Part 2 ~ Dun Lian Jing – Grand Harbour, Blue Water City ~

“…”

“So… the Imperial Dragonship is ‘arriving’ within the next hour?” Dun Lian Jing found herself asking sourly, and not for the first time.

Huang JiLao, standing nearby on the balcony of the Harbour Master’s Pavilion, barely winced.

It had been almost four hours since that ‘next hour’ now, and while there had been periodic ‘updates’ on its rumoured progress, all of them had urgently assured them that arrival was ‘imminent’, there was, still, no Dragonship.

-At this rate, the sun might actually set before it gets here, she grumbled. Though I suppose there are worse ways to spend an afternoon that standing here waiting for it.

“Are you going to tell me what is gnawing at you?” she asked at last, leaning on the balcony beside him and staring out at the waves breaking over the distant sea defences.

“…”

Huang JiLao looked at her, then just sighed, again, and said nothing.

“…”

“You recall what Seong said… about Lu Ji?” Huang JiLao said at last, just as she was about to jokingly remind him she could command him, as a princess, to speak his mind.

“Vaguely?” she said, her gaze searching out the old man, where he was currently standing with Ling Tao, both of them dressed in formal robes.

Not for the first time, she found herself wondering why both of them were there. Ling Tao had arrived when she had, but Lu Ji had also arrived a short while ago as well, along with Ling Jiang and the Ling Yusheng. There were even Hunter Bureau and Military Bureau Officials down there, though mostly ones from imperial-aligned clans like the Ha, Deng, Leng and so on.

In fact, a senior representative of nearly every influential group in the city was there for some reason…

-Which means whoever is on this Dragonship is important… and I don’t know who it is, because my fate-thrashed talisman is broken and nobody knows? she frowned.

“Well, my talisman has been…” Huang JiLao trailed off as Huang Shi Yuimei and Huang Wuli Changmei, the two young ladies from the Huang clan who were working as his ‘deputies’, walked briskly onto the balcony.

“What is it?” Huang JiLao grumbled.

“The Dragonship is coming in,” Changmei said.

“Is it actually coming in, or is this another ‘it will be here imminently’ message?” she asked sourly, wishing the wind was not so fate-trashed humid.

“Apparently it really is. The rumour – speculation – is that they were waiting for the most auspicious hour…”

“…”

She resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose, suddenly have a bad feeling about it.

“The auspicious hour, you say… Any idea which Imperial Advisor is rumoured to be on it?”

“Uh… nobody is clear there,” Changmei murmured. “There is some speculation that it might be either the Grand Imperial Astrologer, or Lord Wuxian of the Wisdom Court… A few of the clans seem convinced it is even our own Lord Leng…”

“My uncle?” Huang JiLao raised an eyebrow. “I rather think we would have heard, were that the case.”

“Quite…” Yunmei agreed. “Another version has it being the Imperial Teacher, Dun Jian… and yet others are convinced it is Lord Jinhong…”

“Din Jinhong? The Grand Seneschal of the Jade Gate?” Huang JiLao almost laughed out loud at that. “Is that because the Din clan are everywhere, talking quietly in dark corners?”

“In part, yes,” Changmei agreed with an apologetic shrug.

-Dun Jian? she frowned, mulling that over, because it was actually more plausible than it first appeared.

The talisman she had was the official point of contact with him, and she had not yet gotten around to telling him it was broken, in part because she was rather miffed at the way this whole farce was playing out.

-I suppose he could have decided to come in person, she conceded to herself, however he already sent that other bunch… unless that was also not quite as he expected?

“…Even Lady Lu Xiao’s name has come up a few times,” Changmei added with a grimace.

“Lady… Lu Xiao?” Huang JiLao’s frown deepened if anything.

“You are thinking that might be why Lu Ji has finally shown his face?” Yunmei mused, staring down at those below, in the grand plaza before the Harbour Master’s pavilion.

“…”

Huang JiLao nodded absently, not quite looking at her.

‘To little Ji, best wishes for transcending your worthless generation – Fairy Xiao’…

Those words haunted her for a moment, along with the little orchid waving at her.

-What if it actually ‘is’ Lady Lu Xiao…? a small voice in her head asked, rather unhappily.

Her gaze found the headmaster… who had not so much as looked in her general direction, and noticed that one of the disciples from the Blue Gate School standing near him, a brown-haired young woman with plain features, was looking up at them.

-Qiao Honghui, you scheming menial servant! she cursed in her heart. I hope the Grandfather of Heaven delivers you every misfortune.

Qiao Honghui, himself, was currently standing near Lu Ji as well, talking with a group of elders and juniors from the Jade Gate Court, the White Storm Sect, the Huang clan and the Deng clan. Nearby, she could see Huang Ryuun, Shu Shubei, Fang Daodi and Di Yao, all chatting away with Qiao Cheng and Yan Fu, clearly amused at something.

“That is not a group we want to see socializing together,” Huang JiLao muttered, following her gaze.

“Sovereignty Hall… huh,” Yunmei observed, frowning a bit deeper.

“They count Fanshu as a backer, don’t they?” Changmei muttered, also casting a judging look at the group.

“They do,” she agreed. “Although it’s fairer to say that the same people keeping his… nose… clean are largely the same ones pushing that agenda.”

Both Huang women stared at her sideways for a long moment.

-What? Can only others say things like that?

“Actually… What has that Di Yao been up to?” Changmei mused, transferring her gaze back to the assembly below.

Staring at the group below, pensively, she could only nod in agreement at that question. Di Yao was out there, standing with a group of elders and several senior disciples from the Jade Gate Court and Imperial School, all watching proceedings rather expressionlessly.

As the son of an Imperial Advisor, his status was technically rather high, and yet he had kept a remarkably low profile. The only time she could actively recall him even really socializing had been that first banquet, the day they delivered the Acknowledgement requiring the cooperation of the Blue Gate School.

“I… have no idea,” Huang JiLao said with a deeper sigh. “He has been at most of the official occasions, and the Imperial Astrology Bureau elder with him has mostly stuck with Qiao Honghui. However, he has done precious little and appears to have been here before we arrived.”

“…”

Shaking her head, she stared back out at the distant horizon, watching the waves rise and fall below the harbour walls and watch towers. Off in the distance, a bell on the grand shrine chimed, signalling the arrival of the third auspicious hour of the day.

Huang JiLao, who had gone back to staring in almost sullen silence, sighed again.

-What is bothering him? she frowned. What was he trying to say about that conversation we had with Lu Seong, about Lu Ji?

“So… earlier,” she started to say. “What were you going to say about— —— — —— ——…”

The last half of her sentence: ‘—what Lu Seong said about Lu Ji’, was lost in a roar of shattering space as the horizon truncated abruptly. The ocean bled scattered rainbows as a huge ship, maybe six hundred metres long and eighty wide, slid into focus about half a mile outside the harbour.

“I’ll tell you later,” JiLao replied, once they were able to hear their own voices again.

“…”

Before she could reply, a second, then a third smaller ship, the same as the one their party had originally arrived in, appeared, decelerating rapidly to catch up to the larger vessel they were escorting.

The two smaller vessels kept decelerating, but the large one just surged forward, not slowing in the slightest.

-What are…

Above the city, the clouds shook and juddered, the rain drifting in odd, unnatural directions for a few moments, before scattering completely, the clouds over almost a thousand mile radius, nearly, melting away to reveal blue sky. In the same instant, the storm-wall of the Rising Dragon Gale was pushed further out into the ocean, to the south west.

“…”

As she looked on, the ward formations on the harbour shimmered into full visibility, then cascaded downwards as they were rapidly disabled to avoid doing catastrophic damage to the Dragonship as it crossed over the wall, into the harbour. Only when it was fully inside, did it finally slow and descend to land in the water before the Grand Harbour.

Among those looking on, quite a few were gasping in amazement, especially among the juniors, who had likely never seen a full sized warship from the Imperial Court before. The faces of those who managed the province, however, were not so ‘awestruck’. Quite a few looked either sick or angry as they looked at the now beautifully clear afternoon.

“How… bad will the backlash from that be?” Changmei murmured, shaking her head.

“BEHOLD, THE MAJESTIC SON OF HEAVEN!”

The words rolled out of the ship as a dozen ‘guards’ all wearing ornate armoured robes appeared, in synchronized formation above it.

“BEHOLD, THE MAJESTIC SON OF HEAVEN!”

“…”

Their roar echoed across the city, transmitted by artefacts, because, in fact, their strength was not much greater than hers.

Her previous, inauspicious feeling was suddenly and abruptly clarified as a second wave of guards exited the Dragonship, followed by a procession of some thirty dancing beauties singing the praises of the Dun clan. The figure who exited after them was objectively tall and handsome, wearing an imperial dragon robe of deep azure, embroidered with golden dragons and silver and turquoise luan. On his head he wore a princes crown, while around his neck, on a talisman, was a seal rather like the one she had used in the Blue Gate School, except rather than ‘Jian’, this one read ‘Fanshu’.

“You note, there is no Imperial Advisor in sight?” she sighed, leaning on the balcony, fighting the urge to throw the almost forgotten wine cup in her hand down at the distant prince.

“Did he lie about there being one… just so everyone would show up?” JiLao muttered dully.

“…”

She had to admit, she was impressed, in a dirty kind of way.

-That is very Fanshu…

His reputation was already not great in Blue Water Province, but that didn’t matter, really, because the world around the Third Imperial Prince operated on very simple rules: He did things, others reacted.

“HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, THE PRINCE OF MAJESTIC FELICITY, FAVOURED SCION OF THE HEAVENS, DUN FANSHU!”

The words of the guards announcing his arrival were loud enough to shake weather vanes on pagodas on the other side of the city.

“Seeing Third Imperial Prince!”

“Seeing Third Imperial Prince!”

“Seeing Third Imperial Prince!”

As far as salutes went, it was rather tame, though not inappropriate given that there were not that many people outside of the dignitaries here to witness the arrival. Most of those cheering were loyalists anyway. Many of the seniors were, if not frowning, not looking overjoyed either.

