Wang Xuan Joins Them

They walked and talked.

The western market opened up around them into a wide square paved with gray stone, ringed with stalls under striped awnings, and the noise of it washed over them — the clang of a smith's hammer, the shrill haggling of a woman buying silk, a caged spirit bird screaming the same three notes over and over. They drifted through it without any destination. Both of them were preparing for the demonic academy's entrance exam, now only days away, and it was the easiest thing to talk about.

"Aren't you excited about the academy?" Cao Ning asked. She kept her eyes on the stalls rather than on him. "There'll be so many new people. New places. The main sect's peaks, the libraries, the beast gardens."

Yan Chi nodded. "Of course I am." He glanced sideways at her profile, at the line of her jaw and the silver lashes. "We'll go there together. And get stronger together."

Hearing those words, she felt a different kind of embarrassment, warmer and more tender than the shameful heat that had been following her for two days. She had always had deep feelings for him. She was almost sure he had them for her, too.

Neither of them had ever said so cleanly; their language had always been shy support, a hand offered without comment, a seat saved, a wrist tied with a red luck talisman. His promise of together warmed her chest — even while, lower down, her cunt remembered the eyes of fifty men on an arena floor.

He noticed then that her skin really was glowing, brighter than he had ever seen it, as though she had swallowed sunlight. Her presence felt stronger, too; when he brushed her with his spiritual sense out of curiosity, her qi felt dense and smooth and wide, like a river that had burst its old banks and settled into a broader bed.

And her body — he could barely believe such beauty existed, and it seemed to have grown even sexier since the last time he saw her. As they walked, his eyes kept dropping to her breasts.

They moved with every step, full and heavy, swaying and bouncing in their narrow strips of cloth, and they looked so smooth and warm that his palms itched. Only the middle strip covered them; everything around it was bare enough to map their shape exactly.

From the side he could not see her nipples. He could see the outline of one, faintly, through the thin cloth. He remembered — vividly, with a jolt that went straight to his cock — the feeling of that breast under his palm in the crowded street two months ago, the warm give of it, the firmness beneath.

He wanted to know the shape of her nipples. He wanted to know their color. He could think of no polite way to find out.

Yan Chi catalogued fantasies. Cao Ning catalogued guilt. Neither of them spoke the true inventory aloud. A street performer's drum filled a silence that might have become a confession if either of them had been braver or crueler.

They talked about the academy dormitories instead — whether disciples shared rooms, whether the food was as bad as rumor said. They talked about Yan Jing and the sneer he would certainly wear at the gates.

They did not talk about oil or needles, or about the way her pussy had grown wet simply because Yan Chi's eyes kept dropping to her chest.

Other people noticed her too. Wherever they walked, heads turned to follow her. A spice merchant stopped mid-sentence with a scoop of red pepper suspended over his scale. A pair of young cultivators lounging outside a wine shop straightened and elbowed each other and stared at her bare hips as she passed.

An older man in a silk robe turned all the way around on the spot to watch her ass, his mouth slightly open. Yan Chi saw every one of them, and every one of them gave him a small, hot spike of something between pride and jealousy.

Cao Ning saw them too. She did not hurry. She did not tug at her short panels. When the man in the silk robe turned to stare, Yan Chi could have sworn that her stride lengthened very slightly, just enough to make the rear panel swing higher, though when he looked at her face it was fixed straight ahead and as composed as a temple statue.

She felt every one of those glances. Each one landed on her breast like a fingertip. And each one, heavens help her, made the purr in her channels rise and stretch and settle a little warmer.

Lost in admiration of her innocent face and her not-so-innocent body, Yan Chi almost missed the shout behind them.

"Brother Chi!"

He turned. A young man his own age was running toward them through the crowd — a big young man, broad and heavy, his round belly jiggling under a fine brocade robe with every pounding step, his face shining with sweat and bright with joy. He bounced off a porter, apologized without slowing, sidestepped a cart with surprising nimbleness, and came on like a runaway barrel. Yan Chi knew him at once from the original host's memories, and the recognition came with a rush of warmth he had not expected.

Wang Xuan. His only loyal male friend.

The Wangs were a merchant family; old Wang Fengrui ran the Merchant Association and did a great deal of business with Yan Tian, which was how the two boys had met at some long-ago banquet, both bored and hiding under the same table.

