Gravel crunched softly under her feet. Moon shone above, framed by the branches of a neatly trimmed peach tree. The air smelled of earth, wet after a short rain, of flowers and fruits, and just a hint of smoke.

Qian Shanyi breathed in the relaxing, fresh garden air, smiling as she followed an outer disciple from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect. It was a good night to be out and about, or perhaps to relax with a book and a cup of warm tea - but she wasn’t here to read.

She was here to educate Jian Shizhe, and that her planning and research took all the way until midnight was his problem, not hers. Jian Wei gave her free range of the sect, and no mention was made of it being restricted to the daylight hours.

She could even argue that it would spare Jian Shizhe some face, to not school him when there were too many other disciples snooping around through the hallways. She didn’t actually care about his face, but she could certainly argue it.

As they were passing through the center of the gardens, she thought back to the appearance of Fang Jiugui, and stopped for a moment next to the same tree he studied so closely. It appeared to be… a ginkgo tree. An ordinary one, at least as far as Qian Shanyi could tell.

What in the Netherworld’s name was he looking at here?

She met him briefly for the second time this evening, when she was leaving the library. She wisely requested a private room to study the books, and stuffed her ears with small balls of silk when heading out, to avoid any chance of conversation. He was talking to the postmaster when she left - though what about, she couldn’t guess, as she could barely hear anything. Her own precaution working against her.

There shouldn’t have been much that the postmaster could tell him about her, but that was just her guess. As long as she didn’t know how he tracked her, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what might or might not be important. But getting involved would have been a definite mistake - she had no time to spare for distractions.

“Honorable immortal?” the disciple called after her. He was giving her what just barely passed for a respectful stare, even with all the deep suspicion bubbling forth.

When she arrived, the sect gates were already locked - but this very disciple was on guard. He recognized her, and let her in, but such was his distrust that he did not even tell her his name. Jian Wei may have given her a dispensation - but that didn’t make his whole sect trust her.

Seeing as how the feeling was mutual, she had little to complain about.

She decided to call this disciple Scar. He had one, running across his eye, though thankfully leaving it unharmed. She wondered why he didn’t have it removed - not being a cultivator, the treatment would have certainly cost him, but as an outer disciple in a prestigious sect, he could surely afford it. Perhaps he thought it looked dashing, as some people did, even if Qian Shanyi didn’t really agree.

Scar also informed her that Liu Yufei wanted to see her as soon as she arrived, and offered - or really, insisted - on accompanying her towards her office. Which brought them to the gardens.

Qian Shanyi turned away from the tree, shaking her head. “Nothing, Scar,” she said, “Just lost in my own thoughts. Lead the way.”

They reached the chambers of Liu Yufei, Jian Wei’s disciple responsible for his post, only a couple minutes later. They were situated at the end of a short corridor branching off one of the main paths through the sect compound, with five beautiful doors - two on each side, and one at the very end. Each of the side doors carried a small silver name plate, one for each of Jian Wei’s disciples. The one at the end seemed to belong to Jian Wei himself.

Unfortunately for them, Liu Yufei’s door was locked shut, and Qian Shanyi did not feel Yufei’s spiritual energy inside.

“Honorable immortal Liu asked me to bring you to her as soon as you arrived,” Scar said uncertainly. He was clearly split between needing to return to his post at the gates, and feeling like he still had to keep an eye on her. Qian Shanyi just barely managed to keep herself from making a joke that perhaps she was the one who planned for Liu Yufei to be absent. “If she is not here…”

“Perhaps we should check the kitchens?” Qian Shanyi said neutrally.

“The kitchens? Why?”

“I presume the honorable cultivator Liu still requires earthly sustenance?”

It was the obvious choice, really. When she worked late, she always got a little peckish.

Fortunately for both of them, the kitchens were in the same quadrant of the sect compound, so it was a short walk. Qian Shanyi led the way this time - she already knew where they were, having asked well in advance, and Scar seemed to want to keep her in his sight at all times. Her shadow, illuminated by the light cast from his small lamp, danced across the walls of the sect, but she had more than enough to see by.

Sect kitchens were far from a single room, but rather took up an entire section of the building. Fit to cook for all the disciples at the same time, they could easily fit twenty cooks all working side by side, and had specialized rooms for baking and roasting, drying and fermenting, and extensive pantries to boot. There were hundreds of places to hide, intentionally or not - but fortunately, she heard Liu Yufei’s voice as soon as they entered the outermost room.

“Dumpling, please,” her quiet voice pleaded with someone, just on the edge of Qian Shanyi’s hearing, “please get out of there? You’ll break something.”

