…It is oft remarked that if you are without particular talent in Spiritual Cultivation, have not the heart for Dharma, or Bodily Cultivation, not the nature for Soul Cultivation, nor the teacher for the Martial Forms, there still remains Physical Cultivation. So long as one has the means to acquire a mantra, one can attain quite easily a degree of strength that would be impressive in a mortal world.

While it is true that one can gain strength, durability, and in fact an almost cockroach-like survivability compared to a spiritual cultivator of that realm. That one can live for a millennia and ensure that your descendants live double or even triple their normal mortal spans. It is in the end, an inescapable truth that this is sadly not a mortal world, and we are not mortals dreaming of Tian.

To us Immortality is not the end of the path, but the beginning. As such, Physical Cultivation has no road here. None that I know of have ever taken it beyond its equivalent of Spirit Severing. Most never make it past Mantra Seed, its equivalent to forming a Golden Core. Additionally, those who dual cultivate these mantras with other methods such as Spiritual Laws cannot take the spiritual part as the major component. To do so invariably invokes issues in tribulations that not even the most remarkable of sages have ever managed to raise a disciple to overcome. As such your spiritual cultivation will never advance beyond your physical one, cursing you to a broken road for the compromise of a swift start…

~Excerpt from a talk on the Heavenly Dao.

Dao Sovereign Sheng Wen.

~ Sana and Arai – Mysterious Land ~

Sana found herself drifting. She couldn’t say it was an ‘unpleasant sensation’ simply because her nervous system had capitulated at an indeterminable point prior to this. Assuming she wasn’t already dead, and this was what the point of demise felt like, only her foundation and mantra were sustaining the frozen sparks of her life at this point. The idea that she might already be crossing over to the afterlife was really not helping. No matter how persistently she scrunched those morbid thoughts into a ball and pushed them away, they kept coming back.

-It could be some weird variant of the afterlife.

-Death is complicated after all.

She focused hard, banishing the – they were not ‘voices’, she didn’t really get those, mercifully – fractured shards of her own subconscious that were prodding and poking away at her.

-On the other hand, I really hope the energy I just spent to keep them in check wouldn't have been better spent sheltering my organs, she thought.

And yet death, and ideas of death… Just. Would. Not. Go. Away.

Disgusted with that part of herself but unwilling to waste more vital energy on it, she let them spool out in the background while she focused on the important things – like trying to ensure that her remaining organs didn’t fail.

Her subconscious promptly started to vociferously debate with itself about what ‘death’ in a world where great sages poked and prodded at the destinies of those much weaker than themselves, while old freaks and ghosts were able to mess with time and space on a disturbingly casual level, might actually ‘mean’. She ignored it resolutely and focused wholeheartedly on the resurgent chill in her bones. It currently felt like it was trying to break out and reconnect with the deathly chill from outside. Only when they started on personal grief, particularly the death of their mother, did she finally send a sweeping thought to scatter them away. Even so, she was left with the lingering memories of her father’s bitter rants about those self-same ‘sages’ and ‘ghosts’ echoing in her mind’s eye.

Finally, however, she managed to reconnect to some sense of her surroundings.

-Her nervous system was still frozen solid somehow. Probably that was a mercy as her blood was barely flowing as it was.

-Grass beneath her? Check.

-Sky, well, mist above her, tinted a disturbing red… so her eyes were ruined? Check.

-Also not ‘above’ her – ‘ahead’ of her, a stray part of her subconscious corrected her.

Sighing inwardly, she had to acknowledge that it was correct it seemed.

It was impossible to move, so she couldn’t see what was holding her left wrist… hand?

-That should be Arai. She had been standing right next to her.

It helped in a strange way that the damage appeared to be purely physical. Whatever it was that had been done to them, by whatever it was that conjured or brought this mist, didn’t seem to be related to qi.

-Or if it was, it was so powerful that she couldn’t even perceive it, a more rebellious fragment called out.

-In any case, it was no form of qi she could do anything about.

She pushed back at the various parts of her mind which were trying to give other theories. As time passed, they were getting more persistent… which was not a good thing.

She knew she didn’t really suffer the ‘split voices’ issue from psyche breaks. Neither of them should, truth be told. Their mantra was particularly good at soul stuff and they had a lot of exposure to places like the ‘Red Pit’, compared to most of the other herb hunters. Especially herb hunters their age. Even so, the disparate shards of her consciousness were getting more incoherent, or morbid, or confused.

Some screamed...

Some sobbed...

One just wanted to ramble about grass and nothing she could do would shut it up. Another had been quietly reciting their mantra non-stop. She was grateful for that last one at least. It was at least being useful. That was what mattered.

Time flowed on, either seconds or minutes, she couldn't say.

Her vision was less pink now which was good. That probably meant she wasn’t dead, so she continued to lie there and stare at grass, trying to filter out the little voice that was explaining how THIS particular bit of grass was more interesting than the last hundred blades. She really wished she could just shut her eyes.

Slowly other things re-associated in her mind and body.

-Stuff.

-Wherever they….?

-...She?

-This place was….

-Had time passed?

-Of course, it had.

She froze.

–Ahhah, the voices giggled at that.

That was probably not good. Becoming the voice in your own head was absolutely not a symptom of getting better.

The feeling of dissociation had been growing steadily stronger even as she fought to save her liver from the cold. It was like trying to focus after not sleeping for days… except… she didn’t need to sleep?

-Oh. My... memories are breaking apart.

All she wanted to do was close her eyes, and just sleep…

-No. No. Very bad! All the shard-like voices invested in ‘not dying’ turned on her.

The mantra still rattled through her head. She had no idea how she was actually doing that, a voice in her head supplied. The one that was –still— talking about fate-thrashed grass told it that it was obviously because this hill was made of very special grass.

She wanted to scream. At them. At her. At the world. At the thing that had put her in this state.

-You can scream because we are feeling pain again.

She eyeballed the shards and really focused on pushing them back together a bit. They didn’t resist, but it was like trying to pile up fine sand with her hands… and there just wasn’t enough sand.

-Why can I feel?

It was odd.

Too odd.

Her nervous system was a chunk of ice. Her brain, lungs and heart were about all that was still properly protected.

Another voice in her head supplied that she was probably suffering huge brain trauma in some manner, likely due to the exposure to whatever it was, the shadowy thing in the fog.

-That was unhelpful.

The voice that she couldn’t really focus on at all pointed out that it wasn’t there to be helpful. It seemed far too happy about that.

Every part of her body hurt. She still couldn’t move, and the chill in her body was still there. Although it was fading, maybe? Probably. Her hand was no longer purplish. Ah. Her vision was no longer pink. That was why. Now her hand was pale. Whitish blue and smeared in dried blood and torn skin? It looked like a corpse’s hand, she thought. One left too long in a blizzard. A hand, in no better condition than hers, held hers through the grass. Dull pulses echoed in her head.

-The grass was taller than she recalled?

Odd… it had been short? Shorter?

The shard of her subconscious that was rambling on about grass was triumphant, telling her she should have been looking at it first.

-Because it wasn’t the same grass!

-You could have started with that point. Rather than something about the shape of the fibres on the blades making it Alusis Broad-grass rather than Alusa Meadow Sedge, she shot back at it.

-I am you, the voice pointed out, even as it dwindled away into the distance, its task presumably done.

One after another the shards of her subconscious folded back into herself. The dull thunder-like pulses in her head were getting stronger now?

-Oh...

-Not thunder, heartbeat.

Her eardrums were either smashed or rendered functionally inoperable. Her face was in agony. Pain inside her face. Ice crystals in her sinuses.

-Wonderful, she thought somewhat sarcastically.

It was funny how the mind fixated on that kind of pain, rather than, say, the agonising frost burns and lacerations she was also becoming aware of. Still, her having an actual pulse was good. Then again, the voice droning the mantra was also getting quieter. So probably not good.

She focused on the words her mother had told her to visualise. To pull out the potential of her body thread by thread.

'Spirit. Heart. Renewal. Body. Soul.'

She might as well have thrown the mantra into a deep pool for the good it did. There was no energy to spare to curse, all she could do was focus harder.

‘Spirit. Heart. Renewal. Body. Soul.’

The pain transformed slightly. The cycle shifted. She felt the intent filtering through the words.

-Again.

‘SpIRit. HEaRt. REneWal. BOdy. SouL’.

