“You don’t have to do this,” said Sen.

Lo Meifeng shook her head. “I realize that, by and large, you’ve done most of your fighting alone. That’s probably skewed your perspective a bit. Helping you fight is actually what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“There’s just three of them,” said Sen.

“You do realize that Shi Ping would probably spit blood if he realized that you were talking about two middle-stage core cultivators and a late-stage core cultivator. Honestly, it troubles me that you take them so lightly. You aren’t going to catch everyone off-guard and unawares. If they’re better trained than the people you’ve fought before, they’re a real threat. Even if they aren’t better trained, you should still treat them as a real threat. Being dismissive is exactly how most of the people you killed wound up dead.”

That brought Sen up short. He had been treating them dismissively. Lo Meifeng was right. That was a good way to get himself killed. Just as importantly, it wasn’t how he’d been trained. Master Feng had always told him to take every fight as deadly serious until he had a very good reason not to do so. He didn’t have a good reason to treat three core formation cultivators who were more advanced than he was lightly. They could be a deadly threat, particularly if they worked together in coordinated attacks. True, he’d been trained to deal with that, but that was no excuse to be stupid. He’d been letting his successes cloud his judgment, but they weren’t all combat successes. He hadn’t outfought everyone he’d faced. He’d out-thought several of them, and that was how he’d been trained.

Using brute force to solve every problem was a sucker’s bet because there was always something stronger out there. That was true even for peak nascent soul cultivators. Master Feng had pointed out that, if the heavens really wanted to kill him, they could do it. He’d also pointed out there were ancient spirit beasts wandering around that could probably do the same. He didn’t think that there were really that many of them, but that any existed served as a warning against too much hubris. Yet, he’d been ready to charge right into this situation and try to use brute force to deal with the problem.

“You have a point,” said Sen. “What do you suggest?”

Lo Meifeng cocked her head to one side and then smiled. “Let them stew.”

“What?”

“They probably know that you’ve been making the rounds. So, they’re waiting for you to go out and do them today. I say we let them stew until they’re ready to do something stupid.”

“Like what?”

Lo Meifeng shrugged. “Could be anything. Maybe they’ll send someone in to see if you’re really here. Maybe they’ll send someone back to get new orders. We’ll know it when we see it.”

“So, just do nothing?”

“Well, Falling Leaf had the right idea. One of us should go get some food. We might be here a while.”

“What if they all leave?”

“Then, we win for the day.”

“How’s that?”

“Not every victory needs a body count, Sen. If they leave without us having to do anything, then they wasted time and resources while we had dinner. That’s a win.”

Sen thought about that for a while before he nodded. “Alright. How likely do you think that is?”

Lo Meifeng shook her head. “Not very likely. I expect they’ll push for a fight.”

“Fair enough. In that case, I’ll go get us some food. Do you want anything in particular?”

“No.”

Sen went downstairs and waited around while the staff prepared a tray of food for him. He saw Shi Ping sitting with Falling Leaf. He was glowering at nothing and occasionally sipping at a cup of something. Fallin Leaf was cheerfully devouring plates of food and seemingly ignoring the man. It was probably the best strategy on her part. Plus, Sen suspected that she legitimately didn’t care what Shi Ping’s problem was or have any desire to talk about it with him. As long as he was willing to sit there and sulk in silence, though, she’d probably let him. Sen supposed that was better than the man going off to some brothel in an act of foolish defiance. Lo Meifeng wasn’t the kind to make idle threats. If Shi Ping tested her resolve, he’d come up on the wrong side of a deeply painful lesson. Whether he truly understood that fact was an open question that only time could answer.

Sen took the food back upstairs. He and Lo Meifeng ate a leisurely meal while the three cultivators who were waiting for Sen grew increasingly restless. They moved around more and more as time went by, as though they were worried that they’d missed him somehow. Sen pointed that out to Lo Meifeng, who nodded in agreement.

“If they’re going to make a stupid mistake, it’ll happen soon.”

“I kind of just want them to get on with whatever they’re going to do. I mean, sure, we’re well fed and not tired, but this waiting around stuff gets boring after a while.”

