Han Jiu spent the last hour before dawn learning how the Rebate Inventory worked.
He did it the same way a man learns his way around a dark room. He reached out and touched things.
He found out that he could open it without moving at all. He didn’t have to close his eyes, or fold his hands, or change his breathing. It was just there, at the back of his head, whenever he thought about it.
Inside, there was a cold grey space. It had no walls and no floor. Ten low-grade spirit stones floated slowly in the middle of it.
He reached for one, and suddenly it was in his hand. It was warm and solid and real. It was the same kind of cloudy stone he had given his wife. But now there were ten of them, and this one belonged to him.
He thought about putting it back, and it went back.
Next, he picked the marriage paper up off the floor, the one with his name written on it. He tried to put it inside.
Nothing happened.
There was no sound and no voice telling him no. It just didn’t work. It felt like pushing on a wall and hoping it would turn into a door.
He tried a copper coin. Then his spare belt. Then a small chip of wood he pulled off the floorboards with his thumbnail. Last of all, he tried an old, dried-out paper talisman he had carried around since he was twelve.
None of them went in.
[The Rebate Inventory only holds the things you gained as rebate.]
Han Jiu sat back against the wall and thought about that. The longer he thought about it, the more he liked it.
This space only held what the system paid him. That made it different from anything else he had ever owned. Nobody could search it. Nobody could steal from it. And neither the Han Clan nor the Yun Clan could ever point at something inside it and say he had stolen it from them, because nothing in there had ever belonged to anyone else.
It was the first thing he had ever owned that was truly his.
He took out three stones and sat down with his legs crossed, in the cold air coming through the broken shutter.
He used the first stone the same way he had used every stone for the last four years. The energy came into his body, went around twice, and then sank into the stuck, dead knot below his belly button. That knot had not moved since he was thirteen.
The second stone did the same thing.
The third stone broke it open.
It wasn’t dramatic. First there was pressure. Then something gave way, like a stuck door finally coming loose. Warmth spread out through channels in his body that had been dry for so long that he had stopped believing they were really there.
Qi Gathering, third stage.
Han Jiu sat there with his hands on his knees. He realised his eyes were stinging.
That was ridiculous.
It was only the third stage.
’I broke through.’
Fourteen-year-olds in the outer courtyard were at the third stage. Some of them were even higher. Han Bo had reached it before he could hold a writing brush properly.
But Han Jiu had been stuck at the second stage for years, until tonight. Every single year, the clan registrar wrote the same two words next to his name. And every single year, Han Jiu walked back to this storeroom and told himself it didn’t matter.
He let out a breath. It shook on the way out.
Then he worked out the numbers in his head, and the shaking stopped.
Three stones. If he had earned them himself instead of getting them out of thin air, that would have been ninety days of work in the frost pools.
For four years, he had been putting energy into his body, and none of it had gone anywhere, because there was nowhere for it to go. The frost pools, the breathing exercises, every stone his branch of the family had ever given him. All of it had gone in and stayed in.
He had been full since he was fifteen. He had been full, and still filling up, and pressed up against a door that wouldn’t open.
The three stones hadn’t filled him up. He had already been full.
The three stones had just pushed the door open.
And now that the door was open, everything behind it had drained away. The fourth stage was going to cost him just as much as it cost everyone else. And then it was going to cost him that much again, because a Dross-rank root only keeps half of what it takes in. It throws the other half away.
He moved his Qi.
Four black bulls appeared above his head.
They were just as small and faint as his two bulls had always been. But now there were four. They walked in a slow circle above his hair, in a dark storeroom where nobody could see them but him.
Han Jiu watched them walk their circle.
Then he made them go away. And a cold thought came to him, about a problem he hadn’t thought about yet.
Two bulls was who everyone thought he was. Two bulls was the reason nobody in this house had ever bothered to search him, or follow him, or wonder what he did in the evenings.
But he couldn’t put a single stone into his body without that number going up.
And he couldn’t use even a tiny bit of Qi in front of another cultivator without that number showing above his head.
The inventory was invisible.
He wasn’t.
"You’re crying."
Yun Qingshuang hadn’t slept. She was sitting exactly where she had been all night, with her back against the wall and her sword across her knees. The grey shadows under her eyes were a little lighter than before.
"I’m not crying."
"You are." She paused. "Did you just reach the third stage?"
"Yeah. I broke through to the third stage." He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. He tried to make it look casual, and failed. "About fifteen minutes ago. I’ve been sitting here since then, waiting for it to feel real."
