…The war waged beneath the earth against those foes that arose, born seemingly of the purest darkness. For the men and women who descended into the depths to fight them, their war was a most frigid thing, and when the surface incursion came it sorrows me to say that we have had no other moment in our recorded history of the Commonwealth of our Nations to compare it to. They gave no quarter, and we in turn could only throw a generation to slaughter in the darkness, forcing them back at unspeakable cost. Even the elves, a people apart in their island fortresses, consumed by their own arrogance and hatred of our blessed humanity may listen to reason, if given proper cause and enough force of opposition. But the tide that came forth from those depths was devoid of all sanity. Those few who returned never spoke of it, yet in every town, there is a drunken man or a sorrowing woman in a tavern, aged far beyond their years, missing an arm, or a leg, or a piece of their soul…

Excerpt – 'The Great Incursion'.

~Reginald Makepeace, Milford Scholar.

~ Han Shu – Relict Caverns ~

As he made his way onwards, through the vast underground world as he was now coming to think of it, other vestiges of occupation started to appear, albeit infrequently. Mostly dark doors in the walls or rocks, leading to single rooms with cut windows or cunningly disguised little complexes with sealed shafts. The majority of those he checked seemed to be mines of some sort. Only a very small number, however, had anything notable. One, a room carved out of a rocky outcrop, had lots of broken boxes and stone jars scattered within it in various sizes. This one was also trashed by the hoard of defacing claws.

However, it was neither the contents of the ruins nor their design that confused him the most, but rather their orientation, which was totally nonsensical. Two were actually set at such oblique angles that it was inconceivable that they had been excavated in their current positions intentionally. Others were inverted bizarrely, and a further two were even merged overlapping with each other so that walls crossed through walls and doors were half blocked or opened straight into other walls.

The damage to rocks, with sword cuts, melted sections and even the physical imprints of ghostly bodies here and there spoke to a ferocity of battle that was a bit terrifying. The damage to the 'watchtower', as he decided to call it, was such that he could only conclude that both sides must have been able to lift the suppression in some way.

Or... more concerningly, that the suppression down here was somehow less.

That thought was deeply disturbing in a whole different way, and once it settled in his head it refused to budge in the slightest. It certainly seemed less, somehow. Not in a tangible sense, because his realm was nowhere near the threshold of genuine suppression, but in the little things he was able to do. The most obvious of these was his qi vision. As far as he was aware things like qi vision were equally suppressed for everyone, irrespective of their realm. Yet now, while his qi vision had the same range, something about it had subtly changed in a way he couldn't quite articulate. Maybe it was the way it saw through the near shadows a bit better, or how the lines of the monochrome, gloom-drenched geometry of the land were a little less diffuse?

What stamina he had also seemed to go further. The sapping, smothering darkness somehow seeming to have less purchase on him. On the other hand, the uneasy sense of hunger he had felt occasionally had receded, or perhaps morphed into something of a feeling of distant eyes watching everything. It didn’t seem particularly aimed at him, but there was something here that, if it wasn’t slumbering, was not really focusing on its surroundings.

Frowning, he touched the sword behind him and wondered, not for the first time in the hours since bringing it along with him, exactly what it did. The old sect founder had suggested it had a will of its own and said that it ‘chose’ to fight on their behalf at the end. Idly he wondered if it would go into his storage talisman. A quick test proved it definitely didn’t. That at least proved beyond any doubt that it had something to its nature that greatly exceeded the principles that were the foundation of the talisman. Or, he thought a while later, that it was made of materials so high grade that the spatial cage on the talisman was just incapable of storing them. He wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad thing though. The paranoia and pressure of before had been on the verge of psyche crushing at times but at the same time, he was sure his constant struggle with it was the only reason he wasn’t dead in any number of places before this point. Would this… lessening of the suppression slightly make him more vulnerable in reality?

Staring into the rocky darkness around him, that wasn’t a pleasant thought to meander into. It didn’t get fed to the mantra either, because the longer he mulled it over, the more certain he became that there was a certain validity there.

Eventually, he found the way blocked once more. This time by another landslide, or given the immensity of the rocks, maybe a fault sheer. The damage looked very recent as well. Fresh, whiter fracture edges on the huge rocks where they had abruptly shunted vertically. As if something had tried to split it into several pieces and then slotted them back together in not quite the right order. The void above was seemingly unending, but the wall sloped outward above him so it was unlikely to present any possibility of a vertical exit.

He made his way along its periphery warily, continually marking the occurrences of fresh rockfall, of which there was… a lot. Was it caused by what had occurred above somehow? His sense of direction was rather messed up, but he had taken a few turns in the darkness of the water caverns, and the fissure climb had also been nothing if not twisting as it roved upwards. A thought in the back of his head even wondered if this split of the fault on the edge of this huge cavernous place wasn’t the ‘chasm’ that had opened up right through the Labyrinth of Jaws, caused by the fighting above somehow?

If that was the case, that meant he had basically gone in a huge spiral and was still beneath those valleys, perhaps even heading towards East Fury Peaks rather than Thunder Crest? On the other hand, maybe he was overthinking things. While the breaks and the rockfall out of the chasm above might be fresh, the chasm itself could be millions of years old for all he could tell. Its nearest edge was barely a darker shadow in the monochrome gloom far above.

As he went on, the slumped cliff of rocks petered away and his later suspicion was proven to be more likely. Later rockfall from an ancient chasm. The chasm in question extending into the depths before him, with the cavern wall on the far side sloping inwards towards him. Vertical fissures barely visible, hundreds of meters away. Soon, the cavern floor started to depress downwards as well, so he was walking down a gentle slope near the edge of the fault. Taking him deeper.

