The man was broad-shouldered and unhurried.
He stood in the center of the open ground with his arms folded, his expression carrying the particular quality of someone who has been expecting a delivery and is now assessing it. Moonlight fell across him evenly and indifferently. He had a face that suggested a long history of making decisions about other people and finding the process uncomplicated.
"Zhongy," he said. "You're late."
Zhongy stopped at the edge of the clearing, maintaining a deliberate distance. "Yangde." His voice had gone completely flat. "As agreed."
Zhao Wei looked between them. He scanned the clearing—the open ground, the sparse trees at the edges, the complete absence of anyone else. He glanced at the small creature, which had settled near the tree line and was making itself as inconspicuous as something of its size and shape possibly could.
Yangde's gaze flicked briefly to Zhao Wei—an assessing glance, nothing more—then returned to Zhongy.
Zhongy's jaw tightened. His hands balled into fists at his sides. Whatever composure he had been maintaining cracked down the center. "Yangde." His voice came out rough now, the controlled flatness giving way to something raw beneath. "It's been three months. Three months of bringing students here and doing everything you asked. Give me back my badge. I need it. You have to return it."
"Quiet."
"You took it—"
Yangde moved without particular urgency. The kick caught Zhongy squarely in the chest and sent him crashing to the ground at Zhao Wei's feet. The impact had been precise—calibrated to place him exactly there. It was less an attack than a statement.
Zhao Wei stared down at Zhongy, then up at Yangde.
Three months.
The shape of it assembled itself with cold, clicking clarity. "That's Zhongy's badge," he said. "You've been holding it for three months. Without it, the registration system won't recognize him—he can't be assigned a teacher, can't be found by one, and can't advance at all." He looked at Zhongy on the ground—at the careful blankness the other boy had already pulled back over his expression, at the quiet efficiency with which he pushed himself upright, the way someone learns not to stay down in front of this particular person. "You didn't bring me here because you wanted to help me," Zhao Wei continued. "You brought me here because you had no choice."
Zhongy said nothing.
Which was its own answer.
Yangde tilted his head. "Clever." The word carried no admiration. "Pity it doesn't help you." His eyes dropped to Zhao Wei's hand. "The badge. Hand it over."
"No."
"Hand it over."
"I said no." Zhao Wei kept his voice level. The badge felt cold in his palm, and he understood exactly what it represented. Without it, he couldn't access Onus's systems, couldn't move through any of its proper channels, and couldn't use the path back through the Gate to Zhao Ming. Without it, he was stranded. "I'm not giving you anything."
Yangde crossed the distance and simply took it. It was not a struggle but a firm, practiced removal performed with the complete confidence of someone who does not expect resistance to last. He turned the badge over and read the value displayed on its face.
Five.
Five Yugen.
A heavy silence settled over the clearing.
Yangde looked at the badge, then at Zhao Wei, and finally at Zhongy with the specific expression of a man exercising significant and effortful restraint.
"Five," he said.
"The selection has been—" Zhongy started.
"Five Yugen." Yangde turned the badge again as though the number might change on the other side. "Out of an entire school full of cultivators." He glanced at Zhongy one more time. "I'll keep the badge," he said simply, and moved to pocket it.
Both badges. The thought hit Zhao Wei's chest with a weight that had nothing to do with Yugen levels. Without the badge, I can't return. Not to Onus. Not through the Gate. Not to Zhao Ming.
"Return it," he said.
Yangde glanced at him.
"Return my badge." His voice came out steadier than he felt, which surprised him. He had no cultivation worth describing and nothing in his arsenal that should give anyone in this clearing pause. None of that seemed relevant. "Return it right now."
Yangde looked at him the way one looks at a sound coming from a direction that should not be producing any sound.
"RETURN IT!" The words tore out of him. "RETURN IT RIGHT NOW!!"
Yangde moved.
Not dramatically. He simply closed the distance with the easy confidence of long practice, and the strike came before Zhao Wei finished processing that it was incoming. It caught him across the chest and sent him skidding backward across the open ground, his boots dragging shallow grooves in the dirt. He barely found his footing before the second strike came in lower, forcing him sideways into a stumble.
He's not trying to end this, the thought arrived, cold and precise. He's demonstrating.
Zhao Wei threw himself back from the third strike, gained two steps of distance, and tried to think. Yangde had months of collected Yugen behind him—not just his own, but everything stripped from every student Zhongy had brought here before. He was faster. He was stronger. He had the settled composure of someone who had never been genuinely tested in this clearing and had no reason to believe tonight would be different.
