…Power acquired at birth is as much a curse as a blessing, so the sages say. Nowhere is this seen better than in the behaviour of the scions of most Noble and Heavenly Clans when they venture out into the world. Their path, to their ears accompanied by trumpets and salutations, is to the eyes of the common man and woman a trail of mayhem, wrought by their unshakable determination that they, and only they, are the masters of any place in which they happen to find themselves.

Excerpt from – ‘Morality and Birthright’

~Anonymous Scholar.

~ Huang JiLao – Golden Dragon Teahouse Garden, Blue Water City ~

Sitting on the edge of a handy table in the pagoda, in the heart of the gardens in the Golden Dragon Teahouse, Huang JiLao stared at the slab holding the metre-wide carving of the red and blue taiji with the inverted colours. Sighing softly, he stood up and walked over to it, watching the edges as best he could, trying not to focus on it too much… finally stopping and putting his palm tentatively against it.

“…”

-As expected, he sighed.

No matter what he tried, it didn’t change as it had that moment when Jing looked at it on the opening night of the auction.

Closing his eyes, he recalled that moment, the strange way the alignments had shifted when he looked at it.

In his mind’s eye, the colours fell back into the rock as if they never were, the white vanishing into the gaps between red and blue, the middle of the taiji seeming to recede into the stone as it lost its colour, the lines becoming a white squirrel with two tails that stood in the middle of the circle, the ‘eyes’ of Yin and Yang, red and blue orbs respectively, cupped in its paws. All around it, other lines twisted, becoming something between a strange zodiac and the phases of the moon, while below the squirrel itself, words were carved, delicately.

‘If you go chasing squirrels and you know where to fall through the shadows on the path where the eye becomes the wall, just remember what—’

He opened his eyes, and the taiji was unmoved, inverted red and blue as it had been, the grain of the rock so fine against his skin that it almost felt like silk as he traced one of the lines in his memory.

Lian Jing had seen something.

She had not spoken about it, but he knew her well enough to tell when something was bothering her, and something had been bothering her ever since she touched this object.

-Lingsheng put her hand on Jing’s and said something… he mused, imagining again where the squirrel had been.

The only other variable was Lingsheng…

Unbidden, he looked around, but she was not there.

“Hah…” he shook his head wryly.

Except for two very bored guards, minding the spirit trees in the courtyard, there was nobody else in the pagoda.

With another sigh, he stepped back and sat down on the table again…

-What do those words mean, ‘if you go chasing squirrels… and you know where to fall’?

The verse was incomplete, that much was clear. In his mind’s eye, whoever had extracted the slab had not realised there was this other image there in the first instance, so the last line was lost in all likelihood.

-What did you see, that I did not? he wondered, feeling… not aggrieved, but… worried.

He had first met Lian Jing when they were young, when she was six or seven and he nine. Back then they had become friends largely because he was not a prince and she didn’t like being a princess. Later, her mother had taken her away, so they had largely lost contact until both were teenagers, meeting again as students of Dun Jian, though only Lian Jing was really his ‘official’ student in that regard. He had been ‘taught’ because Dun Jian wanted to curry favour with the Huang clan and the young empress was his cousin – and a not-that-distant one at that.

In any case, her manner now was bothering him, because, ever since they re-connected, she had been… well, the dislike of being a ‘princess’ had faded away, and been replaced by a cold, aloof, slightly scholarly mask of a princess who did her ‘bit’. She grumbled and she looked down on people, and she had a short temper, but in terms of the ‘role’ she played she was always impeccable. It had allowed her to rise from a position of outright inferiority within the court to someone of actual status among the lesser ranks of princes and princesses.

Until this last week…

-Ever since that bastard Qiao framed her for that orchid she has not been…

He hesitated to say ‘herself’, because actually she had been more ‘herself’ than he had seen her in years. It had been little things at first, like with the spirit food… suddenly disliking the imperial tea, which had confused the proprietor of the Golden Dragon no end, because he had been assured that the food she was being served was… what she liked.

At the time, he had assumed at the time it was, again, Qiao playing little mind games, given they had shown up and caused a huge mess with the Blue Gate School and the regional status quo, but there really had been nothing untoward: she had simply started liking the kinds of things she had when they first met… and never so much as remarked on the change, as if she hadn’t even noticed it herself.

She had actually talked to people… Usually, unless it was him, or someone who was her peer, she barely said three sociable words to anyone outside of an official capacity, even his long-standing friends like Tan Fang or Ran Hao…

Yet she had started dodging official tasks in little ways, socialized with people… and, against all the odds, liked Ling Yu; though that, in fairness, wasn’t hard because the governor’s daughter was a rather likeable young woman.

“…”

He sighed again and tore his eyes away from the mysterious taiji.

The real change had come from it, though. He had seen it, in her eyes afterwards… They were not the eyes of the Lian Jing he had come to know over five decades of their shared tutelage with Dun Jian, but of the rebellious, slightly lost young girl a year or two younger than him who despite ‘being’ a princess seemed determined not to ‘be’ one.

At first he had thought it was the blood ling contamination. Upon seeing her reactions afterwards, how she behaved with Quan Dingxiang… with Lu Seong, how she had spent a small fortune on mangoes and then hidden the evidence of the transaction, how she was behaving with Envoy Qiao… with Lingsheng.

However, when he made general enquiries with Ling Tao during the clean-up, the vice-headmistress had assured him that the effects only lasted a day at most for such exposure.

And then she did the Queen Mother’s Ritual.

If he closed his eyes he could see her face, in the park, afterwards, after she had fobbed off all the dignitaries, basically threatened Huang Shi Yuimei and told the Imperial Envoy to officiate his own banquet, which he had ended up doing in the end. It had been the same slightly haunted look she had had after she looked at the taiji carving, that resolutely refused to give up its secrets… to him at least.

He had even tried to meet with Chief Priestess Yuan Renfei to ask what might have happened, but the woman had just made her excuses and said it was a ‘very busy time’ and offered to let him meet with a lesser priestess, who, as it turned out, had not been at the ritual at all.

-And her talisman broke…

That, frankly, was the strangest part. A talisman that could probably have been used to physically block an unfettered blow from a Dao Weapon… broke, like it was badly enchanted… which it would not have been.

He had a similar kind of talisman himself, an Official’s Token presented formally by his father – or, to the eyes of most, his ‘uncle’, for the truth of that was a very well-kept secret – Huang Leng, the leader of the Huang clan on Eastern Azure, as formal recognition of his status as the Huang clan’s representative on this trip. They were not easy to break, not by any means, and doing so was usually outright dangerous to the perpetrator.

-Though the talismans are a whole different problem, he reflected grimly, resisting the urge to touch the second one he had in his possession, which now hung around his neck, cool against his skin.

It was a personal gift from his father, rather than an official one, and allowed him to sense when people were spying on him and what their intentions were. Such talismans were not rare, but ones of the quality he had were. In principle, the parent talisman, with his father, logged every sense that touched him, up to and including a Dao Ascendant, and remembered who they were. With the child being soul-bound to him, even someone interfering with it very slightly, never mind stealing it, would do no good except to provide an excellent target for the Wuli branch’s ire…

Idly, he relaxed the dissociation he was keeping with the Official’s Token, which also provided a similar, lesser, function. Unsurprisingly, given his status and their mission, it was being tripped constantly, by both the knowing and the ignorant, feeding him a rather annoying array of nudges if he focused on it.

Most of those ‘remembered’ by both were quite innocuous, from elders or people accompanying the various groups and dignitaries who were orbiting around their mission like flies on a corpse. No doubt they were trying to work out, just as he and Lian Jing were, rather ironically, just why they were here. Given that their arrival had brought nothing but headaches, culminating in what was basically an economic catastrophe there had been a few more intimidating ones as well, but they were all within expectations.