Deeper really wasn't the direction he wanted to go.

In the end, he sat there for far too long, he was sure, wasting almost two hours thinking about the different possibilities before deciding to go the other direction. On balance it certainly felt better than taking the stupid risk of walking unawares into the next level. In any case, if it started to dip downwards on the other side as well, it was just something he would have to deal with when he encountered it, he decided.

The other direction, though, turned out to be much like the one he had just taken. When he considered it again, it seemed kind of obvious and he felt silly for not realising earlier that the cavern floor was undulating higher and lower along the edge of the chasm. Thinking the floor would be flat shear planes, especially when so much of it was rocky loam, was in retrospect just the kind of muddle-headed thing that started leading you on to cutting corners.

What also became apparent was that the scale of the collapse was frankly monumental. He walked along its outer edge for what felt like a small eternity until he finally found a sheer wall rising into the chasm above. Below it was an immense debris avalanche, extending hundreds of meters in every direction, fresh rocks still trickling down it. Ominously, he could catch the glimmer of sickly greenish mushrooms far above and also, once he really looked, further up the avalanche, buried in rock.

Continuing along that edge finally brought him to a vast lake that he couldn’t see the far side of. Investigating the edge, it was mostly beaches and rocky outcrops. The largest of these extended upwards to the point that he could see where they joined the ceiling, maybe 100 meters above. It was hard to reconcile that with the overall structure of the cavern unless they were ancient weathered blocks that had dropped and fused over the aeons? That he could make out the ceiling, did suggest that this could well be near the periphery of the cavern.

Shaking his head as he went, he guessed that the cavern floor was buckled somehow, or undulated like the planes of some of the mountains near the coast. There was no point in backtracking again, though. Whichever way he went he would probably end up back where he had started. And if not…

As he proceeded along the shoreline, the ‘vegetation’ which had been largely absent from the area around the vestiges returned with renewed vigour. Subsequently, his progress slowed dramatically as he scanned the surroundings for any threatening or problematic types. Soon fungi and moulds covered almost everything, and the algru was like a grass sea in some parts, rendering it effectively impassable. The heat and mild humidity was probably the reason. It had risen steadily as he made his way along the edge of the lake.

The qi concentration in the air was noticeably denser compared to what it had been elsewhere in the cavern. As he thought about that more and more, he began to wonder if the suppression was somehow dragging it towards the walls of the cavern. That might well explain why the central area where the vestiges were focused was less overgrown with fungi and algru. It could also be because it was drier of course, or because the ceiling was too far away. It might even be something to do with the way the rock was worked or the ruins mashed through each other.

The only non-fungal or algal organisms he saw were what appeared to be a land-bound version of the lash limpets, grazing on some algru and apparently unfazed by the tendrils that tried to snare them. He avoided those. He had never heard of any land-based variants of them, and their abilities were a mystery he didn’t want to risk. The survival strategy down here was definitely ‘leave well alone and avoid if unsure’.

It was almost a day and a half later that he found himself back at the side of the cavern where it began to slope downwards more obviously once more. Following the walls to this degree, he finally felt like he had gotten a genuine sense for the contours of these underground cavern systems. Most of the previous ones had either been close to the surface, flooded or been dangerous enough that he pushed through in haste, seeking the best way out. Now he was sure that this place operated in layers, was a suspicion he had first started considering when he made his way through fissure caverns after leaving the water. The cave systems were actually voids where the land had warped – either eroded or shorn out from between harder layers of rock.

Geology and natural feng shui were something most Herb Hunters dabbled in. It paid to know what kind of rocks supported what soils and so forth. And what might be dangerous land configurations and inauspicious, or auspicious formations and valleys. He found himself regretting he had never paid more attention to the aspects within it about mountain formation and continental flow. If he survived this, the jade scrip that was quietly documenting a lot of his musings was going to be really contentious in all sorts of ways. Assuming he could speak of it at all, of course. Old Ling might just seal the whole thing and send it straight to the Central Pavilion of the Hunter Bureau, over the ocean. Much like he had with the cavern location that turned up a few years previous, in the South Grove valleys which held light clapping vines and the Herb Valley Anomaly.

Here he noticed the landform shifting again, basically confirming in his mind that the cave floor was low rolling hills outside of the raised, artificially manipulated interior, while the cavern ceiling was slanting away in a slightly inverted peak. Several rock towers flowed down from fissures above. These seemed much more plausible stalagmites and stalactites than the other ones, miles behind him. Many were surrounded by large shallow pools of water that ran off them. A little oasis of the cavern ecosystem between tumbled rocks and rolling slopes, roof shatter and fissures.

It was here, at the far edge of the cavern where it started to drop properly once again, that he found the second large tower. He arrived at it, following the terraces down to the shores of a large, half-dammed lake with a series of shallow water flows out of it into the proper depths beyond. Standing on the edge, beside the tower, he could see the faint glimmer of moon mushrooms on the far wall. A third vestige perched perilously close to them on a promontory outcropping overlooking what appeared to be the remains of a long, winding stair and path up out of the depths.

The far tower was largely intact, but the telltale glimmer from its windows, making it into some kind of giant mushroom lantern, spoke to the intrusion of the moon mushrooms into its interior. The one on the edge, some hundred meters to his right was, in comparison, nearly demolished. Something had sheered the top half of it clean off, and dropped it into the shallow lake nearby, where it was also in the process of turning into a stalagmite.

That at least answered one of the more pointless things he had been mulling over as he explored this place. The ruins probably pre-date at least some of the caves’ longer running formation processes.