"How does a man not notice his own breakthrough?"
"Oh, I noticed. But I’ve been wrong about it before." He laughed once. It sounded wrong, so he stopped. "Twice, when I was fifteen. Both times I thought I’d broken through, and I told people. I was too hopeful back then."
She finally opened her eyes.
"You made a noise," she said. "It sounded like a man being punched very slowly in the next room by someone very polite. And there’s Qi in this room now that wasn’t here when I closed my eyes. I was at the ninth stage of Qi Gathering when I was sixteen, Ninth Young Master. I can hear a breakthrough through a wall."
"I wasn’t loud."
"You were exactly as loud as a man who’s been stuck in the same place for four years." She said it flatly, without any cruelty. "But how did you do it? You gave me the only stone you had. I watched you dig it out of the floor with your fingernails."
"I’ve been full for four years," he said. "Everything I put into my body stayed there, because there was nowhere for it to go. Tonight, something finally moved, and everything else went with it."
That part, at least, was true.
"That does happen," she said slowly. "It’s rare. It usually happens to someone’s older brother, and nobody ever believes the story. But it does happen."
"You don’t sound like you believe me."
"I don’t believe anything right now. I’m too tired to believe anything." She rested her head back against the wall. "Congratulations, I suppose."
"You suppose?"
"I’m nineteen years old and my cultivation is going backwards. And I just watched a grown man cry about reaching the third stage of Qi Gathering." Her mouth moved a tiny bit. "Don’t ask me to be any nicer than that tonight."
He opened the inventory and took out four stones.
Her face closed up completely.
"Where did those come from?"
"They’re mine."
"Last night, you told me it takes thirty days in the frost pools to earn one stone. Thirty days, and the cold ruins your hands after the first year. You said it like a man who had counted every one of those days." She didn’t move, but her hand was on her sword again. "So either you lied to me for no reason at all, or you stole them from someone in this house. I’d like to know which one before your cousins come through that door."
"I say a lot of things," Han Jiu said. "Some of them are even true. Tonight isn’t the night to figure out which ones."
"That isn’t an answer."
"No. It isn’t."
He put the four stones down on the blanket, the same way he had last night. Then he stepped back out of her reach.
"Take them."
Then he waited, to see if anything would happen at the back of his head.
Nothing did.
There was no voice. No message. Nothing that said a genuine investment had been detected.
So that was how it worked. The system didn’t care where something came from. It cared about what that thing had cost him.
These stones had come from the system. They hadn’t cost him anything. So he couldn’t give them away and get paid for them again.
He looked down at the four stones on the blanket. They weren’t going to earn him anything at all. He left them there anyway.
"And use them tonight. Not tomorrow."
"Why?"
"Because you told me you’ll be at the fifth stage by winter, and the third stage by spring, and after that it won’t be about stages anymore." He rubbed his eyes. "I’ve lived in this room since I was thirteen. I’m not going to sit here and watch that happen to you, four feet away from me."
"You’ve only known me for one day."
"I know. It’s a stupid thing to care about after one day." He shrugged. "But stop doing maths about the winter anyway. We’re going to survive the mess our families made. I don’t know how yet. But you don’t have to accept that you’re going to die. Not yet."
Yun Qingshuang looked at him. Something in her eyes moved for the first time.
"That’s the stupidest thing anyone has said to me in more than two years," she said.
"Yeah, probably."
"..."
"..."
Han Bo kicked the door open at dawn. He had four cousins with him, which was two more than he needed to kick in a door.
"Ninth brother!"
He looked around the room. At the broken shutter. At the bed that nobody had slept in.
"Oh, this is amazing. This is even better than I hoped, and I hoped for a lot on the walk up here."
He flicked a sheet of paper onto the floor.
"The council met last night. The ninth branch’s stipend is cancelled. Forever. The elders decided that spirit stones spent on a Frost-Devouring root are like stones thrown down a well. And stones spent on you are even worse. I have to tell you, nobody in that room argued with them."
Han Jiu picked the paper up. It had been stamped properly. There were six elders’ seals along the bottom.
Twelve stones a year. That was what the ninth branch’s stipend was worth. It had been twelve stones a year since before he was born, and it was the only reason he had ever owned anything at all.
His parents had died when he was small. There was nobody left in the ninth branch except him. And there was nobody in the main family who would stand up and argue for him.
"Twelve stones a year," he said. "You came here at dawn with four men, over twelve stones a year."
