He’d repair it in the morning. For the time, he left her with nothing to do but sleep, which was often the only way he could get her to rest.

Adama himself didn’t need the encouragement tonight. He felt the effort of climbing the stairs.

When he found the bed, he didn’t bother taking off his robes. He collapsed in a heap.

He would rest, eat, and examine the research he’d taken from the labyrinth for a few days, until he was recovered enough to be called a Sage again. Then it was back underground for him.

Sleep found him in seconds.

It felt like only seconds more when he was woken by searing pain all over his body.

He screamed and shot up, lashing out blindly with his power.

Despite the suppression of Sacred Valley, his madra should have shredded everything in the room. Without the Valley’s curse, a single panicked outburst like this one might have endangered the entire Heaven’s Glory School.

With his spirit and will so drained by the hunger madra, his attackers survived.

Half a dozen Jades staggered back, blood on their daggers. The locals had attacked him. A bunch of Jades had stabbed him. Successfully.

How?

The light of Samara’s ring leaked in from the shuttered windows, and between that and his well-honed spiritual sense, he put together a clear picture of the scene. Their blades glittered with points of brighter silver like stars, and they felt like shards of chaos.

Halfsilver blades.

Those would disrupt anyone’s madra, which explained the searing pain in his body and spirit, and halfsilver was unusually common here. Normally, they wouldn’t have penetrated his skin. He hadn’t considered the full implications of the strength being leeched from his Archlord body; it had been too long since any mundane attack was a threat.

But…they had stabbed him.

Though he was bleeding and surrounded by enemies, he still wondered if this could possibly be real. It was like a bunch of rabbits had taken up spears in their teeth and charged him.

It was humiliating.

The blades had been dipped in poison, which stained their edges dark and leaked venom aura into the air, but such was barely worth a thought. He would never notice the weak poisons here.

And halfsilver knives still gathered sword aura.

The Sword Sage threw out a hand, and though he didn’t have a blade in his hands, he activated the Endless Sword.

Every edged weapon in the room exploded with silver light.

The Jade holding onto his wintersteel sword—the weapon Min Shuei had gifted him before their parting—fell to bloody chunks immediately and landed in a pile of gore.

Adama caught the sheathed blade before it hit the ground.

Everyone else survived.

Which was enough to tell him how bad of a shape he was in, even if he discounted the pain in his neck, chest, shoulder, thighs, and stomach. His madra channels were now wounded from putting such effort into the Endless Sword with halfsilver still affecting his spirit, and most of the Jades still lived.

When he survived this, he was going to come down on the Heaven’s Glory School like a Monarch’s fist.

He drew his sword like a child drawing his father’s weapon for the first time. Clumsily, he lurched forward, shoving his sword into a shield of Forged golden madra.

The shield shattered and the Heaven’s Glory man flew backwards, leaving a crater in the wood and plaster of the wall.

Though he was weaker than he’d ever thought possible, Adama’s Steelborn Iron body still functioned. If he had enough strength to wave a hand, he had enough to hurl a Jade from the room.

But the wounded Jade still breathed. Though he had no doubt suffered terrible internal injuries, his survival was another blow to Adama’s pride.

Blood gummed up his eyes, and he focused on healing his body as he engaged the other five in combat.

They couldn’t use Striker techniques without hitting each other, and their Ruler and Forger techniques were so clumsy that he could always disrupt them before they fully formed. Which left them hand-to-hand combat.

Every pathetic swipe of his sword took a Jade off their feet.

One Heaven’s Glory elder crashed into the ceiling. Another shattered the bed. A third flew through the shuttered window, letting in a wash of light. But they were all armored by iron, goldsteel plates, or scripted devices that kept them alive.

The Sword Sage couldn’t clear his thoughts enough for a single working of will. His body and spirit were falling apart, and only his extraordinary Archlord constitution kept him on his feet.

Reinforcements flooded in from downstairs. Irons. They were flinging Irons at him.

When he was through killing everyone in the building, he was going to be disgusted with himself.

A new voice shouted from downstairs, a flare of Endless Sword madra sent the Irons on the stairs bowling over, and for the first time since waking he felt real fear.

Yerin was here.

Two of the Jades turned to look down, beginning their techniques, and Adama’s fear turned to rage. He took an Enforced hit to the back—his opponents had abandoned their blades almost immediately, so it was just a punch—to dash at those Jades threatening Yerin.

He tackled them down the stairs.

The Jades might be trying to kill him, but they would inevitably fail. He was an Archlord. Yerin was still on their level.

He would pit her against any of them one-on-one, but this was hardly a duel.

As he landed in a pile of bodies on the first floor, he looked up and met Yerin’s eyes. In them, he saw the same fear for him that he felt for her. They were wide, her face pale.

He had to drag this fight away.

He shouted and pulled himself to his feet, squeezing madra out of lacerated channels…and swiped a Rippling Sword at Yerin.

She blocked, of course. The technique was weaker than what she would have produced.

But it knocked her back into the basement.

Adama limped out of the house, casting his perception behind him to make sure the remaining elders would follow him. Sure enough, only the Irons stayed behind.

Though there were more Jades coming from all around him.

His every hobbling one-legged leap covered many yards and left a trail of blood in the snow behind him. The only Jades that kept up with him were those who wore shields on their badges: those best trained in their Enforcer technique.

Adama defended himself with his swordplay and his superior Iron body, as well as the fact that his enemies couldn’t use proper weapons. They had all armed themselves with makeshift clubs.

He took a few bruises, but nothing to worry about. Nothing he couldn’t heal in the morning.

He had to make it to the Ancestor’s Tomb.

When he tried to open his void space, just the effort of focusing made his head throb, and he couldn’t focus his working enough to reach through the Way. His other weapons, his elixirs, his constructs, his pills, were all sealed off to him.

He had grown too complacent. The lesson here was to never show vulnerability, to never rely on others, to treat all strangers as enemies. Clearly, he had let himself grow soft.

In the future, after he razed Heaven’s Glory, he wouldn’t forget.

He just had to make sure Yerin survived to remember this lesson too.

He staggered up the mountain, fending off attacks until the light of the dawning sun spilled over the Ancestor’s Tomb. The Tomb was one of the most ancient structures in Sacred Valley, a blocky behemoth looming on titanic pillars.