The lecture room was exactly as she had left it. A table in the middle, two cushions, a simple tea set, and everything else kicked off to the wayside, where it belonged.

Qian Shanyi glanced at the paper screens - but if Liu Yufei was here, she couldn’t feel her. As expected, if she suppressed her spiritual energy. She couldn’t check, not without tipping off Jian Shizhe - she simply had to trust her.

“Sit”, she ordered, gesturing to the pillow on one side of the table. Without looking back, she sat down herself, put her bag at her side, unclipped her sword and placed it on her right. She set the small lantern down on the table, took out her writing set, and started to quietly grind up ink.

Jian Shizhe stopped at the doors instead of entering. She couldn’t look up, not without undermining her confident image - but she saw his reflection in the edge of her ink plate, warped by the curved surface. One of his hands was gripping the doorframe, and she heard the wood groan slightly.

But he knew she was acting with Jian Wei’s full authority. He couldn’t defy it, not this openly. And so, dragging his feet like they were made of lead, he did just as he was ordered.

“You may read, write, listen or talk,” she said neutrally, not raising her eyes from grinding up ink, once he sat down across from her. “That is all.”

“Talk?” Jian Shizhe spat out. “Talk about what, you witch?”

“Whatever you like, or nothing at all.” she replied indifferently, still not looking up.

Jian Shizhe glared at her, but resorted to simply sitting in silence. She did not mind this - this was, in fact, her true goal all along.

She couldn’t teach the man while he was this furious. Anything she said would simply bounce right off his broad forehead, no matter how true it was. But the brighter the fury, the faster it burned out, the mind itself growing tired from the tension. She would give him an hour to cool off, before proceeding further.

Having finished with the ink, she placed the ink plate so that she could observe Jian Shizhe’s expression without looking up, if she needed to - and reached into her bag, pulling out the same novel she was reading in the morning. She still had a good two thirds to get through.

The minutes passed quickly - for her - but must have felt agonizingly slow for Jian Shizhe. He fumed much like an old, rusted furnace, his flame sputtering out before he forced the scowl back on his face through sheer force of will. He stayed silent all throughout, but for an occasional quiet groan.

And then he closed his eyes, and Qian Shanyi felt a subtle change in the recirculation of spiritual energy around his body.

Well, that just won’t do.

She needed Jian Shizhe to be bored and a little bit frustrated, not calm and self-assured. A bored person would talk with just about anyone, if only to have something to do. Having him enjoy his meditation was simply not an option.

With a pair of fingers, she reached into a small pocket she sewed on the inside of her sleeve, and drew out a small stone. Flicking her fingers, she sent it flying at Jian Shizhe’s forehead.

The stone bounced off his spiritual shield, and Jian Shizhe’s eyes snapped open in confusion, tracing its path down to the table, where it bounced twice with a quiet tink-tink before coming to a stop. The eyes turned back to her, his face once again flushed red, teeth bared.

She calmly turned over a page. Halfway through, and the novel had finally reached the city of eels. This author really liked to take things slow.

“How dare -”

“I don’t recall ordering you to meditate,” Qian Shanyi cut him off, not looking up from her book.

“You have not ordered me anything!”

“No,” Qian Shanyi said patiently. “I said that you may read, write, listen or talk.” She looked up, meeting Jian Shizhe’s eyes. “Is meditation talking?”

He glared at her, lips twitching. She kept her gaze level, simply waiting for an answer. Jian Shizhe was stuck with her, with no way to get out of his obligations. He couldn’t even challenge her to a duel, now that his sword was taken away. She could sit here all night.

“No,” he finally spat out the word as if it was a poisoned pill.

“Well there you go,” she said, going back to her reading. “Please continue with your assignment.”

Another half an hour passed in relative silence. Qian Shanyi kept eyeing Jian Shizhe through her ink plate, just in case he started to meditate again - and it was a good thing that she did. This time, the change in the circulation of his spiritual energy was so slight it would have escaped her notice, but his eyes had closed all the same.

Quite talented, are we?

Another stone sailed directly into his forehead. This time, he didn’t flinch, and simply let it bounce off. Didn’t even react, kept his eyes closed. Challenging her.

Qian Shanyi sighed. Oh well, she tried to be kind. There was only one response to a cultivator’s challenge.

She reached over to her sword, and unsheathed it in a single motion, slashing at Jian Shizhe’s neck, spiritual energy pouring freely off its surface.

Jian Shizhe’s eyes flew open and he rolled backwards, leaping up onto his feet and backing up against the wall. His hands were raised in a guarded stance in front of him, feet planted securely, eyes darting around the room.

Ready for the fight that would never come.

