For a long life and happiness in any Great World, there are three maxims that you should always adhere to. First, never annoy the Hunter Bureau. Second, never anger the Military Bureau. Third, if anyone ever tells you in seriousness that the Meng, Mo or Huang Clans are a pushover? Rejoice in your heart and do everything you can to become that person’s friend, for you will be able to make a fortune off of their gullibility.

Excerpt from ‘A Mortal’s Journey to the Sky’

~By Hua Xiaomei

~ Ha Kai, Ha Family Old Ancestors ~

It had been almost two thousand years, Ha Kai pondered, since he had physically stood in the physical construct of the realm his father’s stele created. The child artefacts allowed a mirror of this one to be cast and anchored where required – currently, that was in a minor estate in Blue Water City that he used. The location of this, the parent artefact, was unknown even to him. His father was almost excessively secretive about this place and the mysteries it held. Nobody else in the Ha clan even knew of it, except for the old man’s wife, long departed the world, himself, and now young Huang and the lad Ha Leng.

The shimmering spatial rift before them was something that only the parent stele could achieve, and subsequently the reason for the shift in location. He had known of this handy ability prior to this point, but what he hadn’t known was that it wasn’t affected by the limitations on divination around the Yin Eclipse mountain range. On the other hand, it was being periodically disrupted by the spatial collapses caused by the lightning on Thunder Crest Pinnacle.

“You motherfucking piece of shit reliquated junk!”

His father was busy swearing at great length as he re-adjusted the arrays again.

“...low down, useless, conniving son of a Dun whore! Stay stable for fucks’ sakes.”

Currently, the three of them were sat around the table, watching the chase unfold and trying to track Di Ji and the other cultivator, Din Ouyeng.

“Old Ancestor, if you keep swearing like this—” Lan Huang, who was looking understandably nervous, protested.

His concern was probably sensible as well. If they were outside this realm, he was sure that his father would have actually called down a proper tribulation by this point: not one of the weak things that the lower step cultivators had to overcome, but a proper, old-style heaven-splitting calamity. Especially given he was explicitly swearing, taking the name of the Imperial Clan in vain. The Dun clan and their Blue Morality Sect was not his father’s friend, not that the old man cared particularly, and they would probably egg the tribulation on in the vain hope that it would actually incinerate the old eccentric. He supposed it was good that they had aspirations in their aeon-long lives.

“—It’s fine,” he interjected with a sigh. “Let him curse, there is nothing the Imperial Court can do to him, or us, in this place.”

“Mmmmm,” young Huang didn’t look entirely convinced. That was fine. While he was a peerless expert, he was still a touch lacking in experience when it came to the way the pointy end of their world worked regarding things from before its current aeon.

Turning back to the viewing rifts, he picked up a cup of a strange fizzy drink from the table and eyed it dubiously – the old man brewed the weirdest things sometimes – then took a sip and winced. It was hengberry flavoured. He offered it to the youth who sat opposite him, who took it with a hand that trembled only slightly. For that alone, he had to give him a mental thumbs-up.

The lad, Ha Leng, was, in fairness, quite out of his depth, having been through a lot in the last few hours, and was now making a spirited attempt at not just shutting down. Sugary drinks laced with some nerve-calming elixir seemed to help, although he supposed the poor lad also didn’t really know enough about realms, or the upper echelons of this realm’s cultivation systems, to truly grasp the calibre of company he was in. That was fine; this was much preferable to having him grovelling obsequiously or just gibbering in a corner somewhere, which tended to be the social settings most people had in the company of his father.

It only took him a few moments to locate some proper wine and pour it out. Thankfully his old man was not restricting the nature of space in here, so he could just swipe it from a cupboard over by the wall. The entire space was currently set up like a luxurious palace hall with a table and pennants. The concession to cherry trees was the carved pillars and such, which were all currently a rather difficult shade of cream. The rift itself hung in the middle of the hall, allowing them a panoramic view of the carnage unfolding within the mountain range.

On the other side of the rift, a youth in blue, white and gold robes was determinedly hacking at a giant centipede with a sabre. The centipede was very angry which made sense given that part of its shell was melted and it looked to be suffering some kind of curse. Seemingly realising that sabre wasn’t doing much, the youth pulled out yet another talisman and his old man’s insults took on a new edge.

He really had a serious grudge against the Jade Gate Court, not that that was hard. Din Bao, its second-generation Sect Master, was hardly a new topic of shared anger, to the extent that many of the Din clan’s elder generations carried anti-divination talismans at this point, no doubt supplied at significant expense by Din Bao’s own teacher in the Kong Heavenly Clan. The fact that the Jade Gate Court was so damn rampant these days was why he had introduced the old man to the profundities of Gu Takes All: Transcendent Edition, a personal upgrade of his ‘game’ made just for the two of them to play. It helped his father’s state of mind and ensured that neither of them ended up paying too close an eye to the rise to near absolute worldly influence of one of their most despised peers.

went berserk, lashing out and hitting the Din youth hard enough to throw him over a ridgeline like he was some child’s ball to crash down like a meteor into the one beyond. However, before the centipede could make good on its opening, a spear dropped out of the sky and pierced its shell. Purple lightning arced across the valley walls as the ‘pretty’ blonde youth in purple and lime green, with a spectacularly obnoxious resting half-smile that would make ladies swoon and any man within two hundred yards inexplicably angry, arrived to support his compatriot and/or controlled minion – it was still up in the air which was which.

“I cannot credit that that fate-cursed little whoreson managed to learn ‘Favour with a Smile'." Lan Huang scowled.

“What is that?” Ha Leng asked, his curiosity overcoming his nervousness.

“It’s a 'Soul Art' from Dewdrop Sage Valley,” Lan Huang explained. “It’s normally not used like he uses it. It’s designed to make people more sympathetic to you, but it requires a certain physique. For a man to learn it…”

“They have to learn it through Dual Cultivation. However, the only person who had learned it in this generation was Saintess Xua, who had an Earthly Physique which was unsuitable for that as I recall. Di Ji seized it from her and ruined her future prospects. She suffered a deviation and was confined in the Valley once she was rescued from his clutches.”

“He…offended even that mythical influence?” Ha Leng’s eyes widened. “How is he even...?”

“Still alive?” Lan Huang grunted. “He was shielded by the Jade Gate Court and the Kong clan. He was, maybe still is, one of the three candidates to become 'Young Sovereign' of the Kong clan in this world. In the eyes of those old bastards, who control this world from afar, his transgressions are immaterial.”

Their attention was drawn back to the rift where the centipede had just spewed a massive cone of... earth core corrosion!?

He stared dully as the yin earth law infused substance melted vegetation and scoured rock, twisting and turning after the fleeing youth as if it was alive.

“Sainted fates, was that thing a Dao Immortal qi beast?” Lan Huang leaned forward and stared at the scene before them.

It was hard to judge the strength of the beasts being dispatched one after another. Both the Golden Immortal Din Ouyeng and the quasi-Ancient Immortal Di Ji seemed able to fight above their realm threshold, but jumping a major step?

“He has a divine blessing?” Lan Huang frowned.

“Possibly,” he conceded. “If he does, it’s shielded in some way.”

-Or some stolen physique, he didn't add. Knowledge of those was much rarer in this era compared to some of the previous ones.

“The Hunters said that everything there is suppressed,” Ha Leng supplied.

“Indeed. I am still curious about how the fuck that brat is lifting the suppression,” his father scowled, stalking over to join them.

He nodded silently and kept watching. To be able to resist a Dao Immortal monster was really just... there were only a handful of people in the ‘current’ younger generation capable of that feat. He supposed the beast was also suppressed in some fundamental ways, as Ha Leng and Lan Huang observed. In that case, it came down to skills and resources... a contest in which the two aggressors were clear winners. As frighteningly expensive as it was, it was a strategy that had seen them kill a hoard of strange bat things the blonde-haired girl had lured out of a cave and also dispatch several Ancient Immortal eleven-star ranked herbage that their quarry had dragged them through.

