Chapter 10: Cai Zhao Defends Chang Ning

The unpleasant exchange in the side chamber had left its mark on both of them, and Cai Zhao had genuinely intended to ease the friction between them — to let the tension settle the way tea leaves sink after the water stills. The harmonious atmosphere had held for barely a quarter of an hour before this temperamental young man across from her ignited again without discernible cause.

Cai Zhao's chopsticks froze in mid-air. She stared at him with undisguised disbelief. She was not, by nature, a person who looked for conflict — she had been easygoing since childhood, the kind of person who bent easily on most things and held firm only on matters of genuine principle. It was entirely beyond her comprehension why Chang Ning seemed constitutionally incapable of speaking without venom.

"Your grandaunt clearly understood that your mother mentioned taking vows in a fit of overwrought feeling — nothing more than the dramatic impulse of a moment. Rather than gently steering the younger generation back toward sense, as any elder worth the title ought to do, she instead actively encouraged them to persist in their mistake." Chang Ning's voice was unhurried, detached, and cutting in the particular way of someone who has no investment in softening what they say. "Truly a Twin Lotus pair — equally muddleheaded, equally foolish, and equally well-matched."

"How dare you insult my family's elders!" The heat came up in Cai Zhao instantly.

"I say what I please." Chang Ning's expression held the faint, cold amusement of someone who has never especially cared about the consequences of honesty. "Given your aunt's intelligence and her perceptiveness about the world — I refuse to believe she never arrived at these same conclusions herself. She simply chose not to voice them. The world is full of tedious elders who derive their comfort from shackling the young with hypocritical conventions that dress self-interest up as wisdom—"

Cai Zhao's chopsticks came down against the table with a sharp, decisive crack. Her expression had gone fully stern. "Senior Brother Chang's vision is apparently so elevated and his wisdom so vast that this junior sister genuinely cannot aspire to such rarefied heights." She pushed back from the table. "Since it seems we speak entirely different languages, it would appear Senior Brother Chang has no further need of my protection."

She was absolutely prepared to make a properly dramatic exit from this conversation. She had, in fact, already drawn breath to do it.

Chang Ning, with no acknowledgment whatsoever of her exit or her clearly stated intention, simply rose from the table, produced a single short, cold laugh directed at nothing in particular, and walked out of the room ahead of her.

Cai Zhao stood exactly where she was, her departure entirely stolen. The fury that had been building with such satisfying momentum had nowhere to land. She stood there like a teakettle whose lid had been blown clean off — steam practically hissing from her ears — with the deeply aggravating awareness that she had somehow lost this exchange without the other party engaging with it at all.

Cai Han looked up from his bowl with cautious, wide eyes. "Sis..." he ventured in his smallest voice, "actually, what Senior Brother Chang said about Grandmother and Grandaunt... Mother said something similar to Aunt before..."

"Eat your chicken leg."

The boy persisted with the quiet stubbornness of someone who has learned to be precise with his timing: "Sis, Aunt always said she had the deepest admiration for Great Hero Chang Haosheng..."

"Eat. Your. Chicken leg."

Cai Han pressed forward with the undaunted persistence of a younger sibling who has correctly assessed that his elder is currently too preoccupied to follow through on threats: "Is it all right for Senior Brother Chang to go wandering out there alone? What if he runs into the people who were waiting to teach him a—"

"Eat your—!" Cai Zhao stopped. Exhaled. Lowered her voice to something approaching normal. "Stay where you are and don't move an inch." Then she pushed back her chair and went after Chang Ning at a pace that was several steps short of undignified.

Threading through the banquet's considerable crowd with impatient efficiency, Cai Zhao stopped three different servants for directions. As it turned out, Chang Ning's sore-covered face was considerably more conspicuous than a three-legged toad in a fishpond — every servant she approached had noticed him pass without difficulty and could point her clearly along his route.

Through the main hall doors. Left at the passageway. Through the floral gate.

She arrived at a desolate backyard — the kind used for storing discarded items and forgotten things — and found exactly the scene she had been constructing in her imagination with increasing dread.

Chang Ning. Surrounded by five people.

Qi Lingbo stood at the center of the tableau, flanked by four outer sect disciples arranged like an audience who had pre-selected their preferred conclusion.

Cai Zhao looked at the ceiling of her own mind and prayed briefly for patience. Why had her aunt, in all her stories and all her teaching, never once mentioned that chivalry required this particular caliber of exhausting emotional labor? She was still half-dead from anger herself, and now she was expected to rush to this impossible person's rescue without even having had adequate time to finish fuming.