“Did I order you to get up?” Qian Shanyi asked lazily, sheathing her sword back at her side. She didn’t even move from where she sat.

“You -” Jian Shizhe blanched at her words. “You tried to kill me!”

“I do not try to kill, I succeed,” she noted lazily, picking her book back up, and gesturing with it towards him. “Unlike you, junior Shizhe. No, I merely woke you up, since you seem to have dozed off again. Now once more - what did I order you to do?”

Jian Shizhe glared at her, but slowly lowered his hands. Perhaps he finally realized that if she wanted to kill him, she wouldn’t have made her sword shine like the sun to his spiritual energy senses. “To read, write, listen or talk,” he admitted grudgingly.

“He remembers,” Qian Shanyi said, lowering her eyes to the page. “Now please continue with your assignment without any more distractions.”

“Will you prohibit me from breathing too?”

“You may breathe. But I will not force you, if you would prefer to stop.”

“This - this is nonsense!” Jian Shizhe burst out. “What assignment is this?!”

“One even a child can manage, and yet you are failing. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Jian Wei had to ask for my help, if the problem is this advanced.”

“You are just trying to humiliate me again!” Jian Shizhe said, stalking back over to the table. He didn’t sit down, glaring at her from up high. “Read what? Talk about what? I will not waste my time sitting in a dark room for hours!”

This wasn’t quite what she was aiming for, but she’d take it. He was asking questions now, which meant he already accepted her implicit framing, if subconsciously. That was the first and most crucial step. If he wanted to know what the assignment was, he could no longer argue that it had to be completed at all.

“Aaaah, so you merely want me to pick a topic?” she said, and put down her book, looking up at him with faked interest. “Very well. Answer me this: why did you lose our duel?”

Jian Shizhe’s scowl faltered at the reminder, his defiant posture sagging. His breathing deepened, as he fought with himself - but then he stood up straight and lifted his head up high.

Qian Shanyi would have had to crane her neck to look into his face. Instead, she busied herself with pouring herself a cup of tea.

“To cultivate is to ascend into Heavens through our strength and tenacity,” Jian Shizhe said, “You won because -” his voice faltered for a moment, before he forged on ahead, “because you were stronger than me, and -”

Surprising, that he would state it openly, but also encouraging, in some sense. If his belief truly was deep, it gave her something to work with.

Even if it was all nonsense.

Qian Shanyi sighed in exasperation, giving him her most disappointed look. Like a mother whose fully-grown son had just shat himself in public. “Childish nonsense of the highest caliber,” she said coldly. “In terms of overall capability, you are obviously stronger than me. Try again.”

Jian Shizhe stepped back in shock. “What?!”

“Sit down if you want to ask me questions,” Qian Shanyi snapped. The last thing she needed was for the idiot to start walking around and see Liu Yufei hidden behind one of the paper screens. “Did you not hear me, or are you deaf as well as childish? I said I am weaker than you. You are in the peak refinement stage, while I am just barely in the high refinement stage, if that, with an unstable foundation. I had severe injuries, less resources, and I won’t even speak about your impressive skill with that demon beast. It is idiotic to look at the two of us and conclude I was actually stronger than you. So try. Again.”

She went back to her book. He tried glaring at her, to get his rage back up, but as soon as he engaged with her question, he was already caught in her trap. For someone who worshiped strength, having her admit her weakness so openly and without hesitation must have been incomprehensible.

Confusion. A poisoned needle stuck in his mind, one that would scratch and scratch until he got it out. Stuck there by his own hand, in response to his own question, it would be even more effective.

He sat down. A small confession, to get his answers, surely. Yet in doing so, he was ceding yet more control to her.

“Fine,” Jian Shizhe said bitterly after a couple of minutes. “You only won because you cheated. Is this what you wanted to hear? That I am forced to swallow this injustice because of my uncle?”

Qian Shanyi put her book down again, boggling at him. “Cheated? Sweet mercy, this is even more idiotic than thinking I am stronger than you.”

“You dare deny it? You planted that rope in advance.”

“Of course I did. Just the evening before, in fact.”

Jian Shizhe’s hands curled into fists again. “So you do admit it? If not for it, I would have won!”

“Admit what?“ Qian Shanyi asked, shrugging performatively.

To his credit, it seems that after getting infuriated by her for two dozen times in a row, Jian Shizhe had finally learned how to manage a fraction of his anger. “That you cheated by planting the rope!” he said, definitely not screaming, even if his voice was high.

“Cheated?” Qian Shanyi snorted dismissively. “Preposterous. The very sentiment is nonsensical. Junior Shizhe, you have fought in well over sixty duels - how could you possibly claim such a thing?”

Perhaps she was too quick in giving him credit for finally learning control. His face was getting red again.

