The righteous factions, thoroughly enraged and led on, we can see in hindsight, by the various behaviours of the Mo clan, and having cornered one of their most famous villains, keeping the rest of her clan at bay, chose not to simply kill her, but rather to capitalize on their good fortune. They demanded that the Mo clan had to pay reparations to every world slighted in the war and Mo Xiao should become the concubine of Lord Huang Gan Murong, a recently ascended scion and rising star of the Wise Emperor of Huang’s court who many felt should be honoured for his contributions that had been cruelly overshadowed by Shu Tenjin.

However, the fervour of those wronged in the war was all-consuming. Thus, they also seized all her treasures, and distributed them to those they felt most deserving of recompense while the great powers looked on. Her precious blades they presented to Huang Gan Murong as Mo Xiao’s gift upon becoming his concubine.

Perhaps matters could still have been resolved, but the fervour of those looking on was not abated and so, seeking further insult, the many victims sought to embarrass Mo Xiao and the Mo clan to the utmost and thus dragged forward 100 maidens of the Mo clan they had captured and stripped them, displaying them above Kang’s origination, finally stripping Mo Xiao herself and binding her in the sky as well, while all looked on and laughed.

Unfortunately, this stratagem was turned on its head, revealing the depth of their pit, for in that instant, ethereal words, whispering from beyond the vault of heaven, assailed a whole starfield: “How easily you forget, it seems, o ‘righteous seats of wisdom’, that you show such disrespect to our God Slaughtering Hall? This strength with which you guarantee all here to be untouched by events, having shamed our Daughter – I wish to witness it for myself.”

In that instant, a shadow descended from the void and cloaked Mo Xiao, carrying her away. Those elders who had stripped her and taken her things were all slain in its passing and every other, junior and elder alike, who had been present and seen Mo Xiao’s heavenly body, was struck blind, tears of blood streaming from their eyes.

Thus, did the third campaign of the Huang-Mo wars begin.

-Excerpt from ‘Tears of Blood – The Third Campaign of the Huang-Mo wars’

By Fei Shanxiang – Scholar of Four Crowns.

~ Lin Ling – Leaving Ajara ~

Lin Ling sat on the rooftop veranda of the tavern, watching the sunrise over Ajara, as the town turned out to be called, watching order restore itself. That had happened surprisingly quickly, once the fires had been put out and the rubble cleared. Juni and Teng Chunhua had gone for a quick look around the inner town, mostly to see how problematic it was going to be to get back out again. In a way, she could understand why both had been keen to leave under nightfall: neither was wholly confident in their disguises, although they hid it well.

However, the longer she stayed here, the more she was able to grasp from the memories regarding the soul sense alignments, and the more she learned, the more glad she became that they had stayed here. She also had an ever-deepening appreciation for the ancient ‘Stealth’ art that they had taught her.

The crux of the issue here, was that the Ur’Vash had built up this settlement over a few thousand years, according to the memories. The lifeblood of the people who lived here, who built it and maintained it, was literally built into it. The hill was not a hill; it was the ruins of previous iterations of the town. Some of the most important sacred sites for the settlement were buried below it: their ancestral tombs, the founding stones of the town, and the altars to the ancient ancestral powers they venerated.

The Ur’Vash buried their dead in mounds in the areas around the town to claim territory. Their clans and families had fought and bled over those for even longer than the town had stood here, according to the memories. It was a method they recognised from their dwindling years, before the memories that were just hate, rage and disinterest became predominant. It was how the first tribes, the ‘ancients of the first days’ as a few termed them, had laid claim to the land.

To her, it had another name – Ancestral Accumulation. Every clan had such a place. An Ancestral Land where the temples to ancestors were situated, where the dead of past generations lay, and where they could, if required, provide strength to their descendants to defend the land they had built. It was the missing link in her understanding from the memories of what separated the ‘Magus’ and the ‘Shaman’ experts of the Ur’Vash.

Magi were like spiritual cultivators: they grasped good fortune from the natural world, tamed it and wielded it like a tool. Theirs was fire, lightning, roiling earth and surging water – brutal, elemental power. It was also why they lived far away from towns like this, because they were almost antithetical to them – because of Shamans.

Shamans were closer to dharma cultivators in a way: they had a close association with accumulation and heritage and wielded powers that she would have considered closer to soul arts and feng shui. If Magi got their wild power from communing with nature and mastering it, Shamans got their strength from other Ur’Vash and the depth of heritage of their clans.

“If you sit here any longer, people will think you a statue,” Juni sat down on a nearby table on the veranda and got her attention.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, what?” Juni replied blandly.

“Learn anything?”

“…”

“I’d kick you off the roof if I didn’t think you would fly upwards rather than down.”

“Truer words were not spoken,” Teng Chunhua sighed, arriving with a plate of spirit food and passing it to Juni.

“I am wounded, wounded I say,” she complained. “We are where we are because we are who we are!”

“Anyway, we can leave easily enough; they are not really searching people, just carts,” Teng Chunhua signed.

“The rumour is that basically a new warband has shown up,” Juni added.

That was about what she had expected really. In a sense, the cultivator band was a ‘warband’ by the local terminology – a bunch of nomadic individuals scavenging off the land and leaving a trail of chaos in their wake, not really caring who they hit or why.

“The bigger problem is how we catch up,” Teng Chunhua mused. “There are a few ways we could see, but…”

“Probably. The easy way is probably the best way, in truth,” Juni interjected between mouthfuls of roast bird.

“…”

Teng Chunhua put her own bird leg down and looked, not annoyed, but disagreeing in a half-hearted way.

-We could join one of the auxiliary bands forming up to chase after the warband, she guessed inwardly, having both heard of and observed them herself in the last few hours.

“There are several smaller bands of non-Grass Stalkers that are banding together.” Teng Chunhua explained, still looking a bit unwilling. “A lot of people think there will be merits to be made if we catch up and contribute – given how much was stolen.

“There is a problem, though, because in as much as that is in fact a good and plausible idea, I’ve nearly reached the point where I will advance,” she grinned a bit awkwardly.

“Ah,” Juni just sighed and poured herself some of the fairly wretched alcohol, downing it in one gulp. “Of course.”

“It’s not entirely clear whether or not I will incur a tribulation either,” she added.

“Really?” Juni frowned, before catching herself.

She had interrogated the memories several times on that point, getting some annoyingly conflicting answers. Before her ‘blood rage’, she would not, they were certain of that. However, her integration with the blood had been pushed nearly to the point where her physique had transformed and there was the strange, almost paradoxical connection between the two moments of ‘blood rage’ in her memories.

Her spirit root was functionally that of a half-blood Ankalderon, and an Ankalderon would indeed incur a sort of tribulation upon forming its core – that was when they usually hatched from their eggs. She, of course, was not in an egg, which was why the memories were ‘unclear’.

She could end up with a tribulation akin to their own. In that case she would be confronted by the ancestral memories in some fashion. Given how problematic some of them were, and her experiences with the blood rage, that was not a thing she was in a hurry to revisit.

It was also possible that she would experience a tribulation akin to a spirit beast breaking through – sustained lightning and other natural phenomena.

Or a tribulation like a cultivator.

Or no tribulation at all and her core would just form.

In all but one of those, it would be noisy and provoke awkward questions because as far as she knew via the memories, Ur’Vash experienced ‘advancement’ tribulations only when they reached the equivalent of the Immortal Realm.

-And I am clearly not at that realm.

“So, what do we do?” Teng Chunhua frowned, helping herself to the drink as well and staring out at the bustling work to rebuild the shaman’s house. “You clearly cannot break through here.”

“No… I cannot,” she grinned wanly. “However, there is some good luck here, because it turns out the breakthroughs of beasts are not that uncommon and so lesser tribulations don’t draw much attention.”

“How do you…? No, never mind, I guess you just asked someone,” Chunhua said sounding a bit broken as she poured another cup of the wine.

“…”

She had indeed asked earlier, when another ‘Hunter’ had come and struck up a conversation. In the course of that slightly meandering conversation, she had learned that quite few travellers were passing through here to the plains beyond, which were rich in spirit beasts. It was part of the prosperity of this town, as the gateway to the great savannah proper. The other had even shared, rather eagerly and perhaps trying to impress her, that several had been reported to break through from third to fourth advancement in the previous weeks, which was why his own band was here.

“However, lightning bolts are not exactly subtle,” Juni pointed out.

“I’ll need to break through at dawn,” she shook her head. “As such, we can make quite a bit of distance in the direction we need to go – so it will not be that obvious. While this town is big, the wilderness beyond us is vast and most are going to be focused on the pursuit.”

“Unless a band decided to sweep up an easy target,” Teng Chunhua added.

“In that case, we still have a few proper talismans and I am fairly confident we can run away and hide,” she pointed out.

“So… we just ditch town?” Juni concluded, staring back out across the rooftops.

“After buying a few supplies, yes,” she agreed. “Unless you feel a compelling need to linger.”

“…”

“I swear she will fall upwards if we kick her off,” Teng Chunhua muttered to Juni, just loud enough for her to ‘hear’ as she poured another drink of the wine.

She resisted smiling, because they might actually test that, having been ruthlessly poking at her guiding this affair to their current point all morning.

-Now I understand at least why Juni kept needling Han Shu about whether he really ‘wanted’ to lead, she sighed inwardly.

…

Shopping for supplies turned out to be very easy. They bought another pack of arrows apiece, a few spare bowstrings and a few other accoutrements to make it look credible that they were hunting wild beasts and then just trotted out the gate. The guards questioned them briefly, to which she just told them they were going hunting, and what business of that was theirs.

She was learning that there was a fine art to Ur’Vash conversation. If you spoke in Easten it was either because you needed to be widely understood, although not everyone did speak it she was coming to realise, or you were trying to make a point. Travellers to other territories spoke the language to show their trustworthiness basically.

It helped that while they were not weak, they were just ‘average’ – third advancement hunters in the eyes of the guards. So, while the guards were on edge, there was only so much scrutiny to go around and it wasn’t being wasted in the direction at Ur’Vash like them. As such, the guards took their exchange at face value, because they were travellers behaving appropriately, were not obviously making a fuss, and not really any different from the few hundred others who had been filing in and out as various bands mustered in the outskirts.

Passing out through the fields, they jogged along the dirt road that headed in the right general direction of the ‘Eastern Azure Warband’ as she had come to think of it. Mostly they were ignored by the other travellers as they made their way through the expanse of rough fields with their small walled compounds and the occasional water reservoir or irrigation canal.

“How far does the soul sense ward go?” Teng Chunhua asked at last, after they had been running along for almost an hour.

“We are still in it at any rate,” she noted, looking at the other two. “If it behaves like the alignment on an ancestral ground then I guess it could go a pretty big distance from Ajara though.”

Juni, just shrugged. “No idea. If it was just a series of formations a few miles is not unexpected, but if they did something more fundamental as you imply, relating to their connection to the land, it could go well beyond line of sight of the settlement.”

“That much is obvious,” Teng Chunhua chuckled.

“Regarding that…” Juni frowned, glancing up and down the road. “Do you think it’s possible that anything from the warehouses was marked by the alignments?”

“I’d bet spirit stones on it,” she sighed. “That said, our storage talismans are all enclosed spaces. As long as we don’t take any of those items out for a while it should be fine. It doesn’t seem to be the case with the smaller settlement, Golden Grass village, though.”

“They don’t seem to have those kind of storage devices either,” Teng Chunhua added.

“They do not,” she agreed.

It was frustrating that the memories really had no ideas about why that was. As such she only had her own rampant speculation to go on.

“I guess either they don’t have experts who are skilled in those kind of spatial manipulations, or the materials used to make them are not in easy supply?”

“It is true that they are very light on the ground when it comes to metal,” Juni agreed.

“Yeah…” she agreed again.

That was, in truth, something she had been pondering for a while now. The memories again had very little to contribute there. Their kind had no need for metal, except to occasionally eat it or later hoard it. There had certainly been ore veins in the Badlands, she had seen a few, some of which had even been quarried. There had been gold in Ajara – she had seen people wearing it as bands around their arms, necks, as bands in their hair or occasionally piercings – however, it had not been at all common. Based on its colour, she guessed that had to do with status.

“Our arrowheads are made from beast bones. The bows, from laminate horn and sinew,” she mused. “And most of the armour we saw on display was carapace or hide.”

“Could it be that it’s just not worth it?” Teng Chunhua eventually suggested after they ran on in silence for a few more minutes.

“That was my thought,” she nodded. “If you can hunt spirit beasts, it’s easy to get materials to make decent weaponry and armour – they even use certain teeth as currency.”

“Indeed,” Teng Chunhua replied. “If you compare that to the infrastructure needed to mine metal, secure it, process it, refine it and transport it.”

“It also helps that with spirit beasts you can eat them, wear them and only carry back the important bits,” Juni mused. “Not to mention, can you imagine how miserable it would be to lug around metal armour in this place? Not to mention the issues with reflections and the like unless you painted it or covered it.”

All three of them shuddered at that idea. The heat was omnipresent and would only get worse. The grass radiated it, the land radiated it, the sky was clear of clouds except for on the distant horizon to the south, marking where the mountains were. Her qi ‘armour’ gave her nothing in the way of protection and while her mantra allowed her to ‘ignore’ it to a degree, it was only the yang blood that made it at all tolerable.

Both the others were sweating, even if they were not otherwise much inconvenienced. All three of them had enough experience with the Inner Valleys of Yin Eclipse to know that this could be worse… much, much, worse. The jungle in the repression fields had been worse as well, just because of the humidity.

“They clearly quarry stone locally; we have passed a few just this morning,” Juni added after a moment, still clearly thinking about that.

“And I guess if you can quarry that blue-grey stone our blades are made out of, you have no need of basic iron, or even steel, unless it’s qi-infused,” Teng Chunhua added.

“And even back home, those mines were things clans guarded jealously and controlled tightly,” Juni nodded. “The Kun clan has had conflicts with the Deng and Ha over Earth Soul Iron to the south of Blue Water City for as long as we have records about it and then two days before that.”

“But the qi density and purity of this land is ferocious,” Teng Chunhua pointed out.

“It could just be that there aren’t many veins out on the plains, or they are buried deep,” she concluded.

“The Badlands we were in before were not exactly the most welcoming place, and if they fight regularly with those tribes in the jungle, I could see it being problematic,” Juni agreed, before waving for them to stop.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Divination art is giving weird signals,” Juni frowned, looking both ways along the road.

“…”

She closed her eyes listening to the sounds of the early morning. They were subtly fewer as it turned out, compared to what she might have intuitively expected.

There were other travellers on the road, although none ahead that she could see.

“Could it be the edge of the soul sense alignment?” Teng Chunhua asked, pulling out the compass she had made that was not attuned to the blood.

“How weird,” she added after staring at it for a moment.

“Let’s go slowly. It might be that,” she conceded.

“Mmm,” Juni nodded.

They continued on, more warily now. In fact, the soul sense restrictions did fade away after another mile or so; however, that didn’t do anything for the weird intuition Juni continued to have. They ran on in silence, watching the roadside, before Juni slowed to a walk, looking back and forth with narrowed eyes.

Teng Chunhua frowned, but said nothing.

“Hidden threat,” Juni signed with emphasis.

Listening to the wildlife around them, she didn’t sense much that was off, just that it was a bit muted really.

“Ambush predator?” Teng Chunhua signed at last. “Could be one of those serpents?”

“Yeah… maybe?” Juni mused, but she could tell from her friend’s tone that she wasn’t confident in that.

“Let’s leave the road,” she suggested after a moment’s consideration, looking at the rocky rises emerging between the thorn scrub ahead of them around which the track wound.

