Eventually they finished their meal— though perhaps finished was not the right move, as even when they moved over to the living room beside a warmly crackling fire and all the glittering decorations of the next day’s festival, everyone kept occasionally going back to grab a little more from the table whenever they started to get hungry. It was a very pleasant experience, all things considered…

There was plenty of stuff to do, unlike with Yuxan’s party, which was a very welcome difference. Aimi challenged him to a game of go— apparently she’d gotten really into the game recently for whatever reason— which he let her win, because actually playing seriously against her would have been an insult. Maybe when she was older. Now, when Janus tried to beat him… really, it was unfair. Eons old cultivators tended to get rather good at even some quite silly things, and it just so happened that one of his fellow immortals in the Heavenly Realm had been rather fond of the game.

Janus looked on in slack-jawed shock as he effortlessly dismantled his each and every move, playing the board like a fiddle to get him into the exact position he wanted him. “How?

How the—” he chuckled, then laughed, an almost giddy full-bodied that rebounded off the walls, so lively. “I didn’t know you were this good.”

“If you want to beat me, train for another ten thousand years.”

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“Right… how about chess?” Another horrible, horrible loss for him. “Then… cards? Surely you can’t win at cards.” He totally could if he wanted to cheat, but this wasn’t the sort of game where that would’ve been acceptable. No, he had just as much luck as everyone else, so out of the five of them he only won a few times.

No, he was too busy making sure Aimi

won as much as possible. It was really funny seeing Aimi rake in all the chips with her horrible hands, much to Janus’s increasingly exasperated incredulity. “Alright!” Janus slapped his hand down, glaring at Mingtian with mock-offense. “I know that you’re doing something. I’ve got my eye on you, Mingtian?”

“What, me?” He batted his eyes more innocently than a spirit of purity. “No, of course not. How could I possibly ever do something so heinous as cheat in a card game? No, I would never.” He paused for a long second, dramatically— “though if I was rigging the game, then I’d rig it that I win, no?” He very pointedly did not look at how Aimi had managed to win the whole pot off one of the worst hands in the entire game.

Janus threw his cards at him.

Fun times.