~ Part 2 ~

~ Jun Arai — Jun Estate, Side Hall ~

“I forgot how much preparing for missions like this sucks,” Lin Ling grumbled, sitting back on her heels and looking out at the various rows of gear, mainly pots, rope, storage crates, climbing equipment and tools.

“Uhuh,” she nodded, also sitting back from her own task, which was checking the various sets of spare clothes for the three of them.

“It feels like there should be more…” Lin Ling trailed off, shaking her head.

“—rope?” she suggested drily, largely because it was impossible to have too much of it when you went up into the high valleys.

“Yes, actually,” Lin Ling sighed, standing up. “There is only a hundred metres of reinforced stuff here.”

“We will be able to get more from the Hunter Bureau,” Sana chimed in, from where she was checking the sets of spirit tools.

Looking around again, she ran through the usual list of things you ran out of and puffed out her cheeks.

“Well, it’s just a normal high rank procurement mission, really,” she said at last. “Just we are going to be doing lots of them in succession.”

“That’s true,” Lin Ling replied, twisting her plaited blonde hair in her fingers as she looked over the ordered rows of kit again. “Still, you know how missions tend to go…”

“Always prepare as if something will end up unavailable or missing, just in case,” Sana said. “And always prepare for things to go wrong.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “The thing that worries me, to be honest, is that when we get to the Pavilion, everyone else will have had the same idea – oh, we can get… ‘rope’ at the pavilion…”

“The Guard Command will have lots,” their father, who was sitting near the wall, painting marks on talismans suggested. “If you put together a list, I can get it taken out, care of the Pavilion.”

“I suppose that will have to do,” she agreed, standing up and looking around again.

“Ah, done?” Sana asked her, glancing up from the set of spirit wood tools.

“Yes. We have basically got a single set of luss cloth clothing between us, it seems,” she sighed, waving a hand at the single set of robe, undergarments, gloves, leggings, boots and a veil.

“That’s more than I have,” Lin Ling said, setting down the rope she had been knotting and moving over to the clothes. “Maybe Han Shu has some extra?”

“I would say the Pavilion might have some extra,” she mused, holding up the light robe, woven with the corrosion-resistant fabric. “But somehow, I suspect everyone will also have that bright idea. Hopefully we won’t actually need more than a set or two between us anyway.”

“I have some,” their father noted.

“Won’t you need it?” she pointed out. “If you are going to help Elder Lianmei and the Beast Cadre. That garb is more important for hunting qi beasts after all.”

“I can spare a bit to make sure you have a set apiece,” their father said with a smile. “I’ll go get it and see what fits. Certainly, I have a second under-robe that belonged to your mother.”

She watched him leave, not sure she wanted to take something that was a family memento up into the valleys, before quashing that slightly irrational thought and turning back to Sana and Ling.

“What else isn’t here?” she asked, looking at the stacks of kit. “We have large pots… but no water jars?”

“Yes,” Sana nodded. “We also need food.”

“We do,” Lin Ling confirmed, waving a hand at the crates of miscellaneous kit she was sorting through. “No food pills in any of this lot.”

“Okay,” she sighed, stepping around a pile of clothes. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Heading back to the kitchen, she went through into the store room beyond it and considered what was there. Food was sort of manageable up in the mountains – you could, if pressed, get by on spirit vegetation – but fresh drinking water was important. You could drink from rivers, but only lower down. Higher up, where the water flowed out of the depths, the suppression was such that drinking a lot of it would actually poison you, making you lose qi and suffer lots of side effects, even with physical cultivation.

Putting a hand on a hundred litre jar of cool, pure water, she stored it away, then took another and another. she eventually stopped at five apiece, which was nearly half a tonne of water each, though their first trip would involve extra people she was fairly sure, beyond the five of the ‘team’ that their part of the mission mandated. After some further reflection, she took a few jars of spirit wine and three crates of nutrition pills, though calling them ‘pills’ felt a bit of a misnomer, given they were basically dried spirit food packaged into fist sized balls that you could rehydrate to turn into nourishing, if rather bland soup.

“…”

“Mangosteen,” she sighed, stopping just before she headed back out, and went to the back of the room and took a crate of the spirit fruit as well.

The trees in the garden produced enough that they could occasionally sell them in the plaza outside. It was possible to get tired of eating them, but probably others would eat them.

Returning to the hall, she put the supplies out and was just considering what else they needed to do, when the sound of the door being knocked echoed through the estate.

“That will be your summons,” Jun Han informed her upon glancing at a talisman tied to his belt.

“It is?” she blinked, surprised they had been that proactive, especially today.

“Yes, it is Captain Ha Feitan,” Jun Han said, coming over to her. “You should go get changed into a respectable gown, fit for being in the presence of seniors.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” she agreed, lightly clapping her forehead, before looking around with a frown. “In that case…?”

“Leave this to us,” Sana said. “You will be meeting us there I guess?”

“Yes,” Jun Han nodded. “She will.”

Sighing, she swept what was in her talisman, which was mostly just what she usually carried, and headed out of the hall, followed by her father.

“Good luck,” her father said giving her a hug. “I will see you in either a few hours, I suppose, or maybe a day. Probably we will cross paths at the main base camp if I am attached to the Beast Cadre with Lianmei and the two old fellows from the Han clan.”

“You too,” she replied, giving him a hug back. “It somewhat sucks that we didn’t get a proper break though…”

“That is the way of these things,” her father said with a sigh, then passed her a talisman wallet.

“These are for you: personal defence wards, two teleport anchors, tied to the land outside town, at locations nobody knows about, and enough attack talismans to fight a Dao Step qi beast, hopefully you will not need them.”

“…”

She stared at the wallet, then gave him a further hug before storing it away in her belt pouch.

“It is a pity I don’t have a storage ring I can give you both,” her father grimaced. “Or any treasures worth using up there.”

“It is not as if this is the first time we have been up there,” she pointed out with a grin.

“It is the first time where the stakes have been like this,” her father sighed, fixing her with a concerned look. “It is impossible for me not to worry. I did not send you to the Pavilion for this.”

“I know,” she grimaced. “We know…”

Her father looked like he wanted to say something more, but instead just gave her a further hug and shoved her off in the direction of the stairwell.

She hurried upstairs, and after a moment’s consideration, took out Ling Yu’s spirit gown and pulled it on, quickly doing her hair up in a formal style and fixing it with some of the hair ornaments. It was not as smart as she had been when she went to the banquet, but she at least did look ‘formal’.

Going back downstairs, she didn’t see her father, so went straight to the front of the house, grabbing an umbrella on the way.

In the courtyard, she found a dozen soldiers standing around looking somewhat bored, with a damp Han Shu standing with them under an umbrella. Her father was chatting quietly to the Captain of the escort.

“Captain Feitan,” she said politely, saluting the captain.

“Here,” Captain Ha Feitan passed her a jade slip, which she skimmed.

