Er Bao had told Xu Hao how their father sent them away from the burning house. He had told him about the courtyard, the bodies and Da Bao's frantic search for their mother. He had never explained why anyone had attacked the Wang family in the first place.
Now the answer waited on the other side of the campfire.
"Our family guarded a cultivation technique," Er Bao said. "It was called Heavens Body."
Xu Hao glanced at Da Bao. The larger twin had stopped examining the rabbit he was supposed to be preparing for supper. He sat with his knife resting loosely across his knees, watching the fire.
"A body-tempering technique?" Xu Hao asked.
Er Bao nodded. "Unlike elemental cultivation, it changes the strength and resilience of the body itself. Six stages: Skin Refinement, Flesh Refinement, Blood Refinement, Bone Refinement, Organ Refinement and Marrow Refinement. Each stage takes more work than the last. Father began teaching us before we'd even awakened our earth affinity."
Xu Hao thought about the stones Da Bao had made him carry, the running before dawn and the exercises that seemed calculated to make every muscle in his body complain.
"So I've been learning the unpleasant beginning of your family method without knowing it."
Da Bao's mouth twitched. "You've been learning how not to collapse. Heavens Body makes the ordinary training much worse."
"A comforting distinction."
Er Bao continued. "It is a Heaven-grade technique. Rare enough that people might spend a lifetime searching for something comparable. Generations ago our family was strong enough to protect it. Later generations grew comfortable. Some neglected the method. Others believed the family's reputation would always be enough."
"But the technique was still there," Xu Hao said.
"Yes. And somebody learned what we had."
Da Bao put down the knife.
* * *
Er Bao drew a small circle in the dirt with the end of a stick. "We had been training beyond the northern wall that evening. On the way back, Father saw smoke. The outer gate was broken, and he told us to wait while he went ahead."
Xu Hao knew the rest in fragments. He remembered Da Bao telling him that he had searched for his mother until Er Bao dragged him away. There had been fighting beyond the walls, the earth shaking, and their father disappearing into the smoke.
"He gave us the parchment," Er Bao said. "The complete technique. He told us to take it and leave. We were not to return for vengeance until we had reached the Star River Realm."
Xu Hao looked at the brothers. Both were Blazing Sun cultivators, extraordinarily powerful compared with the boy sitting between them. Yet the realm beyond theirs was not simply a number on a list. It was the level their father had believed necessary before they could face whoever destroyed their family.
"Do you know who ordered it?"
"We recognised some of the men who attacked us. We don't know who sent them," Er Bao replied. "We've heard names over the years. Some may be true. Some are stories spread by people who enjoy frightening survivors. Father didn't leave us evidence we could trust."
"And somebody may still be looking for the parchment."
"Yes. Or for us."
Da Bao lifted his head. "I wanted to go back that night. I thought Mother was hiding. I thought if we ran fast enough we might still find her."
He spoke without looking at Xu Hao.
"Er Bao stopped me. I hated him for it, though only for a little while. If one of us dies, we both do. I knew that. I still wanted to go."
Xu Hao had heard part of this before. Now, with the motive laid out before him, the memory seemed heavier. The boys had not simply escaped a terrible night. They had carried away the thing someone had killed their family to obtain.
"Your father knew the parchment would matter to those men," he said.
Er Bao nodded. "He also knew that if we stayed, the Wang family would end there."
Silence settled between them.
Xu Hao pictured his own parents, alive somewhere beyond his reach if the world had been merciful. They had no way of knowing he sat beside two men whose father had died to give his sons a future. He wondered what his father would have told him to say.
Probably nothing clever. Probably just to listen.
So he did.
* * *
After a while, Er Bao rose and brought out the same small wooden box that had held their father's cord. Beneath the lining was a tightly folded piece of parchment, darkened at its edges. Xu Hao had handled enough fragile records to recognise the danger of unfolding it carelessly.
Er Bao held it out.
"We've discussed this. We want you to learn Heavens Body."
Xu Hao looked at the parchment, then at the brothers.
"Isn't that the very thing people killed your family to obtain?"
"It is."
"Then you must be aware that giving it to me makes a very dangerous problem bigger."
Da Bao shrugged. "You've already got cards that could get all of us into trouble. We might as well share the difficulty fairly."
"That's not how mathematics works."
"It's how brothers work," he said.
Er Bao sat again. "You need a body that can survive what your Card Drawing demands. We can teach you the beginning, and we can keep the parchment safe together. But this is not a demand that you join our revenge. Our enemies are ours. You have your own life to find."
Xu Hao wanted to object to the idea that family debts could be divided so neatly. Yet he understood what Er Bao meant. The twins had accepted him as a younger brother; they were not purchasing a soldier or binding him to a promise made before they met.
"I can't promise to fight whoever did this," Xu Hao said. "Not when I barely know the world, and not when I don't know whether I'll ever find a way home."
