The chaos that rippled out from the demise of our Red Splendour Great World, so cruelly and viciously cursed by the Mo clan for the slight those villains perceived justice upon their murderous juniors to be, has become a plague that none seem able to stop.

Such a vile assault on my people cannot be borne. The rapacious hordes and underhanded schemes of the Mo have struck a fell blow against our ancestral seats in August Splendour starfield and now the Ming and the Teng are also moving to exploit matters. As such, I authorised our local influences to provide redress to this matter: the world of every sect associated with the seeping ruin of Red Splendour to be brought low in kind. For each of their spawn upon my ancient homeworld, ten thousand had to die so that it was clear to all: my Red Splendour Sect do not brook such actions, nor does the Huang clan.

There are those who called this action mad, or disproportionate, but that is because they did not understand what it means to have the Mo savage at your gates and plundering your people, your lands as we do. The Mo clan speaks only to violence and the forceful will of heavens stronger than their own. We had lost Red Splendour, a jewel in our starfield’s celestial crown. To respond in any other way would be to invite this sorry fate upon some other weaker worlds for the Mo savage never stops at just one conquest. They did not before, when they plagued Gan Solace for 30,000 years, forcing that noble people from their ancestral lands entirely.

As such, it was a great moment when those heroic remnants of the ancient Gan, now sheltered by our own Huang clan, were among the vanguard who arrived to initiate the reclamation of Red Splendour.

Excerpt from ‘A Commentary on Villainy – The Mo Savage’.

By Huang Wen Bei – Venerable Red Splendour

~ Juni – Ruined watchtower overlooking Savannah ~

The trek to the ruined tower Lin Ling had somehow spotted took a surprisingly long time. Even though it was heading towards the fourth hour of the new day, the heat still clawed at her out of the ground and the landscape was nowhere near as flat as it looked. The tower itself had presumably been built out of the rock of the very ridge it was on, given the several conspicuous quarry like holes on the rear face. The stairs up to it were carved through the rock and rather reminiscent of the first ‘ruined town’ they had encountered, with its huge slaughtering formation that appeared to have started this whole slide of misfortune off.

“Above you,” Lin Ling noted, and she ducked as a spider the other girl had just grasped went tumbling down the slope behind them.

She glanced back down at it as it bounded off a few rocks on the way down. It was about the size of a cat and almost impossible to make out, something about it subtly obfuscating her qi sense.

“I could never claim to be a spider person before this place,” she grumbled, accepting Lin Ling’s hand and letting the younger girl haul her up, “but I am decidedly not in their favour now.”

“Most things here will hunt at night,” Lin Ling observed. “This landscape will turn into an oven during the day.”

“As opposed to the greenery themed bath house we just crawled out of,” she observed a bit more acerbically than she intended, sitting down on the flat ledge.

“It is what it is,” Lin Ling shrugged.

“Incidentally, how are we getting this worn out?” she frowned, staring back across the two miles or so of ground they had covered.

“…”

Lin Ling frowned, staring back up at the sky, which was still oppressive, its stars dimmed and the void somehow feeling like it was glowering ever so slightly.

“This… almost feels like the suppression of the inner valleys,” the other girl observed after a while. “Although my qi is not being drained away, the landscape is somehow… The memories have a term for it, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, they call it a ‘Vivid Manifestation’. Basically the rules of the world are being reinforced in some subtle way.”

“But?” she pushed again because there was something Lin Ling was clearly not telling her.

“It’s… complicated,” Lin Ling sighed.

“Try me,” she said.

“Well, you know the landscape we just came through?” Lin Ling mused, pulling out some scavenged persis stick and passing her a bit.

“Unfortunately, my memories are vividly manifest when it comes to it,” she sneered, before biting off a large bit.

“Right… Well, the more I interact with the memories, the clearer their opinions and some of the weirder intuitions I was getting are becoming. They had a very close relationship with the natural world, and with it came a deeply instinctual understanding of the ‘reality of a place’,” Lin Ling paused to chew on her piece of spirit herb, staring out at the scrubland and patchy forest beyond the distant rise they had just come from.

“…”

She sat in silence, nibbling her own piece of the herb, waiting for Lin Ling to continue.

“Well, they present it in a certain way, but I usually have to filter it through something I know. They present it a bit like… Like embroidery. Before, when we first arrived here, the picture was very vague. We landed in a place that was basically a dozen different quilts, all with holes in them in different places that had been crudely overlaid to form a rug on the floor. It was squishy and hard to walk over, and while occasionally unintentionally pretty, very chaotic.

“As we made our way out, the land became less… chaotic I guess? But it wasn’t always the same quilt. Rather than all being haphazardly messed about, the quilts had been overlaid so there were no holes and the most prominent pattern in a place was always on display. It presented a holistic picture of a landscape, but to their eyes it was…

“I hesitate to say fundamentally unreal, because I asked that in several different ways and they said that was not the case. It was very real, but it wasn’t always the same real, and some real was more prominently real than other bits.”

Lin Ling trailed off, staring again into the darkness again for a moment before continuing.

“The way they pitch it, the landscape changed from being a bunch of quilts, to one quilt, rebuilt from a series of them. Like… a popular theme of a forest, or a mountain landscape I suppose is a good way to put it.”

She stared into the gloom, watching the moonlit shadows, pondering what Lin Ling was trying to say. Her experience with certain matters was a bit more detailed than Lin Ling’s, so she thought she understood now what the other girl was saying. It jived with the bizarre set of intuitions she had managed to retain after her ‘experience’ before finding the talisman, blurry as they were.

“Someone took a bunch of ruined quilts that were made with scenes that all represented different impressions of the same landscape… and recreated a single, whole quilt with them?” she said eventually.

“Not someone, just a natural process,” Lin Ling sighed. “At least according to the memories.”

“Oh?”

“Their explanation for that is bizarre as well.” The younger girl grumbled. “Basically places that are touched more by ‘being’ have a greater presence… or the places where the vitality of the land was thoroughly disconnected. To them those are like patterns laid under or over existing holes. The forests themselves are just a mishmash of scenes blended to be ‘natural’ around the ‘big designs’.”

“Right,” she nodded, that explanation made sense, in a vague way to her at least.

“So? What is going on out here?” she asked.

“Here the quilts are actually rewoven back together,” Lin Ling said. “And they are getting more and more vivid by the minute. The strength of the world is stabilizing. That is why it feels like the inner valleys of Yin Eclipse.”

“So… cultivation is going to be suppressed?” she frowned.

-Would that we would be so lucky in the current circumstances.

“To their eyes, they don’t see it like that,” Lin Ling looked frustrated again. “Even the most ‘understandable’ ones do not really present it in an easily understandable way. They present it in different ways. The world is more… real. The fundamentals are harder to change and the natural order of things is becoming more robust.”

“Ah-!” it clicked.

“Ruo Han thought this was a higher world. A shard of a Supreme World.”

“He did,” Lin Ling agreed, grimly. “That is… not a terrible comparison in truth, according to the memories. This world’s origins are supreme to them, although I don’t think they mean it in quite the same Ruo Han did.”

“How so?”

“The easiest way I can say it… is that it has ‘antiquity’,” Lin Ling sighed. “They cannot put it more concisely than that. They seem quite frustrated actually, or at least the older memories do; the memories with relatively more ‘recent’ associations don’t care much for me, or these circumstances and questions it seems. I am too human for them or they are just angry or self-absorbed all the time.”

She pulled out a pill and considered it, before swallowing it down.

“Huh.”

She frowned slightly, feeling how it affected her body. The Qi Replenishment pill certainly worked, but…

She took another, a different type, this time a liquid tonic and gulped that down, comparing the two. In the end she had to try three more before she was sure she wasn’t inopportunely developing temporary resistance to them.

“What is it?” Lin Ling was staring at her now.

“The efficacy of the basic pills is… less.”

Sitting there, she did a cycle of her qi – a proper cycle of refinement, rather than the passive one she had just been letting do its thing. Lin Ling was also peering at some of the pills she had – higher ranked ones.

“There is no change in the cycle of my law; the efficacy is the same,” she mused, considering it again as she did a second one.

Even with ‘Heart Shifting Steps’ turned inwards it was a struggle to see what had changed. The purity of the qi around them was the same. Her tiredness flowed away as her qi surged slightly.

“Interesting,” Lin Ling was staring at a bunch of pills in her hand, having presumably just eaten one.

“Do… your memories have anything to say?” she asked.

“Impure qi, made in a world that is less vivid than this,” Lin Ling shrugged.

“Impure,” she stared at the pills in her hand for a long moment before sighing. “ So it really is that the most fundamental aspects of qi from Eastern Azure are not as complete as that of here, just like Ruo Han and the others hypothesised.”

“That is probably the best way to look at it,” Lin Ling agreed. “But it wasn’t this severe before. It affected laws and the like but not items. What has promoted this immediate change?”

They watched the night sky in silence. It was still faintly oppressive, continuing to put her in mind of the dark they had crawled out of below, albeit less somehow.

“In any case, while we seem to be impacted by the basic oppression. My law from the talisman isn’t showing any lost efficacy,” she mused.

“Yes, we both lost all our qi reserves. You were thoroughly depleted before and I have basically had all my vital qi exchanged by the yang blood at this point,” Lin Ling agreed, swallowing down some of the pills and shaking her head. “From the perspective of our qi at least, the memories are pretty clear that we can be considered to have largely acclimatised to this place. They also imply that previously weak foundations are a major element there. Had we condensed Mana Cores, er… Golden Cores, we would not be anywhere near as well off.”

“Well, I seem to be replenished,” she observed, standing up and peering on upwards into the shadow of the ruined tower. “Shall we? I don’t fancy trying to scale another of these when the sun rises.”

Squinting upwards, Lin Ling nodded herself and they both started to climb again.

In the end, it still took them another hour to get to the top, just as the sun was peeking over the horizon. Surprisingly, it rose in the same place it had the previous day, near as she could tell, which was close to a first for this place. The sky above reflected the dying embers of stars, black fading to blue, scudded by distant clouds.

Behind them, beyond the few miles of transitional landscape, the montane rainforest meandered inland, rising slowly towards the rising ridges they had descended out of. Viewed from where she now was, it was hard to credit they had travelled that far. Beyond those valleys, the mountains rose, shrouded in rain, cloud boiling past in a never-ending river, punctuated by the distant rumbles of thunder and periodic flicker of a lightning bolt.

Ahead of them, a vast savannah swept on, vanishing into the horizon, mist and haze as the first heat of the day started to touch the tops of hills. If she squinted really hard she could make out distant shadows, rising through it, that might have been more mountains, but the distance was such that it could just as easily have been refraction.

Parallel to them, small stands of trees and the odd dried out lake dotted the parched, rocky landscape. Rolling ridges were split by rocky outcroppings running parallel to the forest in a way that was much more obvious than they had been when descending them. The tower they were on was on a larger outcropping. Below them, she could make out a few other tumbled buildings, some further rock-cut quarries and what were likely cave dwellings of some long abandoned little settlement. Walls terraced a part of the ridge below them, their contents a little less parched thanks to ingenious irrigation channels cut through the rock that were funnelling little runnels of water collected through the night.

It was all very… normal, if you chose to ignore the hundreds of thin columns of rising smoke just discernible through the glare of the first sun, some 10 miles to what Lin Ling assured her was probably ‘east’. Ur’Vash cook fires, likely a war camp supporting the forces fighting in the forest behind them. In that direction, she could see other occasional lines of smoke rising, hinting at either forward camps, patrols or perhaps actual fighting.

To the west, a greener band of trees in the distance hinted at the flow of the river and swamp they had crossed in the forest behind and beyond that, the shadow of what might have been another ruined tower miles distant.

“How many are in those camps, do you reckon?” she asked Lin Ling who was sat cross-legged on the edge of the parapet, scanning the distant horizon.

Glancing in that direction, the younger girl shaded her eyes. “Enough that we don’t want to go anywhere near them. The topography of the land blocks me from seeing much and you are the one with siblings who have a military background. I can count around 300 columns of smoke.”

-Three hundred huh… she sighed and did some quick calculations in her head, arriving at a rather worrying number.

“Conservatively a fire for ten people…? Could be 3,000-4,000 Ur’Vash. If that’s a fire per band, however, like we saw organizing in the forest – you could be talking 20,000 to 30,000.”

“Given the mobilisation of forces we saw, I would not bet against the latter,” Lin Ling sighed, turning to look back at the landscape below them.

“No sign of those who arrived here either, I guess?” she queried, also turning her gaze outward, towards the vast savannah below.

“I can see the edge of the trail, at least until it goes over that far hill,” Lin Ling sighed and shook her head again. “However, even I can’t see shit through the haze, even with this altitude. The land is certainly not as flat as it looks, especially these badlands. The savannah out there has a few distant smoke columns that could denote settlements.”

She peered where Lin Ling was pointing, and sure enough, on the distant horizon she could make out a faint shadow and pall that could be smoke from a small settlement.

“Or other warcamps?” she added.

“Or those, yes,” Lin Ling agreed. “Impossible to tell without going and looking really.”

“So I guess we have to track them on the ground?” she sighed, “and hope that we don’t walk smack into them.”

“Well, so long as soul sense is limited, things are broadly even, unless they plan to expend immense amounts of qi to use qi sense to scout the landscape,” Lin Ling mused.

“That seems unlikely,” she conceded. “They have to have noticed what we have.”

“Yeah,” Lin Ling agreed. “There were also multiple groups, not mixing very-”

She trailed off and they both turned to spot a flash of disrupted space in the middle distance. Half a dozen weary looking cultivators wearing greyish blue robes appeared in the vicinity of the hill they had just been on a few hours earlier.

She slipped down to be less obvious, lying on the rock floor as Lin Ling slipped around the ruined parapet and then joined her a moment later. They watched in silence as the group looked around, debating something amongst themselves before pulling out what looked like another talisman.

