Part 2 ~ Dun Lian Jing – Blue Water City ~

“So this is where you went to lurk!”

Dun Lian Jing glanced up at Huang JiLao, who had just entered her booth on the top floor of the Myriad Blossoms Teahouse, and resisted sighing. Two other figures followed after him, who were somewhat less welcome: Huang Fuan, a disciple of the Four Peacocks Court, and Lu Seong, an Inheriting Disciple of the Pill Sovereigns Sect.

Shaking her head, she went back to considering the gardens in the early morning mist. The lanterns were still glittering and the horrible rain had thankfully stopped. The other occupants of the top floor also glanced up briefly as her companions entered somewhat noisily before going back to their drinks, reading or, in the case of the group of four by the other veranda, their game.

“You didn’t buy out the whole floor?” Huang Fuan muttered, looking around critically before raising his voice authoritatively. “You lot, scram; there is no need for commoners here.”

“…”

Nobody moved, but she did see a few heads flicker towards the old men at the table playing the card game with two young women seated between them. That group, who had been here when she arrived, paused their game and eyed Huang JiLao, Huang Fuan and Lu Seong dubiously. The blonde girl in the dark blue gown glanced at the thin old man dressed like a Confucian scholar, who just shrugged and glanced at the other formidable-looking old man, dressed in a blue robe with a well-trimmed beard.

“Sit down and stop being a nuisance,” she muttered, waving to JiLao who made to drag Huang Fuan with him.

“Did you not hear?” Huang Fuan doubled down on his idiocy, reminding her again how much of a moderate Huang JiLao was when it came to the juniors of the Huang clan.

“Bugger off, boy—!”

The scholarly old man dressed in a Confucian style waved his hand sharply.

JiLao stepped backwards smartly as Huang Fuan vanished in a crack of displaced air, only to reappear some fifty metres away outside with a shocked scream and plummet to the ground, splashing down in an ornamental lake in the gardens where he flailed like a bedraggled cat. Onlookers at the party below laughed and threw good luck coins, thinking it part of some trick or performance no doubt.

The handful of Spirit Jade Huang Fuan had been about to toss dismissively clattered on the ground as the two young women looked on, the dark-haired one with mild disbelief and the blonde with amusement.

“Old Kai, your aim is as good as ever; I believe that is the third young noble you have put in a pond this last hour?” the blonde-haired girl giggled, putting down her next card in their game.

“Miss Ling overpraises,” the old man chuckled, also turning back to the game.

“Sit down and don’t bother the others,” she waved a hand irritably, having no desire for them to be here anyway, let alone draw attention to her presence.

“Uhh…” Huang JiLao and Lu Seong gave a further dark glance at the table before moving over to sit opposite her.

“Is that okay?” Huang JiLao muttered, glancing outside to where Huang Fuan, who was still flailing in the pond, had been caught by a friendly spirit plant which was giving him a good hug with its roots.

“Who are… they?” Lu Seong muttered.

“The old man is some local eccentric and the others are from the Ling clan,” she replied perfunctorily. “They were here when I arrived and Huang Fuan is the fourth person the old man has thrown out since I got here. The others included your senior brother Guang from the Pill Sovereigns Sect. He wound up in the harbour, by the way.”

Huang JiLao and Lu Seong both turned to look at the distant masts of ships, doing the arithmetic on that feat, in this weather. She herself was pretty sure he was at least a Dao Lord, probably a Dao Sovereign, given that Pei Guang, the disciple in question, was a peak Golden Immortal and the old eccentric had sent him off like he was so much chopped liver. Certainly he had excellent mastery over spatial laws.

Aside from the loudmouths who had come with Pei Guang and made a ruckus, nobody else had so much as batted an eye at the old man’s actions. Two of those flunkies had also taken trips to the harbour before the other two tried to run, only to wind up in the pond.

“Two of those who came with him landed in a fish bait warehouse,” she added. It had been rather funny and, as far as she had observed, all of them had had their cultivations temporarily sealed as well.

“What influence is he from that he dares act so unruly?” Huang JiLao murmured.

“Boy, do you like to mumble so others cannot hear clearly?” the Confucian old man called over from the far table without turning around. “Speak properly or your elders will think you are being disrespectful.”

The young woman with blonde hair laughed lightly, while the dark brown-haired girl looked somewhat awkward but hid it well.

“…”

She had wondered that herself in fact. Both old men were clearly experts and the two girls likely their disciples or such. Probably they all came from the Ling clan, given the dragon and water motifs on the girls’ surprisingly high quality spirit cloth gowns. Only the blonde one had been addressed as ‘Miss Ling’ though.

While it was probably possible for her to get all the answers she wanted just by brandishing her Imperial Court talisman, she was disinclined to do so on behalf of someone like Huang Fuan, who was a bit of an ass and probably tagging along simply because JiLao was unable to send him packing.

She was also rather enjoying not feeling like she was being watched by everyone and the walls themselves, and outing herself as the Princess would only make her morning more annoying in that regard, not less. That a secondary benefit of it was being able to watch people like Lu Seong – a cherished golden child of the Lu clan – squirm internally in her presence, never quite sure if she was just tolerating their less formal manner or if she was leading them on to pit them, did help though.

It was also because the two guardians from the Envoy’s Palace were not currently guarding her. Probably someone was watching from afar, but that was not her problem.

“So… how come you are here?” Huang JiLao asked, no longer whispering, having presumably decided to just put the matter aside.

“Because it was quiet – and there was a decided lack of people making a ruckus?” she pointed out, not bothering to hide her mild exasperation.

She had come here from the banquet when it had devolved into a further tournament, this time for scholarly arts between various young nobles. The idea of spending hours having to judge the marginal differences between the calligraphy of ‘Scholarly Idioms’ or ‘Martial Words’ rather than just enjoying the banquet had not appealed, so she had vacated as fast as possible, citing being tired from her travels.

Clapping her hands, she had only to wait a handful of seconds before a young serving girl with impeccable manners appeared and bowed.

“How may I help, young lady?”

“Wine and refreshments for these two, and when an angry youth in a peacock robe tries to come back in, tell him to go wait in the Golden Dragon Teahouse—”

“—Give him this talisman,” Huang JiLao smoothly interjected, passing the serving girl a Huang clan jade.

“Huang clan,” she bowed again. “I shall see that the message is properly relayed, please enjoy your refreshments.”

After the girl departed, two more serving maids returned a minute or so later with heaped platters of spirit food and several jugs of wine.

“The service here is much more fulsome than the Golden Dragon,” Lu Seong murmured, before stopping one of the serving maids. “Miss, if I might ask, who are the ones at the other table?”

“I win!” the dark-haired girl at the table in question exclaimed brightly, sweeping up her cards as the two old men shook their heads looking a bit disconsolate.

“Them?” the servant glanced at the other group. “Young Lady Ling and her friend.”

“Young Lady Ling?” Huang JiLao frowned.

“Ling Yu, the daughter of the Lord Yusheng, Patriarch of the Ling clan,” the servant elaborated.

“That Ling Yu?” she asked, recalling JiLao’s earlier discussion regarding her. “The one who is ‘technically’ a princess?”

“So you did remember that,” JiLao chuckled.

“Young Lord is familiar with the history of the Ling clan,” the serving girl agreed politely.

“I don’t recall her being at the banquet,” Lu Seong murmured with a raised eyebrow.

“…”

The servant bowed politely again and said nothing.

“And the old man?” Huang Jilao asked.

“This old man is called Tai Kai,” the old man in question said, suddenly at their table, sitting in an empty seat opposite JiLao and Lu Seong.

“…”

“This old man recalls he said something before about talking clearly in the presence of others, although perhaps this old man is going senile in his old age and does not remember the words that were spoken mere moments ago.”

“…”

“Old Eccentric Kai, please do not make trouble for our other guests,” the serving maid murmured with a respectful bow.

“Miss Chang, I am always a model of decorum, why I haven’t killed anyone on your premises since… I am after all going through my Confucian phase.”

“I believe there was the unfortunate accident with the young lord from the Mu clan, two centuries ago?” Miss Chang murmured helpfully.

“Ah… yes, that one, a mouthy bugger, dared to challenge me to a duel over dice… He shouldn’t have sworn to heaven he would eat them if he lost…” the old man replied. “But that was hardly my fault… No, I believe it was Bo Lao, three centuries ago… much better than Golden Dragon.”

“Confucian phase?” Lu Seong couldn’t help but ask.

“Yes lad, I find it helps with the years… I designate a millennium and pick a philosophy – this is my Confucian millennium. Last one was Taoist, before that I was a Moralist, before that a Stoic… a new perspective for a new millennium and so on…” the old man grinned brightly. “I take it you’re from the Pill Sovereigns Sect…?”

“Erm… yes, elder,” Lu Seong replied carefully, though he didn’t bother to salute she noted.

