Lin Mei ducked behind her counter, eyeing Fang Jiugui over the top as he strolled into the bank. The strange, greasy cultivator had introduced himself to them just a day ago. But today, he seemed different - more active, grinning like a fox that snuck into a henhouse, as he approached Li Zhong at a casual speed. And Li Zhong…

Li Zhong was tense. It would have been impossible to tell if she hadn’t been his disciple for years - but he was really tense.

Lin Mei learned many things in her life. She learned how to farm, and then she learned how to cultivate. She even learned how to read. But what she never learned was what Li Zhong looked like when he fought someone. He sparred with them, of course - but it was a peaceful time, he said, and nobody ever tried to attack their bank.

She felt like she might finally learn it today. There was tension in the air, just like before a thunderstorm.

“But of course!” Li Zhong laughed, but it was a different laugh, not the kind he had when he joked around - the kind he had when he tried to look a little more like a big golden goof. Lin Mei didn’t get to hear it very often. “What is it you might need, fellow cultivator Fang?”

Li Zhong motioned towards the door to his office, leading the other cultivator along - and out of the foyer. There wasn’t anyone else in the bank yet, aside from her and Zhao. He just wanted to get this man away from his disciples.

“Should have just stayed on the farm,” Lin Mei muttered, sinking even deeper below the counter. It was reinforced with steel, but it probably wouldn’t be enough, if two building foundation cultivators went at it. Zhao, at her side, did much the same. “Married a good farmer boy. Who made my parents send me to the city?”

“You are too stubborn to be a good farm woman,” Zhao whispered next to her. “And the bank would have been darker without you here.”

Fang Jiugui pulled out his flask, and took a long sip, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “It’s really just a trifle,” he said, following after, but just a hair bit slower - and then he suddenly half-stumbled, leaning against a wall, and stopped entirely. His sword was hidden behind his long, leather cloak, only the very tip of the sheath poking out. “Fate had put me on the trail of a certain personage, and the best lead comes from your bank.”

“A lead?” Li Zhong said, with mock surprise, stopping in his tracks. Something subtle changed in his posture, and he stepped around, between Fang Jiugui, and the bank counter. “What kind?”

“The barest hint of a rumor,” Fang Jiugui laughed a little. “Nothing serious. It’s about the Sky Void Island sect.”

“The Sky Void Island sect… The Sky Void Island sect…” Li Zhong said, scratching his shiny dome of a head, as if Lin Mei didn’t get papers from him with that same name just a minute ago, “Ah!” he said, snapping his fingers. “Isn’t that the sect of fellow cultivator Qian? The one who won that duel just yesterday? I suppose you think she is our customer, and want to look at her papers?”

Fang Jiugui nodded. “It’s always a pleasure to find an understanding man.”

“Oh, don’t I know it!” Li Zhong laughed, his loud voice shaking the walls. “Of course, of course. The Thrifty Bat Bank always cooperates with the empire, even if it’s about one of our valued customers. You can hand the warrant over to Lin Mei there, and she’ll show you around.”

Li Zhong motioned to the counter, but Fang Jiugui didn’t move from his spot. “It’s just a small lead -” he began.

“Let me rephrase that,” Li Zhong cut him off, suddenly deadly serious. “Either show me the warrant, or get the fuck out of my bank before I decide to use your skull as a stress ball.”

He flexed a fist for emphasis. The two building foundation cultivators stared each other down: Li Zhong with a blank, emotionless face, and Fang Jiugui with that same light grin. The tension in the air grew until you could cut it with a knife.

“My apologies,” Fang Jiugui finally said, and turned around, heading for the doors.

Lin Mei exhaled the tension she held. She really didn’t want to be learning any new lessons today.

Li Zhong stared after him for a good minute, before he exhaled as well, shook his head, and headed back to the counter. His face was still grim. “Didn’t expect to see that one today. What was he thinking, dropping in on me without an invitation?” he grumbled surprisingly quietly. “Send a runner to Jian Wei. He’d want to know that his protege had been involved in some shady bullshit.”