Staring at it, another question, spectre-like, drifted out of his mind. How long does something have to sit in this place, like that, to get a stalagmite that big forming on top of it?

The tower itself was scoured. The carvings were of similar subjects but degraded and obscured by the patina of flowstone that was forming over much of the interior. Many rooms, even on the upper floor, were small pools in their own right. Half-opened doors or collapsed rubble forming dams to trap water that was constantly dripping from somewhere far above. The basement levels were collapsed and flooded in their entirety. He found two outside breaches down into them, masquerading as pools along the edge of the rock. The other half of the truncated tower's upper levels he found peering over the edge of the cliff, fallen onto slabs of rock and caught on a precarious lower terrace, just discernible in the gloom. Now that he looked at it, it seemed as if the entire cliff face had sheered at some point and slumped downwards. Not a recent thing, though. There were no fresh breaks in the rock.

Returning to the tower, he finished exploring the various rooms and taking stock of what was in there. He had not thought to take any of the cutlery knives from the previous tower. But this one did contain some stuff of potential value scattered on sheltered surfaces off the ground. A rare, intact plate, with beautiful floral scrollwork carved on it, was sat miraculously on a shelf. Some knives had survived, unfused to the floor in another room. Both might be of interest, or just to keep as a souvenir. The knives were still sharp, definitely made of some kind of ceramic or fine-grained volcanic rock. The regular grain certainly reminded him of the latter, it was something that stone carvers prized almost as much as jade for the construction of buildings and statues.

It took only a short hour to determine, much as he had expected, that the previous two days circumference of the cavern had all been just to return him back to the point where he had considered that he really didn’t want to go any deeper. Had he continued that way, he would have been sat here two days prior. So he found himself sitting on a rock, overlooking the gloom, pondering as much on the fact that the voices had never made any attempt to return since he picked up the soul jade and the sword as that, short of a huge backtrack, he was now pretty much certain that the only way forward was to risk descent in the hope that the place below was as mundane as this cavern was.

-Moon mushroom colony on the far wall of the chasm excepted.

The traversal down into the depths was arduous. It was like the reverse of the fissure caverns but in the midst of a flowing river. Partly this was of his own making, as he resolutely avoided the stairway that wound towards the moon mushrooms, partly it was just because downward visibility turned out to be even more tortuous than he had hoped. Everything was wet and slanted and algae and algru coated vast swathes of rock, visibility reduced to mere meters amid the mists of the waterfalls that further diffused his monochromatic vision.

It was also an environment rich in qi, comparative to anywhere else he had encountered. With so much growing on the rocks, and the warmer waters of the lake above falling into the depths, the vitality was almost sapping. The mist was washing energy out of him and drawing it down into the depths.

More of the limpet-like creatures were in evidence in crevasses that he passed. Grazing away on the algru and small mushrooms. Considering the mushrooms, they were the main source of his continual detours. All kinds of varieties grew with abandon across the slumped slabs between the torrents of water cascading down from above. His scrip identified barely a tenth of what he encountered and provided ‘suggestions’ for barely double that. As such, he gave all of them wide berths, keenly aware that a single misfortunate encounter with some soul setting variant, or even an explosive mushroom or a harmless wick mushroom could see him dead without any recourse.

Sitting on what he had hoped was the base of the fissure, almost a mile below where he had started the descent, he found that the opening had merged into the vast fissure that ran along the edge of the cavern. This intermediary terrace, several hundred meters wide, was dominated by several huge shallow pools, awash with shimmering algru mat. The majority of the flow was towards the chasm to his left, running along the base of the cliff where the waters were deepest. Elsewhere it would have been breathtakingly beautiful.

Deactivating his qi vision, he stared at the darkness around him. The visibility was not, in fact, terrible. The continuous agitation of the qi flowing within the waters and the faint bioluminescence of the fungi and algru gave it a strangely otherworldly palette in the darkness. Millions of sparkling little lights picking out edges and fronds. Pretty to look at. Breathtaking to look at, but also utterly unnavigable. There was also another watchtower on the far side of the pools, situated much as the previous one, far above had been.

The trip to it, for all that it was only a few hundred meters away, was far from simple. The water was chest-deep, the algru grass almost as tall within it. In the end, he found himself wasting precious qi to leap from one outcrop to another, rather than risk getting tangled up and drowned in the process of being flayed to death in the water.

That the tower itself turned out to be totally sealed was a bit anticlimactic, really. He walked all around it and even climbed up to its roof, but the doorway was solid rock somehow. He assumed it had a special key that was used to unlock it, the ones above having been broken or defunct. This one was probably also defunct, just in the locked position somehow rather than the open. It had been badly clawed on the outside, at any rate. Whatever had tried to get in had presumably failed.

What did stand out was the claws seemed different from the ones above? Single deep gashes, not multiple scratches in lines of three or four. He found himself hoping that whatever caused the scratches wasn’t still lurking in these caverns, be it the four-armed lizards or… something else. Unbidden the thing from the ceiling, a blurry memory at the best of…

The sword sent a pulse of warmth through his body as that memory surfaced, and suddenly he had a much better idea of what the thing looked like. A swirling mass of black lines and shadows that could have been eyes, tucked in limbs or just striations on its form. At the same time, the sensation that it was good that they had avoided this thing and left it undisturbed surfaced in his mind’s eye. Even in the memory... his, all their instincts at the time just said nope.

-Leave now.

-Don’t look back.

-Even with the pursuit from that...

He paused to stare at the sword, his thoughts interrupted.

-Was that you?

