“Sleep tight,” I say. “And seriously, sleep. I’ll be fine on my own for a few hours. I think I’ll do some reading.”

  …with a breath that sound an awful lot like a sigh, I turn and head for the library.

  —?—

  I’ve never been much of a reader, not even of fiction. I’ve always preferred watching my entertainment, rather than reading it or having it narrated to me with none of the nuance and background music that would accompany a more visual medium.

  This doesn’t mean that I can’t get lost in an entertaining book though, and it’s hard for a book to get more entertaining than when it talks about literal real-life magic from an alternate cultivation universe.

  As is my wont, I don’t stick with a single book, instead letting my curiosity pull me from the pages of one to the other like a leaf in the wind.

  An indeterminate amount of time later, I hear a knock on the library door.

  I assume it to be Meng Yi at first, before remembering that she usually doesn’t knock.

  “Yes?” I call out. “Come in.”

  The door opens to admit the same maid who’d greeted us at the door when we returned from The Auction just a few hours ago.

  I’d told her that Meng Yi needs her rest and should not be disturbed under any circumstances, and that she should come to me if anything comes up.

  Well, guess something’s come up.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask, a little apprehensive at her presence here.

  The maid bows. “You have a visitor, Young Master,” she says. “He is a cultivator. Introduced himself as Lang Bao.”

  “Lang Bao?” Do I know a Lang Bao?

  Dammit. Meng Yi would be able to answer that question.

  Whoever this Lang Bao is, why did he have to come now? Couldn’t he wait a few more hours?

  Aware of my irritation at the presence of this visitor, but not the reason why, the maid says hurriedly and with some fear, “Shall I send him away, Young Master?”

  I sigh, forcing myself to calm down.

  “No, don’t. I’ll see him. Where is he?”

  Lang Bao is a young man, no older than twenty-three if I had to guess, and his cultivation rests at the peak of Weaving, a tortoise flavoured beast rank.

  He is tall, and lanky, with a rather plain face and intense, green eyes, and, as soon as I walk in, he throws himself to the ground before me.

  “Great Master Xian,” he says, “this lowly cultivator has come to beseech you for your wisdom.”

  Uh… what is going on right now?

  Unbidden, a memory from some days ago comes to me.

  I had just awoken after my first meeting with Magistrate Qin, where I’d pushed both he and Xiuying into forced advancement in the same afternoon. Meng Yi had told me then that if I keep making every cultivator I have a chat with undergo forced advancement, then I might end up with bottlenecked cultivators lining up at my gate seeking my help.

  I’d dismissed her words as a joke then.

  I shouldn’t have. Because, if the cultivator with his head pressed to the ground in front of me is not hoping to leave my home in the Sprouting phase, I’ll eat my shoes.

  I sigh. “You do know that enlightenment does not come to the man who seeks it, right?” I ask, and Lang Bao raises his head to look at me. “Honestly, I’m of the opinion that if enlightenment doesn’t come as a complete surprise to you, then you did it wrong.”

  Lang Bao looks at me with an expression that’s hard to read, a mix of crushing disappointment heavily suppressed by a refusal to give up. “B-but, The Magistrate,” he said. “You—”

  “Magistrate Qin was not looking for enlightenment,” I say. “Well, not the kind of enlightenment that you’re obviously looking for anyway. Besides, what happened with him was an accident. Same with Xiuying. I can’t hand out advancement on demand, I’m not a vending machine. You don’t slot in your card and get one order of enlightenment to go.”

  Lang Bao blinks cluelessly at me, obviously lost by some of the terms I used at the end there.

  I suck in a breath and let it out slowly, calming myself.

  “Could you get up, please,” I say, and Lang Bao rushes to obey.

  “Great Master Xian—” he begins again, but I hold up a hand to forestall any comments from him.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Take a seat, please,” I say, and again Lang Bao obeys, returning to his seat.

  I take the seat across from him. “You want some tea?” I ask, noticing that he hasn’t been served a beverage yet.

  “Yes. Thank you, Great master Xian,” he says.

  “You don’t have to call me that,” I say. “In fact, I would prefer that you didn’t. Please.”

  Lang Bao looks like he really doesn’t want to stop calling me that. But, after a moment, he says, “As you wish, Young Master.”

  Still too stiff and formal for my tastes, but I’ll take my wins where I get them.

  Right as begin to wonder how I’ll even go about calling for the tea I just promised Lang Bao, someone raps on the door, before opening it and stepping in.

  It’s the maid whose name I still don’t know, bringing a steaming pot of tea and two teacups.

  She sets the table, pours the tea, and, with her head down, asks, “Does Young Master Xian require anything else?”

  “No, I’m fine. Thank you. Although, I would like to know your name.”

  “This one is Dong, Young Master Xian. Mi Dong.”

  Oh… Wow. Now I regret asking.

  “Well, thank you for the tea, Mi Dong.” be an adult be an adult be an adult “You may go.”

  With one final bow, the young woman rushes out, leaving me in here with the seeker of enlightenment, Lang Bao.

  I hold back a sigh.

  I could just tell him to leave. Tell him that even if I could hand out advancement like candy on Halloween, I have zero reason or desire to do that for him, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  Lang Bao is a bit intense, yes, but so far, he’s been entirely polite, and I haven’t gotten any bad vibes from him. I can’t bring myself to just kick him out.

