17: Wolfsfang

The Wolfsfang Greatsword chest was tucked behind a false wall at the back of a small unmarked chamber that branched off the third corridor of Withered Hollow's extension wing, and the false wall did not present itself to a player until the player had stood in the chamber for a full sixty seconds without moving.

Most launch-week parties never stood still in a dungeon for sixty seconds. Most launch-week parties stood still for, at most, twenty — long enough to loot a body, glance at a stat window, drink a healing potion. Sixty seconds was a long time, in launch-week dungeon-time. The Tianyu engagement designers had built the false-wall trigger to weed out parties that were rushing.

Wanqing and I stood still in the chamber for sixty seconds.

We did not look at each other. We faced opposite walls. The launch-week pass-through carried the small ambient noise of the corridor outside — the slow drip of water from the willow roots overhead, the very faint distant scuttle of a respawning wisp at the corridor's far end, the small soft creak of an in-game beam settling under nothing. The chamber's air had a particular faint moss-and-iron smell that the artists had pushed in for atmosphere. Wanqing breathed evenly behind me. I counted under my breath in tens.

At fifty-eight a small low hum opened along the eastern wall. At sixty the wall dissolved.

Behind it sat a small dark wooden chest, banded in iron, with a pale blue glow seeping out at the lid's seam.

"Mn," Wanqing said behind me. "Cangtian. Either you knew that or you got remarkably lucky."

"I knew."

"Open it slowly. I want to see what kind of seam glow promises a Blue."

I crouched at the chest. I unlatched the iron band. I lifted the lid.

The Wolfsfang Greatsword sat in the chest at a slight diagonal, hilt toward me, the blade's pale grey edge catching the launch-week torchlight in a way that the engine had clearly been instructed to flatter. The pommel was carved in a stylized wolf's head with two small inlaid blue stones for eyes. The grip was wrapped in dark leather. The blade was a clean two-handed greatsword profile with a single shallow fuller down the center.

> *Ding!* [Equipment Drop: Wolfsfang Greatsword — Blue Grade] > ATK +45 | STR +8 | LV Req 15 | Special: 5% chance to apply Bleed (15s).

Forty-five attack and eight strength at LV req 15 was, even at launch-week prices, the best Blue weapon listed on the Tianlong server's auction board this week. The Bleed special put it into a particular crafting niche. Wanqing whistled low.

"Cangtian. That's eight hundred RMB at minimum on the market right now."

"Eight hundred is the floor. I will get a thousand."

"How."

"I will not auction it."

"You will not — Cangtian, why would you not auction it."

I lifted the greatsword out of the chest. The avatar's two-handed grip settled around the leather; the weight registered through the pass-through as a precise heavier-by-fifteen-percent than the Iron Longsword across the same wrist. I tested the balance once. Cleanly weighted forward. Two-finger center of mass past the cross-guard, exactly as the spec said. I would not be able to equip it for four levels — I was Lv 11; LV req 15 — but I would not be selling it on the auction. I was selling it directly.

"There is a buyer at the south gate," I said. "He has been there since launch day. He is a Lv-15 swordsman from the Vanishing Brigade. His ID is *NorthRiver*. He has been bidding on every Blue greatsword that has gone to auction this week and he has lost two of them by less than a hundred RMB because his guild's auction-account weighting is two seconds slower than Tianxia's. He needs a Blue greatsword today. He will pay above auction floor for a private sale. I will charge him a thousand and he will pay it."

"How do you know him."

"Old timeline."

"Cangtian, in the dream he is — what."

"He is one of Old Wolf's brothers in the Vanishing Brigade. He is a polite man. He pays his debts. He had a small spectacle of being honest in the second year that Wanqing — that the dream — that I remember well. He would not in old timeline have been a buyer for a Blue greatsword in launch week because he could not afford it then. In this timeline he can, because the Vanishing Brigade still has launch-week sponsorship money before they lose it in the second month. He has a window."

She watched me.

"Cangtian."

"Mn."

"You are running a six-move plan in your head right now."

"I am running a six-move plan in my head right now."

"Tell me the six moves."