Truthfully, the three Herb Hunters these brats were pursuing were the ones he was rooting for, as transparent as their pursuer's strategy was. All three were seriously overachieving, given their foundations and their slight ages. In comparison, their pursuers were almost two hundred years old apiece. Were he younger, he found himself reflecting, and not so close to his current tribulation threshold, he would have taken any or all of them on as disciples without blinking, and be damned with the Ha clan’s adversarial relationship with the Hunter Bureau in that part of the world.

“For these children, barely at Qi Condensation and with Physique Laws at Physical Refinement, to run for three hours from two Golden Immortals, is utterly hilarious,” he leant back, crossing his arms and nodding. “Their local knowledge is certainly impressive.

“For all that the brats are clearly using the three of them to lure out threats, to get a head start on that proclamation thingy, this is at the level where those two should be made to abolish their cultivation and start over, reflecting on their mistakes.”

“It is a huge edge,” Lan Huang agreed. “I walked through these valleys with them and never knew half of the stuff that they are pulling out of the shrubbery left and right was there. We walked two hundred paces from that nest of tetrids for fates’ sakes, and I never detected a thing.”

“Their advantage is more than that,” his father frowned. “Physique Law cultivators are rarely suppressed as badly as spiritual ones in these valleys. There is a different methodology in how the systems use qi on a fundamental level. None of them are at Mantra Seed either, so they are basically unfettered apart from the erstwhile limits on stuff like flight, and the natural dampening of the environment with regard to force proliferation.”

“Er..?” Ha Leng looked confused. "Physique Law?"

"A term from a previous era for Physical Cultivation," he supplied as an aside. "It has largely fallen out of use, except out east, in favour of the term that was put forward by those with influence on the central continent."

"Indeed," his father sniffed. "That’s why old fogies with sense don’t go there.

“The land doesn’t like big explosions. Everything is suppressed there by a factor of a hundred or more. A Dao Sovereign could walk in there and their fire-attributed cultivation law would only be marginally more spectacular than a Nascent Soul cultivator's," his father spoke while looking at Ha Leng out of the corner of his eye.

“Thank you for the teachings, Honoured Ancestors,” Ha Leng saluted the old man, who puffed up just a touch.

He narrowly avoided rolling his eyes in sight of his father -Sometimes he is incorrigible.

“I had no idea that physical cultivation was so…” Ha Leng trailed off as his father started to laugh.

“It’s bothersome, don’t get enamoured by it. It’s not a method that’s easy to advance in this world without some very special considerations. There is a reason why most people founder at Mantra Seed. It’s a very rare person that makes it to Mortal Boundary, the equivalent of Dao Seeking, let alone Mantra Immortal.”

“It’s actually possible to become an Immortal using physical cultivation?” Lan Huang raised an eyebrow.

“Nobody has managed it since the Kong moved in,” his father shrugged. “If you ever meet anyone who is at that realm... be wary of them. They are an old monster who has lived since the previous Heavenly Dynasty and have means outside common expectation.”

He sighed mentally. It was indeed a dead-end for normal cultivators due to the way the mantras that were needed to cultivate beyond Golden Core were structured. The old man had been oddly vague on why that was as well, beyond being emphatic that they could not be stolen from those who had them. Even the Fates of their world were apparently incapable of such. His father had mostly warned him off of it when he was younger, saying it was too bothersome, and that was when the heavens had been much more amenable. In any case, there were other ways to get a strong body – like seeking out an 'Earthly Physique'. Those were generally just as good in most of the ways that truly mattered, according to his old man.

“Ohh…,” Ha Leng pumped a fist in appreciation at the endeavour on the screen. His previous dislike of these three was long forgotten in the face of how he had arrived here, it seemed.

The three had split up. The older girl, a daughter of the Kun clan, had just thrown herself into a sinkhole, while the other two, the blonde from the Lin clan and the boy from the Han clan were now skidding into, no…. under a huge thicket of strange thorn bushes in a gorge. A chain of explosions rippled across the valley. The Din scion was still tied up with the spider queen that had been roused from underground, it seemed. They watched as Di Ji cast several talismans around and eventually stopped in the valley with a frown. The voice talismans they were using to try to disorientate their pursuers boomed again with their puerile threats.

“—Ah! The Din boy finally escaped from the spider queen, that’s the only one other than the ape and the Jasmine they haven’t actually killed,” his father said with a chuckle. “Young Huang here would struggle to kill that spider queen, were it outside that place. It’s a fifteen-star rated qi beast based on its understandings of Natural Laws.”

“F-fifteen?” Ha Leng goggled at him.

“It’s not as impressive as it sounds,” his old man grunted. “It just means that its comprehensions are at that stage. Qi beasts like that rank differently after Dao Immortal, especially in that place. Its physical prowess is closer to a Dao Lord.”

“Oh…” Ha Leng smiled wanly. “Thank you for explaining, Honoured Ancestor.”

Young Huang looked a bit embarrassed at having been drawn out as an example like that, so he poured him another cup of wine.

“Ah. They have a good strategy,” Ha Tai praised. “That’s a mutated persis thorn. Nasty things that will suck the life right out of you, but they have a peculiar trait: they are almost untouchable with soul strength of any kind.”

“They are using it to escape the soul attacks?” Lan Huang mused.

They watched a wave of lurid lightning sweep out of a talisman that Di Ji had deployed. As it arced across the gorge, his intention was clearly to force them back out and into a different route.

“He’s trying to push them towards the xuanwu nest, must be fed up with this and wanting to bring them up short,” his father mused. “They have been smart in avoiding that quagmire.”

“There are xuanwu up there?” Lan Huang raised an eyebrow and put his cup of wine back down. "They never mentioned that."

“There’s a lot of crap up there,” his father grimaced. “The xuanwu are not even the half of it. That Jasmine and the Aspen are the real tyrants in this region. Further north there’s a grove of blood ling trees that was ancient when Mu Shansu—"

His father covered that slip with admirable adroitness he thought "—and that's not even getting started on the fates-accursed mushrooms!”

Ha Tai stroked his beard and redirected his attention back to the screen. "Well… well... What kind of backing does this brat have? That’s a Dao Sovereign weapon. Did he rob some old Eternal’s abode on the central continent or something?”

The bushes farther up had eaten Di Ji’s lightning talisman, and he had now drawn out a spear and was executing some kind of art. The Dao Sovereign weapon’s attack had about as much impact on the vegetation as the talisman had.

“It’s a yin fire element plant, isn’t it,” Lan Huang said dully.

“Brute force monkey,” his father sniffed as Di Ji, now joined by Din Ouyeng, tried again to rip apart the thicket and close off the path that the two had fled into.

Behind the pair, a tetrid stalker the size of a small house finally arrived on the ridgeline and glowered balefully at the pair. Both turned around to look at it with bemused expressions.

Di Ji raised his spear and—

Space ruptured above the valley and distorted the viewing rift.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” his father scowled and waved a hand. “Now I recognise that weapon. It’s one of Kong Jurai’s creations.”

“Sage Jurai? The Refiner God?” Lan Huang said, leaning forward.

“Mmm. His father must have given it to him, the sneaking cunt. Not a Dao Sovereign's weapon, a Dao Ascendant's weapon.”

The rift shifted back into focus and his father sighed. “This brat is truly vicious."

"—And not a bit ridiculous in his means," he added with a sigh, shaking his head.

They caught a flicker of teleportation. The Din boy had used another Spatial Shift Globe by the looks of it. The tetrid stalker was still sticking with them, unwilling to enter the valley itself, but perfectly content to hurl metre-wide orbs of yin earth qi at them with enough velocity to make the whole valley quiver under their impact.

-Is it just his imagination, or is it trying to force them towards the far valley wall?

A flock of the bat things raged out of a narrow cavern and circled in the air. A huge, clawed bat screamed something at the stalker which, waved its legs and finally retreated.

“Did the stalker just drag out the bats to deal with them rather than go over itself?” Lan Huang muttered in mild shock.

“They ain't thick,” his father frowned. “It's not exactly common knowledge, but the big ones rarely traverse ridgelines. It’s always been like that, and nobody has ever really worked out why in a manner I’d consider convincing.”

