Sen’s eyes fluttered open. An act which, on balance, he found absurdly unlikely. The last thing he remembered was the beast tide. He’d been in so much pain that the memories were blurry, but something had happened. No, he had done… He had done something. Then, it flooded back. Falling Leaf being injured and, then, his mind wanted to shy away from that last part. What have I done? He remembered it, but it felt like he’d watched someone else doing it. Someone filled with so much murderous wrath that it was a miracle it didn’t kill them. He remembered that wave of destruction and that it had just consumed everything. He could understand why he’d done it. He wasn’t sure that anything less than that would have been enough to keep Falling Leaf safe. But the sheer scale and scope of the ruination that technique had left in its wake, the land scoured clean of life, was something that Sen feared would haunt his nightmares.

It was only after all of those thoughts had passed through Sen’s weary mind that he realized he wasn’t in the galehouse. The walls around him were made of wood. The blankets covering him were not his own. The smell of the place was, while not unpleasant, wholly unfamiliar. Without really thinking about it, Sen sat up…and froze. There had been so much to process that he hadn’t noted the absence of pain. He looked down. He was still emaciated, but the constellation of stabbing, throbbing, aching miseries that had afflicted him for months was just absent. He took a shuddering breath. He didn’t know what intervention had been performed on his behalf to achieve that miracle. He only had one guess about the who. There was only one option. Fu Ruolan.

He supposed that his little fit of boundless fury must have gotten her attention. As well it might, considering the amount of qi he had poured into that final attack. He’d been sure it would kill him. So, he’d dragged every bit of core qi and liquid qi in his dantian and shoved it into that mad, half-understood technique. He suspected anything and anyone possessed of cultivation within a few hundred miles had felt that. Of course, it could have drawn the attention of many powerful cultivators, but only she possessed the manual. That meant that only she possessed the necessary knowledge of the body cultivation method to intervene. He wanted to take that as a good sign, but he remembered well the warnings he’d received. She was fickle, eccentric, or insane. That she had helped him survive didn’t mean that he was out of danger. It just meant that the mercurial winds in her mind had been blowing the right direction when she decided.

Still, Sen had to take his victories where he found them. He had survived doing something that should have killed him. He was no longer in constant agony. If he was right about who had acted to save him, he might finally be within reach of the manual. Damn that turtle and damn that manual, thought Sen. If I get through this, I’m going to personally see to it that there is a copy of that stupid thing delivered to every sect this side of the Mountains of Sorrow. He was fairly certain he could do it, too. He could think of few better uses for all of that money he’d stolen from the Murky Magpie Hangnail Syndicate.

Sen recognized that part of him was stalling. A quick look around the sparsely decorated room had revealed that he was alone, which worried him. Just because Fu Ruolan had helped him, it didn’t mean she’d left Falling Leaf intact. The part of him that was looking for excuses to not leave the room was terrified that he’d discover that the nascent soul cultivator had simply killed Falling Leaf out of hand. If that had happened, well, Sen would join her in death soon enough. As much as he wanted to prolong this unexpected extension of his life, he knew that he was fundamentally incapable of letting that go. Even if it would mean challenging and being killed by Fu Ruolan. He knew it wasn’t rational or smart, but that didn’t make it any less true.

Taking a steadying breath, he summoned clean robes from a storage ring. He dressed slowly, luxuriating in the ability to move without feeling like he had red hot knives in every joint. He suspected that seeing pain-free movement as a luxury was a testament to exactly how much damage his body had suffered from the incomplete body cultivation method. Yet, despite taking his time with dressing, the moment came when he simply had no excuse left for procrastinating. He did everything he could to marshal his mental energies and checked his dantian. Despite the persistent activities of that strange double helix formation in his dantian, there was a mere puddle of the liquid qi at the bottom. A quick check of his core showed an equally limited level of core qi. Sen desperately hoped that he wouldn’t be pushed into a fight because he had no resources for one. Feeling wholly unprepared for what came next, Sen opened the door and stepped out of the room. He found himself almost immediately eye-to-eye with a wild-eyed woman who gave off the oppressive pressure of a nascent soul cultivator.

“Oh, the sleepy sleepy boy is awake. Sleeps too much, too much, too much!”

“I… I…,” said Sen, taken off-guard by her appearance and odd speech.

“And he stutters!” shouted the woman, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “Why does he stutter? Why? Why? Why?”

Even having been warned about her nature, Sen found himself flummoxed by the actual experience of meeting this odd woman. He shook his head a little and tried to regroup.

“Are you Fu Ruolan?” he asked.

“Are you Fu Ruolan?” she asked.

Sen blinked at her a few times, trying to decide if she was asking a real question or not, before he finally said, “No. How could I be?”

“How could you be? Existence is a multiplex of overlapping and collapsing probabilities. That chair could be Fu Ruolan in the right universe,” she declared swinging her finger to point at, of all things, a table. “Foolish boy. Foolish. Foolish.”

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Sen tried again. “In this universe, are you Fu Ruolan?”

“Dull question. Boring question!” shouted the manic woman. “Ask an interesting question!”

“Where is my friend? Where is Falling Leaf?”

“Good question! Better question,” said the woman, devolving into an exuberant little dance. “Pretty cat girl was angry. She was afraid. So, I made pretty cat girl sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.”

“Where?”

The mania seemed to drain out of the woman as she gave him a look of utter bewilderment.

“In a bed,” she said. “Where else would pretty cat girls sleep?”

“I suppose that’s fair,” said Sen.

A fresh burst of madness seemed to overcome the woman. “Ask more good better questions!”

