Two sets of footsteps came up the path toward the Silent Peak.

One of them was Lian’s. Quick, light, a little out of rhythm because she was half-running to keep up, her steps landing in a hurried rhythm that gave her away.

The other was heavier. And yet, somehow, quieter. The owner of those steps was clearly larger than Lian, but each footfall struck the stones so lightly that Lin Xuan found himself straining to hear them at all. Whoever was walking with her moved like a man who had spent decades practicing the art of not announcing himself.

[ Xuan. ] Mira’s panel dimmed a shade. [ They are almost here. Try not to reveal anything just yet. ]

’Didn’t you say he was trustworthy? Can you read him for me?’

[ I did say that, yes. But that was based on the memories of your previous self. He is the old man who had you adopted into this sect, so I assume he is not an immediate threat. That said, I cannot scan him yet. You will need to grow stronger before I can. ] She paused. [ What I can tell you is that he is not trying to hurt you. That is the only comfort I can offer right now, which I realize is not very comforting. (°ヘ°) ]

’Comforting enough, I guess.’

The door opened.

Elder Ren stepped into the room.

He was smaller than the memories of the old Lin Xuan had painted him, and thinner, and older.

His robe was the formal cut of a Skyedge elder. Deep black down to the hem, with a single thin line of red stitched along the cuffs and the collar, a second red line running down the outer seam of each sleeve. A plain sword hung at his hip in an old scabbard that had been relacquered more than once. His white hair was gathered into a tight warrior’s knot. His eyes were pale silver, and they did not miss things.

They did not miss him now.

They went first to the splinted wrist, then to the stitched shoulder, then to the black stains still drying on the skin of his forearms, then to his feet on the floor, bearing weight, and finally to his face.

The old man’s eyes widened.

"...Young Master."

Lian closed the door behind him and slipped quietly to the wall, folding her hands in front of her, giving the elder his space.

Lin Xuan inclined his head a fraction. Anything more felt like it would insult a man who clearly had no use for ceremony.

"You are standing," Elder Ren said.

"I am. I am standing, Elder."

"You are standing," the old man murmured again, almost to himself, as if he had not heard his own voice the first time. His eyes had not yet caught up with what they were looking at.

Lin Xuan let his mouth twitch at the corner. "I am aware of that, Elder. That is the second time you have said it."

’He had the same reaction as Lian.’

Elder Ren blinked, cleared his throat, and had the grace to look embarrassed about it. "Forgive me. Forgive an old man his surprise, Young Master. But permit me one question. How is this possible? That curse. I did everything I could to find a cure for it, and more. I called in favors from every pharmacist and every scholar who would take my letters. There was nothing. No one could touch it. How is this possible?"

"I don’t know, Elder Ren. If I knew, I would tell you." Lin Xuan kept his voice even, because anything else would have sounded like he was hiding something, which he was. "When I woke up, the pain was gone. I felt like I could move, so I gave it a try and voilà. I moved. That is as far as the explanation gets, Elder. I would like to understand it myself."

Elder Ren studied him for a long beat.

[ He is reading your meridians with his gaze. ] Mira said it low, almost respectful. [ He does not need to touch you. He can see. ]

’I feel naked and exposed when he does that, Mira.’

[ You’ll live, Xuan. (¬_¬) ]

After a long stretch the old man’s shoulders dropped by a quarter of an inch. Something in him had set itself down.

He crossed the room and went to one knee beside the bed, which should have been impossible for a man of his age, and was not.

"Young Master. May I?"

"Please, Elder."

Elder Ren placed one flat palm against the center of Lin Xuan’s upper back.

For a full ten seconds he did not move. His breath slowed. His eyes half closed. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it carefully, and Lin Xuan had the distinct sense that he was watching a man who had spent fifty years learning how to look at things without breaking them.

When the palm lifted, Elder Ren’s hand was shaking. Very slightly. He saw it. He noticed Lin Xuan seeing it too. He returned the hand to his sleeve without comment.

"Young Master. The curse is gone."

He had been told this already. But something about feeling the absence with his own palm seemed to have finally let the fact arrive in his head. His voice came out quiet, almost unsure of itself, as though saying it out loud were the only way to confirm it.

"Yes. As far as I can tell, completely gone." Lin Xuan kept his voice soft. "Whatever held it at the end, it let go all at once."

A long pause. Elder Ren lowered his hand, stayed on one knee, and looked at the floorboards for a stretch before his silver eyes came back up.

When they did, they had shifted. The wonder was still there, but something sharper had moved in beside it.

"Young Master. What happened to you? Why are you in this state?"

