As expected, the morning after the moon-sweeping banquet, everyone who had attended it submitted leave requests. Everyone except Xijiu Ge and Li Hanguang.
At dawn, the students who had no such luck shuffled into Qingxin Hall with hollow faces, still half-asleep. They stopped in the doorway.
At the front of the hall sat the Goddess of Purity. At the back sat the Demon World Proton. Both had their heads down, turning pages in silence, in precisely the same unhurried way.
The student nearest the door swallowed his half-formed yawn and said nothing.
Word had spread fast. Something had gone wrong at Beichahai the night before. The young lords and ladies attending the banquet had been caught inside an illusion, many of them quietly wounded before anyone understood what was happening. Since the hour of the ox, the carriages of the Five Emperors had been rolling in and out of Yongtian Palace without pause. A disturbance that large was supposed to empty a place out, leave it rattled and disorganized for days. And yet here sat the Goddess of Wisdom and the Demon World Proton, present at morning class, reading.
These two, the student thought, must be made of something other than flesh.
Li Hanguang was not particularly surprised by any of it. In his previous life he had attended this same banquet, but Xijiu Ge had not. Fewer guests, a quieter evening. Ji Ningsi had not organized the lake tour. When the moon-tracing epiphyllum bloomed, people stood on the shore to look and then left. No illusions. No saprophytic flowers. He had walked away from that night knowing nothing.
This time Xijiu Ge had come, and the chain of events she set in motion had pulled them all into the trap. When Li Hanguang first surfaced from the illusion, he had needed a moment to locate himself, and he was someone who had known far worse. The delicate sons and daughters of the imperial families had fared considerably worse. The whole matter would have reached the Five Emperors by now.
Rattled as they might be, Li Hanguang suspected this was not a crisis to wait out. Muddy water was easier to read than still water.
When the teacher arrived and found Xijiu Ge and Li Hanguang already seated, he blinked, smoothed his expression, and launched into the lesson without acknowledging anything unusual. He kept his voice even and his face blank all the way to the final word.
The moment he dismissed class, the room erupted. Students grabbed their things and spilled out through the doors in a clatter of footsteps and conversation.
Xijiu Ge moved at her own pace. She gathered her brushes and ink slowly, closed her books, tucked two volumes under her arm, and walked to the back of the hall.
The students who hadn't yet made it out went still. The noise stopped. Every head turned.
Xijiu Ge crossed the room unhurried, drawing every eye without acknowledging any of them, and stopped at Li Hanguang's desk. She set the two books down in front of him. Then she kept walking.
She had simply been passing through. The books were incidental.
Or so it looked.
Li Hanguang stared at the two thick volumes sitting on his desk. He studied them the way he would study something designed to kill him. Hidden weapons were unlikely given the size. Poison on the pages was possible but unsophisticated. Curses, formations, a delayed hex?
He ringed his fingers with a careful thread of spiritual energy and opened the title page.
A well-known moral scripture. The kind meant to improve a person's character. He turned through the first few pages. Nothing concealed in the binding. No secondary layer of meaning he could find.
Li Hanguang sat with a rare expression of genuine puzzlement on his face.
Outside Qingxin Hall, Xijiu Ge had not gone far before a group of priests in white robes materialized in her path. They saluted her low.
"We come on behalf of the White Emperor, Goddess."
"My brother sent you." It was not a question.
"Yes. When word reached the White Emperor that Beichahai had been disturbed, and that the vast moon was destroyed by severe means in a single night, His Majesty grew concerned for your safety and sent us to inquire."
"I'm fine," Xijiu Ge said. She added, without inflection: "The severe means you're describing were mine."
The priest held his posture and said nothing for a beat. Then: "What kind of creature appeared at Beichahai last night to require the Goddess to deploy such force?"
"No creature. An illusion." Xijiu Ge's voice was steady and precise. "The flowers look harmless. In practice they weave traps for the mind and draw people in through their own desires. I saw through it before it took hold. My consciousness was unimpeded throughout." She paused. "Tell my brother there is no cause for worry."
The priest bowed. Then, carefully: "Goddess, it has been some time since you last returned to Western Heaven Palace. After hearing of last night's events, His Majesty would very much like to see you. If your schedule permits, even a brief visit would set his mind at ease."
Yongtian Palace allowed one leave day per month. Xijiu Ge's studies had a way of eating through that leave before it arrived. And when she did get free time, the roads back to Kunlun, to Xuandi's palace, and to the White Emperor's court all ran in different directions. There was no clean way to manage all of them.
She thought about it. It had been a while.
"After the annual test," she said. "I'll visit my brother then."
