Two months later, Mo Jian was examining a jade slip in the Blackrock Emporium, on the top floor of the Blackrock Pavilion in Blackrock City, on, of course, Blackrock Island, when he was interrupted.

  He had a distinct impression that whoever had named this place had simply given up in frustration after discovering all the good names were already taken, and decided to recycle the same one for everything. He wouldn’t even be surprised if the Island Master turned out to be named Blackrock as well.

  The reason he was here, when he ought to have been holed up in his new cave residence with Bai Ning, was that Bai Ning had just broken through to the middle stage of Foundation Establishment. The rate of her advancement was nothing short of absurd, even for someone of her talent. The False Core Pill had proven to be as miraculous as its reputation claimed, forcing even Mo Jian to set aside his distaste for it.

  More absurd still, she wasn’t done refining it. In the past two months, she had only consumed half the pill. At this pace, she might very well reach the peak of Foundation Establishment within a few more months. No wonder it was so coveted, and simultaneously so feared.

  But now, Bai Ning needed resources to stabilize her cultivation and to advance further. More specifically, she needed training in the sword arts, which was something Mo Jian knew next to nothing about. That was why they had taken the risk of venturing out.

  Blackrock Island was far off Mo Jian’s usual path. More importantly, it lay on the opposite side of the Thousand Shattered Islands from Jadeflame Island, a detail that had played a large part in his decision to come here.

  A part of him wished he could simply return to Azure Wall City; he knew its markets, its people, and how to move unseen there. But that would be foolish. He hadn’t set foot on that island since the incident at the Ming Family Auction, and truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he ever should.

  Had Island Masters Shi Die and Lady Yun known about the debacle in advance? He doubted it: they had been friends of Ming Taishou, after all, but the whole thing had left an awkward shadow over their relationship.

  Intentional or not, they had nearly sent him to his death, and worse, they had put Bai Ning at risk. Mo Jian was not one to hold grudges without cause, but avoiding Azure Wall City felt prudent for now.

  Still, Blackrock City was unfamiliar territory, and that left him feeling slightly off balance.

  He would have loved, as Bai Ning had once dreamed out aloud, to possess some sort of powerful disguise technique. In the stories, heroes always had divine abilities that let them change their faces, alter their auras, or vanish into the crowd. Those arts did exist, but they were rare, coveted, and expensive. And even then, every disguise had its counter.

  For every person seeking to hide, there were a dozen making it their business to uncover them. It was an endless cycle of concealment and revelation, of art and counter-art.

  As for Mo Jian, his own skills in that area were practically nonexistent. His best illusions were so simple that any cultivator at his level could see through them. Even a sharp-eyed Qi Condensation novice might notice something amiss. Mundane tricks like a hood, a wide-brimmed hat, or a half-mask were often his best bet. Yet wearing such things practically shouted, I’m hiding something.

  Why this line of thought? Partly, it was because being able to vanish into the crowd would make avoiding Han Wenqing and his mistress infinitely easier. They couldn’t possibly scour the Thousand Shattered Islands alone; they’d have to rely on informants and hired eyes. The ability to fool those would make life simpler. He could even go back to Azure Wall City and move about freely without any fear.

  Partly, it was to avoid the exact situation unfolding before him now.

  “I’m sorry… come again?” Mo Jian asked, genuine bewilderment flickering across his face.

  He looked down at the man kowtowing before him. Not just the request, though that alone warranted a moment of stunned silence, but the kowtowing itself.

  Mo Jian had never cared for such groveling. Too much pomp, too little sincerity. He preferred straightforward respect, the kind born of mutual understanding rather than performative etiquette, a habit lingering from his previous life.

  “Please, Lord Mo,” the young man said, forehead pressed to the polished floor with theatrical fervor. “Grant me the honor of Fairy Bai Ning’s hand in marriage. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her face. My father is the Island Master of Blackrock Island, and I am his favored son. Should you consent, Fairy Bai Ning will want for nothing. Our descendants would revere you as an honored ancestor. I beg you—meet with my father tomorrow to discuss this union.”

  Mo Jian just… stared.

  He had over two centuries’ worth of memories in his head. In them, he had fought ancient beasts, dueled rogue cultivators atop mountains, and watched stars fall from the heavens. He had, in fact, prepared himself for many things that morning, though this was not one of them.

  This was his first visit to Blackrock Island. He and Bai Ning were seeking a very specific resource: the memories and teachings of sword cultivators, or better yet, true sword masters. Jade slips and stone tablets containing stances, katas, proper posture, and technique were a dime a dozen. Mo Jian could have found them anywhere with ease. No, what he sought were teaching memories: living legacies condensed into crystalline form, capable of transmitting not only knowledge but the weight of experience.