When nothing happened, the group seemed to have another discussion and cast about, looking a trifle discontent, pointing in various directions. Eventually, one of them pulled out some kind of talisman and they all stood around it before setting off in the general direction of the trail.

“So… maybe not a good idea to follow that trail too closely,” she mused. “Any idea what realm those cultivators are?”

“At this distance, not really,” Lin Ling sighed. “Fortunately, we don’t need to follow it that closely. A group that size cannot move quickly and if they cannot teleport here, which I assume was the nature of their discussion and remonstration that at least works in our favour.”

~ Cang Di – Travelling through the Badlands ~

Watching the sun rise over one side of the lightly forested valley they were currently trekking through, Cang Di could only sigh. It was a relief the night had ended, such as it was, because walking through it with the perpetual feeling of dull rage that the talisman exuded, seemingly perceivable to only him, had been deeply unpleasant.

It was still angry, which based on what he had seen was understandable, but now in a more seething, muttering kind of way, almost like it was pacing mentally. It was a shame in some ways, because the landscape was spectacular, and he wished he could just walk through it, enjoying the sunrise. It reminded him a little bit of home, although the grass there was shorter due to grazing, and the temperature quite a bit cooler.

He was also pretty sure that their rapidly emerging ‘woes’ were somehow tied to it as well, even if he couldn’t find anything to hang that hunch on.

Throughout the night, many of their number had started to notice that things were for lack of a better word, harder than they should be. Qi control was more difficult out here, and that was just the start of worrying discoveries. Thirst was now a thing for everyone below Immortal as far as he could determine, as was hunger, where before they had most certainly not been. The temperature... in fact the climatic condition in general was immutable, even to the Ancient Immortals. Most worrying of all though, was that the efficacy of the medicines many had with them was now less as well.

The change was, to the group at large, impossible to pinpoint and there had initially been much cursing of it, mainly directed at the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall. It was after all their departure that had been the catalyst for this in the eyes of many. That disquiet was now being pushed back in their direction, the Court basically saying: ‘you all followed us here, we didn’t ask you to come’. That had then shifted to: ‘but we are very willing to take you all under our wing, because those who brought you here clearly were only after treasure’.

It was a lie, but a politic one that most were willing to buy for two simple reasons. Firstly, it gave them someone else to blame, a trend that seemed to be catching right now, and secondly the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall comprised well over half their total number and those influences better disposed to them were very much in the majority compared to forces from the Southern and Western Continents. Even those forces from the Eastern ones, such as they, were siding with their parent clans.

That left him, the Nine Auspicious Moons, the Thunder Phoenix Gate, Dewdrop Sage Sect, Verdant Flowers valley and a few other independent cultivators and the Shen clan forces largely isolated yet unable to make a clean break from the group for one simple reason – no long range teleportation.

Short range hops were still possible, but the spatial signatures were so obvious that even the few Golden Core disciples still alive could make them out and anyone above Nascent Soul had no trouble reading direction and intent in even Dao Immortal talismans. Longer distance hops with talismans were impossible for several reasons as far as he could see.

Firstly – spatial laws had become much more robust almost as soon as they arrived here as far as most were aware.

Secondly, those spatial laws were quite a bit more profound, such that even cultivators like him, who had actual, if very limited, attainments with them, might as well have just hit their heads off rocks.

Thirdly, to make those hops, the qi requirements had gone up by a literal magnitude.

He had quietly tried by himself, and then with the help of Fairy Dongmei, to use an Ancient Immortal realm talisman to initiate a random jump of about 100 miles. As it was, it would have emptied his qi entirely and exhausted his soul reserves to make a jump of 10 miles. Even with treasures, foci and a fully laid out formation, expending a Dao Jade to power it, he reckoned they would barely have been able to transport a handful of people 50 miles.

-Not that that really answers how we were easily able to make it here, he considered.

-Arriving was easy… Leaving however? Simply out of the question. If I leave with others, we will be dead within two hops.

-And to survive I would have to reveal to them a very bothersome card in hand, he sighed inwardly. And that all assumes that they really don’t have a Dao Immortal hiding among their number or something comparable to the talismanic avatar my teacher provided me with.

He was certain now that the Jade Gate Court had, with a smiling face, tried to walk him smoothly in front of a dagger and invite him to stab himself. He could almost believe they had tried to fate bend him slightly, but he had checked that since, in quiet moments during the night, and got nothing beyond a lingering sense of personal discomfort over what had happened to the unfortunate Han Shu.

The boy had certainly been used as a scapegoat. The Jade Gate Court had 19 prisoners from influences affiliated with the Azure Astral Authority, having seized all of them, along with a few from the Military Bureau within five minutes of the initial news coming through. Initially it had been done ‘for their well-being’, because despite the best intents of all involved, those with them had largely done nothing untoward to warrant their current treatment beyond prove just as unable as most others to herd cats. They were as adrift here as anyone else for the most part, and very few originated from regions directly around Yin Eclipse itself.

“At least with the sunrise, the disgustingly inauspicious atmosphere is lifting,” someone muttered nearby.

“Don’t curse it,” their compatriot grumbled.

Others chipped in, mostly agreeing as they threaded their way across the slope of the hill.

“How long do you think this will last?” Sighing, he found himself listening in to the largest of the Nine Auspicious Moons groups, who were walking ahead of him.

“Will what last?” Fairy Liling interjected sourly.

“This walking, before they start considering movement formations,” another disciple from Verdant Flowers elaborated.

“Oh. Probably until it suits them to have made their point,” one of the Nine Auspicious Moons disciples grumbled.

“Whatever that is,” one of the others sighed, scuffing a rock into the brush with a clatter.

“Or they stop interrogating the other prisoners,” another added.

-Or whatever was fighting in the forest notices us, he sighed inwardly, not looking over to the majority of the Jade Gate Court’s group.

That was another topic of conversation that had quite a few people gossiping. The group to his left, threading through the razor-sharp dry grass and vaguely poisonous thistles, were engaged in such a discussion.

“I tell you, their enchanted arrows… one exploded a Golden Immortal from the Jade Gate Court! I saw it with my own eyes,” a thin youth with his robe draped over his head for shade was muttering.

“And yet the two I saw my senior studying were just painted sticks and rock,” another interjected.

“That’s why Bo Pei is your senior, you moron,” a third sneered, clipping the second over the head with a bushel of the razor grass.

“Hey, bastard!” the victim snapped, but then all three shut up when they noticed not just him looking in their direction but one of the masked Golden Immortals from the Jade Gate Court.

They bowed hurriedly and picked up their pace, for what it was worth – which wasn’t much in truth.

“HEY HEY!” someone yelled from the ridge up ahead. “SOUL SENSE WORKS UP HERE!”

Almost immediately, there was a ‘remarkable’ quickening of step among those who were trudging along. Shaking his head, he followed after the Nine Auspicious Moons disciples and arriving at the ridge some minutes later, found that it did indeed work. However…

“What is this?” one of the Nine Auspicious Moons Chosen Immortals muttered blankly.

He pushed his own sense out and found it was as expected: he could extend it practically for about as far as he could see, which was close to a mile in the current haze without augmenting his vision with qi. If he narrowed it down, he could double that, as others were finding as they sent waves of sense everywhere; however, detailed perception in this landscape was impossible after maybe a hundred metres.

If he really focused, he found he could push it out to three miles in a rough sphere around himself and even then, it was taxing. Few here, even those like Kong Bo, would be able to replicate that feat…

-And yet…

He cast his eye over to the majority of the Jade Gate Court, who were clustered a hundred metres away.

-And yet, they are bearing up somewhat better than many others.

It was hard to pick out the sweeping senses of others here, even for him, but the sense of those he did recognise was able to go a mile or two.

-Just a further reason to be clear that sticking with the majority is the way to go, he sighed inwardly.

“Well, at least it is something, is it not?” Fairy Dongmei muttered, coming to stand beside him, her hair covered with a cloth to keep off the heat.

“It is,” he conceded, “but I am uncertain whether it is a good thing for many of those caught up in the net of this power grab – as we are.”

“…”

She sighed and shook her head, then glanced backward towards where the forest was just visible over a distant ridgeline.

“Two groups have already caught up, from those left behind apparently.”

“I see,” he nodded; that was to be expected. “What is unexpected in that?”

“Hah,” she shook her own head.

“The larger band from the northern continent have struck off on their own and the Four Peacocks Court and the Pill Sovereign Sect have also had their subsidiary groups who were scattered through the other camps start to arrive. They are already sending messages and I understand that they are willing to work with the Jade Gate Court ‘for the betterment of all’.”

“Which is to say, they understand their worth suddenly, in these new circumstances, and know that they can carve out a big niche for themselves,” he mused.

“Indeed, a bunch of alchemists and the controllers of the second largest ‘Gathering Association’ on three continents can make a lot out of this group,” Qing Dongmei agreed.

-Not to mention, many of their more senior members came here initially and they are in the same position as us – just more politely framed.

“I take it all pills are losing their efficacy?” he suggested.

“Except for the ones I made myself on the way here,” she nodded. “Those we brought are maybe only 20 to 30% effective, which is still above most people’s laws.”

“So most are losing slightly more than they can acquire simply by having to exist in this place,” he mused, calculating that out quickly in his head.

“Those with Yang spirit roots and earth and fire laws are doing better than most,” she agreed, “but those of us with water or life roots or anything vaguely trending towards Yin are even worse off than that now.”

“It works in our favour that the Jade Gate Court is, funnily enough, not that good with fire,” he chuckled darkly.

“That is a small mercy, but in this landscape, I suppose we can take it,” she conceded, before looking around again. “You know, they came here very quickly? Knew where they were going and did so almost as soon as talisman contact became possible again.”

She trailed off and looked studiously at the landscape rather than the milling throng of the offending group. “You think they got instructions from outside somehow? Or have some other means?”

“Evidently,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “The question is, what exactly.”

- And that Din Ouyeng’s trio of oaths are still bothering me, he added in his own head.

“Mmm,” she pursed her lips and scuffed the ground. “That is just it, isn’t it?”

Qing Dongmei would be a willing partner to any allegations regarding Di Ji; it was certainly a reason she had been willing to use the compass, which was indeed thoroughly staved, he was sure.

“One thing is for sure, the Argent Hall is watching the three who were ‘rescued’ more like they are prisoners themselves,” she mused.

“Just like the other unfortunates associated with the Bureau’s people” he noted.

“Indeed,” she agreed rather neutrally.

-Ah, two of them were with groups who did kill Nine Auspicious Moons’ disciples, he recalled. Yep, they could have made a much stronger case for wanting him dead – much, much stronger.

“However, I have an interesting titbit that came out of some rather unguarded gossip,” Fairy Dongmei went on.

“Oh?” he didn’t look at her, but instead at a bird, hovering in the distance; it was the first one he had seen out here.

“The girl, she is badly injured, but she is from the Western Continent, from Liao Feng city originally.”

It took him a moment to work out why that seemed familiar, beyond her surname apparently being Liao, and sighed as bad memories surfaced far too readily.

-Song Jia and her Good Fortune Core. A tragedy of a different vein to the one wrought a hundred years ago, but one that still has ugly echoes. Talk about disasters that shame a generation, if Di Ji can be considered as the ugly rot in the Jade Gate Court, then that event is the Shu Pavilion’s dark stain in this generation, without a doubt.

“It seems that difficult circumstances haunt young women from that place when they come into contact with the Imperial Court,” he murmured. “How come she is in the Argent Justice Hall – that is a very long way from home?”

“No idea, but Hao Tai has been showing especial interest in her. She is also the only one not being restrained. I suspect because she was not really a genuine ‘Outer Sect’ disciple, but one placed in the outer sect temporarily, and her cultivation has been nearly ruined, making her a threat only to herself.”

“So she has some backing that the Hao clan are wary of,” he mused.

“Probably Liao Feng city. They are not a weak influence and while the girl is not from the main branch, it is possible she has connections to the Tiger of Liao or someone similar,” Dongmei mused.

“At least to the point where declaring her a rebel ‘outright’ might cause them issues down the line,” he agreed.

“Yes, a few of the female disciples from the Argent Hall have been quietly letting it be known that she was ‘caught up in circumstances and led astray’,” Dongmei sneered faintly.

“…”

Looking around, he didn’t see her, but that was unsurprising: now that soul sense ‘worked’ again, there was a lot of bustle but also wards sprouting between groups like weeds.

“If we were obvious to anything before, we are ten times as obvious now,” he observed drily.

She frowned, glancing at him sideways. “Ah, everyone waving their soul sense around again like it’s a long-lost sibling. You are thinking of whatever the Court fought in the forest?”

He nodded, continuing to scan the ridgelines above them, wondering why his intuition was bugging him faintly. The feeling came from his divination art more than soul sense as well.

“…”

Seeing his silence, she frowned a bit more deeply, so he furnished her with some kind of reply, just to move the conversation on as much as anything: “That they are leading us quickly away tells me that they don’t want people poking around there too much, at the very least.”

“Is it worth asking one of my scouting groups yet to arrive to take a look?” she mused.

“It couldn’t hurt,” he agreed. “Although…?”

He trailed off and walked a few dozen paces back over the ridge, feeling his soul sense bleed away again.

“Rather than that, I am more concerned about why soul sense works on this side of the hill but not that side,” he mused.

She nodded her head from side to side in agreement there. He had sent his sense down the edge of it twice already, and it shifted amorphously this way and that, making it impossible to see clearly if it was a line or a curve.

“A formation?” she posited. “Or something similar to what we experienced before?”

“If it is a formation, it is as masterful as anything I have ever seen,” he conceded looking around. “The effect is clear, but the cause entirely opaque – it would be the work of someone far higher realm than you or I… a Dao Lord at the very least, or a Dao Immortal who has spent a lifetime on such formations.”

“Or another ruin,” she added, with a grim chuckle.

