An Exchange of Secrets

Nan Feng pushed open the dormitory's back door. The corridor was empty.

Moonlight seeped through the paper covering the windows, spreading a layer of gray-white light. With every step he took, the wound on his left shoulder pulled and ached. Most of the blood on his clothes had dried, leaving the stiff fabric stuck to his skin and the scab beneath it. Every movement brought a stabbing pain.

Keeping one hand against the wall, he felt his way to his bed, trying not to make a sound.

Tang San's breathing was soft and even on the bed by the window. He was breathing in the rhythm of the Mysterious Heaven Skill, apparently cultivating.

Steady breathing came from Xiao Wu's bed. She was asleep.

Nan Feng breathed a sigh of relief, set his bundle on the bed board, and began to undress.

"You're back."

The voice came from behind him. Nan Feng's hand froze on his collar.

There was a sound of someone turning over from Xiao Wu's bed, followed by a rustle. He turned to see Xiao Wu sitting cross-legged on her bed, half her scorpion braid undone and her hair hanging messily over her shoulders.

Her eyes were wide open in the darkness, with none of the grogginess of someone who had just woken up. It was as if she had been waiting for him all along.

"You weren't asleep," Nan Feng said.

"I was waiting for you."

Xiao Wu jumped off the bed and walked barefoot over to him. She leaned close and sniffed, her nose twitching twice. Her expression turned grave.

She reached out and touched his left shoulder, her fingertip brushing blood that had not quite dried at the edge of the wound.

"You're hurt," she said, keeping her voice low, though she could not suppress the urgency in it. "You went outside the city to hunt for a soul. How old was it?"

Nan Feng was silent for a breath.

"Under a thousand years."

Xiao Wu stared at his chest. Nan Feng had wrapped his coat tightly around himself on the way back, hiding most of the Soul Ring's light. But her eyes were too sharp. When she touched his shoulder, her fingertip had brushed against the layer of Soul Power fluctuations spilling from the Soul Ring.

"Bring it out. Let me see."

Nan Feng opened his coat and circulated his Soul Power.

The deep yellow ring, tinged with purple, rose from beneath his feet and revolved around his body. Its color looked especially dark in the moonlight, a faint purple halo twining through the yellow. The purple light was faint, but it was unmistakably there, tracing the deep yellow outer edge with a purple border.

Xiao Wu stared at the Soul Ring for a long time.

"Under a thousand years, over nine hundred." Her voice was very soft, but every word was clear. "Yellow tinged with purple, not completely purple yet. The Hundred-Year Soul Rings I've seen were light yellow, and Ten-Year Soul Rings were pale white. Yours is such a deep yellow that it's almost dark, and it even has a purple glow."

"Grandmaster said a Soul Master's first ring could be a little over four hundred years old at most. Yours is more than twice that."

Nan Feng did not deny it.

Xiao Wu drew her gaze away from the Soul Ring and looked at his face. Her eyes were unusually bright in the moonlight. In that brightness were surprise, confusion, and a resonance she could not conceal.

"How did you do it?" she asked.

"My tower can suppress the Soul Ring's backlash. The Power of Mountain Suppression."

Nan Feng raised his right hand. The warm band of cyan light on his palm shone in the moonlight, and the pattern of the cracks at the tower's base flowed beneath his skin.

"Nine hundred and twenty years is the limit of what I can suppress right now."

Xiao Wu stared at his palm for several breaths. She opened her mouth, but swallowed the words on the tip of her tongue.

She looked away, gazing at the moon outside the window as her fingers tugged at the loose end of her braid. Nan Feng saw her fingers trembling.

"Xiao Wu."

She turned back to him.

"You have a secret you can't tell anyone, too." Nan Feng's voice was level. "Don't you?"

Xiao Wu's fingers stopped at the end of her braid. She looked into Nan Feng's eyes. Her eyes gleamed amber in the moonlight.

For the first time, Nan Feng noticed that the color of her pupils was different from an ordinary person's. In dim light, they showed a warm chestnut hue.

She was silent for a long time. The dormitory was quiet, broken only by the rising and falling snores of a few work-study students.

"When did you find out?" Xiao Wu's voice was much lower than before, as though something were caught in her throat.

"From the moment I met you on the carriage to Nuoding."

Nan Feng spoke.

"There's a scent about you that ordinary people can't detect, but my tower can sense it. A demonic presence, held down by the power of transformation. It's suppressed deeply, but not completely."

Xiao Wu's shoulders tensed. She took half a step back, pressing her back against the edge of the windowsill.

Moonlight shone from behind her, casting half her face in shadow. That half was as white as paper. Her lips moved twice before the words squeezed out between her teeth.

"You..."

"I won't tell anyone," Nan Feng said.

"Do you know what I am?" Xiao Wu's voice trembled.

"A Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast in human form," Nan Feng said. "A Soft Bone Rabbit."

Xiao Wu's body went rigid. Her fingers gripped the edge of the windowsill, her knuckles turning white. The emotions churning in her eyes changed from resonance to wariness, then to fear.

She stared at Nan Feng as though looking at someone who might expose her secret at any moment.

