Chang Bolin strode over to him and stood inches from him. Their noses would have almost touched, if Chang Bolin had enough height to manage the feat. As it was, he stared fiercely up at Hui from his chest. “Is it bravery or idiocy that drives you to risk life and death to visit Starbound Peak?”

“Er… probably more the second,” Hui muttered honestly.

Other Starbound Peak disciples wandered in behind Chang Bolin. Moving casually, they formed a loose circle around Hui and Chang Bolin.

Hui flicked his eyes toward them. Hatred blazed back at him. They won’t let me escape easily. What, do they believe Chang Bolin’s bullshit? Or are they also jealous of me for holding the spot of Weiheng Wu’s inheriting disciple?

He grimaced. You can take it! He hasn’t helped me out once so far! He abandons small children on the top of peaks! Hasn’t taught me a single technique! What master, ptui!

“I see you’ve graduated from being a waste. Should I congratulate you? It only took ten years,” Chang Bolin sneered.

“Thank you.” Hui bowed.

Disgusted, Chang Bolin spat. Wetness splattered over Hui’s cheek. “What gives you the right to stand before me? After what you did, you should be prostrate on the floor, begging for my mercy. I have every right to strike you down right here!”

As if that matters. You don’t need a reason, you mad dog. You think it’s fine to kill anyone that gets in your way.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Hui bowed deeper. Don’t antagonize him. Think of him as another debt collector. Give in and get on with your life. “Please have mercy, elder brother.”

Chang Bolin snatched his robes, drawing Hui’s face to his. “You think that insincere apology can wipe the slate clean?”

Hui took a deep breath. He started to form words, but they twisted in his mouth. Sneering, he drew himself upright. Chang Bolin’s hand slipped down his robes, unable to hold him in place. “You took that for an apology? Why should I apologize for striking back against a thoughtless beast like you, who only knows how to kill and throw tantrums?”

Chang Bolin’s eyes went wide. His eyes slipped to the open gap of Hui’s robes, and they widened even further. “You—!”

Hui glanced down. Stitched in red in the inside hem of his borrowed robes, Li Xiang stood out for all to see.

A hush fell over the crowd of white-robed disciples. Every eye darted to him.

“It—it was a mix-up in the laundry room! I didn’t, I don’t—” Hui protested, throwing his hands up.

Chang Bolin’s eyes narrowed. “You! You eat our food, you tresspass on our peak, and now you sully our idol?”

What ‘our.’ Have you been officially accepted to Starbound Peak? When, last night? And she’s already ‘your’ idol, Hui mocked silently.

Around him, the crowd grumbled. Swords flashed in the library’s low light.

Chang Bolin shook his head. “Unforgivable!”

“Listen, listen, this is all a misunderstanding,” Hui tried, backing away.

“Almost crippling me was a misunderstanding?” Chang Bolin demanded.

Hui paused. “Okay, that—that was deliberate. But to be fair, you tried to kill me first.”

“This man is a shame upon our sect! It’s our duty to destroy him!” Chang Bolin shouted.

White-robed disciples closed in all around him. Hui glanced around. He dropped his hand to his hip and found no sword. Right, I only have a training sword, and I left it up the peak. He gave them a nervous smile. “Uh, maybe we could talk it out?”

The disciples lunged at him. The fastest of them, a man with a low ponytail, stabbed at his gut. Hui twisted, letting the sword pass by. A whoosh caught his ear, and he sidestepped. A spiked mace slammed through the space he’d been.

From behind the nearest attacker, a man stabbed down with a spear. Hui deflected the stab downward with a flat-palmed strike. The man pressed on, jabbing the spear at his thigh. Hui yanked it out of his way and staggered, off-balance.

Seizing his chance, Chang Bolin jumped in and grabbed a fistful of Hui’s robes. With his other hand, he jabbed a short dagger at Hui’s gut. “This time, I’ll make sure you’re dead.”

Hui grabbed Chang Bolin’s robes back. With his other hand, he deflected Chang Bolin's jab so it skittered over his hip bone instead of striking home. While the other boy's arm was still extended, he lowered his hips under Chang Bolin’s center of gravity, yanked up at the same time, and threw Chang Bolin over him to the ground.