“Oh very well, I will explain,” she said, relenting. “To say that I cheated would mean that I have violated some rule, or at least an informal agreement between the two of us. So what rule did I violate?”

Jian Shizhe breathed in deeply, his red receding to a mere pink. “It was a dishonorable trap -” he began.

“Nonsense,” Qian Shanyi cut him off sharply. “There is no rule against preparing the grounds of the duel, nor could there be, because there are no standard grounds. It is completely acceptable for the challenged duelist to pick a spot that is better suited to their abilities. This is, indeed, intentional, as you are well aware - after all, they are generally the weaker party. You will not find a word against it - not in that pathetic Dueling Codex, nor anywhere else.” She ran a hand through her hair, to let her words hang a bit. “Of course, there are limits, and both duelists can inspect the field before the duel starts, adjust it how they’d like, perhaps change location entirely, or at least plan around the problems. Or do I speak falsely?”

Qian Shanyi stared Jian Shizhe down until he was forced to shake his head. “No, but -”

“But nothing,” she cut him off again. Another skill he lacked - how to keep talking even as the other person did, until they would shut up. “You could have done so and found my rope - but you rejected the offer. This is not ‘cheating’ - this is your own foolishness. By rejecting it you have clearly stated that whatever was in the square at the start of the duel was completely fine with you. You, of course, had no way of knowing the rope was there. Nor was it there by accident, or due to bad weather. I put it there deliberately in order to, yes, trap you. But so what? You have nobody to blame but yourself.”

She was bending the truth a bit. Even if there were no strict rules, there was still an unstated understanding, and what she did was well in the gray zone. If they were normal cultivators, then it would have made the others look askance at her. But as it was, he’d have to swallow it.

Qian Shanyi lowered her eyes, going back to her book. Bad answers deserved none of her attention. “Of course, the same goes in reverse,” she continued in a bored tone, as if discussing the weather. “It was entirely possible that you had planted a hundred crystal bombs all over the square, but I decided to be gracious and to give you some face, and did not inspect it either. But it seems you were too cocky to plant any traps. Which brings me back to my question. Why did you lose the duel?”

“Then what do you want me to say?” Jian Shizhe burst out again, but she could see that his tone had changed. For all that he was quick to anger, he wasn’t truly stupid. Once she grabbed him by the neck and rubbed him in his own failures, he mostly didn’t deny reality - and she just shattered a pillar beneath the house of lies, justifications, rationalizations and self-deceptions he had doubtlessly been building in his mind ever since he woke up. “That I should have seen through your lies? That I should have known you were sent by my uncle?”

“What do I want you to say?” Qian Shanyi said, raising her eyes and mirroring his confusion back at him. “My, my, junior, that is a different question entirely.” She scratched her head, pretending to be in deep thought, even if she had already planned this all well in advance. “Well, thanking me for saving your life would be a good start.”

“What?!”

More confusion. A second needle in his mind, this one primed to explode.

Qian Shanyi gave him a flat, emotionless stare. “I see that you still do not truly comprehend your situation,” she said, pursing her lips. “Perhaps this will help clear things up.”

Qian Shanyi reached into her bag, and brought out a large tome, one and a half fists thick and as long as her entire forearm. Its cover was wooden, with thick metal bands going around the outside rim. A grim book, with an aura of blood to those who knew of it.

Some said the metal was there to resist some punishment, should the book be brought out in the grimmest weather. But Qian Shanyi thought it was just there to remind any hand that held it of the sheer weight of what it represented.

Most cultivators hoped to never see this book in their entire life. Large metal letters on the cover glinted slightly in the lamplight, blunt and unquestionable, like the sword of an executioner that tended to accompany it.

It was the Demonic Cultivator Act.

She tossed it lightly onto the table, making sure the title faced Jian Shizhe, and in the silence of the room it landed like a clap of thunder, spilling some of her ink. For all of Jian Shizhe’s bluster, for all his rage at her, he still pulled back, eyeing the book as if it was a snake with vilest venom.

“I left several bookmarks for you,” Qian Shanyi said casually, going back to her book. “Make sure to study them carefully.”

“Is that your plan?” Jian Shizhe said warily, “To try and scare me?”

“I was hired to educate you and that is exactly what I am planning to do,” Qian Shanyi responded patiently, finally flipping onto the next page. With all the distractions Jian Shizhe kept giving her, she had to re-read each paragraph twice.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jian Shizhe pick up the tome, and open it, slowly flipping to her first bookmark. He read it slowly, and for the briefest of moments, she held some faint hope.

Then he scowled. “What does this -” he said, pushing the book back towards her. “I had it under control!”

“Really now,” she said, not looking up.

“Of course I did!”

