"Big brother Yan Chi."
The voice came from behind him. It was bright and clear, familiar, and threaded with concern. His body knew it before his mind did. His heart jumped.
He turned.
Cao Ning stood on the garden path below the veranda steps, and the world narrowed again.
Her face was a goddess's face. Even with a lifetime of Yan Chi's memories to warn him, Yan Fan's breath caught as if he'd been punched. She was delicate and luminous, with large clear eyes the color of dark amber under fine brows, a small straight nose and full pink lips. It was the kind of beauty that made poets stupid and killers gentle. Her skin was pale and flawless and seemed to hold light the way pearls did.
Her hair was silver.
It floated around her shoulders and fell down her back to her waist, catching the slanting afternoon light like spun moonlight, each strand so fine it seemed to glow from inside. A breeze came up the path and lifted the ends and laid them across her bare collarbones, and they slid over her skin and settled again, soft as breath.
She was eighteen, a young woman in full bloom, and her body was perfect.
Her waist was slender enough that a man could almost span it with two hands. Her legs were long, made for the eye to climb. And her breasts were full, round and generous, high and proud on her chest and half open to the air by design.
Her robe was pale blue, the color of the sky an hour after dawn, and it hung from a fine golden chain clasped around her neck. The metal lay warm and bright against the hollow of her throat. From there the fabric fell in two panels that parted straight down the center, so that her whole chest lay open from the collarbones to just above her navel, a long pale channel of skin framed on either side like an offering.
The cloth covered her breasts only enough to hide the nipples. It clung to the outer curves and the undersides and left the deep line between them completely bare, along with the inner slopes of each breast, round and smooth and so white they almost glowed. When she took a breath they rose against the edges of the silk and pushed them a little wider, and for one heartbeat the faint pink rim of an areola peeked out at the edge of the left panel before the cloth slid back over it. He was certain that if she bent forward, even slightly, more of her would spill into view.
Side cuts ran from her waist down both legs, held together at the hip by another fine golden chain that winked as she moved. With every small shift of her weight the panels parted and showed her thighs, smooth and white, the inner skin luminous where the sunlight touched it, a faint flush rising where her thighs brushed together as she walked.
The middle panel of the robe hung down between her legs. The day had been warm and she'd been walking, and the thin silk had grown slightly damp and settled against her, clinging to her crotch and molding itself over the plump rounded mound between her thighs. It outlined the shape of her pussy without quite exposing it: the gentle swell, the faint seam down the middle where the silk dipped into her, the small crease on either side where her thighs began. It was a tease written in cloth and chain for anyone bold enough to look.
Yan Chi's gaze snagged there and stayed a heartbeat too long.
Fuck. Even the shape of her pussy shows through.
Childhood friend. Junior sister. Call her whatever you want, just don't look away.
He looked. He looked the way a drowning man looks at air. Beneath the loose outer robe his cock, which had only begun to ease, surged back to full hardness so quickly it ached, and he felt the tip leak again against the inside of his trousers.
Cao Ning came up the steps toward him, her small feet light on the stone, worry pulling her fine brows together. The golden chain at her hip chimed faintly.
"Why are you outside?" she asked. "You're unwell. You should be resting." She stopped one step below him, which put her eyes almost level with his, and studied his face with open concern. Up close, she smelled of something cool and clean, like rain on stone, with a hint of plum blossom. "Your mother said you'd only just woken. I came to see you, but the servants said she was with you, so I waited in the garden, and then you came out and—" She drew a breath. "You're pale. Are you sure you should be standing?"
"I'm fine."
He managed a smile. It felt strange on his face and almost real.
"Don't worry, junior sister. Really. My body feels better than it has in a long time."
That was true in ways she couldn't imagine. He kept his hips angled slightly away from her and hoped the loose robe was doing its job.
She searched his face the way his mother had, looking for the lie. Yan Chi had lied to her too over the years about bruises and falls and tea that tasted wrong. Whatever she saw in him now must have been different, because the line between her brows eased a little, though it didn't vanish completely.
"You always say that," she said quietly. "Even when it isn't true."
"This time it's true."
"Hmm." She tilted her head, and silver hair slid off one shoulder and over the bare curve of her breast. His eyes followed it before he could stop them. If she noticed, she didn't show it. "Then I'll believe you. This once."
Something warm and painful moved in his chest that had nothing to do with lust. It belonged to Yan Chi: the boy who'd been led by the hand, the boy whose bloody lip she had wiped. She was Cao family, from a small house that was loyal under the Yan branch's protection. She had been his friend for as long as either of them could remember. The girl who always protected him had become a woman whose beauty made the whole territory jealous of a weak young master who had never earned the privilege of standing next to her.
