Vân looked genuinely offended.
"Speak for yourself, Miss Taoist," he shouted back across the field. "I am no monk. I fully intend to marry some girl and have children."
That almost made Jake choke.
Even Emma's mouth twitched.
Yue Ting did not react.
She lifted one hand, ready to press her advantage from the air, when a phantom cavalryman thundered upward from below and nearly took her off her feet. The strike forced her to twist away mid-step.
On the ground, Jeanne let out a soft grunt and said with cold annoyance,
"It is impolite to ignore a lady and just flirt like that, you know?"
That dragged the fight into a true three-way deadlock.
Jeanne pressed from the ground like an army made human. Her phantom soldiers and cavalry answered every movement of her lance and sword, hitting with the combined force of a dozen men at once. Each charge felt heavier than one person should have been allowed to make.
Yue Ting controlled the battlefield from above. The symbol behind her shifted through the Bagua as naturally as breathing. One moment Qián had hung there in stern gold. The next it changed. Dui. The earth beneath her target turned heavy and false, like standing in swamp water. Li. Pillars of fire burst up from the ground in clean, punishing lines. Zhen. A deafening force cracked through the air so hard even the observers at the forest edge had to brace against it.
Vân answered the only way he seemed to know how.
With raw nerve and Buddhist-named violence.
Phật Đả Kim Chung held his defense together, the golden bell swallowing impacts and turning some of them back on the senses of those around him. Kim Đỉnh Phật Đăng spun again and again, purple lotus-lamp slashes ripping outward whenever either woman gave him the space to form them.
None trusted the others.
None could spare focus to break the stalemate cleanly.
And in that poison balance, the three of them locked themselves tighter and tighter into a fight where no one's allies could safely interfere.
Then Vân moved first.
Or rather, he moved because Yue Ting gave him the chance.
She forced Jeanne half a step off line with one of her Bagua shifts, just enough to create the opening. Vân's hands came together in a new sign, fingers locking between each other.
The next instant, he became a flash of light.
He vanished from where he stood and reappeared behind Jeanne so fast that even Alex missed the transition.
His palm was already out. At the center of it spun a golden swastika of mana, tight and blinding and terrible. The last thing Jeanne heard before the hit landed was Vân shouting the name.
"Đại Phật Tây Lai!"
(Great Buddha that came over from the west.)
The strike hit Jeanne from behind.
The sound of it cracked through the field like a battering ram slamming a cathedral door.
Even from the tree line, Team Nemean felt the impact in their bones.
Jeanne staggered, and that was the exact moment Yue Ting had been waiting for.
Her wrist flicked once.
Mana exploded around her hand and formed a spinning yin-yang symbol, black and white devouring each other in a perfect circle. Then it sharpened.
Not metaphorically, the edges thinned and turned into something like a saw blade made of principle and motion.
It shot straight for Vân's throat.
He saw it coming.
His right hand lifted, index and middle finger together.
The character for Lín spun in his pupil. Then the golden bell around him roared.
Power surged through it so violently that the whole plain shook with a sound like a bomb going off under the earth. Dust jumped. Grass flattened. Team Nemean all flinched at once.
In the sky, Yue Ting dropped.
Her body simply fell, as if the force had torn the footing out from under whatever supported her.
She crashed downward toward the field.
And then, suddenly, she was back.
It wasn't a motion, nor it felt like time rewind. She simply reappeared exactly where she had been before the fall, still standing in the air as if the drop had belonged to another version of her.
Jake stared. "What? That's cheating..."
Emma's brows drew together sharply.
Nobody at the edge of the field had an answer.
But Séline's eyes had gone intent in the way they did whenever a pattern started revealing itself.
"They are not the true Secrets," she said quietly.
Dominic glanced over. "You sure?"
"They feel wrong in the same way the dǒu copy felt wrong." Séline kept her gaze on the field. "Powerful. Ancient. But incomplete." Her voice lowered further. "Replicas. Like the phantom in the Tortura statue."
Alex did not look away from Vân and Yue Ting either.
"It is still better than anything we have right now."
That was, unfortunately, true.
Whatever replicas could do, they were enough to let three monsters in human skin lock a whole battlefield into paralysis.
Either due to her intelligence, or simply because she was more experienced with dealing with Vân's bullshit, Yue Ting realized there was no way to end this.
She looked at Vân, at the character spinning in his eye, at the bell still roaring around him, and then at Jeanne recovering her footing on the ground. Her expression turned from sour to sharpened.
She understood.
Qián and Lín were a bad match, neither of them had the upperhand, and together they would trap them forever in a fight of partial answers and mutual negation.
So she disengaged with the absolute dignity of someone deciding this battle no longer deserved her time.
Her talismans folded inward, the Bagua symbol dimmed. She stepped back through the air in three light motions and withdrew across the plain.
The moment she chose that, Jeanne understood too.