This time the mantra fled from her like a slippery fish. Too much concentration.

Her mother’s words spontaneously resurfaced in her mind. A kindly face, a gentle voice saying: “No Sana... You cannot force it. This isn’t like a spiritual law where you can get there JUST by sheer bloody-mindedness half the time. You must ACCEPT what is given. Receive the words as if they are an old friend. You cannot force them to be a part of you.”

… Father's voice: “I think that’s an oversimplification dear. I won’t pretend to understand a tenth of what it is you are teaching the girls but for a spiritual law, you have to control the flow of Qi. It’s hardly sheer bloody-mindedness as you put it.”

... Her mother sounded annoyed: “Shush! You will confuse her. She needs to understand that control is not about domination, it’s about harmony. It’s a—" the memory trailed off as the words dwindled away.

-What the dark-fate! Stupid memory!

-Why no perfect recall!

"Cycle. Not a—" the words came back momentarily before vanishing again.

-Cycle... shifting pattern, harmonious rhythm of the body!

-Stop fighting me you moron, let me work!

She stared into the darkness of her own collapsing psyche and sweated mentally. When your own mantra started speaking to you things were bad. Very very bad.

‘Spirit. Heart. Renewal. Body. Soul.’

It worked. But it didn’t feel as strong as it should. Her vitality was slipping away. Like the creeping hands of some malignant spectre, realisation concerning her bodily condition filtered through to her. Her body was ruined beyond even the capability of her foundation to support. All she was doing was treading water, slowly drawing out her death…

That went straight into the mantra bin and she started to repeat the cycle again.

Her memories were blurry now. It was hard to focus, trapped in this world of icy fog, in the present. Even as she struggled to eke out that next cycle she could feel everything slipping away from her into the shadows.

Suddenly she heard her mother’s voice so clearly she might have been sitting right next to her, felt a hand on her head, her hand clasping her right hand. A warmth and a sense of care she had not felt in years.

“Child…” the voice seemed… sad?

-Why was mother sad…?

“What has happened to you…”

“Oh, Sana… Your mother is just going to go away for a while... if you both grow strong maybe we will meet again my dear little one, you must look after your father. He can be a real idiot at times.”

The hand… felt warm… the gentle voice echoed in her mind. A sense of sadness gripped her. "It seems that fate is indeed a cruel thing here. Your mother can only give you this gift…"

She heard mocking laughter somehow... Her mother’s?

{I. Do. Not. Want. You. To. Die. In. This. Place.}

It felt like she had been dropped in boiling water. The strength that flowed from those words set her body alight. She floundered in her mind. Hot. Cold. Light. Dark. Everything spun, but nothing quite moved. Consciousness was physically returned to her like a slap in the face. Her eyes snapped open. She gasped out loud. It felt like a soundless death rattle. Every part of her was in agony. Her bones felt like they had jaws and were gnawing at her muscles. Her muscles felt like they were twisted and contorted in ways nature never intended beneath her skin. As for her skin? She couldn’t decide if it was on fire or frozen solid.

Pain was reality, her whole world was pain now.

She screamed silently and kept on screaming until the hand holding hers squeezed hers.

Her sister's voice, from nearby sounded like she was gargling ice crystals. “That’s probably not a good idea.”

She ran out of breath to scream and gasped.

Air flooded her lungs - she hadn't breathed in, the pain was quite something.

Eventually, she managed to speak haltingly: “S-ss-sis?”

“H-how?”

“Ah,” Arai sounded equally raspy and distant.

She tried to move her head to look at her, but her body was still numb.

“Something mother left us, I think,” Arai sounded… not sad, it was an emotion that she knew because it was inside her as well…. complicated.

“I heard her voice. I guess this was her…. gift,” her sister’s voice was muted even through the rasp.

Her own memories were still tattered and fractured. No voices, at least. She tried to summon up the words from the memories. There had been a few. Something in the tone lingered with her.

The homily came first: 'Accept what is given, receive what is due' - even old Ling had muttered it occasionally when she was sure he thought none of them noticed when he was particularly annoyed about something.

The other memory was nebulous. Like it deliberately didn’t want to come into her mind’s eye. Whatever words her mother had spoken to ‘save’ her, or maybe ‘safeguard’, refused to make themselves known. However, something in the tone of the voice lingered.

She focused on that, the tone, and repeated the mantra. She only managed a single word in the same manner.

‘Body’

Her body breathed. That was the only way to describe it. The tension melted away and the pain, while still there, was now more recurring memory than active reality. She stared up at the sky. There was a sun there.

“Sis,” she said after a while.

“Yes?” Arai croaked.

“We both survived.”

“Yes… It seems we did,” Arai’s voice mirrored her own.

It was hard to say how long she lay there, on the grass, before she felt capable of rolling over. Everything hurt. But at least she could move without screaming, thanks to the mantra. Arai lay there, looking like something that had just crawled out of a blood pit.

“Can you move?” she asked.

“Yeah… I… uggh… sort of. I was just,” Arai replied, sounding hoarse. “Figured it was better… to take it easy”

“Yeah…” it was hard to disagree with that logic.

She looked around and finally realised why her subconscious had been ranting about grass. Because the grass was different now. It was taller, for starters. It had been about shin high before on the hilltop. Now it was close to waist high.

Pulling herself up, using the nearest upright rock for support, she took in the landscape. If there was an upside, it didn’t appear to have completely changed around them. The broad brushstrokes were still the same. They were still within a wide circle of twelve upright stones. Now she could make out dull relief figures on each one. A woman holding a jar? Another had a sheep on it for some reason. Another a crab. All were crude and highly stylised. Twelve in total, animals and figures. Was it something akin to the zodiac of 12 celestial animals?

It took a moment to place the other change. The view was still awe-inspiring. The forests now climbed precipitously up the mountain slopes, vanishing into the cloud in the distance. She could make out what appeared to be the tower of one of those great buildings, but of the others? Staring around, she got nothing. None of the other peaks had ruins on them. However, the insane scale was gone or somehow lessened. That was not to say, as she kept looking up and up at the peaks, that they were not immense. The mountains towered. The ones before them, across the valley, easily twelve miles high, from valley bottom to the peaks she could see.

She had taken in the circumference twice before the rest of the changes sank in. They were probably not in a valley, but rather a vale enclosed in a great ring of peaks running east to west. If there was a pass behind, it was lost in mist and cloud pine forest. The pass to the north — what was probably north — was barely visible amid the sweeping slopes.

She fancied that towers shimmered in that distance as well. If it was possible, the landscape felt a lot more, well, complete. Harmonious, even. The vegetation encroached into the vale, but no longer was there a weird shift between sub-tropical jungle and montane cloud pine for starters. The vale was broad and flat. The river still glittered in the distance. The huge cataracts in the distance rumbled. But seemed more structured.

Now that she looked closely, there were in fact buildings in the distance, on some of the slopes to the east – towering compounds and interlocked complexes that squatted on the edge of the cloud line. Their design a mix of familiar and unfamiliar. There were pagodas and stupa-like things, rectilinear buildings with peaked roofs and sprawling halls that barely registered above the treeline. Even several large villa-like structures that were, apart from the flatter roofs, similar in their construction/design to those on the coast near Blue Water City, here overlooking the valley from the higher ridgeline.

Some looked mostly intact, but in others, she was able to pick out some missing roofs and tumbled walls. Her instinct suggested they would be unreachable. Most of them were above the lower mist line or hidden in the forest that encroached onto it.

Arai had managed to pull herself upright and was also looking around, wincing and checking her limbs as she did so.

“That’s… probably not good,” her sister muttered, suddenly holding up the jade talisman around her neck.

She blinked and peered at it. “What’s wrong with it?” she asked, not seeing anything obviously off.

“Remember, I triggered a counting talisman, or well, altered a talisman really badly, to take a stable pulse of qi from my storage talisman at a fixed point back before we started climbing that cliff? What feels like a lifetime ago?” Arai said.

“Oh…Yes,” she found herself replying, not liking where this might be going.

“Well, we were out for three days it seems. So there goes the theory that we get kicked out after seven days. We have been here for… nine now, according to the talisman count. So it could be closer to ten, I guess. If you count the time before we triggered it.”

“Oh,” was all she could manage at that. It was what she had expected somehow, but… well.