“Better manners than the last group, at least,” Tai Kai chuckled, sitting back. “Kept shouting like I was hard of hearing and throwing money around. Presumably thought I was poor… You don’t think I am hard of hearing… or poor, do you?”

Lu Seong shook his head firmly while both she and JiLao looked on with carefully neutral expressions.

“Good lad, good lad,” the old eccentric chuckled. “Knew a fellow from the Lu clan from them. Had one of those names you should never give a child, unless they want to be mocked or become the pillar of a nation… Yong… Zheng… Yes, Lu Yongzheng, he was from that alchemy school in Pill Sovereign City.”

“Ah… Pill… Sovereign Yongzheng?” Lu Seong suddenly looked a little… off colour.

“Is that what he’s calling himself these days…? Ah… hmmm…” the old man rummaged around on his person for a moment and then pulled out a rather cruddy talisman that had ‘Tai’ on it and a scroll. He spent a few moments scribbling a message on it, then he pulled out a simple circle of blue-green jade carved like a taiji, that possessed an inscrutable aura and seemed to suck in the space around it faintly, placing it on the scroll.

“Arrrrk—!” Huang JiLao made a strangled sound, and she also stared at it.

“He won a bet off of me many years ago, but never collected…” the old man mused. “Probably felt embarrassed over such a trifling thing. If you could pass that on to him…”

She watched dully as the old eccentric sealed the Dao Jade, worth approximately one million spirit stones, assuming you could find someone to exchange that many for one, into the scroll. He wrote a short message on it that congratulated Lu Yongzheng on winning his gamble and then rolled it up and tied the talisman around it, sealing it and pushing it over the table to Lu Seong, who just stared at it like it was an unusual mushroom that might explode and give him some horrific disease.

“I’d have asked Lu Ji to do it, but Lu clan politics are what they are,” the old man sighed, helping himself to a fried fish from one of the plates on their table.

“Was that a…” the dark-haired girl on the other table was also staring blankly at where the Dao Jade had just been.

“A Dao Jade?” Ling Yu replied, her voice carrying over. “Yes, that was a Dao Jade… and you were complaining about me paying Earthly Jades for plants earlier?”

“…”

The old man continued to munch on the fish until Lu Seong took the scroll with shaking hands and stored it away.

“This junior will relay this to Pill Sovereign Yongzheng?” Lu Seong asked, bowing, his voice mostly remaining steady.

“Unless the Lu clan has two people with such a name, yes,” Tai Kai chuckled, standing up.

“…”

“We will take a plate of these fried fish,” he added, addressing Miss Chang and waving a hand at the plate he had just sampled.

“Of course,” the serving maid saluted politely.

“Eccentric Kai, I am sorry for the earlier discourtesy,” Huang JiLao said, bowing politely.

The old man paused, considering their table before just nodding and shuttling back to the other group, whereupon they started dealing new cards.

Lu Seong took a deep drink of his wine, his hand shaking slightly, as it might. She had maybe 300,000 spirit stones on her currently, and if she sold the whole contents of her storage ring it might reach the worth of that scroll, but even then, she would never be able to convince an elder to part with an actual Dao Jade for it. The things were less currency and more a cultivation resource for Dao Eternals and Ascendants. A junior waving one around was asking for the kind of worldly pain that even a great step tribulation would feel discomfort meting out.

“Grandpa Bai, I believe it is your turn to deal,” the blonde-haired girl prompted.

“Ah, so it is… Is this how it goes, old Kai?” the other, more martial-looking old man muttered.

“Yes, although that is Nine Long Dragons… not Long Nine Dragons… ah… maybe I will need to rethink that?” the old man muttered, stroking his beard.

“You said she was a princess?” Lu Seong muttered, glancing at Ling Yu.

-Who is the princess, she grumbled inwardly, still slightly stunned by the random appearance of a Dao Jade in day-to-day life.

“Technically a ‘Ducal’ Princess. Her father’s – the Clan Lord Yusheng’s – own great grandfather, was the Grand Duke who controlled the whole sub-continent before the Huang-Mo Wars,” Huang JiLao explained quietly.

“Oh… before the great reorganisation and the coronation of Emperor Blue Morality,” Lu Seong mused, understanding… “So the Ling clan…”

She tuned out their conversation, which rapidly veered off into discussing those ancient wars, and went back to watching the lanterns and late revellers in the parkland.

Fireworks were still going up and she could hear distant cheering from the grand square on the far side of the teahouse if she really strained her hearing. Amusingly Huang Fuan had only now managed to extricate himself from the lake, with the help of some passers-by who were commiserating him on his misfortune even as he castigated people at random and generally acted like a bit of an ass as he pulled bits of spirit plant out of his robes.

“So, why have you left the riveting display of martial calligraphy behind to seek me out?” she asked at last, when it became clear both JiLao and Lu Seong were otherwise going to settle into a long talk about the merits and achievements of the various experts who had fought in the Huang-Mo Wars.

“There will be an auction of treasures the day after tomorrow,” JiLao replied, helping himself to one of the spirit fruit slices.

“I see…” she replied blandly, wondering why this couldn’t have waited until she got back to her rooms.

“It was put forward by Imperial Envoy Qiao; the Envoy’s estate wants to capitalise on what is being seen as a proper pivot by the Imperial Court back towards Blue Water Province,” JiLao added, by way of unnecessary explanation. “I figured you should know sooner, rather than later.”

“…”

She sipped her wine and went back to looking out the window, at the lanterns and the gardens ,while she turned over matters in her head.

“I assume this could be beneficial?” she asked him eventually, wondering what angle they were pushing, beyond trying to fleece money out of those who had come with her party, that was.

“Yes,” JiLao skimmed the dishes and then also decided to try the fried fish before replying. “The idea behind it is to show off the breadth of rare curios from the province – they are of course trying to sell things at an inflated price, but it will also provide a good opportunity to attract some informal interest from parties that might otherwise not engage directly with matters as they currently stand.”

“I suppose that is fair,” she conceded.

So far, their whirlwind of a stone cast through the city had mostly only reeled in those already predisposed towards currying favour with the Imperial Court. The clans with genuinely deep roots on the sub-continent – the Ha, Ling, Kun, Fan and Cao – had been politely interested, but no more or less than was required to avoid giving offence. To those influences, their presence was being taken as a political gambit first and foremost, it seemed. The acquisition of the Blue Gate School by Dun Jian’s faction in the court was to all intents being viewed as a declaration that things were shifting politically again after several centuries’ stagnation.

As she understood it, the province had been slowly trending away from the Azure Astral Authority for some millennia, ever since the Azure Astral Bureau had been wrested away from the Azure Astral Authority and turned into the Imperial Astrology Bureau by her Imperial Father, early in his reign.

The major clans that were historically associated with the Azure Astral Authority in this corner of Eastern Azure – the Ling and Cao primarily – were not ones closely associated with the inner circles of the current bureaucracy on Shan Lai. Only the Fan were, and they had nothing like the presence of the other two. The politics of it was boring to the point of inducing tears, but she knew enough to see why her presence here and any interest her Imperial Uncle, Dun Jian, had directed towards this land would draw pensive eyes, especially since the lack of any influential ‘seniors’ among their party directly stalled most of the traditional means of blocking that interest.

It was indeed a herald that the views towards this place were changing in the halls of worldly power across the ocean, but that was all mostly cover for the real task Dun Jian had sent them here on: to investigate the origins of that slab he had acquired somehow.

“So I take it the Cao clan were politely truculent?” she concluded.

“That is putting it politely,” JiLao agreed with a resigned nod. “Did they approach you at the banquet in any meaningful way?”

“Not really,” she mused, holding out her cup so Seong could fill it again. “One of their ladies made some polite conversation, praising her cousin the Duke and stressing how respectful of his heritage he was, and how they hoped that the Imperial Court, in sending a woman of my status here, intended to give proper consideration to past events in any future dealings.”

“So, likely they want a full-blown apology for the events of one hundred years ago,” Lu Seong interjected politely, having poured the wine for her.

“They do,” JiLao agreed, looking vexed now. “And reparations. The Ha family, who are the most ancient of the Ha clan’s local branches, are also unhappy in that regard.”

Thinking back to it, the only women from the Ha clan she had encountered at the banquet were associated with the Imperial Envoy Qiao’s estate.

“Aren’t the Ha clan allied to the Imperial Court?” she asked, actually surprised at that.

“The Ha clan on the Imperial continent, yes,” Lu Seong continued, clearly seeing an opportunity to share his own knowledge as someone marginally more local to this side of the world than either of them. “Much like my Lu clan has several factional influences, the Ha clan has several differences of opinion. While one faction here has influence with Envoy Qiao and the Din clan, the Ha ‘family’, as Brother JiLao notes, have long been rumoured to hold close associations with Lady Kai Lan.”

