Secret Weapon in the Wreckage

Ximen Lang's narrow eyes moved past Ye Qiong to the wreckage of the barrels.

To the young man sprawled in them: soaked, bleeding, his fine silk robe slashed open across the chest, his topknot half undone. To the soft, pale, unmistakable face.

His pupils shrank to points.

"Li Yuguo?!"

And then—Li Yuguo watched it happen—something slid across Ximen Lang's sharp, handsome face. It was there and gone in an instant. A small, sinister smile, curling at one corner of his thin mouth, like a snake tasting the air.

Then it was replaced by an expression of the deepest concern. Ximen Lang strode past Ye Qiong as if his junior brother did not exist, and bent over the broken barrels, and offered Li Yuguo his hand.

"So it turns out to be His Highness the Consort!" he said. "My junior brother is ignorant—he has no eyes—he didn't recognize Your Highness! I beg Your Highness to forgive him!"

Li Yuguo looked up at him, and narrowed his eyes.

So it's like that.

He knew this man. He had written him, after all. And there was a rule in stories like this, as old as storytelling itself: villains recognized villains. They smelled each other. They cherished each other, the way wolves in a famine cherish another wolf who knows where the deer are.

Ximen Lang was a schemer. A player of games. If Li Yuguo had been an ordinary commoner, Ximen Lang would not have spared him a second glance; he would have stepped over his corpse to scold his junior brother for wasting time. But Li Yuguo was not a commoner. Whatever else he was—soft rice king, prodigal son, laughingstock—he was the consort of the Third Prince's daughter. He was married into the royal family.

And a connection to the royal family was useful. Ximen Lang would not set himself against the royal house for the sake of a junior brother.

Especially this junior brother.

Because Ye Qiong was the True Yuan Sect's genius of a hundred years. And a genius of a hundred years was a very great threat to the position of the Sect Master's son.

Thinking of this, Li Yuguo's eyes rolled once in his head. Then he took Ximen Lang's hand and let himself be pulled up out of the wreckage.

"It's all right, it's all right—it doesn't matter at all!" He brushed splinters off his ruined robe and beamed. "And this must be the famous Ximen Lang! Senior Brother Ximen! I've heard so much about you!"

"Hahaha! Your Highness flatters me!" Ximen Lang laughed. "Please, wait a moment." He reached into his robe and drew out a small white porcelain bottle, stoppered with red wax, and pressed it into Li Yuguo's hand. "This is the healing medicine of my True Yuan Sect. Please accept it as compensation, Your Highness. And be generous to my junior brother."

"Good talk, good talk!" Li Yuguo tucked the bottle away and clasped his fists, ignoring the blood dripping from his shoulder and the rainwater dripping from his hair. "Senior Brother Ximen and I are like old friends meeting at last! If you don't mind, why not come to my house some time for a get-together? We can talk about life!"

---

Footsteps sounded at the end of the alley.

Guan Yunfan came around the corner at a run, his sword already half out of its sheath, his one eye blazing—with Jun Xue clinging to the hem of his cloak, white hair flying, gasping for breath.

She went for help, Li Yuguo thought, and something warm loosened in his chest. She didn't run.

Then the King of Thieves saw Ximen Lang. And Ximen Lang saw the King of Thieves.

Both men stopped dead.

For a long moment, they simply stared at each other down the length of the narrow lane. The air between them seemed to tighten. Ximen Lang's fierce aura brushed against something cold and still and patient coming off the one-eyed man, and neither gave an inch, and the silence grew thick and awkward.

"The King of Thieves?!" Ximen Lang's eyes narrowed to slits.

He looked from the scarred man back to Li Yuguo. And Li Yuguo could practically hear him thinking: It seems I was right to stop that fool. Don't judge this kid by his soft-rice reputation. If the King of Thieves himself comes running to help him, his background must be much deeper than it looks.

Guan Yunfan had recognized him too. He did not draw his sword the rest of the way. But he did not put it back, either. He clasped his free fist to the hilt in a cool salute.

"Brother Ximen," he said. "My brother and yours are well water and river water. We don't cross each other's streams. Why do you want to fight?"

"Hahaha—misunderstanding! It's all a misunderstanding!" Li Yuguo stepped between them, waving both hands. "I just had a little verbal friction with this young brother here, that's all, and Senior Brother Ximen came along and stopped it in time. We should thank him!"

The King of Thieves looked at Li Yuguo's bleeding shoulder, and at his torn robe, and at the wreckage of the barrels. His one eye narrowed. But he let his sword slide back into its scabbard.

"I see," he said. "Then on behalf of my brother, many thanks."

Ximen Lang smiled faintly.

He had already made up his mind.

His position in the True Yuan Sect had been shaken badly since Ye Qiong arrived. His own father, the Sect Master, was far too fond of the boy. If things went on like this, the next head of the sect would sooner or later be Ye Qiong, not him—the son passed over for an adopted genius. And here, in this alley, Ye Qiong and this Li Yuguo had just been trying to kill each other. They would never be friends. They might well become deadly enemies.

And Li Yuguo smelled the same as Ximen Lang. A man who knew how to wear a mask. With the King of Thieves at his side.

He would befriend Li Yuguo. Even if only for the sake of the resources around him.

