The next train turned out to be empty. But the one that came after brought three armoured cadets.

  The first to jump off, closest to me, was Patel. He kicked a cleaning drone, sending it skittering away, turned, and began hauling out a stack of long, heavy bck boxes that looked disturbingly like coffins. Three of them, one on top of another.

  Navarro held the other end of the stack.

  I recognised Patel instantly. Navarro took a second. His face was fully hidden behind his armour, and I had to check my interface to remember him. Soro had introduced us once. A former student of Mendoza’s, a master armourer, and apparently more than that, since he was part of the emergency team.

  The third figure exited from the same carriage but farther down. Tall, slim, almost delicate. Her armour clearly had to be custom-made, or at least heavily adjusted to fit such an unusual frame.

  My interface identified her as Ruan Binxue, Mendoza’s disciple, a full follower of her style: Fire-Lightning. Fourth Stage, te. She was carrying one of the boxes on her own.

  None of the new arrivals paid any attention to the bodies or the wrecked environment. Most of their focus went to the debris underfoot and the drones trying to crawl between their legs.

  Only once the boxes were fully unloaded did the former and current students of Mendoza take a look around.

  Patel’s eyes nded on me.

  “Why are you in armour?” he asked, surprised.

  Mendoza answered for me, sparing me the choice between truth and a lie.

  “He’s got a pocket.”

  “How’d you suit up without a frame?” he asked.

  “That,” Mendoza said, “is one more reason you’re not getting a pocket. You have zero talent.”

  Instead of answering, I jumped and nded with no armour around me. Jumped again and nded armoured.

  “Wow!” said Patel, impressed. “But that was hurtful, Master! Maybe I’m not talented, but I’m very hard-working. If you’d entrust me with such a treasure…”

  “Cut the crap,” said Ruan. “Time’s ticking.”

  She stepped into the centre of the ptform and swept her gaze over the battlefield, not as if she were taking in the chaos, but as if she were analysing the geometry of the floor. Then she raised her hand and pointed at one of the pilrs. Her own box was already standing upright beneath another pilr on the far side of the ptform. Not lying ft — standing, vertical.

  Navarro grabbed the top box from their stack and carried it to the indicated spot. Patel pulled down the next one and tried to figure out its pcement on his own.

  Ruan corrected him just slightly: “Five centimetres to the right. Your right. Two more towards the centre of the ptform. There.”

  To me, it looked like they were arranging the boxes into a perfect square that covered more than half the ptform’s surface, mostly the central part.

  Once the st box was in pce, Navarro crouched by one of them and touched the floor. The box began to sink, pushing up the fake marble like a squeezed sponge.

  With the excess material, Navarro formed a few tiles. When the box had fully disappeared, he flung the tiles into the nearest pilr. The impact marks and scattered fragments looked like a natural continuation of the earlier battle, almost as if it had happened long ago and no one was trying to stage anything now.

  Meanwhile, Ruan sat cross-legged at the very centre of the ptform, as if she were preparing to cultivate in a flow chamber — calm, composed, yet totally rexed.

  “Who are we waiting for?” she asked.

  “Ben Hou. And old Chen.”

  The reply made Ruan tense.

  “We're picking a fight with the Order?” she asked, clearly not thrilled by the idea.

  “I’m hoping we’ll be strengthening our already solid friendship with the Order,” Mendoza replied.

  “And we need the Fortress for that?” asked Patel.

  Mendoza pointed at Zhou’s body.

  “That’s Master Chen’s disciple.”

  “Ha!” said Patel. “Demons inside the Order? That’s not good.”

  “It sucks!” Ruan agreed.

  She made a few smooth but precise movements with her hands, clearly not swiping through any interface. This was a technique. One that made the air itself momentarily denser.

  I felt the flow of qi brush over me. Hard to pin to any specific root. It was a strange mix. It slid across my body, along the armour, and dissolved.

  “All done,” Ruan said. “Now old Chen’s going to have to work for it if he wants to kill us.”

  Ruan stood up and stepped away from where she’d been sitting, though she kept her eyes on the spot for a few more seconds, as if checking something.

  “What is this ‘Fortress’?” I asked. I could’ve tried to keep a cold, composed look like Navarro’s, but really, who was I fooling? Besides, the information might be useful.

  “Defensive array,” Mendoza replied. “And please, don’t say the word out loud. Not now. Not while we’re expecting guests.”

  Fair point. If I were with the Order, I’d be scanning the area first. A few tiny biodrones would be enough to scope the pce out.

  The next fifteen minutes passed in tense silence.

  Two trains arrived and departed during that time. Only the third one brought people. Three armoured cultivators stepped out almost simultaneously through different doors, even different carriages.

  Even without an interface, it was obvious: these weren’t students.

  The one in the centre surged forward like the ptform had belonged to him since birth. His armour was pure badarse — sleek, glossy bck, with yellow segments on his forearms and shins, and a bzing golden pine tree spread across his chest. Not just a logo, an actual work of art, so detailed you could almost feel the texture of the bark and the sting of the needles.

  He radiated authority, arrogance, and the confidence of someone used to taking control even when he had no clue what was going on.

  “Master Mendoza!” he called out, stopping just short of ten metres. “Expin what the hell is…”

  The yellow-armoured woman on the right, with a feminine frame, called out sharply: “Ben…”

  Y. Ma, Fifth Stage, early.

  Where do they keep coming from? Like bloody cockroaches! Can this ‘Fortress’ even handle that many Fifths?