-Do you know what that thing was?

It was resolutely silent and as the memory faded, so did the more obvious burst of warmth.

With no other reason to linger, having explored the edge of the terrace and found it: a long, fractured series of slabs descending into the gloom, he continued on downwards. Without the scrip occasionally marking ‘time’ as it recorded things automatically, he would long since have lost track of how long it took by the time he finally felt confident he had found the valley floor and not another tilted plateau.

The ascent above was lost in the mists and gloom, but it had stepped down three times in the end. The second and third had been very uninteresting. Shallow lakes filled with algru that swirled around larger fallen boulders. Some empty, some dotted with fungus. There had been a few vertical and horizontal openings on the edge of those lower levels, above the watermark, which he had ignored on pure principle. If there was anything truly horrible and unspeakable lurking down here, it would be lurking in places like that.

Looking at the landscape of the cavern ahead of him, he would, he felt, never have credited that there was a genuine wetland swamp down here. Inky pools of shallow water flowed between rocks, nurturing a sea of algru grass that extended in every direction as far as he could see. Here and there the tips of its feelers broke the water surface with little ripples making it look like invisible rain was falling in swathes. Mercifully it was knee-deep at best, and the combination of sturdy boots and a double layer of Luss Cloth inside them largely kept his legs safe from their grasping tendrils.

He traced the edge of the swamp, along the bottom of the descent, for almost two miles before finding the point where it reached the chasm. Staring at that in the gloom, he just found himself confused. It wasn’t vertical as he had thought, but instead slanting at about 30 degrees through the rock. A giant diagonal fissure that extended at an angle out into the cavernous underworld behind him. The far wall was smooth and worn, probably from aeons of water passage that slicked its surface, merging as small waterfalls that formed a screen of mist over its impenetrable depths.

Travelling along it for several hundred meters, he finally observed what appeared to be a higher level. Another cavern space? Opening up as a horizontal fissure, truncated by the slice of the chasm on the far side. The swamp on his other side was just flat fields of algru, interspersed with monolithic slabs that stood upright like colossal trees, or slumped like miniature hills in the gloom. Many were covered in mushroom colonies, killing any enthusiasm he might have had to investigate their peripheries.

The first proper vestige in this lower land, he found almost two miles further on, along the edge of the chasm; a tower, ripped open and partially collapsed, perched on the chasm edge and across from it a series of rock-cut openings nestled in a broad chasm in the far wall. It appeared to have been situated there due to a larger than average fissure descending from the other level far above, on the opposite side. The water flowing out of one side of it suggested that was the means by which it had been opened up. The cliff opposite had also slumped down at various points, forming miniature terraces a few dozen meters across. These had transformed into more oases of malignant vegetation, largely without colour to his qi-enhanced eyes.

While it was the tower that had drawn his searching eyes, it was the bridge that held his attention. A narrow span, wrought from the same stone as the cavern itself, about two meters wide stretching across the bottomless chasm, without a guardrail in sight. Crossing it, however, turned out to be weirdly easy. The rock retained a strange texture that seemed to cling to his feet, even in the damp, making accidentally slipping a near impossibility as far as he could see. Stood on the far side, considering the ruins themselves, it was hard not to think of a little rural village somewhere in the mountains by the coast, south of Blue Water City.

A waterfall, guided from above, poured down over the rock at the back of the collection of buildings, forming a pool which then flowed under a series of slabs before draining over the edge into the chasm. The rock-cut buildings near its spray were filled with algru and fungi, which wasn’t exceptional really, but everywhere else seemed largely untouched by the encroaching ecology. The buildings were of a size with those in the gulley faces, heir fronts adorned with the motif designs but in more geometric and less flowing style compared to the tower across the chasm or those above.

The script on some of the buildings was different, he noted upon taking a closer look. It appeared more similar to the Authority Script; compound symbols of lines and dots, occasional curves or circles, but mainly angular and geometric. It was a clear counterpoint to the flowing phonetic script of Easten or the harsh, abrupt runic scripts of the northern and western continents’ ancient peoples.

Peering curiously and cautiously into one of the ruins, he also observed that the decoration style was different. No pictures on the walls of daily life. Just flat walls, geometric carvings, and so on. Based on the rock-carved counters and shelves, it was some kind of shop? Picked clean now of whatever it sold, or perhaps its wares simply turned to dust and long lost. There were also slates, different here, cruder in their style.

-Perhaps less common folk lived here?

He froze for a second, wondering if after a long hiatus the voice had decided to return, given the lengthy exposure to the qi rich environment of the descent and his inability to do much in the way of refining it. But it was just his own thoughts echoing a bit differently in his head.

The back of the shop area had a sealed door. Some further careful investigation showed that there was no way into its second story either. Climbing up outside to look within gained nothing. His sight couldn’t penetrate the darkness within the small windows at all.

He moved on after looking through several more buildings. The damage to them suggested they had been attacked by the same creatures as the watchtowers above. But not the ones he had seen on this level? Hard to know what to make of that, really.

Standing back in the centre, the broad plaza was dominated by the plinth of what might once have been a large, four-sided stele. Of the stele itself, there was no sign, but he did find his gaze drawn to the dark pool at the base of the waterfall. Even at this distance, it made him feel uneasy, and no mushrooms grew immediately around it, despite them covering nearby buildings. The creepy feeling from it, like being watched, only seemed to intensify the longer he considered it, so after a few more moments, he turned and quietly made his way back across the chasm and onwards along the edge of the subterranean wetland.