“I, DUN FANSHU, COME ON BEHALF OUR IMPERIAL PARENTS TO ACT AS HIS REPRESENTATIVE ON THIS DAY AND HENCEFORTH FOR THE CELEBRATION OF HIS MERITS AND HIS GOOD GRACE TO THIS WORLD, AS INSTRUCTED, BY THE SUPREME AND MOST AUGUST OFFICE OF THE IMPERIAL SEAT!”

Dun Fanshu’s words echoed across the assembled throng as the banners of the Imperial Court being held by the guards accompanying him, all holding the imperial seal, were unfurled.

“HONOUR TO BLUE MORALITY EMPEROR!”

“GLORY TO BLUE MORALITY EMPEROR!”

“PROSPERITY TO BLUE MORALITY EMPEROR!”

This time the salutes, led by those still disembarking into formations on the waterfront, were much more fulsome.

Ignoring him, she swept those disembarking and grimaced, because there, in truth, were Imperial Advisors there, standing in the shadows of entrance, making no move to exit just yet. Neither wore their formal robes, or their regalia, but she could recognise by sight the appearance of the Grand Imperial Astrologer, Kong Di Huang, and Lord Huang Hunji, who was the ‘teacher’ of Dun Fanshu. Standing nearby were two Lord Astrologers of the Imperial Astrology Bureau, their robes bearing Kong and Huang symbols respectively.

“It seems there are advisors after all,” she pointed out the two figures to JiLao.

“…”

JiLao, following her gesture, frowned. “Kong Di Huang and Huang Hunji… Well, I suppose in this instance, we don’t need to go down at least…”

“No, we do not,” she agreed.

It would be a different matter of the two Imperial Advisors disembarked formally, but in this instance, she was also a ‘guest’ so she could just stand up here and watch. It was enough that she be ‘in attendance’ for Fanshu’s arrival.

“I wonder why they are holding back?” Lifan, her handmaiden murmured.

“Consider the optics of a pair of Imperial Advisors arriving here, the day before the Azure Astral Authority makes a big announcement, to make their own announcement,” she explained. “This way, the actions of Dun Fanshu showing up and acting as he does… distract completely from everything else.”

“Indeed,” Yunmei agreed. “Nobody will criticize him, or he will just go and complain to someone like his teacher, or his mother, the Empress.”

“My cousin is not that weak-willed,” Huang JiLao muttered.

“However, Fanshu is her only son and all of Empress Linhua’s children are exceptionally talented,” Yunmei murmured, not that JiLao didn’t already know that. “She would still be Empress even had she not been selected as an inheritance candidate by Lady Kong Jing.”

“You would think someone would have explained to him already that behaving so rampantly doesn’t actually help though,” she sighed.

“Well, when the people ahead of you are either the prodigal genius Dun Sheng or a cursed iron brick like Cang Di…” Yunmei pointed out.

“So, they are letting Fanshu take the lead because it suits them,” Lifan remarked with a grimace.

“Probably, yes,” she mused. “This way the advisors can…”

She trailed off as three more figures, dressed in long azure gowns emblazoned with the regalia of the Office of the Imperial Seat, the cloth veils over their faces marked with the Imperial Seal, arrived at the top of the ramp, followed by a dozen other lesser officials.

She had been about to say that the advisors would make their entrance at the dinner this evening, and probably claim something facetious in regards to ‘providing advice for Fanshu in an informal capacity’…

-An Imperial Herald? Is this related to this rumour that imperial ‘interest’ is going to pivot east? That was actually true?

“Isn’t that an Imperial Herald?” Changmei muttered as the three, followed by the two Lord Astrologers, also started down the ramp. In the movement of people, both Huang Hunji and the Grand Astrologer had vanished as well.

-So, they aren’t coming out, just making their presence known so people cannot throw a strop about Fanshu?

“BY THE GRACE AND MAJESTY OF EMPEROR BLUE MORALITY!

“ASCENDANT TO THE THRONE OF OUR EASTERN AZURE GREAT WORLD!

“WISE RULER OF ALL LOYAL PEOPLES OF THESE LANDS!

“I DELIVER UNTO YOU, THE PROCLAMATION OF HIS WILL, THAT IT MIGHT BE DONE!”

The heralds and the party with them stopped next to Dun Fanshu, turning to salute him.

“HERE, WITNESSED BY OFFICIALS OF THE IMPERIAL COURT, AND THE EMPEROR’S OWN, TRUE BLOOD!”

Fanshu didn’t return the salute, just grinned broadly and stood a bit taller as the heralds turned back to the awaiting officials.

-Feught, she sneered, shaking her head.

“UPON THIS MOST AUSPICIOUS OF DAYS!

“THE DAY ON WHICH OUR DUN CLAN IS MOST REVERED!

“THE DAY UPON WHICH OUR TRIUMPH, ENSHRINED IN THE HEAVENS ITSELF, IS RESPECTED AND ADMIRED!

“VENERATED WITHIN THE WORLD AND WITHOUT!

“BEFORE THE EYES OF THOSE CLOSEST TO HEAVEN ITSELF!”

A page stepped forward, unrolling a golden scroll for everyone to see, while the lead herald took a further step forward and surveyed the watching crowds, somehow managing the appearance of looking down on everyone there as he did so.

“I STAND BEFORE YOU, AS HERALD OF HIS WILL!” the herald roared, holding up both arms to the blue sky.

“…”

“Herald of…” JiLao gawked.

“Uhuh…” she stared as well, not quite sure where this was going, but suddenly certain that it was probably nowhere good.

“OUR EMPEROR HAS SPOKEN!

“UPON THIS DAY, 30,000 YEARS AGO! A HERO OF OUR IMPERIAL AZURE WORLD, BLUE WATER SAGE, ARRIVED BEFORE MY FATHER’S SEAT, BRINGING THE LAST UNENLIGHTENED FRONTIER LAND OF THIS WORLD BACK BENEATH THE ORTHODOX RULE OF OUR AUGUST AND SUPREME IMPERIAL HEAVENS! PRESENTING THIS ACHIEVEMENT IN THE NAME OF ALL RIGHTEOUS PEOPLES, TO OUR IMPERIAL FATHER, EMPEROR AZURE FELICITY!

“NOW, AT THIS AUSPICIOUS TIME! ON THIS AUSPICIOUS DAY, I, YOUR AUGUST IMPERIAL MAJESTY, HAVE HEARD THE WORDS OF MY VASSALS!

“OF MY LOYAL SERVANTS…

“OF ALL GOOD PEOPLES…

“YIN ECLIPSE IS THE TREASURE OF OUR WORLD, A TREASURE FOR ITS PEOPLE, AND YOUR PROSPERITY.

“A TREASURE I, YOUR EMPEROR, DESIRE TO BE SHARED BY ALL.

“SHARED FOR ALL!

“AND, IN RECOGNITION OF THIS, I HAVE DECLARED A TRIAL OF EXPLORATION TO HONOUR THAT SAGE’S LEGACY!

“TO HONOUR HIS CONTRIBUTION!

“TO HONOUR THE OPPORTUNITIES HE SAW IN THIS LAND FOR HIS SUCCESSORS, WHO ARE ALL WORTHY PEOPLE OF OUR WORLD!”

The words, reverberating across most of the city, she was sure were met with what she could only call shocked silence as they petered away into the pacified, late afternoon air.

“PROSPERITY TO BLUE MORALITY EMPEROR!”

The salutes from those noble scions from imperial-aligned factions both with Fanshu and across the docks reverberated loudly.

“HONOUR TO BLUE MORALITY EMPEROR!”

The guards and all those with Fanshu added, slamming their weapons into the ground.

“Huh…” Yunmei frowned, staring down at them. “That is odd… Young Lord JiLao, do you notice that?”

“Odd?” JiLao asked, glancing at Yunmei.

“Those guards… are all juniors. Fanshu has dressed up his ‘Glorious Dragon Society’ as his bodyguards…” Yunmei muttered.

“…”

-You have got to be kidding, she sighed, staring at the others, finally spotting somewhat familiar faces.

“GLORY TO BLUE MORALITY EMPEROR!”

The last salute was carried by the various advisors and officials around the herald. Very few of the clan officials standing by looked enthused, however. Even the senior representatives of the ‘loyal’ clans, like the Ji, Deng and Ha were frowning slightly. The woman standing next to Ling Jiang, however, was grinning like she had just seen a great play for some reason.

“What the fates even is a trial of exploration?” Changmei muttered.

“It’s a glorified way of causing trouble…”

She flinched, as a tall, scholarly man with a close cropped beard and a commanding demeanour, wearing a white and blue robe covered in swirling golden clouds, stepped out onto the balcony.

“Uh…” It took her a moment to place why the man was familiar, until she realised he was Lord Huang Wuli Jinfang, who was basically the personal representative of Lord Huang Leng, the head of the Huang clan on Eastern Azure.

“U-uncle Jinfang?” Huang JiLao saluted quickly.

“Lord Huang,” she bowed slightly to him as well. Even if he was technically a servant, he was actually someone with more status than Envoy Qiao, below.

“LORD HUANG!” Changmei and Yunmei both saluted as well, much more formally. “You do us great honour with your presence.”

“Please, bowing to this old servant is unnecessary,” Huang Jinfang said drily, holding up a hand.

“How come you are not down there?” Huang JiLao asked respectfully.

“If I had to stay in the vicinity of that brat any longer I would have hit him,” Huang Jinfang scowled, staring down at the crowd. “We should have been here three days ago, but for Fanshu.”

“Three days?” she stared.

“It was decided that he should accompany us at the last minute, then he kept everyone waiting at Four Peacocks City.”

“Who… else is here, Lord Huang?” she asked, frowning.

“…”

“Lord Huang Leng is still on the boat, as is your Imperial Uncle and the Grand Imperial Astrologer.”

“…”

-Dun Jian is here… as well as Kong Di Huang?

“Uncle Leng is also…” Huang JiLao stared over at the boat and its escorts, his expression turning even more complex.

-Four Imperial Advisors to announce a trial is quite a lot… she mused. And Uncle Jian came in person at last? Is that because of the difficulties we have run into, with all of this, or in spite of them?

