Cui Tai had not expected the person who arrived to be someone other than Li Chi. In his view, the odds of Li Chi not coming were nearly zero. The Cui family had extended an invitation to Li Chi — that was an honor being conferred. Another way of saying it: they were doing him a favor by acknowledging him.

That Li Chi had not come, sending instead some unknown nobody from the carriage yard, left Cui Tai with a smoldering irritation.

But someone like Cui Tai — how could he let his temper show too easily?

“Mister Cui.”

Tang Pidi cupped his hands in a salute, offering the courtesy of a junior to a senior.

Cui Tai gave only a casual nod before settling into the seat of honor. “Why didn’t Li Chi come?”

Tang Pidi smiled lightly. “Why should Li Chi come?”

Cui Tai’s brow furrowed slightly. He had intended to keep his expression smooth, but this young man with the grave, stern face and the underlying edge of arrogance spoke with a cutting precision that pricked at something. Still, a man of Cui Tai’s background was hardly about to take someone of this sort seriously — he only found Tang Pidi to be an ignorant creature, and it was the ignorant who were fearless.

Cui Tai fell silent for a moment, then waved a hand. “See the guest out.”

Tang Pidi smiled. That smile held an undisguised contempt for Cui Tai, a contempt so plainly worn that Cui Tai found it difficult to bear.

He watched Tang Pidi begin to turn away and let out a soft sound through his nose. “You’re one of Li Chi’s people? As above, so below, it seems.”

Tang Pidi kept walking. “Only today do I fully appreciate how true that saying is.”

Cui Tai’s frown deepened. He was fairly certain he had just been insulted.

“Insolence.”

Qin Zhuo, standing at the door, barked a rebuke and stretched out an arm to block Tang Pidi’s path. “How dare you be so presumptuous!”

Tang Pidi smiled. “So this is how it works — the saying holds layer by layer. There’s a certain elegance to it.”

Qin Zhuo’s eyes blazed with fury.

Cui Tai rose. “I invited Li Chi here; he sends you in his place. On the matter of etiquette, I don’t suppose you’d know the first thing, so I won’t lower myself to your level. You may leave.”

Tang Pidi turned to face Cui Tai. “I’ve heard ordinary folk often say: if you want to truly invite someone to a meal and talk business, you give notice three days in advance or more — that’s an invitation. Calling someone over on the same day isn’t an invitation at all, it’s a summons. Mister Cui’s words have taught me a great deal about the Cui family’s etiquette. I’m grateful for the lesson.”

Cui Tai exhaled slowly and made a deliberate effort to keep his voice level. “You really have been rather presumptuous.”

Tang Pidi said, “An excellent turn of phrase. It gives me further insight into the Cui family’s etiquette.”

“You—!”

Qin Zhuo lunged forward and grabbed for the front of Tang Pidi’s robe. Not long before, he had grabbed Gongshutingting the same way — and had nearly driven a slap across her face before Cui Tai had stopped him. Now Gongshutingting stood behind Cui Tai and watched. She did not know who this young man was, but she found what he was saying fascinating — every word piercing straight to the center of a man like Cui Tai, without a single vulgarity.

She watched the moment Qin Zhuo moved to strike, and felt a faint, involuntary pang — because this young man’s features were severe and compelling in a hard, angular way, very different from the soft, slightly effeminate good looks she more commonly saw. It was a good-looking face. A hard slap landing on it would ruin it.

But in the next instant, Qin Zhuo went to his knees.

At the precise moment before Qin Zhuo’s hand could close on Tang Pidi’s collar, Tang Pidi raised his own hand and caught Qin Zhuo’s wrist in his grip. He applied pressure. Qin Zhuo’s wrist erupted in a sharp bolt of agony — he had not anticipated this at all — and his body answered with complete honesty.

Both knees hit the floor.

Tang Pidi looked down at Qin Zhuo’s face — full of disbelief and humiliated fury. He gave a small nod. “The Cui family’s etiquette may leave something to be desired, but this method of blocking a departing guest is admirably direct.”

