Year 658 of the Stable Era,

Fourteenth day of the tenth month

12th Outer Hour

“So, you just gave him your technique?” Lan Yun asked incredulously, watching her companion dig into his noodles. Watching Yeung Lin eat was always an… impressive sight.

His left hand was preoccupied shoveling thick noodles into his mouth, mixing in a chopstick full on shredded beef and peppers every third bite and a bunch of vegetables every second. His right was fiddling with a set of silver mirrors. Three fingers glowed with thin needles of qi as he inscribed it with a delicate pattern, head glancing to the side between bites as he compared it to the other two of the set.

A pen scribed notes of the process in his notebook, recording both the patterns and his notes with an invisible hand as he went about the process. It looked thinner than the last time she’d seen it, which was a bad sign. It meant that he had just about finished up torturing his last one to death, and was about to cram this one full of every idea he could remember until it ‘felt less empty’.

When he didn’t respond, she asked again. “So, you just gave him your technique?”

“Hmmurgh, oh yes, I did,” Yeung Lin replied, slurping down a big bite of spiced meat. He left a splotch of sauce on his cheek as he did, and with a sigh Yun wiped it off with her napkin.

“Thanks,” he said, “but you really don’t need to do that anymore. I came up with this great new trick for removing stains the other day, you just need to-“

“Lin, why did you give that kid your technique?” she asked, gripping his face between her hands. With a bit of effort, she turned his face towards hers, his ambers eyes darting between his mirrors and notes before they finally settled on hers.

“Because it felt right, I guess,” he eventually answered, and she let him slip from her grasp. With a sigh, she allowed him to continue devouring mouthfuls of noodles as he continued his explanation. As ever, he insisted on ignoring the jade beauty in front of him in favor of nutrition and notation.

“I’ve started to get a feel for it you know, when things are connected like that. Like puzzle pieces, where you can just see that the two things are meant to fit in next to each other.”

“So what, you’re the master of the Dao of Puzzles now?” she joked, nudging him with her elbow.

“No, really,” he replied, not missing a beat. His fingers began to glow again as he talked, thin strands of qi cutting slivers of silver as he continued his explanation, eyes never leaving hers as he did. His hands moved faster as he talked, slow movements speeding up into deft cuts and quick cleaves.

“I’ve started to realize that everything’s connected recently. Me and you, heaven and earth and everything between, it’s all one grand design. A million spinning parts, all interconnected in ways we can’t imagine, even if we had a million years. The more I learn, the more I learn how much more there is to learn about it, as if each manual is simply a single character on the page of a book that we don’t even know how to turn.”

His fingers stopped, a completed mirror spinning in his hands before he drew another blank one from his storage ring and began to carve again. “Do you want all of those fire shrimp? Cuz I’ll trade you half of my noodles for some of them.”

With a rueful smile Lan Yun pushed over her plate, well used to Yeung Lin’s routine by now. He’d always ask to split whatever they were eating, regardless of what it was. Another set of invisible hands deposited the uneaten half of his noodles onto her plate, just as his chopstick carefully transferred half of her shrimp to his.

She’d given up trying to get him to just get shared plates with her decades ago. He always insisted that it was unfair because he ate too fast. As if he didn’t keep a more exacting track of what he ate than most imperial bookkeepers kept of their holdings.

“I still can’t believe you teach the kiddie class,” Yun said, trying some of her new food. The noodles were delicious, the smattering of red peppers that he’s garnished them with perfectly complimenting their original flavor. “Don’t you think it’s a waste of your time? You can hardly learn much teaching cultivation to sprouts too young to start doing it themselves.”

“I am learning though,” Lin replied, crunching down on the shrimp head and all. Fire shrimp kept a buildup of excess qi between the layers of their shell, and he liked to make use of all the parts of his meal. “The untrained mind always asks the questions we’re too close to see. And if I didn’t, who would? We barely have enough instructors to manage them as is, and the unwilling volunteers are just awful with them. Either too harsh, or so lax that they barely know more than a commoner when it comes time to truly enter the sect. For example, just the other day…”

The Generation Guiding Class, or kiddie class as it was more commonly known, was made up of the children of sect members. A perk of their parents’ status was a fast track to joining the sect when they came of age, and therefore capable of beginning their cultivator’s journey, but preparing them for the task wasn’t always easy. Homeschooling was far too time consuming a task for most cultivators to manage in addition to their own duties, nevermind how an ill-planned curriculum was more harmful than the most poorly prepared pill.

