I found Xu Ziqing seated beneath the same crooked pine near the southern ridge, polishing his blade with slow, precise movements as I did last afternoon. The wind had softened since morning, but the chill still lingered. His posture hadn’t changed in the time I’d spent nearby, watching from a polite distance.

Eventually, I approached.

“They’re doing their best,” I said.

He didn’t glance up. “Who?”

“The converts,” I clarified. “Xin Du, Fang Du, and Ying Xie. They’re trying. Helping build shelters, sorting medicine, even splitting firewood with the other refugees.”

Xu Ziqing gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Xin Du asked me if anyone teaches martial arts in the village,” I continued. “Said he wanted to learn.”

That made him pause.

He looked up, arching a brow. “And you thought of me?”

“Well,” I said with a shrug, “you are a sword cultivator with a tactical mind and a scary sense of pressure. I figured you'd be a good fit.”

“I’m not interested in taking disciples.” He resumed cleaning his sword, tone flat. “I’m here to fulfill a duty to my junior brother. Not to play caretaker.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Then carefully said, “Maybe teaching someone to protect themselves is also part of that duty. You said you wanted to honor Ping Hai’s wish. What if giving someone the means to fight for their own life helps fulfill that?”

Silence stretched between us.

The blade in his lap glinted faintly as he turned it over.

I shifted, suddenly unsure. “Sorry,” I said quickly, bowing slightly. “I didn’t mean to overstep. That was—”

“I didn’t say you were wrong.” Xu Ziqing let out a soft sigh, sheathing his blade.

He gave me a sidelong look. “But first, we should focus on teaching you.”

He reached beside him and retrieved a folded cloth, which he unfurled to reveal a hexagonal board; crudely carved, clearly handmade, but marked with care. Small wooden tokens filled a shallow pouch at his side, each etched with different letters and symbols.

“This is Tianqi Duel, a teaching game from Silent Moon,” he said. “Our elders used it for training when we couldn’t spar. It simulates combat, decision-making, and cultivation theory.”

I sat down across from him, intrigued. “Looks like Go.”

“You’d think so,” he said. “But unlike those games, the pieces aren’t fixed. Each one has a progression path.”

He pulled a few pieces from the pouch and set them onto the board, placing one near the edge, another in the center, and a third off to the side.

He began to explain the rules. What each piece did, and what they were called. It was relatively complex, but it was easy to digest with the way he broke things down. But what caught my interest the most wasn't the pieces; it was the way he situated the board. Or rather, how it could be positioned.

"So you're saying we don't have to start with the same pieces? It can be different every time? That doesn't seem fair."

“It isn't. But the goal isn’t always to win. Sometimes the objective is survival. Or reaching a specific tile. Or protecting a specific piece. The terrain can 'shift', too. You can flood one side of the board to cut off movement or trigger a move that makes an area uninhabitable.”

My head spun slightly. “And you guys play this for fun?”

“It’s not meant to be fun,” he said. “It’s meant to train your instincts. Decision-making. When to retreat. When to sacrifice.”

I nodded slowly, watching him place a few more tokens. The hexagonal grid looked more and more like a battlefield the longer I studied it.

Xu Ziqing gestured to the arrangement he’d laid out; an uneven spread of pieces clustered near the center, with a dense ring of tokens surrounding a central point marked by a red dot. He flipped his own set upside down and began placing them on the outskirts.

“You’ll be defending this fortress,” he said, voice low and even. “I’ll be the invader.”

I gave him a wary glance. “So… I just have to stop you from taking the center?”

He nodded. “Without losing more than two of your core pieces. You lose any three? Game over.”

I took a deep breath and leaned in. “Alright. I’m ready.”

He said nothing. Just gestured for me to begin.

The first few moves felt deceptively simple, like setting up dominoes. I positioned a scout on the flank, and a support piece in the backline. It wasn’t so different from the village patrols we’d organized before.

But after five turns, I started sweating.

It wasn’t that the moves were hard to make. It was that every piece could do something else—something more—and I didn’t know when, or if, they would. Every token on the board had an evolution. A passive ability. And depending on their location or proximity to other pieces, they could move multiple times in one turn. Xu Ziqing didn’t even wait more than two seconds per turn. Each move was fast, precise, effortless.

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I realized I was spending longer on each turn thinking than I was playing.

Half the time, I didn’t know if I should move or upgrade. Shift position or try to bait an ambush. I tried to play safe; hold the middle, don’t overextend, protect my healers. For a moment, I thought I was holding him off.

By move fifty, I’d lost everything.

My fortress was gone. My pieces scattered like broken branches.

I sat back, dazed.

Xu Ziqing didn’t gloat. He simply reset the board.