Qin Zhuo was consumed with shame and rage. He had never endured such degradation in his life. He immediately tried to force himself upright — but the first attempt was enough to make him abandon the effort. He could stand, but his arm would break.

The grip on his wrist was holding him there, and one more ounce of force would snap the bone cleanly.

Cui Tai stared with wide eyes. He knew exactly what Qin Zhuo was capable of. To be subdued in a single move — there was an element of carelessness, of underestimating an opponent — but one could not deny that this young man was genuinely formidable.

Qin Zhuo snarled through clenched teeth: “You dare let me up?”

Tang Pidi mused aloud, “That challenge, delivered through gritted teeth — it’s indistinguishable from saying, through the same gritted teeth, *you dare spare my life?*”

He seemed to consider this for a moment, then said: “Funnily enough, I do.”

And he released him.

Qin Zhuo exploded upward and drove a full-force punch at Tang Pidi’s face — a blow thrown in blinding fury, with all of his strength behind it, wanting nothing more than to shatter that infuriating face.

But Tang Pidi was not a post driven into the ground. He did not simply stand there and take it.

He responded after the fact, as he had before.

At the instant before Qin Zhuo’s fist arrived — the gap remaining between them no wider than one finger — Tang Pidi’s head snapped sideways with a sharp, fluid motion. The fist carved past his cheek with barely a hair’s breadth to spare, the rushing wind stirring his hair back.

Tang Pidi’s right hand came up, palm facing upward. He planted it beneath Qin Zhuo’s chin in a rising strike.

Qin Zhuo left the ground. His eyes went wide.

Tang Pidi’s palm converted its lifting force into a pressing one. His hand drove down against Qin Zhuo’s throat and slammed him into the floor.

A heavy crash.

Had Qin Zhuo not wrenched his chin down at the last possible moment, that impact — the back of his skull striking stone — might have put him on the ground for far longer than he would have liked.

The instant Qin Zhuo hit the floor, his legs shot out in a fierce kick aimed at Tang Pidi’s groin. In that same sliver of a moment, something like *I know this one* crossed Tang Pidi’s face.

A kick to the groin? Could anyone be faster than the Flowing Clouds Formation?

Qin Zhuo’s legs came in side by side. Tang Pidi’s right leg rose, passing above both of Qin Zhuo’s legs before bending, and then the bent knee clamped down over them from above. Then Tang Pidi pivoted at the hip, a half-rotation —

He released. Qin Zhuo went airborne and hit the floor face-first.

The floor was polished remarkably clean — not a speck of dust — and so his slide was a substantial one. He traveled across roughly half the reception hall before his head gently kissed the wall and came to a stop.

Qin Zhuo thought to himself that if he had simply been knocked unconscious in the process, it would have been an improvement over this — at least unconsciousness would have spared him the full experience of his own humiliation.

“Your strikes are rigid,” Tang Pidi remarked, his tone entirely composed. “You never adapt. In a military context you’d be a second-tier fighter. But the distance between you and me isn’t so very great — only about five first-tier fighters. One first-tier fighter ought to be able to handle fifty of you.”

An exaggeration. A highly irritating one.

He glanced back at Cui Tai. He said nothing. His expression said it clearly enough: *Are you finished with the farewell formalities?*

Cui Tai suddenly laughed and cupped his hands. “This young friend is right — I have been somewhat rash, somewhat lacking in good judgment. Please take no offense…”

Tang Pidi cut him off before he could finish.

“I do take offense.”

Cui Tai stopped.

Tang Pidi did not look back at him. He looked toward the doors and said, “The person on the roof of the building across the way — he was concealed reasonably well, but the iron-cast bow in his hands caught a flash of light just now, and I saw it. A wooden bow at its limit draws three hundred catties; anything beyond that requires an iron-cast bow. Calculating at four hundred catties — he releases an arrow, I kill you. I should be faster.”

He shifted his stance, stepping sideways: not fully facing the exterior, not fully facing Cui Tai — right hand toward the outside, left hand toward the interior. If the bowman truly loosed a shot, he could close his hand on the man’s throat in an instant, and with his right hand catch the iron-tipped arrow.