---

"Senior Brother." Ye Qiong had picked himself up, clutching his ribs. His sword had gone dark; the white flame had died with his momentum. His face was red and twisted. "This guy is notorious in Nalan City! Everyone knows what he is! Are you really going to—"

"What?" Ximen Lang turned on him with a glare like a slap. "Haven't you disgraced us enough for one day?"

Ye Qiong's mouth snapped shut.

He went scarlet. His fists clenched at his sides. He had never been spoken to like that in front of an outsider, and to be humiliated twice in one afternoon—once by the soft rice king, once by his own senior brother for the soft rice king—was almost more than he could bear. He said nothing. But he looked at Li Yuguo with a hatred so pure it was almost beautiful, and Li Yuguo knew that look would follow him for a long time.

"Now, now," said Li Yuguo generously. "It's fine. He's just a hairy child. Young and ignorant." He smiled at Ye Qiong with every appearance of warmth. "And to have martial cultivation like that at his age—it's truly rare. He's a genius!"

"Hmph." Ximen Lang snorted coldly. "This kid just has good luck, that's all. It turned out he was born with a rare bloodline, so his cultivation speed is strange compared to normal people." He clasped his fists to Li Yuguo. "Thank you, Your Highness, for not holding it against this small person. But the two of us have important business, and we must hurry back to the sect. In a few days, I'll come and apologize to Master Li properly. We'll have a meal together!"

"Good! Then we'll see each other soon!"

The two villains looked at each other, and smiled, and both of them were wearing masks.

Ye Qiong, standing to one side, looked at the two of them smiling at each other and made a small noise of disgust in his throat, as if he were about to spit.

Li Yuguo almost laughed. As the author, he had written exactly this kind of scene a dozen times: two snakes in silk, embracing like brothers in adversity, each with a knife behind his back. He was rather proud of how naturally it came.

There followed several rounds of reluctant farewells and several rounds of enthusiastic urgings to stay—no, no, you must come for tea; no, no, we truly must go; next time, then, next time—until at last Ximen Lang and Ye Qiong walked out of the alley together and were gone.

---

Li Yuguo let out a long breath and slumped against the wall.

"How," he muttered to himself, "could I have written such a brain-dead male protagonist… tsk, tsk."

He looked down the lane in the direction they had gone, and the humor drained out of him.

He would have to speed up his cultivation. A lot.

Because Ye Qiong's bloodline had not even awakened yet. That white flame, that monstrous surge of speed and strength—that had been the Raging Wave Dragon Ape barely stirring in its sleep. A crack. A leak. If Ye Qiong ever learned to call on it properly, Li Yuguo would not be a match for him. Not even close. And Ye Qiong's talent was frightening—he was a monster of cultivation. No matter how hard Li Yuguo worked, the boy would climb faster.

The bloodline of the Raging Wave Dragon Ape had only woken a little, and it had already nearly killed him.

That frightened Li Yuguo more than he wanted to admit.

"Master." Jun Xue had come up beside him, her pale eyes huge in her thin face. "Are you all right?"

He looked down at her, and smiled, and put his good hand on top of her head.

"Haha. Thank you for speaking up for me back there."

She smiled up at him—a small, shy, sweet smile, the first he had seen on her face.

"The young master gave this servant a name," she said softly. "And healed this servant's wounds. The young master is this servant's benefactor…"

---

"That Ximen Lang," said Guan Yunfan darkly, "is not a good person."

He was watching the mouth of the alley, his one eye cold.

"He's despicable and shameless," the King of Thieves said. "Insidious. Cunning. Arrogant. And since his father is the head of the True Yuan Sect, he thinks he can do every kind of evil he likes and no one will ever call him to account."

"I know," said Li Yuguo. "But people like that are greedy. And because they're greedy, sometimes we can still make use of them."

Guan Yunfan turned and looked at him.

Then his scarred face broke into a broad, admiring grin, and he raised both thumbs.

"As expected of Elder Brother! You make the best use of everything under heaven! It's like the calculations of a god! Nothing—nothing—escapes Elder Brother's eyes!"

"Ease up," said Li Yuguo. "Ease up."

---

But he was thinking about something else.

During the fight—at the moment Ye Qiong's sword had ignited—a new line had flickered into existence on his status page. He had felt it more than seen it, a small cool bloom of light at the edge of his vision. Now, while Guan Yunfan was busy praising him and Jun Xue was busy picking splinters out of his hair, he quietly called it up.

It sat beneath his life span, in a little gold frame of its own. Two bars, one above the other, like the health bars in a fighting game.

[ Halo ]

Current Villain Halo: 4.5% — Owner: Li Yuguo Current Protagonist Halo: 95.5% — Owner: Ye Qiong

He stared at it.

Halo. Of course. He had written it into the bones of his world, the invisible thread of fate that bound the protagonist and his enemies together. Luck. Destiny. The weight of the story itself. Ye Qiong had almost all of it.

But not all.

Four and a half percent belonged to Li Yuguo.

The fight, he realized. The fight did that. Ye Qiong had lost control of his emotions. He had been humiliated, beaten, made to doubt himself, forced to wake his bloodline before its time—and with every crack in his certainty, a little of the halo had bled away and pooled on Li Yuguo's side of the scales.

He had been cut, kicked, and thrown into a pile of barrels.

And he had made a very handsome profit.

Li Yuguo laughed quietly to himself.

"All right," he said aloud. "Time to find Dacheng and the others. I've wasted too much time here already."