“—Because of course they did,” she sighed… resisting the urge to put her hand to her head. “Is there nowhere that festering wound has not spread its rot?”

“Among clans of deep standing in these lands who had eligible daughters one hundred years ago? Not really,” Lu Seong replied, before continuing with a degree of distaste, "Even the Lu clan had several daughters caught up in the periphery of Kong Di Ji’s… escapade.”

-Escapade is probably underselling it, she thought inwardly, but didn’t bother to correct him.

Records on those actual events were… scant, it had to be said.

Certainly there had been a lot of hyperbole and people trying to make the Kong clan look bad since then, especially from the Astral Authority and such, but even so, the old adage of where there was smoke, there was some fire was probably true. However overblown it might have become in the retelling.

What was beyond doubt… or political suppression though, was that Lady Kai’s threat to see every Prince bearing the Dun name unmanned had been forceful enough that the Emperor, her father, who was generally aloof from such matters, had had to intercede in the end.

“I had noted as much when making conversation around the banquet,” JiLao agreed. “Everyone was very keen to let me know how they ‘could be of assistance’ to the Imperial Court, but the backhanded interest from almost every clan was: will that mess with the Iron Crown Duke be addressed and will the fallout from ‘the great ruination’ as it seems to be colloquially termed, be acknowledged properly—?”

“—In truth, my cousin’s uncle, the headmaster of the Blue Gate School, would be the person you should be making inroads with there,” Lu Seong interjected, offering them both more wine politely, which she declined for now. “I was surprised not to see him at the banquet?”

-Oh… a small piece of the puzzle regarding the unfortunate demise of the headmaster’s plant slotted into place suddenly.

-That servant Qiao… she involuntarily tightened her grip on her wine cup.

“…”

“While I doubt he is pleased with the imperial writ, he is by all accounts very debonair and an excellent host. It is mainly thanks to him that this backwater city is as prosperous as it is,” Lu Seong went on, putting the wine jar back on the table, apparently not noticing her momentary reaction and the grip she had just relaxed on her wine cup.

“Yeah…” JiLao didn’t look at her, his face carefully schooled. “He was… supportive, when we met him earlier today; however, he sent his apologies at the time and instructed the vice-headmistress of the School to act as host of the banquet.”

That was a barefaced lie, but there was no way either of them could easily explain to someone like Lu Seong what had actually happened, so probably it was for the best.

“That side of the Lu clan has deep roots, and is associated with Lady Xiao…” Lu Seong added, swirling his own wine cup pensively. “While his personal influence with her is probably very slight, the Blue Gate School has certainly possessed unusual means for quite some time in the eyes of those in Pill Sovereign City.”

She narrowly avoided dropping her wine cup at his statement.

“The headmaster is related to Fairy Xiao?” JiLao asked, frowning now.

“Tangentially, and only in a distant sense. She is the sister of the Blue Water Sage’s mother,” Lu Seong clarified more confidently, after taking a sip of his wine.

“…”

-And I know that while I only skimmed the details of what Imperial Teacher sent us, because it was horribly dry, there was no mention of Fairy Xiao in relation to anything within it… she frowned inwardly. Is that why that servant Qiao might want to force matters? Because Fanshu doesn’t want his older sister Miao to gain further influence here?

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not exactly widely known knowledge outside the Lu clan,” Lu Seong muttered, glancing between the two of them.

“How so?” JiLao asked, leaning forward. “It seems like that kind of thing would—”

“—I’ll be honest, how much of your clan’s inner politics regarding the Gan and Wuli is shared widely to outsiders?” Lu Seong pushed back. “To most, the Huang is the Huang and so on.”

“…”

“Dun is Dun…” he cast a sideways look at her.

“That is fair,” she conceded, “although it is still surprising that we did not know of it.”

“The politics of elders is… difficult—” Lu Seong explained with a grimace.

“—I would not like to think the Lu clan inconvenienced,” she murmured, narrowing her gaze on him for a moment.

Lu Seong had the good grace to cough awkwardly at the implication and then went on. “—But I suppose I must explain it.”

“I think you must,” she deadpanned, still thinking about that fate-accursed orchid and what a servant like Qiao might be plotting.

“Well,” Lu Seong sighed and took a deeper drink of his wine. “You know about the Blue Water Sage I assume, Venerate Lu Fu?”

“We do,” Huang JiLao acknowledged, answering that very obvious question for both of them.

Lu Seong nodded again, still looking uneasy, but did continue after a further drink.

“Well, Venerate Lu Fu and his older brother, Ascendant Lu Qiqiang, did not get on. After Venerate Lu Fu passed beyond the sky, he founded the School in Blue Water City with the backing of several old Ancestors within the Lu clan, to try to salvage something of that connection. Otherwise they would never have split their interest between here and Pill Sovereign City.

“The enmity was buried when Venerate Lu Fu lit a lantern for Ancestor Qiqiang on the ancestral shrine, before Ancestor Qiqiang perished of injuries he sustained in the Huang-Mo Wars. Lady Xiao’s residence within the clan is informally known to be Blue Water City, although she is… eccentrically reclusive, even by the standards of the other Imperial Advisors, and barely does anything in regards to the main Lu clan either.”

“So you are saying that that Lady Xiao is Headmaster Ji’s… Great Grand Aunt?” she repeated dully, thinking again of the note inscribed onto the pot before it smashed: ‘To little Ji, best wishes for transcending your worthless generation – Fairy Xiao’. She had only picked it up because the orchid was cute and waved at her, wanting to look at it more closely to distract her from how… on edge that kind of dealing left her.

-Xiao is not exactly an uncommon name and the headmaster was described to us as someone who enjoyed company.

She had to take a drink of her wine to hide the fact that she suddenly felt a tiny bit sick in her stomach.

-That bastard Qiao, she cursed, also including the ‘guard’ the Envoy’s Palace had sent with them to that meeting in her ill wishes. Someone in the Envoy’s Palace really did try to put me in it, or more likely sabotage my Imperial Uncle or the Third Princess Miao’s goals here. Dun is indeed Dun…

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Lu Seong added, recovering a bit of his good humour to smile wanly. “Technically Fairy Xiao is my Great Grand Aunt as well and you don’t see me crowing it from the rooftops loudly.”

-That is a fair point, she conceded, recovering herself…. but only somewhat. I might even have bought it, were it not for that accursed note which is going to haunt the dreams I would have if I needed to sleep these days…

“So why has the Pill Sovereign Sect been trying to take over the Blue Gate School?” JiLao asked, changing topic slightly. “I know my Imperial Uncle has some links to them… but it cannot just be that?”

“Oh…” Lu Seong sighed, and took another deep drink before continuing. “Ancestor Qiqiang’s branch within the Lu clan dislikes Supreme Elder Kwan’s – who backs the Pill Sovereign Sect along with Pill Sovereign Yongzheng – even more than they dislike Venerate Lu’s. They played hardball over some family politics some millennia ago. The difficulty there is also the matter of Ancestor Qiqiang’s son, Elder Bei… Court Alchemist Bei…”

Lu Seong trailed off, casting a glance in her direction. She nodded for him to continue. The matter of Alchemist Bei and the third Imperial Crown Princess Miao’s faction was… She didn’t have hours enough in the day for it, really. The whole situation served only to bring those around it into disrepute in her eyes.

“So the Lu clan has…?” Huang Jilao began to speak, but Lu Seong just shook his head. “Ancestor Qiqiang’s last wish specified that his eldest son, Alchemist Bei, and his heirs take over stewardship of the school – Lu Bei did just enough to satisfy filial piety then passed it off to his own son, Lu Ji, the current headmaster. That whole side of our Lu clan has been riven, politically speaking, almost since the Huang-Mo Wars. The Lu clan in the Pill Sovereign Sect have been trying to grasp Ancestor Qiqiang’s alchemy canon almost since the day the school was set up, claiming that it should be the rightful property of the Pill Sovereign Sect.”

“So the Court tolerates Alchemist Bei because of his links to the Blue Water Sage?” JiLao mused, glancing at her.

-Well, that would explain a lot, she had to concede inwardly. The implied relationship is still scandalous though.

“Such as they are,” Lu Seong agreed. “It is much the same as how Lady Xiao was made advisor…” he trailed off again and glanced at her.

She sighed and said nothing, taking a sip of her wine. The rumours about Lady Xiao and her Imperial Father the Emperor were not worth repeating, if only because the last two court officials who had taken to doing so in any manner had both ended up ruined and exiled. Even repeating that out of turn was asking for trouble.

“Mmm, yes,” JiLao agreed, also keen to change the topic there no doubt.