Her gaze moved quickly over Chang Ning — torn robe hem, telltale wrinkles at the sleeves where fabric had been grabbed, the midday sun casting harsh shadows that made his expression difficult to read fully. In the shifting interplay of light and shadow, she thought she detected — or perhaps imagined — fine threads of controlled irritation and something considerably sharper radiating from him. Bloodlust, possibly. The flat, cold patience of someone calculating rather than reacting.

Some hero, she noted inwardly with brisk practicality. All that temper housed in a body that currently couldn't manage to wring a chicken's neck.

Qi Lingbo had shed every trace of the careful deference she wore in the presence of elders. The face she wore now was undisguised malice, bright and specific. "...Where is all that magnificent bravado you had when you were lecturing me earlier?! Chang Ning — I've decided I don't even want your heart's blood anymore. Simply kowtow eighteen times and eat the dog dung over there, and we can return to being fellow sect disciples. My generosity has limits, but they haven't been reached yet."

The assembled outer sect disciples produced a chorus of threats and jeers at this.

Chang Ning regarded the proposition with mild, unhurried contempt. "If you enjoy eating dog dung so profoundly, please — help yourself. I would never dream of depriving you of something you clearly love."

"You—!" The color that rose in Qi Lingbo's face was extraordinary.

Cai Zhao drew a single breath, adjusted her footing, and leaped — landing between Chang Ning and the assembled five with the light, unhurried precision of a petal drifting to still water. The Flower-Fluttering Crossing technique, performed without announcement and without flair.

The darkness in Chang Ning's eyes, which had been building its own quiet momentum, shifted and receded. The arm he had been tensing slowly within his sleeve released.

Cai Zhao spread her hands toward Qi Lingbo and her disciples with the expression of someone who remains genuinely optimistic about the capacity of others to be reasonable. "Senior brothers and sisters, there is surely no difficulty here that conversation cannot resolve. Shall we—"

She turned her head slightly and caught Chang Ning's gaze on her — clear, steady, and carrying the unmistakable glint of someone who finds the situation privately amusing.

She filed that away for later.

Qi Lingbo's teeth pressed together. "The Flower-Fluttering Crossing. Light footwork — Fallen Blossom Valley's reputation is not unearned, I'll grant you that. And your timing, Junior Sister Cai, is very precise." Her eyes narrowed. "It seems you are genuinely determined to set yourself against me."

At fifteen, Cai Zhao had always moved easily through the world, holding firm on only the things that truly mattered — the correct filling for dumplings, the precise steaming time required for a good fish, the handful of principles she'd absorbed so deeply they'd become her own. Since leaving Fallen Blossom Valley, she had discovered with growing frequency that several things she had considered entirely self-evident required, in the outside world, solemn and repeated articulation. Among them: the principle that a righteous sect did not use numbers and strength to bully those who had neither.

"Senior Sister, Uncle Qi specifically tasked me with looking after Senior Brother Chang Ning just this afternoon." Cai Zhao let her smile settle into something cooler. "You were present. You heard him. Why make this difficult for me?" A brief pause. "We are all juniors here — it may not be within our reach to ease our elders' burdens, but we can at least avoid creating scenes in front of the gathered Martial World. The Snow Lotus Pill is rare, yes — but it is not the only one in existence. The world is large, and other opportunities to obtain it will present themselves. When that time comes, it will be there for your cultivation."

Qi Lingbo's jaw set hard. "Let me be direct with you, Junior Sister. My quarrel with Chang Ning started over the Snow Lotus Pill — that much is true. But if he hadn't repeatedly insulted and humiliated me with that poison tongue of his, I would not be pressing this far. If you don't believe me, think carefully about what happened in the side chamber — what you witnessed today is not a rare occurrence."

Cai Zhao turned and looked at Chang Ning with a patient, level expression. "What exactly did you say to Senior Sister?"

Chang Ning's eyes held their glint. "Which occasion are you referring to, specifically?"

Cai Zhao accepted this with the inner composure of someone who has already begun cataloguing their grievances for a later conversation, and turned back to ask Qi Lingbo directly. Qi Lingbo trembled with fresh outrage. "Cai Zhao — are you standing there deliberately humiliating me?!"