“Originally, this was meant to be less rushed,” Huang Jinfang added, almost like he knew what she was pondering. “However the optics of a bunch of Imperial Advisors rushing over here…”

“Is not good,” she finished for him, agreeing, “especially with the timing of Shan Lai’s own announcement.”

“Quite,” Huang Jinfang agreed. “Princess Lian sees it clearly.”

“I am surprised you did not come separately from Fanshu, Uncle,” Huang JiLao added, still staring at the Dragonship with a furrowed brow.

“Hah…” Huang Jinfang shook his head, looking a bit vexed. “I know. However, your uncle Leng and the other advisors were expressly ordered to wait, by the Authority of the Office of the Imperial Seat… Then the Rising Dragon Gales came early and teleportation became unstable, at which point they left almost immediately.”

“Oh… so it was something like that…” she hid a sigh.

Someone clearly conspired to ensure that Fanshu came with the other advisors, and they used him as cover to avoid looking like they rushed over here hot on the heels of Shan Lai’s own intervention.

“I must admit, the idea of a bunch of Imperial Advisors shamelessly using someone like Fanshu does make for an ironic change from the norm,” she murmured, which did draw a faint smile out of Changmei and JiLao at least.

“…”

Huang Jinfang looked at her sideways but said nothing.

Likely, this way, the Advisors, or a single Advisor, could make their entrance at the dinner this evening, likely give more clarity on what the trial was, and likely state they were here purely to advise the young prince in an informal capacity, or something equally facetious. Fanshu would then likely be let off the leash and the advisors would be able to sit down without distractions and plot.

“Look on the bright side, Princess,” Lifan murmured on her other side. “You will not have to host the banquet…”

“There is that, I suppose,” she agreed. “Though I still have to sit beside him, assuming he doesn’t pick some floozy who catches his eye instead.”

~ Han Shu – Yin Eclipse, High Valleys ~

Sitting cross-legged on a rock in the late afternoon light, Han Shu found himself reflecting that for all that the afternoon had started rather… spectacularly, the actual process of sweeping the valley was impressively tedious. That was not to say it wasn’t dangerous, but the danger was mostly technical, and largely mitigated by the sheer quantity of resources they had to work with, not to mention the expertise of the people using them.

“—West! Down to three jades!”

A jade talisman tied to his arm chimed softly, telling him that the words came from Lin Ling, who was about a hundred metres to the north west of him.

“Three jades on south!” he replied, checking the controlling jade for the formation node he was watching, confirming it still had three spirit jades’ worth of qi in it as well, and that it was decreasing… slowly.

The compass on the rock beside him was also still pointing to the centre of the large yin earth and yin metal attributed formation, barely moving.

“—North! Three left, vine still stable,” Kun Ji’s voice added a moment later.

“—Just dropped to two in the east,” Arai interjected.

“That makes nine spirit jades spent to seal this shadow claw vine,” Sana, who was sitting nearby preparing pots for low grade spirit herbs, observed, sounding mildly impressed.

“It does rather make a mockery of how this usually goes,” he agreed.

Shadow claw vines were a nasty sub-species of trappish vine, prized for use as centres for yin-based trap formations. They were a huge headache to catch as well, almost as bad as shadow balsam and some of the yin ginsengs. They could even trap the qi signatures of things they killed, allowing them to summon manifestations of all sorts of other herbs and qi beasts if they lived long enough, and mimic some of their abilities.

“It does,” she agreed. “The ease of it almost make me feel like I have been doing this all wrong these last few years…”

“Yeah, we just needed to be born into families willing to spend spirit stones like water…” he chuckled.

It was a bit depressing really. This was the tenth herb they had sealed like this in the last two hours, by divining their general location, encircling them with feng shui cages and then using high quality sealing formations to stun them, before digging them up.

It was a strategy that was almost never used up here. Certainly he had never done so, before today. It was efficient yes, but it was basically spending spirit stones to get herbs, and at a huge loss as well. Just this formation alone had spent well over 900 spirit stones, for one shadow claw vine, which would barely sell for a single earthly jade. Even if you factored in the other herbs this was likely to sweep up, that might get you another spirit jade or two… and the cost of the teleports to get them down…

Except, now, they needed as many quality herbs as they could quickly harvest and the price was immaterial, so such strategies were actually… usable. Recommended, even.

He sighed, and checked his compass again, noting that the stability was starting to shift a bit, moving between north and west.

-Is it finally starting to struggle?

“—dropped to one at west!” Arai’s voice cut back in, almost on cue. “Whenever you are ready…”

The compass on the rock beside him, abruptly twisted towards the west.

“It seems it’s trying to escape that way then,” Sana sighed, standing up and picking up the blade sitting next to her. “I’ll be right back.”

He watched her trot off through the wet understory, looking this way and that for a moment then returned to focusing on his own side.

Sitting in silence, listening to the distant crack of branches amid the hiss of the gently falling rain, he sighed again and waited. It was rare to catch a shadow claw vine napping, and he was still not convinced this one did not have a trick or two left… especially with the fate-thrashed rain.

…

Sana returned some five minutes later, picking leaf litter out of her robe and shaking her head.

“It should be sealed in the next few minutes,” she said, giving him an encouraging smile.

“Did it attack Arai’s point?” he asked.

“Nah, it was just trying to get at the minor node we set up between this spot and hers,” Sana said. “Senior Ying was already there by the time I arrived, so all I had to do was cut a few stray vines and scatter a qi manifestation of a five elements tree orchid. Having experts like that along makes things so… painless.”

-There is another odd group… he mused, thinking about Senior Ying. This has to be the first time I’ve ever had a monkey lead me to spirit herbs in a constructive manner.

Monkey aside, though, it was impossible not to be impressed with the slightly mysterious senior’s contributions. Sana had explained a bit about her, regarding how she had been living in Misty Jasmine Inn on and off for decades.

For all that she was certainly a reclusive senior, she also had a disarming manner and a sort of infectious positivity to her as well that made her easy to like. From his own interactions with her over the afternoon, he had also found she was easily as knowledgeable any Pavilion Elder he had met, and had a practical approach to dealing with spirit herbs that made her perhaps the most singularly productive member of the team out here.

“—Coming over!”

Both of them turned to find Elder Lianmei, Kun Juni and Ling Wentai making their way out of the understory behind them.

“It’s clear,” Sana said, more by rote than anything else.

“So I see,” Lianmei mused, looking around. “How is sealing that vine coming along?”

“A few more minutes, probably,” he replied, relaying that earlier knowledge.

“It just tried to break out,” Sana added. “Though it’s been remarkably unproblematic on the whole.”

“Expected, I suppose, they are obnoxious things at the best of times,” Juni agreed, as the three of them started to deposit their kit down beside his rock.

“Maybe it hates the rain as much as we do?” he remarked sarcastically, giving the front of his own sodden robe a tug for emphasis.

“Hah… possibly,” Sana agreed with an eye roll, before asking the group at large: “So, how did the trip to the far side of the valley go?”

“About two dozen lesser herbs, several tree orchids… We found a route over the river to the ruins, but didn’t go very far along it,” Juni replied, sounding a bit drained. “We detoured back via the teleport formation to leave them off then came to check on you guys.”

“It’s been quite the haul, for just an afternoon,” Ling Wentai agreed, sitting down on another rock and looking around at the tree tops.

“Anything particularly dangerous in terms of qi beasts?” he asked, glancing at the formation node again, which was still barely being strained.

“Another small nest of hook bats, a few six and seven-star wandering spiders. The remote nature of the valley works in its favour, I think,” Lianmei mused, looking around. “The river is too fast running to have a lot in it and the ridge lines provide a surprising degree of enclosure—”

“There are caves further up,” Wentai added. “Once you get above the low cloud, you can trace the line of the folds in the far cliff and the base of the cliffs are very broken up. It also looks like there is a point where several waterfalls from into this gorge from the north-east.”

“So, not a place to overnight,” he mused.

“Indeed, not a place to overnight outside of the area around the teleport anchor,” Lianmei nodded.

“What about exits?” Saha asked.

“Gorges, to the north-east, two, climbing into the cloud,” Wentai replied.

“That takes you further up towards the upper slopes of East Fury,” Sana mused, not bothering to look, as the low cloud obscured everything, even the tree canopy above them, from where they were currently. “Though they could also be the source of the river that feeds out of here?”

“They could be,” Lianmei agreed. “But probably worth checking.”

“A job for tomorrow, then,” he suggested. “Assuming we are not continuing with this?”

“We will take stock when we get back,” Juni said, looking around pensively at the edges of the clearing they were in.

He nodded, glancing at the formation again, which was still behaving itself, against all the odds.

-Why do I keep expecting something to go wrong? he wondered. Is it just that encounter with the squirrel?

“I take it we have been squirrel-free since… then?” he asked, on that particular point.

“We have,” Lianmei replied drily. “I must admit, that was surprising. I’ve not met it in a few years, assuming it is the same one.”

“I have always wondered about that,” Sana sighed. “Also… why do they always steal fever pills and the like? All you can say about them is that they are a bit spicy.”

They spent a few more minutes idly sharing stories about the ‘squirrel’, until the formation finally settled into place.

“We will go get it,” Lianmei said, glancing at his compass then heading off into the greenery, followed by Juni and Wentai.

“It’s really strange,” Sana remarked, looking in the direction of the centre of the formation. “Really, I feel like I should be doing more…”

“I know,” he agreed, keeping half an eye on his compass. “I guess we just don’t work in teams like this often enough?”

“That is it, yeah,” Sana agreed, standing up again and starting to pack away the various pots into the storage ring on her finger. “If this was just me and Arai, it would be so frenetic, assuming we bothered with a dangerous herb like this at all. Now we have all these scouts, a small shop’s worth of talismans, formations and pills which we are encouraged to use, not to mention a lot of spare eyes. It makes it all so… easy.”

“Yeah, normally you would just mark and skip it,” he agreed. “I don’t think I would ever try to get a shadow claw vine on my own.”

“Only if I wanted to finish a mission hundreds of spirit stones in debt,” Sana laughed bitterly.

