Soj looked at Houji for a long moment without speaking.
Then he said it simply.
"Something is wrong with this one."
The two brothers looked at each other. Then at Houji. Then back at Soj with the confused expressions of people who have spent a week traveling with someone and have found nothing unusual about them at all.
"Senior," Toko said carefully. "We scanned him at the gate. Rank two signature. Consistent cultivation presence. We observed him use spiritual energy on the journey without any irregularity."
"I am not questioning his rank," Soj said. "I am telling you I cannot see mana flowing in his veins."
The room went quiet.
Soj's eyes had not moved from Houji's face.
"At my level I see mana the way you see light. It moves through the veins of every cultivator in this room. Through the walls. Through the floor. Through everything in the surrounding space that has absorbed it over years of exposure." He paused. "This one has none moving. He is holding mana. But none is flowing. None is being absorbed. None is cycling." He tilted his head slightly. "How are you cultivating."
Houji felt the pressure before he understood what it was.
It arrived the way weather arrives. Gradually and then completely. The spiritual pressure of a rank five cultivator directed at a single point, which was him, bearing down with the casual force of someone turning a faucet rather than exerting themselves. His body began spending mana simply to remain standing. Not fighting back. Just existing under the weight of it.
Every second cost him something he could not recover.
Soj watched his face.
Then he released the pressure and folded his hands.
"You are a cultivator," he said. "I can see that much. You withstood my suppression. A mortal would have collapsed in the first second." He looked at Houji with the specific attention of someone revising a theory in real time. "But you do not radiate mana. You do not absorb mana. You are simply containing it." He reached into his robe and produced a talisman. Flat. Pale gold. Old enough that the edges had worn smooth. "Activate this."
Toji leaned forward slightly. "Senior that scroll is used for rank assessment. The drain on a rank two cultivator is considerable. If he has already been depleted by the journey—"
"Activate it," Soj said to Houji. Not loudly.
Houji looked at the talisman.
He did the calculation in the space of a breath. The suppression had cost him. The journey had cost him. What remained in his body was enough to activate the talisman or enough to survive what came after activation. Probably not both.
He raised his eyes to Soj.
"Senior," he said. "I must respectfully point out that you are making an accusation against a disciple who has just survived the destruction of his master's stronghold, spent a week traveling to report what he witnessed, and brought you physical evidence that your own investigation had not located." He kept his voice level. "I would ask that my contribution be acknowledged before my loyalty is questioned."
The temperature in the room changed.
Toko's eyes went wide.
Toji went completely still.
Soj looked at Houji with an expression that moved through several stages very quickly, none of them comfortable to observe.
Then he moved.
His fist came forward with the compressed certainty of someone who has not needed to restrain themselves in a very long time and has decided not to start now.
Both brothers grabbed his arms simultaneously.
They were not his match. They knew it and he knew it and the effort of holding him showed immediately on their faces, the strain of two rank three cultivators trying to slow a rank five's momentum through sheer physical resistance. They could not stop it. They could delay it.
Three seconds.
Houji threw himself sideways off the trajectory.
The punch completed itself through the space where he had been standing and continued into the back wall of the pavilion and through it and through the wall of the building behind that and through the courtyard beyond and into the outer wall of the next structure before the energy finally distributed itself into the surrounding stone.
The sound arrived after. A deep sequential cracking, building and then settling, dust rising from three separate locations across the pavilion complex.
Houji was on the ground. He had landed badly and one hand was pressed flat against the stone floor and he was looking at the line of destruction the single punch had carved through four walls without Soj having taken a single step.
Soj straightened his sleeve.
"That was your luck," he said. "Nothing more." He looked at Houji on the ground with an expression that had returned to something approaching calm. "No cultivator with a functioning mind attempts to use psychology against a rank five in his own pavilion." He paused. "Unless they are not a cultivator and are trying to delay a test they know they cannot pass."
Houji pushed himself to one knee.
"Senior," he said. "I have traveled for a week. The suppression just now cost me significantly. The journey cost me before that." He looked up at Soj directly. "I will take your test. I am asking only for time to recover enough mana to survive it. I remember what this scroll does to a rank two cultivator. My master used it when I first reached this rank. I was sucked completely dry. I could barely breathe afterward." He held Soj's gaze. "I am not refusing. I am asking not to die during the process."
Something moved in Soj's expression.
Not softness. Recognition. The memory of something.
He stepped forward and held the talisman out.
"Do it now," he said quietly. "No more delay."
Houji understood that there was nothing left to negotiate.
He took the talisman.
It was warm in his hand. Warmer than the temperature of the room explained. He could feel it reaching already, before he had done anything, the way a drain reaches before you put your hand near it.
He began to channel.
The talisman responded immediately and completely. It did not take what he offered. It took everything. The mana in his hands went first. Then his arms. Then his chest. The drain moved through him with the systematic efficiency of something that had been designed specifically to find every reserve a body contained and empty it entirely.
The talisman grew brighter.
Houji grew less.
His lungs began having difficulty with their basic function. The muscles that controlled breathing were not immune to the drain and the mana that had been maintaining his body's enhanced performance was leaving now and the body beneath it was something the talisman did not recognize as standard because it was not standard and the drain did not stop when it should have stopped.
It kept going.
Toko stepped forward. "Senior he is going to—"
Soj's hand came out sideways without looking and Toko left the pavilion through the open wall at considerable speed.
Toji looked at his brother's trajectory and then back at Soj.
"Pavilion master," he said carefully. "He will die."
"Then he dies," Soj said. His eyes were on the talisman. On the brightness of it. On the specific quality of the light it was producing which was not the color it should have been for a standard rank two drain. "He will complete the test."
The talisman blazed.
Houji's body folded toward the floor.
And in the ship, deep in the forest, thousands of miles away, Huang Shing set down his tea and sat forward and began calculating how much time he had before the body failed completely.