Arai frowned. “Huh, it seems the landscape changed again? Less ginormous buildings and the scale seems within reason now?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Probably it happened when the mist moved on. I hope that doesn’t come back. I don’t think mother left us a second lifesaving... whatever that was.”

“Something to do with the more advanced realms of our physical cultivation mantra I guess, or a different mantra altogether, maybe? Old Ling did say you could have more than one if you were particularly gifted or lucky,” Arai mused. “By the way… did you also get the weird recollection thing that went with it? When mother started lecturing me about acceptance and not forcing control.”

“Oh….erm, yeah,” she stared off into the distance. That memory had slotted back neatly into its place. The follow on one was still fuzzy and indistinct though.

“Hah. You were always terrible at that when we were young,” Arai chuckled weakly.

“And you were shit at unarmed…” she trailed off, staring out across the vale. “And after that?” she asked… carefully.

“Oh,” Arai trailed off as well.

Neither talked much about the time of their mother’s death. The memories were cruel and difficult. Easier to just forget that her mother’s extended family were such people. Father had taken steps to ensure that they were properly removed from their matrilineal grandfather’s clan. Their matrilineal grandmother still kept in some contact, but it was awkward and distant. They knew what they had done. Their brother had been the compromise of sorts. A pitiful thing.

“Mother was there, in the dark, holding my hand, singing a song. I think it was the day before she passed away. It was something like a lullaby, but I didn’t recognise the words. I think it was one of the ones she sometimes sang when she was sad, or we hadn’t had a good day somehow. You?”

Sana grimaced. “It’s hard to recall. She was at my bedside? Or sitting on the bed, it was just before... she said she was sorry? And that she had to go away for a long time.”

Neither spoke for a while. Arai finally gave a big sigh and fell back on the grass. “Well it seems no good will come of dwelling on it too much. We survived.”

A short while later she sat back up. “There’s a lake down there. Assuming it’s not filled with Yin Qi. Or deathly corrosive, or actually boiling so hard it doesn’t even ripple…”

“Or actually a portal into a timeless death zone that draws in everyone it touches, turning them into one-dimensional images,” she added sourly, thinking of the 'Stopping Pit'.

“Yes. Or that,” Arai shuddered.

“Shall we stagger over there and see if we can’t clean ourselves up a bit?”

She stared at her sister, then at herself. They both looked like living corpses. “That’s not a bad idea,” she conceded. “You look about as bad as I feel.”

~ Meng Fu, Seven Sovereigns School – Yin Eclipse Valleys. ~

Meng Fu; Ancient Imperial Ancestor, Dao Mother Heaven Pyre, True Flame Sovereign, Founder of the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School – and several others before that, theoretically revered ancient ancestor across much of a Great World, teacher of fabled existences, and to her mother, and now one ancient eldritch thing from beyond the comprehension of mortal existence ‘little chick’, stood on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the smouldering remains of a part of ancient Mahavaran.

The obliteration within the eastern side of the Jasmine Gate was near total. There, the impact of two of the seven venerate-grade weapons had achieved the same kind of devastation a quasi-immortal cultivator could in a lower world.

Someone, the perpetrators of the fine mess she was now looking out over, had clearly raised the suppression, and not just a little bit either. A formidable venerate-step treasure, or an artefact forged of a venerates Dao Spark was required for that.

-Yet another thing to ponder in all this, she mused, taking in the smouldering chaos for a few more seconds before looking into the distance to contemplate the wider catastrophe.

For someone ignorant of the subtleties in the way the suppression in Yin Eclipse worked, having just watched everything unfold, the lack of wider damage in the landscape would, she was sure, probably be perplexing. Yes, parts of the valleys around her burned, their fires visible as halos beneath vast palls of smoke in every direction. Yes, some ridge lines had actually been cracked and several large, rather uninviting fissures had been cleft into the 'underworld', but most of that had been caused by the aftershocks, not the initial impacts.

That the damage below was what it was, was, truthfully, a testament to the terrible power of the seven parasol wood swords that the ‘Seven Severing Phoenix Sword Formation’ leveraged at its core.

To truly understand how terrible the suppression in this place was, you had to understand that anywhere else in this world, that offensive power, even pressured by the fundamental 'oppression' exerted by the nature of Great World, would have turned half of Blue Water Province into a flat, glassy desert. Anything on the western side of the sub-continent would have had a very bad day.

Shaking her head, she turned back to look at the two groups of cultivators behind her.

The first was a squad of Guardian Elders from the Seven Sovereigns School led by two of her own disciples; twelfth old ancestor Cao Liang and ninth old ancestor Meng Tan. Neither were remotely amused to be here, Especially Meng Tan.

The other was the survivors of this farce. It was fair to say there was a lot of looming going on. Their ‘rescue’ mission, of sorts, was not happy.

“Ah, A-ancestor Cao!”

One of the surviving elders who appeared to know her disciple, was busy kowtowing to him. The others were all kneeling nearby, also grovelling. Looking on, she couldn’t help but feel it was an action truly unbecoming of their status.

-I suppose it is what it is, she mused, looking over them. When you get a big sect, no matter how hard you try, invariably you get idiots like this… who lack character yet still manage to worm their way up the ladder.

“We have only found these four, Honoured Founder,” The leader of the Guardian Elder group stepped forward smartly and saluted.

‘These four who are still alive’, that was the unspoken part. Well, five if I count little Ji, who miraculously survived this debacle.

Her gaze travelled to the line of corpses. There were seven, somewhat coincidentally, though those were only the ones they had found body parts for. Another five had died leaving no corpses – either through self-detonation or being consumed – while a further three were entirely unaccounted for.

“We are waiting on the sect to locate the soul talismans of Fan Ji, Rantai Mao and Erlang Weng,” External Guardian Elder Meng Fei added, saluting her politely.

“…”

She gave him a sideways look and sighed inwardly. Technically, all Sect Elders who were willing to partake in this kind of mission had to have a copy of their personal soul talisman stored in the school’s grand pavilion. The Seven Sovereigns had very explicit rules forbidding ad-hoc members on these kinds of missions… for good reason as well, given how political they always tended to be, and how challenging the Seven Sovereigns current position on Eastern Azure was.

“Honoured Ancestor, all three of them originally started off as guest elders. They were recent additions to the External Elder Hall,” another of the elders supplied.

“Did they now,” her non-committal reply made the four survivors flinch.

The pattern of this was clear enough, to her at least. It wasn’t the first time, although it was the first time someone or group had dared to be this overt in almost 200,000 years. Their school had kept a low profile in recent millennia for its status as a major world power.

A part of her was wondering now if that profile had been too low, truth be told. She had largely let its profile recede in public matters since the Huang-Mo wars. Firstly to avoid attracting eyes to her own matters, and secondly because the current emperor was weak on his throne and looking for excuses, particularly after the attempt to pressure the Moon Tomb cult after those wars ended up being a costly, spiked iron brick on the foot of the Imperial Military Bureau.

-What to do. What to do.

She stared over at the mountain slopes beyond and Black Spire Pinnacle, the lowest, easterly peak of Thunder Crest. Its clouds had returned to their normal pattern. To her west, the great peak of the Yin Eclipse Great Mount towered in the clouds, still somewhat visible given the seasonal rains had not started to reassert their dominion.

At this distance, it looked to be over a thousand miles high, but actually, that was an illusion of its presence. Just by being, it distorted its presence in the world, such that she was sure it would be a surprise to most to know it was only ninety-nine miles high.

-Ninety-nine miles high, an immense mountain.

It was the third highest in the entire Great World. Only the erstwhile ‘Kunlun Mountain’, the stronghold of the Buddhists of the Shang Buddha in this world and ‘Mount Tai’ on the central continent, the seat of Divine Ascension for the Dun Clan’s sole Divine Sage and principle link to the Kong Heavenly clan, were ‘higher’. You had to qualify that though because Yin Eclipse was not a normal mountain. It had an innate quality that broke space in some way even she couldn’t fully grasp. It towered on the horizon no matter where you were on the sub-continent and beyond, fully visible tens of thousands of miles distant and having a presence several magnitudes over its ‘actual height.’ All its peaks were odd as well. In their own terrifying ways.

With a further soft sigh, she considered the scattered clouds and drifting sheets of light rain, through which peeked slashes of blue sky, and pursed her lips, as unbidden, the scene of Yin Eclipse descending into the world hung in her mind's eye.