Without the cultivator’s senses, Scar had no chance of hearing it at all, and so Qian Shanyi once again led the way, headed straight for the voice. It seemed to be coming from one of the pantry rooms, way in the back.

She gave an enormous baking oven a greedy glance as she passed. What she wouldn’t give to steal some of this equipment for their world fragment. Making dumplings for the two spirit hunters took her so many hours of futzing around with a fire node of the chiclotron, because it wasn’t built to task.

“Fellow cultivator Liu,” Qian Shanyi called out loudly just before entering the pantry, to announce her presence. “I have been informed you wanted to see me?”

She just barely caught sight of Liu Yufei swiftly rising up from her knees, before the disciple turned towards the doors, looking as if she was merely inspecting this pantry for cleanliness. Her face was a carefully sculpted mask as she looked Qian Shanyi over, with coldness in her eyes.

The pantry was, in all fairness, pristine. It was a long room, with closed cupboards covering all four walls, and nothing left out in the open except for a short ladder in one corner, and the bottom cupboard behind Liu Yufei, which was slightly ajar.

“Thank you, disciple Zhe,” Liu Yufei said to Scar, who entered the room just behind Qian Shanyi. “I’ll take it from here.”

Scar bowed, and finally left, throwing one last suspicious glance at Qian Shanyi. Qian Shanyi returned it with a light smile and a wink. Give him something to think about during his long shift.

Returning her gaze to Liu Yufei, she was met with those cold eyes again. Not suspicious, nor outright hostile, but with a definite antipathy. Eyes of a woman crossed.

She could empathize. When she last spoke with Liu Yufei, it was only very briefly, while asking around about Jian Shizhe - and Qian Shanyi said nothing about her plans. Liu Yufei told her little, and probably put this strange loose cultivator out of her mind entirely.

And then it turned out this loose cultivator was not loose at all, and she ended up getting a talking to from Jian Wei over it. Qian Shanyi would have also been bitter, if it were to happen to her.

“Let’s go to my office,” Liu Yufei said, ignorant of Qian Shanyi’s thoughts, and headed towards the doors.

“Are you not forgetting your dumplings?” Qian Shanyi asked, angling her head curiously. The corners of her lips twitched upwards. She noticed Liu Yufei sneak a glance at the cupboard behind her when Scar left.

Liu Yufei stopped, and narrowed her eyes at Qian Shanyi. Her lips turned into a thin line.

So much suspicion in the air these days. What happened to the trust shared between fellow cultivators?

“You heard me,” Liu Yufei finally concluded, her voice flat.

Qian Shanyi nodded lightly. “I did not want to mention it in front of our junior,” she said, “Perhaps I could offer my help?”

Liu Yufei sighed in exasperation, and made a vague gesture towards the back of the room. “Can you speak to cats?”

Qian Shanyi shook her head. “Not anymore than anyone else,” she chuckled, heading to the cupboard. “But I may still have a trick or two up my sleeve.”

Qian Shanyi kneeled in front of the cupboard, helped by Liu Yufei shining her own small lantern inside. The cupboard was completely filled with preserves in sealed clay pots, resting on top of a wide wooden slate with a handle that was meant to roll out of the cupboard on rails. Way in the back, she could see the glint of a cat’s eyes, staring back at them.

Circulating her rope control technique, she slowly unspooled her rope from her waist, linked it to her glove, and made it quietly slither into the cupboard.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Would you kindly come out?” she addressed the cat, keeping it distracted as her rope sneaked past all the pots, coming in from the side. “It’s awfully late, and I doubt you’d make a good cook. How could you even hold a pan with your paws?”

The cat stayed put, up until her rope sprung at him. He tried to flee, but a mere animal was no match for spiritual energy guided by the skill of a cultivator, and the only exit out of the cupboard was blocked. In seconds, Qian Shanyi had it hogtied like a sausage, and slowly pulled it out, to the cat’s muffled protests.

“Your cat,” she said, handing the animal over to Liu Yufei. She kept the rope control technique going, lest it decide to flee at an opportune moment.

“It’s not my cat,” Liu Yufei said automatically, taking the cat from her, and turning it around to stare it in the face from up close. “The sect bought this beast to catch mice, but he instead spends more of his time sneaking into the pantries, hoping to find an open pot.”

Qian Shanyi smiled. “Of course.”

Liu Yufei frowned, turning back to Qian Shanyi. “You do not believe me,” she stated.

