Master Hu had taken two paces forward. The hands had come out of the sleeves at last, palms loose, fingers relaxed. No weapon. The expression was the same expression of a man over a kettle, except the kettle had begun to boil and he was preparing to pour.

[ Xuan. ]

’I know.’

[ I will not lie to you. The gap between you is the gap of a realm. You have no real chance in a fight. ]

’Any plan?’

[ I’m running possibilities, Xuan. ]

Master Hu took the third pace.

"You know, young master." The old man rolled his right shoulder once, the small unhurried roll of a man working out a stiffness he had earned forty years ago. "When I started in this profession, I was a small man with a small workshop and a smaller list of contacts. I took every contract I was offered, because I could not afford to refuse. I have built this list one careful name at a time. Tonight you are going to ruin part of it on me. Honestly. Would you mind not making me work harder than the bill required."

Lin Xuan did not answer. He moved.

Storm Dragon opened from the recovered stance, four cuts in the rapid sequence Skyedge taught its sword children to scatter through a pressing opponent. The blade described the four arcs that covered the upper, middle, and lower lines of the alley in one combined motion, each cut individually weaker than the cuts that had ended the four hired blades, the sum of them dense enough to keep a man’s hands busy.

Master Hu raised his left hand. Only the left hand.

The four arcs of Plain Steel met a cushion of compressed Qi a palm’s width from his sleeve. Three turned aside with a small chime. The fourth nicked the gray cloth at the cuff before it dissipated into the air. Master Hu glanced at the cuff with the mild appreciation of a tailor inspecting an honest tear. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Better than I would have said for your age. Not for your realm."

He came forward.

The palm arrived with the simple certainty of a man closing a door. Coiling Dragon answered out of pure reflex, the spiral hooking the line of the descending palm and intending to thread the strike past the right hip the way it had threaded the diagonal of the fourth man.

The palm crossed the spiral as if the spiral were a curtain.

Plain Steel left his hand. His left ribs registered the impact a heartbeat after the fact. The wall of the alley met his back with a sound he heard from inside his own skull rather than from his ear, and air left him in the wrong direction. He did not fall. He slid two fingers down the brick and held there, knees locked, one hand braced flat against the cold of the wall.

Plain Steel lay three paces away, the pommel rocking faintly against the cobble.

Master Hu had not moved from where he had thrown the palm.

"I corrected my line at the last instant, you know." The old man’s sleeve fell back across the cuff. "The contract was for sealing, not for ending. You are welcome to thank me on your way to bed."

[ Xuan. Two ribs gone on the left side. Probably a tear in the lung lining. You can still fight. You will not enjoy it. ]

’Plain Steel.’

[ Three paces. He is between you and it. ]

’Soaring Dragon.’

[ ... ]

[ It will get you to it. After that, I have nothing. ]

He did not give Mira the time to argue.

His weight rocked back into the heels and Cloud Step opened the half-step that loaded the leap, and Soaring Dragon fired upward off the brick with the ascending arc of the form even though he had no blade to ride it with. The leap carried him over Master Hu’s head along the line of the wall, his free hand reaching for Plain Steel as the arc of the body curved past the descending side.

Master Hu did not turn to follow him. He took one step.

The pressure under Lin Xuan changed. The air that had been carrying the leap stopped carrying. The arc broke at the apex, and the entire weight of him fell along a vertical that had nothing to do with the trajectory he had launched on. Plain Steel came into his fingers a thumb’s width before the wrist hit the cobble. The fall closed the rest of the distance between his shoulder and the stone with the dull, complete impact of a body that had run out of options.

Master Hu was already there when he came down.

The palm landed flat on the front of his sternum. It did not move after that.

The brick at his back held the rest of his weight. The palm in front held the rest of him. Air that had been almost coming back left him again, and the line of his vision pulled toward the edges in the soft narrow way that meant the body was beginning to make economic choices.

"I have watched boys your age fight well, young master." The old man’s voice arrived from farther away than three paces deserved. "You fight well. That is not the same as fighting enough."

’Mira. I need the plan now!’

[ ...There is only one thing Xuan. ]

The talisman at his collar gave, the way a folded paper gives when it has been holding a flame at its edge longer than paper holds. The faint, sweet, heavy weight of the alley arrived in his throat for the first time without the small shield between him and it, and the breath that followed had the soft sweetness of fruit left out a season too long. His tongue went heavy. His eyes did the thing eyes did when the substance in the air was the substance that had taken Su Qingyue down in three breaths.

Master Hu noticed.

The corner of his mouth lifted by a fraction, the first expression of the evening that was not tired or bureaucratic. A small, almost respectful smile.

"Ah. There it is. Good night, young master."

The palm at his sternum changed. The Qi that had been holding him against the wall began to flow inward through the bone, into his dantian, along the slow controlled line of a sealing technique. Cold. It was not the cold of weather. It was the cold of a hand reaching past skin and bone into a place no hand had ever touched, and finding there the shape of the cup he had spent forty days filling.

He tried to lift his arm.

The arm did not respond.

The panel arrived in the center of his vision. Square in front of him, where it had not opened since the morning he had met Mira in a different bed, in a different pavilion, in a different corner of his short second life.

The border was not blue. It was not pink. It was a color he had not seen Mira use before, and his second-life eyes had no name for it.

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[ HOST OVERRIDE ]

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[ Xuan. ]

[ I am sorry. I needed you out for this. ]

[ I am taking control. ]

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His mouth opened to answer. The first syllable shaped the front of her name.

He did not get to it.