-Oh you fools… if only you brats trying to poke and pry at the secrets of this place could have seen that moment… she sighed inwardly, resisting the urge to shudder. Seen how the land shattered and the seas boiled. How three continents had become seven in an instant under its impact.

Her hunch was that their ardour for its secrets would be be cooled, buried and memorialised for their nine generations so fast it might well cause a temporal paradox.

-Ah...

With a grimace, she caught herself, however there was not sense of peeking eyes, not any spiteful thunder.

The devastation unleashed had been impressive, for the size of what actually came down, given how it now looked. Then again… she had also seen the things fall down that would become the mysterious ‘ruins’ of the primary peaks and their various mountains around it. The fragments of that fortress and the black stone ‘Watchtowers’ as her mother had called them.

unbidden, her gaze sought out the heart of the Jasmine Gate. The grove where that...

she took a breath, glad she was facing away from the others.

-At least the old turtle dragon left without causing a fuss.

That this was where Old Jiao had come to skulk for the last millennia was a bit of a shock, even to her. Their rivalry was somewhat cooler of late, but he was one of the few entities in this Great World that would actually give her personal pause… and among the most unpredictable as well. If only because unlike her, he had spent much more time prying into the secrets of this place.

She had only been a little chick then, standing at her mother’s side. Newly arrived in this place, accompanying her mother when she came to chastise a foolish ancient emperor for using one of the Meng clan’s precious gifts to make furniture…

-Furniture! Who turns a celestial parasol tree into a chair? Over a trade dispute… even now, uncounted years later that was still annoying to think about.

-Well, if I discount the old turtle, probably there is no one else here who knows as much about this heaven-defying death trap as I do… and this is not his style.

-Not to mention, the Jasmine Gate would probably turn him into turtle soup, assuming that old villain of a monkey didn't try again.

There was no sign of it, either.

That was, unfortunately, the problem with this place, it was a death-trap… and it was also an inexhaustible cornucopia of chaos if you didn’t just let it well enough alone. When it first fell, she had been dubious about how concerned her mother was over it and in truth a bit resentful when she was handed the task of watching – as she had put it at the time – ‘Paint dry on a bit of celestial geology’. Now, she would give genuine tail feathers for it to be anywhere close to that boring. Especially given the Jasmine Gate, once its old experts recouped was going to want answers.

Sighing faintly, she turned back to the four survivors again, contemplating them with narrowed eyes.

They had no way of knowing, so it was hard to blame them on one level, that this mountain and the events surrounding its descent into this world were the real reason that the Meng family, within the Meng Heavenly clan, continued to maintain a presence on Eastern Azure. The only reason that the Seven Sovereigns School even existed.

Her mother had asked her and a group of her sworn friends to set up an influence under the pretence of keeping an eye on that emperor’s successor. A first flush of responsibility, a good experience for her to spread her wings, in a world that didn’t have any of the high politicking or inherent danger of many of their own dominion realms. The reality being that she was to keep watch on this place and inform her mother immediately if anything untoward happened. They had made various schools and sects over the aeons since, finally founding the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School which still stood to this day.

-In spite of several events akin to those that have transpired today.

If it wasn’t for the fact that she was being subtly observed by quite a number of people, including several from beyond the horizon, she would have sat down and groaned – or punched something… maybe one of the idiots grovelling. Her mother’s instructions regarding this place were typical of her - ‘Do nothing, say nothing, watch it carefully and make sure nobody pokes around in it too overtly.’

Early attempts at doing nothing about it had been largely futile though.

-If there was a red talisman and bell rope somewhere that said ‘danger do not touch, world may end’, cultivators would be queuing up for a thousand miles to try yanking it off, she thought wryly.

So in the intervening aeons, she had sponsored various expeditions into the ruins themselves and also quietly eliminated quite a few after the fact – either personally, or through the influence of her sworn sister Meng Ruo, who had founded the ‘Solitary Slaughter Sept’. That the Meng clan controlled the foremost ‘dark cultivator sect’ controlling the elite assassins of this great world was a secret known to none but the two of them and one other.

All those places she had ventured into, in and beneath the mountains, including the smouldering ruin of the Jasmine Gate below, were fearful, uncommon places. Filled with inauspicious vibes, distorted qi's, spatial dissonance and the lingering, unwilling echoes of other times and places. To that end, it was amazing what people didn’t notice, despite it being right in front of them. Although some of it was a matter of perspective – perspective that was currently lacking in the heavens of this era.

The laws of the Great World were thin here. Even the strength of the ‘fates’ and ‘Worldly Fate’ struggled to penetrate much beyond the surface. Everywhere here, you could find rules that exceeded the connate strength of a Great World and a veritable menagerie of old things had accordingly found their home in those same depths over the aeons. Things that liked to avoid the laws of these and other heavens, or simply those that sought to test themselves in a way nowhere else in this part of the Azure Astral Starfield, never mind in Eastern Azure itself, could or would. Seekers of that final scrap of enlightenment that would propel them to new heights… or depths.

What few realised was the upper limits of the fearful strength of this place. Her mother had warned her before she left, explicitly, that the suppression in the depths of this land was so vast that it would be able to quash even someone of her realm effortlessly, never mind a lesser Venerate, or an Ascendant. None would be more or less privileged than a Golden Core child. Death would come in equal measure, uncaring of prestige, knowledge, comprehension, Truth… or manifest destiny.

Especially manifest destiny. This mountain sometimes seemed to exist purely to spit in the eye of some parts of the Heavenly Samsara, she felt.

Mulling this over, while she considered her own part in this, it was hard not to feel a bit frustrated, because if she were to be somewhat objective, part of this was her fault. Not the ‘mess’ in front of her – that was a matter for the school and its vitality. Rather, she was culpable for not stopping those brats guarding the school before they dropped that particular formation through the rift.

Staring around again, it was impossible to deny that it had exacerbated the whole thing… a lot. It made her want to kick something. Unfortunately, that would be un-decorous and unbecoming of a person of her eminent status and send the wrong impression to any onlookers.

She should have realised as soon as the abomination started talking. However, it was not every week that a real eldritch abomination from beyond the realm wall came crawling out of your teleportation formation, not in Azure Astral Starfield anyway. It had at least injured the ‘thing’ that emerged, but caused so much damage in the collateral shockwave, even with the suppression of the land, that it had disturbed the Thunder on the Pinnacle and revealed its ruin to the world for a mere moment. Although not as much as the other thing. She was compartmentalising that. Her anger there was more personal.

-There would be restitution for that.

-Could I just seal the entire sub-continent? Claim this place for the Meng family?

It was a tempting… if rather extravagant thought, though dooable if she played her hand right.

-I could call brother, Meng Ruo maybe, and a few of the others back...

-On the other hand, mother would throw a fit and the Meng clan would probably demang I come back.

Her mother would be very angry if she abused the precarious position of the clan in this world. Her father would likey demand that she come home, again.

Maybe send her aunt with her brother to make sure that she did this time.

It would also provoke a Realm War on multiple fronts that the Meng clan neither wanted nor needed in the current era. The Dun and by extension the Kong and Huang Heavenly clans, who were the ascendant influences at this point, would take it as the Meng clan trying to re-establish hegemony here, and Eastern Azure was no longer a pivotal concern on her clan's terriorial fringe in this era.

The new treaty, barely half a cycle old, had also given a lot more power to the Huang Heavenly clan. The Wuli branch was tolerable, however the Gan branch was not. They were almost a clan within a clan, strutting peacocks with dangerous origins and far too many skeletons. The Kong clan might well decide that their bottom line had been breached and permit the Dun’s Divine Sage to turn his gaze back to the world… to protect the seat of his Blue Morality Scripture.

–No, she mused, still eyeing the group who were grovelling, now is not the time to provoke a shit-slinging match with that bunch of hypocrites.

The current generation were a bit flaky but those behind them, pulling the strings, were not… and the last thing anyone needed was someone getting ideas on Yin Eclipse and deciding to turn it over. That someone hadn’t come prying when the Venerate Core exploded was already nothing short of miraculous, though she supposed it could be down to them having detonated it right in front of such an abomination.

Looking back at the peak of the great mount, shrouded in perpetual cloud, she frowned.

-Was it you? Did you step in?

She got nothing in return, making her just sigh again, a bit more deeply… then turn her eyes back to the four survivors once more, who having just watched her stare at them aimlessly for some minutes sighing with palpable disappointment, were fully in the grip of every ill scenario their febrile minds could concoct.

