…When scholars think more widely of the sources of trouble that beset our world, they tend to think about the terrible beast tides of the Western Continent, the Demons beyond the Demon Wall, or the periodic upheavals that beset the Argent Devouring Caves in the south. If asked to think bigger, or less abstractly, they might well point you to the rivalry over great office of the Kong clan, the Heavenly Solace Society and the Azure Astral Authority Alliance that plays out through much of the Azure Astral Region.

However if you went to any random town or city on any continent and asked the working Daoist on the street, or the Buddhist supplicant, or just a common tradesman or craftswoman and talked about that list they would just look at you weirdly and tell you to stop talking about things inconsequential to the moment. For the lay person, the most common and indeed frustrating and impactful source of trouble, is in fact usually their local school, sect, sept or cult. It is not the beast tide, or the extradimensional incursion that is likely to ruin their town, but youths from a different region, arguing about how amazing their seniors are in the tea house, or cheating the craftswoman trying to ply her trade, stealing some local treasure of good fortune that has been of benefit for millennia and so left undisturbed, or just coming to cause a ruckus because their Senior Brother's nephew had a crush on some Young Lady and her Junior Sister’s Auntie didn’t like it.

Truly, most disruption to the common way of life and good health comes from these conflicts. For these scions are told from a young age that they are all special, and given access to all the trappings of power to progress rapidly in power while rarely being taught any form of social responsibility and invariably being sheltered from the real consequences of their actions by the shadow of their seniors, and if that fails their teachers or a school's elders. Far too many a quiet and humble community has been ruined by direct or indirect means from a misfortunate youth contesting with such a scion's crude action, or a pure young daughter catching the eye of a passing inner disciple of this or that school…

Excerpt from a pamphlet speaking out on the unaccountable nature of schools and sects.

~by Seng Mo. Wandering Scholar

~ Ruo Han – Argent Justice Sect, High Valleys ~

Ruo Han, Senior Outer Disciple and Junior Elder of the Argent Justice Sect, felt as they sat in this horrible valley that somebody somewhere in all the energetic build-up to this so-called ‘great opportunity’ had missed some critical piece of information out. Something like, ‘The place is a broken death-trap that’s out to end all spiritual cultivators, so prepare accordingly! ’.

They had come here at the behest of their Honoured Sect Master, after several of the sect's Senior Elders with family connections on the Central Continent proposed sending a group to take part. Everyone in the upper echelons of the sect's four halls had invariably been swept up in the grand momentum of the Emperor’s declaration. There was presumably some politics involved as well, regarding their parent sect, the Argent Imperial Hall, but by and large, it had all been a bit jovial and frenetic to start, a lot of grand aspirations and people, himself included, seeing an opportunity to impress once they were selected to take part. This kind of proclamation was usually a once or twice in a generation thing after all.

Some of that gloss and flush of responsibility had already worn off by the time they made it to Blue Water City. Between trying to find a place to stay, then keep the outer disciples, of whom he had nominal charge, out of the way of the trouble that was swirling around the city, what with it suddenly becoming a focal point for close to ten thousand sects and influences from five continents...

His senior brothers and sisters had all gone out to ‘enjoy’ the ‘festivities’ and settle old scores.

-And probably make new ones with as much gusto as they could muster, a small voice in his head added.

“…”

-Should have been born in a mortal world, Han, he remonstrated with himself. With your talent, you could have been the crest of the wave there, with thousands of years to get strong, not decades.

Listening to the screams and the chains of explosions, cracking of lightning and periodic gusts of chill air that spoke of water arts, he had to reflect that it would be a great victory simply not dying to the insanity unfolding above, behind and now in front of them.

Right now, his junior brother Jin and his junior sister Xiaoli, both crouching nearby, also looked like they wanted to be anywhere but here. He couldn’t blame them at all for that. The three of them were meant to be securing this gully for their presumed to be more competent ‘seniors’, who had landed them in this mess, to fall back to if necessary. As to how that was going? He was, in his capacity as a fairly experienced Junior Elder of their outer sect hall, pretty certain there wasn’t meant to be fighting behind the direction they had been told to ‘secure’ for their seniors’ retreat.

“This is totally fate-thrashed beyond any reasonable measure!” Jin Chen hissed, crouching even lower as the sense of ominous foreboding bearing down on all of them intensified even more.

“If I’d known it would be this dangerous I’d have never put my name forward for this,” Xiaoli muttered.

“Don’t let the seniors hear that Xiaoli, you will get yelled at for lacking ambition again.” Jin Chen sighed.

-I doubt you would have much choice, he sighed. They had rounded up most of the promising Golden Core and Soul Foundation outer disciples from the Outer Hall to come with as it was.

Even so, it was impossible for him to disagree with much of their muttered discourse, as it was playing out on loop in his own head as he tried to watch for more of that fate accursed plant and shake off the influence of that mendacious tree. And the worst part? For all their previous optimism, it was a mess, generally speaking, of their own making.

-For starters, the suppression was nothing like anyone had claimed…

-Oh yeah? His own mind rebelled at his attempt to rose tint the past. We were fate-thrashed told this would happen, and they pissed on the nameless fate instead, so this is what we get.

He stared at the distant valley behind them. The staying power of that tree, indestructible as it was, was really remarkable. It had given everyone within a mile of it at least a splitting headache when someone, he hadn’t been there so he had no idea who, tried to steal its fruit. As a result, everyone was now getting psychic reverberation, courtesy of it.

-Psychic plants was another thing we were warned about, not that anyone believed that. Not to this degree.

He rubbed his temples and squinted harder into the mass of humid greenery below them.

-They had asked local influences in Blue Water City.

-And again in South Grove Town, the mental fragmentation giggled.

-And you all laughed at them or just didn’t take it seriously, another added.

“Now I understand why they said we shouldn’t cut our way through.” Jin Chen grimaced.

That had been one of the top things anyone with any purported experience had said, he had to admit. Walk softly, keep your big talismans close, and whatever you do, don’t rile up whole valleys at a single attempt. It seemed rather… simplistic at the time.

-If only we knew that they were being kind, the same voice wailed.

-And none of you believed them! A voice hissed in anger. Came up here, bothered us, you should all die and become our sustenance!

He stared behind them. The others hadn’t noticed, but that was clearly the tree, not a voice in his head.

-I’m being sassed by an immobile tree…That was something of a first.

-Hopefully not a terminal one, a rather worried part of him wondered.

It didn’t help that the tree was…well, right. Although it was clearly in his head, having made it through his mental defences that time, so he really shouldn’t be surprised he felt.

Nobody with any clout in their group had believed them, because most of those they asked, or were referred to as ‘experts’, were cultivators below or at Golden Core. For the Dao Seeking and Immortal cultivators calling the shots, it would be… had been seen as a massive loss of face for them to give more than lip service to some Golden Core cultivators. Never mind those following a failed method like Physical Cultivation.

-You should have been suspicious when they were so neutrally polite about your seniors denigrating them.

-Even the herb hunters we had along were like that.

-Nobody was willing to step forward, they just let us take our fate in our hands and stumble along with it, laughing.

He grimaced, rubbing his temples again, wondering whether he needed to waste a precious soul reinforcement pill on this.