It said basically what she had been told it would. That she was to accompany Ha Feitan to Blue Water City, care of the Provincial Governor’s Authority to testify regarding what she had experienced. The wording was quite artful, in a rather disturbing sort of way, in that you could read it as being something quite innocuous and routine… and also a subtly worded arrest warrant. The guards were, on the face of it, a formality but also, she knew, provided in case someone did decide that she was worth trying to grab.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she added politely.

“Not at all,” Ha Feitan sighed. “Your father was just explaining some circumstances. It’s a terrible morning for this kind of thing anyway. Someone up above really likes throwing their weight around I suppose.”

She nodded in agreement, saying nothing, in case he was not ‘in on it’.

“See you later, Father,” she called over, giving him a final salute of farewell.

Her father gave her a cheery wave, though she could see he was still on edge, which made her feel a bit sad as she fell in beside Han Shu. Under escort, they headed back out of the courtyard and across the plaza, the guards moving at a brisk trot, no doubt eager to get their part over with and get out of the rain.

“So, how was your morning?” she asked at last as they made their way out of the plaza.

“I watched two tribulations and then I got summonsed,” Han Shu sighed. “Yours?”

“I ate a pill and then I got summonsed,” she replied pithily.

“Oh?” Han Shu replied. “That’s… oddly coincidental.”

“Bai Jiang and the others visited yesterday, and we went on a trip to Misty Vale to sort out Grandmaster Li’s niece’s garden. It was pleasingly simple. Before that, Bai Jiang made a batch of pills with stuff in the garden and we got to keep some – they were ‘Five Elements Harmonious Gate’ pills.”

“Oh, those are good,” Han Shu murmured. “My grandfather gave me some to use this morning. They were made with the spirit dew from your sister’s bromeliads.”

“Ah, so your mother bought them in the end?” she supposed.

“Yes, Mei Chang will send the rest of the money around today…” Han Shu replied.

“…”

They walked on in silence for a while after that, getting a few odd looks from passers-by, but, disguised by umbrellas and with both of them looking somewhat smarter than usual, she guessed few people recognised them personally.

Arriving at the teleport plaza, Captain Feitan only had to show the slip to the Military Authority guards for them to be waved through without any real preamble, and taken onto the teleport circle.

Nobody gave them any instruction as the circle cycled up, which amused her somewhat, though she supposed that the Captain expected both of them to have done this enough times to not need it.

The usual occlusion swirled around them for a few moments… and then they found themselves standing in the teleport circle in Ling Tao’s estate.

“This is not Blue Water City,” Han Shu remarked a bit dully.

“It isn’t,” she nodded.

“This is the estate of Lady Ling Tao,” Ha Feitan said, waving for them to come off the platform. “If you would both follow me?”

They were escorted through the estate and finally delivered to one of the reception rooms overlooking the gardens, where Captain Feitan left them, telling them someone would be along in due course.

“Uh… this is not quite what I expected,” Han Shu said at last.

“How… much did you have explained?” she asked him, wondering how to go about this.

“Lady Ling came to the estate… Some of it was explained by my grandfather there and after,” Han Shu sighed. “I didn’t expect that they would actually send us to Blue Water City though.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she agreed, going over to the table at the side of the room, intending to make some tea. “I guess Ling Tao feels that this estate is more secure—”

“Ah, sorry for the delay,” a maid bustled into the room. “Would you like some tea? Refreshments?”

“Yes, please,” she replied.

The maid glanced around the room once more then left again, leaving them alone with their thoughts once more for a few minutes until the maid returned with tea and light refreshment and served it out to them.

“So, what now? Do we just wait?” Han Shu asked, staring around the room.

“It seems so,” she agreed, taking out a copy of ‘Survival in the Shadow of the Great Mount’ and rereading it to refresh her memory on the various routes through the High Valleys.

In the end, they waited until almost lunchtime, the peace of the estate only interrupted by the occasional, distant booms of tribulation lightning, which she supposed were related to various local cultivators making breakthroughs, though the focus of them around the most inauspicious hour of morning was a bit odd. A maid at last came and escorted them through the estate to a different hall, which held some twenty people.

“—Arai?”

She was immediately greeted by Mu Shi, who came over looking a bit confused as the maid bowed and left them again.

“Ah, Sister Shi,” she said, greeting her.

“And Brother Shu… does that mean basically every high-ranked hunter is here?” Ren Kalis, a tall, muscular youth with long dark hair, asked, also coming over.

“Well, discounting the Ha and Deng ones,” the sandy-haired Duan Mu, who was sitting on a chair nearby, grumbled. “They have clearly run for their parents.”

“Or were not of a sufficient rank,” Han Shu pointed out.

“True,” Duan Mu agreed. “We are a very elite group here and now.”

“—Is my sister here?” she asked Mu Shi.

“Now that you mention it, she is not, nor is Lin Ling,” Mu Shi mused, frowning slightly.

“Nor Kun Juni,” Duan Mu noted. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Do you have any idea what is going on, anyway?” Ren Kalis asked her.

“You haven’t been told?” she replied, carefully.

“We all got transmissions about an hour ago, from Old Ling, basically ordering everyone above seven stars to report to their nearest teleport formation on pain of a proper bollocking,” Duan Mu said.

“Yeah,” Ren Kalis agreed. “The guards sent us through from West Flower Picking Town without any kind of explanation and just ended up here and were escorted by Captain Fentai to this room to wait.”

“Nobody has said anything since then,” Duan Mu added with a shrug. “Just another person comes every now and then. The last one before you was Kan Beifan, who I swore had actually left the Misty Vale Bureau…”

Duan Mu waved a hand towards an older ‘youth’, who was sitting at the far end of the table, talking quietly to an older woman in Ling clan robes she didn’t recognise.

“We were called here to testify about bandits,” Han Shu said, “then brought here.”

“Oh, is that related to the Imperial Acknowledgement that the Ha clan’s lot have been waving around?” Duan Mu grumbled.

“You know how it is: they don’t like anyone talking about those,” she replied, seeking refuge in procedure.

“True,” Mu Shi agreed.

They chatted away, mostly just listening to the others grumble about nothing being explained, until the doors opened and in came the last group, led by a scholarly-looking man in his forties, wearing a robe that was badly burnt in a few places, though slowly repairing itself. After him came a second man in much more formal robes, who she recognized vaguely as Ling Tao’s older brother. Two other old men came next, who she somewhat placed as the elder and leader of the Beast Cadre for Misty Vale region. The rest of the group was Old Ling, Kun Lianmei, her sister, Juni, Ling and Fan Huangfu.

“Everyone, sorry to have kept you waiting,” the scholar said in a voice that filled the room as he walked to the head of the table. “A few of you may recognise me, but for those who do not? I am Lu Ji, Headmaster of the Blue Gate School.”

Managing not to flinch in surprise, which was more than most of the others managed, she saluted the most important alchemist in the province respectfully.

“I am Ling Jiang,” the other man said, “Civil Administrator for Blue Water Province.”

“Seeing Lord Jiang!” everyone murmured, saluting him as well.

“I am sure you are all wondering why you are here,” Lu Ji said drily. “Especially today, when all right-minded people should be at home honouring your ancestors.”

