"It's how they were raised," Medusa said, with a quiet sigh. "You can't place all the blame on them."
"That's because you're too soft on your own people." Xiao Se shook his head, something between exasperation and fondness in his expression. "All sorts of people think they can walk all over you and get away with it. Take that Mobas, for instance — perfectly deferential to your face, but two-faced through and through. On one hand he admires and reveres you, practically worships the ground you walk on. On the other hand, because of that rigid, immovable thinking of his, he harbors genuine malice toward your sister. Sees Die as a threat to your position. Sees her as something that needs to be removed." His voice was light, but the edge beneath it was real. "Today I only broke every bone in his body. Honestly, that was letting him off easy."
"Admiration?" Medusa caught the word and turned it over, something shifting in her expression. A sly gleam surfaced in her beautiful eyes — the particular gleam of a woman who has spotted an opening and has every intention of stepping through it. "Oh? So our Lord Xiao is jealous, is he?"
"Jealous?" Xiao Se curled his lip with magnificent disdain. "Of that? Giant head, neck like a tree trunk, fangs as thick as a baby's wrist — why in the world would I be jealous of something that looks like that?"
He said it with complete conviction.
Internally, he was quietly reconsidering. He'd only broken the man's bones. In retrospect, that had been restrained to the point of generosity. He should have been more creative.
Although — a brief, practical thought surfaced — Mobas was a snake-man. Certain retributive options available for human opponents weren't anatomically accessible. He considered the application of strange fire instead, and decided there were ways to make the point permanently and without ambiguity.
He filed this away for later.
Medusa watched his expression cycle through several things and then settle into something suspicious, and wisely chose not to inquire further.
Instead, the dangerous smile that appeared on her face was the kind that preceded things going wrong for the other party.
"Xiao Se."
The two syllables, spoken in that particular tone, sent a distinct chill down Xiao Se's spine. He looked at her warily. "…What?"
"Where exactly were you," Medusa asked, her voice carrying the sweet, precise quality of a blade being drawn slowly from a sheath, "for the past month?"
"Getting the poison pill technique from that old soul-form man," Xiao Se said, without a flicker of hesitation. His hand was already in his storage ring, producing a scroll with smooth efficiency. "I mentioned it before I left, didn't I?"
Medusa nodded pleasantly. "You did. And that old man — he was in Wutan City, if I recall correctly." She paused. "So why were you in the Imperial Capital of the Jia Ma Empire?" The smile remained perfectly in place. "You weren't there to see that girl, Ya Fei, were you? Spend a night or two?"
Xiao Se's lips did something complicated.
He stood there for a moment with the expression of a man who is rapidly evaluating his options and finding all of them inadequate.
Are women's instincts actually supernatural? he thought, with genuine, helpless admiration. Every single time.
That night.
The grand hall at the heart of the Medusa Temple in the Serpent City was, under normal circumstances, a place of considerable dignity — soaring stone architecture, the low amber light of permanent flame, the kind of space that made you speak in measured tones and carry yourself with appropriate gravity.
These were not normal circumstances.
A tremendous crash reverberated through the hall, followed by the unmistakable sounds of an extremely one-sided physical altercation, and then the great double doors burst open. A dark figure shot outward in a graceful involuntary arc, rotated through several impressive somersaults entirely without choice, and carved two long, parallel furrows into the cobblestone pavement outside before friction and the laws of physics jointly negotiated a stop.
The doors swung shut behind him, sealed with a pulse of deep crimson battle qi.
Xiao Se lay in his furrows for a moment.
Then he sat up, brushed a fleck of stone dust from his sleeve, raised his eyes toward the sealed doors, and curled his lip with the philosophical resignation of a man accepting consequences he had technically brought upon himself.
"Does she have to be this dramatic?" he muttered to no one in particular, picking himself up off the cobblestones with as much dignity as the situation allowed. "She's practically a bride. You'd think a prospective bride would show some generosity of spirit."
He looked at the doors. The doors did not open.
No bed tonight, then.
"That's because you're too fickle, Brother." Long Kui's voice surfaced in his mind, carrying the specific tone of someone who is fond of you but is currently not taking your side. "Count them — Long Kui, Medusa, Xian'er, Zhuqing, Yu'er, Dong'er, Huaizhu. That's seven. And then you told her about Ya Fei and Yun Yun, the Yunlan Sect Master on top of that. Nine." A pause weighted with significance. "You're almost at ten, Brother. No wonder she threw you out. Honestly."
Xiao Se's expression went carefully neutral. "Actually, Long Kui — there's one more you don't know about."
A longer pause.
