Chapter 136: TO INSTRUCT

CHAPTER

136

TO INSTRUCT

Jieyuan

—∞—

Jieyuan, of course, didn’t let go. Not that he reckoned he’d have stood much of a chance if this turned into a tug-of-war situation. Given what he’d seen of Anren’s performance against Daojue earlier, it was a good thing she wasn’t pulling on the Shifting Feathers, just holding onto them.

Anren was not just encroaching on his personal space but outright invading it, her nose nearly brushing his. Only now did he realize how tall she was; she had a few inches on Meiyao and was about the same height as him. She was glaring at him, her pretty features drawn tight in a scowl.

Normally, he wouldn’t have minded having a woman this close; Anren was both beautiful and powerful, and if that wasn’t a winning combination, Jieyuan didn’t know what was.

But he already had something with Meiyao; he wasn’t about to risk that. Besides, Anren was trying to take his weapons away, and no amount of power or beauty was about to make up for that.

“Anren,” Jieyuan said, firmly tugging his arms away, “back off. Now.”

Only the knowledge that Anren could very well wipe the floor with him kept him from punctuating his words with some more physical persuasion. And even then, it was a near thing; his blood was already simmering, a familiar heat seething inside him.

“No,” Anren said.

If she felt even remotely threatened, she sure hid it well. She didn’t let go, and as he tried to pull the Shifting Feathers away, she tightened her grip on the weapons, pulling them back toward her.

“If there’s one thing I cannot stand, it’s weapons being misused,” Anren said. “And that’s what you just did.”

“That’s nice and all,” Jieyuan said. “And trust me, if I’m using it wrong, there’s nothing I’d love more than to learn to fix that. However.”

He did his best to keep his tone level, but he had no idea how much it was working.

Daojue, Jieyuan noticed, had moved to stand just behind Anren. Not in a supportive way, though. Or not supportive of Anren, at any rate.

That had eased Jieyuan’s nerves a bit; he couldn’t handle Anren on his own, but throw Daojue into the mix, and Jieyuan reckoned he might just have a winning hand.

“We’ll handle this like adults,” he continued. “You’ll take your hands off my weapons, you’ll step away, and then you’ll tell me what I’m doing wrong. I don’t even mind lending you the Shifting Feathers—as long as you ask me first. Are we clear?”

Anren didn’t move, not at first. But her scowl slowly faded, and her glare softened into a stare.

He wasn’t sure what to make of her expression anymore as she gazed straight into his eyes for a long moment.

Then she let go of the Shifting Feathers and took a step back. But she still didn’t look away from him; he felt like she was studying him now. Looking for something, though he had no idea what.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I got ahead of myself. I shouldn’t have done that. Sometimes, my nature… It gets away from me.”

A few rather unflattering words almost made it out of Jieyuan’s mouth, but he managed to swallow them down in time. He smothered the last of his fire. What had just happened left him a little soured on Anren, but it didn’t change the fact that he didn’t want to drive her away.

She was their best source of knowledge about this place, not to mention the best combatant between the three of them. And if he played his cards right, it looked like he might get a few amphis lessons out of her as well.

It wasn’t the first time Jieyuan had to swallow his pride; he doubted it’d be the last.

“It’s fine,” Jieyuan said. He hoped that sounded more believable to her ears than it did to his. “Now, the amphis. You said I’m using it wrong?”

Anren flashed him a grateful look, but it vanished so quickly he wondered if he’d imagined it.

Behind Anren, Daojue stepped away, seemingly satisfied that the situation wasn’t about to take a turn for the bloody.

“Yes.” She straightened up. Brightened a bit, too. “First, tell me something. You’re clearly not an amphis user. I doubt you’ve been using it for much more than a year. So what did you use before?”

As she spoke, Anren glanced at the abyss line just behind him, then gave him a meaningful look before skipping over it, onto the next platform.

Seeing the wisdom in having their conversation away from the spawning spot of murderous shadow creatures, Jieyuan followed. Just as he was about to make the jump, he wondered what would happen if he were to fall inside the gap.

Nothing good, was his very educated guess.