-If only that fate-thrashed tree was further away.

-Truly a life lesson right there, he chastised himself in his own mind.

“In Tian’s name, don’t get caught up in their pace,” he hissed to himself under his breath.

They weren’t quite inner voices, yet. He had had those once breaking through a minor plateau at Soul Foundation many years ago.

-Then again if I stay here much longer getting bullied by a tree, they might be. Soul strain is no joke. If I am getting the edges of it….

He stared at the others around him. All of them were at Golden Core or Soul Foundation. He was the only Nascent Soul ‘Outer Disciple’ in this batch. They all looked as horrid as he felt, if not worse.

-The first few hours weren’t that bad.

-It was dumb of them to teleport like that.

-Twice, I never knew they were that dumb.

-We should have used the lower valleys to acclimatise like they suggested. Get a handle on how our skills behave.

He ran through the exercises to stabilise his sea of knowledge. Here, under the suppression, they were pretty weak, but they did help if he focused on them. The chattering argument in his mind settled back into normal thoughts, making him sigh in relief.

In truth the first few hours after teleporting from Blue Water City to South Grove hadn’t been that bad. With the aid of a group from the Teng School who their seniors had managed to convince to join them, they had made good progress through the outer valleys. Though with hindsight, that was where the rot had started really. The initial valleys they moved in through had been spirit herb farms of various types and then cloud forest before they ascended to the ‘low valleys’ as they were locally called. There was nothing much for anyone to profit off there unless you took up robbery. That would likely end badly in the current climate, as the Military Authority was out in force watching all those travelling through the lands of the ‘common folk’ after some disciples from the central continent had caused massive riots in two towns. Rumours were weird about that.

-Yep, no matter how you looked at it, the decision to teleport because they couldn’t fly was dumb, a mental shard piped up.

-Just because the guides hadn’t objected didn’t make it a good idea, another part of him grumbled.

He stopped to stare back in the direction of the previous valley.

-This fate-thrashed tree. Was there nothing that could keep it out?

-You can only make so many excuses before you have to admit that this is way above all our realm grades. A rebellious shard of his consciousness piped up directly.

His Nascent Soul eyeballed his sea of knowledge dubiously until it just shut up. Not that he was disagreeing. He was very happy to say that their teleports had been acts of minor insanity for a whole bunch of reasons that should have been raised at the time.

-Except nobody wanted to argue with their Inner Sect seniors.

That ideal of the senior’s superiority in both experience and judgement fostered so dutifully in the regimented sect environment and wider cultural hierarchies of the central continent was one of several such ‘ideals' now metaphorically dead and well buried in a valley somewhere far behind them.

-And I hope some of them live to regret it.

-Not that they will get off with more than a slap on the wrist, another added.

-Outer disciples are disposable, a voice sniggered. You can get more of those every few years. A new crop like fresh lamb, ready to chop up for soup.

-Shut Up. He focused harder on the rebellious parts of his psyche.

-Seriously, what realm was that tree?

-I have a fate-thrashed nascent soul! This kind of psyche break shouldn’t even be feasible... he swore at his own sea of knowledge

...Unless it was somehow suppressing the realm of his soul as well?

-Now is not the time to have an argument about how screwed I am in my own head! He hectored the other parts with his Nascent Soul.

The shadow voices just flipped him off and went back to their unspooling thoughts. Perhaps the best strategy was just to let them run.

The valleys they moved through after that initial teleport had been a bit harder to navigate, not to mention remarkably rich in low-level spirit herbs. They had been able to gather fairly freely and there were even some weak beasts they could hunt that dropped surprisingly good quality cores. He would have happily split off the outer disciples right then and there and just seen out this whole thing there. None of them had any chance of getting anywhere with their contribution score anyway, what with the peak of those participating being Ancient Immortal for fates sakes.

Still, it was not what their seniors were after. They had refuted any idea of leaving behind the outer disciples when it was tacitly broached. Low-quality beast cores at the Qi Refinement and Condensation grade weren’t going to get them accolades when they got back. They had even claimed that the suppression meant that there were great opportunities for the outer disciples to gain sect commendations. The fate-thrashed nerve.

It also hadn’t helped that the contribution score on the storage items and their talismans had been pretty low despite the effort everyone had to put in. So they had given a bit of a spiel about ‘doing the best thing for the sect’, most people had been placated and onwards they went. The whole thing was deeply ironic, given how things panned out.

As if on cue, his talisman around his neck grew warm for a second as it pulsed with a ranking ‘update’. He didn’t bother to look at it. He had no need to see it to know that they were in the bottom echelons of whatever part of the list they were on.

The talismans were new ones, given out by the Imperial Astrology Bureau specifically for this trial. They were able to track everyone’s participating contribution and tabulate it into various bits of information, including a ‘contribution score’. The Astrology Bureau had made a big show of that, much of it theatre he was sure, to the assembled throng in the plaza. The take away from that whole ‘event’ as far as he could see was that the Grand Ritual had been very difficult, the Sages of the Bureau were doing great things for their generation, so they should all strive to do great things in the Emperor’s name.

Really, the tool was just like those from the large trials on the central and southern continent, but with a few small twists that he was sure now were intentional.

-Their own doom had been brought about by the fate-thrashed old ghosts desire to stir things up that was for certain.

He froze, staring around in panic. No flowers or other weirdness beyond what was usual materialized.

-Fates he had forgotten that badmouthing those old…

Some rumours about fate not having good eyesight in this land resurfaced in his mind. He had just taken them as being local folklore, but… that was pretty empirical. Had it been the tree nudging him?

“It seems the Jade Star Hall has pulled ahead of us as well,” Jin Chen sighed from nearby.

“To the nameless fate with those idiots,” Xiaoli hissed. “Focus on the task at hand.”

It also updated and showed everyone the leading scores and even filtered it by the current geopolitical scene of the sects of the central continent if you were so inclined. Wherein lay the second problem. Their senior brothers and sisters had gotten antsy as the hours passed and the scores of mid-level sects of similar influence rose and theirs didn’t. So they had decided they had to go further into the interior of the range.

The valleys they had moved through as a large group had soon become increasingly difficult. They had also started to encounter the proper suppression as their guides considered it. Even short-range teleportation outside of talismans became next to impossible. More concerningly, to him at least, all of those above Nascent Soul had found their spiritual bodies were increasingly repressed as it ratcheted up.

-But, and this was the thing. It had still been fate-thrashed manageable, a voice in his head raged.

They had even made some good finds; seven-star spiritual ginsengs, several rare eight-star lingzhi and a few unusual flowering herbs. Even a small six-star grade spiritual tree with metal type fruit in one valley. But there were still none of the hoped for Earthly Treasures, no miraculous ores, no relict vestiges or lost ruins in the forest. Just lots of nasty plants and basic realm suppression that pushed everyone’s realms down about two big stages. It had eventually capped out at the peak of Golden Core or maybe very early Soul Foundation. What those limitations meant, he was still discovering, as apparently they were different for almost everyone who entered here, according to Miss Teng. What was clear was that all of those little things seemed to contribute to making spiritual cultivators a marked category out here.

It wasn’t what everyone was hoping for, certainly not his senior brothers and sisters.

