take it that this horse is unusually dangerous,” Song Jiayi remarked dryly.

“He has always been especially spirited, but I’m sure it’s nothing that the skilled cultivators of Liqiu Hua Sect should have trouble managing.” Madame Jin pulled an embroidered pouch from her sleeve and placed in on the table. “I will of course pay handsomely for the return of my horse.”

Ling Hong sucked a breath at the sound of clinking metal, eyes fixed on the pouch.

Song Jiayi sighed. “My apologies to Madame Jin, but we cannot accept your request.”

Madame Jin’s eyes flashed. “Pardon me? Do you find my offer inadequate in some capacity?”

“Oh, certainly not,” Song Jiayi said with a smile. “Madame Jin is most generous.”

Heng Xiaowen and Ling Hong exchanged confused looks.

“Then I do not see the issue,” Madame Jin said.

“We can’t accept your offer,” Song Jiayi explained in the patient tone that Heng Xiaowen himself had used countless times when turning away expired coupons. She turned and addressed her disciples. “Let’s go, we’ve wasted enough of Madame Jin’s time.”

As they moved to stand, Madame Jin interrupted. “Wait!” She narrowed her eyes at them. “How much is Madame Su paying you? Whatever it is that she offered, I’m willing to double it.”

Song Jiayi’s manners fell to the wayside and she raised a judgmental eyebrow. “Now, why is it that Madame Su would pay me to capture your horse?”

Madame Jin took a deep breath that bordered on a growl. “Madame Su is suffering under the illusion that the horse belongs to her, but I assure you, that horse was my mother’s and she left it to me.”

“Be that as it may, I have not spoken with Madame Su, and my answer to her request would be the same. I will not capture this horse for either of you.”

“I don’t believe you,” Madame Su said. “How much did she offer you?”

Heng Xiaowen let himself zone out. Managing this deranged woman’s temper tantrum was blessedly not his responsibility for once.

Glancing around the room, he noticed two small heads peaking around the archway that separated the sitting room from the main hall. He gave them a little wave and they disappeared back behind the archway in a flash.

After a moment, the tops of the two heads slowly re-emerged and stared at Heng Xiaowen. He smiled at them and this time they didn’t retreat.

Heng Xiaowen decided it would be more fun to go introduce himself than stand around while Song Jiayi talked down Madame Jin.

Checking that both women were still entrenched in their argument, Heng Xiaowen crept quietly to the hall.

Two small children were huddled just behind the archway. Heng Xiaowen squatted down in front on them.

“Hello,” he said softly.

The children stared at him wide-eyed and then at Madame Jin and then back to him. The taller of the two children, a girl who looked about seven, whispered. “Don’t tell Zumu, we’re not allowed to listen to guests.”

Heng Xiaowen held a finger over his mouth. “I won’t tell.”

With that promise, the kids seemed to relax slightly. “Are you a cultivator, Xiansheng?”

“I am.”

“Really?” The younger kid asked. “Do you live on top of a mountain? Do you fight demons? Are you two hundred years old? Can you fly on clouds?”

“Didi,” the older kid hissed. “Cultivators fly on swords, not clouds! Those are just stories!”

“Oh,” he said. “Do you fly on your sword, Cultivator-xiansheng?”

Heng Xiaowen hadn’t seen anyone fly on a cloud or a sword. “I mostly just walk around like everyone else, but I can jump really high.”

The little boy frowned, disappointed. “You must not be a very good cultivator.”

“Didi!”

Heng Xiaowen covered his mouth to stifle a laugh. “You’re right, I’m not a very good cultivator.” He folded his arms and rested them on his knees. “It’s alright though, I’m still training.” He pointed to Song Jiayi. “That’s my master over there.”

The two kids turned to look at Song Jiayi, who was listening to Madame Jin interrogate her and responding with increasingly weary insistence that no amount of money was going to change her mind.

The older girl turned to Heng Xiaowen with a very serious expression for a child her age. “You should be careful trying to catch Zengzumu’s horse, Cultivator-xiansheng. Our Fuqin, Bobo, and Shushu went to go catch it and still haven’t come back.”