The other two nodded, and they turned off the road, slinking into the tall grass, suppressing their qi more deliberately. All of them were pretty good at the ‘One with What Is’ art as well by this point. Juni and Teng Chunhua had been using it much like a visualisation art, which was what it was really, ever since they had learned it. Subsequently, she had to properly focus on either of them to really pick them out as they moved along, keeping to broken ground and scanning ahead.

“There are others on the road,” Teng Chunhua signed, pointing back the way they had come.

Glancing back, she saw two wagons pulled by the striped, horned horses travelling along at a reasonable lick of pace. A dozen figures, several armed, either rode on them or jogged beside them, wearing grass hats to protect themselves from the harsh sun. Most of those there were not much stronger than she was, bar two sat on a wagon that were inscrutable and a swarthy-looking Ur’Vash with red tattoos who was jogging beside the lead animals.

The three of them watched from the shadows as the group passed them, looking pretty bored, and started around the distant outcroppings and out of sight.

“…”

“A judicious ambush predator?” she pondered at last.

“Could be,” Juni sighed. “In any case, my divination art is still giving me weird vibes.”

There wasn’t much to say in the face of that. She trusted Juni’s instincts with that kind of thing well enough at this point to know when to just let the older woman run with it. Teng Chunhua also said nothing, though her body language was accepting as well. So, they made their way onwards rapidly, but stealthily, over the first of the rocky rises-

“Stop, stop! Juni signed emphatically, dropping down suddenly before they crossed over the rise.

She strained her senses and caught-

*Clak*

*Tink*

*Thwak*

*Krump*

The distant sounds of combat barely at the edge of her hearing, dampened by the lack of wind, took her a moment to sort out – at least until they were accented by the familiar sound of arrow detonations.

Crawling forward, they peered over the rise to see the carts assailed by twice their number in Ur’Vash.

“Bandits,” Teng Chunhua signed. “So not absolute rule of law.”

She just nodded, unslinging her bow.

“You think we help them?” Juni signed.

“Well, the travellers are likely to be accommodating; the bandits are likely to come for us next, assuming we can’t sneak around,” she pointed out. “And in any case, were you both not complaining about having to be bandits before?”

“Seriously, I will kick you off something before we are done, just to see if you do break the rule of Heaven and Earth somehow,” Juni sighed, unslinging her own bow.

She shook her head at that terrible joke and picked a black and white arrow from her quiver, flexing the bow. It was a martial artist’s joke, working on the principles that governed movement and intent. Man affected the technique, landing the attack and splitting the soul and body. The victim would fall to earth and the soul rise to heaven. The idea of the man rising to heaven after receiving the technique and the soul falling to earth was a metaphor for utterly improbable things happening. In this case, the fact that her ruse had worked as well as it had, and perhaps too well in the eyes of the other two. After all, if the opponent’s soul did fall to earth, what could the man do about it? Heaven would dispose of him thoroughly.

-Damn Taoist spirituality, she grumbled, sighting down the arrow.

“Use white arrows on the ones with black tattoos,” she murmured.

Teng Chunhua nodded, drawing an arrow from her own quiver, and they rapidly slunk over the rise, scrambling down into the rocks, searching for the key targets. The group attacking the caravan were about twenty strong, mostly rather irregular-looking with a mix of melee and ranged weapons.

“That is the first target,” she pointed at an Ur’Vash wearing a scrappy hide of a horned jaguar who was fighting with the lead guard, distracting them while several others dragged females out of the cart, beating them viciously as others fended off the second cart’s occupants.

Juni nodded and loosed two arrows in rapid succession. She watched as they drifted strangely in the air, arriving at their target with deceptive slowness. The attacker was forced to block one, breaking off from the guard and cursing.

Immediately, five of the Ur’Vash bandits split off and started looking in their general direction.

Crouching down behind the rocks, the three of them moved forward, hidden in shadows and concealed by their war paint, their arts and their mantras. In that regard, it was kind of an unfair fight. Unless the opponent saw them, they would run all over, chasing shadow-

A slight shadow ghosted across her instincts and she felt the appearance of a soul sense ward. In that instance, her eyes saw a figure at the back unfurling a crude banner of some qi beasts hide, holding crude variant of three familiar symbols – ‘Isolate’, ‘Soul’ and ‘State’

“…”

“So that’s how it works,” she murmured, looking at the white, purple and orange runes. “Death of the soul, isolate is unseen, state is unlucky.”

“How what works?” Teng Chunhua who had arrived next to her hissed.

“The soul sense restrictions. See the banner,” she pointed out, pulling a pot of blood out. “By the way, dip your arrows in that. It is much better than your own qi.”

“…”

Teng Chunhua peeked around the rock, nodded and dunked three arrows into the blood before standing up and loosing them in rapid succession. Two hit their targets in the chest and she watched as they flailed and screamed as the blood did its thing. The third ghosted towards the banner, putting a smoking hole in it.

“Still there,” she signed. “In any case, it’s not any real threat to us; we don’t have soul sense!”

“True,” Teng Chunhua chuckled.

Two more attackers fell in quick succession to Juni’s arrows as her divination art continued to prove its worth.

“Impressive,” Chunhua murmured as Juni downed a third one who had made it to the slope of the rocks.

“Really, this is why people shit bricks over Martial Archers,” she agreed.

Robbed of their overwhelming numbers, those attacking the two wagons were also doing much worse now. The guards had downed one and while three of the travellers also seemed to be dead, the two young females had recovered and were viciously stabbing one of their assailants to death.

The rest broke off, scattering for the rocks while the attackers cursed and the remaining archer on the carts also shot arrows after them. She got two of those fleeing in the back, while Juni hit another in the leg. Abruptly the banner and its wielder physically exploded in a small fireball, limbs, bits of banner and a bloody rags raining down everywhere.

“Put a ‘Snap Dragon’ talisman on an arrow,” Chunhua shrugged. “It occurs to me that poison would be a really good idea on our arrows,” she added after a moment’s thought.

“We have a quasi-unlimited supply of the yang blood,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s not that arrow-friendly… or friendly to us,” Teng Chunhua added. “Not that it isn’t useful, but I am pretty sure it will lethally poison us before we get a mutation off it!”

“The leader got away, along with two of them,” Juni complained, jogging over.

The group by the wagons had recovered their injured and dead and were looting the bodies of the attackers while the leader looked warily in their direction.

“Do we go over to them?” Teng Chunhua asked her.

“What do you think?” she asked Juni.

“Better we clean up the three who got away, I think. Their animals are still alive,” the older woman mused. “And in any case, what are we going to do? Give them pills to heal?”

“…”

-Actually, not a terrible idea, we have no shortage of those basic pills, she mused, pulling out a handful of basic staunching pills.

“You’re actually going to go?” Juni blinked.

“I am curious about something,” she grinned, extracting a pot of blue plant dye and red pigment.

“If they attack us, or think you’re poisoning them, I will find a way to make you very unhappy,” Juni noted, narrowing her eyes beneath her grass hat.

“They won’t,” she shook her head as she finished painting the pills red and blue. “The pigments are largely harmless anyway.”

“Right…”

Juni eyed her dubiously for a moment, then the group down below and then just shook her head for some reason. It didn’t take long for her to trot down while Juni and Teng Chunhua both started around the slope. As she went, she painted three interlocking purple triangles on her mask.

“I SEE YOU!” she called out in Easten, holding up her bow in an action she had seen the various hunters in the tracking camps use at times when they were uncertain who they were meeting and really didn’t want to get shot.

“I see you,” the heavily tattooed leader growled in Easten. “No closer.”

“Medicine!” she held up the pills.

“You leave it there,” the leader pointed at a rock near her. The archer was trained on her warily as well. The other group were staring at her dully, their eyes fixed on the golden flowers.

Shaking her head, she put the pills on the rock and backed off. One of the others ran over and got them, looking at them dubiously and taking them back to the leader.

“How we know not poison?” he called over, frowning.

“Not poison, swear on Mother of Fortune, Father of Names!” she called back.

“…”

They looked at her as if she was some strange mushroom.

“Medicine of our tribe, will help their wounds!” she added.

The group conferred and one of the injured warriors, who was equivalent to a peak Qi Refinement expert, was fed a pill. She watched at a distance as the qi in his body shifted slightly, her vision allowing her to see the wounds begin to knit together more quickly.

{One with What Is}

While they were all distracted, she used the art fully and ran back through the broken ground, soon catching up to Juni and Teng Chunhua who were now over the hill and following the trail of the three who got away.

“What was the purpose of that?” Juni asked. “My divination art gave me some really weird signatures about what you just did.”

“I’ll bet,” she grinned.

“Why the golden flower?” Teng Chunhua asked.

“You recall the shrine we found? With that white statue?” she grinned.

“…”

Both of them stared at her for a long moment.

“The Ur’Vash call her the Mother of Fortune; she is almost as revered an old protector as the ones they call the ‘Maker’, ‘Old Father of Earth’ and the ‘Mother of Earth’.”

“I… see.” Juni frowned, looking at her with narrowed eyes that promised questions later.

“Up ahead,” Teng Chunhua hissed.

Looking forward, she caught two silhouettes on a rocky ridge line.

Juni smoothly drew her bow, sighted one of them and then aimed up in the air slightly and loosed a blue and red arrow. They watched as it drifted over the hill and there was the distant sound of falling rocks.

Rather than go over the hill, because that was asking to get shot, they skirted around the edge, spotting the leader remonstrating with three more Ur’Vash who were standing by a distant campfire, looking in their direction.

Juni held out an arrow to her wordlessly.

It took her a moment to realise what she was after, then she just sighed and passed her the pot of blood directly. Juni shook her head, put it on the ground, opened it and, wincing slightly, dipped one of the ‘good’ arrows that was blue and white they had brought all the way from the jungle in it.

Her second shot arced high through the air and hit the fleeing bandit leader in the head.

The three around the fire became thirteen as others scrambled up, looking everywhere.

Juni sighted on a second one as she dunked her own arrow in the pot and took aim as well.

The whole engagement took three arrows in the end. Teng Chunhua dipped a ‘Zhong’s Sky Lance’ Talisman in a bit of the blood and shot it into the air. They watched it hiss down and detonate, incapacitating all but two of the others in a crackling sphere of lightning which she and Juni then shot while they were staggering away.

“That was… anticlimactic,” Teng Chunhua remarked.

“Why use a talisman?” she asked, curious really.

“I have over 40 of them,” Chunhua replied, sounding a bit amused.

“How?” Juni blinked.

“Well, I had a stack of them anyway; they are quite useful at dealing with bat swarms in the Shadow Forest and the valleys near South Grove and I was also the one ‘carrying’ the supply of a bunch of those basic talismans,” Teng Chunhua explained as they picked their way across the distance to the ruined camp. “The other hunters who bailed on us, wretched idiots that they were, took most of the good talismans back, but I didn’t store these in my ‘bureau talisman’.”

She held up a jade token that was bound tightly to the inside of her left forearm.

“…”

“How do you have a storage ring and yet neither of us do,” she groused.

“I was sort of wondering that myself,” Teng Chunhua muttered. “Han Shu I can understand, but neither of you two are from bad backgrounds.”

“Family politics of clans, gotta hate it,” Juni muttered. “Since I’ve been in here, I have barely had cause to think of those old frauds up to this point. I don’t suppose they will shed many tears if they think I am dead.”

“Anyway,” she changed the topic swiftly, reminded of her own cruel jibes regarding part of that saga back in the darkness all of a sudden, “what are we going to do about the ones who are not-?”

She was about to say ‘dead’, because three bandits had survived, but one made it very academic by throwing a purple and white clay pot at them.

The explosion picked her up off her feet and made her head ring. Poisonous qi tried to invade her body for half a heartbeat before the yang blood subsumed it.

“{Break}”

She snarled, instinctively, as the blood memories reacted even before she had stopped rolling. Her qi drained away like she had punched a hole in her dantian and the three screamed and frothed at the mouth as her shout cracked their bones and turned their muscles to jelly.

Juni pushed herself up, tossing away her damaged mask, and withdrew her sword-staff as a fourth Ur’Vash charged out the shadow of a nearby rock, where he had totally evaded their notice. It stabbed twice at Juni who barely evaded both times and then hit it with a palm strike that made its whole body twist and deform as it smashed into a rock with a sickening crack.

Somehow, that didn’t finish it, but the stab through its head that followed from her sword-staff did.

“How did they manage that?” Teng Chunhua sat up, spitting grass and dirt, mostly unharmed, a Longevity Lingzhe in her hand already.

“Purple,” she stalked over to the twitching form of the one who had thrown the pot, which was just shattered fragments and a swirling haze of some kind of poison.

“May a monkey screw these colours,” Teng Chunhua muttered.

“Hopefully not. They are the edge we need,” she chuckled, stabbing the offending one in the head with her blade – his heart core was shattered anyway, as were the other two she had caught with the attack.

“No other survivors,” Juni added, looking around with distaste.

The camp, or what remained of it, had precious little else to it beyond some butchered spirit beasts, a few sacks of miscellaneous belongings, clothes and the like, many of them bloody or with holes in them and a small bag of ‘shiny’ stuff that was mostly some bits of gold jewellery and miscellaneous talismans.

A few further minutes of poking about the surroundings turned up nothing else of real significance beyond a rough trail that vanished off into the scrub and broken, grass-covered, rolling hills to north-west. That rather helpfully was in the same general direction as their compasses were pulling so they set off parallel to it rather than follow the road, which was starting to wind away in a more obviously westerly direction.

There was no sign of further bandits, although they did find a second, deserted camp about ten miles further along the trail. That held nothing but some scattered hearths in the shadow of a rocky overhang on the side of a hill, the scattered refuse of some qi beasts and a few scraps of discarded clothing. The aura associated with it was also kind of unpleasant, such that even Teng Chunhua, who was about as good at feng shui as she was, considered it a bit inauspicious.

After that, they moved on, following beast trails and the route the bandits had taken mainly, guided roughly by the compasses in the general direction of the nearest signature from the yang blood. They faced little in the way of predators either, which sped up their progress enormously. She could only conclude that the bandits had scavenged widely and hunted most things or scared them off. What remained was likely hiding from the fierce heat of the midday sun.

By late afternoon she reckoned they had covered close to 50 miles, availing themselves of the restorative efforts of the Lingzhe and a few other herbs from Golden Grass village. The land was starting to become flatter, occasional rock pillars sprouting like trees, around which clustered groves of vegetation amid proper grassland. Unfortunately, they also found the road again about two hours before sunset and with it, quite rapidly afterwards, a walled settlement surrounded by what she could only call a small warcamp.

“Well, that proves that others have got this trail,” Juni muttered as they stood on a hilltop overlooking the camp half a mile away which was flying the banners of several different tribes, including the Blue Serpent and Moon Sickle ones, along with the Golden Grass village and a few others besides.

“Well, on the bright side, it shows they are competent at following a trail,” she pointed out.

“Not so convenient if you are going to break through though,” Juni sighed.

“…”

Considering her current condition, her rough count of the cycles she had undergone since her last ‘coalescence’ was about 13,500. Based on previous experience she would likely reach the point where her qi would naturally coalesce into a core within the next thousand cycles or so. Given they were thoroughly synched to her heartbeat and breathing now, that was not optimal.

“No, it is not,” she conceded.

“So, what do you suggest?” Juni asked, looking at her sideways.

“So I’m the leader now?” she grinned.

“…”

The other two just looked at her.

“Fine, we go see what the deal in the town is; presumably they are camped here for a reason. I can suppress my breakthrough a bit in any case.”

~ Cang Di – Ruined Camp ~

“I have to admit, I expected as much, once it became clear how much scavenging various bands had done on the way to us,” he mused to Qing Dongmei as they stood together in the last glow of afternoon, looking out over the ruined encampment around some actual ruins that the forerunners of their huge band had smashed like a rotten egg.