The Empress was from the Huang clan’s Wuli branch after all and any implication that the Emperor had a ‘mistress’, rather than politically expedient ‘concubines’, would no doubt reflect badly on the Huang clan’s own reputation. She, who was herself the daughter of a concubine of the Emperor, had seen first-hand what happened to those who fished in those dangerous waters for political ends. To incur the displeasure, let alone ire, of the Empress was downright dangerous.

“—So… we have drifted far from the original point,” she cut in, keen to move on from the question of Fairy Xiao in particular. “What do they expect of this auction exactly?”

“It is still being planned out, I understand the Deng and the Ha clans are in some sort of competition…” JiLao sighed. “The idea is, as I said earlier, to see if any other odd relics emerge given suitable incentive. Now that word has gotten around that the Deng clan struck it big with your Imperial Uncle the hope is that others will see that and be angling for advantages.”

“And so we end up buying them rather than them giving them up on an arborundum platter…” she noted drily.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” JiLao mused. “Information, rather than objects, is what we are mainly after.”

“Ah well,” she sighed, seeing herself sat there for another day as a glorified mascot for the masses. “So long as I don’t have to have a hand in planning the fate-accursed thing…”

~ Jun Arai – Jade Willow Ginseng Fields ~

The forest was still in the pre-dawn darkness, bar the occasional bird call amid the dripping greenery. The lack of clearance from the previous season, something that would usually have been the Pavilion’s responsibility and a task carried out while training newer recruits, was evident wherever she went.

The understory was dense – which was to be expected given the previous sustained exploitation of the valley – however the paths were also all flooded out and there were enough new mires and shallow lakes that moving unobtrusively was a nuisance even for her, who was skilled in forest craft. Even with a topographic map lifted straight from her scrip and placed within her mind’s eye to guide her, it still took her almost until dawn to arrive at the first of Elder Li’s ‘survey’ locations for local ginseng.

Along the way, she found herself looking for the various species of mountain ginseng, as much out of idle curiosity as anything, once it became clear that the valley had effectively been abandoned for the previous season.

In the hour long trip to the first point, however, she only managed to find some fifty individuals or clumps that were on the cusp of becoming actual spirit herbs. The numbers above that were… so low as to be almost non-existent. In the forest she surveyed, she found a mere three clumps that were at Qi Refinement – properly two-star grade – and a fourth in a rocky outcrop on the cusp of becoming three-star.

That the returning wilderness hadn’t drawn more ginseng, but instead led to an almost unnatural increase in spirit vegetation usually classed as disruptive colonisers – things like poisonous blood vetch, brown thorn, life-catch vines along with the usual mix of grasses, crimson-resin trees, silk-leaf trees, kobbin trees and ground vines – that started to emerge when the forest ecosystems went properly out of balance and tried to recover, just added to her sense of unease.

Arriving at Elder Li’s first marked location, she considered it, reviewed her notes and sighed, because it only added to her problems.

The evidence before her would make someone, somewhere spit blood, because the ‘point’ surveyed was devoid of any evidence of a ginseng bed at all. It was theoretically possible for one to grow there, certainly, but even after she deployed a proper divination formation to anchor her compass, like the ones she would use in the Inner Valleys, she got nothing from the surroundings.

Over the next half an hour, she checked two more points further along the valley, all of which revealed a similar pattern.

Along the way she passed several out of the way locations where she might have expected at least a few Qi Condensation ginseng if the place was truly going fallow… however, even there, she found next to nothing aside from non-spiritual ginseng.

Stopping at that last location to nibble on some spirit food she had in her storage talisman she reflected on what she had surmised so far, which was not… great really.

The key thing was that there was a really conspicuous absence of any actual spirit herbs almost everywhere she had looked.

-The question is, was this Elder Li, who is now ‘missing’ for whatever reason, covering for someone else directly harvesting ginseng out of season here, or party to it directly…? she mused, chewing on the mouthful of spirit rice wrapped in Duo Li’s lotus leaves.

-When you factor in the influx of unskilled labour from West Flower Picking Town… that does seem probable…

While they had no business being in the Red Pit, people like Ha Fenfang, Nen Hong and Nen Shirong would be just as capable under direction of trapping and catching spirit vegetation ginseng as many of those she had been set to teach.

“…”

She stared up at the dark sky, frowning, because even if that picture was superficially compelling, she knew enough to see the holes there already.

The biggest one was that the Ha clan already had the ginseng economy of this place locked down tight as could be. Second was that Ha Fenfang and the others had been dead in the Red Pit, a place she knew to now be next to impossible to get into without experience and means like she possessed, unless they had taken a very round-about route.

“Are they trying to dodge paying money to the Pavilion?” she muttered, slipping off her rock and pacing across the clearing, considering the bigger issue from a few other angles.

That… was not that uncommon, truth be told.

It would also not be the first instance she knew about of the Ha clan, who controlled most of this part of the province, trying to avoid coughing up wealth they saw as theirs alone to the Hunter Bureau by sideways means.

The Hunter Bureau was one of the old powers, maybe even pre-dating the Astral Authority itself, according to some. Thanks to that ancient position, it held something of a stranglehold on most things that occurred regarding the exploitation of the Yin Eclipse mountain range. They took tithes from every mission, controlled knowledge about it tightly and when they did help local influences and collaborate in the management of places like this, it was always with lucrative remuneration from all parties, independently of others.

On a small scale, this was inconsequential – individual experts were always a thing after all. On a larger scale, however, that was a different matter. When it came to larger influences – sects and clans mainly – the Hunter Pavilions were, through millennia of expertise, thus the branch of civil bureaucracy in this part of the world that had the most influence on the bulk export of valued spirit herbs and land management practices that supported that whole economy as well.

Because they held this commanding position of expertise… and the Hunter Bureau’s purse strings were, in this era, controlled mostly by the Azure Astral Authority. That meant all that wealth they siphoned went, not to the Imperial Court, but to clans who controlled the uppermost echelons of the Bureau, off world on Shan Lai, the Seat of the Azure Astral Emperor… or to Southern Azure, the most influential of the four ‘Azure’ realms within the territory of Shan Lai.

There was bigger politics involved there than she usually cared to consider until moments like now, when it appeared to be spilling over into the reality of little people like her. The main point was, though, that many clans sought to minimise paying those tithes, not so much to the Hunter Pavilions themselves who were quite easy to control, but out of a desire not to pay over copious amounts of wealth to the distant Azure Astral Authority who stood behind the whole edifice.

It also tended to involve pushback on various levels. Her presence, doing clearance missions like this, was one such form. More insidious though were things like the higher level relationships between the Hunter Bureau and the Military Authority Bureau. Bandits could be ignored, the cost of infrastructure pushed off to local arms of clans and provincial matters made just that bit more annoying to deal with, costing those trying to circumvent those old pillars a lot of spirit stones in the process.

The final nail was the old experts themselves, who hoarded knowledge and influence on this place even more than spirit stones. To try to circumvent the Hunter Bureau was to cut yourself off, not just from the Pavilions, but from them and their influence, which others could then play against your little part of the province. Your neighbours would see their fortunes rise and places like Jade Willow Village would see their requests shuffled down the bureaucratic ladder for a few seasons, or years. They would see their roads less well maintained, beast attacks become more frequent and so on. All in retaliation for cutting out the Hunter Bureau and the ‘dues’ those old experts at the top saw as being rightfully owed to the Authority.

As to what had gone ‘wrong’ in this instance? The obvious theory there was that either someone had overharvested the ginseng here in error, or someone had wanted some rare ginseng for something or another and Elder Li, or his coterie of illicit harvesters, had gone over the ridge somehow in search of higher grade spirit herbs and something had done them in.

Given the Patriarch of the provincial Ha clan’s birthday was near, that was, she supposed, a likely culprit, given what Elder Mu had told her regarding Elder Li taking over the responsibility for the village there.

“And yet… it still doesn’t answer how they got up there…” she muttered, turning back to look at the distant, mist shrouded ridges that denoted the edge of the Red Pit. “Or every other odd thing that is playing out here…”

Turning to stare around the misty clearing again, she sighed. “Like… how does the Deng clan figure into this? Are they also stealing from these fields for some reason…? Is that why this place is so barren, is that what Elder Li was investigating?”

She sighed in disgust, her exclamation vanishing into the mostly silent dawn forest, which was content to hold its secrets close beyond more distant bird calls and the hum of emerging insects and the creak of trees in the wind.

“…”

“And why did someone think it useful to steal the four corpses… The ginseng I can sort of understand, although it’s asking for trouble unless…” she trailed off, sitting down on a handy rock and thinking a bit more.

“…”

“All of this has one theme, it causes problems for the local Pavilion, one way or another,” she declared to the world at large, including a few birds that had settled onto the nearby branch of a kopi tree. “It also causes problems for the Ha clan and the local village…”

Checking them off on her hands, that was pretty undeniable.