They watched as the bats shelled into Din Ouyeng’s barrier without a care for their own safety. Din Ouyeng, for his part, finally miss-stepped, because the talisman was one he recognised as a Dao Immortal grade barrier. Under the sustained and semi-suicidal barrage of a few thousand Ancient immortal bats, it lasted about three seconds. Realising his mistake, the youth slammed his sword into the ground and used one of the Jade Gate Court’s better qi arts to send a nova of coruscating azure fire out in every direction, forcing them back.

“That boy is definitely that missing Ouyeng,” Lan Huang pronounced, as Din Ouyeng did a second art and the conjured whirlwind of azure fire pursued enraged bats in every direction.

“Hmmm. Yes, that’s the Din clan's inheritance art, ‘Azure Current’,” He agreed.

“His control is kinda crap though,” his father snickered. “All style, no substance.”

He nodded at that as they watched the fire swirl up to the zenith and then collapse back downwards. As it did so, it formed a vast Roc that covered half the sky above the valley for a moment, dispersing a huge swathe of the bats before hammering into the opening they had come from. Trees shook and loose rocks fell all over the valley as gouts of blue fire exploded from several other caves. The boy's control was quite bad; clearly, he had had the intent instilled within him and relied heavily upon it rather than his own comprehensions. It was the sort of short term gains that kids that age were willing to fall for, he thought with amusement.

"If he lives, he will eventually come to regret that shortcut," he remarked, which got a chuckle from Lan Huang and an eye roll from his old man.

The talismans made another booming proclamation. They couldn’t get sound through the rift, but he could see what they were saying just from the ripples of the qi as they activated, spelling out another ridiculous demand for justice.

“How come the soul attacks aren’t working?” Lan Huang looked puzzled as he surveyed the aftermath of the attack.

“Oh, the rocks are all entirely suppressive. Soul attacks go nowhere up there if you go all ham like that,” Ha Tai shrugged. “Small stuff, targeted stuff works, but the big aura crush type stuff will do bugger-all.”

“Do you think the Kun girl died?” Lan Huang sighed.

“Hmmmmm,” his father stared at the screen pensively. “Probably not. If she fled in there, she did it with a plan, brave of her at any rate. The underground areas make what’s up here look like a novelty garden.”

The viewpoint shifted slightly, back to Di Ji. Din Ouyeng appeared beside him a moment later and the two youths conferred, faced, presumably, with the possibility of their quarry making an actual escape. Di Ji sighed and pulled out another talisman and smeared some blood on it. Din Ouyeng followed suit. Both talismans activated and the pair and all their armaments flickered and vanished in sparkles of multi-coloured light.

“Well, I’ll be. So that’s what they did,” his father spat out his drink.

“They had a ‘True Reflection’ talisman,” he resisted the urge to see if his eyebrows had just climbed off his face and crawled over his head.

“What’s that, Honoured Ancestors?” Ha Leng asked, quickly pouring his father another cup of the horrid juice, which got him a ‘thank you’ and a pat on the arm.

“It’s a form of clone art that uses talismans to summon a piece of a person’s soul and form a connection with their body. While the talisman is active, the clone can use anything the body has that’s linked to it through the talisman. That’s why they were using treasures and talismans exclusively.”

He rolled his eyes mentally, the youth was basically serving wine to the number one Old Freak beneath Worldly Ascension in this realm.

-If others of his generation knew, would they spit blood or weep? he wondered.

“They are not cheap,” Lan Huang added. “A single one probably costs more than the total net income of West Flower Picking Town in the last decade.”

“Where did they go?” he narrowed his eyes.

“One moment, boy...” his father fiddled with the rift somehow, twisting the scrying array and rearranging some of the symbols. “Ah. There we go.”

The screen reset itself and the picture came back into focus. Or tried to.

-Is it seem… distended? An anti-divination ward?

“He has an anti-divination charm of this calibre?” the old man muttered, half in disgust, half in incredulity. “They really did spare no expense.”

“Well, the Din boy is an inheriting disciple of the Jade Gate Court," he pointed out.

“…”

His father scowled and waved a hand. A pitch-black parchment scroll covered with reddish-gold writing appeared a moment later. He spent a moment perusing it before stashing it away again with a deeper scowl.

“It seems I will need to get a new Fate-Seeking Lock. Someone has dissociated the divination I did a hundred years ago on the Jade Gate Court’s current inheriting generation.”

Lan Huang raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. It went straight over the head of Ha Leng, which was probably a good thing. A Dao Ascension old monster tracking juniors with an aim to maybe killing them was… not politic.

The old man tinkered with the array, cursing at length again. Some of his invective made the cherry trees growing in pots around the hall wither away and die, although they bloomed again a few moments later, now a riot of different colours.

“Ahhh! The Ji brat has a ‘Devouring Eyes’ child artefact... I wonder where he got that from? The boy is like a never-ending cornucopia of artefacts.”

He offered up a momentary prayer for whatever remained of the souls of Di Ji and Din Ouyeng. That was probably his death knell at this point. If the ’True Reflection’ talisman and its parent artefact weren’t enough, a ‘Devouring Eyes’ artefact was probably heading for overkill. There were only three, four now, in the world that he knew of. The Meng clan and the Huang clan guarded theirs jealously, the Shu Pavilion possessed one, and now it seemed that either the Din clan or the Imperial Court through the Kong clan had one. His death was long overdue in any case, as he clearly offended something fundamental. The similarities between what was playing out here, and what happened back then…

-Actually... He stared hard at nothing for a moment, recalling those past events.

As far as he was aware, the brat had escaped the Yerrek Pits in a rather mundane way, partly through bribery and partly through sympathy from the guards of the prison. They had thought it was a terrible shame that such a ‘Valiant Young Hero’ be confined for a bit of, as Di Ji had put it, 'frivolous fun'.

-They certainly didn’t think that about what Lady Kai did to them later.

Outside, he had gone on what could only be described as an unscrupulous and deceitful campaign against those he held responsible for putting him in there, killing dozens of sects’ most promising disciples and defiling, debasing and otherwise toying with many female disciples in the process. He had eventually gotten tied up with the Iron Crown Duke’s heirs, and in the process sought vengeance on a minor family whose daughter he had seduced and who had petitioned the Military Authority Bureau asking for recompense, due to the faithless acts performed with their young miss who had a rare spirit root.

Ironically, that hadn’t been what did for him, although it was still Cao Leyang who captured him in the end. It turned out the girl had caught the eye of Lady Kai some months previously and the Saintess, who was approaching the same threshold he was, had been intending to take the girl in as a handmaiden with an eye to making her a lineage disciple in the future. This was largely unknown to anyone but the girl herself and Lady Kai’s inner circle of handmaidens... and himself, who was accompanying Lady Kai Bailing at the time along with Hua Xiaomei – Lady Hua, Founder of Dewdrop Sage Valley – her sworn sister.

In the process, Di Ji had managed to implicate a bunch of other families and clans in the event, including, tangentially, the Ha can. That was the root of his own grievance in this matter, as he and Lady Kai had been quite close. His association with her had suffered accordingly, as the Ha clan brats in question had hidden behind Din Bao and been welcomed into the Astrology Bureau by several ancestors before he could ever get to them. The Ha clan elders who facilitated it, on the other hand...

In any event, Lady Kai had been enraged beyond all reason, doubly so when the Imperial Chancellor's Bureau actually hid the boy and then called a ‘censure’ on her personal abode just to save him. When that didn’t quite go as they anticipated, Di Ji’s adopted father, the Grand Imperial Astrologer, petitioned the Emperor and the Kong clan’s Envoy personally.

That they had cited Lady Kai’s volatile personality, among other reasons, as grounds that the boy was being unfairly framed for the sake of a Golden Core commoner – never mind that this was the second such incident in nine thousand-odd years and many old-timers still remembered the Shu clan’s own narrow escape – had led to the spectacular showdown at the Imperial Palace one hundred years ago, where Lady Kai massacred two imperial legions, abandoned the Fourth Prince and crippled the seventh and eighth-ranked Imperial Princesses, whose mothers were from the Din and Kong clans. After that the brat had vanished: the Din clan claimed he died at the hands of one of their noble scions, desperate to absolve the embarrassment if nothing else. Nobody had really believed it at the time and inquiries had been made, but it all led to dead ends.