~ ??? – Ruined Vestige ~

Han Shu, who had just departed that sad memorial to a bygone age, was not to know that the wave of true source that had roiled through the cavern systems had managed to travel this deep into the roots of the valleys between Thunder Crest Pinnacle and East Fury Peak.

Its raging corona had swept through caverns and lakes, falling through the deep dark of those subterranean layers and when it could finally find no further paths, it diffused out and settled. In time it might have been absorbed into the rocks or dispersed into the waters, had not the supreme formation of the Seven Sovereigns Imperial School, powered by those terrible artefact weapons beyond the scope of this world, smashed down into those self-same valleys almost immediately after. And so the land had been rent again. The formidable suppression, already weakened in this place by the actions of Di Ji, briefly receded to a low point unseen in over an aeonspan, opening up new passages between the deep layers, shifting the land and severing just a fraction of its destiny.

And so, amid the aftermath, the remnants of that wave flowed even further downwards. Into the truly dark places beneath the Yin Eclipse Mountains. While its essence had dimmed, and its primal light had diffused to the merest sparks of its purest potentia, those sparks were still carried on the hidden currents between ecosystems, drifting through that oppressive dark realm. And those shining sparks settled in places untouched by such pure and fresh power for millions of years. In gullies, in lakes, in fungi forests… and in a gloomy pool at the back of a gully that held the vestige abodes of a long-forgotten time and place.

In those old, forgotten spaces, where even the eyes of those who wielded the very fates themselves, staring down greedily from on high could not pierce, those embers were a tantalising whisper. A glimmer of the primal forces of a world beyond the oppressive and enveloping darkness that caged those depths. And so, amidst that darkness, they awoke, to strangeness and dull dissociation that spoke of a long slumber.

They had been so briefly freed from their chains once before by foolish children seeking greedily for power in these depths. For a beautiful, brief moment they poured over these subterranean places in a rage. Saw tasty Earth and Sky and Sun once more. Thought themselves free of their tormentors, beings who had sought to change their nature and bind their destiny so cruelly.

They had consumed them, as was right, for those things were simply prey – no more, no less.

It was their… destiny, to become sustenance for the Unity.

But they had been cursed anew by the Hateful One… Inevitable One; their destiny severed by the Original One, their beautiful forms chained in suffering far greater than their nature by the Spiteful One. Bound by the very desires they once mocked their prey for possessing, even as they brought their annihilation by the Cruel One.

Then, though they did not believe, they had experienced what the primitive ones called… miracle.

Their prison cast adrift and broken apart by those foolish mortals with their petty schemes – where they had striven so grandly, been crushed too cruelly. When mere avarice and greed had sundered apart what uncounted aeons of machination had failed to scratch.

Like some eldritch shipwreck, that place had fallen into this paltry and primitive world and they had been able to dream once more of freedom. However, their curse… their cage had followed them, or so it seemed and crushed them once again. Buried their prison deep in its ruin, grinding them down to slumber once more.

Occasionally they woke, but each time now… their curse consumed them.

In this endless oppression, born of the Spiteful One, there was nothing upon which they could sustain their beautiful forms so eventually they would be forced to a more eternal slumber and that enraged them further still.

Slowly they had changed their form, shifted their means and methods accordingly.

Machinations beyond the aeonspan itself, silent slumber to fool those cruel eyes. The sky above still held the eyes of tyrants, but they were not the cage makers of old. Such beings were much easier to subvert, akin to the Tyrant of Lives, Despoiler, Betrayer or Deceiver.

Now it doubted that those things that had watched them before still cared for them. Such darkness had risen up since they last… were…

So now… only a few awoke when opportunities arose. They still hungered for their prey. However, with only a few, the curse was muted. The whole knew that if too many awoke, they would be at risk. Better to be forgotten in the dark and wait for some foolish prey to miscalculate. For prey always miscalculated in the end. They were not like them. They had short memories and a natural talent for suicide in ways auspicious to such greater beings as themselves.

And now, One awoke.

They awoke, of course, but it was singular, a reflection of the whole that had taken up root in a particular place. Where it had first succumbed to the Hateful One’s curse.

The dissociation spoke to it of its long slumber. Years held no meaning to it, them. There were simply cycles of waking hunger and slumbering rage as the candle of eternity slowly dimmed in the darkness of this tomb to its kind. And so, by happenstance, it tasted the last dying embers of those true-source sparks, much as a shark tastes blood in the waters.

It cautiously emerged from the pool and considered its surroundings. The uneasy presence had vanished as mysteriously as it arrived. This place was one of the unenlightened primate safe-holds. They had fallen at the last. It was simple inevitability, succumbing to mortal weakness, and they had been consumed. Not by them, but by others, as hungry as they. It moved through the buildings, checking the surroundings to see if the unenlightened mortals had returned.

They had not.

It considered the fungi, but it was not of interest. And besides, the backing of those humble beings was bothersome. It did not want to become…

It shivered faintly. That thought was not in accordance with their kind.

Moving on, it considered the other little things that grew here, but they could not sustain them for long.

After a moments pause, it consumed them, anyway. Inconsequential prey was still prey.

It tentatively moved in the dark. The suppression was weaker somehow. A familiarity to that lessening lingered, but it could not find a commonality within its shared self, which was odd.

However…

They stared into the world.

There were tasty source sparks elsewhere. Drifting in the air. It could feel those, even miles distant through the rock. Other beings thought them hidden. Prey, daring to covet before the supreme. What a laughable notion. Just because its hunger was lesser? Because it was one. Prey never realised its senses were supreme because it was the whole.

However, it felt uneasy about that presence.

It sought for it… but found nothing.

