They spent three long weeks tightening their bodies, sharpening their minds, and turning old wounds into quiet armor.
The teahouse bustled each day with whispering patrons, shaded courtyards filled with drifting incense, and thin watchers from Xia who moved under Wei's silent nod. It was Wei who kept the world at bay for them now — even Lian'er stayed there, a promise wrung from him in exchange for Ziyan's own vow to carve secrets out of Qi's court.
Away from that fragile shelter, the three of them lived in the small rented rooms near the Imperial Academy. Every dawn began with cold water poured from clay jugs to clear their heads. Then they each turned to their chosen battlegrounds.
Ziyan spent her mornings at a low wooden table, sleeves tied back, brush scratching ceaselessly over scroll after scroll. Her phoenix mark sometimes pulsed, faintly warm under the edge of her robe, as though stirring at old echoes of statecraft. She drilled lines on taxation across war provinces, how to keep coffers filled without starving fields, how dynasties in the past crumbled from greed masked as frugality.
At times her hand cramped so fiercely that droplets of blood spotted the scroll. She only dabbed them with cloth and kept writing.
Nearby, Lianhua practiced with her pipa until her fingertips split. In the brothel, she had played to flatter or beguile, her notes sweet as plum wine. Now she tuned each string to something sharper. Her melodies haunted the air, sliding under door cracks to catch startled passersby. Even when she paused, her hands kept moving — training wrist and knuckle until she could conjure tenderness or tear through a heart with a single chord.
"Let them say I'm only a brothel girl," she whispered once, eyes narrowed. "By the time I'm done, they'll remember every shameful breath I wring from their lungs."
Li Qiang began each day in the courtyard with practice swords, face set in hard calm. His shirt often hung around his neck, sweat running down old scars. He swung and pivoted until the stones grew slick beneath his feet. At night he read military scrolls by dim oil lamps, lips moving awkwardly over unfamiliar characters. When frustration clenched him, he only stood, walked outside, and began again with the blade.
"You'll never be one of them," he told Ziyan one evening without bitterness. "Or I. But that's why we'll break them."
When at last the day came, they walked to the great courtyard of the exam together.
The city crowded with bright scholar robes — elegant sons of salt monopolies, distant kin of small dukes, all brimming with silk confidence. Painted umbrellas bobbed like spring blossoms among them.
Ziyan stood among them in dark scholar garb cut simply, her hair pinned without a single gem. Lianhua wore a robe of dusky rose, modest yet undeniably striking, and carried her pipa in its pale lacquer case. Li Qiang dressed in plain gray, his belt leather cracked from years of honest use.
Near the registration gate, Yin Meng — with his ridiculous jade crane pinned above his smug face — turned to murmur with Yuan Jie. They made no effort to hide their disdain.
"Well," Yin Meng drawled, voice rich with sneering amusement, "it seems this year's lists attract all sorts. A fallen minister's stray girl, a gutter harlot strumming for coins, and a dog picked up from the roadside. Will the examiners ask if he can even sign his own name?"
Yuan Jie gave a short laugh. "It's always charming when weeds imagine themselves fit for palace gardens. Let them stand here. The higher they climb, the better the drop."
Li Qiang's muscles bunched. But when Ziyan rested a hand on his arm, he exhaled slow, eyes locked on hers. "Not yet," she whispered.
The examinations sprawled across two relentless days.
Ziyan faced the written trials first. When the proctors revealed the question on managing war supplies without collapsing rural estates, she breathed once and dipped her brush. Her strokes sliced arguments into neat lines: how over-mobilization bred banditry worse than foreign soldiers, how a wise ruler paced his hunger for horses so that children did not starve.
Meanwhile, Lianhua took her turn on the raised pavilion. Her fingers were bandaged beneath the sleeves, but she played as if she felt no pain. Notes slipped out like confession, then swelled into a bright, wounding lament — a song of distant rivers that ran dry for want of tax relief. By the time she finished, the hush stretched on awkwardly. Even some proctors cleared their throats without meeting her gaze.
On the sparring grounds, Li Qiang stepped forward to face a smirking young aristocrat in pearl-trimmed sleeves. The boy lunged in a flourish of style meant for spectators. Li Qiang moved once — a step that coiled like a snake, then snapped — and knocked him flat on his back. The boy lay there blinking, breath gone.
"Up," Li Qiang growled, voice low. "I'm not done."
He let the boy struggle upright before disarming him with a neat twist that sent the sword skittering across the stones. The onlookers fell into an uneasy silence. Some even muttered.
When the first round's rankings were posted on bright silk banners, their names stood proudly among the successful.
Ziyan's neat calligraphy marked her high. Lianhua's musical score earned open remark. Even Li Qiang's name was there, though written by the proctor's own hand since Li Qiang had admitted he'd no family seal to impress upon it.
But so too were Yin Meng and Yuan Jie. They stood nearby, lips curling in ugly smiles.
"Well," Yuan Jie said, fanning himself lazily, "perhaps the circus continues. Though it's customary to bow out gracefully before your family is embarrassed. No need to scrape your knees trying to be what you're not."
Lianhua's eyes flashed. "And you'll see precisely what I am by the time this ends."
Yin Meng gave her a thin, hungry smile. "We shall indeed. I've arranged certain… assurances for later rounds. The capital is not as gentle as your little teahouse stage."
That evening, they returned to their rented quarters, bodies leaden with exhaustion. The lamps burned low, shadows chasing each other across the papered walls.
Ziyan settled across from Li Qiang and Lianhua, her pulse steady despite the ache in her hand. "Five more rounds. Debates. Legal judgments. Even a group challenge where they'll try to break us apart. They will cheat. They will bribe. And they will slip blades behind courteous smiles."
"Let them," Li Qiang said, rolling his shoulder. "I've fought hungrier men with less to lose. They may have silk, but we have iron."
Lianhua's slender hands rested over her pipa case. Her eyes glittered with something close to delight. "And when I play next, it won't be for brothel rooms. It'll be to shame them before every high official in Qi."
Ziyan leaned back, exhaling slow. Her mark stirred under her sleeve, almost pleased. "Then let them prepare. The higher they perch, the sweeter their fall when we cut their feet out from under them."
Outside, wind stirred the bamboo, whispering like cautious conspirators. Tomorrow would begin the second round — and the next steps toward cracking the Empire's old rot wide open.