Wang Xuan did resemble a little pig with all his excess weight — round cheeks, small nose, stacked chins, one one above the other. But his eyes were sharp and deep, and they missed very little.

Despite his merchant blood, he had always wanted to become a cultivator, and his father had finally given in and hired a tutor so that he could sit for the demonic academy alongside the clan sons.

He panted to a stop in front of them, hands on his knees, grinning up at Yan Chi — and then he noticed Cao Ning, and straightened, and his grin widened.

"Oh, and Miss Cao's here with Brother Yan Chi too." He put on a wounded face that fooled no one. "You two don't even remember me, huh? A month without a single letter. I could have died. I could have been eaten by a spirit beast. Nobody would have known."

Yan Chi looked at his friend and felt the original host's memories of him rise like bubbles in water. Whenever Yan Chi had been miserable — after Yan Jing's beatings, after the clan elders' sneers — Wang Xuan had appeared with a purse full of his father's silver and dragged him off to a brothel to lift his spirits.

They had peeped at women's bathhouses together through knotholes. They had gambled away Wang Xuan's allowance at dice. They had caused more mischief in Jinling than either of their fathers ever learned about. Wang Xuan had been reliable in the filthiest possible ways, and he had never once mocked the useless young master for being useless.

Yan Chi wanted to laugh at the memory of that running posture, all elbows and belly, and controlled himself with effort.

Wang Xuan turned to Cao Ning and bowed, exaggeratedly deep, until his belly made the motion comic. "Miss Cao, still blinding the weak, I see. My eyes need to cultivate just to survive you."

Cao Ning snorted despite herself. It was the first almost-real laugh she had given in days, and the sound of it made both young men glance at each other with the private male understanding that said she's in a mood, don't ruin it.

Wang Xuan fell into step on Yan Chi's other side, already complaining about his tutor's dawn forms, already asking whether the Yan kitchens still made the sweet spirit-buns he loved, already — when he thought no one was looking — sliding his gaze down Cao Ning's bare back to the sway of her ass under that short rear panel.

"We were busy preparing for the exam," Yan Chi said, shifting the blame with a smile. "But you didn't contact us either, did you? All right, let's forget it. Walk with us."

They went on as a trio.

"So," Wang Xuan said, dropping his voice to a stage whisper as they walked, "I heard a rumor that a certain young master of the Yan branch got his twin maids back. Both of them. In front of the whole family." He waggled his eyebrows. "Is it true they wait for you in your bed? Naked? Every night?"

Cao Ning's head snapped around. Yan Chi felt his face go hot. "Where did you hear that?"

"Everyone's heard it. The whole city's heard it. My father's clerks talk about nothing else." Wang Xuan sighed theatrically. "And here I've been, going to the Jade Fragrance Pavilion alone like a widower. You could at least invite me over for tea."

"They're my maids," Yan Chi said. "They serve tea."

"Oh, I'm sure they serve."

Cao Ning said nothing at all. But she walked a little faster for a while, her chin lifted and her eyes on the road ahead, and Yan Chi could not tell whether the color in her cheeks was jealousy or something else entirely.

At the edge of the square Wang Xuan stopped at a stall selling honey-glazed spirit-buns and bought a dozen before anyone could object, juggling the hot paper bag from hand to hand and blowing on his fingers. He pressed one on each of them.

Yan Chi bit into his and found it filled with sweet red-bean paste and a thread of spiritual warmth that spread pleasantly through his chest. Cao Ning held hers in both hands and nibbled at it, and a drop of honey glaze fell from the bun onto the bare inner curve of her breast and slid slowly down toward her cleavage, leaving a glistening amber trail on her skin.

Both young men watched it go. Neither breathed. She noticed, flushed scarlet, and wiped it away with her thumb — and then, without thinking, licked the honey off her thumb, and Wang Xuan made a small strangled noise and choked on his own bun.

Yan Chi pounded him on the back. Cao Ning looked away with her ears burning. The purr in her meridians hummed like a plucked string.

As they walked on, Yan Chi kept noticing more upgrades in her. Her breasts seemed larger than he remembered, her skin smoother, and her clothes somehow more revealing than his memory of her usual cut — she had always dressed in the demonic fashion, but never quite like this. He smiled at her.

"Cao Ning, you're looking more beautiful than ever," he said. "Did something good happen?"

