He Yu didn’t know when he’d collapsed to his knees, or when he’d lost his grip on his guandao. He did know that when Chen Fei shoved a medicinal pill at him this time, he didn’t object. After taking it, vital wood qi flooded his meridians and began to knit his wounds back together. It would take more than a single pill to get back to full strength, but at least now he wouldn’t collapse in the dirt.

Looking after the retreating Sha Xiang, Tan Xiaoling mused, “What possessed her to resort to such a technique?”

Li Heng hummed in agreement. “What indeed.”

Chen Fei turned to Zhang Lifen from where she knelt next to He Yu. “Senior Sister Zhang, a question if I may?” When Zhang Lifen nodded, Chen Fei continued. “What did Sect Sister Sha do? What was that technique?”

It was a long moment before Zhang Lifen answered. “I don’t know,” she said, looking off into the mists. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Whatever it was, it extracted a heavy price. She has strained her cultivation. I suspect that’s why Xiao Jun tried to stop the duel when she used it.”

“But you allowed it to continue,” Li Heng said.

Zhang Lifen turned back to the assembled outer disciples. “I did. It is not my concern if she ruins her cultivation base or not. Nor is it my concern that, if in doing so, it allows her to defeat my own student. Such is the way of things in the sect.”

Tan Xiaoling nodded at that, as though the words were simply what she’d expected. Li Heng didn’t appear as accepting but said nothing. Chen Fei looked away from them all, distraught. He Yu had a hard time feeling anything at all.

“Stand, and follow me,” Zhang Lifen said to He Yu. To the rest, she said, “Go back to the outer sect. He Yu will be safe with me. Today’s combat has come to an end, so you can move without fear.”

The others saluted Zhang Lifen and left without complaint. He Yu was certain she’d meant what she said. As worn out as Tan Xiaoling still was from her earlier fight, she’d recovered considerably. With Li Heng and Chen Fei accompanying her, nobody still capable of combat would dare challenge the three of them. And for once, He Yu suspected that Zhang Lifen actually did mean to extend her protection to him. At least for the moment.

Zhang Lifen drifted along the mountain paths, leading He Yu further up the slope. The going wasn’t particularly hard, something for which he was infinitely grateful. The medicine Chen Fei had given him flowed through his meridians, restoring a good measure of the strength he’d used during the fight.

As they walked through the mist-shrouded red pines that lined the dirt track, Zhang Lifen said nothing. For that, He Yu was thankful. He was angry with her—more angry than was proper, or than he cared to admit.

She had brought him to the Shrouded Peaks Sect and practically abandoned him. Everything else he’d attained since then, he’d had to claw from the sect with his own blood and sweat. Sure, his friends had supported him, but their support paled in comparison to what Sha Xiang had gotten from Xiao Jun. Zhang Lifen had said it herself—Sha Xiang’s advancement had been largely due to the resources he’d been funneling her way.

It was hard not to give himself over to resentment at that.

He Yu tried not to stew in bitterness at the sheer unfairness of his time at the sect so far as he followed his “teacher” through the forest and the mist. At length, she led him to an outcropping much like the one Fang Yingjie had taken him to after his guandao lesson.

The world fell away below them, blanketed by the perpetual clouds and mists that gave the Shrouded Peaks their name. Zhang Lifen stood half a step from the edge and gazed out over the mists, her hands folded in the sleeves of her robe. For a long time, she said nothing.

“You did well,” Zhang Lifen said eventually, still looking out over the mists below and the lands beyond.

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“Did I?” He Yu asked. “I lost.” The bitterness he’d felt at how the duel had ended still hadn’t faded.

Finally, Zhang Lifen turned to face him. “Did you really?” she asked. The question held more than its words suggested, and He Yu found himself thinking about his answer longer than he was used to.

“I didn’t win,” he muttered to the dirt at his feet after a few moments.

“Not winning isn’t the same as losing, He Yu. I had expected her to grind you into the dirt. Instead, you fought her to a standstill and pushed her far enough that she was willing to damage her cultivation and reveal a closely guarded secret. The fact that you managed to stand your ground at all simply proves that my hunch about you was right all along.”

