The door opened and the receptionist led Ouyang Hui and Kang Zhijun into the consultation room.Kang Zhijun came in with the bearing he had been carrying all morning, the chin-up, entitled posture of someone who has decided that the adjustments the day has required of him are temporary and that his fundamental position has not changed."Ethan," he said. "What is wrong with you? You know Dr. Caldwell personally and you didn't say anything at the restaurant? You made us beg around the entire city. Is that how you treat family?"Caldwell's expression moved through displeasure toward the specific patience of someone who has decided not to say what they want to say because the person does not deserve the energy.These were Senior Brother's relatives. He could see, from the quality of how they had entered the room and the tone of what Kang Zhijun had said, that the relationship between these people and Senior Brother was not a warm one. He said nothing."My mother offered to help you at the

Ouyang Hui had been operating from a position of terror for the duration of Scar's intervention, covering her face, staying down, not making any sounds that might attract further attention from the men who had deposited her on the pavement with no visible concern for her objections.The moment she saw Clara, something in her shifted.This was her elder sister. This was the person who had always folded, who had always absorbed, who had always found a reason to extend grace one more time. In the specific internal hierarchy that Ouyang Hui had operated from her entire adult life, Clara was the one who bent.She stopped covering her face."Clara," she shouted, with the volume and quality of a woman who has decided that the situation calls for maximum performance. "How dare you send people to beat me!"Clara looked at her.“Hui, what are you talking about? I don't even know these men. How could I have sent them?""You don't know them? Then why did they stop when you said stop? Why do they

Ethan's expression hardened.He had seen practitioners' swords before, the ordinary variety carried a silver-white Qi, the natural luminescence of cultivation energy channeled through steel. Xuanhuo's sword was black. The Qi wrapped around the blade was not cultivation energy in any orthodox sense but condensed evil Qi, the specific dark variety that the Ashford Medical Order's records classified under the category of arts that were not supposed to be practiced.Qingyun Sect had been righteous once, apparently. It was not righteous now.Xuanhuo had intended to catch him off guard, the sword launched at the lounge chair, the calculation that a man lying down and not expecting violence would be too slow to respond. It was the correct calculation for an ordinary person.Ethan was not in the lounge chair when the blade arrived.He was in the air, not dramatically, not with any visible preparation, simply no longer where he had been, the Foundation Establishment Stage's physical capability

Ethan turned.The woman standing at the top of the stairs was in a white dress and was pointing a look at him that carried the specific quality of someone who has arrived expecting to find their niece in danger and has found her in a young man's arms and has drawn the available conclusions.He had seen beautiful women. He had Charlotte Quinn, who was by any ordinary measure extraordinary. He had Samantha He, whose beauty was the kind that registered through the resistance she put around it. He had spent enough time in the company of genuinely remarkable-looking women in the last several weeks to have recalibrated his baseline.This woman recalibrated it again.The cold and aloof quality of her, the specific beauty of someone who looks the way marble looks, perfect and entirely without warmth, combined with the current anger to produce something that was, aesthetically, genuinely arresting.Behind her, a line of black-suited bodyguards with the specific bearing of people whose training

Qiaoqiao came up the stairs in a light blue dress, her hair still damp from the shower and draped loosely behind her head. The combination of freshly washed hair and the simple dress produced the specific effect of someone who looks best precisely when they are not trying.She looked around the room at the two people in it with the bright attention of someone arriving at a scene they have not been told about."Was someone singing just now?" she said. "Coming up the stairs I heard, it sounded like 'Conquer.' Which one of you was it?"Gu Qingcheng's complexion, which had been working its way back to its normal temperature, reversed direction immediately and completely. The color reached her ears. She had the appearance of someone who has been drinking, which was not what was happening, but captured the general state of her circulation accurately.Ethan looked at Qiaoqiao with a pleasantly innocent expression."Your aunt," he said. "She wanted to thank me for saving your life, so she san