Lo Meifeng lifted an eyebrow at me. “Is that a commentary on the quality of my company?”

“I mean, you’re no Chan Yu Ming, but you’re alright.”

Lo Meifeng’s eyes went wide for a moment before they narrowed into dangerous slits. “Oh, there will be suffering in your future.”

Sen went to say something that would dig the hole a little deeper, but one of the middle-stage core cultivators bounding away over the rooftops caught his attention.

“Well, I guess you called it,” said Sen. “Do you think they went to get new orders or more people?”

Lo Meifeng frowned. “It could go either way. Regardless, now we should go say hello.”

“Divide and conquer?” Sen asked.

“Something along those lines.”

“Which one do you want?”

“I suppose I should take the late-stage core cultivator. It’ll seem strange if I leave him to you.”

“Do we care about that?”

“Yes. Just because there aren’t other cultivators that we can sense, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any others who can sense us. There are at least a few nascent soul cultivators here who can probably sense everything that happens inside the city walls.”

“Okay. I’ll follow your lead.”

“I doubt it, but we’ll pretend that’s what’s happening.”

Lo Meifeng, much as Sen had done once before, eschewed the front door in favor of the window. The pair of them made casual use of their qinggong techniques to get up to the rooftops and close with the pair of cultivators who had stayed behind. Sen made sure that he kept himself a little behind Lo Meifeng in a show of deference. Let everyone make what they will of that, he thought. Sen wasn’t above helping to muddy the waters where information about him was concerned. In fact, the less certain everyone was about the hierarchy in their group, the happier he would be. Lo Meifeng and Sen stopped on a rooftop and stared across a narrow alley at the cultivators who had been waiting for them. The late-stage core cultivator was a woman who, despite all of the beautification that cultivation provided during advancement, still managed to look unpleasant.

Sen couldn’t tell if it was just the way she was twisting her face up, or if she really was ugly. He supposed it wasn’t going to matter in a few minutes. The remaining middle-stage cultivator was, much to Sen’s surprise, a man who looked to be in his middle years. Either he had advanced incredibly slowly over the years, or he’d started exceptionally late and advanced very slowly. While the woman looked angry, the man looked grim, as though he expected everything to go terribly wrong for him in the immediate future. Sen thought that he was probably right to think that. Lo Meifeng inspected them both, gave the impression that she was wholly dismissing the man, and gave the woman a flat look.

“You think you’re clever, don’t you? Waiting until we sent someone away before you came out,” snarled the woman.

“Clever?” said Lo Meifeng. “If you think that’s clever, you’re in the wrong line of work. While you were out here doing…whatever useless things you were doing, we ate a nice meal and relaxed.”

“You don’t remember me, do you?” the woman asked in tones of pure venom. “I am Li Hua.”

Sen glanced over at the woman, but her eyes were fixed on Lo Meifeng. Sen was relieved that, for once, the personal grudge was aimed at someone other than him. Lo Meifeng gave the woman a harder look and frowned.

“You must have found it a much more memorable night than I did. It’s just so difficult to find good lovers, be they men or women. Rest assured, the problem was you, not me.”

While Li Hua spluttered in shock or outrage at Lo Meifeng’s words, Sen took the opportunity to start applying subtle pressure on the man. He’d gotten used to using his killing intent like a club, but he wanted to see if he could use it in other ways. The man just standing there seemed like a golden opportunity. Sen started with the tiniest sliver of killing intent he could manage and slowly, ever so slowly, started to build it up. Meanwhile, the woman had found her voice again.

“How dare you imply that I would sully myself that way?” Li Hua almost shrieked.

“Why are you offended? You did such a poor job of pleasuring me that I don’t even remember you. It seems as though I’m the one who was sullied in the affair.”

“You murdered my husband!”

“And you still went to bed with me?” asked Lo Meifeng, feigning shock. “You weren’t very loyal, were you?”

Whatever tiny shreds of self-control Li Hua possessed disappeared as rage overtook her. “Kill them!”

