The delegation was already visible from the outer wall by the time Xiao Chen and Su Rou arrived — a column of black-armored cultivators standing in disciplined ranks before the sect's main gate, banners marked with a jagged mountain sigil snapping in the wind, and at their head, a young man who looked, Xiao Chen thought, exactly like someone who had never once been told no and believed it.
"Jiang Feiyu," Su Rou murmured beside him, voice tight. "Blackstone Sect's foremost genius. Core Formation at nineteen. If he's leading this delegation personally instead of sending an elder, that tells you how seriously Blackstone is taking whatever they felt this morning."
Tang Yuan stood at the gate itself, flanked by two elders, his posture carefully, deliberately calm in a way that told Xiao Chen the calm was costing him effort. "Young Master Jiang," the Sect Master said, voice pitched to carry. "This is an unusual show of force for a courtesy visit."
"This isn't a courtesy visit, Sect Master Tang." Jiang Feiyu's voice matched his bearing — clipped, certain, faintly bored with the formality of the exchange, the tone of a man who considered the outcome already decided. "At dawn, every major sect in this province felt a two-hundred-year-old bloodline seal break. Blackstone Sect's elders traced the origin point to Azure Cloud's territory within the hour." His eyes swept past Tang Yuan, past the elders, and settled — unerringly, immediately — on Xiao Chen. "I'll assume that's him."
The certainty in it made Xiao Chen's skin crawl. He knew exactly where to look. Which means the reading wasn't subtle. Which means every sect within range felt it, not just Blackstone.
"I don't know what you're referring to," Tang Yuan said, perfectly level.
"Don't insult me, Sect Master." Jiang Feiyu's tone sharpened, though his expression stayed maddeningly composed. "A suppressed bloodline root doesn't shatter open quietly. It sends a pulse through every cultivation array within a hundred miles strong enough to wake elders from meditation. We felt it. Jade Serenity felt it. I'd wager Vermilion Blaze felt it too, and unlike us, they don't send polite delegations first." He took a single step forward, and the black-armored ranks behind him shifted in perfect unison. "Hand him over, and Blackstone Sect will remember Azure Cloud's cooperation favorably. Refuse, and we'll simply take him, and remember your sect's obstruction instead."
The threat landed in the open air between them with no ambiguity at all.
Xiao Chen stepped forward before Tang Yuan could answer, ignoring the sharp look Su Rou shot him, ignoring the elder beside Tang Yuan who audibly inhaled at the breach of protocol.
"Why," Xiao Chen said, "does Blackstone Sect want a bloodline that got a hundred-and-eighty-year-old sect erased the last time someone tried to keep it?"
Something flickered across Jiang Feiyu's composed expression — not quite surprise, more the recalibration of a man realizing his target wasn't going to play the role he'd assumed. His eyes narrowed, assessing, the same wary calculation Xiao Chen had first seen in Su Rou days ago, though colder, more clinical.
"So you know the history," Jiang Feiyu said. "Good. Saves us the trouble of convincing you this isn't a request you can afford to refuse." He clasped his hands behind his back, and for the first time, something like genuine interest entered his voice. "Blackstone Sect doesn't want you for the same reason that sect a century ago wanted to hide you. We want you because a bloodline capable of drawing that kind of attention, harnessed correctly rather than buried in fear, is worth more than every other asset this province has to offer combined. You'd be protected. Trained by masters this backwater sect couldn't dream of affording. Given resources appropriate to what you actually are, instead of left to rot as a trash-root outer disciple nobody bothered to properly test for six years."
It was, Xiao Chen noted with cold clarity, a genuinely good pitch — better than a simple threat, calculated to sound like an offer a desperate boy in his position should leap at.
"And if the thing that came through my sect's wall this morning follows me to Blackstone instead," Xiao Chen said, "does that offer still stand? Or does 'harnessed correctly' mean I become bait your elders are willing to spend?"
The flicker of genuine surprise on Jiang Feiyu's face this time was unmistakable — quickly smoothed over, but real.
"You've already been attacked," he said slowly, and something in his posture shifted, recalculating faster than before. "That's... sooner than the histories suggested it would come."
"Meaning you knew it would come at all," Xiao Chen said. "Meaning Blackstone Sect has records on this bloodline that go deeper than a felt pulse this morning. Meaning this delegation was already prepared before you ever confirmed which sect I was in."
Silence stretched across the gate. Behind Jiang Feiyu, the black-armored ranks stood motionless, disciplined, clearly waiting on a single word to become something considerably less diplomatic than a delegation. Tang Yuan's hand had drifted, slowly, unmistakably, toward the formation seal at his belt.
"You're more informed than a trash-root outer disciple has any right to be," Jiang Feiyu said finally, something colder entering his voice now, the pretense of a courteous offer thinning by the second. "That makes this simpler, honestly. Come willingly, and Blackstone Sect protects you from what's hunting you, and from every other sect that will be at this gate by nightfall once the news spreads further. Refuse—" his eyes flicked, briefly, deliberately, to the black-armored ranks behind him, "—and we take you anyway, and Azure Cloud Sect gets to explain to the entire province why they chose to burn for a boy who wasn't even theirs to protect."
Su Rou's sword was half-clear of its sheath before Xiao Chen felt her move beside him.
"He's not going anywhere," she said, voice flat and absolutely certain, "and you're not taking anything from this sect without going through every disciple standing behind this gate first."
Jiang Feiyu regarded her for a long, measuring moment — not with anger, but with the same cold, clinical assessment he'd given Xiao Chen, filing her away as a variable worth accounting for.
"Admirable," he said. "Foolish, but admirable." He raised one hand, and the black-armored ranks behind him shifted forward in perfect, disciplined unison, weapons still sheathed but the intent behind the motion unmistakable. "Last chance, Sect Master Tang. Choose whether this ends with a diplomatic handover, or a war your fourth-tier sect has no possibility of surviving."
Tang Yuan's hand closed fully around the formation seal at his belt, and the air around the gate began, very quietly, to hum with gathering qi.
"Young Master Jiang," the Sect Master said, voice gone hard as struck iron, "you've made a serious miscalculation coming here with only twenty cultivators."
Jiang Feiyu's composed smile didn't waver. "Have I."
Behind him, without any visible signal Xiao Chen could identify, a second column of black-armored cultivators crested the ridge beyond the gate — three times the number of the first, moving into position with the same disciplined silence, ringing the entire outer wall in the space of a few heartbeats.
"No," Jiang Feiyu said pleasantly, watching Tang Yuan's expression change in real time. "I really don't think I have."