The ruined encampment had held maybe 150 of the demons according to what general conversation from the destroyers told him. A good few now dead – an expected outcome given the majority of the force of cultivators had hit them like a hammer out of the blue.

The few survivors, mostly females, had come about mainly because the Four Peacocks Court had found them before the Jade Gate Court and by a minor miracle the leader there had not fancied killing women, even ‘demon’ women. It had helped the survivors’ cases that they were mostly wretched, ill-treated things, prisoners of the larger band in all likelihood.

The most you could say about this was that they were either bandits, or the ‘settlements’ here raided each other. He was erring towards the latter, personally. Those who had defended the settlement had apparently fought until the last, buying time for their civilians to flee, then covering them with that terrifying art that had stopped anyone dying. These demons, though, had fled in groups within minutes of the engagement and clearly had no intentions of dying.

They had apparently had a banner that prevented soul sense, which was now being pored over by Kong Bo and a bunch of the other Jade Gate Court’s senior disciples.

In truth, he would have advocated against even bothering this camp – it would have been easy to bypass it, or just stun them all for long enough that they could have been ignored. However, the politics of being a large group was again rearing its ugly head, and that was why this place had been rolled over as it had.

They had travelled fast since diverting to ‘rescue’ the band who had smashed themselves on that settlement. Mostly, it had to be said, on the urgings of the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall’s more senior disciples.

The problem there, was that it was impossible to silence the complaints of the survivors and enough people were uneasy at the idea of ‘demon savages’ killing so many cultivators, especially among the Imperial Court influences, that many had been agitating for a second attempt. One with actual ‘preparation’, not hamstrung by some ‘rogue cultivators’, who had thoroughly and he was pretty sure very unfairly been handed the blame for that debacle in their convenient demise.

“I can only say that this is not optimal,” Qing Dongmei complained, agreeing in a way with him.

“It is the kind of wrong-headed thinking that gets people killed,” he nodded. “A lot of them seem determined, likely because they want to prove to themselves or others that they are superior to a bunch of people who barely use metal and live in mud houses.”

Qing Dongmei just spat on the ground and stashed her bow away. “Idiots. Half of them didn’t even lose disciples in that debacle, and now they want to act on our behalf on the one hand, while ignoring us on the other?”

“It is what it is,” he agreed, yet again glad that the two groups from the ‘Shu clan’ who were here, and part of this whole mess of cultivators, had nothing to do with him. “What do your disciples who survived have to say about it, incidentally?”

“It wasn’t us, we just went along with it, there were only seven of us, and the group of two dozen rogue cultivators did all the strategising,” she sighed.

“Two dozen…”

“All of them died in the attack bar three who turn out to be distantly affiliated with the Hao clan,” Qing Dongmei added.

“How-”

“Convenient?” Qing Dongmei murmured.

“Yes…” he agreed.

“Impossible to prove anything though, beyond circumstantial evidence,” she muttered. “And in any case, the Jade Gate Court have been running like a devil is on their tails for some reason. It’s almost atypically logical.”

“We are moving out!” a call from below echoed up.

They watched as people scattered from the camp and a group of four disciples from the Jade Gate Court shot to the four corners, holding talismans and spirit stones. The entire space between them twisted and shifted, and the ruins of the camp collapsed into the ground, grass and vegetation growing after a few moments, thoroughly disguising any trace of the destroyed place. The talismans would continue to work for several hours after they departed and by that time there would be no trace at all.

“At least they are sparing no expense to cover our tracks now,” Qing Dongmei sighed, turning away and walking back towards the rest of the group who were beyond the hill.

He could only nod at that. The talismans the disciples had just used were fairly widely known: Dao Immortal grade utility talismans, intended to help with the transformation of land and alignments for spirit gardens of all things. Here and now, they were repurposed to hide the scene of a crime… of sorts.

-Too many fate-accursed questions by half.

“I take it you have had no luck inquiring after the wellbeing of the other ‘prisoners’,” he added, as this was the first chance he had had to conveniently speak to Qing Dongmei in any sort of private capacity in about two days.

“Faugh,” the younger woman spat on the ground again, and then kicked a rock.

“I made some enquiries. I also have a certain association with the Tiger of Liao, just as you do, but I was flatly rebuffed by Hao Tai, then Jiao Den. The former I can push about, but he immediately ran to the latter’s shadow.”

“How so?” he frowned. He had also made a few tacit enquiries as to Liao Ying’s wellbeing via secondary associations since then which had basically fallen like stones into a deep pool.

“It has to do with why she was even in the Argent Justice sect at all,” Qing Dongmei explained. “That much I did work out, if only because I asked Tuli and Minghua to go ask questions themselves.”

It took him a second to place them as the two of the Immortals from the Verdant Flowers Valley.

“And what did they learn?”

“That she was sent there as an overture to arranging a marriage between the Hao clan and the Liao clan. The Hao clan want an inroad on the Western Continent and the Liao clan have a few old links to various arms of the Argent Hall that go back to the time it was founded. They rekindled that and Liao Ying was sent to the Argent Justice sect as sort of a ‘test’. She wasn’t officially anyone’s fiancé, but the gossip was that she was linked to…”

“Hao Fang?” he guessed.

“…”

“You are disgustingly good at reading between the lines of these things. Why do you even bother with the rest of us,” Qing Dongmei pouted.

“I have been wondering that myself more often of late,” he chuckled darkly, to which she gave him a poke.

“Present company and a few others excepted,” he added, rolling his eyes.

“So, did she know?”

“No, as far as I am aware, she was just aware that a treaty was being negotiated and her presence was related to that. Liao Ying is from the main family, but not an important aspect of it, barely a cousin. Her parents have reputation but little ambition,” she mused.

“So… they are holding her because she is a valuable bargaining tool and so long as they control the narrative, it is easy for them to paint our interest as politically aimed at them, exploiting a poor girl from the Liao clan for our own ends,” he resisted sighing again.

“Have I ever said how much I hate this generation?” he added.

“Several times,” Qing Dongmei snickered, although her heart was clearly not in it.

“And the others?”

“Sealed and held with those from the Bureau, impossible to even lay eyes on. They transport them in one of the two dragon carriages. They are alive but that is about it. The line is almost certainly the one you know.”

“The allegations are serious. We accept they may have been led astray, but they still rebelled so a sect elder will deal with it, until then they stay in custody,” he rhymed off.

“Exactly,” she agreed, before snapping her fingers. “Oh, they made another effort to get Xin Dai and his group on their side.”

“Mmmmm,” he nodded pensively, sweeping his eyes across the rocky ground ahead of them just in case a spider decided to chance its arm.

Xin Dai was something of an enigma, he had to admit. Two things were clear: Firstly, Xin Dai was the second strongest Ancient Immortal here, even ahead of Kong Bo of the Jade Gate and Jiao Den from the Argent Hall – only marginally weaker than he was. Secondly, he was deeply moral and helped anyone who asked for it, but didn’t take any overt stance in their politics as a whole.

Much of the interest from others came from the other two in his group anyway. The youth from the Ran clan and the woman with him didn’t leave Xin Dai’s shadow and refused any attempts at discourse with any other faction associated with the Imperial Court. Such was the influence of the Ran clan, who had the patronage of the Imperial Uncle Dun Jian, that only Kong Bo would likely be able to force any kind of meeting with him.

“How are your disciples in a proper fight?” he changed the topic, abruptly.

“…”

“As in…?” Qing Dongmei frowned.

“As in formations that don’t need talismans and your specialisms,” he didn’t say Martial Archery outright, because certain things were not widely known.

“Ah…” she frowned. “We can fight, and so can the Verdant Flowers… You expect trouble?”

“We flattened a town, and two other bands who came in have been trading quite a few spirit herbs…” he pulled out one he had bought in passing and passed it over to her.

“…”

She stared at it, turning the tuber over in her hands, and her eyes narrowed as they walked on.

“A four-star grade, life attribute root. It looks like it was marked, but someone scoured that – Wait. It’s still marked?” she said at last. “It almost feels like a reflection of Soul Law?”

“It is. They wiped the worst of it, because they are not idiots, but their knowledge of laws is lacking. It is marked simply because it grew in a land with accumulation; likely it is how settlements or clans of the demons keep a rein on others stealing their crops.”

“Which sect?” she asked, passing it back to him. “It is not freshly harvested even if it is only a four-star grade life attribute root.”

“Not a sect, one of the rogue cultivators,” he sighed, again. “A Chosen Immortal.”

“So they robbed a settlement and are now peddling the goods?” she mused.

“That was what they implied to me, although they were very reticent about the details,” he nodded, stashing it away in his storage talisman.

“Senior Dongmei! Senior Dongmei!” a woman in a white robe, now stained from travel, came dashing up.

“I’ll have to deal with this it seems,” Qing Dongmei sighed. “Unless you want to come with me?”

“It’s fine,” he smiled faintly. “I’ll let you sort this out.”

She bowed politely, and he returned the sentiment, watching her bustle away as the junior gesticulated about something, their conversation hidden by a ward of soul sense now as they fell in with the Nine Auspicious Moons group and the looted cart they were drawing along, pulled by a talisman conjured beast.

Letting them move on, he stood there, thinking about matters. They were covering over a hundred miles a day, which for their current circumstances was pretty good really. They were also scouting properly, although for not entirely altruistic reasons. The group could likely go faster if they expended resources to perform an actual geomantic movement formation, but it turned out spirit stones were not the answer to their problems, so that had meant hunting for beasts with cores that could be refined, which meant they had to scout properly.

The Four Peacocks Court and a few later arrivals were a boon there, but there was a growing undercurrent of discontent that just wanted to take out their frustrations on something, anything in fact, which was causing events like the destroyed camp now being left behind them. He was pretty sure that this one would not be lamented, unless it was for this territory raiding a neighbouring one. However, for every camp like this, every scout team came back in the evenings with ‘things’ to barter around the group and get benefits from.

{Shatterpoint}

He triggered the art and, walking slowly along the ridgeline, watched the next minute play out in mirage around him as his qi drained away rapidly. In part, he used it just to check that there would not be any oddities in the next minute or so, but it also served a more subtle purpose, as an extra layer of warning if he was peeked upon from afar. Letting the mnemonic maintain itself after the minute was up, he sat down on a convenient rock, took out a jar of wine and had a quiet drink, watching the train of various influences pass by, largely uncaring for his presence.

Once he was thoroughly ignored, he took out the book in wind script and considered it. There was an art to setting trails like this and Liao Ying had thoroughly underestimated how much he was actually able to get from what was in her storage ring. The group had ‘captured’ Liao Ying and two others, and also Han Shu. He had seen Han Shu’s memories, or a part of them courtesy of the talisman, which still seethed around his neck, albeit much more quietly now.

There were three signatures associated with this book, along with Liao Ying’s because she had put it in her ring. One was Han Shu, but the other two were unknown to him… except one had the same affinity as the yang blood. Liao Ying had been very coy on it in their brief conversation and he really wanted to have a second talk with her about it.

The woman who he had seen in those recalled moments had also left a signature on some talismans – or at least he was pretty sure she had, because there was another unknown signature in there, very faint as it was. Not a group of five, but a group of eight.

The last puzzle piece was on his and everyone else’s contribution talismans for that matter, and a source of much aimless speculation besides.

-I wonder, does Din Ouyeng regret those early moments where they begged my little group to seek ‘restitution’ against the three rebel hunters, he sneered inwardly.

Without that memory to go back to, he would never had made that connection, that one of Din Ouyeng’s companions had claimed that the ‘Lin girl’ rebelled. Putting two and two together, he had since made a few quiet enquires about inconsequential things and learned that Han Shu was from West Flower Picking town and that the Kun clan had a relatively influential branch there. There had been a Kun, a Han and a Lin in the group accused of rebellion and now Han Shu was captured.

Kun Juni and Han Shu had the same, ludicrous score and it had been impossible to miss ‘Lin Ling’. He had also tried to look at the inner workings of the divination arrays that meshed into the contribution talismans they carried, but drawn a material blank. Theoretically, however, he could make a few educated guesses on how they worked based on the score breakdowns.

He had also looked up ‘Lin Ling’ again on that newly updated list and hers was also there in contention with the top 50 or so at around ~600k.

As such, Liao Ying was covering by omission for the others in the off chance they had survived. That didn’t of course mean that much of that information had not been searched out of the other captives. If he had worked that out, others would have as well. However, he had not heard so much as a whiff of speculation about any other ‘specific’ accomplices of Han Shu from the Jade Gate Court or the Argent Hall.

Liao Ying’s score had not jumped from possessing that talisman of Yang Qi but he knew why that was. She had stored her stuff in a Burning Tiger Band. Not a fake one either, or a copy – an original, crafted by Burning Tiger’s old ancestor who was the foremost crafter of such artefacts on the western continent. That meant, in truth, that Liao Ying’s ring was, in terms of pure craftsmanship, superior to almost anyone else’s here. Such artefacts hearkened back to an older time, designed to work in ancient ruins of the Western Continent – some of which were classed as the most dangerous in the whole world, except perhaps those below Yin Eclipse.

-And likely why she was so nervous, he mused.

Hao Tai had no issues taking ‘his’ Burning Tiger Band. They were fairly famous and sought-after artefacts on other continents. If Hao Tai learned that Liao Ying had a genuine one, it would not remain in her possession, one way or another. That was also why he had asked Qing Dongmei to keep a wary eye on the girl. It worried him that she was a valuable piece in all of this and Hao Tai and others were thoroughly unscrupulous.

The key thing though, which was a very obscure bit of knowledge, and also why they were so sought after, was that anything held in them was inscrutable in the eyes of worldly fate. His own ring, crafted for him personally by his teacher, was the same. Nothing he put in it would be caught up in the net of the trial’s supreme divination. His score was thus mostly related to the things he had in another ring, just so it didn’t look totally weird.

It was amusing in a way to hear random conversations regarding his ‘qualifications’ echo around the camp as people looked at that score and gossiped. A few like Hao Tai had even compared it overtly to people like Gan Jiao and even Jiao Den. Most of those leading the rankings now had scores of close to a million. His own by comparison was barely 300,000.

“Perhaps I should do something about that,” he sighed, taking another swig of the wine, and watched the groups trail by.

The sense that there was a shadowy ‘problem’ somewhere in all this, fed through his divination art, was still there, melding inauspiciously with the quiet anger from the talisman as well. It was enough to make him wish he could have a headache, because it was certainly headache-worthy. He had tried two compass divinations, including a mortal one, and gotten precious little out of it though.

He watched the group pass by for a few more moments, then, satisfied that a trace of the Yang Qi had settled from the talisman located on the bottom of the strong bottle of spirit wine, he stored it away again and stood, making his way after the group.

~ Lin Ling – Edge of the Savannah, Beyond Bad Mango ~

“Who calls a town ‘Bad Mango’,” Juni grumbled as she wiped blood off the last of her arrows.

“Someone who wants to make a terrible pun,” she joked, looking out at the grasslands.

The aforementioned town was still visible in the distant horizon amid grasslands lit in strange reds and purples by the last vestiges of a setting sun.

The memories had been able to unpick that one for her all of their own accord. The settlement took its name from the ruined stele that sat in the middle, a two metre tall rock carved with a map and a bunch of names. Clearly the means to read it had mostly been lost, but the one remaining bit of text on it had been ‘-The Land Bad Man Go-’. Someone had then carved into the bottom ‘Waystone of Bad Mango’, presumably very pleased that the dubious punctuation meant the words could be co-opted into Easten.

It helped in a weird way that the town had a small oasis and some sink holes where against all the odds someone had actually succeeded in cultivating a variant of the tropical fruit tree in this landscape. She had tried one, confident that basically no spirit herb could poison her, and found that while they were not, in fact, bad, they would never be called good mangos.

