After the room change, neither Ethan nor Serena returned to the exploration topic.
The omission was clean, almost formal. Not avoidance, exactly. Deferral.
They shifted to the old arts instead. Mostly Ethan asking, Serena answering when she chose to.
"The pre-Qin golden bamboo slips," Ethan said. "How many are actually out there?"
Serena gave him a look that suggested he was asking about private launch codes. "If you mean the real ones, don't spend your life planning around them. Across all known excavations, four were recovered. Two were torn into pieces in factional fights. Only two complete slips remain."
"Where?"
"Vaulted. New Star's largest bank. Highest-grade security section."
Ethan nodded once. He had expected *difficult*. He had not expected *financial-institution impossible*.
Even with the old path in decline, no serious organization had let go of those artifacts.
"So even ordinary pre-Qin bamboo records are priceless," he said.
Serena glanced at him. "Anything connected to pre-Qin *fang shi* is beyond 'ordinary.'"
He thought of Professor Lin's translation pages in his apartment. Thought of the old man almost dying in the tomb that produced them.
Not just pages. A life's price, written as pages.
Ethan shifted the topic. "I heard New Star had a genuine grandmaster who died training a body technique."
Serena's brows moved slightly. He had touched a layer that wasn't in public channels.
"You're better connected than you look," she said.
He let the line pass.
"The road is rough," Serena said after a beat. "Very few make anything of it. The grandmaster you're talking about trained a Taoist court transmission text. Burned himself out. Organs failed catastrophically." She looked directly at him. "It was ugly."
Ethan sat back, expression unchanged.
The warning landed anyway.
If that level of practitioner could die that way, the five-page gold-leaf method in his apartment needed even more caution than he was already giving it.
Marcus, who had recovered enough from earlier emotional damage to drink again, shook his head. "What for? Already a grandmaster, then still dies chasing a next step. Humans never stop wanting more."
"Easy to say from outside," Serena said. "Imagine aging in real time, then being told there is a method that might renew the organs and add decades. You think that temptation doesn't work on elites?"
Marcus considered this for half a second. "If someone told me that, I'd probably try too."
Ethan asked, "How far is grandmaster level from pre-Qin *fang shi* level?"
"Not the same order of magnitude," Serena said. "The gap is too large to compare directly."
Then she looked at him more carefully.
"You still intend to keep walking the old path," she said. "All the way?"
"I was cut out of the new one," Ethan said. "So yes. This is the road I have."
Marcus went quiet at that. He hated hearing it stated so plainly.
Serena did not pity him. She assessed him.
Marcus broke in before the silence could settle. "He's unlucky in timing. Put him in an older era and maybe he'd become one of those names people mythologize. In this era?" He made a small gesture at the city outside the glass. "Advanced weapons solve the argument before old arts even enters the room."
He wasn't wrong. That was what made it heavy.
Old arts at peak still had to share a world with rifles, drones, power systems, and people who did not duel.
Serena watched Ethan's face while Marcus was speaking.
No visible reaction. No debate posture. Just that same economical stillness.
"So," Marcus said, turning to Serena with forced casual energy, "if he's this good and still stuck, do you have channels? New art materials, maybe. Or a route to New Star."
The request had been building for five minutes. This was always where he was going.
Ethan cut in before Serena answered. He put a hand briefly on Marcus's shoulder.
"My road," he said. "I understand it."
No thank-you spoken. None needed.
Serena said, "When I get back, I can push the file. No guarantees."
Ethan nodded. "I appreciate it."
Then, after a beat: "I'll think about it first."
She accepted that without pressing. Not agreement. Not refusal. A future node left open.
She stood to leave, smiling again now, the public-friendly version restored.
"We'll meet again," she said. "Next time, maybe we finish the conversation."
Ethan and Marcus stood and saw her out.
---
"You're keeping distance from her on purpose," Marcus said after she was gone. "Maybe too much. If she actually helps, you could reach New Star."
Ethan shook his head. "The players across the stars have already started moving on some unknown zone. We can't afford to step into that blind."
Marcus nodded slowly. "Fair. But what did she mean by people trying to ignite god-fire?"
"Not enough data," Ethan said. "Could be tied to Western deification frameworks. Could be someone's branding fantasy."
"You're telling me people in this era think they can become gods?"
"I'm telling you people think whatever the available power allows them to think."
Marcus laughed once, then got serious again. "Something is happening out there. I can feel it. New era, deep space, everything opening up—"
Ethan cut in deadpan: "No unauthorized ascensions."
Marcus stared at him.
"That's your response?"
"My response is this," Ethan said. "In a high-tech order, if a financial house actually crosses the line and tries to declare theological sovereignty, every other power center moves. Governments move. Institutions move. They get ground down."
Marcus lifted his glass. "Cold joke. Colder analysis."
"Accurate analysis."
---
That night, Ethan returned to his apartment and reopened Professor Lin's translation pages.
He read slowly, not for plot but for weight - trying to feel what had survived in the language.
Marcus's argument still sat in the room with him: even peak old arts lost to modern weapon systems.
The century had changed.
Could the old path still become new?
He set the translation aside and opened the gold-leaf body method from the jade case. He ran part of page one - only the early sequence - and stopped the moment the five-organ ache surfaced.
No forcing.
He knew what Aoki had looked like after two minutes.
Still, his own pain profile remained different. Manageable in short bursts. Recoverable with rest.
Thirty minutes later he stopped cleanly at limit.
Then he pulled out the old-arts manual Maxwell Zhou had gifted him at the gathering and started reading it properly for the first time.
He had expected decorative nonsense.
Instead, the opening looked familiar - close to the Iron Silk path, maybe even a downstream branch.
"Golden Body," he read aloud.
The text claimed later stages could resist conventional blades and firearms. He almost laughed.
Then he kept reading.
Stage one: roughly one year.
Each subsequent stage: time required doubled.
He flipped ahead.
Past nine stages.
Thirteen formal layers.
Then draft notes for layer fourteen and fifteen.
Ethan put the manual down, stared at it, picked it up again, checked he had not misread, and dropped it flat onto the desk.
"Maxwell," he said to the empty room. "I understand why your son keeps getting hit."
If the progression model were taken literally, you needed multiple human lifetimes to reach meaningful depth.
Either the text was intentionally useless, or it was written for beings operating on a different time scale than ordinary practitioners.
Neither option made him feel generous.
He shoved the yellowed volume aside.
"Keep playing games," he said quietly. "We'll settle it in installments."