The problem, was the creeping sense of unease, impossible to pin down and without any apparent source, which had been weighing on him ever since Duke Qiao’s play in Headmaster Ji’s office, which only his father’s talisman was periodically picking up.

He had tried to speak to Jing about it several times, but the opportunities had never quite panned out either, not to mention he had had to swear an oath not to reveal the talisman’s unusual properties. It was, his father had stressed, to safeguard him, and him alone, which was rather vexing now that something was clearly going on with Jing.

He stared at the taiji… almost daring it now to show something, anything at all different, but it did not.

-That fate-thrashed orchid…

It always came back to that.

His first instinct was that that ill sense was related to Lu Ji in some way, but Lu Ji was only a Dao Sovereign, and ‘known’ to his father’s talisman.

With hindsight, that was the moment they had lost all their ‘momentum’ in this task, he could see now. Up to that point Lu Ji had been helpful, if clearly put-out by the Imperial Acknowledgement… Yet he had not as much as laid eyes on him since that meeting and all their leads from other sources, the unusually informative dinner with Ling Yu aside, had been about as credible as yarns spun by drunks in a teahouse.

What little he had gathered about the man since, from Lu Seong and others, painted a picture of a man who was very much not his father, and very much not like how Jing had thought of him initially.

Amid the stories and rumours of a man who liked to socialise and had many friends and several very beautiful female admirers, including an exceptional disciple who was hailed as the foremost beauty in the province, who was a gambler and a philanthropist in equal measure, it was possible to find the iron core of a someone who would keep smiling right up until they snapped your neck without blinking when they had finally had enough, and who had a deep attachment to the province and was fiercely proud of the role he had taken in keeping it prosperous.

In light of that, he had tried to reach out and mend fences, doubly so after Lu Seong’s unexpected revelation of the headmaster’s distant links to Lady Xiao. Lady Ling Tao had been… believing of his assurances he hoped, but she had also made it clear that it was up to Lu Ji, not him or her.

-Please don’t let that sense be someone like Lady Xiao, he thought with a shudder, again reflecting that the holes in the information they had been given were very… problematic.

Dun Jian’s resources had not made any mention of links like that.

There had been some mention that the Ha, Ling and Lu all ‘claimed’ deep links to the province for ‘political’ purposes. And that, as a result, there were old experts from the era before the Huang-Mo Wars with the potential to cause difficulties. That had been why Jing was ‘leading’ this whole mission, and they didn’t have an Imperial Advisor accompanying them. By making this a ‘junior-led’ initiative, it undercut the actions those ‘old ancestors’ could take openly. Even then, Dun Jian had assured them that most were in seclusion or entirely apathetic. Even his own father had been fairly dismissive in that regard.

The only time in the last few centuries any of those ancestors had moved was one of them acting to safeguard the last remains of the Lin clan after the Three Schools Conflict, and Dun Fanshu had seen next to no repercussion. They hadn’t even shown themselves during the Blood Eclipse, apparently, and even now, nobody vaguely reclusive had so much as shown their face in regards to the fallout from the auction…

That all three of those clans had founding ties to the Province, Blue Water City and Blue Water School respectively, was something nobody had thought to mention until Vice-Headmistress Ling Tao revealed it almost anecdotally at their shared dinner. And that all three had ties to the Blue Water Sage, based on the book she had given him…

Knowing that would have led him to encourage Jing to approach the annexation of a highly lucrative territory with roots in three powerful, ancient clans on behalf of the Imperial Court in a… significantly less strident manner.

The lack of such important information, combined with the breaking of Headmaster Lu Ji’s orchid by the ‘minders’ sent with Lian Jing by Duke Qiao, was feeding his growing suspicion that both he and Lian Jing were somehow being lead to fall in a hole.

-The problem is… I just can’t see why… he reflected, feeling frustrated as his gaze again found the taiji. Dun Jian has been cosying up to the Huang for millennia and Lian Jing is someone he has taken an interest in since she was a young girl…

-Is it someone in the Huang unhappy with the Wuli branch?

-Or someone associated with Dun Fanshu, not wanting competition?

-What benefit does…?

“—Here you are!”

He was shaken from his thoughts by Lu Seong’s voice unexpectedly intruding. Looking around, he saw his friend walking through the pagoda towards him, waving.

“I was looking for you, but you are not answering your talisman…”

He glanced at his Official’s Token and stared, because, indeed, Lu Seong had messaged him a good dozen times in the last… hour.

“…”

He stared back at the carving again, then shook his head and slid off the table.

“That strange thing, huh,” Lu Seong frowned, glancing at the taiji.

“Yeah… well, this whole place is full of strange things,” he said with a grimace. “What is it you wanted me for?”

“…”

Lu Seong gave him a ‘look’ that suggested he could just read what was on the talisman, but he chose to ignore it.

“A few things, actually,” Lu Seong replied apologetically. “The first, I suppose, is that Brother Tan’s arrival has been delayed.”

“These ‘Rising Dragon Gales’?” he asked, knowing the answer already.

“Yep,” Lu Seong sighed. “It is showing no signs of lessening and all long-distance teleportation in the western half of the province is suspended.”

“Ah… bugger,” he sighed, rubbing his temples.

He had wanted Tan Fang here as soon as possible, so that was not good news.

It bothered him a great deal more than he had let on to Lian Jing that those who the White Storm Sect had sent, ostensibly at Dun Jian’s request, included someone like Yan Ju…

‘—The one who killed Huang Jurong in the last Dragon Pillar trial?’ Unbidden, Eternal Daughter Lingsheng’s words drifted back into his mind, so vividly that he found himself looking to check that she had not, in fact, appeared with Lu Seong somehow.

As an influence of the Huang Heavenly Clan’s core lineage, that sect’s upper echelon marched to its own tune in many ways. The fact that they were sending those associated with the Hong and the Gan suggested someone high up there felt the Huang Wuli were in need of a setback.

That Yan Ju was, in his eyes, gilded trash, did not help that conclusion at all, either.

“I don’t suppose you know what Yan Ju and that bunch are up to?” he asked.

“Screwing beauties in a brothel, probably?” Lu Seong grunted. “I dunno. They are not going to seek me out, that is for certain. I’ve not seen them since the meal after the Queen Mother’s Ceremony—”

“They were not at the banquet yesterday?” he frowned.

“Just like you, I didn’t go,” Lu Seong sighed. “The Lu clan had their own Sovereign’s Day divination, which was about as you would expect.”

“Rainy with a chance of good fortune?” he joked, looking out at the heavy rain rippling the surface of the lake surrounding the pagoda.

The Huang clan had also had their own divination, but it was only attended by core members of the branch families, so only a dozen or so people, junior and senior, had been there. People like Yan Ju, who were just ‘affiliated’, had not been invited. Even the important ‘guests’ – Elders from the Imperial School and the Bai, Quan and Ji clans – had only been entertained afterwards.

“Hah… it does feel a bit like that…” Lu Seong agreed. “Speaking of divinations though, do you know anything more about this rumoured upcoming announcement from the Imperial Court?”

“Nope,” he sighed, and it was not for lack of trying either. “I have tried to reach out to my uncle Leng, but he hasn’t gotten back to me, so I know only what you do: that the Imperial Court is likely to announce a formal pivot in their interest from Northern Tang to Yin Eclipse, and that it will mean ‘great things’ for the provinces here. Best guess, it’s to counter the damage that this ‘gift’ is going to do to the status of the noble clans in some way, and they are being cagy so they can see what the Azure Astral Authority’s hand actually is.”

“I suppose so…” Lu Seong mused. “In any case, I ask because there is meant to be a Dragonship arriving within the hour, or within the hour of me first messaging you…”

“A Dragonship,” he repeated dully, “As in an Imperial Dragonship?”

“I don’t know any others,” Lu Seong shrugged.

Now he did look at the talisman messages, noting one from Envoy Qiao and one from Lady Huang Shi Yuimei, both calling him to come to the harbour master’s grand pavilion.