“It didn’t seem controlled when I blew out half its carapace.”

“Oh what would you know about glass shamblers?” he sneered. “This is my legacy, the manual of my sect, written by my father -”

Father, huh. Should have expected as much.

Qian Shanyi raised her eyes to the heavens. “Alright,” she interrupted him. “I believe you.”

Confusion, again, plain in his eyes. It was important to keep this dance, keep him just frustrated enough that he would keep thinking, keep biting more of her bait, but not so frustrated he would blow her off completely.

“What?” she said, raising an eyebrow at him. “I do believe you. As far as people in your sect have told me, it was the largest glass shambler your sect had ever captured. Clearly you possess great talent at rearing demon beasts. I have already admitted you were stronger than me, have I not? Why should I doubt your words when you say it was under control?”

“Then why -”

“Why bring the DCA? Because you didn’t finish reading my bookmark.” She pushed the tome back towards him with one finger. “Tell me -,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly, “if an untrained demon beast escapes from your control due to the actions of another cultivator, and this leads to the deaths of ordinary people, which of you is at fault?”

“It was -”

Qian Shanyi nodded quickly. Stop him before he gets going. “Controlled, yes. But not trained. It couldn’t be, not in three days, and you know this as well as anyone else. Your control, as far as I understand, rested on those talismans stapled to the demon beast’s body. It stands to reason that if I were to remove those talismans, the control would vanish no matter your talent. Is this correct?”

Jian Shizhe scoffed at her. “This is semantics.”

Qian Shanyi responded with one of her gravest stares. “Answer the question, junior.”

“Yes. But -”

“But nothing, again,” she cut him off, leaning across the table. “If I were to remove those talismans through any means, and the beast were to go on a rampage, who would be at fault, according to the law, junior Shizhe?”

She tapped the open tome with a pair of fingers. She would have slapped the table, but with the pillows under it, it would have looked a bit pathetic.

More scowling, more denial. “I had spares -”

“How many?”

He leaned forward too, still defiant. Their faces came quite close. “Enough.”

Deny, deny, deny…

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Qian Shanyi exhaled in exasperation. Still he didn’t see what she was pointing at. Perhaps she was wrong, and he really was just plain old stupid.

She leaned back, picked up her tea cup, and took a quiet sip, to clear her throat. “Junior Shizhe,” she began quietly, her voice cold, twinkling like clear ice on a sunny day. “Let me be clear. That you are still alive at all is frankly a minor miracle, and is down to your immense, Heaven-defying luck, and Jian Wei’s incredible influence.”

She briefly wondered what Liu Yufei would think of her after this speech. She planned it before she knew the woman would be listening, and she wasn’t about to change her point, but still, she wondered. When she blew her off - was it because she didn’t see the problems with Jian Shizhe, or because she didn’t want to speak of them to an outsider?

“Your humiliating loss in this duel was not a coincidence,” Qian Shanyi continued. “It was not an accident. It was not due to me cheating, or you having a bad day. It was a statistical inevitability caused by your behavior, just as inevitable as the fact that a man who keeps bashing his head into a wall will get a concussion. However, because of sheer bloody luck, you happened to insult me, instead of a particularly cranky spirit hunter. And because of my immense respect for Jian Wei, I chose not to kill you even if I had a dozen different opportunities to do so.”

Jian Shizhe folded his hands on his chest, but she could see that her words shook him, if only a fraction.

“I’ll drop the pretense and speak clearly,” Qian Shanyi continued, “As your senior sister, I think that when you say you had ‘enough’ spares, you are lying. I think that when you went into the glass fields, you brought enough talismans to train a normal glass shambler, but couldn’t resist your greed - and as a result, you almost ran out. And I think that you are fully aware that had I targeted your talismans, it would not have been enough.”

This was a guess, but one she felt confident in making. The talismans had to be expensive, and would have been rationed carefully - and of course, the shambler breaking out was just the sort of thing Wang Yonghao’s luck would orchestrate.

Qian Shanyi put down her tea cup, and leaned forwards, poking Jian Shizhe in his chest from across the table. “You brought an untrained spirit beast to a duel,” she hissed. “I would have been well within my rights to do whatever it took to win - and if that resulted in you being declared a demonic cultivator, then neither the empire nor your sect could have said a word crosswise! I could have set you up, Jian Shizhe. I chose not to.”

“Of course a dishonorable wretch like you would -”

“And if I did,” Qian Shanyi cut him off, continuing her point, “then at best Jian Wei would have executed you himself. At worst, you would have been slaughtered like a mongrel, a rabid dog, and exiled from your sect - if only in spirit. Your body would have been burned, bones packed up into a crate like so much pottery and shipped off to an imperial catacomb, where a hole would be your final resting spot. Not even a grave, nothing to remember you by. Just a number in a rarely consulted catalog, no different from a pot of pickles.”

