The Great One didn’t bother with long expnations and, of course, didn’t reveal the core of the intrigue. Everything he wanted to convey boiled down to one simple point — don’t let yourself be intimidated.

  Old Chen was an ancient monster, and the key word in that phrase was ancient. He was older than Novak, had survived the previous invasion as a child, and, more importantly, might not live to see the next one. Not today, not tomorrow, but the process he had been actively trying to fight and dey had started decades ago. Even the Fifth Stage doesn’t save you from the basic maths of time. The body wears out. The core degrades. The channels lose conductivity.

  Oh, he was still a monster, one who could easily tear apart the absolute majority of Fourth Stage cultivators, but a monster who was dying.

  Novak said this without any malice. It even seemed to me that he felt some pity for the old man. But from Chen’s condition, my master drew a clear conclusion: right now, it wasn’t in old Chen’s interests to make enemies.

  Not at the end of his life.

  And not even because they might hasten that end. Simply because the grudges he created could be inherited by children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and disciples. By everyone who carried your name, your techniques, and your legacy.

  Among cultivators, this worked exactly like genetics.

  Not only talent was inherited, context was too. Knowledge, philosophy, even alliances.

  Who had been your enemy. Who your ally. Who owed you, and whom you owed. Money, materials, access, contacts, contracts — all of it could be lost in a single generation. And it wasn’t even about murder. Sometimes simple indifference was enough. If the elites decided you weren’t trustworthy…

  Trust and reputation were the primary currencies outside Verdis. Without trust, you couldn’t assemble a team, one you could take into a truly difficult raid, one that might yield unique materials and allow you to progress properly.

  As it happened, among Chen’s descendants only two possessed genuine talent: his youngest daughter and her son, Tao Dao. And the boy himself was doing a fine job of making enemies without his grandfather’s help. Even exceeding expectations.

  In this world, politics wasn’t offices or ws. It was genetics and logistics. Genetically targeted marriages and alliances.

  Novak wasn’t afraid of Chen. And he said I shouldn’t be either.

  The next morning I woke up without real pain in my left hand, only with an unpleasant background sensation in my right, where sensitivity was beginning to return. After breakfast, I followed the Great One’s instructions, found Master Chen’s contact, and wrote, as politely and formally as possible, that I was ready to have tea.

  At his pce, this evening, without unnecessary ears.

  The reply was just as formal, with a crification of the time — 18:00.

  Before going to Chen’s, Patel brought me a box from Mendoza, along with several distinctly displeased comments about my condition, also from her.

  The box was light. Made of some alloy I didn’t recognise right away. Its surface was engraved with gold in a Norse style: knots, beasts, geometry folding in on itself.

  It was a gift from Novak. Technically from Mendoza’s stash, but formally from my master.

  Chen’s building was on the opposite end of the academy. The same kind of terminal station as Mendoza’s or Novak’s. It was empty and quiet, with a high level of security.

  Patel escorted me to the station, and there handed me over to Rambler, who led me to Chen’s apartments, much like Soro once led me to Mendoza, and Kate to Novak.

  There was a difference, though. Both Novak’s and Mendoza’s guest rooms with tea tables were located almost right by the entrance, so I never knew what y beyond. Chen followed a different philosophy. We passed a living room with a panoramic view on one side and a wall covered in bdes on the other.

  Curved swords and sabres hung in neat rows without chaos and without ostentatious symmetry also. Old and new, pin and btantly expensive. Some with wear along the spine, some with barely visible cracks, completely spent and absolutely pristine. It felt as though each bde carried a memory. An archive of recollections id out across the walls.

  Beyond the living room, the path turned into a dead-end corridor leading to a small inner room. No windows, but four open passages framed in wood.

  Most of the interior was made of wood and carried a sense of age. Not antiquity, like Mendoza’s table, but simply old wood.

  Like the kitchen table standing in the centre. Massive, slightly worn, clearly not decorative. It was clean, of course, but its surface still held old stains and scratches. A rge dark bronze ptter sat on it, filled with an assorted selection of biscuits and dried fruit.

  Off to the side, in one of the corners, stood a real wood-fired stove. Old, heavy, with a cast-iron surface marked by time. Above it, naturally, worked a modern extractor, quiet and efficient, removing excess smoke and heat, leaving only a feeling of comfort in the room.

  Chen, dressed in a standard brown jumpsuit, stood by the stove and brewed the tea himself. No servants. No machines. No ritualistic show.

  He moved calmly, but every motion was precise. He knew where everything was and didn’t look at his hands. Teapot, water, leaves, everything was in its pce.

  On the walls of this room, aside from a few cabinets, there were bdes as well, but different ones. Heavy, broad sabres that seemed to evolve gradually, growing slimmer, longer, changing the curve of the bde and the hilt, until the final examples in the progression became the elven curved swords already familiar to me from Chen’s students. Perhaps with barely noticeable differences in proportions, with a colossal difference in decoration, but unmistakably of the same type.

  Besides the bdes, there were several pairs of gauntlets, but I couldn’t see anything special about them, no unifying trait that stood out.

  Rambler exchanged a few words with the master, bowed, and disappeared.

  Chen flicked a gnce at me, noted the box under my arm, and calmly, without raising his voice, said, “Sit down. The tea is almost ready.”