He managed to stop himself saying ‘well, why didn’t you lead with that?’, because the derailment was his fault.

“Where is Jing—Princess Lian?” he asked instead.

Lu Seong shrugged helplessly. “She isn’t answering her talismans either. I expected her to be with you, honestly.”

-Ah, because she currently doesn’t have one, not that she will admit to it, he thought, pinching the bridge of his nose now.

“…”

“Who is there?” he asked as they started to walk back out of the pagoda.

“Envoy Qiao, various clan heads who are in the town, though it’s mostly just the local representatives, the elders of the various groups accompanying you… and every junior who wants to be seen at the arrival of an Imperial Dragonship,” Lu Seong replied, his tone not quite veering towards sarcasm at the obvious question.

-So Huang Ryuun and the rest certainly will be… he mused, nodding absently to the guards on the way past.

“Once we are out of here I will try to contact the Princess,” he said once they were on the now-covered bridge across the shallow lake. “Probably they want someone a bit more important than Qiao to make this grand announcement, and decided to also make a spectacle of the celebration of Blue Morality Emperor this evening, to wow the masses.”

“…”

“A Dragonship would certainly be quicker than waiting on the storms to pass,” Lu Seong conceded.

“And also more spectacle,” he remarked drily.

“True,” Lu Seong agreed.

“Ah, you are here Brother Seong!”

They were met on the far side by two umbrella-carrying juniors of Lu Seong’s.

“You were looking for me?” Lu Seong asked them, frowning.

“Uh… everyone is going to the harbour pavilion…?” the disciple said, glancing at him uncertainly.

“Yes, we are aware,” he murmured, a bit more crisply than he intended, really.

“…”

The disciples paled slightly beneath their umbrellas, making him wince, inwardly at least, as he had not intended to actually pressure them.

“Brother Huang has had a trying day,” Lu Seong murmured, apologizing on his behalf.

“It has been difficult,” he agreed.

“Not at all, our question was ignorant,” the disciple muttered, saluting him apologetically.

They walked on in silence, out of the ‘garden’, which was still fully set up, the auction continuing at the behest of the Imperial Envoy, because now everyone needed spirit herbs and those that were demonstrably uncontaminated were selling for preposterous prices, even by Imperial Continent standards.

“You head on ahead,” he said to Lu Seong and the two disciples once they got into the main foyer of the Golden Dragon Teahouse. “I’ll contact Princess Lian.”

Lu Seong nodded and led the other two off, taking out umbrellas as they went. He watched them go for a few moments, then sighed and headed for the stairs up.

“Lian?” he sent, using the personal communication talisman they had.

“…”

The connection hung, unacknowledged for long enough that he found himself starting to wonder if she was actually going to ignore him for some reason, before, finally, connecting properly.

“What is it?” her voice echoed in his head, sounding a bit jaded.

-Was yesterday that annoying for her? he wondered.

She had attended the Sovereign’s Day banquet and rituals for the Dun clan, hosted by Qiao Honghui in the Imperial Envoy’s Palace, and basically returned when he was out at the Blue Gate School, chasing more ghosts.

“There is an Imperial Dragonship supposedly arriving within the hour,” he said.

“…”

“Any idea who is on it?” she asked.

“No, sorry, the information I got was silent on that.”

“Shit,” her voice turned resigned. “That likely means it’s designed to make a statement. Are you still at the Golden Dragon?”

“I am,” he confirmed, “Where are you?”

“I’ll be down in a moment,” she replied. “I doubt ‘my talisman broke’ counts as an excuse for not showing.”

“Yes, I don’t think that will work,” he replied drily, though again he was struck by just how more… laid-back, she seemed.

“…”

The connection cut after a few seconds of silence.

Sighing, he walked over to a table and sat down on a seat, taking out a jar of wine and pouring himself some while he waited on her to appear.

He just finished pouring the wine, which was an excellent vintage from the Blue Gate School itself, the maker of which had agreed to enter his household, when the uneasy sense of being watched returned for a brief, frustrating moment…

He had to fight the instinct to close his eyes, or to touch the back of his neck… or look behind him, as his father’s talisman gave a faint chime in his mind that drifted behind him.

-Ah… I am being haunted by evil monkeys, he groaned, putting the cup of wine down without spilling it.

It lingered, seeming almost amused as he fought with the visceral reaction it was trying to provoke from him, before vanishing again, as if it had never been.

He exhaled and downed the wine in a single shot, aware that his skin felt cold, even in the humidity.

-Please have eyes, whoever you are, and don't provoke a bigger problem, he thought with a sigh.

“…”

Pouring himself another cup of wine, he waved for a nearby servant of the teahouse to come over.

“Yes, Young Lord Huang?” the youth murmured respectfully.

“We will be taking a carriage to the harbour. Please tell them to prepare it.”

“How many, Young Lord?” the youth asked.

“…”

“Large enough for a full party,” he shrugged, guessing Jing would bring some attendants, for the purposes of scene dressing if nothing else.

“It shall be waiting when you require it,” the servant said, saluting him and hurrying off.

Sighing, he drank his cup of wine and poured himself a third.

He had just finished that when Lian Jing arrived, dressed in a blue and gold phoenix robe. Somewhat surprisingly, her escort was the six handmaidens she had brought with her, from her own palace. The six, who were all basically teenagers and none over Immortal, had largely been left to their own devices since they arrived, as the Imperial Envoy’s Palace had always sent people who outranked them. Also with her, he noted, were Huang Shi Yuimei and Huang Wuli Changmei, who were part of the Huang clan’s contingent he was ‘leading’.

Both of them were also dressed formally, in white and red gowns with the Wuli clan symbol featuring prominently.

“Sorry we took so long,” Lian Jing murmured, coming to stand beside him. “I tried to find out what is going on with this Dragonship.”

“How did you manage that…?” he asked.

“I asked them,” she nodded at Yuimei and Changmei.

“…”

“Rumour has it an Imperial Advisor is on board, though which one, rumours are unclear on, Young Lord,” Changmei said apologetically.

“That is the rumour, yes,” Yuimei agreed, crisply. “There must be some merit though, because even the Duke has sent Lord Jiang to the harbour, not to mention Lady Sheng has made an appearance…”

“So it has to be someone important,” he nodded. The Duke and the Azure Astral Envoy would not show up for some minor official.

“Yes, Cao Leyang does not seem the kind to lower himself to personally saluting juniors,” Jing sighed. “I mean, he did not care to send more than a token representative to our arrival…”

“Mmm…” he agreed.

“So, off to the harbour, anyway,” Jing added, looking around. “I take it we are just waiting on the carriage?”

“We are,” he nodded.

“I shall go see what is delaying them,” Changmei said, with a slight bow to all of them.

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

Long after Ling Tao, Kun Liang and Ha Shi Xiaolian had gone off to plot the misery of others, Ha Kai continued to sit at the table, quietly sipping his wine, accepting an occasional refill from a passing serving girl and watching the world go by. Morning became evening, raucous with people enjoying their Sovereign’s Day meal, then night, with music and dancing, revelry and fireworks, then morning once again, with drunken groans and hangovers. Throughout all of it, the rain continued to fall and the town bustled by.

In a strange way, he found the rain relaxing. You got used to the quiet silence it imparted, after a while. There was a beautiful equality to its effects that had always entranced him, ever since he understood exactly how profound the effects were.

In the untold years since, he had spent some time pondering them, but the simple truth was that they were beyond nearly everything else. You could push and pull them, banish them… even summon them if you really wished to live dangerously, but you could never command them, truly. There were laws in there, and perhaps even truths about the way the world worked, but, unlike elsewhere in Eastern Azure, they kept their counsel close and their secrets even closer.

-I suppose that is why I keep lingering here, he mused to himself, watching raindrops scatter off the roof opposite.