“Go over your mistakes,” he said.

He pointed to the moment where I moved my archer onto unstable terrain, which had allowed him to rotate two invaders behind my flank. Then to when I spent three turns trying to evolve a support piece, when I should’ve collapsed my position and retreated.

“We’ll play ten games every day,” he said. “You’ll review every single match. Not to memorize what I did. But to understand why.”

We played again.

I fumbled. Struggled. Improved, slightly. The tenth game took me seventy-five moves to lose. A milestone, sure, but it still stung. I rested my forehead against my arm on the board, groaning. “The game isn't that hard. But seventy-five moves? That's the best I could do?”

Xu Ziqing didn’t look at me. He placed the tokens back in their pouch with the same quiet precision. “It’s remarkable you lasted fifty moves on the first game. Most usually last twenty-five or less.”

I blinked up at him. I could hear a 'but' coming.

“You adapt quickly. You’re good at thinking on your feet,” he said, voice thoughtful now. “But you’re too cautious. You don’t trust your instincts. You keep opting for safe routes. Risk-free. But ‘risk-free’ doesn’t mean ‘victory.’ Sometimes, it means waiting just long enough to be cornered.”

I chewed on that.

Because I knew he was right.

I was cautious. Always had been. I only took risks when I knew I had an edge. And lately, I’d been trying to shoulder everything alone because it was safer that way.

As I stood, brushing off my robes, he glanced at me sideways.

“Does this method of training disappoint you?”

I shook my head immediately. “No. Actually... I think this is exactly what I needed.”

I gestured to the board, still half-scattered with pieces. “Most cultivators chase strength like you said; stronger techniques, raw qi, power. But nobody teaches when to use those things. Or how. This sharpens the part of me I’ve ignored since I began all this.”

A faint smile tugged at the edge of Xu Ziqing’s lips. Barely there. But it was real.

“Good,” he said, standing. “We meet again tomorrow. Same time. I won’t go easy next time either. Bring the board and practice by yourself as you see fit.”

He walked off without waiting for a response, his long robes trailing slightly in the dust.

I smiled, then started packing up the pieces.

I had a long way to go. But this felt like the right road.

I dusted my hands off and tucked the board under my arm, stepping into the village square just as the afternoon sun broke through the thinning clouds. The usual buzz of activity met me; hammer strikes on scaffolding, saws biting into planks, the occasional burst of laughter from workers taking a breather.

The greenhouse was coming together faster than I expected.

I found Li Wei near the base of the half-raised structure, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, his hands dark with wood dust. He stood atop a beam, overseeing two older men adjusting the fit of a cross-brace. His blunt-cut hair was stuck to his forehead, and he looked like he hadn’t slept properly in days.

“You’re not just here to stare, are you?”

I offered a sheepish smile. “Just checking in.”

“It’s going smoothly,” he said, hopping down from the frame with a grunt. “No thanks to your ridiculous request.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Sorry about that.”

Li Wei shook his head, not unkindly. “Don’t be. It’s good. For growth. And I know you're doing it for the village.”

I studied him for a moment, his confidence, the way he didn’t even flinch before barking an order to another group of workers nearby. He was young, younger than me, but carried himself like a man twice his age. I knew his father despite being a seasoned carpenter, had taken more of a supervisory role lately.

But Li Wei? He never stopped moving.

“Impressive,” I murmured.

“Hmm?”

“You. All of this. You’ve been hard at work.”

He shrugged. “Someone has to be.”

I watched as a group of villagers passed him planks, each sanded and notched in ways I didn’t immediately recognize. Li Wei caught my gaze and gestured to the joints. “Mortise and tenon. Traditional joinery. Clean, efficient, and won’t splinter under pressure.”

“I remember the name,” I said slowly. “Didn’t realize people here knew how to make them.”

“Some didn’t,” he said, rubbing his fingers together to flick away sawdust. “But they’re picking it up fast. A few of them have gotten really good. Like the skill was always there, just waiting.”

“You think it’s the Heavenly Interface?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t ask. I just appreciate the help.”

We stood in silence for a moment, watching the workers fit the next beam into place. The sound of wooden mallets and steady footfalls filled the square.

I saw the way his eyes followed one of the workers, an older man from Pingyao. He carried himself with confidence. Purpose. The way his back straightened made him seem ten years younger than when I first saw him.

Now he carved with precision, like it was second nature.

I nodded my thanks and stepped away, weaving through the scattered construction toward the foot of Soaring Swallow Hill.

There, gathered by the bottom of the stairs, were a dozen children and more than a few curious adults. They sat cross-legged in the dirt or leaned against stones, all focused on the old man perched atop a stump in the center.

Ren Zhi.