“You would have to teleport it out too,” he pointed out drily.

“Uggh, you would, wouldn’t you,” Sana groaned.

“…”

“Coming in!”

He glanced over to see Senior Ying and the monkey approaching from the direction Arai had been in.

“All good here?” she asked them both brightly as the monkey scampered over to stare at the pots Sana had been preparing.

“Yes, thank you, Senior Ying,” he replied.

“I have to say, this makes for a nice change of pace,” she remarked, looking around. “I wonder is it because we met that squirrel at the second auspicious hour?”

“Is… that actually a thing?” he asked, because the folkloric views on the squirrels were… convoluted, to say the least.

“Who can say? Divination is as much about what you put in, as what you want out,” Senior Ying replied, rolling her eyes. “However, I have rarely had serious misfortune from it, when events around its appearances were considered objectively…”

“…”

“I suppose that is true,” he conceded, thinking back to the other times he ran into it.

One had been with a rather rebellious group of trainees, who had been so scared by the event that they barely complained for the rest of that trip. On another occasion, it had stolen some pills from a disciple who he was escorting, while a third time, it had lifted some spirit herbs… in all three instances, the experience at the time had been quite fraught, but all of them had resolved themselves kind of oddly, though not in entirely negative ways.

“I guess so,” Sana mused.

“How come you have a good rapport with the monkeys?” he asked, changing the topic slightly.

“I have spent quite a bit of time up here and have provided them some benefits I suppose,” Senior Ying mused. “They are better than cultivators, that much is certain…”

The monkey, which was carefully investigating the prepared jars, under Sana’s watchful eye, looked up at that comment and nodded energetically, as if to say ‘of course we are!’

He blinked, surprised at how clear the communication was…

The monkey stared at him and then sighed, a bit too theatrically for his liking, before rolling his eyes and giving an intimation of ‘this much is expected; can’t you do it?’

“…”

Sana smothered a laugh with her hands.

“Actually, yes,” he grunted, before waving a hand sign at Sana, “We can!”

The monkey actually stared at him with slightly narrow eyes.

“Yes, we really can,” Sana replied, also with sign language, her hands moving so subtly he nearly missed the faint transmitted cues. “Though some of us are better at it than others…”

“That’s unfair,” he signed back, pretending to sulk, though she was right.

If it came to the sign language, Arai and Sana were easily the best at it among the Herb Hunters along with them. Even Juni, who had over a decade on them was not as good. Neither had ever really explained why, either, at least convincingly, so he was fairly sure it related to their mantras in some way.

“Pfft…” Senior Ying also started to laugh as the small monkey folded its arms and pouted.

“Well, this is all very fun,” Sana said, looking around. “But if there are caves up there, and hook bats around, we want to be gone from here by dusk, so let’s start picking up the best of the rest?”

“Yeah… probably not a terrible idea,” he agreed, looking around. “Getting mobbed by hook bats would not be an auspicious end to the day.”

“Not, it would not,” Senior Ying agreed.

…

The ‘best of the rest’ turned out to be not that much, really, not that it surprised him greatly. It took them about thirty minutes to sweep their quarter of the sealed area and reach the middle, where Lianmei, Juni and Wentai had extracted the vine itself from the tree it was parasitizing and were in the process of coiling it up and putting it in a large jar.

The area in the vicinity of a shadow claw vine would was not somewhere you would expect to find great riches of spirit herbs. Either the vine would have devoured them all, or another herb or predator would have overwhelmed the vine. The best discovery, really, was a cluster of Nascent Soul realm ginseng in a smaller clearing nearby and some more lingzhi inside a fallen tree.

“Find anything good?” Wentai called over.

“Just some ginseng and mushrooms,” Sana replied, scanning the environs.

“Do you need us?” he asked as they stopped nearby, surveying the progress the three were making.

“Nah, keep sweeping the other areas,” Juni shook her head, looking up from the pot she was applying talismans to.

“In that case we will keep sweeping the other quadrants,” Senior Ying murmured. “Unless you two wish to take the far side?”

“Eh… we might as well stick together,” he mused, looking around at the gloomy forest.

“Has Arai already come over?” Sana added.

“Yes, she went to help Lin Ling. They are working their way around to the north,” Juni said. “You can go to the west, I suppose?”

Nodding, he turned to where Arai had been maintaining her part of the formation and set off, carefully through the low-lying vegetation, occasionally glancing at his compass. Just because they were not finding anything and the place was sealed didn’t mean there might not still be some nasty threat waiting to ambush them after all. Sana and Senior Ying followed after a moment later, with the monkey jumping along, looking around with clear interest.

Over the next forty minutes, they found six more spirit herbs, a nest of bees – sadly not the honey-bearing kind – which they avoided, and two stunned serpents, which the monkey killed for their cores. The last serpent turned out to be guarding another lingzhi as well, bringing their total haul to something really quite respectable. They had just finished extracting that, when Arai and Lin Ling arrived.

“—Oh, another lingzhi,” Lin Ling remarked, peering into pot as he put the seals on it.

“Yep, this place is quite good for them…” he mused. “I guess it’s because there are not many qi beasts?”

“Likely, yes,” Senior Ying nodded. “Most things here benefit more from leaving them, so they become part of the territory. Probably why the vine was here as well.”

“You know a lot about these kind of things, Senior Ying,” he added, again quietly impressed.

“You learn over time,” Senior Ying replied with a faint smile. “Everyone has to start somewhere and I too was once a bumbling young woman who could not tell ginseng from ginger!”

“I’ve encountered spirit ginger that’s every bit as bad as ginseng,” Sana remarked drily.

“Yes, that’s why it’s not a good idea to mix the two up…” Senior Ying added with an amused smile.

“Is there much left on the far side?” he asked Arai, looking around again as a bird called in the distance.

“Not really,” Arai shook her head. “We left a few larger pots where we dug the herbs up, but they are all marked.”

…

In the end, it was almost another hour before the fully cleaned up the whole formation of spirit herbs, though after some consideration they decided to leave it in place overnight, just to see what happened, in terms of how fast it decayed and also what might try to get rid of it.

The trip back to the gorge was thankfully uneventful, despite the rapidly fading light and the small fortune in herbs they were carrying. The concerns about hook bats also never came to pass, though, and after a short wait, they teleported back to the Misty Jasmine Inn with the haul, arriving in the shadow of that other, much more hospitable gorge to find lanterns lit and two of the guards already waiting for them.

“Why the welcome committee?” Lianmei asked as they started to haul the pots off the platform.

“—Want to take these two?” Arai, beside him, asked, tapping a pair of thirty litre pots with her foot.

“Okay,” he agreed, picking the first one up with a grunt before she added the second, then helped Sana take a pair of pots as well.

“Lady Ling wants you to contact her as soon as possible,” the sergeant, who he had not really been introduced to yet, called over from below.

“Ohh?” Lianmei asked, putting her pot down again. “Now? Or can it wait until we put these herbs away?”

“Dunno,” the sergeant sighed, apologetically. “The message came in about thirty minutes ago. We tried to reach you but the talisman wouldn’t connect.”

“Really?” Lianmei frowned. “Our outgoing transmissions earlier worked just fine?”

“They did,” he agreed. “It might be a calibration issue.”

“Great, that’s all we need,” Juni muttered.

“We are going to have to take these to the storehouse anyway,” Lianmei said, “I’ll look at it there.”

“Okay,” the sergeant said, saluting her politely.

“Is Ling Shun back yet?” Lianmei added.

“They reported they were heading back from scouting the eastern valley an hour ago. They left on foot so I expect they will be arriving back imminently,” the sergeant replied.

“Okay, thanks,” Lianmei replied before waving for them to all start moving again as he realised he was not the only one who had stopped to listen.

“Who is that Sergeant?” he asked Sana, who had fallen in beside him as they headed up the steps towards the storehouse.

“Ling Yun Fuhai,” Sana answered.

“Thanks,” he murmured. “I hadn’t been introduced to them yet…”

“Ah, I’ll give you all the names,” Sana replied, flashing him a smile before nearly tripping on the uneven step. “Augh! Stupid! Did they hire a cross-eyed stone carver?” she grumbled, stabilizing herself.

“The unequal thickness of the steps is almost artisanal,” he agreed, taking care not to repeat the same slip while balancing the two pots he was carrying in the rain. “Did I ever say how much this rain gets in your head?” he added.

“Yes, several times!” Sana called back.

Shaking his head, he followed after her, into the storehouse.

“That… is actually quite a respectable haul for a day,” he remarked once they had deposited their pots down with the others to be inventoried and checked.

“It is,” Sana agreed, sitting down on one and uncoiling her hair braid to squeeze some water out of it.

At this point, the hall had series of stacks of nearly seventy herb jars of various sizes, roughly ordered by grade. The majority were Golden Core or Soul Foundation grade, but there were still some dozen Nascent Soul ones, marked by twin purple stripes painted on them, and ten Dao Seeking herbs, marked with a purple star. Most surprisingly, given they did not, really, grow on trees, they had found six Immortal grade and two Chosen Immortal spirit herbs, not counting the last load they were still moving in.

“—Oi, stop slacking!” Lin Ling, who had come in after them, carrying a bundle of smaller pots in each hand, called over.

“Oh shut up!” Sana retorted, though her tone was in no way serious.

Lin Ling stuck her tongue out and put the two piles of jars down on a handy table and started to unpack them.

“I suppose if we are going to slack, we should make it look official! Thanks for the lesson, Teacher Lin!” he added.

Lin Ling shot him a slightly more sideways look, but if anything, just started checking the jars even more carefully.

“Oh come on you lot!” Arai, who had followed Lin Ling in, said with exasperation. “The faster we do this, the faster we can go get cleaned up!”

“…”

Sighing, Sana slipped off her perch and followed her sister out. Lin Ling sighed as well and put down her jar. Feeling a little aggrieved at having been caught out, he quickly stepped after both Jun sisters, though still not fast enough to beat Lin Ling to the door, who stuck her tongue out at him on the way past.

Shaking his head, he followed after them, back out into the rain.