The Cherry Wine Pagoda’s formations to keep bad weather away had about as much effect on the rain as… well, actually they had no effect at all, which was the interesting thing really. The formations might as well have been simple light or paint on a wall for all the difference they made.

“There is a guest for you, Scholar Kai,” a serving girl, a disciple of the pagoda in truth, because all the disciples worked for a living doing something to help the teahouse, said respectfully, stirring him out of his reflective daze.

“Oh?” he frowned, giving himself a shake and focusing on her.

“The… Clan Lord, Scholar Kai,” the young woman murmured. “Also, Sir Feiyuan and Lady Chang.”

“Oh, well, show them up,” he said.

The young woman bowed again as he stared at the rain again, then, idly, took out a six-stringed lute and started to pluck it.

“In Tai Sha’Varan, in Mist-Moon Va-al-ley~

One pleasant evening, as the year did turn,

I met a maiden, she was so young and handsome,

Her gentle beauty, did seize my heart away…”

The melody, while ancient, was catchy enough that it turned up in ‘rediscoveries’ every now and then. The latest version was known as ‘Shu’s Joyous March’, and had little in common with the original, as he knew it. He had picked it to sing largely because it fit the image of the ‘Pagoda Lord’, who was supposedly a ‘carefree old man who delegated a lot and only showed up occasionally’.

“She wore no jewels nor elegant treasures

No paints nor powders, no none at all,

But she wore a veil, with a ribbon it,

And around her shoulders hung a fox-fur shroud…”

He hummed through the first two verses happily, finally reaching the chorus, at which point he found that the girl had returned, with two men in youthful middle age wearing Ha clan robes, and a beautiful young woman, all standing a distant away listening raptly.

Sighing, he put the lute to the side and focused on the one in the middle.

“Ha Feirong, Ha Feiyuan, it has been a while.”

“It… sorry, we did not mean to disturb you, Pagoda Lord Tai,” Ha Feirong murmured, addressing him by the persona he usually used to interact with the wider Ha clan.

“Not at all,” he said. “What can this old man do for you three young things?”

“…”

“This is my wife, Chang Mei,” Ha Feirong added, introducing the woman standing politely beside him.

“A pleasure,” he replied, giving her a kindly smile as he stood.

“Uh…” Feirong looked a little nonplussed, which amused him greatly.

“Here is not really the place to talk,” he said drily, looking around at the busy tearoom below. “Unless of course, that is the point?”

“…”

Ha Feirong gave him a look that suggested it was.

-So, they really do want to re-balance the way the Ha clan appears to be being seen… interesting, he mused as he waved for them to take a seat, which they did, looking a bit surprised that he bothered to do so.

“Give us some wine, and whatever is on the menu for…” he trailed off and stared out at the rainy sky…

“I will bring wine and lunch,” the pagoda disciple said with aplomb, scurrying off.

“So… why are the three of you here?” he asked, once the maid was out of earshot.

“…”

“Pagoda Lord…” Ha Feirong coughed, addressing him by his ‘known’ title, that of the reclusive ‘Lord of the Cherry Wine Pagoda’. “I… er, understand that Lady Tao has sought you out… erm, before I could?”

“…”

“If it is about the Ha clan’s current predicament, I am aware of it,” he said, without any preamble.

Feirong knew a little something of his status within the ancestral Ha clan, but was smart enough not to go digging, and for that he had quite a lot of time for him. He was also doing the best he could to make sure the Ha Family, his descendants through his younger sister, and this one of the genuine, core lineages within the wider Ha clan, did not suffer any undue problems.

“Much of that is… manageable,” Ha Feirong said, looking around. “I imagine it will cause some local unhappiness, but frankly, the Kun clan is crumbling from within and the Deng clan is too close to the Imperial Court.”

“—And the Ha clan is any better?” he asked, taking a sip of his wine and looking between the three of them.

Ha Feiyuan’s expression twisted slightly, but none of them refuted it, despite Ha Feirong’s positive spin. In truth, the Ha clan was a bit better, if only because it was somewhere between the two extremes. Its internal divisions were clearly demarcated and, while it was sidling towards the imperial side, it was doing it without the same degree of shameless inertia the Deng clan was.

“…”

“So, why are you here, beyond seeking to reassure me that you are still filial,” he asked, just before the silence became awkward on their part.

“The Din clan, Pagoda Lord,” Chang Mei said respectfully, speaking up at last.

-Ah, of course, he nodded to himself. That would be a foe they are wary of antagonizing without being sure of the old guard’s position.

Chang Mei continued, “They are making approaches to branches of the clan, especially to our juniors.”

“I am aware,” he nodded again. “Two of their young masters were party to this group who landed you an Imperial Acknowledgement, were they not?”

“Those two were, yes,” Feirong nodded.

“And are, presumably, plying Ha Cao Fangfan, Ha Cao Quanbo and Ha Ji Fanguang with all sorts of nice opportunities?” he asked.

“They have agreed to let three youths from the Ha clan enter directly into the second tier of the selection contest for the Jade Gate Court each year,” Ha Feiyuan said, with a grimace.

“…”

“And what do the other old elders say?” he asked, pondering what could actually be done about the Din clan specifically, and more importantly what they actually wanted.

“Broadly sympathetic,” Ha Feiyuan muttered, staring at his cup of wine. “Three of our five families see nothing but benefits, especially those of Ha Cao Quanbo and Ha Ji Fanguang, while the Shi are very much split—”

“—And we have no interest in what they are offering,” Ha Feirong said. “Yun and Sungmei are talented enough that we do not need to barter hostages to the Jade Gate Court for paltry gains and too many questions.”

“They offered betrothal agreements for little Sungmei,” Chang Mei added, her expression gloomy. “And I know for a fact they approached the Deng clan and the Kun clan as well.”

“…”

That was news, he had to admit.

“The elders were going to seriously consider it,” Chang Mei glowered. “My dear little one is SIX!”

“I know dear,” Feirong murmured, patting his wife’s arm.

“Already, the various old elders have arranged matters so the new Town Captain here will be one who opposes your grand-disciple Ha Shi Miao’s less confrontational outlook, Pagoda Lord,” Ha Feiyuan also added.

“…”

-So, the Din clan is approaching elders and family lords who are mercenary enough or divorced enough regarding their awareness of the ancient history of the first few Dun Emperors and our difficulties with Din Bao and Din Jinhong, he mused.

“So you came to me, because I will not be swayed?” he asked, with a half-smile, though in his heart he was really scowling.

-That actually complicates matters, if only slightly… Could one of those old fellows be trying to push a bit again, behind the scenes? Having left matters alone for so long?

“Pagoda Lord Tai is carefree and easy, seeing a different path for the Ha clan, while Cherry Wine Pagoda has stood since time immemorial!” Feirong actually stood and bowed to him. “Please, advise this junior. I do not wish to be the sinner who ruins the Ha Family.”

“…”

“Once, not too long ago, there was a time when the Ha clan in this land was six people,” he reminded them, staring out into the rain. “That said, if it has to become a single family again, then that would be unfortunate, I agree.”

“…”

Both Ha Feirong and Ha Feiyuan stared at him, faces draining of colour slightly.

“That would… not be desirable,” Ha Feirong agreed, swallowing nervously.

He was about to clarify that he had just been speaking of the time before Lu Fu Tao came back and re-united the disparate remnants of the inland regions into something with some self-esteem again. The actual point was simply that the roots of the clan were much more durable than its branches perhaps thought, but, thinking it over, he thought better of it.

-A little reminder every now and then that that is always a possibility isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, he mused. Certainly, the Kun clan is in need of such a reminder.

“If you want my advice?” he mused, thinking things over quickly. “Help Ling Tao, or, if that is optically awkward, help Shi Xiaolian help her. You owe your position to Ling Tao in the eyes of others anyway, and it is expected you will do something, so use and abuse that to get away with things you would not manage otherwise.”

“We could send some disciples to help the Ling clan,” Ha Feiyuan mused, looking pensive.