The fact that the boy had again reappeared, overreached in this fashion and managed to show this degree of resources in front of his old man could only be called Heaven's gift of Karma. This Di Ji was going to have to hide in the Jade Gate Court’s Grand Pagoda, or underneath the Imperial Throne itself, until he hit Dao Immortal and could be spirited off the realm plane by a Worldly Venerate to avoid his father paying him a visit to discuss the finer points of ownership of weird out-realm treasures and interfering with his desire to have a cute grandchild.

The ‘Devouring Eyes’ artefact was just the latest in a small line of such things that had been thrown out for use while they watched. Where in the world had he skulked off to for the last few years to avoid prying eyes while playing dead…?

“Ah- found the buggers!” his father finally pronounced.

The screen shifted and revealed Di Ji, now disguised as Ji Tantai once more, and Din Ouyeng rapidly teleporting, using ‘Heaven Shifting’ talismans to catch up to the place their clones had vanished. As they entered the valley, the angry swarm of bats swept up and immediately descended on them once more. This time the battle was totally one-sided: Di Ji and Din Ouyeng both deployed a bunch of Dao Sovereign grade talismans and swept away most of the swarm in a valley-shaking series of explosions that went off like a New Year’s firework display. Di Ji summoned the spear again and cast it at the leading bat, which barely avoided it and was still thrown halfway across the valley by the shockwave. The spear, now the size of a large tree, continued on and tried to scour through the persis thorn thicket, which just tangled around it.

It took him a moment to work out where the black limb that gently slipped out under the tangled thorn trees originated.

-The rift where the two Herb Hunters escaped.

As they watched, a second black limb slid out from the gully. It split apart into four, then contracted slightly, a bit like a squid, before becoming eight limbs which sank into the cliffs.

Something emerged from the gully.

His every instinct said not to look at it directly.

“Young Primates, you seem to have a lot of words to share. Why don’t you have a nice chat with this old man, it’s been a long time since I discussed the finer points of suicide with your kind.”

Ha Tai swore, at length, as he conjured a massive, complex seal in front of the rift. It branded the entire screen, searing his eyes faintly in the process. His father then spat blood at the ward, drew his soul bound weapon out and slammed it into the ground, linking the nexus of the barrier array inside the realm to the weapon.

“Father… What..?” he found himself asking... still trying to work out what was going on.

-Is that an... outsider!?!

“Shut it, boy,” the old man snapped tersely. “Don’t any of you look directly at that thing!”

Ha Tai’s hands were shaking and his skin had turned pallid. Was his father actually afraid of this… whatever this was?

All three did as instructed without a qualm.

Ha Tai did something to the rift while they all looked elsewhere. After a few moments, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank fuck. Fate-thrashed thing can’t see through the tablets wards fully. This should be enough. What the nameless-blessed hells possessed something like that to emerge there…

“It’s safe to watch now… Probably.” his father added after a further moment, seeing them all still resolutely looking at the ground.

All three turned nervously back to look at the rift, which was now ringed by a double layer of glowing runes and had a slightly azure tint that hadn’t been there before. On the screen, the spider... squid... crab-like thing?... It was hard to say what it was, something about the lines of its body defied obvious inspection. In any case, it was waving its limbs about in what appeared a fairly amused manner.

The remaining distortions he had observed on Di Ji and Din Ouyengs’ real bodies were now gone, and there were two other people standing next to the pair. A beautiful young woman in a red gown and—

“What!” The boy next to them exclaimed. “Yun survived?! But why is he with them... and how?”

Lan Huang leaned in and stared at the screen as well. “Young Master Ha Yun seems none the worse for wear, compared to…”

“The boy is Ha Yun?” his old man queried.

“Yes,” Lan Huang nodded.

“His spirit root is not bad,” Ha Tai mused, stroking his chin. “He could have cultivated to Earthly Dao Sovereign with time and resources, as long as he had the right law and sufficient… it’s only his destiny that is lacking it seems…” the old man looked… sad at that.

“It’s lacking?” Ha Leng asked, sounding confused.

He stared at the screen. To him, the issue was clear as day. Probably it was visible because of whatever the black... creature… had just done: Di Ji’s manipulations had never been this obvious before.

“Ah,” Lan Huang scowled. “Both of them are messed with. So that’s what the Lin girl was feeling back there, when she thought that the Ling girl wasn’t right… her senses are sharp, for a child not even at Core Formation.”

“Hm,” the old man frowned. “Yes, the sight of the puppet would not be sufficient to shoulder your vision. It’s incapable of utilising any power above Dao Immortal.”

As they looked on, Di Ji pulled out another object, and the space his father turned near-solid.

“This boy. This Di Ji….” his father abruptly stepped forward until his nose was nearly against the rift, staring down at the scene before them.

Di Ji had a golden core in his hand, about the size of a large fist, which he held up for a moment before white light streamed out of it. The black-limbed, fuzzy-lined, spider-squid-crab thing shook. Was it laughing?

It lashed out.

The screen quaked.

The valley warped before their eyes.

Ha Yun and the red-gowned girl were locked in place as far as he could see, sheltered in some kind of golden barrier.

In the moments before it hit, a translucent sphere of flame appeared around the four, barely stopping the two limbs.

The spider-squid shook a bit more and then warped, forming the appearance of a scholarly-looking, bearded man in middle age with black, shoulder-length curly hair, wearing a grey robe with eight white swirling lines across it. It’s most striking feature, however, was that in place of eyes it had only a black, vertical slit on its forehead that opened slightly.

The man reached forward and his hand passed through the sphere as if it were vapour. Di Ji looked shocked for the first time and retreated backwards, throwing a strange rolled-up talisman at the man that—

The golden lightning left him with strange afterimages in his vision and a faint sensation that he had just tasted shit. Heavenly Grade tribulation lightning, sealed up in a scroll.

As the four of them looked on in shock, the creature shrugged, picked a few stray strands of the lightning out of its beard and put one into the slit in its forehead directly. Then it threw back its head and its body shook with amusement again, ignoring the rest of the lightning that swirled around it and formed a glowing cage of heavenly thunder.

Din Ouyeng, now visibly shaking in terror, pulled out a golden scroll of his own, emblazoned with the Imperial Authority Seal and the seals of the Military Bureau.

The creature stared at it with amusement and then threw its arms wide in a mocking fashion, breaking apart the cage.

A symbol blazed across the valley and a circle showing the Imperial Seal reflected into the sky as a pillar of light. He stared mutely as a golden scripture unfurled in the air above the scroll and a series of runes swirled around and shot into the sky. Something twisted around them as they flew as if trying to drag them back down to the valleys, but, in the end, all twenty runic symbols escaped and shot off out of their field of view, over the horizon.

“That…” Lan Huang gasped.

“An 'Imperial Authority Censure Scroll'?” he was shocked as well.

-How the fates dio either of those two have…?

“C..c… censure?” even Ha Leng, totally out of his depth, knew what that was, and what it represented.

The scroll itself continued to shimmer ever deeper gold. Even through the wards his father had put up, he could see space twisting as the scroll set down teleportation coordinates. As it was doing this, Din Ouyeng pulled out yet another scroll. This time the grey-robed creature, which had been standing there looked bemused, reached out for it. Space bent around its hand, drawing everything unnaturally close together. However, the second before it could grasp the scroll, Di Ji activated another talisman, this one ancient and crumbling.

There was a crack and a spatial fissure split between the group and the grey-robed man. His arm dropped to the ground, and a chasm seemed to open between them, pushing the groups apart. The grey-robed man stared at his arm for a moment until it reformed, then the slit on his head opened fully, and the rift went dim. Colour seemed to drain out of the world. Di Ji looked shocked, then withdrew an orb that manifested six golden rings that seemed to have the wrong number of edges.

“What the—!” his father, who had stepped back from the rift at this point, almost fell over his chair.

The orb started to crack and erode, its six rings destabilizing. As he watched, the orb sent out six streams of white-gold fire towards the creature, who looked annoyed somehow.

He made a shooing motion, deflecting one. Some fire stuck to his hand and made the creature's skin smoke a touch. Then it stepped forward. This time there was nothing casual about its intent as it made to pluck the orb directly from Di Ji’s hand. In that instant, the group vanished in the varicoloured flicker of a dimensional shift, leaving the orb hanging in the air.