"…Which one?" Long Kui's voice had taken on the cautious tone of someone who suspects they're not going to enjoy the answer. "I thought I'd kept track of everyone. Is it Xun'er?" She answered herself before he could respond. "It can't be — Brother doesn't have real feelings for her yet. That shouldn't count."
"No, not Xun'er." Xiao Se scratched the back of his neck. "Like Huaizhu, she's from another world. You and Medusa were both still in the valley of the Monster Mountain Range at the time. After Xian'er and I finished sparring, I had some time to spare and went wandering. It was entirely coincidental."
"How coincidental?"
And so Xiao Se recounted the story of Li Hanyi.
Long Kui listened to the whole thing without interrupting. When he finished, she pressed a hand to her forehead.
Ten. It had genuinely broken ten.
She turned it over for a moment — the circumstances, the logic of it, the precise sequence of events that had led, through a chain of individually reasonable steps, to the current arithmetic. And she found, somewhat against her will, that she couldn't entirely assign blame. Li Hanyi had gone looking for Zhao Yuzhen. Xiao Se had simply materialized in the wrong place at a dramatically inopportune moment. One mistaken identity, one battle, one thing leading to another—
It was, as he said, coincidental.
This didn't make ten any smaller a number.
"Brother," Long Kui said, after a thoughtful pause, "should we go see her? Li Hanyi, I mean." Her voice had softened into something genuinely earnest. She knew — better than most — what waiting felt like when the person you were waiting for didn't come. She had waited a thousand years. She would not wish that on anyone if she could help it.
"Might as well," Xiao Se agreed, with the easy practicality of a man whose evening plans had just been cancelled by a locked door. "We're free tonight. We can visit Huaizhu and Dong'er while we're at it." He had drawn a permanent Young Swordsman's Journey travel voucher just yesterday. The timing was reasonable.
"Lord Xiao Se."
The voice came from the shadow of a nearby colonnade — clear and polite, carrying that particular quality of someone who has been waiting a careful moment to speak.
Two figures stepped into the torchlight. One was small and graceful, with a long blue tail — Yue'er, instantly recognizable. The other was notably taller, with a figure of striking natural confidence — Yue Mei, one of the eight commanders of the Snake-People, whom Xiao Se had met once before under circumstances considerably more fraught than these.
"Leader Yue Mei. Yue'er." Xiao Se greeted them with easy familiarity as they approached.
"I genuinely didn't expect you to remember me, Lord Xiao Se." Yue Mei's smile was warm and somewhat wry — the expression of a woman recalibrating a memory. She belonged to the faction most loyal to Medusa directly, and her feelings toward this particular human had always been favorable. He had saved her disciple. He had helped the Queen complete her evolution. That counted for a great deal.
"You were a Dou Wang when we first met," Xiao Se replied, the corner of his mouth lifting. "And I was a minor Dou Shi. Honestly, I almost wish I'd forgotten — it's a little embarrassing in retrospect."
Yue Mei let out a dry laugh. Three years ago, this boy had walked into a negotiation with the Snake-People's Queen carrying nothing but a strange flame and a composure that had no business being that steady. Who could have imagined that the same person would be standing here now, about to become said queen's husband, with a cultivation that made her commander look like a practice target?
"Lord Xiao Se—" Yue'er stepped forward, her curiosity winning out over her discretion, "—my teacher and I heard a rather significant commotion coming from Her Majesty's residence just now. Is everything alright?"
"Perfectly fine." Xiao Se waved a hand, his expression entirely serene. "Your Queen and I made a small wager. I lost. My punishment is sleeping outside tonight."
"Ah." Yue'er absorbed this. Her cheeks tinted faintly, and she appeared to think it over for a moment with the sincere helpfulness of someone who takes hospitality seriously. "Well — if Lord Xiao Se doesn't mind, the side hall where I live has several empty rooms. You're welcome to stay there for the night."
The offer was entirely genuine. It was also, immediately, accompanied by a sharp sideways look from Yue Mei, who was rapidly running calculations about her disciple's motivations and not arriving at a comfortable conclusion.
Xiao Se caught both the offer and the look, and smiled with the warmth of someone declining gracefully.
"That's kind of you, but I was planning to find somewhere quiet for some cultivation work tonight. I wouldn't want to impose." He rolled his shoulders once, and the dark, sweeping span of his Evil God Wings unfurled behind him in a single fluid motion. "Don't let me keep you."
One beat — and then he was a streak of light ascending into the night sky, gone before the echo of his words had quite finished settling.
Below, Yue Mei watched the point where he'd vanished, then turned a very specific look on her disciple.
Yue'er was gazing upward at the empty sky with an expression she wasn't entirely managing to keep neutral.
Yue Mei decided, as her teacher, that this was a conversation for another day.
(End of Chapter)
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