There was some uneasy shuffling around the room.

“Well, without any preamble… here,” Lu Ji waved a hand and a copy of the same mission she had seen before appeared, hanging in the air before them all.

“You are all gathered here because you are the best Hunters West Flower Picking Region and Misty Vale Region have to offer in the current generation,” Old Ling said, stepping forward. “As such, you will be working together, for the next two weeks, on a task relating to the long-term vitality of our province…”

“And short-term,” Lu Ji muttered.

“Yes, well, let’s be optimistic,” Old Ling chuckled, before continuing. “You will be divided into two teams: one led by Kun Juni here and the other one by Fan Huangfu.”

There were a few groans around the room at that.

“A few of you will also be tackling more specific assignments, which we will discuss in detail with you later…”

“Did you get sorted?” she asked Sana as she sidled over to stand beside her.

“Yes,” Sana replied. “Old Ling took us to the pavilion shortly after you left. We… well, we have enough equipment from the warehouse to start a small influence: talismans, ward stones, formation cores, sealing treasures, herb boxes… two storage rings that don’t need binding, so they work below Nascent Soul.

“Both of them can hold almost two tonnes,” Sana added. “We even have a spatial chest – well, Juni was assigned it – that can store herb crates in bulk.”

She glanced sideways at Juni, who just shrugged slightly.

“We also have a small talisman shop’s worth of talismans, including special ones from Grandmaster Mang and Li,” Lin Ling murmured. “Grandmaster Oudeng also gave your sister a bunch of stuff.”

“He did,” Sana nodded. “We can divvy it up later.”

“They are really pulling out everything for this,” she mused, making a show of listening to the same briefing that they had already been given by Ling Tao earlier.

“Basically, our groups get a target list,” Sana said softly. “We are going up north, towards East Fury Torrents, between Thunder Crest and the East Fury Peaks. Fan Huangfu’s group are going east towards South Grove Pinnacle. Apparently the high valleys there have been neglected by the Teng School in recent years.”

“So the lesser ranked hunters are going to be sent out in squads to strip valleys?” she guessed.

“Yes, though that will not happen for a few days yet,” Juni murmured. “That is why we are here and not in the Pavilion. Probably something will leak, but Lianmei told me the plan is to teleport our groups straight to the Misty Vale forward way station, where we will rendezvous with the Beast Cadre teams and coordinate directly.”

“—Anyone got questions?” Old Ling said, finishing his briefing in the background.

Half the room immediately put their hands up.

“There are more people than needed for the request,” she noted, looking around as Fan Huangfu started to bombard Old Ling with various ‘what if’s.

“The specific wording says ‘at least five’,” Juni said, looking at her.

“So, our team is… us?” Lin Ling said, looking around at the five of them.

“If you are willing, yes,” Juni said, looking at each of them in turn.

“Sure,” Han Shu nodded. “I’d rather work with you than be bossed about by Huangfu.”

“Such a vote of confidence,” Sana giggled.

“…”

Han Shu stared at her sister then shook his head wryly. “I phrased that poorly, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you rather did,” she agreed drily.

“I mean, we don’t usually work together,” he mused, “but we do know each other and that helps, so yes.”

“Of course,” Sana nodded.

“Uhuh,” Lin Ling agreed as well.

“I feel left out,” Duan Mu, who was standing nearby, remarked drily. “Brother Shu, you must teach me your ways.”

Han Shu coughed awkwardly.

“You are welcome as well,” Juni said with an eye roll.

“It’s fine. I work well with Ren, and this looks like it will be a messy one,” Duan Mu sighed. “I didn’t even get to see this auction that caused all the mess either…”

“Okay, okay!” Old Ling clapped his hands, cutting their discourse and the rest of the chatter in the room short. “There will be time for specific questions later. Elder Guanbei will be working with you, Huangfei. Elder Lianmei will be with Juni.”

Lianmei gave them a cheerful wave and beckoned Juni to come over.

“This seems mildly nepotist,” Juni noted, sounding amused, as they made their way around to her.

“The other group has a much less troublesome route,” Lianmei sighed.

“So, what happens now?” Han Shu asked.

“In terms of provisioning, you are basically ready to go, so there is very little point in hanging around here,” Lianmei mused. “Unless you have questions to ask that I cannot answer.”

“If I might say a few final words?” Ling Jiang said, his voice cutting through the hubbub. “I appreciate that this is unorthodox, but please understand that at this point, only those in this room are aware of the specifics of the full reality behind this mission. Time is of the essence here, so anyone who leaks this or contributes to it being compromised will regret it.”

“…”

There were several dull looks from around the room.

“That said,” Ling Jiang went on, “you were selected for this task because you are the best. This mission gives you protection to go about this without interference or being dragged into the political maelstrom that the announcement of this ‘gift’ is going to cause in just over a day and a half. By that point you will be deep in Yin Eclipse and beyond its claws. We have been put in a difficult spot – mostly, it must be said, by the greed of a select few – however, I, the Duke, Lady Ling and everyone else in the province wish you good fortune in this endeavour.”

As far as motivational speeches went, it was not a particularly good one, she had to admit, but that was probably beside the point.

“Are there other teams for the different regions?” Han Shu asked as they watched Huangfei start to ask questions again.

“Yes,” Lianmei nodded. “Though their tasks are notably easier. Once they have completed those, they will be rotated in to join your groups and pick up the slack if there is any.”

“Oh yes…” Lianmei added. “Mu, Shi.”

Duan Mu and Mu Shi, who were standing nearby talking turned to look at them.

“You are with Juni for the first leg,” Lianmei said.

“I thought Brother Shu and Sister Jun here were with her?” Duan Mu said.

“They still have obligations to fulfil here,” Lianmei said.

“…”

She was about to ask what exactly, then recalled that actually they were, in the eyes of anyone official, technically suspended from taking any official requests. This was, she supposed, to continue that subterfuge a bit longer.

“Captain Fantai will be here to escort you back to that,” Lianmai added to her.

Indeed, a minute or so later, Ha Fantai arrived and politely led them back to the room they had been in before, where they found that an early lunch had already been prepared for them… and they were, again, basically left to their own devices.

“You know,” Han Shu said at last. “This is honestly bordering on the mildly comical.”

“Only mildly?” she joked, walking over to the table and pouring herself a cup of tea.

“True,” Han Shu sighed, following her over. “I just… feel like we could be doing something useful?”

“Hmmm, that is true,” she nodded. “However, it is not like we can train, or practice formations or something here… and we will have to do all that anyway when we meet back up with the rest of them—”

“Whenever that is,” Han Shu sighed, taking a lotus leaf wrapped rice roll and starting to nibble on it.

“Quite,” she nodded. “In the meantime, the best thing we can probably do is rest. Fates know, there will be little enough time for that later, especially if the rain outside keeps up.”

“Indeed,” Han Shu agreed, glancing out at the drifting, humid drizzle somewhat sourly.

*knock knock*

She glanced up to find that a brown-haired young woman, of medium build and average looks, dressed in the robes of the Blue Gate School, was opening the door to look inside.