Before the situation could deteriorate further, the four outer sect disciples stepped forward as one, eager to contribute their respective testimonies:

The pointy-mouthed one announced: "Senior Sister Qi generously brought that Chang brat a bowl of medicinal soup, and he had the nerve to say the Snow Lotus Pill was a precious healing treasure — giving it to her would be like feeding fine ginseng to a fat pig!"

The monkey-cheeked one continued: "Another time, Senior Sister specially commissioned fine fabric to have his robes tailored, and the brat said her manner of presenting gifts reminded him of a concubine's attendant attempting to curry favor with a household of means."

The ugly-melon-faced one persisted: "Three months ago, when Senior Sister defeated the Golden Blade Sect leader's prized disciple beside the Heavenly Pool — Second Senior Brother honored her with the elegant title Celestial of the Heavenly Pool — and Chang Ning announced that the Golden Blade Sect leader had simply allowed his disciple to lose in order to flatter our sect master, and that the title should therefore be amended to Nepotistic Celestial."

The misshapen-date-faced one drew breath for his contribution: "And last month—"

"ENOUGH! Not another word!" Qi Lingbo looked, at this particular moment, as though she would have paid considerable money to have the power to stuff mud into four separate mouths simultaneously.

Cai Zhao had been managing, with real effort, not to laugh. She transferred the effort into a questioning look directed at Chang Ning instead.

Chang Ning met it with perfect equanimity. "I only spoke the truth on each occasion."

"Saying true things in ways that wound people is still wrong," Cai Zhao told him.

For the first time, something in Chang Ning's posture shifted — a slight yielding, barely visible. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to something quieter and less armored. "My injuries are not healed, and the poison has not cleared my system. What possible interest would I have in going out of my way to provoke trouble? If they had not come to me and forced their attentions on me, I would not have said a single word to any of them."

Cai Zhao considered this honestly. It was, when examined without prior irritation, a reasonable point.

"Nonsense!" The pockmarked disciple had finally assembled his interrupted thought. "Senior Sister Qi honoring you with her words is a distinction — don't mistake genuine condescension for unkindness!"

Qi Lingbo's lip curled. "Junior Sister Cai. I have heard your case. Are you truly committed to shielding this person? I'm not proposing anything permanent — just a small, instructive lesson. No broken arms. No broken legs."

Disciples A, B, C, and D burst into the enthusiastic laughter of people who are confident the outcome of this particular confrontation has already been decided:

"That's right! Nothing serious — just a couple of meals of dog dung, nothing more!"

"Dog dung has nutritional merit! Perhaps the Chang boy's injuries will heal faster!"

"Ha! You're missing the point entirely — Senior Sister is generously educating him in the established customs of the Azure Tower Sect!"

Cai Zhao circulated her True Qi through her dantian in three patient, deliberate cycles. She maintained her smile with the practiced ease of someone who has worked a shopfront for years and understands that visible irritation is a luxury one rarely profits from. "Senior Sister, please hear me out. My aunt used to say that in the Martial World, reason is the foundation of everything. Some things provoke genuine anger — and yet, when reason demands it, that anger must be swallowed, regardless of how it burns."

She held Qi Lingbo's gaze steadily. "Though Senior Brother Chang has wronged you, he is the last living member of the Chang family. If you truly forced him to this — how could Great Hero Chang rest in peace? A man of his righteousness, who never once looked away from injustice? There is also the matter of honor to consider. Senior Brother Chang is still wounded — defeating him in his current state would bring no credit to anyone." A measured pause. "Wait until he has recovered. When that day comes, no matter when or where you choose to challenge him, I will not speak a single word against it."

Qi Lingbo's expression moved through several calculations with visible discomfort. Easy enough for you to say, she thought. If Chang Ning recovers and turns out to be genuinely skilled, the window for this particular satisfaction closes permanently.

"Besides," Cai Zhao continued, with the air of someone who has just arrived at a genuinely helpful contribution, "scholars have their debates and warriors have their duels — that is the established order of things. Since Chang Ning has never once laid a hand on you, if your anger demands an outlet, why not meet it with words? You have numbers on your side — gather your friends and unleash a thorough, comprehensive volley of insults at him. Wouldn't that relieve the pressure entirely? If your own vocabulary runs short, hire a few storytellers from the foot of the mountain to assist. Properly engaged, they can curse creatively for hours without repeating themselves once."

Qi Lingbo blinked. "Insults? What insults, specifically?"