"I came at dawn because I wanted to see your room." Han Bo smiled at him. It was a wide, honest smile. "And because anything left in the ninth branch belongs to the main family now. I plan to be very thorough about collecting it. So hand it over. All of it."
"There isn’t anything."
"Ninth brother." Han Bo sounded almost fond of him. "Everybody has a hiding spot in the floor. Even my father has one. Don’t insult me before breakfast."
He found the hiding spot in the floor.
Then he found the loose brick behind the water jar, and the gap above the door frame, and a cloth bundle under the bed. The bundle turned out to be a dead man’s old winter socks.
He threw everything in the storeroom out onto the stones outside. Then he stood in the middle of the mess, breathing hard, with nothing in his hands.
’Didn’t this bastard cut moss all season? Did he already spend everything he earned?’
Han Jiu watched him.
He could feel the inventory at the back of his head. It was holding three spirit stones that Han Bo couldn’t see, couldn’t weigh, couldn’t price, and couldn’t take.
"Why," said Han Bo, narrowing his eyes, "are you smiling?"
"I’m not."
"Yes, you are. I know that face. I’ve been throwing you into walls since you were nine years old, and you’ve never once smiled while I did it." He stood up straight, slowly.
Then Han Bo moved his own Qi, because he had never been able to wait for anything in his life.
The storeroom filled up with his power.
Eight iron bulls rose above his head. They hung there, dark and slow and heavy.
The candle flickered. The paper on the floor slid an inch toward the door.
There was no reason for him to show his power like that. He did it because it felt good.
"Show me yours," he said, pleasantly.
Han Jiu didn’t move.
’Two,’ he thought. ’Show him two. Two is what he came here to see.’
He moved his Qi and let out the same small trickle he always let out. Two thin bulls appeared above his head and started walking in their little circle.
Han Bo laughed out loud.
"Four years," he said. "Four years, and it’s still two. Do you know what the registrar does when he gets to your name? He reads it out loud, ninth brother. He reads it like a joke he’s told before, because he has." He wiped a tear from his eye with his thumb. "Piece of trash."
Then he hit him.
He hit him with an open hand, almost lazily. But Han Bo was at the eighth stage, and Han Jiu was showing two bulls. So Han Jiu flew into the wall and stayed there. He tasted blood in his mouth, and the room spun around him.
The cousins laughed. One of them said something about the bride’s face, and what it was going to look like in a year.
Han Bo turned toward the bed. He was still smiling, and his eight iron bulls were still shining above him. He reached for the four spirit stones in Yun Qingshuang’s hand.
"Give me those. They belong to the clan, sister-in-law. Everything in this room does."
She let him touch them.
Then she stood up, grabbed his wrist, and broke it.
The sound was small and sharp. Everyone stopped laughing at once.
Han Bo’s scream came half a second later. By then, she had already twisted his arm, kicked the back of his knee, and dropped him onto the floor. His broken hand was pinned flat under her boot.
She hadn’t even drawn her sword.
And there was nothing above her head. Not one bull. Not even a faint wisp. She hadn’t used any Qi at all to do it. Meanwhile, Han Bo’s eight iron bulls were still turning above him, lighting up the room while he screamed into the floor.
The bulls had never once shown what a person could actually do.
"I’m the fourth daughter of the Yun Clan," she said to the four cousins, who were frozen in place. "I’ve lost a lot in the past three years. My rank. My pills. Every spirit stone my family ever saved for me."
She pressed down a little harder on his hand.
"But I haven’t lost this. Would anyone else like to check?"
One of the cousins ran away.
Yun Qingshuang stepped off Han Bo. She crossed the room to where Han Jiu was leaning against the wall. She didn’t offer to help him up.
Instead, she stood between him and the door, and stayed there.
"You shouldn’t have done that," Han Jiu said. His mouth was full of blood.
"No. I shouldn’t have." She didn’t look back at him. She was watching the doorway. "His wrist will be fixed by noon. The council will meet before evening. And by tomorrow morning, the Yun Clan will have exactly what it came to this valley for. And it will have got it from me, for free, on my very first day."
"Then why did you do it?"
"Because I’ve been an expensive person my whole life, Ninth Young Master." She kept watching the door. "Just once, I wanted to cost somebody else something, instead of myself."
"Meh. We’ll survive," Han Jiu said with a shrug.
But inside, he felt hopeful. ’This Rebate System... This is the way forward.’
Within the hour, a message arrived. Both of them were called to the ancestral hall.