the multi

Talking was not Yang Ru's strong point, and in his quest to get to know Kang Lin, grunting just wouldn't be enough. So, he resolved to talk to her.

There was one big problem, though. He had no idea what to say. Literally. Not a thing came to mind.

They walked for a while, silently, through an area outside the Wood. Master had swept it for beasts earlier, so they didn't expect to encounter anything. Yang Ru almost wished they would. It would have given him something to talk to her about.

Occasionally, she would look at him expectantly, and he'd open his mouth. Nothing would come out, though.

Finally, he could take it no more. "I don't know what to say."

Kang Lin grunted.

He stared at her for a moment before the absolute absurdity of her response hit him, and unable to resist, he started laughing. And laughing. She joined in, and they both lost control. Eventually, their hysterical response drained some of the tension and awkwardness that had previously hung between them.

With the pressure off, he felt a lot less stifled. He found his voice. "Thanks for that."

"No problem."

They grinned at each other for a moment before her face grew serious.

"I have to confess," she said. "I'm having trouble figuring out what is going on in your head."

He shrugged.

"There's no pressure, here. Both our master and Grandfather have been very clear that anything that does or does not happen between us is solely up to us."

Yang Ru nodded before opening his mouth and snapping it closed again before saying anything.

"Whatever it is, just say it. Talk to me," Kang Lin said.

He sighed. "What … What is it you're looking for?"

Left unsaid was whether or not he could possibly fill that role.

"Looking for?"

"In a … partner."

"Ahh." It was her turn to sigh. "Honestly, I don't know. For the good of the sect and the family, I'm expected to find a man with good talent so that my children will have a chance of being better than me." She paused. "May I ask what the rank of your spiritual roots are?"

He frowned, not knowing if that information was sensitive enough that Master would rather it not be revealed.

"You don't have to tell me," Kang Lin said.

"No. It's okay." He figured that, since she, too, was Master's disciple, he didn't need to worry about secrets. "I'm an A-."

Her eyes went wide. "Then why are we even doing this? Why would you even pretend like we can be … partners?"

Yang Ru had no idea what she was talking about, so he grunted. She didn't laugh that time. Instead, she turned away from him, clearly upset.

He'd only answered the question she'd asked of him, and he hadn't lied. Her reaction made no sense.

"I don't understand," he said. "I thought we were doing this to get to know each other? What changed?"

"What changed? What changed? You tell me you're top tier, and you ask me what changed? If I thought you were lying, but… What changed!"

Well, at least her response clued him in on the root cause of the issue. She apparently hadn't expected his roots to be that highly ranked? The relevance escaped him.

"Is that a problem?" he said. "I thought you just said you wanted someone with good talent."

He was so confused.

"Yang Ru, I'm a C+, strongly mid-tier, but that's it. Nothing special. Without Grandfather being an elder, I probably wouldn't have even made it to the inner sect. You're…"

Wait. She thought he couldn't be with her because her talent was too low?

"You beat me in a straight up spar," he said. "You reached Foundation Establishment before me. How can you think I'm better than you?"

"Yang Ru, when is your birthday?"

"In a little over a month."

"I'm a little more than a year older than you. It took me over two years to reach Foundation Establishment. You advanced after nine months."

Well, that was a valid point.

"But the spear," he said. "You beat me fair and square."

"No. I didn't. The contest was rigged to give me every advantage. If we had truly sparred, it could have gone either way. I was ahead of you by three minor realms, but your cultivation method, talent, and technique all surpassed mine by a great amount."

Oh.

"What does your talent level matter, anyway?" he said.

"What do you mean, what does it matter? It's the main thing that matters!"

Yang Ru shrugged. "Not to Master. He knew your talent when he suggested we get to know each other. If it doesn't matter to him, why should it matter to me?"

She started to speak but hesitated. "That's … a good point. You really don't care that I'm so far below you?"

"Why do you care so much?"

Her shoulders tensed, and she took a deep breath, letting herself relax. "You don't know all that much about sects and cultivators, do you?"

He grunted, and she smiled. Finally.

"I'll walk you through it," she said. "Let's say that you were slightly less talented than me. My family wouldn't exactly be thrilled, but Grandfather would probably overrule them due to political reasons, meaning that he felt it would be beneficial for either the sect or the family or both to barter my hand for closer relations with your sect. If you were supremely untalented, that calculation might change. I don't know his thinking on the matter. Do you understand so far?"

Things were a lot more complicated than it had been back in the town he'd grown up in, but nothing she said was too difficult to follow. He nodded.

"You're not less talented. In fact, you're a lot more talented," she said. "At every realm, major and minor, you're going to advance faster and easier than I will. If you were a B or B- talent, a step or two above me, it would be perfect. My family would be happy that you're higher than me, but you wouldn't be so much faster and better that I had no chance of keeping up. A- is four steps higher, an insurmountable crevice."

Ah. He was beginning to grasp her point. "When I reach Golden Core, you'll still be in Foundation Establishment."

"Under the best of circumstances, I'll be a year or so behind you. That's assuming I don't bottleneck, which is much more likely to happen to me than to you. And with my relatively low talent, my chances of even reaching Nascent Soul are in the single digits."

"Even with Master's cultivation methods?"

She tapped the side of her forehead for a moment. "Well, maybe twenty percent? Thirty tops? It's hard to say."

"And you wouldn't want to see your partner advance so far without you."

"Would you?" she said.

He could definitely see how that would be a source of tension in a relationship. "It seems like an awful lot of worries being built on ifs and maybes."

"True, but this is how we're taught to consider such matters in the sect."

"What about how you feel?" he said.

"That consideration is of some importance." She paused. "Honestly, it's like a checklist. At the top is whether the perspective partner is in the right talent range. Next comes the family and sect's approval of the perspective partner's status and pedigree. Third is whether or not I can get along with him. If any of the three are negative, then there's no point going any further. If all three are positive, then it's pretty much a done deal as long as he agrees."

"That sounds … cold."

"Is your expectation different?" she said.

"Where I grew up, my family and the girl's family and the elders would take our temperaments as a prime consideration. Most of the matches they chose ended up happy with the arrangement."

"That's nice, but honestly, it's the viewpoint of a peasant. In a sect, one's first consideration is the sect, and the second is the family. Personal choice is only taken into account if the match is so onerous as to cause serious problems. Better to not marry than for a blood feud to develop."

Her voice slipped into bitterness during that explanation.

"You don't sound happy about that," he said.

"That's because I'm an idiot who has read way too many silly romance stories." She barked out a laugh. "Truthfully, I'm starting to feel like the protagonist of one of those. A top tier talent with a mysterious master is somehow interested in me. We both know we face incredible odds. How will our cultivation paths align? Can our growing love stand when you ascend to immortality, leaving me behind?"

He grinned. "Maybe my love for you is so great that I sacrifice my chance at immortality."

"But I couldn't let you do that," she said, "so tragically, I will try to end my own life."

"But how could I let you do that? I shall rescue you at the very last moment."

"And I'm so taken by your heroism that we vow to always love each other and be together no matter what happens."

"Which is when my mysterious master appears with a solution," he said, "allowing both of us to reach immortality."

"And we live, literally, happily together forever."

They both burst out laughing.

Nothing had been determined. There were still problems, perhaps insurmountable ones. But he did feel like he knew her a lot better than at the start of their walk. That result was enough. For the moment.