Lightning crashed, a flash of light painting the chamber white. Wood splintered and burned, filling the air with the scent of burnt sawdust.

Gu Xiulan stared down the length of her arm with narrowed eyes, sparks still crackling along her extended fingertips. The scorched ruin of a training dummy lay smoking and splintered upon the floor.

She lowered her arm, expression twisting in irritation as she glanced to the side. “I thought that these were reinforced,” she said coolly. “Explain.”

This was not her father’s training room in the Spire, but rather, one of the many set aside for her many cousins and relatives. A large circular chamber with a domed roof, it’s floor was covered in a layer of sand over the polished marble of the floor, and its walls lined with racks of training gear and tools. Among them, wooden and metal figures carved and shaped in the shape of men in varying bumbers and wielding different armaments. Such was the wealth of the Gu that some were even partially animate, able to make simple movements.

They should not have been so fragile.

“My deepest apologies Lady Gu,” the training room attendant said. A young woman in the flowing pink and red garb of the Gu family’s servants, she bowed so deeply that she seemed she might tip over. “Though this chamber is rated for cultivators of the Foundation step, this humble servant should have known that the Young Miss would have lightning so pure as to exceed that potency. Please…”

“Yes, yes, I understand. Your groveling is sufficient,” Gu Xiulan sniffed. Once she would have listened to the whole rambling apology, but she didn’t have the patience for that these days. She grimaced, plucking at the collar of her new armor. She was still feeling agitated. Father would be taking her out tomorrow, to join the men in the twice yearly patrol and showing of force, but that did not help her today. She felt like a cat in a cage. “Leave me, I will find less destructive cultivation methods.”

She barely paid the servant woman any mind as she backed out of the room, bowing repeatedly. Instead, she stared at the scorched remnants of the dummy. Power. It was impossible to say she did not have power. Though she was still behind Ling Qi, still behind her sister Yanmei, it was impossible to say that her arts lacked in power for her stage. Nor did she believe she lacked in control. So why, she thought embers crackling in her hair, did her qi still not feel right?

“Man you are really bottled up ain’t ya.”

She spun, foot lashing out with such speed as to be naught but a blur to a mortal, unleashing a wave of blue-white flames at the voice just behind her.

The onrushing flames roared across the sandy floor, a wall of heat nearly reaching the domed ceiling. Then came the heavy sound of calloused palms coming together, the wind roared, and the flames dispersed. Standing there near the entrance on the opposite side of the room stood Zheng Nan, his hands clasped in front of his chest, grinning ferociously.

“Hey there! That how you treat guests round here?” The man complained insincerely, lowering his hands. Gu Xiulan glanced down, frowning at the loose robe he wore, it wasn’t the vagabonds garb he had come in with, but rather, the single layer and red color, the signs of steam rising off his hair and shoulders….

“Are you wandering our palace in a bath robe, Zheng Nan?” She asked incredulously.

“Hey, isn’t it rude to answer a question with a question?” Zheng Nan replied, scratching his chin.

She scrunched her nose, giving him an irritating look. “Adults know not sneak up on cultivators in training halls. Why does a man such as you even have such skills?”

She could think of a few unsavory reasons.

“You can’t kick a villain in the face mid-monologue if they sense you coming,” Zheng Nan said, nodding his head wisely.

Or there was that she supposed.

Gu Xiulan took a deep breath restraining her temper. “Fine, but you should know that both your garb and… skulking may be taken poorly. As your traveling companion I am used to this, but surely your elders instructed you to have some consideration for your hosts?”

He picked at his ear like a commoner. Gu Xiulan’s eyebrow twitched as he flicked a speck of something into the sand. “Sure, sorry about that. Honestly, the sneakin was just out of habit. I don’t like bothering the normal folk.”

Gu Xiulan sniffed. “Fine, and the robe?”

“You lot are weird about clothes,” he complained, leaning against the wall. “Important bits are covered ain’t they?”

If he counted a robe half falling from his shoulder like that proper covering, she would like to visit Shiulan city at some point.

Gu Xiulan ignored the perverse tittering of her spirit, who was surely at fault for such thoughts.

“It is not the proper way of doing things,” she replied sourly.

