11: Pioneer of the Path

Beigong Yan was leaning on his sheathed sword like a man who had been leaning on it for a hundred years, and at the speed I came down the last flight of the temple steps he opened his eyes without lifting his head.

"You're late, boy," he said.

He was not. The chain-quest tooltip in my UI gave me a six-hour window, of which I had spent perhaps eleven minutes climbing the temple, bowing, and arguing with Wanqing about a working title. He was, however, an NPC sword-saint, and sword-saint NPCs in this game opened ninety percent of their conversations with *you're late, boy* regardless of the speed at which the player arrived. The line was hard-coded. It still landed; the launch-week voice-acting team had hired an actual retired Beijing opera singer for him, and the singer's voice came out of the avatar at a low gravelly register that scratched faintly along the upper edge of the helmet's audio range.

In old timeline I had not met Beigong Yan until level seventy-eight. I had been, by then, alone in a wing of the Floating Cloud Sect's hidden vault, sweating through a thirty-minute trial fight, with a half-broken shortsword and the conviction that the next hit would crack my IRL ribcage even though the helmet's pain-dampening was set to thirty percent. He had said, at the end of that trial, *you're late, boy*, and I had laughed because there had been nobody else in the vault to laugh at.

He was the same NPC. The launch-day version of him at the south gate of Jianghai was a younger model — not visually, the avatar was identical down to the gray cord around his throat, but in conversation depth. The Lv-10 chain quest version of him had a four-line dialogue loop. The Lv-78 vault version of him had spoken five hundred and twenty distinct lines I had memorized over four months. I knew which version of him would emerge out of which trigger. I knew the four lines I would get this morning. I knew also that one of them, if I answered correctly, would unlock a hidden fifth line that the launch wiki would not catalogue for nine months.

I bowed.

He inclined his head. The sheathed sword across his back caught the morning light on its black lacquer.

"Pioneer of the Path," he said, reading the title that had bloomed above my head in a small system halo. "First on this server to climb the temple steps in silence at dawn. First on this server to clear the Withered Hollow before sunrise. First on this server to refuse the Coalition's outer ledger." His eyes narrowed at the last. "Three firsts in three days. Tell me what you want, boy."

That was the third line of his loop, given out of order. The system had moved the third line up because it had detected the Tianxia refusal in the player's faction record. I had known the refusal would weight the dialogue toward the third line; I had not been certain it would be moved this far up.

I said, "I want to learn the path that severs heaven from earth."

The line was the trigger phrase. The launch wiki would catalogue it under *Beigong Yan / Hidden Mentor Chain / Trigger* nine months from now. In old timeline I had stumbled on it by accident, two years too late. Today I delivered it on the first attempt at a level sixty-eight steps below where the line was supposed to be earnable.

Beigong Yan was very still for the space of three heartbeats.

Then he laughed. The laugh came out as a single short bark, very dry, very high, the laugh of an old man who had not been surprised by a player on this server in a long time, because no player on this server had existed long enough to surprise him.

"Boy," he said. "That phrase is older than your grandmother's bones."

"I know."

"Where did you hear it."

"In a dream."

He looked at me for a long beat with the small calm yellow of his pre-rendered eyes. The eyes were beautiful. The Tianyu artists had spent disproportionate budget on Beigong Yan's eyes. The pre-render included a faint amber filament across the iris that I had only ever seen on Beigong Yan and on three other hidden NPCs across the entire game.

"All right," he said. "Hidden chain accepted. You will not call it a hidden chain when you speak of it to others; you will call it nothing. You will return to me at the south gate at every full sun-cycle and I will give you a small piece of work. You will not hurry the work. You will not skip the work. Sixty cycles. If you survive sixty cycles I will give you a thing that has no name."

> *Ding!* [Hidden Chain Quest Accepted: *The Severing Path.* 60-cycle slow-burn quest under NPC Beigong Yan. Reward at completion: undisclosed. Reward at each cycle: small permanent stat or skill bonus. WARNING: this chain may not be shared, abandoned, or transferred.]

The chain quest icon settled into my UI as a small black sword-stroke against a faint amber background. The icon was the only one of its kind I had ever seen on any player's UI. Old timeline I had walked around with this icon for the last sixteen months of my life and had never asked anybody else if they had seen it on theirs, because nobody else had it on theirs.

Beigong Yan turned his face toward the rising sun.

"First cycle's work," he said. "The Iron Hills ridge to the north. There is a clan of stone-back wolves at the summit. Bring me one tooth, no more, no less. The tooth must come from the wolf you killed last."

He vanished. He did not vanish dramatically; he simply stepped backward into the gate stone and the gate stone did not catch him, and the air closed where he had been, and an in-game crow lifted off a roof tile somewhere and gave a single dry caw and I was alone at the south gate with a chain-quest icon in my UI and the Iron Hills ridge somewhere over the horizon.

Wanqing's voice in the bonded-duo channel said, "Did you finish."

"I finished."

"Mn. Then come back. I have made a list. We are recruiting."

