Su Fang let the handful of fire he was holding dim to a flicker – just enough to see by – as he watched their target vanish into the dark, bounding from pillar to pillar like he was part monkey.

That… was going to be a problem.

Shi Rong pushed past him, running over to help Fen to her feet. The woman's face was pale in the faint, ambient light that filtered from his still-burning fireballs, her jaw tight with pain.

"He shot me while I was veiled," she hissed, tearing a strip off the bottom of her robes to wrap around her injured leg. "Must be a sensor. And that jump… it wasn't normal. It was a movement technique, had to be. He must be in the second realm."

Su Fang let the flame bloom a little brighter in his palm and leaned in to examine Fen's injury, partially to buy himself a moment to think. He was no healer, but after a few decades pretty much every cultivator had gotten into enough fights to judge the severity of a wound. At a glance, it seemed clean – the arrow had passed through meat, not tendon. Painful, yes. Crippling, no. Even better, there didn't appear to be any discolouration around the edges of the wound, so the arrow probably hadn't been poisoned.

As for the target's movement…

"No," he said after a moment's thought, gaze sweeping the oppressive darkness of the cistern. "If he were in the Body Refining Realm, we would already be dead. He wouldn't have run; he would have walked through us. Second-realm speed on a cultivator that sneaky?" Su Fang shook his head. "That was something else. A standard technique used in a novel way, perhaps."

Which, in some ways, was even worse. Raw power was generally easier to fight against than creativity.

"Cowardice, is what that was," Shi Rong scoffed, scowling into the darkness around them. "In a fair fight, he wouldn't last two minutes – the hardest part about this is going to be finding him."

Su Fang resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Then the boy hardly had any reason to fight fair, did he?

"Practicality, not cowardice," he corrected, despite knowing the effort was wasted. "He has a potent stealth art, a ranged weapon, and he has no intention of fighting us on our terms. He will harass us from the shadows, bleed us dry, and wait for us to make a mistake. Some might call it honorless, but…" he shrugged. "It's effective."

The real issue was that they didn't have an answer to that type of fighter – or, rather, their usual answer was Fen with her stealth technique. But that had already proved to be ineffective, which left them with precious few options.

"Is your wall still in place?" Su Fang asked, turning to Shi Rong.

Shi Rong gave a curt, prideful nod. "Of course. Nothing short of a siege engine will break it."

"Good," Su Fang said. "Then our objective has not changed. The Broker wants to ensure he is not followed. The path is blocked. Our task is, for all intents and purposes, complete." He looked from Shi Rong's incredulous face to Fen's pained one. "We should fall back. Have Shi Rong raise a dome of stone around us. We will wait here. The target cannot pass the wall, and if he tries to come back this way, he will have to face all three of us in a prepared position."

It was the smart, safe, and logical choice. It was the choice that would see them all live to collect their pay. Of course, things would be different if Teng Min were around, but even a man as wealthy as the Broker couldn't afford to pay a cultivator at the Body Refining Realm to hang around for longer than they wished.

Predictably, Shi Rong turned on him with a sneer. Su Fang had seen a hundred times on wealthy disciples who'd never been forced to make the practical choice of survival over pride. "Hide in a shell? From a child? No."

"From a hunter with a bow in the dark," Su Fang said sharply. "He's already proven that he can outrun us, and put an arrow into Fen even under her veil. That's not a child, that's a threat. Unless you have been holding back rather significantly, I somewhat doubt you have a way to even find this cultivator, let alone kill him."

Fen grimaced but nodded slightly. She knew it too. Her sensing art was one of the best Su Fang had ever seen – using the moisture in the air to somehow cast her senses further than anyone else at their advancement could – and even she had only noticed the danger when it was almost close enough to strike.

Unfortunately, the only thing that outweighed Shi Rong's pride was his stubbornness.

"You may cower in the darkness if you wish," the infuriating man said with a wave of his hand. "I do not fear a child. Let him skulk in the dark. He won't get past my wall, and if he tries, I'll crush him between the stones. Besides, with the money the Broker has promised, I will be able to advance to the peak of the Qi Condensation Realm and rewrite my fate."

Su Fang let Shi Rong's words hang, the flicker of his flame painting the arrogant man's face in harsh orange lines. He'd seen this before. A dozen different men, all convinced that pride would see them through what caution never could. Most of them were dead.

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Fen finished binding her leg, her hands trembling slightly despite the tight set of her jaw. She caught his eye and raised a brow, the unspoken question plain: Are you going to stop him?

Su Fang didn't think he could. By this point, no matter what arguments he made, words wouldn't change Shi Rong's mind. Pride never listened.

"Then at least let us stay together," Su Fang said instead. "Splitting up will help no one but our foe, and—"

"I don't need you to tell me how to fight," Shi Rong cut him off with a sniff, turning to walk away into the darkness. "If you don't want to be left behind, then keep up."

Fen waved Su Fang off before he could speak. "Go. I'll veil and follow you as best I can."

He hesitated. "Alone, injured—"

"I'll be fine." She forced a smirk that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Realistically, you two are easier targets than I right now. Don't argue."

