"..."
Qiu Jizi laughed. "If you had no inheritance, no one under heaven could claim to have one."
"It's precisely because your inheritance is so clear and your road so broad that I have to be doubly careful in drawing up your Sword Ladder." Qiu Jizi shook his wine gourd, then looked at him with a serious expression. "I mustn't let my own lack of ability harm the road ahead of you."
"...I just thought, everyone else has a Sword Ladder from their school to use as a reference, while I've come empty-handed. It's too much trouble for you."
"You have one too."
"...Huh?"
Smiling, Qiu Jizi took a snow-white letter from his robes and handed it to him. Pei Ye accepted it in a daze-this was the very letter he had seen arrive from Ming Qitian yesterday, already opened and read.
"I spent all last night studying it." Qiu Jizi sighed with a smile, pulled out a chair for him, and sat down himself.
Pei Ye unfolded the letter.
"To Senior Jizi,
Several months have slipped by since we last met.
I hear that your academy recently admitted new Sword Talents, among them one named Pei Ye, whose Sword Endowment is outstanding. Newly emerged from his thatched cottage, he has yet to find his footing; I earnestly hope you will look after him.
I have already given him a Recommendation Letter, but thinking again of the matter of his Sword Ladder, which bears lifelong importance for a swordsman, and of his bewilderment regarding it, I must trouble you once more.
I have spent considerable time discussing swordsmanship with him. Knowing his sword and having often considered this matter, I have spent the past month compiling a Sword Ladder for him. Yesterday, I also asked my master to examine it,