This valley below the Red Pit and the ones adjacent to it were among the most lucrative ginseng fields in the whole province.

None of the clearance that should have been done… had been done either.

The local relationship with the Pavilion was fractured because the Ha clan were trying to… dodge taxes?

Even the mission that brought her by that circuitous route in the first place was trying to cause problems for the local region in its own way…

Never mind the training mission being shuffled around…

“Haaaaii,” she sighed, staring around at the dark, misty clearing.

-This is why I hate political things… she reflected to herself. Give me a herb to capture and I’ll do it, but shouldn’t this really be handled by auxiliaries from the Military Authority…?

Standing up, she shook her head and twisted some water out of her rather matted hair. “And the manual labour from outside thing still doesn’t add up… let alone how they got up into the Pit.”

Something kept telling her that that was the key. If she understood how a bunch of kids like the Nen siblings and Ha Fenfang got in there…

-Is that why the bodies did a vanishing act… Someone doesn’t want questions asked about the ‘how’ as much as the ‘why’? she frowned, staring into the shadows beneath the trees.

“…”

-Don’t tell me there is a ruin involved somehow?

Staring about the dark forest, she resisted sighing a further time, reflecting with some wry introspection that she was doing so with depressing and unhealthy regularity thanks to the day’s events. The valley was poorly cleared, the landscape changed by the last season’s bad weather and likely much more dangerous to random poking around than it should otherwise have been, given most of the remaining spirit herbs she had encountered were dangerous, aggressive and unprofitable – usually all three at once in the case of things like brown thorn or blood vetch.

-If there is something like that in here, I could spend weeks with a full, fate-accursed team poking around and find nothing, she thought sourly, even if I was so inclined!

“A plague on all clearance quests!” she added out loud for good measure, kicking a convenient rock into the shrubbery.

-Maybe I should just go back and claim that Elder Li was killed by a tetrid stalker or something… she stopped at that somewhat irrational thought, which had been just a little too…

“…”

The tell-tale buzz that she associated with the influence of a blood ling tree wasn’t there, but her intuition that something was nudging her, aided by her excellent resistance to soul-based attacks, didn’t let her buy it. Something was forcing the edges of her emotional state and it had been well over an hour since she was definitely within the field of a blood ling tree.

“No fate-thrashed way… Somebody couldn’t have been that dumb… could they?” she muttered, turning to look this way and that.

This was the first of these spots she had really stopped to consider in detail. “Assume nothing… huh?” she mused, folding her arms and continuing to stare about carefully.

-Did I miss this at the others? Or has it been building for a while?

-Was I so caught up in assuming that the two things were not really related that I made that kind of mistake?

-No… unlikely…she decided that she likely hadn’t missed it at the other sites…

“So, blood ling trees,” she muttered out loud. “Dangerous, because they have soul sense fields that can resist the suppression to a degree… and they feed on imbalanced emotions. To grow… they need rocky qi-rich soils with a lot of decaying matter, good drainage and an abundance of spiritual energy in the ground to draw on.”

Looking around at the low-lying, boggy forest all around her, with shallow lakes forming in some places speaking to its lack of decent drainage, she had to concede it was not optimal ground for either ginseng or blood ling trees. The nearest craggy massif pillar, rising south-west of her, was wreathed in mist and heavily vegetated and with the fresh rain on dry season jungle… yang energy largely outweighed yin. It was also the Outer Valleys, so the absorption strength of the ground beneath her was minimal… not enough to sustain the reservoirs of qi needed for a blood ling tree to even think about putting down shoots.

-So, a mutate that got gathered from up there? she concluded.

Staring at the map in her mind’s eye again, she considered the still dark sky above her, with its rolling clouds and occasional bursts of rain. Pulling out her beggars’ compass she considered it as it spun idly in her hands before settling in a pattern that showed the local alignments were shifting oddly, hinting at an overabundance of yang fire that was not in harmony with its surroundings.

“…”

Picking a direction, largely at random, she headed slowly towards the western side of the clearing, watching the compass until it started to trend back in the direction she had come.

Heading back that direction, she was slowly drawn north-east. The path it took her along went through some very dense reclaimed forest, towards the ridgeline of linked massifs that ran parallel to the higher interior of the mountain range.

Occasionally, she got further hints of pressure on her psyche as she worried about bird calls and then about leeches in the mud and qi beasts like the water serpent she had encountered earlier and echo toads as the forest rapidly morphed into a vast shallow lake that happened to have trees in it.

As she advanced onwards though, she noticed two odd things about the twisting aspects of the alignment that she was following. First that it had split and the signal was now pulling her in two directions and second that only one half of it was in fact moving… the speed it was moving was not fast, but it was coming in her general direction…

Stopping, she crouched down and just listened to the forest, letting her vision take in the shifting greenery. It was still quiet, far too quiet. There were insects and such, but as before nothing much in the way of the ambient spirit beasts that should have been out and about at this hour. She had been moving quickly, but not to the point where it would disturb them unduly.

“Ka ka ka kaaa kaaa!”

A treebill called in the distance and she frowned… waiting for the reply from its mate… which never came, only an echoed treebill call from ahead of her this time.

{Empty Eye Steps}

Inhaling, she stilled her heart with ‘Body’ and drew upon ‘Spirit’ in her mantra to turn her qi inwards. Her clothes were sodden as they were, but she stored most of them away before smearing her whole body with mud rapidly to break up her outline further before cautiously moving onwards again, a thread of intent touching her teleport talisman in case the worst happened.

“Ka ka ka kaaa kaaa!”

Another call a few moments later that was in the same vein all but confirmed for her that it was not treebills calling.

“Owaaa waaaa waaa!”

A call of a green-wing, another large canopy-dwelling bird, a moment later only deepened her wariness as it also went unanswered.

The shadow returned as well, pushing against her mind, seeking purchase that it could nudge, twist or pull on. It was instinctual but she could feel the pressure there, a sense of acquired fear, like whatever was trying to transmit out understood what fear should be… but not how it should be?

‘Soul’ sheltered her from the worst of it, but it slowed her progress still further… until at last she saw the pale grey-green and yellow tetrid stalker, crouched immobile on a tree branch, mostly camouflaged but in an open enough place to be obvious.

“Fates get—!”

*Splash* *Splash*

“These vile plants won’t shut up…!”

“I hope they will get a good price for the buggers.”

Distant voices echoed through the rain, beyond the curtain of green she had been slowly traversing.

“This is just the appetiser… so stop complaining and let’s get this stuff out of here,” an older, more authoritative voice grumbled.

“We should have been gone a day ago… what if someone noticed?” the first voice hissed.

“Who the fates is going to notice? You think any of those unskilled idiots could come out into this shithole so easily?” another voice hissed back.

“…”

Crouching lower, she watched the tetrid stalker carefully.

It rubbed its back legs together and another chirping cry of a treebill echoed out.

“Heaven-accursed beasts are spooked as well,” the second voice called out. “Hey, Yeng, what’s up with your pets?”

The sound of more splashing and some distant cursing drowned out whatever reply came amid the whispering wind and an untimely return of the rain. In the distance though, she could now make out several lanterns flickering, allowing her to orientate herself to the group’s unexpected presence.

Hidden as she was, she watched them move past, comprised of almost a dozen bedraggled figures, moving in pairs who each carried a bunch of jars slung between them. The group as a whole was being escorted by several older men wearing broad hats and masks to hide their features.

‘Yeng’ was identified by a tamed female tetrid stalker the size of a large dog that was following along behind him. It chittered and chirped quietly, casting this way and that, but didn’t notice her, crouched as she was in the underbrush.

The one in the middle distance she had first spotted moved on in a single leggy leap to another tree as the convoy travelled by, some thirty metres away. In the distance she saw a second move and then a third, all with similar colours, all of them likely males, bound and controlled through the single female. There was no question of doing anything regarding the group, even if she were so inclined. Her job out here was to find answers, not pick fights with unknown experts.

Thanks to the rather unbridled qi use of the youths doing most of the carrying, she could see they were all Qi Condensation or Qi Refinement. All the escorts though were properly disciplined, not even sending out any intent. They all carried weapons as well, and the tetrid female was almost certainly at Soul Foundation given its size. Arts and spiritual cultivation might be suppressed, but the four tetrids and whatever talismans the group carried would certainly see her in a lot of trouble.

They passed on by and she waited until the light from their lanterns had thoroughly vanished into the gloom of the flooded understory before consulting her compass again. Sure enough, the fire attribute signature that had been diverging now pointed somewhat in the direction of the group, and also somewhat off towards the face of the nearest massif pillar that adjoined the ridge separating this valley from the Red Pit.

-Really, I am not being paid enough for this, she complained grimly.

Moving as warily as she could and keeping an eye out for traps now, especially given evidence of warded spirit herbs like she had run across earlier, she made her way onwards.

