The smell of meat soup woke him.

  Yan Qiu opened his eyes and found Xu Liang crouching beside him with a bowl so close to his face that the steam curled against his nose. A piece of fresh bread sat on top, soaking in the broth.

  “Looks good, right?” Xu Liang grinned.

  Yan Qiu sat up from the corner he had slept in. His back was stiff from the wooden floor and his neck ached from using his bundle as a pillow. The inn was quiet in the morning, tables empty and chairs stacked, with sunlight coming through the windows.

  He took the bowl and ate. The soup was rich and salty with chunks of meat that fell apart on his tongue, and he finished it so fast that Xu Liang laughed.

  “Slow down. There is more if you want.”

  They sat together on the floor while the innkeeper swept the front entrance. Xu Liang asked him where he was from, and Yan Qiu told him about Blackroot. How small it was, how poor, how everyone knew everyone. He told him about the sect elder who came to test the children for spiritual roots, and how he passed the test but failed the trials after.

  Xu Liang asked about his family. Yan Qiu said his father was a farmer and his mother did not cultivate. He kept it short.

  “What about you?” Yan Qiu asked.

  “Merchant family.” Xu Liang stretched his legs out and leaned back against the wall. “We travel around. I got bored of it and ended up here.”

  It was a lie. Yan Qiu could tell by the way he said it, too smooth, like he had told the same story many times. He did not say anything about it.

  “Do you know anything about the Barched Wind Sect?” Yan Qiu asked. “Like when the next trial is?”

  “They take disciples every month. Next one is in about twelve days.” Xu Liang looked at him. “You want to go?”

  “That is why I came here.”

  “Twelve days is enough time to learn some basics and get through the next stage, but you cannot just show up with nothing. You will need pills, maybe a technique scroll or two.”

  “How much do pills cost?”

  “A lot. Body Tempering Pill is about fifty copper. Qi Gathering is closer to eighty. And anything better than that costs even more.”

  Yan Qiu did the math in his head. Fifteen copper a day for twelve days was a hundred and eighty coins. After food and whatever else he needed, that would barely cover one pill.

  By normal terms I am at the first stage of Breath Weaving, he thought. But if I go by that book, I am closer to the last stage of Flesh Forging. I really need those pills.

  “That is a lot,” he said.

  “And do not think working here will be enough. It will not. Not in twelve days.” Xu Liang lowered his voice. “The fastest way to make real coins is the arena. It opens at night, for martial artists up to the third stage of Channel Refining.”

  “An arena?”

  “You put in two copper to enter. Every round you win, your coins double. You can also earn through betting.” He paused. “Everyone wears masks, so nobody knows who you are.”

  Yan Qiu was quiet for a moment.

  “By the looks of it, you are at the first stage of Breath Weaving, right?” Xu Liang asked.

  “Well, yea,” Yan Qiu said. He hid the fact that he was cultivating a different method.

  “Then you would be in the lowest bracket. Should be fine.”

  “Let us do that then.”

  They talked it over and agreed. They would not tell the innkeeper about the arena. Xu Liang said the inn got quiet in the evening and the innkeeper could handle things on his own for a while.

  “I will tell him I am showing you around the city,” Xu Liang said. “We should have a break around evening anyway.”

  The rest of the day passed slowly. Yan Qiu learned how to carry trays without spilling and how to pour liquor without overfilling the cups. Then Yan and Xu Liang handled the afternoon crowd.

  Evening came and the inn emptied out. Xu Liang told the innkeeper he was going to show Yan Qiu around the city, and the old man waved them off without looking up from the counter.

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  The streets were different at night. The market stalls were closed and lanterns cast everything in warm orange light. Xu Liang led him down a side street, then through an alley, then down a set of stone steps that went underground.

  They came out into a wide underground chamber lit by torches along the walls. The ceiling was low and the air was thick with smoke and sweat. In the center of the room, a raised stone platform served as the fighting ring, and around it people stood shoulder to shoulder, watching and yelling and waving coins.

  Every person in the room wore a mask. Some were plain wood, others painted, and a few were just cloth tied around the face. Xu Liang pulled two wooden masks from his bag and handed one to Yan Qiu.

  “Put it on. Do not take it off until we leave.”

  Yan Qiu tied the mask over his face. It pressed tight against his cheeks and the world narrowed to what he could see through the eye holes.

  On the platform, two men were fighting. The crowd roared every time a hit landed.

  Yan Qiu watched. Something stirred in his chest, the same heat that had been there since the spiritual root test, but stronger now. It spread through his arms and into his fingers, and his hands curled into fists on their own. His blood felt warm, almost hot, and his body started trembling. Not from fear. Not from cold. His body was trembling because it wanted to move.

