Lin Jin lay on the ground.
Trussed in hemp rope like a rice dumpling.
Li Shou had added three more turns for good measure, wound so tight he could not move a finger, and there was a wad of cloth of uncertain origin in his mouth. The smell of it had nearly knocked him out cold a moment ago.
He watched all six of them go from arguing to agreement, watched them stand there in bliss imagining tomorrow's meeting with Senior Sister Qingxue, listened to them discuss it.
What color Senior Sister would be wearing tomorrow.
Whether Senior Sister would praise them for a job well done.
"If Senior Sister pats my head I'm not washing it for three days."
That sort of thoroughly derailed subject matter.
There was only one thought in Lin Jin's head: is there something wrong with these people.
He put everything he had into one struggle. The rope did not budge.
"Mmf mmf mmf!"
He wrenched his head around and finally managed to scrape the rag out of his mouth.
"Hey!"
His voice was a little hoarse, and it carried the leftover sourness of the cloth.
"I really am a disciple Senior Sister Qingxue took in!"
"She put that token in my hand herself!"
"She told me to come and find her at noon tomorrow. Untie me, and when Senior Sister can't find me tomorrow, every one of you is finished!"
The conversation among the six of them stopped.
Zhou Cheng looked down at him.
That look.
It was a pity so sincere it broke the heart.
Zhou Cheng crouched down, brought his face close to Lin Jin's, studied the swollen sockets of his eyes and the seeping cut on his forehead, and then sighed. There was a flavor of poor child in his gaze.
"Listen to that. All of you, listen."
Zhou Cheng straightened up and addressed the five behind him.
"A mortal lays eyes on Senior Sister Qingxue's immortal face, has hallucinations, goes mad. A pitiable creature. Don't worry — Senior Sister never makes trouble for mortals. We'll take you up tomorrow to apologize and she'll forgive you."
He paused, apparently hunting for something vicious enough to shock the man back to his senses, and after a long search produced:
"If he really is Senior Sister Qingxue's disciple, I'll eat this token."
Fatty Wang, chopsticks still standing in his bowl, raised a timid hand.
"Senior Brother...!"
"You've told us the reward. What about the penalty?"
"Be quiet."
He waved a hand, and Li Shou and Liu Dazhu came forward at once and lifted Lin Jin between them, one at each end. Li Shou took the shoulders, Liu Dazhu the feet.
Lin Jin was hoisted into the air.
He was carried off toward the lodge's rear courtyard like a torn sack.
Lin Jin struggled his head up and watched the warm lamplight of the lodge getting further and further away.
The glow of the lanterns shrank behind him, and in its place came a pitch-black little path.
At the end of the path was a low storeroom. A few brooms and some battered wooden buckets were piled by its door. There was no lock on it — a broken-down shed like that needed none — but Li Shou pulled a cord from behind his waist and tied the bar shut from the outside.
"You're all going to regret this!"
Lin Jin shouted it as they threw him into the storeroom.
"When Senior Sister Qingxue finds out I never reported in, she'll come looking for me!"
"And then you'll all see..."
The door shut.
BANG.
Every trace of light vanished.
Lin Jin lay on the ground with his face against the cold floor, and the smell of mildew seeping up out of the gaps between the tiles went straight into his nose.
He stared at the pitch-dark ceiling above him and said nothing for a long while.
"Novels are all lies."
Outside he could faintly hear the six of them walking back, talking and laughing. He rolled over onto his back.
Ugh. Sleep first. Today has been too much.
There was a crack in the storeroom roof, and through the crack a small patch of night sky. Lin Jin stared at that moon, and then he went quiet.
Then he caught the smell coming from inside his shirt.
That spiritual energy, clear and cold as frost, left behind on the token, seeping out through the gaps in the rope and settling over the whole of him.
Like a thin blanket.
Cool.
And somehow steadying.
"Senior Sister Qingxue...!"
He said the name quietly, and the corner of his mouth curved without his meaning it to.
Then he shut his eyes, rolled over, and curled himself up on the cold floor in his rice-dumpling wrappings—
And slept.
Noon tomorrow.
Senior Sister Qingxue would come looking for him.
Heh heh.