And he was standing here with a hard cock under his robe, staring at the shape of her pussy through damp silk.
Yeah, Yan Fan thought, without much remorse. Yeah, I'm going to hell. Again.
"I should go," Cao Ning said. "Father expects me for evening practice, and I'm already late." She hesitated. "Rest properly, all right? I'll come see you again soon."
"I will."
"See you next time, senior brother."
She turned and walked back down the steps.
He stared at her ass as she went.
It was smaller than his mother's, not as heavy and not as lush, but it was still full and round, two firm young cheeks that moved under the pale blue silk with a lively, springy sway. Where Yan Mei's ass had rolled slowly and heavily like a tide coming in, Cao Ning's bounced. There was youth in that motion, a quick tight lift on every step that made each cheek jump and settle, promising firm heat under the palm instead of heavy luxury. The silk clung to her as she walked down the path, cupping the lower curve of each cheek and dipping into the shadow between them whenever her stride lengthened.
And the side cuts rose high. With every step they swung open and showed the side of her ass, a pale flash of bare curved flesh where her hip rounded into her buttock, there and gone, there and gone, with the golden chain at her hip swinging across it like a pendulum. Once, as she stepped down onto the path, the cut gaped far enough that he saw the whole outer half of one bare cheek, taut and smooth, with the thin dark string of her underwear riding high across her hip before the silk fell closed.
He could imagine sliding a hand into one of those openings and cupping her bare cheek without any ceremony at all, feeling that firm young flesh fill his palm and push back against his fingers.
His cock throbbed so hard against the sash of his robe that his vision briefly swam. Blood rushed downward so fast it left him dizzy.
Five points for staring at Mother.
What do I get for staring at her?
The thought was filthy. He kept it anyway.
"Well-shaped ass, isn't it?"
The voice was smooth and lazy, and it came from right behind his shoulder.
"I wouldn't mind smacking it myself."
Every muscle in Yan Chi's body locked.
His body knew this voice even better than it knew Cao Ning's. It knew it from the courtyard, from the breakfast table and from the dark nights spent shaking on the floor. Before he could think, his shoulders were already hunching, his chin dropping, his eyes sliding toward the ground.
He forced his head up and turned around.
Yan Jing leaned against one of the veranda's lacquered pillars as if he owned it. He was taller than Yan Chi, broader in the chest and shoulders, with the lean, hard build of someone who trained every day and enjoyed it. His robe was dark green, embroidered with silver at the cuffs, and expensive. His face might have been handsome if it had ever learned an honest expression; instead it had settled into a permanent faint smirk, as if the world were a joke and he was the only one who got it.
He wasn't looking at Yan Chi. He was looking past him, at the garden path where Cao Ning's silver hair was disappearing around a flowering hedge. Hunger and contempt mixed together on his face, in his half-lidded eyes and in the tip of the tongue that touched his lower lip.
When she was gone, his gaze slid back to Yan Chi. It went down first, deliberately, to the front of Yan Chi's robe, and his mouth curled. Then it came up again.
"Look at you," Yan Jing said. "Up and walking. I was told you might not wake up at all." His smirk widened. "Disappointing."
Yan Chi said nothing. His heart was pounding.
Yan Jing pushed off the pillar and strolled closer. He moved slowly and easily, and the air around him seemed to thicken as he came. It was qi, Yan Chi realized, the faint pressure of a Qi Refining cultivator who didn't bother to hide his aura from someone beneath him.
"Body Refining, third stage," Yan Jing said softly, almost fondly. "At nineteen. Do you know the servants' brats in the stable yard are catching up to you? It's embarrassing. For the whole family." He stopped an arm's length away and looked Yan Chi up and down. "Trash with a good surname. That's all you are. And she still walks over here every other day to check on you like you're a sick puppy." His voice dropped. "You don't deserve a body like hers. You never did. Someday someone who does is going to take her, and you'll get to watch."
The old Yan Chi would have looked at the ground. He'd have mumbled something, or nothing, and waited for it to be over. He'd done it a thousand times.
But something new was rising in Yan Chi's chest. It was hot and reckless, Yan Fan's stubbornness braided together with nineteen years of Yan Chi's humiliation. Beneath it was the first heady taste of a cheat in his skull, a god-level method folded in his mind and a hidden band of metal cool against his wrist.
He lifted his chin and met Yan Jing's eyes.
"Aren't you just a piece of shit," he said, "who bullies the weak and kisses the asses of the strong?"
The words hung in the warm air.
Yan Jing's smirk died.