“Jun Arai, Han Shu?” she asked brightly.

“Uh, yes,” she nodded, standing politely.

“—Sorry to keep you both waiting…” the girl said with a bright smile. “It’s been rather hectic around here of late.”

“I am Mo Xiaolu,” the girl continued, walking over to the table and grabbing a rice roll. “An inner disciple of the Blue Gate School who has been tasked with… helping the vice-headmistress sort out her bandit problem.”

“…”

“—Ah, you were expecting this to be some grand inquisition?” Mo Xiaolu asked with an eye roll as she tried to find something to say.

“Uh, the summons was not very specific,” Han Shu replied, a bit lamely after a moment.

“That is rather typical, I am afraid,” the girl conceded, before helping herself to another roll, as she had already finished the first one. “Mmm… delicious,” she sighed. “It can be easy to forget what real food tastes like sometimes.”

“So… uh, Disciple Mo, how can we help?” she asked, because she had, genuinely, thought that this was just a formality pending Lianmei or someone else returning and getting her.

“Oh, once I’ve had some food, we will go look at it. You were the hunter who found it right?”

“The ruins?” she asked.

“Uhuh,” Mo Xiaolu nodded, “We, that is my fellow disciples and I, have been helping put your scans back together, for the vice-headmistress and Headmaster Lu. It is a most interesting challenge, quite unlike what I normally end up doing.”

“Oh…” she nodded. “You want me to come look at it?”

“…”

“I suppose so,” Mo Xiaolu agreed, pouring herself some wine. “However, what we need from you now, is the additional survey data you took in the Red Pit. Apparently you have scans from where some bodies were found?”

“I do…” she confirmed, taking out her jade scrip.

“Excellent,” Mo Xiaolu smiled broadly.

“Shall I copy the relevant data over?” she added.

“That will be unnecessary. Once we have eaten, you can come to the great hall and we can link your scrip directly to the locus being used as the core of the reconstruction,” Mo Xiaolu said. “Did you take scans in the ginseng valley as well?”

“Ah… a few,” she confirmed, checking quickly and finding to her relief that she had, at various locations of interest to Elder Li. “I was investigating the disappearance of Elder Li…”

“Oh… Senior Brother Li,” Mo Xiaolu sighed. “I heard he was caught up in this. I understand he survived, somehow…”

-So he was a disciple of the Blue Gate School…

“Yes… apparently so,” she said, a bit vaguely, not sure how much Mo Xiaolu might actually know.

“—So, what will I do?” Han Shu asked, after passing Mo Xiaolu a cup of wine, which she gratefully accepted.

“You spoke to the relatives of the deceased?” Mo Xiaolu asked him.

“I… did,” Han Shu confirmed. “Not all of them, but those in the Blue River and Seng District within West Flower Picking Town.”

“Excellent. Start by putting down your recollections, of all those you met when you went around the town, the people you talked to about it, assuming it wasn’t chucking it down onto a jade scrip… Ahh, here,”—Mo Xiaolu passed Han Shu a blue-grey jade cube inscribed with twisting strange patterns—“use this one. It will work with the locus.”

“It… was raining,” Han Shu grimaced.

“Ah… figures,” Mo Xiaolu sighed. “Well, put it there anyway. We will see what we can do; at this point every shred of evidence is helpful.”

“Of course,” Han Shu nodded, taking the cube.

“You can do it after lunch though,” Mo Xiaolu chuckled. “There is no hurry. We’ll be at this for the rest of the day.”

“…”

~ Ha Kai – West Flower Picking Town, Cherry Wine Pagoda ~

Sitting on the balcony, overlooking the inner courtyard of the Cherry Wine Pagoda Teahouse in the Ha district of West Flower Picking Town, very much not drinking its signature drink, Old Kai looked out at the rain-drenched vista of the rooftops, in the direction of the Hunter Pavilion, and sighed softly. If he closed his eyes, a part of him could still see those first buildings going up, cultivators working busily to convert several disparate villages and farmland estates into the bustling economic hub it had now become. That had been almost 30,000 years ago. Some things had changed a lot since then – the street layout and the width of the river, for example – but some things had not.

“—Scholar Kai….?”

“—Scholar Kai, do you want more wine?”

He blinked, realising the serving girl had spoken to him twice, trying to get his attention, and coughed lightly.

“Special Peach Wine,” he answered politely. “And some of the fried fruit slices, they are delicious.”

“Of course,” the young woman murmured, bowing politely. “Anything else?”

“…”

“Two extra cups,” he replied, giving her a smile.

The young woman nodded and retreated respectfully to go speak to another patron, leaving him to his own thoughts again.

The ‘teahouse’ was not full. It never was, which was unsurprising, given its non-central location and kind of old-time décor.

Mostly it was frequented by a collection of local old-timers, a few people from the Ha clan who knew it was a bit more than it seemed, and the occasional group of lost youngsters, looking for somewhere different to drink.

That last group mostly got served the cherry wine, because the reclusive ‘elder’ managing it, Ha Xiaolian, hated ‘juniors’, who in her eyes was anyone under the age of a thousand. Very few people had the stomach for more than a few cups of the wine either, which was very much an ‘acquired taste’. They either left complaining, or they got so drunk they were carried out and dumped in the side ally.

The only exception to that, really, was the employees, who were largely all young women, orphans, from around the town, from the extended Ha clan, who had, for various reasons, fallen on hard times. They were, in part, why he was here, beyond his regular check in with Ha Xiaolian to top up its accounts if required, and deal with any problems she couldn’t.

The other reason, reasons… he was pleased to see, had just entered the teahouse and were looking around with interest.

Ling Tao was dressed, as always, like she was the most beautiful woman in any given situation, and quite happy to make sure everyone else knew it… It made her easy company, although, also, dangerous beyond her realm, he reflected wryly, given she was also a talented exponent of the Ling clan’s more esoteric arts. Her elegant companion, Kun Liang, was also dressed in a stunning gown, embroidered with a striking golden eagle on shades of swirling blue and grey, and was, if anything, even more of a beauty, though, as always, she tended to prefer elegant understatement.

A maid hurried over, bowing respectfully, saying something to them. He could probably have heard what it was, but that would be disrespectful, so instead he just waved politely when Kun Liang glanced at the upper story and pointed to where he was sitting.

He was fairly sure he knew what they also wanted to talk about, in any case, so he just sipped his wine and waited for them to make their way up.

“…”

“Sorry I am late… Senior Kai…” Ling Tao murmured, once the pair finally arrived at his table.

“Likewise,” Kun Liang agreed, a bit more curtly, though that was her manner, before adding, “You look well, old scholar, Confucianism suits you.”

“Thank you, fairy ladies,” he replied with a grin, gesturing to the seats opposite him. “Please, sit, have some wine. It is not cherry.”

Both nodded and sat elegantly opposite him, rolling their eyes at his comment as he poured them some wine and passed them each a cup.

“I… bring a message from a mutual acquaintance,” Ling Tao said, passing him a jade slip carved with… motifs of a squirrel.