  His stomach turned and his mouth tasted like metal. He felt like he was going to vomit, and at the same time he did not want to look away. One of the fighters on the platform took a hit to the jaw and stumbled, and Yan Qiu felt something pull inside him, something that wanted to be the one throwing that punch. He could picture it clearly, his fist connecting with the man’s face, the way the bone would feel under his knuckles, the way the man’s head would snap to the side. He could feel it in his hands like it had already happened.

  He wanted to hurt someone. The thought was not a whisper or a passing idea. It sat in his chest like a living thing, heavy and warm, and it was growing with every punch he watched land on the platform. He wanted to feel someone’s body give under his fists. He wanted to hear the sound of it. He wanted to see someone fall and know that he was the one who put them down.

  The worst part was how good it felt to want it.

  What is wrong with me?

  He did not understand where the feeling came from. He had never wanted to hurt anyone before, not like this, not with this kind of hunger. It was like watching the fights had woken something up inside him that had been sleeping for a very long time, and now that it was awake it would not go back to sleep.

  “You alright?” Xu Liang asked, glancing at him. “You look sick.”

  “I am fine.” He was not. “I want to fight.”

  Xu Liang looked at him for a moment. “Two copper to enter. Winnings double every round. You can stop whenever you want.”

  Yan Qiu paid the two copper and stepped onto the platform.

  His first opponent was a man twice his size who moved slowly. Yan Qiu stepped around his punches and hit him three times in the stomach before the man knew what was happening. He went down fast.

  The second was quicker but sloppy. Yan Qiu stepped inside a wild kick and swept his legs out from under him.

  The third gave him trouble. A wiry man with quick hands who caught Yan Qiu with a punch to the chest that sent him stumbling. He spat blood onto the stone and went back in, watched the man’s shoulders for the tells, and landed two clean hits to the jaw. The man dropped.

  Because of the masks, most of the crowd did not realize he was a child. A few of them guessed he was a teenager from his build, thin and short but fast. Nobody had bet on him at first, but after the third round some of them started gambling on him.

  The fourth opponent hit him hard. A straight punch to the chest that cracked something inside, and Yan Qiu doubled over and coughed blood onto the stone. The crowd went quiet, expecting him to stay down.

  He was vomiting blood, and he enjoyed it.

  He straightened up with blood on his lips and his eyes wide behind the mask, and he let out a laugh. It came out of him before he could stop it, a sound that did not belong to him, that he had never made before in his life. He went at the man with everything he had, and the man tried to back away, and Yan Qiu followed him step for step until the man fell.

  The crowd went silent for a moment, then erupted. The people watching were surprised. Xu Liang was standing at the edge of the platform, and his smile was gone.

  From the fifth round, something changed.

  Yan Qiu stopped trying to aim. He stopped reading his opponents, stopped watching for patterns. He just swung. His fists went out in wide, aimless arcs with no technique behind them, no footwork, no thought at all, and somehow they kept hitting. He took every punch thrown at him and laughed through it, spitting blood between exchanges and swinging blind.

  The fifth opponent went down when Yan Qiu’s fist caught his jaw on a wild backswing. The crowd did not cheer. A few of them shifted uncomfortably.

  The sixth was bigger and hit harder. The first punch caught Yan Qiu in the stomach and he doubled over and vomited blood onto the platform. He straightened up and kept swinging, walking forward with his arms moving in loose circles, taking every hit and laughing through all of it. The sound coming out of his mouth did not sound like laughter anymore. He caught the man with a wild elbow he had not even aimed, and the man went down.

  Nobody cheered. The section of the crowd closest to the platform had gone quiet, and some of them were staring at the small masked figure standing in the center of the ring with blood on his mouth and his fists still swinging at nothing.

  Xu Liang’s face was pale. He looked horrified, but he did not stop it.

  The seventh opponent was the strongest. He hit Yan Qiu so hard that his feet left the ground and he landed on his back. He lay there for a moment, and the laughter kept coming. He got up. The man hit him again. He got up again. He was not fighting anymore. He was just swinging and getting hit and getting up and swinging again, and the laughter had turned into something low and constant that he could not stop.

  He caught the man in the throat with a fist he had thrown blind. The man choked and dropped.

  Yan Qiu stood in the center of the platform with his arms hanging at his sides, blood dripping from his mouth, his hands swollen and purple.

  The laughter stopped.

  His legs gave out and he collapsed face-first onto the stone.

  The chamber went silent. The shouting, the betting, the shuffling of feet, all of it stopped. The only sound was Yan Qiu’s breathing, wet and ragged, echoing off the stone walls.

  Nobody moved.