The mountain wind moved softly along the wall, carrying the last of the evening chill with it.
Bai Meiyue remained seated beside him, one hand resting against the stone, the dark disciple robes of the Iron Blood Body Sect shifting lightly around her in the breeze. The sect below had begun to quiet down. The noise of training had long faded, leaving behind only distant footsteps, the occasional call from a watchtower, and the low, ancient hush of mountains standing around them like old guardians.
For a while, neither of them said anything.
It did not feel awkward.
Jun Jie found that more surprising than it should have been. He had expected tension after that absurd apology and the catalogue of crimes the old Jun Jie had apparently committed in her direction over the years. Instead, the air between them had cleared. No mockery, no flirtation, no strain. Just two disciples of the same generation sitting on a wall above the sect and letting the day breathe itself out.
Bai Meiyue spoke first.
"What are you doing up here?"
Jun Jie glanced toward the valley below, where the clouds moved slowly between the lower cliffs like white water caught in a stone river.
"Thinking."
She nodded once, as if that answer made enough sense on its own.
"About what?"
Jun Jie considered lying, decided against it, and answered with the simplest truth available.
"About what comes next."
Bai Meiyue sat quiet for a breath, turning that over in her own way before speaking again.
"You finally look like the young master a sect should have for his generation."
Jun Jie gave a faint huff of amusement. "That sounds dangerously close to praise."
"It is praise."
He turned slightly toward her. "You say it like a diagnosis."
Bai Meiyue's mouth curved, very slightly.
"I say it that way because praise suits you less than correction. You'd probably listen better."
Jun Jie could not argue with that, which annoyed him enough to make the answer honest.
"Fair."
The wind lifted a strand of her hair and carried it across one shoulder. She tucked it back without hurry and looked out over the mountain range.
"The second and third generations should be returning soon for the tournament."
Jun Jie frowned. "Second and third generations?"
She turned her head. "You really don't remember much about sect affairs, do you?"
That one he deserved.
Fragments from the old Jun Jie's memory stirred belatedly, late and useless as usual. First generation meant elders and above. The second and third generations were their seniors in the sect hierarchy, older disciples and core figures who trained elsewhere, took external tasks, cultivated in isolation, or represented the sect beyond its immediate grounds. Above Jun Jie's generation, below the true old monsters.
He clicked his tongue softly.
'So that's what she meant.'
Out loud, he asked, "And the tournament?"
Bai Meiyue watched him for a moment, perhaps measuring how much of this was forgetfulness and how much was the old Jun Jie never caring enough to learn.
Then she answered.
"The regional tournament. It happens every year between the local sects. We participate every time."
Jun Jie stayed quiet, waiting.
She continued in that same even tone.
"The nearby sects send their disciples by generation. Younger disciples fight first, then the older groups. Body sects, sword sects, mixed sects, alchemy-affiliated factions if they have disciples worth sending. Some go for reputation, others for resources, and finally some don't like to be seen hiding."
That pulled more memory loose.
Names drifting back with the faint irritation of things the old Jun Jie had once heard and dismissed while thinking about entirely different topics.
Jun Jie rubbed his thumb lightly against the rough edge of the wall.
"And we attend every year."
"As always."
"Do we win?"
Bai Meiyue let that question hang long enough to answer it without words.
Jun Jie exhaled through his nose. "Right."
"We don't disgrace ourselves every year," she said, which was probably intended as comfort and somehow managed to wound the sect anyway. "But we haven't had much to boast about in a while."
There was no bitterness in her voice.
Jun Jie let his attention drift back over the darkening peaks. The Iron Blood Body Sect perched high among them with all the pride of a faction that still remembered what it had once been and had not yet accepted what it had become.
A sect in debt.
A sect with elders pulling in different directions.
A sect whose inheritance had been flawed for years without realizing it.
A sect that might suddenly arrive at a regional tournament carrying a very different Jun Jie than the one everyone expected.
That thought had teeth.
Bai Meiyue turned toward him slightly, and the softness in her earlier tone thinned.
"I hope you pay attention and do it properly this time."
Jun Jie glanced at her.
She did not soften the line.
"If you hate your old self that much," she said, "then I hope you won't embarrass the sect again when it matters."
Simple words. No edge sharpened for cruelty, no dramatic challenge wrapped inside them. She spoke as a disciple of the sect, to another disciple of the sect, about something that would soon place all their names before outsiders.
Jun Jie respected that more than if she had tried to provoke him.
"I won't," he said.
Her expression did not change. "You're very certain."
"I am."
Below them, somewhere deep in the grounds, a bell rang once from one of the side courtyards. Evening discipline. Lights would soon rise in the disciple residences, night rotations would begin, and the sect would fold itself into another day the way old sects always did, with routine, pressure, and stone holding everything in place.
Jun Jie rested both hands against the wall and let out a low breath.
"Was I really that huge a piece of shit?"