"You're afraid," Nan Feng said.

Xiao Wu did not deny it.

"You're afraid I'll tell someone else now that I know who you are. You're afraid people from Spirit Hall will come to capture you. You're afraid you won't be able to stay at this academy."

Nan Feng withdrew the Soul Ring into his body and took a step forward.

"But you haven't been afraid of the wrong person."

Xiao Wu looked up at him.

"I have my secrets too," Nan Feng said. "You're a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beast in human form. I had innate level-eight Soul Power, yet I absorbed a nine-hundred-and-twenty-year First Soul Ring. Whichever of those secrets gets out, the result won't be good. Do you trust me?"

Xiao Wu looked at him for a long time. Moonlight cast their shadows on the opposite wall, overlapping.

Tang San turned over on the bed by the window and continued sleeping with his face to the wall, his breathing rhythm unbroken.

"I trust you," Xiao Wu said.

Her voice was soft, but every word came out steady. She let go of the windowsill and stepped forward.

Her nose twitched again. The scent of blood and sweat on Nan Feng reached her nostrils.

Beneath it, she smelled something else.

The cyan light seeping from the cracks at the tower's base: dry and solid, like a presence unearthed from deep underground.

"That tower of yours," Xiao Wu said, "I touched it when I touched your shoulder just now. Its presence is different from the Soul Power on you, older and heavier. That thing has a much greater background than I do."

Nan Feng did not respond.

Xiao Wu's perception was even sharper than he had expected. With that one touch, she had sensed the tower's true nature. The soul perception of a Hundred-Thousand-Year Soft Bone Rabbit in human form far surpassed that of an ordinary Soul Master.

"Then keep my secret too," Xiao Wu said.

"Obviously."

Nan Feng returned her words to her unchanged.

"You kept my secret last time. This time I'll keep yours. We're even."

Xiao Wu was taken aback for a moment, then the corners of her mouth curved up. She reached out and patted Nan Feng on the right shoulder. She did not use much force, but the pat rang out loudly.

The pat pulled at the wound on Nan Feng's left shoulder, and he sucked in a breath of pain.

Only then did Xiao Wu notice how serious the wound was. The edges of the flesh curled beneath the scab had turned white, as though he had lost too much blood.

She reached for the little bundle at the head of her bed.

"Wait here. I have some powder to stop the bleeding. I swiped it from the infirmary the last time I was cleaning."

"You stole it?"

"I borrowed it!"

Xiao Wu glared at him, then fished a small porcelain bottle out of the bundle. She pulled out the stopper and sprinkled a layer of pale yellow powder over his shoulder.

Nan Feng drew a sharp breath when the powder touched the wound. The sting was quickly covered by a gentle numbness. The bleeding stopped, and the edges of the wound drew together.

"All done." Xiao Wu tucked the bottle back into the bundle and clapped the powder off her hands. "Don't get it wet for the next few days. It'll scab over in a couple of days."

Nan Feng put his coat back on, covering the wound on his left shoulder. He sat down on his bed, and Xiao Wu returned to hers. They looked at each other across two beds and a floor bathed in moonlight.

Xiao Wu pulled her blanket up to her chin and lay on her side facing him, her eyes bright in the darkness.

"Tower Simpleton."

"Mm."

"That Tower Suppression of yours-once you've trained it up, could you help me suppress something with it?"

Nan Feng knew what she meant: the seal deep within her Martial Soul, the chain wrapped around the Soft Bone Rabbit's original power.

He nodded.

"I can. But I'll need time. My Soul Power isn't enough yet. Once the first gate is fully open and I can release the Power of Mountain Suppression outward, maybe I can reach the edge of that seal."

Xiao Wu's eyes lit up.

"When can you open the first gate?"

"When my Soul Power reaches level twenty."

Xiao Wu pulled the blanket up over half her face, and her muffled voice came from behind it.

"Then hurry up and cultivate. I'll be waiting."

Nan Feng watched her curl up into a ball under the blanket, the corners of his mouth curving up. He lay flat, facing the ceiling, his right hand resting on his chest.

Against his ribs, the deep yellow light tinged with purple at the base of the Soul Ring in his palm pulsed in an alternating rhythm with the cyan light in the cracks at the tower's base.

Outside the window, the moonlight moved from one end of the beds to the other. Before closing his eyes, Nan Feng went over the events of the day.

He had obtained his First Soul Ring, and his Soul Power was at level fourteen. The tower gate had not opened all the way, but the gap was wider than before. Xiao Wu knew his secret, and he knew hers.

Tang San was his friend, but something still stood between them. He remembered both what Yu Xiaogang had said to Tang San last night and how Tang San's gaze had changed when he looked at him today.

When his Soul Power reached level twenty, the first gate would open fully, and the tower would complete its first evolution.

Only then could he truly release the Power of Mountain Suppression outward. Only then could he help Xiao Wu reach the seal, and only then would he be qualified to say those words to Yu Xiaogang: "You'll apologize."

The moon outside had moved to the edge of the sky, and the snores had changed rhythm several times. Nan Feng pulled the blanket up to his chin and sank into sleep.