"We aren't asking," Er Bao replied.
"But I can promise to learn properly. I can preserve what your father entrusted to you. And if I ever have children to teach, or if the two of you have families of your own, I won't let the technique disappear because somebody decided it was easier to steal than to earn."
Da Bao looked at him, eyes shining in the firelight.
"That's quite a promise."
"I'm a historian. Preserving difficult things is more or less the profession."
Er Bao placed the parchment in Xu Hao's hands.
It felt thinner than he'd expected. He resisted the urge to unfold it immediately.
"After we return from town, we'll begin with the first stage," the giant said. "Only the safe foundations. There is no reason to rush body tempering before a journey."
"That's fine," Xu Hao said. "I am becoming an expert at beginning things slowly."
Da Bao laughed, then reached for the rabbit he'd abandoned and began preparing supper again. Er Bao returned the cord to its box, and Xu Hao wrapped the parchment inside a clean piece of cloth.
He did not feel more powerful for holding it.
He felt responsible.
* * *
They left for Hibiscus Town the next morning.
Xu Hao woke before Da Bao for perhaps the first time since joining the brothers. He lay still for a moment, listening to the sounds of the forest. An insect trilled beneath the shelter. Wind moved through the pines. Beside him Sia opened one eye, watched him stretch and thumped her enormous tail against the ground.
"Not today," he told her. "Today I get to leave before Brother Da Bao announces another hill to climb."
She stood, stretching her legs with a deep contented rumble. He scratched her ears, then began packing.
The bow and quiver went across his back. A water skin hung from his belt. His notes and the herb trader's scrap of paper went inside the small bag he'd made from the surviving cloth of his old white coat. The wrapped Heavens Body parchment he secured against his chest, beneath his vest, where no casual inspection of his belongings would expose it.
He paused with the bag in his hands. The fabric had once been part of the outfit he wore in his office, when he'd examined the red wax seal that brought him here. There were still ink marks near one seam, stains from work he'd done more than a world away.
He could have discarded it. It was badly worn. The stitching was uneven, and the cloth no longer resembled anything respectable.
Instead he tied the strap over his shoulder.
Some things did not have to remain useful to deserve keeping.
Da Bao found him beside the fire, already dressed and waiting.
"What are you doing? It's early."
"An excellent observation. I understand this is when people leave on journeys."
"Not before breakfast."
"Then kindly make breakfast before I die of anticipation."
The giant laughed and started the fire. Er Bao emerged carrying the trade bundles, inspected Xu Hao's repaired bag and declined to comment on its crooked stitching.
"Ready?" he asked.
Xu Hao looked around the camp. He saw the place where he'd first practised his knots, the rock where meditation had brought him nothing for days, the warning line he'd repaired after the rain. He saw the target stump, scarred by dozens of arrows, most of which he had once failed to put anywhere near it.
"As ready as I'm going to be."
* * *
They travelled downhill with the three huskies summoned for the journey. Sia carried Xu Hao easily over the rougher stretches. Grey and Little One carried their masters with far less elegance, though both were strong enough to manage. Da Bao's knees hung so low that Xu Hao had to look away before the giant caught him laughing.
"What?" Da Bao demanded.
"Nothing. A perfectly dignified hunting party."
Er Bao glanced at his brother's dangling feet. "Very dignified."
They reached the broader southern road before midday. Xu Hao saw the first cart tracks, then a weathered signpost. Beyond it, the forest began to thin. Small farms appeared between low walls, and the smell of smoke changed from wet campfire wood to cooking fires and workshops.
Xu Hao drew a long breath. People. Roads. Actual buildings. He had missed these things more than he knew.
Er Bao told them to stop beside a stand of willows before the final approach. Xu Hao dismissed Sia reluctantly, feeling her familiar presence settle safely into the card. The brothers did the same with Grey and Little One. They would walk through the town gates like ordinary travellers, unless someone gave them reason not to.
"Remember," Er Bao said, "the Su family controls the gate. Five copper coins for each traveller. Don't offer information nobody has asked for."
Xu Hao nodded. Three travellers, fifteen copper coins. The herb trader had warned him that beasts could attract extra charges. For once, they had avoided that complication before it began.
They joined the line approaching Hibiscus Town. The town walls rose ahead, weathered and crowded with banners. Merchants called to one another from wagons, a child cried because his father refused to buy a sweet, and a guard argued over the weight of a sack of grain.
Xu Hao listened to the overlapping voices, understanding perhaps half of what he heard.
He was smiling when they reached the front.
A young official in fine clothing stood beside the guards, watching the queue with an expression of profound boredom. His gaze moved over the Wang brothers and settled on Xu Hao's bow.
"Three travellers," the official said. "Fifteen coppers."
Da Bao reached for his coin pouch.
Then the young man lifted a hand.
"Not so fast. What's in the boy's bag?"