“Will they accept, though?” Ha Feirong frowned. “Ling Tao has… as you say, been my personal benefactor in a number of um… ways…”

-Giving a man a beautiful and loving wife and a job for life is an excellent way to buy all kinds of gratitude… he reflected with wry amusement as Ha Feirong gave his wife’s hand a squeeze.

It was yet another reminder that Ling Tao was much better at what she did than many gave her credit for.

“The clan is already drawing away most of the higher-ranked Hunters and experts, taking them out of action for the regional pavilions,” Ha Feiyuan mused. “What if we got a few of our Ha family’s groups… integrated into that mission?”

“And pitch it as us seeking to subvert the local pavilion?” Ha Feirong mused. “They might actually be gullible to buy that, though whether Ling Tao will show us enough face to play along…”

He sat there as they discussed the pros and cons of that action for a few minutes, pondering for himself what decisions might be made there. In truth, for all that they were a potentially troubling variable, whatever the Din clan was up to was still the lesser of the problems he was here to address. Far more concerning to him was the poking around of the Imperial Princess and her Huang… companion. Not so much for what they were looking for, but because of who Huang JiLao was.

Huang JiLao, the ‘hidden’ son of Huang Wuli Leng, going missing in Yin Eclipse had the potential to spawn a disaster unlike anything this world had seen in tens of thousands of years. One that even he would not be able to save the Ha clan from being implicated in, given some of the treasures the two branch lords in Blue Water City had trotted out for that useless auction and the Ha clan’s unfortunate links to the ruin and the bandits.

Sighing, he pushed that from his mind briefly.

-Each thing in order, after all…

“In regards to the matter of the Din clan and our more… ‘forward-thinking’ elders, leave that with me,” he mused, re-entering the conversation in an opportune gap.

Taking out a talisman, he pushed it over to Ha Feirong. “I can contact you through this, if necessary.”

“Thank you, Pagoda Lord,” Ha Feirong murmured, standing up and bowing again. “We will take our leave.”

“Thank you for your advice,” Ha Feiyuan seconded, also saluting.

“Yes, thank you, Lord Tai,” Chang Mei added.

He watched them leave, then poured himself another cup of wine.

-Which elder should I bother about this? he mused.

-Which elder…?

Despite his earlier words… there were not actually that many and not all of them were useful for something like this. Ha Shi Xiaolian was already involved; Ha Fan Ma… another elder who enjoyed these kinds of things… was currently off-world as far as he knew, out in the Azure Maelstrom, and unlikely to come back on very short notice. Of the elders from more removed generations, Ha Erlang Shan was also off preparing for his breakthrough to Dao Eternal…

“…”

-Ah… if we are talking good fellows who don’t have any stake in this mess… he mused, reaching a choice, I suppose it is between Lan Huang and Bo Feihung.

Both were peak Dao Sovereigns, experts of many years who, acting as ‘Elders at Large’ for the Ha clan in general, spent most of their time travelling around. Both were very good at the ‘travelling around’ bit, as well, so much so that he was willing to bet actual Dao Jades that nearly every clan elder on two continents not already considered a reclusive ancestor in their own right believed them departed for some other world or off wandering the Azure Maelstrom looking for opportunities.

-I suppose it should be Lan Huang, he concluded, stilling his fingers and withdrawing a simple jade talisman in the shape of a fox holding a fish in its mouth.

“Lan Huang—”

“MOTHERLESS VIRGIN OF NINE HEAVENS!”

The expletive made him wince.

“It is I, your senior,” he sent back, rather drily, resisting the urge to put a finger in his ear to check for blood.

“Ah… erm… sorry, Ancestor Kai, you surprised me, that was all…” Lan Huang’s voice echoed in his mind.

“No apology needed,” he murmured. “I am sorry for interrupting whatever you were doing.”

“Eh… it’s fine, I was just fishing,” Lan Huang replied, sounding a bit resigned. “How can I help you, Ancestor Kai?”

“Where are you at the moment?” he asked.

“…”

“Chunfa Village…” Lan Huang replied.

“…”

“…”

“And where is ‘Chunfa Village’?” he asked after an appropriate length of silence.

“You don’t know it?” Lan Huang sent back, somewhat innocently.

“I must confess, I do not,” he replied, rolling his eyes.

“…”

“It’s a delightful little fishing village on the Eastern Yuan delta, down in the south-east…”

“You are taking the ‘wandering’ in your clan title literally, I see,” he remarked with some amusement.

The Eastern Yuan river delta was basically on the other side of the Easten Continent, some 70,000 miles away, as a very tormented or driven bird might fly. The Ha clan had only one interest out there, which was currently talking to him.

-Maybe I should have asked Bo Feihung after all, he mused. He is also someone Ha Dongfei and that bunch cannot push around in the slightest…

“How quickly can you come to Blue Water Province?” he asked, pushing that thought away.

“…”

“This is a trick question, isn’t it?” Lan Huang replied after a short, awkward pause.

“Very good, it is,” he replied brightly. “I’ll see you in the Cherry Wine Pagoda in an hour.”

“An hour…” Lan Huang muttered. “Of course, Ancestor Kai…”

In truth, he did expect Lan Huang to take longer than that, but a little bit of revenge for that conversation was in order, he felt, as he sat back and sipped his wine.

In the end, Lan Huang only took some seventy minutes to arrive, walking into the Cherry Wine Pagoda looking rather like a rural fisherman, in rather damp ropes, carrying an umbrella. He waved down as a maid hurried over and bowed politely. Lan Huang traded a few words with her, then came up, unaccompanied, and sat down opposite him in silence.

He poured a second cup of wine and then passed it over to Lan Huang.

“You didn’t say that the ‘Rising Dragon Gales’ had come early,” Lan Huang muttered, accepting it. “Or that the ‘Rains from the East’ are here in full force. I had to fly the last two thousand miles on a treasure…”

“Well, you are here now,” he said with a pleasant smile.

“Yes, I am…” Lan Huang agreed, sipping his wine.

“Do you have any persona that you can use that will not immediately mark you as… well, you?” he asked, getting straight to the point.

“Ah… is this one of ‘those’ jobs?” Lan Huang remarked, taking a sip of his wine and sighing.

“I am afraid it is,” he conceded. “However, I can assure you, you will not go unrewarded.”

“Oh, now I really want to go back to where I was,” Lan Huang said drily.

“Ha. Ha,” he laughed, sardonically, and pushed a book across the table.

He had pondered what he could actually offer the Dao Sovereign, which was not as straightforward a proposition as might have been expected. Lan Huang was not a ‘Clay Pot Sovereign’, as they were sometimes called, someone who had adopted the almost ‘traditional’ approach at this point: rushed to Dao Immortal like many noble scions did, with the help of supplementary comprehensions, and then advanced after that by gorging on the glut of riches provided by powerful clans to exceptional scions.

Rather, at close to 150,000 years old, he had gotten to where he was… by not dying through some of the most turbulent years in Eastern Azure’s history, since the foundation of the Dun Dynasty. After joining a now-defunct branch of the Ha clan on Western Shu as a young disciple, he had eventually entered the Cherry Wine Pagoda, upon being drawn here by the chaotic allure of Yin Eclipse in that distant era prior to the return of the Blue Water Sage.

Once the province calmed down, he had taken a well-deserved ‘rest’ and gone back to the Western Shu continent, where he had founded his own influence, ‘The School of the Worldly Fisher’. That had endured as a private project through the turbulent years either side of the Huang-Mo Wars and was now thriving as a second-class influence in its own right.

Since then, he had wandered the world, refining his comprehensions through the simple act of ‘fishing’, seeking to build up comprehensions for his attempt at becoming a Dao Eternal.

As such, the manual was actually something he, himself, had written long ago, regarding a way to safely cultivate, or advance, into a ‘Peerless’ True Principle in the current heavens.