The elders were getting a breakdown of what had happened at least, in between all the gesticulation and the grovelling.

-When you realise what it is that you have been party to. Will you try to kill yourselves? Rather than accept the punishment? she wondered with an amused sigh, probably they wouldn't, they didn't have the conviction for that.

“Haiiii…”

The trees around them rustled somewhat ominously, making her realise that last sigh had been a bit too overt. The four were grovelling even more now. Even the elders and her two disciples were staring at her askance.

“Honoured ancestor?” a nearby External Guardian Elder saluted.

“Another war for the control of Eastern Azure is not what anyone needs. Certainly not off of the back of this place,” she mused, walking over from the edge of the ridge.

It was somewhat amusing really, to watch the wheels of their minds spinning as they all turned over her words. I could have said that the grass was green and the sky was blue and they would still be sweating, looking for the hidden meaning.

That said, talking about global war did serve to unnerve the four idiots, who were visibly sweating, so she decided to just stick with that line for now. As much because it was what the distant watchers probably expected as well.

“You are aware that your actions have broken a whole bunch of our influence’s most ancient rules?” she added for good measure, crossing her arms.

The ‘theatre’ was something you just took in your stride after a while, though in this instance it was getting a bit silly. She could detect ten separate ‘groups’ now, from all over – north, south, east and west, a lot from the west. She herself could not be divined, but that didn’t mean that people weren’t trying to see what the Seven Sovereigns would do in these circumstances.

Various powers had been quietly working for hundreds of millennia to keep the eyes of the current Imperial Court from these lands, and before that the Shan had also been encouraged to not delve too deeply, though there the agreement had been somewhat cosier. Quite a few of those powers, on both sides, had long memories and held deeper grudges still. While the war between the differing interpretations of ‘Fate’ within the world had mostly cooled this last aeon and the Blue Morality was here to stay, this vexed a lot of the older influences who remembered freer days, before the last great upheaval, when the Dun Imperial clan was re-established thanks to the Kong clan.

The Heavens of Eastern Azure had changed and most had made some accommodation with it. She had wanted to leave the world then, having become disillusioned with this place and the chaos that led to the downfall of the Shan, as several of her old friends had. However, her mother had been insistent that someone she could trust watch the Great Mount – and keep a wary eye on the more ambitious elements within the Dun Imperial clan in case they turned their eyes towards it.

That warning still made her wary, because the Dun’s own Divine Sage had deep roots with Eastern Azure. She knew a bit about ‘divinity’, truthfully, far more than anyone at her realm should.

Many of the eyes watching now were from those other powers. While they disagreed about a very great number of things, none of them wanted to see the Kong or the Ming or the Tang Heavenly clans set their eyes on Yin Eclipse in earnest, so her actions here were being scrutinised far too closely. Far, far too closely.

-Oh yes. Her mother was going to give her an earful all right if she ever got to hear about this.

She stared at the four pensively, not bothering to hide the pressure in her gaze now. Based on the idiots in front of her, it was highly likely that word would get back to others in the Meng clan, even if she had no hand in it.

Sect Enforcement Great Elder Tuo Kankai, who was still babbling, would have absolutely taken some steps to ‘expedite’ his role in this mess. She had, admittedly, tuned out his excuses several minutes ago because they were, if not properly mendacious, bordering on attempted deception by omission. Not even good omission either. Anyone with half an eye to read the landscape, and most of those who had come with her were at least capable of that, even here, could see how his excuses rang hollow.

“—So let me get this clear,” young Liang, who was squatting next to the shivering 'Great Elder', mused. “None of the people you ‘saved’ are here, because they were already running away when you arrived?”

“Ye…y-ye-yes!” another nearby survivor stammered.

“Some Golden Immortal punks and two children managed to run away – while you all bravely stood there and fought not only the whole Jasmine Gate, but an honest to goodness Eldritch Abomination?"

“…”

You could hear the subconscious gulps of all four.

“E-e-elder Fan Ji—”

“—Is missing,” Meng Tan supplied helpfully from where he stood nearby. “We are aware of that. You don’t need to keep stammering it out like you're retarded.”

An image of that group was still within her perception, barely. They were now maybe 15 miles to the west, hidden by a pretty good talisman. The signature suggested that it was personally crafted by Din Bao… one seemed to be from the Jade Gate Court, two others were scions of the Ha Family, based on the symbol on their soiled robes, while the last was a young woman from the Ling clan wearing the robe of a minor civil official.

There was no obvious sign of the other two. The four here had been categorical there had been four, but they had said nothing of a girl, which to her suggested, which either meant they were lying or the group she had in her sights had gained a few. Certainly none of those in that group were the 'Ji Tantai' that Meng Tan had been looking into.

There were more questions there, but they could wait for later.

-When eyes were not prying quite so much.

“We, we did…”

“You teleported blindly into the single most dangerous corner of the whole of Yin Eclipse—”

“—probably in Azure Astral Starfield,” Meng Tan, who was old enough to have seen the Jasmine Gate exact 'retribution' for markedly lesser incursions than this, added.

“Probably, yes,” young Liang agreed. “Without even bothering to try to scry the location you were about to hit—”

"—Not to mention the Censure Notification was delayed after you set out," Meng Tan added.

"Indeed," Cao Liang agreed. "And then, to add insult to all that, when you landed here, blind, you got slapped in the face so hard the rest of the fate-thrashed world heard it twice before you even registered you got hit!” Cao Liang had almost pulled the misfortunate Tuo Kankai off his feet at this point. “You know what this looks like?”

The three other elders grovelled harder.

-Oh they know all fate-thrashed right, she smirked inwardly.

“That was an Imperial Censure Summoning. We have to do those, it’s part of the ‘obligation’ every sect signed up to with the Azure Astral Treaty all those years ago,” she interjected. “However, did you know we have an exemption for one place?”

“…”

Confused expressions on both groups just made her sigh and determine that everyone over the rank of Outer Sect Junior Elder was going to re-read the entire sect’s rulebook, in front of her, in the very near future… out loud.

“Here. They can’t call anyone to perform a censure here. In this fate-thrashed place!” Cao Liang proved himself the one person who apparently had read it as he pointed at the smoking ruin of the Jasmine Gate behind them. “And—! Even if such a thing were to be required, it has to go through Junior Sister Yang—”

“—or me,” Meng Tan interjected.

“Yes, or my Senior Brother Tan!” Cao Liang, who really was having far too much fun with this she had to consider, agreed. “So what this looks like to all of us, gathered here, is that you are colluding with enemies of our school to cause us an injury?”

“…”

“Are you colluding with enemies of our school?” Cao Liang pressed, a bit more forcefully.

“N-no!” the three other elders almost screamed at once. “No Collusion. NOT COLLUDING! NEVER COLLUDING!!!”

“Elder Tuo? Can you swear you are not colluding?” Meng Tan asked grimly from where he was standing, arms behind his back, watching the interrogation.

“…”

Looking at how this was playing out, she coughed and turned to Meng Tan. “You are certain there is no sign of this Ji Tantai here? None whatsoever?”

“None, Revered Teacher” he replied respectfully, as Cao Liang stepped back, also looking at her.

Her decision to step in was really down to the fact that Tuo Kankai, or more likely one of those missing elders, really did have some connection to the missing Ji Tantai. That was something that didn’t need to be openly aired for potential onlookers. A secondary consideration was that she also didn’t trust Tuo Kankai to not start sprouting stupid things that might put them in an awkward situation if he had too much time to think about things here and now.

“May the fates be buggered by a monkey!” she muttered, allowing a little bit of her annoyance, and she was annoyed at that, truly, to seep out to play for the watchers.

Several little orange daisies flickered into being around them. Even though they vanished almost as quickly as they came, sliding back into unreality, everyone else present still flinched.

“And what of the… complications?” she asked, making sure her face was suitably thunderous.

“Erm… the Turtle Dragon has left, thank the fates. He seemed in remarkably good spirits given the circumstances and the manner of his… umm exit,” one of the External Guardians reported.

“The four-armed lizards have also vanished without a trace,” Meng Tan sighed.

She glanced at the corpses, two of which had been killed by those dark remnants of a bygone era half a cosmos away. Their bodies were twisted in a deeply inauspicious way and their souls had been seized, one had even had his flesh partially flayed. It was not the kind of injury that those here would be familiar with, but to her it was symbolic of their souls being claimed by an eldritch malevolence. Not the same one that had invaded the school either. That hadn’t left bodies when it absorbed its victims.