Though he kept his guard up as he made the cross, no sword fiend jumped up at him, and he landed without problems on the next stretch of barren rock. Daojue was just behind him.

Anren was walking slowly over to the center of this new platform.

“I’ve mostly used the spear,” Jieyuan said as he joined her, matching his pace with hers. “And you’re right. It’s been only a few months since I picked up the amphis. And I can’t say I got any formal instruction in it.”

“Just the spear?” Anren asked. She didn’t slow as they reached the center. “What about sabers? Because you’re certainly using your pair-forms as if they were sabers.”

“I’ve tried,” Jieyuan said. “But they feel too much like swords.”

Anren frowned. “And what’s wrong with swords?”

“They…” Jieyuan hesitated.

He knew how weird his aversion to them was, and he didn’t want to get into it right now. Together with Anren and Daojue, he jumped into the next platform. Still no sudden sword fiend incursion.

“They don’t really feel right to me.”

Anren gave him a long, considering look. “Well, we’ve all got our quirks and dents. But why did you stop using the spear? Or are you just experimenting with the amphis?”

“No,” Jieyuan said. “I did give up the spear. I…”

He glanced at Daojue, who was standing off to the side but paying attention.

“I decided that the spear wasn’t for me. And then I came across the amphis, and— Well, it caught my eye.”

“I see,” Anren said, quietly. She glanced at Daojue, and then back at him, and pursed her lips. She sighed softly before perking up again. “Well, back to the amphis. What are you holding right now? What kind of weapon?”

She stopped at the center of the platform, giving him an expectant look.

Jieyuan stopped too. He glanced down at the Shifting Feathers, and then back at her. “Short glaives?”

“That is your first mistake,” Anren said. “What you’re holding are not short glaives. They’re half-amphises. Or, if you want less of a mouthful, pair-forms. They are short glaives, sure—but so much more than that.”

Pair-forms. That wasn’t an unfamiliar term; it was what Duolan, the artificer who’d made and sold him the Shifting Feathers, had called the amphis in its split state.

He recalled how she’d supposedly read about the amphis in some old jade book and decided to replicate them. It looked like she’d gotten at least some of the terminology right.

“All right,” Jieyuan said. “I think—”

Anren put up a hand before he could get another word in. “But before we get into that distinction, let’s pretend you’re right. Let’s pretend those are short glaives. Why, then, are you using them like sabers? Look at your grip right now. Your hands are barely away from the blade. You’re completely ignoring the rest of the shaft.”

Jieyuan didn’t need to glance down to know she was right. He could see where she was getting at. “I’m supposed to be holding it lower, then?”

“Not exactly,” Anren said. “You’re supposed to vary your grip. Up and low. May I?”

She shifted to a one-handed hold on her sword, and extended her now free hand.

Jieyuan hesitated for a moment, then handed her one of the Shifting Feathers.

“Here,” Anren said, her hand closing at the very top of the shaft. “Adjust it according to the situation. You need to consider how much reach and leverage and control you need. High grip for the best control and closest range and least leverage. Saber-like.”

She moved her hand down to the end of the shaft so fast the weapon barely seemed to move. “Low grip for the opposite: worst control but longest reach and highest leverage. Like an ax.”

Again she adjusted the position of her hand lightning-fast, now at the middle of the shaft. “Everything in between as needed.”

It wasn’t like it had never occurred to Jieyuan to vary his grip; he even did so sometimes. But it wasn’t something he’d bothered incorporating into his style. The closer grip had served him well enough so far, and he hadn’t even mastered it yet to worry about alternative hand positions.

Anren seemed to know what she was talking about, though. So if she was willing to teach him, he wasn’t about to refuse.

“But that’s for using a short-glaive, which this isn’t,” Anren said. “No, like I said, this is a half-amphis. A pair-form.”

She sheathed her sword and held out her other hand. Jieyuan handed her the other Shifting Feather.

“The amphis is what’s called an inherently chromal weapon,” Anren said, holding the two short-glaives—or pair-forms, as she insisted on calling them—in front of her. “That means they don’t have a mundane counterpart. Because an amphis isn’t a pair of short-glaives.”

