Chapter 17: The Road Down the Mountain

The path was quiet. 

Yun Wan walked through the moonlight, eyes drifting sideways every few steps. Xie Tingyun moved ahead of her — tall enough that she'd have to crane her neck to meet his face, his expression swallowed whole by the swaying tree shadows.

She cleared her throat. "Xie Tingyun. Are you alright?"

His steps hitched. Just barely. "Fine."

"Wait a moment."

He stopped.

Yun Wan dug through her storage bag, pushing past the clutter until her fingers closed around a small blue porcelain bottle. The label read: Supplement. She held it out.

Xie Tingyun stared at it. "?"

"It's a — a supplement. For the body." She was already stumbling over her own words. The spider demon's male concubines had clearly been run ragged; the woman's vault had been stacked floor to ceiling with all-purpose tonics. Yun Wan had grabbed one on instinct, figured it couldn't hurt.

Apparently, it could.

Xie Tingyun's heart kicked against his ribs.

"It's completely safe, nothing like last time, I promise —"

Her voice died. The silence between them thickened. Both looked away at the same moment, suddenly very interested in opposite sides of the path.

Yun Wan's toes curled inside her shoes. If she could have dug a hole in the ground and climbed into it, she would have.

Eels. She'd thought it was some bizarre mutant creature — the cultivation world had no shortage of those — and hadn't looked too closely. How was she supposed to know? The two things had nothing in common. Nothing. And yet somehow her hand had found exactly the wrong one.

If Xie Tingyun had suffered for it...

She burned with the thought. Mostly from shame.

"Do you..." She tried again, quieter. "Do you want it?"

Xie Tingyun exhaled slowly. "No."

He turned and walked. Faster than before.

"Really?"

"No."

Yun Wan watched his back for a long moment, studying him carefully, until she was satisfied he genuinely didn't need it. Then she put the bottle away.

---

By the time they returned to camp, the cloth was nearly finished.

Red and black — exactly Yun Wan's taste. She had the bird-men change into the new robes and scrub their wings down. The transformation was immediate. They looked almost presentable.

"Rest. Come out when I call."

The half-demons, simple as they were, obeyed without argument. Wings beating, they scattered upward into the dark.

Yun Wan gathered wood, built a fire, and settled beside it. She turned once and called toward the tree where Xie Tingyun sat. "Aren't you sleeping?"

"Keeping watch." He pushed more wood into the fire without looking at her.

Yun Wan thought about that.

Was he in pain? Was that why he couldn't lie down?

The idea stuck. She pulled a pink blanket from her storage bag, spread it on the ground beside her, and patted it once. "Here. It's softer."

She was being very thoughtful.

Xie Tingyun looked at the blanket. Then he turned his back to her without a word.

Before Yun Wan could decide whether to be offended, wings beat the air nearby and Ah Huang descended, bowing with great ceremony.

"Master. I will keep watch tonight. You and your male concubine should rest."

Ten years serving the spider demon had left its mark. Ah Huang had watched that woman drag off abducted men with unfailing regularity. Naturally, he assumed this was the same situation.

He bowed again, flew to a distant branch, and whistled.

The trees exploded with movement.

Bird-men dropped from every shadow — branches, treetops, even from directly behind the tree Yun Wan had been leaning against. They swept upward and vanished into the night, leaving her standing there with her mouth open.

That one was right behind me the whole time.

Then, from across the fire, she heard it — a low, quiet laugh.

She turned. The firelight caught Xie Tingyun's face at an angle she hadn't seen before. Something in his eyes, usually cold as high-mountain snow, had gone briefly, unexpectedly warm.

"Male concubine?"

"He's talking nonsense." Yun Wan raised one finger. "I never taught them anything like that. That's entirely the spider demon's doing."

Xie Tingyun's smile didn't quite leave. He flicked his sleeve, and the pink blanket slid across the ground to his side. He lay down, fully clothed.

He glanced back at her. "Are you coming?"

