“Hello,” I responded. I wasn’t going to be rude, people. “I’m glad you’re doing much better.”

She fared far better than Violet Flame Noble did, that’s for sure.

“I only performed better since I focused on avoiding direct confrontation,” she explained. “Violet Flame Noble isn’t any worse than I am. He simply did more head-on attacks than I did.”

I liked that. She wasn’t a narcissist.

“Would you like to join me in signing up for the martial competition?” She offered.

My brow raised at this. Was this not what I was doing? “You can do it without waiting in line?”

It seems she didn’t expect my question since her expression turned to one of slight unease. Privilege could indefinitely be used until it’s mentioned, I reckoned.

She shuffled a little under my stare. I wasn’t trying to make her feel uncomfortable, but I guess my million-dollar smile can do that to a lady.

“I-I…” she stuttered a little as she struggled to find the words to answer me and Mad Sword Haoran’s smile disappeared and he shot me a look that wasn’t really gleeful.

His fiance Jingyi Yu, on the other hand, had a huge smile plastered on her face. That meant my side job as a comedian wasn’t dead in the water.

“H-Heavenly Sun Noble, you don’t have to wait in line!” A random cultivator spoke up to give her an out.

“Y-Yeah! You don’t need to answer to that kid. You’re a favourite to win, anyway. We’re just here to broaden our horizons!” Another spoke up.

Wow, these people are shameless. I could practically smell the kiss-assery and it smelled like hot ass. The kind that hasn’t been washed for 314 days. If it was more literal, I’d need to walk around with toilet paper.

“Thanks, everyone, but it’s okay. I’ll take my place in line like everyone else.” As soon as she said this, she came right beside me with her two attendants behind her as well.

So I guess nobody is going to bring up how she just cut everyone else who was right behind me. She looked at me with all the obliviousness of someone who didn’t even realise what they had done.

Finally, I met someone who was more dysfunctional than me. Okay… maybe that was a stretch, but a boy can hope, can’t he?

“Fellow Daoist Di, I heard that you encountered Death Armour Archaic Soldier.” She said after a while. She didn’t seem to hold my putting her in an awkward position earlier against me.

That’s not normal. This is a telltale sign that someone wants something. Mad Sword Haoran did give most of it away I think, but then again, it didn’t have to be true, did it?

“Yeah, I did. If you want tickets to my next show, you’ll have to line up. They’re going pretty fast.” I didn’t leash my sarcasm, allowing it to run loose.

Her expression was strange. “I’m sorry?”

Great, she either didn’t get sarcasm, a witty remark, or a combination of the two. This was bound to be a fun conversation.

“It’s nothing. It’s just… it didn’t seem like people had a great opinion of me hooking my arm with Mr Death Armour’s like I was taking him to the prom. For the most part, they’ve been looking at me with what I assume to be fear. Maybe there’s karma there I’m unaware of…” I didn’t think of that back then during everything that happened.

Considering what I knew about karma, which was less from the Confucian books back in my old world, and more from cultivation novels, something like Death Armour Archaic Soldier seemed like it should have karma leaking from its joints.

The bad kind too, not the good kind where you found a yen on the ground.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” she beamed another smile at me, must be nice to be about to smile. She then went on. “I don’t know much about karma, but from the little I’ve heard, I know it’s not something that we’re qualified to come in contact with. If Death Armour Archaic Soldier incurred karma on everyone that it came in contact with, many powers would have felt its effects long ago. So you’re safe on that front.”

“Good to know.” I gave her a lacklustre thumbs up and could feel a familiar fatigue overcome me. Yep, that was my tank of social reserves running real low. I never did have good mileage with that.

“So…” goodie, she wasn’t gonna spare me her words. I just hoped she got to the point. “Haoran Jian probably told you of my goals.”

I shrugged in response. “More or less.”

She looked tentatively at me, which sapped away at her heroic air, but not enough to lessen any respect I held for her for reasons I could not give words to.

“And you still hold true to your denial? Your power, I heard, is not small by any account. However, the powers that I hope to find the realm to put us all to shame.”

I took her words in and contemplated them deeply and quickly. Not a combination that goes well together due to one being neglected by the other, but here, for this, it was easy.

“I will have to decline,” I said after a while.

“Why?”

She sounded almost pleading with this.

“I have grander goals,” I told her. This was the truth, but far enough from clarity so that she couldn’t know my mission.

She snorted in response. “Grander than greater power?”

