Inevitably, though, two days later things went to shit again.

  Shan Kong, forehead slightly beaded with sweat from the training, strode over to the stone ring. Wu Hao could track his emotions as his eyes travelled over the three of them, their little group as he saw them: Yi Wei, with a measure of grudging respect. Jin Qilong with disgust and jealousy.

  At Wu Hao he looked with hate.

  As Shan Kong's saber left its sheathe silently, he pointed it at Wu Hao.

  "I'm challenging you," he said.

  Wu Hao nodded, but Jin Qilong stepped in front of him as soon as he realized Wu Hao would agree.

  "Wait," Jin Qilong said quickly. "Wait, wait."

  "Stay out of this, young master," Shan Kong said, with a wide sneer. "Get up here, peasant."

  "He's still injured," Jin Qilong protested. "Give him some time to rest!"

  "And whose fault is that?" Shan Kong replied coolly. "He has only his lack of ability to blame for that."

  Jin Qilong sputtered something, but then Yu Xiong looked up from where he was sitting.

  "Wu Hao," he said loudly. "Shan Kong has challenged you to a spar. Do you accept?"

  Shan Kong must have bathed in resources since the day he had been born. Sometimes he might have gotten them from his father, sometimes he might have received them from the clan and sometimes he might even have earned them, though Wu Hao was angry enough that that felt impossible to admit.

  All that gave Shan Kong a leg up that Wu Hao would be hard-pressed to match with a few days of cultivation. No matter his level of talent, if there was nothing worth using it on, what was the point?

  Perhaps if he had a heaven-defying cultivation art or something like that, the way heroes in stories did, then he'd stun the world with his talent.

  But he didn't. He had the Heaven and Earth Wheel Art and the Dragon Gate Ascending Art, both of which were at the Earth-tier and therefore the lowest one could be while still being considered true Arts. These were the things so cheap that the library barely seemed to bother guarding them. That was how little they were valued.

  So that made things simple. The rational thing would be to say no.

  "Yes," he grunted instead, stunned at the words coming out of his own mouth.

  He stared up at the smirk on Shan Kong's face, and suddenly he knew why.

  Wiping that smirk off that little shit's face had felt fantastic. He was willing to risk it, for another chance to do the same again.

  There was a certain trick to having your saber leave its sheathe without having it catch on the leather, but Wu Hao hadn't even thought about doing that yet. His saber snagged on the thick leather and he had to tug twice to free it.

  There were a few snickers of laughter.

  "Don't," Jin Qilong said. His tone was almost pleading.

  Shan Kong spoke. "Are you going to take his place, then, young master?"

  Yi Wei tried to muffle a snort.

  A silence fell as everyone else stared at Jin Qilong, who stood there with fists clenched. His hands crept towards his saber, but Wu Hao saw the hesitation and the regret and the shame building upon each other in the young master's qi. Jin Qilong's hands fell again, crept up, as if caught in a cycle.

  "Stay out of this," Wu Hao said, and the relief that rushed through Jin Qilong must have been as dizzying as the hesitation had been.

  Wu Hao stepped on the stage, feeling ridicule in every glance he saw except three. Yi Wei looked indifferent, Jin Qilong looked panicked, and Shan Kong looked angry.

  Nothing new there, then.

  Heaving his saber up into position, he breathed a few times just to center himself.

  "Let's go," he said.

  "Go!" Yu Xiong called, moments later, and Wu Hao rushed forward. He was going to keep his qi seed whole for now, but he could tear it if he needed to, and he probably would need -

  Qi swelled with the burnished oil-and-seawater stench of Shan Kong and built upon itself, forced into a tight loop of qi. He felt a mass of it stream into the other boy's saber, coating it like a thin film that made the entire thing gleam eerily.

  That wasn't a technique that Shan Kong had known the last time. Wu Hao felt an instance of regret, even before he heard Shan Kong's voice announce his first move.

