Blade clashed against blade, his sword slid along the flat side of his opponents with a deafening screech and the shower of sparks slit aflame the air. Sand and grit formed a burning plume behind his feet as he was deflected and carved a line across the training field. Han Jian dug his heel down into the earth, channeled qi into the screaming wind and turned on one foot, turning the burning plume of grit into a shrouding curtain to conceal his movement. The tip of his sword dipped down and flicked to the side, returning to a starting stance.

And a sharp bang marked the end of the round. Han Jian sighed, reaching up to where he felt a patch of wetness on his cheek. “It looks like you got me good, Senior Brother.”

The core disciple across from him smiled, and flicked the tip of his straight edged blade, the tiny droplets of ruby red dissolving into black ash before they’d gone a millimeter from the metal. Diao Gen. Crackling blue flame crawled along the wavy grain lines of the wooden blade in his hand. His fine green sleeves fluttered in the breeze and his mirror-like breastplate flashed, unmarked by the grit.

With a darker complexion like most of his clan, and wavy unbound brown hair. He was a picture perfect Young Master of the Diao clan, if you ignored the wrinkled, ruined flesh peaking out from beneath the silk patch over most of the left side of his face. He’d heard there wasn’t even a ruined socket beneath, but merely a patch of chalky white featureless nothing where it should have been. Diao Gen had fought at the battle of the Caldera. In the south outside of the Elder’s protection at that.

Han Jian wasn’t so impolite as to let his eyes linger on the patch.

“Your form is superb, junior brother,” The older man complimented. He spun his sword in his grip, the rose petals blooming at the hilt scattering as the blade vanished.

“Senior Brother's experience was telling,” Han Jian sighed. He sheathed his own blade, there were no theatrics to it, merely metal sliding into its snug and oiled sheathe. “I was too slow.”

Diao Gen hummed to himself. “Junior Brother is focused on the wrong thing. It is true that I am faster than you. It would shame me if I were not! But that is not how I struck you, because it would be just as shameful to unleash a fourth realm’s speed while trading pointers with my junior.”

Han Jian frowned, bouncing the palm of his hand on his swords pommel as he observed the field. The pattern of their fight was written on the ground, the zig zagging cuts of his stride deep in the dirt and sand. He grimaced, gestured and flattened the stinging particles floating all throughout the air to the ground. “I suppose I was too easy to read then? Were my blows too predictable?”

“There was an element of that,” Diao Gen observed. “You have improved yourself greatly, your blows are not as linear as they once were. No, your blade is too far in the future, it neglects the now.”

“I see,” Han Jian frowned. You were supposed to predict moves ahead of time, to stay ahead in the fight, if you were the one reacting, you were on the defensive, you were giving ground.

And besides, he couldn’t afford to wallow around anymore.

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“I am not sure you do, but my telling you will not solve the matter,” Diao Gen said brightly. “Cultivate on it.”

“Yes Senior Brother,” Han Jian replied, bowing his head. He was glad for the tutelage, even if he was fairly certain he got such a high ranking teacher due to the minor insult his clan had felt at his match pairing the year before. Well perhaps not. Diao Gen was still recovering. It was probably not for any singular reasoning. He’d learned that trying to boil things down that far was pointless. He had earned the Sect Points for this fairly after all.

Diao Gen gestured for him to follow, and Han Jian followed him from the field, Han Fang would be waiting for him back at the square, if things went as usual Senior brother Diao would ask them out to eat. He was glad to be making a connection with the Diao…

But he found himself frowning. Cutting too far into the future huh?

“Senior Brother, can I ask your thoughts on something?”

Diao Gen tilted his head a little, glancing at him out of his good eye as they left the training field, air rippling as they left the sealed space behind. “Of course. What is on your mind, Junior brother Han?”

“What do you think of what the Cai Heiress is doing in the south?”

Diao Gen had no obvious reaction he could read. “It is good for the heiress of the Cai to be ambitious.”

He left it at that, and was silent for a time. Han Jian wondered if he should prod for more or leave it at that, but Diao Gen pre-empted him as they descended the rocky path from the training fields. “You were well known to Lady Cai and her retainers, no?”

“...I was,” Han Jian said, thinking back to the conversation he’d had with Ling Qi just a short time ago. She was… driven now. She always had been. That girl’s focus could be almost scary. People liked to snicker about her spacing out, but Han Jian didn’t see it that way.

She was always focused on something, always grasping for something; climbing or cultivating. He was surprised she ever slept, even as a mortal.

It’d ended up making him feel defensive, awakened a little ugly snarl of bitterness in his heart, that he’d not quite fully rooted out. It’d set Xiulan on fire, and shoved Fan Yu down into a pit he still hadn’t climbed out of.

And she’d been directionless back then. She wasn’t now.

“It is a good plan, what she is doing,” Diao Gen said quietly. “The young Miss Cai sees clearly.”

He blinked, giving the other man a surprised look. As far as he knew the Diao Line was much more neutral than that.

Diao Gen smiled tightly, and Han Jian’s eye caught on a shimmer, an unsettling light shining from under cracked skin. He felt something… not malevolent, but unrelentingly hostile, contained and caged by artifice and medicine.

“The true threat are the Twelve Stars. I will be pleased indeed when her Grace faces their demon and casts it down. The Emerald Seas can ill afford distraction until she does though,” Diao Gen Said. “Whether it will work out beyond that… I cannot say. But… if a Cai cannot accomplish something impossible, could she ever have a chance of holding her throne?”

The Cai family was two people. Three now. There was… quite a lot of talk about what would happen when Cai Shenhua ascended, as all were sure she would do, eventually.

“I guess so. I don’t envy her.”

He felt worried enough, with the trickle of news filtering back from home. Ashwalkers on the move. The patriarch going out, Grandfather Fortress diverting.

He wanted to say there was nothing he could do about it. That he was far too small to affect that kind of thing yet.

But that rang a little hollow, didn’t it?