Lin Xuan gestured at the bandage on his wrist, the stains on his arms, the stitches on his shoulder. "It’s a long story, Elder. Do you have time?"

"I have all the time you need."

So Lin Xuan told him. Not all of it. Nothing about Mira. Nothing about the panel that had unrolled itself above him the first night. He told him about the two men who had come in the dark. Two assassins wearing the fang-mark of the Blood Fang Sect hidden under their collars. How he had set a stone trap at the edge of the dry well. How the first one had gone down into the bottleneck of the pit and he had crushed his legs with the boulder and finished him with a sharp rock. How the second one had heard and been smarter, and he had crawled out through the collapsed drainage and tried to take him from behind, and failed, and the man had broken his wrist.

And then he told him the rest. The thing he did not quite know how to explain.

"Something broke through inside me. Right before I thought I was going to die. I felt it. Like a door opening. I do not have the vocabulary for it yet. Then I advanced to Qi Refining Stage One."

Elder Ren did not speak for a long moment.

When he did, his voice had gone strange.

"Two years without being able to cultivate. And you stepped through into Qi Refining in the middle of a fight." He stopped. Swallowed once. His silver eyes had gone very bright at the corners. "Young Master. That is. Forgive me. That is — "

He did not finish the sentence. He looked at the window instead, because a man of his age and position was not going to cry in front of a nineteen-year-old boy.

[ He genuinely cares about you, Xuan. ] Mira said it quietly.

’Yes. I can see that.’

After a moment Elder Ren recovered himself.

"The bodies," he said. "Where are they?"

"In the dry well at the back of the courtyard. Lian hid them during the night. She covered them with the old stones, dirt, and the loose bricks from the south wall. She can show you exactly where."

Elder Ren inclined his head in Lian’s direction without turning, an acknowledgment. Lian accepted it without moving.

"Then permit me a request, Young Master." The old man’s voice had settled back into its measured rhythm. "I will call a pharmacist for you. A private one. An old friend of mine named Master Fu. He owes me something, and it is not money. He owes me a life debt. Which means nothing that happens in this room leaves it through him."

That was important. A life debt in the cultivator world was not a metaphor. Among honorable men it carried weight most oaths did not, and many grown men of reputation respected the word of a life debt over any contract sealed in ink.

"More than acceptable, Elder. Thank you."

"And as for the bodies." The old man’s jaw tightened slightly. "I will dispose of them myself. Quietly. No one will find them. But I will tell you what I already know, Young Master, because you deserve to hear someone say it out loud. Blood Fang assassins do not walk onto a Skyedge mountain on their own schedule. Someone inside these walls opened the path for them. Someone with timing and reach."

"Madam Mei." That was the name that unconsciously came out of Xuan’s mouth due to the memories of the previous Lin Xuan.

Elder Ren did not confirm it with his mouth. He did with his face.

"The Regional Tournament of the Six Sects begins in a month, Young Master. Your father’s return is imminent because no Skyedge Patriarch misses the selection round for that tournament, not for any summons, any emperor, nor any excuse the capital can invent. The two sons of the Patriarch fight a duel the day after he arrives. Whoever wins the duel represents the Lin family at the tournament."

"Elder. I have been crippled for two years."

"Yes."

"Until yesterday morning I could not sit up without help. The whole sect believed I was bedridden. So why is there a duel scheduled."

Elder Ren’s silver eyes settled on the floor for a moment before they came back up. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"Because the duel is tradition, Young Master. It cannot be cancelled without a formal vote of the elders. Madam Mei knew that. She put it on the calendar three weeks ago. She knew, when she scheduled it, that you would not be able to walk into that hall. Protocol allows one hour of waiting. After that hour, the absent son forfeits. The duel is recorded as a victory by no-show. The forfeiting son is permanently struck from the list of eligible Lin family representatives for any future tournament."

A pause.

"She scheduled a ceremony specifically because she knew you could not show up to it. The whole sect knows. Everyone is going to come and watch a young master forfeit by absence, and everyone is going to know exactly why it is on the calendar. It is not a duel, Young Master. It is a public funeral for your name, dressed up in tradition so no one can object."

"And the elders just agreed to it?"

"Three of them did, yes. Two of them firmly in her faction. The third was bought, I suspect, with information I will recover in time. None of the three are loyal to me. They signed it before I could file an objection."

"And my father, when he arrives..."

"He will see the calendar. He will not be able to remove a duel that has already been ratified by three elders. Not without spending political capital he cannot afford. Especially not for a son everyone in this sect, until twenty hours ago, believed was about to die."

Lin Xuan mouth moved at one corner. Not quite a smile.