“This, and its following volumes, are yours, no strings attached, if you help,” he said.

Lan Huang took the book, opened it, read the first two pages and then stared dully at him.

“This is…”

“I know it’s not much,” he coughed apologetically.

“N-not much,” Lan Huang repeated dully, barely stammering, to his credit. “You could start a bloodbath on the Imperial Continent with this…”

“Right up until they realised I wrote it,” he replied drily, “then they would probably burn it.”

“Your reputation still isn’t good there, is it?” Lan Huang remarked with a weak smile.

“Swearing to hang a former Grand Imperial Astrologer from the Jade Gate by his testicles for colluding to ruin the auspice of the wheel of heaven on Eastern Azure is the kind of thing people in power remember,” he replied with an eye roll. “Though my name is still also kind of mixed up in the mess a century ago with the new Grand Imperial Astrologer…”

“You really have karma with fools who hold that post, don’t you?” Lan Huang chuckled.

“I suppose I do,” he agreed, sighing deeply.

“So, what terrible task am I doing that you are willing to part with this treasure trove of comprehensions?” Lan Huang added.

“The current elders are a bit unreliable, and prone to having their heads turned,” he mused. “I need some steady, trustworthy people, who know how the Din clan operates, that Ha Feirong and the other youngsters can rely on, if anything goes wrong,” he said with aplomb, adding the other three volumes to the pile.

“That’s it?” Lan Huang asked, staring back at him dubiously.

“Well, it’s a bit more involved than that,” he conceded, “but I can explain on the way to our first stop,” he sighed, standing up.

“Which is?”

“Tai Shan, or as it is now called, Jade Willow Valley,” he replied, finishing his wine. “I want to see what the Ha clan has been up to, up there, and why a bunch of ‘bandits’ were based in one of our ancestral ruins.”

…

The trip to Jade Willow Valley took them all of about twenty minutes, really. They could have flown – or teleported, he supposed – but it was honestly easier and less obvious to just walk, using their formidable comprehensions of Natural Laws to distort the distance in unusual ways.

By the time they had arrived on the outskirts of the large fortified village there, he had given Lan Huang the rundown of most of the pertinent aspects of the two sources of trouble the Ha clan had sleep-plotted their way into.

“I know it is said that descendants are the final curse on your karma before ascension,” Lan Huang declared as they stood on the road, watching traffic go in and out of the gate, “but this really has widened my eyes…”

“It does,” he agreed, looking around at the landscape, which was somewhat changed from how he remembered it, even from a few hundred years prior.

“So, where are we going?” Lan Huang asked, following his roving gaze across the field systems.

“…”

“To see some criminals about a villa,” he sneered, taking a step and appearing on the edge of a canal embankment, overlooking a sealed-off reservoir.

A moment later, Lan Huang appeared beside him, looking out over the misty fields, fading into the rain.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Lan Huang observed, folding his arms, his gaze travelling across the distant reservoir. “Whoever is cleaning up after this knows what they are about. Those are some unpleasant traps.”

“They are, aren’t they? Not at all what you might expect to encounter out here…” he agreed, staring at the mendacious feng shui maze that had been constructed on the other side.

“Whoever did this fancied themselves something of an expert,” Lan Huang noted. “I see several recognisable styles of Easten feng shui in there… although the execution is somewhat… naive.”

“Uhuh,” he nodded, tracing the reservoir, again, which held a shadow of a formation known as ‘the swallowing carp’, which only the Kun clan’s experts should have known.

“And there is Kun clan feng shui, Fan clan formations… done in the style of the Yin Peoples, rather than the new, orthodox methods many follow,” Lan Huang mused, twirling his umbrella idly. “Anyone looking at this will think the Kun are working with the Azure Astral Authority and the Yin tribes to make trouble for our Ha clan, supporting bandits in their territory…”

“Indeed,” he agreed drily, stroking his beard, because why wouldn’t you. “This is just slight tricks before a master.”

“Uhuh,” Lan Huang nodded. “Whoever did this… their grasp of the Dao of Feng Shui is good, and they are widely read… However, they tried a bit too hard. It’s over-complicated and the mentality is not right for an Easten formations expert, or a Yin one for that matter. It’s too…”

“Forceful?” he suggested.

That was the ‘flaw’, really: it looked good, but the whole thing was just faintly forced. It was too calculating and just a hint of that shone through, in the lingering Intent that stained the alignments around them.

“Uhuh,” Lan Huang agreed.

“Well, they can hardly have expected us to come look at it,” he chuckled.

“These would fool most people,” Lan Huang mused, shaking his head in amusement. “What amuses me most, though, is that it fails to convince because whoever set it up never realised that you can also read the orthodoxy of ‘Seizing from Heaven’ in the way the whole thing is presented, for all that the individual pieces all look convincing. What interests me more though, is who came and cleaned it out…”

He nodded at that, his gaze moving to the fields behind the reservoir.

-It is well hidden, but the group who cleaned this up had multiple Dao Immortals, maybe even a Dao Lord. Whoever is behind this really is trying to sell this as the clans conspiring to shame the princess, aren’t they?

“Looks like it was maybe a week ago?” Lan Huang added, looking over at the distant villa.

“Sounds about right, that would be around the time the auction started,” he agreed, comparing it to what Ling Tao had given him.

Taking a step, he arrived on the roof of the main villa building and then drifted down to the courtyard below. Lan Huang followed a moment later, looking around pensively.

“—What will you do?” Lan Huang asked.

“…”

-That is the question, he mused. What do I do?

It was very tempting to obliterate the alignments, but the effort put into making it look as it had suggested that whoever had done this would not let their efforts go to waste. Certainly, a copy of this would exist, as insurance that could make its way out in a convincing-looking manner. Furthermore, in line with that assumption, any evidence that things here had been altered would likely just be used as further evidence to shift the blame away from whoever the original perpetrators were.

It did not help any investigator either, that the rain made the whole web about as fragile as could be and was slowly wearing down the integrity of what remained. In a few days most of what was here would be just a dangerous quagmire of inauspicious feng shui and twisted alignments.

-Should I even do anything?

The more he pondered that, the more appealing that became really.

-This is a tar pit, designed to slow and distract… There are other ways to deal with this… What is it that the locals like to say… ’accept what is given?’ he mused.

“…”

“I will do… nothing,” he said with aplomb, stroking his beard. “The whole thing is a trap we do not need to engage with… At least not here… It’s much easier to just tell Lady Ling Tao about it.”

“Hmmm…” Lan Huang nodded, then, to his surprise, took out a sheaf of old talismans. “You said the Din clan was poking about here?”

“…”

“I knew I invited a smart young fisherman like you along for a reason!” he grinned, as Lan Huang held out a handful of used feng shui talismans that were from the Din clan and had, more importantly, been used by people from the Din clan.

“Bait is bait,” Lan Huang smirked. “I assume we need something…?”

“The Din clan are a bunch of snakes, but they are also as arrogant as they are sneaky,” he mused, looking around. “If they were to send someone here… Golden Immortal, maybe?”

“Ancient Immortal, at most, I’d guess – expendable overkill for a ‘backwater province’…” Lan Huang suggested, holding out a broken ‘alignment disruption’ talisman on which the qi decay had only just started to set in. “If you are going to game that the Din clan is involved in this—”

“Well, they are now,” he smirked, taking the talisman and walking into the building, then placing the talisman on the reverse side of an open door, where it looked like someone had slapped it on in a hurry.

Lan Huang agreed with a nasty laugh.

“Where do these come from, anyway?” he asked as they went through the other rooms, looking for suitably inauspicious spots.

“You pick things up over the years,” Lan Huang shrugged, a bit evasively. “Having talismans that can implicate this or that young noble is quite useful, especially if you want to lure them out.”

“Shameless…” he snickered.

“I don’t need to hear that from you, ‘Pagoda Lord’,” Lan Huang murmured, rolling his eyes.