Heng Xiaowen felt a pang in his chest.

It left a bitter taste in his mouth, but it wasn’t his place to tell them.

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll be careful.”

The girl opened her mouth to say something else but then looked up and abruptly shut it, eyes going wide. She grabbed her brother’s arm and ran away down the hall.

“A-liao! A-xuan!” someone hissed. “What have I told you about eavesdropping!”

Heng Xiaowen stood and turned around to see the woman from earlier.

“I apologize if my children bothered you,” she said.

Heng Xiaowen waved his hands. “Oh, no, not at all.”

The woman didn’t look well. Her dark circles were stark against her sickly complexion.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Heng Xiaowen said quietly.

“Oh.” The woman averted her gaze. “Thank you.”

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They lapsed into silence.

Not wanting to disturb her, Heng Xiaowen moved to return to the sitting room.

The woman caught his sleeve.

He turned and she quickly dropped it. Her mouth worked for a moment, but eventually she whispered, quick and desperate. “Please kill the horse.”

He cocked his head.

“Don’t bring it back here,” she said. “It’s— There’s something wrong with it. It’s evil. Madame Jin won’t be able to control it. I don’t want it near my children.”

Heng Xiaowen nodded slowly. “My master is already refusing to catch it for Madame Jin, you shouldn’t worry.”

The woman didn’t look particularly reassured. “It’s not just a horse. It can’t just be loose in our town. I can’t pay you but please—”

“We’ll take care of it,” Heng Xiaowen said. “We won’t let it hurt anyone else and we won’t bring it back here.”

He wasn’t sure if that was true, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. He’d talk to Song Jiayi about it later.

It seemed to do the trick anyway and the woman let out a breathe that she had been holding. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. Thank you.”

She bowed and left.

Heng Xiaowen watched her pale silhouette vanish down the hall after her children, feeling unsettled.

“Xiaowen?” Song Jiayi called. “Where did you go? We’re leaving.”

He stepped back into the room. “I’m here.”

Song Jiayi nodded and hurried him and Ling Hong down the hall and back outside.

Just as they made it out, Madame Jin ran up behind them, standing imperiously in the doorway. “I demand you explain to me why you won’t catch my horse.”

Song Jiayi shut her eyes, pressed her lips together and turned to face Madame Jin. “Then explain to me why you haven’t sent a request to Zhai Xing Peak? They’re the nearest cultivation sect, yes? You could have even reached out to Feng Chi Sect, they’re known to respond quickly and travel long distances to provide assistance.”

Madame Jin’s face went blotchy. “Why—”

“You certainly have the money, considering the offers you have made me, unless of course you planned on reneging once we brought your horse back.”

“I would never! How dare you accuse me of such a thing!”

“Then why lie about the sudden illness? Why wait until I showed up on your doorstep?”

“I—”

Song Jiayi wasn’t done talking. “You know perfectly well that no respectable cultivation sect would do as you asked. You’ve heard that rogue cultivators can be unscrupulous, and you incorrectly assumed that I am a rogue cultivator. So, you thought that I would be willing to turn a blind eye to my responsibility as a cultivator if you named a high enough price.”

Madame Jin sputtered. “Am I wrong? Do you really expect me to believe that you’re noble cultivators walking the righteous path? You’re just mercenaries that learned a few tricks and picked a nice sounding name so you can charge higher prices.”

“Madame Jin.” Song Jiayi wasn’t shouting. There was no threatening undercurrent to her voice. But there was also no flexibility, just stating a fact in a low even tone. “I am the third Sect Leader of Liqiu Hua Sect, founded by our venerated Grandmaster Liang. Whether you believe me or not is not my concern. I have a duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves, I will not disgrace my sect by abandoning it.”

Madame Jin turned purple, and then green, and then white, and then purple again, before finally letting out a great indignant huff and retreating, slamming the door behind her.

Heng Xiaowen couldn’t help but stare at Song Jiayi with admiration.

A sworn code of honor to defend the defenseless could be wielded with far greater gravitas than Store Policy.

He had a lot to learn from her.

At last free of Madame Jin, Song Jiayi’s head drooped back like a wilting flower. “Aiya, what a headache,” she groaned, massaging her eyelids. “So much posturing. Let’s go find the others.”