The priest's expression shifted into something gently reproving. "You are returning home to Xitian, Goddess. It would not be quite right to call that a visit." He pressed his hands together and bowed again. "We waited until your classes were finished to come. We did not wish to interrupt your studies. We take our leave."
Because of the delay, Xijiu Ge arrived at the trial grounds a few minutes late. Li Hanguang was already there.
Ji Gaoxin and Ji Ningsi had submitted leave. Ji Shaoyu had been collected by Emperor Xuan that morning. Chang Ju had one of his fragile days and did not come when he felt the slightest discomfort. That left two people in the trial class.
Li Hanguang saw Xijiu Ge come in and smiled. "Goddess."
Their last meeting on this ground had not ended well. Her meridians had been damaged and she had still tried to kill him. He had not been required to fake the blood. Under ordinary circumstances, being left alone together after that would have been unpleasant for both of them.
These were not ordinary circumstances, and they were not ordinary people. Xijiu Ge did not carry things. Whatever had sharpened between them that day had long since dissolved into the same general blankness she applied to most of the world.
Before the master arrived, she stood at the range loosening her arms, drawing and releasing without an arrow, and said: "Where did you learn your fighting?"
"Hand to hand?" Li Hanguang's smile turned self-deprecating. "No one taught me."
He had learned by surviving. Every move he had came from a situation in which not having it would have killed him. That was its own education.
Xijiu Ge was lining up her first shot. She said, almost to herself: "I was going to send someone to find your master. But if there's no master, I'll find someone else."
"The Goddess wants to learn close combat?"
"Yes." She released the arrow. It struck the center. She reached for another without looking. "I never noticed any weakness in my close range before. Now that I know it exists, I can't ignore it."
Li Hanguang considered her. He was aware of what she was doing. Or at least, he suspected it. The shift from open eyes and sharp blades to something softer and more deliberate, the effect of which had been quietly stunning. He felt very much like an animal that could see the trap clearly, could identify every piece of it, and was going to step into it anyway because the bait was that well placed.
"If the Goddess doesn't mind," he said, "I can teach you."
Xijiu Ge turned and looked at him directly. It was the kind of look that measured a person against what they claimed to be.
Li Hanguang had been questioned before, but not usually like this. He was just drawing breath to speak when she nodded.
"You'll do," she said, and she said it with complete seriousness. "What do you want as compensation?"
The warm and humble smile on Li Hanguang's face went slightly rigid.
He had been playing a particular role for a long time. The performance had gone on long enough that the mask and the face beneath it had grown together, and he could no longer always tell where one ended and the other began. Xijiu Ge had a gift for finding the seam anyway. She pressed on it without knowing she was doing it, and it hurt every time in a way he could not have explained.
"The Goddess is too kind," he started.
Xijiu Ge's brow rose slightly. "You think I can't afford it?"
Li Hanguang looked at her for a long moment. "Then I won't refuse. I haven't decided what I want yet. Can the Goddess give me a little time to think?"
"Take your time," she said, without hesitation, with the easy confidence of someone who has never worried about a bill in their life. "I won't shortchange you."
With the terms settled, Li Hanguang looked around the trial ground and said: "This place is too open. Martial arts are better taught somewhere more contained. Let's find a different location."
This was mostly nonsense. But Xijiu Ge had grown up with private tutors who selected quiet rooms and closed doors for lessons, and the logic sounded reasonable enough. She looked at the empty range and hesitated. "We still have one more class."
"At the Goddess's current level, is there anything left in spellwork that requires a master's correction? The time would be better spent on what she actually lacks."
That was harder to argue with. Under Li Hanguang's influence, Xijiu Ge skipped class for the first time in her life.
When the instructor of the magic class arrived and found the trial ground empty, he assumed the remaining students had also submitted leave. He had no reason to imagine that somewhere in the back mountains, in a courtyard threaded through with water and ringed by steep green hills, Li Hanguang was pressing his hands together in a bow and saying, with flawless courtesy and not a grain of actual sincerity: "Goddess, close combat requires physical contact. I may give offense without intending to. Please forgive me in advance."
Xijiu Ge nodded to indicate she understood.
Li Hanguang received the nod and pressed further: "To help the Goddess develop real fighting instinct as quickly as possible, I would ask that no divine fire or spells be used during practice. The body needs to learn to react on its own. I won't use any spiritual force either. The Goddess has my word."
Xijiu Ge had not been separated from fire since the day she woke. Calling the divine flame was as unconscious to her as breathing. What he was asking was not a small thing. She thought about it, then agreed.