The rain almost made things easier for her, because she could now see where she was likely going, thanks to the topographic map in her mind’s eye. There was a gorge cleft into the pillar, which melded with another beyond it and then eventually merged in a tangle of precipitous forest with the sheer, uplifted cliffs that split the Red Pit from everything else.

The unanswered bird calls echoed again and she paused, scouring trees for where the offending insectoid predator was watching, cursing beast controllers in her heart. Even with the advantage of the rain, which made them easier to spot, because their shapes silhouetted better against the backdrop of shifting greenery it took her far longer than she would have liked to find it.

Marking it warily, she moved past it, some actual birds screeching on the pillar itself, no doubt warning the interloper to get out of their territory. However, she had only gone about twenty metres before she had to stop again, her compass telling her in no uncertain terms there was a large formation ahead of her, hidden in the rising, rocky ground around the forested pillar.

Grimacing, she looked around carefully. The rising, broken ground would provide any number of places to stash flags, which seemed to be the formation expert’s preferred method. It was certainly effective, but in here, there were ways around it.

Palming her ‘Alignment Disruption’ talisman she ate a replenishment pill and activated it.

{Li’s Alignment Disruption}

The field swept out and she listened carefully, picking out the sounds of various controlled qi beasts dropping, incapacitated, out of surrounding trees.

Next, she sent a thread of intent into her teleport talisman, setting it to automatically activate if the flow of her qi was disrupted beyond a certain threshold. Life was more important than money or stupid missions after all.

Preparations for the worst made, she stealthily continued forward, skirting through the rocks and looking for one of the flags. It took a few minutes of quiet scouting but she finally found one, buried in a crack in a rock and covered rather hastily in loam. No doubt the person bedding it in had hoped time and weather would make it less obvious.

Investigating the flag in-situ, she was relieved to find it was not a ‘monitored formation’ meaning they had just set it down and left it to work.

The flag itself was actually quite good quality, suggesting that either the group had means or one of their number had some actual understanding of formations. The formation on it, however, was just a simple detection formation which seemed to have been scaled up for a large area. Her talisman had cut all the links in any case, rendering it, and probably much of the formation as a whole, useless until someone came and swapped them back out, so after recording the symbols, she left it where it was and re-covered it. Moving on, she approached the gully where the map implied the right conditions were for water-cut caves, which were likely responsible for the worst of the flooding, and was rewarded by the sight of several glimmering lanterns and distant voices.

“Shit… what happened?” someone was complaining. “Is it the weather?”

“Could be. Fate-thrashed weird, though. Maybe one of the flags got damaged?” another, younger-sounding voice asked.

-Figures they would have some way to tell there was a disruption, she sighed inwardly.

“Well, you’re the one who knows about formations; why don’t you go look?”

“What… on my own?” the younger voice complained, sounding unenthused by that idea.

“What… the guard insects are still out there, at worst one of them has probably just dislodged a few flags somehow,” the first voice pointed out.

“So you’re the expert on formations now? Why don’t you go then?” the ‘formations expert’ grumbled.

“—Both of you go, sort it out,” a third, older voice that sounded… oddly familiar cut in, commandingly.

“…”

There was some grumbling and she watched as two figures in grass cloaks scrambled up over a ledge some ten metres away and she could only sigh as she caught glimpses of their faces through the rain. One was very familiar to her as Wen Suan, while the other… the other was the youth who had stood and watched her process the corpses in the Hunter Pavilion, the ‘Ha Kwan’ that Clerk Bai had not known.

-Well now… she scowled, watching them move off into the greenery, making quite a bit of noise as they went. That is… interesting.

Setting aside the question of Wen Suan, because that encounter had already felt somewhat suspect in her heart, she considered what the presence of Ha Kwan here might mean.

-Does that mean they stole my ginseng and took it here?

Taking out her compass she focused on feeling any resonance of yin qi… and got quite a bit, as it turned out, though none of it related to a meek yin ginseng near as the compass could tell.

“…”

Wordlessly, she pulled out the pieces of the yin attributed lamium and considered them, noting that the compass also orientated itself towards those as much as her general surroundings.

-Well, it’s a divination, so ‘conclusive’ is inherently debatable, she thought sourly, but as far as plausible goes, it’s not bad.

Putting the herb away again, she pondered what her choices here actually were. The group had clearly trapped the path in, and had significant numbers…

Turning back to her compass, she considered it again, pondering how she could actually get something useful out of it regarding Ha Fenfang or the others. The yin qi was clearly related to the lamium, and probably there were other such traps scattered about… or there would be if they were at all smart about what they were doing. Her alignment disruption talisman might have tripped a few, but so long as she didn’t actually disturb them nothing bad would happen. The bigger issue, really, was that short of trying to find traces of a physical trail directly from this location that went back to the Red Pit, she was unlikely to tie events more closely than the presence of the herb.

-First, let’s look and see what the deal with their actual camp is, she decided, shoving the compass into a pouch at her waist.

Slowly, she made her way through the under scrub, moving towards the distant voices that were not quite carrying in the misty drizzle and sounds of the rain hitting trees.

To call it a ‘camp’, though, was a bit of a misnomer as it turned out. The dominant feature was the ruin, which was about what she expected; a collapsed cave – its exposed entrance now maybe thirty metres high and the same across – probably water-cut, that held what was likely a larger version of the rock-cut shrines that the Hunter Bureau occasionally turned into secure way stations. Above it, a fissure was half opened into the cliff face and off to one side she could see where they had dumped a lot of the collapse in the shallows of the lake.

Two of the statues that had probably been within the entrance had since been hauled up that she could see, one now serving as a support for the corners of two cloth canopies to one side, providing shelter for a crude camp with tables, chairs and even an unlit brazier. The path around the expanding lake to the entrance and cleared area ran almost below where she currently crouched, concealed in the handy cover of some tangled vines that were slowly working their way across the smaller trees.

She could make out a total of ten cultivators standing or sitting around the camp itself. Two were by the water’s edge, doing something there, sheltered by umbrellas. Two more were sitting under the canopy on the near side while the rest – all wearing nondescript robes, drenched to the skin and sheltering as best they could under grass hats, cloaks and the occasional umbrella – were clustered around an older man in the open area between her and the cavern who was now pointing this way and that, though mostly towards some pots with seals painted across them, stacked by the near awning in the cave mouth.

She moved a bit further along the ridge, relocating to a second set of vines that were growing over a stunted kobbin tree like a green waterfall, hoping to catch…

“—get these out of here before the weather changes again!” the voice of the old man cut through the rain.

-That’s… the elder from the previous night?

She was glad she had her mantra to keep her emotions stable, because bits and pieces of the ‘puzzle’ were suddenly… both quite clear and yet also not?

-This lot are a sub-faction within the local Pavilion? she frowned.

“They still haven’t ‘paid’ for the last lot!” one of those by the pots, who was kneeling down and examining something complained.

“—exclusive access to this place isn’t paying for itself?” a third voice asked, who turned out to be another cultivator, bringing the total number up to eleven…

“Half that shit goes to feeding those damn tetrids, or growing things that they can eat!” the cultivator investigating the row of pots retorted.

“You know the deal, stop yacking!” the old man snapped.

“Old Ku, they say that the plant set near the Red Pit was torn up!” a voice called out from the nearest tent…

-Twelve… yep, this is bad, she sighed grimly, spotting the new speaker, who she had missed before.

“…”

“Did they find the perpetrator yet?” the old man, Ku, retorted.

-Well, that must be the group who I saw earlier, she thought grimly. That’s… at least twenty-four in this group, counting Wen Suan, Ha Kwan and the ones I saw before?

“Dog shit, I bet it’s that hunter…” the ‘haven’t been paid’ cultivator squatting by the pots spat.

“If it is, it’s just one hunter, we can deal with her,” one of the others standing around under an umbrella remarked.

“—You know what happened the last time a ‘hunter’ died up here?” the other watching by ‘Ku’ interjected.

“If it is that ‘hunter’ it will be no issue,” an urbane voice cut in.

“Ah, Sir Huan,” the old man actually saluted to the new figure who walked out from the cavern itself. “You are finished?”

“It is very interesting… not what I expected. For that alone, I think our association here has been very profitable,” ‘Huan’ replied diffidently, looking around, his gaze lingering on the pair by the water’s edge and whatever they were doing.

She moved slightly, making sure to keep her presence totally suppressed, so she could get a better look at ‘Huan’, without really ‘looking’ at him.

Indirect observation – ‘empty eyes’ as it was sometimes termed – was a trick you learnt very quickly, and were expected to have effectively mastered at nine-star rank. It was a vital skill, especially deeper into the mountains where even the act of looking ‘at’ a skittish herb or certain qi beasts could clue them in to your presence – ‘looking at’ something was also a form of ‘intent’ after all and those sensitive to any changes in it towards them would notice. That was also why she hadn’t gotten her scrip out to record any of what she had seen. That would also count as ‘intent’.