The only ones able to still function with some degree of their normal capability were the very small number who had some ancillary skill in Body Refinement or Dharma Arts. Never would he have thought that their sect's lack of tradition in those areas would also come back to bite them up here. They could only push the few who did to the fore to save resources, so they had become the scouts…

-Except none of those combat addicts has any kind of stealth and are useless at reading the landscape and feng shui in general, a voice sniggered.

-Yep, combat addicts who picked that path because they were good at breaking things and wanted their cultivation to advance while doing so make for the worst fate-thrashed scouts, another stray thought added sourly.

When even their local guides, Herb Hunters from South Grove, started to voice concerns, tempers had frayed a bit and they had pushed on. Resorting to brute force to overpower the truculent landscape in spite of the earlier admonitions that that was a bad idea. Their seniors’ target being those inner valleys where only the high star hunters apparently went or escorted people into for special missions. The information they had managed to get from various sources said that the local Hunter Pavilion in South Grove Town didn’t come through here much. It was close to the edge of the range with West Flower Picking to the northwest and their own hunters didn’t have the star grade nor inclination to traverse into some of the areas around there.

“Do you think this is one of those danger zones they mentioned?”

Sister Xiaoli cut into his mental reverie about their misfortunes, mercifully dislodging the small chirping chorus of stray thoughts that were repeating much of this like a mantra as if looking at their circumstances over and over again might actually do something, beyond give him soul strain and a headache.

He grimaced. “I really wish it was the case, but I don’t think so…”

Looking at their current predicament, he thought his senior brothers and sisters might maybe have asked a bit more about those! And the fate-thrashed anomalies!

-That was why they were properly stuck out here now anyway.

-Not to mention, weren't the juiciest discoveries probably IN those self-same places anyway?

“I do think,” he pointed up at the low rolling grey clouds extending out above them, past East Fury Peak as it was named, and blotting out the whole sky “However, that that is one.”

She looked downcast. “I….”

He sighed, forcing his own worries back and embracing the role of de facto leader of their small group here. “It’s okay, sis Xiaoli, things will get under control once they manage to cut a way through that accursed plant.”

He looked back down from the gorge they were sheltering in. The sub-tropical forest was misty and dense, the places between trees swamped in curtains of undergrowth and thickets of low level herbaceous spiritual plants.

-Yeah. The plants.

He was starting to hate them. From the grasping vines that could resist the sword strikes of Golden Core cultivators to the ferns that just made it rain all the time, via the exploding mushrooms and now this eternally replicating rage nettle… Everything here was annoying and downright dangerous. And this certainly wasn’t where they had intended to be.

The original plan as such was to go to valleys somewhere to the west on the south/west slopes of East Fury Peaks and then work their way towards Thunder Crest Peak and the slopes of the Great Mount itself where rumour said you could find vestiges with treasures of the high Immortal grade or better. Or maybe even Dao Treasures. Those places were on the boundary between the two regional territories. Apparently, they were normally handled by West Flower Picking. And had been neglected somewhat because both towns were stretched thin and lacking many new recruits to the Hunter Pavilions since some conflict between the schools a decade or two back.

Brother Jin chipped in: “I can see why they offer such insane incentives to become a herb hunter now…”

“Yeah,” Xiaoli murmured. “Ahh. Look, there’s some more of IT.”

Before he could turn there was a *Whump* and a *sching* sound as Brother Jin exploded the bunch of nettles with a Wind Cutting Art.

He glanced at the damage dealt and sighed again. “Nice shot”.

The others nodded without much enthusiasm. That bit of destruction was like pulling a leaf off a tree and going ‘—Hah Villain! I hath struck thee a vital blow!’

Brother Jin stabbed the ground with his sword. “They just had to get antsy and teleport us a second fate-thrashed time.”

He scowled in agreement. “Yes… they did, didn’t they?”

Xiaoli made an obscene gesture in the vague direction the few seniors still with them had taken.

“They should have listened to the Teng School bunch. Why did we bring them if they were just going to ignore everything they advised when it suited them,” she hissed.

-We are all fodder, that’s why. A nasty voice in his head added. Our status means nothing to them, you can always get more outer disciples.

“Yeah.” Jin Chen muttered. “What kind of moron looks at this landscape and thinks, yeah, sure let’s use unanchored teleportation in these circumstances without stable divination.”

“Our seniors, that’s who.” Xiaoli was getting quite into this now.

She had been so polite and well-mannered back in the sect.

-It’s the residual effects of the tree, neither of them has a firm Soul Foundation. His own mind supplied helpfully.

-As if he didn’t already know that, he shot back at it.

The voice just fled into the recesses to sulk.

The local hunters with their group; which included several juniors from the Teng School, had certainly been dubious about that plan their seniors concocted. If you could call it a plan. The most experienced ones had explained at some length how the talismans worked, which didn’t help the point they were trying to make, sadly. Their seniors feeling instead that they were being talked down to and not being given respect by people they hired to advise them. So the line that the Teng school cultivators put forward; that unanchored teleportation without proper divination, this far in, was a fast way to end up dead, had been dismissed because clearly their own teleport talismans were made by the sect elders and were better quality than some local trash.

-Or lost, then dead.

-Or teleported into caves underground, dead then lost.

-Or teleported onto the top of a ridgeline above the thunder and incinerated without a trace.

His mind helpfully dug up all the ways they could have died horribly.

The whole thing had, as he recalled, become a shouting match rather than an exchange of ideas. The Teng School cultivators had suggested turning north westerly for a while, heading between two of the smallest mountains within the series of peaks they called East Fury, in the general direction of West Flower Picking Town. According to them, those valleys provided much more accessible routes into the outermost edges of the Great Mount.

The downside was that it would have required two days walking 'away' from the so called Inner Valleys, an idea which had gone down like a metal brick on their seniors’ collective feet, due in no small part to the fates-accursed Red Sun School and their marginally higher contribution score. Even the hunters’ assertions that there would be lots of eight and nine-star herbs in those valleys to be gathered due to them having a large pacification backlog with the local Pavilions and the Beast Cadre patrols hadn't made any ground.

“I guess we could blame the Red Sun School for managing to get such a running start on the score table,” he found himself suggesting while scanning for more of the nettles.

The stuff was almost invisible to qi perception.

“Someone should have spoken up…” Xiaoli muttered

“And say what?” Brother Jin grimaced and parroted. “Dear seniors are you sure this is a good idea? We aren’t that far behind and those are Chosen Immortal grade herbs we are talking about you know. How rare they are outside of places like this?”

“And then to have those three useless idiots from the Teng School just use their teleport recall talismans and leave after Senior Sister Yan called them cowardly. I know she has a reputation for being blunt... but they could have been better than that…” Xiaoli sighed.

He had to admit that wasn’t quite how he remembered it if he was being brutally honest. There had been a lot more shouting and then some serious remonstration about anchored points and expensive divination talismans the hunters were fronting which were better used for more important things – like not accidentally wandering into anomalies! And so on before the insults started flying.

“If you were them and could have foreseen even a bit of this, would you have stuck around…?” he asked with a grimace.

Xiaoli stamped her foot. “That’s unfair, Brother Han! Anyway, they abandoned their own companions as well. That was cowardly of them!”