She brought her hands together in a begging gesture, putting them up against her nose. “I need you to understand this, junior Shizhe,” she pleaded. “I am not here to humiliate you, even if you may feel humiliated. You are dangling over the very edge of the abyss by a single bloody finger, and I am the last person in this entire town who is still willing to offer you a hand to pull you back up. You can take my hand and survive, or you can slap it away and fall right in. It’s your choice.”

That was, of course, a lie. Humiliating the prick was the highlight of her day, but the point stood.

Yet Jian Shizhe did not believe her. She could see it even before she finished speaking - he had nothing to argue with, but he still didn’t believe her.

He felt safe, after all. He always felt safe, comfortable, cared for. Sure, she painted dreadful images of slaughter - but what did that matter to him? Young masters didn’t get declared demonic cultivators. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be.

“Are you done congratulating yourself?” he said, echoing her thoughts. “Last person in the city? You humiliated me, and you dare try to pretend to be my friend?”

Friend? Ha! You wish.

She had to show him how exposed he truly was.

Qian Shanyi nodded, pursing her lips. “Very well,” she said, “Name one other person who would willingly help you.”

“Rui Bao.”

Qian Shanyi couldn’t help but laugh. She didn’t expect that. “Honorable cultivator Rui Bao was the one who told me how to kill your glass shambler as soon as we saw it,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “He told me to target the brain, and without his advice, I do not think I would have won.”

Jian Shizhe reeled back as if she slapped him. “You - you lie.”

This, too, she didn’t expect. This much of a reaction - was he his only lasting friend?

Qian Shanyi shrugged again. “You can ask him yourself if you do not believe my word. Wang Yonghao was there as well. He saw the danger immediately, and tried to plead with me to abort the duel entirely, or at least stall, to let the people evacuate.”

“This is impossible,” Jian Shizhe said, disbelief flooding his voice. “He was my second. He asked to be my second.”

“Did he tell you that your glass shambler was a danger to civilians, or that I had a plan for how to kill it?”

Jian Shizhe’s stared off into space. “He - he asked if I could contain it.”

“Junior Shizhe,” Qian Shanyi said, each word a stamp, a verdict. “That is not what I asked, so let me rephrase it. Did or did not honorable cultivator Rui Bao warn you that you were a hair’s breadth away from violating the Demonic Cultivator Act?”

“No.”

“Perhaps honorable cultivator Rui Bao simply didn’t know the exactitude of the law, yet the danger was still obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes to see. It was certainly obvious to him. Did he explicitly warn you of the danger to the crowds, of the possibility of me sabotaging your talismans?”

Jian Shizhe looked away, not answering. He seemed to be slowly folding in on himself, like a punctured paper balloon leaking air, all his previous defiance simply vanishing.

Qian Shanyi gave him a moment, then cleared her throat. “Junior Shizhe -”

“No,” he replied, glaring at her again, but with only a fraction of his previous anger. Step by step, she guided him to the inevitable conclusion.

“Then it seems Rui Bao doesn’t really care if you live or die,” Qian Shanyi concluded. “Who else?”

This one sentence cracked something in Jian Shizhe. He took a shaky breath, and started to pour a cup of tea of his own. His face was graying, eyes hollow. Finally, he started to see.

“Is it truly nobody?” Qian Shanyi said after a couple minutes of sullen silence, “How sad.”

“What does that matter?” Jian Shizhe suddenly burst out, all his previous fury coming back with a vengeance. “I do not need Rui Bao! I do not need the help of weaklings and worthless degenerates. The road of cultivation is a lonely one! The others are jealous of my position, and they are scared of my skills - as they should be! How could you expect a pack of pathetic hyenas to help a human being?”

It was to be expected. Any animal, finding itself in a corner, would try to find some way out - and for a human, that often meant fooling themselves, grasping at the last vestiges of self-assurance.

“In fact,” Jian Shizhe grinned madly. “You are much the same. You are afraid of my uncle, aren’t you? That is all that respect of yours amounts to, in the end. Fear. You wouldn’t have dared kill me, or you would have been killed yourself!”

Qian Shanyi raised an eyebrow in surprise. She didn’t expect Jian Shizhe to bring up Jian Wei, for he clearly did not respect the building foundation cultivator. Admitting that he relied on someone else’s strength - it would be a crack in his previous beliefs. Even the very thing he said was already contradictory - if the others were really scared of Jian Wei, then they weren’t scared of Jian Shizhe.

But it was only a small crack. She had to widen it.