  "Ocean Devil's Teeth Art," Shan Kong said, his voice loud enough to be audible over the buzzing saber. "Wave Cutter."

  The saber blurred forward, the qi on its blade spiralling in on itself until it was humming with vibrations, spikes of qi bursting out of the blade every so often.

  Yi Wei standing next to the stage gasped, and muttered something under her breath. Wu Hao couldn't hear it, but he knew what she was saying.

  That was a Sky-tier art.

  Wu Hao barely managed to lift his own saber up in time, a movement that lacked all technique or rationale, and blocked the buzzing saber blade. The teeth of the saber's sides nearly tore it from his fingers, and immediately he felt wounds open on the webbing of his hands and the skin of his fingers as he tried to simply hold onto his weapon.

  It wasn't easy. With every collision of the qi bursts against Wu Hao's saber he could feel the bandit's saber shudder in his hands, until finally he decided to simply risk it in a single strike.

  He let the saber go, and it almost immediately slammed into the ground. On its surface, patterns had been carved that looked almost like bite marks - as if some mammoth beast had taken the saber into its mouth and bit down, hard enough to leave deep marks on the steel.

  But all that wasn't important. The saber was gone, but Wu Hao was on the move again, fists rising in a counter blow.

  His fist lanced out in a heavy punch, aiming once again for Shan Kong's nose, only to stop abruptly as Shan Kong caught it with the flat of his saber. Wu Hao's knuckles crashed against the heavy metal, and pain lanced out through his entire hand. It wasn't just the sheer impact of bone and flesh smashing into unforgiving iron, though: he felt the teeth of the buzzing blade tear at his hand, qi thorns actively springing forward to rip away skin.

  "That got me once," Shan Kong spat, a certain vicious glee in his qi. "Never again."

  Wu Hao's heart sank. Trying to step quickly backwards, he felt his hand throb, screaming for his attention. It felt like he might have shattered something, and blood was spurting from the wound.

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  Raising his fists again, even though he'd lost all feeling in his left hand, he stared at Shan Kong. He could feel grim joy run through the other boy, a thick reddish layer building up atop a darker bloody foundation of spite.

  He exhaled, then inhaled, preparing to tear open the seed. It'd cost him a day's worth of work, but he wouldn't lose here.

  But before he could, the flat edge of a saber slammed into the side of his face and sent him crashing down to earth. Shan Kong hadn't used the same art again, because his attack didn't just rip off parts of Wu Hao's face with the ripping qi bursts.

  This wasn't an attack meant to kill. It was meant to humiliate, to beat down any resistance.

  Wu Hao slammed into the ground and instinctively tried to roll back, but in his haste he did so with his ruined hand and he suppressed a scream of anguish as bare nerves came into contact with the cool stone.

  Tears sprung unbidden to his eyes, but he ignored them and made his way to his feet again, just in time to see Shan Kong's qi curl up on itself as he prepared to kill Wu Hao, rending him limb from limb.

  He had learned the lesson Wu Hao had taught him, and he'd learned it well. There would be no letting him go, now.

  That same buzzing, snarling sound filled the air, muffling a shout nearby. All of Wu Hao's attention was on Shan Kong as he raised his saber high, then spoke.

  "Ocean Devil's Teeth Art," Shan Kong snarled. "Wave Cutter!"

  The saber crested and then came hammering down, ready to tear Wu Hao's head from his shoulders.

  He stared up at it, fearless. In fact, he was almost glad. With his ruined hand, why bother living? Better to simply go back and try again.

  But then there was another saber, slashing out in a beautiful metallic arc that smashed into Shan Kong's and cancelled out both forces with a loud ring of steel. Abruptly the buzzing stopped.

  Yi Wei went skidding back from the force, and even Shan Kong had to take a step back.

  Wu Hao barely breathed. He stared from one to the other.