-Oh fates go get bugged by the mystic monkey, he sighed, his mood souring a hint as he recognised the message talisman, which was in a style Lu Xiao favoured, before adding, reflectively, though I suppose they might like that, in this era.

Touching Lu Xiao’s talisman, there was a faint chime in his mind—

“You are a hard person to reach, Ha Kai,” Lu Xiao’s dulcet voice echoed in his head.

“I could say the same about you,” he pointed out. “I have not seen you in… well, over a century?”

“Why, that was practically yesterday,” Lu Xiao giggled, “Though I suppose the aftermath of the Blood Eclipse was not exactly a social time.”

“It was not, at that,” he agreed. “And we only talked like this,” he reminded her politely.

“I suppose that is true,” Lu Xiao conceded.

Talking to her, it was disarmingly easy to forget that she was possibly the second or third scariest old expert he knew, and he felt somewhat qualified to make a list like that, because the depths of ‘Lady Lu Xiao’ were not what most in this generation thought they were.

“I have something for you,” Lu Xiao continued, “or more exactly, your old man. Is he around? He also doesn’t answer his talismans; presumably this fairy is not pretty enough to arouse his interest.”

“My… father, is in his cultivation century still. He can be reached though,” he replied, feeling a twinge of embarrassment. “Although he gets grumpy if he is bothered for…”

“Ling Tao will show you. I think you will find it… ‘interesting’. Assuming you don’t already know the dangerous waters your descendants are swimming in,” Lu Xiao added.

-Oh dear, he sighed to himself. That’s not at all ominous.

Anything Lu Xiao considered ‘interesting’ was either something totally banal, or bowel-clenching problematic. Sometimes both at once.

The immediate topic that sprung to mind in that regard was the mess with the bandits, which had ‘just’ the right mix of the ‘inane’ and ‘Oh Grandfather of Heaven, Why?’, to have caught her eye in some way.

The wider clan were up to their necks in it as well, near as he had been able to work out.

“I can be reached by this talisman,” Lu Xiao added. “A pleasure as always, ‘Old’ Kai.”

“Likewise, ‘Fairy’ Xiao,” he replied drily, before she broke the connection.

“So, you have something to show me?” he said, looking from one to the other.

“Well, I do. Liang is not here because of that,” Ling Tao replied, passing a second jade slip over to him.

He swept his soul sense through it and nearly spat out his wine.

“The… Tai clan ruins?” he said after some effort spent not coughing.

-Someone actually found that old place again?

Skimming the details on the slate, he saw that she was right… and that somewhat serendipitously, much as he just guessed, her task actually intersected with his… and in far more ways than he…

He stared at the ‘hall’, and then laterally at the seven bodies, with a conspicuous gap for an ‘eighth’, and the associated ‘information’ regarding them.

“…”

His gaze drifted out to look at the rain while he replayed his memories of the banquet quickly, finding exactly what he expected, that the ‘people’ shown had been walking around and talking, feted as having ‘uncovered’ the bandits.

-So, the bandits found that ruin? No wonder they were disappearing people, he sighed, considering the entry requirements to take people into the temple, and also the list of ‘dead’, including several from the Ha clan who fit the criteria – young, female, virginal, innocent…

“I see why you came to me now,” he said at last, putting his cup of wine down and affixing Ling Tao with a pensive look as he wondered just how much she knew beyond what was on the tablet, and what Lu Xiao might have told her.

-Lu Xiao certainly knows that place. She has been there, back when it was a real town, he mused.

“So… you know it?” Ling Tao asked him, her tone cagy.

-Presumably Lu Ji, or maybe Lu Xiao, didn’t tell her much, he mused.

Ling Tao and Kun Liang certainly knew that he was old. Every Dao Ascendant was ‘Old’, unless they were a glorified ornament raised by a great power for bragging rights, and even those hollow pots still had to get there via sideways means. However, he doubted that either knew that he was quite as ‘old’ as he was.

In the eyes of most, he was either Old Scholar Kai, Grandmaster Kai… or simply Old Kai. If it really got to a question of ‘influence’, he was, taking a leaf out of Lu Xiao’s playbook, Ha Tai Kai, a wandering elder of the Ha clan, of which there were several, who was from the same Era as Lu Fu Tao.

If he told either of the ‘young’ women before him that he had seen the actual aeonspan turn, reordering its laws, or, if he really wanted to give himself a headache, recall a point when the suppression zone of the mountains was basically east to west, rather than north to south, like it currently was, he was pretty sure that both of them would spit out their wine and likely think him drunk or messing with them.

“I do,” he confirmed, realising that they were both looking at him and that he had actually drifted away in his own thoughts, staring at Ling Tao. “It’s been abandoned for a very long time. The Red Pit is a useful feature in that regard. It stops people poking… Or should have…”

“Yes, well, it’s not now,” Ling Tao sighed. “These bandits… well I am sure you have seen the chaos already, so I don’t need to go into that.”

“It is rather wide-reaching,” he agreed, reframing his earlier thoughts on the sabotage of the auction with this new information. “Rather serendipitously, it seems we are actually interested in the same set of problems in any case.”

“We are?” Ling Tao frowned.

“I was asked to look into these bandits by Xiaolian. Several of those she looked out for… were among the deceased.”

“Oh…”

Ling Tao glanced down at the young woman ordering several serving girls about, down below.

Ha Shi Xiaolian, the ‘proprietor’ of the Cherry Wine Pagoda, was technically his disciple, he supposed, having taught her extensively back before West Flower Picking Town was ever founded. She was a Grand Elder of the Ha clan in her own right, though she held no real power in an official capacity as far as the wider clan was concerned.

Unbidden, she glanced up at him frowned then went back to directing the serving girl in whatever it was she was doing.

-I should actually call her up here, to save me explaining things twice, he mused.

She was certainly talented, but preferred to just live at her own pace, and so was quite happy to be the person who ensured that the Ha family, his nominal descendants, through his younger sister, kept rolling along nicely and that they didn’t succumb to any stupid disasters, like the one that the Ha clan was trying to perpetuate right in front of his slightly disbelieving eyes. Her own grandson, Ha Shimo, the first son and youngest child of her favourite daughter, had also perished to the bandits, though he was fairly sure that Ha Cao, who had orchestrated that little villainy, didn’t know who they had annoyed… yet.

“…”

“Should we be concerned?” Ling Tao asked carefully, stirring him from his pondering.

“Do you mind if Xiaolian joins us?” he asked, before answering that. “This is somewhat relevant to what she has asked of me as well.”

“If she…?” Ling Tao blinked, clearly caught out by the sudden change in topic. “Okay, I suppose she can.”

“Can you ask Ha Xiaolian to come up and join us?” he said to a passing servant girl.

“Of course,” the girl murmured.

“So… should we be?” Ling Tao asked him while they waited.

“—What do you need?” Ha Shi Xiaolian appeared before he could answer Ling Tao.

“We are discussing the bandits that you wanted me to look into,” he explained, waving for her to take a seat. “I thought you should be party to the conversation about the ruin itself.”