  Besides, seeing him here like this does make me wonder about some things.

  “Aren’t you a bit young to be this eager for advancement?” I ask and Lang Bao suddenly looks uncomfortable.

  “My father says the same,” he admits.

  “Oh? Well good. He’s got a point. I mean, you’re what? Twenty-five?”

  Lang Bao’s discomfort grows. “Nineteen,” he corrects me, looking awfully embarrassed.

  “Wait, what!? Nineteen!? And you’re here throwing yourself to the ground acting like you’re a failed cultivator past his prime or something?”

  Lang Bao splutters for a moment before finding an argument to make. “By my age, General Mao Yun had already attained Qi Realm twice, once as a sage rank and then again as a divine rank after she tore down her cultivation to rebuild it as a higher rank.”

  I blink at the boy, a small part of my mind noting that I recognize that name.

  More importantly though, I ask, “So, you’re planning to tear down your cultivation when you get to Qi Realm?”

  Lang Bao looks at me like I’m insane. “Of course not,” he says.

  “Then what does the Mao Yun thing have to do with you?” I ask. “Don’t you think you’re in a bit of a rush for someone who’s cultivating a tortoise flavoured method? Tortoises are slow and steady, you know, that’s their whole thing.”

  Lang Bao gives me a strange look, and the question he asks me next is even stranger.

  “Did my father put you up to this?”

  “Uh… What?” is all I can ask.

  “My father,” Lang Bao says, looking around like he expects the man to jump out from behind a potted plant or something. “Did he know I was coming here? Did he ask you to discourage me?”

  “Of course not,” I say. “I don’t know your father. I don’t even know you. Why do you think he has anything to do with this?”

  “Because he always says the same things,” Lang Bao complains, then affects a voice that I suspect sounds nothing like his father. “‘Go slow, Bao,’ ‘be like the tortoise, Bao,’ ‘a man who takes slow and steady steps will never lose his way, Bao.’”

  “That all sounds like good advice to me,” I say.

  “But I don’t want to be slow,” Lang Bao says, resisting the urge to raise his voice with every fiber of his will. “I don’t want to be like the stupid tortoise.”

  “Then what do you want?” I ask easily, and that causes the young man to pause.

  “What?” he asks.

  “You say you don’t want to be slow. You say you don’t want to be like the tortoise. What do you want?” I ask.

  Lang Bao seems to think about it for a moment. “I want…”

  “Yes?” I encourage.

  “I want to matter,” he says finally.

  “To whom?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “You say you want to matter. Well, matter to whom?”

  Lang Bao splutters for lack of an answer, getting frustrated as a result. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “I would say it does, yes. In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s the most important thing. I mean, you say you want to matter, but to who? Your father? Your peers? Some children thousands of years in the future listening with wide eyes at probably false stories about how you fart thunder and shit lightning?”

  To that Lang Bao has no response.

  “You know, the funny thing is, if you truly do not matter, then it can only be because you’ve never actually done anything that matters. And, believe me when I tell you, Lang Bao, that all the power in the world will not change that. Not in any way that truly matters.

  “When I walked in this room, the first thing you did was beseech me for my wisdom. I do not know if I have wisdom to give you, Lang Bao, but I do know this, if you were to get enlightenment as you are right now, it might not be the boon you expect it to be.

  “It is a hard thing, looking into oneself and seeing the truth of your character.”

  And, buddy, your character is lacking, I think but don’t say.

  What Lang Bao truly wants isn’t to ‘matter’, no, what he wants is to be a protagonist. All the luck, all the power, all the talent, and too shortsighted and self-absorbed to realise that it will come with a fleet of problems.

  Not to say that he’s a bad person, because he isn’t. Or, at least, I don’t know him well enough to say. But I do know enough to see that he’s exactly the type of person that, ironically enough, typical xianxia stories are written for.

  That wish fulfilment ego stroking plop.

  My words seem to have taken Lang Bao from frustration to confusion to introspection, and I let him think, quietly sipping on the qi-less but still delicious tea Mi Dong has provided us.

  After several minutes, the young man says, “I want to matter.”

  We’re still on this, huh?

  “To whom?” I ask.

  “To me,” Lang Bao says, and my eyebrows perk up.

  “Why?” I ask.

  Lang Bao frowns. “I want more from my life,” he says intensely. “I don’t want this—” he gestures vaguely around himself “—to be my story.”

  I almost roll my eyes. Typical cultivator. What’s wrong with a nice, peaceful, quiet life?

  Lang Bao isn’t done though. “Maybe going slow is good enough for my father,” he says. “But it isn’t for me.”

  “That’s your first mistake right there,” I say. “It’s not about the pace you run, it’s about the road you walk. It doesn’t matter if you get to the end first if you’re going in the wrong direction.

  “Going slow doesn’t mean not accomplishing anything, going slow means being deliberate in your actions, and it is good advice for anybody, regardless of their ambitions. That’s the wisdom I have to give you, Lang Bao, and it’s something your father has already told you. If you’d listened when he had, you would not have wasted a trip.”

  Lang Bao frowns, lips pressed into a thin line.

  He rises, bows deeply and thanks me for my wisdom, and then excuses himself.

  My qi sense follows him as he leaves the house.

  What an odd fellow.