And thus, the Teal Mountain Sect endeavored to lighten the load while providing better training for their future members. For common subjects, such as reading, writing, and mathematics, mortal teachers could suffice. However, for more nuanced subjects such as history and cultivation, cultivators were required. Lin was one of the few that volunteered, because he genuinely enjoyed helping the kids.

It was one of the things Yun loved about him, despite how often she’d poke fun at him over it. Aside from her and Wang, the kids were some of the few people that he really opened up around, dropping the stiff instructor act to be the warm, slightly eclectic, person she knew him to be. Even if he was more than a little dense at times.

“… and that’s when I got the idea to try and use silver for the new mirrors array. That way I can make use of the amplifications properties without ruining the final result,” Lin finished, excitedly lining up the last of his six mirrors. Yun nodded, having only managed to absorb a third of the specifics of what he was talking about. The academic aspects of his ideas could be a bit much sometimes, but she always enjoyed the passion he had. It was inspiring, in its own special way; it made you want to work harder on your own cultivation so you could share your progress with him with that same excitement.

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As Yun thought about the best way to change the topic to the recent breakthroughs she’d had in her Shattering Jade Sword Technique, the doors to the cafeteria slammed open with a resounding BAM that echoed throughout the room. The silencing arrays fought to keep the noise down, but the echo made its way through, the qi-enhanced force of the reverberations demanding it be heard.

As Lin began to paint the inlays of his mirrors, Yun turned around to see which unlucky fool was about to become their lunchtime entertainment. And who the brazen challenger was. There was only one reason to make such a loud arrival to the dining hall, and it was if one was seeking to declare a public duel. Or if a dignitary had arrived, but there wasn’t one of those scheduled for another month.

Yun wondered who it could be. It couldn’t be a regular disciple, as they lacked the strength to make the door tremble so, but was it an inner disciple or an outsider intent on pushing the limits of the sect’s hospitality?

As it turned out, it was neither, as the figure standing in the door, robes flapping in the faint breeze, was none other than Instructor Chun.

As ever, their former mentor cut an intimidating figure. He stood a wide seven and a half feet tall, muscles bulging beneath his robes. Supposedly he was closing in on the peak of the Body Moulding stage, though one could never quite tell from appearance. Bulk cost less to forge than quality, after all. His head was shaven, all hair save for his bushy eyebrows said to have been singed off by the smithing techniques he practiced. A glimmer of those flames flared in his eyes, as they alighted from table to table seeking out his target.

“Lin, you’ll never guess who it is,” Yun whispered excitedly, making use of their shared mental communication technique so as to not ruin the silent anticipation of the room.

“Hmm?” Lin mumbled, dipping his brush into his paints again.

“It’s Chun Kai! I haven’t seen him in ages. Wonder what poor sap angered him this time.” Chun had a fierce pride, even for a cultivator. During his time as the Junior Instructor in charge of their first body cultivation classes, he’d challenged five Assistant Instructors and three Junior Instructors to duels over various slights, ranging from disagreements over methodology to taking the last tea snack.

“Shit,” Lin responded, a twinge of sharp annoyance accompanying his words.

“Yeah, I know. Real blast from the past. So, what do you think he’s angry about this time?” As she asked, Chun turned towards their table, eyes narrowing. “Hey, I think he’s coming this way. Wait, Lin, what did you do?”

Any further response from Yeung Lin was cut off by Chun’s arrival at their table, gauntleted fist slamming down with a loud crash. Yeung Lin’s chopsticks clicked against the wood, pushing his tray of paints out of the way before they could be crushed. Chun’s other palm slammed down, and this time Lin slid his mirrors out of the way with a visible hand.

Chun glowered at him over the offense, faint wisps of steam rising from the corner of his eyes. “Yeung Lin! You dare to make a mockery of your senior?”

Instinctively, Yun adjusted the sheath at her side. Chun had come to this challenge fully equipped for violence. Metal gauntlets wrought from strange silvery metals covered his fist, and armored plates dully shone from between the gaps of his robes and on the tips of his shoes. If he decided to attempt an ambush, she would be ready to support Lin.

