He saw the scar-disciple on a Wednesday.
Not hunting him — not yet, not today — but there he was standing at the grain merchant stalls exactly where the clone log had placed him, haggling over a sack of milled rice with arrogance.
Jelani kept walking.
It was one of the hardest things he had done since coming back to the city.
Keeping his feet moving at a steady pace, eyes forward, letting the scar-disciple remain in his peripheral vision and then slide out of it entirely as he rounded the corner and kept going.
His hands were shaking. He put them in his pockets.
He walked two more blocks before he let himself stop and breathe. He was in an alley between a candle-maker and a laundry house, and the smell was a strange combination of tallow and soap, and he stood there with his back against the wall and counted his own heartbeats until they slowed down.
Jelani thought about his father walking too slowly and the disciples deciding that was reason enough to kill him.
{Don't,} the system said, reading him again.
"I'm just thinking."
{You're working yourself up. Stop.}
He exhaled slowly. Straightened. Stepped back out of the alley and turned toward Master Feng's school.
He taught the morning class with complete focus.
He was patient, present, and attentive, and none of it required the part of his brain that was filing away everything the clone logs had told him about the scar-disciple's routine.
Grain stalls, Wednesday morning. North gate, Thursday at midday. Training ground, Spirit Sect compound, every evening before dark.
The Thursday midday location was significant. The north gate was at the edge of the city's busy zone — beyond it, the road thinned toward the outer fields. Not many people. Not much oversight.
He said nothing about any of this to anyone.
That evening, hunting in the outer fields, he brought down a Level 3 beast — the biggest thing he'd successfully taken on — and stood over it afterward with his breathing only slightly elevated and thought: not yet. But soon.
{Level 8,} the system said. {One more level and you hit the Body Refinement ceiling.}
"I know."
{The gap between you and the scar-disciple is now very wide.}
"I know that too."
He walked back to the city under a sky going purple with evening and kept everything he was planning behind his eyes where no one could see it.