“I admit that your uncle also cares about your life,” she said, reaching into her bag again.

“So you admit it!”

“- but it doesn’t matter,” she continued, drawing a second book, and sliding it across the table. A plainer tome - dark brown cover, with a bright red title. Imperial History, tome thirty-one. “You said that respect is simply fear? Junior Shizhe, in that case, you have forgotten to respect the Empire.”

His arrogant smile faltered slightly.

“In the tenth year of Zhang,” she explained, gesturing to the book, even if she doubted he would open it. “There was a similar incident with the Black Still Pools Divination sect. If you would have read my bookmarks in the Demonic Cultivator Act until the end, you would have found the case reference - but Imperial History has a fuller story, as usual. Young Master of a sect had been playing with his new demon beast, a three-headed lion, when he had been asked for a spar by a fellow disciple. While they were busy, the demon beast broke out, and killed twenty six ordinary people, wounding another five dozen.”

She saw him realize where she was going. But he did not speak up, and so she simply forged ahead.

“In the investigation afterwards,” she continued, “the young master was found culpable, and not only culpable, but so incredibly negligent that he was declared a demonic cultivator on the spot. Even if he did not order the demon beast to slaughter innocents, he still brought it into the sect compound, into the middle of a populated town, and left it without supervision - this is no different to leaving a primed crystal bomb in the city square. Unfortunately, his Elder refused to execute him. What do you suppose happened next?”

She was giving the driest possible retelling, a summary of a summary. Perhaps she should have read some passages from the history book out loud, descriptions of the victims. It was an important case, though rarely known - she herself didn’t recall it without the reference.

Jian Shizhe didn’t answer her, and after giving him a moment, she shrugged lightly. “The sect was declared to be a demonic sect, of course,” she said, “and slaughtered, as it should have been. One quarter of the disciples foolishly stood together with the Elder and died, while three quarters have scattered to the winds, forswearing any association with it. At the time, the Black Still Pools Divination sect had well over two hundred inner disciples - three times what your sect has. Now tell me this, Junior Shizhe: if Jian Wei had to choose between you and the life of his entire sect, what would he choose?”

Jian Shizhe swallowed. He didn’t speak, but his answer was clear, even if he wouldn’t admit it out loud. His own disrespect of the man would dictate the answer.

Another pillar in his mind, shattered to pieces.

“But it is curious to me that you say respect is nothing but fear,” Qian Shanyi said, deciding to move to a different topic. Let those thoughts of his stew for a while. She reached into her bag one final time, and drew out the Immortal Cultivation And The Collapse Of Imperial Virtue she had taken from his room. “I happened to peruse your books while you were getting dressed,” she explained. “This is based on the philosophy of the Li era, is it not?”

Some of the fury returned. Like waves, coming and going, pushed around by the winds of her rhetoric - but this time, it was different. Too fast to come, too shallow in its depth, but at least familiar. Covering him like a child hiding under an old, comfortable blanket, scared of the nightmares in the dark.

Only this time, the nightmares were here to stay.

“So you are a thief as well as a cheat?” he said, his scowl already fading. It came out as more of a question than an accusation.

Qian Shanyi snorted. If only he knew. “I will take it as an agreement,” she said instead. “I suppose I should apologize for the intrusion, but this one caught my eye. It seems to me that you’ve read it quite a lot.”

Jian Shizhe jerked his nose upwards. “What of it?”

She gestured towards his false armor, worn over his robes. “And that -” Qian Shanyi paused, sorting through half a dozen insults that immediately floated to mind in search of something neutral. “That, mmm, costume of yours. I admit I had to look up the style, but it is cut to resemble the armor of the forces of, once again, late emperor Li - unless I am mistaken?”

“What are you leading to?”

“Leading to?” Qian Shanyi flapped her eyelashes innocently. “I am simply making conversation. I figured you would find talking about your views less stressful than further discussing the duel.”

Jian Shizhe stayed silent for a moment, shocked she would lie so blatantly. “Yes,” he finally said. “I respect his philosophy.”

“Why?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple question, I should think. Why do you respect it?”

“Because it makes sense.”

Qian Shanyi angled her head curiously. “Does it? Very few people follow it these days. I do not, myself.”

“Of course I wouldn’t expect a rube like you to understand,” Jian Shizhe scoffed at her, crossing his arms on his chest.

Qian Shanyi rolled her eyes. “A coward’s answer.”

Another shallow spike of fury. “You dare -”

“To cultivate is to dare,” she cut him off sharply. “Are you a daoist or a mongrel dog? Speak of your beliefs, or admit you stand for nothing.”

He fumed for a while, grasping for an answer. She simply waited. He had already taken so many of her baits his mouth had more fishing hooks than teeth.