And thus, was the town of ‘Bad Mango’ locked in, proudly shouted about by its occupants.

“They are not actually bad mangos,” she added. “Although the same cannot be said of the occupants.”

“Seriously, we will kick you off a drop to see if you fall upwards!” Juni said with mock exasperation.

“That doesn’t even work now,” she pouted.

“…”

The other two just laughed, again reminding her how odd it was for them to not be sullen and morose, even if it was mainly just a façade between them.

For her, she had to laugh because of the bundles of rage that half the memories were. Juni she was sure was just wearing humour like a mask at this point and Teng Chunhua was clearly still finding her place in their band in some ways.

The short trip into the town had been beneficial in a few ways. They had learned that this place had acquired bandits almost an hour after the main influences around here had had a lot of their forces called to fight in the jungle. The local towns who controlled stakes in the ‘settlement’ were unable to deal with it because they were also so inconvenienced and so the settlement was basically controlled by a gang who charged extortionate rates and a tithe on anything going in and out.

“What do we do about the bodies?” Teng Chunhua asked, looking at last of the ‘bandits’ pretending to be gate guards who had pursued them upon leaving.

“Leave em for the nightlife,” she suggested. “They deserve it.”

“In truth, I am more concerned about why the original text of the stele, such as was visible, had, as you put it, ‘The Land Bad Man Go…’ on it,” Juni added, putting away the last of her cleaned arrows.

“No idea,” she sighed. “The inscription is ancient, badly damaged and the map barely a sketch, such as what remains. There is nothing to say that the stele was even originally for this place.”

“You mean it’s a gimmick for travellers?” Teng Chunhua muttered, eyeing her a little disbelievingly.

“You said it,” she retorted, “not me!”

“True,” the older woman sighed. “It just feels bizarre in a different way in this place.”

“Well it was clearly a trading market as much as a town, built around the sole water source out here,” she pointed out. “Having a humorous name probably helps.”

“Or did help, until it got taken over by a bandit gang,” Juni pointed out.

“True, true,” she agreed, scanning the horizon towards the town.

Three of the guards who had pursued them had been something like Nascent Soul realm body refiners, not that that had actually helped them a whole lot in the end. Their physical strength was the only thing in that category and they had stunned them at the gate for long enough to get this much distance, along with everything else in 200 metres, before they caught up.

That skirmish had been short and brutal, the three stronger bandits killed with a lightning talisman and then the rest with a combination of yang blood, arrows and her stabbing one with the black spear.

“There are more preparing to come over,” she observed, spotting the shadows of almost two dozen bandits making their way through the grasses.

Juni scowled and drew a handful of arrows.

Without comment, she held out the small pot of blood and watched as Juni dunked them and shot arrows one after another high into the air with almost casual ease. To see them ghost unnaturally far, hitting targets close to a mile away amid the grass, was yet another reminder of why Martial Archers were scary.

In any case, it was hard to feel much pity, because had they been weaker, that would be that. They would have been raped and robbed of everything by the gate guards.

When the last one fell, Juni stored away all her stuff and, without comment, glanced at the compass which was pulling them north-west ish, and they set off at a flat run, making distance. They got half a mile before a soul sense scoured out in their general direction, passing over them and failing to find them.

It swept twice more until they finally passed beyond it, not that any of them stopped running.

In the end, they ran for almost another hour, hiding their presence and cutting through bits of landscape that would make for a hard trail to follow before Juni finally deemed it safe to stop for a bit. Munching down on a Lingzhe, she considered their surroundings carefully while the other two consulted the compasses.

“We need to go further north,” Juni finally concluded after pacing around the small hilltop they had stopped on staring at the compass in her hand.

“I got to say, the more I use that art, the better it is,” Teng Chunhua, who sat nearby watching, murmured with an admiring sigh.

“Ah, yeah,” she nodded, understanding what the older women meant.

She had come to realise that the ‘awareness’ of being touched by soul intent was also a part of ‘One with What Is’. It wasn’t until Juni and Teng Chunhua both remarked on it earlier that she had realised it wasn’t just ‘her’ but the ‘art’, in truth.

“Well, I guess we are risking night travel,” she asked.

“I think so,” Juni agreed, as did Teng Chunhua after a moment’s consideration. “At least until it becomes clear that we need to find a place to hole up – I don’t fancy fighting one of those serpents out here.”

The serpents in question had mostly kept clear of them as far as she had noticed. She suspected that the blood had a slight hand in that. The ancestral memories put a rather unusual pressure on wildlife in their surroundings, she was coming to notice. Insects and stuff like spiders were largely unaffected, but the serpents, the odd larger lizard and such mostly just shadowed them a bit or avoided them.

“Assuming we see anything bigger than a cockroach,” she pointed out, thinking back to the huge butchering and hunting camp outside of the town they had just fled. “The locals likely shot anything bigger and skinned it at this point.”

“That… That is quite credible actually,” Teng Chunhua agreed. “I would say we should have stolen from them, but I rather suspect that their commitment to actually engaging with the cultivator warband would be disappointing.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” she agreed. “Although I did drop a few of the herbs in a pot we stole from Ajara in the ditch with some scraps of ruined clothing when we ran away.”

“…”

Both of them looked at her and then just sighed in unison.

“What?” she retorted, putting on her best ‘who me?’ expression. “It’s justice, one way or another.”

“Well, let’s get a move on,” Juni said after a moment.

Their progress after that was not as fast as it had been during the day, but it was still pretty good. They had to kill a few spiders, and at last one small serpent, but between Juni’s archery, the yang blood and one barrier talisman they had little trouble with anything. About two hours after midnight, just as the moon was properly rising, they walked into another hunting trail that seemed to have been made several days prior by a large band heading in the same general direction.

That sped up their progress again, so by the time the first rays of pre-dawn light were peeking over the horizon they finally arrived at the point that the compass was pointing them towards, except…

“Well, this is odd,” Juni declared as they stood on the top of the rise looking at the small ruin.

“It is odd,” Teng Chunhua repeated flatly.

“Odd,” she nodded, picking a leaf off a shrub and nibbling it, just to confirm her hunch.

“The hunting trail ends here,” Teng Chunhua noted, looking back the way they came.

“And there is a trace of the yang blood here,” she agreed glancing at a rock about thirty metres away which was faintly resonating with her.

“Like… it truly ‘ends’ here,” Teng Chunhua added, stomping on the ground.

It did, indeed, end right there. It sort of diffused a bit, but only a tiny bit. Unless the Ur’Vash who had come through had vanished between one footfall and the next, this was absolutely odd.

“It is associated with that ruin down there,” Juni frowned, turning to look at the fallen stele, a few scattered walls and two ruined buildings that had been built up to the edge of a shallow quarry in the side of the far hill.

“The vitality of the land is off,” she added after a few moments.

“An anomaly?” Teng Chunhua asked.

“…”

“I have a simpler theory,” she sighed, walking down the hill, picking bits of vegetation here and there and looking at them.

“You recall there is that talisman?” she called up after a few moments, before pausing and narrowing her eyes, staring at the ground ahead of her as the instincts… twinged.

“Oh,” Juni nodded and followed her down for a moment before suddenly drawing up short.

“Stop!” Juni called.

She nodded and backed away, carefully.

“Sorry, that was silly of me,” she grimaced. “It stands to reason they would trap it after covering their tracks.”

“Would you two speak normal words?” Chunhua scowled, crossing her arms.

“There is a talisman,” Juni explained. “It’s called ‘Heng Heng’s Auspicious Field’.”

“Kind of niche, also very expensive, it tends to get used in setting large spirit gardens,” she agreed.

“When you say expensive?” Teng Chunhua frowned.

“Last time I had to get one on requisition I think it cost me 25 Earthly Jade to get one made,” Juni sighed. “It is a talisman that requires a Dao Lord with comprehensions in Earth and Water Laws to make.”

“Oh…” Teng Chunhua looked around the shallow valley below them and shook her head. “Seems profligate?”

“Indeed,” she agreed, “but the memories tell me there was killing done here, as does, I am guessing, your divination art?” she glanced at Juni.

“Death in four directions for a hundred metres from the stele, pretty much,” Juni sighed.

“A big trap, then. Probably not a low grade talisman for the first person who comes poking,” Teng Chunhua ran a hand through her hair. “So this is the main band?”

“Looks like it, or a subsidiary,” Juni agreed.

“Well, it kind of works out in our favour,” she pointed out. “Well, my favour at least.”

“How so?” Juni asked.

“Well, the qi density here is even higher than usual, thanks to the stimulation done to the valley down there…” she pointed out.

“You want to try to break through here?” Juni looked sceptically back at the vale and then at her. “What if it’s a trap?”

“…”

-Damn you, she sighed inwardly, cursing both the more recent aspects of the memories in the blood and their ‘eagerness’ that had caught her for a moment there, and also Juni, who was annoyingly right.

The two of them looked at her for a long moment before she just sighed and manifested another Longevity Lingzhe, taking a large bit out of it with a scowl.

“Sorry,” she sighed.

“It’s fine… but are you okay?” Juni asked.

“It’s… The memories are being annoying,” she explained. “The closer I get to ‘breaking through’, the pushier they are becoming.

“You…?” Juni narrowed her eyes.

The unspoken question there was clear: ‘Are you going to be okay and not go crazy?’

“I’ll be fine,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s keep going?”

“Does it have to be at dawn?” Juni asked as they started running along again, following the trail itself now, which was somewhat visible if they looked carefully.

“Noon is also possible,” she elaborated. “Although the impression I get is that it would not be quite as good, because I am female apparently.”

“Oh, the auspicious alignments,” Juni nodded.

“Well, we have an hour before sunrise, so somewhere might be suitable,” Teng Chunhua added.

“Just not here, or on the trail,” Juni finished, smiling in a way that never really reached her eyes. “Or I will kick you off a cliff myself for the headache it will cause finding it if your breakthrough twists every alignment within a mile like it nearly did last time.”

“I am not incompetent,” she sniffed, picking up the pace.

In the end, they ran on, parallel to the trail, until Juni led them away, across the grassland and into broken ground again, eventually stopping at a hill some three miles away that had a large section of exposed reddish-brown rock.

“Will here do?” Juni said, looking around the hilltop.

Considering it and the large exposure of iron-rich rock, she had to admit that it was indeed a pretty good place.

“Should do,” she nodded, suppressing the surging eagerness of the blood yet again. “You may want to back up though.

“…”

Both of them looked at her, then Juni abruptly embraced her and whispered, “Good luck!”

“Yes, may fortune smile on you,” Teng Chunhua added.

“Thanks…” she said, not really sure if she should smile or look serious as she broke away from Juni’s embrace.

-You should use the array we showed you before, the old turtle stated, cutting through the eager surging intents of the later memories.

Nodding, she took out the blood and started to draw the symbols on the rock, guiding them with her qi, linking them up and overlapping their common elements until it was complete. She then took out a bunch of the spirit herbs from both Golden Grass and Ajara and placed them in focal points in the array.

Finally, she stored all her garments and gear and sat in the circle, naked, and started to eat spirit herbs and pills. The yang blood made the question of ‘impurities’ in the pills from home largely moot in any case. With each cycle her qi became thicker and thicker, surging in tandem with her heartbeat as she pushed qi into the array continuously.

‘State, Contain, Focus – Gather – Myriad – Land – Fortune, Link’

{Breath of the Wild}

The qi of the land surged, twisting to focus around her as she kept devouring Golden Core grade spirit herbs, watching as her qi became more and more sluggish as her dantian twisted inwards.

And inwards…

And inwards…

Inwards…

The symbol in her mind shifted and swirled, the qi surging and shifting in strange rhythms as it continued to swirl in on itself, pulling in qi from the world, threading it through her body, through her meridians, through the array until she was at the centre of an ever-deepening maelstrom of inwardly spiralling qi.

Her dantian twisted inwards on itself and her meridians creaked under the strain. Her bones started to crack as well, as all the while qi continued to surge into her body.

Finally, her qi seemed to reach a certain point, spun on itself in the heart of her dantian and then kept twisting, drawing itself together into a surging spiral of yang energies that then kept spinning.

One rotation…

The blazing spiral became spherical.

Five rotations…

It gained a deep, luminous red bronze colour.

Fifteen rotations…

It manifested a blazing corona of yang fire.

Twenty rotations…

It started to streak other colours, the yang energies taking on hues of the different sprit herbs she had in the array.

Twenty Five rotations…

Her bones genuinely started to shatter and her vital qi was drawn into it, the ghostly patterns on them swirling across the surface of the core.

Thirty rotations…

The symbol surged and the patterns began to reorder themselves to become closer to the ‘Shieldbearer True Physique’

Thirty one rotations…

Her meridians started to distort, also being pulled into a subtly new layout, as her core continued to grow in size.

Thirty two rotations…

The flames around her core became five-coloured and the bronze became faintly golden.

Thirty three rotations…

The core spun on itself and then-

She spat blood as it literally exploded. Her dantian recoiled, her meridians twisted and then distorted faintly. The energy held within it swept back through her body, turning her surroundings into a blazing column of yang fire that melted the rock even as it tempered her flesh and bones. The memories screamed, enraged in some strange way.

When her body stabilized and she was sure she hadn’t exploded, she stared up at the sky, processing her momentary epiphany.

-Memories, you suck.

This was a concise opinion, shared by many of the older ones, who had a decidedly pensive bent there. The later ones just raged mostly, while others claimed all sorts of strange things and a few generally denounced her ‘human-ness’ as the problem.

Muting them as best she could, she checked her body’s condition. What she found left her… shocked.

Her dantian had enlarged again and her meridians were-

“Okay, that’s ridiculous,” she exclaimed to the world at large.

She had indeed broken through, in a way. Her physical cultivation had made some sort of strange advancement she couldn’t quite articulate but she had a faint, vestigial grasp of another strength in her body.

Her twelve ‘Basic Meridians’ were no longer twelve, but thirteen. In addition to that, she had an extra set of eight ghostly meridians that spiralled through her body, connecting her vital gates.

Inhaling, she drew the strength of the world into her and felt… alive.

That was the only way she could think of it. Her awareness of the world around her was vivid to a degree that it had not been before.

“You succeeded?” Juni called from the middle distance.

She sat up and looked around. The hilltop was glass and ash, grass was smouldering a hundred metres away. Standing, she walked over to them, dusting herself off.

“Well, kinda…” she grimaced.

“You’re at ‘Body Tempering’…” Teng Chunhua said dully.

“Ah… I am?” she blinked, realising that she really hadn’t known what the realm above Mantra Seed was called.

“So I take it you didn’t form a core?”

“I… nearly did,” she shook her head. “I need to think a bit on why it didn’t work.”

“Well, there was no lightning,” Teng Chunhua frowned.

“Should there be?” she asked, being totally unfamiliar with that breakthrough.

“I… I think so?” Teng Chunhua sighed, looking confused. “I have to admit I don’t know anyone who is at that realm, and I only know two Soul Meridians experts. My grandfather is one, and a senior who I work with occasionally in the Pavilion in Star Koppi village. My grandfather broke through almost three hundred years ago and that senior before I was born as well.”

“Ah well, it was noisy,” Juni said with a wry grin. “I mean you charred the rocks a hundred metres away…”

She nodded awkwardly at that. The ‘explosion’ had been quite unexpected, although she was starting to see them as a running theme of sorts.

“Is breaking through to Body Tempering that easy though?” she frowned, still mulling over the last few moments.

“No?” Teng Chunhua also shook her head and muttered.

“…”

Juni said nothing, but her expression was pensive again, staring away at the sky.

“In any case, I do not think we should linger here,” Juni added, once she had finished reapplying her body paint hurriedly and put a few garments on to recover her modesty. “My divination art is going a bit weird all of a sudden.”