He saw something twist in the orb, a black crack spidering across its eroding surface.

The orb split apart and a nova of white light sliced out. It swept through the valley, spilling over ridges as it rose. At its core were six tiny golden-white flames which he found he was unable to look away from. Their presence demanded the attention of his whole being, somehow, a degree of command that he had no means to even comprehend, let alone reject. Their edges seemed to be apart from the world and inside each one were tiny figures, constrained by red runic bands, with sad expressions on their childlike faces as they slowly turned to white mist and—

There was a sense of wrongness so overpowering that he wanted to reach up and pluck his eyes out. Beside him, Lan Huang was bleeding from his eyes. Ha Leng… was surprisingly unaffected. Was it a matter of comprehension?

The twisting of laws that was occurring, that he had no control over, abruptly snapped back.

The trees and plants seemed to change colour, the rock colours also inverted for a split second, and then the world righted itself. The wave of white-golden energy, he hesitated to call it qi because he could feel nothing other than existential terror from it, plummeted down the spatial rift, which vanished with a ripple as the talisman finally gave out.

The grey-garbed man was gone, and the squid-spider-crab had reformed. It smoked a bit and shook in a way that implied significant anger. The valley warped outwards slightly and along with it, and, much more concerningly, so did the rift they were viewing it through.

“And what in the unnameable fates was that,” Lan Huang groaned, holding his head.

The old man just sat there on the ground, where he had tripped.

“He blew it up,” he whispered…

“The little shit blew it up...” he started to tremble with rage...

“HOW DARE THAT LITTLE SHIT SHOW THAT IN FRONT OF THIS SEAT AND THEN FUCKING BLOW IT UP!?!”

He had the presence of mind to shield the table and the surrounding space, protecting Ha Leng as his father’s rage tore the courtyard apart like it was a dust sculpture in a strong breeze, leaving only the the strange law in the sky and the pedestal intact. He breathed out as everything reformed around them. The great hall was gone, replaced by a parkland? They sat in a pagoda looking down at a lawn that led to a lake. The cherry trees were Tiger Print-coloured this time.

Still howling in rage, his father had staggered to his feet and was waving his arms at the rift, which was now just broken space.

“What the motherfucking fate-thrashed devil's spawn do you mean [Can’t target, perception exceeded]!”

The world disintegrated again and reformed after a few moments as a restaurant by a waterside pond with beautiful lotuses, surrounded by cherry trees. This time they were pure white.

“Father!” He was panting, hard. Either The strength of the old man had gone up or, more likely, he had simply never seen his father this angry.

“Please calm down! You’re going to injure the boy if you keep this up.”

The old man snarled and kicked the veranda railing. It didn’t budge, and he was left hopping, which only seemed to fuel his rage even more.

“Only time I ever got a [perception exceeded] response was that time I tried to scry that phoenix chick after she incarnated.”

-Ah. He had a moment of filial shame, tinged with mild respect.

Like a sudden enlightenment beneath a holy tree, he was suddenly sure that the real reason his old man spent all his time in this realm wasn’t anything to do with tribulations, but rather because he had tried to scry Fairy Meng Fu and been noticed by someone from the Hong Meng Heavenly Clan: possibly her mother... or more likely her rather overprotective elder brother.

His father was still gripped with existential fury, now swaying back and forth, turning this way and that as if possessed by some devil.

“That globe… that globe…

“ARRRRGH…

“MAY THE EMPEROR BE SODOMISED BY HIS OWN HORSEDRAWN FATE!”

His face was pallid as he grasped his hair and stomped on the ground like an enraged mortal for a few seconds before finally getting himself under control.

-Mostly, he observed with a shudder, looking at the still-twisting surroundings.

“Never seen one with that many rings before....

"Where, by Nuwa's tits, did he get it?

"Must have found some vestige of the previous worldly cycle or something. That’s the only place you’re getting one of those and not getting immediately robbed by literally anyone at the Dao Ascension realm. Using it for that though?”

His father gasped for breath and put both his hands on the table, balling them into fists as he struggled to get his fury under control. The sound his nails made as they failed to gouge out the top was… disturbing.

“I am going to track that little shit down and kill him before the front gate of the Jade Gate Court. It’s justice for all the Dao Ascendants in this world...

"...Then I am going to take his skin and turn it into clothes for Kong Di’s nine generations of descendants..."

"...I will make his bones into a boot rack, and his skull into a chamber pot, and seal his soul inside it for all eternity!”

Ha Tai stalked around the table, holding his now-bleeding hands behind his back, muttering dire threats under his breath.

“That doesn’t answer my question, what was that thing he... exploded?” he muttered.

“You’re family, so I’ll tell you.” His old man’s voice echoed in his head, even as he kept pacing and muttering out loud. He even managed to sound deeply vexed through the steady telepathic tone.

“It’s a Celestial Venerate’s Cosmic Core. Got six rings as well, which makes it a mid-grade one. It will do the other two no good to know of it, or have it confirmed as what they think it is, frankly. Only two ways to get one, pretty much: either find an inheritance grave of a Celestial Venerate, or kill a Celestial Venerate. For the former... good luck there, and for the latter, well…. yeah. There’s almost no one in this world, except maybe the things under that mountain, capable of that.”

At the same time, in the valley, there were twenty flickers of light and twenty figures wearing gold, white and red robes and armour in the style of the Seven Sovereigns’ School appeared, all bearing supreme, Dao grade weapons. There was no sign of Di Ji or Din Ouyeng and the others. Closing his eyes, he re-ran the last few seconds in his head – they had teleported separately, Din Ouyeng and the others vanished just a moment before Di Ji in his mind’s eye.

“That’s the censure force….?” Ha Leng’s voice was decidedly reedy. Today had certainly been a character-building day for the poor boy.

“That’s… a bit…” even Lan Huang, who had seen them before and participated in a few, sounded a bit shocked at the composition of the group before them...

To be fair, mind-numbing shock was a good reaction. The force was indeed somewhat over the top to respond to the summons of a mere Golden Immortal: ten Dao Immortals, four Dao Lords, four Earthly Principle Dao Sovereigns and two True Principle Dao Sovereigns whom he recognised as Sect Enforcement Great Elder Tuo Kankai and External Guardian Elder Ji Ming of the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School.

“The Seven Sovereigns School?” Lan Huang asked blankly.

“Don’t the Jade Gate Court and the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School utterly hate each other?” Ha Leng spoke up in the silence.

He stared at the screen, trying to process what he was seeing. “Is it possible that Di Ji, Ji Tantai, somehow is part of the Seven Sovereigns School now?”

His father swallowed another string of curses and stared at the restored image with a raised eyebrow. “While travelling with a young noble from the Din clan? I’d find it more credible, with that grade of line-up, that he stole the core from the Seven Sovereigns School and they are here to get him… If I hadn’t just watched them use the censure summons in front of me.”

He frowned. “Maybe they stole it?”

“Like, off someone else?” his father said, looking at him weirdly. "Do you think people just carry those around? At your age?"

“Well, Di Ji crossed paths with, and killed, a lot of pretty important people during his rampages. That’s clearly a Seven Sovereigns censure force, but summoned by an imperial scroll… so treaty obligation?” Even as he said it, it didn’t sound right. But what was the alternative?

“If that is the case—” his father said drolly, slumping down on another chair and pouring himself another cup of the obnoxious juice, “—I’ll probably have to queue up to have a crack at the brat at this point. Either somebody is playing the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School – and by extension Meng Fu – for a fast one, he’s captured a young noble from the Jade Gate Court... or he’s stolen that core from either of them and somebody is out for serious blood.

“Even that brat’s father will struggle to extract him from this mess before his ‘treasured’ son is refined into a humorous lampstand.”

“Erm… Revered Ancestors… I think the censure force is in trouble,” the Ha Leng pointed out in quavering voice.

~ Han Murai, West Flower Picking Town ~

Sergeant Han Murai glanced around a corner carefully. These streets were nearly as bad as the south district. The entire town was in turmoil thanks to the Ha clan, and that insane censure declaration. The clap of another explosion made the ground shake faintly and the hair on his arms and neck stood up as errant thunder qi sizzled somewhere in the middle distance. At least here there was—

The flame talisman hit the wall across the street, melting a hole through it into the house beyond. A second one followed a moment later, landing a lot closer to him before detonating with a flash of light and leaving a bubbling pool of rapidly cooling molten rock.