"Wanqing. He gave me a kill quest. Iron Hills ridge."

"How far."

"Two hours run-time. Wolves at the summit, level fifteen-ish."

"Mn." Pause. "I am coming."

"You can't be in his quest. He said the chain is solo."

"I am not going to be in his quest. I am going to be in the field next to his quest. I am going to be shooting things that are not in his quest. The system will not yell at me. Move."

I started to move.

***

The Iron Hills were a low ridge running north-northwest from Jianghai's outer gate, brown and bare in the launch-week build, dotted with small clusters of stone-back wolves and the occasional bandit camp. The ridge would be redesigned in the second major patch into a far prettier zone with proper grass and a stream — but in launch week it was bare, brown, and hostile. The two-hour overland run was a small subtle test the chain quest had built into the first cycle: any player who took a mount or a horse for the run would forfeit the cycle's bonus. I knew. I walked.

Wanqing met me at the foot of the ridge in fifteen minutes. She had ridden a mule from the south gate to the ridge's edge, dismounted, and was sitting cross-legged on a flat stone with a meatbun in one hand and a small in-game canteen of water in the other.

"The mule is not in the quest," she said, before I could open my mouth. "The mule is in the wider in-game ecology. I am also in the wider in-game ecology. The wider in-game ecology is allowed."

"You are reading the rules creatively."

"I am reading the rules accurately. Walk."

We walked. The ridge climbed at a gentle slope for the first hour and then steepened into a long stone scramble. The launch-week pass-through carried the small clean rasp of stone under boot soles, the small dry whine of wind across exposed rock, the faint occasional flicker of in-game wildlife — small lizards on the rocks, a hawk-shape circling somewhere overhead. Wanqing climbed half a step ahead of me. The pale silver-grey tunic was riding up at the small of her back where the leather belt of the quiver had pulled it; the line of her waist showed for a finger-width above the belt, the smooth narrow turn of the obliques into the line of the lower ribcage, and the freckled skin caught the launch-day sun in a way that I let myself note for one full breath and then looked at the ridge above her shoulder instead. The bond icon between us pulsed faintly.

She turned her head over her shoulder without breaking stride.

"You're staring at my back."

"I am looking at the route."

"Mn-hm. You used your treat at the temple. We are now in deficit. You are going to owe me one extra bow at the dorm tomorrow morning."

"What is an extra bow."

"You will find out."

She turned back to the climb. The hem of the tunic settled. I followed her up, jaw set, with the small persistent feeling along the line of my throat that was, I had begun to understand, simply what nineteen years old felt like the second time around when the eighteen-year-old in front of you climbed a ridge in a tunic that had ridden up on her back. The cradle band against my ribcage logged the small sustained climb in my heart rate. The system would not investigate the source.

We crested the ridge at the in-game equivalent of mid-morning. The stone-back wolf clan was where Beigong Yan had said it was — six wolves arranged in a loose semicircle at the summit, the alpha at the back, the rest in three pairs along the rim. Average level fourteen, alpha level sixteen. None elite, but the alpha had a charge attack that one-shot Lv-10 cloth.

"I will take the rim pairs," Wanqing said. "You take the alpha. Don't kill last. The chain wants the last tooth. Make sure it's the alpha's."

"Understood."

We took the rim pairs first. Wanqing's bow, with the Withered Quiver's twelve-percent Wither proc rate, ate through the first pair in fourteen seconds — two arrows into each wolf, the second arrow landing into the small open-mouth window the Wither DoT created when it staggered a target. The system pinged six times in twenty seconds.

> *Ding!* [Stone-back Wolf (Lv 14) slain. EXP +210. ×6]

The alpha was the long fight. I baited its first charge by stepping out into the rim of the clearing and letting it see me; it lunged, six meters of grey-furred mass at a sprint, head low, jaws bracketed in stone-tooth armor along the muzzle. I sidestepped at the half-second, took a clean cut along the line of its right shoulder with the longsword, took two steps in toward its flank as it tried to pivot. Crescent Moon Slash on the cooldown — the cone-AoE bit into the back of its neck and the front of its hindquarters, two-hundred percent damage clean.

> *Ding!* [Skill: Crescent Moon Slash — Mastery accrual +6. Mastery: 17/100.]

The alpha turned. It was wounded but still composed; it did not lunge again immediately. It walked sideways, watching me. Stone-back wolves had a cautious second phase. I knew the second phase. I stayed inside its turn radius and forced it to keep pivoting until the second-phase timer expired, then took the killing strike with a clean two-handed downstroke as it tried to lunge a second time too late.

> *Ding!* [Stone-back Wolf Alpha (Lv 16) slain. EXP +480. Gold +44 copper.]

> *Ding!* [Quest Item Acquired: Stone-back Wolf Tooth (alpha — last kill). Return to Beigong Yan at the Jianghai south gate.]

> *Ding!* [Chain Quest Update: *The Severing Path* — Cycle 1/60 complete. Reward: +1 STR permanent.]

