Chapter 5

The opportunity came sooner than Lin Feng expected.

Two days after his visit to the bridge, a martial tournament was announced in the city square. The local Martial Alliance chapter was recruiting new disciples, and the selection process was open to any cultivator under the age of thirty who could pass the preliminary trials.

It was a trap. Lin Feng knew it immediately. The timing was too convenient, the location too public. They were fishing for something—or someone.

But it was also an opportunity.

The tournament would be held in three days. Preliminary round: combat trials. Second round: formation navigation. Final round: an audience with the chapter leader himself.

An audience with someone who sat on the Martial Council.

Lin Feng registered under the name "Feng Lu." The clerk barely glanced at him. In a city of cultivators, one more face in the crowd was nothing.

The day of the tournament arrived with clear skies and the kind of nervous energy that Lin Feng remembered well. The arena outside the north gate was packed—hundreds of spectators, dozens of competitors, and at the center, a raised platform where the chapter leader would sit in judgment.

Lin Feng wore simple clothes. No sect markings. No displayed weapons. He carried only the sword he had purchased the day before—a serviceable blade, nothing remarkable.

The preliminary round was basic: one-on-one combat, first to yield or be knocked from the platform advanced. Lin Feng's first opponent was a broad-shouldered cultivator with the confident swagger of someone who had never lost.

He lost now.

Lin Feng did not use the Demon Vein. He did not use the Heavenly Demon Arts. He used basic swordsmanship—the kind taught to first-year disciples at any respectable sect. Clean, precise, efficient.

The broad-shouldered man fell in six moves.

Lin Feng's second opponent was more careful. A woman with quick feet and a pair of dao blades. She attacked in patterns, trying to overwhelm him with speed.

Lin Feng parried. He stepped. He waited.

On the fifteenth exchange, she overcommitted. Lin Feng's sword tapped her wrist, and one blade clattered to the ground. On the twentieth exchange, the second blade followed.

She yielded.

The crowd was beginning to notice.

In the stands, two men watched with interest.

"That one," said the first. "Third exchange. Did you see it?"

"I saw it. His footwork is wrong."

"No. It's right. It's the old Heavenly Demon Sect style."

The second man's expression changed. "Impossible. The sect was destroyed. All disciples were..."

"Apparently not all."

A pause. Then:

"Inform the council."

Lin Feng advanced through the preliminary round. He advanced through the second round. And when the final round arrived, he found himself standing not before the chapter leader.

But before Li Mei.

His former sister. The woman who had stood silent while he fell from Heaven's Peak.

She was older now. Her hair was pulled back in the severe style of a Martial Alliance officer. Her eyes, once warm, were hard.

She recognized him immediately.

The arena went quiet.

"Feng Lu," she said, her voice carrying across the platform. "Or should I say... Lin Feng?"

The crowd murmured. The name meant nothing to them. But the chapter leader's guards shifted their hands to their weapons.

Lin Feng did not reach for his sword.

"Sister Li," he said, his voice calm. "It has been ten years."

"Ten years," she agreed. "And yet here you are. Alive."

"Disappointed?"

Her expression did not change. But something flickered in her eyes—something that might have been guilt, or fear, or the memory of a peach tree and an oath sworn beneath it.

"No," she said. "Not disappointed."

She drew her sword.

"Terrified."

The final round had begun.