Jun Jie was still half hanging off the wall when a hand appeared in front of him.
It was slender, pale, and steady, offered without panic despite the fact that he was one bad decision away from tumbling off a mountain because some cross-world degenerate had requested "hands-on cultivation guidance."
He lifted his head.
And for the first time in a while, Jun Jie forgot to speak.
The girl standing above him wore the dark disciple robes of the Iron Blood Body Sect, though on her they looked cleaner than they had any right to. The wind moved lightly through her long black hair, and the evening light caught the line of her face just enough to make the whole scene feel unfairly composed. She was young, around his age, with the kind of beauty that did not need effort to make itself known. It was simply there, quiet and impossible to ignore.
She tilted her head slightly.
"Are you all right?" she asked. "Can you get back up?"
Jun Jie stared another breath too long before his pride finally returned.
"Yes."
He took her hand.
Her grip was firmer than he expected. She pulled, he pushed against the stone, and a moment later he was back on top of the wall, boots planted safely where they should have been from the beginning.
Only then did the memories hit him.
Bai Meiyue.
The beauty of the sect.
Same generation as him. A true genius. One of the few who did not train with the others because her talent had outgrown the normal rhythm of the field long ago. Even the old Jun Jie's rotten memory had preserved her with humiliating clarity, which became a problem the moment the rest of those memories started arriving.
Jun Jie's face changed.
He turned toward her, stepped back once on the wall, and bowed.
Not a normal bow either.
He bent low.
Lower.
Then somehow lower still, until his forehead almost threatened to hit the stone.
"I am deeply, sincerely, profoundly sorry."
Bai Meiyue blinked.
Jun Jie did not rise.
"I apologize for the old me, the previous me, the disgraceful me, the version of me that should have been thrown into a barrel and sealed with nails."
That made her lips twitch.
He bowed even deeper.
"I apologize for every offense committed under this face, this name, and this tragically handsome frame."
Now she was openly staring at him.
After a long breath, Bai Meiyue sat down beside him on the wall and said, with perfect calm, "You can raise your head now."
Jun Jie stayed bent a heartbeat longer out of sheer commitment to the apology before finally straightening.
She looked amused. More than amused, actually. She looked like a person who had been handed something strange and was enjoying the shape of it before deciding whether to trust it.
"You really are apologizing?" she asked.
"Very seriously."
"For which one?"
Jun Jie froze. "Which one?"
Bai Meiyue folded her hands over one knee and looked out across the mountains as if she were casually discussing the weather. "For trying to spy on me while I was changing, while I was bathing, while I was walking to the privy, while I was inside the privy, while I was reading, while I was practicing breathing exercises, while I was drying my hair, while I was eating, while I was resting under the eastern tree, or while I was washing blood out of my sleeves after training?"
Jun Jie sat there in absolute stillness.
Ten.
She had prepared ten.
Nya's voice floated through his mind with helpless delight. [The truth is, you've surpassed even my expectations. I did not think the previous one could be this committed.]
Jun Jie nearly swallowed his own tongue.
'Ohhh! You know that wasn't me. That was the earlier deranged animal wearing this body. I would never do something like that.'
[Wouldn't you?]
'Yes.'
[A bold defense.]
'You don't believe me?'
Nya gave him the mental equivalent of a smile he could not see and did not trust. [Let's leave it there.]
Jun Jie wanted to argue, but Bai Meiyue was right beside him and entirely too real for him to waste the moment fighting a cat-shaped menace in his head.
He cleared his throat. "In my defense, I hate the version of me that did all that even more than you do."
That made Bai Meiyue laugh.
It was soft, but it carried easily in the mountain air, and Jun Jie found himself absurdly grateful that he had not fallen to his death half a minute ago.
"I doubt that," she said.
"No, truly. If I could drag that old idiot out and beat sense into him myself, I would."
Bai Meiyue turned toward him with a steadier kind of attention now. There was no shyness in it, only quiet curiosity and the calm of someone who had long since learned what effect her presence had on others.
Jun Jie found that far more dangerous.
Or better.
Probably both.
"I've been watching you these past two weeks," she said.
That caught him.
"You have?"
She nodded once. "From a distance."
Jun Jie searched the old memories again. Bai Meiyue rarely trained with the main group. Her talent had put her on a separate path early. She had her own schedule, her own spaces, her own pace. The old Jun Jie had noticed her often, but for all the worst possible reasons. He had never really understood her.
The current Jun Jie was beginning to think that had been one of his many failures.
"I didn't see you," he admitted.
"I know."
The answer came without vanity. It was simply true.
She let the wind pass between them before continuing. "At first I thought the duel changed you. Then I watched you teach. After that, I started wondering whether the person wearing Jun Jie's face was really Jun Jie at all."
Jun Jie went quiet.
That was a dangerous sentence, delivered far more gently than most men in the sect would have managed.
Bai Meiyue rested one hand on the wall between them and looked at him again. "You don't walk the same."
Jun Jie's brow moved faintly.
"The old you swaggered," she said. "He dragged arrogance behind him like torn cloth. You move like someone who actually feels the ground."
That was a sharper observation than he would have liked from anyone, let alone from her.
Nya sounded delighted. [She sees through posture. Careful, host. This one might be dangerous.]
Jun Jie ignored her.
"And you came all this way," he said, "to tell me that?"
Bai Meiyue's mouth curved, small and knowing. "Partly."
"What's the other part?"
She looked out toward the mountains again, the last light resting along the ridge of distant stone. "I wanted to see if this version of you would apologize."
Jun Jie let out a breath through his nose. "And?"
"You bowed low enough to qualify as performance art."
He winced. "I was committed."
"I noticed."
That earned a real smile from him.
For a moment neither of them spoke. The sect behind them had grown quieter with the fading light. Below, stone roofs and courtyards were sinking into shadow, and far beyond them the mountains stood like old, silent judges.
Jun Jie leaned back on both hands, keeping a respectful amount of distance between them now that he was painfully aware of every disgrace tied to his face.
Bai Meiyue noticed that too. Of course she did.
"You've changed," she said at last.
Jun Jie glanced toward her. "That obvious?"
"Very."
He considered lying.
"Good," he said. "The old one was unbearable."
This time her smile stayed a little longer.
And somewhere in the back of Jun Jie's mind, past the embarrassment, the apology, the teasing, and the uncomfortable list of crimes he had inherited, one quiet thought rose on its own.
'She really is beautiful.'