"Tap. Tap. Tap."
The bluestone rang under her feet, one strike after another.
Chu Qingxue walked very fast, her white robes flying like snow in the noon light. Her hand was closed around her cuff.
Lin Jin. Do not let anything have happened to you.
The foot of Purple Sun Peak came into view.
The guest lodge's grey tiled roof showed above the green trees, perfectly quiet, as though nothing at all had taken place. Two outer sect disciples sat at the gate in short grey-blue robes with iron swords at their hips, one leaning against the door frame picking at his fingers, the other seated on the threshold sipping slowly from a coarse bowl of tea.
Everything as usual.
Chu Qingxue did not slow.
Her spiritual power pushed the two heavy wooden doors and they flew apart with a bang.
Several outer sect disciples were sitting around drinking tea in the main room.
At their head was a young man at the third level of Qi Refining. The hand holding his tea bowl jerked at the sudden noise and the tea went all over his trousers. His mouth had just opened to swear at somebody—
And then he smelled that clean, sweet spiritual energy.
His head snapped up.
A figure white as snow stood in the doorway.
The tea bowl slid out of his hand and shattered on the floor.
"S-Senior Sister Qingxue?!"
Every other man in the room froze mid-motion at the same moment.
One had a tea bowl raised to his lips and had forgotten to drink; the tea ran down his chin and dripped onto his collar.
One had a flatbread halfway broken apart, his hands suspended in the air, crumbs falling.
One was halfway up off his stool with a foot still lifted.
The worst off was the man in the corner, chopsticks stopped against the rim of his bowl, the slice of spirit vegetable pinched between them swaying twice in midair.
Chu Qingxue did not answer any of them.
She swept the room with a glance.
She did not see Lin Jin.
Her brows drew together, and a thin layer of anger settled over that cool face.
"The mortal who came here last night with my token to take a room. Where is he?"
No one answered.
A small, fine noise came from the corner.
Teeth chattering.
A side door opened and a girl in the pale blue robes of an inner sect disciple walked briskly in. Sixteen or seventeen, delicate-featured, a slender green steel sword at her waist.
At the sight of Chu Qingxue she went still for a moment.
And then her eyes lit up.
She came forward quickly and saluted. "Senior Sister Qingxue! What brings you to the outer sect side?"
Chu Qingxue recognized her.
Ling Ruowei. A junior sister who had entered the inner sect only last year, steady by nature and conscientious in her work, lately assigned by the elders to manage the outer sect guest lodge.
"Ruowei." Her voice was as cool as ever, though her speech ran a little faster than usual. "Last night I sent a mortal here to lodge with my token, and arranged for him to come up the mountain and find me at noon today. I waited a long while and he never appeared, so I came to see whether he was still with you."
Ling Ruowei's expression changed on the instant.
From delight to alarm.
"Senior Sister's man... has gone missing in the outer sect?"
Her eyes went rapidly across the few outer sect disciples in the room. Her gaze passed over the man on the left with the wet trousers, then over the one on the right dropping crumbs, and came to rest at last on the menial curled up in the corner.
Her fingers closed around her sword hilt without her noticing.
"Senior Sister, rest easy," Ling Ruowei said, turning around, her tone leaving no room for argument. "I will find him for you."
She began issuing orders at once, calling several outer sect disciples by name and splitting them into groups to search the rooms. The main hall filled with activity — footsteps, doors opening, questions called back and forth, rising and overlapping.
And just then, the sound of chattering teeth in the corner grew louder.
Chu Qingxue turned her head to look.
Crouched in the corner was a disciple in grey menial's clothing, sixteen or seventeen, short and plump, still holding a half-finished bowl of rice.
The menial's face had already gone white. His lips were trembling, and he had not noticed that half the rice in the bowl had spilled onto his trousers.
He raised his head and met Chu Qingxue's eyes. His whole body slid down the wall and collapsed into a sitting sprawl on the floor.
"He... he... he really is Senior Sister Qingxue's man..."
Zhou Cheng, who had led the tying, was coming in through the side door at that moment with a coil of hemp rope still in his hand.