Chang Ning offered, with the unhurried ease of someone consulting an internal catalogue: "Ugly freak. Jinx. Star-crossed orphan who brought ruin on his entire family. Runaway stray dog. Useless waste sheltering inside the Azure Tower Sect and consuming meals he has done nothing to earn. The list continues at some length."

Qi Lingbo's expression soured. "With skin as thick as yours, nothing I said would leave a mark. Why exhaust myself for nothing?" The entire point of a verbal assault was to find the crack in a person's dignity and drive something into it. Someone as comprehensively shameless as Chang Ning would simply look back at her, unmoved, and the effort would be wasted.

Cai Zhao had been standing here for some time now, having eaten nothing since before the banquet began, and her patience had reached its practical limit. "I have said everything available to me," she announced. "If Senior Sister remains unconvinced, there is one remaining option."

She turned, reached up, and lightly brushed her palm through the nearest branch of the peach blossom tree growing at the yard's edge — collecting a small handful of petals as she moved. Then, with a motion too fast to follow clearly, she was forward and back in what seemed like a single continuous gesture — weaving between all five with the shadow-light efficiency of someone for whom this was less effort than walking. Five soft, distinct pats. She was back in her original position before the petals had finished drifting from her hand. She produced her handkerchief and wiped her palms with unhurried calm.

Qi Lingbo and her four disciples looked down simultaneously.

A single petal rested on each of their chests or shoulders, precisely placed.

Cai Zhao said, pleasantly and without warmth: "The five of you, combined, cannot beat me. I have given Uncle Qi my word that I will watch over Senior Brother Chang. If this arrangement displeases you, the appropriate course is to bring your grievance to your parents or your senior brothers." Her tone made perfectly clear what she thought of that option. When a person comes looking for a fight without reason or principle, courtesy is wasted on them.

She turned, took hold of Chang Ning's sleeve, and walked back toward the banquet without another glance at Qi Lingbo or her disciples, the string of increasingly creative curses that followed them fading at her back like weather she had already decided to stop noticing.

She towed Chang Ning back to their quiet table by his sleeve. Cai Han was already deep into his fourth chicken leg, cheeks distended with the serenity of a person who has decided that whatever was happening elsewhere was other people's concern.

Cai Zhao looked at him. "Eat less meat. Look at you — you've rounded out so much you could be taken to market."

Cai Xiaohan said, with the mournful resignation of someone who has accepted their fate but wishes to register their feelings about it: "Have some sympathy, Elder Sister. After the death anniversary ceremonies, I have to go with Uncle to visit Grandmother, and the visit will last months. At Grandmother's house, not only must I chant Amitabha morning and evening — I have to eat vegetarian food for every meal."

"Stop complaining. Grandmother is seriously ill. You will behave well and do whatever cheers her up. Do not make her angry."

Tears gathered in Cai Xiaohan's enormous eyes with startling speed. "Elder Sister is utterly heartless! If you weren't formally taking a master this time, you'd be making this same journey too. Then you wouldn't be worrying about whether the dumpling filling is front-leg or hind-leg pork — you'd be counting the days between boiled, stir-fried, or pickled cabbage. And you have the nerve to tell me to cheer Grandmother up! The thing that would make her happiest of all would be if both of us shaved our heads and took vows. Would you agree to that?"

Chang Ning let out a single, involuntary sound — something caught between suppressed laughter and a brief moment of genuine helplessness against it. Cai Zhao shot him a look of crisp warning, then turned back to her brother. "Enough. Eat your chicken leg. That is the last one."

Having dispatched Cai Han back to his meal, she planted herself directly in front of Chang Ning and fixed him with the full force of her most blazing, undiluted attention.

"To keep this brief — I am establishing three rules. Rule one: no speaking ill of my aunt." She held up a finger. "Rule two: no speaking ill of my parents." A second finger. "Rule three: no speaking ill of any elder I respect." She paused and turned her head. "Xiao Han, if you want to continue eating meat for the foreseeable future, you will not interrupt me."

Cai Xiaohan had opened his mouth with the expression of someone who has identified several significant structural weaknesses in the argument he has just heard. Upon receiving this warning, he closed it again and devoted himself to his food with sudden, intense concentration.

Chang Ning raised his sleeve partially to cover his mouth. Above the fabric, his eyes curved into something that was genuinely, warmly amused.

Cai Zhao heard herself replay what she had just said and recognized, with the clarity that only arrives slightly after the fact, that her rules contained enough exceptions and unspecified gaps to be immediately exploited by anyone of ordinary intelligence. She had been too angry to think in straight lines. She scratched her rosy cheek with the dignity of someone acknowledging an error and beginning again.