“To cultivate is to rebel against the Heavens, and rebellion is based on strength,” he finally pronounced. Words stilted, without feeling - a quote. “Without it, what good are cultivators?”

“Strength to do what?”

Jian Shizhe stopped, brought out of the recitation. “To slaughter the demon beasts, the celestials, the real demonic cultivators,” he finally answered, growing more frustrated. “Without cultivators to defend the ordinary people, what would we have? Gu Lingtian had slaughtered the Heavens, and got his way. If a cultivator does not strive to do likewise, are they not trash? If they cannot even help transcend a tribulation, repel an errant Zhuque, or slash apart a comet, what good was all the time they’ve wasted? A weakling can only build a sect of weaklings, and teach them to be weaker still.”

He said Zhuque a bit too quickly. If she did not already know what she did - she might have missed it. It seemed his father’s death was still somewhere in the back of his mind - buried deep, perhaps, yet still present. A hundred layers of beliefs all built on top, until it was obscured, hidden within the emotional core of his entire soul.

“You are saying that a cultivator that does not seek strength with all their means, with all their time, through blood and sweat, is nothing more than trash.”

“Of course.”

Qian Shanyi nodded lightly. “And what of the refiners, alchemists? Your own sect spends most of its time producing glassware.”

Jian Shizhe scoffed dismissively. “A hand that forges the sword is nothing without the one to wield it.”

“Yet what sword will there be to wield, with nobody to forge it?” Qian Shanyi asked, projecting a curiosity she did not truly feel.

“A hand without a sword is still a fist,” Jian Shizhe said, still scoffing. As if she was merely making a joke that wasn’t worth his time. “A refiner without their head can refine nothing.”

”I see.”

Spiritual cultivation, refining, and alchemy. Three pillars of cultivation, a triangle, where each vertex supported each other. But what Jian Shizhe saw instead was a pyramid, with a singular peak. A common enough view, in ages past.

But also one that was full of holes.

“It does seem to make some sense,” Qian Shanyi said slowly, scratching her head. “There’s just one thing that doesn’t quite fit for me. Would you remind me, what happened to the late emperor Li?”

Jian Shizhe gave her a strange stare. “He died. What of it?”

“And how did he die?” Qian Shanyi said, inclining her head curiously once again.

“What does it matter?” Jian Shizhe scoffed again, crossing his arms on his chest. “This is a waste of time.”

“Hm. A waste of time, huh.” Qian Shanyi paused, taking a sip of her tea. “No, I think this is rather important,” she continued with a light shake of her head. “See, I seem to recall him being slaughtered like a pathetic pig above his very palace, his forces scattered to all four cardinal directions. A group of six golden core powerhouses and two nascent soul cultivators joining hands, if my memory still serves me well.” She put her cup down on the table, and leaned forwards, looking into his eyes. “So tell me, junior Shizhe: what good is a philosophy of strength from a weakling who lost the only fight that ever matters?”

“You truly have nothing more than insults.”

“A coward’s words. Again.”

“This isn’t about him,” Jian Shizhe said, raising his nose. “It’s about the principle.”

“I see. Very well, let’s think this through. Your constitution is that of wood, correct?”

Jian Shizhe froze. Did he really never think this through, for her to surprise him that easily?

Perhaps he truly hadn’t. If nobody dared challenge him on his beliefs, then what would move him to do so?

“I will once again take that as an agreement,” Qian Shanyi continued. “Yet you practice the same sword art as the rest of your sect - one made for those of metal. Is this not a glaring weakness?”

Jian Shizhe’s slammed his fist down onto the table, cracking it. Qian Shanyi had to snap her own hands out, to catch the tea kettle and her cup out of the air, before they spilled all across the books. She caught them just in time.

She couldn’t catch the ink plate, but it flew in the other direction entirely. A black blotch, all across the floor. But the books were safe.

“You pathetic streetwhore, you dare speak of my legacy this way?!” Jian Shizhe screamed. This was a much, much deeper fury than before - but she had to provoke him here, for the point to stick.

“I speak the truth,” Qian Shanyi said calmly, putting the tea kettle far away from this emotional lunatic. “Your art is incomplete - it was never intended to be used in isolation. Your talent with it is great, yes. Perhaps the best in generations. But it matters not. I saw your fellow disciples practice - the longer sword is meant to strike from behind a cloud of flowing glass, one you cannot control with a wooden constitution. You might as well attempt to dance with one leg tied to the other! So tell me: why are you a weakling that practices an art unsuited to your constitution?”

Would he strike her? He was still not recovered from his spiritual energy exhaustion, and without his sword, she could beat him easily, especially since Liu Yufei would interfere. But it would slow the lesson down.