Just back from checking the storeroom in the rear courtyard.
At those words his feet nailed themselves to the floor. The rope slid out of his hand and coiled itself on the ground.
The blood went out of his face in an instant.
Then he knelt. Both knees struck together and his whole body slid forward half a foot.
"Senior Sister Qingxue! I am sorry! I am truly sorry!"
His voice was shaking beyond all control.
"That man came here yesterday — he took out your token — but the state of him, his face beaten black and blue, one slipper gone, and a mortal on top of it — I was certain he had stolen your token — so I tied him up and threw him in the storeroom—"
Ling Ruowei did not look at him.
She raised a hand.
Her sword fingers set, and a thread of pale green spiritual power reached out from her fingertips, ran along the floor and down the corridor, slipped through the crack of the side door, turned the corner, and stretched away toward the storeroom.
The hall went quiet for three breaths.
Every eye in it followed that thread of light.
The light passed down the corridor and vanished around the corner.
Ling Ruowei kept her eyes closed. Her fingertips trembled faintly.
Two more breaths went by.
Her eyelid moved.
Then she opened her eyes.
The spiritual power folded back and sank into her fingertips.
She lowered her hand.
"There is indeed a person in the storeroom."
"No fluctuation of spiritual power. A mortal."
She turned her head and stared at Zhou Cheng.
"You locked him in there?"
Zhou Cheng lay prostrate on the floor. "I— I locked it..."
Ling Ruowei's breathing grew heavier. She took a step forward.
"Why did you not report this to me?"
Zhou Cheng shook. "I— I thought—"
"You thought?" Ling Ruowei cut across him. "You are an outer sect disciple. By what right do you think?"
Zhou Cheng shrank his neck down. "I— I looked at the state of him... face beaten black and blue... one shoe missing..."
"And so you simply tied him up?"
"I was afraid somebody was impersonating Senior Sister's—"
"Afraid?" Ling Ruowei's voice climbed again. "If you were afraid, could you not have come and asked me? I am right here in this lodge. It is two steps away. Did you ask?"
Zhou Cheng had nothing left to say.
Ling Ruowei glanced back at Chu Qingxue.
Only a glance.
But that glance was full of shame.
Senior Sister had trusted her enough to put her in charge of the outer sect lodge. And Senior Sister's man had come — onto her ground — and been tied up and shut away for an entire night.
She bit her lip and turned back.
"Do you have any idea how humiliating this is for me?"
"You have made me, in front of Senior Sister..."
She could not go on. Her right hand shot up. Spiritual power gathered into a ball of light in her palm. Her wrist turned over. The power left her hand and struck Zhou Cheng in the left shoulder.
Zhou Cheng was thrown into the edge of a table. A tea bowl broke. He clutched his left shoulder and half knelt. Sweat ran off the tip of his nose. His left arm hung at his side with no strength in it. He fell to the floor and curled up. He clenched his teeth and made no sound.
Ling Ruowei's hand was still raised.
She was shaking all over.
Her palm began to glow again.
"Ruowei."
Chu Qingxue's voice came from beside her.
Ling Ruowei's hand stopped.
She did not turn her head. Her shoulders were pulled rigid.
"Senior Sister..." Her voice shook.
"This is the place I am responsible for."
"My own people."
"And this is what happened."
She turned her head at last.
Her eyes had reddened.
"I cannot even face you."
Chu Qingxue looked at her.
"Put it down first."
Ling Ruowei's arm stiffened for a moment. The spiritual power in her palm dimmed. Scattered. Her hand came down. She turned her face aside and drew a deep breath.
"I am sorry, Senior Sister."
"I failed to keep my people in order."
Chu Qingxue did not answer.
She stepped forward and patted her lightly on the head.
Then she walked over to Zhou Cheng. Zhou Cheng lay on the floor, curled around his shoulder. His face was covered in sweat.
Chu Qingxue looked down at him.
"Did you injure him?"