A bow at four hundred catties or more would send an arrow with tremendous force. He had gauged it as an iron-tipped shaft, meaning he could grip it — but he could not stop it dead. He would have to yield to its momentum and redirect it.

Driving it into Cui Tai’s chest.

In the span of that instant, Tang Pidi had worked through all of this. The moment he stepped into that sideways stance, he had eight parts in ten confidence.

Cui Tai was silent for a moment, then raised one hand and gave a small gesture toward the exterior.

On the rooftop across the way, the young man called Wei Xianzhan hesitated, then finally set the iron-cast bow down.

Cui Tai said, “Young friend — I acknowledge the discourtesy earlier. Now, shall we sit and speak properly?”

“We shall not.”

Tang Pidi looked at him, still smiling. “Come back in a month.”

Cui Tai smiled as well. “And why a month?”

Tang Pidi reached into his sleeve and felt around, producing a small fragment of silver — perhaps half a tael. He set it on the table.

“Turn left out of Sanyue River Pavilion’s front door. Walk roughly two li. Thirty zhang from the Temple of Confucius, there is a private school.”

“The old teacher there doesn’t lecture on classical learning — only on etiquette. He is well known in this city for it. Proper conduct was established by Master Zhou; Master Zhou organized it into a text and used it to educate the people.”

“The teacher at that private school specializes in exactly this. He charges three copper coins per lesson. He teaches clearly, in plain language. Ordinary children generally learn a great deal in a single session. For a common family hoping their children will be well-mannered — three copper coins is not something anyone would begrudge.”

Tang Pidi smiled at Cui Tai. “Mister Cui, it seems no one paid that sum on your behalf when you were young. I’ve paid it for you. That half-tael of silver comes to at least five hundred copper coins. Three of them are your tuition. As for the rest.”

He held Cui Tai’s eyes.

“That’s for you to repeat the class.”

At that moment, Gongshutingting’s gaze on Tang Pidi changed. This was the first time she had felt that a young man was not being childish — and moreover had a particular kind of quiet, unforced authority.

The distinction between childish and not, when it came to a young man acting this way, was not complicated: if you have no ability and still put on airs, that’s childish. If you have the ability, it isn’t putting on airs — that’s simply standard conduct.

Tang Pidi turned and walked toward the door, still speaking as he went. “Once Mister Cui has completed his studies, come to the carriage yard and we’ll speak again.”

Cui Tai said, quietly, “If you walk away having had your moment of wit and nothing else, you may be giving up something.”

Tang Pidi did not look back. “I genuinely hope that sometime later, Mister Cui does not appear at the carriage yard — that would be awkward for Mister Cui, and besides… Mister Cui is not, in fact, a clever man. The considerable advantage of having young Master Xiahou on your side, through Sanyue River Pavilion, has just been rather inexplicably forfeited.”

He was like a machine that dispensed mockery without end — unhurried steps, unhurried voice, already a dozen paces out the door and still talking.

“Should Mister Cui truly appear at the carriage yard, it will be awkward for us both — though the difference is that Mister Cui’s awkwardness will be genuine, while mine will only be because I’m rather shallow, and when I find something truly funny I can’t contain myself. It won’t look good. But I really will mean it.”

Cui Tai stood where he was and gave no order to stop him — because he had already noticed, at the front of the building below, that Xiahou Zuo was standing there.

This young man had come first; Xiahou Zuo had come after. It had clearly been deliberate.

The distance was considerable, and yet he almost imagined he could see the mockery on Xiahou Zuo’s face — as sharp as every word Tang Pidi had spoken.

After a moment, Cui Tai called out: “What is your name?”

Tang Pidi walked to where Xiahou Zuo stood. He looked back once, and said: “In time, the world will know. And so will you.”

Xiahou Zuo said with a quiet laugh, “A rather grand thing to say.”

Tang Pidi smiled back at him. “Anything less would be beneath your station.”

Xiahou Zuo laughed heartily, and the two of them walked away side by side.

—