  Such teaching tablets were rare. They were not strictly unique, but they could not be copied like normal jade slips, which contained only facts and figures, stripped of context. A proper teaching slip could only be made by a master on the subject; attempts to replicate them produced hollow copies, devoid of the skill and insight of the original creator.

  Unfortunately, while the Blackrock Emporium did have a few such slips, none were suitable for Bai Ning. One had belonged to a mortal warrior, preserved by a cultivator, but he had wielded the sword more like a club than a true bladed weapon. Another had belonged to a cultivator on the slaughter path, and Mo Jian had firmly refused to even consider it.

  Bai Ning had not protested that decision.

  Instead, she had gone below to trawl the markets of the island proper, hoping to stumble across some opportunity. Mo Jian wished her luck and chose to spend the time browsing a few jade slips of his own. It was a rare moment of peace, buying a book without Bai Ning snorting at his choices. Not that there was anything wrong with reading palace stories or harem dramas, but his disciple never passed up a chance to mock his tastes as hopelessly archaic.

  Where was he? Oh, right; he had just finished his business and was about to depart when the young man, Jin Rou, approached, introduced himself as the emporium’s manager, and politely requested a word in private.

  The moment they stepped into a room and the door closed, Jin Rou dropped into a kowtow and made his absurd proclamation.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  A marriage proposal out of nowhere. At least the young man had the sense to do it in private—that was the only saving grace of the entire situation.

  Mo Jian let the silence stretch, partly for dramatic effect, but also because he genuinely needed another breath to absorb the absurdity of what he was hearing and to consider his response.

  Finally, after discarding several cutting remarks that rose unbidden to his lips, he settled on something suitably pointed.

  “Bai Ning is my disciple and still undergoing her studies,” Mo Jian said, his voice mild but edged with steel. “You think you can lay claim to a Core Formation cultivator’s disciple so easily? You have never even met her before today. What prompted this?”

  He felt vaguely villainous speaking those words, like some domineering sect elder from a morality tale. But experience had taught him that when dealing with people like Jin Rou, it was best to speak their language: the language of rank and hierarchy, of face and power, of knowing one’s place.

  Mo Jian’s tone did not faze Jin Rou; the young man simply pressed on, resolute.

  “Lord Mo, I understand your concern. Yet I overheard you mention that you would not remain on the island long. I feared that if I did not act today, I would lose the chance forever. My father would be most honored to speak with you. I beg you to meet with him—he will explain and offer terms worthy of your esteem.”

  Mo Jian’s frown deepened. It wasn’t just the proposal. He also hated the phrasing. It sounded as if this were a business transaction, or a barter for livestock, as if Bai Ning’s own opinions or desires were irrelevant.

  He would like to say it was because he had stumbled upon some particularly misogynistic corner of the Thousand Shattered Islands, but the truth was harsher: he had encountered this mindset far too often even elsewhere.

  In many clans, in many regions, women were prized for beauty and usefulness, not treated as individuals with will or agency. One might expect that in a world of immortal cultivation, where anyone, in theory, could rise to power, that gender equality would follow naturally. Cultivation did not care whether one was man or woman. But the reality was starkly different.

  Female cultivators were plentiful in the lower realms, yet their numbers thinned drastically higher up. Among Core Formation cultivators, there might be one woman for every dozen men.

  Why such disparity? Mo Jian wasn’t certain. He suspected it was a deeply rooted cultural inheritance, reinforced over countless generations, rather than stemming from any real difference in ability. Much like the mortal world, the cultivation world was built so that men simply had an easier path.

  A man could keep a dozen concubines without reproach, but let a woman take even a single extra lover and she would be branded with the vilest of slurs—slut, harlot, or worse.

  And then there were cultivators like Jin Rou: raised in sects, clans, and families where such thinking was second nature. They didn’t speak of “cauldrons,” no, that would be too crude. They called it dual cultivation, balance of yin and yang, shared advancement. But behind that polished silk and ceremony, the ugliness remained the same.

  Even so, Mo Jian suspected this wasn’t really about any of that. Something felt off. Jin Rou’s proposal was both too sudden and too polished. The lines flowed neatly, as if memorized, and the young man spoke with a strange confidence. Some of that could be explained away by the circumstance, but too many of his internal alarms were going off.

  Also, it had been nagging at him from the start, but when, exactly, had the man seen Bai Ning? Mo Jian had been examining the tablets, and Jin Rou had arrived only because he’d been informed that a Core Formation guest was present. By then, Bai Ning had already left for the market below.

  Jin Rou had mentioned his father twice already. Could this be some sort of trap? Like a fake proposal used as a pretext to arrange a meeting.

  His instincts told him to test his suspicions.

  “You promise much in your father’s name, Jin Rou,” Mo Jian said, trying to sound calm and measured. “Will he not be furious that you negotiated with a peer behind his back?”