Li Hanguang stepped back, opened his hands, and said pleasantly: "Forgive me."
Then he was gone.
Not retreating. Gone. One moment standing in front of her, the next not there at all, and she felt the air shift behind her before she understood what had happened. Something cold traced the side of her neck and pressed, light as a word, against her carotid artery.
"Goddess." His voice came from just behind her ear. "You're leaving your back open. Your reaction time is too slow."
She had expected a lesson in the basics. Stances, footwork, something foundational to begin with. Instead he had started in the middle. Xijiu Ge reacted on instinct, pulled her arm forward and drove her elbow back toward him.
Li Hanguang did not move away. He caught her elbow with one hand and pressed two fingers against the tight muscle at her shoulder.
"Your shoulder is locked. It's killing your power. And your elbow is angled wrong. You're pointing it straight, nothing will land."
His other hand was still against the back of her neck. He shifted it, let two fingers settle against her elbow joint, and slid them slowly down the length of her forearm.
"You're generating force from the wrong place. This isn't going to hurt anyone, but it will absolutely get your arm bent the wrong direction. Feel where the tension is. Soften your shoulder. Drive from here."
His fingertips were cold. She could feel her pulse moving against them. The hand tracing her forearm had a particular presence, each point of contact precise and impossible to stop being aware of.
Xijiu Ge's fingers curled. A tongue of fire dropped from her palm and hit the ground.
Li Hanguang's hand wrapped around her wrist before she finished the motion, smooth and quick as water, and brought her arm behind her back with practiced ease. The golden fire of the sun sat burning less than a hand's width from his abdomen, the kind of fire that did not go out once it caught. He could not see it clearly from where he stood. He didn't move. His body stayed close behind hers and his voice came from just beside her neck.
"Goddess. We agreed. No spiritual force."
He practiced Xuanming Kung Fu. His body ran cold, the same temperature as deep water, and utterly unlike her own heat. When he spoke, his breath moved against her collarbone. That cold displaced the air at the edge of her collar and she felt it like the threat of immersion.
Her back went rigid. She held it there for one breath, then pulled the fire back.
Li Hanguang, watching over her shoulder, was quietly surprised. He had expected to need to dodge something. He had factored in at least two burns.
He released the fingers resting at her carotid artery. His touch moved to her spine and worked down it in a series of small, deliberate points.
"Let go here. Press forward here."
His hands slid to her waist. He held her there, adjusting the line of her back.
"Your waist is extended, you'll hurt yourself. Keep the spine straight. Like that. Now try again."
He loosened his grip.
She elbowed him immediately.
Li Hanguang stepped back and let the strike pass him by a margin that suggested he had been expecting it. He really had taught her nothing that would help her hit him.
Xijiu Ge put distance between them and stopped thinking about technique. She came at him with everything she had. Elbows, fists, her knee, a sharp turn of her shoulder. Li Hanguang blocked it all with one hand, not hurrying, commenting as each attack landed or didn't.
"Wrong angle. Too slow. You changed your move too early, you should have pressed into my block and closed the distance."
Nothing connected. He was managing her with one arm and a running commentary and she could not find a way through him. Since she had woken, Xijiu Ge had either never competed at all or won without difficulty. She had never been handled like this. She had never been made to feel so completely controlled.
She stopped holding back and kicked him hard.
Li Hanguang slipped sideways, easy and unhurried, and the kick found nothing. But the shift in his weight had pulled away from her at exactly the wrong moment, and Xijiu Ge's center of mass was already committed. She had no time to correct. She went over backward, fast and hard.
Li Hanguang had created the gap between them dodging, and couldn't close it in time. He saw her going down and moved anyway.
"Careful."
One arm caught her around the waist. His other hand cupped the back of her head. He pulled himself beneath her, turning his own body into the surface she would hit, and they came down together on the palace floor.
Yongtian Palace did not cut corners on its stonework. The floors were inlaid with rare stone, dense and smooth, and landing on them was like landing on polished bone. The impact was hard. Li Hanguang absorbed most of it. It was not the kind of pain that registered as serious for him. The demon world had given him worse on an unremarkable day.
But Xijiu Ge had come down with him, and she was light and warm where everything else in him ran cold. Her hand had landed instinctively against his chest, and Li Hanguang went completely still beneath her.
Xijiu Ge lay there for a stunned moment as the collision caught up with her. Then her hand moved, and her fingers found his throat, and she pressed.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Li Hanguang lay on the stone floor and did not move. The line of his jaw was rigid. His throat moved as he swallowed.
"I didn't intend any offense," he said, pulling each word out carefully. "I was afraid you would fall. Goddess. Please get up first."