“I mean, neither is yours, from what I’ve seen,” Zheng Nan said, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t get me wrong, you make that villainous battle lady look work, even if it’s kinda plain, but it’s hardly normal round here.”

Gu Xiulan found herself sputtering at his bald and brazen words, words slipping free unconsidered. “What about me is villainous!”

He looked apologetic, like a messenger giving bad news, and vaguely gestured up. “I mean, it’s the face, you know.”

Something in the back of Xiulan’s mind snapping. The pale blue lines left from the scars on her face flared blue white, heat pulsed in her meridians, turning the air hazy and shimmering. All the frustration, impatience, agitation and uncertainty flared up, and tore its way out of her lips as an outraged scream. With the scream her hand rose, and from her extending fingers a lance of lightning.

She didn’t know what she expected to happen, for him to dodge aside and laugh at her, to swat aside her lightning with his staff? What she did not expect was for him to grin like a lunatic, baring square white teeth, and step up, right into the lightning. It struck him square in his half bared chest. The curling hair on his chest crackled with static, the hair on his head snapped straight up, and sparks jumped between his grinning teeth.

And then he stepped forward, and bellowed. “Hah! That’s good, but not your best! Come on, give me a good swing then!”

Gu Xiulan snarled, long past thoughts of consequence for assaulting a guest, or anything else but making this smug monkey stop grinning at her. Her other hand rose, and brilliant white flames curled out from her fingers, her qi dropped precipitously as she wove her flames between the jumping arcs of lightning, and fused them into sunfire.

The crackling bolt arcing from her hand turned into a solid white blinding bar of incandescence, wider than the swaggering apes body.

And still he stood, a gray shadow in the blinding light, but though he struggled, he took not one more step forward, as seconds stretched into a minute.

Gu Xiulan gasped as the fuel of her fires came up short, a sudden painful tug in her abdomen telling her she had drawn too deep. The all consuming heat of the sun guttered out. She swallowed as she saw the melted training gear and superheated glow of the marble walls, shimmering with the heat haze. She swallowed harder when she saw Zheng Nan standing there with his bare arms crossed in front of his body, now glistening with sweat and bare from the waist up, save for the ashy tatters of the robe fluttering around his waist.

“Heh, that’s more like it. Bet you feel better now huh?” Zheng Nan said cheekily. “Sorry for the insult.”

She just stared at him, she did feel calmer, marginally so. “You recant your words then?”

“Nah, just the tone. Never said you looked bad,” he said cheekily, rolling his shoulders in what she was quite sure was a deliberate display.

Gu Xiulan snorted, straightening up herself. “Honestly, you’re terrible at this, you lout. Do you really think you convince anyone with such blatant flirtation.”

“Don’t need to convince anyone, just signal I’m interested, rest takes care of itself,” Zheng Nan replied breezily. “Honestly, Lady Gu. I don’t get you, you’re all wound up, even though it seems like your gettin what you want?”

“And what do you know of what I want?” Gu Xiulan replied, hiding her wince as she crossed her arms, the pain in her burned limb throbbing.

“You wanna burn bright, and you want to burn atop piles of enemies,” he said. “You like fighting, you like battle.”

Gu Xiulan didn’t bother denying him, instead turning away from the.. Distraction he presented. “Hmph, and if I like other things too?”

“Then enjoy ‘em. Honestly the way you featherbrain’s let yourselves get stuck in boxes the second you’re born makes me scratch my head,” Zheng Nan said.

“As if you don’t act exactly like your clan is famed for acting,” Gu Xiulan sniffed.

“Hah, got me there!” he laughed. “Guess I’m just an average kinda guy. But the point is, cultivation is freedom, you aint ever gonna rise to the top acting the way someone else wants you to act.”

Gu Xiulan glanced his way ready to retort, only to stiffen as she saw another silhouette in the doorway. A figure in regal robes, a circlet on his brow, calmly stroking the point of his beard. Gu Xiulan glanced to the shirtless Zheng, the damaged training room, and the half molten sand on the floor, and considered the sweat on her own brow on flushed face. Zheng Nan blinked in surprise as she turned and clasped her hands bowing deeply.

“Honored Father, I apologize deeply for the commotion.”