  And yet, surprisingly, Ben Hou turned out to be only te Fourth Stage, same as Z. Lin, the one fnking him to the left. And he had the gall to completely ignore the Fifth.

  “…happening here? What the hell?! Bloody hell, how many of them…” he finally noticed the bodies.

  “Master Hou…” Ma said gently, tactfully, but with a hint of urgency.

  “Sabina, you’ve overpyed your hand!” Hou snapped.

  “Oh, shut up already!” Ma barked. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be throwing your weight around inside a hostile array!”

  Hou turned his head, as if only just realising she’d spoken to him, and was genuinely stunned the way she had. But then the meaning of her words caught up with him, and he whipped his head around to Mendoza.

  Right as the train behind him shut its doors and began to pull away.

  Mendoza gave a slow nod.

  “You’ve always been perceptive, my friend,” she said, with a trace of irony. “The array is purely defensive. And frankly, I’m insulted you called it hostile.”

  “Why?” Hou asked.

  “To shut you up and make you listen, for one thing,” Mendoza snapped. “You forget — I’m also a Hall Head. And I’ve been one long before you ever got your seat. So here’s some advice: listen to someone who has far more experience in these matters than you do. Especially,” she added pointedly, “when it comes to demons.”

  “Oh, so now you’re going to tell me half these corpses are demons,” Hou said, venom dripping from his sarcasm.

  “All of them,” Mendoza corrected. “Every st one of those bodies belonged to demons.”

  “Four at once?!” The scepticism in Ben’s voice was so thick it could’ve been carved with a knife. “Not a single one in four hundred years, and suddenly you’ve got four?!”

  “Actually, five. We handed one over to Bck Lotus a bit earlier. This lot’s the aftermath.”

  “You did what?!” That, the Head of the Hall of Order believed. “You had a demon prisoner, and you gave it away?! To Bck Lotus?! The lot that can’t even sort out their narco trade in fifty years?! The fleet had to bail them out!”

  Whoa. That’s not how I remember those events. Apparently, our reputation’s worse than I thought, but now’s not the time to argue about it.

  Even Mendoza didn’t counter him right away. She took a few seconds, weighing her words.

  “If you want details, have them take a walk,” she said, nodding toward his companions.

  “I’m absolutely against that,” Ma decred. “We still don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “And she’s right,” Hou confirmed, giving everyone a second look. His eyes stopped on me. “I hate you people,” he said, in a tired voice. “Bloody spies.”

  Somehow, it was me that made him change his mind. That, and the fact that the train he’d arrived on had already circled around and docked on the opposite ptform, releasing another wave of cleaning drones.

  “You want a private talk? Fine.” He pointed at the train. “Let’s go. Just you and me. Whole carriage to ourselves. I’ll jam any potential surveilnce.”

  The offer seemed to catch Mendoza off guard, but there wasn’t much time to hesitate. She agreed.

  “I don’t like this,” Ma muttered, but no longer with the same firmness as before.

  “If you actually liked anything, you’d be the Hall Head and not me,” Hou shot back.

  He and Mendoza exited the array and boarded the train. Our one and only Fifth Stage was leaving us. The next ten minutes were very quiet, and painfully awkward.

  I couldn’t see Ma’s expression through her lowered visor, but everything about her radiated the vibe of someone ready to tear us all to pieces and just waiting for an excuse.

  We, of course, gave her none.

  Hell knows how good this array really is, but no one here was willing to take risks. And then, one train ter, Mendoza and Hou came back.

  Not that the ride had made them friends, but Ben Hou opened with a sulky voice: “For the next few hours at least, we’re best mates. But next time, I want to know these things immediately!” He jabbed a finger at Mendoza’s face.

  “No problem,” she replied.

  Judging by her tone, she was lying.

  Not that I knew what they’d even talked about. Whatever it was, it was way above my paygrade.

  What I did need to know, though, was my immediate task, so I didn’t accidentally screw something up. And I didn’t like it one bit.

  My job was not to die when Master Chen found out I’d killed his disciple. Yes, they’d tell him she was a demon first, but I was supposed to keep an eye out and make sure he didn’t get too emotional about it.

  As if I had any say in what a Fifth Stage master might do if he lost his temper.

  There were no negotiations this time, no promises of rewards or special treatment. Just a clear order: stand in the shadows and don’t make yourself a target.

  “So maybe I should just get out of here,” I offered, “and let you talk to Chen without me around. I think that’d be for the best.”

  “No one gives a damn what you think!” Hou snapped. “Your job is to shut up and do what you’re told!”

  Ah. There it was.

  The arrogant, dismissive attitude I’d expected from cultivators in this world ever since I got here. Novak’s polite manner had thrown me off, and his reputation had shielded me from other big shots.

  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but: “My master might not like that.”

  And just like that, I was on the other end of the cssic ‘do you know who my dad is?’

  Hou didn’t take the bait.

  He might not have been a diplomat, but he hadn’t become a Hall Head ahead of stronger candidates without knowing how to navigate a conversation.

  He didn’t insult Novak directly or indirectly. But the way he said what came next made his opinion of me very clear:

  “Such a shame I don’t have the time to call him and check.”

  MaksymPachesiuk