Lin Mei calmly nodded. Li Zhong always taught her to never be surprised at anything, even if she never managed to learn that particular lesson. “Should I abort the account creation process as well?” she asked.

“What?” Li Zhong asked, frowning in confusion. “No, of course not. Shady bullshit is how we make our best money. Make sure it has priority.”

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

Qian Shanyi sipped her tea, and glanced out over the central square of Glaze Ridge. It changed with every visit: with only a day having passed after her fateful duel, the sand and dust still clung to walls and rooftops, to signs and windows. The various establishments had done their best to clean, of course, and most of the floors were already back to normal - but there was only so much you could do in a single day. It would take a good rain for the square to really start to shine again.

It was early morning, and she was waiting on Jian Shizhe, and finishing up her novel to pass the time. When she went to meet with him directly, she was told he was taking a bath. She could sense his spiritual energy through the walls, which meant he sensed her as well, and yet he still didn’t come out - so instead of waiting around, she simply left a message with his servants. If he wanted to avoid her, she wouldn’t waste her time.

The restaurant she decided to patronize this time was the same one that was hit by the glass shambler’s jaw. It still hung above the door, now secured in place with a bit of rope. A canny decision, to capitalize on the duel - and by forcing Jian Shizhe to visit, she’d make him passively endorse it as well. Qian Shanyi hoped they could at least get a discount on the food out of it.

She was sitting on the second floor, having taken a nicely shaded table, with her back to the balcony railing, and a great view of the square. As her gaze passed over it, she spotted Fang Jiugui, entering from an alleyway on the diametrically opposite side. This was the first she had seen of him since last evening - which proved little, as the building foundation cultivator could track her from beyond the range of her senses - but it might have implied he ran out of other leads to investigate.

Even if she hadn’t seen the man himself, she was sure he still kept track of her. She had spotted Scar, the outer disciple from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect, tailing her around town since this morning. If she wasn’t already expecting something like this, she might have missed him - he’d changed out of his sect robes, and didn’t approach too close. Either he was showing a surprising amount of foolish courage, to be poking his nose into cultivator business, or (much more likely) Fang Jiugui simply paid him to keep track of her while he was out investigating other leads.

She considered giving him the slip - but for now, decided against it. She wasn’t doing anything she needed to keep particularly secret, and simply knowing the tail was there - without the Scar knowing she knew - was an advantage best kept in reserve.

But as the saying went, every tail grows out of an ass - which brought her back to Fang Jiugui. What was he scheming?

It was fairly likely he knew about her visit to the Thrifty Bat Bank. Perhaps he would have gone there as well, but she had already anticipated this, and made sure to alter her handwriting on all the documents, enough she very much doubted they could serve as conclusive evidence. But she couldn’t be absolutely sure, either.

Impossible to guess. At least she could be sure of one thing - for now, he still didn’t have enough on her to go for the direct accusation, but that could change at any time. They had something of a plan for how to deal with him - Wang Yonghao should be looking into his “abode” just about now, to see if he could find something they could use - but it was still too loose and full of holes. Just one step away from disaster.

What she needed most were anchors. The more people would lose face from her being found out to be a sect runaway, the more people would have a direct stake in making sure she was never found out. Her deal with Jian Wei had already secured him, and if the Thrifty Bat Bank would grant her an account, that would be a second one - but would it be enough?

Feeling Jian Shizhe finally entering her sensory range brought her out of her grim ruminations. Teaching him was still her best method of remaining in Jian Wei’s good graces. From where she sat, she had a good view of the little pest as he appeared on top of the stairs.

His clothes surprised her quite a bit. He had taken off his usual, armor-like leather cuirass, and now wore fairly ordinary robes of an inner disciple from the Northern Scarlet Stream sect, together with a wide-brimmed hat - one angled such that she couldn’t really see his expression. Perhaps he wanted to keep a low profile, avoid further humiliation, seeing as how he still lacked a sword. She doubted it would work - his foot was wooden, and obvious to everyone in how it clacked across the floor - but the man likely had little experience in such matters.