“There are a few we have passed,” he noted, completing his traversal of the immediate horizon. “Even in this valley there are old farming terraces.”

“…”

“It is easy to forget that you do not come from exalted eaves,” she chuckled faintly. “Although that is not what I meant by ‘ruins’.”

“You can take the boy out of the village, but sometimes it is remarkably hard to take the village out of the boy,” he remarked, considering the slight evidence below them of the terraces and what would be a few tumbled-down walls.

“All of it is consigned to abandonment in any case,” she agreed, looking around. “The patina on the rocks and the lay of the soil is such that even I can tell this land has sat for hundreds of years.”

“It is hard and inhospitable,” he agreed. “Likely prone to awkward flooding as well.”

“…”

“Similar to back home, is all,” he mused. “The landscape is very similar to the region of Western Shu’s Nahai and Burning Tiger provinces, where I grew up.”

They stood there, watching the various groups get themselves back in something approaching good order and set off again. It didn’t take long though, only two hours in fact, to highlight a problem few seemed to have considered and which he had been pondering in the back of his mind quietly regarding why the Jade Gate Court had run away from whatever was in the forest.

Sitting on a rock, he watched a band from the Dragon Fangs of Chu, a smaller sect from the Imperial Continent, struggle to deal with a cow-sized scorpion that had happily decided to ambush that wing of their large group.

It was, as far as he could see, a beast close to the strength of an immortal. It was also winning – handily. Its soul sense was about what he would have expected in an immortal qi beast back home in truth.

“Without talismans they would be dead already,” Zi Min observed drily, from where he was sitting nearby, investigating the edge of his sword.

“I take it you have no plans to interfere?” he chuckled.

“You are still sat here,” Zi Min noted, rolling his eyes.

“Well, they are thoroughly in line with the Jade Gate Court. I am more interested to see what the other group watching does,” he replied, casting his gaze across the ridge to a second group of eight figures who were sitting on the far side, looking travel-worn.

“…”

“Your eyes are good,” Zi Min grunted.

“Their leader is an Ancient Immortal,” he shrugged, “Stronger than you.”

“Hah!” the younger man chuckled, stroking his beard as if he were the old warrior he ‘styled’ himself as.

The scorpion lashed out with its tail, shattering another bunch of barriers as they watched on, interested.

“So it is, as could be expected,” Zi Min said after a while.

“Qi efficiency is reduced, control is harder because the ambient qi is purer. Soul sense is suppressed because the strength of the world and its connection to our Nascent Souls requires more concentration to focus…?” he suggested.

“Indeed,” the younger man nodded. “Everyone’s laws are pressured…”

“Except for those who were slaughtering widely in the forests, weeks ago,” he noted.

“Hmmm, yes,” Zi Min agreed. “Although that could have been done by some other means. Talismanic avatars for example.”

He nodded diplomatically and continued to watch the group below. The scorpion’s armour was easily a match for the immortals’ treasure weapons, making up for its speed. It also had smaller scorpions, maybe the size of cats and dogs, supporting it, harrying the edge of the-

The grey jade-coloured sword scythed down, out of the sky, smashing into the carapace of the creature, and shattered like glass.

“Interesting,” he looked along the ridgeline to where two seniors from that sect and a pair from the Jade Gate Court had arrived and intervened.

The scorpion looked in their general direction-

He reinforced his defences on his mind as it shook its body, emitting a ferocious soul attack that made the valley ring like a bell.

- I guess it is no longer willing to sound out its food, he mused.

-The question is, is it a clone or is that just the soul manifestation.

That was the question in his mind anyway. This was an ambush predator; no way was it going to risk its main body on unknown prey like them. That was the main reason why the group below was having such difficulty: they were treating it like it was the beast’s corporeal body.

With a scream, two of the disciples were impaled, stung by its brood, and the creature scythed out with its claws, twisting the ground a-

The entire space around it shook as if a huge bell had just been dropped right on top of it. A balding man with a beard had jumped off the ridge on the far side and landed right on the scorpion's back, grasping its tail and preventing it from killing the unfortunate disciple even as his staff blocked its claws.

Flattened to the ground, the scorpion thrashed for a moment and then crumbled into dirt, vanishing.

“They were fighting its soul manifestation all along…” Zi Min suddenly looked uneasy.

“Indeed,” he nodded. “That thing is not affected like we are. It cannot fight an Ancient Immortal, but it can certainly run away if outmatched.”

Looking down, the new arrival's juniors were descending the hill. The man who had saved them was offering replenishment pills to those who had been fighting. A remarkably selfless action when all was said and done.

“He offers pills. How very upstanding,” Zi Min chuckled.

“Yes, not everyone is an asshole by birth,” he shrugged.

-Body Refinement Cultivator, and an Ancient Immortal one at that.

“I am surprised, Sir Cang, you are willing to sit here while juniors struggle so,” a voice echoed down the ridge.

He glanced along and saw that Hao Tai and several of the Argent Hall group were also now showing themselves. The group below were looking up in their general direction – mostly they just seemed relieved to have been saved, but two glared in his direction.

“I will enjoy the day I can test my blade on that boy,” Zi Min sneered.

“Best wear your thickest set of fire retardant underwear then,” he chuckled darkly. “There is a reason he is willing to mouth off like a bitch.”

Zi Min just spat on the ground and glowered. It was no secret that anyone who ‘killed’ a core member of the Hao clan would be cursed by Hao Ghost Fire. Anyone who killed them who didn’t die from the Ghost Fire that was sealed in their souls at birth would be marked by it for the rest of their life and hunted by the Hao clan.

That also gave them a link to the gatekeeping treasure of the Argent Hall – the Ghost Fire Argent Lamp, which was the other reason they could be so rampant. If they died, their souls still had a chance to be saved thanks to that Lamp, according to his Teacher. The gatekeeping treasure of the Hao clan formed the heart of the Argent Hall and could touch the samsara at considerable cost. He could weather that headache, thanks to his backing, but others would not be so lucky and Zi Min’s own sect would not thank him for causing them such a headache.

The lamp and the fire had been a final gift that their old ancestor had left behind to protect the clan before he went off to war, according to Ancestor Bronze. Hao, the ‘Ghost Fire Celestial’, as he was now known, had never returned, so disgusted had he been with events that transpired afterwards. While he had never forced his clan, who had sided with the Dun clan, to acknowledge their crime, he had also refused to give the new Dun Dynasty and their first Emperor any face – telling his descendants that they could do as they would, his inheritance was theirs – if they could grasp it.

The Hao clan’s status had not fallen quite as much as the Ghost Fire Celestial had hoped, since then, his teacher had confided in him while recounting the tale. The other old elders of the Hao clan from that era still lived and two of them were World Venerates, even if they rarely left the depths of the vast maelstrom beyond the realm wall of Eastern Azure, where they cultivated. Those elders had eventually been convinced to step in and salvage most of what the Ghost Fire Celestial had abandoned and formed the Argent Hall with it.

“What am I, their grandmother?” he called back.

Zi Min laughed and loudly added - “That scorpion clearly gave no face to your Imperial Hall, did you not see it waving its ass around all over? Where were you when it was giving such insult?”

The group below had the grace to look a bit shifty, although a few also scowled, because he had basically insulted them as well, not that it made much odds. The Argent Hall just waved their hands and made some obscene gestures, dismissing them as ‘only that much’ to those who had come up to join them.

-Perhaps that scorpion might come bother them, he prayed inwardly.

Setting the idiots out of his mind, he considered the new arrivals, who were a hodgepodge. All of them were travel-worn, injured and with slightly haunted looks in their eyes. Their leader, the bald, bearded older man, just looked up at the ridgeline and nodded slightly before returning to looking over the group.

“It seems we should go down and at least say hello,” he sighed, standing up.

The others had clearly had the same thought, because by the time they got to the bottom of the valley, Hao Tai and a few other Argent Hall disciples had started down the slope as well.

“Senior Cang,” the bald man, who he noted was making no effort to disguise his age, which was close to his own, bowed politely. “This humble self is Xin Dai.”

“Brother Xin,” he bowed back, not recognising the name.

The other man made no comment on his having sat out the fight, but instead just looked around at the group that was with him for a moment before looking back at where the scorpion had been.

“A difficult opponent,” was all he said in the end.

He nodded, considering the rest of the group. They were not from one sect, by any means. Two had short hair and beards marking them as being from either the Western or Eastern continents unless someone had tried to deliberately give them disgrace. Three others, including a woman, being helped along by a tall youth wearing stained robes of the Ran clan, all had evidence of serious cultivation injuries. Despite that the Ran clan cultivator was also an Ancient Immortal, albiet one who had only broken through very recently.

None made any move to introduce themselves and he noted they looked with some distaste at the Argent Hall and Jade Gate Court groups who were approaching.

“Senior, senior,” Hao Tai bowed politely to Xin Dai, “I am Hao Tai, of the Argent Hall, one of the leaders of our large band.”

“Xin Dai,” the bald man nodded, again very politely.

“And your companions?” Hao Tai asked, skimming the group.

“They are my travelling companions. If they wish to introduce themselves to you, they may,” Xin Dai said politely.

“…”

There was silence until the two short-haired men spoke.

“I am Jiang Yong,” the first stated, again with a scrupulously polite bow.

“I am Won Shin,” the second bowed.

“…”

Hao Tai glanced at the others, who all just stood there in silence, making no move to introduce themselves. The woman actually looked at the ground, deliberately avoiding his gaze.

“A woman, travelling all-”

“Enough,” she rasped softly. “I have nothing to say to you.”

The badly scarred youth wearing Ruo clan robes stepped forward as Hao Tai narrowed his eyes.

“My companion… has said… she has nothing… to… say to you…” the man hissed, his voice sounding like he had gargled acid at some point.

“Brother from the Ran-” Hao Tai bowed, sounding a bit solicitous even though he had just sent out his soul sense to gauge out the whole group now, bar Xin Dai.

“…”

The man stared at Hao Tai for a moment and the other had to take a step back as their soul senses briefly touched and Hao Tai came out much worse, in a polite enough way. Xin Dai made no overt comment, but he had certainly noticed the slight because he took a smooth step forward between Hao Tai and the woman.

“Daoist Xin… perhaps we… do… not need to join this group,” the woman rasped softly.

“You require treatment,” the older man sighed.

“Even so…” she murmured.

Hao Tai scowled a bit, but under the eyes of everyone else, it was clear that he had been a trifle presumptuous and, unless he wanted to pick a fight with two Ancient Immortals, had to back down.

-That said he is someone to nurse a grudge and clearly these few are aware of our identities, even if they are not keen on publicising their own, he mused inwardly.

On the face of it, it was interesting, because the Ran clan had strong links to the Imperial Court and yet the youth clearly had no care for the Argent Hall. The final figure, an Immortal wearing the robes of a sect he didn’t recognise, had said nothing and was happy to just bow politely and go with the flow it seemed. That said, the intent on him was just as wary as the woman, who had been a Chosen Immortal before her injury, which seemed to be related to her meridians and weirdly enough put him in mind ever so slightly of the oppression of the previous night’s sky.

He stood there in silence, looking at their surroundings as the others harvested their slim pickings from the fight. Xin Dai and the others showed no interest in the cores, half of which he noted went to Hao Tai and company, without much complaint.

Even after the others had started back up the ridge, Hao Tai still trying to politely coax information out of Xin Dai and his companions, the two of them stood, surveying the site of the combat.

“It seems we have gained more lost sheep,” Zi Min said eventually.

“Indeed,” he nodded.

“The small scorpions were the real thing,” he mused, picking a dead one, now devoid of its core, up by its tail.

“Teaching its young to hunt perhaps?” Zi Min suggested, peering at it pensively. “Though there are surely easier prey than us out here.”

“…”

He looked sideways at the younger man.

“Are there, though?”

“…”

Zi Min sighed and sheathed his blade, shaking his head as they both turned to follow the slope.

~ Lin Ling – Arid Badland valley ~

The trail itself was not hard to follow; even had she not been blessed with her newfound affinity for this land, Lin Ling had to admit she could have followed it blindfolded. The passage of several hundred cultivators was an event that left… unsubtle marks on the landscape. In the end though, it was a surprising person they found, about ten miles along the trail, camped beneath some trees on a good vantage point overlooking the distant trail.

Teng Chunhua.

She was sat there, poking a small fire and cooking some foraged roots, several rodents and serpent, to all intents waiting for them. The older woman, who was travel-worn, a bit singed and wearing a grass cloak for camouflage also looked tired and annoyed – though that was a common theme at this point.

“I am surprised you are not captured,” she remarked, noting the other woman quietly sliding the talisman she had been holding back into her wallet.

“Hello to you too,” Teng Chunhua grumbled.

“I am glad you are alive and uncaptured,” Juni murmured after a moment.

“Me too,” Teng Chunhua agreed. “I only survived by blind luck as far as I can see.”

“…”

They both glanced at her.

“I am glad you survived as well,” she added, staring at the other woman, letting the various instinctual intuitions do their thing.

Juni sighed and sat down by the fire, after Teng Chunhua waved for them to join her.

“Are you going to sit, Ling? Or stand there peering at the landscape as if it ate your cow?” Juni nudged her.

Realising she had been doing that, thanks to the blood in a way, she exhaled and took a seat by the small smokeless fire as well. They had only found this place because of Juni in any case.

“How did you avoid… whatever happened?” she asked eventually.

“Random luck,” Teng Chunhua grimaced, her eyes reflecting a faintly haunted expression she was familiar with, having seen it quite a bit in her own memories and those of Juni and Han Shu after they escaped the depths.

“There… was a big demon, three of them in fact, called Ur’Vash according to Han Shu. One exploded a tree we landed on while trying to flee the battle behind us. I was thrown into the under-story, scrambled around for a few minutes and then all hell broke loose – when I came to, there was silver fire everywhere.

