The heavy thud of iron-shod hooves died out, replaced by the coarse laughter of men who smelled of cheap ale and unwashed leather.
Li Fan sat perfectly still on his moss-covered throne. The Refined Breathing of the Stellar Depths hummed in his chest—a cold, silent thread that cinched his meridians tight. For the first time in his life, the Qi he had absorbed during his transition wasn't leaking. It pooled in his solar plexus, a tiny, concentrated spark of warmth.
To anyone else, he still looked like a mortal. But he felt like a sealed jar of high-grade wine.
"Li Fan! Boy-Sect Leader!"
The heavy doors of the hall grovelled open. Three men stepped in, their silhouettes broad against the fading twilight. The leader, a man with a jagged scar across his nose and a pair of iron-studded gauntlets, spat on the floor. This was Scar-Face Ma, a 3rd-Layer Qi Condensation thug from the Iron Fist Hall.
"The three suns have set," Ma rumbled, his voice like gravel in a grinder. "Where is the tribute? Or do we start taking pieces of this mountain as payment?"
Behind him, his two lackeys chuckled, their hands resting on the hilts of their rusted sabers.
Jing'er stood by the tea tray, her tray trembling. She looked at Li Fan, her eyes begging him to run, to hide, to do anything but sit there like a sacrificial lamb.
Li Fan didn't run. He leaned forward, the motion slow and deliberate.
"Ma, you are late," Li Fan said. His voice was calm—disturbingly so. It didn't have the tremor of a starving boy; it had the weight of a man who had seen the stars fall.
Ma paused, his smirk flickering. He narrowed his eyes, trying to sense Li Fan's cultivation. He found... nothing. Just the same empty void. But something was off. The way the boy sat, the way his breath was so shallow it was almost non-existent...
"Bold words for a dying pup," Ma spat, though he didn't take another step forward. "My patience is thinner than your sect's walls. The tribute. Now."
"The Sunset Sect has no copper for your hall," Li Fan said, picking up the porcelain cup. He took a sip of the bitter herbal tea as if he were drinking the finest nectar of the heavens. "But we have something better. Something your Master would kill you for if he knew you let it slip through your fingers."
Ma let out a bark of laughter. "Better than copper? What, more of this gray moss? Or maybe that scrawny girl?"
Jing'er flinched, but Li Fan's gaze remained like ice.
"History, Ma," Li Fan said. "Ten thousand years ago, before the Silver-River was a trickle, this sect was the seat of the Drunken Immortal. Have you ever wondered why the air around the Ancestral Spring smells of ancient fermentation on the first moon of winter?"
Ma stopped laughing. The Iron Fist Hall's Master was obsessed with finding "Liquor Treasures"—ancient wine pits that could enhance cultivation. It was a common rumor in the valley, but no one had ever found a trace of it on Sunset Mountain.
"Lies," Ma hissed, his fingers twitching toward his gauntlets. "We've searched the spring. It's dry as a bone."
"You searched the spring," Li Fan agreed. "But you didn't search the fermentation pit beneath the boundary stone of the third ancestor. The one hidden behind a layer of white clay that only reacts to... a specific breathing pattern."
Li Fan stood up. He didn't use Qi, but he moved with a fluid grace that Ma couldn't reconcile with a mortal. He walked toward the thug leader, stopping just an arm's length away.
"I can give you the location of a single jar of 'Sunset Nectar'," Li Fan whispered, his voice curling around Ma's ears like a snake. "Enough to buy your Master's favor for a decade. Enough to make you an Elder of the Iron Fist Hall. Or I can let you kill me, and the secret dies with the last of the Li bloodline."
The room grew silent. Ma's lackeys looked at each other, greed flickering in their eyes.
Ma stared into Li Fan's hollow eyes. He looked for fear and found only a chilling certainty. In the Year 10,000, Li Fan had seen the ruins of this very pit—he knew exactly where it had been before it was looted by tomb-robbers eight thousand years hence.
"If you are lying..." Ma growled, the scar on his nose turning purple.
"Then you can come back and burn the rest of us," Li Fan said, stepping back. "But think, Ma. Why would I bluff with my life? I simply want to keep my mountain. You want to be more than a collector of copper. We both get what we desire."
Ma stood for a long watch, the air in the hall thick with tension. Finally, he slammed his gauntlets together with a resonant clang.
"One jar," Ma said. "Lead us to the cellar. If it's there, your debt is cleared for another moon. If not... I'll use your Sect Leader's seal to brand your face."
Li Fan bowed slightly, a predatory glint hidden in the shadow of his brow.
"Follow me, then. Let us see what the ancestors have left us."