Lin Xuan watched his stepbrother climb up the northern stairs to the platform, the secondary robe of Skyedge falling clean down his shoulders, sword at his hip and the small confidence in his step that meant he had decided this fight was already his.

’He looks focused.’

The opening would be Azure Cloud. He could see it in the angle of the right hip before Lin Kai had even reached the top of the steps. The Seven Dragon Sword Art was still beyond him, a few months out at best. So Lin Kai was going to fight today the way he had always fought.

Three techniques. The same three he had used in the family duel, in every duel before that, and in every duel since. Azure Cloud middle-guard to open. The second form to grind down whoever stood in front of him. Twin Cloud Cut to finish. Predictable was generous.

’He is not exactly creative. The talent is there, more than most cultivators have, but it is the talent of someone who never had to think past the first three steps. Mira, do you think a new mindset can be put into him?’

[ What do you mean by put into him, Xuan. You smiled when you said that and I am not sure I want to know why. ]

A small grin passed across his mouth.

’Nothing dramatic. Manners. Maybe a little humility. Educational, in spirit.’

[ ... ]

The southern stair filled.

The figure that climbed it had been described in Mira’s morning briefing without much detail, and Lin Xuan understood why the moment he saw him. Wei Tianming was striking in a way the registry would not bother capturing. Short hair, which was rare enough to make him stand out among a crowd of bound topknots and braided ties. Blue eyes, paler than the Yuncheng light tended to forgive. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. The same year as Lin Xuan, give or take a season.

He wore a plain gray robe with no insignia at the chest. A simple sword at his belt, the kind of plain steel that came out of any village smithy in the empire. No visible cultivation breathing pattern when he walked. No technique in the way he carried himself that suggested formal training.

Which made sense.

A boy without a sect.

[ It tracks, Xuan. He has built something for himself out of whatever he could get his hands on. A manual stolen from a wandering cultivator, or one that fell into his lap by accident in whatever village he came from. If he has reached this level on his own, he is not a candidate. He is the candidate. You bring him into Skyedge. ]

’...If you put it like that, he would be a strong disciple to bring back.’

He let the thought rest there.

Wei Tianming reached the top of the platform and bowed toward the Master of Ceremonies.

The bow came out wrong.

It was not a disaster, but it was the kind of mistake a sect would have caught in the first month of intake. The boy had never been taught the protocol form. Lin Xuan caught the small crease that passed across his own forehead at the sight of it. Whoever brought Wei Tianming into a sect was going to have to spend a week teaching him how to bow properly.

The Master of Ceremonies did not comment. He stepped back and gave the signal.

The combat started.

Lin Kai opened with Azure Cloud, exactly as predicted, and pressed forward in three measured steps to force the first exchange. Wei Tianming did not raise a guard. He lowered his blade by a fraction and let Lin Kai’s opening cut pass through air.

The crowd murmured.

Lin Kai recovered, rotated his weight, and brought the second form into play. The horizontal cut carried a Stage Seven’s worth of pressure behind it. Wei Tianming let that one slip past his chest by a finger and answered with a single thrust toward the right shoulder.

Lin Kai stepped back half a pace to reset. The look on his face had stopped being smug.

Lin Xuan leaned a degree forward in his cushion.

What he had seen in two exchanges was not Stage Four against Stage Seven. It was a self-taught swordsman who had read his opponent before the second cut and decided exactly how he was going to manage him.

[ He just downgraded your stepbrother’s opening, Xuan. Without a guard, without a parry, or wasted movement. ]

The third exchange came in faster. Lin Kai launched the Twin Cloud Cut, and Wei Tianming evaded it with footwork no master would have signed off on. It was rough. It was also clean.

Lin Kai found himself defensive on the next two exchanges in a row. The crowd murmured louder.

Then Lin Kai understood what was happening.

His face changed. The smug had been gone for a while. What replaced it was the cold realization of a Stage Seven who had been close to losing to someone three stages below him in front of fifteen thousand people.

He stopped trying to be elegant.

He flooded the next exchange with raw realm. Four cuts in continuous succession, each one carrying the full weight of Stage Seven Qi unleashed without restraint. Wei Tianming held the first two with technique. The third forced his knee to the floor. The fourth broke his guard and sent his sword skidding across the platform stone.

Lin Kai stopped his fifth cut a finger from Wei Tianming’s throat.

"Yield."

Wei Tianming took two breaths before he answered. There was no anger in his voice when he did. Only the disappointment of someone who had known the gap was real and had hoped, for a moment, that it would not be.

"I yield."

The Master of Ceremonies declared Lin Kai the winner.

The applause came. Most of it was for the realm that had won. A smaller portion of it was for the Stage Four who had nearly done the impossible.

Lin Kai climbed down from the platform without a glance toward Wei Tianming. The line of his jaw had set in something that did not match the expression of a young man who had just won.

’Same mistakes, again. Does he ever learn, or what?’

[ He does not learn, host. He was given a victory that was not clean. He knows it was not clean. That is exactly the lesson his mother never taught him. ]

Wei Tianming picked his sword up off the floor, walked back across the platform, and bowed toward the Master of Ceremonies a second time. The bow came out wrong again, the same wrong as the first one. He went down the southern stairs at the calm pace of a man who had lost without feeling defeated.

Lin Xuan did not wait for him to reach the bottom.

He stood up from his cushion, crossed the row at speed, and began descending the western stair toward the service corridors of the Arena. The stands narrowed into stairwells, the stairwells fed into a network of stone corridors that ran beneath the rings and connected to the contestants’ wing.

[ I will remind you, host, that the Frostmoon Ridge elder rose from his seat at the same time you rose from yours. ]

’Then I had better hurry.’