  I bowed, awkwardly set the box on the table, and offered, “A gift from my master.”

  Chen didn’t look at the box any longer than necessary to register its presence. He nodded just enough for it to count as politeness and said briefly,

  “Thank you.”

  Then he slid the box towards the edge of the table, as if it were just another piece of furniture. Not dismissively, but without any interest either. As though what mattered wasn’t what was inside, but the fact that the gift had been brought and the formality observed.

  He turned back to the stove, lifted the kettle, and poured the tea into simple, heavy cups without patterns. The smell was… ordinary. Not bright, not sharp, without the characteristic citrus, pine, or honey notes I’d grown accustomed to. Just herbs, a hint of smoke, something warm and dry.

  I sat down, not rushing to touch the cup, and inhaled again. Nothing familiar. The snacks on the bronze ptter also looked unfamiliar: tiny croissants, biscuits, dark pieces of dried fruit, several coarse rusks that looked more like bread trimmings than dessert.

  Well, snacks were traditionally just snacks, without additional effects. But the tea…

  Chen took an open sugar bowl from a cabinet, set it on the table, and sat down opposite me. Now that he wasn’t standing, it became more obvious. Back on the ptform, his gaze had seemed piercing. Now, at the table, his eyes were faded. As if colour had completely left the irises. Old, tired eyes. The weight of centuries pressed on soul and body alike, seeping as fatigue into shoulders and back, into the pauses between movements. He took one of the rusks, dipped it into the tea for a few seconds, then into the sugar, and only then took a bite.

  I decided to copy the host’s manoeuvre by his example…

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” Chen said.

  “Is it… not for the Second Stage?” I asked, setting the rusk back. “Or are there restrictions?”

  He looked at me with mild surprise, then smiled briefly. For the first time the entire evening.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just a very dry, hard piece of bread. No Qi. Both the tea and the snacks are completely ordinary. No additives. No properties.

  “Try the croissants. They’re perfect.”

  He gnced at the rusk and dipped it again, this time more slowly.

  “My students already know the rusks are for me. It’s how I indulge in nostalgia. I simply remember what it was like. Back then. When we drank this kind of tea. Ate this kind of food. Without stimunts, without formus, without efficiency calcutions.”

  He took a sip and fell silent for a few seconds.

  “Sentimentality,” he added calmly. “A bad habit of old age.”

  I raised the cup to my nose again, and this time the smell registered differently. Not as a tool, but as a… memory. Like the swords on the walls, and like the bdes in this room, probably.

  Chen noticed my gaze, intercepted it, and indicated with his eyes one particur bde at the very end of the evolutionary line, with a simple hilt, but refined scabbard. Zhou Xiangyun’s sword. The bde I’d killed her with. Cleaned and polished.

  I twitched slightly when I saw it here.

  “The bdes of my fallen students. All the ones I was able to recover.”

  There were at least two dozen swords here, and several pairs of gauntlets.

  He had outlived three dozen students?

  I definitely wouldn’t have kept them like this.

  Chen stood up, approached the wall, and took down Zhou Xiangyun’s sword. He held it out to me.

  “This bde is rightfully yours.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, like a small cat facing an attack-ready pit bull.

  “I won’t harm you,” he shook his head. “You had the right. More than that, you did all of us a great service!” he said bitterly, still holding the sword out. “This trophy belongs to you.”

  It felt like he was offering me a venomous snake.

  “I’m not a swordsman,” I tried to refuse.

  “I can’t simply throw away or destroy this sword,” he said.

  Chen stopped holding it out, pced it on the table, dipped the rusk into the tea again, and began to speak:

  “Back then, right after the invasion, everything was different. I had a talent for Lightning. My first master was Lightning as well, but he died along with many others. I hid, and that’s why I survived. My second master was also among the survivors. Bde was his primary root, but he used a Lightning movement technique.”

  “He was only a few years older than me, but extraordinarily talented. You could say I was lucky with him. Back then, there were very few masters left, and many had to learn techniques from old schematics and video lessons. Hell, we even studied from paper books, when we managed to find something interesting.

  “My second master created and passed down to me the Lightning Bde Technique Number Three. As you can see, he wasn’t a fan of fshy names and preferred technical precision.”

  Chen smiled, as if recalling the good old days, and tossed the sugar-soaked rusk into his mouth.

  “Even though he wasn’t much older than me, injuries prevented him from breaking past the third stage. I quickly outgrew him, and ter outlived him. I developed his technique further. From Lightning Bde Number Three were born: Ten Lightning Steps, Soul Cut, and Killing Shock.

  “Xiangyun used Soul Cut…” he darkened.

  “…but I never abandoned the original. I refined and perfected it to the Fifth Stage, red quality. Along with that, I searched for a bde that would perfectly complement the technique.” His hand rested on the sword, and he slid it closer to me. “In these techniques and these bdes lies my entire life. I cannot throw it away or destroy it, but this sword does not belong in this room.

  “Please, take it. You don’t have to use it. You may sell it, give it away, or throw it away. It is yours.”

  It was a strange request, but at the same time one filled with pain and regret.

  “Most likely, I won’t use it,” I said, taking the bde by the scabbard, standing up, and bowing deeply. “But I will never sell it,” I promised.

  MaksymPachesiuk