“Then why did you even suggest the fight?” he asked, pouring as much accusatory outrage into his words and his gaze as he met her eyes.

“Because I knew it would be a valuable lesson, regardless of the outcome,” she said without sounding the least bit apologetic. “She wouldn’t have killed you. It’s against the sect rules, Xiao Jun wouldn’t have allowed it even had I not been present. He’s invested too much in her."

“Right,” He Yu scoffed. “At the very least she couldn’t kill me. As if I haven’t spent enough time just getting beaten bloody since I came here.”

Zhang Lifen reached out, and with one finger under his chin guided him to look at her once more. “Do you think I really needed your help finding Shulin when we first met?”

She was clearly making a point, so he answered simply—if a bit petulantly. “No.”

“And do you really think I chose both you and Sha Xiang by chance, rather than design?”

“No.”

She released him from her grip, such as it was. “No, I didn’t. However, I didn’t expect her to fall under Xiao Jun’s sway. At least not so soon. But I’m never one to waste an opportunity.”

“How was that an opportunity?” he asked. He was still a bit angry with her, but there were hints of something at the edge of her words, and he was curious, too.

As she regarded him before she answered, her smile dropped. Her eyes—always swirling like an ocean current—churned as though they’d been made rough by a storm, and turned so dark they became nearly black. When she spoke, there was a hardness to her voice he’d never heard from her. “There’s a war, He Yu. It plays out across the schools and sects, between individual cultivators, between coteries like the ones you and Sha Xiang have formed, and between even whole nations. Your little spat with Sha Xiang is but one small skirmish in that war. The first of many you’ll face.”

“That’s not an answer. It doesn’t change the fact that the only reason she’s even here is because of you.” There was a small measure of relief that came with finally giving voice to some portion of the frustration that had been piling up these past months.

“No, it doesn’t,” she answered, sounding almost sad as she looked back out over the mists. “You would have been caught up in it regardless.”

“I’d have been stuck practicing stunted cultivation out in the southern forest,” He Yu said. “If it weren’t for you, I’d still be in that backwater, as everyone here keeps reminding me.”

“Do you truly believe that?” she asked, her back still turned.

This time, he had no answer.

“I didn’t think so,” she said after a time. “You’d have found a way, with or without my intervention. Of that I’m certain. That’s why I first approached you, why I picked you despite your loss in the tournament. Even if I’d been wrong, Shulin and the southern forest aren’t going to remain safe for much longer. You’d have been caught up regardless of your advancement. At least this way, I have a soldier.”

“A soldier,” He Yu said, making no effort to hide the bitterness in his voice—not to mention the sudden worry for his father.

Zhang Lifen remained gazing out over the mists. “Isn’t this what you wanted? To be a cultivator out of the legends?”

It was. It had always been. He simply nodded in reply.

“Then you’ll need to catch her. Once you’ve managed that, you’ll need to surpass her.”

“Catch her?” he asked. “You expect me to fight her again?”

Finally, Zhang Lifen turned back. Her smile was back, and it was wicked. “Of course. And I expect you to beat her.”

“What about Xiao Jun?” The prospect of leaving Xiao Jun to his own devices wasn’t one he found particularly exciting, not after what the Third Realm cultivator had done to Li Heng and Tan Xiaoling.

“Oh, he’s nobody to me. Trash. Hardly even worth my time.”

“So you’re just going to let him do what he wants?”

“Tan Xiaoling will no doubt want to exact vengeance for the way he humiliated her today, and I have some ideas on how I can use that. Worry about Sha Xiang in the meantime. Plus, the future holds bigger things, and I’ll need you to be ready for them. You and all your friends. Consider it a training opportunity.”

He Yu swallowed down the lump in his throat. “All of us?”

Zhang Lifen nodded. “Things are heating up in a way they haven’t for a long time now. The great powers are beginning to stir, and Master Cai is afraid that she is going to awake soon.”

He Yu recalled everything he’d managed to scrape together about Elder Cai and the Dawn Palace. “Who is ‘she’? And what do you mean by waking up?” he asked.

“It’s best we leave that for later. Just hope that you’re ready when the time comes.”

He Yu joined her at the edge of the precipice. For some time they remained like that, staring silently out over the mists.