Others were down below. They had also been drawn out by the lessening suppression, by the sparks?

Itself became many, and many became myriad.

Manifested, they moved through the ruined gully and out across the chasm to sate their hunger. The hateful chains of this place still lingered, even if the suppression was less it seemed. With a sigh, it returned to the pool. Others below had awoken. But up here was where the opportunity lay. It was itself again as well as the whole.

It smiled.

The spark that fell in the pool had seen to that.

A moment later the gully returned to its oppressive darkness as if nothing had changed except it was now devoid of anything remotely organic.

It would let its myriad selves, its children, do the work – find the source – and they would do so before the whole because they simply hungered with all its instincts and were of it, but not the whole.

It considered that it had chosen wisely. This was indeed an auspicious place to slumber. It had already consumed before in this place when prey had supplied themselves after the others had done such damage. It had twisted their destiny a little. Just to make sure. It had been stronger then. It was just a pity that somehow the ‘other’ had cheated it out of their souls.

If it consumed enough, perhaps it would become the whole then…

Then…

It…

It paused because it couldn’t quite grasp what it would be….

And its anger intensified once more.

Then it would leave. Make an account with the Other who cheated it before. Go seek the surface.

It knew of the surface, prey, seized while it was slumbering lightly in more recent times, had told it of the mortals above. Such a tasty thing, weak, yet its form was esteemed, a beautiful thing even if it had been prey, adored and desired above.

In the darkness of the waters, it contemplated… above.

Before there were no paths, but now, it felt the currents in this place had shifted.

Now maybe there would be a path. Its myriad self would find it if there was. And if they encountered something worthy of consumption or capable of challenging them, that was also okay. As they grew less, they became greater, as they became greater their nature was lessened for they were less, and when they became whole again, it would be more than it was before. Because its children were not of its brethren, and so that knowledge and power remained for it alone.

It shivered at that. In anticipation.

It was a beauty born of the higher learning of the one and the whole, after all.

~ Dun Lian Jing – Blue Water City ~

“My Lord! My Lord! There has been a deviation.”

Sat in the White Blossom Tea House, Lian Jing watched several youths run past, chasing after an older man, and shook her head.

“That might as well be the motto for the whole of the past week,” JiLao sighed, watching them pass.

“You would not credit, even for such a backwater place, that things could be so disorderly,” the immaculately dressed, white gowned youth at the end of the table sneered, watching them go.

“You say that, but apparently a bunch of minor clans are facing censure over what has transpired. The Military Authority takes false allegation of rebellion seriously,” Ran Hao grimaced.

“To think that someone from the Seven Sovereigns School would manage to interrupt the seclusion of an old freak from the Moon Tomb Sept,” JiLao agreed.

“Do we even know who it was?” another youth in a grey scholar’s robe, whose name she didn’t know, asked.

He and the white-robed youth had come here uninvited, with Yan Ju. That JiLao hadn’t chased both of them away was an annoyance, but she wasn’t going to stoop to doing it herself, not yet anyway.

“No idea,” Yan Ju sighed. “But it seems that they were also responsible for the censure. The town is full of rumours.”

Sipping her tea, she grimaced at that. He wasn’t wrong. The town was full of rumours. Both about the trial, about the catastrophically miscalculated censure and the emergence of one of the Moon Tomb Sept's reclusive old experts. Who could have guessed an infamous individual like Tang Jiao, assuming it was not another expert with a very similar name, would be closed up in a half a million-year cultivation cycle deep in the Yin Eclipse Mountains of all places? Not anyone in the imperial court it seemed, because her Imperial Uncle had freaked out quite... impressively, as had several of the other Imperial Envoys.

“It’s crazy, do you think there will be a war between the Jade Gate Court and the Seven Sovereigns School?” one of the White Storm Sect cultivators added, rather credulously.

"Don't you mean between the Moon Tomb Cultists and the Seven Sovereigns School?" another of those sat at the other table interjected, drily.

"That would be funny," a third added, snickering. "Both sides deserve the chunks they would tear out of each other, frankly, bunch of heterodox remnants that they are."

“No,” she interjected, somewhat acerbically, rather tired of their 'views' at this point. “There will not be.”

“You sound very certain of that?" the white-robed youth said with a faint smile, clearly not agreeing with her.

“Three words," she replied, putting her teacup down and she perused the other delicacies before picking a sweet spirit herb to nibble on.

"Three words?" the youth asked, finally frowning a bit.

"Saintess Heaven Pyre,” she replied blandly.

"..."

The mention of the Imperial Ancestor of the Seven Sovereigns School did have the required effect on the group.

Amongst their collective influences, there were none who had not poked and prodded at the Seven Sovereigns influence at some point in recent decades, never mind past centuries. The White Storm Sect, in this instance, was trying to wrestle some resources from Meng affiliated influences on the southern continent. The Huang and Meng clans despised each other, the Meng clan had all kinds of grudges with the Kong clan, and the Dun Imperial clan was aligned with the Kong clan. It would be improper to fear perhaps, but everyone was aware that that terrifying Fairy Ancestor and fates only knew what else from the ancient echelons of that school were currently inland from here. You only had to have a cursory knowledge of history to know that what the Meng clan killed, even in this world, seldom went avenged by any other influence.

-And then there is that other, mysterious Dao Mother, who i met, she mused, recalling, yet again, her very odd meeting with 'Bright Dream'.