She joined the weapons together, butt to butt. They melded into one. “Or a double-bladed glaive.” She split them up again. “The ability to switch between pair-form and single-form is essential to an amphis. It’s what makes it an amphis.”

She held out both pair-forms in front of them, straight with her arm, like she was weighing them. Then she snapped back together into single-form.

“Cultivators don’t normally bother with the amphis. For most of them, simple weapons like the sword and the spear are already enough of a commitment; you could spend centuries learning them and still not reach mastery. An amphis is a vastly more complex weapon.”

Anren started moving the full, merged amphis slowly in front of her, drawing circles in the air with the opposite blades.

“Both of its forms are hard enough on their own. For pair-form, you must simultaneously wield two short glaives. For the single-form, you must wield a glaive with blades on both ends.”

Her feet moved as she started snapping the single-form into different positions. But then she went back to spinning the weapon around. Except this time she was doing it much faster, and flowing between the moves she’d just shown.

And she kept going at it faster and faster until it looked like the Shifting Feather was moving around on its own, between her arms, and she was dancing around it.

Jieyuan watched. At first he was a little stunned at how easy she made it look; he’d tried his hand at wielding the single-form a few times, but he found it too awkward, with the blades on both ends.

But then he got over his surprise and fully focused on what she was doing, committing it all to memory as best as he could.

“But the amphis takes it a step further,” Anren said, her voice perfectly steady despite her rapid movements and the whooshing winds they produced. “You’re meant to switch between both of its forms all the time, from one moment to the next, as the situation calls for it.”

Mid-swing, the amphis split up, but Anren, now wielding pair-forms, completed the movement just as naturally with the separate weapons. She stayed like that for a while, moving the pair-forms in sync.

And then she snapped into a flurry of movements. Single-form to pair-form and then back, barely an instant between each switch as she delivered an unbroken sequence of attacks to the air in front of her and around her, like she was facing several opponents at once.

Jieyuan stared, wide-eyed. Even after everything she’d said and showed him so far, he found it hard to believe that what Anren was wielding right now was the same weapon he’d been using for the last few months.

Anren gradually brought her routine to an end, her movements slowing until she was standing still again, holding the amphis in pair-form to her sides.

She looked at him, met his gaze. “The amphis is one of the hardest weapons to wield, that is true. But master it, and as far as martial combat is concerned, you’ll be near unrivaled.”

She offered the Shifting Feathers back to him. He took them, and she unsheathed her sword, holding it up.

“The sword’s the favored weapon by most cultivators. And none is better at using it than the members of the Absolute Sword Sect. But in terms of martial arts, very few Absolute Sword Sect cultivators can hold their own against your average Xieyueshen Clan lunar.”

Anren mentioned that clan before, shortly after she’d reached them. Lunar, too. Jieyuan hadn’t had the time to consider those things, but now that she brought them up again, he couldn’t help but focus. Especially on lunar.

There was also something else she’d said, at the time: I don’t even remember the last time I saw a human with one of those.

A human. Meaning she was more used to seeing non-humans wielding the amphis.

Lunar. Whatever they were, it didn’t seem like they were human. And if they had their own clan and could use weapons, they probably weren’t a type of beast, either.

He’d have probably been more surprised there were other intelligent races if he hadn’t been standing in another world right now, one made up of an empty gray sky and barren rocky plains cut by lines of the deepest black from which shadow creatures jumped out.

“You said you learned under the Xieyueshen Clan,” he said.

“Correct,” Anren confirmed.

He looked from the Shifting Feathers to Anren.

“I take it you’re willing to teach me?” he asked. “Or at least give me a few pointers?”

She smiled. “Yes.”

He hesitated for a moment, weighing his options, but decided he needed to at least throw it out there. “But what do you get out of it?”

Anren cocked her head like she was confused, but her little smile betrayed the truth: she wasn’t all that surprised by the question.

“I could name a few. Not having to see you absolutely butcher using the amphis is one. Getting you stronger to face the waves of sword fiends we’ll have to face later is another. But there’s another reason. The biggest one.”

“And it is?”