…

By the time he had finished helping put away the rest of the herbs and then gone and gotten cleaned up, dried off and changed into a fresh robe, it was properly dark outside. More concerningly for the following day, he couldn’t help but note that the rain was also… intensifying as he stood at the window of his room and looked out over the gorge.

“What. an. odd. day,” he declared to the world at large, because that was the only way to sum it up, really.

A part of him had been rather driven regarding the whole thing, mostly because it got him away from the maudlin recollections of telling people about their dead loved ones. That had mostly been banished when they finally got to teleport up here, and he had been the one who was much keener to go out immediately, rather than Arai, he had to admit. At which point they had arrived and met the squirrel. Almost like reality itself was mocking his previous eagerness.

-It’s the suppression talking, he told himself, a bit sourly. And the rain. Don’t let it get to you…

That thought just promoted another odd thought though.

-Why is the rain getting to me?

He focused on his mantra, trying to dull the sense of oddness, but it did next to nothing…

“…”

He tried again, and it still made no appreciable difference. It wasn’t even that his mantra didn’t work… It… just made no difference. As if the effect was somehow split away from the reality in some small, subtle way.

“What in the nameless fate?”

He tried a third time, and nothing changed.

Frowning properly now, he turned to look around his dark room and had to fight the urge to… just collapse on the bed and go to sleep. The frustrated lethargy with how the day had panned out was so wearily all-consuming.

*Bang Bang Bang*

“What?” he snapped as someone banged on the door.

“Dinner is ready,” Arai said, sticking her head around the door. “And the rain is messing with people.”

“The rain… is?” he frowned, annoyed, both at the interruption and the stupid statement.

-Of course the rain is…

“…”

“Come downstairs. Lianmei will explain, if she stops cursing and throwing unbreakable jars at the wall,” Arai said, her own expression a bit shadowed in the doorway.

Giving himself a shake, he followed her out of the room and downstairs, to a common room that was indeed… kind of fractious. Someone had kicked a table over and Lianmei was sitting on a jar of wine beside her, glowering at the wall.

The others were sitting around at the far side, all looking somewhere between worried, concerned and tired.

“What’s going on?” he asked Arai.

“Heaven is conspiring to piss in our soup, is what,” Lianmei growled, focusing on him for a moment.

“The rain from the east has started to really take effect,” Senior Ying, who he had not even realised was sitting nearby, spoke up. “Basically, someone dispersed the ‘Rising Dragon Gale’ down by the coast and split the provincial weather-front in two. It’s a beautiful clear evening down on the plains…”

“…”

He stared at her blankly, those words not quite connecting in his mind for a few seconds.

“Oh…”

“Oh, indeed,” Arai agreed.

“Who would do something that—?”

“Crown Prince Fanshu, apparently,” Lianmei sighed, slipping off her table. “Now that you are here anyway, we are just waiting for Jiang Wushen to come back from checking on the guards, and then I’ll explain exactly how the heavens have pissed all over us.”

“So… this rain that is intensifying… this is a renewal of the ‘Rains from the East’…” he said to Arai as they both walked over to the main table.

She didn’t reply, just gave him a look that seemed to imply it was a stupidly obvious question…

-Oh come on… he groaned, putting a hand to his face for a moment. Get a grip.

“It’s never been this bad, I don’t think, ever?” he said at last.

“Yep, this is quite exceptional,” Senior Ying agreed. “You have to go back 150 years almost to the arrival of the censure force that was humiliated by the Blood Eclipse Cult to find a repression of the standard weather patterns that has had this much of an effect so suddenly.”

He was about to add that that ‘didn’t bode well for tomorrow,’ but managed to stop himself at the last moment, aware that everyone else was sitting in various degrees of silence, reading a book or doing something that allowed them to keep their own personal space a little. No drinking, nothing vaguely competitive like a card game…

“Let’s hope it sorts itself out quickly,” Sana added.

“We can but hope,” Arai agreed. “Or there are only going to be three of us able to do anything out there.”

“—Four,” a young woman dressed in a light gown and with pale brown hair added as she appeared almost like a ghost, to place another bowl of food on the table. “My senior sister is okay in this weather as well.”

Seeing his confused look, she bowed politely to him. “Meiling Xiang, I am a disciple of the Cherry Wine Pagoda, Hunter Han.”

“Ah, a… pleasure,” he managed to say, returning her smile as he took a seat, though he was sure it came across as little more than a grimace.

“—Sorry, that took longer than expected,” Jiang Wushen declared, stepping into the teahouse area and shedding his sodden cloak.

“They are all good?” Lianmei asked.

“The veterans are going to hold watch. Ling Shun and Ling Fuhai are both veterans of dark times; this will not affect them overly, given their martial foundations,” Jiang Wushen said. “I will take the second watch, along with…?”

“I’ll do it,” Lianmei sighed. “My ill humour has little to do with the weather.”

Jiang Wushen nodded and came over to sit at the table.

“So, what has gone wrong?” Juni asked at last, after Kun Lianmei continued to sit on her table, staring at the wall behind them in silence.

“—Aside from the weather?” Kun Ji remarked drily.

“Well, the source of the weather woes is an imperial party who have come,” Lianmei said, after a further short pause. “As to the bad news, it is hard to know where to start really. An Imperial Envoy has come, a Herald from the Imperial Seat. Their announcement is that there will be a ‘Trial of Exploration’, in honour of the Blue Water Sage.”

“…”

“A what?” Lin Ling asked after a moment.

“What is a trial of exploration?” he added, because that meant absolutely nothing to him either.

“In this instance? It’s a way to make trouble,” Senior Ying said, sighing. “There have been three I know of, since the Huang-Mo Wars, all on Northern Tang. The last one was some 6,000 odd years ago, when the Imperial Court used it to conquer the Ice Jade Forbidden Zone. Basically, they say ‘go into this land and discover miracles’. The person who finds the most miraculous or special thing will be announced the winner, but really, a trial like this is about making trouble for everyone else.

“Tens of thousands of junior cultivators from every major sect on the Imperial Continent will descend on this place, doubly so, because Yin Eclipse has a sense of mystique to it that exceeds any era it is in.”

“Uhuh,” Lianmei agreed.

“Wait… so they are going to come to Yin Eclipse… and explore it?” he asked, trying to see what he was missing.

“Yep, that’s going to be it, pretty much,” Senior Ying sighed.

“That’s…” Lin Ling started to say.

“Suicidal?” Sana suggested.

“Yes…” Senior Ying sighed. “However, that is not really the problem.”

“The problem is we need to exploit this place and having groups of young nobles surging through it like an avalanche of chaos…” He murmured, the problem crystallizing in his mind.

“Yep,” Juni agreed.

“If there is a saving grace, it is that this will not happen immediately, but in a way that makes this fate-thrashed rain all the more frustrating,” Lianmei mused. “Because it absolutely cripples any existing efforts to exploit this place ahead of the trial.”

“I mean, it’s still possible,” Senior Ying mused, “The rain will stabilize in a few hours, hopefully. I can also prepare some talismans that will help.”

“There are… talismans that can help with this?” Lin Ling asked, looking hopeful.

“Yep, I can make ones for you that will help promote some sympathetic resonance, much like the baths here,” Senior Ying explained, taking out a talisman paper with an elegant, dark-red moon rune on it that he had never seen before. “It’s basically a talisman that helps you focus your intent in such a way that your mental state, well, it won’t get worse than it is already.”

“That will help a lot,” Lianmei said, giving Senior Ying a relieved smile. “Your generosity is much appreciated.”

“Not at all,” Senior Ying said with a wave of her hand. “That said, I cannot make many, as the process is draining.”

“All we can do is take stock tomorrow,” Juni said, sitting back in her chair with a grimace. “There are things that can be done that don’t put us in grave danger that will still be more than useful.”

“Like starting to nurture some of the herbs we have already,” Sana suggested.

“Like that, yes,” Juni nodded.

“The bigger, immediate, problem is that this has cut us off from the lowlands,” Lianmei added.

“The rains are interfering with formations and such?” he guessed.

“Yes,” Lianmei confirmed, nodding in his direction. “They are. We can teleport in and out, but talisman transmission is very broken up and many lesser formations will fail in hours without steady maintenance.”

“It makes us vulnerable,” Ling Wentai, who had been sitting in silence up to this point, added.

“It does,” one of the group of guards who had come with him and Arai agreed.

“In that case, Senior Ying, if you might provide talismans to the guards in the first instance? We will remunerate you suitably for any you need to make beyond what you already possess.”

“Okay,” Senior Ying agreed, getting up and walking over to the dinner table as well.

“So, is there any other ‘bad news’?” Juni asked.

“Oh yeah, but that was the main bit,” Lianmei sighed. “We will be getting a bunch from the Ha clan, in all likelihood. At least one, maybe two groups.”

“The Ha clan…” Arai murmured coolly.

“The Ling clan is also sending extra people, as is the Kun,” Lianmei said. “All of them see opportunities in these expeditions, to get a head start on this ‘trial’.”

“And we cannot tell them to just get stuffed?” Juni asked, with uncharacteristic bluntness.

“I believe Lady Tao said as much. Most are going to join the other group… Their ‘prospects’ are held to be… greater,” Lianmei replied, her face twisting into a mocking sneer.

“Why not just strike out on their own?” he asked, turning that over in his mind. “Would they not get more benefits that way?”

“…”

“You would think, but your assumption is based on the flawed premise that they are trying to get benefits as a first priority.”

“Oh… right,” he grimaced, sitting back with an understanding, if resigned, shrug. “We are the pointy end of the actual effort, that mission is major kudos and also, if they get involved with us in small ways, they get a lot more leverage?”

“Uhuh…” Lianmei nodded in agreement. “That’s basically it.”

“Well, we can always send them to sweep valleys behind us,” Juni suggested.

“Indeed,” Jiang Wushen agreed. “There is no reason to coddle them in the slightest. Most of those they send will be four and five star hunters, I would assume.”

“Probably. Lady Tao did assure me that we would be saddled with as little dead weight as was possible,” Lianmei continued. “The problems mostly seem to be coming from within the Ling clan, near as she was willing to say.”