“You -,” Jian Shizhe hissed, pure hatred coming out instead of mere air. His hands were clenched into fists again. “Oh, if only I had my sword -”

“Silence,” Qian Shanyi cut him off, raising her tone to match his. “Insults I can tolerate. I will not tolerate my student speaking nonsense. You claimed a cultivator that does not strive for strength in all their actions is nothing more than trash. Yet you do not do so yourself. So which is it? Are you trash, or are you a human being?”

Now that she dismantled the excuses in his mind - the fury didn’t matter. She just had to push him over the edge of realization, and he’d be done.

Jian Shizhe had stayed silent, his whole body tense. His eyes bored into hers.

“What? Nothing more to say?” She mocked him. “I asked you: why did you lose the duel? A simple question, yet you could not even answer that. So here is one answer: you lost it because you practice a bad law, and refuse to change. If you had any techniques at all to build on, you would not have lost.”

If he had any techniques to build on, she wouldn’t have challenged him in the first place.

“Bad law?” Jian Shizhe screamed again. “You -”

Even still he could surprise her. “Are you a child?” She boggled up at him. “I mean it’s bad for you.”

Some fury had receded. A tenth, no more. “A true cultivator does not need techniques,” he said, “A sword, a shield, it has to be enough -”

Qian Shanyi’s lips curled in disgust again. “You say that a cultivator must strive for strength, yet abhor techniques?” she said. “Admit it - your belief is simply false. Whatever it is you cultivate, it is not the rule of strength.”

Their gazes crossed once again. She pushed him to the very limit - any more, and he would snap. It was time to offer him a way out.

“I do not share your so-called philosophy,” she said, backing off. “To me, and many others, to practice a sword art passed down within your sect is admirable loyalty, even if - especially if - it does not suit you. But if you wish to do so, then pick your beliefs to match. And if you do wish to be loyal to your sect, then you have harmed it greatly.”

Massage his pride a bit. He needs it.

“You are a cultivator with enormous talent, much greater than mine,” Qian Shanyi continued with false admiration. “Your realm is high. But so what? You are a laughingstock, so much so that I heard about you within minutes of my arrival. How many young loose cultivators chose to seek another sect, simply because they were afraid of you? How many of them could have advanced your sect’s techniques further? Even the Heavens may never know.”

She saw his fury fade, bit by little bit. Without her stoking the flames, it was inevitable. And just like metal solidifies once it cools, so would his mindset - into a mold of her choosing, if she had done this right.

“I said that blaming your cultivation for your loss was one answer to my question,” Qian Shanyi said, picking up the books, and packing them back into her bag. Just in case this outburst repeated. “It is not my answer. My answer is that you lost because you fought alone, where I had a dozen helpers. Wang Yonghao helped me train, taught me how to fight a crippled enemy. Rui Bao told me how to kill your shambler. A dozen disciples in your sect told me how you think. Junming had given me the cultivator almanac, and it had told me how you fight. There were others, too. A dozen swords will always slaughter one - but you chose to stand alone. And so you lost, and only through my mercy had you kept your life.”

She pushed at the table, testing the crack. It held, if a bit unsteadily. The pillows she put under the legs had absorbed much of the impact.

“Why do you think the Empire stands?” Qian Shanyi continued. “It’s not because the strongest lead it. It is because we work together. If you had even a single person to confide in, they would have talked you out of your insane, bizarre plan, even before you walked off to seek a glass shambler. But you did not.”

She glanced up at Jian Shizhe. He still had his teeth bared, defensive, just on the edge of fury - but she could see the gears clicking in his mind.

He’d never admit she was right, of course. Nor would he thank her for the advice. He’d hate her for the many years to come, even as he accepted her conclusions, even as he invented his own reasons to believe them.

There was a reason why Jian Wei agreed to let her do this - a loose cultivator, or one from another sect, would leave the town, and take the fury with them. A sacrificial goat, unlike disciples from his own sect.

“But that is merely my answer,” Qian Shanyi concluded. “Seek your own, Junior Shizhe.”

She sighed, motioning to where the ink plate had rolled away. “I spoke my part,” she said, “Pick up the ink plate, brush and paper. To help you think, we will go over the entire duel - from start to finish, beginning with the challenge - and you will write out everything you did wrong, and what you should have done instead to win. Then you will hammer this list above your bed and stare at it as you sleep. And then, you might, just might, see something of your future.”

He stood up slowly, and went to pick up the scattered items. Perhaps she mollified him enough - or perhaps he simply wanted to get it over with.

“Or stick to your nonsense about strength,” Qian Shanyi said, giving him one last disgusted glare. “But then you might as well just die, for you quite clearly have none to speak of.”