"One: sell to NorthRiver for a thousand. Two: NorthRiver tells Vanishing Brigade leadership that an unaffiliated indie is moving high-tier launch-week loot at sub-auction speed. Three: Vanishing Brigade leadership notes the indie's name. Four: Old Wolf, who has been keeping a quiet hand on Vanishing Brigade scouting because he thinks he is going to retire from pro and is bored, sees the name. Five: Old Wolf comes to find me at a time and place of his choosing within the next eight days. Six: I do not have to recruit Old Wolf. Old Wolf comes to me."

"Mn." She tilted her head. "That's elegant."

"Thank you."

"Don't get smug." She closed the chest's lid for me. "Sell."

***

NorthRiver was at the south-gate step at four in the in-game afternoon, exactly where I had told Wanqing he would be. He was a tall slim man in his late twenties with a Vanishing Brigade silver-and-blue crest at his shoulder, a Lv 15 swordsman in a pale sturdy tunic with a battered iron longsword at his hip and the small visible posture of a man who had been waiting at the same step for two days for an auction to open in his favor.

I crossed the step. I sat down beside him.

"NorthRiver."

He looked at me sideways without lifting his head. "Mn."

"I have a Wolfsfang Greatsword. Blue. Forty-five attack, eight strength, fifteen-percent bleed proc. LV req fifteen."

He was very still for the space of two heartbeats.

"Where."

"Inventory."

"Auction listing?"

"No auction. Direct sale."

"Price."

"One thousand RMB. Half down through the Tianyu wallet now, half on receipt."

He turned his head. He looked at me fully for the first time. He had a long thin face with a small scar at the left corner of his mouth that had survived the Tianyu helmet's facial scan because he had set the option to keep visible scars. He had brown eyes. He looked, very briefly, surprised, and then unsurprised.

"You have sold Blue weapons before."

"I have sold one Blue weapon before. Yesterday. A Hollowsteel Sabre. Nineteen-twenty on the Tianyu auction. Net to me one-eight-four-three after fee."

"That was you."

"That was me."

"Mn." He looked at the south-gate plaza around us. He looked at me again. "Why direct sale, Bladeless. Why not auction this one too. Auction would float you twelve hundred minimum on a Wolfsfang. The bleed proc tier alone is going to drive bidding."

"Two reasons."

"Tell me."

"One: I need cash within three IRL days. Auction lift-out plus settlement is four to five days minimum. I cannot wait. Two: I would rather you owe me a small favor than the Tianyu Tech auction system owe me four percent."

He was quiet for a long beat.

"That is a clean answer."

"It is the answer."

"What favor."

"Not now. Later. Within three months."

He thought about it.

He turned his head toward the gate. He was looking past the gate, into the lower city, at — I knew, because I had been here before, at this step, in old timeline, three years from now in a different conversation with the same NorthRiver, when he had been Lv 80 and I had been Lv 100 and we had been having a different conversation about a different favor — at the small distant rooftop of the Vanishing Brigade's launch-week instanced barracks, three blocks east, where Old Wolf's office window was.

He nodded once.

"All right, Bladeless."

He opened the trade window. The Wolfsfang Greatsword icon dragged into his side. The wallet payment dragged into mine. Five hundred RMB hit my Tianyu wallet at the same instant. He confirmed. I confirmed. The Greatsword vanished from my inventory. The cash settled.

He stood up.

"You asked for a favor within three months."

"Yes."

"Bladeless."

"Mn."

"I have a habit of paying my favors before they are called. I do not like to owe."

"All right."

"I will tell my old guild leader, today, that an indie named Bladeless on Tianlong Server has sold me a Wolfsfang Greatsword at a thousand-yuan direct sale, four hundred under what auction would have floated, and that he asked me only that I owe him a small thing later. My old guild leader will be interested in this story. My old guild leader will perhaps come find you at a time of his choosing."

"All right."

"His ID is *Old Wolf*."

"All right."

He inclined his head a half-inch. He shouldered the greatsword. He walked off the step into the plaza in the long unhurried stride of a man who had just received a piece of equipment he had been waiting two days for.

I watched him go.