“—Sorry to interrupt, this is the last of it,” Meilan said brightly, putting a platter of rice rolls down on the table.

“Ah, well done. Thank you, Miss Meilan,” Lianmei said, giving the young woman a smile.

-How is she not as affected? he wondered, still feeling really out of sorts in a strange, hard-to-define way.

Now that he looked around, it was clear that Arai and Sana were less affected as well, and while Lianmei was annoyed, she had implied she was not so impeded. Similarly Senior Ying, Jiang Wushen and Kun Ji were all handling it quite well.

Were it not for the Beast Hunters, he would have thought it a mantra thing.

As it was, he only had to ponder the matter for a scant few seconds to already start feeling irrationally vexed over it…

He clearly wasn’t the only one either, because Lin Ling was staring at her soup, her cheeks puffed out, looking deeply perturbed, and some of the guards were also looking studiously at their food, as if they could not trust themselves to speak.

He sighed and was about to just ask, when Sana spoke up.

“So, about this trial? How would that even work?”

“Depends what the objective is…” Senior Ying mused, sitting down opposite him. “If it’s like the ones in the Northern Tang, it will basically be a competition to see who can get the highest score in a time limit. The ‘score’ being determined by their accumulation of… good fortune, I suppose, throughout the time period of the trial.”

“So, like the Dragon Pillars?” Jiang Wushen asked.

“Yes, although not as structured, because that usually involves some specific challenge or target, like a rare herb or grasping the teachings in a recently exposed tomb…” Senior Ying replied. “More likely – and I have to admit my experience here is somewhat lacking – they will set up a grand formation or ritual and create contribution talismans that will be issued to everyone, then what herbs you gather, what beasts you kill, how your cultivation advances and so on, will all be tied together to a numerical score that can be compared.”

“But what does it even achieve?” he asked, frowning.

“Doing that somewhere on the Imperial Continent, sure, but Yin Eclipse is not a normal forbidden zone…”

“…”

“Heh… quite,” Senior Ying agreed, her smile turning a bit nasty. “It does, however, have lots of mysteries and a lot of wealth. Perhaps someone wants to see what might be shaken loose.”

“A lot of corpses,” Kun Ji remarked sourly.

“Probably, yes,” Senior Ying agreed. “Also, this kind of event is quite prestigious. A lot of influential people will come, much like for this auction you spoke of, but more so. Yin Eclipse has preyed on a lot of minds for many years, but few have been willing to commit to it, in the aftermath of recent upheavals. The Imperial Court announcing this means they are taking Yin Eclipse and its riches seriously.”

“Hmmm… yes, that is a good interpretation,” Lianmei mused. “Based on the wording in the message, and the fact that it is today, means it is as much about making a statement to the Azure Astral Authority and other watching powers as it is internal considerations?

“That they sent Fanshu is a bit odd, but everything I know of that prince suggests he probably did it for a power trip. The wording of the announcement though…”

He watched as Lianmei waved a hand and a shimmering figure in herald’s robes stood on the table, flanked by various dignitaries.

“—By the Grace and Majesty of Emperor Blue Morality!

“The day on which our Dun clan…”

They all listened as Lianmei replayed the message itself. In tone it was fairly bombastic, however, the wording was certainly not what he was expecting. Especially the rather evocative callout to the legacy of the Blue Water Sage.

“…”

“That…” Juni frowned after the last echoes of the salute had faded away. “Well, it certainly provides a contrast in tone…”

“It does,” Senior Ying mused, walking over to it. “Can you play it back, but turn the sound off and expand the image. Does it shows a bit more than that?”

“Sure.” Lianmei did something to the talisman and the whole scene increased in scope by about fifty percent and skipped back to an earlier point.

Lianmei started it replaying again, showing first the Prince Fanshu disembarking, until Senior Ying held up a hand for her to stop, at a point where the ship itself was visible in the background as the Prince accepted the salutes of the people on the dock.

“—Here. See there, on the ramp?” She pointed to a figure in a white and gold robe emblazoned with ‘Kong’ standing in the shadows.

“That’s a Kong clan envoy?” Lianmei mused, also staring at the scene with narrowed eyes.

“Not just any envoy, that’s the Grand Imperial Astrologer himself, Kong Di Huang,” Senior Ying murmured. “And he did not get off the ship.”

“…”

He, along with everyone else, stared dully at the image, with that lofty and important person standing there in the shadows, not quite sure what to say.

“So… they are basically saying that unlike Shan Lai, who uses Yin Eclipse to ‘punish’, the Imperial Court wants to ‘support’ the people and that its riches should belong to Eastern Azure…?” Juni said at last.

“…” Lianmei shrugged, slightly helplessly. “My money is that they are trying to counteract the messaging of the Azure Astral Authority. The question of ‘wealth’ being taken off world is a deeply evocative one for many of the clans. With this, isn’t the Imperial Court basically suggesting in not so many words that they will support that view?”

“It is certainly a problem well above what we can deal with ourselves,” Juni added. “This also makes us a massive target as well.”

“It does,” Lianmei agreed. “That it does…”

~ Ha Tai Kai — Cherry Wine Pagoda ~

Long after Ha Feirong had left once again, now in the company of Lan Huang, to deal more personally with some of the fallout from the sudden arrival of a whole bunch of imperial Advisors and a second Imperial Scion in the province, Ha Tai Kai found himself pacing idly around a cherry tree lined courtyard in the heart of the Cherry Wine Pagoda, lost in thought.

To the uninitiated eye, there was little to recommend it from the several other such courtyards of similar style that led off the main building of the ancient compound. There were cherry trees… and the odd ornamental pond with Meng carp in them and some nice lotus blossoms, as well as a statue here and there, usually with a strange name, like ‘Old Man Ponders the North’ or ‘Old Man Reflects on What Was’.

While most of the town was abuzz with the news about the ‘pivot’ towards this region by the Imperial Court, or fixated on what the trial might be, or the arrival of a second imperial scion, his concern, largely, was what he had seen in the ruins of Tai Shan.

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

Even now, hours later, the words whispered eerily, almost like a mark in his mind. The feel of the shadow’s hand gripping his neck, the hate and the fury, loss and longing in its tone unpleasantly vivid.

He entered another courtyard, which again held a familiar statue, a pond and a bunch of cherry trees, and stopped. The only difference here was that rather than an inscription below the figure seated amid the cherry trees, there was just a blank slab, carved with scrolled leaves around the edges.

Only he could access this courtyard, and anyone he chose to bring here. Even then, it was possible for the courtyard to remain elusive, if they did not ‘fit’ with the criteria it permitted. The requirements to enter were comparable to an ancestral refugium in that regard.

-Took long enough, he mused, glancing around. There must be some eyes looking at this place from afar?

Closing his eyes, he felt the ambience and, sure enough, there was a faint shadow in the doorway behind him.

“Huh… where did he go?” the shadow frowned, looking around. “That old man, to think he was that quick… Was there another exit?”

“…”

He looked at the ghostly figure and shook his head. The figure was already caught within the traps here, unaware of what had transpired.

Approaching, he bowed politely to the statue then placed is hand on the empty slab—

The only indication of ‘change’ was the rain fading away.

To anyone else, like the foolish interloper who had managed to follow him into that courtyard and not already died a horrible, uncertain death, they would still have no idea what he had done. Either they would believe they just missed him, or that he had left again, or something. In any case, it would be unremarkable, unmemorable and the courtyard very boring, and they would leave again and forget they ever found it.

As a gleaned comprehension from the suppression of Yin Eclipse, it was perhaps, in his considered opinion, among the singular most impressive examples of ‘ablative feng shui’ anywhere on Eastern Azure, hidden away in this little courtyard, unbeknownst to Sage or Scholar.

Stepping back, he found himself in a very similar-looking courtyard, except that the style of the building itself was functionally alien to this era of Eastern Azure, the walls painted white, the roof tiles no longer the traditional dragon tiles, but rustic terracotta slabs.

“The décor never changes huh,” he remarked to the world at large, shaking his head.

The climate was pleasantly warm, barely humid and with a faint hint of salt in the air. The sky was a dark, dusky, blue fading to purple-red as mackerel clouds fanned out.

Turning on his heel, he walked back out the way he came, into a wider courtyard flanked by two story high white stone building, which opened onto a paved veranda overlooking a wonderful coastal vista with the sun slowly dipping into the azure ocean.

Arriving at the balcony, he leant on it, admiring the view, which made a nice change from the dreary humid haze of the unpleasantly tropical West Flower Picking Town. The only ‘issue’ – if you could call it that – or oddity perhaps… or ‘visual blight on the landscape’, if you were being uncharitable, was that every flowering plant within eyesight, every tree and shrub was a species of ‘cherry’. Even the lawns were carpeted in tiny grass-like saplings of dwarf cherry, no more than a few centimetres tall. The weirdest part, though, was that everything: leaves, the flowers, the bark… if you cut them open, even the wood inside would be the same colour, in this case, luminescent lilac—

“You are late…”

Turning, he found the villa’s only occupant, a fit man in youthful middle age with a well-trimmed beard, reclining on a chair, a book over his face.

“Sorry… Father,” he murmured, saluting the ‘old man’, who in truth looked younger than he did, currently.

Ha Tai Wen sighed and sat up, putting the book to one side and stared at him pensively.

The whole space that they were in, was the construction of a special formation, created by the link between a parent artefact in his father’s possession and a child one given to him.

The master stele never left his father’s side as far as he could tell, and his father had never shared either knowledge of it, or its origins, with anyone except him and, previously, his mother. The child stele, one of two for the parent in his father’s possession, had been given to him by his mother the last time she visited the Azure Astral Starfield, some 50,000 years ago now.

In the years since, he had found it to be… utterly remarkable. It was capable of forming a formation that opened up a separate world without any disturbance, without any anomalies, that was as stable as the ‘real’ one, though oddly fragile in parts.

Within, it was possible to completely customise the innate qi attributes of the environment you trained in. It also seemed able to do something strange with time if you killed chickens in it and occasionally would spawn a small altar.