The man was of medium, youthful build, wearing a knee-length dark robe, perhaps green before it was soaked through, that was a bit smarter than the others, slashed with red or brown on the sleeves. He also wore a nondescript mask under his broad hat, so all she could tell of his appearance was that his wet hair was darkish-blonde. The only other thing that stood out about him was the faint glitter of golden-bronze trim in the shape of some vines or leaves on the hem of his robe where it caught the light of the lanterns.

“Regarding pay, you need have no concerns there,” Huan added, turning his head slightly to look at the others for a moment before turning back to ‘Old Ku’. “Come with me,” Huan said perfunctorily.

“Of course, Sir Huan,” the old man replied with a neutral expression.

She waited, silent and motionless as the pair walked back under the middle awning, past the statue and then into the shadows of the cavern.

“Are you two going to just stand there like those damn insects?” the one working on the pots added.

The two who had been standing beside him moved over to the pots to hold umbrellas for the three working at whatever they were doing.

-Monkey shit, she cursed mentally. It really is a corrupt bunch within the Pavilion, isn’t it? Does the presence of Wen Suan mean that the local gang and the Ha clan is involved? Have they got a group inside the Pavilion with an elder’s position? Is that what all this is about? It really is a bunch dodging taxes…

-Is that Huan the orchestrator?

Focusing on ‘Heart’ and ‘Spirit’ she buried the worries rattling around in her head, calming her slightly disordered thoughts and using her mantra to keep her emotional state rock solid.

The more concerning part there though was the casual way they spoke about her presence and the apparent lack of any concern over the ‘consequences’ of ‘dealing’ with her.

-That could be ignorance, she reflected glumly, though in her heart she really doubted it…

“Hey, you, short shit, get over here!” one of the cultivators below called, waving over to the awning where two other cultivators in rustic robes were sitting discussing something quietly having taken no part in the discussions up to now.

“Dog molesting imperialists,” the shorter of the pair, who turned out to be a woman sneered… in flawless Easten, standing up.

“Speak a real fate-thrashed language!” one of the pair who had been standing by Elder Ku called back dismissively.

“What can’t you do, fungus brain?” the woman smirked, leaving the insult at the end in Easten as she walked through the rain to stand beside the others, looking at the largely obscured row of large pots.

“You—!”

“Enough,” the one who had claimed she could be ‘dealt’ with, said. “This rune here is not working, fix it.”

Kneeling there, she watched the exchange with a frown.

-Easten Mercenaries? she frowned, looking at her and the man more closely. All the way over here, that’s… unusual?

While it was not… that unusual for people to speak Easten, it was not at all common either, especially on the western side of Yin Eclipse, where the settlements from the Imperial continent had almost entirely displaced the older populations from what she knew. Those folk didn’t speak this dialect of Easten either though. The accent of the woman put her firmly from the eastern side of the mountains.

The other, older man under the canopy had also gotten up now and made his way over.

“They are very bad at these runes,” he remarked to the woman in Easten.

“They are worse than yapping monkeys at them,” the woman agreed with an eye roll.

“…”

Once they finally stepped into the lantern light, she could make out that both had a few tattoos, mostly on their necks and forearms, depicting swirling patterns akin to those your mantra naturally formed within your bones.

-Definitely from the east, she concluded. The tradition of those markings was largely gone from Blue Water Province since the time of the Blue Water Sage. Mostly because they were superficial and also because people wanted to fit in.

From where she was sitting, she could get no clear gauge of qi purity off either figure, however, both did have the tell-tale ‘presence’ of Mantra Seed physical cultivators, which made her sigh inwardly a further time…

A searing column of distortion swirled nearby in the forest, distracting her from those thoughts. The rain shimmered faintly as the aftershock of a teleportation settled, the others below also looking up briefly before going back to what they were doing.

-And they have a teleportation circle set up as well?

In a sense, that didn’t surprise her, not really. It was wasteful, certainly, especially in this weather, however, the outfit was clearly capable and the main limitation on teleporting into the mountain range came from not being able to anchor talismans and teleporting blind further in.

“Ah, the first lot are back, excellent,” the one who had complained about pay remarked.

“Fix these,” he commanded the man and woman, who just sneered at him, then waved for the others to get out of the way.

She continued to watch as a group of sixteen figures made their way out of the treeline and around the edge of the lake, all sporting lanterns and largely dressed as the group she had seen in the forest had been. Twelve ‘porters’, all younger youths, and four guards, all dressed in very nondescript fashion that would fit right in in the middle of a frenetic harvest with lots of labourers running around the fields.

-That’s… a lot of cultivators, she sighed mentally, adjusting her ‘count’ of those here up to at least forty-one.

“The next lot isn’t ready?” the lead guard remarked, turning to look in the direction of the large pots.

“It is not,” the one who complained about pay grumbled, from where he was still kneeling by them. “But we have to work with this lot, so what do you expect.”

“That people do what they are told,” the guard grunted, before glancing at the Easten pair working on another pot: “And what they are paid for.”

“Well, yes,” the grumbling cultivator agreed. “We have one more load, then whatever Sir Huan and Old Ku are working on.”

“Oh well, gives a bit of recovery anyway, the forest is shit out there,” the guard sighed.

“Yep, absolute ancestors-cursed shit!” one of the other guards spat.

“I hate this weather,” one of the other cultivators standing nearby grumbled.

“Where are those two who went to look at the broken wards?” someone else piped up.

That just got shrugs from the guard and the other cultivators, none of them apparently interested in how long ‘Wen Suan’ or ‘Ha Kwan’ were taking.

From her vantage point, she watched the rest of the group walk around the lake, passing not twenty metres from her hiding spot amid the rocks and her vine cloaked kobbin tree, and head under the far canopy to sit down on various mats and the like. The guards pulled out some food and drink, which they shared to the others, tossed some ward stones into the embers of a brazier sitting near the table then sat down around it and started to play a dice game, talking quietly among themselves.

-Well, this is going to go nowhere, she reflected to herself, wondering what she was actually going to do about this, or if she even should.

Reporting it would do little good, if the old man was a real Pavilion Elder, this went way above her head unless she went straight back to West Flower Picking Town. The group itself seemed to be a mix of mercenary hunters though, seemingly working for either ‘Old Ku’ or ‘Sir Huan’, likely Sir Huan, given he had had the manner of the person in real charge. The enigma was the pair of physical experts from the east though. Were she over at the Golden Promise School or any of the towns and villages towards Yuan Shan City they would not be out of place, but such folk rarely cared to come west of the Shadow Forest, especially not ones openly wearing tribal markings.

“We are done!” the male Easten expert below her grumbled, standing up from whatever he had been working on with the potted herbs.

“It’s secure?” the lead guard asked, getting up and walking over.

“Of course it is,” the woman sneered, also standing up.

“Watch the attitude, indigenous,” the lead guard grunted.

“Mmm…” the woman clearly hit a pot, which went *clunk* loud enough for it to carry through the rain.

“—Watch it!” one of the other cultivators snapped.

“I wonder who should watch their attitude, really, these things are dangerous you know?” the woman remarked.

“That is why they want them,” her companion agreed. “I wonder what you want them for though.”

The guard just chuckled while the others nearby shook their heads, none of them answering.

-That is the question though, she mused, eyes narrowed. What do you want with these… Those other herbs were certainly mutates from the Red Pit… and those are ‘dangerous’ in ways few people understand.

“Right you lot, earn your worth, get this lot strung up!” the lead guard called over to the twelve youths.

They all stood with groans and made their way over, picking up poles and ropes.

She wondered for a moment why they were not teleporting them out, at least until the first large pot was awkwardly rolled out by a pair and she saw the moon runes painted on the sides of the pot in glittering beast blood and the yellow paper talismans sealing the lids.

-Spatial cages?

It was a method she recognised, though not one she had any ability with. Usually the Beast Cadre did such things… the knowledge of formations it required was far in excess of her own meagre means. A low level teleport formation that could be set up here would not survive more than a few uses with such objects before it destabilized.

-What do they have in those pots?

Unlike the ones she had seen in the forest, she couldn’t sense any fire aura leaking out from them, though that likely meant that they were just better sealed.

One after another, the porters hefted the pots, slinging them two to a staff, and with the four guards accompanying them, headed off at a brisk trot into the forest leaving the rest of the group as it had been.

“Those two are taking a while,” the cultivator who had originally asked about Ha Kwan and Wen Suan remarked again.

“Feel free to go look for them, don’t blame me if they are just smoking shit somewhere avoiding doing something useful though,” another of the cultivators replied, which got laughs from the others standing around under umbrellas.

