Xu Jian noted the unlit halls that weren't getting any foot traffic, first, which meant his first stop was the kitchen.

The cook and a small servant were there, and there was bound to be more coming in and out to eat before the disciples were served. Xu Jian considered his options, and decided to bluff.

He strolled into the room. The two servants turned to him with wary eyes, visibly baffled by his dress.

“Don't tell anyone I was here, please,” he said with an exaggerated, light voice totally unlike his usual hoarse, soft-spoken monotone, and nothing like the deep growl the novel described. His posture was full of nervous energy and a forced jovial edge. He was still very wet.

“You…” The young servant girl started.

“...Those guys caught me on the wall,” he said with a darker voice, and left them to understand what 'those guys’ meant.

Xu Jian and Lai Mingliao were not the only targets of harassment in Wendian.

He stuffed a few plums and dried fish in his net and danced back out again, the very image of a light-hearted yet humiliated young disciple.

[ITEMS ACQUIRED]

[ITEMS ACQUIRED]

Next was a bamboo mat. Xu Jian knew from his chores that the disciples here sat on mats as they practiced meditation, so he he made his way to the meditation hall. There were, of course, always people there, usually stronger cultivators; sometimes they'd meditate for days.

Again, he couldn't avoid being observed, so he continued his 'sheepish disciple gathering some things after being bullied’ act, and kept a lively bounce in his step when servants saw him pass by. He'd definitely be reported.

There were four people meditating in the hall. He could feel, just on the edge of his brand new sensory abilities, that they were circulating energy through their meridians in a way that made the world around them sort of...tuck in. Like the vortex of an unplugged sink full of water, draining into their stomachs. It wasn't anything like he was doing.

Well, using the river meant he was better at surviving in river rapids, and Lai Mingliao cultivated that way, so it couldn't be that big of a problem.

He retrieved a bamboo mat from the side, and tip-toed out of the room, seemingly unnoticed.

[ITEM ACQUIRED]

He was making good time! Wendian's lack of diligence and discipline had finally fallen in his favour!

Clothes... If the straw coat didn't count as clothing even though it covered his whole body just fine, he likely needed a full outfit.

Xu Jian returned to his shadowy halls. He could hear activity in the rooms lining it, and see torchlight from between cracks, but no one opened the door. He refused to let his guard down, and kept up the bullied disciple posture. He was only accompanied by equally silent servants.

The laundry room was kept far out of the way, almost entirely outside the sect compound. He had to walk in open air to reach it, which made him uncomfortable.

"You there..."

Xu Jian froze, and his spine went ramrod straight. He hadn't had to act this hard since he was in high school, and while he lacked the hesitance of bad actors, he was a little worried about his facade holding under pressure.

A servant - a woman who worked in the kitchens - approached him, brow furrowed.

"Sorry, I was on the wall, and then I-" He paused meaningfully, as if he were hiding something, and said "fell."

While he wasn't used to pretending to be a different kind of person, he was well-practiced in pretending to be a bad liar. If he were 'hiding something', he could escape quite a few accusations with only a slap on the wrist. It came natural to him as breathing.

The woman nodded slowly, and glanced at the laundry room behind him. She noticed his state of undress under the straw coat that only reached his knees, and understanding bloomed on her face. Then her eyes stopped at his feet.

"On the wall?"

Xu Jian's jaw clenched. He had forgotten how bruised his feet were. They hurt, but were healing nicely, so he had been casually tolerating it, like the ache from walking too much in a day.

She seemed to decide something, and walked toward the laundry room. He reluctantly followed.

The sun had yet to rise above Wendian's walls, so the room was submerged in darkness, but the woman strolled straight into the shadows as if they didn't exist, and the lamp on the far wall was lit. The familiar sight of washbasins and hanging linens were illuminated.

"Sit," she gestured to a bucket on the ground.

He sat on the bucket.

She gathered a soap made from fat and disappeared into the back room where they kept the rest of their cleaning supplies. The servant woman emerged with clean bandages, scraps, and a paste.

"Does a cultivator heal easy?" She asked.

"Ruptured blood vessels disrupts the passage of spiritual energy," he recalled from the novel. "Many cultivators achieve impressive feats by preventing the bruise from forming in the first place."

"Show me your feet."

Xu Jian offered his feet. She splashed them with water, then lathered them with the soap. He folded his hands in his lap politely as she worked.

After the silence stretched too long, he whispered "Thank you."

She shook her head. "I know the elders of this sect are not diligent with their disciples. This is a lesser sect with only a handful of small techniques, so they think that because they're already so pitiful, there's no point saving face, and they all let their young men rampage around."

"They encourage each other, don't they?" Xu Jian mused in his light affect.

"They do. Everyone celebrate Xu Jinyue's fall, but another just like him will crop up. They won't have the sect leader's support, so they'll fall too, then another will crop up. It's the way of things."

She opened the container of paste, and it had a nice natural, green smell to it. She smeared the paste on his feet and then bandaged them. He felt refreshed.

"If people in power had your kindness, change would be simple," he said.

"But people like me can't obtain power. I must wash dirty clothes and simmer in hatred." She smiled to herself.

She then tied the scraps to his feet, and he stood when she was done. He hadn't realized how much it hurt to walk until he had some relief.

"Thank you," he said again, softer this time.

She paused, then looked up at him. He tilted his hat forward a little.

"What's your name?" She asked.