“…”

In the end, it took about thirty minutes to check out the whole estate and confirm that blood ling contaminated plants had been held there, in one of the reservoirs in fact. They scattered a few more talismans and then dropped a few pill bottles in the reservoir for good measure, before leaving as silently as they arrived.

The trip back across the fallow spirit fields was largely silent, until at last the line of markers denoting where the suppression field ran came into view in the early afternoon haze.

“Hasn’t been updated recently,” Lan Huang observed as they ‘entered’ the suppression, a good hundred metres before the markers.

“This place has been suffering a lot of neglect of late,” he shrugged, patting the large stele at the side of the bridge before they crossed over the canal that was the second ‘dividing line’.

The trip up the valley took them about thirty minutes, which, from the standpoint of anyone unfamiliar with how exactly the suppression worked, was disgustingly fast. Reality was that while the suppression did lean hard on higher realms and most practical manipulation was curtailed at the peak of Golden Core, there were grey areas in there. One was Laws. It was not strictly true to say that you could not ‘use’ Laws in Yin Eclipse. Rather, it was fairer to say you could not use your comprehensions of Laws made outside the mountains’ periphery, within it.

That said, comprehending the Laws of the mountain range was not a quick process. Both he and Lan Huang had spent tens of millennia in this place, slowly grasping aspects of how the world worked through the harsh prism of its suppressed reality. For all that it was a dark and dangerous place, it was… remarkably egalitarian, so long as you stuck to its few ‘rules’. That was how a place like Tai Shan had come to be in the first place.

“Here we are,” he declared at last, bringing them to a stop in a secluded part of the forest near the ridge that split off much of the modern Red Pit from Jade Willow Valley.

Walking over to a rather innocuous tangle of fallen rocks by the cliff, he found one that had a slightly square edge and put his hand flat on it—

“Dreaming of Tai Shan, this son returns to the Gate. Return to the World, what was once of the World,” he murmured.

At first, it looked like nothing happened… however, as he stepped back, the rockfall, the vines and everything around them bent slightly, the geometry of the place realigning itself in his vision to reveal a set of steps up towards the cliff, through the boulders.

“That is neat,” Lan Huang murmured, clearly impressed. “Who created that?”

“My mother,” he said blandly. “Her means are not anything anyone in this era can imagine, frankly.”

“Your… the Lady of…” Lan Huang’s mouth opened and shut as he gulped, looking around with slightly wide eyes.

“Don’t let flies go in,” he chuckled, patting the younger cultivator on the shoulder. “Anyway, it won’t remain open for long, so let’s go.”

With the still slightly dazed Lan Huang following after, he walked up the steps, which wound between the boulders and led to a simple carved doorway into the cliff, barely visible unless you looked at it just right. Placing a hand against it, he sent a thread of his qi and cultivation law into it and got a pulse of acknowledgement back, telling him the way was open.

Lan Huang followed him inside, into a small hall which held an altar at one end, flanked by statues of foxes, and a further set of stairs up at the other.

“Don’t fall behind,” he warned Lan Huang. “This place is much bigger than it looks.”

“I can see the edges of the alignments,” Lan Huang murmured. “Don’t worry.”

“For every one you can see here, there are hundreds you cannot,” he replied, his tone light, though he was not joking as he ran his fingers down the carved wall as they walked.

Soon they came out into a broad gallery, vines tumbling down around pillars and water pooling below the flows down from above where vegetation drew the rain in. Walking along it, he almost fancied he could hear the laughter and sound of children running… of the hammers of the craftsfolk and the music from the teahouse below…

“This…” Lan Huang, however, looked quite pale.

“It is evocative, isn’t it?” he remarked, turning down a staircase to the next level.

“Evocative… It’s oppressive,” Lan Huang shivered.

“This is the sentiment of a land this world has made a conscious effort to forget,” he mused. “Of course they will be unhappy at that. Do not dwell on it. Yin Eclipse’s suppression is a very strange beast… At times it is cold and cruel… and yet sometimes, something touches it, and it decides that it is worth remembering, so you have places like this.”

“A place worth remembering…” Lan Huang nodded. “This… is this place a bit like Golden Promise?”

“It… some might consider it as such,” he replied, “But it is just a fleeting memory of a happy time, preserved for eternity in the shadows of the divisive darkness. Golden Promise is nothing like as fair as this… I do not think anyone from our…”

He trailed off, as what he was looking for found them.

“You walk long and far, child of this place,” the silent shadow, hidden in the vines of a wall, murmured, its words only for him.

“What is wrong?” Lan Huang asked, looking around uneasily.

“I had cause to remember it,” he replied carefully, waving for the younger man to be quiet.

“You come for the temple?” the shadow asked, softly.

“May I enter it?” he replied respectfully.

“You are not of our cult, nor our kindred; however… You are of this place, and of our Lady. I will lead you… the other, he must stay.”

“He can wait at the pagoda below?” he suggested, glancing down at the open area below.

“Acceptable,” the shadow murmured.

Lan Huang was staring at him, uneasily, clearly not seeing the shadow at all, as it turned and slipped down the hall.

“Follow me. When we get to the bottom, wait at the pagoda, I will return shortly,” he said, following after it quickly.

“…”

Lan Huang nodded, clearly curious, but smart enough to say nothing.

The shadow led them on down, through deserted walkways and past long-sealed doors until they finally exited a stairwell out into the broad, circular hall, ringed with its trees and with the pagoda and the memorial stele in the centre.

“Wait by the stele,” he said to Lan Huang. “Touch nothing and act as if this was an ancestral ground…”

Lan Huang gave him a worried look, but nodded and walked off as directed.

The shadow, sitting nearby, grinned and then stood again and led him off, towards the temple at the far side, flanked by its waterfalls.

“How did they enter, before?” he asked.

“…”

“Through sideways means, showing disgrace to our Lady…” the shadow murmured, leading him to the steps. “Do not fear, they will return to us, at the end. We do not forgive, nor do we forget.”

“Wait…” he stopped, holding up a hand.

The shadow paused in the door, looking back at him.

Taking a short cloak, he pulled it over his head and then took off his shoes.

“So, you do remember the old ways,” the shadow chuckled, holding out a hand for him to enter.

Bowing formally at the entrance, he stepped inside… and then froze, because the hall was full of people.

There had to be almost two hundred young women and children, standing there, their bodies naked and broken, all looking at him with empty, judging eyes.

“We do not forgive… We do not forget…” the words clung to him as the restless dead pointed to the altar at the front.

Gulping, he walked down the hall as the shadow followed after, the gaze of the ghosts of those who had died following him unerringly.

-Good thing I have had a long life, he shivered.

How real the ghosts were, he could not say. It was possible the shadow was revealing them, just for effect, to test him in some way.

The altar was clean, clear and untouched… until the shadow put her hands upon it and then the hall rippled and he saw a naked young woman drag a youth’s body over to the altar, tears running down her face, and put it on it. Beside her, a shadow whispered instructions in her ear as she placed a talisman, spat blood on it, wrote a name ‘Ha Li Wen’, and then placed a talisman on his chest. He watched as the girl left again, then turned back to the youth and found there were three bodies, then six and a blank slot with a broken talisman and compass on it.

“Why is that one damaged?” he asked the shadow.

The shadow stared at him, then laughed, a horrible, echoing, uncanny sound that made his consciousness waver—

A hand grasped his face, small, child-like almost. A copper-gold blade rested on his throat. The misty shadow almost shifted, gaining features that included dark, curly hair and a white clay mask.

“…”

-Right, not a good question to ask, for some reason, he thought with a shudder.

He carefully stepped back, and everything was as it had been before, what he had just experienced a moment before no more than a nightmarish afterimage in his mind’s eye.

Around him, the scene shifted and he saw another girl return, pale and terrified, yet determined, watched her walk over to each of the three bodies in turn and put a pill in their mouths and leave.