“The creature itself, the thing targeted by our sect’s supreme formation, has also fled,” another elder added. “We caught its trail briefly with auguries but didn’t pursue. It seems to have escaped into some kind of subspace. It re-emerged briefly on the far side of the great mount. Reports circulating from near Yun Shan City speak of a terrible fog that froze the ocean, heading northeast. Nobody who engaged it in combat other than Junior Brother Ming left an intact corpse, let alone survived – even the Elders Hui, Long and Yurai.”

“It also effortlessly executed everyone in the central conflux hall and managed to escape again,” Cao Liang sighed, standing up. “Three Dao Eternal Elders, even ones with Heavenly Principles, would be nothing more than a speedbump for it.”

"What about the Jasmine Gate?" she asked.

"Keeping their distance," Meng Tan murmured. “There is also no evidence of the…other… things that you drew attention to having any involvement, Teacher,” Meng Tan added, skimming a jade that had been handed to him smartly by another elder who had just returned from scouting the surroundings.

-I suppose that is something, at least, she reflected.

The old monsters that lurked here were quite varied in their makeup and personality. Some were tolerable, or could be reasoned with, like the ancient spirits of the Jasmine Gate, however others were... outright evexatious, like the old monkey.

Idly, she took in their surroundings, looking at places nobody would consider twice, but there was no sign of the disarmingly cute nusience.

“What about the ruin that was revealed?” another elder, somewhat more junior to his role asked, glancing towards the once again shrouded mountain.

She stared at him with flat eyes for a moment until he bowed and stepped back apologetically.

-That will be a problem, she reflected glumly, pointedly not aking which one.

Mahavaran was buried so deep in myth that nobody would remember it by that name, but the ruin of these valleys had cracked open the natural defences that had protected it for aeons, nevermind the reveal of the ruin on black-spire.

A pair of new 'ruins' including one near the 'famous' Jasmine Gate, emerging right when the Dun clan's proclimation was still fresh in the public conciousness meant that interest in their insane trial was almost certainly going to spread like a plague.

-I wonder, is that why they actually put out the proclamation? she mused to herself, staring at the four even harder. Did someone in the Astrology Bureau actually manage to divine an opportunity here?

If there was mercy there, it was that the thunderclouds to the north were rapidly starting to decscend and the spatial turbulence from everything that had occured here...was so disruptive that nobody without her means could arrive here easily. The Jasmine Gate would also be taking steps, she imagined, moving to secure routes in, like Misty Jasmine Inn or the Rainbow Gate, to prevent the avaricious and the ill intentioned from swarming towrds here.

The lower clouds on Thunder Crest also suggested to her that the other, more... commanding powers in this place were also taking steps to prevent people from making it into the ruins there. Black-spire was where the Heavenly Venerate from the Heavenly Ming clan had perished, during the Middle Shan.

She frowned slightly, having inadvertently reminded herself of that insanity, which put anything in this era well into the shade truth be told… One of the kowtowing elders in front of her started to cry.

-Craven loon. Unbefitting of being an Elder. Take responsibility for your problems with dignity at least, she sneered inwardly.

More disturbances flicked through the domain of her perception. Not close, but they were marking the damage. It was like someone turned an ant hive over. The ramifications of exploding that Venerate Core were still being felt. It was impressive, really, that this Ji Tantai boy or the Din spawn had managed to piss off or attract so many terrifying old things.

The real question was how, though. Anywhere else in the starfield, the Jasmine Gate would have been considered a hegemonic sect to rival her own. The other oddity was the way the damage was spread. The initual 'event' gave her the feeling that it should have been more devastating than it was, questions of suppression aside. It was almost like someone had opened up a chasm and dropped it into it.

-The eldritch thing?

-The spirit trees working together?

Thoughts of a 'chasm' into the deep drew her gaze back the two killed by the lizards. Those horrors were something that lurked so deep that few even believed them to be more than a wives tale or a figment of some bored scholar. They also had many dubious elements to them...

A lingering, stealthy intent brushed against her own 'presence' and she glanced off towards the east, where the spider queen who had named her self 'Yushiki' or something like it, was watching them carefully.

"Ah, that spider queen just swept us," Meng Tan murmured.

"I am aware," she replied, keeping the 'contact' long enough to let the spider queen know she was spotted.

a moment later, another washed subtly over them, this time from a series of deep lakes a few miles to the north east, in the foot-hills of East Fury... originating from one of the eight-headed neonates responsible for its ever-present clouds.

-Have they all come because of that core?

Even so, the rule in Yin Eclipse was stronger than it. She knew that, even without being aware that this place was already trying to quietly absorb fundamental essence from the seven treasure swords embedded in the surrounding valleys. Those were peak Venerate realm weapons, crafted by her grandfather and gifted to her for her safety by her mother. They were almost quasi-reliquaries. It had taken quite a lot already, in fact.

“The rebellion?” she belatedly asked, noting with derisive amusement that several of the distant gazes on their location intensified faintly with that comment.

“Non-existent as far as we can see. The only things the censure force encountered were the qi beasts and that – those… monstrosities.”

She made a mental note to send a low realm core disciple that could be trusted and had a talent for one of the Meng clan’s God Physiques here to check quietly into the background of some of this. They could also investigate the regions that the flow from the qi-geometry of the land here was feeding and check that this place didn’t suddenly spawn a valley full of parasol trees. Maybe under the cover of their planned mass suicide of a trial that the Dun Imperial Court was concocting.

“There is significant turmoil in the two regional capitals nearest here though. It seems that the claim of rebellion came through an official censure from the Din clan and the Ha clan… the authorisation for the 'Imperial Censure' came from Ji Tantai.”

The elder bowed as he finished his report and stepped back as she motioned for them all to come over. Looking at the assembled elders, and the four survivors, she sighed.

“Find out what you can about this Ji Tantai.”

“As you command! Honoured Founder!” all the external elders saluted.

“Who were his backers? What is their influence and why? Not to mention, specifically, how there came to be an ‘inheriting disciple’ in my influence…that I have never heard of!”

“Also—!” she turned back to the four Elders who flinched and stopped trying to explain how this was someone else’s fault.

She let her gaze roam the mountain above her as she wandered slowly around them in a circle.

“—I agreed all those years ago that our sect could... would participate in such designated requests alongside the Imperial Court and the Astral Azure Authority because that was the most expedient option to preserve our status here. We are a righteous sect, despite what those other morons occasionally claim and that was the most prescient way to ensure that we didn't suffer the same issue as the Moon Tomb Cult did.

"I know things changed around a bit after the Huang-Mo wars some millennia ago, but this goes all the way back to the founding of this current Imperial Dynasty! Also – the alternative would have been the loss of our seat at that particular table thanks to that generation’s incompetence while we were dealing with the 'Ming Incursion'. Do you recall what happened to those idiots?"

It didn’t have to be said to those present that the ‘incompetence’ had been aided by two of the ancestors of a few of the elders still alive here.

Rounding on the four survivors, she put on her very best scowl. “Since when does a censure force consisting of ten Dao Lords, five Dao Sovereigns with Earthly Principles, two Dao Sovereigns with Heavenly Principles, one True Principle Dao Sovereign and two Heavenly Principle Dao Eternals teleport blind right into one of the Four Azures more infamous forbidden zones, and right on op of one of its more famous occupants?

“Are you trying to tell me that as external elders, purportedly versed in ‘living in the world’, you have risen to this eminent and respected position and never heard how obnoxious this place is to those of the third step who enter unprepared? And you want me to believe that you came here, with this force, from my sect, just to put down some supposed rebellion, in the Jasmine Gate?”

They flinched back from her, pale now as the full weight of her ‘Intent’ bore down on then.

“To believe that you came here just to save a bunch of Golden Immortal brats; one of whom is apparently an inheritance disciple of whom I have never heard, let alone met and whom none of you can inform me exactly which Inner Hall Elder of the Seven Stars Pavilion he was attached to?”

She paused to look back at them. One of them started sobbing again, quietly.

“Who has apparently vanished without a trace before you ever got here!”

Her two disciples and the external elder squad all judiciously stepped away a few paces as the air started to shimmer around her in a reflection of her inner rage manifesting against the realm suppression.