  Jin Rou’s expression didn’t falter. Instead, it brightened. “Senior, my father would be honored to speak with you. I will tell him of my admiration and respect for you. He would never turn away such a guest.”

  Mo Jian’s eyes narrowed. What admiration? What respect? This was their first meeting, and Jin Rou knew next to nothing about him. And again, the mention of meeting his father. For a man supposedly “in love,” Jin Rou certainly didn’t act like it.

  His suspicions solidified. Staged. Everything felt staged.

  His first instinct was to end it there: dismiss the young man, collect Bai Ning, and leave. Even if there was more to this than met the eye, why borrow trouble? He was already caught between Song Shaoyue’s schemes and Han Wenqing’s pursuit.

  Getting involved in whatever nonsense this was would be like wrestling with a wolf while a tiger prowled at the gate.

  Better to take Bai Ning and fly far from this place. Blackrock Island wasn’t worth the headache, and no one here could possibly chase them if they tried.

  But what if it was a trap? Could Song Shaoyue have already caught up to them, if she was even bothering to chase after them in the first place? But if so, then this approach… didn’t make much sense either. Yet, the possibility existed. If this was a trap, walking away blindly would be worse. He should al least do his best to confirm whether the net had already closed around them or not.

  So the question became: how to respond? Should he spring the trap and see what lay beneath it?

  After all, he hadn’t spent the past two months idle. Ye Chen’s suicidal technique—the one that burned his golden core for power and had allowed him to tangle with a Nascent Soul cultivator briefly—had taken immense effort to decipher and master, but Mo Jian had finally done it. It would never be his first move, but as a last resort, it was a card he could play. Just having it as a possibility did much to bolster his confidence.

  Of course, there was another route: refusal. He could outright say ‘no’ and see what Jin Rou did next. And, he reminded himself, never tell Bai Ning about it. She would probably try to erase the man from existence if she ever heard his words, and that was not a headache he wanted to deal with.

  He weighed the two options for a moment, then decided to go ahead with his first thought and probe the situation.

  “Jin Rou,” Mo Jian said quietly, his tone stripped of warmth, “tell me; when you first saw Bai Ning, what exactly attracted you?”

  Caught off guard, Jin Rou blinked. “Lord Mo?”

  “You said you fell in love,” Mo Jian continued, aiming for a voice as frigid as falling snow. “So humor me. Was it her golden hair? Her green eyes? Perhaps the giant fan she carries everywhere? What exactly was it that made you fall in love?”

  Jin Rou hesitated, then smiled brightly as if recalling a fond memory. “It was all of that, Lord Mo. I fell in love the moment I saw her.”

  Mo Jian smiled faintly, though there was no warmth in it. “That’s what I thought.”

  He stepped closer, the air between the two of them tightening like a drawn bowstring.

  “My disciple,” he said sharply, “has almost the opposite features of what I just described. Curious, isn’t it, that you fell in love with a woman you can’t even recognize?”

  Rou Jin’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then, sheepishly, like a child caught in the act, he forced a smile. “Senior… please, do not be angry. I meant no disrespect. If you meet my father tomorrow, he will… he will explain everything.”

  “Why would I do that?” Mo Jian’s tone was angry, though it was mostly an act. “Every word out of your mouth thus far has been a lie. I would be well within my rights to strike you down for this affront.”

  Jin Rou flinched. “I—I apologize—”

  “I don’t want an apology,” Mo Jian interrupted. “I want an explanation. Either give me one right now, or I’ll leave right this instant and never step foot on this island ever again.”

  Jin Rou froze in pace, his face a battlefield of panic and indecision. Mo Jian let the silence stretch, then waved dismissively, stepping past him. “Fine. I’ll take my leave. I have no intention of coming back to this place.”

  Jin Rou stiffened. He made a half lurch, half leap; an abortive move to latch on to Mo Jian’s robes, whose eyebrows raised at the desperation.

  “Wait, senior, please,” Jin Rou said, speaking slowly and carefully, as if he was painstakingly weighing each word. “There is a matter I am sworn not to speak of. Please meet with my father tomorrow and ask him about it. Only he can—”

  Before he could finish, his body convulsed violently. He coughed, once, twice, and then a dark spray of blood hit the floor.

  Mo Jian’s brows knitted together with alarm, but the fit passed quickly, leaving Jin Rou trembling, gasping, and pale as ash on the floor.

  It clicked in Mo Jian’s mind, then. Not merely a secret, but a restriction, set using a powerful binding. Whatever the matter, it was serious enough that the Island Master had bound his son under a spell, and desperate enough that the aforementioned son had staged a fake marriage proposal to ensure the first Core Formation cultivator he encountered would agree to meet his father.

  Mo Jian didn’t know the reason behind any of it. But he could already say one thing with crystal clear certainty: whatever was unfolding here was far more dangerous, and likely far stranger, than he had initially imagined.