The other half of the wallet payment settled six minutes later. NorthRiver had sent it from the south-gate's wallet kiosk before he left the plaza. Five hundred more RMB. Total: one thousand RMB clean, no auction fee.

The cash brought my running total to: six thousand one hundred and sixty pre-Wolfsfang, plus one thousand, plus the thirty-two silver of teeth I had not yet converted to RMB (about another three hundred), minus the small running expenses (skewers, NPC sharpening, in-game inventory bag upgrade) — call it seven thousand four hundred RMB net.

Father's bill: eleven thousand four hundred and thirty.

Gap: four thousand and change.

I had three days and twelve hours.

I sat on the step a moment longer with the wallet's *Sale Settled* notification glowing faint along the bottom of my UI.

Wanqing's voice came in on the bonded channel.

"Cangtian."

"Mn."

"That was very smooth."

"Thank you."

"You talked to him like a man who has known him for eight years."

"Mn."

"Cangtian."

"Mn."

"I am not asking. I am only telling you, again, that I am noticing. The notebook is filling up. Not the *To Bury* notebook. The other one. The one I am not going to tell you the name of."

"All right."

"Mn."

She closed the channel.

***

I logged out at five-thirty IRL. I sat at my desk with the dorm window open and the late afternoon sun coming through and the auction notification still glowing faint behind the visor's after-image in my vision. I opened the laptop. I navigated to my bank's online portal. I set up an instant transfer of seven thousand RMB from the Tianyu wallet to my Industrial and Commercial Bank account, and from there to the Suzhou municipal hospital's accounts-receivable settlement portal, against my father's invoice number.

The bank charged a small wire fee. The hospital accepted the payment. The portal refreshed with a small green tick and a new running balance.

*Outstanding: ¥4,430. Settlement period: 7 business days remaining.*

I closed the laptop.

I closed the window.

I lay back on the lumpy pillow.

I had four thousand four hundred and thirty RMB to make in four IRL days. I had a working trust line with Tianxia outer-recruit Hu Liansheng. I had a private sale conduit with NorthRiver of Vanishing Brigade. I had a chain quest with Beigong Yan that was paying small but compounding stat bonuses every cycle. I had an unread MoonShadow message in my UI sidebar that I had still not replied to. I had Wanqing.

I had a mother who had said to me, on Saturday afternoon at the door, *I see you.*

I did not, just at this moment, with the late afternoon sun coming through the dorm window and the cradle band warm against my ribcage and the small clean accumulating thing in my chest that had been accumulating since Wanqing had pulled me up off the temple bench, see my way, very clearly, to anything other than continuing to do exactly what I was doing.

I let myself rest for ten minutes with my eyes closed and the quiet sounds of the dorm around me — Fatty Chen's faint snoring from the upper bunk, the small ambient murmur of a Sunday-afternoon corridor, Wei Lin shouting at someone about a missing badminton racquet — and then I sat up and pulled the helmet off the floor and put it back on.

The bonded channel opened at the gesture.

"Cangtian," Wanqing said immediately.

"Mn."

"Old Wolf is at the south-gate step."

"Already?"

"He arrived two minutes ago. He is sitting on the same step NorthRiver was on. He has not pinged me. He has not pinged you. He is just sitting there. I think he is waiting for you to come find him."

I stood up at my desk inside the helmet. The cradle band against my IRL ribcage took the small sharp climb that was the exact small sharp climb it took every time the pre-cockpit life and the post-cockpit life began, in the same sentence, to overlap.

"Wanqing."

"Mn."

"What does he look like."

"Big. Forties. Bald. Beard. Tank class — Iron Wall Knight tier-two or working on it. He is wearing a Vanishing Brigade silver-and-blue surcoat that is a launch-week Lv-12 cosmetic. He is holding a tankard of in-game ale and not drinking it. He has the small posture of a man who is watching the south-gate plaza for a particular stranger to walk through it."

"All right."

"Cangtian."

"Mn?"

"Walk slowly. He is reading the gait of every man who comes through. Walk like a Lv-11 swordsman who has business at the gate."

"Understood."

I started walking.