He sat with the ease of a man who’d told stories longer than most present had been alive. His voice was steady, rough around the edges, but carried the kind of cadence that naturally pulled in every ear nearby. Even without raising it, he held the crowd like a spell.

I hovered near the edge of the circle, arms crossed, letting myself simply listen. I wasn’t rushing. Wasn’t cultivating. Wasn’t planning, repairing, building, or organizing. Just listening. The air was cool, the sun was warm, and the moment felt suspended in amber.

From inside the inn, I caught movement.

Lan-Yin, framed in the doorway. She spotted me and gave a small wave, lifting a wooden bowl and mouthing something that looked suspiciously like soup. I smiled and shook my head, gesturing toward Ren Zhi, tapping my chest twice to say, Later.

She nodded and vanished back inside.

Meanwhile, the tale spun on.

“...and just when the bandits thought the village had no more defenders,” Ren Zhi said, voice taking on a dramatic hush, “in came the storm.”

The children leaned forward.

“A maroon-robed warrior, hair like wind-tossed shadows, landed from the sky like thunder made flesh!”

Several heads turned to me in unison, a few giggling as they pointed.

I blinked. Wait.

“He danced with fire and fist,” Ren Zhi continued. “Striking faster than any blade. The earth sang beneath his feet, and the heavens blinked just to watch.”

I laughed under my breath, raising a hand. I didn't even question how he knew what color robes I wore. “It’s all true,” I called out, stepping forward. “Every word of it.”

A few of the children cheered, clapping.

I bent my knees and pushed upward with a breath of qi, launching myself lightly onto the roof of the Soaring Swallow Inn with a flourish. The crowd gasped, then cheered louder. I gave a mock bow.

“And when the flames rose,” Ren Zhi went on smoothly, “he spun like a blazing wheel, flame wreathing his hands. A low kick! A sweeping strike!”

I grinned and followed along, dancing across the rooftop tiles. I slid into a low sweep, pivoted into a rising strike. The embers from the forge caught the wind and drifted past me like sparks answering the call.

“He weaved between enemies like water between spears,” Ren Zhi said, his voice rhythmic now, each word coming with a beat. “A jab! A feint! A rising chop that split air like lightning!”

I mirrored the sequence; jab, feint, rising chop. It flowed. It wasn’t the Dance of a Thousand Flames, not exactly. The tempo was different. Looser. But somehow, it still felt like it belonged to me. The crowd cheered in rhythm with each move, their excitement fueling mine.

“And when one blade struck low,” Ren Zhi continued, “he dipped and twisted, letting the flame guide his step, not resisting, but weaving.”

I stepped, dipped low, let my weight shift as he said, not driving the motion, but surrendering to it. My heel skated across the tile as my body spiraled around, arms cutting through the air like trailing fire. I heard a few gasps from below.

“He struck not with anger, but with precision,” Ren Zhi went on, voice still calm, but now slightly slower, more deliberate. “A palm to disarm. A chop to unbalance. A rising knee! Not to break, but to drive momentum upward.”

Without thinking, I followed. I pressed forward, palm extended. Chopped with the opposite hand. Let the motion carry into a rising knee. Each piece snapped into the next like a dance I hadn’t known I was learning. My qi continued to surge like flames being fanned.

“Then,” Ren Zhi said, quieter now, “he circled back. Breathing steady. Breath leads body. Shoulder loose. Elbow sharp.”

I spun again, tracing a half-circle step with my foot, adjusting posture mid-motion. My elbow shot forward in a short, precise strike, stopping just above the roof tiles. There was weight behind it. Real technique.

The applause softened now. Less cheering, more watching.

“And in the final moment,” Ren Zhi murmured, voice like smoke curling in the wind, “he leapt. Pivoted from the heel. Carried flame to his foot. And brought it down, defeating the bandits in style.”

I took a breath.

And jumped.

My foot came down in an arc, feeling right as it did so. It landed softly, a whisper against the ground, as everyone gave me a wide berth to land. Controlled. Measured.

The familiar chime of the Heavenly Interface sounded within me.

Heavenly Flame Mantra has reached Level 5.

The crowd below erupted in cheers. I blinked the sweat from my eyes, heart hammering—not from exertion, but from the rush of clarity.

That final move... was it really mine?

His last few words, those weren’t flourishes for a crowd. Those were notes. Feedback. Teaching cues.

For me.

I looked at Ren Zhi, amidst the whooping and hollering audience.

He was smiling faintly. His eyes closed like always. His posture casual. But the tilt of his chin faced my exact position.

He couldn’t have seen me up here. Could he?

The cheer of the crowd swelled again as I bowed, heat still lingering in my limbs.

Who are you, really, old man?