He couldn’t really disagree with that. The schism in the hunters had caught them all by surprise on the back of that. The gist of it had been some disagreement about who was due what equipment and sharing it out equally. The three seniors from the Teng School had claimed the talismans because they were the highest-ranked, refusing to give the supply back before leaving. They had actually run away, leaving before the other hunters could get to them and get a lot of their kit back. That was clearly an aspect of the political wrangling between the local influences and the Bureau that they hadn’t anticipated.

The four from the bureau who remained had then also bailed, saying that their contract was now invalid and that they could either force them to accompany them or let them return on foot. They had then used their own recall talismans, abandoning the remaining two hunters, outer disciples from the Teng School, who didn’t seem to be much respected by either of the other groups for some reason. Both of them had been faced with either walking out on foot or tagging along. So here they were.

“There’s more of the cursed things,” Xiaoli hurled a minor wind art with some venom into the trees about thirty meters to their left and was rewarded with a cloud of disintegrating nettles

And so they were here, having learned the hard way that teleportation out here without proper formation anchors was dangerous. The teleportation had shunted. In spite of the array being divined auspicious and the destination locked in using a planted flag formation rather than the usual ward stone ones, and divined again as safe. Something in the clouds had deflected the teleport at the last moment after activation. Almost as if it was waiting for them.

“At least quite a few of us all seem to have ended up in this valley. So that’s a positive,” Brother Jin interjected while he slashed out with his sword art, mincing another wave of nettles that were advancing up the slope and several other shrubs and trees besides.

“Watch it with the collateral!” Someone yelled from the distant left. “We don’t want anything ELSE deciding it wants to join in!”

-Hmmm, that was a positive, he supposed.

Unfortunately, though, nobody here had a proper message talisman. They had a few short-range ones, but the proper message talismans only worked if anchored. And they had precious few of those. Only the senior disciples basically.

Two disciples arrived out of the tree line, dragging a third. “Brother Gan is badly stung!”

“No shit,” all three of them muttered simultaneously. Brother Hu Gan looked like he had been thrashed within an inch of his life. And Brother Fuo didn’t look much better beside him although he was still walking at least.

“Brother Gan miscalculated his art!” Brother Fuo grimaced. “This suppression up here is horrible. Even the Dao Seeking brothers are struggling.”

-Ah. Yeah. He thought darkly.

The suppression jump. Having it explained was one thing, but now they got to experience it first-hand, with no ramp-up like in the lower valleys, it was nearly farcical. Even the strongest among them, the core disciples, among whom were a few recently ascended Immortals from lower realms and some scions of minor nobility in their home province, at peak Dao Seeking, were now pushed down to low Golden Core. Most of the properly useful arts they could use were also suppressed to varying degrees of magnitude.

“Can you see to them, Brother Jin?” he called over.

Looking downslope there was another wave of the nettles pulsing out of the forest. This time in full bloom, their cheery little red and white flowers flickering with yang qi.

Aiming as carefully as he could he stabbed out with his sword art and took out a large furrow of the things. At least these ones were fairly vulnerable to martial intent.

Surveying his handiwork, he sighed inwardly. Outside, a Golden Core expert could smash half a valley this size to dust in moments. A Nascent Soul cultivator like him could have cut the ridges like paper and probably thrown the remains two valleys over as an afterthought. Suppressed to the level he was, could probably tear up a few trees or smash the rocks a bit with his fists. Or slightly singe some very angry plants.

Miss Teng emerged from the treeline, jumping from tree branch to tree branch then onto the ground. She was the hunter who ended up with them, or in their valley at least. That was about all the luck they had been afforded really, and now he was glad of it. They had chatted a bit before this all kicked off. He had mostly wanted to know the ins and outs of their political problem that saw her abandoned here, but she had been reluctant to go into details and just said it boiled down to differences of professionalism. He had discovered that she wasn’t a member of the actual Teng Clan, just shared a surname that was written differently in the local script.

Glancing across, he fired off another sword art and sliced down another small front of the nettle swarm that was now besieging half the valley and then followed it up with a small fire art to try to combust the pollen that the flowers spread. Sister Xiaoli contributed with a wind art and pushed the remainder of the savaged herbage away downslope in case it re-rooted.

Miss Teng moved past them and started helping Brother Jin to administer to the two who were badly stung. The other one who had just arrived, Brother Wen, was working on trying to rewrite a minor communication talisman so they could make a temporary anchor. Keeping half an eye on what was happening back there he was impressed at her knowledge. Apparently, she was a seven-star hunter. If the 'Star Ratings Ranking' meant the same here, as they did elsewhere, and it was the Azure Authority Bureau so they probably did, she was considered qualified to work and survive in valleys that would be categorised as environments Dao Seeking experts would be careful in outside of this place and its suppression.

“It seems we are clear of nettles,” Jin Chen slumped down, looking winded.

“For now,” he agreed.

Just as he said that the explosions several hundred meters to their right intensified. Looking in that direction, he could see the treetops shivering with wind qi.

-So others were still trying to get through.

Keeping half an eye on that, he observed the herb hunter working as she expertly applied some of the spirit herbs they had gathered to the injuries.

“Brother Jin!” she spoke without looking up.

“Yes?” his Junior Brother glanced up from where he was watching the forest glumly.

“You said you had some talent for alchemy. Can you make these into a crude purification elixir?” Miss Teng tossed a handful of herbs over to him.

Jin Chen stared at them for a moment and then nodded, pulling out a small pill furnace and sitting down with his back to the rock to make what would probably be a wood/fire purification dan of some kind. That was what the poison was, at any rate.

“It really sucks that we can’t seem to detect the damn things,” Brother Jin sighed as he focused on the flame in the cauldron.

“That’s the third time you’ve said that… repeating it won’t change anything,” Xiaoli snapped.

She had a point, he had to admit. But the stress getting to everyone was something that they would all have to grapple with themselves, it was its own kind of professionalism if you could call it that. What was true was that there was no intention signature at all from the damned things. No warning at all when they just grew out of the grass, stinging at random. Nobody had detected them with any sort of spiritual sense.

As if to punctuate his own personal annoyance, the water ferns up above them decided to start raining again at the exact moment he returned to observing the battle below them. He swiped a broad straw and cloth hat from his storage ring as the rapidly spreading, fine, skin drenching mist descended for 200 meters in every direction, cutting visibility down to 20 meters or so instantly.

He sent out his spiritual sense and hissed in annoyance. It had already been suppressed before, now it was utterly crippled by the mist. Diffuse to the point where he had just thrown away a pill’s worth of qi. He ate a pill quickly, noting that a few others had made the same mistake and were correcting accordingly.

-By the nameless fates. That was going to be another nuisance. He hissed in annoyance under his breath and cursed whoever or whatever had been so obsessed with crippling every tool he had to survive up here.

Qi Sense suppression did occur in other trial zones including the Argent Devouring Caves far to the south of their sect, but even at its worst, it was nowhere close to this. Here in the gully, it had seemed a bit easier to use. The rocks repelled the sense a bit better so you could more easily define the limits. Out in that fate cursed forest, the vegetation just distorted, diffused and dithered it to the point where it was migraine-inducing to even attempt to extend it very far. Just like the water ferns were doing now.