The +1 STR slid into my stat panel quietly. One out of sixty. I tucked the tooth into the dedicated quest slot.

Wanqing was already collapsing the bow. She had taken nothing in the fight; the bond bonus had given her one rim-pair too clean, and she had finished her own pairs with two arrows to spare. She walked over, looked at the alpha, prodded it with the toe of her boot.

"That was clean," she said. "Cangtian. How many more cycles."

"Fifty-nine."

"Once a day."

"Once per in-game sun cycle. Two per IRL day if we game the dilation."

"Don't game the dilation. He'll know."

"He will know. We won't game it."

She tipped her head sideways. "He's an NPC."

"He notices."

"Cangtian."

"Mn?"

"You said yesterday that nobody else has the chain icon on their UI. That nobody you ever met in old timeline ever had it on theirs."

I had said that. I had not realized she had been listening to that sentence the way she had been listening; I had let it slip on the temple steps without registering the slip. Wanqing collected the slipped sentences. She filed each one into the small mental box she kept warning me about.

I did not answer.

She did not press. She slung the bow. She tipped her head down toward the southern slope.

"Long walk back," she said. "I'll race you to the mule."

She vanished at a sprint along the ridge's southern lip, the silver-grey tunic flicking, the boots leaving faint dust prints on the launch-week stone. The pass-through caught, in the half-second she had been turned away from me, the small unconscious smile she had tried to keep off her own face. I watched it. I let the watching count as nothing — it was outside the daily treat, it was a stolen frame, it was the kind of small stolen frame that I had been collecting at the rate of perhaps six a day since the morning of the second day.

I started after her down the ridge.

***

Two hundred meters from the foot of the ridge, on a small flat outcrop above the mule path, a player in a dark red leather coat lowered a pair of in-game spyglasses and leaned back against a rock.

I saw him only for the half-second his coat moved in the wind. He did not see me see him; the sun was at my back and the angle was bad for him. He was older than the Tianxia outer-recruit RedSpear from the gully. The red of his coat was a deeper red, three or four shades toward black-cherry — the inner-circle tier. The crest on his shoulder was the two-stroke version of the Tianxia mark, with a small additional fleck of gold along the lower curve. Tianxia inner-recruit, intelligence cell. Old timeline I had killed exactly two of these across three years and I had remembered the crest the way you remember the shape of a particular knife.

I let my eyes go past him without lingering. I did not change my pace on the ridge path. The bond icon between Wanqing and me, faint at this distance, maintained a steady gold; I was still inside the duo radius.

The player on the outcrop tilted his head, marked something on a small in-game scroll he had pulled from his coat, and slid the scroll back into an inner pocket. The spyglasses he raised again and pointed not at me but at the alpha wolf carcass at the ridge summit, three hundred meters up. He was looking at the kill cam record. He was looking at the time stamps. He was looking at the *first kill* tag on the alpha — *First Kill: Bladeless. First-Hour Pioneers.*

Across the in-game distance I could not hear what he muttered. I knew the syllables anyway because his mouth shaped them clearly enough through the spyglass-lifted angle of his face.

*Liu Sanpao,* he muttered. The name was not addressed to me. He was naming himself in a system message he was about to send. Inner-recruit messaging protocols required the sender to voice their own ID into the open before the dispatch.

*Liu Sanpao to dispatch,* he said. *Two indies on the Iron Hills ridge. Bonded duo. Bladeless and an archer. Lv 10, killing Lv 16 alphas clean. He took a hidden chain from a sword-saint NPC at the Jianghai gate at sun-cycle dawn. The chain icon is a black sword-stroke on amber. Confirm with intel desk: that icon's never been logged. Should we squash, scout, or recruit hard?*

He paused. He waited for the dispatch reply. I did not stop walking. I kept the pace.

He grinned, a small white grin in the launch-day sun, the kind of grin a man on an outcrop made when the dispatch reply came back and the dispatch reply was the one he had hoped for.

He did not say the reply aloud.

I caught up with Wanqing at the mule.

"You walk too slow," she said. "I had time to negotiate the mule down to half a copper."

"Wanqing."

"Mn."

"There is a man on the ridge behind us. Red coat. Spyglasses. Tianxia inner-recruit. He was watching the alpha."

She did not turn her head. She tightened the mule's saddle strap with a small efficient pull.

"Mn," she said. "What did dispatch tell him."

"I don't know what dispatch told him. Whatever it was, he liked it."

She slung herself up onto the mule. The Iron-Sole boots caught the launch-day sun. She offered me her hand. I let her pull me up behind her — there was room for two, barely — and the mule plodded south at a thirty-percent-mounted speed under the +1 stat bond.

Behind us, on the outcrop, Liu Sanpao folded his spyglasses, tucked his scroll, and started down the back of the ridge at an unhurried walk toward the city.

The chain icon glowed quietly in my UI.

Wanqing's spine, against my chest where I sat behind her on the mule, was very warm.

Treat used. I had not even meant to. The cradle band logged the climb. The mule walked.