“…”

Teng Chunhua nodded, looking around warily. “That pillar of yang fire was probably visible for ten miles in every direction at least.”

~ Cang Di – Cultivators Warband ~

They made camp somewhat after midnight in the end. The number of cultivators in the group now was such that the camp was less a camp and more a small sprawled village of tents, a few carriages and wagons, through which wound the inevitable ‘streets’ of people bartering various bits and pieces from the day’s foraging.

He himself was sat a bit of a distance away, beneath a tree on a rise at the edge of the camp where he could watch the stars and the moon. Since he had begun to feel that faint premonition that something was ‘wrong’, it had only grown. Now, it was at the point where he felt his shoulder blades itching faintly, as if someone was pointing a blade at him from the darkness.

No one else seemed to notice anything, or if they were, they were keeping it to themselves, which was only heightening his quiet unease.

Sending out his soul sense into the night, he swept their surroundings as far as he could, careful to avoid both the various groups patrolling the perimeter. There were few actual predators out here that were willing to bother them, as near as he could tell. Not in the two miles his soul sense could reach anyway.

A pack of the horned jaguars, led by one that was close to an Immortal realm beast, was lurking about a mile to their west. They were likely the same ones a group of scouts had tried to hunt earlier to no avail.

A two-headed serpent was hunting a small pack of mouse-like mammals to the east.

Not to mention another two-headed serpent was lurking in the bottom of the shallow lake nearby.

That last thing was probably the most dangerous thing nearby, barely a Chosen Immortal and showing no inclination to come poke at them.

By the time he had completed the sweep of the surroundings, the moon had risen properly and he again found his mind turning to the suppression and the distance they had covered. The Jade Gate Court were following their compass, using that to guide their path this way and that, having basically ‘explained’ to the group as a whole that their ‘first concern’ was the safety of all those here, rather than any particular treasure.

He, and quite a few others, he was sure, didn’t believe that for a hot second, but aside from that one self-inflicted iron brick of a settlement, they really had had a fairly painless trip so far, so it was hard to publicly poke holes in matters…

-Unless you happened to be properly paying attention to the path we took today, he mused.

About two hours after they had left that camp, their progress had started to divert west subtly, then east… then back west until they finally made camp here. If they had gone in a straight line they could have covered almost 40 miles in those hours… Instead they had gone barely 20…

He was pretty certain at this point that there had been no danger to divert around because his own divination art had been tallying fairly well with the obvious evaded dangers and yet twice the group had been ‘diverted’ to avoid things that he got no sense of, nor had Dongmei when he asked her quietly.

He swept the surroundings again, but still found nothing that would provoke the kind of bad vibes he was continuing to feel.

-Is it my bad vibes, or is it a matter of perspective though?

It was certainly true that if you kept divining problems long enough, problems started finding ways to get divined by you. It was a known problem with fixation divinations, not to mention self-fulfilling ones. Divine trouble enough times and not only will you find it, but usually you find it after you gave up looking, thus making it doubly dangerous.

Below, a group of disciples from one of the newer bands who had drifted in…

His attention was pulled away as his senses caught a point of distorting space from about half a mile to the west of camp. The flare of void fire from the teleportation hung in the night air for a while as almost two dozen figures adjusted themselves and then made their way down the hill.

That was the first batch who had arrived this close in almost a week. Most of them arrived during the day and so got thrown off by their movement and obfuscation. To arrive at night meant that they were likely coordinated with a force already here. Watching them go straight to the inner camp, he caught gold robes in the distant light with red dragons on them – Shimmering Dragon Sect.

“And so another useless bunch arrive,” he sighed, spitting in to the darkness.

When it came to hotheaded lunatics, the Shimmering Dragon Sect were to the southern continent what the Red Sovereigns were to the central continent. They also had excellent ties to the Argent Hall and were thoroughly in the ‘Imperial Court’ camp. They had little to do with legitimate dragons either, according to what he knew. Their claim to fame was that their founder had killed a dragon in the turbulent years between the Shen and the Dun Dynasties and the remains of that, mainly its blood and flesh, were the ‘vitality’ of the sect. The dragon’s enslaved spirit was their ‘guardian’.

They were also another group who had…

He pulled out the manual that Shu Tian had provided him, an account of those times as the sect master recalled them, and flipped through it. Sure enough, the Shimmering Dragon Sect, just like the Argent Hall, Jade Gate Court and a few others had had their defining origins in that time, rising at the expense of the chaos unleashed when the Heavenly Dawn Sect and several of their key allies collapsed into obscurity on the Central and Southern continents.

He thought about the words on the wall, ones Han Shu had also read, and found himself wondering why not just the first emperor but also a ‘Kong Hao’ had been cursed by Mu Shansu in the message he left.

Flipping back through the book, there was no overt mention in events of a Kong Hao…

There was a ‘Din Hao’ though, a fellow advisor appointed to help Empress White Swan choose a new emperor. The empress had vanished, Din Hao had vanished, Mu Shansu vanished, Ruo Tian vanished…

The vanishing of those old masters had been the catalyst for a short interregnum that had broken the influence of Shan Lai on Eastern Azure, mainly through the Dun clan managing to seize the moment and re-establish themselves. After that, the powers of the central continent had been those clans that sided with the Dun clan, including the Jade Gate Court and the Red Sovereign Sect, the Four Peacocks Court and a few who, while neutral, had thrown their lot in with auspicious timing, like the Hao clan, who then founded the Argent Hall, or the Muan clan, who founded the Shimmering Dragon sect…

He finished skimming through it, frowning.

They were all new stars who had no desire to work with the old influences. The Shu Pavilion and Seven Sovereigns had been thoroughly outmanoeuvred and the latter had never really recovered its position. As for the Lu and Ha clans, as well as the Shen and Yuan clans… they had sort of shuffled along and were all ancient enough that their lack of a firm stance had never really harmed them.

All those old masters – Mu Shansu, Ruo Tian and a few less well remembered others – had vanished without trace over 200,000 years prior. In the depths of Yin Eclipse, forgotten by history except by a very small number of old ancestors from before the rule of the heavens changed.

“And yet here and now, you have a collective of those who benefited most from their disappearance, and that tablet and sword are in Hao Tai’s possession… and the Din clan?”

-If this Kong Hao and that Din Hao are the same… does that mean that the Jade Gate Court’s links to the Din clan are not just through the Dun clan or the Kong clan directly?

Thinking through his own knowledge, there had never, to his knowledge, been the faintest hint of the Din clan having deep links to the Kong clan.

He swept the surroundings again, continuing to look for the source of his unease, and again found nothing untoward.

-And yet why did we suddenly slow after destroying that camp?

“Idiot,” he groaned, turning on the spot.“Idiot, idiot, you had the damn answer all along!”

It was a really obvious answer. The Jade Gate Court also knew that Han Shu was associated with ‘Kun Juni and Lin Ling’.

-Did they put some trap in that spot?

That was all he could think of, really.

-I was careful, he frowned, poring back over his memories.

Eventually he had to draw a blank there though. The more likely source was their compass. The Jade Gate Court basically had the monopoly on diviners at this point. Most of the remaining independently minded ones had been enticed over, and the few that remained, like those with the Nine Auspicious Moons, he was familiar enough with to know their limitations.

-Does that mean they are laying a trap for whoever has Han Shu and Kun Juni’s talismans?

He stared at the sky, watching the stars shift gently overhead, as he pondered the possibilities of that idea, which became more and more likely. All they had to do was slow down and unless the person or persons were stronger than someone like Kong Bo or Jiao Den, or they ran into another area of soul sense repression, the Ancient Immortals and the Jade Gate Court would fall on them like the cruel fist of heaven before they even understood what was happening.

“…”

“And for better or worse I may have contributed to that…” he scowled, feeling angry suddenly.

The hunters, if it was indeed them following, were so weak they could do nothing to this group… and if it was a bunch like the Red Sovereigns they would just join forces. If it was another force, he couldn’t see really who it could be unless it was one of the few northern forces.

Pulling out the wine jar, he put it down, forcing a tiny bit of qi out and drew it into a faint symbol – a hunter sign that simply read ‘trap’. It was only a single word, but that should in theory be enough to at least make them wary while being vague enough that anyone else who didn’t know about those signs who stumbled across it would be more confused than anything else or believe it an actual trap.

-Or I could split from the group, flee and try to meet with them directly?

He entertained that idea for a moment before sighing again and going back to staring at the sky above.

It made him question his own… not morality… because he hardly considered himself a ‘good’ person.

“I have seen good people…” he took a deep drink of the wine and raised it to the sky. “And much good it did you, Good Fortune Saintess!”

Rather, it made him question what his attitude to those weaker than him really was…

The stars continued to shift overhead as he watched them and let his mind move to something else. There was no curvature in here – something he had marked a while ago – but the question of ‘what’ this place was exactly was still open to debate. It was almost certainly a shattered plane of some description rather than a round plane or a cosmic well.

A bird hooted nearby and he stared at the moon, watching a flock of distant birds scatter from some distant trees.

“For fates’ sakes, is this what they call having so many talismans you forget what you have?” he sighed, pulling out a Nascent Soul talisman designed for beast suppression before putting it away.

He had not really looked at possessing a bird to scout because beast possession was not a common art and he hadn’t run into a bird that had a robust soul foundation until that one just now, whose call had a hint of soul strength. He had used it once in the forests, but there the cloud and the weather had been a serious impediment to its utility and it wasn’t until they were out here that his soul sense properly returned.

He cast his soul sense around, finally finding the owl-like creature, which was sitting in a tree about a mile away, near the lake, watching the serpents still stalking the mammal burrows.

Gently slipping a thread of his sense into the creature, he nudged it to take flight, letting it soar up into the clear night. It took a few moments for him to orientate himself and find their camp, via the lake.

From there he nudged it up higher, riding thermals to get altitude, and surveyed the distance with his soul’s strength and the animal’s natural night sight as he worked out how best to ensure he didn’t snap the thin tether to the creature. It was a feat of control that was made artificially hard by the limits on what he had to work with.

Finally, after some minutes of the bird just circling, he worked out that he could probably direct it to fly for maybe thirty miles and just rely on its eyesight and soul sense. It could see nearly triple the distance he could in the day anyway. All he had to do was focus on the fine control and not disturbing the bird overly while making sure it scouted.

It flew off, with him keeping one eye on what it saw, while the other scoured his own surroundings. He had quite a few powerful barrier talismans he could use in any case, but there was no harm in being extra careful.

The first thing he noted was maybe forty miles to the south west, shimmering lights of something in the distance.

He directed the bird to fly in that direction, noting that the first glimmers of pre-dawn were starting to show and eventually a-

He nearly broke the connection, such was his shock, because it wasn’t a settlement but a moving column of torches racing across the grasslands, following the rough line of the trail they had been following.

The band was itself only about 300 strong, but as the bird swept onwards, eating up the miles, he saw another, maybe a hundred strong, running from further south… and then another, maybe double that again, angling in from the south.

The bird spun around, its attention caught by something, and he blinked in shock as a flare of brilliant yang qi erupted some twenty miles away to the south-east, swirling hundreds of metres into the air before dissipating. It was odd enough and visible enough that-

His breath caught abruptly as the bird’s vision swept past, and he saw another distant shadow of movement, like a swam of ants running across the grasslands. Some were diverting off in the direction of the flare, he noted as he urged the bird on carefully so that he could observe them.

“…”

It took most of his control to not break the connection, because while the other bands combined were decent in size, there had not been any great strength in them perceivable through the eyes of the bird. This band, however, was not a band; it was an army and it was running breathtakingly fast. The most approximate headcount told him it was maybe 5000 strong, all of them at least Core Formation with hundreds at Soul Foundation. Fully a third of the whole force were strong enough that the bird’s own sense was unable to gain anything from them. At its head ran 100 demons painted completely red and black carrying banners. Behind them ranged approximately eight forces, each led by an old demon with greying hair or beards-

Abruptly, a female figure wearing a robe and a mask glanced up, straight at the bird, and a moment later a wisp of what was soul sense came like a grasping hand for him. Urging the bird up, he let it shoot into the sky, escaping the attack which, while powerful, was unable to adapt quite that flexibly.

Directing it away, he groaned inwardly as with the increased altitude he could see a fifth band moving to catch up from behind that other one, maybe 600 strong.

-So that is why I was feeling uneasy. We really did kick a damn hornet’s nest with that settlement, he cursed.

He directed the bird back in his general direction, sweeping in a vast arc across the landscape as it soared on the dawn thermals and tried to ensure that it didn’t pass beyond the range of his control. It flew on for several minutes before he spotted yet another band, angling in from the north, across the horizon, no more than a distant shadow against the grass.

Approaching it, steeling himself, he felt his heart sink a bit as he found that while this band was smaller, totalling maybe 400 odd and not moving anywhere near as fast as the large army, they were basically flanking to catch up to them. They were also comprised almost entirely of demons the bird could not see through and well over two thirds wielded bows while the rest carried hide shields and spears, screening ahead of the main force.

He flew on, continuing the sweeping arc, and found, grimly, that miles further on, past that point was yet another band, only 200 strong, but split into very organised columns, each with banners and again totally inscrutable. One lot carried bows, again, and the others long glaives made of beast bone and had headdresses made of serpents. At their heart ran a group of ten demons who were clearly some kind of guards escorting two old demons riding on a chariot of all things.

Both demons were garbed in robes of what he fancied were some kind of skins and carried staves made of bone and wood set with what looked like beast cores. Of all their organisation he could see that the other demons were giving the two a wide-

There was a sense of abrupt dissociation and Yin Thunder abruptly surged down the link as the unfortunate bird was incinerated by what had almost certainly been a lightning bolt.

He strained to hear it, feeling a pang of sorrow for the poor animal which had done nothing to deserve getting incinerated really.

-However, I was maybe five miles away and got spotted almost immediately…

That was the main thing. The nearest of them was about 40 miles away and if they kept up the pace they were running at they would likely catch them just after sunrise.

That said, as he played back what he had seen in his mind’s eye, it had looked like the largest force had been slowing and the others were angling in such a way as to flank their general location or to probably join up with the larger army. All the groups were running flat out to catch up in any case.

Standing up, he shook his head grimly, looking back towards the camp which was starting to stir properly now the sun was rising again.

“Is this all for one ruined settlement where they fought a barely pyrrhic victory?” he muttered out loud, “Or did some idiots actually manage to steal something of value elsewhere?”

The more he thought about it, the more likely that seemed, especially given the people trading spirit herbs. He pulled out that herb and then turned to look back at the horizon where massive problems were rapidly advancing towards them.

“What the hells did you idiots take that had made this kind of force come from all…?” he trailed off, turning to the north.

“All directions… straight for us…”

He cast about, looking for another bird with a Nascent Soul foundation…

After a few moments he just kicked the rock he had been sat on and then stored the herb away again, lest he be tempted to throw it.

“What to do… What to do…?” he paced back and forth, muttering under his breath.

Based on what he had seen, he could probably destroy a good number of that force just on his own; he had enough talismans and treasures…

“No,” he sighed out loud and kicked another rock. “They are not that simple, absolutely not that simple.”

The army had been moving faster than they had been during the day. The demons lived out here, had survived this land for who knew how long.

“The prisoners!” he snapped his fingers and stalked off towards the camp before stopping again.

“They are not suppressed.”

It was such a simple, obvious thing that he indeed had to kick something again, sending a rock clattering off into the grass.

“What is the nature of the suppression?” Turning on his heel, he stalked back over the hill and went to look back at the sunrise that was hiding any trace of the approaching calamity.

It was something he had been considering for a while, but the pieces had just not been fitting. Not until he thought about how both those groups of demons had detected his presence in the bird easily and at serious distance.