Without Yue Ting pressing the third angle, she had no clean way to bring Vân down alone. Not with his bell, not with his absurd movement, not with the field already showing too much of her own hand. And especially, not with how the secret of Lín seemed to be able to reflect damage back to the attacker regardless of distance and obstruction.
Unlike Yue Ting, she didn't have Qián to save her ass from that encounter.
So France's finest backed down as well.
Her phantom army faded around her like mist burned off by morning, though the way she kept her sword angled made it clear she hated every second of the choice.
Vân watched both women retreat with visible disappointment.
He actually looked like he wanted to give chase and punch them both in the face for leaving.
Yet he did not move. Not even one step. Not until they had widened the distance enough that the standoff truly broke.
Séline noticed it first.
"He is stuck."
Jake blinked. "I like what you're implying."
"The replica," Séline said, eyes narrowed. "That might be the downside."
She pointed subtly through the trees.
Vân still stood in place loose, ready. Looking furious enough to bite the air. But he was standing in place all the same.
"The cost might be that he has to root himself to use it properly."
Dominic let out a slow breath, showing that he agreed with Jake for once.
For all its absurdity, for all the outrageous force of the bell and whatever Lín had just done, the power had shown limits. Just like the dǒu copy did when it passed through Séline.
Replicas were strong.
But they were not invincible, not powerful enough to scare the dungeon itself like the real things.
And as the plain emptied, with Yue Ting gone one way and Jeanne another, Team Nemean stayed hidden in the Croak Wood and watched the bald man who maybe, somehow, looked too much like Phong stand alone in the aftermath of a fight that none of them would have survived.
Vân did not even turn around at first. He stretched both arms, and spoke toward the trees.
"You can come out now."
Team Nemean froze.
Jake looked at Dominic.
Dominic looked at Alex.
None of them had made a sound. None of them had stepped on a branch. None of them had so much as breathed too loudly after Jeanne and Yue Ting pulled back. Yet the bald man in the field had found them anyway.
Dominic made the call with a small nod. They stepped out of the Croak Wood one by one, weapons not fully lowered, but not raised either. There was no point in hiding now that Vân had spotted them. There was also no point in picking a fight with a walking unbreakable wall that disguised as a super hero monk.
Vân turned then.
And smiled right at Alex.
"Sister-in-law."
Alex's face went flat. No one even had time to ask what the hell he meant before Vân casually pulled out his phone and showed them a picture.
It was old. Years old.
In it, a younger Vân stood at an airport beside a smaller, shy-looking boy. The boy had his shoulders slightly hunched, his posture already carrying that quiet instinct to take up less space than he should. Behind them stood an older man with a face that somehow radiated pure anger issues even through a still photo.
Alex felt her stomach drop.
She knew that shy boy.
Not because she had met him then.
Because she had seen those childhood photos in Phong's room in the attic. Dominic and Janet had left that room mostly untouched after the renovation, and Alex had spent enough time in it to know what Phong looked like as a kid.
That was him.
Vân really was related to her farmer.
Which was, for a lack of better word, deeply irritating.
Then Alex realized why Vân had rubbed her the wrong way from the first sentence. He was a human version of Rico. That thought was so awful and so accurate that she nearly groaned out loud.
Only now did she understand why Phong was so tolerate toward the raccoon nonsenses.
Vân tucked the phone away again and nodded toward the plain behind him.
"You all were wise not to interfere," he said. "I don't know Jeanne well enough to say what she would've done. But Yue Ting?" He shrugged. "I've fought her many time. The Taoist Master must have spotted you already. That is just the nature of her Secret. If you had joined in, she would have dealt with you first."
That sounded believable enough to make nobody argue.
Séline stepped forward a little.
Her eyes had not left him since the fight.
"Why are people like you even chasing the replicas of the Nine?"
That was the real question everyone had wanted to ask, at least before Vân flabbergasted them with the picture of a certain level 1 farmer. They had just watched three monsters in human bodies turn a field into a deadlock. Even a replica had been enough to make all of them feel small.
Vân nodded, as if pleased someone had asked the right thing.
"My Lín and Yue Ting's Qián are only replicas," he said. "Yes."
Jake let out a short breath. "That is insane."
"That is life," Vân said. "And considering we're in a spatial anomaly disguise as a dungeon, I say life can be stranger. I'd rather not provoke it into making this a challenge."
He hooked both thumbs into the edge of his kasaya and looked at them all in turn.
"If you want any chance at finding a true Secret, you start with the copy. No one walks up to the real thing empty-handed."
Alex did not relax.
If anything, she got more suspicious.
He was too easy with the answers. Too casual, too willing to speak when someone at his level. Someone who could force a stalemate with Yue Ting and Jeanne de Valois, should have been far more guarded.
And that raised another problem. How was someone with this strong of a defense so nameless in western media.
Alex narrowed her eyes.
"You're talking very freely," she said. "For someone who dives alone."
