Li Heng sat with his back to the mountain. The mists of the Shrouded Peaks stretched out below him, with other slopes rising like solitary titans, keeping watch over the sect lands. Above, the last full moon of spring cast cold light over the vista. He’d initially come up here thinking to cultivate. The potent lunar qi that came with each full moon was a boon to his advancement. Heaven knew he needed it. Instead, he’d lost himself in more mundane contemplation.

He sat with one arm propped up on his leg, absently twisting a piece of mountain grass between his fingers, and reflected on the unfairness of his life. While Li Heng had fully intended to stay angry with He Yu, his earnestness and stubbornness had made that plan an impossibility. It was, most likely, for the better.

Envy was an ugly emotion, unbecoming of a noble. Li Heng grimaced at the thought. After all this time, he still defaulted back to that way of thinking. About what he ought to do or feel. What was expected of him. Those expectations placed upon him for as long as he could remember, and that he’d so far failed to meet at every turn.

Worse still, as he confronted that failure and tried to come to grips with it and what it meant, there was He Yu. A mere commoner who embodied everything that Li Heng was supposed to be. He Yu was gracious—magnanimous, even—in victory. Humble in defeat. Polite, if a bit awkward, and thoroughly committed to doing what was right, even if he didn’t know exactly what the right thing was.

Most of all, he was driven.

That wasn’t to say that Li Heng wasn’t driven. Compared to most disciples in the outer sect, Li Heng had been one of the few who had pushed himself to any degree before the beginning of formal instruction. Compared to most disciples in the outer sect, Li Heng had seemed like a peerless talent. Compared to most disciples in the outer sect, Li Heng had been the embodiment of everything a cultivator was expected to be.

He had spent the month since his arrival practicing his sword forms, cultivating the potent qi of the Shrouded Peaks, and generally behaving as he imagined his father would expect him to. When he was assigned a commoner as a housemate, he’d initially been rather offended. Especially when that commoner had barely awakened to the First Realm. That he’d been barely eighteen was, frankly, insulting. Li Heng had achieved the middle First Realm less than a month after he’d awakened.

Then, He Yu had surprised him. He’d spent the entire first night in cultivation. When he broke through into the middle Qi Gathering stage by the end of the first week, Li Heng had realized that he’d been correct in trying to cultivate a relationship after that first evening. He’d thought that maybe he could train up a retainer. A competent and dedicated ally, indebted to him for the kindness, aid, and eventual resources the Li Heng showered on him. What an idiot he’d been.

His first clue should have been that He Yu had been recruited by Zhang Lifen. At first, all he’d known of He Yu’s now-master was that she was a core disciple of the sect. Granted, she was the youngest, and the lowest ranked among them, but she was a core disciple just the same. That alone should have been enough. For a core disciple to notice someone of the First Realm and sponsor their entry into the sect, that someone would clearly have considerable potential.

It was only later that Li Heng learned the truth about He Yu’s mentor. That she was the sect’s rising star, and the personal disciple of the sect’s First Elder, Cai Weizhe. Given a position as a core disciple while only in the Fourth Realm. They hadn’t even made her challenge anyone for it. A seat had opened up, and they simply promoted her. Despite being given her current position, Li Heng had no doubt that she was deserving. She’d been the top-ranked inner disciple and had remained undefeated in tournaments and duels alike during her time in the inner sect. Anyone recruited by someone like her had to be a peerless talent.

As far as Li Heng could tell, He Yu was exactly that. He’d reached Foundation in record time, at least by Li Heng’s standards. Although he’d always known that He Yu could be downright obsessive about his cultivation—he had lived with him, after all—it wasn’t until their time with Old Guo that Li Heng had truly started to appreciate his dedication. Rather than give up—like he had—when the old monster had had them chop those damn trees, He Yu had figured out a way to do it.

It wasn’t simply that he’d done as he’d been told. It was that he adapted a rudimentary technique to it with barely a thought, let alone any real practice. He’d taken a half-formed body enforcement, combined it with his guandao art, and then used it to empower a woodcutter’s ax. And he’d done it as easily as the carp swims. It was an adaptation that Li Heng never would have even thought to attempt, let alone accomplish, on his first try.

And that was just the beginning.

“There you are,” came a familiar, and welcome voice. A dry tone ran through her words, along with an almost teasing humor. He could practically hear her half smirk.

Stolen novel; please report.

He turned and gave Tan Xiaoling a warm smile. Even in the cold light of the full moon and up here on the slopes where the last chill of late winter still maintained its fingernail grip on the highest peaks, she radiated the heat of a sun-seared desert.

“I can leave you to whatever it is you’re about, if you’d like,” she said. “I’ll simply expect proper compensation for the effort it took to track you down later.”