“…”

“Our pills became less, and while talismans still work, now even efficiency and manipulation is problematic,” he mused, ticking them off on his hands as he paced around the tree again.

“The teleportation issues seem to stem from dimensional inflexibility? It is still possible but it now costs a magnitude more – and nobody can fly. Not even with treasures.

“That is the going theory regarding why we cannot manifest our Immortal Souls easily either…

“Talismans work, albeit at a much higher cost because they generally draw on the natural spatial laws of the place, not the user’s understanding of it,” he added. “Same deal with divination talismans and such.

“So… soul suppression, inability to perform teleportation without talismans and the huge pressure on forming minor teleportation, spatial laws being different and the dimensions…?”

The obvious answer was one that had been mooted a few times, albeit not with a lot of confidence, because it was a crazy idea.

-It would explain a lot, though. What if the goal of the Imperial Court isn’t really what is in here, but this space itself. Is this actually a shard of a higher world?

“Are we not actually suffering suppression but attunement backlash?”

That was something he had pondered a bit, but circumstances had never been quite right to test it. Now, though…

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. It was an expensive talisman to waste, a serious lifesaving talisman in fact, of which he only had three – A ‘Dao Cage’ talisman. The three he possessed were all Dao Ascendant grade talismans who could block sustained attacks from a Dao Ascendant for probably an hour. The talismans were fuelled by formations of Dao Jades sealed into the talismans themselves. Fantastically expensive to make and the kind of lifesaving thing that could even block a single strike from a World Venerate.

Shaking his head, he departed the camp, hiding his presence as best he could, and dashed straight into the grassland, moving at his full speed until he was almost eight miles away from the camp. Sitting down, he took out one of the talismans and activated it, encasing the area for ten metres around him in a shimmering haze.

In reality the process of attunement was quite ‘simple’: All you had to do was get all your old qi and vital qi out of your body and Nascent Soul without anything replacing it. Any quality Dao Cage talisman would do, but he was paranoid enough about the Jade Gate Court that he was unwilling to take any chances. As it was, unless a Dao Ascendant personally showed up with an Ascendant weapon, he was about as safe as could be inside a regular Dao Cage; however, given the backing of people like Kong Bo… it was not a risk he was willing to take.

-Certainly they are determined to expend opportunities if not treasures to try to end me… although that wouldn’t get them very far in reality.

Everything he had seen so far lent towards this being less a trial and more some kind of backhanded stratagem by some power group in the Imperial Court to tilt the balance of favour in this junior generation more thoroughly in their favour. The why of it was fairly opaque as well, unless…?

-Don’t tell me this is all going back to the Heavenly Hundred, he groaned inwardly. Are the Dun, the earthly branch of the Kong heavenly clan, trying to clear the board so they can field a concealed competitor from this world to rival the two from the Hao clan?

That was the only reason he could think as to why they wouldn’t just wait out him breaking through to Dao Immortal and going somewhere less obnoxious.

Once he was certain the barrier was complete, he started the unpleasant process of removing every shred of unrefined qi within his body. This was the bit that, for most, required a Dao Immortal, but an Ancient Immortal with a Dao Cage could also do that with the aid of a second talisman so long as you had some comprehensions with soul laws.

Taking out the talisman in question, usually just called a ‘cage controller’, he slapped it on himself and stored all his clothes away, extricated all his treasures from his dantian and then put his storage rings on the grass beside him, bundling it all up in a sack that he tied to his spear.

Finally, he linked himself to the Dao Cage barrier with the control talisman and just told it to keep pulling qi out of his body. Once it was set, all he could do was sit there, shouldering the discomfort. The whole process took a mere 5 minutes, leaving him with a dull ache in his stomach and an unnatural sense of chill in the first light of day. When that was done, he contracted the Dao Cage until it was basically cloaking his body as a second skin, forcing out all the qi around him and began the second stage.

This time, he directed the talisman to pull out his vital qi, bracing his body with his martial intent as it tore out the stored longevity in his flesh, blood, bones and even the small building blocks that made them up.

Finally, he turned his attention inwards and voided all the soul strength in his Sea of Knowledge, binding every shred of qi inside his Immortal Soul and then feeding that into the control talisman.

Whimpering silently under the horrific pressure, he watched the orphaned qi around him dissipate away and be consumed by the natural environment. That process gave him a surprising shock, because he had been steeling himself for it to take a good twenty or thirty minutes, opening up all sorts of opportunities for someone to notice, but in fact it melted away like the first morning mists, vanishing in all of five minutes.

Even then he held it for a full five minutes more before cancelling the control talisman. The barrier snapped back to its original form and he cancelled it and then pulled out a blink talisman and stared as it just sizzled and collapsed.

“Well that’s not helpful,” he sighed.

Pulling out a Phase Leap talisman, he tried again and watched as it failed to work either. A quick check showed that even a teleport talisman just failed to initialise.

“Okay…” he stared at the talismans, and then involuntarily at the horizon and then the sky.

“I really hope that is not the case,” he grimaced, thinking of the approaching armies, and pulled out a single use Ground Contraction talisman.

This one did work, thankfully, carrying him to a hill a further two miles out before it crumbled into dust, the Heavenly Jade powering it turning into glittering dust at the last as the seal on it unravelled.

“Even so, you cannot be too careful,” he sighed, sitting down by a rock as he started to reabsorb qi from the surroundings.

His suspicions were validated within moments as he felt the subtle differences in the qi entering his system. He stared at it as it flowed into his parched meridians and swirled into his tortured dantian, billowing out as-

“MYRIAD ELEMENTS TRUE QI!” he could not help but yelp out loud as he recognised the foundation realm of the qi he was absorbing.

“Somewhere the nameless fates are certainly mocking us,” he sighed, slumping back against the rock. “Here we are floundering around and cursing this! And all the while, the reality is this is indeed a shard of a supreme world!”

As he watched his reserves fill, he was relieved to see that his ‘Four Peaks Celestial Law’ worked just fine to absorb it.

-For all the talk of the difficulties of the Martial Path and its fearsome combat prowess, it is easy to overlook that its real strength comes from its mastery of ‘Intent’, he mused.

Abusing that, and combined with the knowledge that an Immortal’s longevity was tied equally to body and soul, one could be used to shore up the other. Even a good Immortal Realm spiritual cultivator could do that with a bit of time and effort, but for a martial cultivator such as himself, who had an exceptional grasp of intent and a far more robust principle than many would ever suspect, considering the Shu Pavilion’s lack of high quality spear scriptures, it was easy to replenish soul intent.

In fact, he was pretty sure that once his vital qi fully replenished, which it was doing rapidly now as he filtered it through his Sea of Knowledge, and then exchanged soul intent back into vital qi, he might actually have made some gains in this place without ever realising it.

After a few more minutes, he had as much unrefined qi in his body as he could. Refined qi would take a while longer, but it was what it was.

He experimentally used his movement at and found it was back to normal, mostly.

He then tried to teleport and grimaced as that got basically nowhere.

“So the spatial laws in this place really are much more rigid,” he complained to the world at large.

Focusing on his soul sense, he swept it out and found that he could direct his perception almost anywhere within almost 30 miles of his current position if he pushed it in a straight line and didn’t care for his surroundings. That meant that the suppression there was maybe a factor of ten.

On a whim he searched in what would have been the general direction of the nearest band of interlopers.

A few moments’ searching got him nothing, although that was unsurprising given he was still unused to the current circumstances. Even ‘attuned’, his soul sense was suppressed by close to another factor of ten. Outside, he could push it for almost 300 miles in a straight line.

“Harsh…” was all he could say as he pulled it back.

The trip back to camp, once he had dressed again and cloaked himself in his soul sense so his strength appeared as before, took only a few minutes compared to what it had before. Arriving on the hill, he had been on before, however, he found Qing Dongmei standing there, looking concerned.

“Ah, there you are,” she exhaled.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“…”

“I came looking for you earlier and you were nowhere to be found. A bunch from the Glimmering Dragon Sect arrived and then Hao Tai and the rest have all vanished off somewhere – I couldn’t find you…” she blushed faintly, looking embarrassed now.

He didn’t bother to correct her mistake, and just shook his head. “It’s fine, I had a thing to sort out. We do have a problem though.”

“We do?” she asked.

“Yes,” he grimaced. “But first, you said that Hao Tai and Din Ouyeng are missing? Not just in one of the warded tents?”

He swept his sense out, searching the camp as carefully as he could and found that they were indeed all gone. Looking outwards, he found them on the far side of the shallow lake, in another small camp about three miles away that was well warded.

-Not after me then…

There were a few tents there and… the female demon prisoners? Narrowing his eyes, he focused on the surroundings, warily probing what he could, and watched until two familiar figures left a tent. The first, being led by one of the senior sisters from the Argent Hall, was Liao Ying, who looked blank-faced and dazed. The others who followed behind were Hao Tai and a youth in the robes of the Glimmering Dragon Sect.

The final figure who left the tent was dressed as a common cultivator wearing a mask.

“I’ll kill him,” he sighed, splitting off his soul sense.

Even if that man had not actually violated her, he made that determination then and there, because simply put the other prisoners, the demons and two of the female bureau ‘prisoners’ and another one he didn’t recognise at all were also there, bound and naked.

-Righteousness and evil are just two more flags…

“You’ll what?” Qing Dongmei said dully.

“Hao Tai, I will probably kill him, either here or once we leave,” he said simply.

“Okay,” Qing Dongmei said doubtfully. “But why?”

“They are probably mistreating the female prisoners in a camp, about three miles away on the other side of the lake,” he said simply.

“…”

Her expression flickered from shock to disgust to cool outrage before nodding.

“In any case, an opportunity may arise sooner rather than later,” he added, taking her by the arm.

“Eh? What…?” she nearly yelped as he used his movement art to carry her in a few seconds almost four miles away from the camp and away from the lake as well.

“You… what…?” she said dully, stumbling to keep her balance. “How?”

“There is likely to be a proper battle, today,” he explained, sitting down on a rock.

“Are you not affected by… whatever?” she just repeated blankly.

“I took a risk; it paid off,” he sighed. “I can do so for you as well.”

“You… can?” she paused.

“Yes. We will need people who can fight at full strength… and all those at the camp over the lake are also fully attuned. All the Golden Immortals and Ancient immortals from the Jade Gate Court, Glittering Dragon and Argent Hall are.”

-So, they really could have a Dao Immortal with them?

Pondering these matters, that thought, which had been haunting him for a good while, resurfaced.

-Although, they could have used the same method I did, seeing as a lesser Dao Cage talisman would also do, and admittedly there are a few more circuitous ways to solve the soul law issue, which is a strong suit of the Jade Gate Court anyway.

There was also no saying when they did it, unfortunately, beyond that it didn’t appear to have been too recently. Thinking back, the obvious time was actually when they were all sat around, pondering that town Qing Dongmei’s disciples had worked out was called Valinkar.

-Not to mention, if they had a Dao Immortal, they could have salvaged a huge amount of this much more easily? So why would a Dao Immortal keep quiet? That circle still resolutely refused to square itself in his head in a satisfying way as he looked around further.

“…”

-Could there be more than one Dao Immortal? And they don’t see eye to eye?

That was about the only thing he could think of, but that only raised more questions than it answered.

-People like that would be even more of a target than people like me? They can’t be with one of the main groups or their group would have just struck off on their own…?

-If it was a rogue cultivator, maybe?

That was deeply brave or very mendacious, and they would also not go anywhere near a horde of brats from the Jade Gate Court or similar, amped up on all sorts of talismans and with means beyond means, who would not blink at trying to grab a Dao Seed nobody would likely come to ask questions about.

“All…” she stared at him blankly.

“Yep,” he nodded grimly, pushing those thoughts away for the moment.

She stared at him, the permutations of things that could go wrong and how little anyone might be able to do about it reflected in her clear eyes for him to see for several seconds.

“How many of us can you attune?” she asked decisively. “And when you say there will be a battle later?”

“Oh, not against them,” he sighed. “We have a literal army of demons bearing down on us. Maybe 7000 all told, from almost every direction except north. The only reason I can’t say north is because the bird I used to spy on them was struck down by lightning first.”

“Nameless defiling monkeys’ milk!” Qing Dongmei put her hands over her mouth, but it still came out as a strangled snarl rather than a shriek.

“When will they get here?” she asked at last.

“If they keep at the same speed they were, then an hour or two from now? But I think they will mass up and organise first.”

“What kind of strength are we talking?” she mumbled, sitting down again on a rock.

“I’d guess a third of them are Nascent Soul or higher?” he shrugged. “Their leaders had soul sense ranges comparable to mine… as it is now.”

“Which is?” she asked dully.

“About 30 miles in a line if I push it. Yours reaches what, two?”

“About that, yes,” she nodded, biting her lip and clearly already doing those same calculations he had earlier.

“You can extend it for 150 odd outside?” he added, recalling what he had seen of her using such means before. “The suppression is variable but it’s close to a 90-95% reduction for most of us, I would imagine.”

“…”

“So that’s two coming who are at least as strong as you are outside of here, in terms of soul sense?” her voice turning a bit edgy.

“Yes. One of whom appears to be using something like a Spiritual Law; most of them seem to be innate body refinement cultivators though.”

“Suppressed as we are, this will be a bloodbath,” she groaned.

“Yes, and the Jade Gate Court slowed us down for some reason. I suspect because they think cultivators they want to trap are following us,” he added with a bright grin.

“Oh may they be fucked in the ass by the celestial monkey!” she swore.

“I don’t suppose we can just collect up everyone vaguely deserving and teleport away?” she added after a moment.

Wordlessly, he handed her a teleport talisman. She put her qi into it, stared at it then threw it on the ground and stomped on it for good measure.

“Ah, I wish I didn’t have to share a generation with these idiots!” she cursed.

“Agreed,” he sighed.

“So, how many of us can you attune?” she asked.

“Only those who have comprehensions in soul laws,” he grimaced, not really needing to add ‘that I trust’.

“So… me… and Zi Min?”

“Just you,” he shook his head.

“You don’t trust Zi Min?” she blinked.

“Zi Min doesn’t have any grasp of soul laws,” he said with a sigh.

“I am not really a good combatant,” she sighed.

“No, but you are good with a bow, and can run away with the prisoners from the Argent Justice sect if this all goes to shit,” he said.

~ Yergak – Grass Stalker Warband ~

When they finally caught up with the main group an hour after dawn, Yergak found he was impressed and also faintly relieved because the eyes were back. The forces mustering were from all over, but the main strength was from Ajara, based on the banners being flown.

“This proper army,” one of the Blue Serpent warriors muttered, sounding a bit overawed as they crested the last rise to properly look at the fires scattered in every direction ahead of them.

“WE SEE YOU!” a watcher, an elite hunter from Ajara, called from the nearby rocks.

“Moon Sickle sees Ajara!” he called back.

“Blue Serpent sees Ajara!” another of their warriors added.

The watchers nodded and waved them on by without further comment, letting them advance. The eyes didn’t vanish either as he glanced around, seeing a few other smaller bands crossing the perimeter and being hailed here and there.

He cast a searching look at Takgos who grimaced and nodded at him… so it wasn’t just his paranoia, it seemed.

They passed through the boundary into the ad hoc camp, navigating between small groups of resting warriors, hunters and citizens of Ajara’s various clans, it seemed. Based on overheard chatter, it seems they had run through the night and run hard, given Ajara was almost a hundred miles away as the bird might fly.

He was wondering how they managed it when they passed over another rise and found a large cleared space where various shaman were chanting and dancing, painting sigils on a hundred Ur’Vash who were red with the colour of their own blood, shuffling in a dazed trance around a banner inscribed with ancient ancestral sigils that faintly crackled with mana.