When he came up to her table, she finally got a glance at his face. He no longer looked furious - merely extremely pissed off, as he took the only other seat at her table.

Qian Shanyi placed it there deliberately, moving all other chairs away, so that he would end up sitting with his back to the restaurant. She wanted people to know he was here, but not so much to see his face. It wasn’t a sight conducive to good digestion.

Nor hear his annoying voice. Qian Shanyi shifted her foot under the table, and moved the last sound muffling talisman into place, quieting the noise of the square around them. “You are late,” she said, by means of an introduction, looking down onto her book.

“You are a bitch,” Jian Shizhe immediately cut back.

“True, but also irrelevant.”

He scowled at her. She was already starting to forget how his normal face looked. “The message said to be here in half an hour,” he said, in the tone of a child asked to explain why his room was still not cleaned. “I am here half an hour after I got it. What is the problem?”

Qian Shanyi tapped her cheek, humming in thought. “An interesting point of view,” she said. “Unfortunately, your instructor - me - does not subscribe to this theory. Your punishment for stalling on receiving the message itself will be that you won’t get a choice of what to eat, since I have already ordered dumplings for both of us.”

Jian Shizhe very, very slowly exhaled. “Why am I here?” he said through clenched teeth.

Qian Shanyi raised her eyebrow and looked up, closing her book and putting it aside. That was a decent question, for once, and was even phrased well. It definitely deserved her attention. “We are going to do a bit of work to repair some of your reputation,” she explained. “Or perhaps I should say rebuild, since it’s more akin to a building that had been leveled down to its foundations.”

“My reputation is fine.”

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Your reputation is that of a rabid dog who is too dangerous to be around,” Qian Shanyi cut back, leaning onto the table. “Perhaps this is fine for you and your philosophy, but for a disciple of Jian Wei, for one of the likely heirs of the Northern Scarlet River sect, that is simply unacceptable.”

She held his gaze for a moment, to let her words sink in, before she shrugged with one shoulder. “Fortunately, we have a unique opportunity! Everyone in town has heard about our duel. So after we eat a nice lunch,” she gestured vaguely towards the table, keeping her tone neutral, but not open to objections. “You will take me by the elbow. You will smile. And then we will go around town and visit a couple dozen stores -”

“What?!” Jian Shizhe burst out.

“- we will make conversation,” Qian Shanyi continued regardless. “We will be seen. And hopefully, if you have any luck at all, other people will start to think that you can behave like an actual human being, even with someone you dueled just a day ago.”

“This -” Jian Shizhe stood up from the table, furious. “Are you - this is some kind of perverted courtship!”

Qian Shanyi laughed softly. “Please. You wish. Now sit back down, people are looking at you.”

Jian Shizhe glared at her, but he did sit. “This is unacceptable!” he hissed at her. “I would rather eat dirt than be seen alongside the likes of you!”

“You can refuse, of course, in which case I will simply beat you with a stick for failing to follow my orders,” Qian Shanyi said dryly, then blinked, as if the idea just crossed her mind. “In fact, please refuse, I would much prefer to do that. Perhaps I’ll get some volunteers from your sect to join as well - we could turn this into a collective exercise.”

“What is your angle in this?” Jian Shizhe said suspiciously, completely undeterred by the prospect of serving as a communal beating bag. “Will you seek marriage next? My uncle can order me to do many things, but this is beyond the pale!”

Qian Shanyi groaned, rubbing her face with one hand. “Junior, we’ve been over this,” she said, tapping two fingers of her other hand on the table for emphasis. “I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care if you feel humiliated. I don’t even care that much if you live or die. All I care about is turning you into a serviceable direct disciple for Elder Jian. That is my one, singular goal in all of this.”

She leaned forwards, pointing her finger in Jian Shizhe’s face. “So what I need you to do is quickly figure out how to plaster a smile on your face - or, if you can’t manage that, at least remove the damned grimace - and avoid making a scene for a couple heavens-damned hours.”

Her actual angle in choosing this particular exercise was to publicly link herself to the Jian family as tightly as possible. Like two prisoners chained together - either we both sink, or we both swim. But she couldn’t very much say that.

