A Fight

Beijing summers had a heat that left people nowhere to escape. The asphalt roads had been baked soft, giving a strangely yielding sensation underfoot. The leaves of the roadside trees were coated in dust and hung lazily, as though even breathing took effort.

Xia Mi walked down a street outside an internet café. Thinking about how she would be going abroad tomorrow—and how her brother would probably make a fuss again once he found out, crying, "Big sister, don't go"—she suddenly felt irritated.

She deliberately stepped on the sunlight filtering through gaps in the branches, as though she wanted to grind it into the ground, watching the flecks of light dance over the fair, delicate skin of her feet like scattered gold.

Li Lin walked beside Xia Mi with his schoolbag in hand. He lived near Peking University High School, so they were more or less on the same route home.

Though they were "childhood sweethearts," their relationship was like that between a scholar and a painted-skin demon in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Both had discovered that the other was unusual. The difference was that Li Lin did not want Xia Mi exposing his true bloodline rank in public, while Xia Mi was dead set on taking Li Lin in as one of her chief subordinates.

Sometimes, Li Lin could not understand why Xia Mi was so fixated on him... though it was true that despite his Dragon Blood ratio being far lower than that of an ordinary Mixed-Blood, he had kept pace with Xia Mi in both academics and physical ability.

But... couldn't she assume I'm just a one-in-ten-thousand genius among ordinary people?

Apparently not.

Li Lin recalled the common knowledge in the Mixed-Blood worldview: the greater the talent, the purer the Dragon Blood. He could only hate himself for learning that too late.

After graduating from elementary school, he and Xia Mi had been specially recruited into Cassel College's preparatory class.

But Xia Mi had set her sights on Li Lin back in first grade. No matter what they did, she insisted on competing with him, trying to make him willingly become her little follower.

Thanks to the Dragon-Slaying Binding System, no matter what challenges Xia Mi threw at him—from sports and martial arts to arcade games and test scores—the two always traded wins and losses, neither able to gain the upper hand.

Li Lin remembered receiving a weather alert not long after starting middle school, warning that Typhoon Dandelion had made landfall in the south. Xia Mi had suddenly slapped her desk and announced that she planned to transfer to the famous Shilan High School in that area.

The middle schooler who had been tortured beyond endurance by Xia Mi had nearly wept with joy. He had almost made a gentleman's agreement with her on the spot, promising to meet again at the college entrance exams five years later.

Yet five years never came. After taking a week off, Xia Mi ran back to Beijing, still shaken as she recounted how she had gone sightseeing outside the city, accidentally run into the typhoon, and nearly lost her life.

Li Lin could tell that Xia Mi's expression held more frustration and impatience than fear. He had the feeling that she had not been frightened at all; she simply found the outside world too boring.

But since she herself said the typhoon had scared her.

Li Lin secretly figured that Xia Mi would surely rein herself in for quite a while. Maybe I can finally live peacefully for a whole semester.

To his surprise, Xia Mi threw a bamboo sword—one she seemed to have stolen from the youth center—in front of him the very next second and invited him to fight on the athletic field.

What had she said back then again...

Li Lin recalled the scene in the classroom. One moment, the bright-eyed, white-toothed girl had been complaining gloomily about how dangerous the "typhoon" was. The next, she had excitedly tossed down a bamboo sword, appearing before Li Lin like a female ghost jump-scaring him in a horror game and staring him down.

"Li Lin, let's fight!"

Xia Mi, who had been playing hopscotch between patches of sunlight and shadow beneath the trees, suddenly hopped in front of Li Lin. She imitated a stance from either Ip Man or Huo Yuanjia, waved her arms and legs around for a moment, then cupped her fists in salute.

"Lady hero, please spare me. I have a flight to catch tomorrow..."

"You say that like I don't have a flight tomorrow too. Hurry up! A man who doesn't dare fight isn't a man!"

Li Lin had no choice. He knew that whenever Xia Mi put on this uncompromisingly forceful attitude, no matter how radiant her smile was, it meant she was actually in a terrible mood.

When Xia Mi was in a bad mood, she generally did only two things: pick a fight with Li Lin, or find somewhere to sit and stare into space by herself.

Normally, she chose the former, unless Li Lin was not around.

If an ordinary person had a stunningly beautiful childhood sweetheart from elementary school onward, then even if they did not necessarily end up together, they should at least have enjoyed a beautiful youth that would make their hearts race whenever they thought back on it years later.

But Li Lin and Xia Mi's youth was full of countless bruises and swollen welts. Their classmates would often watch in horror as the two desk mates ran up to the rooftop to beat each other up over the slightest disagreement, then returned to class grinning like idiots and continued their lessons.

From Li Lin's perspective, Xia Mi truly was a genius blessed by heaven in the literal sense. At such a young age, she already carried herself like a master, proficient in all seven major boxing styles and able to wield any of the eighteen martial arts with ease.

Moreover, he had noticed that whenever their fights reached a stalemate, Xia Mi would suddenly make a breakthrough without warning, mysteriously pulling out moves she had never used before.

It was like facing a bottomless stone well. He was a wooden bucket falling toward its depths, able to hear only the splash of water Xia Mi was holding back with every move, yet never able to probe her true limits.

Fortunately, Li Lin had bound Xia Mi through the system. Otherwise, she would have beaten him flat countless times already.

From Xia Mi's perspective, Li Lin was instead the incomprehensible genius.

No matter how she tried to push her strength higher within the limits of a Mixed-Blood's understanding, Li Lin would catch up at astonishing speed during battle, stopping only when he was exactly her equal.

If her rate of "improvement" slowed even slightly, she might not even be able to beat Li Lin.

Xia Mi had also noticed Li Lin's seemingly endless potential. From childhood to adulthood, no matter how much more harshly she forced him, it only made Li Lin grow stronger faster.

That sudden thrill of encountering worthy talent, combined with the realization that Li Lin's bloodline was so mysterious that even she could not see through it completely,

had made Xia Mi want more than once to directly offer Li Lin an invitation to "immortality."

But Xia Mi had to restrain that desire to cherish talent, curb her words and actions, and work hard to play the "Xia Mi" Li Lin knew.

After all, Li Lin had long been under the Secret Party's close watch. She could easily seize the opportunity to use Li Lin against those rebellious ministers and monarchs who were gradually awakening.

So much so that her greatest pleasure now was observing exactly when this strange Mixed-Blood would reach the limit anchored by his bloodline.

Xia Mi naturally grabbed Li Lin by the wrist and briskly pulled him toward the subway station near the school. There was a nearly deserted martial arts training center there, which was actually a disguised teaching base for the preparatory class.

The two waded through the scorching streets, entered a stairwell covered with promotional posters beneath an advertisement reading "Promote Our National Heritage, Strengthen Body and Mind," and handed their student IDs, decorated with a relief of the Half-Rotted World Tree, to the front desk.

"Do you need to prepare any weapons?"

The instructor at the front desk asked Xia Mi and Li Lin. He was already used to these two oddballs borrowing the venue every few days to spar.

Their enthusiasm for combat was even greater than that of the lunatics in the Executive Department.

Xia Mi merely waved her pale, slender little fist at the instructor, then dragged Li Lin into the gymnastics room beside them.