Her little smile widened into a grin. “Because it’ll be fun.”

The gleam in her eyes, paired with her grin, gave Jieyuan a bad feeling.

“Fun?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Anren said. “Fun.”

She pointed her sword toward the end of the platform. Toward the abyss line. “The next few fiends we come across are yours. You’ll face them on your own. And there’ll be conditions.”

Jieyuan felt even warier—but also excited.

There was a challenge coming, and he’d never been one to shy from that kind of thing.

—∞—

Jieyuan was in front of the abyss line. Anren had just finished telling him what she wanted him to do. Her conditions for this next fight.

The Shifting Feathers were out. Low-grip with his right hand; high-grip with his left. He was to use his left hand only if absolutely necessary. Those were the conditions. Anren’s idea was to start small and work their way up. And that meant getting him accustomed to low-grip.

Jieyuan kept his wrists loose, his eyes fixed on the dark slice across the rock. He kept flexing his right hand, shifting its position a little, testing the balance of the Shifting Feather, getting a feel for its weight.

He wasn’t going into this entirely unprepared; Anren had shown him a few low-grip moves. He’d done a few swings, she’d corrected his form a few times, and that had been it—off to fight.

The heat of battle forges the sharpest blades, she’d said.

There was no breeze, let alone any proper wind, but the air wasn’t still; it softly flowed around him. Dry, chalky, a touch metallic.

Anren and Daojue were some ways off behind him, like the last time. Ready to intervene if he messed up; he would be using his weapon in a way he was entirely unfamiliar with, after all.

Was unfamiliar with, Jieyuan thought, twisting his right wrist a little. Anren’s instructions and advice had been simple but effective, and he’d always prided himself in being a quick study.

Something moved—a shape, a shadow—

And Jieyuan swung his right hand in front of him into the impossibly black blade of the fiend that had just appeared in front of him.

It disengaged, pulled back, attacked again. Jieyuan fought the urge to engage his left hand, tried to bring his right hand in for another swing. But the fiend was too close, and he missed the mark, and only just managed to throw himself to the side to dodge the creature’s lunge.

The low-grip gave him a lot more range. That could be an advantage. Could. Would, eventually.

Right now, though, it sure wasn’t working in his favor.

The fiend didn’t give him breathing space as it kicked off the ground, rounding back on him. Jieyuan swung his right-hand Shifting Feather again, and this time he was closer—the blade almost cut across shadow-thing’s chest.

Almost.

Again, it was only the footwork Jieyuan had honed over and over in the Viridian Dome that saved him.

But the third time was the charm. As it gave chase again, Jieyuan felt in his gut as the right moment came. He took a step back even as he swung the Shifting Feather again, hacking down at its shoulder—and this time it was the creature that retreated to avoid the strike.

And that was all Jieyuan needed. Momentum. He went on the offensive, swinging the low-grip Shifting Feather again, and again the creature dodged, tried to attack—footwork came in for the rescue, and Jieyuan swung again.

Jieyuan was in his element now. His left hand and other Shifting Feather were relegated to little more than counterweight and balance as he focused only on his right hand, the low-gripped Shifting Feather it held, and the sword fiend.

Swing. Dodge. Swing. Upward, downward, sideways—shoulder, chest, thighs.

Jieyuan didn’t bother coming up with a tactic. Killing the sword fiend wasn’t the point. Familiarity was. So he just tried every move he could think of, feeling his skill improve in real time.

He didn’t know how long he spent there, engaged with the sword fiend. There were some close calls when he overreached, but only at the start. The worst that came of it was a little bit of cut cloth.

At some point, he didn’t need to think of new moves anymore; he simply let instinct take over as he attacked and defended. His mind—his body—had already gotten the basic motions down.

Jieyuan let it go for a while longer. Then, without any fanfare, he ended it.

He feinted a kick, the fiend backed right into where Jieyuan wanted it to be, and the right-hand Shifting Feather struck its neck.

Jieyuan watched as the fiend faded away into nothingness. His heart and breath settling a little, he turned around.

Anren and Daojue weren’t watching him. Rather, Daojue was watching Anren—who was holding Gleaming End. And cooing over it.