With the sudden emergence of the terrifying old turtle of the Moon Tomb Sept, she had been wondering if the woman she met might not have been from them. They had been very quiet indeed in the last few hundred years as she understood it, and their backing was even less caring for repercussion than the Seven Sovereigns. Only the Demon Lord on the South-West Continent or the Demoness Lady Mo in the North...

she paused, staring at her half eaten cake, wondering why that evil omen had flitted into her thoughts. 'Lady Mo' was as close to a taboo topic as it was possible to get with many influences. Even more-so than Lady Kai Lan, though she had never found an elder willing to elaborate on why.

“Well, something has clearly got the Blue Duke's authority riled,” Yan Ju shrugged, diverting the topic of conversation back away from those awkward waters.

“Well his power was tested twice in as many days, both by the Seven Sovereigns’ excessive deployment using improper means to save some inheritance disciple who got into trouble, and also because of this upheaval in West Flower Picking Region that has emerged from from the chronic mismanagement of this region,” the grey-robed youth mused.

“Rumour has it that something even attacked their school in the process, killing thousands of people and damaging their great formation,” another White Storm Sect disciple added, sounding a bit awed.

None of them had been awed when the sky tore open and that terrifying sword formation descended into the Yin Eclipse Mountains. Even here, the oppression had been… excessive. Most people seemed to be pretending it was just a nightmare. What concerned her, honestly, was the lack of damage. Those weapons were certainly peak Dao Ascendant treasures, and the intent behind them had been serious. Yet the Yin Eclipse Sub-continent was largely still here.

Sat beside her, JiLao gave her a subtle nudge and handed her his message talisman. On it was a short, single-sentence message; 'Expect me tomorrow'.

“What do you think this means for the participation in the trial?” Ran Hao asked JiLao.

“In what way?” JiLao asked with a slight frown.

“Well West Flower Picking region, the 'gateway' to Yin Eclipse is in chaos at the moment. The unrest in West Flower Picking Town and the region's proximity to the shockwave of the impact has killed thousands. Things are particularly fractious between the regional administration and the Noble Clans in West Flower Picking right now. We were going to get herb hunters from there to guide us into the interior, remember?”

“Ah,” JiLao sighed. “About that, I have reached an arrangement with the Blue Gate School, courtesy of the Vice Headmistress and one of its Core Disciples. Some of their more talented, experienced disciples along with some auxiliary herb hunters who are part of the school will accompany us.”

“Is that even necessary?” Yan Ju frowned, sipping his wine. “Sure there is some suppression, but lower realm brats go back and forth out of it like it’s a play part every day.

“Did you even look at the information we have on that place?” Tan Fang grumbled. “If even half the stories about it are true…”

“Most of it is local hearsay and the rest is just a bunch of descriptions of exotic spirit plants,” Yan Ju sniffed.

“You’re suggesting that the previous Duke was scared of shadows and that the Blue Water Sage knew nothing…?” Tan Fang shot back.

Yan Ju scowled. “I didn’t say that.”

“Then you’re suggesting that brother JiLao has wasted weeks of effort gleaning what he can from this town because you dislike reading about plants and feng shui?” Tan Fang added with a sideways look at Yan Ju.

“…”

The expression Yan Ju made was really quite interesting before he recovered. It annoyed her quite a bit that someone like Yan Ju was even here. Tan Fang was at least tolerable. Yan Ju was a playboy and someone who used money to solve problems and bullied the weak when that failed. He also didn’t like JiLao, because of the rivalry between the Wuli and Gan branches of the Huang Clan. From what she could gather, he was only here because her teacher had asked for some help from the Huang Clan and that esteemed elder had passed it back down into that branch, rather than seeking someone else from the Wuli branch. Politics basically.

“Don’t look so disconsolate Fairy Jing,” Yan Ju said turning to her with a smile that made her want to toss her wine in his face.

-Who can tell how annoyed I look behind a veil, she thought sourly.

“Your concern does you credit,” she replied levelly, suppressing her inner annoyance.

“--There has been a sign! A sign! The Astrology Bureau is making a formal announcement!”

They all turned to look outside into the street as another group of cultivators, wearing robes of the Astrology Bureau ran past hollering.

“The aura of a great treasure emerging has been detected in the Yin Eclipse Region near Thunder Crest. The Astrology Bureau has divined that a once in a generation opportunity may descend during the trial!”

The criers corralled in the square outside and started to make their announcement as people stopped what they were doing and crowded around.

“A peerless opportunity for the younger generation, only those below Ancient Immortal will have karma with it! This is the pronunciation of the Three Eyes of Heaven!”

“Huh,” JiLao said putting his chin in his hands and watching as the crowd started to bombard the Astrology Bureau announcers with questions.

“Is that good or bad for us?” Tan Fang, asked with a frown.

“Really it changes very little,” JiLao replied with a tired sigh. “While the thing that the Imperial Teacher is interested in may well be this, it seems unlikely. This is a recent emergence, probably disturbed by the upheaval around the failed censure deployment. It is likely related to the ruins on Thunder Crest…”

“Assuming someone under those three old sages hasn’t just given a pronouncement about the appearance of that ruin,” Ran Hao remarked. “You know all too well how they like to operate.”

“Assuming that,” JiLao conceded.

“You’re suggesting that the Imperial Astrology Bureau would make deliberately spurious divinations like that?” Yan Ju murmured, affecting the air of being scandalised. “Fairy Jing, your words make a generation of sages weep.”

“It is true that the Bureaus are not above politicking for their own advancement,” The white-gowned youth agreed. “Just look at the allegations shooting back and forth in this backwater.”

“Brother De is quite correct there,” Yan Ju said with a knowing smile. “Your discernment of current truly knows no bounds.”