“No, that’s fine,” Li Heng said, turning back to gaze up at the firmament. “I just needed to think. Company would be nice.”

Without another word, Tan Xiaoling sat down next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. He slipped an arm around her and pushed away all the thoughts about how improper this was.

He didn’t need yet another inadequacy weighing on him. Not tonight.

“You’re tense and your spirit is all tangled up,” she said absently. It was an invitation to talk, if he wanted it.

“It’s hard being surpassed by a commoner,” he said after a moment. Easier to talk to her about this than it was He Yu. She was of similar, if higher, station to him. She would understand.

“Which commoner are you talking about, exactly?”

He knew what she was getting at. Suffering defeat at Sha Xiang’s hands had been humiliating, but it was something he’d found he could live with. Her power was unnatural. Unearned. The speed she’d advanced at, and surpassed him with, wasn’t her own. She’d gorged herself on resources given by a Third Realm cultivator when she was in the outer sect, and had likely been getting further advantages from the Sunset Court in the time since. She was different.

“Who do you think?” he asked.

Tan Xiaoling’s fingers entwined with his. “I think that anyone who captured the attention of that woman would have done just as well for themselves,” she said.

He knew well enough how Tan Xiaoling felt about Zhang Lifen. He couldn’t say he blamed her—he had plenty of reasons of his own to resent her. Tan Xiaoling had told him of Zhang Lifen’s offer before the tournament. He didn’t blame her for accepting it; he would have done the same in her position. It still didn’t mean he had to like being offered up as a concession. From the moment he stepped into the arena to face Tan Xiaoling, he knew that was what he’d been.

“Easy for you to say,” he said.

Her warmth turned sharp. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“The weight of expectation is different for you than it is for me.”

“Ah yes,” she said. There was a knife-edge glint of danger in her words, but she didn’t shift or pull away. It was an uncomfortable experience, to say the least. “My father is so impressed with what I’ve done for myself that he’s seen fit to declare me his heir before the whole Jade Kingdom in my absence. Is that what you’re saying?”

Li Heng thumped his head against the boulder at his back. “I’m just saying that you left of your own accord while I was sent. Sent carrying expectations.”

“I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that.”

Li Heng sighed. He knew better—they’d spoken about her situation time enough. She hadn’t come to the Shrouded Peak Sect to gain support or allies for her claim to her father’s kingdom, as he’d initially thought. She’d fled from her uncle—a Fifth Realm cultivator who had made his intention to kill her openly apparent. It was, in her words, the way of the Jade Kingdom, and her father would not stand in his brother’s way. Not even for the benefit of his only child.

“I meant no offense,” he said, hating how robotic his words sounded.

“Of course you didn’t.”

They sat in silence for some time after that. Tan Xiaoling curled up against him while Li Heng lost himself in thought once again.

There was only one thing he could arrive at with any certainty. He Yu had meant what he said earlier that day. Which, in practical terms, meant that Li Heng would fall further behind. The real reason he’d come up here was to figure out how he was going to deal with that. Deal with the fact that He Yu was not only ready to step into the Fourth Realm, but that he was going to do so sooner than Li Heng would have thought possible.

“You must keep your eyes firmly upon your own Way,” Tan Xiaoling murmured. “Measuring yourself by the accomplishments of others is a certain way to cripple your advancement.”

“What do I measure myself against if not my peers?” he asked.

She cracked open one eye and looked up at him. “Yourself, of course,” she said.

“Is that what they teach you in the Jade Kingdom?”

Tan Xiaoling gave a soft laugh. “My father told me ‘always strive to be better; better than you were yesterday and better than you will be tomorrow.’ Excellence comes from self improvement. To measure yourself against those around you, is to tie your potential to theirs. Only by surpassing yourself can you reach for the heights you’re capable of.”

“That’s not what I was told,” he muttered. He wished he had been told something like that. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel as though he were being crushed by responsibility he felt wholly unprepared for.

“Color me shocked,” she said, slipping in to that now-familiar wry humor he’d come to appreciate from her.

“What about when your peers surpass you?” he asked.

“Think about it like this. Would you ever reach your potential if you only ever chased me? Ask yourself, how could you ever comprehend your own Way if you kept your eyes firmly fixed on mine?”

Li Heng allowed silence to settle over them. She was right, of course, and he knew it. It didn’t make it any easier to accept. Quite the opposite, in fact. As he felt himself fall further behind, it became that much more difficult to keep his eyes away from the advancement of others.

“Would you feel the same way if Chen Fei surpassed you?” he asked. He hated the bitterness that crept into his voice at the question.

Tan Xiaoling laughed softly. “If little sister Fei surpassed me, I would shower her with praise and host a celebration. She would deserve no less.”

Li Heng sighed. Envy truly was an ugly emotion, and he would give anything to be unburdened with it.