“No,” Qian Shanyi admitted after a momentary hesitation. “If it was merely a sect cat, I doubt you would have known his name, or been trying to get him to come out on your own. This isn’t a job for an inner disciple, let alone a direct disciple of an Elder.”

Liu Yufei’s lips twitched downwards slightly. “I was the one who proposed we get the cats for the mice,” she said haughtily. “Of course it falls to me to control them.”

“Of course.”

Liu Yufei pursed her lips, looking back at her cat. “You are here for Jian Shizhe?” She said, “Elder Jian asked me to observe the lesson.”

Qian Shanyi nodded. She expected as much, once she heard that the woman wanted to talk. “I see,” she said, “That would not be a problem, but may I ask you to do so in secret? I would prefer it if Jian Shizhe thought we were alone.”

“There is a study room where I could remain behind a screen, with my spiritual energy suppressed. Is that acceptable?”

“Certainly.”

“Very well.” Liu Yufei said, then decisively put the hogtied cat under her arm, and headed for the doors. “But first, let me put this beast back in his den.”

----------------------------------------

The room Liu Yufei led her to was one of the lecture rooms for the sect. It was square, about ten meters long, and something of a dais, a quarter of a meter tall going all the way across the room in the back, where the teacher was supposed to sit, elevated above the students. There was a short table as well, and two dozen pillows, arranged in rough rows.

The dais was framed by two paper screens, hiding entrances to a pair of side rooms. They were painted with murals of birds flying through a peach grove, which was just about the only spot of decoration in the entire room. Everything else was plain wood. Utilitarian, but boring.

It’s good to keep the students focused, I suppose.

Qian Shanyi strolled right in, put the tea tray she brought from the kitchens down on the ground, and headed for the small table, lifting it up. Annoyingly, its legs were asymmetric - shorter on one side, built to fit the dais the teacher was supposed to sit at. She pulled it into the middle of the room, and stuffed a pair of pillows under the legs until it seemed just about even to her. Fortunately, the pillows seemed fairly tough, and so the table did not wobble too much.

Jian Shizhe was proud to a fault, and would never truly respect her no matter what she did. Sitting physically above him on top of it would just annoy him all the more. Better to put them on an even level, at least to start with.

Kicking the rest of the pillows towards the walls, she dropped one on each side of the table, and turned back to Liu Yufei, who was watching her from the doorway. “This will do,” Qian Shanyi said. “I am ready for the lesson.”

“Should we head back to Jian Shizhe’s quarters?”

Quarters. What a word. I only had a small room.

“Please.”

The woman stayed cold, distant and perfectly professional throughout, even if Qian Shanyi could tell she appreciated her help with extracting the cat. No smalltalk, with curt responses to her questions - only as much information as she requested, and no more. Any other time, Qian Shanyi couldn’t have held herself back from poking a bit of fun - but today, she had other things on her mind.

Jian Shizhe. Fang Jiugui. Stuck between a demon beast and a demonic cultivator, truly.

Whether Liu Yufei picked this room deliberately because of its closeness, Qian Shanyi couldn’t say - but the quarters of Jian Wei’s disciples were only a short walk away. Liu Yufei went into her own “quarters” briefly to drop off the “sect” cat, just before showing Qian Shanyi the study room. Now they stopped in front of the door just opposite hers - that of Jian Shizhe. Instead of knocking, Liu Yufei reached for one of a few red tassels hanging next to the door, and Qian Shanyi heard a bell ring somewhere inside.

A minute passed in silence, before Qian Shanyi heard quiet shuffling, the click of the lock, and saw an unfamiliar face open the door. A man in his fifties, squinting at them in the light of a small oil lantern. He was dressed in the robes of an outer sect disciple, though the ornamental pattern on them was subtly different.

“Disciple Lai, this is fellow cultivator Qian Shanyi,” Liu Yufei said, motioning to her. “She is here at elder Jian’s orders, as an instructor for Jian Shizhe.”

The little prick even has live-in servants…

Liu Yufei surely had some servants as well. Part and parcel of being a direct disciple to a sect Elder, Qian Shanyi supposed.

The servant’s name, at least, was familiar. Wang Yonghao spoke to him before the duel, though he said little about the man himself.

“The young master had already retired for the night,” Lai said uncertainly, looking between the two of them. “I am not sure -”

“I am afraid this training cannot wait,” Qian Shanyi cut him off. “Please wake junior Shizhe up.”

She savored the words as she said them. Junior Shizhe. Unquestionably correct, since she was to be the teacher, yet also subtly deprecating to him, because her realm was lower. Just perfect.

Lai bowed after a short pause. “Of course, honorable immortals. I will do so right away.”

