Chapter 38: The Ancestor Speaks Plainly in the Tower’s Highest Room, a Duel Is Written Into the Guild’s Charter, and the Dragon Is Given Thirty Days to Climb

The ninth floor of the Gilded-Crow Tower was dark.

The glass ceiling had been shuttered. There were no silver dishes, no jade cups, no portraits smiling down from the walls. A single lantern burned on the long table, and its light barely reached the black lacquer door through which Adam had entered.

Ye Tianhe sat at the far end in the same plain gray robe, with his white hair in the same simple knot. He did not rise. He did not smile.

Behind him, in the shadow of a pillar, stood Ye Xuan with his arms folded and his face like a drawn blade.

"Scholar Han," the old man said. "Sit."

Adam stayed on his feet.

"I think I’ll stand, Ancestor. You said you would speak plainly."

A pause. The corner of the old man’s mouth moved, almost a smile.

"Plainly, then." He folded his hands. "In nineteen days, you have taken a champion’s seal, emptied a vault, cost my clan a million and a half stones and the better part of its face, broken the Chamber’s currency, and pulled a thief out of my Division’s cells. You have done it all with the manners of a nervous scholar from a village I have never heard of."

"I am a man who was owed money, Ancestor."

"You are the owner of the Void-Star Pavilion."

The lantern’s flame did not move.

"The Pavilion’s branch in the Southern Continent bled my great-grandson’s Gilded-Crow stall dry in a month," Ye Tianhe went on, in the same level voice. "Its owner has never been named. Its front man wears a silver mask. I do not know who stands behind it. But the same name has appeared on a shop in my city, under the seal of a scholar from the south who dined at my table and drank my tea without so much as a cough." The pale eyes rested on Adam’s hood. "I do not believe in coincidence, Scholar Han. I have lived too long."

Adam’s hand did not stir in his sleeve.

"You flatter me," he said mildly. "I’ve only a head for figures. If the Pavilion in the south is the same house as the Pavilion in the Slum Ring, I’m afraid that’s a distant cousin’s doing."

"A distant cousin." Ye Tianhe’s voice held no mockery at all. "Very well. I will not ask whether you are the boy who killed my great-grandson. It does not matter."

Behind him, Ye Xuan stiffened.

"I know what I know," the old man said. "I cannot touch you here, in the open, without breaking the law I built my family upon. The Imperial Dynasty does not permit a Nascent Soul cultivator to strike a Guild Champion without cause. So I will not strike you." He spread his hands. "I will use the law instead."

He lifted a scroll from the table and unrolled it with a long, slow motion.

"The Alchemy Guild’s charter has a clause no one has invoked in four hundred years. Article Twenty-One. When the Heir’s Seat is unclaimed, and the Champion’s title is contested, the Champion and the challenger may settle it in the Imperial Arena, by duel, at the Autumn Festival." He turned the scroll so the lantern lit its ancient characters. "Ye Xuan challenges you for the Champion’s seal, for the Guild’s reserve, and for the Cauldron Notes. Thirty days from tonight."

Ye Xuan stepped out of the shadow. His eyes burned.

"I accept the challenge on my own account," he said, hoarsely. "Not my Ancestor’s."

"If you win," Ye Tianhe said, "the Ye clan withdraws its claims against you and the Guild, and you may keep the Pavilion’s trade in the Slum Ring. If you lose..."

"I lose everything," Adam finished. "The seal, the notes, the Pavilion. Perhaps my head."

"A man should have something to fight for."

Adam looked at the scroll for a long moment.

He was calculating the way a cold mind calculates. Ye Xuan was a Mid Golden Core at twenty-two, with a Nascent Soul clan’s whole treasury behind him. Adam was a first-layer core with six weeks of seniority, a pocketful of tricks, and a Nine-Turn body at the Second Turn. In an honest duel, he was the weaker man.

He could refuse. A challenged Champion who declined would forfeit his seal in thirty days anyway.

He could run. The Imperial City was big, and the Ancestor was patient.

’Or I can make the Ye clan fight on a field I choose,’ he thought. ’A field where the Ancestor cannot reach across a table and press his thumb to my skull.’

He raised his eyes.

"I accept," he said. "On three conditions."

Ye Tianhe’s brows rose a hair. "You bargain like a man who expects to win."

"I expect to be treated fairly." Adam held up one finger. "The duel is to the first yield, not death. A Guild contest, not a blood feud."

A beat. "Agreed."

"The Ye clan will not interfere with Su Lian, the Elder Council, or the clearing house until the duel is settled. No arrests, no sabotage, no forged seals."

The old man looked at him for a long moment. "Agreed."

"And the Ancestor will bind himself with a Soul Contract, signed in blood, and held by the Guild." Adam lowered his hand. "A man of your age should have no objection to putting his word on paper."

Ye Xuan hissed. For the first time since Adam had entered the room, Ye Tianhe laughed.

It was a dry, delighted sound, like a branch breaking.

"Remarkable," he said. "You are asking me for the very thing you pulled from the Chamber’s hands." He nodded. "Done."

They signed in blood on a scroll of thin white jade, the old man’s thumbprint and Ye Xuan’s and Adam’s, and the ink flared red and sank into the page. When it had cooled, Ye Tianhe rolled it up and handed it over.

"Thirty days," he said. "Do not waste them, Scholar Han. I should like it to be a good fight."

Adam bowed, small and humble, and walked out of the shuttered room without turning his back.

In the carriage, in the dark, he drew the scroll out of his sleeve, and the system chimed.

[Notice: Quest Detected. Imperial Arena Duel. Opponent: Ye Xuan, Mid Golden Core. Deadline: 30 days.]

[Nine-Turn Immortal Body: 3rd Turn Requirements. Heaven-tribulation thunder tempering (not owned). Golden Core consolidation: 0 / 90 days.]

Adam read the second line twice.

’Ninety days,’ he thought. ’And I have thirty.’

So the Third Turn was out of reach. There was no pill to buy it, no pool to sink into, and no shortcut around a core that had only just formed.

He folded his hands in his lap and watched the white jade streets slide past the carriage window.

’Then I’ll have to win the way I’ve won everything else,’ he thought.

The thought was cold, and quite steady, and somewhere inside it was something very like pleasure.

’By being the only one in the room who knows the rules.’