Depending on whether the chicken killed was male or female, the altar also showed an inscription. For the male it was ‘Teacher told me to write lines so I would get better, but all I ever seem to do is write more lines for teacher?’; while for a female one it was ‘They see me severing, they hating, but I severing still’.

After many years of fruitless study by his father, the altar was largely ignored by both of them these days. Artefacts this powerful always had… oddities. And that was by no means the oddest thing about a stele that anyone could use.

“So… what brings you here? It’s… a few years yet for our scheduled discussion?” Ha Tai Wen asked with a raised eyebrow, putting the book to one side, which he saw was called ‘An Ode to She of the Many-Coloured Throne’. “And you still manage to be a day late, on top of that?”

“It is,” he conceded, coming over and sitting down at the table. “In recompense, I brought dinner… and entertainment?”

“I do not see beautiful, scantily clad maidens with you,” his father remarked drily, staring around theatrically.

“…”

“I am sure they are there, in your heart,” he replied with aplomb, putting down a box and withdrawing a stack of food he had bought from a Mrs Leng’s market stall the previous day with the intention of sharing it on Sovereign’s Day, before events overtook those plans.

“—Ah, a new game…”

“…”

“It’s not a new game,” he pointed out, “Quite the opposite.”

“Huh…” his father took the box, opened it and gave a faint shrug. “Ah, ‘Nine Sages Stars’. Didn’t you used to play this with your younger sisters?”

“Indeed,” he agreed blandly.

“So, why are you here?” his old man said. “Don’t tell me you are bothering this old fellow just because you are bored?” his father remarked, somewhat mockingly.

-Ah, how easy it is to forget that your parents can be annoying, he reflected to himself, opening the box of food.

“It is a day when family should sit down and have a meal,” he reminded Ha Tai.

“That was yesterday, and you didn’t even cook this yourself, unfilial son,” his father remarked, his scorn entirely undermined by the fact that he had taken a whole leg of roasted duck and bitten off a huge mouthful mid-sentence. “This is quite good, by the way – who cooked it?”

“A market chef,” he replied.

“Market chefs are getting better,” his old man conceded, helping himself to a second leg of duck.

“…”

“I suppose that young woman would be flattered to know that the second oldest of the hermitic old ancestors of the Ha clan’s original family declared that her food was ‘quite good’,” he mused, helping himself to a fried roll. “I wonder if she could put it up on a sign. ‘Officially Acknowledged as ‘This food is quite good by the way,’ by Ha Tai Wen’.”

“Hah!” his father shook his head, claiming a third duck leg. “I doubt my name has much draw these days, given how unfilial the bunch over on the Imperial Continent are… relegated to an orthodox branch, my saintess-blessed ass…”

“…”

“Descendants are a hazard of the occupation,” he reminded his father.

“Yes, a trial sent by the Dao to fuck with this old man,” his father grumbled, shovelling out a large portion of the rice, before looking at him again, with piercing eyes.

“So, are you going to set that lot out? As I recall we used to play this when you were all bright eyes and bushy tails,” Ha Tai added, pointing a greasy finger at the box.

Rolling his eyes, he cleared some space and set out the various cards into their appropriate stacks, along with the counters.

“We using a board or…” his father added.

He squinted at the marble table for a moment. “We can use the table top; neither of us is new to this game.”

His father stared at him slightly accusingly, but nodded.

…

About thirty minutes later, the food eaten and the first round of ‘Nine Sages Stars’ basically complete, his father sighed and pushed his hand of cards away and fixed him with an accusing glare.

“Son… there are only so many times this old mind will take your cheating ways.”

“The only thing that’s ‘cheating’ here is your memory of how to play ‘Nine Sages’ Stars’,” he replied with a grin, placing his last card down on the counter to cancel out the last of his father’s gains down the auspicious pattern they were ‘fighting’ to secure as reflected in the stone on the table top.

His father frowned for a moment and said, without any hint of self-reflection, “Hmm… perhaps you’re right.”

Leaning back, he reclined on his chair and stared out at the garden of cherry trees below the veranda, which stretched away into the early evening darkness, melding into the coastline below where the water was starting to reflect the moon slowly rising above them.

“So, what is it that is bothering you, son, that you need to come here, eat a meal and make small talk with your old man to clear your head?”

“…”

“Two problems, but I suspect they are rather related. The first, is that I went to Tai Shan…”

“…”

His father paused in moving his cards and stared at him.

“Okay…”

“I talked with the ‘Shadow’ there,” he said softly, taking the jade that Ling Tao had given him out and placing it on the table. “Look at this and you will understand.”

“…”

Ha Tai Wen stared at him for a long moment, then took the jade and stared at it…

The trees shifted in a breeze that had not been there before, luminescent lilac cherry blossom that mysteriously held its colour, even in the twilight, as if lit from within, falling like rain.

With a sigh, his father put the jade back down and looked pensively out at the sunset-tinted waves of the ocean.

The cherry buds on the trees regrew and bloomed once more, bright green this time, rather than lilac, and with it, the entire landscape became… slightly eye-searing.

“Someone desecrated that space… Can you show me what you saw?”

“I can… try?” he frowned, unsure suddenly whether that was possible.

His father held out a hand, which he reached out and touched—

Shadows flowed, moments blurring within moments, memories of the trip through the ruins with Lan Huang flickering back and forth like a children’s lantern.

“Old Scholar…” the words whispered out of the darkness between the images.

“…”

His father broke the connection a moment later, the shadows and memories rattling in his mind a few moments longer before he quelled them gently.

“Well?” he asked after a moment.

His father, rather than replying, lifted up the talisman again and considered it a second time… before sighing softly and putting it to one side.

“I’ll look into it, and however that inner area is… challenging. I have to concede it’s a good place to hide dodgy dealings. It seems Lu Xiao is also investigating this?”

“She is,” he confirmed.

“If it is that place, she is much better placed to get answers. If it’s a matter of persuading her, you have always had a way with the ladies as I recall…” his father mused.

“I had a way with one lady,” he muttered, annoyed to be reminded about Xue Kai Lan. “And that is thoroughly ruined for now… no thanks to our idiot descendants in part.”

“…”

His father stared at him and sighed, then tossed him the book over.

Taking the book he glanced at it and found… that it was a lengthy, if very well written poem about the pursuit of a beloved by a woman called ‘Sapphire’.

“…”

“Read that, maybe it will help,” his father grinned mischievously. “I am sure she will come around. It’s only been what… a century? That’s basically a fight over dinner last week.”

In truth, that had been about significantly more than a ‘fight over dinner’. His ‘good friend’ of many years, Lady Kai, had effectively had her inheritance disciple ruined by a scion of the Imperial Court, who had then covered the whole mess up quite thoroughly, to the point where Xue Kai Lan had actually gone to the Imperial Palace and threatened Emperor Jiang to his face. The Ha clan’s part in ‘resisting’ her, had led to them having a significant fallout afterwards as she felt he should have come with her.

Setting aside that it was not a good look for a clan’s ancient ancestor to kick in the doors of the Imperial Palace, he had actually been off world at the time in any case, making it doubly awkward when he rushed back and found out just how vexatiously and unwisely the Ha clan’s elders had gotten them entwined in the whole toxic mess while trying to capitalize on the aftermath of the ‘Year of the Blood Eclipse’ some half a century before that.

Sighing, he quickly recounted the pertinent details about the auction, the bandits and the background to the jade, giving his father the rundown of much of what he had discussed with Ling Tao, Kun Liang and Ha Shi Xiaolian, then with Ha Feirong and Lan Huang.

“I can see why you are concerned,” his father said, at last. “Our Ha clan is up to their wretched little necks in this auction house mess? You think that someone is trying to implicate our descendants?”

“Certainly, within the clan itself,” he sighed, “Ha Cao Quanbo and Ha Ji Fanguang have both been making approaches to the Din clan, and Envoy Qiao is likely involved as well. It has not sat well with any of them that the Ling clan basically installed our descendant Ha Feirong as Clan Lord and Governor of West Flower Picking Region over Ha Cao Quanbo’s son.”

“The Din clan huh…” his father’s tone cooled noticeably as the evening sky dark turned murky. For a few, brief seconds, the distant landscape turned shadow-like and the trees shivered, scattering green blossom everywhere that rapidly flowered again as dark gold.

His father hadn't put any qi in it, yet that was still enough to nearly collapse the world this place generated temporarily, such was his enduring dislike of the Din clan.

-Some grudges really do run deep, he reflected, watching the realm re-manifest around them as the parent artefact in his father’s possession re-established its connection to his child artefact.

The seaside villa was still there, behind them, but everything else was entirely new, the place they sat, now a beautiful pagoda on the edge of a lake, surrounded by rising massif pillars… covered with dark gold cherry trees.

He shook his head. His father's enmity with the old ancestors of the Din was a thing that went all the way back to the previous Imperial Dun Dynasty, to their founders.

Unfortunately, his reclusive nature and complete intransigence on it had led the Ha clan of more recent times to basically break with that enmity and choose to align with the Imperial Court more closely, to pursue opportunities that did not go through his father, him, the fifth old ‘ancestor’, Ha Erlang, or the ninth old ancestor, Ha Shi.

The result had led to a repositioning of power, rather like what was happening in the Kun clan at the moment, but with Dao Ascendants at odds, not Dao Lords. The result had led to the isolation of the Ha clan on Yin Eclipse for quite some time, but their industry here was basically untouchable. Thanks to places like the Cherry Wine Pagoda, and his father’s personal ties to people like Lu Fu Tao, all the Cao, Ji and other branches could do was gnaw at the edges, like rats.

“How have the Din clan crept back in anyway?” his father asked coolly, as the evening sky returned last of all, swirling constellations of stars drifting across it in esoteric patterns. “I heard they were disgraced after that mess with… the Imperial Astrologer’s adopted son, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, well, in your time spent elsewhere, Thirty Years Ago, the Imperial Court ‘granted’ an opportunity to the Din clan to make ‘amends’ for what happened here a hundred years ago—”

“—And they did it by helping Fanshu consolidate his position after the ruin of the Lin school?” his father interjected.

“You do know about that?” he frowned.

“I was away at the time, but I do read my messages,” his father replied.