Lin sighed as he rose, sliding his mirrors into his pocket as he did. “I apologize, Instructor Chun Kai. I simply assumed that a fellow man of craft would want to avoid damaging another’s work in anger. Passion, like the forge, often flares when stoked, after all.” He looked up as he did, as he was just shy of being a foot and a half shorter than his new companion.

“We are no fellows, as craftsmen or instructors,” Chun growled. “And it is senior Chun to you.”

“Apologies,” Lin blinked, “I was not aware that you had achieved the rank of Senior Instructor. Congratulations on your appointment.” Several members of the growing audience laughed softly at this as Chun’s face reddened. His stagnation at his current rank was well known to those that paid attention to sect gossip, turning the sincerity of Lin’s words to salt.

“I might not be a Senior Instructor, but I am still YOUR senior, Instructor,” he threw back, sleeve flapping as he pointed a steel-covered finger at Yeung Lin. “And you would do well to respect your elders.”

“I assure you, I respect the Sect Elders from the bottom of my heart,” Lin responded, attempting to push the finger to the side. When Chun resisted the motion with every fiber of his being, he simply stepped around it. The two began to circle each other, three steps distance between them, as the rest of the dining hall began to encircle them in turn.

“However, I cannot agree with you on the use of age as a replacement for rank. A century is far too ephemeral a thing to conflate with experience. If continued existence so meritorious a virtue, we would all kowtow to every mountain we encountered.”

“So, you think you are better than me?” Chun snapped.

“Not at all,” Lin responded coolly, “I simply believe that as we are of equal rank, we should treat each with equal courtesy.”

“The same courtesy you showed when you insulted me in front of my students? When you slandered my name, and my expertise? As if a little upstart like you wouldn’t know the first thing about diligence, rushing your foundation as much as you have. Cultivating whatever takes his fancy, rather than the true path of a true cultivator.” Some of the crowd ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at Chun’s accusation, dozens of pairs of eyes flicking to Yeung Lin for his response.

Lin, meanwhile, trapped a treacherous sigh in his lungs. So that was what this was about. Him correcting Chun’s quote was just the excuse the man was using to squash a rival. The sect had been considering opening several new Senior Instructor positions, and Chun was looking to reduce his pool of competitors.

A public denouncement to serve as a blow to both his credentials and his face, with the threat of violence to follow if he didn’t meekly accept it. A brutish tactic, but one that had allowed Chun to slowly work his way up the ranks over the years. And one that he couldn’t allow to suceed here. He had too many ideas that would only work if he had the resources of a Senior Instructor, and he couldn’t allow them to be delayed.

“I cannot apologize for the speed of my cultivation,” Lin said, clasping his hands behind his back, “as we each move at our own pace. Cultivation is not a race, but a path of discovery. What matters is not the speed at which we reach our goals, but what we learn as we do so. I have been quite thorough in my exploration of my path, and thus have many insights to share with my students.”

“Then perhaps you would like to share the learnings of your enlightened path,” Chun jeered, reaching a hand into his robe.

Yun tensed up in anticipation of a weapon, but instead Chun drew a thick coin from his pocket. As wide as his longest finger, the thick teal jade was carved with reliefs of swirling clouds and seven tall mountains, rimmed in gold and embossed with the character for ‘challenge’ at its core. A dueling coin, one that would clear an arena for his challenge, regardless of time of day. A heavy thing to twirl so carelessly between his fingers, its weight one of both cost and significance.

“This senior insists that you exchange pointers with him,” Chun said, eyes blazing as he tossed the coin at Lin. It spun towards him, the force of his cultivation turning it into a gold and green blur.

With a ting Yeung Lin deflected the coin. A chopstick guided by an invisible hand speared itself through a hole in the relief, launching it into the air with a twist. With his other chopstick he caught the pommel of Lan Yun’s sword, stopping her from drawing it in response to Chun’s provocation. As the dueling coin tumbled down, he caught it with a casual motion, like a mortal catching a coin flipped to determine who got the last dumpling.

“I would be glad to,” Lin said, forcing a smile. “After all, who am I to stop a scholar seeking answers, even if he foolishly thinks that they will be meekly handed to him.”