Others came and went, never the same one twice, always accompanied by a whispering mental shadow. The numbers shifted, as did the names; Deng, Kun… Ha… he counted at least sixteen ‘victims’ of the mysterious bandits before he realised what they were doing to ‘communicate’ with the girls and young women.

-Soul Arts, he frowned, and not any I recognise.

“Longevity…” the shadow whispered, almost by his ear. The sheer hatred in ‘her’ voice, made his skin crawl. She was older now, taller, carrying hints of a beautiful woman, her hand caressing his neck, forcing him to turn and look—

“We do not forgive… We do not forget…” Gone were the ghosts. In their place the figures on the pillars were staring at him, the same furious hatred in their eyes as he had felt in the woman’s voice.

“Tell the old scholar…” they hissed, as one—

He stood outside the temple, the shadow standing in the doorway, looking at him in silence, as if he had never entered.

-Well, that is not at all creepy, he shuddered.

“Is… that all you will show me?” he asked.

“As I said, they used sideways means and did not show our Lady respect,” the shadow sighed.

“And yet they lived,” he pointed out.

“Someday, they will return to us,” the shadow smirked. “The longer they wait, the crueller the penalty. Perhaps, if they wait long enough, it will be so cruel that this azure child can be free of its burden…”

“…”

“Find those responsible, Child of the Tai…”

“Tell the Scholar—” the shadow appeared, right in front of him.

“Tell the Lost Girl… or the Lonely Widow, or the Ruin Daughter…” Its form was suddenly older and more alluring again, though that only made it more threatening, even if any real detail evaded him.

“I will…” he agreed, hoarsely, sweating now and unable to move at all as her hand, and he was sure it was a ‘her’ in as much as these things mattered in this circumstance, brushed up his chest and gripped his chin, forcing him to look up at her.

“Find those responsible, Child of the Tai… or we will…”

Before he could do or say anything, she stepped back and the shadow was gone, leaving him alone in the rain, staring up at the dark doorway to the temple.

“Well, I was going to see the old man anyway,” he sighed. “I guess this just makes it a bit more pressing.”

Giving himself a shake, he turned and walked back through the great courtyard, mulling over what he had seen. The only real clues were the mention of ‘Longevity’, the ‘Soul Art’, the talismans and the compass, along with the knowledge of how to get in there. And the fact that there were a lot more than six people affected, though the timeframe for the whole thing was a little odd, he mused.

In the middle, there had been a woman with a Seng School tattoo… and the Seng School had been dead…

“…”

“Well?” Lan Huang was sitting on the edge of a flowerbed, waiting for him, looking a bit on edge.

“Ling Tao was right. Somehow Yeng Illhan’s bunch are up to their necks in this,” he said, looking around at the pagoda, which was much as he remembered it.

“So this does have its links to the Blood Eclipse Cult?” Lan Huang sighed.

“It is looking that way,” he agreed. “The six bodies are not the only victims… The good news is I have a mental image of all sixteen now, though they could be scattered through the last century and a half…”

“And the perpetrators are Yeng Illhan’s bunch?” Lan Huang frowned.

“Maybe, I doubt it though. I have to admit I was not as involved with those events as I might have otherwise been,” he sighed.

“Me neither,” Lan Huang grimaced.

-I guess I can only take this back to Ling Tao, he reflected.

“This stele… by the way?” Lan Huang asked, gesturing to it.

“Something my father made, long ago,” he said with a shrug.

“So, back to West Flower Picking, I suppose?” Lan Huang added, taking the hint.

When his mood improved, he might share some anecdotes about this place, he supposed, but not right now…

“Hmmm…”

“Let’s get out of the suppression zone, at any rate,” he sighed, heading off across the nearest bridge.

Curious, he went to check the ‘entrance’ that had been blocked in the scans and, sure enough, found that someone had totally broken the alignments. The stairway down went into a second hall, and when you went down again you ended up at the top of the stairway leading back up to the open area.

That confirmed, he went back up the steps, the way they had come, and led Lan Huang along another long corridor until they got to a further stairwell down. This time, the formations were not broken, so they were able to pass, unhindered apart from a portion where they ended up wading through waist-deep water, into a long hall with a lot of statues memorializing ancient cultivators from the Tai clan. From there it was fairly straightforward to go through one of the smaller tomb areas, their contents long since relocated, to finally exit out into a cavern which he recognised as the one from the Ling Tao’s recording.

The path in to where the stalker nest was had been brought down entirely, the back third of the cavern buried under a series of collapsed slabs.

“Nobody is getting in there without mining tools,” Lan Huang grimaced, kicking the edge of the new rear wall of the cave.

“Uhuh,” he nodded, looking around pensively.

Traces of battle, probably with the tetrid stalker queen, were everywhere, in the form of talisman scars and the rock-collapse. Traces of the formations that Ling Tao’s jade had spoken of were just about evident to him as he walked around one of the larger boulders, pondering the places of the formations nodes; however, enough people had been through here since that there was little to be gained from the traces.

“…”

“Huh…”

He turned to see that Lan Huang had wandered out to the entrance, where there was a lake that had probably formed out of the access to the lower regions of Tai Shan.

“What is it?” he asked, coming over.

“It’s late,” Lan Huang remarked, pointing at the long shadows in the rain.

“…”

It was indeed, he realised.

“How long was I… in the temple?” he asked.

“You were gone for maybe an hour. I didn’t want to say,” Lan Huang said.

“…”

*Tiiiinng~ Chiing Chiiiing—!*

The talisman he had given Ha Feirong triggered three times in rapid succession as delayed messages from the last two hours, all from Ha Feirong arrived at once. He hit the last one, which was only ten minutes ago—

“Pagoda Lord, you finally… Ah, sorry,” Ha Feirong’s voice was a bit nervous as he spoke without being prompted.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Erm… you don’t know?” Ha Feirong asked, sounding wary.

“Evidently,” he replied, patiently.

“Maybe it is best if we talk in person…” Ha Feirong’s voice had a clear edge to it now. “Are you at the Cherry Wine Pagoda?”

“…”

Closing his eyes, he tested to see whether he could make a connection between the teleport talisman he had, and the formation in the Cherry Wine Pagoda, and found he could.

“The Rising Dragon Gales seem to have abated, briefly,” he said to Lan Huang. “It seems we will have to go back directly.”

“A problem?” Lan Huang asked.

“Maybe, something has Ha Feirong on edge, enough that he doesn’t want to talk about it by talisman,” he mused.

“You are talking via an unsecured talisman?” Lan Huang raised an eyebrow.

“Of course not!” he grumbled, pacing out into the open space next to the lake. “But Ha Feirong is barely a senior; he has no idea how secure that fate-thrashed talisman actually is.”

Lan Huang just rolled his eyes and walked over to stand beside him. Taking out the teleport talisman, he sent a thread of qi and Spatial Laws into it and the space around them rippled like a stone had been dropped into it. When everything stabilized again, they were standing back in the Cherry Wine Pagoda, in a secluded courtyard lined with cherry trees, which were just coming into flower in a lurid shade of greenish-yellow.

“I am at the Pagoda,” he replied to Ha Feirong. “I have solved your elder problem as well.”

The question, really, in his mind, was whether he went to meet Feirong now, or went to deal with the task that kept getting kicked down the road, so to speak.

“Al— Already?” Ha Feirong sounded surprised at that.

-I can always have Lan Huang deal with Feirong’s problem while I go talk to the old man, he mused.

“Come to the Pagoda now,” he sent back to Feirong, then cut off the transmission.

“Shi Qingmei?” he said, tapping the Cherry Wine Pagoda Talisman he had and contacting one of the elders who should be keeping an eye on the teahouse.

“Pagoda Lord…” her voice chimed back.

“When Feirong arrives, escort him to the third floor.”

“I will,” she replied.

Sighing, he hung up and set off, through the back courtyards of the complex of buildings, heading towards the main teahouse.