“Luckily I had a Moon Rune Ward that can isolate presence for a short while. I managed to use it and just hid, playing dead,” Teng Chunhua grimaced, pointing to the talisman around her neck which was carved into a flat piece of blue-grey rock that might once have been a pot made of qi-repelling stone in a past life.

“How did you manage to nurse that along this far?” Juni murmured.

She had to admit to being impressed as well. Those were not easy to acquire, at least the legitimate ones, and even more tiresome to use. For them, as they had been, it would have been impossible, requiring at least a Golden Core foundation just to have enough qi.

“You say it like those things are easy to use,” Teng Chunhua grumbled. “It takes about 80% of my qi to activate, I can’t do anything else while it’s on, it only works on one person and I had to burn my vital qi through my mantra to maintain it up to this point – hardly ideal.”

-Which is fair, she acknowledged, watching the fire as Teng Chunhua let the talisman, which was no longer active fall again.

Everyone had their survival options in any case, which they didn’t really talk about to others. Hers had been the ‘Skitter Leap’ talisman, now in the possession of Di Ji. Juni’s had been used during their initial flight and Han Shu had exhausted all three of the forbidden pills he had long before this point.

“Fat lot of good it did; you still found me anyway!” Teng Chunhua sniffed, giving the fire another poke.

“Ah…” Juni nodded. “Well, I was using a divination art and it pulled me towards this point as being marginally more auspicious than any other rock spider or scorpion infested hilltop in the vicinity.”

“Figures, even in their absence the local wildlife here is out to get you,” the other woman sighed.

“So what’s the deal with your appearances?” Teng Chunhua added eventually, “I nearly used a talisman on the pair of you, thinking you those… demons, the Ur’Vash. If I didn’t recognise your qi signatures – you look utterly demonic.”

“How come you know what they are called?” she asked.

“Han Shu somehow knew the name for them,” Teng Chunhua shrugged. “Nobody really had the time to ask in the mayhem after we… retreated.”

“It was rather chaotic,” Juni sighed, considering the fire.

“So, what happened to the two of you?” Teng Chunhua asked eventually.

“I…” Juni paused, presumably to order her thoughts before continuing. “I got attacked by a spider then buried by Lin Ling’s Heaven Fall talisman for fates know how long, clawed my way out, found her fighting the Ur’Vash and we fled up the cliffs, then looped back around. By that point the ruined valley was crawling with forces so we hurried after you as best we could.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, picking up the thread of the explanation at that point. “Once we extricated ourselves from the mess in the valley, our clothes were largely ruined. Thankfully once we scavenged some stuff from the dead and used what remained of our stealth talismans and arts we were able to get by largely unnoticed thanks to that bizarre ward they were using.”

“They seemed largely disinterested in two female Ur’Vash running around,” Juni agreed. “We patched ourselves up as best we could and started after the rest of you.”

“Here,” she passed over a Qi Refinement heart core to Teng Chunhua. “Use that to recover. They are much more effective than most of our pills at this point.”

“Thanks,” Teng Chunhua nodded and started to absorb qi from it.

“So, what happened on your side?” Juni asked after a long pause.

“As I said... I am not sure,” Teng Chunhua sighed deeply. “We hid for a while, then had to move because of the army of demons, at which point we snuck over the ridge, ended up mired in small bands then ran smack into a full blown tribe or something who chased us down as if we were the demons. After that, we ran away until one of their attacks exploded a huge tree.

“I was thrown off, scrambled around and tried to find the others, only to see them get attacked by the Ur’Vash who chased after us. There must have been some kind of soul attack at that point because when I came around my mantra was barely keeping me alive and the entire forest was being consumed by silver fire.

“I used that rune and a forbidden art to protect myself from the worst of it, but before I was fully recovered a bunch of other cultivators came…” she trailed off, looking at them with frustrated eyes.

She felt her stomach twist, so it had gone much as they predicted.

“I was going to go forward, but then more Ur’Vash arrived all around me so I could only keep hiding. The cultivators cleaned up the battlefield, then the Ur’Vash attacked them in force, presumably before they could finish fully. To cover their retreat, the cultivators set the whole forest on fire, near enough, although I think the Ur’Vash killed quite a few.”

“And after that?” Juni frowned.

“At that point, all I could do was try to get out of the forest in the confusion or be burned to death. I only got as far as one of the rocky outcrops in the transitional zone though. The cultivators retreated to the rocky hills beyond the transitional zone. I assume you found that point; it was not… unsubtle.”

“We did,” Juni nodded along with her.

“The Ur’Vash didn’t follow, beyond shooting some more arrows, but I was basically stuck right beside them.”

She trailed off, looking at the pair of them, unease clear in her eyes.

“What about Han Shu?” Juni asked

“I found the broken storage talisman…” she added.

Teng Chunhua stared at the fire in silence for a long moment.

“They… I am not sure initially, but on the hill, I saw them drag him out and have some argument between a bunch of sects. Most of them I didn’t recognise beyond the Jade Gate Court, Argent Justice, I think Pill Sovereign Sect arrived as well – by large scale teleportation. I was too far away to see what the problem was… but they had some kind of big face off. I didn’t see the others obviously, just Han Shu, but there were quite a few bodies being hauled out of the forest in their flight.

“Han Shu was being held by the Argent Justice sect and the Jade Gate Court. A woman brought out a mirror and they made Han Shu put his hand on it-”

“And then?” Juni’s tone was odd, far too placidly neutral to be normal.

“The mirror exploded, the woman collapsed and I got a really bad feeling for a moment. It was like an enraged eye was staring out of the sky,” Teng Chunhua looked at both of them, the unease and worry plain on her face now.

“And after that?” Juni asked.

“I… they had some argument, the ones holding Han Shu did something and he collapsed—”

“What.”

It took her a moment to realise it was her own voice that had spoken. The air was flat and the land humming faintly below her as if trying to attune itself to her anger. It took a supreme effort, but she got the involuntary and reflexive upwelling of rage back under control. The qi in her dantian surged and rippled, pulling around her meridians like a viscous tide.

“They killed him?” Juni’s voice was suddenly dripping with darkness. The heat of the afternoon grew oppressive, like a shadowy blanket around their surroundings.

In that instant the anger in the memories abruptly cooled and nearly slid backwards in her mind’s eye. The same shadowy manifestation of darkness she had seen that one time when Juni nearly killed that Dao Seeking disciple from the Argent Justice Sect was reflected in her eyes.

The darkness of the depths. The mark of the suppression of the deep places of Yin Eclipse, etched into Juni’s soul, somehow called forth by her mantra. She knew it because it existed within her as well, although not quite in the same way.

“Calm down,” Teng Chunhua was sweating slightly now. “I am pretty sure he isn’t dead.”

“How can you be sure?” she hissed.

“Well, after he collapsed, the group that was associated with the woman and the mirror started getting really worked up, accusing the Jade Gate Court of giving them no face; saying that justice was ‘only for the Jade Gate Court and not for others’,” Teng Chunhua muttered.

“Sounds familiar,” Juni sneered and spat into the fire herself.

“One of the group with the mirror threatened to kill Han Shu, to regain his honour. Tried to stab him with a spear, only to be blocked by the Jade Gate Court directly,” Teng Chunhua finished her recounting, looking unhappy. “Basically, the Jade Gate Court and the Argent Hall prevented the others from killing him. But, well…”

“What of the sword?” Juni asked, even as she was about to ask what seemed to be implying by there being ‘more’.

“Sword?” Chunhua frowned and looked distant. “The sword he was carrying got broken, I think the Ur’Vash actually did that, although I might be mistaken in that recollection – the Argent Hall claimed most of his stuff. He had some kind of holy tablet which seemed to be what the argument was over? I mean I didn’t know he had that tablet; I was honestly expecting the sword to be…”

Teng Chunhua trailed off, looking from one of them to the other. For her part, she was struggling to avoid turning and hitting her head off the tree they were sat under. Juni’s face was flickering between anger, shock and concern.

“The tablet,” Juni muttered. “I forgot about that…”

“…”

She nodded, because she had actually forgotten about it pretty much as well. Its aura was such that taking it out was utterly inadvisable, they had come to conclude, and after they had gotten out of the darkness Han Shu had never so much as mentioned it. Then they had met up with the Argent Justice sect and it had been thoughtfully consigned to the depth of his talisman and never mentioned again.

-Because you never could be too careful.

-Humans are even greedier than ‘the people’, a later voice sneered, its voice laden with hate.

-Thieves of all, another hissing voice pitched in.

-Shut it, not helping, she shot back at them.

-The primate Han Shu got some method that allowed him to cultivate… Akin to blessed Juni’s means, one of the old memories gently reminded her.

-Ah, she could see what had happened now, grimly.

“I bet they initially sought to use Han Shu as some kind of scapegoat and then discovered via the Argent Justice Sect that he had a treasure. Someone probably tried to poke at his talisman, got angry at the anti-theft wards and then broke…”she trailed off.

-Wait, ‘blessed’ Juni? She caught what it had just said a second too late to query it before it vanished and cursed in her heart; they kept doing that. Saying throwaway remarks then never explaining them, it was infuriating at times.

“Broke it, yeah,” Teng Chunhua agreed. “I am not that up on the sects of the southern half of the Imperial Continent – but the parent influence of Argent Justice Sect is the Argent Imperial Hall, although it’s usually just called the Argent Hall – and they were clearly aligned alongside the Gate Court. I doubt they would know high rank talismans all have anti-theft wards on them.”

“…”

-Di Ji… and Din Ouyeng were both part of the Jade Gate Court.

“Din Ouyeng,” she murmured. Those memories were back, no longer doing weird things, mostly thanks to the forceful nature of the blood’s memories she suspected.

Juni glanced at her, her face a mask at this point.

“So, Han Shu might be alive?” Juni sighed at last.

“Well, the Jade Gate Court seemed unwilling to let him die,” Teng Chunhua grimaced. “That said…”

“At least there is some good in there,” she conceded, her mind racing.

“Yes, but you have no chance of getting him out of there,” Teng Chunhua sighed, scrubbing a hand through her hair suddenly looking older – and frustrated. “I followed them as best I could but there are close to 400 cultivators in that band. Over a dozen Ancient Immortals, dozens of Golden Immortals, easily 100 Immortals and twice as many again below that…”

“We gathered,” Juni nodded grimly.

“It feels like we are being mocked somehow,” she said eventually. “We got through all that and nobody died. We even got stronger… yet in the end what do the cheating fates do? Dump Han Shu right in the lap of a bunch of young nobles to get robbed.”

Teng Chunhua just nodded and poked the fire as they sat there in silence.

“What did you mean earlier?” she asked, finally getting back to that point. “You seemed to imply that there was more?”

“More?” Teng Chunhua frowned.

“When you said that the Jade Gate Court and the Argent Hall were keeping him alive…” she frowned.

“Oh...” Teng Chunhua nodded. “Yes, we have gotten a bit off topic.”

“I… I did manage to catch up to them for a bit, once it became clear that soul sense out here was thoroughly obfuscated for some reason.”

“…”

“That will be the Ur’Vash,” she nodded. “We can explain that later; it relates to totems they have. Anyway, you managed to catch up to them for a while?”

“Yes, I scouted the edge of their group a little, talking to a few of the groups who were moving to join them once. I learned three fairly useful bits of information. Outside connection is possible again, at least for some sects, the big ones. Their group is huge, but it is not at all cohesive and the big sects are all targeting anyone associated with the Bureaus.”

“Ah,” she grimaced and Juni narrowed her eyes pensively.

That last bit, it made sense to them – if ‘Juni’ and ‘Han Shu’ were walking around with scary scores on their talismans? However, the way Teng Chunhua suggested it, it made her feel like there was something more.

“Did they say why?” Juni asked.

“Yes,” Teng Chunhua sneered. “From what I could gather, they had communication from the outside. It looks like the Bureau and the Imperial Court have come to some kind of blows over the trial. Anyone who is affiliated with the Bureau is a target at this point. The main group had almost a dozen prisoners and the second group was claiming that Han Shu was a rebel who had conspired with others to murder, pillage and subvert them. The evidence cited was…”

“The huge stack of pills in our storage talismans,” Juni interjected before she did, reaching the same ominous conclusion.

Teng Chunhua just nodded, and continued: “It turns out that a lot of influences ran into serious troubles before they ever got in here, the brute force to the inner valleys, much like the Argent Justice sect. Thereafter, all sorts of bad things have happened in here to others. The result is that there is a lot of misfortune going around and not much blame to spread.”

“They are blaming the Hunter Bureau for all this?” she blurted out, incredulous.

“Yep, and they used Han Shu and all the pills we had from that chaos in the ruin,” Teng Chunhua nodded grimly. “The group as a whole is not at all unified – the Jade Gate Court are leading it, seemingly using the Bureau as a scapegoat for all the misfortune that has occurred. Accounting that some of that may be ill-mannered rumour, I heard it enough times to make it pretty likely,” Teng Chunhua sighed.

“Shit,” Juni nodded, looking worried.

She had to agree there: that was not good news. It made easy infiltration difficult as well, because people missing talismans might be even more suspicious.

“So, they haven’t killed them because of our scores,” Juni hissed.

She could only nod at that. It made sense. The highest ranked score in the trial belonged to people from the Bureau. They made easy targets and there was a lot of political ill will between the Court and the Azure Authority anyway.

“But the others would also have had that,” she pointed out, for what it was worth.

“Yeah… I didn’t see anything of them, and there was no easy way to ask regarding them in either group. However, I did see an old friend,” Teng Chunhua’s face twisted faintly and her own killing intent finally showed its fangs for a brief second before vanishing again.

“An old friend?” Juni raised an eyebrow.

“You remember that Sheng Zhao?”

Juni looked blank, as did she.

“He was the one you nearly killed in the courtyard, when our groups joined,” Teng Chunhua clarified.

“Ah,” now she placed him.

“Him!” Juni narrowed her eyes. Her killing intent bleeding back out for a second as well.