Sen had had a few moments to gather himself and the longer he interacted with the woman, the more suspicious he became. Whatever she had done to help him would have been complex, difficult in the extreme, even for someone who knew what they were doing. It was not a task that could have been accomplished by a mind as disjointed as the one on display before him. He smiled at her.

“Does this act really work on people?”

The change was instantaneous. From one second to the next, she went from a wild-eyed madwoman to an almost overbearing presence of calm, cool consideration.

“Yes,” she said. “Wasn’t that what you were told to expect? Did I not conform to your assumptions?”

Having expected something along these lines, Sen wasn’t thrown as badly as he had been by her insane playacting. “Oh, it dovetailed rather nicely with what I was told to expect.”

“Yet, you were not fooled?”

Sen considered his words for a moment. “I get the feeling that you didn’t really expect me to be fooled. Or, barring that, you hoped I wouldn’t be.”

A faint smile crossed her lips. “Hoped. What gave it away?”

“Me. The whole standing here not screaming in pain part.”

She nodded. “I thought that might ruin the illusion. Still, I couldn’t have that tiresome old man you call a master coming here to bother me if you die. And he would.”

Sen felt caught between a rock and a hard place. He needed something from this woman, so his best interests were served by playing along. Yet, his loyalty to his master was a powerful thing. He didn’t have a good sense for Fu Ruolan or how she thought. Her face was an unreadable mask to him. He did the only thing that felt right to him.”

“Master Feng is a great man. A genius.”

Fu Ruolan waved that off with a negligent gesture. “Of course, he’s a great man and a genius. He wouldn’t have risen to such heights if he wasn’t a great man and a genius. Here’s the catch. Those things and being tiresome are not mutually exclusive categories. All he really cares about is swordsmanship, forging, and you, apparently. It doesn’t make for good conversation. I mean, honestly, he’s been wandering around on this planet for longer than any of us and he doesn’t even have a hobby.”

Sen heaved a sigh. “I’m pretty sure that I’m his hobby.”

That sentiment seemed to strike the woman funny because she threw back her head and laughed.

“Maybe so. Maybe you are his hobby, but that’s not all you are to him. No, he takes his duties and responsibilities to his students very seriously. That’s why I was surprised that he didn’t come here to get the manual. Why didn’t he?”

“I didn’t ask him to.”

She gave Sen a speculative look. “And why not?”

“Because I didn’t know what he would do or what you would do in response. And I need something from you, as you are clearly aware. I couldn’t risk it devolving into a fight.”

“Ah yes, now we come to it. The manual.”

Sen nodded. “The manual.”

“Well, you’re certainly right that you need it. You’re also right that I do have it. I suppose the real question is, why would I give it to you?”

“Why wouldn’t you? I can’t see why you would need it. As I understand things, it’s a method for core cultivators. That makes it useless to you. So, unless you have a sentimental attachment to it for some reason, it seems like it should mostly be a question of price.”

Fu Ruolan smiled. “That’s a very well-reasoned argument. I can see Caihong’s influence on you there. Of course, that does overlook a couple of possibilities. One, do you honestly think you can afford it?”

Sen snorted. “I am surprisingly well-funded at present.”

“Interesting. The other possibility you’ve overlooked is that maybe I simply don’t want to.”

Sen nodded. “It’s possible, but then why bother to save me? You’d just end up in the same position as if you’d let me die without ever finding you. A tiresome old man would come sniffing around to find out why you didn’t just let me have the damn thing.”

“True enough,” said Fu Ruolan with amusement in her voice. “Well, at least your brain functions.”

“Was that a matter of debate?”

“That is always a matter of debate with cultivators.”

It was Sen’s turn to laugh. “So, it’s just a question of price, then?”

“Indeed,” said Fu Ruolan.

“What is your price? Gold? Natural treasures?”

“Time.”

Sen frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I want time. Five years of it.”

“From me?” asked Sen.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because Ming, Jaw-Long, and Caihong got five years with you, give or take. They saw something in you that made them think you were worth investing their time and effort. I want my five years to see what they saw. From you and your little cat friend.”

Sen had been prepared to agree to almost anything, right up until that last. When she demanded that Falling Leaf commit that way, though, everything in Sen hardened.

“No.”

Fu Ruolan looked genuinely startled. “What?”

“I’ll stay and do as you wish. But I will not impose that on her.”

“But you know she’s going to stay.”

“Maybe she will, but it will be by choice. And if she decides that she wants to leave, that will be her choice as well.”

Fu Ruolan narrowed her eyes at him. “And what if I say that it’s non-negotiable?”

Sen met her eyes. “Then, I think our negotiations have come to an end. Please point me to my friend and we’ll trouble you no more.”

“You’re serious? It’d be a death sentence for you.”

“I murdered an entire beast tide to protect her life, knowing it would likely kill me. What could have given you the mad idea that I’d commit her to slavery?”

“You don’t think that I just could make you both stay, regardless of what you want?”

“You could, but it wouldn’t get you what you want. You can force compliance, but not cooperation. You could threaten to hurt her to get me to do what you want. If you do that, though, you’d just have to kill me anyway, because I’d make it my life’s work to end your life.”

Fu Ruolan beamed at him. “Oh, you do not disappoint. You are everything your reputation makes you out to be. Very well, then. Five years from you. Your cat friend can come and go as she pleases with one caveat.”

“Which is?”

“She never says a word to anyone about me, ever.”

“Fine, with one caveat.”

Fu Ruolan lifted an eyebrow. “Which is?”

“She can talk to Master Feng, Uncle Kho, and Auntie Caihong. She has relationships with them already. It’s unreasonable to ask her to deny them answers.”

Fu Ruolan scowled a bit but eventually nodded. “I suppose that’s fair. The bargain is struck.”