"Are you still not gone!"
Zhou Cheng raised his hand again.
"What are you grinning about over there?"
Lin Jin retreated two quick steps and opened up a safe distance.
He drew a deep breath and delivered, in the most unruffled tone he could manage, the line he had been preparing for a long while.
"I am an outer sect disciple taken in by Senior Sister Qingxue."
Zhou Cheng's hand stopped in midair.
Not out of shock—
It was that he found it even funnier.
He lowered the hand, tilted his head, and looked at Lin Jin, the expression on his face shifting from distaste to pity.
Senior Sister Qingxue?
This beggar?
Zhou Cheng wondered whether he had misheard.
Three years he had kept this lodge, and he had heard plenty of outrageous lies. Men who passed themselves off as inner sect disciples to eat and drink for free, men who claimed to be from the Enforcement Hall to frighten people. But passing yourself off as a disciple taken in by Senior Sister Qingxue?
That was a first.
And an utterly lazy attempt at it. Couldn't you at least have said you were some elder's distant relative? That would have been more believable.
"Say again who took you in?" Zhou Cheng asked, and there was a flavor in his tone of let me hear that one more time so I can confirm you are completely gone.
"Senior Sister Qingxue."
"The Saintess of the Sword Sect. Chu Qingxue."
Lin Jin straightened his back and bit down clearly on every word.
The muscles in Zhou Cheng's face twitched.
He laughed out loud without meaning to.
His laughter rang through the night, a good three notches louder than Lin Jin's had been a moment ago.
Because he genuinely found it that funny.
What sort of person was Senior Sister Qingxue? The youngest peak Golden Core in the Ethereal Sword Sect in a thousand years, the sole inheritor of the Flawless Sword Body, a woman that no end of inner sect disciples begged for a single pointer on the sword and never got one. And she was going to take a bruised-up mortal in big shorts and flip-flops as a disciple?
Zhou Cheng reckoned this joke would keep him going with his fellow disciples for three days.
"You, mortal, are not only an idiot, you are deranged."
Zhou Cheng put out a finger and jabbed it toward Lin Jin's chest, not quite daring to touch the strange white shirt for fear of dirtying his hand. "Do you have any idea what Senior Sister Qingxue's standing is? How could she possibly take in someone in your state? Beaten black and blue, one slipper gone, dressed in something unspeakable, and a mortal besides."
Lin Jin sighed.
Fine. Follow the procedure.
He pulled out from inside his shirt the token Chu Qingxue had given him.
In the moonlight the token threw back a soft silver-white halo. The material was neither iron nor jade, and it was warm to the touch. A spiritual energy of the utmost purity radiated off it, carrying a breath of cold like frost.
The instant Zhou Cheng's gaze landed on that token, his pupils contracted hard.
He knew the material.
Moonstone marrow. In the whole Ethereal Sword Sect, only core disciples and above were entitled to it. And that cloud pattern along the token's edge — the cloud pattern was the inner sect's own engraving. An outer sect disciple's token bore the mountain pattern, a menial's the water pattern. Only inner sect disciples were entitled to the cloud.
And the character for sword showing on the reverse — the Transmission Pavilion access token.
His brain finished processing the information inside three tenths of a second.
Moonstone marrow. Cloud-pattern engraving. Transmission Pavilion access token.
The three of them stacked together meant that the owner of this token stood, at minimum, in the front rank of the inner sect.
And then that spiritual energy.
Zhou Cheng's breathing stopped for an instant.
He knew that spiritual energy far too well.
Or rather, every male disciple in the Ethereal Sword Sect knew it far too well.
The energy of a top-grade water spirit root, so pure it did not seem like something this world should contain. He had caught it from a distance exactly once, on the Transmission Grounds, when Senior Sister Qingxue rode past on her sword and the wind of her passing carried this scent in it. That one time, and he had remembered it for two years.
The presence of that energy in the air was too strong to mistake — strong enough that a single encounter branded it into the sea of consciousness.
Zhou Cheng's nostrils flared.
He would have bet six months of saved spirit stones that this energy was Senior Sister Qingxue's. In the entire sect there was only one person whose water spirit root ran that pure, pure enough that not even a storage artifact could seal the leakage in.
A string of thoughts detonated in his head.
Senior Sister Qingxue's token. Why was it in this mortal's hands? This beggar of a mortal, in his strange white clothes, bruised all over, one slipper, who had just claimed he was a disciple taken in by Senior Sister Qingxue.
Could it be...!
Could it be that he was telling the truth?
No, no, no. Impossible. There was no possible way Senior Sister Qingxue would take a disciple like this.
He must have stolen it.
Yes. He had definitely stolen it. Or found it. Senior Sister Qingxue was so busy — perhaps she had dropped the token somewhere without noticing, and this mortal had picked it up. And then the fool had assumed that finding a token was enough to pass himself off as a disciple and freeload his way into the lodge.
That had to be it.
Zhou Cheng's eyes reddened slightly.
Not with grief. With rage.
That mortal had walked the whole way up here with the token clutched in his hand, and his hands were caked with dirt.
Senior Sister Qingxue's token, smeared with a mortal's dirt.
The thought pricked at Zhou Cheng's heart like a needle.
He drew a deep breath and worked to keep his voice level. The tremor leaked out of his throat anyway.
"Senior Sister Qingxue's token...!"
"To think that Senior Sister Qingxue's token would be picked up by a mortal. By an idiot, no less."
"Rest easy, Senior Sister Qingxue. I will see justice done for you."
He said it in the direction of the token, in a tone as devout as a man praying before an image of the Saintess.
One look at Zhou Cheng's expression and the weight came off Lin Jin's chest at last.
That was it. That was exactly the expression — shock first, disbelief, and then it turns to awe.
He waited for Zhou Cheng to drop to his knees, waited for the head-knocking apology, and even had his next line ready in his mouth: now you know who I am.
Then Zhou Cheng moved.
His left hand shot out and clamped around the wrist holding the token, twisting it down; the wrist bone was wrenched to a strange angle and the token fell out from between Lin Jin's fingers.
Lin Jin hissed with pain, and his mouth had only just opened when the right hand came across, caught his other arm and wrenched it back.
Lin Jin was spun around bodily and pressed facedown onto the bluestone slabs beside the door frame, his cheek scraping up a faceful of dust and grass.
"Hang on—"
Zhou Cheng's knee came down on his back, one hand pinning both arms while the other drew a length of hemp rope from behind his waist.
"What are you doing to me!"
The rope went around for its first turn.
"Senior Sister Qingxue told me to come and find her at noon tomorrow!"
Second turn.
"Loosen the rope and listen to me first—"
Third turn.
The rope wound from his shoulders to his wrists, from his wrists around his waist, crossed once behind his back and went around a second time across his chest, the knot pulled down hard enough to make his bones ache.
He lay on the ground and twisted a shoulder. Nothing moved. He arched his back. The knee was still on it.
He panted, muttering inwardly the whole time: why? What happened to the face-slap script? What about my token? Did he actually look at it just now? He definitely looked at it. Which part of what I said was wrong?
Zhou Cheng glanced down at him with nothing but disgust in his eyes.
Then he produced a rag from his sleeve, balled it up, and shoved it straight into his mouth.
A reek of sour mildew went right up into his skull.