“Absolute, she really is precious,” Anren said, looking between the crystal spear and Daojue. “She really loves you. Quite the loyal girl. I know the Tianzijun have it easy with weapons, but she’s obsessed with you. You are, aren’t you, girl?”

Quite a lot to unpack there, Jieyuan decided, wondering how this had even happened. He’d been fighting the fiend for a while, and Anren and Daojue should have figured out he had it well in hand—but how had that led to Daojue lending Anren Gleaming End?

He glanced at Daojue, who was silently observing Anren. There was something about Daojue’s expression, the way he looked at Anren…

Jieyuan felt a jolt of disbelief.

No way. Right?

—∞—

“And this is what you want to do with mid-grip,” Anren said, swinging the Shifting Feather Jieyuan had just lent her.

Jieyuan traced the movement, memorizing the motion.

It’d been about a day since the Plundered had dumped them in the trialworld. About a day, because wonder of wonders, they’d left the Dome only to end somewhere else without a day-night cycle. Or any cycle to speak of, really.

He’d killed a total of ten fiends today. After each duel, Anren would take him over to the side, walk him through just what he’d done right and what he’d done wrong and how he could improve. Then they’d spar a bit.

And if she was satisfied with his progress, she’d introduce a new set of conditions for his next fight.

And the condition for the next fight was set already—mid-grip.

“You’re making good progress,” Anren said, “so I also want you to try to throw in some grip sliding if you can. Stick to short-grip, but slide. And I also want you dual-wielding from the start. I think you can manage it.”

In just one day, Jieyuan had gotten single-wielding the low-grip with both his hands down, as well as dual-wielding it. Granted, that one day had been about twenty-four hours of nonstop practice.

Anren was determined to take full advantage of their lack of exhaustion.

Jieyuan’s own determination, he was pretty sure, dwarfed hers. He’d been right about Anren teaching him being an opportunity—but only now was he starting to realize how right he’d been.

Anren extended her hand, and Jieyuan wordlessly lent her his other Shifting Feather as she showed him a few more moves. She moved slowly, her body language open in a way he couldn’t quite define.

Jieyuan couldn’t explain it, but she moved in a way that told him exactly what she was doing—what muscles she was engaging, how she was distributing her weight. It was the perfect reference material.

Jieyuan watched it all without blinking.

He’d been wrong about her being a good teacher. He knew he was a quick learner, sure, but he wasn’t this fast.

Anren wasn’t just good at teaching. She was easily the best teacher Jieyuan had ever had—in anything. That included Meiyao and Maeva; they weren’t even in the same league.

Anren handed him back both half-amphises after a while. “Give them a swing.”

Jieyuan got to it. He started moving slowly, getting a feel for the movements Anren had just shown him, both the Shifting Feathers flowing around him. Once he felt comfortable, he practiced adjusting his grip on the fly.

It was odd, feeling the slide back and forth in his hand, but after a few tries he felt he had the gist of it down.

“That’s enough,” Anren said.

Jieyuan nodded, cutting off his routine. “Off to fight, then?”

“Hmmm.” Anren gave him an appraising look. “You know, I can see why your master picked you for the trialworld, even with you not being a sword-user. You’re talented.”

Jieyuan didn’t usually care much for the praise of others. Recognition was nice, sure. But praise had never been something he’d chased after.

And yet Anren’s words had him feeling awfully warm.

Being praised was one thing. But being praised by someone as skilled as Anren—a violetsoul?

Jieyuan would be lying if he said it didn’t feel good.

“You’ve got good instincts. Good reaction time, too. And you don’t need to be told anything twice,” Anren said. “I can actually see you mastering the amphis in time. And from what I’ve seen so far, you’re a tricky fighter.”

She smiled. “You’ve got potential.”

Maybe it was the smile, or the way she said it, but there was something a touch mysterious about it. Sly, even.

Some kind of inside joke?

But Jieyuan was focused mainly on Anren’s words—the real takeaway.

He shouldn’t be far from a Violetsoul’s level when it came to pure martial arts. That didn’t mean he was anywhere close to a Violetsoul’s power, of course.

