12: Crescent Moon

Crescent Moon Slash maxed at mastery one hundred from a base of zero in seven hours of dedicated grinding, and I did it on a Thursday afternoon in a strip of empty grassland west of Jianghai while Wanqing sat on a wagon driver's bench drinking iced barley tea out of an in-game NPC stall and reading aloud from a campus-recruitment forum she had pulled up in a side-window.

"*Bladeless Hall*," she said, without looking up. "*A name that is appropriately mysterious for an indie guild but sounds, on second reading, like the bathroom of a hotel for ghosts.*"

"That was a forum post."

"That was a forum post. Three days ago. Twelve upvotes and an angry reply from someone who appears to be a fan of yours."

"I don't have fans."

"You have one. His name is Iron Wei Wei and he wants you to know that *Bladeless Hall* is a *crystalline statement of intent.*"

I parried the next charging boar without looking. The longsword bit; the system pinged.

> *Ding!* [System Notification: You have slain Yellow-Tusk Boar (Lv 4). EXP +24. ×1]

"How is the mastery."

"Eighty-six," I said. "Eighty-seven."

"Mn."

The grassland was the small open zone on the western flank of Jianghai, lower density than the gully, almost empty of other players because the launch-week wiki had decided in two days that the gully was the better spot. The wiki was not wrong; the gully was the better spot for raw EXP per minute. The grassland, however, had a subtle property that the wiki had not yet noticed: every fifth boar in the spawn cycle was an Aberrant Yellow-Tusk, two levels higher than the standard boars, with a small extra animation tell I could read at distance. The Aberrants gave triple the standard EXP and, more importantly, dropped a small chance at a Crescent Moon Slash mastery scroll — an item nobody on the server had identified yet, because nobody else had read the boar tooltip down to its third sub-line.

I had identified it on the second pull. I had been farming the Aberrants for the scroll for the last hour and a half. Two scrolls had dropped. My mastery was now three pulls from cap.

"Eighty-eight," I said.

"Mn."

She turned a page in her side-window. The wagon driver's bench creaked under her. The launch-week wagon driver NPC, Old Hu, was idling at the head of the wagon eating a system-rendered yellow apple. The pass-through carried the small soft *crunch* every twelve seconds. Old Hu was a friendly NPC; his presence in the field gave any nearby player a small +5% to skill mastery accrual, a buff the wiki would not catalogue for months. I had positioned us deliberately within his radius. The +5% had cut my grind time by eighteen minutes.

Wanqing had not commented on the positioning. She had, however, ten minutes after I had picked the spot, said *Cangtian, I have a question, was it the apple or the bench,* and I had said *the apple,* and she had nodded and gone back to her forum.

A new Aberrant rolled into the spawn at the edge of the grass.

"Mine," I said.

I closed the gap at a sprint. The Aberrant pivoted, lowered the head. Crescent Moon Slash on the cooldown — the cone-AoE bit through its shoulder and the back of its neck and a strip of its hindquarters all in one stroke; its HP bar hit zero before the swing finished.

> *Ding!* [Aberrant Yellow-Tusk (Lv 6) slain. EXP +72. Gold +8 copper.] > *Ding!* [Equipment Drop: Crescent Moon Mastery Scroll — White Grade. Use to add +12 mastery to Crescent Moon Slash.] > *Ding!* [Skill: Crescent Moon Slash — Mastery 88 → 100. Mastery cap reached.] > *Ding!* [Hidden Achievement Unlocked — *The First Hand to Master.* You are the first player on this server to bring a starter-tier skill to mastery cap. Reward: Mastery Cap Bonus — Crescent Moon Slash now has a 5% chance to ignore enemy DEF on critical strike, permanently.]

I sheathed the longsword.

Wanqing put down the iced barley.

"You're done," she said.

"I'm done."

"Cangtian."

"Mn."

"That was four hours faster than the wiki estimates for a base-skill cap."

