A quiet sat between them for the length of one careful pour.

Then Su Han spoke again, in a register that had moved a degree away from sect business.

"I will need to thank your son properly, Lin Zhen. Su Qingyue is the only daughter I have."

"You have two older sons, do you?"

"I do." Su Han’s hand opened on the table. "It is not the same thing, what a man feels for his sons and what a man feels for his daughter. I raised the boys to walk into rooms I cannot follow them into. With her, I still find myself wanting to hold the door."

Lin Zhen’s hand shifted toward the pot. He refilled Su Han’s cup without asking.

"I understand more of that than I would have when I was younger. A son is raised with distance in the shape of the lesson. You teach him to carry a blade, to lose, to stand up, to walk into trouble with his own feet. With a daughter, a man keeps finding excuses to stand near the threshold."

Su Han accepted the refill with a small inclination of the head.

"By the way, Lin Zhen. Your son is not married, is he? Nor promised to anyone."

"He is not."

"I had heard there had been an engagement."

"There had. It was broken when the Withered Meridian Curse settled into him. The other family said he would not be able to fulfill his obligations and walked away from the agreement before the year was out." Lin Zhen lifted his cup. "I do not regret that they did. If they were not willing to trust the boy when he was at his lowest, the alliance was worth nothing. An alliance built on suspicion is a debt wearing ceremonial clothes."

"Mhm. That is the right line."

"It is the only line I am willing to draw on this."

Su Han turned the cup one more time.

"With the times around us being what they are, I would like to propose something to you, Lin Zhen. I think there is a benefit to both houses, if we are willing to put the names down on paper while the world is still letting us choose where we put them."

Lin Zhen did not react in the small ways a man reacted when he was surprised. Lin Zhen reacted in the smaller ways a man reacted when he had already considered the possibility and had been waiting for the other man to bring it up first.

"You are proposing to promise Su Qingyue to my son."

"I am."

"I would like to hear the line you would draw on the table."

Su Han set his cup down for the fourth time. The set of his shoulders changed for the first time since the conversation had started.

"He saved my daughter, Lin Zhen. That is the first line, and it is the line that matters most at this table. The second is that the move itself is sound. Your son defeated a Stage Seven principal at the opening of the bracket. The Arena does not forget combats like that. He is a future investment, and an investment in a future is what alliances were built on before the world started treating them like ledgers. Your house and mine, joined by this engagement, would carry weight neither of us would carry alone."

The lamp burned down a finger.

Lin Zhen kept his hand on the cup and did not drink from it for a long count.

"I will need to speak with my son, Su Han."

"I would be insulted if you did not."

"And I will need you to understand that whatever he says is what I will stand on. I am not going to arrange the boy past a line he is unwilling to walk."

"I would expect nothing less from you."

"Then we have a frame to keep working with."

Su Han raised his cup. Lin Zhen raised his. The two cups did not quite touch, the way two cups did not quite touch when the men holding them had agreed to something that had not yet finished agreeing with itself.

———————————————

In the room across the corridor, Lin Xuan came back the rest of the way.

He did not open his eyes.

The first thing he registered was that his head was resting on something soft. Not a pillow. Pillows did not breathe. Pillows did not have the small, regular pressure of fingers stroking very gently along the line of his hair, the way a person who had never done it before might do it once and then keep doing it because they had decided they were going to stay until the boy whose head they were holding woke up.

He kept the eyes closed.

’Mira.’ 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

[ LIN XUAN! Oh my god, finally! How are you feeling? You are back, you are back, I was about to start writing your obituary, you would not believe how dramatic the second draft was. ]

’Like absolute shit, Mira. What happened?’

[ I took control of your body. You were about to be sealed by the old man and I had to step in. If I had not taken over you would either be a vegetable or a corpse, and I have a soft spot for you in the way a system is allowed to have a soft spot for its host, so I did the thing. Sorry. Your body is going to be unhappy with me for a couple of weeks. ]

’...At least I am alive. I am going to take that as the win condition.’

[ It is. (◠‿◠) ]

A small pause.

[ One bad piece of news, though. ]

’Well, I’m not surprised, to be honest.’

[ I had to spend everything to do it. Your Origin Points are at zero, Xuan. We are starting from scratch on the wallet. ]

’No!!’ He kept the thought very quiet so the body did not move with it. ’Well. The trade was my life. Hard to argue with that one. We are going to need to rebuild.’

[ That is the spirit. Now. The other two updates. One is also a little bad and one is very good. ]

’Lead with the bad one.’

[ The heavens noticed something they should not have noticed. Killing a Foundation Establishment Stage Four cultivator from your realm is the kind of thing that registers in the records up there. You picked up fifty Karma Celestial in one shot. ]

’...Fifty.’

[ Fifty. I will not lie to you, that is a meaningful tick on the counter. Nothing immediate. But the heavens are aware of you in a way they were not yesterday, and we are going to need to be careful about that. ]

’Acknowledged. The good one.’

[ The good one is good, Xuan. ]

A panel opened at the edge of his closed-eye vision, soft enough that the colors of it bled through his eyelids without making him lift them.

═══════════════════════════════

[ HIDDEN MISSION COMPLETED ]

═══════════════════════════════

[ "Defeat an opponent one full realm above your own." ]

═══════════════════════════════

[ Reward: ]

[ ▸ +10,000 Origin Points ]

[ ▸ One Secret Technique — pending revelation ]

═══════════════════════════════

Lin Xuan, with his eyes still closed, with his head still resting on whatever soft surface had been waiting for him, allowed himself a very small, very private smile.

’Mira.’

[ Yes, Xuan. ]

’The trade just changed.’

[ It did. (¬‿¬) ]