CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY ONE
### Feng Luo Goes Home
He said it at the morning meal.
"I am going home."
Not the way he had said it after the combination — with the specific resolve of someone who needed to have a difficult conversation. With a different quality.
Simpler.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo looked at him.
"You are not going to ask why," Feng Luo said.
"No," Jian Yu said.
"Or how long," Feng Luo said.
"No," Jian Yu said.
"Because you know," Feng Luo said.
"Xian Yue used your name in a formal document three weeks ago," Jian Yu said. "And your father cooperates without understanding. And you said after when I asked about showing him the archive."
Feng Luo was quiet.
"After is now," he said.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
Feng Luo looked at the Flame Blade at his hip.
"The directed heat application," he said. "The cross-absorption. I want to show him. Not tell him about the combination and the archive and the growing season work. Show him what the sword found in me."
He said it plainly. Not dramatically. The way Feng Luo said things when he had been carrying them for months and had finally landed on the accurate version.
"Yes," Jian Yu said.
"He has never seen what I can do," Feng Luo said. "Not correctly. He has seen me attempt things and miss and attempt things and overshoot and burn roofs off." He paused. "He has not seen what I can do when I know what I am doing."
"Show him," Jian Yu said.
"And then the archive," Feng Luo said.
"The human record section," Jian Yu said. "What people chose. Show him that."
"After the directed heat," Feng Luo said.
"After the directed heat," Jian Yu confirmed.
Feng Luo stood.
He picked up his pack.
He looked at Lin Mei. "Tell Xian Yue I will be there before her field rotation ends."
Lin Mei looked at him.
"Tell her yourself," she said.
"I already did," he said. "But she reads your messages differently than mine."
Lin Mei was quiet for a moment.
"I will tell her," she said.
The Flame Blade's fire rose to full height.
Not agitation.
The specific brightness of someone going toward something important.
He walked south toward Vermilion Sect territory.
Jian Yu watched him go.
He thought about an eighteen-year-old who had jumped off a waypoint shelter wall without calculating the drop. Who had burned the roof off. Who had provided the Banked Coal base sixty-three times without variation.
Who had committed to all of it at once and had never held anything back.
He thought about what it meant to show your father what you actually were.
Not the version of you that your father had decided you were.
The actual version.
He committed.
He did not count.
He watched the Flame Blade's fire until the road took Feng Luo around the southern bend.
Then he turned.
The work was east.
He went east.
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