Lin Zhen took the first word, and the first word was an apology.

"I would like to ask your forgiveness again, son. I failed to protect you a second time, and the second time you were closer to my hand than the first."

The look on his father’s face came in a register Lin Xuan had not catalogued before, a thin defeated sag at the corners of the mouth that no patriarch of any sect on the continent had the right to wear in front of his own son. Lin Xuan saw it, and decided in real time that he was not going to let it stand.

"Father." The voice he used was the one he had grown into during these last six months, the one that did not negotiate with self-pity. "Take that expression off your face. It is not an image you owe your son. I am well, I will be well, and what happened to me is not going to happen to me again. I can promise you that. So you can put a little more faith in me, and you can stop bracing for the next storm. Whatever comes, I will be the one standing in front of it."

Lin Zhen took the words in the way a man took a draught of water after a long road. The faint sag at the corners of his mouth eased. Something behind his eyes that had been wearing him thin for longer than the last two days let out a breath of its own.

"Thank you, son."

He set his hands flat on his knees and rearranged himself the way patriarchs rearranged themselves when the apology was over and the work began.

"The letter your maid sent. That is the second reason I needed to ask your forgiveness. She tried to reach me earlier, and the residence staff did not let her through. The letter arrived late through a different channel."

Lin Xuan’s eyebrows went somewhere they had not planned.

"They blocked her access? I told her to announce she carried an important letter for the patriarch from his son, and the staff of my own residence still turned her at the door?"

"I will speak with them, Xuan."

"No, father." The voice arrived harder than he had meant, and he chose to leave it there. "Speaking is not going to fix this. You are the face of the sect. You need to act on it. Words at the door of a patriarch who lets his door be ignored are words a household reads as theater. We need to make it cost something."

Lin Zhen held the line of his son’s face for a long beat. The reproach reached exactly where it had been aimed, and the patriarch’s posture answered it the way a patriarch answered an honest reproach. He inclined his head a fraction.

"You are correct. I will see to it." A small pause. "But first, the heart of this. The content of the letter."

Lin Xuan took the conversation by the reins.

"What I wrote in that letter was the version I had built in my head a week before the alley. I told you something was coming for me, and I did not have proof. I still do not have proof. I have my word. In that teahouse I followed Madam Mei through three streets and listened from the next stall over while she paid a man to incapacitate me a second time."

"Those are not words a man uses lightly, son."

"No. They are not words a man uses unless they happen to be the truth. I can send a runner to the teahouse if you want. The house will play deaf. A business that pays for that room pays for the deafness as well. You have my word. That is the only thing on the table."

Lin Zhen’s face passed through the small troubled adjustment of a man being asked to weigh an accusation against the woman whose name was the mother of his oldest biological son. The adjustment took him three breaths to clear.

"I believe you, Xuan. I have believed you on this for longer than tonight. I have known for some time that my first wife has been moving against me in corners I do not yet have a name for. She did things while I was at the capital. The shape of what she has been doing is not yet clear."

"What do you intend to do, father."

"Work already began. Elder Ren has been investigating her at my request. The two of us are the only people in this sect who know that, and now you are the third. I will trust you to carry that weight without dropping it. For now, you need to focus on the tournament. You have two combats of importance ahead of you, and your brother fights Yan Wuji before either of them. Rest. You have earned it."

Lin Zhen rose without ceremony, set a hand against his son’s shoulder for the small careful weight of a father’s hand, and left the room.

———

The door closed. The room held its breath one count longer than it had been holding, then released it.

[ A much better outcome than I had budgeted for, host. Your father is no fool. He has been working at her from a different angle. Which would mean the gesture we saw in the tribune the other day, when he put a hand’s width between them on the cushion, was not an accident. He has been quietly putting daylight between them in public for a while. ]

’Good. Mira. Now that the conversations are out of the way, there is one thing I sincerely hope you have not forgotten.’

[ I do not know what you are referring to, Xuan. ٩(◜▿◝)۶ ]

’Mira.’

[ I am drawing a blank. Maybe if you helped me out with a hint. ]

’My technique. Give me my technique.’

[ As you wish. ]

The panel opened gold, then went black.

[ SECRET TECHNIQUE REVEALED: ]