THE VOID THRONE

CHAPTER 9

Inner Sect disciples had their own water — pipes that went right to their dormitories. They didn't come to the outer well unless they had a specific reason. Zhao Peng stood three feet away, at an angle that looked like coincidence and wasn't, and watched Wei Liang work the pulley without saying anything for a moment.

Then: "That was something yesterday."

"It was a match," Wei Liang said.

"He's Fifth Layer, Wei Liang."

"I know what layer he is."

The rope creaked. Cold water rose in the bucket. Around them the Academy morning moved — distant bells, footsteps on stone, the smell of breakfast drifting from the kitchens.

"I should have said something," Zhao Peng said. "When we were twelve. At the river. When Cai Dong — I should have said something and I didn't and I've thought about that a lot."

"You didn't say it," Wei Liang said.

"I know."

Wei Liang pulled the full bucket up and set it on the edge of the well. He looked at Zhao Peng properly for the first time since he'd arrived. Zhao Peng looked back. He had the face of someone who had prepared a speech and was finding that the real version of the conversation was going differently than the rehearsed one.

"Come back in a year," Wei Liang said.

Zhao Peng blinked. "What?"

"Come back in a year. If you still want to have this conversation, I'll have it with you then. I mean it — not as a punishment. It's just that right now I need to focus on moving forward and I can't do that properly if I'm also dealing with someone else's guilt. Come back in a year."

Zhao Peng looked at him for a long moment. Then nodded slowly. Like he'd been handed terms he couldn't argue with and didn't want to.

He left.

Wei Liang watched him go. Noticed — without meaning to, just from habit, from years of knowing this person — the slight hitch in Zhao Peng's left step. An old injury from when they were nine. A training fall. Wei Liang had been the one to run for help that day. He'd run the whole way without stopping.

Zhao Peng probably didn't remember that.

He picked up his buckets. Went back to work.

Three days after the Exhibition, Cai Dong appeared in Wei Liang's corridor. Alone. No friends, no performance, just himself standing in the hallway with his arms at his sides like someone who has decided to do something and is going to do it.

"I want to understand what happened," he said.

"I told you. I disrupted your Qi."

"With what? You have no roots. You shouldn't have any Qi at all."

"Shouldn't is a word that has caused a lot of problems for me."

Cai Dong looked at him. Not the arena look — that certain, closed look of someone performing certainty. This was different. This was a man in a corridor with a genuine question and no performance around it. "I've trained for twelve years," he said. "I know what every kind of disruption technique feels like. Blocking, suppression, interference — I've felt all of them. What you did didn't feel like any of those things." He paused. "It felt like you reached inside me and took something out."

Wei Liang said nothing.

"I'm not going to report you," Cai Dong said. "I'm not asking to fight you again. I just — I need to understand things I don't understand. It bothers me when I can't." He met Wei Liang's eyes. "So I'm asking. How?"

Wei Liang thought about it.

"Someday," he said. "Not today. Not yet. But someday, when I understand it better myself, I'll tell you."

Cai Dong considered that. Then nodded once — the nod of someone accepting a delayed answer they know is the best one available.

He walked away.

Wei Liang watched him go and thought: that might be something, eventually. I don't know what yet.

He went back to his room.

He had two months until the Summit team was announced.

He had work to do.