"The wiki estimates are wrong. They average across a player base that does not know about the Aberrant spawn rule. Three pulls a minute on the Aberrant outpaces the wiki's per-cycle math. The wiki will catch up in a week."

"Did you just *publish* the reasoning out loud."

"Only to you."

She watched me.

I went and sat down on the wagon driver's bench beside her. The bench was narrow. Old Hu the NPC chewed his apple. The pass-through carried the small soft warm pressure of her shoulder through the silver-grey tunic against my shoulder through the Beggar's Tunic. The two avatars sat side by side on the bench in the launch-week sun, and on the other side of two helmets in two dorms in Hangzhou two nineteen- and eighteen-year-old bodies sat in two foam-padded chairs and the sensors pretended very competently that the bench in the field and the chairs in the dorms were the same bench.

"Cangtian."

"Mn."

"You fight like you've been here before."

I had been waiting for the line. She had not said it on the boar field on day one. She had not said it in the gully on day two. She had not said it in the Withered Hollow at four in the morning, or on the temple steps at sunrise. She had said many things adjacent to the line — *you walk like a person who knows where he's going* — *you read the rules creatively* — but she had not, until this small early-Thursday-afternoon moment with Old Hu chewing his apple and the launch-week sun coming down across the grass, said the exact line.

I did not deflect.

"I have been here before," I said.

She did not move.

"In the dream."

"In the dream."

"Cangtian. The dream."

"Mn."

"You said yesterday that some of it turns out to be real."

"I said that."

"You said that you had been very good at this. You said you had been alone."

"I said both of those."

"I am going to ask you a question. You can decline. If you decline, I will not ask again. But I am going to ask it once."

"Ask."

She turned her head. The freckles caught the launch-week sun. The pinned-up ponytail had loosened at one side; a single strand of hair fell along the line of her jaw and she did not push it back. The pale silver-grey collar of the tunic was loose where she had been carrying the bow on her shoulder all morning; the line of the throat caught the light and the line of the upper sternum bone did, very faintly, and I held my eyes on her eyes the way I had been holding them on her eyes for two days.

"How long was the dream," she said, very quietly.

The question was not the question I had expected. I had expected *was I in the dream* or *was my father in the dream* or *did I die in the dream*, any of which I had answers prepared for. She had asked the meta-question instead: how long. She had asked it the way she asked everything important — at the angle that gave her the most information for the least disturbance to the source.

I gave her the truth.

"Five years."

She did not look away.

"Five years."

"Five years."

"And you came back to this morning."

"Yes."

"You knew, when you logged in on Sunday, that I would be in the chat scroll."

"I knew you might be. I did not know you would be. The detail of you being here now — that is a small change from what I remembered. I think your uncle's helmet gift was a small change. Some of the smaller things have shifted. Most of the larger things have not yet."

"Most of the larger things." She turned that phrase over for a second. "What are the larger things."

"Some of them I would like to keep to myself a little longer."

"All right."

"Wanqing—"

"I said all right." Her voice was very even. "You answered the question. I will not ask the next one for a while. I am going to sit here for a moment. Please do not say anything."

I did not say anything.

She did not move. She did not look at me. She looked across the grassland at the small idling shape of Old Hu the wagon driver, and at the line of low brown hills on the western horizon, and at the launch-week sun, and her hand — the small hand at the avatar's right side, on the wagon driver's bench between us — was lying palm-up on the wood where I had not noticed it had been lying for the last forty seconds.

I did not put my hand on hers.

She did not put her hand on mine.

The pass-through did not require either of us to move. The space between our palms, on the warm wood of the wagon driver's bench, with Old Hu chewing his apple at twelve-second intervals and the launch-week sun coming down in long slow stripes, was its own small held thing.

After a long minute she closed her fingers. Lightly. Without drama. Without looking at me.

"Cangtian," she said.

"Mn."

"You are not going to be alone."

"Wanqing, I—"

"I am not asking your permission."

"All right."

"Mn." She uncurled the hand. She stood up. She brushed nothing off her tunic. She slung the bow. "Walk. I want to recruit a tank tonight."

