Lin Zhen did not bother with framing. He turned the cup in his hand and put it down.

"We are going to recover one of our spirit mines in the west. The one Blood Fang seized from us years back."

Lin Xuan registered the line for half a breath before any expression reached his face.

He had walked the corridor turning over a list of possible topics: the family wing, the council seats, Lin Kai, his marriage prospects with Frostmoon Ridge. A strike against a Blood Fang holding had not been on the list. Not so soon. Not in the state Skyedge was in. He would have expected something conservative: patching the elder seats, retraining the disciples, anchoring the alliance with Frostmoon, and only then turning outward.

But the more he held the idea, the more it stopped being a surprise.

They did not have all the time in the world. The continent was inching toward a war nobody had yet named out loud. The Imperial succession was rotting from the inside. The Fourth Prince’s machinery had nearly walked Skyedge into a casket on the road home. Conservative was a luxury for sects with two patriarchs to spare and a hundred years of grain in their warehouses.

Skyedge had neither.

He opened the inner channel without giving anything away from the front of his face.

’What do you make of this, Mira?’

[ I think it is a sound call. Blood Fang almost certainly does not expect anyone to come for one of their mines this soon, least of all from the sect they just tried to break on the road. Surprise is a real asset right now. Your father has thought this through. I would do it. ]

Lin Zhen had been watching him through the pause. He read the shape of his son’s attention without pressing for an answer.

"What do you think, son?"

"I think it is the right call, father." Lin Xuan turned his own cup a quarter rotation, mirroring the gesture without meaning to. "Recovering one of our mines brings several things at once. The resources they took from us. The income those resources turn into. The capacity to forge weapons again without going to the open market. The ability to push our disciples up properly. It is a win-win across the board."

Lin Zhen’s brow lifted a degree.

"Win-win?"

"A term I picked up at the tournament. The newer generation of disciples uses it. The meaning is the obvious one. Both sides gain, except in this case both sides are us." He set the cup down. "Returning to the question at hand. We know what the mine looks like inside. We know what it looks like outside. Geologically it cannot have shifted much in the years they have held it. But the defences will have changed. We need scouts to map the outside as it is now, not as we remember it." 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The inner channel flickered.

[ Tell him you want to be the one who goes. I can see the structure of the inside of the mine from here. I can build you a map of it for the operation. ]

’Truly?’

[ I am your Limitless System, Xuan. I should be able to do something like this. ]

Lin Xuan turned his face up to his father.

"In that light, father. Please send me as the scout. I will go to the mine."

Lin Zhen did not answer at once.

The proposal had caught him fully sideways. He had assumed his son would back the operation with the strategic eye Xuan had been showing across the past week, and had assumed the conversation would continue toward the question of which veterans to send and which elder to anchor the team. He had not assumed his son would put his own name forward.

His face did not move. But behind the unmoving face, a fight had broken out.

He had walked a Blood Fang mine perimeter himself, back when he had been a younger man with both wives still alive and a sect that had not been hollowed out yet. He had not forgotten the rhythm of those scouts. The guards rotated in pairs. The patrol cycles were short. The dogs were never the danger — the watchers in the trees were.

Behind that memory sat the harder one. The mine they were going to recover had been taken from Skyedge during the two years he had been away. Another of the western mines had gone the same way during the same two years. The same two years his son had lain bedridden under the curse. The same two years he himself had failed the post he was supposed to be holding. The ledger of that loss was his to balance, not anyone else’s at this table.

The boy across the table, however gifted, was Qi Refining stage five. The numbers did not square on either side of the ledger Lin Zhen kept inside his head about his sons.

What would the sect lose if he agreed and the worst happened? A talent of a generation. A young master the disciples had only this morning begun to follow.

What would he lose? Not a talent. A son. A son he had already failed once by going away. A son he had only had two months back at his table.

The two questions did not have the same answer.

"Son. What you are asking is very dangerous. I cannot let you go."

Lin Xuan reached across the small table and placed his hand on his father’s hand.

"Father. Trust me. The way you have been trusting me. I told you I would help with everything I could. Let me show you I keep my word."

[ Are you sure this is not about the Origin Points? ]

’Partly. But this is my family now. I should be helping. And with you beside me, I am more useful than any scout they could send. If you can map the inside, that alone is something none of the people they would deploy can give them.’

[ I expect to be properly praised when I do. ]

’I will call you queen if it comes to that.’

Across the table, Lin Zhen’s attention drifted to the window. The night beyond the lattice was empty of moon. The lamp burning between them threw two reflections onto the dark glass: one of his son’s hand resting on his, and one of his own face, which he did not hold for longer than he had to.

A long breath went out of him.

He turned back to Lin Xuan.

"Very well. When you have a window of time, go. You know where the mine is. West of our mountain. The road is not long. The plan I have been building runs on a month. We need what is ours back inside a month."

"A month?" Lin Xuan caught the tail of the line. "That will be tight. Frostmoon Ridge arrives in six weeks."

"Which is exactly why we have to move quickly, son."

"Understood. Before the operation begins, I will go and scout. Do not worry."

"Good." Lin Zhen patted the back of his son’s hand once and withdrew his own. "Be careful out there. That is all I ask of you. You may go."

Lin Xuan rose, bowed at the waist a small degree, and walked to the door. He paused at the threshold. He turned half a body back toward the table.

His father had picked up the brush again, but the brush was not moving. The patriarch’s attention had returned to the lattice window, and the patriarch was watching something in the night nobody else in the room had been invited to see.

Lin Xuan stepped out and closed the door behind him.