Jian Shizhe scowled much harder than before. He reared back, preparing to go on another tired tirade - but Qian Shanyi got ahead of him. “Ah-ah-ah!” she said, wagging her finger. “Remember the smile! People can’t hear you right now, but they certainly can see.”

She gestured towards the square beyond the balcony’s railing. Their table was obscured by a pair of screens, so it was not entirely exposed - only mostly so.

Jian Shizhe glanced over as well, and something seemed to finally catch traction in that brain of his, because he blew out all the air out of his lungs in one powerful exhale. His face smoothed out, the grimace turning into a merely curled upper lip.

“Better,” Qian Shanyi congratulated him. “But I need a smile. That’s it, that’s all you have to do.”

Jian Shizhe glared at her, and then a spark of cunning passed through his eyes. “So, in other words,” Jian Shizhe said, actually beginning to grin, “as long as I smile, I can do whatever else I want? Is that your order, oh honorable instructor?”

“Anything that will not further damage your reputation.”

“Can I insult you?”

Easiest trade of her life.

“Certainly, however you want,” she said casually. “But only for as long as we are within this sound muffling formation.”

Some people on the street could still read his lips, of course - but in the end, it was his own choice.

“And you, as my… instructor… will not do anything about it?”

Qian Shanyi picked up her cup, distracted by an errant line of thought. How many people out there could even read lips? Qian Shanyi couldn’t.

Hm. Fang Jiugui probably could. He seemed like the type who’d pick up the skill. She saw him still keeping watch over the two of them, leaning against a wall all the way across the square.

Could she be sure?

It’s impolite to stare, Qian Shanyi mouthed at Fang Jiugui when their eyes crossed for a moment, concealing her mouth from Jian Shizhe with her book. What happened to cultivator courtesy?

She saw Fang Jiugui’s chest move with laughter. So either he really could, or he was just bluffing, by correctly guessing she’d made a joke. More likely the former. It wasn’t much, but every bit of information might be critical to their escape.

“No,” Qian Shanyi finally said, tearing her eyes away and focusing back on Jian Shizhe. If Fang Jiugui was here, it meant he wasn’t investigating the rest of the town, which should be to her advantage - and she didn’t care what he thought about Jian Shizhe. “I’ll even swear I won’t say a word of it to Jian Wei.”

Jian Shizhe’s grin grew even wider. “In that case…” he said, and began a torrent of curses and invectives so vile he would blend in well with some of the sailors Qian Shanyi knew. She wondered where he even managed to learn so many - perhaps from some of those letter articles, or perhaps from an occasional loose cultivator.

At first, Qian Shanyi held his stare, but she quickly lost her interest, and opened her book again. It really went on for a good while.

“Are you just about done?” Qian Shanyi asked him, when his flow seemed to have petered out.

“Cheap whore,” Jian Shizhe threw in at last, and then leaned back, a satisfied smirk playing on his face.

Qian Shanyi nodded, and closed her book, setting it at her side. Giving him a harmless outlet for all his emotions was going to be helpful, but she couldn’t just leave it like that. “Alright,” she said, “like I have promised, I won’t say a word of this to anyone else. However, as your instructor, I must naturally correct any deficiencies you might have in any of your skills - and your cursing is completely unacceptable.”

“Oh what?” Jian Shizhe scoffed. “Will you lecture me on propriety?”

“Propriety?” Qian Shanyi laughed. “Junior, I am saying that while your insults are certainly varied, they are pathetically weak. You are like a child who picked up his father’s heavy sword and is swinging it around with no direction - more of a danger to his own fingers than anyone else.”

That seemed to have put him on the back foot - but surprisingly, he seemed to be listening. Perhaps after last night, he at least learned to do that much.

Qian Shanyi snorted. “Take that last one,” she continued, giving him a pitying look. “Cheap whore? Please. Junior, I am keenly aware of my own promiscuity. I do not even hide it, so how do you imagine bringing it up would hurt me?”