“The other—” she hissed, leaning forward until she was close to Sect Enforcement Great Elder Tuo Kankai's terrified face. “—The other is an inheriting disciple from the Jade Gate Court’s Din Clan no less who is now hiding under the talismanic skirt of their old ghost Din Bao, along, I might add, with the only other witnesses to the events.”

She glanced her gaze across the valleys towards West Flower Picking Town and the valleys above it, as much for dramatic effect as anything else. The onlookers expected a certain response in any case, so, for now, they would get it, she decided, as she fumed.

The four elders sweated beneath the pressure from her gaze, their clothes smoking under the pressure of her aura.

Shaking her head in disgust, Meng Fu turned back to face them. “Not only have you behaved like the Imperial Court’s running dogs, disgracing the reputation of our sect, but because of you, our vitality has suffered today. Dao Sovereigns and especially… especially, Dao Eternals do not grow on trees to be picked and consumed like seasonal fruit as some Golden Immortal brat likes!”

As she spoke, the world warped and shifted a bit around her, the vegetation starting to show little sparks and flaming outlines as the prestige of her ‘Truth’ leaked out. The idiots in front of her all spat blood as their cultivation bases wavered. She could cancel them all with a thought, even here, but that was far too easy. The prying eyes might appreciate it… some might even be hoping for it, but that kind of stupid mistake was not one she would make here. There were still things about this bunch that needed to be determined, far away from prying eyes.

“Tan, take these four back to the sect. See that they are suitably disciplined!” she snapped more imperiously, pointing her wooden blade generally at the four. “They are to be relieved of their elder’s duties and whatever familiar influence they possess is to be penalised… heavily. I tire of their protestations and find their mediocre excuses and attempt to cast blame on others for their own failings in judgement pathetic.”

Meng Tan bowed politely and appeared behind the four without appearing to do anything special. There was a ripple in the air and the five vanished like a mirage, followed a few seconds later by the rest of the elder squad.

With a somewhat resigned sigh, she dissociated her focus on her surroundings. The pressure vanished and the temperature returned to its normal setting of ‘green sauna with extra humidity on the side’.

The prying eyes seeking out their proximal location also vanished as her aura blended her presence into the landscape so thoroughly that even if someone was looking physically from a distance at this point, they would find nothing unless they could peek from outside the world. Not that that was possible here, anyway.

She sat down on a convenient rock, after checking it for spiders and took in the scene of devastation in the valley below them. Thunder Crest Pinnacle rumbled above, its clouds flickering and roiling with deceptive sluggishness.

Cao Liang, who had remained with her, was staring around warily now, as the noise of the cloud forest reasserted itself.

-Perhaps there is an opportunity here to teach him a bit about this place, she mused. It has been a while since I sent any of my proper disciples here.

“This place has achieved calm of a sort. Although this is probably only a prelude to the bloodletting to come,” she observed, listening to some birds have an argument in the middle distance.

“Mmm… That will be quite ugly, I think, in light of what has occurred today,” Cao Liang agreed.

“It will at least be silent, and unlikely to really shake the roots of this place in the way this little bust-up has,” she added, watching the flames flickering on the valley wall opposite for a long moment before sighing. “That said, this event is only going to be considered a huge loss of face.”

“—no matter how we spin it,” Cao Liang agreed, grimacing.

“Indeed. There is no point in trying to put the broken bits back in the box. People already laugh at our ‘misfortune’ and this will lead to a renewed round of plotting in the younger generations.”

Looking at him sideways, she half-smiled. The anger on his face was genuine. If it wasn’t for Meng Yang being such a talent, he would have been the current headmaster. It was strange to think of someone who was approximately 70,000 years old as ‘young’ but compared to her, let alone someone like Meng Tan, who had been born during the previous imperial dynasty, he was.

She gestured out at the smoking valleys again. “However, they will also see this place and what twenty elite experts of our Seven Sovereigns School did. They were able to hold nothing back, and three-quarters of the force died. Several without even being able to defend themselves. Including one Heavenly Principle Dao Eternal. Those sects will not wish to become us. Many will now reconsider their plans to take advantage of that preposterous proclamation and will not send too much power with their disciples. It is unlikely we will see a repeat of 30,000 years ago. The Imperial Court does not want to see another generation chopped off at the knees, especially when it will not gain them anything.”

“Immortals are easy to raise with power,” Cao Liang nodded pensively. “I had not realised that this land had such fangs.”

“You need not feel apologetic for it. Few do, until it is too late,” she murmured softly. “You are still young for your realm and this place has not seen a disturbance of this calibre in half your lifetime.”

Cao Liang's expression was still locked in a pensive grimace. "I recall the aftermath of Lu Fu Tao’s return...”

“That was certainly a chastening experience to many,” she agreed with an eye roll.

“Those covetous imperial brats behind this dynasty on the Imperial Continent turned their eyes here so greedily. Such hopes and dreams…” putting a hand to her mouth, she stifled a laugh.

Truly their faces when they realised what they had done to their juniors had been a thing of beauty.

“All they saw was the pride of their junior generations sink without a trace into its grip. Those who came to explore before either vanished without trace or fled in fear and never spoke of what they found... or what found them.”

She stared back at the Great Mount, towering above them. “It was during the reign of Eternal Star Emperor that people last ventured into some of the true ruins and successfully cleared them out. They paid for their endeavour with the blood of millions and this land was uninhabitable for almost 50,000 years thereafter as the things they disturbed followed them home. There was White Swan Empress as well, who vanished here at the end of the previous dynasty.

“Before her, Heaven Grasping Ascendant Sage sought to refine the very mountain above it as his Heavenly Truth – it consumed him.”

Running through them in her head, she continued ticking others off. “Before that, during the first early Shan Dynasty, a visiting Celestial Venerate from the Ming Clan. Before that—“

Cao Liang stared at her slightly slack-jawed. “Even a Celestial Venerate fell in this place? I thought you were exaggerating for effect earlier!”

She laughed for a good minute before recovering herself. It was the earnest way he said it that was the best bit.

“It is all ancient history… and all forgotten for a variety of reasons, except to those of us who have always kept an eye on this place. This is not even in the top three among the reasonably storied list of vexing incidents this place has served up since it fell out of the sky, for now at least… This generation, however, continues to surprise me in all the worst ways.”

They both looked out at the wreckage of several valleys that were now smoking ruins. Rocks were shattered and several deep gouges cut new paths through ridges. The forest was badly incinerated, which was a remarkable feat in its own right given how fire retardant this landscape could be. Then again, there was a conspicuous swathe of green to her right, as if to make a mockery of anyone judging the damage dealt. Some parts of it were still very much intact and roiling. Impressive resilience in the face of the threefold onslaught it had endured.

The seven swords were scattered about this landscape. The creature's final action, retaliation perhaps for the failed attempt to restrain it, had been to disperse them broadly enough to make them hard to recover, even for her. One of the ones in the valley below was the sword that had managed to inflict a slight flesh wound on it. In its distant crater, she could see the corrupting essence, even as she felt it gnawing at the bond between one of her souls and the sword itself, which was damaged to the point where she would probably have to send it back to Vast Obscurity Grove to be repaired.

An impressive feat, that. Those seven swords were treasures her mother left her. Not truly powerful by her clan's standards, but unparalleled in this relatively young Great World. Grown directly from the wood of her mother’s own Heaven Sheltering Parasol Tree and enchanted by her personally with the aid of her mother’s own father, her imperial grandfather.

“I still do not grasp how they failed to do more than injure the creature,” Cao Liang finally ventured.

“It is an existence that far exceeds the chains of the world outside here. What you are seeing is the curious nature of the suppression of this place, writ so large it poses questions that lead to dangerous answers,” she explained, plotting out the route to the second and third swords in her head as she did.

“Dangerous?” he looked at her expectantly, to the point where she nearly sighed. It was like being stared at by a 70,000-year-old puppy, eyes saying - ‘Tell me about the eldritch horror teacher, I wish to know how I will die without a grave.’

Smiling wryly, she rephrased it as a further question. “Those swords, wielded as they were, with that degree of intent, what do you think this landscape should look like. That formation is capable of Minor Karmic Execution.”

Before he could reply she went on. “It is not like us old folks keep secrets for the sake of it...”

Absently she considered a certain old freak and revised that statement a bit... “Mostly.”