“A doom guide banner,” Hunter Korjai muttered half in awe, half in fear, echoed by Takgos and then Argok.

“Honoured are the fallen, for they have lit the path to war,” Dergazt muttered as they jogged past.

“Honoured are the fallen…” The rest of their group, hunters and warriors alike, murmured.

They passed beyond the banner towards the main area of the camp, where the leaders of the force were likely gathered. Their job was basically to relay the greetings of Warguz, youngest son of Yuugor, Chief of the Golden Grass village, along with the leaders of their own contingent’s Kabu, an Elder’s son from the Moon Sickle and Qehoz, the new, more senior leader of the Blue Serpents.

Really, Warguz should have been doing this himself, he couldn’t help but feel. Likely he would have, but they had not known this was Ajara until they saw the sentries themselves. Probably ignorance would not be seen as an excuse though. Unlike the Golden Grass village, Ajara was a real power, with leaders like Great Shaman Ezajara who were feared and respected across the whole territory.

Rumour had it that Ezajara’s notoriously bad temper was as much down to the fact that she had been born a ‘she’ and so could not take on her late father’s role as the chieftain of Ajara. As for her ‘un-Ur’Vash’ looks and lack of pointy ears – he supposed it was an unfortunate throw-back to her family’s history with the ‘Sar clan’.

“Me think Warguz going to get stomach worms if he realises how important this place is,” Dergatz snickered as they made their way past another camp, this time from Sanaak town, their elite warriors with their shields and spears sitting around drinking and chatting.

They were finally halted at the inner boundary by a bunch of Towering Tribe guardians.

“What is you doing?” one rumbled bluntly from where they were sitting on a rock, looking very bored.

“I bring greetings from our advance party, of the Moon Sickle, Blue Serpents… and Golden Grass to the leader of this war camp. I am Yergak, Hunter of the Moon Sickle tribe. I greet you,” he stepped forward and made the formal greeting.

“We greet you, hunter. You may pass to carry your greeting. The others may wait here,” another of the tribe guards nodded.

He saluted with a fist to his chest and waved for the others to go find somewhere to camp. They shot off, looking annoyingly relieved he thought.

The inner camp was mostly elite warriors of Ajara, close to 300 if he wasn’t wrong, which had to be maybe a third of what had remained from what they sent to fight in the jungles.

-Did the Great Shaman empty Ajara? That seemed unlikely, but then, knowing the stories about her… maybe not.

He was stopped two more times, forced to repeat the annoying formality ritual each time before finally reaching the central campfires where a band of old Ur’Vash were sat conversing silently, as if in their own world.

-Ah, that explains it, he shuddered. The Ajara elders, the clan greybeards.

The old geezers sat around the fire were all monsters in their own right, not at the degree of Ezajara, who had region-wide infamy, but they were all old warriors who had fought in the deeps and secured great standing for their families or had long links with Ajara. All of them had tattoos that marked them as veterans of campaigns in every direction and survivors of real terrors. Two even had a green scorpion painted, marking them as veterans of the infamous raid by ‘Mayumi of the Hundred Ghosts’ when the Grass Scorpions had last incurred into these lands over a hundred years before his birth.

A reminder that even a power as unscrupulous as the Grass Stalkers had an iron core at its heart and a spine made of experienced old veterans who knew exactly how much violence to apply in any situation to yield the most profitable results.

“I greet honoured elders of Ajara, of the Grass Stalker Confederacy of Tribes, on behalf of the Moon Sickle Tribe, the Blue Serpent tribe and the junior chieftain Warguz of Golden Grass village,” he saluted with both fists to his chest and then held out his hands as if offering their contents in the formal ritual of greeting old elders.

“We see you, hunter of the Moon Sickle Tribe,” one of the old Ur’Vash rumbled from where he sat. “You have run hard. The Moon Sickle sweeps the grass.”

“The Moon Sickle thanks honourable elder for the words,” he finished the ritual.

“How many do you bring?” another elder asked, between mouthfuls of some roasted game.

“Just over 900 in total. When we set out we were not clear of the scope of the threat. Half our number come from Golden Grass, citizens and irregulars, but the rest of us are all Hunters, or young elites of our tribes from the border regions close to the Badlands.” Little more needed to be said than that really.

“Send your three tribal envoys to see us in due course. We would know of the nature of the other attacks outside of our tribe’s territory,” another scarred old elder rumbled.

“With respect honoured elders, I may supply you with that information now if you desire it,” he volunteered, as much because it would annoy Warguz who was clearly being a facetious little git in sending them here.

The various old Elders eyed him, looking pensive.

-Eh, it was worth a try, he sighed inwardly.

“Okay,” the old elder who had first addressed him nodded.

“Sit, eat, explain your tale,” the scarred old elder added, waving for him to approach the fire and take some meat and drink.

He saluted in thanks and took a seat, helping himself to an appropriately sized piece of one of the birds and relaying their various experiences. He explained the escalation and the oddities of the raids and how many had seemed to target very unusual things. The injuries done and the deliberate disrespects of the attackers along with their fears it was some new warband emerged from the Badlands. He concluded with a quite detailed recounting of the events in Golden Grass village and finally presented them with the talisman that they had found.

That had ended up staying with him because Meklaz had been at a loss regarding that and also unwilling to turn it over to the Golden Grass elders or the remaining town shaman, not liking their attitude.

The old Ajara elders took the talisman and looked at it carefully, passing it around before finally returning it to him. They conversed quietly for a while, their words no more than faint hisses in his ears. Another reminder that old Ur’Vash just got stronger; they didn’t grow any less hale for their fading skin or lightening hair, unlike other races.

He ate in silence and answered more questions as they occasionally asked them, learning along the way that the scarred old elder had fought with the warband, which had sacked Moonless Lake village in a singular offensive, albeit at great cost. That identified him as Roja ‘Lake Cutter’, so called for his feat of killing a three-headed serpent in ‘Moonless Lake’ from which the village had taken its name.

“We thank you, Hunter of the Moon Sickle, for this tale,” the eldest finally said, putting his cup aside. “Return to your band and have them take up station to the east of the camp and rest. We will attack when we get word that Warleader Xavak and March Stalker Ilkuz have brought their forces into position to the north.”

He stood and left, saluting them a final time, pondering that bit of information with a slightly awed feeling. Xavak and Ilkurz were also famous old Ur’Vash. Xavak mainly because he was a successful Warleader who had served three Chief of Chiefs with great acumen. Ilkurz was a survivor of a tribe that was now extinguished in all but myth – the Sky Biter Tribe. He had traded blows with a D’varad she-devil and survived – or been let live, which was a bit less glamorous.

The tale itself was famous though – enough that there was not a young Ur’Vash in the last two centuries in this region who didn’t know it. The Sky Biter tribe had been the biggest tribe to hold the Badlands, even occupying, for a while, the reconquered settlement of Inukas, which some old evils had renamed Valinkar. That had been their undoing in the end, because a single D’Varad she-devil had appeared one night, walked out of the jungle and exterminated the entire tribe. 100,000 Ur’Vash had perished, leaving only four children living out of the whole tribe to carry a simple message spent in Ur’Vash Blood – ‘do not come into our lands again’.

Eventually he found the group, who had by luck actually gravitated towards the eastern side of the camp anyway, and they settled down to wait out the arrival of the rest of the band. Meklaz and his group soon arrived, whereupon he relayed the message from the elders and Meklaz then went off to break the ‘good’ news to their leaders.

Their rest lasted almost an hour as it turned out, before they were roused by horns and drums.

“Red and black drums!” Argok grinned as they all stood, feeling the supernatural strength of the beat course through them.

“We will dance for mages after all,” Dergazt spat.

He nodded, a bit more grimly than the others. He was just a watch scout but he had fought a few such engagements over the years.

“Truly today is not a good day to be a hunter,” he grumbled, suddenly not feeling very blue as he rummaged in his bag for some warpaint.

The eyes were still on him as well somehow…

Annoyed, he took a handful and just put a blue palm print on his face as he surveyed the edge of the camp not really expecting to see anything, except…

His gaze found the distant ridgeline, beyond the sentries. Three scrawny – no, three female Ur’Vash were sitting, watching the camp by some rocks. Female hunters were around, but there were not that many in the bands he had passed. Most of those had come with their partners or children though.

-Travellers? From a more distant tribe who came from Ajara?

Narrowing his eyes, he tried to make out their war paint. They were not really dressed like Grass Stalkers… and one had a metal weapon, a broad-bladed spear. None carried a martial aura either…?

He peered more intently at their war paint but found his gaze almost sliding off…

-Purple triangles on their masks?

-With crude golden flowers between the eyes?

Gulping suddenly, he looked at the designs on their arms and saw blue waving lines like clouds.

“That… not possible?” he shook his head and looked again but between one second and the next, the three were gone.

“What you looking at?” Argok poked him. “You look like you seen a bad ghost.”

“You see three Ur’Vash over there?” he pointed at the distant rocks.

Argok looked at the rocks and shook his head. “You letting those eyes get to you. You should put some blue on!”

“I think I might,” he grumbled, taking the pot of blue dye back out, “Really though, isn’t feeling right… I’ve been feeling like I am being stared at in the bigs every now and then.”

“Maybe you got a pretty orc stalking you,” Huklurz laughed from nearby.

He spat, annoyed, partly because having maybe hallucinated three Maker’s Dancers… and because Huklurz had reminded him that not all of them were afflicted by the following eyes and those that were not were in the majority.

“We should be so lucky,” one of the Blue Serpents laughed, from where he was sat nearby. To emphasise that, he pulled up his loincloth and slathered his crotch in blue paint, eliciting laughs from other nearby Blue Serpents.

“Maybe they come, be more impressed with our blue serpents instead!”

There were groans from nearby and the warrior ducked as someone threw a rock. He sighed, again reminded that the ones joking, like Huklurz and the younger Blue Serpents were also among the more inexperienced ones. Everyone was on edge and…

The swirling smoke from the next fire over made it to them and he wrinkled his nose and sighed. The Golden Grass tribesmen were burning their grass on the fire.

-Well, maybe that do it, he conceded, painting more blue on his arms and legs. Stupid grass making good Ur’Vash see weird things.

That was better than thinking he had actually seen them. Maker’s Dancers only appeared when a lot of Ur’Vash were going to die in very heroic ways usually and, much like you never saw purple devils until they ripped out your guts and wrapped them around your neck, you never saw the dancers until they spoke your name and took you home to the Maker in the sky, or so the old tales went.

Shaking his head, he gathered up the last of his kit and fell in with the others, jogging forward as elites started raising banners and yelling instructions. All around them warriors were arming up and cheering them as they trotted forward and banging on drums and blowing horns.

By the time he had all his black and white arrows within easy reach, they had arrived at the front with the rest of the hunters, elite hunters and various other skirmishers and irregulars – spear throwers and such.

Two old Ur’Vash who he had seen around the fire also came forward, both carrying bows and waving for gaps to be made as a hundred shuffling orcs in red and black came forward carrying banners with sigils on them that hummed with repressed mana. They now also had blue waves and gold stars on them, their legs and arms almost blurring as they shuffled to the beat of the drums.

“Mother of Earth to set the Stage.”

The words of the various Shamans undertaking the ritual rang through the surroundings, melding with the drums which continued to increase their tempo, making his legs itch to dance. He fought the instinct though; that would be lethally dangerous now.

“Such a gift, you lift us up from shadow this day.”

The rhythm shifted and the old Ur’Vash waved for them to start moving forward as the hundred Ur’Vash, the doom guides, started forward in a single synchronised dance that kicked up dust that swirled in strange ways.

“Mother of Fire, to light the Path.”

The rhythm became all-encompassing and the space around them twisted, the dust tinting red in the first rays of the sun. As he watched, the nearest doom guide seemed to slide apart, a spectral Ur’Vash dancing in the twisting blood red dust.

“Such a blaze of glory, to kindle the soul and raise the heart.”

The red dust around them twisted and glimmered as the shamans’ chants echoed with the drums and the alignments of the world shifted.

“Mother of blood! To lead the dance!

The roar shifted through the whole battle line and they raced forward, following the spectral forms of the dancing red and black Ur’vash and the banners they were carrying.

“Such gaiety and vigour to lead us on, for days and nights!”

By now, he, along with everyone else, was yelling the words along with them. The thunder of the red and black drums echoing in his very soul now as they raced through the shadowed grassland, shrouded in red dust and dancing, screaming forms-

Everything shifted and twisted, the land around them and the entire army of Ajara, the Moon Sickle tribe, the Blue Serpents tribe, the Moonless Lake survivors and many others besides were carried across the distance between them and their quarry in a single stride as all around them the chosen warriors who had borne them there crumbled away into red dust, their spectral forms dancing away into darkness and myth.

~ Cang Di – Cultivators’ Camp ~

He had just made it back to the edge of the camp with Qing Dongmei when he felt the world twist all around them.

The rolling grassland behind them shifted and suddenly he was staring at two overlapping places as a hundred blood red demons carrying banners inscribed with unnatural glyphs… danced out of the twisting firmament. Their bodies seemed to split bizarrely as their skins were torn clean off them and dust swirled up everywhere, merging with what remained of the morning mist, and the first rays of sun cleared the nearest hills to make the entire world turn blood red before their shocked eyes.

Between one footfall and the next, the demons collapsed into dust as a vast roar swept over them.

“Such gaiety and vigour to lead us on, for days and nights!”

The words, spoken in Easten, carried a vast, boundless soul strength and martial intent along with them as the dust scattered and he could understand what had been wrought. Hundreds of demons wielding bows raced down the hills behind them, the weakest of them at Soul Foundation, the strongest, though, were close to Chosen Immortals.

Behind them came thousands more, massed ranks and formations bearing banners of what had to be a dozen different influences among the demons, including one he recognised as being from the village that had been sacked.

He found he had no words, really, as he saw the full force of the army he had seen mere hours before now arrayed across the hills behind them. 50 miles in an instant, teleportation at the cost of 100 Nascent Soul demons.

“I hope those idiots are ravaged to death by these demons,” Qing Dongmei spat, pulling out her bow and quiver of arrows. “It totally was that accursed village, wasn’t it?”

The camps behind him were already coming to their senses as people recovered from the shock of the soul attack.

Sweeping his soul sense out he saw, two miles to the east, a loose line of glaive-wielding demons spreading out, screening archers who were forming up behind them, and now, around the base of those hills, the other spear-wielding demons and more archers following after.

Those group were forming up – 50 demons with bows to 5 with pikes to shield them. His practiced eye picked out the banners, formations as well. The leading demons, who he had seen escorting the two on the chariot, were pointing this way and that, organising them.

“Shit!” he groaned as they retreated towards the rise before their ‘camp’.

“There are ten quasi-Ancient Immortal demons two miles to the south forming up what look like martial formations.”

“Say WHAT!” Qing Dongmei actually screamed at him.

“That is where you will be going,” he grimaced. “Your Nine Moons Astral Huntress formation can secure that whole flank.”

“…”

She nodded grimly as other Ancient Immortals blurred towards the edge of the hill.

“What the fates is this?” Quan Dingxiang gawped.

“An army, dumbass,” Zi Min spat.

Din Xin and the boy from the Ran clan just stared in silence.

“Where are the Jade Gate Court Ancient Immortals?” Zi Min scowled abruptly.

-Good question, he sighed, sweeping his sense out.

Kong Bo was, in fact hurrying over, looking concerned; the other Ancient Immortal was nowhere to be seen though… and maybe a third of the Jade Gate was repositioning itself to the side closer to the ‘other’ camp. The Argent Hall were trotting over this way but most of the cultivators were milling about looking shocked and dazed – those that hadn’t been stunned outright by that.

“What is this?” Jiao Den also echoed dully, arriving in a gust of wind with a few other members of his group, with nobody from the Hao clan he noted.