-Fifth grade yang-affinity talismans, and not a standard pattern either.

-Lunatics.

In the distance, a mob could be heard chanting… something about observance to the true path. Impressive that they could be that audible in spite of the pitched battle in the plaza not a hundred metres away from here.

“Sir,” a shaken youth wearing still-smoking armour, Corporal Kun, arrived behind him. “they set fire to Yu Ta Pavilion on 3rd Yu Street.”

“Casualties?” the other man present, Corporal Danshu, asked.

“Twenty-six total, Sir, twelve dead.”

“That makes 219 reported fatalities in this neighbourhood alone, and however many more hundreds injured,” the corporal looked worried, updating the jadework scrip tied to his arm. “Cause of deaths?”

“Alchemy cauldron explosion, Sir,” the young guardsman went on, “Old Yu threw it at one of the, I guess… arsonists? It didn’t react well to a satchel of ‘Bright Blaze’ talismans, based on the size of the crater and the pink fire covering half the street.”

All three flinched as another detonation a block away, towards the river this time, rattled the buildings. Roof tiles and some bricks dropped out of the sky, followed a few seconds later by half a body, burnt beyond recognition, that hit a roof across the street.

“220 dead apparently…” Murai muttered.

A dozen figures entered the street from the far end, attracting his attention. All were dressed the same way, in Ha family colours. They carried clubs and torches, and he noted a few long blades. Two of them also had body armour on that carried an identifier marking them as Town Authority enforcers, which was a nice bit of collusive corruption.

Corporal Danshu scowled and unslung his bow. Corporal Kun drew his own blade, which Murai was pleased to see wasn’t shaking... much. The boy was a Golden Core cultivator, but right now that didn’t mean much when people were slinging Nascent Soul talismans like half-bricks. The boy was relatively new to the Guards, and this was almost certainly his first proper riot. Not that you could call this a ‘riot’ with a straight face: this was a full-blown battle, with the town in the middle of it. If he continued to distinguish himself as he had, the boy would be in line for a grade promotion to Senior Corporal.

In West Flower Picking Town, the populace was in turmoil. Several neighbourhoods, like this one, where many of the local tribal people settled, were in complete upheaval. Across the river, Seng District was almost totally ablaze. Here, and across the city, groups of youths amped on ‘outrage’ and ‘patriotic spirit’ were running riot; mainly, it had to be said, egged on by older and much more mendacious minds. Across the city they were smashing up shrines and tearing down banners and, in the last few hours since the censure force arrived and immediately ‘denounced’ the western district, had started dragging civilians out of their homes and beating them brutally, or worse, while chanting passages from the Blue Morality Scripture. Now they were setting things that were ‘inappropriate’ on fire. Where they were now was the logical extension of that, really.

Locals of all stripes also fought: first to defend their houses, then to avenge friends and family, but now they were just as much out for blood as the ‘morality faction’ if you could call them that. This was no longer just a riot between the Ha clan and the Yin Eclipse enclave in the western district. Everyone with a grudge against the noble clans, or who felt that the current order in the town was not to their liking, was getting in on the action, with the influences and the local septs, sects and pavilions all sending out their people, hurling bricks, roof tiles, talismans and occasionally pots full of alchemical and herbal mixtures at the mobs. Hundreds lay dead on both sides already, even as the guard squads of the Civil Authority Bureau, and now the Military Authority, struggled to separate and contain the various mobs. The matter of the rogue censure force was being dealt with by the Beast Hunter Cadre. He looked in that direction, where a pall of smoke was obscuring much of the Seng District, split by occasional flashes of sword qi.

“Our lads and lasses seem to be winning over there,” Corporal Kun smiled nervously, seeing the direction of his gaze.

“Probably,” he agreed. “I think a few people forgot how powerful that lot of irregulars are.”

There was a dull rumble and a transmitted sound like tearing cloth. The three of them watched a spectral blade descend and split apart the billowing pall of smoke. Bits of building rained down for hundreds of metres in every direction across the river.

“Seems our own finest have also started to weigh in,” Danshu grinned. “Fate-thrashed continental types thinking they are able to just show up here and turn the city over.”

The group ahead of them looked at them down the street. He saw one of them pull on one of the two enforcers’ arms and, as unobtrusively as was possible, show him... -a jade scroll? Murai narrowed his gaze somewhat, then quietly took a recorded image and transferred it to his Military Bureau binary jade talisman. If the town ‘militia’ were going around with bootleg Military Loci, the captains certainly needed to know. The enforcers had a short debate between themselves, then the group turned and continued up Yu District Main Street, leaving the three guards behind.

Corporal Danshu put his bow back in its holder. “I wonder why they didn’t try to come down.”

Murai spat. “They are avoiding the guards. They have a Bureau Jade Loci, probably synced to ours. They can likely see the location of most of the squads out here, just like we can.”

“Only the deputy commanders have access to those?” Corporal Kun added questioningly, as if stating the obvious would make any difference.

Murai glanced back around the corner. The whooping and chanting in that direction was moving closer. A second talisman, earth-attribute this time and much more poorly aimed, arced across the street, hitting a now-deserted house on the far side. They watched grimly as the world trembled and several dozen square metres of the outside of the building turned into dust.

“I really wanna say they skimped on their building wards...” Corporal Danshu said quietly.

He made no reply. The owners of the building had not. That had been a sixth grade ‘Earth Ash’ talisman. As a Spirit Severing cultivator, he was reasonably confident in his survivability out here, at least against brats and rioters, but getting hit by one of those would be unpleasant.

Various shouts of “Betrayer”… “Murderers”…. “Thieves” and so on echoed, continuing to come closer.

Signalling to the two corporals to move up, Murai turned towards the nearest house and knocked on the door. There was no response, so he shoved his Guard Badge against the array that locked it. A few moments later it creaked open and a grim-looking man poked his head out, holding a sword ready to stab if necessary.

“Ah... it’s just you, Sir Han,” the man breathed in relief.

“Can we move through your villa, Grandmaster Li?” Sergeant Murai asked politely. “We would like to bypass the rabid mob in the district square.”

“Of course, Sir Han” Mr Li nodded and led the three of them inside.

Murai noted the two hall doors had heavy wards in place. The one on his workshop was particularly fierce, not that he could blame the Grandmaster. The upgrade on the moon rune over the door looked like it was done today. No rioter would be getting freebies from here, it seemed. Not without a serious body count attached, anyway, although anyone stupid or insane enough tried to storm a formations grandmaster’s workshop was just asking for their ignominious fate. He offered another silent prayer of thanks that Grandmaster Mang was currently visiting Blue Water City to see his great-great-grandchildren.

They went through the inner courtyard and he nodded to the young master Li, who was sat beneath the tree, a glaive leaning nearby. Both Mr Li’s youngest sons were sat playing ‘Gu Takes All’ nearby. The boy nodded back to him but offered no other greeting. Mr Li led them to the rear courtyard and opened the side door so the three could pass through.

“Your wife is out of town?” he asked the Grandmaster.

“Unfortunately, yes,” the old man looked worried. “She is on her way back from Blue Water City as we speak, though. There is a delay at the terminus, but she… erm.”

The grandmaster looked shifty. He presumably meant she would teleport directly... through the town wards. That wasn’t at all proper, but right now he couldn’t gainsay the man for making a talisman that allowed it.

“Good,” he nodded. “There are unsavoury types in town and a lot of opportunists. Don’t let them get anything they shouldn’t, you have a lot of Bureau contract work stored here. The Town Authority is not dealing good cards either.”

That was as close to a direct admonition as he was going to give, he decided. Grandmaster Li nodded pensively.

Satisfied with that, he ushered the two corporals out first, then followed behind. He felt the wards set at his back after he had passed through. It would indeed be a foolish opportunist who chose to use the unrest to try to loot Mr Li’s formations workshop... but it seemed intelligence wasn’t in a lot of supply today. Or wisdom, for that matter.