“Oh… thank you,” Ha Xiaolian murmured, sitting down in a chair on his side of the table.

“So, concerned?” he mused returning to the topic in hand. “In what way?”

“Is there… anything left of its original makers?” she asked.

That was a very diplomatic way of asking: ‘Will some angry ancestor from the Heavenly Tai come back here? Asking why his or her sworn sibling’s treasure weapon or personal scripture was now in the hands of some upstarts power’s pimple-nosed brat, rather than lying respectfully away in its grave?’

“…”

“It is not…” He was about to say it was not an ancestral ground, but in regards to the temple and the sink hole… that was not a simple denial.

“In terms of the ancient temple complex, it is fairly self-selecting,” he said at last, pouring them all another round of wine.

There was no reason to hide it from Kun Liang in his eyes, anyway, or Ha Shi Xiaolian. Neither were the sort to go looking for trouble in the mountains anyway.

As far as odd parts of the complex went, the ‘Sanctuary of the Red Maiden’ was almost as old at the mountains themselves. It was a strange place, with challenging requirements to enter, that even the Tai clan, when they were at the height of their power, treated with respect, much as the Queen Mother’s shrine in Blue Water City was now.

“If you enter and do not meet the qualifications – namely, be a young, pure virgin or an initiate of the cult who worshiped there long ago – you will not enjoy the experience. In that regard it is much like the Turquoise Sanctuary in Blue Water City.”

“I did notice the similarities,” Ling Tao agreed, nodding.

“That said, I cannot tell you whose sanctuary it is, either,” he continued. “Except that their power is old, and very real.”

“Oh?” Kun Liang asked.

“The cult that controlled that place, back in those ancient days, could teach the old Yin clans, who guard the secrets of Physical Cultivation, a thing or three about secrets,” he said. “The person it honours was originally addressed by them only as ‘Mingzhu Shuchun’—”

“Pure Pearl of Beauty?” Ling Tao frowned. “Isn’t that a colloquial term for a ‘virgin beauty’?”

“It was, yes,” he nodded. “It is a transliteration from ancient wind script. The literal translation is ‘She Who is Totally Pure’, or ‘She of Utmost Purity’.”

“Does she have some relation to the Queen Mother of the East?” Kun Liang asked, while Ha Xiaolian just listened in silence.

“Some have thought that,” he agreed, pouring them all another round of wine. “When it was ‘re-discovered, by explorers during the interregnum between the Shan and Dun dynasties, they certainly thought so, and speculated that a great array was sealing Yin Eclipse, calling upon the four Queen Mothers and the Grandfather of Heaven.”

On the face of it, he would have suspected that Lu Xiao was just doing his father a favour, letting him know that the old place had resurfaced, but the bodies in that room…

He closed his eyes for a moment while Ling Tao and Kun Liang took in what he had just said, and focused more carefully on that scene, taking care not to get caught in the mire of aberrant feng shui, still extant even within the trapped image. The disciples were all passingly familiar to him, having seen them at Dongfei’s dinner and, in the case of two, around town earlier today. Apart from their inner injuries there had been nothing outstanding about them that he had noticed…

-Except they are in that place, with strange compasses that are associated with fate somehow…

Focusing on the talismans as closely as he dared, he found that they were basically just Fate Shifting talismans, though with a few quirks. The image had done an excellent job recording them, but the suppression of the mountains themselves was basically limiting him from seeing anything at all about their actual workings.

-Ah, Yin Eclipse, there are days I really dislike you, he reflected, withdrawing his scrutiny.

“Consider this drawn to our attention,” he said, opening them again and glancing at Ha Shi Xiaolian. “Messing with that shrine… has always led to unpredictable problems. You have seen the carvings inside?”

“I have,” Ling Tao shuddered. “Are they…?”

“The source of the blood ling trees?” he mused. “Perhaps. I cannot help you there. I have never set foot in it and this is the first time I have ever set eyes on the interior. When that place was… Tai Shan, only those who were anointed into the cult were allowed into the sanctuary. Anyone who violated that?”

He ran a finger across his throat.

“Dead, without exception, torn limb from limb by the shrine maidens, their remains displayed on an altar until they rotted, for the crime of sullying the purity of that place.”

“So… it is not an old ancestral ground,” Ling Tao asked, taking that in her stride. “Our concern was that these bandits were doing something dangerous, even beyond what they have perpetrated with the blood ling contamination.”

“No, it is not, not in the sense you mean,” he affirmed. “Though as to whatever they were doing being dangerous…

“Hmmm…” he considered the ruins, the recreated images and the other bits pensively.

The picture being built by the evidence was… problematic, frankly, on a number of levels. Firstly, it was clear enough to him, looking at all the evidence they presented, that some element of the Ha clan was involved in this, even more than he had anticipated. The mental divinations he had been doing since he started looking at the images also told him that there was no obfuscation within the evidence, so neither were hiding anything from him in that regard either.

That said… the more he looked at it, the more he got the distinct impression that there was a critical piece of the puzzle missing, hanging tantalizingly out of reach in what was on display, because despite being undeniably effective… the outcomes were… contradictory.

“Can I keep this?” he asked, holding up the slip.

“Yes,” Ling Tao nodded.

“If I learn more, I will let you know,” he added, noting they had made no mention of the Ha clan’s involvement, perhaps so as not to offend either him or Xiaolian.

“So, what else can I do for both of you fine young ladies?” he asked, putting the slip away in his belt pouch.

-I will have to ask father about that it seems, he mused.

“Well, the second problem is tangentially related to the first,” Kun Liang murmured, glancing at Ha Shi Xiaolian now, who just raised an eyebrow as she continued to sip her own wine.

Ling Tao nodded and pushed a scroll over to him.

He opened it, skimmed it, noted that it was certainly going to make a few schemers spit blood when they learned about it in due course and closed it again.

“What is it?” Ha Xiaolian’s voice echoed in his head.

“Can I show this to Xiaolian?” he asked.

Ling Tao nodded.

“What is the catch?” he asked, passing the scroll over to Xiaolian, knowing full well that there would be a sting in the tail.

The question is, why are Ling Tao and Kun Liang sitting here like earnest little disciples telling me this?

Xiaolian, who was skimming the scroll, whistled softly under her breath and then put it down.

“—If it is just this, the Ling clan could supply that pill, as possibly could the Blue Gate School?” he added, looking at them in turn.

-Lu Xiao could make that yesterday, assuming she doesn’t just have a supreme quality version lying around, he mused. Ling Baisheng could as well… not to mention someone as capable as Lu Ji. Likely even Ling Tao here. So it can’t be the pill itself…

Considering the options and what he knew from the Ha clan, that left a very small list of possibilities. If he considered the fiasco with the bandits and the fact that various factions in the Ha clan had been manipulating matters to try and take Herb Hunters affiliated with various regional pavilions out of action in recent weeks…

“…”

“The mission is a cover,” he postulated drily, focusing on Ling Tao again.

“A cover?” Xiaolian blinked, then stared at the scroll again with a deeper frown.