“Yes. Him,” Teng Chunhua sneered faintly as well.

-Oh, he was the one who tried to kill… and accused the others of being rebels based on what they said. She hadn’t done much listening to those early campfire chats. Even then her mental state had not been the best.

Thinking through the disparate pieces, she could see what might have happened.

“They knew where to come. They teleported right on top of them.” she mused.

“They did,” Juni narrowed her eyes. “Han Shu made a very good showing there and I revealed the sword spear. That group and some others ran away didn’t they...”

“…”

They sat there in silence, as she continued to let a part of her skim the memories for things that might be useful to their current predicament until Juni spoke again.

“As I see it, two things happened,” Juni frowned, poking the little fire again. “Either one of the group somehow sold us out…”

Teng Chunhua looked genuinely affronted, the instincts supplied – not that she had personally ever thought the older Herb Hunter was false or the one who might have done so.

“Or they got pushed to a point where they tried to call for help?” Juni mused.

“There was a hell of a fight,” she acknowledged, thinking through what might have occurred.

“The obvious candidate is actually Hao Jun,” Teng Chunhua sighed, “He is from the Hao clan and the one who had the most concealed methods.”

“Hao Jun called for help and whoever he called died?” she postulated. “Others in his group came after? Either to help him or just to investigate, found Han Shu, learned of the treasure and drew their own conclusions – or were influenced by someone like that Sheng Zhao or some of the others who survived.”

Teng Chunhua nodded and they sat there in silence, listening to the crackling of burning twigs until she spoke again.

“Look,” Teng Chunhua sighed, setting aside her gourd and staring at them both. “I know I’ll probably slow you both down…”

They stared at her, but the older woman just looked sad now. “I- Well, Han Shu was a friend, I suppose. We worked together a few times on missions over the years. I can’t say we were ever close but he was a good sort and an excellent hunter. I am affiliated with the South Grove Hunter Pavilion much more so than the school and my talisman is just as full of all sorts of pills as Han Shu’s was. Those bastards would likely have seen me dead had I been caught, especially the ones associated with that Sheng Zhao.”

“…”

“If you will have my company, I’d like nothing better to than to tear some of those bastards down to size,” Teng Chunhua said morosely, spitting into the fire. “Not that I can see a way to do anything to that huge blob of cultivators, especially if they ever recover their soul sense.”

“…”

“Of course,” Juni nodded, without even appearing to think about it.

-Ah, her divination art is probably as good as my instincts… and those were telling her a lot about Teng Chunhua: she was enraged, albeit hiding it really well; she felt genuinely bad over what had happened to Han Shu and possibly the other three as well; and most importantly –she wasn’t hiding anything.

Teng Chunhua blinked, then involuntarily glanced at her.

She was still a little bit wary of Teng Chunhua but it was nothing really to do with the other woman at this point, she had to admit. It was more a wariness born of the baseline instinctual paranoia that was associated with the sort of land-sense the memories were providing. Teng Chunhua was ‘human’ to them and that was instantly a black mark. ‘Juni’ got a pass, because she was somehow ‘part of the pack’ as weird as that analogy was.

-I am me! I am not a lizard, she shot back at them and the more recent memories snarled a bit.

“…”

“No complaints here,” she shrugged at last.

Juni raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry, I was… thinking about what we can do next,” she mumbled, quashing the brief flash of inner annoyance that had emerged.

The edge of a plan was starting to come together. However, the issue she was running into was the memories she had to interrogate to get the final details were in the ‘angry at the world’ bracket for the most part.

“Well, not everything is bad news,” Teng Chunhua chuckled darkly.

“Oh?” Juni interjected sounding rather disbelieving.

“Well, it’s relative I suppose,” the older woman sighed, poking the fire again. “The harshness of the cultivation environment here is slowing them down. That aforementioned lack of unity also plays a part there as well. The main thing, though, is that-”

“Pills and cultivation resources are all suddenly less effective; the strength of the world is stronger,” she interjected.

“You noticed then,” Teng Chunhua deadpanned.

“Given how Juni here has been eating them like candy,” she pointed out, to get a bit of revenge for earlier.

Juni, however just ignored it and nodded a bit awkwardly.

“That’s why I am here cooking gourds.” Teng Chunhua added helpfully. “The rodents tried to swarm me earlier and I refuse to eat spiders on pure principle. The cultivators have been exterminating half the things they encounter, probably to get resources to recover. A lot of them teleported here in big groups and that took a lot out of them.”

“How come they are not teleporting now?” Juni mused, accepting a gourd that Teng Chunhua passed to her.

“Qi efficiency, from what I was able to gather. Most of them seem to have teleported here from the north-west. They were exploring a ruined town and settlements, rather like the one we found.”

“Ah,” they both nodded at that.

Teng Chunhua finished the rodent and tossed the remains back into the fire. “Unfortunately, while they seem to be sorely lacking good landscape scouts-”

“Unsurprising,” Juni nodded. “That’s not a skillset or a background that provides easy access into most big sects.”

“Quite,” Teng Chunhua agreed, poking at the fire pensively again. “However, following in their wake will still be dangerous, especially once they recover their soul sense. You said that was the Ur’Vash?”

“Yes, they have special formations – experts in feng shui. They use it to…” she caught herself before she explained a few things she should have no right knowing and instead went on. “We saw the totems as we went through the forest, the drums and the like. After we watched them fight the spider tribe a few times, it was quite obvious that they were restricting soul sense.”

“I see,” Teng Chunhua nodded. “That makes sense I suppose. I haven’t seen any Ur’Vash out here – until you two.”

“Ha, ha.” She allowed herself a faint chuckle at that. “Their war camps are about thirty miles east of us. We climbed one of the ruined towers and scouted a bit.”

“You can see that far? I can barely make out five in the haze and that is with my mantra,” Teng Chunhua muttered.

“…”

They sat there in silence, eating some of the rodents, which were surprisingly tasty. For all that it looked rustic, she realised Teng Chunhua was a capable spirit cook – not as good as Sana, but still better than both her and Juni.

“You said that they were being affected badly by the cultivation environment?” she mused, returning to the quandary of what they did next and how they might effect the rescue of Han Shu.

“Yes, most groups were already hard up for resources it seems. That is why they are moving as a larger band I suppose – security in numbers,” Teng Chunhua mused.

“There is also the problem that this is likely the edge of Ur’Vash territory,” Juni added.

“It is?” Teng Chunhua frowned.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “There is a huge war camp over yonder, not to mention what I thought was a settlement or maybe another camp given this landscape, in the general north-westerly direction.”

-It would have to be about the size of a decent sized village, fields… The memories told her that Ur’Vash were not that nomadic. Ur’Khal were roving tribal warbands but the other, later Ur peoples, had different origins and the Ur’Vash were notably more clannish than Ur’Inan.

“Except, those war bands were big,” she muttered out loud.

“That feels like an understatement,” Juni chuckled darkly.

“No… you are right,” she shook her head. “We are on the edge of Ur’Vash territory. There have to be at minimum 4,000 Ur’Vash in that camp to the north… and there were thousands and thousands in the forest… A force of cultivators that big will tear through this landscape like a plague.”

“I guess it is possible they might run into a decent-sized band of the locals sooner rather later,” Juni frowned. “As you said, there looked to be several camps dotted across the landscape. Unlike our compatriots, their military edifice seems to be terrifyingly competent.”

“Would that we be so lucky,” Teng Chunhua agreed.

After a while, they tidied up the site, putting out the fire, and hid it as thoroughly as they were able. With her in the lead, the three of them were able to make really good time across the rocky hills and did indeed rapidly exit the ‘veil’ that was obscuring soul sense about a mile further on.

At that point, she stopped and did teach Teng Chunhua the ‘One with what is’ art. There was no point in concealing it in any case and the other woman bought the story that it came from the same place as her jars of blood happily enough.

Once Teng Chunhua had gotten a grasp, they set off again, shadowing the trail as rapidly as they could.

~ Cang Di, Edge of the Savannah ~

When night came, it became clear they had to stop. There were a bunch of reasons for it, but the key one, ironically enough, was that having worked so hard to get control of a small army of wandering cats, the Jade Gate Court were unwilling to let it all collapse after a mere day.

It was a reminder that for all that many people here had lived quite a long time, they had never had functional responsibility to lead large numbers of people in a circumstance like this. Senior disciples looked out for junior disciples. Sects looked out for their own and it was maybe only a handful of people in any generation who ever actually made the transition to an ‘elder’ position.

Having worked so hard to demonstrate they were the ‘righteous’ seat here, the Jade Gate Court’s disciples were now finding they had to do something to which they were singularly unsuited: listen to the opinions of others and act on them in a way that didn’t make them look like sociopathic lunatics only out for their own self-interest.

Organisation was only as good as the lowest common denominator among those keeping the rules usually. It was a quandary his teacher had talked about a few times, usually when complaining about sect elders who had somehow slipped through the competence net periodically cast over the Shu Pavilion’s various workings.

Nobody had ever accused cultivator forces of being homogenous and ‘rules’ were really only as good as the examples being set unless you were willing to get quite draconian, as they were finding out. Such an event had been the catalyst for why they were stopped where they were. After a sustained battle with a pack of Immortal realm tiger beasts whose territory they had walked straight into, several disciples from the court had stood by and watched the fight play out then ‘rescued’ the group at the very last minute.

Given that was the fourth or maybe fifth time that had happened, it went down like a lead brick and they had ended up stopping, at which point mass opinion had settled on ‘well we already stopped, so we might as well stop here’ while people like Kong Bo were still trying to straighten out the conflict their sect’s disciples had nearly caused with some new arrivals.

It was an oft-made joke that if you sat three cultivators down in a teahouse, within five minutes there would be seven opinions and within five more minutes they would be seeking three new teahouses so they could convince their mates why it was absolutely the fault of the other two that the first was demolished.

“Sadly, out here there are no other teahouses,” he chuckled darkly.

As such, there was now a sprawling camp being set up in the grassland – a heavily patrolled one as well because that was the second most important reason why they had stopped.

Disguise wards and the like were next to useless at night for some reason. That discovery had come about in a manner he could only call fittingly hilarious, were he not also here, in the middle of the mess.

If the day was ‘Yang’ then the night here was ‘Yin’ in all the ways that made divination arts unhappy. The starry sky was already oppressive enough and the shadows of the grassland seemed, even to his eyes, far too dense. Given the heat of the day, only ambush predators had bothered them, but now, at night, the entire landscape was crawling with danger. Serpents, scorpions, spiders, the tiger beasts, various other packs of wild mammals and watching over it all, was the moon, which hung in the sky like a malevolent eye that stared back if you looked at it too long.

Quite a few had remarked on that and in the end, a bunch from the Pill Sovereign Sect had tried to set up an artificial sky – and found it didn’t work.

They had then just tried to block out the moon and that had nearly given the formation centre a deviation somehow. Even he couldn’t see how it was possible, which was downright concerning. At that point, it had also become clear that barriers of the scale needed to protect the camp could not sustained purely by disciples maintaining them unless Ancient Immortals got involved and suddenly the ‘leaders’ of the expedition had been faced with the choice between convincing a bunch of tired, annoyed, fractious cultivators to part with a lot of spirit stones – or just set people to patrol.

Sadly, they were not idiots, so patrols had been organised, whereupon they had discovered that most quietly expected the ‘Discipline Gate’ of the Imperial Court to keep them safe, because for what other reason had they been volunteering up cores and whatnot all day.

-Really, I hope somewhere you are weeping in anger into your very expensive spirit wine, Kong Bo, he sneered.

Off the back of that, a rather vibrant little night market had also rapidly organised itself. Not in the heart of the camp, as the Jade Gate Court had tried, but in the strata between the inner and outer camp, because most of those providing goods or expertise turned out to not be part of the ‘Imperial Court’ group.

“So this is where you came to watch the show.”

He glanced up at to see Quan Dingxiang, the Ancient Immortal from the Pill Sovereign Sect, make his way out of the night to take up a seat on a rock next to him.

“It’s close enough to the edge of the camp that I can interfere if anything comes for those I might actually devote some time to protecting,” he chuckled, waving to the camp of the Nine Auspicious Moons and the Shen clan nearby.

“…Are you protecting them, or protecting us?” Quan Dingxiang grunted.

“Only you know in your heart what you might do if that had been your Ten Suns Auspicious Cauldron they had designs on,” he shot back.

“…”

“Anyway, to what do I owe this pleasure, Brother Quan?”

“We have known each other almost a millennium and suddenly I am Brother Quan?” Quan Dingxiang sighed.

“…”

“A fair point, I would also be vexed in your position,” the younger man conceded.

“So how is life inside the glittering circle of lights,” he asked, glancing towards the centre of the camp where various tents were set up with sigils of the various Imperial Court factions.

“Fractious,” Quan Dingxiang sneered.

“You don’t say,” he remarked drolly.

“I would say you are being an ass, but I am mostly in awe of your restraint,” Quan Dingxiang sighed. “I have already had both of the Court’s other Ancient Immortals all but command me to make pills for them at a loss.”

“So the other one crawled out from behind his mask?” he noted.

“Very little gets past you, does it,” the alchemist sighed.

In truth, he had not clocked the second Ancient Immortal hiding in Kong Bo’s coterie until he started poking at various soul senses with his divination art in the early afternoon, again pondering warily the question of a hidden Dao Immortal in their ranks.

“And?” he asked.

“And what?” Quan Dingxiang sighed again.

“Did you make the pills?”

“Of course not. I got my juniors to do it instead. They were disgustingly happy to do so as well. It was almost embarrassing. I suddenly find myself counting the days until I can be done with this foetid generation; our seniors for all their faults were much more reasonable.”

“You know you are the fourth person who has said that to me today?” he observed.

“Hah,” Quan Dingxiang stroked his beard and looked amused. “Who were the others?”

“A gentleman never tells,” he shot back drily.

