’I have been swindled.’

Three thousand spirit stones for an inhibitor that had been purged inside the first thirty seconds of the combat. Three thousand spirit stones for a result that had ended with her stepson breaking a Stage Seven representative’s blade in front of fifteen thousand people.

’Tonight. I am going to find that man tonight and I am going to have words.’

Her left hand on her thigh had closed past natural a long time ago.

She lifted the cup the rest of the way to her lips and drank it down in a single swallow.

In the western sector, Su Qingyue stood and applauded with both hands without making the slightest effort to disguise it. The smile on her face was full for the first time anyone in this Arena had seen it, and it stayed.

’Form Seven. How many forms does your Sword Art have, Lin Xuan?’

She turned to the elder beside her, who had spent the last ten seconds clapping with a confused expression because he was not entirely sure what he had just witnessed.

"Elder."

"Young Mistress."

"I have to win my round. I want this fight. It seems that now it is my turn to keep my end of the promise."

The elder raised an eyebrow at the word promise and decided not to ask. He had been a senior of Frostmoon Ridge for forty years and had developed a finely tuned sense for which questions did not concern him. This was one of them.

She kept clapping.

Two rows down in the lower ring, in the section reserved for Skyedge attendants, Lian was standing.

She was also crying.

The tears had started somewhere around the moment Plain Steel had drawn its line through the air, and they had not stopped. Lian, who had spent years at the bedside of a young master everyone in the sect had quietly written off, who had been told to prepare him for the curse to take him in his sleep, was now watching that same young master walk off the fighting floor of the Arena of Yuncheng after a victory that had silenced fifteen thousand people for one full second.

She wiped her face with the back of one wrist, sniffed, wiped again, and started clapping with both hands at a rhythm that had nothing to do with the rhythm of the rest of the Arena.

The Skyedge attendant beside her glanced over once, took in the scene, said nothing, and offered her his sleeve. She refused it with a small shake of the head and used her own.

In the seat two cushions to the right of Lin Xuan’s empty cushion, Wei Tianming was on his feet.

He was applauding.

He was also crying, and he had given up trying to hide it. The tears were running down his face in two clean lines and the cuff of his new Skyedge robe was already damp from one round of wiping. His nose had begun to run somewhere around the moment Plain Steel had moved, and the back of his other sleeve was now occupied with that.

He sniffed loudly, wiped, sniffed again, and went on clapping.

A Skyedge attendant standing at the back of the row offered him a handkerchief. Wei Tianming accepted it without breaking the rhythm of his applause and blew his nose into it with the energy of a man who had been waiting his whole life for an excuse.

The handkerchief did not survive.

He kept it anyway.

In the Heavenly Sword Pavilion tribune, Yan Wuji had not moved.

His attention was on the figure in the Skyedge formal robe walking off the fighting floor. The slight inclination of his chin had not gone back to its previous angle. His hands were folded in his sleeves, and his face had not changed expression, but his eyes had narrowed a fraction in the way men of his level narrowed their eyes when the variable in front of them had moved from manageable to interesting.

He spoke softly to the elder seated beside him.

"That seventh form."

The elder inclined his head and did not answer.

"I have not seen it before. Have you?"

The elder considered the question for a count, then shook his head once.

"Hm."

Yan Wuji unfolded his hands from his sleeves and rested them on his knees.

He did not applaud.

He kept watching the boy walk off the floor.

Lin Xuan crossed the bridge over the moat back to the western stair and climbed two steps before stopping at the edge of his row.

Lian had already arrived from the lower ring, somehow, the way she always seemed to arrive at the right place at the right moment without anyone seeing her move. Her eyes were still glassy. The corner of her mouth was working very hard to behave like the corner of a mouth that had not been crying ten seconds earlier and was failing.

"Young Master."

"Lian."

"You won."

"I noticed."

She did not reply to that. She made the small efficient bow she always made and stepped to one side, the way a personal maid did when she had said what she needed to say and no longer required attention.

Wei Tianming was right behind her, the destroyed handkerchief still clutched in one hand, his face streaked, his eyes shining. He had clearly been working on a sentence the entire walk down from the cushions.

"Young Master."

"Wei Tianming."

"The blade. The thing in the air. The dragon."

Lian, without breaking the line of her bow, raised her right hand and brought it down in a clean, controlled karate chop on the top of Wei Tianming’s head.

THUNK.

"Sit. Down."

Wei Tianming blinked, swayed, gathered his composure, and sat down on the nearest cushion with the obedience of a young man who had just been corrected by an older sister he had not known he had until this moment.

"...Yes, Madam."

"Lian."

"...Yes, Lian."

Lin Xuan made a small noise through his nose that was not quite a laugh.

Lian gave Wei Tianming the kind of look that promised she would be having a longer conversation with him in private later. Wei Tianming, who had not yet fully understood his new place in the sect hierarchy, understood it now.

Lin Xuan took the cushion beside him. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

’Mira. I told you.’

[ You told me, Xuan. And now the entire Arena knows. Well done. (◠‿◠) ]

[ Also. Your maid just adopted your inner disciple. ]

’I noticed.’

[ The Arena is going to be a small place for him for a while. ]

’I noticed that too.’

Plain Steel rested in its scabbard at his hip. His cup was at fifteen percent and the bone-deep tiredness of a Form Seven commitment had begun to climb through his shoulders. The afternoon was long. The next round of the bracket was three days from now.

He let his shoulders ease against the back of the cushion.

He had won the first fight of the principal bracket of the Six Sects Regional Tournament.

Across the Arena, his father was still laughing.

The patriarch of Thunder Lotus Sect had his face in his hand.

The rest of the Arena was still on its feet.