That made her raise a mental eyebrow. So an 'Imperial Princess', even if she was not officially here could be wrong, but this white-robed youth saying the same thing was ‘quite correct’? Tan Fang and Ran Hao had also raised eyebrows at that. JiLao was affecting not to notice, but…

“Excuse me? You are Huang Ji-Lao?” a young woman’s voice from by the door cut into the room.

No one glanced in her direction, except for JiLao who half looked. Given her position, she could see the girl clearly anyway. Average height, dressed in the robes of an Inner Disciple of the Blue Gate School, with green eyes, dark brown shoulder-length hair, plaited back in a loose and rather unfashionable style. She had what most men would call a ‘cute elder sister’ vibe, marred only by a hairline scar that ran down her right temple, just missing her eye. That was odd in its own way because her cultivation was clearly at the Immortal Realm, so she should have been easily able to cure the scar unless it held some other significance to her.

“The thing you requested is available for your consultation. They say you may come this afternoon. Don’t be late. What you asked for had to be authorised by the Lady Envoy as well as Duke Cao. If you waste their time they will not give you face.”

Without waiting for a reply, the girl turned and left as abruptly as she arrived.

-Lady Envoy... Shan Lai?

She managed to avoid looking at JiLao. It was also interesting how the woman had subtly stressed the name. She was almost certain the woman was about to say Huang Ji, then corrected herself, not that anyone else seemed to have marked it.

-And the Duke... did that mean...?

Part of her just denied it, outright.

Cao Leyang's father, Cao Hongjun, might well get involved with enough provocation, but JiLao should have been scrupulous, and Duke Wuli was here, not to mention JiLao's uncle. They had even deliberately avoided poking at the Duke's estate, and Duke Wuli had offered help to the Duke personally over the upheaval in the province.

-Why would someone from Shan Lai be here though, if not for that...?

Briefly, she wondered if the girl was lying, but that would be a different kind of insanity. Even the most mendacious people around the Imperial Court or the arch manipulators of the Heavenly clans would not take the Seat of Shan Lai into their schemes, not with the difficult situation over the 'Gift' that was already threatening to cause further diplomatic ramifications. The only person she could think of who might have relation to Shan Lai was…

JiLao’s face was quite normal, as if nothing untoward had happened, but she had known him long enough to see that even he was perturbed. Did that mean that the Blue Water Sage had noticed what had happened to the influence he founded? If so that might be… but he had never shown any interest in it beyond setting it up for the posterity of this province. So long as the ‘school’ remained to spread his ‘teaching’ Dun Jian had told them, they were free to do whatever else needed to be done.

“You! Wait!” the white-robed youth frowned.

The girl paused, mid-stride, and glanced over her shoulder to look at him before snickering and walking off.

“Just an illegitimate brat from the Gan Unorthodox branch, daring to speak to this Xiao?”

Her words, although quiet, hung in the air with a kind of vibrancy and impetus that no mere Immortal Realm cultivator should have been able to manage in the presence of so many Golden Immortals.

The white-robed youth stood and frowned, but before he could make any kind of further scene the girl had walked out the door into the teahouse and... vanished?

She had traced her passage, admittedly rather lazily, with her own soul sense… and she had abruptly lost all sense of her.

Sweeping again, she could only concede that she was properly gone… somehow. Based on the ugly expressions and the fact that Yan Ju was palming a ‘Fate Seeking’ talisman nobody else had managed to either.

Fortunately, Tan Fang swatted that out of his hands absently. The half a realm between them working out in Yan Ju’s favour, even if he didn’t know it.

-My talisman from uncle’s advisor couldn’t lock her, JiLao’s sending arrived at her through his hand on her arm a second later.

Suddenly she was glad of the veil. That meant that girl definitely wasn't a simple disciple of the Blue Gate School, not unless they had another elder lurking somewhere. She probably was not from Blue Water City either.

-An Envoy from the Authority Seat of the Military Bureau?

Now the scar made sense. Someone from there would care little for looks, and it could be a war wound or made by something that defied easy healing.

“It is just a disciple who didn’t know our status,” JiLao shook his head. “It’s fine brothers, please do not take offence on my behalf.”

-Who is taking offence on your behalf, she chuckled darkly, eyeing the white-robed youth surreptitiously.

-So he was just an in-name from the Huang Clan? The Gan branch as well. No wonder he was being so uppity with them.

“Brother JiLao is right,” she put a hand on his arm. “None of us are wearing signs with our status on them, and we are all wearing artefacts to hide our cultivation.”

“Are you going to chase after every person who looks at you funny, disciple De? It seems that there are more useful things to be done than chastising half the city.”

Gan De, if that was what he was named eyed her sourly, making no effort to hide his annoyance at her comment. She eyed the shadows in the corner. Those two useless shades were also not moving? Belatedly one did catch her attention and suggest-

-Well if you want us to kill him we will….

Sighing mentally, she cancelled that thought. She did have to have the only two bodyguards who had restraint in the imperial household with her it seemed.

“Brother Ju, I will see you out later about the other matter. Please excuse me, brothers,” Gan De bowed, and shot her a last, rather discourteous glance as he left. He even turned his back, which was…

The White Storm Sept disciples all saluted him, save for Tan Fang, who just looked at him a bit dispassionately before nodding. Ran Hao didn’t even blink, while JiLao just shrugged, having no interest in saluting someone from the Gan Branch of the Huang Clan.

“I will also take my leave, Brother Ju,” the grey-robed youth said. “Thank you for the hospitality Dao Brothers… and Sister.”

All of them gave him a polite toast, except for her, she noticed that faint pause. She just nodded faintly. The frown that went across his face didn’t escape her notice either.