Chang Bolin struck the ground with an ‘oof.’

A dozen blades flew at Hui, too many for him to track or deflect. Time seemed to slow. He watched them close in on him, glittering in the light. I can’t dodge all of them, but they won’t all kill.

Images flashed through his head, memories of a small, moldy room, a lit-up X-ray chart on the wall. A man in a lab coat pointed at the image, his expression bland. “Kidney, twenty thousand. Liver, forty thousand. Lung, fifty thousand. Heart, a hundred thousand. If you can’t repay… you understand, right?”

Don’t underestimate loan sharks! I remember where every vital organ is! They drilled it into my head over and over until I was sick of it!

Blades dropped toward him. His eyes narrowed. He adjusted his posture, dodging the worst, angling the rest for non-vital spots. At the same time, he reached into himself, toward his qi. Remember that manual. It’s a technique, it’s something you can use!

Sharp blades slid into his flesh. Hui screamed, gripping the worst sword, one that stuck shallowly into his side, missing his kidneys by a hair. It’s okay. It’s okay. This is the only way to survive!

Shifting his weight subtly, he fell away from the blades. At the same time, he reached out to the qi inside him. Vanish!

The qi resisted him. It wanted to blaze, to circulate, to move evenly. Don’t stop it in pieces. Don’t widen my passages and stagnate it. I have to kill it at the source! He focused on his dantian and caged it in mentally, blocking off all passages in and out. The flow of qi slowed, then stopped. Without a supply, the qi in his passages dried up.

In his dantian, he extended his mental energy and caged the qi down, down, down, forcing it ever smaller. Slowly, his qi faded away. From filling the dantian, to half-full, to a bright patch of light, not compressing it but destroying it. He forced it away, again and again, bleeding qi off into the room. Faster, faster!

He struck the ground and bounced limply. Fell into a huddle of limbs. His blood spilled out, soaking into the library’s floor.

The other disciples backed away. “He’s dying.”

“Oh, shit. We’re in trouble now.”

“I just wanted to stab him a little bit… aren’t we cultivators supposed to be hardy?”

“He stopped dodging! How was I supposed to know he’d just stand there?”

“Who has a qi-and-blood restoring pill? Anyone?”

“I’m not wasting my good pills on that guy…”

Chang Bolin pushed himself up, wiping blood off his lip where it had burst open on the floor. “He’s not dead!”

Shut up. I’m almost dead. That’s close enough, Hui thought, annoyed. His body temperature dropped. He shivered uncontrollably, just once. Qi siphoned out of him slowly, so slowly. C’mon! Faster!

Chang Bolin rested his sword on Hui’s neck, then raised it over his head. A vindictive smirk on his face, he shouted, “Come back from this one!”

“That’s enough! Absolute Authority!” the librarian shouted, standing up from his desk.

Instantly, an immense pressure weighed down on everyone in the room. Chang Bolin fell backward, weighted off-balance by his raised sword. The other disciples crumpled as one, falling under the pressure.

You step in now? Is this the line between “let them hash it out” and murder to you?

No, wait, I’m ‘dead.’ So the line isn’t at murder, it’s between murder and mutilating corpses? Damn librarian! Stop them before they stab me next time, not when I’m dying and they’re about to behead my poor cold dead body! Hui cursed him inwardly.

The weight stifled Hui’s qi. It fled his body, as if he really were dying. His vision faded to a slit. His body went limp.

No, wait… hold on, I still need some of that! Releasing his technique, he fought against the pressure. The last spark of his qi wavered in his chest, flickering like a candle. He cupped it with all the energy he could muster, mental energy, physical energy, all balled around the quavering light.

Even then, his qi fled, but slower. Staring at his last qi, Hui counted the slow breaths as it waned. Five more. Four. Three.

He tried to stoke his qi, draw in the surrounding qi and feed the flame, but under the weight of the librarian’s Absolute Authority, his efforts proved meaningless. The spark became an ember. He held on as hard as he could, but it still faded. Two. One.

The door blasted open. A figure in white rushed in, exuding enormous pressure. Eyes blurred, Hui could make out no details. Lan Taijian?

He let out a last rattling breath. Chang Bolin, may mud-grass horses trample all over your grave…