"So to Madam Mei. I have been inconvenient to her for nineteen years. For the last two years she has watched the curse do her work for her. And when the curse turned out to be slower than the calendar required, someone in her faction tried to finish the job last night."

"Yes, Young Master."

"And the duel was the best version. The one that is inside the rules."

"Yes."

"And the assassins were the failsafe."

"Yes."

"And now I am cured."

"Now you are cured, Young Master. The duel is still on the calendar. The protocol is still the protocol. But protocol does not assume that the cursed son will recover. If you walk into that hall on the day of the duel, able to draw a sword, the ceremony stops being a forfeit. It becomes a real duel. In front of the entire sect. The one your stepmother spent three weeks arranging."

"The duel, when is it?" he said.

"The day after your father arrives. Eight days from today."

Lin Xuan let smallest and slowest smile crossed his face. The first one Elder Ren had seen on it that morning that did not have something tired underneath it.

"Then I have eight days, Elder."

"Yes, Young Master."

-------------------------------------------

Master Fu arrived within the hour.

He was thin to the point of being carved out of driftwood, brown-robed, with no sect marking on his collar, and small dark eyes that moved fast and landed nowhere for longer than a second. He bowed once, briefly, to Elder Ren, and then more deeply to Lin Xuan.

"Young Master. Elder." His voice was the voice of a man who had no intention of wasting syllables. "I was told I was needed. Where is the wrist?"

"Right here, Master Fu."

The old pharmacist crossed the room, knelt beside the bed, and took Lin Xuan’s splinted hand in both of his. He pressed once at the base of the thumb. His eyebrows went up a fraction.

"This was set by someone who knew what they were doing up to a point, and then got tired. Whoever it was, please tell them the joint was almost correct."

"It was me, actually. With help from the girl standing at the wall."

"Then, Young Master, I will say you both did respectably for amateurs, and now I will undo it and do it properly. It will hurt. Do you want the leather?"

"Yes, please."

Master Fu handed him a folded strip of old leather without ceremony. Lin Xuan took it between his teeth. The pharmacist braced the wrist and snapped the half-set bone in a single clean motion.

The pain climbed white behind Lin Xuan’s eyes. He did not make a sound. Mira, who had been murmuring in his head since Master Fu walked in, stayed very quiet through the worst of it and only said, when it was over: [ Well handled. ]

Master Fu re-set the joint, splinted it with faster and tighter linen wraps, and moved on to the shoulder without stopping to talk. He inspected Lian’s stitches, made a small approving sound under his breath, redid two of them that were pulling, cleaned the wound with a tincture that burned hot and then cold, and spread on an ointment that smelled of mint and something dark underneath.

When he was done, he closed his case, bowed again, and walked to the door.

At the threshold he paused.

"Young Master."

"Master Fu."

"I could not help you two years ago because what was inside you then was not something my tools could reach. I want you to know that I remember. I remember the night Elder Ren brought me up this mountain, and I remember walking back down it with my hands empty. Whatever took the curse off you reached further than my tools go. I am grateful, as the man who failed you two years ago, that someone with a longer reach has finally arrived."

Lin Xuan shook his head once, and when he spoke his voice was quieter than he had meant it to be.

"It’s all right, Master Fu. You did what you could. It was not your failure."

The pharmacist looked at him for a long second.

"Young Master. That is kinder than I deserve. Please give my regards to your father when he comes home."

The door closed behind him.

Elder Ren waited for the footsteps to fade down the path before he exhaled slowly through his nose.

"That is the closest Master Fu has come to giving a compliment since I have known him, Young Master. And I have known him since he was thirty."

"How old is he now?"

"Old enough that I will not answer that question where he might hear me."

Elder Ren rose, joints cracking softly, smoothed the line of his black-and-red robe, and walked to the door. At the threshold he paused. His hand rested for a breath on the frame.

"Eight days, Young Master. Your father arrives. The duel follows. Your brother is Qi Refining Stage Seven, trained on Azure Cloud Sword Art, and has not lost a formal duel in five years. You are Stage One as of this morning. I will not insult you by telling you that the math is favorable. I will only tell you this. Use the eight days. Use all of them. I will do what I can do without being seen doing it."

"Thank you, Elder."

"Do not thank me yet. I have not done anything useful in two years, Young Master, and I have a great deal to make up for."

The door closed behind him.

Lian exhaled against the wall and finally let her shoulders drop. Lin Xuan looked up at the crooked beam in the ceiling and let the silence settle over him for a count of ten.

’Mira.’

[ Yes, Xuan. ]

’Options.’

[ Who do you think I am, Jarvis or something? Hmm... (¬＿¬) ...but I would recommend using the Shop. ]