“And I will take my leave,” Liu Yufei said, bowing to Qian Shanyi. “I am sure honorable cultivator Qian could find her way back.”

She handed Qian Shanyi her lantern and left, without waiting for a reply. Heading to their lecture room, to hide and observe their lesson.

At least this one trusts me enough to leave me alone.

Qian Shanyi hung the small oil lantern off her belt. “May I come in?” she asked Lai. “I would prefer not to wait in the corridors.”

Lai nodded, opening the door wider, and stepped aside.

The room beyond was a small guest room. There were two other doors - one for Jian Shizhe’s bedroom, where Lai headed right away, and the other perhaps for his own. A collection of taxidermied demon beast heads hung on one of the walls, an impressive head of a river dragon at the top framing the set like a crown of a king. Just below it was a tea table, different teas sitting in a disgustingly beautiful redwood box, surrounded by expensive china. The floor was covered in a carpet so thick that the pillows next to the table sunk fully into it.

Why do you even need pillows? This is excessive.

Qian Shanyi stepped around the room, looking it over. She pulled the curtain on one of the windows aside - it led into the gardens. The view was like something out of a fable.

Of course.

If she was being frank, she simply felt jealous. Her entire room, back at her sect, was half the size of just this guestroom.

A small surprise came from a small shelf next to the tea table. Among the various trinkets, there was a row of books, about two dozen altogether.

I wouldn’t have taken Jian Shizhe for a reader.

Out of curiosity, she stepped over to it, and glanced over the titles. Imperial History, a shortened volume - a common enough sight. Demon Beast Index, of course. Dueling Codex, even more obviously.

It all seemed very conventional, but one of the tomes caught her eye, and she pulled it out. It had a few scuff marks, and creases on the spine - and wasn’t standing in the row of other books, but rather was simply placed on top.

“Immortal Cultivation And The Collapse Of Imperial Virtue”. Some daoist text? It doesn’t look like a cultivation manual.

It was a little improper to be snooping around, but she doubted Jian Wei would mind, so… Qian Shanyi opened it, took a seat, and started to skim. It seemed to be a collection of articles, probably compiled together from a letter journal, talking about the reign of emperor Li. Each one was a rambly mixture of references to various scholars, citations from the late emperor, and strange hypotheticals.

Reading between the lines, the author claimed that cultivation in general and Empire specifically had been declining ever since, due to something having to do with the Shui Gui, reformation, and sword-carrying women turning all cultivators into wimps.

What utter schlock.

Qian Shanyi slipped the book into her bag. Shlock it might be, but it was useful schlock. Just another piece to the frustrating puzzle that was Jian Shizhe.

The man himself did not leave her to wait much longer. Soon, the door to his bedroom flew open, and he stepped through. He looked better than the last time she saw him - fresh set of robes, clean hair, hands no longer twitching randomly from a stimulant overdose. Rested enough, after his sleep.

His eyes immediately snapped to her, and his face, already set into a perpetual scowl, started to grow red. She heard his teeth grind together, right hand clutching tightly into a fist, fingers going white. The rest of his body even shook slightly. All the fury he showed in the duel, all the rage that got temporarily slapped out of him by Jian Wei was right back.

But there was more. At this point, Jian Shizhe was like an open book to her. The fury was partly a mask, worn over his wounded pride and disappointment. Sharp thorns of humiliation grew straight through it, competing for space with the choking vines of betrayal and the false flowers of self-righteousness.

And self-hatred, bubbling deep within, like sap within a demonic pitcher.

But was it there all along, or is it new? This is the real question.

She could guess at the lines of thought his mind had taken. After the duel, once he awoke, he would have tried to find excuses for his clear failure. He would have thought of Jian Wei, who took her side. And then he would have turned inwards.

It was a common enough pattern, after a traumatic loss. Within a week, his thoughts would have begun to settle, to crystallize into a jaded picture. She caught him at a perfect moment - still early on to change the way they settled. With any hope, into a more productive pattern.

Jian Shizhe said nothing, even if etiquette called for him to greet her. Jian Wei ordered him to take instruction, and he knew better than to disobey directly, but that was all she’d get. If she tried to teach him like this - it would be no use.

Qian Shanyi rose, and greeted him first, with a short formal bow. The student was supposed to greet the teacher - but if she had to wait for him to do so, they’d be here all night. “Junior Shizhe,” she said. He returned the bow, pain written all across his face.

“Please follow,” Qian Shanyi said, and headed for the doors, not looking back.

She heard footsteps, which was the important part.

It’s time to get my tools and weed out this little mental garden.