Violetsouls should have six realm-skills, all of them at Violetrealm. And if aura scaling worked the way the texts he’d read assumed, they could probably shatter mountains with a punch and move much faster than sound.

But, well, Jieyuan had to pick his battles. And right here, bound by the laws of the trialworld, what Anren said meant he might have a shot at doing well in the trialworld.

Though that reminds me—what is the reward?

There was usually a reward for passing the trial.

Getting out of here alive was plenty nice, sure, but Jieyuan suspected (or hoped, at any rate) there was more to it. Something that had all these sects sending their disciples over.

Before he could ask, though, Anren said, “I think Daojue should take the next fight.”

“What?” Jieyuan glanced at the man in question—who was standing just off to the side, looking their way. Or, well, looking Anren’s way. “Daojue?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but distance is skewed here. The Sword Tower over there? Do you know how far it is?”

She indicated the far-off distance with her head. Jieyuan squinted at the dark vertical line in the horizon.

“Neither do I,” Anren said. “Nobody does. Distance here is for the most part illusory. See, the Sword Tower is massive—bigger than you can comprehend, really. We’d need to be impossibly far away for it to appear this small. Way past the limits of this voidworld’s artificial horizon.”

Jieyuan might have been more surprised if he hadn’t already grown used to having his perception screwed by his surroundings.

The Dome was a gift that kept on giving.

“Everyone’s got one month to reach the Tower,” Anren said. “And in that time, they must take down at least a thousand fiends. The closer you are to the tower—or at least, the closer you try to get to the tower, the more fiends you face. That’s a good thing.”

Anren looked between him and Daojue. “Guess what happens if a month passes and you haven’t killed a thousand fiends?”

Jieyuan could only see two options. “Either you get disqualified, or…”

“You face the remaining fiends you need all at once,” Anren confirmed. “So if you sit around for a month, at the end you’ll be swarmed by a thousand fiends all of a sudden.”

“You said you had to kill a thousand fiends,” Jieyuan said. “That’s per cultivator, then. Not groups.”

“Yes,” Anren said. “It’s better if Daojue and I get a few kills in every once in a while, to get used to fighting the fiends too. Later on we’ll be facing larger waves of fiends, and we can make up the difference.”

“That’s fair.”

Jieyuan didn’t reckon Anren and Daojue would have any trouble with the fiends. But it wouldn’t be a good idea to have their first clash with the creatures (in Daojue’s case, at least) be a group fight.

“Perfect,” Anren said. She turned to Daojue. “Off you go, then.”

Wordlessly, Daojue set off toward the edge of the platform. Jieyuan and Anren hung back.

“I was wondering something, actually,” Jieyuan said.

Up ahead, Daojue stopped in front of the abyss line.

“Hmmm?” Anren glanced back at him.

“What’s the reward for the trial?”

“Something else your master forgot to mention, is it?” Anren said. “That one actually makes a little sense, at least. Because it doesn’t really matter.”

“It doesn’t matter?”

“Not really. The Absolute Sword Trial only has one winner, technically. The very best contestant. There’s no second place, third place, or anything like that. Only the best gets the reward.”

“That’s…” Jieyuan frowned. He’d been feeling a bit confident about his odds before, but beating everyone? That was a bit of a different business. He definitely didn’t see himself beating Anren, any time soon.

And she wasn’t even from the Absolute Sword Sect, whom he understood were the top dogs here. She’d said she was a core disciple of the Whispering Winds Sect. He really needed to have a private talk with Daojue sometime and find out more about these Violetsoul sects.

“What’s the reward?” Jieyuan asked.

“Supposedly, you get a wish granted.” Anren shrugged. “It’s vague, I know. The thing is, pretty much nobody’s actually here for the reward. It always goes to some Absolute Sword Sect core disciple, anyway.”

Jieyuan was about to ask if it was the conditions of the trial—being tireless, being able to keep training without stop. But he was pretty sure that violetsoul were untiring anyway. Besides, a Violetsoul sect probably had the means of replicating these conditions in some way. Maybe through an inscribed field.