After a moment's pause, he grunted. "Stay hidden, then," he said simply before turning and striding off after Shi Rong. They weren't friends, but they'd worked together long enough for him to dislike the idea of abandoning her – but it was the logical option. Shi Rong didn't have any real way of defending himself, not unless he was willing to let go of his pride and create a proper defensive structure. The largest downside of cultivating an element like earth or stone was the time it took for their technique to be ready – but on the flip side, few could match the strength of their constructs.

He caught up to Shi Rong easily; the younger cultivator was moving slowly, his overconfidence not accounting for the simple fact that he couldn't see a thing without Su Fang's firelight. "Tell me, then, what is your grand plan?"

"The plan is simple," Shi Rong said with a sneer. "The boy needs to get past my wall to reach the Broker. He will come to us. We wait for him there, and when he shows himself, we kill him. It is a matter of patience."

Su Fang was getting a very bad feeling about this. He had survived fifty years of a cultivator's life by learning one simple lesson: never underestimate an enemy, especially one you can't see. Shi Rong was a more recent hire of the Broker's, and was quite a bit younger than Su Fang himself. Honestly, Su Fang found it a little confusing that the younger man hadn't tried entering a sect – his cultivation was advancing quickly enough that he had prospects Su Fang could only dream of.

Perhaps that was where his arrogance came from – he still believed that a higher cultivation level made one inherently superior. Su Fang had buried enough arrogant young disciples to know better. He suspected Shi Rong was going to keep charging forward until he got himself in over his head, and Su Fang had no desire to be there when he did.

They had not gone fifty paces when they heard it.

A single, sharp cry of pain from the darkness behind them, abruptly cut off. They spun and ran back, Su Fang's flame flaring brighter as his stomach tightened.

Fen lay sprawled across the stone. Her veil had flickered out, her robes soaked dark where the wound had taken her. Her sword was gone.

Su Fang swore under his breath. This was bad. Worse than bad. Fen had already been crippled; she posed no real threat. But the boy had still gone for her. It meant he wasn't going to fight like a cultivator. No sense of honour, no restraint. The sort of foe who poisoned food or slit throats while people slept. The sort of foe you avoided unless you had no other choice.

Shi Rong dropped to his knees beside her, fists clenching. "Coward! He struck her down in hiding? Coward!" His voice cracked with rage, echoing through the cistern like a child's tantrum.

Su Fang's jaw tightened. It was clear that the man wasn't going to be of any help. He'd always been arrogant, but never to the point of stupidity. He and Fen hadn't been lovers, had they? No. It didn't make sense – more likely that he was just another coddled brat too stupid to recognise danger when it bared its teeth.

"Shi Rong," he tried one final time, "we should fall back. Raise a dome. Wait him out. He can't get past your wall, so we have nothing to gain by fighting and quite a lot to lose."

"No," Shi Rong snarled, teeth bared. "I'll tear him apart piece by piece."

Su Fang ground his teeth. "You won't tear him apart if you can't even see him. Put up defences and—"

"Don't tell me what to do!" Shi Rong snapped, surging to his feet. "He'll come to us. And when he does, I'll crush him."

A faint twang in the dark was his only warning – but it was enough.

Su Fang snapped his hand up, burning an uncomfortable amount of Qi to throw up a wall of fire in the general direction of the noise. The arrow disintegrated mid-flight, sparks scattering across the walkway. The shaft would have taken him through the throat.

He exhaled slowly. That… was enough. The situation was clear – as soon as their target demonstrated that he had both a stealth technique and the ability to outrun them, this was at best going to end in a stalemate, and even then, only if Shi Rong was willing to cooperate.

Shi Rong swore, spinning in the direction of the shot much too late to be of any use, eyes blazing in the firelight. "Face me, coward!"

Su Fang didn't bother pointing out how this latest insult was unlikely to receive any more attention than the last few. Instead, he stepped a little away from Shi Rong and pitched his voice to carry.

"I've no personal quarrel with you," he called into the dark. "And no amount of silver is worth my life. If you wish to pursue the Broker, I will not bar your path. In return, I hope you allow me to leave peacefully."

Then he turned his back and began walking down the path, away from the tunnel they were supposed to guard, and away from the corpse of Fen. He didn't lower his guard, though, not for an instant – if this boy was the vindictive type, he may not be satisfied with this sort of ending.

"You dare?" Shi Rong's shout rang out behind him. "Traitor!"

Su Fang didn't pause. "I would advise that you walk away too," he said over his shoulder. "After all, he doesn't need to kill me."

The words were both a warning for Shi Rong and a reminder to the cultivator that killing him served no purpose. Hopefully, it would be enough.

The only reply he received was a choked curse. Then a gurgle.

Su Fang looked back.

The boy stood over Shi Rong's body, Fen's stolen blade in hand. Shadows clung to it like oil, lengthening the edge into something jagged and wrong. Blood ran freely, pattering dark onto stone.

Jiang met his gaze, eyes flat, unreadable.

Su Fang gave a stiff, formal bow to the silent figure. Then he turned and kept walking, his footsteps echoing in the sudden, profound quiet of the cistern, not once looking back. He was a practical man, and he was betting his life that a boy this ruthlessly efficient wouldn't waste his time chasing a man who was no longer an enemy.

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