Bai Meiyue did not hurry to soften it.
"Yes," she said. "You were a huge piece of shit."
Jun Jie clicked his tongue and shook his head with faint disbelief.
"Those are cruel words coming from such a beautiful young lady."
Bai Meiyue's mouth curved, though only slightly.
"You earned cruel words."
Jun Jie accepted that with more calm than the old version of him ever would have managed. He leaned back against the stone and let the wind brush past his face, carrying with it the dry scent of rock and the distant chill rising from the valleys below.
"Fair enough," he said. "At least you're honest."
"There isn't much point lying about what everyone in the sect already knows."
Jun Jie laughed softly under his breath.
The sky beyond the mountain ridge had darkened by another shade. What remained of the light stretched in thin gold across the farthest peaks, while the lower valleys were already sinking into blue shadow. The Iron Blood Body Sect stood above all of it, carved into the mountain like a stubborn scar that refused to fade.
Jun Jie looked toward the path leading back into the inner grounds.
"So a few months at most."
"Most likely."
"And the second and third generations will return before that."
"They should. Some are training elsewhere. Some handle sect matters outside. Others were sent to gather resources or temper themselves away from the main grounds. When the tournament approaches, they come back."
That pulled at his curiosity again.
The Iron Blood Body Sect had felt big when he first woke here, but each passing day made it feel wider in a different way. Not because of the buildings or training fields. Because of the lives moving through it, the people he had not met yet, the old structure still holding together even while the sect itself limped through decline.
It was larger than disgrace. Larger than one rotten young master.
That, more than anything, made him want to drag it upward.
Bai Meiyue stood.
The motion was smooth and light, but it carried finality. She brushed a stray thread from her sleeve and turned slightly toward the stone path below.
"I should go."
Jun Jie lifted his head. "That abrupt?"
"It's getting dark."
"And?"
"And unlike you, I don't make a habit of staying on walls with terrible footing."
Jun Jie gave her a dry look. "I slipped once."
"You nearly died once."
"That's an unnecessarily dramatic way to describe a brief loss of balance."
"It was a very long brief loss of balance."
She stepped away from where they had been sitting, her robe shifting lightly around her legs as the wind moved over the wall. Jun Jie remained where he was, watching her make her way toward the drop to the inner path below.
For a moment, he simply saw her as she was.
Not as the beauty of the sect or as another person tangled in the old Jun Jie's mess.
Just Bai Meiyue. Talented enough to train apart from the others. Sharp enough to notice how he walked, how he spoke, how the shape of him had changed before most people around him could name what they were seeing.
He spoke before thinking much about it.
"I'm glad it was you."
Bai Meiyue paused.
The evening light was almost gone now, but not so gone that it could hide the faint color that touched her cheeks. It was slight, gone almost as quickly as it came, yet Jun Jie caught it.
He blinked once.
Bai Meiyue recovered first.
"You say strange things very casually."
Jun Jie frowned a little. "Did I?"
"You did."
He ran the sentence back through his head and realized, a touch late, how it could sound.
What he had meant was simple. If someone had to find him half falling off a sect wall while he was being mentally assaulted by the refined literary demands of a cross-world degenerate, he was glad it had been someone he could actually speak to.
What had come out was... less precise.
Jun Jie cleared his throat.
"I meant the conversation."
Bai Meiyue's lips curved again, small but real this time.
"I'm sure you did."
That did not help him.
She stepped down from the wall onto the inner path with practiced ease and turned back only once.
"Try not to embarrass the sect at the tournament."
Jun Jie folded one arm over his bent knee and looked down at her from the stone wall.
"I'll do my best to be a different kind of trouble."
Bai Meiyue studied him for a breath, as if deciding whether that answer should worry her more than the old one.
Then she gave the smallest nod.
"I'll hold you to that, Young Master."
She left after that, walking back toward the inner grounds while the last trace of day faded from the mountain peaks. Jun Jie stayed where he was long after her figure disappeared between the descending paths and stone lanterns.
The wall felt quieter without her there.
The sect below carried on, but its noise came from farther away now, muffled by height, dusk, and distance.
Jun Jie stared out at the mountains again and let out a slow breath through his nose.
'That went better than I expected.'
Nya, who had been suspiciously silent through the last part of the conversation, finally returned with perfect timing.
[How noble. How innocent. How absolutely not flirtatious.]
Jun Jie closed his eyes.
'Shut up.'
[You told a beautiful girl you were glad it was her.]
'I meant the conversation and the help.'
[Of course.]
Jun Jie pressed two fingers against his brow and sighed.
Below him, the mountain wind rolled across the sect walls and vanished into the darkening valleys.
Above, the first night stars had begun to appear.
And there Jun Jie remained, seated atop the stone wall of the Iron Blood Body Sect with the cold air around him, the tournament ahead of him, and a growing suspicion that his second life might become far more complicated than simple cultivation ever had the decency to be.