“There are three reasons everyone’s really here for,” Anren said. She raised a hand, three fingers up.

“One of them is for making contacts. You’ll be meeting the most promising disciples born in the last hundred years or so from the region’s Violetsoul sects, after all. Another’s for a chance to draw the attention of the Absolute Sword Sect and get scouted. And the third one…”

She gave him a mysterious smile. “It’s for what happens inside the Sword Tower. But you’ll see.”

—∞—

Spins. Jieyuan was learning about spins.

Because the amphis couldn’t be complex enough.

“First, there’s paired,” Anren said. In her hands was the Shifting Feather in single-form. “See how the blades are facing the same direction?”

She then snapped one of her wrists out, and the top half of the Shifting Feather spun half a circle. Jieyuan knew she must’ve just detached and attached the Shifting Feathers, but it happened too quickly.

“This is the opposite spin,” Anren said. Another snap, and this time the top blade was facing the side. “This is mismatched. Mismatched-spin actually applies to any blade orientation that’s neither paired nor opposite.”

“Like mid-grip,” Jieyuan said, remembering his earlier lessons on pair-form. Two weeks had passed since then.

“Exactly,” Anren said. “And as with every aspect of the amphis, spin is something you’ll be changing all the time mid-battle. Different spins for different single-form swings.”

She handed him back the Shifting Feather. Without needing to be told, Jieyuan tried to replicate what she’d just shown him.

By now, he barely needed to think to split and merge the Shifting Feathers, but splitting and merging back-to-back wasn’t something he had much experience with.

The ends of both the Shifting Feathers came apart, and Jieyuan spun his wrist before merging her back. Except he’d been going for opposite-spin and ended up with mismatched, and Anren had done it much, much faster.

“Keep at it,” Anren said.

They stood in the middle of a platform. Further off, at the edge, Daojue fought a group of fiends. The numbers varied; whenever he cut one down, anywhere from one to three more would sprout from the abyss line to take its place.

Jieyuan busied himself with repetition. Detach. Spin. Attach. Split. Snap. Merge. Over and over.

Once he got the hang of it, he let his attention wander and just let his hands get used to the movement. He looked at Anren, who’d turned around to observe Daojue.

Two weeks they’d been in the trialworld. Two weeks since he and Daojue had met Anren. Two weeks since Anren had started training him—and Daojue too, though not as often.

And yet Jieyuan was still no closer to figuring her out. He really, really appreciated her help. But that was just it—she was helping them, plain and simple. She wasn’t training herself or really gaining anything by helping them.

Jieyuan knew some people were genuinely selfless or altruistic—but cultivators? It was one thing to lend a helping hand; Anren had gone far beyond that.

He’d asked her reasons on the first day and accepted her answer. But he hadn’t really believed her. It could be she was really just bored, or maybe she was doing it because she was just that nice, but—

“Why are you helping us?” Jieyuan asked.

He wasn’t sure if he regretted asking. Maybe. But it was already too late.

“Hmmm?”

Anren glanced back at him.

He didn’t elaborate, just took a page from Daojue’s book and met her stare evenly.

Anren’s curious look gave way to a searching one. She pursed her lips, appearing thoughtful.

“Hmmm. I wonder.”

She looked away, back toward Daojue. For a good while, she stayed silent, just watching as Daojue mowed down the sword fiends with Gleaming End.

“I have two older brothers,” Anren said, softly. “Daojue reminds me of one.”

She turned back to him. “You remind me of the other.”

Jieyuan blinked. His hands stopped moving. “Huh.”

She tilted her head, curious. “What?”

“If I had a coin for every time someone told me that,” Jieyuan said, “I’d have two. And both times this year.”

Anren frowned. “Really?”

Jieyuan gestured in Daojue’s direction. “I asked Daojue a similar question, once. Why he was helping me. And he said I remind him of his younger brother.”

“Oh.” Anren’s frown eased up a bit—only to deepen again the next moment. She regarded him for a moment longer before turning back to Daojue, her lips pressed together in a pinch.

“Hmmm. I see,” she said, quietly. “A curious coincidence, that.”