—

They caught Qiu Jucheng and the girls just as they were crossing the bridge over to the east side of the river. Heng Xiaowen’s shishu wasn’t a particularly expressive person, but there was an unhappy quirk to his mouth and a dark cloud hovering was over his entire group. Lu Xiuying seemed pensive. Yang Jingfei was determinedly staring at the ground, her hands balled into trembling fists.

“You look worse than we do,” Song Jiayi observed. “What happened?”

“Madame Su asked us to catch a horse for her, we declined,” he reported calmly.

“How amusing, we had a similar experience with Madame Jin.” Song Jiayi gave Qiu Jucheng a look and nodded at Yang Jingfei who still hadn’t raised her head. “What’s wrong?”

“Jingfei drew her sword on Madame Su.”

Song Jiayi sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Yang Jingfei, we’ve talked about this,” she said sharply. “Give me your sword. I’ll find you a wooden sword to carry later.”

Wordlessly, Yang Jingfei unhooked her sword from her belt and handed it to Song Jiayi. Finally, she raised her head to reveal that, alarmingly, tears were streaming down her face. “She was horrible, Shizun,” she choked out. “She sent her own children out to die! She didn’t care at all! She—” Yang Jingfei was cut off by her own hitching breath and made a strangled noise of incoherent rage.

Song Jiayi tapped Heng Xiaowen on the shoulder and gave him a nod that he took to mean, you deal with this.

Heng Xiaowen looked at Yang Jingfei who seemed to be well on her way to hyperventilating with fury.

Oh god, he thought, This is my job?

Not seeing a way around it, Heng Xiaowen gingerly put a hand on Yang Jingfei’s upper back and lead her away from the group, finding a tree they could huddle against to stay out of the way of foot traffic. A faint buzz of panic was building in his skull.

He was no stranger to Yang Jingfei’s volatile temper at this point, but he hadn’t seen her completely meltdown like this before.

Hands awkwardly fluttering at his sides, he grimly reflected on the fact that he was probably better equipped for handling Madame Jin’s histrionics than Yang Jingfei’s tears.

Heng Xiaowen could politely tell an irate customer to fuck off. He was perfectly fine smiling and nodding along with the various eccentrics he had met on the road. He got a kick out of chatting with children who had a million questions and no filter. He thought he was getting the hang of being an amiable and well behaved disciple and senior brother of Liqiu Hua Sect.

There was an unspoken script to being a Nice Young Man. Similar, but different than being a Polite Young Lady. It was his first time being a Nice Young Man, but it was straightforward enough and frankly he seemed to be having better luck following this script than he ever did with his old one.

If there was a script for diffusing a furious thirteen year old girl before she exploded into a blaze of snot and violence, Heng Xiaowen didn’t have it.

Making his best guess, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I already told you!” she yelled and started crying harder.

Heng Xiaowen winced, hearing a phantom blare of an incorrect buzzer.

He looked over his shoulder to the group, hoping maybe one of them would see him floundering and come to his aid. No such luck. Song Jiayi and Qiu Jucheng had their heads bent together in discussion, Ling Hong attentively glancing between them. He managed to catch Lu Xiuying’s eye, but she gave him a brief inscrutable look and nothing else. She probably wouldn’t be much help anyway.

He turned back to Yang Jingfei and swallowed. “Madame Jin was a piece of shit as well,” he offered.

This seemed to startle her enough that her hiccuping sobs paused and she looked up at him.

A step in the right direction?

Cautiously, he held his arms out for a hug and had to suppress a sigh of relief when Yang Jingfei immediately clung to him like an octopus.

He rubbed her back while she buried her face in his shoulder and took long shuddering breaths.

He closed his eyes. That wasn’t so bad, Heng Xiaowen thought.

Because it was the kind of luck he had, just as he relaxed, he noticed Yang Jingfei had started saying something too muffled by his robes to understand.

“What was that?” he asked.

Yang Jingfei stepped back, swiping aggressively at her tear streaked face. “Nobody ever takes us seriously,” she croaked. “Everyone thinks we’re untrustworthy or a joke. They take one look and think they know everything!”