“…”

“You know, suddenly I have much more sympathy for the Pill Sovereign Sect’s logistics elders,” Quan Dingxiang mused, staring out at the vaguely organised chaos.

“It is hard to set aside the politics of a flag when it is all you have ever known,” he shrugged.

Quan Dingxiang said nothing for a good while, before finally speaking again. “If you do need pills to supplement your cultivation, I can see what I can do.”

“Thank you for the offer,” he replied politely. “If I find myself in need, I shall seek you out.”

The alchemist sighed and stared at the night market below them some more. It was mostly full of people arguing over badly harvested spirit herbs. Alchemists telling people that the quality of pills they were going to get was garbage while irate cultivators accused them of being scammers. Here and there, there were straight-up exchange points for goods. Quite a few were willing to compound their own elixirs rather than pay exorbitant prices. Those who had got in on that act early though, had swept up most of the spirit wine from people who hadn’t caught on during the march and were now also charging a premium on it as well.

The Four Peacocks Court was also bargaining hard there, being backed by the Huang clan rather than the Kong clan, like the Jade Gate Court was. They had basically said they would sell to everyone equally, or the Jade Gate Court could buy out their services for a very high price. It was a rather short-termist view, but it was amusing to watch the Imperial Court faction’s inner politics do its thing.

“Actually… I was hoping you would tell me about that tablet,” Quan Dingxiang muttered.

-Ah, so that is what he is after.

“Why is Hao Tai hugging it like it is his virgin beloved?”

He mulled over in his head whether or not he should tell, before deciding that he might as well spread a bit of difficulty on that side, one way or another.

“Ruo Tian,” he said at last. “I saw his name on it.”

“…”

“You are joking!” Quan Dingxiang muttered.

“…”

“Okay – not joking,” Quan Dingxiang sighed, hiding his interest well. “But then why are you interested in it.”

“The elder sister of Sect Master Tian’s name is also on it,” he said drily.

“Oh,” Quan Dingxiang eyed him sideways.

“Quite. Hao Tai is very welcome to hug it like it is his virgin bride, but if he makes her bleed, he will find the parents of the girl very uncompromising.”

“Actually, the name Ruo Tian is more problematic than Shu Liang,” he added, confidingly. “Ruo Tian was a lifelong friend of Ha Ka – among others.”

“…” Quan Dingxiang stood silent in dismay. “Are you trying to curse us all to death?”

“The Argent Hall need no help there,” he pointed out.

“…”

“Well, thank you for your conversation,” Quan Dingxiang murmured, standing up. “And as I said, Brother Di, if you need anything refined, please seek me out. Not everyone here is an idiot.”

“I shall keep that in mind, Brother Dingxiang,” he smiled slightly and gave him a departing salute.

“You make friends widely,” the shadow lying on the top of the rock murmured.

“Quan Dingxiang is everyone’s friend, so long as you remember he is an alchemist first and your friend second, Dongmei,” he chuckled.

She sighed and pushed herself up on her elbows. “Did you speak the truth there? Is Ruo Tian’s name really on that thing Hao Tai has?”

“Of course, the truth is usually every bit as damning as a lie, if not more so, especially if you deploy it right,” he observed. “Hao Tai has no idea of the devils he is dancing with if he thinks he can keep that tablet when he departs here. Others, who have read far too much, like Quan Dingxiang, and are cursed with inquisitive minds, will do all the damage there.”

“So that is why you are so unconcerned with it,” she nodded. “I cannot recall her eminence letting it slip either, or people like the Dewdrop Sage – or Lady Kai for that matter. Especially if Ruo Tian is indeed connected to it.”

He noticed she stopped short of suggesting that Ruo Tian might be dead. He was very clear that every name on that tablet was dead, but that was the kind of news he fully intended to say nothing of and hand straight to his Teacher. If others arrived at that conclusion and spoke incautiously? That was their misfortune.

“Quite,” he agreed. “So… how do you find the moon?”

“Chastening,” she observed after a moment. “This place is not simple.”

“Truer words have possibly not been spoken this day,” he quipped, drawing a cool look from her.

“The secret held in that moon is unlike anything I ever thought I would see coming here.” she went on. “I cannot cultivate using it, at least not yet, but I can certainly temper my psyche on it.”

“In that case,”—he stood—“I shall leave you to it. It seems it is the opportune time for me to go talk to a girl about our shared love of Liao Feng city.”

He cast off most of his garb and put on some old robes from back home, put a broad bamboo hat on his head and wrapped the spear up, disguising it as a staff. Once that was done, he made his way down from the rocks and back towards the middle of the camp. The talisman continued to seethe away quietly around his neck – it was almost like it was pacing, mentally.

Walking through the darkness, he reflected that there had been no further twinges to his divination art since they left the scorpion behind. He was fairly sure now he knew what that was about and it was a strange thing, to be sure.

He had been walking along one edge of their group, before they left the region where soul sense did not work, and noted a young woman with dark hair remonstrating with a group. At the time he had given it no thought, but now, looking back on it, she was certainly not among those he had seen later in the day, and in fact, he could not really recall her after that chance memory. She had only been at Golden Core from what he could judge.

The deciding factor in something being weird there, had been a quick conversation earlier in the evening, chasing up that Argent Justice disciple who had been keen to see Han Shu condemned. A few others were aware of that group and, putting two and two together, one of the Bureau hunters, a woman no less, had had an altercation with Sheng Zhao, lost him a lot of face and he held a grudge as a result. The three ‘captured’ had also been part of that group.

The Argent Justice sect disciples talked about it quite freely, because nobody expected ‘the’ Cang Di to be wandering around half the time in scruffy robes looking like a labourer, hiding his presence, pretending to be a mere immortal. They had not ‘seen’ the event Sheng Zhao spoke of, but they had quite clear opinions of Sheng Zhao the ‘person’ – someone who doubled down on grievances until he found the right hammer to see the nail struck.

They had even had a few recordings of early in their endeavours as a group and were happy to share, if only to make it clear that the Bureau hunters had been a bunch of scammers in their eyes. Sure enough, there in those recordings had been a much neater version of that woman, stood on the sidelines while several seniors argued about teleport talismans.

How they missed her, given there had likely been Kong Bo and a dozen Golden Immortals in that forest, he had no idea, but she had followed as far as the soul sense restricting region allowed at the very least, which was interesting in its own right.

-That said, too many mysteries in one go will just confuse matters! he remonstrated with himself.

Putting the mystery woman from his head, he picked his way between the various ‘stalls’ of the market and unobtrusively entered the inner camp. Finding the tent where the ‘prisoners’ were was not hard: It was the only one with four very bored looking Golden Immortals sitting at its four corners, maintaining a barrier formation.

That wasn’t his target though – he wandered on, through the camp, into the section controlled by the Argent Hall, eventually finding the girl, sat by a tent, looking listless in the company of two Chosen Immortal ‘senior sisters’ from the Argent Hall.

“You are Liao Ying?” he asked her politely.

“Who is asking?” one of her minders sniffed, looking him over.

“I had heard from my sect that Ms. Liao is here. Hearing she had suffered injury, I came to offer my best wishes for her recovery,” he bowed again, presenting the reasonably precious recovery pill. It wouldn’t help Liao Ying unfortunately, but he ‘should’ have no way of knowing that. As such, it was an appropriate gift.

“…”

They both stared at him, clearly not believing.

“Ms. Liao is from Liao Feng city, a place I spent much of my youth. I am a friend of her family and merely thought that a few minutes talking about old times might help her spirits in what are trying times?” He smiled brightly, infusing a tiny bit of his intent and soul strength into the request to make it go down a bit easier.

From their perspective he was an immortal aged about 80, and Liao Ying who was in her 40’s would undoubtedly have had seniors back home, so they would fill in the rest of the blanks without further prompting hopefully.

“We were tasked by Young Noble Hao, on behalf of our sect’s punishment elder and an elder of the Hao clan, to look out for her,” the older woman murmured, “Please do not make things difficult. She does not want to talk about-”

-Figures, he sighed. They are at least good in finding dull-minded people to act as guards to others, even if they cannot find eyes to tell insects from grass.

The roar echoed from the distance making the disciples glance up. He looked around as well, because it was a magnitude over anything they had heard up to now. Encapsulated within it was the vague strength of Yang Laws of fire and earth.

He was wondering why his divination art had told him now was the most auspicious time when he happened to glance at her and saw that her eyes were dilated and quivering faintly in fear and also subtle… recognition?

“Do you know what that was?” he murmured.

“No,” she hissed, suddenly seeming defiant.

On the other hand, it gave him an edge and he nudged both women properly with his intent, capitalising on the edge that distant roar had had.

“Might I not have just a few moments to talk with my old friend Ms Ying?” he murmured. “I haven’t seen her since she left to go to the Argent Justice sect and it was most surprising to find her here in these circumstances. You know what they say about fated meetings…”

“Humph.” The older disciple muttered. “Very well, a moment, but we will stay here.”

“There are two famous people from Liao province,” he murmured to her, using soul sense now to hide their conversation.

“…”

“I am not a woman,” he added, drily.

“Tiger of Liao is also famous…” she muttered, a touch defiantly.

“So you really don’t know what that was?” he murmured.

“No.”

He could see she wasn’t lying at least, which was a pity.

-That would be too easy.

“But… I saw what it did,” she mumbled. “It… it demolished a whole valley. Its rage killed thousands of demons. Turned the land into a yang swamp of ash and death.”

He blinked.

-Surprising… and in her aura, no falsity – And these demons? Are they what the Jade Gate Court is running away from?

Frowning, he glanced at the other two and nudged them again to make it seem in their recollections that he was indeed talking with this girl about something very inane from Liao city. This close, he could sense off her…?

{Shatterpoint}

He triggered the divination art completely, thankful that his qi control was such that neither Chosen Immortal in front of him would notice the fluctuations in his qi just before she closed her eyes suddenly.

Her hand slid out of her pocket and pressed something into his hand. “I… saw what Senior Cang tried to do for Han Shu.”

“Hey! What is that!” the Chosen Immortal snapped, suddenly focusing on them.

“Just a keepsake from back home,” Liao Ying snapped back. “I gave everything of value to Hao Tai…”

“That is for Young Noble Tai to determine,” the older woman said flatly. “You, wait here as well.”

“…”

Looking around, he wondered what had clued her on, but nothing stood out. While he was thinking about it, his Immortal Soul looked at the object she had given him. It was a twisted bracelet, melted and broken. A very familiar kind of bracelet as well, because if you grew up around Liao Feng city you learned the signs of the Liao clan.

It was inscribed with a tiger and if it was functional would actually have been a ring. They had two names though: ‘Ruin Breaker Rings’ because of their unique storage features and ‘Burning Tiger Bands’ because they were imbued with the strength of the Tiger of Liao, the Duke of Burning Tiger Province.

Every scion of the Liao clan’s main branch was bequeathed one on their name day, both as a protective treasure and also to remind them of their humble roots as men and women who clawed their way up from the bottom.

“You can access the ring, Sir Cang,” she mumbled, biting her lip so blood flowed.

Glancing at both those watching he moved with a speed most Ancient Immortals would struggle to observe and touched the ring against her blood and then wiped away the blood.

Sending his sense into the ring what he saw it was, in fact, very boring. Mostly pills and some spirit herbs, a few spirit treasures, a few spare changes of clothes which he ignored, several sets of offensive talismans – largely elemental, and a few basic formations. No movement talismans, stealth talismans, no disguise talismans or anything like that. The one barrier talisman she had was within a fraction of disintegrating, maybe good for two or three blows at the Nascent Soul.

It spoke to sustained combat and endeavour and none of it was touched by any kind of soul sense that he could detect, meaning nobody had pried into the ring since most of them were put there. Most of the pills were plundered from a dozen sects, but he had expected that. It took two more quick sweeps to finally pick out the talisman in the back, which was well disguised and not like the others

“The talisman?” he murmured.

She nodded and made a hunter sign for ‘Yang’.

-A ‘Devouring Tiger’ talisman. That was not the kind of goods he expected a Soul Foundation girl from the Argent Justice Sect to have, however a daughter of the Liao clan with a genuine Burning Tiger Band? Does this girl actually have a scarier origin than anyone here suspects?

He looked her levelling in the eye but she gave away nothing.

Turning back to the talisman, he saw that inside it was a thread of meandering mist, swirling like a bored little serpent. He sent in a thread of his soul sense-

-Monkey-mothers-milk!

He swore, although it was his own fault – she had said it was ‘Yang principle’, probably because she didn’t know what a ‘Law’ actually felt like. The little serpent had a ferocious resonance with Yang. It was so abstruse that he was left wondering if there were actually aspects of Yang Truth in there as well. There was no way to be sure though without taking it out directly.

-In any case that is a manifestation of Pure Yang law.

“This… Is associated with the thing that made that just made that roar?” he signed slowly.

She blinked, then nodded.

“It… came from the aftermath. I got it because it would help activate the bracelet… It… it… wasn’t enough,” she mumbled, looking haunted again.

He considered the talisman then the darkness. A pure Yang intent with hints of water, fire and earth even thunder. One element short of a minor cycle but that could be hidden in the innate vitality of the yang itself.

“…”

“Why would a thing like that be following us?” he asked carefully.

“The demons annoyed it, probably tried to kill it opportunistically,” she muttered.

-Truth, but not the whole truth, his divination art helpfully supplied, as if he couldn’t read her intent that well.

He noticed Hao Tai making his way over.

With an inner sigh, he drew the problematic contents of the bracelet out and transferred it into his own ring. That required him to do little more than briefly align the seal matrix and use his soul sense as a bridge between the two.

He gave her ring another careful sweep, there was nothing of the slightest worth to the Hao Tai in there.

“Jade,” she signed. “Manual.”

He swept it again and saw-

-Ah-!

Two jade slips and a tattered book, pulling those across he glanced at them and nearly dropped the bracelet, because they were transcription of ‘Wind Script’ relating to teleportation formations and how to maintain them. The book was another such object, only he didn’t recognise the language.