Zhou Cheng's head jerked up. "No! Senior Sister Qingxue, absolutely not! We only tied him up and put him in the storeroom, we never touched him—"
He fumbled the token out of his shirt and held it up over his head in both hands. "Your token, returned to you—"
Chu Qingxue took the token.
"What hour did he arrive last night?"
"Around the ninth hour of the night."
"After you tied him up, did anyone go and look in on him?"
"N-no..."
"Was the storeroom door locked?"
"It was locked."
Chu Qingxue sighed.
Most of the anger had already gone out of her.
These disciples had not tied Lin Jin up out of malice. They had genuinely been defending her token. The reasoning was not the problem; the execution was crude, and they had not verified anything by the sect's own rules.
And she bore some of the responsibility herself. She should have taken Lin Jin straight back to her cave dwelling yesterday. Dealing with Elder Yue would have been the greater nuisance and would have set tongues going, but even that beat coming to look for him in person and making this much noise about it.
"Never mind," she said, her voice still cool, though the tone had plainly eased. "I will not hold it against you. You did not, after all, injure anyone without cause. You only tied him up, and you did it out of consideration for me, for fear that someone might use my token to do harm. Your reasoning had its logic."
She paused.
"Yesterday the fault was mine for not thinking it through. Sending him to lodge here looking the way he did — it is small wonder you misunderstood."
Ling Ruowei, listening to this from the side, moved her lips. She glanced at Zhou Cheng kneeling on the floor, then at Zhao Si huddled in the corner with his face a mess of tears and snot, and finally drew her gaze back.
"Senior Sister... you truly are not angry?"
Chu Qingxue looked at her.
"I was."
"It has passed."
Ling Ruowei bit her lip. Her voice came out low. "In your place, I would certainly not have let it go so easily."
Chu Qingxue did not answer.
The hall was quiet for a while.
The menial disciple slumped in the corner was moved to tears.
He was remembering last autumn, in this same lodge, when an outer sect disciple named Chen Ergou had stood duty here the same as Zhou Cheng. One night an inner sect disciple came late for a room, and Chen Ergou, half asleep, opened the door and muttered offhandedly, "Coming this late, how tiresome."
That one sentence.
The Enforcement Hall came first thing the next morning. They dragged Chen Ergou off in front of everyone and gave him twenty lashes. Then they sentenced him to three months digging spirit stones in the mines on the rear mountain. When he came back he was worn down to nothing. His whole back was a lattice of scars. He could not straighten his waist. He walked stooped over from then on.
After that, if anyone in blue inner sect robes came past him, he went around them.
And that had only been one wrong sentence.
And now? They had tied up Senior Sister Qingxue's man.
What sort of person was Senior Sister Qingxue? The Saintess of the Sword Sect, peak Golden Core at twenty, the Flawless Sword Body. She had pursued heretical cultivators three thousand li on a mission and hung a Nascent Soul devil cultivator's head from a flagpole.
They had assumed they were dead today. At best, cultivation stripped and expulsion from the sect. At worst — nobody dared think about at worst.
And what Senior Sister said was, never mind.
He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand for all he was worth. Tears and snot smeared across his whole face. He knocked his head toward Chu Qingxue over and over, and his forehead thudded against the bluestone.
The outer sect disciple kneeling on the floor had reddened eyes too. He had assumed twenty lashes was the floor for today. And Senior Sister had said the fault was hers for not thinking it through. He bit his lip and tried to say thank you, Senior Sister, and what came out at the last was a sob. He raised a sleeve and scrubbed hard at his face, and only made more of it.
Ling Ruowei stood to one side watching all of this. Something rose in her that she could not name. She had heard no end of talk about Senior Sister Qingxue — that she was cold-faced and warm-hearted, that she was never harsh with the lower disciples. And the hierarchy in the cultivation world was a rigid thing.
Seeing it with her own eyes today, she understood that all that talk had fallen well short.
Senior Sister looked aloof and distant, unapproachable by anyone — and underneath she was softer than any of them.
"Let us not waste more time." Chu Qingxue's voice cut across the general emotion.
"Take me to him."