Chapter 18: The City of Deception

"And what happened to you?" Yun Wan pointed past Li Xuanyou to the old man behind him.

Li Xuanyou looked like a man confessing at his own trial. The story came out in pieces.

His junior brother had racked up gambling debts and was being held until someone paid. The owner had given Li Xuanyou three days to settle everything, or the Sword Sect's land deed would be forfeit. Desperate, Li Xuanyou had remembered the jade piece Yun Wan gave him and brought it to a pawnshop. That was his first mistake. His sword, the Million Sword, promptly swallowed the pawnshop owner's prized Tianshan jade whole. The owner was now demanding fifty thousand taels of gold in compensation.

Fifty thousand taels. For one piece of jade. Pure extortion.

On top of that, Li Xuanyou was almost certain something had been slipped into their drinks earlier — something that had sent them wandering into the black market half out of their minds. He had gone looking for help and ended up deeper in the hole.

Yun Wan listened to all of it without a word. What an impossibly unlucky man.

"Miss," Li Xuanyou bowed his head low. "Could you lend me some money? I swear I'll pay you back."

"I don't have fifty thousand taels of gold."

She had sold every piece of jewelry she owned to Qin Zhiyan. What she had left were spirit stones and cultivation artifacts — useless to a mortal like him.

Still, something felt wrong. No piece of jade was worth fifty thousand taels unless someone was running a con.

"Where did the old man get his Tianshan jade?"

At her question, the old man seemed to freeze. Then his face crumpled and the tears came.

"Young friend, my family has been in the jade trade for generations. Xiaotian Peak, a hundred li behind Wangshan City — that land belonged to us. The jade mined there was the finest quality anywhere. The color, the clarity — every major sect bought from us to forge weapons, to repair damaged swords." He wiped his eyes. "Then demonic beasts took the mountain. Workers died. Workers fled. No one went near anymore, and our business died with it. We opened this pawnshop just to survive."

He shuddered.

"My son couldn't accept it. He went up there himself, tried to drive the beasts out with fire. He failed. But before he retreated, he managed to grab one piece of jade. Just one." The old man's voice broke. "He came home sick and never recovered. That jade was the last thing he ever touched."

Li Xuanyou stood there looking stricken, useless, and genuinely sorry. "I — I'll pay you back. I'll figure something out."

"How?" the old man snapped through his tears. "The mountain my ancestors built is gone. My son is gone. What exactly are you going to give back?"

Li Xuanyou set his jaw. "I'll go kill whatever's up there. Consider it done."

The old man stopped crying immediately. His eyes sharpened. "You mean that?"

"I mean it."

He was a sword cultivator. He had broken things, and he would fix them. He couldn't look himself in the mirror otherwise.

"I'm going now. Wait here."

He swung his longsword over his shoulder and made to leave. The old man shot out a hand and grabbed his sleeve.

"Oh no you don't. You walk out that door, who do I chase when you don't come back?" His eyes slid to Li Xuanyou's sword, then drifted toward Yun Wan. "One of your group stays. That's the deal."

Yun Wan sighed. "We'll all go. We'll handle Xiaotian Peak and be back before dark. Your junior brother too," she added, glancing at Li Xuanyou. "We'll sort out the gambling house."

Li Xuanyou looked like he might actually cry.

Yun Wan waved him off and dragged Xie Tingyun toward the road.

"You're so kind," Xie Tingyun said flatly.

Five words. Heavy with sarcasm.

"Look at him," Yun Wan said, jerking her chin back at Li Xuanyou, who was still standing there — tall, bewildered, vaguely tragic. "Doesn't he remind you of my house?"

Xie Tingyun's expression twitched. Whatever irritation he'd felt toward Li Xuanyou softened, reluctantly, into something like pity.

Yun Wan lowered her voice. "We handle the old man's problem, then hit the gambling den and win back the junior brother and the land deed." She was already calculating. A house. Two free laborers. Not a bad morning's work.

From this day forward, she had a name for her personal Bodhisattva — Li Xuanyou.

"You know Wangshan City has another name," Xie Tingyun said.

She looked at him.

"The City of Deception." His tone was even, unhurried. "Two hundred years ago, this place had no ruler. Fertile land, prosperous people. Then someone set up a black market and a casino. Humans, demons, monsters, immortals — anyone who passed through played by Wangshan's rules. Everyone could be swindled here, and everyone had something worth swindling. Cultivators left this city with nothing. Regularly."

"And then?"

Xie Tingyun's mouth curved, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "They picked the wrong target. One cultivator came through and leveled half the city with a single sword strike. The city lord had to beg the sect for intervention. The sect leader brokered a deal — no more open casinos preying on passing cultivators, and the sword cultivators would spare the city. Everyone shook hands." A pause. "The casinos went underground the next week."

Anyone who knew Wangshan City's history gave it a wide berth. Anyone who didn't know learned the hard way.

Yun Wan nodded slowly. "That swordsman sounds capable."

Xie Tingyun tilted his chin up slightly. "He was."

"Also petty."

Xie Tingyun stopped walking. "What?"

"He only destroyed the city because he lost," Yun Wan said. "If he'd won, he would've gone home happy and left everyone else to their misery."