  "Yi Wei," Shan Kong said slowly, raising himself up again. The hands that he'd clenched around his saber were pale, but with a flick of his saber color began to flow back into his skin. "I thought you'd decided not to get involved?"

  She rolled her eyes in response.

  Shan Kong's saber raised slightly, but Yi Wei didn't rise to the provocation.

  "It's not personal," she said. "Not this time."

  That got her a snort from Shan Kong, who shook his head and looked at Wu Hao again, who felt like he hadn't been able to move an inch.

  "Pathetic," Shan Kong said. "But expected. Last time was a fluke, after all."

  Wu Hao's eyes burned with hate, and as he stared in Shan Kong's eyes he saw there an expression that mirrored his own - drawn lips, wide eyes, deep-set anger.

  "This isn't over," he said. "I'll humiliate you again and again, peasant. The young master won't always be around to save you."

  And with that, he walked off the stage. Yu Xiong made a small comment to him, and Shan Kong nodded, but otherwise he didn't look back as he walked off with all the confidence in the world.

  "Fuck," Wu Hao hissed, hitting the bottom of his fist against the stone. "Fuck!"

  Shame and anger and hate ran through him in equal measure, ready to make him overflow again. The knuckles of his injured hand creaked audibly as he clenched them into a fist.

  "Er," Jin Qilong said, hesitating. Then, apparently not knowing what else to say, he was stupid enough to ask: "Are you alright?"

  When the look in Wu Hao's eyes hit him, he actually took a step back in surprise.

  "Sorry," Jin Qilong said, sheepishly. "I - sorry."

  "Let him be," Yi Wei said, walking back down from the stage herself. She resheathed her saber easily with a single hand, and with the other she let Wu Hao's saber clatter to the stone. "Here. That's what I expected last time, by the way."

  Then she smiled at Jin Qilong.

  "As agreed," she said. "Pay me by morning tomorrow or this'll be the last deal we ever make, young master."

  Jin Qilong nodded mutely.

  Yi Wei grinning, then stepped away, making a show of rubbing her wrists like they were sore from having blocked Shan Kong's blow.

  Wu Hao stared as she walked, still with his knees on the stone.

  "You paid her?" he croaked. "To save me?"

  "What else was I supposed to do?" Jin Qilong asked, sounding outraged that Wu Hao was even asking. "Let you get crippled, or die? Shan Kong's vicious. He wouldn't have thought twice about it."

  "Then I'd have died," Wu Hao said, hoarsely.

  "You don't mean that," Jin Qilong said.

  He didn't understand. Wu Hao was used to death, but he was supposed to have left humiliation far in the future.

  Wu Hao grunted, stood up, and inspected his own hand. He couldn't move his fingers, and looking at the bloody mess that was his hand he doubted how much even Old Qin's medicinal paste could accomplish for him.

  He might never move those fingers again - his hand felt as though it might never become anything other than a fist. He could see fragments of bone, peeking out through the torn flesh. There was so much pain that he didn't even feel it.

  "We should get you looked at by the doctor," Jin Qilong said nervously. "This needs a lot more than medicinal paste and bandages."

  With balled fists, Wu Hao stared at the stone. He knew what he was going to do. First, he would wait here two hours more, and then he would charge at the guards and have them kill him for some sort of reward.

  He would wake up just after the cultivation session, if he'd timed things correctly. And after that, he would plan.

  For a day or so he'd shelved his plans of robbing the library, but now it was clear that he'd been wrong to. He'd been wrong to think that maybe Old Qin had a point when he'd said this was an opportunity, that the Jin clan could be a good master.

  Shan Kong needed to be beaten. Maybe Yi Wei could, and maybe even Jin Qilong could, if he'd actually bother to set his mind straight. If he really wanted to, he could go to them and maybe have them do something. Pay Yi Wei, in information or... something.

  But he didn't want to. He couldn't.

  For the first time in any of his lives, Wu Hao felt that a fight had truly become personal.

  He would crush Shan Kong and he would die trying.