The toxic cloud spread across the tavern floor, melting wood into black sludge as it crawled toward my boots. The dozen sect disciples behind the Patriarch had already backed into the corners, not eager to be collateral damage in their boss's tantrum.
I grabbed a wooden stool and tossed it into the path of the acid. It dissolved mid-air with a wet hiss. Great. That would have been my leg.
"So," I said, stepping onto a dry patch of floorboard, "let's break this down. You're the Poison Patriarch. You've cultivated the venom of ten thousand snakes. Your touch is death. Your breath is a miasma. But have you ever considered—"
"I have considered nothing!" the Patriarch roared, hurling a bolt of purple liquid from his palm.
I dove behind an upturned table. The bolt hit where I'd been standing, melting a hole clean through the floor. Through the smoking gap, I could see the cellar below.
"—that your entire combat strategy relies on a single element?" I finished, peeking over the table. "That's a critical weakness. Any decent cultivator with a wind technique could blow your poison back in your face. You've specialised so hard you've made yourself vulnerable to a stiff breeze."
"Silence!" Another bolt. The table in front of me dissolved into a bubbling puddle.
I scrambled to my feet and ran for the bar counter, jumping over a pool of acid. "I'm just saying! Diversity in your skillset is basic career advice! What if you meet someone immune to poison? What's your Plan B? Scream at them?"
The Patriarch's face was a deep, toxic violet. "I have never met anyone immune to my poison!"
"Well, there's a first time for everything! Statistically speaking, with the number of cultivators in this world, at least point-four percent of them are probably immune to your specific venom composition. That's basic probability!"
"Those are not real numbers! You are making them up!"
"Of course I'm making them up! I don't have access to a census! But the point stands!"
Han was crouched behind an overturned bench, his hands over his head. "Caelan! Can you maybe stop giving him career advice and start running?!"
"Where would I run?! He's melting the exits!"
It was true. The tavern's front door was now a smoking hole in the wall. The windows had dissolved. The only way out was through the Patriarch, and he was currently radiating enough poison to fell a small army.
I grabbed a half-melted bottle of cheap wine from the bar and chucked it at the Patriarch's head. He didn't even dodge — the bottle dissolved in the purple aura around him, wine evaporating into steam.
"Okay," I muttered. "That didn't work."
"A mortal weapon?" The Patriarch laughed, a sound like gravel grinding. "You throw bottles at me? The lord of the Five Veins Sect? I have bathed in acid! I have consumed the blood of venomous beasts! I am immune to—"
"You're immune to poison, yeah, I got that. But are you immune to basic workplace safety violations?"
He paused. "What?"
I pointed at the ceiling. A massive support beam, blackened by decades of tavern smoke, was groaning under the strain of the melting floor below. The acid had eaten through one of its anchor points.
"That beam's going to come down in about thirty seconds. And given where you're standing, it's going to land directly on your head."
The Patriarch looked up. The beam groaned.
"That is not a workplace safety violation. That is a structural coincidence."
"It's both. And it's going to kill you if you don't move."
He sneered. "I am a Nascent Soul cultivator. A wooden beam cannot—"
The beam snapped.
He moved. Fast. Faster than a man his size should have been able to. The beam crashed into the spot where he'd been standing, sending up a shower of splinters and acidic mud.
He glared at me from three feet to the left. "You think a cheap trick like that—"
"I wasn't trying to hit you. I was trying to see if you'd dodge."
"Of course I dodged!"
"Because you're afraid of wood."
"I am not afraid of wood! I am protecting my vital—"
"Then why did you move? You said yourself you're a Nascent Soul cultivator. A wooden beam shouldn't have been able to hurt you. But you dodged anyway. Which means either you're not as strong as you claim, or you've conditioned yourself to avoid falling objects regardless of their actual threat level. Either way, it's a reflexive response, not a calculated one. Your instincts are running on outdated threat-assessment software."
The Patriarch's eye twitched. "You... you dare psychoanalyse my combat instincts?"
"I'm analysing everything. It's what I do. Your attacks are powerful but wasteful. Your defenses are strong but reactive. Look at your stance — you're leaning forward on your front foot, which means a solid shove to your centre mass would send you off-balance before you could even form your next attack. You've spent five hundred years cultivating raw power and zero time on fundamentals. You're a classic brute-force build. High damage output, low tactical flexibility. In gaming terms, you'd be a glass cannon, except you're not even glass — you're more like... wet cardboard. Impressive-looking, but one good poke and you fold."
"Wet... cardboard?"
"It's a metaphor. You wouldn't understand. This world hasn't invented cardboard yet."
Han's voice drifted from behind the bench. "What is cardboard?"
"Pressed wood pulp. Useful for packaging. I'll explain later."
The Patriarch's hands were shaking. Not with rage — with something else. Doubt. I could see it in the way his aura flickered at the edges.
"You have a way with words, I will give you that. But words cannot stop cultivation."
He took a step forward, and the floorboards beneath his foot sizzled. The acid was spreading faster now, eating through the supports. I could feel the heat of it even from ten feet away, a damp, chemical warmth that clung to my skin.
"You speak of my techniques as if they are flawed," he said, his voice lower now. "You speak of strategy and efficiency. As if cultivation is a... business transaction."
"Everything is a transaction, Patriarch. You trade time for power. You trade safety for strength. You've traded five hundred years of your life sitting in a poison swamp to get where you are. Was it worth it?"
The purple aura dimmed slightly. "Of course it was worth it. I am the Poison Patriarch. My name strikes fear into—"
"Into who? The tavern owner? The disciples who are currently edging toward the door because they don't want to be caught in your meltdown? You're feared by people who are already weaker than you. That's not impressive. That's bullying."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. The aura flickered again.
"My wife..." he started.
"Your wife?"
"Is dead. She died of toxicity. My blood was too poisonous for her. The same cultivation that gave me power... killed her."
The tavern went quiet. Even the bubbling acid seemed to pause.
I looked at him. Really looked. Beneath the rage and the purple aura and the grandiose speeches was a man who had lost everything to the power he'd chased.
"...Okay," I said. "That's genuinely tragic. I'm sorry."
He blinked. "You... you are sorry?"
"For your loss. Not for the attempted murder. That's still on you. But losing someone to the thing you thought would save you? That's rough. I can't relate personally, but I've seen enough bad management decisions ruin people's lives to have some sympathy."
"I do not need your sympathy," he said, but his voice had lost its edge. "I need you to stop talking."
"I can't do that. It's my primary character trait."
He raised his hand again. The purple aura flared back to life, brighter than before.
"Then I will silence you permanently."
The attack came fast — faster than the others. He had been holding back, I realised. Toying with me. A concentrated spear of purple liquid, aimed directly at my chest. I dove left. It grazed my shoulder.
The pain was immediate and blinding. Not fire. Not ice. It felt like my entire arm was being dissolved from the inside out. I hit the ground hard, my vision swimming.
Through the ringing in my ears, I heard Han scream my name.
The Patriarch loomed over me, his hand crackling with another bolt. "Any last words, accountant?"
I laughed. It came out as a wheeze. "You called me accountant. That's the best insult you could come up with? I've been called worse by interns. By interns, Han. Interns."
"Well," Han said from somewhere behind me, "you are very accountant-shaped."
"Not helping."
"I am noting it for the record. Future reference."
"You and your logbook."
"My mouth will be the death of you," Han said.
"Probably, but not today."
"It is the only reason I am still alive."
He raised his hand for the killing blow.
And then the wall exploded.