-Just imagine what the ferns are like IN the forest, a cheerful voice in his head added.

“Xiaoli,” Brother Jin called. “Can you administer it to him? He also has meridian strain – and you’re much better at that than me.”

*uggh* Xiaoli groaned and moved back as Brother Jin re-joined him, having successfully refined the elixirs.

“Why did he even bother with it,” Brother Jin sighed. “It’s not like it even helps detect half the shit out here, it all blends together so flawlessly and nothing has any intent that you can detect with it no matter how dangerous it is it seems.”

-So Brother Gan has also managed to damage his meridians forcing his spiritual sense? That was… typical of their ill judgement in these circumstances he supposed.

Considering the forest, he experimentally pushed more qi through his ocular meridians and got his Nascent Soul, which couldn’t do much else, to handle the regulation. With his Nascent Soul as the filter, his vision snapped, becoming several times clearer than it had been before. It was much better at tracking tiny changes and processing them and provided some necessary definition between the vegetation types that was lacking. The inundation of the mist still caused issues, but at least it was tolerable and he could filter out the water qi given a little bit of time.

-Ah. Again. The things were almost sentient? That was his Nascent Soul bringing the new threat to his attention.

Sneaking upslope and shifting off to their right. About 40 meters away but they didn’t come closer he was relieved to see. That group also had a pollen cloud now. At least when they flowered the stings seemed to be less serious, even if the pollen’s yang rich nature was a menace in its own right.

He turned to Miss Teng: “Miss Teng, what in the name of the fates did you say these things were again?”

The young woman glanced his direction and grimaced. “I think they are a variant of yang lash lamium. It’s nominally a four-star active threat where it occurs, but I’ve never heard reports of a bed quite this big, so it’s probably a mutate…”

She came over to look downslope. “I see it’s nearly covering half the valley now. At least they aren't coming this far up, that’s good. They need deep loamy soils as I recall…

“Here,” she scuffed the rocky ground. “Here, they probably won’t come in numbers. Their root system doesn’t like to be closer to the surface than about half a meter.”

Jin nodded. “We got rid of a few bits that came upslope but the density was sorely lacking compared to out there.”

The herb hunter surveyed the battle below with interest. They were properly trapped in this valley now it seemed. “I wish that Senior Brother of yours had at least waited to check with me before scorching that thicket of the stuff just to get to some shitty five-star grade lingzhe growing on a stump in the middle of it.”

-You and me both, he thought.

“I guess he thought nothing in it would be able to injure him, given he’s at Dao Seeking,” Senior Brother Sheng Zhao had done that and paid quite spectacularly for the action.

She just sighed at that.

He could only agree really. She was at Golden Core, just. It was a pretty good golden core, for out here as well, third grade if his sight wasn’t failing him. She also practised one of the physical cultivation laws as well that the local people used –her grandfather was from the Yin Eclipse people as he understood it so her family had one. The techniques were largely held to be degenerate in the eyes of the sects in their region and it was held to be almost impossible to cultivate the method beyond Golden Core for whatever reason. As if there was some extra criteria that nobody could quite find, even great scholars of the central continent.

Then again, it wasn’t suppressed anywhere near as much here, so those using it were operating at a much more efficient level compared to spiritual cultivators. He could understand why so many who worked in these mountains were willing to practise it. In their eyes, it gave them a livelihood, and their chances of becoming an Immortal were minuscule anyway in this backwater, despite this being a Great World, not a Mortal World.

“Yes,” She nodded. “But as we did try to explain to you... and demonstrate! The plants here don’t quite play by the same rules sometimes.”

“Especially the mutates.” he nodded apologetically. She had been one of the ones doing most of the explaining on the way up.

“Yes. I am glad you at least were listening,” she chuckled darkly and swept some of her damp hair out of her face.

“Anyway, the suppression affects basically everything that uses spiritual qi at a certain point. The plants are unusually well adapted to the landscape and can actually accrue energies in a way that’s similar to our Physical Cultivation methods. I’m not an expert in that though…” she trailed off, looking a bit embarrassed.

-The plants cultivate. Actively. They had been told that as well he reflected. Not that anyone believed at the time.

There was nothing really to add so they watched as one of his martial brothers used a thunder art in the middle distance to vaporize a thicket of the things that had grown up in seconds off to the left and tried to cut that group off as they made their way upslope towards them.

Further to the left, there was another flash of fire and a second group appeared running quite hard.

Squinting through the misty rain, he couldn’t see exactly who had lightly shredded the nettle thicket. It regrew within moments in any case. So far the only way to blunt it seemed to be to chop it up and then disperse the bits with more yin-aspected arts. Incinerating it with any kind of yang energy was almost like feeding it. They were remarkably fire retardant as well, even for this sub-tropical cloud forest, so dense in water qi it was actually making their clothes damp through their innate qi barriers. So wind arts were where it was at.

Behind them, another tide of herbage was already blooming under the trees. He shivered. Really, seeing was believing. The stuff was almost on the level of a nettle plague.

“Brother Han! ... BROTHER HAN!” a voice broke him out of looking out for any of the nettle swarms coming their way.

“Yes, Junior Sister Liao?”

He stood and made his presence in the mist more obvious as another disciple, Junior Sister Liao Ying, who was at Soul Foundation, skidded over a damp, fern-sporting rock and arrived beside him. Behind her, another group made it in moments later. The group with that Senior Brother Zhao, who he noted with some satisfaction was still really groggy and looking quite the worse for wear from his near brush with actual death.

“Martial Brother Hao says we are probably the last group in,” one of the inner disciples who was still with them stated.

Liao Ying, looking a bit flushed still, scowled at the younger disciple and turned to him: “I got all the way across and circled back and didn’t find anyone else beyond Hao Jun and Sheng Zhao’s bunch here.”

He followed her sweeping gesture as she outlined the route she took, noting the minor stings on her arm. The qi poisoning wasn’t bad compared to some of the less lucky ones.

Miss Teng cut back in. “We need to go up then, onto the ridgeline, and take stock. We can work out our location from the direction the ridgelines run. We can’t be more than twenty or thirty miles out from the original ‘intended’ destination. But I am worried we are far too close to Thunder Crest… given…”

“Surely that’s a good thing!” Sect Brother Tuo who had just arrived beside them suggested.

Miss Teng gave a bitter laugh. “No. it’s really not. Either we walk into the aftermath of whatever it was that is out there in terms of landscape damage from that huge formation that smashed down or we walk into whatever has crawled out of the hole the giant formation left.”

“But… I heard that was the Great Guarding Formation of the Seven Sovereigns’ School – Surely it will have killed everything?” Xiaoli queried, sounding a bit awed.

Miss Teng nodded “So I heard. But that’s not a good deed. It just makes it more likely that whatever happened up there tore a hole into the upper layers of the caverns below these lands. Even if it killed everything for ten miles in every direction on the surface.”

“Are the caverns that dangerous?” he frowned. There had been no mention of an underground part to this mountain range.

“…….” Miss Teng looked at him sideways. It was not a look he wanted to see on her face.