“Insurance, so the… regional pavilions can work to balance the mess that the auction has made of the provincial herb stores. Interference in this mission and anyone taking part in it will be seen as a personal effort to attack the prestige of Shan Lai and Empress Sheng Diaomei has a certain reputation when it comes to things that obstruct the progress of her dear son, Tian Feihuang.”

“Ah,” Xiaolian nodded.

“You see it clearly,” Ling Tao sighed, sitting back and looking appropriately, and genuinely vexed, then taking out a second slip and pushing it over. “There is also this…”

He took that and read it…

The details on it were rather speculative, involving the usual ‘rumours’ that leaked out of the Imperial Court, but, putting everything together, he finally understood why Kun Liang was also sitting here, smiling coolly.

-That is the problem with being a ‘reclusive ancestor’, he reflected, absently stroking his beard, which was one of the perks of being ‘Confucian’, frankly, as he read it again.

-Your descendants sometimes think you have taken the eye off the matter at hand – which I might indeed have… – and decided to ‘innovate’, he sighed to himself.

“Do you know anything about this?” he asked Xiaolian, passing her that scroll.

Xiaolian took it and read the contents more carefully with a small frown.

“This certainly casts a disquieting light on the difficulties the young Hunter Jun Arai faced in her investigation,” she remarked, putting the scroll aside.

“It does indeed,” Ling Tao agreed drily.

The wider gambit of the Ha clan in the province was… well, it was understandable, he supposed. The Blood Eclipse had provided an opportunity to solidify ‘local power’, and the Imperial Court had worked hard ever since to promote circumstances where the local powers had the freedom to undermine the Hunter Bureau’s regional power structure ever since.

That initiative, and the Ha and Deng clans’ roles in it, had expanded rapidly after the Three Schools’ Conflict, but it was not a strategy that any local clan could shoulder for long. You only had to look at the Lin clan’s sorry fate in a vaguely objective way to foresee that. The problem was, that the Deng and his own clan… knew they had powerful old ancestors.

The problem was, that a little knowledge was dangerous.

Fortunately, the Ling clan, who basically controlled the province, even if young Cao Leyang was the ‘Duke’ and Qiao Honghui fancied himself a grand strategist, knew enough about the nuance of what was going on, and had deep enough roots to keep it all simmering stably. Up until today, he had been content to just let them get on with it.

Ling Tao in particular had been keeping both the Ha and the Kun clans happily balanced in mild chaos for half a century, just through appointing one of his own tenth generation descendants as regional governor in West Flower Picking and making sure the Ling clan showed favour to the daughter of the Kun clan’s lord, who had deep ties of friendship to experts on the Imperial Continent, rather than the daughter of the Supreme Elder and his links to the Northern Tang continent.

“As to the catch,” Ling Tao remarked, “the burden of the ‘gift’ will exclude the civil authorities, the common folk and the sects…”

“…”

“Hah!” he had to laugh at that, because otherwise he would probably hit his head on the table.

“Oh…” Ha Xiaolian sounded much less amused than he did, he noted.

As a solution, it was ‘pure’ Azure Astral Authority: dividing the various opponents, elevating the common folk, who the Imperial Court didn’t much care for over here anyway, and pushing the burden onto the clans, who were slowly pivoting towards the Imperial Court anyway. On the surface it looked like a ‘mistake’ by Shan Lai, a rare misstep by Sheng Di Tiankong and his advisors… But, just like divinations, sometimes it paid to just keep watching while the pieces spun.

“They are forcing them to pick a side,” he mused.

“They are,” Ling Tao nodded. “I trust you will both be discreet with that. It will not be announced for another day and a half.”

“…”

-The Ha clan doesn’t know, he sighed, staring again at the information there.

“This may be a problem,” Ha Xiaolian murmured to him.

“…”

“I must admit, on a day like today, I find my decision to be a Confucian old fellow a bit trying,” he murmured, pouring each of them some more wine.

“I can imagine,” Kun Liang sighed, accepting her cup. “How bad is it?”

He glanced at Ha Xiaolian rather than reply himself.

“For the Ha clan? Bad, but not as bad as they deserve, probably, in the context of this,” she said softly, her expression complex.

He could only nod at her assessment, as someone who was basically a silent witness to much of the local goings-on in the clan. The optics of it were undeniably bad. When you put it all together – the bandits, the ill-judged campaign against the regional pavilion, the ruins, the auction, the blood ling contamination and factored in the levy and the foreknowledge of that? – it would look like the Ha clan had been the Imperial Court’s tool in all of this.

Ling Tao telling him this basically demonstrated that the Ling clan knew ‘everything’ the wider Ha clan had set up, and the mission was their way of saying ‘enough is enough’.

“Hah…” Ling Tao nodded in agreement.

“A toast?” he murmured, holding up his cup, and reflecting on the various reasons why he was here, having to be a bit more involved for once.

“Of course,” Ling Tao nodded, holding up her own cup.

“To idiot descendants, may they choke on their aspirations,” he murmured, touching his cup to theirs and then downing the wine in a shot.

“May they choke,” Kun Liang agreed with an eye roll, before downing her own cup.

“Indeed, may they choke,” Ha Shi Xiaolian agreed, more sourly.

~ Lin Ling – Ling Tao's Estate, Near Blue Water City ~

Watching the slow bustle around the teleport platform in the Ling Estate, Lin Ling found she had to focus quite hard to avoid tapping her foot on the wet paving. There was a nervous energy to everything, for the Hunters at least, that was, in the current weather, worryingly infectious. In a funny way, she found she had worked most of that out of herself when they were sorting matters out in the Jun Estate; however, many of the others had been pulled here straight from homes or other tasks, and not had the better part of half a day to let the reality of the next month settle in.

“It’s just gonna keep raining, huh?” Mu Shi grumbled, coming to stand beside her.

“Sorry you’re not going with Ren,” she said companionably.

“Hah… it’s fine,” Mu Shi shook her head, scattering water-drops off the brim of the grass hat she now wore. “We don’t always work together, you know.”

“It seems we are getting some helpers anyway,” Sana added, also joining both of them in watching the various crates of equipment, supplies for the way station and a lot of herb crates and the like, be stacked up on the teleport platform by several disciples from the Blue Gate School.

“The disciples?” Mu Shi frowned, glancing at the three blue-robed youths working on talismans nearby.

“No, them,” Sana pointed to half a dozen youths dressed in nondescript clothes and light leather armour, emblazoned with a blue dragon, each armed with a pair of short blades and carrying a bow and quiver – who she saw were now walking into the courtyard.

“A Military Authority Platoon,” she murmured, taking in their gear. “Lord Jiang was not exaggerating.”

“No, he was not, it seems,” Mu Shi agreed, staring up at the grey, cloudy sky, at the faint haze of early afternoon sun, just visible through the rain. “Though I doubt they are coming with us. Probably they are going to reinforce the Beast Cadre’s base camp, on the grounds that you cannot be too paranoid. There will be a lot of herbs moving through it soon, and once word gets out there will be a lot of worried people.”