They made their way down the rubble-strewn alley, peering cautiously at the debris in case some talisman or alchemical weapon was spoiling in them. Rather than cross the main street directly, they cut through the sewer culvert. Several beggars and travellers were cowering in it already, who relaxed visibly at the sight of the guardsmen. Murai gave them his best encouraging smile, which was probably not much better than a grimace. After assuring those taking shelter that they were safe enough here and that they should take care not to be caught in the disturbance, they exited onto the lower riverfront walk. As the corporals scanned both directions, he slid up the slope and glanced carefully back around the corner, along the main street.

About two hundred yards up he could see half a dozen figures in Ha clan robes hiding out of sight from the alley they had been in. That confirmed his old military instincts about the other squad – it was never the one you saw that worked you over. -Or killed you.

With a sigh, he slipped back down the bank and gestured to the corporals to head upriver towards the Yu Bridge.

When they reached the bridge, they found the guard post ruined. That was expected, since the guard post on the Shu Bridge and the one at Yu Han Square had also been trashed. Neither side would be keen on having points where the town’s Military Authority could reinforce directly into to try to break this up. They made their way up the stairs carefully, then Corporal Danshu went used a movement art to flit to an upper balcony on the far side of the road. Murai nodded approvingly: that position offered a good vantage point and was obscured from view from the street itself.

The corporal signalled back. ‘Two groups.’ - ‘Smash shops.’ - ‘Forty metres.’ - ‘No obvious armaments.’ - ‘Suppress?’

Murai shook his head. ‘Mark.’ - ‘Get later.’

They had no means to easily send them to a barracks in any event. The transmission point in the guardhouse had been ripped up wholesale and then dismantled for its valuable elements.

Corporal Danshu acknowledged and turned to look back across the bridge—

The building exploded in a tempest of stone and wood. A split second later, the bridge behind them also erupted outwards as if someone had just struck it with a huge hammer. Murai grunted as a piece of masonry the size of his bed at home smashed into him. His innate qi protections reflected it, but he was still thrown across the street and back onto the vegetated slope leading down to the river bank. Corporal Kun hit the water and bounced three times before turning a boat on the far bank into firewood.

As the pressure wave from the follow-up explosion caught him in the open, the flicker of his protection talisman showed he was still alive at least. Rubble shifted and Corporal Danshu pushed his way out of the wreckage. His own talisman had saved his life, but it now flickered weakly. He was bleeding from his eyes and ears and appeared to have lost his bow. Dozens of masked individuals poured out of the side streets.

One pointed at the demolished building. “BROTHERS, WE HAVE STRUCK A GREAT BLOW. Another of the indigenous thieves’ rat warrens has been returned to harmony!”

Murai pulled himself up, only to drop down again immediately as he observed one of the youths, a girl in her teens, draw out another talisman and look in his general direction. It was a sixth grade ‘Minor Yang Blaze’ based on the qi flow through the symbol, although she tried to cover it with her hand as if he couldn’t see the qi within it. A Qi Condensation idiot, looking to get in on the action. That said, there were a lot of grade five and six talismans being slung about right now by people who shouldn’t have them. Had someone quietly gone around and armed up the mobs? A question for the aftermath, probably.

The looters had moved up as well, swelling the crowd to over fifty.

That mob pushed onto the bridge and along the walkway above the slope. Amid the chanting, general yelling of insults and hurling of the occasional brick scored with a charm across the bridge at the houses on the far shore. Several impacted the bank near him as that crowd noticed him as well.

A voice somehow made itself heard over the others.

“I KNOW THAT ONE!”

Someone yelled from the back. “He protected one of THEM! My uncle saw it.”

-One of them?

There was context in this that he was certainly missing... that half the fate-thrashed town was certainly missing. He hadn’t even been on arrest or patrol duty in the last two weeks?

Another voice shouted from the far side of the crowd. “Yes! He wouldn’t let Official Bao carry out his work! If he had observed the Town Authority properly as the Blue Scripture calls on all righteous peoples of our Great Realm to do, Young Master Yun would not have been killed!”

Official Bao. That incompetent fate-lusting bastard. Bits clicked together. He had gone to Jun Arai’s house that day. The Ha clan had been in a sort of cold war with the Hunter Pavilion for the last few years. Had something finally kicked off to the point where they were willing to make a move? More to the point, were they claiming Ha Yun was dead? Was that what had kicked this off?

“HE'S A TRAITOR?” someone else yelled, forcing him back from his thoughts. Not that he had really been caught in them as he watched the crowd milling above.

Murai swatted a thrown roof tile away and found the implicit attempt at a question in the shout slightly jarring given it was accompanied by such intent. Intelligence was definitely not high up on today’s list of priorities. The crowd parted with some more boisterous shouting and salutations from the looters. Twenty men in Ha clothing walked through, their leader wearing the armour of the Town Authority Enforcers’ Office. Murai vaguely knew the man, Ha Guo? He was at the peak of Nascent Soul if he remembered rightly. That meant he was still pretty much the strongest person in the street unless someone was hiding their strength with an artefact or talisman.

Best to assume that he is. As far as the crowd was concerned, he was just a Nascent Soul cultivator, and he would prefer that it stay that way.

“Han Murai!” Ha Guo arrived at the edge of the walkway and stared down at him in what he seemed to believe was a commanding manner.

It seemed to impress the crowd at any rate, and they quieted their insults a bit to observe this new development.

More were now appearing. This group, wearing auxiliary armour and the colours of the Ha clan either tied on their arms or around their heads, spread out in front of the crowd. Judging by their numbers, it seemed like a full squad of the Ha clan militia; bolstered quietly by a few of their estate guard as well, he thought sourly, noting the artificially dirtied armour of the two Spirit Severing cultivators and their dubious attempts to not look too professional. All the militia bore weapons: not legal in the town under normal circumstances without a Military Authority talisman. He supposed that the Town Authority had deputised them somehow, or they just didn’t care for the potential repercussions at this stage.

Wearily, he drew his own blade. There was no point in being half-hearted about things at this point.

The expected confrontation, where he would have to cripple or kill far too many people for his own peace of mind, never started. From off to the left, in the direction his squad had come from, came a series of colossal *cracks*. The rooftops of several buildings that hadn’t invested in basic wards turned into rubble as a miniature ‘Thunder Light’ formation blazed in the middle distance. Both he and the corporal stared at it for a second before reaching the same ominous conclusion.

Uncaring for the rioters, who had just dug their own graves pretty much, both Murai and Danshu threw themselves backward, down the slopes on either side of the bridge towards the river.

A heartbeat later there was another detonation, much closer this time. The crowd flinched back and several of the less committed members dived for alleyways or doorways. He hit the bottom of the bank as he sensed two distinct ripples of spatial qi in the vicinity. A youth in Ha clan clothing, but bearing the jade badge of a sect he couldn’t immediately recognise, appeared in the street, staggering a little as if drunk. He looked singed, and the formations on his fancy armour were all destroyed. A high-grade protection charm that hung around his neck was glimmering with suppressed qi. In his hand, he held a child’s arm, still holding a Gu Takes All card.

“Brother Weng!” someone in the crowd yelled.

“It’s Brother Weng—”

“Help us seek justice against the traitors to the Imperial Morality here—”

Murai stared blankly at the tableau before him. The youth had been the one with the two enforcers from—?

Survival instincts kicked in and he rolled into the river. Underwater he could see Danshu. The veteran soldier had somehow managed to get in first and was already moments ahead of him. He plunged for the river bed, wielding his own ‘Surging Waters Cultivation Law’ to draw the river water above them both into a protective barrier. Grabbing Corporal Danshu by the arm, he spared a thought to hope Kun Ya would survive, and crushed the Officer-Issue Minor Teleportation Jade.

They both vanished from the riverbed with a swoosh of displaced water and reappeared, along with several cubic metres of the river, in the square of the Yeng District Barracks, half a mile away on the south side of the river.

Even at this distance, he felt his hair on his arms stand up as the ‘Thunder Light’ formation triggered again. Chittering dragons of lightning swirled down from the sky and vanished in the direction they had come from. There was a flash of light and arcs of lightning scattered across distant rooftops, which he knew signified that the Yu Bridge and the street beyond it had been reduced to molten slag, along with fifty or so looters and probably a few innocents.