“You know my mother,” she gestured vaguely in the direction of the Great Mount.

“I have heard speak of Her Exalted Highness the 3rd Sovereign Princess of the Hong Meng clan, Lady of the Parasol Pavilion, Fairy Envoy for the Phoenix Throne,” Cao Liang replied, just a touch over-reverentially.

“Right,” she murmured dryly. “Anyway, when she held that this place was dangerous—” Gesturing vaguely up at the Great Mount, its slopes wreathed in snow and cloud, towering above them like a divine lance aiming for the heavens, she continued. “—I was there, you know. When it fell… I saw what occurred, as much as I was able to at any rate, for I was young then and inexperienced – barely a Dao Lord of 30 years...”

“Teacher was… there?”

She rolled her eyes, amused that that was what he had fixed on, not that she had become a Dao Lord by the age of 30... Well, 27 actually, but she wasn't one to brag. “Mm… do I look like an old crone? With one foot in the release from suffering the mortals like to call a 'grave'?"

Cao Liang winced. It was unfair really to call him out on a momentary flicker of thought. It was the difference of a Great Step between realms. If she truly wished it, nothing in his power could stop her from seeing whatever she wanted. In any case, she was ancient. Probably only a handful of people still in the world were older than her at this point. Even that divinity of the Dun Clan, now long left, was ‘younger’ than she was.

She stared at her own hands. Her current form, this form, was not really… real. At a certain point, your appearance started to reflect your soul, rather than the other way around. She was so far beyond that it was risible really. Now her form was starting to reflect her 'Truth'. On days she felt old, she was old. On days she felt incandescent, she was fire, on days like this...

Under the faint impetus of intention, her form shifted.

Years flowed backwards. Her previous matronly form shifting into that of a heaven quelling beauty in her early 30s. Platinum white hair became golden with a faint coppery iridescence. Her features became smooth and flawless – not the unnatural jade-like form so beloved by younger generations but true beauty. Flawless. Harmonious. The kind only one with her understanding could achieve. The robe she wore remained as it was, but now it fell across her body like the height of fashion. Her hair swirled on its own and plaited itself up, feathers of red and gold forming an ornate style to affix it. Only her eyes remained as they had been. Smouldering molten gold, irises like black holes that contained the faintest hint of iridescent fire around their edges.

Cao Liang turned pale and looked to the mountains again.

“You were uncertain before. You thought we should go over there and seize those three, find this Ji Tantai that way…” she said with an amused smirk.

“I was foolish, teacher,” Cao Liang muttered. “Caught up in the moment. Your reasoning is—”

She laughed. “I could do it. You think I care for a revolting punk like that Din Bao? Or any of those other old ghosts and cynical bastards who sold their consciences to the Blue Morality Sect for mere ambition.”

Cao Liang stared at her, a bit wild-eyed. Her sudden willingness to potentially provoke an all-out war clearly disorientating him a bit.

Glancing in the direction of Blue Water City she snickered. “Most of them are no good with fire, despite many cultivating fundamental aspects of the Blue Morality Scripture. Once we would have burned their cities to ash, exterminated the Karma of their generations like snuffing out candles after dark… Persevered until they lit fires of their firstborn and begged our Heavens for mercy even as they skulked in caves, their civilisation long abandoned to the altar pyre of our righteous fury.”

The world twisted around them again. Every tree, bush and shrub within 50 metres getting a brief corona of golden-white fire. That was about the limit of her manifestation without any proper ‘Intent’ to force it along, constrained by the limitations of this place.

-Pathetic really. She shook her head and smiled faintly.

The pressure of this place was indeed something to be respected.

Cao Liang winced slightly as she skewered his thoughts neatly. If it was just the censure team that met disaster that was one thing. That thousands had died in the sect was what elevated it beyond in his eyes and the eyes of many others. Her apparent reticence, beyond that bit of silly theatre for the onlookers earlier, was noticeably weighing on them. Their respect for her position was nearly absolute, but even so, chinks like this amongst the younger generations could gain problematic momentum if left unattended. One only had to look at the Shu Pavilion in the aftermath of that tragedy of the girl with the Good Fortune Core a few millennia ago to see what could occur.

“That group is bait,” she finally pronounced.

“Bait?” Cao Liang frowned.

“The one that has gone to ground? 15 miles from here? It’s a fated decoy. Made with a peak Dao Ascendant parent/child artefact or a talisman. Probably the clones are all True Reflection talismans or similar. The whole thing is shady, regarding those missing guest elders and this Ji Tantai. The Din boy was also the one who used the scroll, not Ji Tantai, like that idiot Tuo claimed.”

Cao Liang stared at her askance, his expression reflecting not doubt, but rather concern, which in truth, she found somewhat amusing. It made her want to go and pull his cheeks like he was a small child.

“A 'True Reflection' talisman? That kind of thing is not something a bunch of juniors should be carrying around,” he furrowed his brow and squinted in the direction of the group.

“Neither was that core,” she pointed out.

He nodded silently at that, anger resurfacing. Their school had a few and the aura on this one was familiar. She had a suspicion there that she really hoped wasn’t the case. This Ji Tantai had been in their school, somehow. She, on the other hand, had been focusing on her own advancement elsewhere. Only returning when little Ji’s life talisman collapsed.

Just as well I did too, she thought with a fleeting grimace.

“Regretful vision is always full,” her sigh rustled the leaves and extinguished a few small fires nearby.

“You cannot blame yourself for not being in the school,” Cao Liang’s voice was tinged with concern. “You are not of the current generations and have to focus on your own situation. We must carry forward your hopes and dreams. If we rely on you for such things, what does that say about us and our achievements and your status as our teacher?”

“Well spoken,” she chuckled. Her laughter made his skin flush a bit. That meant she was still not suppressing her aura enough.

-No wonder grandfather insisted I persevere all these years, she sighed, looking around again. The difference, hidden in lost words and scholarly endeavour is truly superlative. No wonder those old forces in the Bai, Qing and Yuan hate the Dun clan so, they really ruined their prospects with the Blue Morality if this is where it could have led them…

Recollecting herself, she returned to the matter in hand, the stolen core.

“If it is for that core, I can and I will!” she declared, feeding her anger back to herself. “That core came from us. I expect to be told soon that the tombs of either Murali or Jenasi, from the era of the previous Heavens have been robbed. Not of their own cores, because neither that brat, nor any backing him has the means there — but of one of their disciple’s cores, buried alongside out of filial piety after they themselves fell. Onassa fell as a Celestial Venerate as did Qui.”

“You really think he robbed one of our Ancestral Stupas?” Cao Liang’s voice twisted to the point where the ground started to smoke around him.

“And he likely had help to do it as well,” she mused grimly. “Until we understand the minutiae of how this affects our school, we must not rush into anything.”

“Such… such a thing!” Cao Liang took a few deep breaths and got his emotions under control.

She nodded, agreeing in her heart with his sentiment. Betrayal in a school or sect on that level was almost unheard of, not because it didn't happen, because greed was greed and ambition was everywhere, but usually because nobody wanted to think about the consequences afterwards. Robbing the tombs of an ancestral senior was a good way to get those of their generation with strong attachments to them interested in what was going on again, and Murali and Jenasi had been disciples of her own sworn companions. She very much doubted that the Heavenly Kong wanted the eyes of Vast Obscurity Starfield's Heavenly Venerates turning this way.

“Anyways, we need not rush into unpicking this mess. Further mistakes are what those looking on wish to see from us in any case and injudicious actions by idiots like Tuo Kankai have already fed them quite the glut as it is.”

Cao Liang spat on the ground at her mention of the former elder.

“Calm your mind,” she murmured, rolling her eyes again. “Have no fear that proper retribution will be extracted. However, it should be in a manner fitting to the moment. I have a mind to see what else bites at the exposed wound we have been left with before deciding what to hit first… and how hard.”

“Teacher is wise,” Cao Liang grimaced a little but did indeed follow her instructions and bury the anger simmering within him. It wouldn’t last long, anyway. The trip through the valleys wrestling with the landscape would draw that out and make a mockery of it before they were done.

“In any case. It is much more important that we go recover my treasure swords before the land here manages to take enough from them to make their essence a feature of its regenerating ecosystem. I would have significant difficulties explaining to the Meng clan and the Grove how this place ate the treasures mother ‘left’ me to protect our clan’s connection to this world and bloomed a parasol grove in the process.”