“Dao Sisters thank you for humouring me in this matter,” he murmured, “I will pass on this matter to my old friend Brother Kang.”

“I hope I have not made things difficult for you,” he bowed politely to the two watchers, as he should, had he noticed nothing.

“We cannot accept your bow,” the pair retreated half a step. “You are not to leave until Senior Hao arrives.”

“…”

He sighed, watching from the corner of his eye as Hao Tai arrived.

“Junior brother, you are not from our Argent Hall?”

“I am not,” he shrugged, passing the bracelet back to Liao Ying who slid it on her arm again.

“…”

“Then why are you here!?” Hao Tai snapped. “I do not know your name, identify yourself before I force you!”

Shaking his head, he pulled out a bracelet and held it up. “I had heard that a junior sister was being cared for by the Argent Hall and came to inquire about her well-being. My apologies if I offended you, Senior Hao.”

“…”

Hao Tai waved his hand and snatched the bracelet from his hand, staring at it and comparing the two, looking from one to the other.

“I am sorry to have imposed,” he bowed again, but made no move to depart.

“What? Why are you still here?” Hao Tai sneered. “Get out of my sight before I thrash you.”

Narrowing his eyes, he watched as Hao Tai turned the bracelet over in his hands pensively...

“…”

“Respectfully, Senior Hao, I am afraid I cannot give you that as a first meeting gift; it is a token awarded by the Tiger of Liao.”

Hao Tai stared at him, then at the talisman, then at Liao Ying.

…

{Shatterpoint}

He closed his eyes and the moment of forward ‘divination’ that had just cost him almost all his qi and a vast quantity of his soul strength to achieve truncated, leaving him with a lingering sense of annoyance at how shameless a bastard Hao Tai was.

Liao Ying pressed the small Burning Tiger bracelet into his hand. “I… saw what Senior Cang tried to do for Han Shu.”

In the same instant sent a thread of soul sense into her.

“Can I access it?”

She blinked in shock and acquiesced in her head, biting her lip as if nervous. With a blur he swiped the bracelet, disguised in his hand across her lips and then put it in his pocket as fast as he could, sneering inwardly at the two women.

-Want to make trouble for this Cang? I have means beyond your understanding.

Once it was in his pocket, he then re-aligned the matrices and transferred everything remotely suspicious over, taking care not to mark anything else with his soul sense. The two women were still muttering about the roar, so he dropped the bracelet on the ground by Liao Ying’s feet, taking care that there was no blood or signature on it.

“Ah-! You dropped this,” he smiled at her apologetically, reaching down as the nearer Chosen Immortal glanced over and blocked him with her own qi.

“Oh! Uh… thank you,” Liao Ying muttered her hand shaking as she took the bracelet back from the woman who scowled at her.

They talked for a few more moments about some inconsequential details of a ‘fellow acquaintance’ from Liao Feng city and then he pulled out a pill from his storage ring and begged his leave, turning to face Hao Tai, who had now arrived.

“Dao Sisters thank you for humouring me in this matter,” he murmured, bowing appropriately to the two, who were now eyeing the pill rather than him. “I will pray for Fairy Liao’s recovery. I hope I have not made things difficult for you.”

“We cannot accept your bow,” the pair retreated half a step. “You are not to leave until Senior Hao arrives.”

“…”

“Indeed, who are you?” Hao Tai sneered. “This is the Argent Hall’s area. You are certainly not from the Argent Hall.”

“I am not. Ms Liao is an acquaintance of an old friend and, hearing she had suffered injury, I came to offer my best wishes for her recovery,” he bowed again, presenting the reasonably precious recovery pill. It wouldn’t help Liao Ying unfortunately, but he ‘should’ have no way of knowing that. As such, it was an appropriate gift.

It was a weaker excuse than he might have given before, he considered, but the key thing was that it was true and there was the original question of how Hao Tai had caught on he was still mulling over.

“…”

“Accepted, scram,” Hao Tai sneered, adding intent into that made him just sigh inwardly.

He bowed and the woman next to Liao Ying picked the pill and stored it without comment.

Bowing a final time, he hurried away as Hao Tai held out his hand to look at the pill before tossing it back to the woman with a laugh and walking away.

~ Lin Ling – Savannah Badlands ~

Watching the pack of Golden Core qi beasts flee into the darkness, Lin Ling fought back a sigh. She calculated they had run about 40 miles by the time the sun had started to set. The stars that came out were mercifully the same as the previous night, but held the same oppressive tension. They had run on, into the twilight, stopping occasionally so she could climb trees to re-orientate their trail, which was not as easy to follow as it first seemed.

It didn’t help that these lands at night were not pleasant.

Threading their way through the foothills, they encountered several monster beasts that were much more actively interested in them. The serpents in particular were difficult to deal with, able to strike without warning and flee before being injured significantly if their ambushes failed.

That pack she had finally convinced to back off were a pack of some fifty something cat-like monster beasts, something like a jaguar but sporting small horns like deer. As she made her way back down the outcropping they had taken refuge on, Teng Chunhua was eyeing her dubiously as she handed the bow back to-

The distant roar made her blood surge. The memories narrowed their eyes somewhat before judging it to belong to a very distant devolved kin of one of the later sets of blood memories. The contents of the call could basically be summed up as something close to ‘get off my gate!’.

She handed the bow back to Juni, who took it and grimaced.

“I managed to kill one. They recovered it in short order and are hiding in the grass about 200 meters away,” she said.

“What was that?” Teng Chunhua asked, of the roar

“A territorial lizard,” she suggested.

“Right…” Juni also looked at her.

-What do you want me to say? It’s my lesser horned cousin or something? She complained inwardly.

“It’s a big territorial lizard?” she clarified, rolling her eyes in the darkness.

“…”

In truth, there was nothing much to say beyond that in any case, so they sat in the dark, playing visual tag with the horned jaguars, and absorbed qi. She had quite a few cores in her storage ring now, both from the odd beasts that had chanced on them during the day and from the battlefield before.

As she watched, the cycles of qi were not something she really had any control over, she was coming to discover. They just happened naturally as she absorbed things, which flew almost entirely in the established canon of cultivation she had previously been aware of up until a few weeks ago.

On the flip side, the memories found it bizarre, amusing and occasionally concerning that she, at her realm even dared to consider that there were ‘cycles’ she was qualified to so much as poke with a very long stick.

So, under their rather ambivalent guidance she watched the qi in her dantian ripple gently and spin in on itself as its density once again exceeded the critical threshold. It began to spin inwards on itself as all the qi drained out of her meridians and focused it into her dantian. The sense of oneness with the world around her kept rising as she pulled out one of the Nascent Soul cores and held it in her hands, drawing qi out of it directly now, aware that both Juni and Chunhua were looking at her.

The rhythm of the resonance between her and the world around her kept rising with every surge, the grass around the hilltop twisting faintly, and the heat of the earth, lingering from the day’s sun, flowed into her just as the vast dome of stars above seemed to push down.

She watched the qi roll around and slowly coalesce into a deep red-gold core with a faint hint of white and then red shooting across the surface. It started to spin and draw in on itself, effortlessly speeding up with each cycle as it passed 10… 15…20…25 times as she needed to do nothing but look on. When it passed 28 she found she was sweating, her body almost drawing in on itself and starting to collapse properly. Finally it reached 30 turns, twisted half way and-

“Harggkt-!”

The force of it exploding and collapsing outwards made her spit blood. The surging wave forced qi into every part of her body, cracking her bones faintly under the force of the impact and making the entire hill around her ring like a bell. The accompanying sound surged like a dull roar of an ancient primordial beast, echoing into the night, scattering edge ephemera of Yang Law with it.

When she recovered, she found her dantian had almost doubled in size as it was forced to expand under the force of the impact. Her qi settled back down and she exhaled, watching as a haze of black mist swirled away from her like ash, forced out of her pores and carried on her breath.

“Uh, that was surprising,” she muttered.

-And impressive! Thirty rotations is akin to a grade one core!

It was still a bit weird to think that a month or two ago she would have grasped that in a heartbeat. That kind of core was better than her eldest brother’s, better than her father’s and mother’s. The clan records told her that her great grandfather was the last person on their branch to get a ‘Grade One’ core, and even then it had just been a normal, ‘Heavens Bright’ golden core.

-And now… I am looking at it like it was chopped wood, she felt a little sad inside at that.

-Curse you memories, at least savour the experience for ten seconds!

“Did… Did you just abort your core formation?” Teng Chunhua was staring at her with wide eyes…

“…”

“Erm, not as such,” she coughed awkwardly and clarified. “I think I have a little way to go before that.”

That was the intuition she got, feeling the qi continue to flow into her from the Nascent Core in her hand. The memories told her this was a waste, that the majority of the really precious resource was being lost, but in truth, she had no other way to ensure she had enough qi to succeed without inconveniencing the others.

-Anyway, I have 14 more of these! She complained back at them. It is not as if we lacked for Nascent Soul Ur’Vash to shoot back in the forest or loot on the way out!

“…” Teng Chunhua just continued to look at her, until she found an excuse to shuffle some stuff around beside her.

“That does seem to have scared off the horned jaguar at least,” Juni finally murmured, breaking up the awkward moment.

“We have a while until dawn. Sorry for causing a ruckus,” she apologised, which got weak laughs from the other two.

What Juni said was true. She could see they had retreated almost 300 metres away and were clustered on a distant hilltop en masse, only their eyes clearly visible.

The memories had told her that they were mostly just tracking them through their territory and would not properly attack unless she keeled over dead in front of them, such was the instinctual dread her blood’s aura would instil in many lesser predators. Of the beasts around her, it was the memories regarding the serpents that bothered her a lot more.

Those suggested that the larger versions were problematic. A close relative of neonate serpents, the memories called them ‘Hydra’ and those who grew many heads were natural calamities and each head would nurture a different elemental affinity. The ones that lived in swamps were the worst apparently. This was the considered professional opinion of most of the memories. They had a lot in common with heaven-swallowing serpents, who were themselves close relatives of lesser flying dragons like flood dragons and star horn wurms.

The ones she saw out here mercifully, were mostly earth or wood affinity and just serpents, not having achieved their unity, as the memories termed it, and manifested a second head.

Several were lurking in the trees to the west of them from about the same distance as the horn jaguar, watching.

“If only the serpents would also take the hint,” Chunhua sighed, looking at those very trees in the distance. “At least its good practice for this soul concealing art of yours. It’s impressive.”

“Yeah, it was able to mask us from that old Ur’Vash your group met after we ran into its camp in the forest by accident and I shot at its camp a bit.” Juni chuckled nervously.

“Say what now?” Chunhua stared at her dully. “You never said that! Either that you ‘met’ that Ur’Vash – or that you fought with it?”

“…”

“We didn’t?” Juni suddenly looked a bit awkward. “Ah. Well, we ran into a patrol and I shot the leader… and didn’t realise it was right next to their camp. One thing led to another…”

“You glossed over that bit as well,” she pointed out, running back through their earlier conversation, which had been kind of vague and mostly just ascertained for her that it was that Ur’Vash then they had moved on to talking about other more consequential things.

“Hmmm, I suppose that is true. The whole thing was bizarre - Han Shu being targeted by one of them, then another. They chased us the whole length of the valley seeming utterly enraged and then they exploded that last tree I was thrown down. I think there were a bunch of old Ur’Vash as you call them, who had an argument of sorts. I wasn’t that close as I said before. The impression I got, before I lost consciousness from what I can only guess was a soul attack, was that that Ur’Vash just wanted us gone, while the others wanted us dead.”

“That is odd.” Juni nodded in agreement.

-It does, however, kind of match with it being a Jotnar rather than an Ur’Vash, she considered in her own head.

“Hmmm, yes… although he was quite happy to try to pulverize us,” she pointed out.

“We were disguised as Ur’Vash and shot his people though,” Juni pointed out.

“That is fair,” she conceded.

“Well, I certainly got the impression there was more going on there than it seemed,” Teng Chunhua sighed. “I have some very weird double memories about the battle in the forest before that. That I can only put down to the soul shock I suppose…”

“More ironic, is you all seem to have picked up another weird weapon,” she added, glancing at the spear.

“Oh, that. I picked it up escaping the first valley,” she nodded. “It’s pretty good to be honest, but totally non-spiritual as far as either of us can tell. It’s just made of some monstrously tough material and appears quite good at piercing qi defences. It was able to poke holes in Nascent Soul orcs like you pushing your finger through paper lantern.”

“I wonder what face that Sheng Zhao would make if he knew you had another weird weapon!” Chunhua giggled quietly.

“Hopefully I’ll get to find out when I shove it through his stomach and tear out his Soul Foundation,” she grinned nastily.

“Only if I don’t get to him first,” Juni said with very odd half-smile.

She had to admit, that killed off conversation quite definitively, leaving the three of them alone underneath the stars to watch the night pass by, accompanied by the sounds of the plains at night.

To pass the time, she watched how her qi moved.

By her estimation it was likely to be a few thousand cycles before her qi was again dense enough in her meridians and dantian to make her core coalesce.

-So days at least, she judged after about an hour of staring at it.

The memories also provided a few ways she could speed the process up in a few ways by hunting out specific combinations of spiritual plants that could rarely occur in these kinds of landscape and consuming them along with the cores. It was useful knowledge – if she wasn’t certain that the horde of cultivators would have swept up half the landscape.

They set off again, just before dawn, when the serpents retreated back into their burrows. The horned jaguar trailed them for several more miles before moving on. By day the heat of the sun was also supplying her with quite remarkable amounts of Yang. Just walking through the landscape was delivering her enough qi that her cycles were effectively a few heartbeats, which if the memories were not continually reminding her that she was pretty untalented, she would have been over the moon about.

It did occur to her a few times that they might be just messing with her, but that was impossible to prove sadly.