I stood. I followed her.

***

Halfway across the grassland, on the way to the western road that would take us back to Jianghai's gate, a player walked past us on the path going the other way. He was a Lv 8 or 9 swordsman, generic build, a pale tunic, no guild crest. He was alone. He passed within four meters of us. He did not look at me. He did not look at Wanqing.

As his shoulder cleared mine he murmured, very low, almost not voiced, "Beautiful form."

He did not stop. He did not turn his head. He kept walking.

I kept walking too. I did not turn my head. I did not break my stride. The pass-through carried his low murmured *beautiful form* to my ear in the small clear way the engine carried ambient voices in close-pass, and the murmur had been unmistakable.

I did not know him. I had never seen him.

Wanqing said, softly, half a step ahead of me, "Did he say something."

"Yes."

"What."

"*Beautiful form.*"

"To you."

"Yes."

"Cangtian, that's—"

"Mn."

"That is a very strange thing to say to a stranger on a path."

"It is."

"He wasn't in your dream."

"I have never seen him."

She did not turn around. She walked.

I let one hand drift, casual, to the hilt of the longsword. Not a draw. Just a finger on the pommel.

I turned my head sideways once, after a hundred meters, to glance back along the path. The pale-tunic swordsman had vanished. The path was empty in both directions. The launch-week sun came down on the long grass and on the small shape of Old Hu the wagon driver and on the line of low brown hills, and there was no other player in sight in any direction.

I turned forward.

"Wanqing."

"Mn."

"There is — there is a player on the server who is paying attention to the form of a Lv 11 swordsman."

"Mn."

"That player is good enough to know what beautiful form looks like."

"Mn."

"It might not be a Tianxia player. It might be a different kind of player."

"Cangtian."

"Mn."

"That sounds, if you are wondering, like a man with a very dry sense of humor and a very high level."

"It does."

She looked at me sideways for a long beat without slowing her walk. Then she smiled. The smile was small. The smile was the one that had sat at the corner of her mouth on the temple steps, smaller this time, settled.

"Well," she said. "Whoever he is, he taught you that you have admirers other than me. I will write him a thank-you note when we identify him."

"Wanqing."

"Mn."

"That was not necessary."

"It was extremely necessary. Walk faster."

I walked faster.

***

We logged out at six-thirty IRL Hangzhou time. I peeled the helmet off and lay back on the lumpy pillow and stared at the cracked-egg ceiling stain for a long minute with the cradle band still warm against my ribcage and my heart rate still slightly above resting and the small persistent feeling in my chest that the small held thing on the wagon driver's bench had been a great deal larger than I had been prepared for.

The dorm phone buzzed. Wanqing.

*Wanqing (text): Window. Open it.*

I went to the window. I opened it. The dorm courtyard was in evening light. Forty meters away, at her own window in the girls' dormitory across the path, Wanqing was leaning on her windowsill in a different hoodie — a white one, oversized — with her hair down out of the ponytail for the first time since launch day. She was eating a yogurt with a small plastic spoon. She did not wave. She lifted the spoon, briefly, in the smallest possible salute.

I lifted my hand, briefly, in the smallest possible salute.

She licked the spoon. She closed her window. She drew the curtain.

I stood at my own window for a moment with my hand still partly raised, then lowered it, then stood there for one more breath, then closed the window.

The cradle band against my ribcage, which I had forgotten to remove, logged a small sustained climb in my heart rate that the system, in the absence of any active gameplay session, had nothing to do with except note.

The phone buzzed again.

*Wanqing (text): Daily reset. Treat in the morning. Don't be late.*

I sat down at my desk. I did not type a reply for a full minute.

Then I typed: *Won't be.*

The screen brightened with the small grey *delivered* tag.

I closed the phone, set it down, and sat for a while in the dark of the dorm with my elbows on my knees and the small clean unfamiliar feeling in my chest of a thing I had not, in five years of dying, had a chance to feel and now had every chance to.

The cracked-egg stain was still on the ceiling.

I did not look at it.