Damn it. She was getting worked up again.

“They don’t know anything! They don’t know that Shizun is more noble and upright than anyone from Zhai Xing Peak or Denglong Palace or any of those other stupid fancy sects! I’m so—” She made another one of those strangled screeches and stamped her foot on the ground. “I hate them. I hate them, Da-Shixiong.”

“People believe what they’re told,” he said. “It’s not always their fault.”

She ignored him. “The tournament was supposed to be our chance to prove everyone wrong.” Her voice was thick. “And now that’s ruined.”

Heng Xiaowen’s stomach sank. “I—” he started to try and apologize.

Yang Jingfei wasn’t still listening to him though, bursting back into tears and crying, “And it’s all my fault!”

“What?”

Yang Jingfei sank down to the ground, curling up in a ball and burying her face in her knees.

“What?” Heng Xiaowen kneeled down, panicked. “Jingfei, what? It’s not your fault. How could it be your fault?”

“If—” Yang Jingfei heaved. “—I had just—” She could barely get a word out between sobs. “—If I had just been paying attention!”

Right. The first Heng Xiaowen had been trying to protect her when he got his soul walloped out of him.

“Jingfei, that’s not your fault,” he insisted.

She shook her head. “I know you’re mad at me,” she whimpered.

Jesus Christ. He wanted to fall down another bone-well.

“I’m not mad at you, why do you think I’m mad at you?”

“Don’t lie!” She unburied her face. “Ever since you got hurt you’ve been so quiet, and you haven’t been joking around like normal and, and it’s like— It’s like you’re so far away! Like you’re not even looking at me—” She choked and took another jagged breath. “You don’t even hit me on the head when I’m being stupid anymore!”

His goose was so cooked.

He’s been fucking this up so badly. Forget any assertion he made about being a good senior brother. Complete shit show. Absolute failure.

Yang Jingfei was still blubbering, barely intelligible at this point. Mostly just snot and shaking and body wracking sobs.

He had no idea what he was supposed to say to her. He wanted to rewind what she said. He wanted a notepad. He wanted a fucking off button—

He had an idea.

Heng Xiaowen karate chopped Yang Jingfei right on the noggin.

She froze.

“Stop being stupid,” he told her firmly.

“But Da-Shixiong,” she protested weakly.

He chopped her again. “Stop being stupid.”

She nodded and sniffled.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said. “I’ve been stressed about the tournament and my injury, so I haven’t been acting like myself.” He felt bad lying to her, but she needed some kind of explanation and it was the best he could do.

“But even if you’re not mad, that doesn’t change that it’s my fault—”

Chop! “Listen to your Da-Shixiong!” He raised his eyebrows, his expression half threatening, half playful. God, he hoped he was doing this right. “If I cared more about how well I did at some stupid tournament than I did about you getting hurt, then wouldn’t I be like the people from those fancy sects you hate so much?”

Yang Jingfei stared at him mulishly.

“Yang Jingfei, tell me that you think I’m the kind of person who would regret saving your life just because the injury I got is going to make me look like a huge idiot at this tournament.”

“Da-shixiong never looks like an idiot.” She pouted at him, some of her normal petulance returning.

He grinned and ruffled her hair. “Don’t lie, I’m going to make an ass of myself. I think I forgot what end of the sword I’m supposed to hold—don’t tell Shizun.” He was supposed to joke around more, right? He could figure that out. He could be a regular jokester if it stopped Yang Jingfei from having another meltdown like this.

Yang Jingfei snorted and he felt a rush of victory.

“C’mon,” he held out his hands and Yang Jingfei let him pull her to her feet. “We’ve got a horrible demon horse to catch.”

Yang Jingfei’s face was still a wet, puffy, wreck, but she smiled up at him.

Speaking of horses, he should probably horse around more. That seemed like something he should be doing. He could horse around, he’d seen people horse around.

He grabbed Yang Jingfei and threw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

She shrieked and started laughing.

“Yeehaw!”

Heng Xiaowen decided what the Fan-Translation Matrix did with “Yeehaw,” was none of his business.