Xie Tingyun inhaled sharply and walked faster.

Yun Wan stared at his back. Then she ran to catch up and grabbed his sleeve. "Xie Tingyun. You know this person, don't you."

"A friend."

"Tell me honestly." She was already grinning. "Is that friend you?"

He shook her off and kept walking. She caught him again.

"How much did you lose?"

He didn't answer. He tried to pull free; she held on. Finally, with the air of a man who had exhausted his options, he simply closed his hand around hers.

"Stop."

His palm was broad and warm. The heat traveled from his hand into her fingertips before either of them registered what had happened.

They both turned their heads away at the same moment, as if by agreement. But neither let go.

It was only after several more steps that Yun Wan slowly drew her hand back and tucked it into her sleeve, quietly, without comment.

Xie Tingyun cleared his throat. Whatever had been in his eyes was gone now, carefully smoothed over.

"Wangshan City is full of swindlers. Your unlucky friend has probably stepped into another trap already. Still going?"

"Still going. Xiaotian Peak first."

She wasn't letting this opportunity slip away.

Something softened at the corner of Xie Tingyun's mouth. "Then let's go." He summoned the Peerless Sword and held out his hand. "Come."

The sword — well-fed on Yun Wan's spirit stones and apparently loyal to whoever fed it — settled obediently at her feet without protest.

Flying was considerably faster than walking.

---

Xiaotian Peak rose out of the forest in minutes. They landed in the trees before getting close, crouching among high branches with a clear line of sight below. The foliage was dense enough to hide them, wide enough to see everything.

The old man had told the truth.

Seven or eight demonic beasts prowled the base of the peak — or rather, lay scattered across it, snoring. Strange creatures: shaped vaguely like birds, but their bodies were dense and stone-hard, each with three heads and long curved horns. Each one had claimed its own patch of ground and was deeply, noisily asleep.

Yun Wan stared.

"Is there anything in the cultivation world that looks normal?"

"Zuan Diao," Xie Tingyun said from above her.

She looked up at him.

"Demon beasts from Luwu Mountain. Five hundred li south." He studied them for a moment, working something out. "Luwu has gold deposits, mineral veins. The Zuan Diao guard them. If they've migrated here..." He trailed off, fitting pieces together.

He placed a light hand on Yun Wan's back. "Go."

She turned. "Go where? Go do what?"

"Kill them. Take their cores."

She stared at him.

"One Zuan Diao core multiplies a mortal's strength tenfold. You're at the twelfth level of Qi Refining. All eight cores and you could break through to the next level."

Yun Wan looked at the seven or eight enormous stone-bodied beasts below. Then back at Xie Tingyun. "All of them? By myself?"

"Yes."

He said it so easily.

"I'm not doing that. I'll die."

"I'll step in if it goes badly."

She shook her head.

"You want to enter Kunlun Sect," he said, patient as a man who has already won the argument. "Their entrance trials have layers. If your Daoist techniques aren't good enough, your body cultivation needs to carry you. If neither is good enough, you won't get through the door."

Yun Wan was quiet for a moment.

She was someone training her body. She was not going to be stopped by a pile of sleeping birds.

She took a breath, climbed down from the tree hand over hand, and hit the ground softly. The eagles were still snoring. She edged toward the nearest one, picked up a small stone, and tossed it.

The snoring stopped.

The eagle's eyes opened.

Guide your Qi to protect your body. Attack the vital point.

She steadied her mind, pulled her Qi down into her dantian, and punched the eagle directly in the chest.

The spiritual Qi in her palm hardened on impact. The bird — a hundred pounds of it — dropped.

Yun Wan blinked.

She hadn't entirely believed that would work.

She didn't have time to think about it. The fallen eagle's companions woke shrieking, a chorus of infant cries and ghost-wails that tore across the entire peak. The remaining birds lurched upright, horns gleaming, and thick green liquid began seeping from the tips — venom, the kind that would end a mortal's life on contact.

This was very bad.

Yun Wan broke for the nearest tree. The eagles smashed it apart before she reached it.

She was surrounded.

"Help me!" she screamed up at the treeline. "Xie Tingyun!"

He didn't move.

She hurled talismans, lit them as she ran, and kept calling his name. He watched from the branches, unmoved, expression unreadable.

He wasn't coming.

The promise had been a lie. Just like all the others.

Cold sweat soaked through her clothes. An eagle lunged and she didn't move fast enough — she hit the ground hard. The world narrowed to the sound of her own breathing and the ring of beasts closing in.

And then something broke open inside her.

A surge of energy cracked through her dantian, raced through her Ren and Du meridians, and flooded outward. Her mind went sharp and clear. Her body felt weightless. Spiritual power poured from her in every direction at once, and she gathered it without thinking — shaped it into a shell around herself, pulled it tight.

The eagles pulled back.

They could feel it. They didn't come closer.

Yun Wan got up.

She went through them one by one. One punch each. Unhurried.

Every single eagle wore Xie Tingyun's face in her mind.

When the last one fell, she stood in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving.

Xie Tingyun dropped from the tree, already holding a demon core. He held it out to her.

She didn't take it.

She looked at him, and without warning, the tears came.