For a heartbeat his face went completely blank, the way a cat's face goes blank in the moment before it pounces. Then his eyes went flat and cold, and the pressure in the air spiked so hard that Yan Chi's ears popped.
Qi flared around Yan Jing's fist, a faint pale shimmer. Qi Refining, first stage. A whole realm above Body Refining's third.
The punch came faster than Yan Chi's eyes could follow.
Thud!
It hit him square in the chest like a thrown boulder. The force lifted him off his feet. He flew backward off the veranda's edge, over the low steps, and slammed down onto the stone path below.
Crack!
His back struck the flagstones, and the air exploded out of his lungs in one ragged whoosh. Pain burst across his chest and back, white and enormous, and blood filled his mouth, hot and coppery, tasting of old coins.
Move. Breathe. Breathe!
He couldn't. For a terrible second his lungs simply refused, locked in shock, and he lay on the stone with his mouth open and his vision going dark at the edges—
—and then the pain stopped short.
It didn't vanish. It just stopped growing, as if it had hit a wall.
Against his left wrist, the invisible armband hummed. He felt it vibrate against his skin, a deep, low thrum, drinking in the force that should have cracked his ribs or crushed his sternum. The blow that would have put the old Yan Chi in bed for a month flowed into the metal and simply… went somewhere else.
His lungs unlocked. He dragged in a breath that scraped like sand, then another.
Hurt? Yes. His chest throbbed, his back screamed, and his lip was split and bleeding.
Broken? No.
He lay on the flagstones and breathed through gritted teeth, staring up at the gold-washed sky.
Footsteps came down the steps, unhurried. Yan Jing's face appeared above him, upside down against the bright sky, his fists still clenched, a faint pale glow of qi fading around his knuckles. A flicker of confusion crossed his features. He'd expected more damage, maybe, or screaming. It was gone almost at once beneath fresh contempt.
"The family won't protect you everywhere," Yan Jing said. His voice was low and venomous, meant for Yan Chi's ears alone. "Your mother can't follow you around forever. Your sister is three days' journey away, licking Grand Elder Lan's boots. Remember that." He leaned down a little. "You're a shame to the Yan name. Learn your place, trash."
He didn't hit again.
This was still Yan Chi's residence, still watched ground, so close to Yan Mei's rooms that a scream would carry. Even a bully had limits when the young master he was beating belonged to a branch protected by Grand Elder Lan's disciple. Yan Jing straightened, spat to the side onto the flagstones a hand's width from Yan Chi's head, and turned away.
He walked off down the same garden path Cao Ning had taken. His steps carried none of her grace. They carried only the ugly, easy confidence of a man who had never once been knocked down himself.
Yan Chi lay on the stone for a long moment after the footsteps faded.
The flagstones were still warm from the day's sun. Above him a pale ghost of the moon hung over the eastern ridge, waiting for night. Somewhere in the forest beyond the walls a night bird called, a low, hollow note.
He was shaking.
It wasn't the blow that made him shake. The armband had taken most of that. It was what came after. Anger rose up through him, slow and thick and molten. It was Yan Chi's anger, a whole life of it, every cup of poisoned tea, every laugh, every time he'd looked at the ground. It was Yan Fan's anger too, at twenty-six years of being nobody, at a heart that had quit on him, at a world that had always belonged to men like Yan Jing.
He let it fill him. He let it burn.
His cock was still half-hard against the sash of his robe, stubbornly remembering the bounce of silver-haired silk on the garden path. The memory of his mother's breasts against his face lived on his skin. The god-level method waited in his mind like a loaded crossbow.
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the flagstones beside Yan Jing's spittle.
Just wait until I'm stronger than you, you bastard.
Slowly, carefully, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, then onto his feet. His chest protested and his back screamed in answer, and he ignored them both with the stubborn patience of a man who had already died once today and did not intend to stay on the ground. He wiped the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand and looked at the red smear across his knuckles, right across that thin white scar he'd never seen before today.
Then he lifted his eyes to the mountains, where the sinking sun was setting fire to the clouds draped over the peaks.
The Pervert System floated at the edge of his vision, faint, patient and shameless, its counter glowing at zero.
He climbed back up the veranda steps one at a time with a hand pressed to his ribs, slid open the door to his room and stepped into the sandalwood dark. The lamps were still burning in their bronze cranes. The silk covers still lay rumpled where he'd thrown them aside.
He didn't go to the bed. He lowered himself to the polished floor, crossed his legs with a wince, laid his hands palm up on his knees the way the glowing diagrams in his mind instructed, and closed his eyes.
"All right," he whispered to the system and the dark and the bruise spreading across his chest. "Let's see what god-level feels like."
He drew in his first breath.