Vân shrugged.
He looked completely unbothered.
"Phong and I are closer than you think. Believe it or not."
Alex did not believe him.
At least not immediately.
Then Vân added, "Also, someone spotted Joshua Harlan entering the dungeon through a gate in Kyoto. So I came down here to hunt the bastard."
That eased the team more than anyone liked admitting. Because that, at least, made sense. Plenty of people had reason to hate Josh. And a strange Vietnamese relative of Phong wanting to cave his face in was weird, but not weird by dungeon standards.
Alex folded her arms. Then, because suspicion alone would not get her answers, she said, "Spar with me."
Dominic glanced at her.
Vân grinned.
"Oh, I like you already."
So they did.
The fight started ugly.
Not because Alex lost right away.
Because Vân fought in a way that felt wrong.
He was level 41, not impossibly higher than them, but he moved with a rhythm that made Alex's instincts complain. Just like Séline said earlier, he favored slower strikes. Not to the point of feeling sluggish or clumsy, and certainly not to the point of making it telegraphed. But he was indeed slower than someone with his stats and obvious skill should have needed.
He let his blows breathe.
As if he was waiting for something to catch up.
Alex came in with her usual snap and speed, the sharp quick pressure she had built from HEMA drills and everything she had adapted from real combat since entering the dungeon, thinking it would beat him just like it did Séline.
And it did almost nothing to Vân.
He didn't even bother blocking or parrying.
That was the worst part.
Vân gave up on proper defense altogether and rushed through her offense like he trusted something else to keep him safe.
Alex's psychic constructs hit. Her sword bit. Her spear, her vajra, all her shields landed, and they bounced off him. The difference felt insulting.
Vân kept walking in while using those slower, heavier attacks to force her off line. It was like someone lore walk toward Alex in the boxing ring just to style on how helpless she was against him.
From the side, Séline watched with growing intensity, trying to catch the missing piece she knew had to be there.
But it was Joanne who saw it first.
"Mana," she said suddenly.
Everyone looked at her.
Joanne pointed. "Look at his skin."
Now that she said it, they saw it.
Barely.
A thin layer of mana covered Vân's whole body, close enough to the flesh to be missed if one only watched the big movements. It was not flashy. Not like a shield or armor skill. Just a dense, steady sheath over him.
The reason Alex's attacks had been failing miserably was a skill none of them had seen.
Vân stopped the spar the moment he realized Alex's surprise. For him, that was enough. He rolled one shoulder and looked at them.
"Do any of you know prana coat?"
None of them answered.
That, to him, was answer enough.
So he explained.
"Prana coat wasn't given by the system," Vân said. "A Burmese monk came up with it first. Later, the Chinese spread it all over East and Southeast Asia."
Emma's eyes sharpened immediately.
It was the first time they even heard of custom skill made by a human. But given what they had seen and known about the Nine, it fit in a scary way.
Vân tapped two fingers against his own forearm.
"Only concentrated enough mana can get past it and carry other force to damage the user. You can imagine how big of a innovation prana coating is. Thousands of years of realistic combat became half obsolete overnight. Martial artists, divers, researchers, everyone in the east started building new fighting ideas around the same problem." He smiled faintly. "How to make mana matter more than muscle."
Séline chimed in:
"The key idea is you wait for your mana to travel?"
"Bingo."
And with that, Séline got her answer, the missing part of the fighting style she had glimpsed from dǒu copy. The whole missing frame around it, even.
Prana coat was what forced the fight to slow down.
It was what bought the time needed for mana to move through the body fully before impact. Without it, speed still killed too easily. With it, people like Vân or Yue Ting could force combat into a tempo where thicker, heavier mana started deciding exchanges instead of old physical timing.
Séline clicked her tongue softly.
"That's what we were missing."
Vân nodded.
Alex lowered her weapon, thinking hard. So that was why her fast attacks had felt so useless.
Not because they were wrong, but because they belonged to an older logic.
Vân kept going.
"I'm trying to accelerate my mana too. Everyone serious is." He shrugged. "But it gets harder after level forty."
Dominic frowned. "Why."
Vân tapped his own chest lightly.
"Mana gets thicker every ten levels. At least that's how it feels." He looked at the team with something closer to seriousness now. "Every threshold changes the body. Changes the way force behaves. If you want to keep climbing, you have to keep relearning how to fight."
That left the whole group quiet. Because what he was saying fit too many things they had already felt without understanding.
The awkward weight in Séline's stronger punch.
Alex's problem with giving true heft to her constructs.
Vân had just handed them a missing chapter in the book.
And Alex hated how useful that made him.
He stretched once, easy and loose again now that the spar was done.
"Well," he said, "now you all know something useful."
Jake stared at him. "You're just giving this away?"
Vân grinned.
"What? You want me to invoice you?"
That, again, felt painfully like something Rico would say.
Alex looked away before she could acknowledge the comparison a second time.