At the tree line, Zhongy stood motionless. Whatever was moving behind his eyes, he kept it entirely off his face.
No help would come from that direction.
Yangde came again.
This time, Zhao Wei read the angle. He moved with the strike instead of against it, using the momentum to extend his evasion and buy himself a breath of space. It wasn't a solution. Yangde adjusted without effort, patient and methodical—the approach of someone who preferred to wear down rather than overwhelm. Each exchange cost Zhao Wei something—footing, air, distance—and cost Yangde almost nothing.
He couldn't sustain this.
Then Yangde reached to pocket the badge more securely, and something in Zhao Wei simply refused.
He lunged. Reckless. Too short, with no technique behind it—hand extended toward the badge, body entirely committed to a reach that any trained fighter would have shut down without effort. Yangde brought his hand down to stop him. The impact landed on Zhao Wei's outstretched palm with a crack that should have broken something.
The darkness came up.
He hadn't called it. He hadn't chosen it. It rose from beneath the surface of his palm the way a body moves before the mind agrees—instinctive, immediate, belonging to something deeper than decision. It spread outward from the point of contact through the skin of his hand and fingers: deep black, clean-edged, precise. A darkness with genuine depth to it, as though his hand now opened onto somewhere further down than any hand had a right to reach.
He stared at it.
Yangde had gone completely still.
For the first time in the entire exchange, his composure had cracked. Not broken—cracked. He stood looking at Zhao Wei's hand with an expression that had lost its professional quality entirely. Disbelief peeled back to reveal something underneath that was very close to fear.
"That's—" The word came out rough and stripped bare. "Five Yugen trash, and he has—that's Black Talon."
From the tree line, Zhongy's sharp intake of breath cut clearly through the still air.
Zhao Wei didn't know what Black Talon was. He only knew what it felt like. It felt like the thing that had happened when the Poison Worm's bite had driven his body to defend itself, except that had been internal and invisible. This was here, climbing from his palm toward his wrist with slow, certain purpose. It felt like something that had been waiting for a long time. Something that had always been his, sitting just beneath the surface, patient.
Something in him decided.
Return it.
He moved.
The darkness reached forward, and what came out of it was not a technique or a cultivated skill—it was force compressed into a shape it did not naturally take. Dense, sharp, and directed with a precision his conscious mind could never have managed. It hit Yangde in the mid-chest, and the impact made a sound like something sealed being broken open. Yangde flew backward across the open ground, and as he went, the badge spun free from his grip and arced through the moonlit air.
Zhao Wei caught it.
His fingers closed around it and held tight. His dark-stained hand trembled at the wrist—fine, fast tremors, the body registering something the mind had not fully processed yet. The darkness had passed his wrist now and was climbing toward his elbow with the same patient, unhurried certainty.
From the ground, Yangde pushed himself up.
The composure was gone entirely. In its place was raw fury. "How dare you—" He surged upright, and the Yugen energy around him changed quality—no longer contained and methodical but compressed and furious, the power of three months of accumulation narrowed to a single point. "Five Yugen garbage knocks me back and keeps his feet?! I'll end this right now—"
He came with everything he had.
The full force of it collided with the Black Talon, and neither side gave cleanly. The impact was mutual and absolute—a sound like something fundamental being bent in a direction it resisted, a concussive shockwave that sent dirt and dead leaves radiating outward from the point of collision. Both of them flew back. Neither landed well.
The clearing went quiet.
Zhao Wei was on one knee. His entire arm from palm to shoulder was dark now—the black deep and steady, settled into his skin like something that had decided to stay. His breathing came in controlled increments. The badge was still in his hand.
Yangde was several meters away, one palm flat against the dirt, head down, his breathing audible in the silence.
The moonlight lay across both of them without preference.
Then a voice came from the tree line—calm, clear, carrying the particular quality of someone who has been watching long enough to form a full and considered opinion.
"You're not trying to kill your opponent, are you?"
Zhao Wei turned his head.
A woman stood at the edge of the trees. She was taller than average and dressed in something dark that caught the moonlight without reflecting it. Her face carried the specific expression of someone who has witnessed a great many fights and is therefore not particularly impressed by this one, though she may find it mildly interesting.
One earring caught the moonlight—a small skull, delicate and precise.
Her eyes moved between Zhao Wei and Yangde with the unhurried accuracy of someone conducting a thorough assessment. Then they settled.
"Right there," she said.
She was not pointing at Yangde.
She was pointing at Zhao Wei.