"No." After everything today, sharing a blanket with the sect's top cultivator was simply not happening. She reached into her storage bag and pulled out an identical one. "I have another."

Xie Tingyun said nothing.

Her storage bag, apparently, had no bottom.

---

Yun Wan lay on her blanket, staring up at the branches, her mind already turning.

"What are you going to do with them?" Xie Tingyun asked, quiet and unhurried. He meant the half-demons.

She didn't open her eyes. "Half-demons have a bad name. No righteous cultivator would agree to do business with them right now, not openly. I need to think of a way to fix that first." She paused. "And I need a building. Somewhere they can work from. But land in the cultivation world costs a fortune — the good spots belong to major sects, towns are packed, and if a group of half-demons walked into a city, people would panic before we even hung a sign."

She exhaled.

"If only someone would just give me a place for free."

She hadn't meant to say that last part out loud.

Xie Tingyun opened one eye. "Dream on."

"I know." She sighed and closed her eyes. "I know."

---

The night deepened. The cold settled in. At some point Yun Wan began to shiver in her sleep — and then, without waking, the cold lifted. A warmth spread through her limbs, quiet and steady, and she slept the rest of the night undisturbed.

---

They set out at dawn.

The mountain path wound down toward the plains of the Tianyue Realm, the most prosperous stretch of the Five Mountains — mines, towns, and villages strung across it like beads, the streets wide enough to drive three carts side by side.

Wangshan City rose into view first, built below the heavens and blessed by the mountain god. Even demons didn't approach it without thinking twice.

Yun Wan had been walking since sunrise and was starving. She grabbed Xie Tingyun's sleeve. "Food first. Then the weapon-refining shop. Agreed?"

He had no objections.

She was already scanning the street for a good stall when the shouting reached her.

"You owe me the Heavenly Jade Mine! You owe me!"

"Give back my sword!"

"Who are you calling broken?! I'm broken, maybe, but the sword isn't!"

Two figures — one old, one young — were screaming at each other in the middle of the road. The crowd flowed around them like water around a stone. Nobody stopped. This was apparently not unusual.

The old man, losing the argument, switched strategies and began to wail. "My ancestors left me that mine! One piece! That was all! You damned little —"

"I said I'll pay you back! How much? Name a price!"

"Then pay!"

The young man's confidence collapsed instantly. "I will — could I just... pay later? I'm currently —"

"You DAMNED LITTLE —"

Yun Wan stopped walking.

She knew that face.

Li Xuanyou. She'd parted ways with him only days ago. Already in this condition.

She forgot about lunch and pushed through toward him. "Hey."

She tapped him on the back.

He spun around, jaw set, ready to snap at whoever dared interrupt — and then he saw the red mark on her forehead and those bright, clear eyes, and everything on his face crumbled at once.

His eyes went red. He lunged forward and wrapped both arms around her, face buried against her shoulder.

"Miss."

The relief in his voice was enormous, desperate, the kind a lost child uses when they finally find the person they've been looking for.

Yun Wan stood there, completely rigid, pushing at him with both hands to zero effect. Then a pair of arms cut between them and pulled Li Xuanyou back — firmly, efficiently, and to a notable distance.

He tried again. Xie Tingyun stepped forward and simply stood there, which was enough.

Li Xuanyou took three steps back and swallowed.

Yun Wan appeared from behind Xie Tingyun's shoulder. "What happened?"

"It's a long story."

"Summarize."

Li Xuanyou's expression tightened. "It's a long story."

She stared at him.

He cracked. "On the way back to the sect, my junior brother and I were pulled into a black market. They got us gambling." He stopped. "My junior brother lost everything. And then he mortgaged the sect."

Tears spilled over.

It was only the three of them — him, his junior brother, and the disciple who swept the courtyard. The land wasn't large. But it had been their master's, and it was theirs, and now it was gone, traded away over a gambling table.

Yun Wan listened.

And then she stopped listening, because something had just clicked into place.

A place, handed over for free?