Lin Jin laughed once in his sleep, at something or other in a dream.
Back to the present.
In the cave dwelling on Purple Sun Peak, Chu Qingxue was adjusting the angle of her mouth in front of the bronze mirror.
She had no idea that her bro had spent the night tied up in a storeroom with her name on his lips.
All she knew was that at noon today Lin Jin ought to be waiting for her at the agreed place.
She set the mirror down and tapped the edge of the table twice with her fingertips without thinking about it.
Her chest gave one hard thump, like a pebble dropped into a still lake, and the ripple was gone as soon as it came.
Time to go.
Hope that dog hasn't gotten himself into anything.
She pushed open the door of the cave dwelling. The clean sweetness of spirit grass came rolling in. She narrowed her eyes at it, stepped over the threshold, and started down the mountain path.
Her hem brushed the grass at the roadside and a dew drop rolled onto her ankle, cold.
Out on the Transmission Grounds in the distance somebody was practicing.
Sword light flashing on and off.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
But there was nothing calm about her.
She had thought all night. The original owner's memories. That promise, and the cold fingertips at the touching of fists. And the traitor hiding somewhere behind a face she could not pick out.
She had thought about it until her head was fit to split.
And the more she thought, the further the pictures drifted off course.
All of them drifted to the same person.
Lin Jin.
That man crouched on the mountain path with his face bruised to pieces, holding that battered can of cola, eyes red, saying:
"Senior Sister, my life belongs to you from now on."
Working like an ox and a horse, he said.
Chu Qingxue snorted lightly.
Her steps came a little faster.
Come to think of it, in university that man was late every single day.
Late for morning lectures, late for evening lectures, late for his finals. There was one time he was late and sent a message, seven words long.
"Chu Yang answer the roll for me."
With three exclamation marks after it.
Now he had made it all the way to a cultivation world. Surely he wouldn't be late on day two?
She reached the mouth of the mountain path.
She stopped.
The path was deserted. Wind passed through the bamboo and rustled, and beyond that there was nothing.
She craned her head.
No one.
She waited a while longer.
Still no one.
Chu Qingxue's cheeks puffed out before she could help it. By the time she noticed, her jaw was already full of air. She let it go in a hurry, but the corner of her mouth had already turned down.
That man.
"Rest easy, Senior Sister!"
"If I'm late, I'm a dog!"
Beaten his chest over it yesterday.
And here he was today, a dog.
She retreated to the roadside and leaned against a boulder furred over with moss. The stone was cold, and the damp came through the fabric into her back. She folded her arms, and inside her sleeves her fingers tapped one by one against her elbow.
When she had finished with the left arm she switched to the right.
Never mind. Wait a bit longer.
He had only just arrived in a cultivation world; it was reasonable enough that his body clock had not adjusted. Yesterday he had been pinned in the water at the Jade Pool and kicked in a circle by a crowd of immortal maidens. The strain on the nerves alone would justify sleeping in.
Two hours went by.
A leaf drifted slowly down in front of her eyes.
She watched it spiral and settle on the bluestone, and then a gust of wind moved it again.
Inside her sleeve, her fingers stopped.
Closed into a fist.
Good.
Very good.
Stood up outright.
Not adulterated in the slightest.
Chu Qingxue drew a deep breath.
Then let it out.
Calm.
No.
Lin Jin being late to class was his normal state; across four years of university he could be late for the morning lecture from the first week of term to the last. But standing up a girl, and one as good-looking as she was now — that did not fit his dog code.
That dog was lazy, foul-mouthed, unreliable, and if he managed two out of every ten things he agreed to do, that counted as exceeding expectations.
But there was exactly one thing he executed more seriously than anyone.
Keeping faith with girls.
When a girl in the class forgot her meal card, he pushed his own share across, went back to the dorm on an empty stomach to gnaw instant noodles, and came back pleased with himself:
"See how much of a gentleman I am."
A dog.
But a dog with principles.
And more to the point, he had still been in the middle of his Senior Sister Qingxue is the finest in all the world high.
Would he stand her up today?
Absolutely not.
Chu Qingxue shut her eyes, then opened them.
Which meant—
Her chest dropped hard.
Something had happened.