“Those caverns run for hundreds of miles and are tens of miles deep. The vertical suppression down there is immense according to the Bureau records. Just on the surface layers, a nine or a ten-star graded creature might be suppressed to Qi Condensation. In the depths, you have suppression strong enough to make the thirteen and fourteen-star threats that are trapped there actively seek for ways out.”

Miss Teng sat down on a rock and wrung out her cloak for effect. “What do you think happens if we run into something that if it was unsuppressed would be rated as a Dao Lord…?”

Brother Jin whispered in fear. “There are actually monsters out here that have that kind of—?”

There was a lot of uneasy murmuring from around them as well. Both inner disciples were looking like they might contest what Miss Teng had said as well.

He quickly changed the topic, to not give their already stressed group time to dwell the untapped potential of the real terrors out there “So we head up onto the ridges and then?”

“First, we wait for Junior Brother Hao,” one of the newly arrived inner disciples, Jang Bo he thought, stated flatly.

He didn’t bother to reply. Jang Bo was actually weaker than he was. Most of the Argent Justice Sect’s full disciples in their group were Nascent Soul but in their early twenties. Even Sheng Zhao who was Dao Seeking was half his age.

-No wonder I feel old. I am old, he thought suddenly.

-Twenty years and I’ll be a member of the ‘senior’ generation. Left behind on account of not getting to Immortal before one hundred.

-Assuming you live that long, the nasty voice in his head added bleakly.

He eyed Jang Bo again as Miss Teng nodded absently. In the sect, he would have had to bow, but out here, he had come to realise he simply had no time for their stupid shit.

“Uhuh.” She sighed. “So long as the lamium doesn’t assail here it's all fine. It should stop annoying us once people stop feeding it basically. If I can get a look at the valley ridgelines from up there we can probably find a Beast Cadre way shelter to rest up in and decide what you do next.”

~ Ao Kui – Inner Valleys ~

Ao Kui ran through the subtropical forest, skidding between trees as quickly as he dared. His perception was heavily suppressed here, and it was making staying ahead difficult. Behind him, there was another crackling hiss that rippled the edge of his spiritual perception about 40 meters back. He threw himself behind a boulder as something hit it with a dull *thwack*. The hair on his arms and neck stood up with the close proximity to the lightning.

“How dare you steal our Spirit Tree sapling!” a commanding voice roared behind him.

“What Sapling?!” he hissed under his breath.

-You’re just trying to justify opportunistic theft through righteous words, and after I helped you away from those nasty vines you all got stuck in that were tough enough to resist an Immortal grade weapon!

There was another yell and another *thwack* of lightning, not in his direction this time. He massed qi around his feet and swigged from his treasure gourd, filled with an elixir made of liquefied spirit crystal qi.

{Moonlit Steps on the Water}

His movement art triggered and blinked to a spot he had picked out as he ran down the slope. He rolled behind a rock as he heard someone in the distance shout, “SHIT! He had a teleport.”

The fact that a bunch of what appeared to be Nascent Soul realm punks from a mid-grade sect on the central continent were trying to rob him would be laughable anywhere but here. Which was why he guessed some, like these fate-thrashed loons, were equally happy to target their competitors once the particulars of the landscape and the way it interacted with spiritual cultivators became increasingly clear.

So far as he could tell, the distance between realms was seriously compressed in this space. As a Chosen Immortal, he felt his realm was basically pushed down to around the base of the Nascent Realm. That alone would be fine. In fact, that was what he thought most had expected upon learning about this place. Nobody he knew of in his own sect, the ‘Righteous Moon Song Pagoda’, had known that it also suppressed the application of principles.

Something about the land itself interfered with the way his admittedly fairly common Dao Principle of Shifting Water was behaving. He could use it, although it was a strain on his qi reserves, however anything he did with it was muted. More worryingly, there seemed to be an innate element of qi penetration to the entire ambience. In short, his physical body with its true soul and immortal meridians counted for very little here. Outside, he could probably be hit with a minor Immortal treasure and have it bounce off. Here he had been injured twice by low-grade earthly treasures from these brats in their initial ambush. From that, and the damage he had accrued running through the forest it seemed his body was suppressed to about Core Formation, even if his qi reserves were still at Nascent Soul…somehow.

The inability to fly made him think that this was something similar to what those old ancestors could achieve where they controlled the very integration of principles and laws to open up controlled spaces for students to cultivate in. Except this wasn’t a controlled space in that sense.

There was another hiss on the edge of his perception and he threw himself down, teleporting instantly, as a frond-like thing slashed towards with breath-taking speed.

He appeared about twenty meters away in a puff of loam and plant remains and looked to see what had attacked him. There were some reddish ferns on the ledge above him from which now hung a few innocuous-looking frond-like tendrils. He squinted at them and wracked his brains even as they rustled and slowly merged away into the ground.

-Ah. Some sort of herb with spiritual wisdom, coupled with both life drain and yin earth elements.

A quick calculation told him that if suppression behaved the same way it did here it was probably at the peak of Chosen Immortal. He gulped even as he pushed himself up.

That would have been properly dangerous if his body was a realm lower and he didn’t have an excellent grasp of his spiritual abilities for his realm. Honestly, with the right preparation and under good circumstances, this place would be excellent for training control and efficiency if, and this was a big if, he wasn’t having to run from a bunch of brats he could turn to gristle with a breath outside of here.

He teleported again and took another drink of a replenishment tonic. He was actually having to concentrate to push qi through his immortal meridians, which he hadn’t needed to do in… nearly a millennia? Perhaps he had had it far too easy on the western continent since he travelled up into this world. In his home world, he would have relished the challenge of this place.

There was a *crack* and a *thwack* as two more lightning bolts earthed on trees nearby.

The trees splintered and fell. Something in one of them made an inarticulate wail. A strange thing that looked like a cross between a scorpion and a centipede made its way out of the tree with a sort of lazily fluid speed that made his blood run cold. It glanced in his direction. 10 eyes and a spider-like maw opened to hiss at him even as he got the faintest induction of qi from it.

{Shifting Waters Sword Art}

It reared and spat acid at him, which he deflected with his qi, even as he triggered his strongest sword art to attack its front legs.

The monster… demon beast? Parried the attack and retreated fluidly not much the worse for wear. He could see fluid leaking from its limbs even as his hand trembled.

It hissed at him again then vanished behind the ruins of the tree. So they were about equally matched. He considered pressing after it, but another bolt entered his sphere of perception. In that instant, the creature attacked again, with another acidic projectile even as the lightning bolt grazed his shoulder in the process of him diving away to dodge the acid. He pushed as much of his qi at the contact point as possible and managed to mute the energy trying to turn him into a very crispy former Ao Kui.

As soon as the pain shifted to numbness he teleported immediately, leaving behind just some tattered fragments of cloth and a whiff of burnt flesh, along with several talismans stuck in the loam.

This time he landed in an area of swampy water with a splat and rolled. Once he was sure another bolt wasn’t going to find him, he swiftly checked his injuries. The burn to his shoulder and back was nasty but not life-threatening, however, it stung with water contact and much of his side was still numb. He palmed a body mending pill and took another swig of his gourd. There was some excited shouting in the direction he moved from. Taking aim, while visualizing where he had just been, he carefully executed another move from his sword art.