That was more than a bit of a lie. The only reason she was this open in this town was because she had transcended the tribulation, and now even won a duel. Without that reputational safety blanket, thick enough to let practically anything slide, she wouldn’t have given people easy ammunition to dismiss her.

“If we were in public,” she continued, “where my honor would need defending - it would be another matter, but here? In private, within a sound muffling formation? From you, who couldn’t hope to get into my robes for all the treasures in the world? You might as well be complimenting me for all the good it would do to you.”

“You -”

Qian Shanyi suddenly leaned forwards, slapping the table. “The purpose of an insult is to hurt!” she said. ”It is no different from a sword strike. It may hurt reputation, or pride, or self-esteem, or even honor, but it must hurt. And in order to hurt, it must strike at some weakness, some insecurity.”

Jian Shizhe crossed his arms on his chest. She wasn’t sure if she was getting through to him, but this was mostly a distraction in the first place, to keep his mind away from what they’d be doing later.

“For example, if I were to insult you,” she continued, gesturing to Jian Shizhe’s robes. “I would have said that that ‘armor’ you thankfully stopped wearing looked like the shiny shell of a cockroach, crawling all over the kitchen floor, just asking to be squashed to death by the light swing of my sandal. Then, by analyzing your perspiration, breath, heartbeat, and the bright crimson color that your face is rapidly assuming at this very moment, I could have easily seen that my curse had hit its mark. Because it directly struck at your pride, which you have in over-abundance, because it related to your recent humiliating loss to me, and because it further reinforced your entirely imagined sense of disempowerment.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Qian Shanyi saw a waitress coming over with their order, and waved her over, leaning back in her chair again. “Our dumplings are here,” she said soberly, “So, here is a task for you while we eat: analyze what you know of me, and make a list of what you consider to be my potential weak points. Then come up with an insult that might - might - at least scratch me. You won’t succeed, but it’s the exercise that counts. Then we’ll do the same insecurity analysis for you, and perhaps you’d at least know what you have to work on.”

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

Qian Shanyi returned to her tavern after three hours of, frankly, very miserable walk-and-talk with Jian Shizhe. To some of his credit, he just about managed to keep his temper, and restrained himself from glaring at her… too much. He even managed a smile, some of the time. She still had to take up the entire burden of talking to the shopkeepers, as he was content to let her lead him around.

At least most of the town now knew she worked for Jian Wei - no way for him to toss her overboard without losing face.

Would he agree with her about the needed improvements to the reputation of Jian Shizhe? She certainly hoped so. If he didn’t, then even if the effect was good… It would be rough.

Her worries only grew throughout the day. She lost track of Fang Jiugui about halfway through their walk, though Scar still stuck around. The hunter was working on his own plans, out there in the darkness - and only the future could tell who among them would prevail.

As she headed towards her rooms, a familiar voice called from behind her, interrupting her thoughts. “Oh, honorable immortal - there is a letter for you!”

Qian Shanyi stopped, and turned around, coming face to face with… Linghui Mei. She blinked twice in surprise, before she realized that this had to be the original tavern maid, and not the jiuweihu.

The maid ran up to her and stopped a respectable distance away, leaning on her knees to catch her breath. She had been wearing old robes, patched up in places - her best ones having been stolen, and then torn apart by Linghui Mei.

Qian Shanyi gave her time to breathe. “A letter?” she asked curiously, “What kind?”

“It’s been - it’s with this strange black bird,” the maid said, gesturing back through the corridor. “A runner from - from the post office brought it, said it’s for you. We left it in the kitchens to wait.”

Both of Qian Shanyi’s eyebrows flew up in shock. “I see,” she said, already heading where the maid had directed her, though slowing her step to match that of an ordinary person.

Strange black birds delivering letters meant only one thing - a voidbird. Incredibly expensive to keep and train, but all but impossible to intercept. Larger cities generally kept a few in the post offices, for emergency dispatches.

Just when she thought she at least knew what the game board looked like, an unknown factor had literally flown in through the window.

A voidbird? For me, but from who?

Qian Shanyi pursed her lips.

And is it here to help, or further trap me?