“How about you two go?” another said to the pair of Easten experts.

“…”

The woman just laughed and went back over to where she had been before, ignoring the question. The man frowned, but also shrugged and walked over to the shelter and sat back down on his bench.

They had been taking quite a while, she had to concede. The probable reason was that they couldn’t work out what had gone wrong with the wards and didn’t want to come back until it was fixed. The effects of her disruption talisman would have been wide ranging, but she had long cancelled it, so all they would have was a bunch of disabled flags and perhaps several stunned tetrids.

-I wonder if the tetrids got freed from their control when they recovered? she mused, glancing back into the shadows of the green and the boulders behind her.

It was tempting to use the talisman again, but the thought that there might be bound spirit herbs lurking elsewhere meant that was something of a last resort. The talisman might also strip the bindings on those if she was injudicious with its application. It would certainly cause a huge distraction, but the idea of being in the middle of a few dozen angry, vengeful spirit herbs of unknown type just freed from enforced containment was not appealing.

“Why did they go anyway?”

“Dunno, Old Ku sent them off,” someone else replied. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“…”

There were a few sighs and then the five below walked back over to the other canopied area where the guards had been.

“Fate-thrashed assholes, couldn’t they at least have left the wine?” one grumbled as they poked around, ignoring the Easten pair and then sat down on the chairs and bench, poking at the brazier.

“Hey, you lot, you’re wanted inside!” someone else called from further into the cave, making the group who had just got settled stand up again with a few groans.

She watched them head in, then slowly made her way a few paces further along, still under the cover of the kobbin tree, so she could get a better view of the rest of those remaining. Two more cultivators were working away at a slab by the water’s edge, scrubbing algru off it…

She blinked as a third cultivator suddenly surfaced from within the lake, spluttering and looking rather unwell, followed by two more, dragging a large bundle between them.

“Give us a hand here you idiots!” one of the swimmers called over as the three splashed ashore.

“…”

The pair by the slab glanced over but ignored the trio… who she saw all had tattoos.

-Ah, so there are more than just those two, that makes more sense now, she mused, watching as the woman got up with a scowl and stalked over to the lake shore, splashing into the shallows without comment. Presumably they got the physical cultivators to do the diving?

-Still, a group of mercenary hunters from out east working here, in Ha clan territory, is really odd, she reflected.

“What you got?” the cultivators washing the slab had stopped what they were doing now.

“What’s it matter to you, all goes to your Sir,” one of the swimmers grumbled.

“It matters, indigenous, because we pay you,” the cultivator said flatly. “Unless you don’t want to be paid, you speak, that clear?”

“…”

-And the working relationship is… as expected, she observed feeling a bit odd.

She had little personal sympathy for those from out east, despite frequently being mistaken for such with her own dark hair and skin that tanned easily in the sun. However, her mother’s clan… tribe were horrible and she wanted nothing to do with them.

-The presence of the woman is also odd, though, she thought with a frown, looking at her while taking care to not 'actually' look at her. Traditionally men do this kind of thing. For a woman to do so is deemed a betrayal of her ancestral duties to uphold the purity of the clan and bear descendants.

“Just pots… pretty, pretty pots!” another swimmer, tattooed in swirling patterns of water chuckled, lugging the bundle onto the shore with a smirk.

“Fate-thrashed pots, can’t there just be something…” the other cultivator by the slab complained, kicking the water with a splash.

The swimmers laughed, adding a few choice insults in Easten as they dragged the bundle further up onto the flat and started to sort it out. The two cultivators scowled at them, then went back to trying to remove algru off their slab.

In the end, she watched them for another fifteen minutes in the pre-dawn gloom before ‘Ha Kwan’ and ‘Wen Suan’ returned, looking annoyed and carrying three dog-sized dead tetrids with them.

“Did you get lost and need to take a shit or something?” one of the cultivators by the water remarked sourly at the pair.

“Fate-accursed things were rogue,” Wen Suan spat, tossing the tetrid down on the ground next to the slab they were cleaning. “Nearly stabbed me through the head.”

“They went rogue?” that cultivator frowned, picking up the insect, now missing half its legs and with an obvious hole through its abdomen, to inspect it.

“Well, they are just qi beasts, nothing is infallible,” the one who had complained about pay remarked, coming back out of the cave. “Just toss ‘em in the side hall, they can feed the big-un, we are nearly out of corpses and it doesn’t seem to like the ones we recovered.”

“…”

“Didn’t he sort that?” Ha Kwan asked sourly, presumably speaking of whoever was responsible for the controlled tetrids, perhaps the ‘Yeng’ she had seen earlier.

“He said it had to dissipate on its own, unless we used an expensive talisman,” the other cultivator cleaning the slab remarked with a shrug.

“Yeah, we are here to make a fortune, not spend one!” his companion grumbled.

-Nearly out of corpses? she frowned, that was… concerning in its own way, starting with the question of where they were ‘getting’ corpses, unless it just referred to dead qi beasts. The ones ‘recovered’ though, had, she felt a rather high chance of being…

She glanced at her compass, sitting on the ground next to her, which nudged auspicious on that point, making her sigh.

-What a fate thrashed day… she complained in her heart – and it’s not even sunrise yet…

As if to attenuate that observation, the rain was starting to pick up again, she noticed. The drops were splattering off leaves above her in a steady cascade now and making the surface of the lake appear dappled in the grey, pre-dawn light.

Surveying the area before her, she mulled over what she should do… or could do.

The number of cultivators down there was… not what she was comfortable with, but sneaking in might be doable. The uncertainties were the ‘big-un’ as it had been termed, whatever tricks might have been deployed with formations to protect the cave itself and the depth of pocket of the cultivators themselves, especially the ‘Elder’ and ‘Sir Huan’ who had not yet re-emerged.

The ‘big one’ sounded remarkably like another adult tetrid, which in the right circumstances was something she could deal with. She had the formations for it, certainly.

Similarly, the actual formations could be badly messed over with her alignment disruption talisman, though that was something that would have to be carefully timed – assuming her previous use had not already done for them.

-Fates, I am going insane, she grumbled, pondering what formations she could use that might actually tie up that pair if it came to it.

Yin Eclipse totally restricted the external manifestation of Nascent Souls and did very odd things to the efficacy of higher realm cultivators’ foundations, especially spiritual cultivators, but that didn’t mean that it was at all a good idea to pick a straight-up fight with well over a dozen cultivators of largely unknown quality, including a bunch of physical cultivators.

-And I can’t even record this with my scrip, she complained in her heart, again surveying the whole camp carefully, with ‘empty eyes’.

That would make things a lot easier, because she could just go straight to the Kun clan, demand a direct line to Juni and then transmit everything to her, making it very much someone else’s problem.

Her hand twitched towards her own talisman, tempted to contact her father directly… but again she stopped, because that too might be detected. Her alignment disruption talisman should have quietly torn a huge hole in their ‘defences’, the scale of which had apparently gone unmarked because it was not a monitored formation, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other ways to spot such a transmission, even out here in the suppression.

-I guess I’ll have to go back, speak to Juni or Old Ling directly and take it from there… she thought grimly.

The worst part though, was that this still left her with two outstanding ‘clearance’ requests she was basically none the closer to properly resolving…

“Well, take ‘em in then,” the older cultivator added, gesturing to Ha Kwan and Wen Suan to go do as suggested.

“…”

“Or keep ‘em here for all I care. Let ‘em check ‘em when they come back,” he shrugged, turning and walking back into the cavern mouth.

Wen Suan sighed and tossed the three broken tetrids over by the wall and stalked off to the shelter of the canopy, followed by Ha Kwan.

Glancing at her compass, she pushed a thread of intent into it, considering her options... and stared, as it spun twice and then locked onto an absolute alignment that told her the hour was deeply auspicious for recovering the bodies she had—

“LOOK OU—!”

There was a scream, which cut off abruptly, from inside the cavern and suddenly one of the three who had gone in came sprinting out—

She stared, dully, as a tetrid stalker the size of a very large bull, with a greyish-black and yellow carapace, tumbled out of the cavern like a child’s toy, taking out both awnings and crashing into the statue holding them up in a mess of flailing legs.

“What–!”

“HOW!”

“WATCH OUT!”

“Kuan!”

“GET AWAY!”

“HOW IS IT FREE!?!”

“FATE-THRASHED YENG!”

Everyone else around the lake shore scattered, yelling curses or scrambling for weapons.

*KUAAAAAAAASSSSHHHHHH!*

The stalker’s enraged scream made her vision waver almost as much as the rain around her was, the suppression barely blunting the terrifying manifestation of intent that came with the howl.

-Fate-thrashed… what the actual? Nameless nine generations…

She cursed inarticulately in her head as she pressed herself flat in the dirt, fighting the instinct to teleport right then and there.

-Mother, I officially hate this day!