"I'd rather not to say. Er, could you..." He looked meaningfully at the clothes hanging above, then at her.

She tensed, and looked flustered as she quickly shuffled out of the room. "Take what you need!"

He beamed, and continued his task.

[ITEMS ACQUIRED]

[ITEMS ACQUIRED]

The first outfit went in the net, and the second he wore. The disciple's outfits were simple and white - having to wear such a basic design had driven the showboating original Xu Jian nuts - but fit snug and comfortable on his body. He also hadn't realized how cold he was all month. No wonder he could handle all the freezing water he'd been barraged with lately.

He wasn't particularly surprised it was this easy to get everything he needed. Wendian wasn't an impressively organized or vigilant compound; the inter-disciple disputes the servant girl described wouldn't have been as bad as they were if anyone actually cared enough to patrol. This was about the level one would expect from the community that allowed Lai Mingliao and Xu Jian to be tortured in a river.

He exited the laundry room clutching the coat in his arms to hide the bulge of the net full of quest items. The servant girl opened her mouth to speak, but then, along with the sun finally reaching the distant corner where they stood, more servants arrived. He hurried past.

Last was Baixiang.

If it was stored anywhere, it would be in the sect leader's quarters. It was out of the way, hard to get into, not a place one would even bother breaking into, and deeply personal. The man loved Xu Jian enough to throw away his life for him, so it would make sense for him to pine in front of the sword now that he'd 'lost his mind’.

The sect had his own pavilion at the end of a jetty stretching out from the centre of the compound. Xu Jian returned to the boat bay, shed his extremely suspicious straw coat, dropped the boat in the water, and set off.

His first target was the forest where his scrolls were still waiting. He placed his net on top of the stone he used to work at. Then, after some deliberation, he stripped off his robe and tucked the clothing safe into the net. He wanted his quest items safe and sound, and it was doubtful anyone would remove his pants.

He then pushed the rock, and retrieved his scrolls. Xu Jian took his newly amassed luggage and brought it through the woods, until he came upon a satisfyingly easy to pinpoint shrub, and tucked it all away. He'd find a better hiding place later.

That done, Xu Jian returned to the water. He took the boat back halfway across the river, propped the hat up using a stick, and dove in.

Wendian didn't typically care about disciples going out at odd times for unknown reasons, but Xu Jian was a thieving criminal now, and they could be more cautious about that sort of thing. Probably not, but caution never hurt.

The Celestial Path River was enormous enough as it was, but the centre of the Heaven's Crossing Pier lined up with the river's widest point, which made swimming a wide, circular path back to the pier unbelievably tedious and time-consuming. He tried focusing on cultivating his core to ease the boredom of all that swimming, but the only thing he felt was the throb of the ugly-looking bruise on his stomach.

Xu Jian finally made it to the pavilion on the jetty when the sun was shining strongly and the sect leader must be out and about. He positioned himself underneath the building and tried watching for any updates on the hunt for his head, but the pavilion was simply too far away. All he could see or hear was the usual daily bustle.

Giving up on being informed, he instead hauled himself up on the back. Once he was up, he was struck with a new problem.

He could sense a presence inside.

The sect leader hadn't left? He was supposed to supervise disciples as they trained, wasn't he? What was he doing, lounging around in his house? It was because of this that the Wendian sect had to depend on Xu Jinyue in order to have any worth in the eyes of others!

Xu Jian continued to climb, hoisting himself up to a window on the second floor, and slipping inside. The presence...he couldn't tell where it is. It was just a disruption in the sterile air, radiating like an ache. Without a breeze, he'd never be able to pinpoint it. It just felt wrong.

He let himself drip-dry for a few minutes, pondering what he'd do if caught. He didn't like the idea of killing anyone, as a modern man with modern sensibilities, but he wasn't sure how much punishment a cultivator could take. Was removing limbs or breaking limbs the better route?

He gazed at his surroundings as he considered this, and was impressed. It was a cramped hall with only one door, but the wood was dark red, and the walls had lavish wooden decorations lining the bottom full of complex shapes. The doors were elaborately painted. A really nice rich asshole look.

When he had stopped dripping quite so much, Xu Jian weighed his options. He decided he could sneak down some stairs, but there was no sneaking around opening a door. He decided to check the floor below before doing anything risky.

There was very little in eyeshot of the stairs. He saw a kitchenette tucked away in the corner, and the main floor, aglow with the early morning sun, was hidden by fancy-looking red standing screens. Xu Jian wrinkled his nose at the tackiness of the entire building.

The presence...he still couldn't tell where it was. He tried sensing for it, but he just didn't have a cultivator's brain.

Xu Jian swallowed. He had to take some more risks.

Carefully, making as little sound as possible, and trying to keep his spiritual energy as stagnant as the air, he took wide, slow steps towards the heart of the room. There were sheer curtains between the walls of standing screens and the kitchenette, and he did his best to peer through them.

The longer he matched the air, the stronger the sense someone was here was. After a second attempt at finding this mystery person, he finally realized he could pick up a tiny current of someone breathing.

They were on the ground, facing him. He immediately circled around, approaching from the side instead.

The breathing was shallow, ragged, and under some strain. He realized, with some second-hand embarrassment, what was happening.

Still tip-toeing and doing his best to suppress himself, Xu Jian slid past the screens.

The sect leader was there, laying on the ground in front of a saber, crying softly into the floorboards.