“It seems that the locals didn’t like the raiding you lot did,” he said dryly.

“…”

Kong Bo and Jiao Den both shot him nasty looks which he ignored.

“You should probably find out what they took… and return it, unless you think we are going have a lot of success fighting them?”

“By the fates-!” he realised with a start that Shen Biyu had arrived beside Qing Dongmei along with the others from the various influences aligned with the Nine Auspicious Moons.

“Senior Cang? Can…?”

Whatever one of the other disciples had been about to say was drowned out abruptly.

“KILL THE DEMON!”

The howl that swept out from the armies was in Easten – again.

That raised a whole bunch more questions

The soul attack that came with it was just about blunted by the various cultivators who were a bit more on the ball. Even so, dozens of weaker cultivators still recovering from the first shout spat blood or staggered and had to sit down.

“KILL THE DEMON!”

The roar came a second time and the entire army smashed their weapons or stamped the earth.

This time it wasn’t just soul attack but proper Martial Intent funnelled with a synchronicity that would have made a legion commander applaud, or maybe sweat ice, it was hard to say which.

Some of those among their number less used to slaughter staggered back or shook, looking pale.

An old grey demon stepped forward and raised his bow, quieting the whole army somehow.

“You come to our land!”

The shout echoed eerily, carried not by soul sense but pure martial intent again.

“DEATH!”

The horde screamed as one, hammering on their shields.

“You burn our fields!”

“DEATH!”

The warriors in the front, wielding bows, howled in rage, stamping on the ground.

“You burn our towns!”

“DEATH!”

The disparate armed demons behind dressed in furs and daubed in war paint raged.

“You take our means to live!”

“DEATH!”

The seven old demons, the moon tattooed archers and the blue snake tattooed warriors, screamed out.

“You dishonour our people”

“DEATH!”

The whole army thundered, as the drums and horns behind the army resounded with a terrible howl as the entire force took a forceful step forward, making the ground shake.

“ATTACK!”

The old Ancient Immortal demon raged, pounding the ground with the butt of his spear, making it shatter outwards as his martial intent finally swept across the group.

Zi Min actually beat him to it, stepping forward and hammering down a foot on the ground to disperse the intent. Even so, most of those below Golden Immortal still had to stagger and a few unlucky Dao Seeking cultivators collapsed, their qi in chaos.

“BROTHER CANG!”

“Oh fuck this monkey bitch, seriously!” he heard one of the Verdant Flowers disciples complain behind them as the other half of the Argent Hall finally made it to the hilltop along with the various other influences.

“FEAR NOT BROTHERS! THE HEROES OF OUR GENERATION ARE ASSEMBLED!”

The words Hao Tai rather grandly proclaimed, washed over the wavering cultivators behind them, bolstering them somewhat.

“SURELY SUCH MEAGRE BARBARIANS ARE NO OBSTACLE TO THE MIGHT OF THE HEROES OF OUR GENERATION.”

One of the other women from the Jade Gate court called out.

“BROTHER CANG!” others yelled out righteously.

“WE WILL FOLLOW YOU AS YOU FIGHT FOR THE HONOUR OF ALL CULTIVATORS!”

Eyes slid sideways to him, Qing Dongmei and Zi Min. Even Quan Dingxiang’s hand twitched as if he wanted to cover his face. Kong Bo had a very… odd expression on his face as well.

For his part, he had a terrible, irrational thought.

-I could just use a Dao Eternal’s Heaven Fall Talisman and end the lot of them?

“SHU PAVILION!” someone else yelled

He honestly couldn’t trust himself to look at the forces that were rather loosely massing behind him.

-Talk about digging a pit for someone, this is truly trying to ‘praise someone to death’.

Their strategy was pretty clear: In singling him out, the demons, who were not deaf or blind, would likely assume he was the leader and that those near him were the main command of their group. That they spoke Easten meant he could probably explain, but at that point they would immediately become targets for the ‘righteous’ elements who would go after the Nine Auspicious Moons, Dew Drop Sage Valley and others for conspiring with demons.

-These people…

-Well, I could use an obfuscation talisman… but it’s a bit late and they would twist that as well.

“FIGHT FOR THE HONOUR OF EASTERN AZURE!” another voice echoed.

“VICTORY IN THE NAME OF TIAN!”

“HEROES OF THE GENERATION!”

“FIGHT! HONOUR!”

“Brother Hao, Brother Din, Brother Sheng… Brother Reng,” it was actually Qing Dongmei who spoke up, stepping forward and rounding on the most ‘outstanding’ of the Jade Gate Court and Argent Hall, along with Gao Reng from the Glittering Dragon sect.

For his part, he couldn’t help but notice that the massed ranks of demons suddenly looked a bit caught off guard – almost curious to observe what was going on.

{Shatterpoint}

He triggered the art, not to see the moment forward, but to get a better grasp of the nuance being projected by the various soul senses around him as well, because he trusted the agitators in this not one bit now.

“You and your companions have often boasted before us fairy maidens about your great deeds! You claim you aspire to the same heights that Brother Zi, Brother Cang or even Brother Jiao here has walked?”

She scowled and swept her own intent across the entire group, not bothering to hide that she was properly attuned now.

“Yet when such a path appears do you stand forth?”

“You who clamour for ‘Tian’, are you not ashamed?”

“You call out to the heroes of our generation… yet you hid behind them now? You speak ill of the friends of Senior Cang, of Senior Zi… Even of Senior Quan and Senior Jiao who have fallen along the path? Compare your deeds to them, to those who they fought beside, for things they believed in?”

“I, Qing Dongmei, declare I have only one regret in this life. I wish was born to the previous generation.”

“Well said,” Zi Min spat.

He turned his own gaze across the throng behind, who looked like they had just been slapped in the face, which in a way they had been. Some were just confused, some were shocked, but quite a few were also angry or beginning to become angry.

-Her tongue is too sharp, he sighed, although her anger is very pure.

“Jiao Den, Kong Bo, I trust you can stay here and guard these children?” he added, hefting his spear.

“Let the real warriors fight this. You children of providence do not have the stomach for war.”

“Hah-!” Zi Min grinned, “This is more like it.”

“Nor do you have the heart for it,” he added, shooting a nasty look down the line at Hao Tai and the others who had gathered.

“Bah!” he spat on the ground then narrowed his eyes, “You lot were happy to throw your reputation in our faces back by the forest, and then reject the council of others when our bands started to cross this land?”

“…”

He was about to continue, when he noted that their words were now falling…

Trailing off he just looked around, again having to resist very hard not to eliminate them all.

Someone, one of the unsuppressed ones, had just used one of the very talismans he contemplated using earlier, although it was at a radius that he would ‘struggle’ to notice it in the chaos of the surrounding. It also only twisted sound slightly, so that any words spoken here would not be understood by others, effectively cutting off the idea of telling the demons in Easten or maybe Wind Singers tongue that it was the idiots in green they should kill first.

He could probably break it; however, that would give away that he was also attuned and likely make him even more of a target.

“Let me put this another way!” he called out, deciding to just go with the blunt force approach. “You know who my teacher is?”

There was some uneasy shuffling, a few admiring looks at the invocation of ‘Ancestor Bronze’ but largely just antipathy of people taking things too lightly.

“If I fall here, Ancestor Bronze will know of it, and the circumstances. As to who is righteous before that seat, let them examine for themselves their actions.”

“You speak big words!” Hao Tai finally spoke up, looking around.

“You really think your old ancestor will be able to see what happens here?” Hao Tai’s next words, however, arrived shrouded in soul sense, presumably so they could not be heard by others.

“Truly Shu is a paper tiger, letting women and children speak for them,” a Jade Gate Court Golden Immortal sneered.

“Truly, you are a paper tiger after all,” another of the Argent Hall’s Immortal female disciples called out, her words also carrying aspects of a soul art.

“No wonder the Shu Pavilion took a step backward and let the heavens change for the better.”

That last one was in fact Din Ouyeng, he realised, who had finally appeared as well.

“…”

-Ah, talk about overthinking, he slapped his head slightly. Din Ouyeng was pushing ahead… and Hao Tai’s rather unguarded comment just now?

Even the Blue Morality Emperor would give some face to the Four Ancestors of the Shu Pavilion, and here they were just speaking in a thoroughly unguarded way?

-They knew there was a hidden space in here? If they came here with the realm shard in mind, they would have gotten someone to make talisman avatars of an expert with soul law?

Actually, that thought wasn’t any better, in its own way. A Talismanic avatar of a Dao Immortal or a Dao Lord was exceedingly expensive and required a significant sacrifice by the maker. They also had a limited lifetime, but the havoc they could wreak was much more… deniable.

“I will go fight him,” Zi Min said simply.

He considered the old demon, then Zi Min critically. It was unfortunate that Zi Min had no talent with soul laws or he would have attuned him as well. As it was, however…

“No,” he shook his head, stepping forward instead.

“Brother Cang?” Zi Min frowned at him. “This is clearly a ploy by those behind to paint a target.”

“Indeed,” he nodded, having seen that much clearly. “There will be plenty of opportunity for mayhem later.”

“…”

Zi Min looked at him a bit weirdly but finally nodded, stepping aside.

{Shatterpoint}

He triggered the art again and took a look at the vagaries going forward and sighed, relinquishing it again. There were no good options really, though there were a few ‘less bad’ ones that he saw the edges of. Not having his strength oppressed was useful for that art at least. The manipulation of those behind was unavoidable in any case, as far as he could tell; however, how it played out, even he couldn’t say, he found.

The old demon who had stood forward and issued the challenge was still waiting, arms crossed and grinning, looking at their side with a worryingly calculating look.

-If those idiots had just done their bit, rather than making this about flags again, this would have gone much easier, he sighed.

The problem with armies was that it wasn’t like other kinds of fights and these demons were all martial cultivators, body refinement cultivators too. Looking over them as he walked down the slope, he again toyed with the idea of using one of his strongest talismans to try ending them all; however, again he got a sense that that would by no means be a desirable outcome.

The old Ancient Immortal grinned and hefted his own spear, handing his bow over to the second old demon.

That was the other reason he wanted to try this, an entirely selfish reason in fact. He could feel the strength of the old demon’s martial intent and it held traces of spear law.

-If I hadn’t attuned myself earlier I would be in serious trouble, he had to acknowledge inwardly.

-But that is the thing you idiots never grasped. That’s is why you will only amount to so much. I got to where I am not because others gave me things, but because I kept walking forward and accepting the things I had to and fought the things I should.

-As it is, I’m probably only in pretty bad trouble, he thought wryly.

Unslinging the spear, he felt her thrum gently in his hands, oddly reminded of what the talisman had said.

Advancing, he levelled the spear, the old demon nodded slightly-

The strike came like that of a viper, breaking space slightly around the edges of the blade.

He blocked it smoothly and swept his own spear up in a low arc, carrying the flow of the strike forwards to exploit the opening provided.

The old demon took half a step to the side and swept his own spear up, smoothly cutting off that avenue of attack.

He let his own strike track it upwards and followed off the line between them to let the strike continue to stab forward at the demon’s neck.

There was no qi here, not from either of them, just his own attainments with the ‘Law of the Spear’ against the old demon’s.

They traded flickering blows, their missed strikes tearing space around them in weird elliptic arcs as their spear principles, naturally brought out by the flow of combat, also clashed and crashed off each other.

After a dozen moves they broke apart, the old demon looking a bit more determined.

As he had suspected, the old demon’s grasp of Spear Law was akin to his own, if not slightly better. The main gap between them though was in age. The demon was maybe 800 years old, maybe a tenth of his own age and that lack of experience showed in tiny little ways. Even so, this was, he had to feel the first time he had ever encountered an opponent who was truly bent on killing him with a spear dao…

-How annoying that we have to meet like this, when you are a threat to us and I cannot decide if the threat before me or behind me is the greater, he complained inwardly.

His teacher didn’t use spears and, among the others who had trained him on the four Ancestral Peaks of the Shu Pavilion over the years, only one, his senior brother and disciple of Ancestor Iron, had halberd arts. Others had suggested he set aside the spear and take up the halberd, the bow, the sword or the Shu’s traditional Sun and Moon blade, but the spear had, as the talisman said, been with him longer than anything else.

She had been with him since the days when he was just a humble junior crawling through ruins trying to earn a living…

Smiling grimly, he advanced first this time, striking out again, forcing the old demon to defend more adeptly this time.

~ Yergak – Battle Lines ~

Yergak watched in silence with the rest of his hunter troop as the old Ur’Vash, famous as ‘Elder Wurm Piercer’ fought the one that their adversaries seemed to call ‘Cang Di’. It was a strange name, but oddly worthy. Even in that other language they spoke it was possible for him and many others to feel the worth in it.

It was in contrast to many of those who stood behind him, many of them were weak-willed, and that made him angry… made all of them angry, in different ways.

They had all watched them try to hide behind this warrior and a few others, like chiefs who knew only how to use the power of others. Even Warguz, the junior chieftain from Golden Grass was not that bad.

He could see the young Ur’Vash below him, closer to the front, shaking with suppressed rage.

“Perhaps the comparison is not lost on him,” he chuckled to Dergazt who was standing next to him.

“Perhaps, or maybe he just ate bad stew,” Hulkurz snickered.

“…”

“That might be true,” he conceded as they watched the pair clash weapons again.

The shockwaves of the fight below were actually tearing the firmament of this space, which was proof that both combatants were within touching distance of the 8th advancement. That was the strength that properly supported a tribe through the year.

Their tribe’s old elder, ‘Elder Moon-Slice’, was a genuine 8th advancement old ghost as well, as was the Blue Serpents’ reclusive ‘Elder Snake-Seizer’. However, he and probably nobody else here not with a grey beard would have seen them fight, merely heard tales of tales. As such, for every warrior and hunter here, to see this clash was almost as valuable as seeing these cowardly interlopers who were disrespectful even to their own kind in the face of a circumstance like this captured or killed.

The old elder roared and drew first blood at last, leading to a great cheer.

The other warrior took half a step backward and then waved his hand, his ruined upper robe vanishing into some other space.

“Ohhhhh…” Hulkurz echoed the dozens of others nodding in understanding.

“So that was how they do it,” Dergazt nodded. “Ancient artefact.”

Those were very rare. He had never even seen one. If anyone possessed one, it would be someone like Ezajara or the Chiefs of the whole regions of the Vashlagh.

The wound on the strange bearded youth didn’t heal, not that he seemed that perturbed, merely nodding as if it confirmed-

He stumbled backwards as a feeling of deathly chill sunk into his body. Even 200 metres away, the spear suddenly levelled at the Elder Wurm Piercer made his body go slick with sweat as its point seemed to descend from the depths of everywhere to-

“GOOD HEART!”

Elder Wurm Piercer’s roar echoed as he met the strike with a shadow of his own that swept across the grass…

The female in white who had insulted the cowards spun her hand, a fan appearing in it, scattering the worst of what washed over her group, but not the others.

“YES! GOOD HEART! YOU SLAUGHTER LIKE AN UR’VASH!”

The words, spoken by the old Ur’Vash elder stood at the front of the Ajara forces holding a two-handed blade, boomed out, dispelling the moment.

-Martial Heart, he trembled.

This strange opponent actually had a Martial Heart? That was the qualification to be a war chief.

“Is no wonder Ezajara send out big army to get them,” someone muttered nearby, their voice sounding… taut.

“This why Xavak and Ilkulz come,” another agreed. “Not want to miss chance to polish own heart.”

He could only nod at that, with the others around him as the battle intensified. Both combatants were now using their full martial strength, a flickering dance of death. Every attack intended to kill, every counter designed to make a new opening to try to kill again.

Neither sliced the air anymore. That was extraneous. Even someone as unversed as him knew that.