Li Hua was so enraged, that she didn’t even attack Lo Meifeng with qi. Instead, she simply threw herself across the alley, drawing a pair of war fans from a storage treasure. So livid was the woman, that she didn’t even notice that the man hadn’t moved. He was fixed in place, shuddering uncontrollably, the whites showing around his eyes, and his gaze fixed on Sen. Lo Meifeng, who had apparently been waiting for Li Hua to do something stupid, lifted a hand and thrust it toward the woman. A web of white-hot strands launched from Lo Meifeng’s palm and wrapped around Li Hua’s entire body. The move had been so swift that Li Hua didn’t have time to prepare a defense.

Even if Li Hua hadn’t been screaming in agony, Sen would have smelled the scorching clothes, charring flesh, and burning hair. Yet, as easy as it would have been for that to distract him, Sen remained focused. He continued to increase the pressure on the man, whose mouth had opened in a silent scream of terror. Sen started cycling for water, fire, and wind. A part of him noted that there had been a time when doing that would have been difficult. He also would have been awed at even being able to manage the cycling, let alone doing anything with the qi. Now, it was just one more thing. Sen recalled that Lo Meifeng had once told him that he set his bar for excellence too high. He wondered if his bar for wonder was getting too high as well.

In a process that probably would have looked almost instantaneous to anyone watching, Sen condensed water from the air and shaped it into six-inch spikes. He used his fire qi to bleed off the heat in the water and form ice spikes. Then, with a thought, he sent those dozens of ice spikes hurtling over the alley and into the body of the middle-stage core cultivator. In a reflective moment, he realized that he could probably have just used one ice spike and sent it through the man’s eye and into his brain. Still, he supposed it was better to be certain his enemy was dead than to be overconfident about how well a single attack would work.

Sen heard the sound of metal-on-metal and glanced over. It seemed that Li Hua had survived that initial attack of Lo Meifeng’s, although not without consequence. Most of the hair on her head had been burned away, and the rest of her was a hideous crosshatch of marred flesh and clothing. Despite the terrible pain she must have been in, though, she moved with the speed and grace of someone who had endured the kinds of countless hours of training Sen himself had endured. She was also using wind qi to lob wind blades at Lo Meifeng, and sprinkling in attacks using hardened whips of air. Lo Meifeng danced and dodged around these qi attacks, and sent small fireballs at Li Hua, who flinched away from them. After that fire web attack, though, Sen imagined he’d be wary of fire as well.

He considered intervening but decided that wasn’t appropriate. Especially if there were unseen observers. Whatever else had brought Li Hua to this place, there was something personal between her and Lo Meifeng. He’d let them settle it unless Lo Meifeng got into real trouble. Instead, he used his qi to loot the body of the man on the other roof, snagging the usual assortment of goods. However, he also got a necklace made of jade that had a staggering amount of qi stored in it. Since he wasn’t entirely certain what it was, though, he simply put it into a pocket for later examination. He kept half an eye on the fight between Li Hua and Lo Meifeng, but it became clear which way that fight was going to end when Li Hua stumbled. Lo Meifeng capitalized ruthlessly on it, severing the tendons in the back of one of Li Hua’s knees. The woman screamed, staggered, and fell. By the time Li Hua managed to get oriented, Lo Meifeng had conjured a blade made of pure fire and driven it into Li Hua’s heart.

Sen pretended he didn’t hear Li Hua’s final declaration of hatred as the life drained from her eyes.

“You stole everything from me.”

Sen was going to give Lo Meifeng a moment to herself, but an intuition sent him sprinting toward her. He didn’t have time to explain, so he simply lowered a shoulder, caught her in the middle, and swept her over a shoulder. He activated his qinggong technique, fueling it with core qi, and launched them into the sky. He felt the building they’d been standing on explode behind them. Having been in a situation like this before, he knew better than to ignore that explosion. He cycled hard and created a dome of hardened air behind them. He wasn’t looking in that direction, so he didn’t know exactly what hit the dome, but it was big enough and moving fast enough that it strained Sen’s limits to keep the dome intact. Unfortunately, the impact also added to their velocity and altered their trajectory. Unless Sen was badly misjudging, they were going to crash into the thick city wall at a speed that would probably be enough to kill them both.