"...Disregard what I just said. Revised rules. Rule one: you are not permitted to speak ill of any elder I respect — this includes sarcastic remarks delivered in a tone of polite neutrality. Rule two: you are not permitted to provoke trouble, stir unnecessary conflict, or create situations that require me to arrive breathlessly and sort out on your behalf. Rule three..." She paused. "I have not yet determined rule three. I will add it when I have thought of it."

Chang Ning's eyes narrowed to something that suggested an impending observation he was clearly shaping into words.

Cai Zhao got there first. "As long as you conduct yourself within these parameters, I will watch over you and ensure that no one bullies or harasses you until your injuries are healed and the poison has fully cleared. Is that arrangement acceptable?"

The amusement in Chang Ning's expression cooled by several degrees into something more considered. Cai Zhao held his gaze without yielding.

After a moment, Chang Ning said, "With Sect Leader Qi present, I am unlikely to face any genuine danger."

Cai Zhao's look was brief and pointed. "Does eating dog dung count as genuine danger?"

Chang Ning stopped speaking.

She glanced at his torn hem, at the wrinkled fabric at his sleeves where someone had grabbed hold. "Qi Lingbo is not someone who swallows injured pride quietly. Your life is not at immediate risk — but degradation and persistent harassment are a different matter entirely. And don't pretend otherwise." Her voice carried no particular heat, only the practical clarity of someone naming things accurately. "You are exhausted by these people. You have been since before I arrived. But right now your injuries have you shackled, and you cannot deal with any of them as you otherwise would. Am I wrong?"

Chang Ning met her gaze steadily, and for once said nothing that deflected or dismissed.

"And you clearly dislike me," he said, after a moment. "Yet you choose to protect me anyway. Did your aunt teach you that as well?"

Cai Zhao was quiet for a beat longer than usual. "My aunt was a true hero — not in name only, but in practice. Compassionate and principled. She stood for the weak and against cruelty without pausing to sort through whether she personally liked or disliked the person involved. I only hope I don't disgrace what she taught me."

Chang Ning turned his gaze toward the window for a moment. When he looked back, something had shifted — settled into a different register entirely, quieter and less defended. "My father also had hopes for what I might become." A pause so brief it was almost absent. "I'm afraid I will fall considerably short of them."

Cai Zhao, taking this as the understandable burden of a son who had lost such a father to such a cause, nodded with what she believed to be genuine understanding. "Of course. To pursue vengeance properly, you would need a ruthless edge. A man of your father's warmth and benevolence — that path would be far too constraining."

Chang Ning turned to look at her, his clear eyes resting on her face for a moment with something unreadable in them. Then, with the particular quality of someone choosing to say something that costs them something: "I was wrong earlier. I should not have spoken of your elder the way I did."

Cai Zhao went still in the way of someone who had genuinely not been expecting this.

"I was..." He paused, his fingers moving absently along the edge of the cloud-and-bat motif carved into the dark table. "I was reminded of something. By what you told me." The long, pale fingers traced the pattern again — slender, the joints distinct against the polished wood, carrying in their quality something that suggested old refinement and present diminishment, like a fine white jade hairpin found in the decaying heirloom box of a once-great family. The sight produced, in the part of Cai Zhao that paid attention to such things, an inexplicable and unasked-for ache.

"Before my father died," Chang Ning continued, quietly, "he entrusted me with the care of a particular elder. One I hold in complete contempt. Cowardly. Without warmth. Devoted to personal comfort above all things."

A pause.

"I was unwilling. The question I kept returning to was — are an elder's words always right, simply because they are older? Not necessarily. And yet those were my father's last wishes."

"Did you agree to it or not?" Cai Zhao asked, too impatient to let the silence extend any further.

Chang Ning surfaced from wherever he had been, his gaze settling back into its customary steadiness. "It is settled."

"Good."

Cai Zhao reached across with her chopsticks and removed the last chicken leg from Cai Han's plate in a single decisive motion, taking a defiant bite under the full force of her younger brother's devastated, tear-filling gaze. Standing up for the weak, she reasoned, began at home — though she had absolutely no plans to widen the scope of this principle in the immediate future. She also held onto the quiet, private hope that her aunt's spirit, wherever it rested now, was not looking down at this particular moment with too much exasperation.