The Pavilion's midnight bells had trembled through the stones hours ago, their echoes long since swallowed by the velvet dark. Jian Long moved like a shadow between the servant corridors, his bare feet memorizing every groove in the wormwood floorboards—three steps silent, fourth avoiding the board that groaned like a dying man.
Creak.
He froze. The sound hadn't come from beneath him.
Across the courtyard, a silhouette melted from the moonlit fog—a girl's figure, all sharp angles and coiled tension, her violet disciple robes hanging slightly too large on narrow shoulders. Mei Ruyan. She paused at the clinic's rotting doorframe, one pale hand hovering over the latch. Even from twenty paces, Jian Long saw the minute tremors in her fingertips.
"System," he thought, "amplify vision."
[Ocular Enhancement Activated]
Target: Mei Ruyan
• Breath Pattern: Shallow, 5.3 seconds between exhales (Suppressed panic)
• Pupil Dilation: 0.2mm beyond normal (Adrenaline surge)
• Subtle Tells:
Left thumb rubbing callus on sword handRight sleeve tugged down to cover wrist scarLower lip caught between teeth (Released upon noticing observation)
Jian Long waited until she'd slipped inside before approaching. The scent hit him first—not the expected medicinal herbs, but something warmer, human. Peony soap and the faint iron tang of recently split knuckles.
"You're late," came her voice through the door, flat as a dulled blade.
He entered to find her already seated on the cracked jade slab, back straight as a guillotine's edge. The cheap beast-oil lamp painted her in jaundiced light, catching the fine down hairs along her jawline where sweat had begun to bead.
"Had to stop and rescue a kitten," Jian Long said, leaning against the wall with deliberate casualness. His elbow knocked a dried herb jar, sending a brittle sage leaf drifting to the floor between them.
Mei's eyes—dark as pooled ink but for the single reflected lamp flame in each—tracked its descent. "There are no cats in the west wing."
"Exactly." He grinned, watching how her shoulders tensed at the sound of his molars clicking. "Poor thing was terribly lost. Just like someone else I know, sneaking around after curfew."
Her fingers spasmed against her knees. "I could leave."
"And waste all that dramatic cloak-swirling you did outside? Perish the thought."
The ritual required three preparations, each more intimate than the last.
Jian Long rolled up his sleeves, exposing forearms still laddered with fading bruises from last week's "disciplinary adjustment." The spirit-water basin steamed between them, its surface swirling with dissolved moonlight herbs.
"Purification first," he said, plunging his hands in. The liquid burned like frozen fire, turning his skin momentarily translucent—veins glowing gold where his meager qi flowed.
Mei's nostrils flared. "You didn't mention that part."
"Would you have come if I did?" He shook off excess droplets, watching them sizzle against the floorboards. "Now breathe with me. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight."
Her exhale was a dagger's point against his cheek. "I know how to breathe."
"Yet you're doing it wrong. Your Huantiao point is flaring like a whorehouse lantern." He tapped his own hip demonstratively. "Which means you're either terrified or—"
"Begin."
The first contact was electric. Two fingers pressed to the Fengchi point beneath her skull, Jian Long felt her qi surge like a trapped bird against his touch. Mei's breath stuttered—not the controlled rhythm she'd practiced, but something raw and human.
"Easy," he murmured, his thumb finding the knot of tension at her Jianjing. The muscle beneath was iron-hard, vibrating with suppressed energy. "I'm not going to—"
"Don't." Her voice cracked like thin ice. "Just... don't talk."
But the system was already translating her body's silent screams:
[Partner Analysis]
• Pulse: 112 BPM (Elevated)
• Skin Conductance: 8.2 microsiemens (High stress)
• Qi Turbulence:
63% fear (Primary)22% shame (Secondary)15% something warmer, darker (Suppressed)
At the fifth meridian point, something fractured. Mei's rigid posture softened infinitesimally—her right shoulder dipping by precisely 3.2 degrees, the way a weary sword arm might after hours of drills. The system pinged:
[First Resonance Achieved]
Emotional Permeability Detected
The memory struck without warning—
—A girl of twelve (Mei? Younger.) standing in midnight downpour, practicing the seventh sword form until her palms split. No master's voice chiding her, no seniors laughing—just the hiss of rain on hot skin and the copper smell of her own blood—
Jian Long gasped. Mei wrenched away, her chest heaving.
"What did you see?" Her fingers flew to the dagger at her belt.
"Nothing," he lied smoothly, flexing his tingling hand. "Just your qi being dramatic. Like its owner."
Her eyes narrowed—not in anger, but calculation. The lamp's flicker caught the faint scar bisecting her left eyebrow, a pale thread against sun-kissed skin. "You're a terrible liar."
"And you're a worse patient. Six points left, Your Highness."
The twelfth point burned.
Jian Long's palm hovered over Mei's Dantian, close enough to feel the furnace-heat of her unstable core. Sweat slicked his brow, each breath coming harder as their qi threads wove tighter.
"Last one," he warned, voice rough. "This might—"
Mei's hand snapped up, her calloused fingers encircling his wrist like manacles. Up close, he could count every fleck of gold in her irises, see the faint tremor in her lower lashes.
"If you see her again," she whispered, "don't speak to her."
"Her?"
The silence stretched, broken only by the drip of condensation from the ceiling. Somewhere, a water clock marked the passing seconds.
Mei's thumb pressed against his pulse point—not a threat, but an anchor. "The girl in your vision."
Jian Long exhaled through his nose, catching the scent of peony soap and something deeper, muskier—the smell of a body pushed to its limits. "Was that you?"
Her grip tightened. The system flashed a warning:
[Emotional Surge Detected]
Recommended Action: Disengage
He stayed.
The contact ignited. Their qi exploded outward in a golden helix, shattering every glass vessel in the room. Shards rained down like crystalline hail as the resonance peaked—
—then collapsed.
Mei staggered upright, robes clinging to damp skin. "This never happened."
"Obviously." Jian Long plucked a sliver of glass from his sleeve, watching how the lamplight fractured through it. "I'm just a humble servant who—"
"Jian Long." Her voice could have flayed flesh from bone.
He met her glare without flinching, noting how her pupils remained dilated, how a single strand of hair clung to the sweat at her temple. "Yes, my lady?"
Her fist connected with his shoulder—not a strike, but something infinitely more dangerous. A touch. Brief as a sparrow's alighting, warm as stolen sunlight.
Then she was gone, the door shuddering in her wake.
The system's final alert pulsed like a second heartbeat:
[Countdown Initiated]
72:00:00 until next required resonance
Failure Penalty: Core degradation
Outside, the Pavilion's bells tolled the witching hour. Somewhere in the dark, a girl's uneven footsteps faded into the mist.
Jian Long pressed his tingling palm to the cracked jade slab where she'd sat. The stone still held the ghost of her warmth.