“There are greater things than power,” I said, wondering if the annoyance was leaking into my inflexion-less words, probably not. “I have things that are beyond your ken brewing Heavenly Sun Noble. You can believe me if you’d like or you can take it as shameless boasting. I have little shame, to begin with, so you may be right, but regardless, my attention is on greater things. Bias could very well be there since they are my things to deal with and so they are greater in the realm of my mind, but greater they are to me and my power tips in the dealings of them thereof.”

Silence lingered between us like the smell of the mortal abodes he witnessed in this place.

“Do you not wish for greater heights?” she finally asked, this time much quieter than before.

“My wish is very mundane and downright secular from a somewhat higher view,” I admitted despite myself.

“I’m guessing it requires great power?” She intonated rather than asked.

Another pet peeve I’ve come to find I have… repeating myself. “I advised this once before, it will take my power. It requires great power, yes.”

A shadow of a smile played upon her lips, and I wondered why this was. Were rejections cause for muted celebration these days?

“Then how about a bet?” she asked.

My thoughts were like an engine just starting up, warming themselves before they ran at full speed. “A bet? Of what?”

My inherent response was to declare my age once more, but I wasn’t in the mood. Yes, I have those.

“A competition between you and me. We make it to the last stage, or at least where we will face off against each other at least, and the one last standing wins.”

Okay, to be honest, my interest in this just went up the tiniest, but… not unlike my eyebrows, I reckon. So I asked. “And the winner gets…?”

She smiled at my question. Her knowledge of my non-leashed curiosity fueled her. “The loser has to accede to the winner’s whims for a year.”

“Just a year?” I wasn’t expecting this. Typically, these kinds of impromptu bets and contracts lasted for a far longer time.

She looked to the sky, in contemplation I would think, before she looked back at me. “Honestly, if it doesn’t happen in a year, then my ambitions are probably for nought.”

“So you set the time span based on the assumptions of your own goal? That’s hardly fair.” I know what I wanted for anyone I would have in my service. A year is laughable in scale truly.

“Then how long?” she asked.

“Six-”

“Six years!?” She gasped, incredulous at her own words. And her words they were.

“Ty months,” I finished.

She blinked several times at that last tidbit. “Huh? What?”

“Six… ty months. Sixty months, little sun.” I finally joined it together.

“Sixty mo… W-Who are you calling little sun!?” Her face reddened in what looked to be a mixture of anger and embarrassment.

“You.” I said pococurante. “If you think I’m going to refer to you as Heavenly Sun Noble every time, then I’m going to need you to refer to me as ‘Your Prickiness, Lord Introvert the First.’”

A moment of hesitation washed over and I was beginning to think that I wanted that title I just made up. “… You can call me Shai Bing.”

Darn it. She gave me her name. Then again, I could just not care and have her refer to me by that title, couldn’t I? She would do it, wouldn’t she?

I looked behind her and saw Mad Sword Haoran looking at her and then at me in shock. With that, I’d chance a thought that calling her by her name is an honour that not many can revel in.

Oh, joy.

“Wait a minute!” She shouted and then lowered after seeing a few heads swivel in her direction.

“Isn’t sixty months, five years!?”

Look, she finally noticed. She was about as slow as that sloth from Zootopia.

“That is correct.”

“Then how the hell is that much different from six years!” She hissed at me in hushed tones.

I held up one finger. “One year,” I answered her.

“That was a rhetorical question!”

“Hmm…” I burned with the urge to tell her I gave her a rhetorical answer, but I held back. I needed a prize for that.

“That’s too much!” She vehemently shook her head.

“Take it or leave it.” I propped up an ultimatum. “I have no need for someone who will sup on the benefits of my travels only to leave before I get any real use out of them.”

“You!” It was Mad Sword Haoran whose face twisted into a grimace. Taken by umbrage he was at the way I spoke to his beloved young noble, but I detested mincing words in cases such as these.

Shai Bing raised a hand to stop him from going any further. She then focused on me once more. “Surely, you can agree that five years is enough to cripple me in your debt if all else goes… sideways.”

I thought about it for a while and then decided to relent… but only a little.

“For the winner, the loser would be in their service for two years, minimum. After that, however, if they deem whatever cause the winner is engaged in to be worthy enough to be followed through to the end, then those three years are there for the loser to embrace.”

A smile, as bright and gleaming as her armour flashed on her face. “You’re on.”