The trail itself was weird, she had to conclude. On the face of it, it was the antithesis of subtle, which made sense – a band of cultivators of the scale they were tracking was akin to a plague of locusts.

That said, it was also surprisingly hard to follow just by eye alone and without Juni’s divination art and Teng Chunhua and her scouting constantly they would have inexplicably lost it several times already. Clearly someone was making an effort to clean up.

Had there been fewer cultivators and if she did not ‘know’ her peers, at least in mentality, she would have thought that someone was intentionally leaving them a trail to follow.

That thought haunted her through most of the morning until eventually, just after midday, they arrived at a shallow lake, surrounded by some slightly greener trees – a catchment between several scrub-covered rocky hills. They had clearly stopped here overnight based on the number of fires and a large pile of butchered qi beasts near the shoreline. Yet even here there were concentrated signs of general obfuscation. They might have worked better, she judged, were this place not a natural confluence in the landscape and thus hard to avoid without serious effort, and for some reason she felt oddly drawn to it.

They spread out, poking carefully around the remains of the site as she continued to try to work out why she had felt an uncommon affinity to this place.

It didn’t take them long to find the ruined buildings at any rate, proving that Ur’Vash had occupied this place at some point. There was no sign that the cultivators had poked through them either, not that they were much more than piles of rocks and a few stray bits of dry wood that might have been supports, covered in arid thorn scrub and a few trees.

It wasn’t until she was poking around the edges of a pile of large rocks on one side of the camp itself that she finally found what she was looking for, both in terms of why she was drawn here and felt such an unusual affinity to the location and with it she found the answer to her earlier headache as well.

Someone was, in fact, leaving them a trail.

“Hey! Juni! Chunhua! Over here!” she waved them over to the side of the rock outcropping.

They both made their way over from where they had been scavenging the beast corpses near the lake.

“What is it?” Juni frowned, coming over to stand beside her.

As they both stood there, she continued to poke around the crevice, carefully in case it held rock scorpions, and finally found the rock, passing it over to Juni without comment as she didn’t need to spend any time identifying it.

Juni turned it over in her hands a few times before her eyes lit up. “This… This is from the yang blood.”

“It is,” she agreed, as Juni passed it to Chunhua who also considered it.

In fact, it was more than that. It was a vestigial trace of the yang qi from when she had transformed in the valley, likely one of the Argent Justice group had sealed a bit of it for some reason, or had realised a trace of it remained on some of their items and left it as a trail.

“In the landscape like this, unless you cultivated a powerful yang law and knew what you were looking for, you would struggle to pick this out as significant,” she mused, looking around at the location.

In fact, the memories were even more admiring, because this outcropping had traces of yang rich iron ore, so anyone poking around here would likely struggle to pick it out, believing it just to be slightly better yang iron in the concentrations it was at.

“Isn’t it the qi intent from the mists in the valley?” Chunhua added.

“Yes,” she nodded. “I used a bunch of it to activate a powerful formation before the beast that turned the whole valley upside down also got annoyed at the Ur’Vash. It would have been scattered widely.”

“So, someone is deliberately leaving us a trail,” Chunhua frowned. “However, whether it’s a good or a bad thing…”

That was the question really. On the face of it, it should be someone who at least knew enough of their group to suspect she and Juni at least might pursue.

“There is nothing hugely inauspicious about it,” Juni mused. “What is a bit more problematic is that the tiger beasts by the lake were butchered sometime late yesterday. That’s the best I can do with the qi dispersal.”

“…”

She did the sums in her head and came up with a grim answer.

“We are losing ground on them, even when they outnumber us a hundred to one.”

“Most of them are Golden Core at the very least, not to mention their leaders are Golden and Ancient Immortals,” Teng Chunhua pointed out. “Even with the harshness of this land, with those numbers and shared resources they can just go in a straight line and roll over anything. I only managed to catch them even when we didn’t have to worry about soul sense because they were weaving about, likely gathering up the subsidiary bands, and not clear where they were going.”

“Since they got soul sense back, they have basically gone in a straight line bar oddities in the landscape,” she agreed.

“Then it just becomes a longer hunt,” Juni muttered, sounding resigned. “We can try to travel through the night and they are a large group.”

“We can chase those cultivators all the way to hell and they will leave us in the dust just through geomantic movement formations…” Teng Chunhua shook her head and really, they could only nod glumly in agreement there.

“And it still doesn’t solve the question of what we do if we did manage to catch up to them by some miraculous stroke of good fortune.” Teng Chunhua added sadly. “The three of us can’t do anything.”

“Or can’t we?” she sat down after checking there was nothing objectionable under the rock beside her. “I’ve been thinking about it for a good while. It…”

She nearly said, ‘it took me a while to coax the memories to give up what I needed’, but while she trusted Teng Chunhua she was still wary of sharing everything with the other woman. Likely they would need to have that talk soon but she wanted a bit of a better grasp of her before then.

“…as you said, Juni, they are a large group, and basically travelling in as straight a line as this landscape allows. However, soon we will make it out onto the plains proper and they seem to have done quite a good job of avoiding notice so far, despite this vast swathe of devastation they are leaving…”

“Yes?” Teng Chunhua frowned.

“So, what if we attract notice to them?”

“…”

The memories had, with some coaxing, coughed up quite a bit about Ur’Vash over the course of the morning, starting with recalled examples of exactly how territorial they were. The answer turned out to be very. They controlled land and valued settled society both for its own merits and as a means to an end. They were also by turns warlike and uncompromising. Products of an era in their world’s history where frontiers were still being forged. They also nursed grudges and they had remarkable depths of power when pushed.

Their arts tended towards the martial rather than the esoteric, but with a heavy bent towards things like feng shui and formations which had evolved into potent tools like the soul sense wards. To get anywhere near such a group as they seemed to be following and rescue Han Shu and maybe the others they either needed to learn how to make those wards – or attract the attention of forces that used them.

“Attract notice?” Juni frowned.

“Yes, remember that huge war camp we passed by?” she said.

“…”

“You mean the Ur’Vash?” Teng Chunhua looked out at the rocky horizon, frowning. “I suppose so but we haven’t seen anything remotely like habitation other than a few ancient farming terraces and this war camp I somehow missed.”

“Don’t feel bad about that,” she shook her head. “That was almost thirty miles east of us; I only saw it because of the sun and morning cook fires. Anyway, this area is Badlands - arid apart from these few places.”

“Yes, we have been walking through it, it’s been hard to miss,” Teng Chunhua murmured.

Pointing vaguely over at the distant buildings hidden in the trees beyond the lake, she went on, ignoring that. “It seems pretty clear that the Ur’Vash don’t live up here anymore. Either beasts forced them out or they don’t need to for some reason-”

“Or this is close enough to the Spider tribe that it’s not safe anymore?” Juni suggested.

“That is possible,” she agreed.

“In any case,” Juni added, “your idea is good and all, but we nearly lost the trail twice earlier and it’s huge. They are certainly taking steps to obfuscate distant view. They are not complete idiots and some of their number must have met the Ur’Vash at this point, the corpses we found are evidence enough of that.”

“True,” she agreed. “Which is why we need bait. Chunhua, do you have any spare clothes left that could actually make the three of us, or even just me, look remotely presentable in the manner of an ‘idealised’ female cultivator?”

“…”

“I… probably do have enough to go around. Why?” Chunhua looked in her own storage talisman.

“Oh.” Juni’s face flickered with understanding.

“We are going to do what cultivators do, loudly and with a great deal of flash,” she grinned nastily. “We are going to go kill a bunch of ‘demons’ and look stylish doing it.”

“Draw attention to their presence in the land ourselves?” Chunhua mused, “In theory that works but how do we make them buy it?”

“Oh, that bit’s easy. We just make sure that they find the corpses here!” she grinned, gesturing around at the camp. “And they even left a wonderful trail to follow.”

“Leaving aside that you’re casually talking about the framed murder of a bunch of Ur’Vash, which doesn’t at all have the potential to catastrophically backfire,” Juni replied, looking at her a touch dubiously, “Ur’Vash that live out here are likely to be pretty good trackers and can likely tell the corpses died at the wrong time,”

“I never said we were after Ur’Vash doing the heavy lifting out here,” she shook her head. “They are heading straight for the plains and I have seen at least one other haze of smoke that should represent a decent-sized settlement or war camp since then. Not to mention, we can just frame it as either a later group or a trap, we have plenty of talismans that will do the job.”

“…”

Teng Chunhua and Juni just stared at her, clearly not following.

“Come on, how am I, the herb hunter who is barely half the age of either of you, the one that sees this when you don’t? A settlement that size cannot support itself on just people shooting rats in the shrubbery!” she said, a trifle exasperated at last.

“…”

“Oh,” Juni sighed, “yes, sorry. That was stupid of me.”

“…” Teng Chunhua sighed, looking rueful. “Of course. People who live in villages have other people to go shoot rats in the trees for them, and all those people are back there or most of them – shooting other Ur’Vash.”

“Exactly,” she nodded, glad that her compatriots had not in fact left their brains somewhere in the sun to shrivel up.

“But wait,” Teng Chunhua frowned suddenly. “Most of those I saw were at least Golden Core or higher?”

-Ah, she realised that she had just taken that bit of information from the memories totally in her stride.

“They don’t seem quite like cultivators. They had several supply camps on the way out the valley with food and stuff, so clearly enough of them do need to eat?” she remarked. “They also need resources for cultivation and other stuff to support that many, just like home? Not to mention, with most of the stuff out here being close to spirit vegetation, eating it is actually a credible cultivation strategy.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Teng Chunhua nodded. “The fact that we have a small shop's worth of recovery pills between us makes that easy to forget, even if they are less effective now.”

“I see. So if they have that infrastructure, they will be more focused on defending villages, fields and such, meaning they’re not exactly as plains-wise as they might otherwise be,” Juni mused. “We, on the other hand, can hide our presence well enough to escape that old Ur’Vash, and you,” she waved her hand at Chunhua, “have that rune. Not to mention actual attack talismans.”

“The art is far superior to the rune in many ways,” Chunhua muttered, eyeing her. “I was starting to push the limits of my Mantra Seed’s recovery regarding vital qi.”

“In any case,” Juni nodded, pacing around in a circle now, “your idea is that if we do it right, get a suitable target, we can spark a huge Ur’Vash… erm… manhunt? One that will snare up the whole territory. As soon as they work out what they are dealing with, they will likely start putting up those soul sense formations and harrying the cultivators looking for them and slowing their passage. At which point we can try to find an opportunity to free the others?”

“I can still see several ways this can go horribly wrong…” Chunhua muttered, looking at them both.

“Yes,” she conceded.

There were several ways it could go horribly wrong, and both Juni and Teng Chunhua were at best barely adequate - for children - with the ‘One with what is’ art by the standards of the ancestral memories.

“That is why I am going to be doing the kidnapping part of our plan. Both of you are barely passable, but I was sticking Nascent Soul Ur’Vash with spears from two meters away, entirely unobserved, and that was two days ago.”

“Fair enough,” Chunhua nodded, “so what is our role in this?”

“Probably we go set some fields on fire and steal anything not nailed down that looks vaguely bling in some outer camps.” Juni supplied.

“Pretty much,” she nodded, grinning. “The aim here is to ensure that the hotheads get involved rather than the wise old heads, at least until it’s too late for them to stop things slipping out of control. We want angry young Ur’Vash nobles baying for human blood and going on a big warpath!”

~ Ha Yun – Edge of the Savannah, near Valinkar? ~

Ha Yun opened his eyes, sweating hard with a start to find a hand over his mouth and immense strength locking him in place.

The sky above glittered with stars that seemed to stare into his soul and make his mind want to curl up and sob in terror…

No… it was the place between the stars that was terrifying. He had seen it, briefly, he felt, when he lost consciousness before and there was no hiding from that darkness, because it wasn’t outside. It was inside him and it was enraged.

“Shit! I can’t believe those idiots actually found out how to get in there,” a faintly familiar woman’s voice was muttering nearby.

“Honoured Ash’Kald,” an older voice rumbled nearby.

“This one is awake,” the voice holding him down murmured – in Easten?

“Great, now just the others to bring around. You know those scrolls do not grow on trees?”

“Uhh…” another feminine voice trailed off, sounding conflicted somehow. He thought it was the one he remembered from before, the ‘not’ Fairy Luo.

“Okay, but you know what I mean.” The hauntingly familiar woman snapped and he experienced a weird moment of disorientation.

…

He was hauled roughly upright and placed against a warm, sun-baked rock, finding in the process that he was stark naked, very sore and also that his limbs had no strength in them at all. All around, masked figures crouched, cloaked in grass and carrying bows. Two women stood, rather underdressed in loose tunics and grass cloaks, carrying broad bladed spears, one familiar if only because he had decent talents regarding pattern recognition and her hair colour was memorable.

The final oddity that struck him, was that it was close to noon, not midnight.

“Uh?” he asked blankly, wondering why he had just thought the sky was full of stars.

“…”

“Sorry about that. It was good that you came back to us, but your timing was not the best,” Ganlan Meixiu explained, her beautiful face graced by a faint smile

“Uhh?”

He looked around and found that while he was indeed sitting against a rock. They were amongst some rocks on a shadowed rise. The stars he had ‘seen’ were carved and painted on the rock behind him, which depicted a figure holding a moon as if was a lantern, and constellations in the shape of strange animals dotted around her as if they were later additions.

“Sorry, these are not the circumstances I hoped we would meet again in,” the young woman said.

Looking around, he saw a few others sat, all naked and bound. Brother Feng was there and, he was surprised to note, Bia Meifen, along with the guards and one of scholars who had been in the depths that time and a few others scattered around he vaguely recognised. They were all unconscious, a few bound with bandages or showing evidence of recent injuries.

“You’re… not a cultivator?” he asked dully.

“I am,” she shook her head and smiled again. “I am just not one from your world.”