A part of her wanted to say that the mission they had should provide sufficient cover… but she did know where Mu Shi was coming from. It was possible for ‘accidents’ to happen, especially up in the mountains, where the only quick route in and out was teleportation. Recent events had, rather undeniably, shown that there were ‘malicious groups’ – she hesitated to call them ‘bandits’, any more – willing to make big statements as well.

“You would like to think that this mission and the bigger picture would at least rein in people,” Sana murmured with a grimace.

“I guess they are concerned about more fallout from what happened near Jade Willow,” she mused.

“Is your sister still tied up with that?” Mu Shi asked Sana. “I thought the Ha clan had sorted that out. They won’t shut up about it in the teahouses back home.”

“She is, and Han Shu,” Sana sighed, putting on a very creditable ‘how frustrating’, expression. “It seems that the local bureaucracy has made that stick, at least for a little while.”

“How is Han Shu tied up in it?” Mu Shi mused. “Or do they want to speak to him about what happened in Green Vale Village?”

“Oh, there was that,” Sana nodded. “I had almost forgotten. Everything has started to bleed into each other in the last week.”

“—Ladies, are you going to help, or are you going to stand there looking pretty?”

She turned to find Fan Huangfei and Mu Feijin had come out of the hall behind them, carrying a crate of formation cores between them.

“Of course, Cousin,” Mu Shi said with an eye roll, addressing Mu Feijin.

“Leave them,” a third youth, who had come in later, from Misty Moon Town, grunted. “Some of them are just here because we are short-handed.”

“Now, Brother Jin, that is uncharitable,” Fan Huangfei sighed, though his gaze did linger on her a touch too long. “They took the same exams you and I did…”

-Rich, coming from you, she sighed, though didn’t say that out loud.

Fan Huangfei was… difficult to work with, especially if he thought you were disrespecting him. He was also from the Fan clan, who had deep roots within the Hunter Bureau’s hierarchy.

“Did they, though?” the youth, Jin – who she supposed was Jin Mofan, one of Misty Moon Town’s nine star ranked hunters – muttered, pushing past all of them. “Thankfully, Leader Feng is sending back experts from the east, or so I heard—”

“—TELEPORTING IN ONE MINUTE, CLEAR PLATFORM!”

An older man in a Ling clan robe shouted, loud enough to cut through the rain, warning anyone standing near the edge of it to get moving elsewhere.

“Gah… this load needs to be on there,” Mu Feijin grunted, pushing Fan Huangfei forward and waving at the Jin Mofan to follow. “As do we…”

She watched the three of them hurry off, Jin Mofan still grumbling about people being promoted by sideways means, feeling a bit aggrieved.

Mu Shi, who had said nothing, just sighed softly.

Sana shook her head and mimed tossing someone far away, in the same gesture that Baisheng had used on Huang Fuan.

“Hah—!” she had to put her hand over her mouth to stop herself laughing.

Mu Shi just looked at her oddly.

“A youth from the Huang clan got chucked in the harbour in Blue Water City for annoying an old expert,” Sana said with an eye roll.

“Ah…” Mu Shi nodded.

“From the alchemy courtyard in the Blue Gate School,” she added with a grin.

“Oh…”

Mu Shi gave them funny looks, but before she could say anything, the rain in the courtyard shook and the teleport platform seemed to flex slightly, reflecting another place, a clearing with a stone plaza and a cliff behind, in a manner rather like a distorted scene in a pool of water. When it settled back to how it had been the platform was empty and the supplies and half a dozen people on it, Fan Huangfei and the others included, were gone.

“I am suddenly quite glad I am on your side of this excursion,” Mu Shi sighed.

“Yeah,” she agreed with a shudder. “Imagine a week being ordered around by Fan Huangfei.. it would be the worst. I’d almost rather go back and teach classes with that Huang bastard.”

“Hey, hey,” Duan Mu called over as he appeared, burdened down under a pile of five metre lengths of freshly cut ‘unattributed bamboo’. “Elder Lianmei said we are going next.”

“Is there more stuff to bring?” she asked him.

“Just stuff like this that can’t go in storage rings,” Duan Mu said.

“INCOMING TELEPORTATION!” the old man watching the circle called out behind them.

The platform twisted again, almost in the reverse of what she had just seen a moment before, and Elder Guanbei, along with two helpers from the Ling estate appeared and hurried off the platform to go talk to the leader of the group of Military Authority guards.

“Well, now that we have looked pretty and fulfilled the expectations of others,” Sana grinned, “let us give you a hand with that wood…”

“…”

“…”

Duan Mu stared at Sana for a second, then coughed and nodded as she took the front half of the bamboo bundle. Mu Shi just sighed and gave her a nudge in the back to get her moving in the direction Duan Mu had come from.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she giggled, moving so Mu Shi could get past, then starting off after her.

Duan Mu sighed and shook his head ruefully, moving off with Sana.

Going into the storeroom, she followed the directions and was handed a crate of blank talismans, warned not to put them in a storage device, which made her roll her eyes because every idiot knew that, and sent back outside.

“Talismans?” the group loading the teleport asked her as she carried it over.

“Blank ones,” she confirmed.

“Put them on the left,” the old man overseeing the formation said, pointing to an unoccupied spot.

Sighing, she put the crate where instructed and headed back without comment.

The process of loading up the teleport for their hop took about ten minutes in the end. Without rain it would have taken less, she supposed, but that was just how it was. Once everything was on, she, Mu Shi, Duan Mu and Sana all walked to the left side of the formation and stood, as instructed, well clear of the items themselves.

“Teleport in five!” the old man called over to them. “Got everything you need?”

“We have,” Sana called back. “Ready to go.”

“Ready to go indeed,” she agreed under her breath, watching as the space around the teleport started to twist.

To the side, Duan Mu was turning a good luck charm with his family crest over in his hands, reminding her that he was someone who didn’t like distant teleports.

“OUTGOING TELEPORTATION!” the old man hollered.

The twisting occlusion made the world swim before her eyes. The rain, oddly, still fell vertically, untouched by the spatial disturbance as the courtyard of Ling Tao’s estate bled into spirit wood buildings and the dark blue-grey rocks of their destination.

The humidity shifted, almost between one breath and the next, humid wet heat drenching her as their surroundings stabilized to reveal the somewhat familiar surroundings of one of the Beast Cadre’s main forward bases, basically in the jaws of the inner valleys, the ‘Gateway Station’, Misty Jasmine Inn.

Sound returned a second later, as the hiss of wind in the gorge and the sound of rain splashing off everything became all consuming. Turning, she spotted a watcher wearing a light robe, no doubt minding the teleportation circle for incoming traffic wave at them cheerfully.

Juni, who had been sorting through some crates in the shelter of an umbrella in the cleared area around the teleportation also turned and waved at them a moment later.

She turned, catching movement out of the corner of her eye and found it was just a beast hunter, who she vaguely recognised from ‘around the pavilion’, who had hopped onto the platform, flashing them a cheery grin from under his broad grass hat.

“—Welcome to our damp green hell!” he laughed, grabbing a bundle.