{Water Drifting in the Shadows}

It covered the intervening space silently in the misty gloom of the forest. Moments later he was gratified to hear a startled scream of pain and a lot of cursing.

-That will teach you to mess with an Immortal, even if I am suppressed I still have better arts than you brats, he thought grimly. Hopefully, he took a leg off or an arm at least.

Someone yelled, “Heretical Villain, how you dare ambush us with sideways ways!”

There was more yelling off to the right at one of the valley entry points. “Brothers, let us also try to catch this thief! – this is a sacred trial designated by the emperor!”

*pfft*, he could only snigger.

Pushing qi into his oesophageal meridians, he called out, “What’s so heretical about using water arts in a jungle filled with water... idiots.”

Several speculating lightning bolts and a sword strike scythed through the dense deep green of the vegetation about 30 meters away which helpfully orientated him to his pursuers as they tried to work out where the voice had actually come from. If they kept going in that direction they should find where he teleported as well. Probably best to get some more distance before the talismans got triggered, he had disguised them to make it seem like they had just been dropped when he used his movement art.

Looking around, he could see a small brook running; the source of this shallow swamp. He moved to an outcropping of water-worn rock and looked for the ridgeline above him, judging the nearest one to be about 60 meters to his left. He swore as something poked his leg. Looking down there was a small brown frog that had just…

He spent a frantic few seconds using his qi to try to remove the leeches. The frog had taken one at least. Eventually, he just tore them off and threw them far away, cursing, and then scrambled up the rock. A Chosen Immortal getting bitten by leeches.

“Uggh.”

And they inflicted qi poisoning. A faint wood, vitality and yang aspect to it, not dangerous in that quantity but still…

He glanced up at the ridgeline and clicked his tongue in annoyance. Too far to teleport, even here. He had tried before, proximity to the rock faces here made qi abilities even more intensive to use. It didn’t seem to affect talismans or artificial items that much, which was also curious, not that he was going to dwell on that now. He had a sheaf of teleportation talismans but wasn’t going to risk wasting any just for a better vantage point.

“Ah. Here, we nearly got him,” the voices, enhanced with qi, echoed through the deep green.

“Good, he won’t have gotten far,” another added

“DAO BROTHERS! ... We are over here! The thief is this way – let us strike with righteous justice to—”

The thunderclap of his own talisman trap triggering turned the distant forest translucent for several long seconds. The trees steamed and the ground cooked under the pressure from the Dao Immortal grade Thunder Light talisman.

As sound returned, he caught the sound of screams of agony followed by several rapid discharges of lightning that tore at random through the forest behind him. Another scream, a different voice and the sound of vegetation being cut and exploded before a third scream cut off very abruptly.

The qi beast or demon beast that had lost its tree had obviously stuck around.

He glanced around warily, insectoid creatures of that size rarely existed on their own. The plants were bad enough. He hadn’t seen much beast life other than some birds and the occasional frog or swarms of biting insects before it.

Certainly, there was no point in hanging around here if there was any chance it might have friends in the trees. Intuition suggested that wasn’t a particularly prominent specimen of whatever it was. The colouration of the shell maybe, it seemed freshly moulted. Then there was the acid. That had contained profound aspects of the Dao principles of both water and wood.

He offered a short prayer that his pursuers might provide it with a nice hearty meal and then another, shorter, divination prayer he wouldn’t land in an actual river this time before blinking away along the ridgeline in search of a better place to scale it.

~ Huang JiLao & Dun Lian Jing – High Valleys ~

Huang JiLao pulled his spear out of the thorny carapace of the centipede, its ichor smoking on his spear blade. This one was an unnatural shade of red with yellow stripes. Half a dozen of the creatures in various lurid colours lay dead in the clearing around them, their ichor smoking on the ground.

The clearing itself was remarkably intact, he had to feel, for the ferocity of the battle that had just occurred here. It would probably be an eight or nine-star threat in the Bureau's rankings. This particular variant wasn’t listed in what he had seen from Blue Water City. Not surprising really. Teacher Dun Jian had told them both before they set out that the permutations had fundamentally changed with the events of the last week. Part of him felt that was kind of obvious, but even he couldn’t say that directly to someone of Dun Jian’s calibre sadly.

What he could gather was that it was related to the Grand Imperial Astrologer and their trial. That came courtesy of his uncle, who had tried to convince them both to not go. He had half a mind to agree to that request, but while Lian Jing was wavering and finally showing some doubts, she wasn’t willing to refuse the request of their teacher. He wished his uncle had explained more than just telling him to be careful and giving him a few extra lifesaving treasures on the sly. He had not shed more light on it than that. Not that it mattered really; he got a strong implication that the old ghosts were messing with fate from his uncle’s words. At his current realm the explanation would be interesting but the reality of it not helpful. The concepts were still too far beyond him, or Lian Jing.

Lian Jing was currently pulling one of her swords out of the largest centipede. It was nearly 25 meters long and had been difficult to kill, even with the tools at their disposal. The adult had been somewhere close to the peak of Ancient Immortal, or ‘True Immortal’ if you came from a heavenly clan like he did. Even the juveniles that came to protect it had been something close to powerful Chosen Immortal grade monsters, even if they didn’t really have cultivation bases that he could see.

They certainly possessed cores, although they were closer to crystals than the usual cores that formed in monsters on other continents. Just another bit of evidence to support what he had gleaned from that account he had been shown from Shan Lai and what its author posited about the origins of this place based on the expedition 30,000 years ago.

He put the crystal in the final one he had dispatched into his ring and surveyed the rest of the clearing.

Twenty or so inner and core disciples from the Blue Gate School, nine from the White Storm Sect and eight from the Ran Clan were busy chopping up the other remains.

Carefully.

None of them were at the same realm as either himself at the peak of Golden Immortal with a True Principle, or Lian Jing who had a Special physique and was also starting to found a True Principle. The strongest was probably his sworn brother Ran Hao, who was at the peak of Golden Immortal with an Earthly Principle, while Yan Ju and Tan Fang from the White Storm Sect were both early-stage Golden Immortals still trying to found their principles properly. All of them also practised God Physiques as befitting their status in their various influences. Himself as an inheritance disciple of the Huang Wuli branch on this world, Lian Jing as an Imperial Princess and student of Dun Jian. Yen Ju had found a God Physique Scripture during the last dragon trials while Tan Fang and Ran Hao both possessed Minor Physique Manuals through their clans which had ancestral roots within the previous aeonspan.

They had not suffered any fatalities this time either, which was good. They had lost five early on in the high valleys. Two from the Blue Gate School and three from the White Storm Sect to a mutate ginseng field soon after entering the slopes of the Great Mount. That thing was in his storage ring as well, it was actually a Dao Immortal spirit herb, which had been both a hugely fortunate encounter and a total menace to suppress. It had been able to manipulate an earth law and killed two from the Sept before anyone was actually clear what they were dealing with. It had stalked them through two valleys before they managed to trap it in an array and seal it up. Even then it had nearly broken the array twice, shattering the souls of the Blue Gate School cultivators and a formations expert from the White Storm Sect.