“Well, there is an envoy from the Din clan here in town at the moment. They attended Dongfei’s party and one of their scions was involved in breaking up those bandits…”

“…”

His father stared into the distance for a long moment, then nodded. “If you want a culprit for this mess, the chaos that benefits no one, the Din clan is a very good place to start.”

“Control, even partial control, over one of Yin Eclipse’s provinces would give them a huge boost in their ambitions,” he agreed. “Our Ha clan have already started to give them benefits in return for material backing in supplanting the influence of the regional Hunter Pavilions, according to Xianlian, and this trial announcement is only going to accelerate that.”

He passed over both the scroll of ‘rumours’ and a copy of the scene from the trial announcement over to his father, who looked at both, snorted and tossed them back down on the table with a disgusted sigh.

“So, is that it, or is there more?” Ha Tai Wen asked.

“There is always more,” he said drily, pouring some wine for both of them. “I thought to appraise you of the lesser issue first, frankly.”

“This is the lesser issue?” his father raised an eyebrow.

“Well, the less imminently dangerous element of it, yes,” he mused. “I recall you went into the interior with the Blue Water Sage?”

“…”

His father stared at him for a long time, then sighed again, much more deeply, his expression just a touch haunted, which, considering he was a quasi-World Venerate, was not a comforting thing.

“I did. Effing nightmare it was too. Never stood in a place simultaneously so beautiful and so singularly full of deathly peril in my life before or since, even back in the day when Tai Shan was still occupied.”

“I don’t suppose there is any chance a junior could get anything… out of there?” he added.

“…”

“In regards to this ‘trial’?” His father scoffed.

“In part,” he confirmed.

“Not a fates-thrashed chance in the celestial realms. That place views people of the calibre of moral fibre espoused by our world’s current ten generations as fertilizer for the laws of entropy… at best,” his father said flatly. “Why? Has one of our idiot scions gotten himself lost in there? If he has, just write the bugger off and be done with it.”

“Sadly, it is nothing so easy to deal with, I fear,” he replied, “though the appetite for participation in this trial does make outcome rather likely. This relates to, well… I told you of these two ‘young nobles’?”

“You did, go on…” his father nodded, helping himself to another roll.

“Well, the Princess, Dun Lian Jing, is just a minor princess, the daughter of a concubine, the last one taken before Dun Jiang married Huang Wuli Mei some fifty years ago. She largely unexceptional, beyond her possession of a somewhat unusual connate physique. She is a messenger girl for Dun Jian in effect.”

“Dun Jian? Faugh,” his father sneered.

“Yes, unfortunately. However, he has just annexed the Blue Gate School…” he murmured. “With an imperial decree… using a bunch of juniors as the errand runners to minimize the pushback.”

“…”

Ha Tai stopped and looked at him.

“Has he now…?” his father frowned, before changing the subject. “And the boy? You said he was from the Huang clan? Core or Branch? Just telling me his name is like pointing at a lake and going ‘so about these fish’….” The old man managed to make that sound both denigrating and demeaning just by invective, which was quite impressive really.

“Yes, the boy is actually the problematic one, in the wider context of all this,” he continued, after sipping his wine. “On paper, he is a favoured nephew of Huang Leng, nothing unusual there, but in truth, he is the ‘hidden heir’ of the Huang clan’s Wuli branch, Huang Leng’s son… the grandson of Lady Huang Gao Wuli.”

“…”

“So that is why Ju Shan is hovering around like an evil songbird,” his father mused, “I mean, she is pretty on the eyes and all, but her presence does rather put people on edge.”

“I always assumed that is rather the point,” he noted. “Much like the ever-present possibility Meng Fu or Lingsheng might drift back into focus and do something inexplicable and disruptive, someone like Ju Shan visibly doing ‘nothing’ unnerves people.”

“How did you find that out, anyway?” his father added.

“Actually, I ran into some Huang scions and in the process of tossing one out of the Myriad Blossoms Teahouse and saw the boy with my own eyes,” he replied drily.

“You didn’t toss Huang Guo Wuli’s grandson out of a teahouse, did you?” his father remarked with mock disgust. “I thought I raised you better than that? You should get someone else, someone disposable, to do a thing like that.”

“…”

“Ah, no,” he refuted that flatly, rolling his eyes. “I saw one of the Huang brat’s memories. He was envious of a fancy talisman Huang JiLao was given, and in that memory I saw he had a bound treasure from Ju Shan, though neither Huang JiLao nor that brat actually know it.”

“How shameless of you. And that Qiao said that no seniors were to ‘interfere’,” his father chuckled.

“So, regarding how this all might tie together,” he said, getting back to the original point. “Dun Jian was not part of the group who went ‘after’ was he?”

“No, he was not,” Ha Tai grunted. “And he gained a lot from that, especially in advising his brother Jiang to avoid it as well. That basically delivered Jiang the throne in the end and Jian a lot of good will.”

“Hmmm…”

He frowned, staring out at the sunset.

“So, how does this all link back to you and me, sitting here, playing card games like we are not older than original sin,” his father asked.

“Well, their little fact finding mission has been mired up quite neatly by Envoy Qiao…” he mused. “Likely helping Prince Fanshu, with whom he has some considerable association…”

“Unsurprising. Qiao is a snake, but he is well-matched with someone like Dun Jian,” his father muttered. “And Fanshu’s backers are tight with the Jade Gate Court and the White Storm Sect, aren’t they?”

“They are,” he agreed. “They call themselves the ‘Sovereignty Hall, and if I was going to bet properly, I’d say this trial has their fingerprints all over it. Certainly in light of this…”

With a sigh, he took out a small, grey stone slip from his belt pouch and pushed it across the table.

About nine by twelve centimetres in size and about one centimetre, deep the 'child slate' contained a series of interlocking circular patterns, each of which themselves contained a shifting moon rune. The middle rune stabilized as they looked at it and read ‘Unity Shifts Formation Basic Script Array – Annotated teaching aid [$5_5&t9_A%@]’.

His father stared at the tablet, then at him, then back at the tablet.

The atmosphere turned heavy, cherry blossoms again falling like rain, though this time the actual fabric of the space didn’t reorder itself at least.

“A scion from the Deng clan fished out a piece of one of these, allegedly, from the Blue River and promptly handed it over to those two, basically as soon as they disembarked from their Dragonship, the day before they annexed the Blue Gate School for Dun Jian. Though they are being very circumspect about it, they have been asking oblique questions about ruins ever since.”

“…”

"So they found another? Is it a ‘Unity Shifts’ one?" the old man asked eventually, as the trees blossomed again, everything becoming a rather unpleasant shade of pink.

"No… thankfully, or I would have led with that.” he clarified, dusting a few blossoms away with his hand. “And they have rather wisely said nothing to anyone about it, as far as I know, and I have been keeping half an eye on the lad, in spite of that talisman he has. The slate they were given is heavily damaged in any case… but it has clouds and a sword on it. All it really says is 'Yin Eclipse W——', as I understand.

“What I can tell you is…”

“—It certainly didn’t come from the Blue River,” His father said, beating him to it. “Based on that description, it likely from the East Fury Torrent, washed out of the underground caverns below East Fury. They took it to the Blue Gate School… you said?”

“Indeed,” he confirmed. “Straight to Lu Ji himself, asking him for ‘especial cooperation’.”

“They annexed the school over that… Ha…” his father shook his head wryly. “How ironic. Does Dun Jian want to die childless in this generation?”

“I very much doubt Dun Jian is childless within this generation based on what I know of him,” he said with an eye roll. “I figured I should check with you, before I go and cause a mess by robbing them of something like that… If it is just a warding formation or an access key, like the ones that were in the depths of Tai Shan, it should be no problem. If there is a chance it has a celestial law in it, however…”

They both paused to admire the inner workings of the complete universal law that was slowly shifting into focus in the sky above. It was visible at night in this space, or, sometimes, if you let your aura get so out of control that it did break things.

Yet, it never provoked any form of tribulation, ever, that he had observed, and not for lack of trying, since they had started corresponding regularly. Not even the sneaky little grey lotus blossoms or the invisible eldritch cat spirits that came when you talked too much about ‘gravity’.

His father chuckled, leaning back in his chair and swirling his wine cup. “I suspect this is quite unique… the work of an eccentric artist.”

“Uhuh…” he could only nod in agreement at that, the strange altar, the riddle of the chickens and the various other oddities flitting through his mind.

“So… your concern is that they will follow this relic up there… and die, horribly,” his father mused at last, “with or without the help of this trial? That someone is sending Huang JiLao out there on a fool’s errand, trying to kill Huang Wuli’s grandson by sideways means? Knowing her personality and how she will react?”

“It… has crossed my mind, several times,” he conceded. “With the announcement of the trial… I am less certain though, on that than I was.”

“…”

“Ju Shan is not that incompetent,” his father said at last.

“I hope so,” he sighed. “I really hope so.”

“So, what is your plan for this?” his father asked, sitting back and staring at him over steepled fingers.

“Well, I have already called Lan Huang back, to help remedy the question of clan security.”

“A wise choice,” he father agreed.

“I… also want to borrow a puppet from you,” he said.

“You expect to send someone into Yin Eclipse?” his father mused.

“It is likely we will need to safeguard some of our descendants inside Yin Eclipse in the near future, one of them would be ideal for the job,” he replied.

“Okay,” his father agreed, barely even hesitating, to his mild surprise. “I take it you intend to have Lan Huang use it?”

“I do… will that mean…?”

“—Showing him this place?” his father stared around pensively. “It might, but Lan Huang is… worth nurturing. Get that commitment from him… then bring him here. If the stele lets him in, we can talk about that further.”

“Okay,” he nodded, sitting back. “And what should we do about the bodies and the links to Yeng Illhan?”

“This old man has means. Leave it and the question of those bodies with me,” his father mused. “Your recollection suggested there were sixteen, not six?”

“That was what the shadow showed,” he grimaced.

“Start with identifying who they were, and what they have been up to,” his father added. “Where are the six that came back?”

“Now that the rain has stopped, that is the next thing I intend to look into,” he agreed.