His ears were still ringing as Deputy Jurai ran over. “Senior Sergeant Han Murai… what in the Emperor’s Name was that?”

“I believe… A bunch of suicidal idiots just tried to rob Grandmaster Li's home… Sir.”

He closed his eyes for a second and an image of the youth, still holding the boy's arm and the Gu Takes All card, swam in his mind’s eye.

-What kind of homicidal idiot robs a formations grandmaster and cripples his son? One that doesn’t know his wife is a Golden Immortal who retired from the Duke’s Auxiliary Scout Battalion is what.

“I… we are going to need to request access to the formations library, Sir!” he grimaced. They would need something solid if they were going to make any attempt at returning to that district. He really hoped Li Quan wasn’t dead; another homicidal Golden Immortal was not what the town needed right now.

“Ideally something like a 'Minor YingJing Mountain Suppressing Formation Core' from the Central Authority, imprinted in the Jade…”

“Senior Sergeant… that is...” Deputy Jurai looked worried. “In these circumstances, authorisation already came through about thirty minutes ago. All districts have been issued with upgraded authority under Civil Unrest Guidelines Directive 14… most formations like that are in active use already.”

“Well, can you at least send a recovery team to the Yu Bridge? I am worried that Corporal Kun from my squad may be in need of help, Sir. We were separated before teleporting and he was thrown into a boat in the river by an explosion,” he asked, then quickly explained why...

Deputy Jurai nodded and turned to the courtyard, which was now half full with guardsmen.

“I NEED VOLUNTEERS IN FULL OUTFIT TO GO TO YU BRIDGE AND RECOVER AN INJURED GUARDSMAN!” his voice thundered around the courtyard.

“SIR!” Three junior sergeants and eight guards stepped forward and immediately ran towards the barracks’ armoury.

Turning back to Murai, the Deputy stroked his beard. “I am afraid that our only copy of the formation is already on issue. Deputy Tan has it, along with three squads who were sent out an hour ago to investigate and suppress a large scale disturbance near the western fields…. There is a ‘Minor Jade Atlas’ formation that would fulfil most of the same criteria… except…”

Everyone in the square paused as the air once again became charged with yang thunder qi.

Looking in the direction of the former Yu Bridge, Deputy Jurai grimaced. “We do, however, have a sword formation that is capable of providing support. It will go with the squad recovering Corporal Kun.

“How bad is it out there anyway?" the Deputy asked. "All we are getting is reports on the battle in the Seng District and the one outside in the western fields, precious little is coming in from elsewhere despite almost everywhere being in upheaval."

Murai shrugged resignedly. “Sir, it’s already as bad as the unrest that came on the back of the Lin School incident. If this goes on, we will have a body count that even the orchestrators of this mess won’t be able to weasel their way out of… they are destroying guard posts, and have copies of our jades as well—”

The world became heavy. An immense disturbance in the ambient qi somewhere near the town overwhelmed the already turbulent shifts in the local feng shui. His qi tried to run backwards as everything streamed away from some distant point, until the natural harmony of the Yeng District Barracks reasserted itself.

“What the—?” Danshu turned to face him.

“I—”

He choked on his words as the sky to the north-east of the town buckled outwards and twisted impossibly. A coruscating rent spiralled open across half the horizon, beyond which he could dimly see a... great hall?

Seven golden suns descended into the world from the distortion, accompanied by a firmament-shattering roar of furious voices that shook the entire city to the bedrock.

“YOU DARE CREATURE FROM BEYOND!”

[SEVEN!~ SEVERING! ~PHOENIX! ~SWORDS!]

West Flower Picking’s ‘Heaven's Guard’ Formation Loci activated, bringing the series of immense interconnecting protective formations that protected the town to overwatch status. The town’s wards blazed and dozens of smaller formations over the various noble estates flared as the shockwave of the rift passed through the air. Thankfully, the axis of the rift was such that the brunt of the wave passed ‘harmlessly’ through the sky to the north. He thought he saw valley ridges shattering and land being pitched high into the sky before the glare obscured everything.

The minor ‘aftershocks’ of the sky shattering ‘intent’ that washed over the ‘Heaven’s Guard’ walls made his teeth chatter and his heart skip a beat as the shimmering wards recoiled under the impact of forces at a scale that the formation’s creators had certainly only seriously considered in hypothetical circumstances.

The barracks’ own wards, much stronger than those throughout a lot of the town, erupted as an intangible ripple still managed to pass through that outer formation wall, the nine guardian officers who manned the formation pre-emptively triggering their own array with much more precision than some of the others that had already cycled up. Even so, the pressure from the words made his vision swim and his knees go weak. Many of the guards dropped to one knee or spat blood as their meridians were injured. Some of the new recruits fainted directly, foaming at the mouth or bleeding from their eyes and ears.

The seven suns didn’t immediately smash down – he didn’t want to think about what kind of damage that would cause. Instead, they spiralled around, forming a series of ellipses, sweeping arcs and brilliant trailing auroras. Their unnatural clarity told him all he needed to know about their rank. Dao Step weapons, at the very least, wielded by a person or persons with enough power to warp space on a fundamental level. The heat that they emitted was tangible even here, a horrifying fire principle on a level he would not have conceived of unless he had seen it here and now.

Those still conscious all watched, hypnotised as emission flares lashed down like celestial tendrils at specific points across the northern slopes of the Yin Eclipse Great Mount.

Something rose up to meet them, mist-like tendrils that were as chilling as the suns were hot. Where they connected in the air he saw shatter planes skitter out, as space capitulated entirely under the competition between pseudo-sun surface temperatures and something he could only presume was close to Absolute Yin Cold.

The seven blades circled again and the sense of ominous foreboding abruptly magnified a hundredfold. With a colossal cry, that defied his senses and pierced directly through his soul, the seven swirled and became one. In his mind's eye, a ferocious, primaeval bird descended into the world. An avian god of old, not seen in this world since the Heavens themselves turned, an aeonspan ago.

By the time he dared to look, to see if the intent had been just that or if such a monster of old had truly appeared in the energies of the swords, they were already plummeting from view, a spiral of seven golden lines leaving shockwaves of red-gold fire to flicker across the horizon.

His stomach dropped. Nobody watching was able to move a muscle as they envisaged what was about to—

The expected annihilation wave never came.

Instead, he, and presumably the tens of millions of other onlookers in the whole province and maybe even surrounding regions, watched as the perpetual maelstrom of thunderclouds and myriad-coloured lightning that towered over Thunder Crest shifted. It billowed upwards and outwards, its ubiquitous lightning scattering like a billion tentacles to ravage the ridge-tops of the valleys all across the western horizon. The mist scattered, even as lightning sought out the places where the swords had descended.

In the aftermath, he saw a flat, rectilinear piece of black glass-like ruin slanting up the north side of the peak, as if someone had stabbed it into the mountain. A second piece of ruin was visible right at the peak: a black tower, half of it severed away in a crescent moon shape. Below it was a great rift that seemed to open into the depths of the mountain itself.

The mists rolled up and swirled away towards the Great Mount, even as something else, hidden by its speed and the roiling clouds, flickered out of the cavernous rift and struck down with immense strength after it. Strange echoing laughter reverberated through the world as the mists swirled again before the thunderclouds rolled outwards, obscuring everything, leaving only flickers of sky-illuminating super-lightning in reds and purples.

"Oh no—"

He barely registered Deputy Jurai's horrified utterance before his body felt like it was doused in a bone-drenching cold. His Nascent Soul quivered and nearly lost its integrity as an unspeakable wall of something – the suppression itself maybe? – washed over the town. The wall formations flickered and died like candles in a gale, followed immediately by the simultaneous collapse of all the formations protecting various estates and the barracks, every defensive ward ripped to pieces and scattered as threads of gossamer qi on the crest of the tsunami of suppression. It took him several disorientating seconds to realise that he was physically unconscious, that he wasn't seeing the world currently but rather replaying the last few moments from memory as if to confirm that he was not, in fact, going insane. Then icy darkness swallowed up his whole world and his Nascent Soul, still barely maintaining the essence of his being, could no longer see or feel anything outside the prison of his own body.