Two more, one from the Blue Gate School and one from the Ran clan, had died during their ascent of the ridgeline to get into this higher access path. One fell after being ensnared by some kind of vine thing that nobody near them at the time had been able to kill fast enough. The other surprised a swarm of what appeared to be some mutate bat, which he didn’t know existed in these mountains. Nor had the two Chosen Immortals Beast Cadre experts from Blue Water City’s Hunter Bureau that accompanied their group.

Their ignorance concerned him more than his own. Both admitted it was possible that stuff was coming to the surface through new means opened up under the bombardment of the Seven Sovereigns’ formation. He had hoped that the Seven Sovereigns School would have cleaned up the mess they made, but maybe the holes that the swords punched were just too big. Neither his uncle nor Dun Jian had been able to provide any information on them at all. The former apologetic, the later frustratingly enigmatic.

It didn’t help that the vicinity of that battle was likely their destination unless a more opportune path into the Thunder Crest presented itself. Dun Jian had finally shared where he thought they should go, and as if to confirm his worst suspicions he wanted them to search for the thing he divined between Thunder Crest and the Great Mount itself. Apparently, that was where all the divinations said that the right auspicious opportunity would emerge and they would be able to find the route Dun Jian told them they should take into the depths to find whatever this thing was that would give the Dun clan and the Huang clan a chance to soar to the heavens, as he put it.

Just thinking of that made him want to carry the treasure Uncle Leng had given him around in his hand at all times. His uncle had brought him a manuscript, ancient in age, on the eve before their departure, an account of the depths, by someone who had been there. All the way down to the second layer... and come back sane. His instinct suggested it came from Lady Shan rather than his uncle. To go with that account, his uncle had given him a sect treasure capable of actually alleviating it to a degree. The talisman would, according to him, allow him and only him to exert strength up to his current peak, even in the fact of abstract suppression of a Heavenly Venerate. He had also had Lady Shan place a luan feather within his dantian as a further lifesaving treasure. He really hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

“Young Noble, we have finished gathering all the cores… crystals,” an inner disciple from the Blue Gate School saluted.

He nodded in affirmation and walked over to see how Lian Jing was getting on. She had stored the corpse and was looking at something she had cut out of it.

“What did you find?” he asked

“I’m not totally sure,” she replied, frowning, passing him the object.

It was an octagonal talisman made of... bone on first glance?

-No. He narrowed his eyes and considered it carefully turning it over in his hands...

-Not a talisman...

He put his hand on her shoulder and messaged her. “It looks like a Law Bone, based on what I know from our clan’s records of such things.”

Handing her back the bone he added, “Store it and say nothing in front of them, it might make people greedy and greedy people who don’t all want to be here are dangerous.”

Noting the curious looks from Yan Ju and some of the other White Storm Sect cultivators he added out loud.

“It’s a talisman of some sort, quite old by the looks of it, not in a style I know of either… maybe it's older than it looks, or it’s from the Indigenous clans?”

Playing along, Lian Jing nodded and placed it in her storage ring. “That’s what I thought.”

“We could just leave all the Blue Gate School ones behind at this point,” she messaged back.

“Pointless, while they are outmatched they still have knowledge of plants and are local to this land. And besides, they can use formations, which are actually surprisingly useful in here. Against all the odds,” He replied.

“Still they slow us down,” she pushed back.

“Perhaps, but I’d rather be slow and alive than quick and dead, and besides, remember what teacher Dun Jian said about there being some oddly auspicious connection between the core and inner disciples of the Blue Gate School and our trip into here. It would be stupid to leave them behind then discover we needed them later,” he messaged back.

That bit of ‘advice’ still made him nervous. Oddly auspicious didn’t necessarily mean ‘good auspicious’ or ‘inauspicious’. It meant that they were auspicious for someone, just maybe not the two of them. Not for the first time, he found himself truly annoyed at the Imperial Teacher's very real habit of being pointlessly mysterious at times.

As a final message, he sent: “We will swap that bone into my storage ring later when nobody is looking.”

“….”

Lian Jing furrowed her brow for a moment, then nodded.

“Okay,” he turned to the Beast Cadre elite, Ling Hai that approached and asked. “You know where there is a large enough way station for us to camp tonight?”

“Yes, Young Noble,” he replied courteously. “If we continue across this ridge, we will enter a valley with a moon seizing jasmine field. Unless you want to risk gathering it, we can bypass that to the west side and then head down that valley around six miles and there is a larger station we use as a staging point for patrolling onto the Great Mount.”

At the mention of moon seizing jasmine the inner disciples from the blue gate school flinched and looked uneasy he noticed.

-Mmmmm… it was reactions like that that made him glad he had them along in all honesty.

“Even if it’s dangerous, we should take a look.” Yan Ju said from nearby.

“It really IS.” the Beast Hunter supplied with emphasis.

“If it's dangerous we will bypass it as you suggest,” he assured the older man.

-They were already fighting enough stuff as it was, without looking for trouble, he added in his own head.

“Aww.” Yan Ju cut in, “This was pretty bracing…” he gestured around the clearing “But we haven’t seen anything that actually warrants half the paranoia and supplies you have expended in preparing us for this trip, Brother.”

“Don’t worry,” the Beast Cadre elite muttered sourly as they made their way onwards leaving the clearing.

“When we go down THERE, you’re going to find it far more than merely bracing….”

His comment drew nasty looks from the White Storm Sect inner disciples, but he pushed everyone along briskly before anything could come of it. He understood the man’s worries. Lian Jing wasn’t somebody who sweated those kinds of details, but she was cautious in her own way and had good experience with remnants for her age. That was why he was here, he frequently suspected, not just because he was certain he was the closest thing the princess had to a real, trustworthy friend, but also to moderate her more pointed instincts when the occasion required it.

As the last group passed out, the Blue Gate School disciples, he noticed one of them was glowering ferociously at the trees nearby.

“What’s wrong...?”

He grasped for a name and found it, “Miss Mo Xiao…? Is there something else out there?”

He surveyed the trees pensively. He was rapidly learning that it paid to check what others thought they might have seen. You couldn’t have eyes everywhere, especially out here where Qi Perception and qi enhanced vision and senses were dulled.

She glanced in his direction and sniffed. “A squirrel made off with my pouch while we were manipulating the ‘Caging Waters Formation’.”

He stared at her dully for a second… “A squirrel?”

“Yep,” she scowled. “It was a nice pouch, and it had some medicinal pills and food pills in it.”

He sighed and shook his head wryly...

-At least it was just a squirrel.

“It’s probably not dangerous?” he queried to the other Beast Hunter, who was also walking by at that moment, bringing up the rear just in case.

He got an odd look back from the man who shrugged. “Probably not Young Noble, but it’s undeniable that the Koppi squirrels are fate-thrashed weird out here.”

Up ahead there was an angry yell and the sound of someone slicing vegetation with some venom. Somebody had had another one of those trappish vines snare them it seemed. This place really was every bit as difficult to move through as the records he had read in Blue Water City seemed to suggest. And then some. He headed towards the noise. The last bunch they had encountered had been remarkably durable and had life corroding properties. It wouldn’t do to have someone strangled to death by one after everyone passed that centipede ambush safely.