She flared up at once, a little angry to hide her panic. "You idiot, I've always been beautiful. What good thing could possibly happen to me?" Then she fell silent, remembering the window, the table, and the strange purr curled in her channels.

Inside, her heart was hammering. Did something good happen. She thought of her master's oiled hands and the needles glinting in her nipples and the pink fog and the blurred hour she had decided was a dream, and the word good turned over in her stomach like something rotten and sweet at once. She could not look at him. She looked at a stall selling paper lanterns instead, and counted the lanterns, and got to eleven before her face cooled enough to turn back.

Yan Chi watched their old familiar bickering and felt at ease for the first time all day. "Let's all go to the demonic academy together," he said, "and have some fun."

The three of them felt the excitement of it, and the determination; only a few days remained before the exam. Wang Xuan punched Yan Chi on the shoulder and swore that he, at least, would not sink in the entrance trials. Cao Ning almost smiled. Almost.

---

They wandered without a plan, and without meaning to they left the city behind.

The western gate let them out onto a road lined with willows, and the road turned into a path, and the path climbed gently into the forest that pressed up against Jinling's walls on that side. The noise of the city faded behind them into a distant hum and then into nothing.

Sunlight came down through the leaves in shifting coins of gold. Spirit moss glowed faintly green on the north sides of the trunks, and somewhere ahead a stream ran over stones with a sound like quiet laughter. Wang Xuan, puffing on the slope, complained loudly that nobody had warned him there would be hills.

Cao Ning walked ahead of both of them with her long legs carrying her easily up the path, and the rear panel of her dress lifted and fell with every step, and Wang Xuan stopped complaining.

On the willow road, with the city noise falling away behind them, Wang Xuan walked backward in front of the other two so he could talk with his hands, and asked Cao Ning which peak she meant to aim for at the academy.

"Wherever will take me," she said. "The sword peak, if I'm lucky. Anywhere with a library."

"You'll be lucky," Yan Chi said. "Your qi feels different. Stronger. I noticed it in the market."

She kept her eyes on the road. "My master did some meridian work for me. Two days ago." A small pause. "A widening."

Wang Xuan stopped walking backward and nearly fell over a root. "A full widening? Elder Chang did that for you? My father would pay a fortune for that. He tried to buy one for me last year and the Spirit Realm healer laughed at him."

"It took all afternoon," Cao Ning said. "The end of it is hazy. Like a dream." Her ears had gone pink, and she walked a little faster.

Yan Chi looked at her profile and felt a flicker of something he could not name, a faint unease that slid away before he could catch it. "Elder Chang must think highly of you," he said.

"He's very thorough," she said, and the color in her ears spread to her cheeks, and she did not explain why. A wild bird called somewhere off in the willows. Neither boy noticed that her hand had drifted to her hip and pressed there for a moment, flat, as though holding something in.

The forest closed over them, old oaks and spirit-pines with bark the color of rust, and the path wound between their roots in a springy carpet of fallen needles.

Light came down through the canopy in long slanting shafts full of drifting dust and tiny winged insects, and every time Cao Ning walked through one of those shafts it lit her like a lamp: the silver of her hair flared white, the pale blue strips over her breasts turned briefly translucent, and the bare curve of her hip where the skirt panel was slit glowed like polished jade.

Then she stepped into shadow again and was only a young woman in a daring dress walking ahead of him on a forest path, her panels swinging with every step.

Yan Chi walked behind her and tried to look at the trees. He was not very successful. The rear panel of her skirt was short enough that when the path climbed, it lifted, and when it lifted he caught the lower swell of her bare cheeks, or thought he did, before it fell again.

He could not tell whether he had seen skin or the shadow of skin. The System, which had paid him for so many smaller glimpses, stayed stubbornly silent, and its silence told him he had not seen enough.

He found himself climbing with his eyes fixed on the hem of a skirt like a starving man watching a kitchen door, and he made himself look up at the canopy instead, and counted spirit-pines, and lost count at eleven.

Wang Xuan, puffing up the slope behind them both, had no such scruples. He was not even pretending to look at the trees. When Yan Chi glanced back, the fat young master's eyes were locked on the same swinging hem, and his round face wore the expression of a scholar in front of a rare manuscript. Yan Chi gave him a hard look. Wang Xuan widened his eyes in innocent surprise, pointed at a spirit-pine, and said loudly, "Remarkable bark on that one," and nearly walked into it.